The Fourth Crow (36 page)

She buried her face in his shoulder, and he felt her tears hot on his skin.

‘I know,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘But oh, it is hard.’

The Castle courtyard was thronged and noisy with the Archbishop’s servants, making preparations for the arrival of King and court. The morning was sunny, with a brisk wind which added to the movement of the scene, snatching at plaids and gowns, sending litter whirling in corners. Otterburn, glumly surveying the bustle from the steps of his lodging, nodded to Gil as he approached, and raised his red felt hat to Alys.

‘Good day, mistress. I hear we’ve you to thank for finding the missing heiress.’ Alys curtsied acknowledgement of this. ‘I should take you on the strength, you’re worth any four o Andro’s lot. All I need now is to learn who killed the verger, and we’re done.’

‘What time is the quest?’ Gil asked. ‘Have I time to question the Muirs, and maybe Craigie and all?’

‘My lord’s dealing wi Craigie right now.’ Otterburn glanced at the sky. ‘It’s called for after Sext, you’ve an hour or two. I’ll ask you to go down to the cells, it’s ower busy above stairs here.’

Austin Muir was in a poor state for questioning. Dragged out of his cell with his chains clanking, he fell to his knees in the passageway saying,

‘Did he lift the curse, Maister Cunningham? Will you tell him to lift the curse? I’m no wanting snuffed out like the candle!’

‘If you confessed,’ said Gil, and took a step back as the manacled hands snatched at his gown. ‘As the Archbishop said last night, if you’ve confessed and repented, you’ll no be snuffed out, though you may hang for what you did.’

‘I had to do it!’ The man was snivelling. ‘She kept on at Henry, I’ll no let her flyte at Henry like that, I had to stop her.’

‘What was she on at Henry about? What was she saying to him?’

‘All sorts, she was saying, and none o it true. About he killed the lassie from the tavern and put her at the Cross, and where had he put Annie Gibb, and the like. None o it true, we was never near the Cross in the night. You’ll no let them snuff me out, maister, surely?’ The hands came up again, imploringly.

‘D’you want him taken into the light, Maister Cunningham?’ asked Andro, hauling the reluctant Austin to his feet. ‘There’s more light in the guardroom, and a table forbye. Come on, you. Gie’s a hand, Richie, he’s no for moving.’

More light did not improve the prisoner’s appearance. He had a black eye and a badly grazed jaw, and his velvet gown had suffered in the struggle to arrest him as well as in the cell overnight, with loops of braid hanging loose between the greenish patches of slime from the damp stonework. He crouched between the two men-at-arms, shivering, and said pleadingly,

‘I’m no wanting to be accursit, nor any o those things. You’ll tell them, maister, won’t you?’

‘The Archbishop said you confessed, Austin,’ said Gil. ‘Have you repented o what you did? Can you tell me what you ken about Dame Ellen?’

‘Dame Ellen! She was a wicked woman,’ said Austin. ‘She’d promised us all sorts, and land and money forbye, if we did her bidding, and none of it cam about. She cheated us, and then she called Henry sic names as there was no standing for it.’

‘What were you to do for her?’ Gil asked. Austin shook his head.

‘I canny mind. All sorts. We’d to take letters for her all across Ayrshire, to men o law, and ride in her escort when she cam to Glasgow, and make up to Annie Gibb. I didny like doing that, she wasny nice in her ways.’

‘Was that all you had to do?’ Gil asked, ignoring Andro’s snort of amusement.

‘She had us call at the hostel every day while she was there.’ The prisoner began rocking back and forward. ‘And then she’d more for us to do. She wanted us to go and see Annie Gibb in the night when she was tied up at the Cross, I’m right glad we never did that, we’d ha found the man that strangled her, maybe he’d ha strangled me. Or Henry. I was feart to go near it. Henry tellt her what was what about that, but she threatened him we’d never get the land nor the money.’ The rocking intensified. ‘And now see what’s come o’t all, we’ve neither land nor money nor Annie Gibb and I’m to be curst like a jackdaw.’

‘Austin,’ said Gil. He hunkered down, to look into the man’s face. ‘Is that all you did for her? You killed nobody for her?’

‘Killed? No.’ Tears were dripping onto the ruined gown. ‘Who would we kill for her? Mind, she asked us to, she wanted Annie Gibb slain, seeing we wouldny wed her, so her lands would all go back to the family they cam from, but Henry tellt her no, we wereny getting caught up in sic a thing.’ Austin’s manacled hands came forward again in appeal, reaching for Gil’s arm. ‘Maister, will you tell him to lift the curse? I’m no wanting to be snuffed out like yon candle.’

