Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

Alys, rising, embraced her, and turned to lift her plaid. Gil said suddenly, ‘Ealasaidh, what like was her plaid? Bess’s plaid that is lost? You said she was wearing it when she went out.’

‘Her plaid?’ Ealasaidh stared at him. ‘Aye, indeed, her plaid. It is like mine, only that I had more of the green thread when I wove it, so the sett is four threads green and eight of black, not two and ten. She said she never had a plaid like it. I wove it when I was a girl in my mother’s house.’

‘So where is it, then?’ Gil wondered.

‘The same place as her cross, likely,’ Ealasaidh said fiercely. ‘And both in John Sempill’s hands, I have no doubt. Go you and ask him, since he would not answer me.’

She lifted the basin and the clothes and stalked out of the chapel, passing one of the brothers without apparently noticing him. He came forward, offered a blessing to Alys and to Gil when they bent the knee to him, and settled himself at the head of the shrouded corpse with his beads over his hands. Gil, after one glance at Alys’s face, put a hand under her elbow and steered her out into the courtyard.

‘I would give a great deal that you had not seen that,’ he said.

She shook her head, biting her lip, and gestured helplessly with her free hand. Gil clasped it too, and in a moment she said, ‘She had survived so much, and now she is taken from those who love her and the child who needs her.’ She looked up at him in distress. ‘What did she think of, when the knife went in?’

‘She may not have known it,’ Gil said. ‘It was a narrow blade, one could see that, and she may not have felt it., He fell silent. Then he added, ‘She had mended the kirtle.’

Her hand tightened in his, and suddenly they were embracing, a warm exchange of comfort from the closeness of another. After a moment she drew back gently, and Gil let her go, aware of the scent of rosemary from her hair.

‘Will you come back to the lodgings with me,’ said Ealasaidh beside them. ‘There were things you wished to ask himself.’

‘May I come too, to see the baby?’ Alys asked. ‘he maids will be a while at the market, I have time.’

They went back out on to the High Street and down the hill, past Alys’s house, to where the market was setting up in the open space around the Cross. Those traders lucky enough, or prosperous enough, to have shops which faced on to the market were laying out their wares on the front counter. The centre space was already in good order, with traders from other streets setting out bales of dyed cloth, hanks of tow for spinning, cheeses, leather goods. On the margins, others were arranging trestles or barrows, with much argument about position and encroachment. The serjeant, waiting with the drummer on the Tolbooth steps to declare the market open, favoured Gil with a stately bow as they passed.

They turned into the Thenawgait, encountering a pair of baker’s men hurrying to their master’s stall with a board of warm loaves, and followed the new-bread smell back down the Fishergait. Past the bakehouse, the painted pelican still hung crooked, and the children were playing on the midden as if they were never called in.

This time, as they stepped out of the stair-tower, a drowsy greeting came from the shut-bed in the outer room. Ealasaidh strode on, ignoring it, and into the room beyond.

For a moment, following her, Gil thought the place empty. A great clarsach was now visible at the far wall, two smaller ones in the corner beyond. The Flemish harp still hung by the cold chimney, and below it the harper sat erect and motionless in his great chair, the determined mouth slack, hands knotted together so that the knuckles showed white in the dim light.

‘Aenghus,’ said his sister. He did not answer. She closed the door, crossed the room to fling open the shutters, and turned to stare intently at him. Alys slipped to the further door.

‘You see,’ said Ealasaidh to Gil. ‘He has never moved since the mourners left last night.’

‘Nancy is not here,’ said Alys in the other doorway. ‘Nor the baby.’

Ealasaidh, with a sharp exclamation, strode past her. The room was clearly empty but for Alys, but Ealasaidh peered into the shut-bed and felt the blankets in the wicker cradle next to it. Then she turned on her heel, meeting Alys’s eye briefly, and came back into the outer room.

‘Aenghus!’ she said loudly. ‘Where is the bairn? Where are Nancy and the bairn?’

She began to repeat the question in her own language, but the harper turned his head to face her voice.

‘Gone,’ he said. She stiffened, but he went on harshly, ‘They are all gone. Bess, and Ealasaidh, and my son. The bairn wept sore for his mammy. The lassie took him to her own mother.’

‘When? When was this?’

‘All gone,’ he said again.

‘Aenghus.’ She spoke intensely in her own language. After a moment, one hand came up and grasped her wrist.

Gil, still watching, said, ‘When did he eat last?’

‘The dear knows. He would not eat yesterday, only the usquebae. Aenghus — ‘

‘I will get the fire going; said Alys in practical tones. ‘Maister Cunningham, can you fetch in some food? The market should be open by now.’

He did not need to go as far as the market. By the time he returned, with two fresh loaves from the baker across the Fishergait, a quarter of a cheese from the man’s back shop, and a jug of ale, the harper was combed and tidied and wearing a leather jerkin over his saffron shirt. Ealasaidh was clattering pots in the inner room, and as Gil set down his purchases she bore in a steaming dish of sowans.

‘Eat that, mac Iain,’ she said, putting dish and spoon in her brother’s hands. He began obediently to sup the porridge-like mess, and she carried off the loaves and cheese. ‘Here is the lawyer to learn about Bess.’

‘Where is the demoiselle Alys?’ Gil asked.

The white eyes turned to him. ‘She has gone too. They are all gone.’

‘Ealasaidh is come back,’ said Ealasaidh firmly. ‘Stop your wandering and speak sense to the man of law.’ She gestured helplessly with her gully-knife at Gil, and went on cutting wedges off a loaf. ‘The lassie went home, I think. She slipped away once the fire was hot.’

‘Tell me about Bess,’ said Gil gently. ‘How old was she? Who was her first husband? What happened to him?’

‘She was the bonniest thing that ever stepped through my life,’ said the harper, setting down his spoon in the half-eaten sowans. His fingers clenched and unclenched on the rim of the dish.

‘She was quiet,’ said Ealasaidh, ‘and kind, and sensible. A woman to take her turn at the cooking and do it well, for all she owned a house in Rothesay.’

‘She was a good woman,’ said the harper. ‘It was always a great wonder to me,’ he said distantly, suddenly becoming rational, ‘that she came away with me, for she was devout, and honest, and lawful. And as my sister says, she owned a house and land, and yet she crossed Scotland with us, laughing when she fell in the mud, and said she was happy with us, for that we loved her.’

‘And in especial after the bairn came,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘It was a great joy to her that she had given himself a son.’

She was, it seemed, five- or six-and-twenty. Her first husband had been a Bute man, and had died of plague leaving her a very young widow with a respectable tierce and a couple of properties outright. Neither the harper nor his sister knew his name.

‘He was kind to her,’ said the harper. ‘She told me that once. Not like the second one.’

‘She lost the tierce, of course, when she took Sempill,’ Ealasaidh observed, ‘but there was jewels and such, and two plots in Rothesay, and a bit of land at Ettrick that was her dower.’