Pat McIntosh - The Merchant's Mark

‘I’m glad you agree,’ said Kate, but Alys said:

‘Oh, the bairns! I meant to ask Maister Morison what ails the older one.’

‘I asked that Ursel this mornin,’ said Babb. ‘She said she’s been that way a year or more. Seems they’d both had a right dose o the rheum, they got it a year past at St Mungo’s tide when the lass that was minding them let them get chilled at the Fair, and the older lassie took a rotten ear wi it, and after that she seemed never to hear what was said to her, says Ursel, except it was her sister. What’s her daft-like name, now?’

‘They’re both daft-like names,’ said Kate. ‘Wynliane and Ysonde.’ And how, she wondered, had such a gentle soul managed to get away with naming his daughters out of the romances, instead of after their grandmothers in the proper way? There was a strong current of determination, she recognized, under the gentleness.

‘Aye,’ said Babb, striding onwards down the hill. ‘Wynliane.’

‘There are simples for a rotten ear,’ said Alys, clicking her tongue in annoyance. ‘And for the rheum, indeed. Poor poppet. So what do you have in mind?’ she asked again.

‘The house, for one,’ said Kate. Alys nodded. ‘The yard. Those men will sit about all day playing at dice if they’re not put to work.’ Alys nodded again. ‘The bairns. I asked Jennet this morning and she says there’s barely a stitch in their kist that fits them, and little more in the wash.’

‘And with the rest of the day?’ asked Alys, the smile flickering again.

Kate looked at her, then at Babb, occupied in coaxing the mule past an assertive cockerel on his midden. ‘I thought,’ she said airily, ‘we could ask about a bit, see if we can learn anything about Billy Walker and the man with the axe. Maybe even have a drink in the Hog.’

‘Oh, yes!’ said Alys.

‘Oh, no, my doo!’ said Babb. ‘Back in that nasty place? Do you want the other pole cut down and all?’

‘I’ll go without you, then,’ said Kate.

‘You will not!’

‘Indeed aye!’ said Ursel, stirring a pot over the fire. ‘There’s store of linen in one of the presses up the stair, we can easy stitch them shifts.’ She paused for thought, her spoon suspended over the kale. ‘I’ve a notion there’s a bolt of woad-dyed and all, that would make wee kirtles to them. Better for them running about in than Wynliane’s good brocades.’

‘Excellent,’ said Alys. ‘We can cut them out after dinner.’

Kate was only half attending. She had two of Maister Morison’s books in her hands, a printed Bevis of Hampton and a handwritten collection of long poems, and was leafing through them. The printed book had occasional pencil marks in the margins, which somehow seemed very personal, but the choice of tales in the other book gave her a strange feeling of looking right into the man’s mind. She could visualize him, sitting over these books like the reader in Chaucer’s poem. How did it go? Here it was, indeed, and the page well-thumbed. In stede of reste and newe thynges, Thou goost hom to thy hous anoon; … thou sittest at another book Tyl fully daswed is thy look. What else had he copied? The whole of Sir Tristram and a portion of Greysteil were followed by an extraordinary poem which seemed to be English and involved babies stolen by wild animals, and then by Lancelot of the Laik. None of the humorous or bawdy tales which went around in such collections, no sign of Rauf Colyer or the Friars of Berwick. But alle is buxumnesse there and bokes, to rede and to lerne. Morison was clearly a romantic, through and through.

And yet a brief glance at the account book lying open on his tall desk had revealed still another side of the man. Details of load after load of goods from Irvine or Dumbarton or Linlithgow, with exotic ladings and amazing prices, showed a trim profit on every barrel.

‘Aye, well, mem,’ said Jennet from the kitchen doorway. She cast a glance out into the yard, where Babb and several reluctant men were weeding or shifting rubbish, and the two little girls were constructing an elaborate maze out of shards of pottery. ‘I washed them both as best I could last night, but they could do wi a bath.’ She grimaced. ‘And their hair needs a good seeing to, mem, if you tak my meaning. We’ll likely need to cut it and all, afore we’ll can get a comb through it.’

‘It’ll take all of us to bath them,’ Ursel warned. She put the lid back on the pot and turned away from the fire. ‘Wynliane screams till she boaks at the sight of that much water. That’s how they’ve no been washed right for months.’

‘Well,’ said Alys, ‘we must start the bath heating, and then get to work on the house.’ She craned to see past Jennet as the yett swung open. ‘Who is this? Someone with a horse?’

‘Three folk,’ said Jennet. ‘Is that Maister Gil’s Matt? Who’s he got there on the crupper?’

‘And here’s that Mall Anderson,’ said Ursel, swelling with indignation. ‘The cheek!’

Firm footsteps on the flagstones by the door heralded Matt, who dragged off his bonnet and ducked in a general bow.

‘Brought ye a nourice,’ he said. ‘Name’s Nan Thomson. Widow woman. Raised five. Great hand in a house and all.’

His passenger’s voice floated in from the yard. ‘My, that’s a fine building. What’s it to be?’

And, after a pause, Ysonde’s reply, almost civil by her standards: ‘It’s the Queen’s palace. Can you no see that?’

Anything Mistress Thomson might have said to this was lost in an explosion from Andy as he recognized the third arrival at the yett.

‘Mall Anderson, what are you doing in this yard? Get your thievin’ shiftless face out of my sight afore I slap it for you!’

‘Fetch Mall in here,’ said Kate urgently, setting the books aside. ‘I want a word with her.’

‘I’ll get the bairns out of the yard,’ said Alys. ‘I want to try physicking that ear. Ursel, have you tartar of wine?’

Mall was propelled into the kitchen by a furious Ursel, with Andy exclaiming angrily behind them. Ignoring them both, she stopped in front of Kate, wringing her plump hands in her apron. There were tear stains on her face, and her lip quivered.

‘Oh, mem,’ she pleaded, ‘what’s this they’re saying about my Billy? Tell me it’s no true, mem?’

‘Oh, my dear lassie,’ said Kate, with a rush of sympathy. ‘I’m afraid it is. Billy’s dead, Mall. He was slain in the night.’

She was aware of Alys pausing in the doorway on her way out to the children, but all her attention was on the girl in front of her, who had collapsed in a wailing heap, flinging her apron over her head. Amid the racking sobs words could be made out.

‘I tellt him no to do it, I begged him to leave it! He wouldny listen to me. Oh, my Billy, my dawtie, my dearie!’

Andy abandoned his indignation, heaved the girl up and set her down beside Kate. Ursel, in grim practicality, dragged away the apron and forced a mouthful of aqua vitae down her throat, which made her choke but stopped the wild sobbing, and Kate took her hands with a sudden recollection of Augie Morison clasping her own hands not an hour earlier, and said earnestly, ‘Mall, if you tried to persuade him against it, you did your duty by him. Now tell me all about it. Who put him up to it? It was never his own idea.’

Mall nodded, gulping, and freed one of her hands to scrub at her eyes with her apron.

‘Tell me what happened to him, mem,’ she begged, sniffling. ‘Was it one of the household took him? How did he dee? Tammas constable wouldny tell me, he just said he was found. .’

Kate bit her lip.

‘He was taken redhand in the night,’ she said carefully, ‘here in the house, breaking into a lockfast kist. We questioned him, but got no sense of him.’