Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

Maister Renfrew closed down his case and fastened the strap. Its lid was ornamented with the same sign as hung over his door, the sun rising out of a mortar.

‘He’s brought the craft into disrepute,’ he said grimly, ‘and I’ll see him hang for it.’

Gil turned away from the doorway and moved across the hall, towards the seated prisoner, but before he had taken two steps there was a hammering at the house door, an urgent voice shouting, ‘Let me in! Let me in! Is Nanty there?’

The two journeymen guarding the prisoner looked at one another blankly; Morison emerged from the hall-chamber, Andy Paterson the steward could be heard clumping up the kitchen stairs, but Gil himself was nearest. When he opened the door the woman on the other side of it almost fell in out of the twilight, still saying, ‘Is Nanty here? Let me see him! What’s ado?’

‘Christian!’ exclaimed the prisoner.

She straightened up, looking round for him, and hurried to his side. ‘Our Lady save us all, Nanty, what’s amiss here? They tellt me — they tellt me — it’s never true, is it? A man dead, and by your hand?’

Bothwell looked up at her, his face working.

‘Danny’s dead,’ he said. ‘It wasny by my hand, Christian, I swear it, but he’s dead none the less.’

She stood over him, some of her fears allayed, and set a hand on his shoulder. She was a stocky woman, older than her brother, dressed in a decent gown of woad-blue worsted, the ends of her linen kerchief knotted behind her head, her apron stained with the different colours of an apothecary’s stock-in-trade. She had come out without a plaid.

‘You don’t need to swear it for me, my laddie,’ she said, with fond untruth. ‘I’d never ha believed it, whoever tellt me it. But what’s ado then? Why are you bound like this?’ She turned, looking round the chamber, and her eye fastened on Gil. ‘Is it you that’s in charge, sir? Why is my brother being held?’

‘There’s a man deid, Christian,’ said Wat Forrest’s quiet wife. Barbara Hislop, that was it, Gil thought.

‘He pysont Danny Gibson,’ said Maister Wilkie bluntly, ‘no matter what he swears on, for we all saw it happen.’

‘But how?’ she said, staring at him. ‘You all saw? How would that happen, in front of a room full of people, and none of them raise a hand to stop it?’

‘All sudden, it was,’ said Mistress Hamilton. ‘We’d none of us a suspicion, till he fell down in a fit.’

‘It must ha been something in the flask, Chrissie,’ said Bothwell, swallowing hard, ‘but whatever it was I never put it there.’

‘Aye, and what flask?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve got your flask here.’ She put a hand under her apron and drew out a small pewter flask, which she shook. ‘You left it below the counter, I’d just found it when Girzie Murray from the Fishergate cam in by the booth and said you were taken up for murder.’

Well, well, thought Gil. So Nicol Renfrew was right.

‘It was this flask, mistress.’ James Syme stepped past Morison where he still stood open-mouthed in the door of the hall-chamber, and held up the painted pottery object which had emerged from the doctor’s great scrip at the vital moment.

‘That looks like one of — ’ she began, and bit off the words.

‘We all had some of that shipment,’ said Adam Forrest from behind Syme. ‘You ken that, Christian.’

Morison pulled himself together and came forward, saying, ‘Maisters, I think the Serjeant wants to ask us what happened, and then we’re free to go, and I’m right sorry to have had to keep you here so long.’

‘No trouble,’ said Andrew Hamilton the elder in cheerful tones, ‘I’d stay longer than this in company wi your clarry wine, Augie.’

‘So can you untie my brother, sir?’ demanded Christian Bothwell.

‘No, no, we’ll no untie him the now,’ announced the Serjeant, emerging in his turn from the hall-chamber. ‘He’s safe where he is till Tammas and me’s ready to take him away.’

‘Away? Are you arresting him? But he never — I’ll not — ’

‘He’s guilty, woman, and no use to protest,’ said Wilkie.

‘If it wasn’t the right flask,’ said Gil, nodding at the little pewter one which Christian still held, ‘where did you get the other one? The one you used?’

‘Why, I — ’ began Bothwell, and stopped, staring in horror at the bright glaze of the flask in Syme’s hand. Sweat broke out across his brow, and he closed his mouth, swallowed, and said, ‘I–I forget.’

‘No point in questioning him here,’ said the Serjeant. ‘I’ll get all the answers I need out of him, down at the Tolbooth. Now, maisters, mistresses, I’ve heard from the man’s fellows, and from the potyngars that treated him, I’ll take your account of what passed, if it’s convenient, and then I’ll get away out your road.’

‘What’s in the right flask?’ Gil asked.

‘This and that to make a smoke when it’s opened.’ Christian drew the stopper and waved her hand, and a cloud of sinister bluish vapour trailed after the open flask.

‘There’s no harm in it,’ said her brother wearily, ‘but it looks good.’

‘And in the other?’ Gil looked from Syme to his colleagues. ‘What would you say killed Danny Gibson? Can you prove what’s in the flask in any way?’

‘What, taste it ourselves?’ said Robert Renfrew. He had found a discarded tray of sweetmeats. ‘I think no!’ he said, and popped a marchpane cherry into his mouth.

His father frowned at him, and said heavily, ‘That’s a task for one of us, I’d say, it being apothecary business. There’s ways to prove pysons, though something that acts so swift and in small quantity — aye, well, the craft will tell.’

‘The craft will tell,’ agreed Syme, ‘though it takes great learning to prove a poison.’

‘I’ll take that on, Frankie,’ offered Wat Forrest. Syme looked annoyed. ‘You’ve trouble enough in your household the night, without extra work.’

‘Aye, I should be away,’ admitted Maister Renfrew reluctantly, ‘and see how the lass is doing. They’d ha sent word if the bairn had come home, I suppose. But I’d as soon see Bothwell took up for murder afore I go.’

‘No, no, just you get away, maister,’ said the Serjeant, with slightly forced civility, ‘and let me speak wi these worthies. Then we can all get home to our supper. Maister Cunningham, if you want to run about testing pysons, I’ll no stop ye, and if Maister Forrest wants to take the nasty stuff away wi him I’ll be just as glad no to have the care o sic a thing myself, but I’ll ha Nanty Bothwell safe in the cells at the Tolbooth in any case, so he’ll no slay any more folk.’

‘We’ll never dare entertain again,’ said Kate. She spoke lightly, but her eyes were shadowed.

‘No, no,’ said Maistre Pierre comfortingly, a wedge of pie halfway to his mouth. ‘Once the poor fellow is buried you can be sure it will all be forgotten.’

‘Aye, but the quest,’ said Morison. ‘The whole town will be there to hear. There was a crowd at the gates the now, when I saw the Serjeant off the premises.’

Alys patted Kate’s arm. ‘Better to wait, as my father says, till the poor man is buried,’ she said, ‘but after that, you must hold a gathering for a great many people, and hold your head up and wear all your jewels. And Augie must wear the King’s chain.’

‘And invite the Provost,’ said Gil, ‘and our uncle.’

‘And your neighbours,’ added Alys. ‘You are right, Kate, Grace Gordon is well worth the knowing. When did you say they came home, she and Nicol?’

‘In May, was it? Poor soul, she’d have had her own bairn by now, but she miscarried within days of reaching Glasgow, and kept her chamber a month or more after it. She’s well now, I’d say, but — ’ Kate glanced at Alys, and stopped in mid-sentence.