Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

Her brother put both hands on his knees and remained silent. Philip Sempill said, ‘You never had that amount from the land in Bute, John!’

‘No, I never,’ agreed John Sempill flatly.

‘Whose responsibility is it to collect the rents?’ asked the Official.

‘Sempill’s,’ said James Campbell.

‘They go to James,’ said Sempill in the same moment. Their challenging stares met. ‘Except the rents that went to Bess, to buy harp keys with,’ he added in a suggestive snarl.

Euphemia giggled again. Her brother’s green velvet elbow moved sharply, and she showed her teeth at him. The harper sat impassive.

‘Is it agreeable to Bess Stewart’s kin,’ asked the Official, ‘that these properties pass to her bairn, with arrangements for the rent to be paid directly to his foster-parent?’

‘Her kin have nothing — ‘ began Sempill.

‘It is not,’ said James Campbell of Glenstriven, as if he had been waiting for this. ‘I am married to her sister Mariota Stewart, and I submit that if John Sempill alienates these properties they should be offered first to my wife.’

‘It is none of your — ‘

‘If Bess had died before she disgraced herself — ‘

‘Which, St Catherine be my witness, I wish she had!’ exclaimed Euphemia piously.

‘You keep out of this,’ said her brother. ‘If she’d died before she went for a harper’s whore, Mariota would have got her Stewart properties.’

‘I’d have seen you in court first!’

‘I’d have taken you there with pleasure.’

‘Bess never had no rent off her lands in Bute,’ said Ealasaidh loudly. Both men turned to look at her. The mason sneezed again.

‘What are you saying, woman?’ demanded Sempill.

‘Och, what does a singing tramp know,’ began James. Campbell

‘You miscall my sister, do you, Mhic Chaileann?’ said the harper quietly.

‘I am saying Bess never had any money off Bute but what she brought away with her,’ said Ealasaidh doggedly.

‘And that was what little she had by in the house. She was saying, if we had waited till St Martin’s tide she would have had more to bring that was her own rents.’

‘Hold up here,’ said Sempill. ‘Are ye saying she never brought anything but the coin that was in the house? What about the plate-chest? There was plenty in that.’

‘Plate-chest?’ said Ealasaidh. There was no mistaking the blank surprise in her voice. ‘How would she be taking a plate-chest off Bute, and me not noticing?’

‘Well, she never left it behind,’ said Sempill. His pale eyes turned to Campbell. ‘At least, so I was tellt. Well, good-brother?’

Gil stepped back quietly from the shouting.

‘Euan,’ he said to the waiting gallowglass. The man, intent on the argument, jumped and looked up at him. ‘Go down yon stair to the kitchen and fetch your brother up to me.’

By the time Neil sidled into the hall, James Campbell had reached the point of accusing Ealasaidh directly.

‘And what price did you get for it, you and her? Plenty of silversmiths in Edinburgh would ask no questions, though it had the crest on it.’

Ealasaidh was on her feet, spitting Gaelic. Beside her, Alys was hugging the baby, who was becoming alarmed by the noise. The harper cut across his sister with a single calm sentence which made all the Gaelic-speakers in the room flinch.

‘I must ask you to speak Scots in this court,’ said the Official, apparently forgetting where he was for the moment.

‘I ask the court’s pardon.’ The harper rose and bowed in the direction of Canon Cunningham’s table, his darkbrowed face very solemn. ‘I have said, I am a harper, and I can determine the truth of the matter.’ It appeared to be a threat.

‘There is one here,’ said Gil, cutting in smoothly, ‘who can tell us more towards the facts.’

‘Euan Campbell?’ said his master. ‘What does he know?’

‘They were asleep when she left,’ said Campbell of Glenstriven. ‘She got out of a window, no doubt with help from this ill-conditioned woman — ‘

The harper said something, quietly, to his sister. She bowed her head and restrained herself. Gil said, ‘I have seen this window.’ James Campbell turned to look at him, his jaw dropping. ‘It is this size,’ Gil continued, measuring the air with his hands. ‘I have not seen the plate-chest — ‘

‘It was this big!’ Sempill demonstrated. The dimensions appeared quite similar.

‘But we are asked to believe that this woman climbed out twenty feet above the ground, from a window scarcely big enough to accommodate a laddie, let alone a grown woman fully clothed, taking with her a box at least the size of the window and containing near thirty pounds of plate, as well as coin and jewels.’

‘Forty pounds of plate at least!’ Sempill corrected.

‘I have the inventory,’ Gil said, looking at another of the parchments in his hand. ‘Twenty-seven pounds, ten and a half ounces. There were never any marks of a ladder found, so she either jumped or climbed down a rope with this box — ‘

‘She must have lowered it first to whoever helped her,’ said James Campbell desperately.

‘And landed in the spreading white rose-bush which grows under that window.’ Euphemia giggled, and was pinched savagely by her brother again. ‘Shall we hear a different version? Not Euan Campbell but Neil can tell us more about that night.’

He beckoned the gallowglass forward, and got him launched with difficulty on the account he had given on Sunday evening. While the halting explanation went on he looked round the faces. On this bench, John Sempill in steadily rising fury, Euphemia critical as if she was listening to an old tale badly told, her brother in gathering alarm, Philip Sempill with the expression of a man waiting for a cannon to go off. On the other, the mason absorbed, Alys watching the baby (she looked up, and their eyes met for a moment), Ealasaidh intent, her face softening as she remembered the escape, and her brother beside her, clasping the harp, still as King David on a church doorway. In the great chair, his uncle was watching the gallowglass.

‘And I never laid eyes on it again,’ the man finished.

‘Lies — all lies!’ said James Campbell, a second before Sempill said,

‘Right, James. Where is it?’

David Cunningham beckoned to Gil, and when he approached asked quietly, ‘What is the significance of the plate-chest?’

‘It is certainly missing,’ said Gil. ‘The contents belonged to her first husband’s family, and were to revert to them, so someone owes them the value of twenty-seven pounds of silver.’

‘And ten and a half ounces,’ the Official added, watching the growing argument before him. At the point where Philip Sempill leapt up to restrain his cousin, Canon Cunningham banged sharply on the table with his winecup. Even muffled by the table-carpet the sound was enough to distract the combatants.

‘I am not certain,’ he said in his dry voice, ‘that this discussion is relevant to the point at issue, which is I believe to establish what lands belonged to Elizabeth Stewart, deceased, in the Island of Bute, and which are now to be assigned to her son.’

‘May it please the court,’ said Gil, following where his uncle led, ‘I think it is relevant, since if the money and other rents did not reach John Sempill and did not reach Bess Stewart they must still be owing to someone, and might be said to belong to the bairn.’

‘And what about the land in Kingarth?’ said Philip Sempill, sitting down. ‘And was there not another stretch in Rothesay itself? Where are the rents for that?’

‘The conjunct fees. I had the rents off those,’ said Sempill grudgingly, ‘for what they’re worth.’