Pat McIntosh - The Merchant's Mark

‘No, you wouldny,’ said Mall, shaking her head. Subdued like this, with the cockiness all gone out of her, she seemed much more reasonable than her lover.

‘So we bound him, and shut him in the coalhouse for the rest of the night,’ Kate continued. ‘Now, Mall, he was man alive when Andy here shut him in.’

‘And cursing,’ put in Andy.

‘He can curse like a mariner,’ agreed Mall, and her lip quivered.

‘But when Andy went to fetch him out this morning, to see if he’d tell us any more before we sent for the serjeant, he was lying dead.’

‘How?’ the girl whispered.

‘It looked as if someone wi an axe went at him,’ said Andy bluntly. Mall stared up at him, open-mouthed. The high colour receded from her face, leaving two patches of red flaring on her round cheeks; then she put up her hands to cover her mouth. A thin high wail escaped from behind them, and she began to rock back and forward.

‘Some more usquebae, I think, Ursel,’ said Kate.

‘It’s no usquebae,’ said Ursel, pouring out another small measure. ‘It’s the good stuff, come from the Low Countries.’

She pulled Mall’s hands from her mouth and administered the dose with efficiency. Mall choked on it, hiccuped a couple of times, and began to weep again, but when Kate said, ‘What can you tell us about the man with the axe, lassie?’ she shook her head and said coherently enough through the sobs:

‘Aye, it must ha been him. It must ha been him. I never heard his name, mistress. Billy said he cam from Stirling, or Edinburgh, or one of those places. He speaks strange-like.’

‘How, strange?’ asked Kate. ‘Is he maybe no a Scot? Could he be foreign?’

Mall sniffled. ‘He might be. I never heard anyone foreign speaking.’

‘Mistress Mason’s French,’ said Andy.

The girl considered this briefly, and shook her head again. ‘No, I canny tell. He doesny sound like Mistress Mason, but that’s all I ken.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Oh, my dear, my Billy. Oh, if he’d never met that man.’

‘When did he meet him?’ Kate asked gently.

‘Yesterday.’ Mall stopped to think. ‘After the noon bite.’

‘What did he tell you about him?’

‘Oh, he’d no need of telling me. I heard it all.’

With careful questioning, she produced an account of how, after the household had eaten, she had slipped away for a tryst with Billy. Ursel exchanged a glance with Andy at this, but neither said anything. Waiting for her sweetheart in the hayloft of the stable, down at the end of Morison’s property next to the mill-burn, Mall had heard voices on the path beyond the fence.

‘So I keeked out,’ she said, ‘at the eaves where the swallas fly in, and I seen Billy out on the path by the burn, talkin wi this big ugly man. A grim-lookin’ chiel.’

The man had been all dressed in black, with a long-hafted axe, and a silly wee bit beard. He had told Billy that some task was not yet finished; Billy had claimed he was paid only to open the yett, and had done more than that already.

‘What yett?’ demanded Ursel. ‘This yett here?’

‘He never said. No here, I dinna think, no this one. But Billy said, if he’d kent what he’d have to do he’d never ha taken the chiel’s money.’

The man with the axe had pressed Billy to complete the work, threatening to tell his master what he had done already.

‘He didny want to,’ Mall assured Kate, wiping her eyes again. ‘He tellt me after, it didny seem right. But I think he was feart what the man wi the axe would do to him, no just for him telling the maister. The man said he cheated him, and he never did.’

‘What was he to do?’

He had been instructed to tell the Provost at the quest that afternoon that he and the other men had been got out of the way when the barrel was opened. Kate, listening, decided the two must have been talking for some time before Mall heard them; the stranger already seemed to know a great deal about Billy’s part in the day. Billy had objected, saying it would get his master arrested, and the man with the axe had laughed.

‘It fair made my spine creep,’ said Mall, remembering. ‘Then he said, That was the point, to get the maister out the road, and Billy was to get the key to his kist and all. So after,’ she closed her eyes, and tears leaked under her lashes, ‘he tellt me to get the key. And if Andy hadny sent him off — ’ Andy snorted at this — ‘it would ha been easy, and he’d never been taken, and never …’ She scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Where is he? Can I see him?’

‘The serjeant took him away,’ said Kate gently. ‘There has to be a quest on him.’

‘Up at the castle?’

‘He was mighty cut about,’ warned Andy. ‘You’d maybe no want to see it.’

‘I want to say farewell to him,’ said the girl. ‘And when I think just yesterday …’ Her face crumpled again.

‘What else did Billy and this man say?’ Kate asked. ‘Did they say what Billy had done already? Did you hear anything about what the man wanted him to find?’

‘Just the rest of the treasure,’ said Mall, ‘that he said was in the barrel.’

‘There was no — ’ began Andy.

Kate shook her head at him. ‘The rest of it?’

‘Aye. He kept on about that, and Billy kept telling him he kenned naught about it. He said, he said,’ Mall shut her eyes to think better, ‘You tellt us it was in the barrel already. You can find the rest of it, wee man. Then he laughed.’ She shivered. ‘Made my skin creep, so he did,’ she admitted again, and dabbed her eyes with her apron.

‘That’s why Billy was so certain there should be another bag hid in the house,’ said Kate thoughtfully. ‘And you never learned his name, or anything about him? He never mentioned any other names?’

Mall shut her eyes again, thinking.

‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘No that I recall. I canny mind clear.’ She sniffed, and managed a watery smile. ‘Oh, aye. There was one orra thing. He was saying the Baptizer wanted his goods and gear back, and Maidie would help him. Was that no a strange thing to say?’

‘The Baptizer?’ Kate repeated. ‘St John Baptist, did he mean? Was it a joke, maybe? Was he talking about the man whose head was in the barrel?’

‘Maybe he was.’

‘And who might Maidie be?’ said Andy.

‘Oh, his strumpet, for certain,’ said Ursel grimly.

Mall shook her head. ‘I wouldny ken.’

‘Have you kin in Glasgow, Mall?’ said Alys from the doorway to the stairs.

The girl looked at her, while the question sank in. ‘My sister dwells in Greyfriars Wynd,’ she said drearily. ‘I lay there last night.’

‘I think you should go to her now. Andy, may one of the men take her there?’

‘No need to disturb the men, when they’re working,’ said Ursel grimly. ‘I can leave the dinner for now, mistress. I’ll see her to her sister’s door.’ She untied her apron and took her plaid down from its nail on the back of the door, saying with rough sympathy, ‘Come, lass. You’ll be best wi your kin the now.’

‘And Mall,’ said Kate urgently, ‘don’t say aught about the man with the axe.’ Mall, halfway across the kitchen, turned to stare at her. ‘Not to your sister, nor anyone else, unless the Provost himself.’

Mall’s pale eyes grew round again. Her hand went up to cover her mouth, and she nodded emphatically as Ursel drew her from the kitchen.

‘Well!’ said Andy.

‘Well!’ said Alys.

‘How much did you hear?’ asked Kate.

‘From the hayloft onwards.’ Alys came forward, her smile flickering, and sat down beside Kate on the settle. ‘She may have more to mind Billy by than she bargains for, poor lass, if they trysted in a hayloft.’