Pat McIntosh - The Merchant's Mark

‘A bad business, my lady,’ he said. ‘It must have been a shock to you.’

‘A shock to the whole household,’ said Kate. ‘Andy, here, found him, as he just tellt you, sir, and the other men were working wi him the day before.’

‘And why were you in the house, anyway?’ Sir Thomas went on in a low voice.

‘As I said,’ said Kate, ‘I’m there to mind the bairns till we sort out this charge against their faither. He’s an old friend, sir, and a friend of my brother’s. I knew his wife, I’ve known Maister Morison since I was the age his bairns are.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Sir Thomas nodded. ‘You’re acting for your brother, are you?’

‘What about the man wi the axe?’ said a voice behind Sir Thomas before she had to answer this. The Provost turned sharply, and Mall came into Kate’s view, dry-eyed and pinched with grief, her sister beside her. ‘You never mentioned him,’ she went on, looking at Kate, ‘you never named the weapon that killed my Billy. Is he to get off wi it?’

‘Speak respectful to my leddy, you,’ said Babb over Kate’s shoulder.

‘What’s this? What’s this?’ demanded Sir Thomas.

‘It’s Billy’s sweetheart, Mall Anderson,’ said Kate. ‘Mall, did you not speak to the Provost before?’

‘I tried,’ she said, ‘but my uncle wouldny let me.’ She jerked her head towards Serjeant Anderson, who had just reappeared leading the assize from the inner room.

‘Oh, he wouldny?’ said Sir Thomas a little grimly. ‘What’s this about a man with an axe, lassie? Tell me quick.’

‘There was a m-man wi an axe at the back yett to our yard,’ said Mall, stumbling over her words, ‘I heard him talking to my Billy, and he threatened him to d-do what he wanted, to break into his maister’s house and steal for him, and it must ha been him that slew him, sir, and is he to get off free?’

‘It’s no right, maister,’ said her sister at her elbow.

‘Do you ken this man’s name, lassie?’ asked the Provost severely. Mall stared at him, and shook her head. ‘If we canny name him, we canny put him to the horn. Still I wish it had come out afore this, for someone in the room might ken him.’ He turned as the men of the assize were herded behind their rope again. ‘Aye, neighbours,’ he said, making for his chair on the dais. ‘Have you reached a verdict, then? And are you minded o the penalties for a false assize?’

‘At least they brought it in murder,’ said Alys, as Kate settled herself on her saddle.

‘That wasn’t enough for Mall,’ said Kate, who had seen the girl’s face as the verdict had been announced. ‘I think she feels if the weapon had been named, the man might somehow be taken for the killing.’

‘Hah!’ said Babb beside her, taking up Wallace’s reins. ‘She expects justice for a common wee thief, that got his own master put in prison unjustly?’

‘It’s different when it’s one of your own that’s affected,’ said Alys.

Kate said nothing; she was thinking of the conversation she had just had with the prisoner, fetched down to the yard to speak with her while Alys snatched a quick word with a harassed Lady Stewart.

‘Andy tells me they questioned you about you being in my house,’ he had said in embarrassment. ‘Lady Kate, there’s no end to the trials you’re undergoing on my account.’

‘I’ll survive,’ she had said lightly. ‘It’s a different kind of trial, maister. Makes a change from wondering how to get up a stair. Mattha Hog tried the same questions, when I spoke to him this morning, but I dealt with him and all.’

‘Hog?’ he said, startled. ‘How so? What kind of a word?’

‘I sold him the tainted coals,’ she said. ‘From the coalhouse where Billy was killed.’

‘Andy was saying something about them. I never took it in. You bargained with Mattha Hog? What did you get off him?’

She told him, and he gave her an admiring look.

‘That’s as much as I paid for the whole load, my lady. It’s not many can get the better of Mattha Hog.’

‘You’ve never heard my mother selling horseflesh, maister,’ said Kate, with her wry smile.

Morison smiled in answer, and then bit his lip, and put his hand out to touch hers. ‘D’you know, I mind carrying you up our fore-stair in Hamilton one time.’

‘You’d not find it so easy now.’

‘And those days, Lady Kate,’ he said, and hesitated. She looked up, and met his blue gaze. ‘You used to call me by my name. My own name — my given name.’

‘So did you,’ she said after a moment. ‘We’re old friends, Augie.’

‘Aye, Kate. We are that.’

‘So we’ll hear less about what I’m undergoing on your account.’ He seemed about to reply, but Alys arrived beside them. ‘You’ll scarce know your bairns when you join us again,’ she went on. ‘We’ve clipped their hair short, the better to wash it, and we’ve been making wee gowns for them, that they can run about the yard in.’

‘There’s been precious little sewing done in the house this while,’ he said. ‘But I thought you were to send Andy up to me, for orders to take the bairns to Bothwell.’

‘You’d hardly have sent them to their uncle with the clothes they had in their kist,’ said Kate briskly. ‘We’d to get those gowns finished.’

Morison’s mouth twitched in a reluctant smile.

‘They had the first ones on this morning,’ said Alys, ‘of blue linen, and they looked like two little flowers.’

‘Aye, they would,’ he said, and covered his eyes. Kate, in her turn, put a hand over his other one.

‘They’re well,’ she said. ‘They’re safe, and we’ve found a good nourice to them. You’ve no need to concern yourself about them for now, Augie.’

‘Aye,’ he said again. He lowered his hand and looked at her with that blue gaze. For a moment he seemed about to say more, but at length he managed only, ‘My thanks, Kate.’

By the time the dinner was ready, both Kate and Alys felt some sense of achievement. With Babb and Jennet they had made a more thorough attack on the hall, swept, dusted and polished again, taken the hangings outside and beaten them with sticks and rehung them, and done the same for everything in the chamber where Kate and Babb had slept except the great bed. Kate had wiped and oiled the heap of neglected instruments and cleaned candlesticks, Mistress Thomson had beaten cushions, and polishing the stools, with a rag each and a pot of Ursel’s sweet-smelling beeswax and lavender polish, occupied the children spasmodically for most of the afternoon. However now the army of cleaners had reached the door of Maister Morison’s counting-house at the other end of the hall.

Here they met a predictable obstacle.

‘That’s my da’s chamber,’ said Ysonde, lower lip stuck out, a smear of polish on her nose. ‘Not to go in there.’

‘Now, poppet,’ began Jennet.

‘What does your father keep there?’ asked Alys. ‘Is it all his order-books and counting-books?’

Ysonde looked hard at her, and nodded. ‘And all his books with poetry in, no-to-touch-wi-sticky-fingers. Wynliane’s in a poetry book,’ she announced proudly, ‘and so’m I. But you’re not to go in.’ Beside her, Wynliane shook her head and her mouth framed a silent No.

‘We only want to sweep and dust,’ said Jennet.

‘There’s a good lassie, taking heed to what her da said,’ announced Nan. ‘You come wi me now, poppets, and we’ll see what there is for your dinner.’

‘No,’ said Ysonde. Wynliane shook her head again. Nan was just holding out her hand when there were hasty steps at the house door, and Andy’s nephew John appeared in the hall. Behind him Kate heard distant shouting, and the tuck of a drum, and then a fanfare.