Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

‘Would the other men know any more? Or your maidservants?’ Gil suggested hopefully.

‘I asked them fast.’ Alys looked up and down the quiet street. ‘I’ll send them out to ask at the market tomorrow. No purpose in searching now, with nobody about. Once they get together with their gossips, the word will pass like heath-fire.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘What will you do now?’

‘I have to find the other boy,’ Gil said, ‘the saddler’s youngest, and confirm Andrew’s story. And since that takes me down the Fishergait I will go by the harper’s lodging and ask them about the harp key.’

‘May I come with you? I am concerned for them.’

‘Do you promise not to throw pepper at them?’

The smile flickered. ‘That was a special case. In general I would deplore such a waste.’

‘Then it would give me great pleasure,’ he said, and offered his arm.

‘And after the saddler’s house we must stop and buy a jug of spirits to take with us.’

The sign of the Pelican swung crookedly from the front of a tall building, apparently a former merchant’s house which had seen better days. Gil, picking a careful path for the two of them through a noisome pend, wondered if he should have brought Alys to the place, and felt his qualms confirmed when they emerged into a muddy yard in which children were squabbling on the midden. Two of them turned to stare at the strangers from under unkempt hair.

‘Where does the harper live?’ Alys asked.

‘Is it the wake ye’re after?’ asked the taller child. Alys nodded, and the boy gestured with a well-chewed chicken bone at the side of the yard which was probably the original house. ‘He stays up yon stair, mistress. Two up and through Jiggin Joan’s. Ye can hear them from here,’ he waved the chicken bone again. There was indeed a buzz of voices from one of the upper windows.

‘Through?’ Gil queried, and got a withering look.

‘Aye. She’s nearest the stair. D’ye ken nothing?’

Gil would have enquired further, but Alys thanked the child and moved towards the stair tower. As Gil turned to follow her, a woman hurried along the creaking wooden gallery opposite.

‘Your pardon, maisters!’ she exclaimed, with an Ersche- speaker’s accent even heavier than the gallowglass’s. She leaned over the rail, pulling her plaid up round her head, to ask in a tactful whisper, ‘Could you be saying, maybe, when is the poor soul to be buried?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Gil. ‘It’s surely a matter for the harper to determine.’

‘Oh, ‘tis so, ‘tis so,’ she agreed, ‘it iss for mac lain to decide, but it will be needful to send round to the keeningwomen, and they will be wishing to know what time to gather.’

‘Perhaps Mistress Mclan will know,’ Gil suggested.

The woman nodded, a dissatisfied look crossing her broad face. ‘I will be at the wake as soon as the bannocks is cooked,’ she said, drawing back from the railing. ‘I cannot be calling empty-handed.’

Alys was waiting at the stair-mouth. Gil followed her up two turns of the spiral, past a doorway where a woman was scrubbing a small boy’s face, on up where the protests were drowned by the sound of loud conversation which came from the open door on the next landing. The untidy room seemed deserted, but the noise came from within.

‘This should be it,’ Alys said doubtfully. ‘Dame Joan is not at home, I think.’

‘Does the harper stay here?’ Gil called loudly. The door to the inner room opened, and Ealasaidh appeared on a redoubled blast of sound and a smell of spirits.

‘It is the man of law,’ she said, accepting Alys’s proffered jug of brandy with grace. ‘Come within. Mac lain is at home.’

The room was crowded, and so noisy that it was a moment before Gil realized there was a baby crying somewhere. Amid the press of people, the harper was seated in a great chair by the fire, dressed in saffron-dyed shirt and velvet jerkin, the formal dress of the Highlander, with deerskin buskins laced up his bare legs. A Flemish harp with a curved soundboard hung behind his head. As Gil entered behind Alys he rose and bowed to them, saying with great dignity, ‘I bid you welcome, neighbours.’

He was not as old as Gil had thought at first, possibly not yet fifty. Hair and beard were white, but his eyebrows were dark and shaggy and the high forehead was relatively unlined. He listened courteously to Gil’s formal words of sympathy, and bowed again.

‘I must thank you for your care of her, sir. Woman, bring refreshment for our guests.’

Ealasaidh was already returning from yet another, further, room, the one where the baby was crying. She handed Gil a tiny wooden beaker brimming with liquid, and offered him a platter of oatcakes. As Gil had feared the liquid proved to be barley eau-de-vie, fierce enough to burnish brass, but he offered a toast to the memory of Bess Stewart and drained his little cup resolutely. Around him, the harper’s neighbours and acquaintances were talking, not in the least about the departed. Alys had disappeared.

.’You are not yet a man of law,’ said the harper suddenly.

‘I soon will be,’ said Gil, startled.

‘But you will not be a priest.’

‘I must,’ said Gil, utterly taken aback, ‘or live on air. Sir, I have a couple questions for you or your sister.’

‘In a little space,’ said the harper, turning to greet another mourner. Gil stood quietly, wrestling with the surge of conflicting feelings which assailed him. He was used to the sinking in his stomach when he thought of his approaching ordination (Lord, strengthen me, remove my doubts! he thought) but why should he feel panic at the thought of not being a priest?

The baby, he discovered after a moment, had fallen silent.

‘Maister,’ said the harper. ‘We will not talk here. Come ben and ask your question.’ He moved confidently towards the other door, and those round him fell back to let him pass.

The inmost room contained three adults and the baby, and a quantity of stained linen drying on outstretched strings. Ealasaidh, by the window, was opening another flagon of eau-de-vie. Before the fire, Alys was dandling the baby while a sturdy young woman looked on. The small head turned when the door opened, but at the sight of Gil the infant’s mouth went square and the crying started again.

‘What ails the bairn?’ Gil asked, dismayed. His sister’s children had never reacted like this.

‘He is looking for one who will not return to him,’ said Ealasaidh remotely.

‘Every time the door opens,’ said Alys over the baby’s head. ‘There, now! There, now, poor little man. Nancy, shall we try the spoon again?’

‘Ask your question, maister lawyer,’ said the harper again. ‘Here is mac lain and his sister both.’

‘And I must go out in a little,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘We will not be having enough usquebae for all the mourners, and I must borrow more cups.’

Gil drew the harp key from his jerkin again.

‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked, through the baby’s wailing.

Ealasaidh gave it a glance, then another.

‘It is hers,’ she agreed heavily. ‘The key to her little harp. Where was AT

‘In the kirkyard,’ said Gil. The harper’s hand went out, and he put the key into it. Mclan’s long fingers turned the little object, the nails clicking on the metal barrel, caressing familiar irregularities of the shape, and his mouth twisted under his white beard.

‘It is hers. Where in the kirkyard?’

‘By the south door. Could she have dropped it?’

‘No,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘Not Bess — not that.’

‘She took care of what I gave her,’ said the harper harshly, ‘for that it was given in love. This dwelled in her purse always.’