Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

‘Yourself,’ said the mason, ‘warranted sound in wind and limb, your profession, your descent. Your learning and, if you will forgive me, your attitude to Alys’s learning. Alys herself will be well dowered. These are matters for your uncle and me to discuss. If we are satisfied, so may you be.’

‘And what my uncle will say — ‘

‘He was in favour of the idea when I spoke to him. Are you trying to cry off already?’

‘God, the old fox — !’

Gil began to laugh, and took the hand which the mason was still offering.

‘You have turned my life round with a few words,’ he said, and realized he was trembling. ‘My hert, my will, my nature and my mind Was changit clean right in another kind. I am finding it difficult to grasp such a shift in my fortune.’

‘Do not try,’ said Maistre Pierre seriously. ‘Let it be. You will grow used to it soon enough. Meantime, I think Compline is ended, since there is no singing to slow matters. Sir William will be with us shortly, and we can go back to those appalling mattresses.’

Matt was waiting on the strand at Dumbarton when the Mary and Bruoc beached just after Sext. Gil felt astonishingly glad to see him; he was a familiar figure, one of the remnants of his childhood, like Maggie, and it was reassuring to find him here in the midst of change.

‘Thrown out of all the ale-houses?’ he asked, wading out of the shallows. Matt grunted in reply, and gave the gallowglass the hostile stare of a small man for a tall one. ‘And have you found any word of Annie Thomson?’

‘Aye,’ said Matt.

‘Is she safe?’ asked the mason, turning from bidding farewell to the master of the Mary and Bruoc. Matt nodded, and Gil was conscious of a strong feeling of relief.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Where does she live? Is she in Dumbarton?’

‘St Giles’ Wynd. But …’ said Matt.

‘But what?’ asked the mason. Gil, more familiar with the man’s taciturn nature, simply waited.

‘Toothache,’ said Matt finally.

‘The poor lassie,’ said Neil with ready sympathy.

‘Bad?’ asked Gil. Matt nodded. ‘Bad enough to prevent us questioning her?’

Matt shrugged, and turned away to walk along the shore. Gil followed him, trying to concentrate his mind on what he must say to the girl.

He felt quite different this morning. He had slept, badly, two nights in these clothes, and certainly had acquired fleas from the infamous straw mattress, and yet his body felt cleaner than the wind which blew through his hair. His feet in the soggy boots were as light as the wood smoke spiralling up along the shore where someone was heating a tar-kettle. And beach and burgh, rock and hills, the smells of seaweed and tar, seemed as new and unfamiliar as if he had cast up on the shores of Tartary or Prester John’s country. He could not gather his thoughts at all, although that might be down to lack of sleep, or to the dream, which would not leave him.

He had lain most of the night in Sir William’s loft chamber, listening to his two companions snoring, and to the occasional rattle of rain on the slates of the chapel above his head, imagining strange and glorious ways in which he could earn land and money to support a wife. To support Alys. None of them, he had to admit, was practicable, and he had eventually fallen asleep, and dreamed that he was sailing a small boat, just big enough for one, across billows of grey ribbed silk. A rope in his hand led to a sail bluer than the sky. The boat sped on, until he came to a high rock rising out of the folds of silk. Seated on its crest, Euphemia was combing a lock of her long yellow hair and singing. At her side was an armed man, entangled in another yellow lock; as the boat slid past he raised a mailed fist in salute, or in farewell, and Gil saw without surprise that it was his brother Hugh. He looked back, but the boat sailed on, followed by the singing. The annoying thing was that he knew the tune, and he had woken trying to remember the words.

‘Do you know this one?’ he said to Maistre Pierre, and whistled a few notes. The mason joined in, nodding.

‘We sang it. The other night at my house, you remember? A new song Alys had from somewhere. D’amour je suis desheritee …’

‘I remember. I am dispossessed by love,’ Gil quoted, ‘and do not know who to appeal to. Alas, I have lost my love, I am alone, he has left me … to run after an affected woman who slanders me without ceasing. Alas, I am forgotten, wherefore I am delivered to death.’

‘What has brought that into your head?’ asked Maistre Pierre, at his most quizzical. ‘I hope it has no bearing on the present?’

‘I don’t know. Oh, none upon Alys or the — the matter you broached last night. Merely, I dreamed of Euphemia Campbell singing that.’

‘Hardly likely,’ said the mason.

‘She is singing like a ghillie-Bride — an oyster-catcher,’ said Neil, who had apparently taken Gil for his lord and protector. ‘High and thin and all on one note.’

‘It keeps coming back to my mind. Matt! Where are we going?’

‘St Giles’ Wynd,’ said Matt, jerking a thumb towards the vennel that led inland.

They could hear the screaming as they picked their way along the busy High Street, and when they turned in at the entry under the figure of St Giles the sounds echoed hollowly in the vault. A little knot of neighbours was gathered along the wynd outside the house, nodding and exclaiming, and as Matt pushed his way through someone looked round saying hopefully, ‘Here’s the tooth-drawer!’

‘That’s no the tooth-drawer,’ said someone else. ‘He’s away across the river to St Mahew’s to see to a horse, he’ll no be back before Vespers. Oh, my, will you listen to that, the poor lassie.’

‘What is it?’ asked the mason. ‘What is wrong?’

‘A lassie with a rotten tooth,’ said someone else. Several voices explained how the girl’s mouth was swelled the size of a football and she couldny eat or speak.

‘And her minnie waited till this morn to send for the tooth-drawer, and found him out of the town.’

‘Why’d she wait so long?’

‘The lassie wouldny have it. Aye, aye, she’s regretting it now.,

Gil, listening to the screams, felt it unlikely that the sufferer had thought for anything but her pain.

‘Is it Annie Thomson?’ he asked.

‘It is that,’ said someone. ‘Here, widow Thomson, here’s a man asking for Annie.’

‘If you’re no the tooth-drawer I don’t want you,’ said the widow Thomson, appearing in her doorway. She was a big-framed, bulky woman, with a strong resemblance to the girl they had seen in Glasgow. ‘I don’t know, there’s been as many folk asking for her since she came home, and the worse she gets the more folk come asking.’

‘Who else has been looking for her?’ Gil asked quickly.

‘Him yonder, for a start,’ said the widow, pointing at Matt, who ducked hastily behind the mason. ‘And a black- avised fellow in a green velvet hat came round the door yesterday stinking of musk, seemed to feel all he had to do was show enough coin and she’d tell him some story or other.’ She flinched as another scream tore at their ears. ‘I ask you, maisters, how could she speak to anyone?’ She wiped her eyes with the end of her kerchief. ‘What she needs is that tooth drawn, and then she can get some rest.’

‘Then maybe we can all get some rest,’ said a voice from the back of the crowd. ‘Two days this has been going on.’

‘I wish we could do something,’ said Gil helplessly.

‘I could,’ said Matt suddenly.

Gil stared at him. ‘Can you draw teeth, Matt?’

‘You can draw teeth?’ asked the widow. ‘Oh, maister, if you could help my lassie!’