Pat McIntosh: A Pig of Cold Poison

Although he was watching closely when the mummer was poisoned, it took Gil Cunningham several days and three more poisonings to work out how it was done.

There were many more people in the hall of his sister’s house than he had anticipated. The weather had been mild for late October, and not all the guests were in their winter-weight finery, so that the wide, light chamber and its two huge window bays each as big as another small room seemed to be crammed with furred wool set next to rustling taffeta-lined brocades, with a top-dressing of black silk hoods and jewelled hats. Gil, checking on the threshold with his wife on his arm, cast a glance round and muttered to Alys:

‘Sweet St Giles, she’s asked half the High Street. She’d never have noticed if I’d stayed at home.’

‘We have a good company,’ observed Alys’s father, the French master-mason, at Gil’s other side. Alys, ignoring them both, handed her plaid to the journeyman who had let them in, paused to ask after the man’s family, and went forward across the buzzing room to embrace her sister-in-law Kate, who sat enthroned beside the cradle, her crutches propped against the arm of the great chair and her gigantic waiting-woman on guard beside her.

Kate and her husband, Gil’s good friend Maister Augie Morison, had launched on the process of entertaining most of the burgh council of Glasgow and their families, in small batches, with the twofold purpose of showing off their newly extended house and their baby son to Morison’s fellow merchants. As the child’s godparents, Gil and Alys were naturally expected to be present at this first occasion, but Gil had obeyed his sister’s stringent invitation with some reluctance. He had a report to compile for his master the Archbishop of Glasgow, and two legal documents to compose before the week was out. Either would have been a preferable occupation for the afternoon, if he could not borrow a horse and ride out into the autumn sunshine. Instead here he was, in his good blue brocade, required to make civil conversation about nothing in a group of people he did not know well.

‘There is Francis Renfrew the apothecary,’ stated Maistre Pierre. ‘And Maister Hamilton. I suppose they would start with their neighbours, indeed. They had to suffer the worst while the building went on.’

‘Aye, Gil,’ said their host, appearing beside them. ‘And yourself, Pierre. I’m right glad to see you.’

‘How is Edward?’ asked Gil, nodding towards the cradle. Morison’s face broke into his lambent smile.

‘Oh, he’s well enough,’ he said, with unconvincing modesty. ‘I think he’s going to be a reader. He listened to every word on a page o Floris and Blanchflour last night.’

‘Do you tell me?’ said Maistre Pierre, suitably impressed. ‘At ten weeks of age?’

Gil preserved his countenance and gestured at the company.

‘Who have you got here today?’ he asked. ‘Looks like a town meeting.’

‘Not so many,’ pronounced Maistre Pierre. ‘There is Dod Wilkie the litster, who is Hamilton’s friend, and is that also Wat Forrest from the Drygate? It is to be hoped nobody falls ill today in the burgh, if both of the established apothecaries have closed up shop to admire wee Edward.’

‘It’s worse than that,’ confided Morison in amusement. ‘We’re to have the Play of Galossian acted later for the company, seeing it’s the season, and it seems young Bothwell, that has the potyngar’s booth at the Tolbooth, is one o the band I’ve asked in to play it. There won’t be a potyngar of any sort at liberty in the town. Bide there till I get you a glass, maisters, and then we’ll go talk to Adam and Dod yonder.’

He slipped away past three seated women. Gil identified Mistress Hamilton in ill-judged light blue velvet, Nancy Sproull the wife of Wilkie the dyer, and the hugely pregnant Meg Mathieson, second wife of Maister Renfrew the burgh’s senior apothecary. Meg shifted uncomfortably on her seat as his eye fell on her, but none of the three looked up from their intent dissection of someone else’s reputation, and Maistre Pierre said:

‘Galossian? Does he mean that tale of champions and death and healing?’

Gil nodded, still surveying the room.

‘I have never understood why such things should be seasonal.’

‘It always has been,’ Gil answered absently. ‘Any time from All Hallows Eve — ’

‘That is today,’ observed his father-in-law.

‘- to New Year. I suppose it celebrates the death of the old year and the coming of the new one. Out in Lanarkshire every parish has its own version, and the young men go about playing it in houses and farmyards and get rewarded with ale.’

‘Better, surely, to play out tales from Holy Writ,’ said Maistre Pierre in faint disapproval, accepting a brimming glass from Morison. ‘Your health, maister.’

Following his friend between the clustered backstools, Gil listened to the snatches of conversation. The chamber was not in fact as crowded as it had seemed at first sight, although all the guests had brought their ladies; unless one counted the baby and his nursemaid, and Morison’s small daughters and their stout black-browed nurse who were handing little cakes and sweetmeats, there were no more than two dozen people present, and most of the men had retired into one of the big new windows in a comfortable, argumentative group. In the further window, three women seemed to be discussing herbs for the complexion, two black cloth veils leaning together with one head of soft brown waves.

‘You want to choose him a young lassie, she’ll be by far more biddable.’ That was Francis Renfrew, striking in tawny velvet braided with crimson silk, his wide-brimmed bonnet close to Wat Forrest’s neat black felt.

‘That depends on the lassie, Frankie,’ observed Maister Forrest. ‘An older one will be the more grateful to get a husband.’

Whose marriage were they hatching? Gil wondered. Could Wat be turning his mind to his brother’s future? Adam had been a year ahead of Gil at the grammar school. He must be nearing thirty, it was full time he brought a wife and her dowry to the business in the Drygate, but by all accounts biddable was not a word to apply to Renfrew’s younger daughter.

An even less biddable lassie paused in front of him, holding her wooden platter up level with her chin so that he could reach it.

‘There’s two cakes each,’ she warned him, ‘and you get one of the marchpane cherries. But there’s plenty quince zozinzes.’

‘I’ll take a quince lozenge, then,’ Gil said, ‘and leave some cakes for other people. Thank you, Ysonde.’

His sister’s younger stepdaughter gave him another penetrating grey stare.

‘Some folk’s taking more than two cakes,’ she said. ‘If you don’t take one now you might not get any. Wynliane and me made them,’ she expanded. ‘Nan helped.’

‘I see.’ Gil took a cake obediently. ‘Has Mistress Alys had hers yet?’

‘Yes, and she said it was good.’ Ysonde waited. Realizing his duty, Gil took a cautious bite of the greyish morsel, and nodded with emphatic pleasure. ‘You can get another one if you like. But I’m not giving any more to him.’ She glowered at someone beyond Gil. ‘He laughed when I said how many, and then he took a great big handful.’

‘That was ill mannered,’ Gil agreed, swallowing the final crumbs. The little cake was perfectly edible; Nan Thomson, who was now shepherding the older girl out to the kitchen with an empty tray, must have had more to do with it than Ysonde would admit.

‘You didn’t bring your baby,’ she observed.

‘No, we didn’t,’ he agreed. And he isn’t our baby, he thought, and it’s beginning to matter. ‘John’s only two, so he couldn’t take the sweetmeats round like you and Wynliane. He’d eat them all.’