Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

‘Mistress Stewart, what is the latest word that has reached you about your sister Bess?’

Mariota Stewart, in her woollen gown and white kerchief, gazed back at him. She was unnervingly like her sister, with the same oval face, the same build and wellbred carriage, but Bess’s sweet expression was lacking. This woman looked out at a world which held no illusions for her.

‘Word of her death reached me yesterday, maister.’ Her voice was quite steady. ‘It was no surprise to me. Half the parish heard the washing at the ford yonder, on Tuesday night, so we were waiting for something of the sort.’ She sipped at her own glass. ‘I understand she was murdered.’

‘Yes. I found her. She had been stabbed, without struggling. She probably felt nothing.’

The white kerchief bowed. After a moment, still quite steady, she said, ‘Thank you. Do you know who …?’

‘I am acting on behalf of St Mungo’s, to find out who. Maister Mason, here, is also concerned, in that it was on his building site that she was found.’

Maistre Pierre offered some conventional words of sympathy, at which Mistress Stewart bowed her head again and said levelly, ‘If I can tell you anything that will help, ask it.’

‘Thank you.’ Gil paused, and took a bite of yesterday’s oatcake to blot up the spirits. ‘Mistress, you and your sister both inherited land. The rents are clearly valuable, but your sister had not received hers since she left Bute. Can you tell me where the money might have gone?’

She stared at him.

‘My husband collected them,’ she said, ‘coin and kind both. The grain and kye he would store, or maybe buy in, and the coin went to John Sempill, as was his legal right.’ Only the absence of expression conveyed what she thought about Sempill’s legal right.

‘And yet,’ said Gil, equally expressionless, ‘John Sempill is convinced that Bess was receiving the rents of her own property, and also that the two conjunct properties, the land by the shore and the plot in Kingarth, are worthless. This suggests to me that very little rent is reaching him.’

‘I do not know how that can be,’ she said, and took refuge in the married woman’s defence. ‘My husband deals with all the money.’

‘How does the coin go to John Sempill?’ asked the mason. She flicked a glance at him, and considered.

‘If my husband is to go to Renfrewshire, it goes with him. Otherwise we send a couple of men. We have trustworthy servants.’

‘That would be the Campbell brothers,’ Gil prompted, and she nodded, taking his knowledge for granted. ‘So they take the money to John Sempill?’

‘Wherever he chances to be.’

‘Which of them brought you word yesterday?’

‘Neil,’ she said indifferently.

‘And which of them helped your sister to get out of her house, the night she left with the harper?’

What does that have to do with — ‘ She stopped, looking out of the window. ‘I suppose you need to know,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It might all have a bearing on the matter.’

‘Exactly,’ said Gil in some relief. She sighed.

‘Her husband — John — was in Renfrewshire, and Bess was here in Rothesay. Last time John was on Bute he had been — displeased, because the rents were less than he wanted. The factor had given the coin to James, and James counted it and gave it straight into his hand,’ she added, without seeming to hear what she was saying. ‘So John took it out on Bess. And the harper and her — it was like in the ballads, the old romances. One word together and it was as if they were the two halves of an apple. I tried to speak to her,’ she said, biting her lips, ‘but ‘she would not listen. I knew no good would come of it.’

‘If it’s of any comfort,’ Gil said gently, ‘she seems to have been happy while she was with the harper and his sister.’

She smiled bitterly. ‘For a year and a half. Aye, well, it’s longer than some folk get. So anyway he was leaving and she would go with him. I made sure both the Campbell brothers were in Rothesay for her, and lent her a horse, one that would come back to me on its own from the ferry, and I hugged her and wished her Godspeed, for all she was going into sin, and went back to my own house that night, and I never saw her again.’ She stopped speaking and put the back of her hand across her mouth, apparently unaware that tears were pouring down her face. Gil reached out and touched her other hand.

‘Drink some usquebae, mistress,’_ he suggested.

‘Perhaps we should be going,’ said Maistre Pierre uncomfortably.

‘There is still something I need to ask.’

Mistress Stewart poured herself another glass of spirits and took a gulp.

‘Ask it,’ she said.

‘The plate and money — ‘

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I know nothing. I do not believe my sister took them with her, for the plate was not hers, and she was angry at John Sempill for not returning it to the Stewarts when she wedded him. She kept it, you understand, to make a good showing at the wedding, and then he insisted it was part of her tocher, though it was all clear in her first man’s will. She would not have taken it away. Nor any money that was not hers,’ she added. ‘Jewels, now, that was different, and our grandmother’s prayer-book that we learned our letters out of, but never a thing that was not hers.’

‘What do you suppose might have happened to it?’ Gil asked.

She shook her head.

‘Ask Neil Campbell. It was him was there when James went in the morning to call on her. I think James suspected what we had done,’ she said, taking another mouthful of usquebae.

‘When did the horse come home?’ asked the mason.

‘That was what sent James round to her house. It came in as soon as the Gallowgait Port was opened in the morning, and one of the stablemen must have told him I’d lent it to Bess.’

‘What was the name of your sister’s waiting-woman?’ Gil asked.

‘Oh, it wasn’t likely her. She was another of the Provost’s cousins, an auntie of Edward Stewart’s. She’d an interest in making sure it went back to her kin.’

‘I had wondered if she might have been your good-sister Euphemia.’

‘Her?’ Mariota Stewart looked genuinely startled by the idea. ‘Euphemia go for a waiting-woman? Not till the sky falls in! She’s got ideas beyond her means, that one. It was a great pity her man fell at Stirling, particularly with him being on the wrong side.’

‘I thought Chancellor Argyll was for the present King,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘with all his kin.’

‘Someone married Euphemia to the wrong man. He was a Murray, and hot-headed like all of them, so Euphemia trying to argue with him only brought him out the more strongly for the late King. So her ladyship had to see all the property she’d married him for handed over to the Crown in fines. What she lives on now I don’t know. To be honest,’ she confided, taking another sip of usquebae, ‘I don’t care either. She’s not a nice woman, with her airs and her graces, and her fancy clothes, and her scent to her own receipt, that smells of something else when it gets stale. She’s not a nice woman at all, and I don’t like her round my bairns.’

She sighed, and hiccuped.

‘Where is my sister laid?’

‘In Greyfriars kirkyard,’ said Gil gently. ‘Maister Mason and I were at the burial. It was well attended, by Sempill’s kin and the harper’s friends, and she was properly keened. There area number of Ersche speakers in Glasgow.’

She nodded, and went on nodding for some time before she collected herself and said formally, ‘Will you eat, maisters?’

‘No, no, I thank you,’ said Gil, getting to his feet. The mason did likewise, and she sat looking from one to the other. ‘We must get back to Rothesay and find Neil Campbell. Mistress …’ He hesitated, looking down at her. ‘Did Neil tell you that there was a bairn?’