Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

The last paternoster bead reached his fingers. He rattled through the prayer, added a quick word for the repose of the lady’s soul, whoever she might be, and rose to have another look, the question of consecrated ground still niggling at his mind.

She was lying on her right side, face hidden in the trampled grass as if she was asleep, one hand tucked under her cheek. The other sleeve of her red cloth gown was hitched nearly to the shoulder, the tapes of the brocade under-sleeve half-torn, and the blood-soaked shift stiffened in sagging folds round her arm. The free hand was strong, white, quite clean, with surprisingly long nails and calloused fingertips. She wore a good linen headdress, with a neat dark French hood over it. Round her waist was a belt of red-dyed leather shod with silver, with no purse attached to it, and she had no jewellery beyond a set of finely carved wooden beads. She looked like a decent woman, not one of the inhabitants of Long Mina’s wellknown house in the Fishergait. Gil could not rid himself of the feeling that he had seen her before.

The sound of chanting was diminishing towards the vestry on the other side of the nave. He realized Lauds must be over, and there was still no sign of the mason, and nobody to help him move the corpse, which could certainly not stay there.

A door clanked open, east along the buttressed honeycoloured flank of St Mungo’s. Children’s voices soared, then paused as an angry adult voice entered at full volume.

‘Andrew Hamilton! William! Come here this instant!’

That was the chanter himself, sounding surprisingly alert after last night’s drinking session. Gil got to his feet, intending to shout to him, and found himself looking out over the roof of the masons’ lodge at Patrick Paniter, broad-shouldered and angry in his robes, confronting two blue-gowned trebles.

What were you about, that you were three beats late in the Gloria? What was so interesting?’ The chanter pounced. One boy ducked away, but the other was slower. ‘Give me that!’

Strong hands used to forcing music from the cathedral’s two organs had no difficulty with a twelve-year-old’s grip.

‘Ow! Maister Paniter!’

Maister Paniter’s dark tonsured head bent briefly over the confiscated object. ‘A harp key? What in Our Lady’s name did you want with a harp key? It’ll never tune your voice, you timber-eared skellum!’

‘It’s mine — I found it!’ The boy tried to seize it back, but the chanter held it easily beyond his reach.

‘Then you’ve lost it again.’ His other hand swung. ‘And that’s for boys who don’t watch the beat. What have I told you about that? And you, Will Anderson, hiding behind that tree! What have I told you? It’s-. Y

‘It’s wickedness, Maister Paniter,’ they repeated in reluctant chorus with him.

‘Because …?’

‘Because it interrupts the Office,’ they completed.

‘Remember that. Now get along to school before you’re any later, you little devils, and you may tell Sir Adam why I kept you.’

The fair boy, rubbing a boxed ear, ran off down the path to the mill-burn. His friend emerged from behind the tree and followed him, and they vanished down the slope, presumably making for school by the longest way around.

Gil drew breath to call to the chanter. He was forestalled by a creaking of wood behind him, and a voice which said in accented Scots, ‘Well, what a morning of accidents!’

He glanced over his shoulder, then back again, just in time to see Maister Paniter hurl some small object into the trees, and then withdraw, slamming the crypt door behind him.

Gil turned to face the master mason, staring. The man standing on the scaffolding was big, even without the furtrimmed gown he wore. A neat black beard threatened; under the round hat a sharp gaze scanned the kirkyard and returned to consider the corpse.

‘What has come to this poor woman in my chantier?’ he demanded, springing down from the planking. ‘And who are you? Did you find her, or did you put her there?’

‘I am Gil Cunningham, of the Cathedral Consistory,’ said Gil, with extreme politeness, ‘and I should advise you not to repeat that question before witnesses.’ The French mason, he thought. Could this be the father of his acquaintance of yesterday?

‘Ah — a man of law!’ said the big man, grinning to reveal a row of strong white teeth. ‘I ask your pardon. I have other troubles this morning already. I spoke without thinking.’ He raised the hat, baring dark red hair cut unfashionably short and thinning at the crown, and sketched a bow. ‘I am called Peter Mason, master builder of this burgh. Maistre Pierre — the stone master. Is a joke, no? I regret that I come late to the tryst. I have been searching for the laddie who did not sleep in his bed last night, although his brother was come from Paisley to visit him. Now tell me of this.’

‘I found her when I came for the meeting,’ said Gil. ‘She’s stiff — been killed sometime last night, I’d say.’

‘Been killed? Here? She has not died of her own accord?’

‘There’s blood on her gown. Yes, I think here. The grass is too trampled to tell us much, this dry weather, but I would say she is lying where she fell.’

Maistre Pierre bent over the corpse, touching with surprising gentleness the rigid arm, the cold jaw. He felt the back of the laced bodice, sniffed his fingers, and made a face.

‘See — I think this is the wound. A knife.’ He looked round. ‘Perhaps a man she knew, who embraced her, and slipped in the knife, khht! when she did not expect it.’

‘How was her sleeve torn, then?’ asked Gil, impressed in spite of himself.

‘He caught her by it as she fell?’ The big hands moved carefully over the brocade of the under-sleeve. ‘Indeed, there is blood here. Also it is smeared as if he wiped his hand. There is not a lot of blood, only the shift is stained. I think a fine-bladed dagger.’

‘Italian,’ offered Gil. The bright eyes considered him.

‘You know Italy, sir?’

‘There were Italians in Paris.’

‘Ah. Firenze I know, also Bologna. I agree. What do we do with the poor soul? Let us look at her face.’

He laid hold of the shoulder and the rigid knee under the full skirt, and pulled. The body came over like a wooden carving, sightless blue eyes staring under halfclosed lids. The black velvet fall of the French hood dropped back, shedding tiny flakes of hawthorn blossom and exposing a red scar along the right side of her jaw. Poor woman, thought Gil, she must always have kept her head bent so that the headdress hid that, and with the thought he knew her.

The knowledge made him somehow decisive. He reached out and drew a fold of velvet up across the staring eyes, and the woman’s face immediately seemed more peaceful.

‘It’s one of the two who sings with the harper,’ he said.

‘But of course! The one with the baby, I should say.’

‘A child, is there?’ said Gil, and suddenly recalled his uncle using the same words. ‘Then I know who must be told, as well as the harper. She is on St Mungo’s land, we must at least notify the sub-dean as well, and he is probably the nearest member of Chapter in residence just now. I have no doubt he will want to be rid of her. Do you suppose the Greyfriars would take her until we can confirm her name and where she is and find her kin?’

‘But certainly. Go you and tell whom you must, Maister Cunningham. I will bide here, and by the time you return my men will be come back from searching for Davie-boy and we can put her on a hurdle.’

A plump maidservant opened the door to Gil when he reached the stone tower-house by the mill-burn.

‘Good day to you, Maister Cunningham,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Is it the maister you’re wanting?’