Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

‘I’ve heard about it,’ said Mistress Bell with a sniff, measuring a huge jug of ale for another girl, ‘but I don’t pay much mind to what happens up-by.’

‘I hoped,’ Gil pursued, ‘that she might be able to tell me who struck him down. Since the boy is still in a great swound, he can tell us nothing. But now I am concerned for Annie, since there’s another girl dead.’

‘I remember now,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘Annie came back late on May Day. About this time, it was, or later, after Compline anyway. I would have fetched her a welt for it, for we’d been busy, but she seemed owercouped by something.’

‘She said nothing?’

‘No to me.’ She poured two beakers of ale for one of the girls. ‘Mysie, when you’ve served these, get out the back and search for Annie. All of ye. Take torches to look in the buildings, work in pairs, look in all the corners. All of them, mind, and the yard as well.’

‘Why? What’s come to her?’ asked the girl pertly. Mistress Bell raised her arm to her and she ducked, grinning, and spilled some of the ale. ‘I hear ye, mistress.’

‘Maybe we should lend a hand,’ offered Gil as the girl hurried off. Mistress Bell eyed him carefully.

‘Maybe ye should no,’ she corrected. Gil, understanding her, felt his face burning, but nodded in acknowledgement.

‘You keep your girls well, mistress. Supposing she is not to be found out the back, can you tell me where she might have gone?’

‘I can not. Do ye think I’ve the sight like an Ersche henwife? Her mother’s at Dumbarton, she might run home if she’s feart for something.’ She grinned at him. ‘Get you out my way and wait, maister. Unless you like to lend a hand here fetching jugs of ale, since I’ve sent all the lassies out hunting for Annie.’

But Joan, reporting back after a quarter-hour or so, had no information.

‘Not a sign of her, mistress,’ she said. ‘No in the outhouses, no in the brew-house, no in the yard. Mysie and Peg looked behind the kindling, Eppie and me checked the sacks of malt, but there’d been nobody there, you could see that.’

‘Could you?’ asked the mason. She threw him a challenging look.

‘Aye, you could. Because Rob Morrison tore a sack when he unloaded this afternoon, and there was no fresh footprints in the spilt grain. But we did find the side gate unbarred,’ she added to her mistress.

‘Ye did, did ye? Was it closed over?’

‘Oh, aye. Ye’d never have seen from outside that it was unfastened. I think she’s away, maisters, and I think she went that way.’

‘May we see it?’ Gil asked.

Mistress Bell scowled, looked round the room and finally said, ‘Joan, mind the tap a wee while. This way, maisters.’

The light was at that difficult stage where it was too dark to see clearly, but torches helped very little. The yard where Mistress Bell brewed her ale was surrounded by a stout fence of cut planks, as high as Gil’s shoulder. Near the house there was a narrow gate for foot traffic, closed by a latch and a bar the thickness of the mason’s forearm. It conveyed no information whatever. Gil, holding his torch high, peered round at the dancing shadows of barn and brew-house.

‘This is the only gate?’ asked the mason.

‘No, there’s the gate for the carts, yonder by the barn. This is the gate the lassies use in the morn, it’s the one she’d think of first. The cart-gate’s barred, maisters, I can see it from here.’ She strode down the yard and brandished her own torch at the big double leaves.

‘May I open this?’ Gil asked.

,if it makes ye happy.’

Beyond the gate was the muddy track which led between the ale-house and the next cottage. On one side it went out on to the street, on the other it disappeared into the shadows between the two tofts. Mysterious vegetable shapes jumped in the dimness.

‘Out there’s only Neighbour Walker’s grosset bushes,’ Mistress Bell informed him. ‘If ye’re ettling to search those in this light ye’re a better man than I am. Walker could sell the thorns for whingers.’

Gil shut the gate from the outside. It dragged over the ground, but with one hand in the latch-hole he contrived to close it completely. As Joan had said, from the outside all looked secure, and he judged that the hefty girl they were looking for would have had no difficulty in doing the same. He opened the gate and stepped back in.

‘Thank you, mistress,’ he said, settling the bar in place.

‘Seen enough?’

‘I have, for one,’ said the mason. ‘May we now leave the neighbour’s gooseberry bushes and speak to the girls?’

Joan, handing responsibility for the tap back to her mistress, admitted that she had no idea what was troubling-Annie.

‘She’s no been right,’ she admitted, ‘she’s been as if the Bawcan’s after her, peering in corners and ducking at shadows. She’s been taking more than her turn at the dishes, which is no like her.’

‘But kept her out of the way of customers,’ Gil interpreted.

‘Aye,’ agreed Joan. ‘But as for telling anyone, no. Mysie says she tried, and Peg tried, but she’d tell nobody. She said she’d the toothache, but we thought maybe someone forced her,’ she admitted.

‘And why did none of you tell me?’ demanded her mistress. ‘What a flock of haiverel lassies!’ She cast a glance round the emptying room, and raised her voice. ‘Last orders, neighbours! It’s near curfew.’

‘Do you know where Annie’s mother lives in Dumbarton?’ Gil asked.

‘No; said Maggie Bell bluntly. ‘And if you’ve to get home to the Wyndheid before they bar the door, you’d best get away over the river.’

‘You know me?’ asked Gil.

‘I know you’re from St Mungo’s.’

‘Then if you hear any word of Annie — good or bad,’ he said earnestly, ‘will you send to me? I stay in the Official’s house — the Cadzow manse.’

She nodded impatiently.

‘I’ll do that. Goodnight, maister. I’ll put Sandy the tanner out in a wee bit and he’ll shut the Brig Port on his way home.’

Out in the darkening street Maistre Pierre said thoughtfully, ‘She left well before the Sempills.’

‘Aye. She may simply have run, as the other girl says.’ Gil looked up and down the street and turned towards the bridge. ‘Providing she has not met James Campbell in a kirkyard, she is probably safe enough.’

‘You think he knifed the other girl?’

‘What do you think?’

The mason remained silent until they had crossed the bridge with a few last revellers, who vanished in ones and twos into the closes of the Waulkergait. Finally he said, ‘I do not know. Nevertheless I think we have learned something useful tonight, even if the scent is broken.’

‘We have.’ Gil hitched his gown round his shoulders. ‘Now — shall we try opening Bess Stewart’s box?’

‘But can you believe anything he says?’ Alys asked, jiggling the baby on her hip. ‘Dance a baby, diddy!’

,It is obvious he needs the child,’ said Gil, looking at it with more interest. ‘And if he’s wise, he’ll try to convince his uncle without showing it to him. Even by candlelight, it’s dearly the harper’s get.’

J 1 V The baby grizzled at this, but Alys said indignantly, ‘It’s a boy. Aren’t you, my little man?’ she crooned to the baby.

J ‘Why is he crying?’ asked her father resignedly. ‘Is he hungry?’

‘No, because we fed him just now. And he’s all clean …’ She sniffed at the child’s nether regions. ‘Yes. I think he wants his mammy, poor little boy.’

‘May I take him?’ Gil put his hands out. She hesitated. ‘I am an uncle,’ he assured her, and after a moment she handed him the bundled baby.