Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

‘Saints keep us, the dog!’ wailed Mistress Murray. ‘Oh, my poor pet!’

Euphemia turned her head just before the jaws closed on her arm. Gil got a glimpse of her horrified face before she went down, screaming, under the weight of the huge beast. Bright blood sprang on the tawny satin of her sleeve as Doucette, pinning her prey with one massive paw, let go Euphemia’s arm to go snarling for the throat.

‘Help her, maister!’ shouted her waiting-woman. She turned, darted at James Campbell, her black veil flying, and tugged at his sleeve. ‘Call the brute off! Save her!’

‘She’s past helping,’ said Campbell, shaking her off.

‘In Christ’s name!’ Gil exclaimed, making for the door. Before he reached it a hand seized each of his wrists.

‘Leave it,’ said Ealasaidh at his left through the screaming.

‘If she killed Bess,’ said Philip Sempill at his right, ‘this is her due.’

The screaming turned to a dreadful gurgling which sank beneath the mastiff’s snarls. The dog was now shaking her prey as easily as some monstrous terrier.

‘Ah, well,’ said John Sempill, staring out of the window. ‘It wouldny have been legitimate anyway.’ As Mistress Murray fell at his feet in a moaning heap and across the road the yard was filled by horrified shouting, he added, ‘She should never have teased that dog the way she did.’

‘We will have to reconvene,’ said David Cunningham, ‘to determine the questions of the bairn’s future still unsettled.’

‘Another day, I beg of you, maister,’ said the harper, as his sister put the little goblet in his hand. ‘I at least have had enough of great deeds for one day.’

‘I, too,’ muttered Ealasaidh. She accepted wine herself from the Official, and sat down.

They were all in the garden in the evening sun, with the replenished jug of wine and a plate of cakes. John Sempill and his household had gone home. Gil had felt it was typical of the man that he had asked no further questions. Euphemia’s guilt was clear enough to him in her flight. Euphemia’s brother also seemed to accept the fact, although he had been more intent on defending himself and casting blame on her in the matter of the missing rents. It seemed, indeed, as if Mistress Murray was the only person to feel any grief for her fate, and that appeared to be mixed with dismay at the loss of her own living.

Canon Cunningham was initiating a discussion with the harper on the differences in the law of inheritance on either side of the Highland line. Gil paid little heed to the polite exchange; his attention was being drawn to the other side of the garden where the mason and his daughter were in intense conversation. Alys’s head was bent, and he could not see her face, but Maistre Pierre’s expression was stem. Overcome by a sudden feeling that it was now his responsibility to chastise Alys if anyone was going to, Gil set down his pewter goblet and made his way between the box-hedges, his footsteps light on the gravel. As he approached, Alys turned and walked away, rapidly, aimlessly. The mason looked at her retreating back and moved towards Gil.

‘Who would be a father?’ he complained. ‘She has been a rational intelligent mortal since she could talk, but suddenly now she is betrothed — ‘ He bit off the next words.

‘Is something wrong?’ Gil asked, with a return of the familiar sinking in his stomach. Has she changed her mind? he wondered. Perhaps Euphemia’s fate -

‘No. She’ll come round,’ said Maistre Pierre. That was an impressive performance just now, Gilbert. You made all very clear — and with your uncle watching, too.’

‘He trained me,’ Gil pointed out. ‘But Alys — ‘

‘I should let her be.’

‘But what’s troubling her?’

‘She is mumping,’ said the mason in exasperated tones, ‘because she was excluded from that singularly unpleasant scene a little while ago. She feels she had a right to be present.’

Gil looked from his friend, bulky and indignant in the big fur-lined gown, to Alys, slender and indignant in almost identical pose at the other end of the path.

‘I have to deal with this,’ he said, half to himself.

‘She’ll come round,’ said the mason again. ‘Leave her.’

‘You have sixteen years’ advantage over me,’ Gil pointed out. ‘You came to terms with her long since. Alys and I have all our terms to settle, and this is certainly a clause which demands negotiation.’

‘Well, your diplomacy is clearly more polished than mine.’ Maistre Pierre looked beyond Gil at the wine and cakes. ‘Negotiating with your uncle is taxing enough for me. You go and make terms with Alys, if you feel you must.’

Filling two goblets with watered wine, Gil avoided the stately legal discussion and made his way to where Alys was pacing slowly along another of the walks, her brocade skirts brushing over the gravel. Stopping in front of her, he held out a goblet.

‘A toast with you, demoiselle,’ he said formally. She turned her head away. He held the goblet forward so that the backs of their hands touched. ‘Alys,’ he said, more gently. ‘What ails you, my sweet?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, with an attempt at lightness.

‘It is the duty of a good wife,’ he pointed out, ‘to speak the truth to her lord at all times. I assumed I was getting a good wife, and if it’s going to be otherwise I think I need to know it now.’

She looked at him uncertainly round the fall of her hood. Her face was pale and pinched, the narrow blade of her nose outlined sharply against the black velvet. He smiled at her, and put the goblet into her hand.

‘If you won’t drink a toast, shall we walk?’ He indicated the path beyond her. She set her other hand on his wrist and turned to walk with him between the beds of primroses and cowslips. Gil found himself thinking, suddenly and irrelevantly, of the primroses growing wild on the steep banks of the burn at Thinacre, where the Cunningham young had scrambled to pick handfuls of the flat, sweet-scented flowers for their mother’s still-room. These were slips of the same growth, brought in on the cart when the tower-house was cleared. And there had been primroses by the well at St Chattan’s, when he saw the hind, he recalled, and recognized that the images were not irrelevant at all. This was part of the next thing that he had asked for.

‘Tell me what troubles you, Alys,’ he prompted.

She paced on, carrying the goblet of wine, and at length said, ‘You have offended Maggie.’

‘Maggie and I are old friends. She’ll come round.’ But that was what the mason had said of Alys. Am I wrong about Maggie too? he wondered.

‘Nevertheless,’ said Alys, with another shy glance round the hood, ‘you have rewarded her ill. She had done an unpleasant task for you, and you repaid her by shutting her in the kitchen away from the excitement.’

‘I gave her the care of the bairn and of you,’ said Gil. She turned her head away. ‘Is that it, indeed? Your father said you were mumping at not seeing the excitement — ‘

‘I was not mumping,’ she said clearly.

‘It’s the kind of thing parents say,’ he agreed, ‘to reduce us to their power. Did you really want to see Euphemia torn to pieces by the dog?’

‘No,’ she said, with an involuntary shiver. ‘But I wished to be present while you explained what happened. I know you’ll tell me how you discovered it — won’t you?’ She turned to look up at him. He nodded. ‘But Maggie and I should have seen how they all heard your account.’

‘What — you think it was your right to be present?’ he said, startled.

‘It was certainly Maggie’s.’

‘And yours?’ He found he was looking at the back of her hood again. ‘This is the nub of it, isn’t it, Alys?’