Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

The mason turned the bonnet over. It was a working man’s headgear, a felted flat cap of woad-dyed wool with a deep striped band.

‘There is blood on the inside,’ said Gil, pointing. ‘He was wearing it when he was struck.’

Maistre Pierre turned the bonnet again. On the outside, corresponding to the patch of blood, was a rubbed place with scraps of bark and green stains. ‘With a great piece of wood,’ he agreed. He set the bonnet on the boy’s chest as the hurdle was borne past him. ‘Take him home, Wattie, and come back for the lady. Or if you pass any sensible men send them up to carry her away.’

As the two men plodded up the slope with their burden, Gil said thoughtfully, ‘The woman was stabbed, but the boy was struck over the head. Have there been two malefactors at large in the kirkyard last night?’

‘And the woman was robbed but the boy was not.’ The mason gathered his furred gown round him and strode up the slope in the wake of his men. ‘Come, maister lawyer, you and I can at least put her on a hurdle.’

As they rounded the angle of the Fergus Aisle they saw a small crowd hurrying eagerly towards them. Wattie’s idea of sensible men turned out to be anyone who had been passing when he reached the Great Cross, and it was with some difficulty that the hurdle with its sad burden was handed up the ramp on the inside of the scaffoldshrouded walls and down the outside, and set on its way. Several prentice-boys who should have been at work tried to climb in to see where the blood was, and a couple of the town’s licensed beggars appeared, offering to pray for the lady’s soul for ever in return for suitable alms. Once they realized that her kin had not been discovered they lost interest, but a knot of women followed at the rear of the procession, exclaiming and speculating.

Brother Porter at Greyfriars was compassionate.

‘Poor lass,’ he said, raising the fall of the hood to look at her face. ‘Aye, it’s the harper’s quine right enough. Father Francis is waiting for her in the mortuary chapel. She can he quiet there till they come for her. They’ve nowhere they can lay her out, they live in two rooms in a pend off the Fishergait.’

‘You know where they live?’ said Gil as the small cortege plodded past him, through the gateway and towards the chapel. ‘Someone needs to send to let them know.’

‘Bless you, son,’ said the porter, grinning wryly. ‘Half the town’s let them know by now. The man’s sister’ll be here any moment, I’ve no doubt, if not the harper himself.’

‘The other woman’s his sister, then?’ Gil said. ‘True enough, they’re alike. I’ll wait, if I may, brother. I must speak with her.’

‘Then I wait also,’ said Maistre Pierre. He drew a wellworn rosary from his sleeve and approached the chapel. Gil turned away to lean against the wall, thinking. The woman had clearly been dead for some hours, perhaps since yesterday evening. If she had reached St Mungo’s yard in daylight, she must have been about the place at the same time as he was himself. Alive or dead, he qualified. When he left the cathedral after Compline, was she already lying hidden under the scaffolding?

Over in the church, the rest of the little community of Franciscans were beginning to sing Prime. It felt much later.

As the Office was ending, the harper’s sister arrived in a rush, followed by a further straggle of onlookers. It was, as Gil had expected, the other singer, the tall woman in the checked kirtle, now wrapped in a huge black-and-green plaid. He straightened up and followed her to the little chapel, where she halted in the entrance, staring round; when her eye fell on the still figure on the hurdle a howl escaped her and she flung herself forward to kneel by the body, the plaid dropping to the tiled floor.

‘ohon, ohon! Ah, Bess!’ she wailed, unheeding of Father Francis still reciting prayers before the altar. Gil stepped forward to hush her, but two of the women in the crowd were before him, bending over her with sympathetic murmurs. She would not be stilled, continuing to lament in her own language. The porter hurried in and with some difficulty she was persuaded to leave the body and sit on a stool where she began to rock back and forth, hands over her face, with a high-pitched keening which made the hair on Gil’s neck stand up. The two women showed signs of joining in the noise.

The mason said to Gil under his breath, ‘Are these all her friends, that they mourn so loudly?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gil returned. ‘Er — ladies. Ladies,’ he repeated more loudly, without effect. ‘Madam!’ he shouted. ‘Be at peace, will you!’

She drew her hands from her face, still rocking, and showed him dry, angry eyes.

‘I am mourning my sister,’ she spat at him. ‘How can I be at peace?’

‘Listen to me,’ he said urgently, grasping her wrists. ‘Someone killed her, on St Mungo’s land.’

‘The more ill to St Mungo,’ she said, ignoring the shocked response of her companions. ‘Oh, Bess, as soon as I saw the gallowglass, ohon — ‘

‘Gallowglass?’ repeated Gil. ‘When was this?’

‘Yesterday, after Vespers. Him and his brother, they rode through the dance at noon, and him after Vespers casting up at our door, meek as a seal-pup, with a word for Bess Stewart and no other.’

‘You knew him?’ said the mason.

‘And why would I not know him, Campbell that he is?’ She spat as if the name were poison. ‘So what must she do, just about Compline, once the bairn is asleep, but put her plaid round her and go out with him, though we would gainsay her, Aenghus and I.’

‘She took her plaid?’ said Gil. ‘You are sure of it?’

She stared at him.

‘But of course. She was a decent woman, and not singing, of course she wore her plaid.’

‘It was not with her when we found her,’ said Gil.

‘He has kept it, the thieving — Oh, and when she never came home to her bairn, I knew there was trouble, ohon, alas!’

‘I want to find out who did it,’ said Gil hastily. She stared at him, and then grinned, showing gapped teeth.

‘It will have been the husband,’ she said. ‘But if it is proof the gentleman wants, I will help. Then we can avenge her.’ One hand went to the black-hilted gully-knife at her belt.

‘Then tell me what you can about her,’ said Gil, sitting back on his heels. ‘Who was she? No, first, who are you?’

‘I?’ She drew herself up, and the two weepers beside her sat back as if to hear a good story at some fireside. ‘I am Ealasaidh nic lain of Ardnamurchan, daughter of one harper and sister of another, singer.’

The dead woman was, as Gil had assumed, Bess Stewart of Ettrick, wife of John Sempill of Muirend. The harper and his sister had met her in Rothesay in late autumn a year and a half since.

‘She was singing with me first,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘I was playing the lute and singing, and she was joining in the second part. That was in the Provost’s house one evening. Then a day or so later we played at another house, Aenghus and me both, and she was there, and she was singing with us.’

She paused, remembering.

‘French music it was,’ she said at length. ‘Binchois, and some other. And it seemed Aenghus must have had a word with her by his lone, for when we came away from Bute before St Martin’s tide she came with us. I was not happy about this, the gentleman will be seeing, for it is one thing a willing servant lass and another entirely a baron’s wife. So we went to Edinburgh for Yule, and spent a while in Fife, and when we were coming back into the west there was the bother the Sempills had about Paisley Cross, and she was already showing, so we thought the husband would not be pursuing her.’

‘Showing?’ queried Gil. She gestured expressively.