Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘I wonder how long we — ’ Kate began, one hand at her breast.

‘There is little we can do but wait till the Serjeant comes,’ Alys observed, ‘and pray for that poor man. Gil, do you think it can have been an accident?’

‘I don’t believe Nanty Bothwell intended to poison Dan Gibson,’ he said cautiously.

She gave him an intent look, and nodded. Kate, easing at the bodice of her dark red gown, said, ‘Of course it was an accident. I’ve dealt with the man, when I wanted straightforward simples rather than a compound wi honey at five times the price, and he’s intelligent and civil, and so is his sister. As you said, Gil, he’s not such a fool as to poison the fellow afore all these witnesses. I’m right sorry we’ve had to take and tie him. I had Jamesie fetch him a bite to eat and drink, poor man.’

‘There’s a sister, is there?’

‘Her name is Christian Bothwell,’ said Alys. ‘She is often at the booth, but I think she does a lot of the stillroom work. I think her a good woman.’

‘Where is Serjeant Anderson?’ wondered Kate distractedly, still plucking at her gown.

‘Kate, are you laced too tight?’ Gil asked. She looked down, colouring, and snatched the hand away.

‘Edward,’ she said. ‘He needs to be fed.’ She looked about the chamber as if expecting to see the baby hidden in a corner.

‘Mysie has taken him above stairs,’ Alys said. ‘I’ll fetch her down. Where will she bring him?’

‘Not here,’ said Kate, with a helpless glance at the men still ostentatiously talking matters of state. Nicol Renfrew gave her a happy smile and another tiny wave of his fingers.

‘Augie’s closet,’ Gil suggested.

He had just returned to the hall with a list of instructions for Morison, leaving Kate and Alys to settle down with the baby, his nurse Mysie, and a jug of ale, when a portentous knocking at the house door announced the Serjeant. Admitted by Andy Paterson the steward, the burgh lawkeeper proceeded into the hall, a big man in an expansive blue woollen gown with the burgh badge embroidered on the breast. He was followed by one of his constables bearing a coil of rope and a pair of rusty manacles.

‘Guid e’en to ye, maisters. Aye, Maister Cunningham,’ he said, looking about him. ‘So what’s this about murder being done? Strange how I’m aye finding you next to a murder.’

‘Daniel Gibson,’ said Gil, ignoring this, ‘fell down deathly sick at the end of the mummers’ play.’

‘Is the rest of the company well?’ asked the Serjeant sharply.

‘So far as I knew,’ Gil answered, impressed despite himself. The man did not usually ask such pertinent questions.

‘A terrible thing! We all saw him pysont,’ Mistress Hamilton announced with relish. ‘Poor man,’ she added.

‘Gibson was playing Galossian,’ Gil supplied, ‘and it seems as if he could have been poisoned by the drops the doctor uses to cure him. Maister Renfrew and his partners, and the Forrest brothers, are working on him now.’

‘He’s a deid man, then,’ said the Serjeant, ‘for nobody could survive that much curing.’ He laughed at his joke, and looked about him. ‘Where is he, then? I’ll need to see him, deid or no, and where’s Nanty Bothwell? Ah, you’ve got him ready for me.’

The door to the hall-chamber opened, and Morison emerged, his velvet hat in his hand.

‘Serjeant,’ he said. ‘I thought I heard your voice. Thank you for coming so prompt. It’s a matter of violent death, right enough.’

‘Death?’ said Nancy Sproull sharply. ‘Is the poor fellow dead, then?’

In the window Maistre Pierre turned to look at them, and pulled his hat off. The other men did the same, one after another, and Nanty Bothwell, between his two sentinels, bent his head and muttered a prayer.

‘He died just now.’ Morison crossed himself, and most of his hearers did likewise. ‘Father Francis was wi him.’

‘God send him rest,’ said Andrew Hamilton. His son was silent and round-eyed.

‘Aye, well,’ said Serjeant Anderson, ‘that’s clear enough, I’d say. Pysont by the man that’s his rival in love, so I hear, and all these folk witnesses to it, is that right?’

Nanty Bothwell looked up with a despairing ‘No!’ but most of those present nodded, and there was a general chorus of agreement. Nancy Sproull said:

‘Aye, as Agnes said, we all saw him give poor Daniel the drops that slew him.’

‘I’m none so certain,’ said Gil. ‘Bothwell seemed as dismayed as any of us at the man’s taking ill.’

‘It was hardly anyone else in the chamber ministered the pyson,’ objected Maister Wilkie. He clapped his green bonnet back on his bald patch and came forward into the room. ‘There was none of us anywhere near the man — aye, nowhere near either of them, till the moment Dan Gibson fell down.’

‘That’s truth,’ agreed Maister Hamilton.

His stout wife nodded, her chins wobbling, and young Andrew said clearly, ‘They were all there in the midst of the room, see, and the rest of us round the outside.’

His mother looked at him fondly, but Nicol Renfrew said, with that irritating giggle, ‘It was the wrong flask he had.’ Everyone turned to stare at him, and he put his head back and looked owlishly from face to face. ‘You could see that,’ he added, and giggled again.

‘How could you tell?’ Gil asked carefully, trying to recall the moment when the flask had appeared from the doc-tor’s great scrip.

Nicol waved a hand, grinning. ‘It just was.’

A reply Ysonde might have made, Gil thought.

‘This gets us nowhere,’ declared the Serjeant. ‘See here, Maister Cunningham, you’re paid of my lord Archbishop to look into murders, so it’s only natural you should want to look further. But I’m paid wi the council to keep this burgh safe, and what I’ll do to that end is arrest the man that pysont Daniel Gibson, that you’ve got held there waiting for me, and there’s the sum of it. Where is the poor fellow, sir?’

‘Yonder, in the hall-chamber,’ said Morison, with a helpless glance at Gil, while Wilkie and Maister Hamilton made approving noises and the scrawny constable looked resigned.

‘But if there’s some doubt about the flask — ’ Gil began, swallowing anger.

‘Ach, nonsense,’ said Maister Hamilton roundly. ‘We’ve only this daftheid’s word on that, and he’s the one that tellt our Andrew Dumbarton Rock was on fire.’

Nicol flourished one hand and bowed, still grinning, and young Andrew went scarlet and glowered at his father. The Serjeant, ignoring the exchange, summoned his constable and proceeded grandly towards the door Morison had indicated. Gil, following him, paused as he found Maistre Pierre at his elbow.

‘The man is safe meantime, if he is in the Tolbooth,’ the mason observed in French. ‘But I agree, it is not at all a certainty.’

‘I’m not happy,’ Gil admitted, ‘but there is too little to go on. Better to let him take the fellow up, I suppose, while I ask questions further afield.’

In the hall-chamber the apothecaries were packing up their equipment, a set of wicked little knives, the basin in which the cataplasm had been mixed, the packets of strong-smelling herbs which went neatly back into the leather case. Robert Renfrew, holding a bowl of blood, stood aside for the Serjeant to enter and his father looked up from his herbs and said:

‘Aye, Serjeant. It’s murder right enough. Have you arrested the fellow?’

‘In good time,’ returned Serjeant Anderson, sailing towards the bed. ‘Poor Danny. A good lad, so I believe.’ He removed his hat briefly, and replaced it, then nodded at the mummers still seated in a row where Gil had left them, four of them numb and silent, the other young champion now sobbing into his hands. ‘Aye, fellows,’ he went on. ‘A bad business, a bad business. It just goes to show what following your heart can do to a young man.’