‘Has he seen a priest the day?’ Gil asked Andro.

‘No yet. There’s been no word about what to do wi him.’

‘He might make better sense if he was confessed again.’ Gil disengaged himself and straightened up, looking down at the rocking prisoner. ‘Take him away. I’ll speak to my lord about a priest for him.’

Henry Muir was even less helpful. Rather more resilient than his brother, he was resentful rather than tearful, but it seemed to Gil he was frightened too. As well he might be; he faced death or imprisonment for his part in two killings, and a heavy penance from the church. He was disinclined to answer questions, nevertheless, even those relating to his signed confession.

‘I can see you were protecting your brother,’ Gil said at length, ‘and he was protecting you. But you could help me now, at no cost to yoursel, and maybe do yoursel some good as well.’

Henry gave him a sour look, and shrugged one shoulder so that his chains clattered.

‘Will I get the pilliwinks heated?’ suggested Andro hopefully. ‘Or the boot, maybe?’

‘What’s this about taking letters across Ayrshire for Dame Ellen?’ Gil asked, ignoring this. ‘D’you ken what she wrote in them?’

‘No.’

Well, that was an answer of sorts.

‘When did she ask you to kill Annie Gibb?’

Another sour look, but no answer.

‘Put him back,’ said Gil in resignation. ‘The Provost can deal wi him later.’

In the outer courtyard of the castle, matters were being set up for the quest on Dame Ellen Shaw and Barnabas the verger. A table had been carried out to the foot of the steps from the main hall, and Otterburn’s great chair set behind it, with a stool for Walter the clerk at one end. Walter himself was already standing by, clasping the worn red velvet Gospel book and directing matters crisply while the wind snatched at his long gown. The area for the members of the assize had been roped off. People were gathering, standing by in gossiping knots; Maistre Pierre was in discussion with Andrew Hamilton the joiner, other neighbours were present. The two central actors in the proceedings lay on trestles under a wildly flapping striped awning, and to Gil’s surprise he saw Alys there, with the boy Berthold at her side.

As he looked, Alys raised the linen cloth from the battered countenance of Dame Ellen. Washed clean of blood the woman’s face was, he knew, a less fearsome sight than it had been by candlelight in the chapel where she died, but both of them flinched from the sight. Alys gathered her resolve and looked again, and spoke coaxingly to the boy. After a moment, perhaps not to be outdone by a young woman, he also looked, visibly forcing himself to gaze steadily at the ravaged countenance. Then he glanced at Alys, apparently surprised, and said something, with complicated gestures.

Elbowing his way through the crowd, Gil reached them just as Alys laid the linen sheet down, pulling it straight, tucking the edges under so that the wind would not catch it. The boy ducked away from him, but she looked up with a troubled expression.

‘Berthold has just said he has seen Dame Ellen, arguing with someone,’ she said. ‘Tell Maister Gil, Berthold.’

Berthold swallowed, opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, and shook his head helplessly.

‘Meister Peter?’ he said, craning to look about him. ‘Lucas?
Ich kann nicht
—’

Alys patted his arm in reassurance.

‘Try, Berthold. Try to say it in Scots.’

‘Come over here.’ Gil drew them both away from the two bodies, into a relatively quiet corner.

With encouragement, Berthold succeeded in explaining that he had indeed seen the woman before. He was certain it was her; he tapped his own front teeth, and gestured at the corpse under its flapping shelter.

‘When did you see her?’ Gil asked, thinking hard. The boy had been kept at home since the same day that Peg had been found at the Cross; it must have been the day before, the day the Glenbuck party had arrived in Glasgow.

‘After,’ said Berthold, and mimed eating something in his hand. ‘After food.’ Gil nodded. ‘In, in kirkyard. She spoke.
Verärget.’

‘Argued?’ guessed Gil. Berthold nodded in his turn.

‘Sie stritt mit ihn.’

‘Who did she argue with?’ Alys asked.

‘A man, a man of the kirk.’

‘A priest?’ Gil conjectured.

‘
Nein, nein.
’ Berthold patted his skinny chest, below his left collarbone, then drew an oval shape like a badge there.

‘One of the vergers.’ Alys looked up at Gil.

‘What did they quarrel about?’ Gil asked, but that was more than the boy could answer; he shrugged, grinned beseechingly, spread his hands. ‘Then what?’

