Pat McIntosh - The Merchant's Mark

‘And that’s a lee!’ exclaimed the man who had spoken before. ‘When all of us kens the maister keeps his coin up at the castle wi the Provost. Come on, tell the leddy. What were ye after?’

‘Up at the castle!’ repeated Billy, and spat. ‘Believe that, you’ll believe anything.’

‘Watch your manners!’ began Andy, but Kate leaned forward from Maister Morison’s great chair.

‘What does that mean, Billy?’ she asked. ‘Do you know something we’re not privy to? What does Maister Morison keep in that kist?’

‘It’s just the plate-chest,’ Andy said.

‘Billy knows different,’ said Kate, watching the man in the light of the three candles on the pricket-stand. ‘Well, Billy? What were you after? Was it coin, right enough, or treasure? What did the man with the axe send you for?’

It had been a shot almost at a venture, but it struck home. Billy jerked back, gaped at her, and then said in panicky tones, ‘Ye never saw me! I wasny there!’

‘Oh, but I did,’ she said.

‘Where were you no?’ said Andy. ‘For if it’s the Hog you mean, I saw you an all, Billy Walker. As for pushing Lady Kate off her crutches, I’ll pay you for that some day.’

‘I’ll pay him first,’ said Babb darkly.

‘I never! It wasny me that couped her ower!’

‘He kens a lot for one that wasny there,’ said Babb.

Kate nodded. ‘So the man with the axe sent you for something in the kist,’ she said.

‘No, he never,’ said Billy wildly. ‘He never had anything to do wi it. He wasny there!’

‘You broke in of your own accord?’

‘Aye,’ said Billy in relief. ‘It was my idea. To look for the …’

‘The what?’

‘I forget,’ said Billy.

Kate looked at Andy. ‘He breaks into his master’s house,’ she said, ‘opens his iron kist with a key, and then forgets what he was looking for.’

‘Aye, well,’ said Andy, ‘maybe the serjeant can help him remember the morn. He’s got a set of thumbscrews he’s a great hand at using,’ he continued, without conscious humour. ‘I’ve no doubt he’d get an answer in no time.’

‘We’ve no need to wait to the morn,’ said Babb. ‘Ursel’s got a pile o kindling in the kitchen. We could get wee splinters and put them under his fingernails.’

‘Ye can set light to them and all,’ said the man at Billy’s other side unexpectedly. Billy flinched.

‘What were you looking for, Billy?’ asked Kate. ‘You might as well tell us, for we’ll have it out of you sooner or later. If we don’t, the Provost will. For a start, where did you get the key to the kist?’

‘Likely his lassie gied him it,’ said Jamesie Aitken. ‘Her that took a strunt and went off without her dinner. Mall Anderson.’

‘I said she had something down her busk!’ said Andy inaccurately. ‘Ten to one it was the key she took from the kist upstairs that we all heard her opening.’

‘What if she did?’ said Billy with an attempt at bravado. ‘It doesny prove I took it from her. Maybe I was bringing it back,’ he added. Kate laughed aloud at this effrontery, but Andy produced a menacing growl. ‘Anyway you never saw it in my hand,’ he added. ‘You canny prove I brocht it wi me or that I made use of it to open the kist.’

‘Ah, a man of law,’ said Kate. ‘Billy, you were caught with your hands in your maister’s iron-bound kist. I don’t think arguing points of law will make it any easier for you when the Provost sets his questioner to work on you.’

‘We’ve no need to wait for the Provost,’ said Babb. ‘Will I get a bit kindling, my leddy, and start splitting wee skelfs off it?’

‘You’ve no right to be talking like that,’ blustered Billy. ‘It’s no your house!’

‘It’s no yours either,’ pointed out Babb.

‘Billy,’ said Kate patiently, ‘you can help yourself by telling us now what you were after. Why, if Jamesie is right and Maister Morison keeps his store of coin out of the house, did you go straight to the iron kist? What did you think to find there?’

