Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

‘Understood, sir.’ Gil followed his uncle from the room and down the stairs. ‘Do we meet here in the hall?’

‘Considering the numbers, I think we must.’

Shouting down the kitchen stair for Tam, Gil began to move benches. Shortly, despite his uncle’s directions and Tam’s inclination to ask about Alys rather than lift furniture, he had an impromptu court-room arranged, with the great chair behind a carpeted table, and the two benches set on either side. He was hunting through the house for more stools when he heard a knocking at the door, and Maggie’s heavy feet descending to answer it.

Gil contrived to reach the hall with his latest find just as the mason stepped in from the stair, followed by a complete stranger in a French hood and a black brocade gown, wearing a string of pearls which gleamed in the light from the windows.

Gil’s jaw dropped, and the mason advanced on the Official and spoke.

‘Good evening to you, Maister Cunningham. May I present to you my daughter Alys?’

When she moved forward, of course it was Alys. Straight-backed and elegant, she curtsied to Uncle David. If his feet were rooted to the floor just inside the hall door, how was it that by the time she straightened her knee and raised her head, he was at her elbow?

‘Well, well,’ said his uncle. ‘Here’s as bonnie a lass as there’s been in this house since it was built, I think.’

The old man took Alys’s hands, embraced her, kissed her, as was an older relative’s right. Could this be jealousy, Gil wondered, barely aware of the nursemaid jiggling the baby at the mason’s back.

‘And here’s my nephew,’ said Uncle David.

She turned, and their eyes met. Her hand was in his.

‘Take her in the garden,’ said his uncle. ‘You have a quarter-hour.’

In the centre of the garden, in full view of the hall windows, the green mound was dry enough to sit on, but Gil took off his gown and spread it anyway, then handed Alys to the seat. Her silk brocade rustled as she sat down, and gave off a scent of cedarwood. He kept hold of her hand, and stood looking down at her. She looked up, a little shy, her face framed by the black velvet folds of the French hood.

‘You truly wish to marry me?’ Gil said at length. She looked down, blushing slightly, then up again to meet his eyes.

‘Truly,’ she said with that directness he admired so much. ‘And you? You truly wish to be married? Not to be a priest?’

‘You know the answer.’

The apologetic smile flashed.

‘I would still like to hear it.’

‘I wish to marry you,’ he said earnestly, ‘more than anything else I have ever had the opportunity to do. I have never felt like this about anybody before. I think I must have loved you from the moment you spoke to me on that stair by the Tolbooth.’

‘I too,’ she said. ‘From that moment.’

‘Alys,’ he said. He sat down, and somehow she was in his arms.

‘Gilbert.’

Her mouth, innocent and eager, tasted of honey under his.

When the mason interrupted them he swore they had had half an hour.

‘And Sempill is here, with his entire household, I believe,’ he said cheerfully, ‘becoming more thunderous by the breath, and the harper is sitting like King David on a trumeau ignoring everything while his sister mutters spells at his side.’

‘A merry meeting,’ Gil said. Alys was putting her hair back over her shoulders, so that it hung down her back below the velvet fall of her hood. He dragged his eyes from the sight, and said more attentively, ‘Sempill’s entire household, you say? Who is there?’

‘Sempill and his cousin, Campbell and his sister, the other gallowglass, the companion — why she has come I know not, unless as some sort of witness — ‘

‘Right.’ Gil drew Alys to her feet. ‘Go with your father, sweetheart. I must get a word with Maggie first, then I will come up.’

Her hand lingered in his, and. he squeezed it before he let go, drawing a quick half smile in answer, but all she said was, ‘Is my hood still straight?’

‘Square and level,’ her father assured her. She took his arm and moved towards the house, her black silk skirts caught up in her other hand. Gil turned towards the archway to the kitchen-yard, where the mason’s man Luke was drinking ale with the Official’s Tam.

Maggie’s face fell when he entered the kitchen alone.

‘And am I no to get a sight of your bride?’ she demanded.

‘And she’s well worth seeing. You’ll have the care of her later this evening, Maggie,’ Gil promised, ‘for I think things may get a little fractious upstairs. For now, I have an errand for you. And you, Neil, I want you to stay here handy until I call you.’

The gallowglass, seated by the fire with a leather beaker of the good ale, merely grinned, but Maggie scowled and objected, ‘I’ve to take wine up for the company.’

‘I will do that. You get over the road and get Marriott Kennedy to help you search for that cross you never found.’

Her gaze sharpened on his face.

‘Uhuh,’ she said, nodding slowly. ‘And if we find it?’

‘Bring it to me, quiet-like.’

‘I’ll do it,’ she said, and went to the outside door where her plaid hung on a nail.

‘Maggie, you’re a wonderful woman.’

Her face softened.

‘You’re a bad laddie,’ she said, and stumped out of the house.

Gil reached the hall with the great jug of claret wine and plate of jumbles just as John Sempill leapt to his feet snarling, ‘If he’s no to compear we’ll just have to manage without him. Oh, there you are! Where the devil have you been? Vespers must be near over by now.’

‘I was concerned with another matter,’ said Gil, setting wine and cakes down on the carpet on his uncle’s table. ‘Have some wine and come over to the window and instruct me. Maggie has gone out, sir. Will you pour, or shall I fetch Tam up?’

Sempill, a cup of good wine in his hand, seemed reluctant to come to the point. Gil simply stood, watching him, while he muttered half-sentences. At length he came out with, ‘Oh, to the devil with it! If he’ll let me name the bairn mine — ‘

‘By “he” you mean the harper?’

‘Who else, gomerel? If he’ll let me name it mine, without disputing it, then I’ll settle Bess’s own lands on the brat immediately, and treat it as my sole heir unless I get another later.’

‘That seems a fair offer,’ said Gil. ‘Who gets the rents? What about your conjunct fee?’

‘That’s mine, for what good it does me,’ said Sempill quickly. ‘I suppose the bairn or its tutor gets the profit from the land, which willny keep a flea, I can tell you, so that’s between the harper and the nourice.’

‘You do not contemplate rearing the child yourself,’ said Gil expressionlessly.

‘I do not. You think I want another man’s get round my feet?’

Gil looked across the room at the assembled company. On one bench was Ealasaidh, dandling the swaddled baby, while Alys waved the coral for the small hands to grasp at and the harper and the mason sat on either side like heraldic supporters. As he looked, the mason broke out in a volley of sneezes. On the other bench, in a row, one Sempill and two Campbells drank the Official’s wine in a miasma of conflicting perfumes and discussed, apparently, the marriage of a cousin of Philip Sempill’s wife. Euphemia cast occasional covert glances at the rope of pearls which glimmered against Alys’s black Lyons brocade. In the background, Nancy on one side, Neil’s brother Euan and the stout Mistress Murray on the other, waited in silence. Canon Cunningham was sitting in his great chair, watching the infant, who was now grabbing at the fall of Alys’s hood.

‘Do you wish to stipulate who is to rear the child?’ Gil asked.