Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

There was a reply from within, and the leather curtain across the doorway swung back. A woman in a plaid and a checked gown stared at them, then made a gesture of invitation with a dignity quite unimpaired by the fact that she was barefoot and had a sucking child in the crook of her other arm.

Inside the house the smell was almost solid. To the right, clearly, the goats, the hens and at least one cow spent their nights.To the left a peat fire glowed on a square hearth, and by its light a man rose from a stool and bowed to them. He was clad, like the harper, in a saffron shirt and buskins. Several of the children squeezed in past Gil to crowd into a corner, watching the guests with big dark eyes. The priest offered a blessing, to which they all said fervently ‘Amen!’ with a strange turn to the vowels. Then he made a speech, apparently introducing Gil and explaining his errand.

I can speak Latin,’ said the man of the house at length. ‘It is a sight of the title deeds to Bess Stewart’s property you are after, yes?’

‘I need to know who benefits,’ Gil said. At the sound of his voice the children giggled, and their father turned and spoke sharply in Gaelic. They sobered immediately. ‘The title deeds, the terms of Edward Stewart’s will, Bess’s father’s will, the conjunct fee or whatever it was, Bess’s own will if she made one. I need to know what happens to all that property now, because I suspect that is how I will learn who killed Bess Stewart.’

‘You don’t ask much,’ said the other man drily. ‘I have the title deeds and the two wills here in one of the protocol books, I can be finding them for you in a little while, but the other, the conjunct fee, I never drew up. I can tell you it was conjunct fee, it will certainly be going to the husband now, but I have not the details. And if she was making a will, it was not when she was in Rothesay. I have no knowledge of such a thing.’ He looked about him, and spoke to the children. Two of them dragged a long bench near the fire. ‘Be seated, guests in my house, and the woman of the house will bring you something. I will be looking for the papers.’

He threw a brief word to the woman, who was settling the baby in a strong-smelling nest of sheepskins at the foot of what must be their bed. She straightened up, fastening her gown, and moved to a carved court-cupboard opposite the door. Her man made for the shadows in the corner, and began to search in a kist full of books and papers.

The refreshment proved to be oatcakes with green cheese, and usquebae in a pewter cup. Gil drank his share of the spirit off quickly, to get it over with, and to his dismay was handed another cupful. The oatcakes were light and crisp, and the cheese was excellent. He said as much to the woman, and got a blank smile, until Sir William translated. The smile broadened, and she offered him more, but he refused in dumbshow, fearing he might be eating the children’s supper.

‘There is plenty,’ Sir William assured him. ‘Mairead makes excellent oatcakes.’

Gil was about to answer when two more of the children tumbled in from the street shouting in Gaelic. A man’s voice spoke indistinctly outside and Gil turned to listen, sure he knew the accents. The woman, pulling her plaid over her head, slipped out past the tall desk which stood at the light, and. Gil heard her speaking softly beyond the leather curtain.

‘Here it is, maister,’ said Alexander Stewart. He brought an armful of books forward into the firelight. ‘If we take it to the door there will be light for reading.’

He moved to the door, and pulled back the curtain. Gil, following him, was aware of swift movement and the certainty that someone had ducked round the end of the house. The woman went past them into the shadows, to offer Sir William another oatcake, and the lawyer opened one of the books on the desk to show Gil his own copy of the first of the documents.

‘Torquil Stewart of Ettrick,’ he said. ‘His will. You see, he left his property divided between the two daughters, held in their own right, to leave as they see fit.’

‘This is very clear,’ said Gil. ‘A nice piece of work.’

‘He was very clear about his wishes himself,’ said Maister Stewart modestly. Seen by daylight, he was dark of hair and eye like his children, the neatly combed elf-locks hanging round a pale, intent face. He seemed, Gil thought, to be not much past thirty. ‘He had raised his daughters to know how to run a property, he trusted them to go on as he had taught them. And this is Edward Stewart’s will,’ he continued, setting open another book. ‘More complicated, because more clauses, but in essence the same in respect of the property itself. The house outright to his wife Elizabeth, in her own right, to dispose of as she sees fit. The use of the contents of the house entire, with provision for it to be inventoried at his death, for the rest of her life. Requirement that she does not sell any item, and replaces items worn out or broken. All the liferent goods to revert to his kin after her death. In fact when the house was let the remainder of the contents went to Ninian Stewart like the residue of the estate.’

‘This matter of the plate and money is very strange,’ Gil said. He skimmed down the careful Latin sentences of Edward Stewart’s will, aware out of the tail of his eye of a steady sauntering of passers-by out in the street, as Maister Stewart’s neighbours came to admire his Latin conversation with the colleague from Glasgow. ‘There is no sign that she came to the harper with a fortune in her kist. If it were to surface, whose would it be?’

‘Interesting,’ said Alexander Stewart thoughtfully. ‘The plate would certainly be the Provost’s, like the furniture. The money I suspect was hers, or perhaps her husband’s. It would have been rent for the land at Kingarth and the two farms at Ettrick, all good land. Some of the rent would be in kind, you understand, and some in coin. As to jewellery, some of that would be paraphernal, and should return to her kin, or I suppose it now belongs to the bairn, but any the husband gave her would revert to him. All subject to discussion, I suspect. An interesting question, Maister Cunningham.’

‘Had she made a will herself?’ Gil asked.

‘Not one that I knew of, since her second marriage.’

‘I wish we had a copy of the conjunct settlement. What was the value of the two properties? You say the land at Kingarth is good? I had heard otherwise.’

‘I do not know who could have told you that,’ said Maister Stewart disapprovingly. ‘It is very good land. Further, it is beside the St Blane’s Fair gathering-place, so it is used for grazing and pound-land at the Fair, and the rents for that every year would ransom a galley. As for the other, it lies between the castle and the harbour, and is rented to two merchants for a good figure. One of them has built a barn on his portion.’

‘I saw it as we came into the bay. Trade through the burgh is rewarding, then?’

‘Rothesay is the only burgh in the Western Isles licensed to trade overseas,’ said Maister Stewart with some pride. This is why I moved here last year, to be closer to the centre of trade. There was no man of law here anyway, I came here often or folk came to me in Inveraray to draw up documents, and after I lost two or three clients in bad weather I thought, well, well, better to move the inkstand than the mounting-block.’

‘Very wise. I hope it has been good for business.’ Gil, only half attending, looked from one will to the other. ‘These properties,’ he said slowly, ‘I think are now the bairn’s. There is no indication that either husband had a claim on them. Do you have paper to spare? Would you object to my having a true copy? I need to show them to John Sempill, and to my uncle, who acts for the bairn. And can you tell me who was the grantor of the conjunct fee? Who gave them these two valuable properties? And who is collecting the rents while Bess has been away from Bute?’