Billy glowered at her. ‘Will you let me go if I tell you?’ he demanded in belligerent tones.

‘Oh, no. But I will bid the serjeant not to put you to the question.’

Billy shrugged, as well as he might in the grip of his two fellows. ‘Aye, well. He’s no hid it there, anyways.’

‘Hid what?’ exploded Andy. ‘Get to the point, man!’

Billy threw him a look of extreme dislike and said direct to Kate, ‘The treasure they found in the barrel. He only took the half o it to the Provost. There should be another bag o coin and that, hid somewhere in the house.’

‘Who says?’ said Andy incredulously.

‘Is this what the axeman told you, Billy?’ asked Kate.

‘No,’ he said in a panic. ‘No, I thocht o it mysel. Nothing to do wi any axeman.’

‘You’re a fool, Billy Walker,’ declared Andy. ‘I was present the whole time, and there was only the one bag of treasure came out of that puncheon. And that went to the Provost entire. Where did you get the notion there was more?’

‘Aye there’s more,’ said Billy. ‘Even that Cunningham said there should be more.’

‘You mean my brother?’ said Kate evenly.

He swallowed. ‘Maister Cunningham,’ he began again, ‘said if there was that much in one bag there should be the same again in another.’

‘I mind that,’ said Andy. ‘And I said there was no more in the barrel.’

‘Aye,’ said Billy. ‘Expect me to believe that?’

‘We had all the brine out of the puncheon,’ said Andy, ‘before the maister, and Maister Cunningham, and Maister Mason. There was no more treasure in it, as you’d ha heard if you’d stopped to speir a bit more, you nasty sneaking wee bauchle.’

‘What’s he called, the man with the axe?’ said Kate.

‘He’s got no name,’ said Billy, taken by surprise as she had hoped. ‘They cry him the Axeman, just.’ He realized what he had given away and stopped, gulping in alarm.

‘And the Axeman sent you to fetch the treasure out of your maister’s kist,’ said Kate. ‘What were you to do with it? Were you to take it to him at the Hog?’

‘He’ll kill me!’ said Billy. ‘I’m a deid man!’ He flung himself forward, taking his warders by surprise, and fell on his knees. ‘My leddy, you’ll protect me, won’t you? He’ll get me for letting on about him!’ He shuffled forward to grasp at Kate’s skirts, and she drew back instinctively into the chair. The two men bent to haul him up, but he grovelled on his face, moaning in what seemed like real fear.

‘What does he have to do with it?’ Kate asked. ‘Why did he send you for the treasure? How did he know about it?’

‘I dinna ken!’ wailed Billy. ‘I never cheated him!’

‘When did he first speak to you?’

‘In the Hog this afternoon,’ said Billy quickly. ‘I swear it, by St Mungo’s banes I swear it! I never seen him afore that in my life.’

‘In the Hog this afternoon,’ repeated Kate, looking down at the man with distaste. ‘You said just now neither of you was there.’

‘Aye we were!’

‘Put him in the coalhouse,’ she said to Andy. ‘And never mind giving him a light. We’ll see if he can tell the serjeant a straight tale in the morning.’

‘This is a handsome town,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘though it is smaller than Glasgow.’

Gil did not reply.

He was seated on a block of stone, throwing pebbles into Linlithgow Loch. The music and the drinking had gone on in the harper’s lodging well into the night, and even after the brisk two hours’ ride from Stirling in the sunshine his head still felt thick. Moreover, all through the merriment, the part-songs and snatches of consort-music, the ride in the bright morning, McIan’s comment had nagged at the back of his mind. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be . It no longer surprised him that McIan could quote Holy Writ; the surprise was that he had quoted it in Scots and not in Latin. But what did the harper mean by it? His heart, certainly, was with Alys, but there was precious little treasure involved, and until there was more he was reluctant to agree a date for their marriage. I am a Cunningham, he thought, rubbing a stone with his thumb, I won’t live on my bride’s money.