The man had dropped something, and the woman had picked it up. ‘
Schnell, schnell
,’ said Berthold, miming someone pouncing on the item. They had argued more. Berthold wound an invisible cord about his hand; the woman had insisted on keeping it, and sent the man away.

‘Where did he go?’ Gil asked.

‘In kirk,’ said Berthold.

‘And the woman?’

She had seen Berthold watching, and threatened him, so he had run away, back to the masons’ lodge.

‘A cord,’ said Gil. ‘Berthold, come here.’

He led the reluctant boy back to the two corpses, and uncovered Barnabas’ face. It had smoothed out, and was by far more recognisable than it had been immediately after he had been dragged out of the well. Berthold considered it for a few moments, then looked at Gil and nodded.

‘
Es war dieser Mann
. This man.’

‘I must say,’ said Otterburn, ‘I could ha done wi hearing this an hour or two sooner. You say the woman had words wi the man that’s dead. What about?’

‘I wonder if she knew of Craigie’s thefts. She was trying to support his money-gathering, I suppose she was aware of his penance. She was certainly writing to men of law in Ayrshire, I suspect with a view to claiming property on his behalf, and without his knowledge. I need to question him, once Blacader is finished wi him. So yes, she might have tried to instruct Barnabas about the matter, which he would not have taken well.’

‘And then she lifted a cord and kept it. Is that the cord she strangled him wi? Why would she strangle him, any road?’

‘No, I think she used that cord on Peg Simpson. Barnabas was strangled wi the cord he had in his hand when he went off from the Almoner’s store.’

‘On Peg Simpson. You’ve still no explained why, either o them.’

‘I think,’ said Gil carefully, ‘she had just realised that her schemes for Annie’s marriage were coming to naught. So she slipped out in the night, greasing the hostel door hinges so that she could return in silence, and strangled the girl at the Cross. She was very insistent that nobody had left the women’s hall, but she was our only witness for that. I suppose she could have made certain they all slept soundly, just as the doctor did in the other hall.’

‘Aye,’ said Otterburn, not particularly encouraging.

‘I think Barnabas either recognised her part in what happened to Peg, or suspected Craigie of involvement as we originally thought. It was his misfortune to meet Dame Ellen rather than Craigie, whether it was in the Lower Kirk or out in the kirkyard as the Dean would prefer to believe.’

‘She was a big strong woman,’ said Otterburn thoughtfully.

‘And she had done it before,’ said Gil. ‘Sir Edward died peacefully, a couple of hours back, but he made a deposition in his last hour, witnessed by Sir Simon and myself.’ He drew the folded paper from his purse. ‘It’s interesting reading.’

Otterburn shot him a wary look, but took the paper and unfolded it.

‘All circumstantial,’ he said after a moment.

‘But it all points in the same direction,’ Gil observed. ‘She had tried to strangle her brother with a cord when they were children, and he was never satisfied that her first two husbands hanged themselves. That detail of the bruising on the first fellow’s neck is very convincing.’

‘Aye, but that was twenty year or more ago. No way to tell now.’ Otterburn laid the document flat and smoothed it onto his desk. ‘Does it satisfy you?’

‘I think it fits better than accusing Will Craigie,’ Gil admitted. ‘He’s still swearing he did not kill Barnabas, and I’m inclined to think it’s the truth.’

‘Aye,’ said Otterburn again. ‘It would be tidy, I’ll admit. It’s no like you to go for the tidy solution.’

‘I’m none so sure it is tidy,’ Gil said. ‘We still don’t know just why Barnabas died, or why Peg Simpson was throttled, though we can guess, and it’s still no clear whether Habbie Sim was involved or no. In some ways it would be neater if we could blame Craigie, but he swears innocence o both those crimes.’

Otterburn folded the paper and handed it back to Gil.

‘Well, we’ll put it to the assize, though what they’ll make of it Deil alone kens. And now I’d best make a start on this quest, afore my lord sends out to know what we’re up to.’

‘So that abominable laddie,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘had the answer to your questions the whole time?’

‘Not all of them,’ said Gil.

The day had been longer than he liked. The assize had accepted his evidence and brought in the verdicts Otterburn required of them, but its aftermath had included a long and difficult interview with Robert Blacader and a very painful one with John Lockhart. The Archbishop had been rather less surprised than Lockhart to learn that Dame Ellen had been malefactor as well as victim, but saddened to realise that she had died without being confessed and absolved of her crimes, particularly those against Holy Kirk.