Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

A wave slopped over the strake beside his elbow. Gil hitched his plaid up, and the master, having set the sail to his liking, made his way aft and took the helm from the mate. The Flower creaked happily in the wind.

‘Now you’ll see,’ said the master instructively, adjusting the rope at his other hand, ‘that when we get out yonder, off Kilcreggan, we’ll take a point or two to larboard, because that’s what the channel does. And I’ll tell you, maisters, that if the weather doesny shift southward from here, you’ll be kept in Rothesay a day or two.’

‘She’ll shift,’ said Andy, looking at the sky.

‘And where is this Kikreggan?’ asked Maistre Pierre.

‘Yonder,’ said Andy, gesturing to starboard. Gil, peering, made out a scattering of thatched roofs under a haze of peat smoke. How strange, he thought. It is a village, where people live their lives, as important to them as the Chanonry and the High Street are to me, and yet I would not have known it was there. What other havens are out here, invisible until pointed out by someone who knows the coast?

Rothesay Bay was full of shipping. There seemed to be more ships here than at Dumbarton. Several large vessels were anchored in the bay with ferries plying to and fro, a number of ships lay alongside a wooden jetty, and two galleys were beached west of the castle. There were carts and wheelbarrows on the foreshore, and a bustle of people beyond. Over all the gulls swooped, screaming.

‘That is a strong fortress,’ Maistre Pierre observed. ‘Also very old, I should say.’

It stood on a mound, less than a hundred paces from the water, its red stone drum towers dwarfing the houses round it. The light caught the helmet of a man on the walkway, and Gil, looking closer, realized there was a competent guard of five or six on the battlements.

‘And what is that yonder?’ asked the mason, nodding at a tall building some way to the left of the jetty.

‘Bishop’s house,’ said the master, easing the rope in his hand. ‘Let go, Andy.’

The sail clattered and flapped into a heap in the bows again, and the mate and the boy shipped the oars and hauled for the shore.

Gil studied the town. It lay snugly between two small hills, facing the bay. As well as the castle and the Bishop’s house, there were a number of stone buildings, certainly more and better than at Dumbarton. A handsome plastered barn stood between the castle and the shore, and there were some timber-framed houses further inland, but most of the dwellings were low structures covered in thatch or turf, each at the head of its toft. Pigs, children and small black cows roamed freely between them, and hens pecked about everywhere. The smell of the middens reached them on the breeze.

‘Where are ye for, maisters?’ asked the master. The Bishop or the castle? Just I need to know which side of the burn to set ye down.’

‘The castle,’ said Gil. ‘I’ve a letter for the chaplain.’

Sir William Dalrymple, stout and red-faced, his jerkin caked with food under a hastily assumed moth-eaten gown, peered anxiously at the letter Gil presented to him under the interested gaze of the two guards on the gate.

‘Lachie Beag stepped on my spectacles; he said apologetically, handing it back. ‘I can make out the salutation, but David’s wee writing’s beyond me. Mind, I’d know his signature anywhere.’ He added something in Gaelic to the guards, and one of them nodded and opened the barrier to let them pass. ‘Come into the yard and tell me what it’s about. Are ye hungry, maisters?’

‘We have not eaten since Sext,’ said Maistre Pierre, following the portly outline of the priest along the passageway into the bustling courtyard.

‘Come to the buttery, then, and see what we can find.’ Sir William led the way round the end of the chapel, past the smithy where several men were discussing crossbow bolts, and up a narrow stair. ‘And is your uncle well, Gilbert?’

Dinner was long past but the buttery men, obviously used to their priest, found half a raised pie and some roasted onions which nobody was using. Seated at the end of one of the long tables with these and a plate of bannocks and a jug of claret, Sir William rattled through a short grace and said as the mason grimaced over the wine, ‘Now. This letter. Why is David sending to me after all these years?’

‘It explains why we’re here,’ Gil said, and read the letter aloud. Sir William listened attentively, with muffled exclamations, and nodded emphatically at the end.

‘Very proper, very proper,’ he said. ‘It’s high time that was cleared up. And so Bess Stewart is dead, then? I’m sorry to hear it, indeed, for she was a bonny girl and a good Christian soul, until she did what she did. That would explain the word from Ettrick, certainly.’

‘From Ettrick?’ Gil prompted, when the stout priest did not continue.

Sir William nodded deprecatingly. ‘News came in this week that the beann nighe had been heard at Ettrick, washing linen at the ford, on May Day at twilight.’

‘Washing? What is this?’ asked the mason, perplexed.

Sir William sighed. ‘It is a pagan thing, an evil spirit I suppose, and I should stamp out the belief, but to be honest, maisters, I’ve heard it myself once or twice. If you are near a ford by night and you hear a sound like someone washing linen, slapping the wet cloth on the stones, go away quickly and do not disturb the washer-woman, or she will have the shirt off your back. And then who knows what will happen? But if she is heard, a death in the parish follows.’

‘But what does she wash?’ asked the mason. ‘How can you tell it is a spirit?’

‘Who washes clothes by twilight?’ said Gil. ‘I have heard of such a thing, in my nurse’s tales. Did one of the old heroes not meet her? Finn, or one of those?’

‘Aye, very possibly,’ said Sir William. ‘Anyway she was heard at Ettrick, so they were all waiting for a death in the parish, and when nobody seemed like to die and there were no accidents, of course the entire parish began to reckon up who was off the island that she might wash for. They will certainly believe it was for Bess, if she is dead.’

‘She is dead,’ Gil agreed, ‘under sad circumstances. There is no doubt it was secret murder, forethought murder, and I am charged with finding the killer.’

‘Well,’ said Sir William. ‘And how can I help you? What do you need to know?’

‘Tell me about Bess Stewart; Gil said. ‘Did you know her, sir?’

‘I baptized them both. Bonny bairns they were, too, her and her sister. Well-schooled, obedient lassies, able to read and write their names, modest and well-behaved for all their mother died when they were young.’ He sighed. ‘I wedded her to Edward Stewart, and I witnessed his will. He was a good man, and a loving husband to her. Then her good-brother handfasted her to the man Sempill, after Edward died, and I think she was never happy again.’

‘You witnessed her first husband’s will,’ Gil repeated. ‘Do you remember the terms? How was the outright bequest worded?’

‘Oh, I canny mind that. It was near ten years ago; Dalrymple pointed out. ‘She’d lose the tierce when she remarried, of course, but there was the house, and I suppose the use of the furnishings.’

‘That would be the house she left when she ran off with the harper,’ said the mason, cutting another slice off the pie.

‘Aye, it was. That was a mystery.’

‘Tell us about it,’ Gil prompted. ‘It was November, wasn’t it? Before Martinmas?’

‘It was,’ said Dalrymple, giving him a startled glance. ‘Janet McKirdy the Provost’s wife was full of guilt after it happened, for they’d met in her house at Allhallows E’en when she had the guizers’ play acted in the yard. Then not ten days later the harper left in a night, and Bess Stewart with him.’