Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

I am to be a priest, he thought again

Exasperated, he turned over, hammered at his pillow, and began firmly to number the taverns on the rue Mouffetarde. In general it never failed him.

He had reached the Boucher and was aware of sleep stealing over him when he was jolted wide awake by a thunderous banging. As he sat up the shouting started, a piercing voice which he recognized without difficulty, and then a monstrous barking which must be the mastiff Doucette. Cursing, Gil scrambled into hose and shoes, seized his gown and stumbled down the stairs as every dog in the upper town roused to answer its peer. Matt appeared blinking at the Official’s chamber door, carrying a candle, as Gil crossed the solar.

‘What’s to do? The maister’s asking.’

‘Ealasaidh,’ Gil said, hurrying on down.

The moon, not yet at the quarter, gave a little light to the scene in the street. The gate to the courtyard of Sempill’s house across the way was shut and barred, but a tall shadowy figure was hammering on it with something hard, shouting in shrill and menacing Gaelic. Shutters were flung open along the street as first one householder, then another leaned out to shout at his dog or to abuse the desecrator of the peaceful night.

Gil picked his way across to the scene of the offensive and caught at Ealasaidh’s arm. Above the sound of the dogs and her own screaming, he shouted, ‘Ealasaidh! Madam! They will not let you in!’

She turned to stare at him, her eyes glittering in the moonlight, then returned to the attack, switching to Scots.

‘Thief! Murderer! What have ye done with her purse? Where is her plaid? Where is her cross? Give me back the plaid I wove!’

‘Ealasaidh,’ said Gil again, more quietly. ‘There is a better way.’

She turned to look at him again.

‘What way is that?’ she asked, quite rationally, over the mastiff’s barking.

‘My way,’ he said persuasively. ‘The law will avenge Bess Stewart, madam, and I hope will find her property on the way. If not, then you may attack whoever you believe stole it.’

‘Hmf,’ she said. She reeked of eau-de-vie. Gil took her arm.

‘Will you come within,’ he asked politely, ‘and we may discuss this?’

‘That is fery civil of you,’ she said.

For a moment Gil thought he had won; then, behind the gates, somebody swore at the mastiff, and somebody else demanded loudly, ‘ho the devil is that at this hour?’

Ealasaidh whirled to the fray again, staggering slightly, and launched into a tirade in her own language. There was a series of thuds as the gate was unbarred, and it swung open to reveal John Sempill, not entirely sober himself, with his cousin and both of the gallowglasses. Torchlight gleamed on their drawn swords.

‘Oh, brave it is!’ exclaimed Ealasaidh. ‘Steel on an unarmed woman!’

‘Get away from my gate, you kitterel besom, you puggie jurrock!’ roared Sempill. ‘You stole my wife away out of my house! If she had never set eyes on you I would have an heir by now Away with you!’

‘It was not your house,’ said Ealasaidh shrilly. Several neighbours shouted abuse, but she raised her voice effortlessly above them. ‘It was her house, entirely, and well you know it. Many a time she said to me, how it was hers to dispose of as she pleased, and never a straw of it yours.’

‘I will not listen to nonsense at my own gate,’ bawled Sempill with stentorian dignity. ‘Get away from here and be at peace, partan-faced baird that you are!’

There were shouts of agreement from up and down the street, but Ealasaidh had not finished.

‘And you would never have had an heir of her, the way you treated her! I have seen her back, I have seen what you — ‘

‘Shut her mouth!’ said Sempill savagely to the nearest Campbell, snatching the torch from the man’s grasp. ‘Go on — what are you feart for?’

‘In front of a lawyer?’ said Gil, without expression, under Ealasaidh’s dreadful recital.

Sempill turned on him. ‘You call yourself a man of law, Gil Cunningham? You let her stand there and slander me like that in front of the entire upper town — ‘

‘Rax her a rug of the roast or she’ll rime ye, indeed,’ Gil said, in some amusement. Sempill snarled at him, and slammed the gate shut, so fast that if Gil had not dragged her backwards it would have struck Ealasaidh. The bar thudded into place as she reached her peroration.

‘And two husbands she may have had, ye countbitten braggart, but it took my brother to get a bairn on her she could carry to term, and him blind and a harper!’

On the other side of the gate there was a momentary silence, then feet tramped away towards the house-door. The mastiff growled experimentally, then, when no rebuke came, began its full-throated barking again. Other dogs joined in, to the accompaniment of further shouting.

Ealasaidh turned triumphantly to Gil.

‘That’s him tellt,’ she said.

When Gil entered the kitchen, earlier than he would have liked, Ealasaidh was huddled by the kitchen fire with a bowl of porridge under her plaid, the kitchen-boy staring at her across the hearth. Maggie was mixing something in a great bowl at the table and talking at her, getting the occasional monosyllabic answer. Gil cut across this without ceremony.

‘Maggie, I have a task for you.’

She eyed him, her big hands never ceasing their kneading.

‘Have you, now, Maister Gil?’ she said.

‘Have you any kin across the way?’

‘In Sempill’s house, you mean? No what you’d call kin; she said thoughtfully. ‘My sister Bel’s good-sister has a laddie in the stable. I say laddie,’ she amended, ‘but he must be your age, by now. That’s as dose as it gets.’

‘Any friends?’

‘Aye, well, Marriott Kennedy in the kitchen’s good company from time to time. A rare talker, she is. Sooner gossip than see to the house.’

‘Would she need a hand, do you think,’ said Gil, ‘with the house being so full- of people?’

‘I’ve no doubt of it.’ Maggie finally paused in her work and straightened up, to look Gil in the eye. ‘What are ye at, Maister Gil? Do ye want me in their kitchen?’

‘I do, Maggie.’ Gil slipped an arm round her broad waist. ‘And in as much of the house as you can manage.’

‘And for what?’ She slapped affectionately at his hand, scattering flour. ‘To look for what’s lost, is that it? A green and black plaid, a cross, a purse?’

Ealasaidh looked up, but made no comment.

‘Maggie,’ said Gil, kissing her cheek, ‘that’s why my uncle brought you to Glasgow, because you’re a canny woman, and not because you make the best porridge in Lanarkshire.’

A dimple appeared in the cheek, but she pushed him away firmly, saying, ‘If I’ve to waste my time on your ploys I’ll need to set this to rise.’

‘Just keep your eyes open,’ Gil warned. ‘Don’t get yourself into any unpleasantness.’

‘I’m no dotit yet,’ said Maggie. ‘Get you away down the town with that poor soul, before the harper calls out the Watch.’

Picking his way along Rottenrow beside a sullen Ealasaidh with her plaid drawn round her head against the early light, Gil said diffidently, ‘It seems likely that Bess Stewart was killed by someone she knew.’

‘I was telling you already,’ said Ealasaidh without looking at him, ‘it will have been the husband. Sempill. She went out to meet him.’

‘It could have been,’ agreed Gil, in an attempt to mollify her, ‘but I had him under my eye all through Compline.’ She snorted. ‘Is it possible Bess could have met someone else in St Mungo’s yard, that she would trust at close quarters?’

‘Who could she have known that well?’ said Ealasaidh, striding past the Girth Cross. ‘Here in Glasgow or when she was on the road, she had ourselves and the baby. Before that she was in Rothesay. There is nobody she knew in Rothesay that is in Glasgow just now, except the Campbells and Sempill.’