Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

‘And what was the mystery?’ asked the mason, chewing. ‘What was it that must be cleared up?’

‘Why, the money,’ said Sir William. ‘She took every penny there was in the house away with her, and the plate, and her jewels, but the next we heard she was in Edinburgh, and living on the harper’s earnings. Whether she’d lost it, or spent it, or given it away, nobody knows.’

‘There was no money in her box,’ said Gil. ‘How much plate would this be?’

‘Edward Stewart was cousin to Ninian Stewart the Provost,’ said Sir William. ‘He was a bien man, very comfortable. I remember a considerable amount of plate when I was in the house. All silver, of course, gold’s not to be found in Rothesay, except when the King’s in residence, but nevertheless …’ He took the last roasted onion and bit into it reflectively. ‘Twenty-five or thirty pounds weight, maybe.’

The mason whistled.

‘Did his kin not reclaim it when she remarried?’ Gil asked.

‘They tried to, but the man Sempill resisted. It was to come to the head court in the February. They made an inventory, and lodged it with Alexander Stewart, and got Sempill to sign it as well. We’re honest folk on Bute, maisters. Well, mostly.’

‘How would she carry that much?’ the mason wondered. ‘It is a great burden, even as far as the shore.’

‘Oh, she’d not go by the shore,’ said Sir William. ‘You can wait days for the right wind, in November. They would go round by Rhubodach, to the ferry.’

‘When was all this discovered?’ Gil asked.

‘Not till the morning. Her good-brother came calling, and found the servants in disarray, and her chamber door shut. It seems she’d barred it with a kist and climbed out of the window. He raised a band to follow, but they’d made good time and she was off the island, so he turned back. Once they got in among the hills, there’d be little hope of finding them.’

‘Burdened by a chest containing twenty-five or thirty pounds of silver,’ said Gil, ‘as well as money and jewels, they had made such good time that a mounted band could not catch them?’

There was a short silence.

‘It is strange, when you look at it,’ admitted Sir William.

‘Who else lived in the house with her?’

‘She’d a waiting-woman, a kinswoman of some sort, and two-three kitchen girls, of course, and two outside men and a pair of swordsmen.’

‘So her kinswoman did not share her chamber? Quite a household.’ Gil pushed the crumbs of his bannock into a heap. ‘That is strange, for the harper’s sister never mentioned that Bess had money. Indeed, she told me that as soon as the bairn could be left, Bess was helping to earn her keep.’

‘There was a bairn, was there? Poor Bess.’ Sir William looked blankly at the empty dishes. ‘Is that all the food there was? Come and leave your scrips in my chamber, and I will lead you to Alexander Stewart.’

The lawyer, it seemed, lived away up the Kirkgait. Having left their baggage in the priest’s stuffy chamber in the loft above the chapel, they went out at the postern, into the busy little town.

There were still a lot of people about, even this late in the afternoon, men from the foreshore in tarry jerkin and hose, shipmasters and merchants in furred woollen gowns and felt hats, Highlanders in shirt and belted plaid. The women gossiping at one street corner wore checked gowns like Ealasaidh’s, those at the next were in good wool. Many of the passers-by greeted Sir William, who had a name and a blessing for everyone.

They turned inland and walked round the castle walls, passing the mercat cross where a man with a tabor and pipe had an audience of children and time-wasters. Sir William, ignoring this, pointed out one of the stone houses as the Provost’s.

‘Same stone as the castle,’ said the mason. ‘I know that soft stuff. You can shape it with axes.’ He stopped. ‘Maister Cunningham, do you need me to help you talk to a lawyer?’

‘I could likely manage without you.’

‘Then I will go and walk about this burgh a little way. I can get back into the castle, no?’

Armed with the password for the day, he set off briskly for the shore, and Gil and the stout priest went on inland, Sir William still nodding to passers-by.

‘I wonder is the Provost here any kin of Stewart of Minto who is Provost of Glasgow,’ Gil speculated. ‘I know they say All Stewarts areny sib to the King, but are they all sib to one another?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Sir William seriously. ‘Although I believe a cousin of Janet McKirdy’s wedded one of the Stewarts of Minto a few years back. And that is Bess Stewart’s own house,’ he continued, pausing casually a few tofts along before a substantial timber-framed building, set back from the roadway. Before it, at some time, someone had made a small pleasure-garden, which was now struggling against the depredations of the roving hens. ‘It seems she got out of that window there.’

Gil eyed the window. It was just under the thatch, twenty feet above the ground, and the shuttered lower portion was no more than eighteen inches deep.

‘Was there a rope?’ he asked. ‘Or marks of a ladder? What time would this have been?’

‘You think she might not have climbed down? I thought the same,’ confessed Sir William. ‘And another thing I thought was, a woman’s kirtle is a lot of cloth. Would it all fit through there?’

‘Did you mention this at the time?’

‘What would be the point? She’d run off, poor lass, and her kin were pinning their mouths up about it. Who was I to argue with her good-brother’s version?’

Gil nodded absently, studying the house. It was not being well maintained. He could see several places where the clay and plaster infill between the sturdy timbers of the frame was crumbling under its limewash, exposing the wattle.

That rose will be through the wall shortly,’ he commented. ‘What is it, a white one? We have one in Rottenrow which spreads like that. Who was covering up for whom, I wonder?’

‘I wondered if her sister might have helped her,’ said Dalrymple. ‘It would be a sin, of course, to help a woman to leave her lawful husband, but they were very close. If Bess asked for help Mariota would give it. I thought likely Mariota’s man suspected that had happened, for he dosed up his own house in Rothesay, just down yonder, and moved all out to the farm at Ettrick. He would beat her for it himself rather than have it known publicly that he couldn’t control her.’

‘The waiting-woman knew nothing?’ Gil swung his foot at a hen which was inspecting his boots. It flapped away, squawking, and two more hurried over to see what it had found.

‘She slept at the back of the house. The first she heard was when the servants woke her.’ The priest’s breathing had settled down. He moved on, walking slowly among the homeward-bound workers. ‘It’s let now, of course. Probably for a good rent, it’s a good family in it. Another cousin of Ninian Stewart’s. No, I have it wrong, a cousin of his wife’s.’

There were a few more timber-framed houses, none quite as grand as Bess Stewart’s house, interspersed with long low cottages of field stones. Beyond these were even lower structures which, to Gil’s astonishment, proved to be composed of alternating layers of turf and stone, their roofs turfed over and sprouting happily. Women in loose chequered gowns called in Gaelic from house to house as they passed, until they came to one with two goats tethered above the door, and four or five half-naked children in successive sizes tumbling in the street next to its rounded end.

‘This is Alexander’s house,’ said Sir William, turning off the main track towards the door. The children halted their playing to stare as he shouted something in Gaelic.