The Harper's Quine (12 page)

Quite ridiculous. I am to be a priest, he thought.

And here were the descriptions, as if this long-dead king had seen Alys Mason in his dream. He read on, picking out
the cramped lines with satisfaction, until the candle began
to flicker.

It was, he realized, very late. He rose, returned the book to
its place, and went to the window to close the shutters.

He leaned out first, breathing in the scent of the gardens
after the rain. The sky was clearing, and the bulk of the
Campsie hills showed against the stars to the north. Late
though it was, there were lights in the Sempill house, one
where he could see a table with cards and several pairs of
hands, and above that and to one side, nearly on a level
with him, a room where someone came and went
slowly.

It was only when she paused and began to comb her
wealth of golden hair that he realized that Euphemia
Campbell was undressing before a mirror.

He watched, fascinated, the movement of little white
hands and dainty arms, the tilt of the slender neck, the fall
of the rippling gold locks as she turned her head before the
mirror. How many candles was she burning?, he wondered. There was certainly one to one side, and another
beyond the mirror, to judge by the way the white shift was
outlined, and maybe more. Little surprise that Sempill was
short of money.

Euphemia turned her head and moved gracefully out of
his sight. The square of light stood empty, while on the
floor below the card-game continued, apparently at the
stage of declaring points from the new hands dealt. Gil
leaned on the sill a moment longer, then drew back into
the room and reached for the shutters.

Euphemia came back into view, but not alone. The man
with her was still fully clothed, although she was enthusiastically attempting to remedy this, and he had already got
her shift down over her shoulders.

Gil stood, hand on the shutter, watching in astonishment. The man’s face was buried in her neck and his
movements were driven by what could be presumed to be
strong passion, but even at a distance and from this angle he felt sure it was not John Sempill. The fellow was not
much taller than Euphemia, and his hair was dark in the
candlelight and surely longer than Sempill’s sandy
pelage.

The woman spoke to him, apparently laughing, and he
raised his head to answer her. Gil stared, frowning. The
urgent manner might be put down to the circumstances
but that dark, narrow face, black-browed in the candlelight, was certainly not Sempill’s. It was the little dark
fellow who had been outside St Mungo’s, who had been in
the procession which rode through the May Day dancing
- dear God, was it only yesterday? - and who had not been
present when he questioned the household today. The
Italian musician. He suddenly recalled the expression
he had seen on Euphemia’s face when the man was
mentioned.

Euphemia’s shift had fallen to her waist. Gil was conscious first of regret that she had her back to him and then
of sudden disgust. Such behaviour could be excused in the
mastiff down in the courtyard, but not in a human
being.

The two entangled figures moved out of sight, presumably in the direction of Euphemia’s bed. Thoughtfully,
Gil closed the shutters and turned to his own.

He spent longer than usual on his prayers, but nevertheless he found when he finally lay down that sleep was
a long time claiming him. Images of women danced
behind his eyelids, of Bess Stewart as she lay under the
scaffolding in the half-built chapel, of Ealasaidh in her
grief, of Euphemia just now in the candlelight wrestling
the battle of love, and then of Alys weeping for a woman
she had never met while the Franciscans chanted psalms in
the shadows. He was disconcerted to find that, though he
had spent a large part of the day in her company, and
though he could remember the tears glittering under her
lashes, his image of Alys was that of the princess in the
poem, and he could not remember clearly what she really
looked like.

I am to be a priest, he thought again

Exasperated, he turned over, hammered at his pillow,
and began firmly to number the taverns on the rue
Mouffetarde. In general it never failed him.

He had reached the Boucher and was aware of sleep
stealing over him when he was jolted wide awake by a
thunderous banging. As he sat up the shouting started, a
piercing voice which he recognized without difficulty, and
then a monstrous barking which must be the mastiff
Doucette. Cursing, Gil scrambled into hose and shoes,
seized his gown and stumbled down the stairs as every
dog in the upper town roused to answer its peer. Matt
appeared blinking at the Official’s chamber door, carrying
a candle, as Gil crossed the solar.

‘What’s to do? The maister’s asking.’

‘Ealasaidh,’ Gil said, hurrying on down.

The moon, not yet at the quarter, gave a little light to the
scene in the street. The gate to the courtyard of Sempill’s
house across the way was shut and barred, but a tall
shadowy figure was hammering on it with something
hard, shouting in shrill and menacing Gaelic. Shutters
were flung open along the street as first one householder,
then another leaned out to shout at his dog or to abuse the
desecrator of the peaceful night.

Gil picked his way across to the scene of the offensive
and caught at Ealasaidh’s arm. Above the sound of the
dogs and her own screaming, he shouted, ‘Ealasaidh!
Madam! They will not let you in!’

She turned to stare at him, her eyes glittering in the
moonlight, then returned to the attack, switching to
Scots.

‘Thief! Murderer! What have ye done with her purse?
Where is her plaid? Where is her cross? Give me back the
plaid I wove!’

‘Ealasaidh,’ said Gil again, more quietly. ‘There is a
better way.’

She turned to look at him again.

‘What way is that?’ she asked, quite rationally, over the
mastiff’s barking.

‘My way,’ he said persuasively. ‘The law will avenge
Bess Stewart, madam, and I hope will find her property on
the way. If not, then you may attack whoever you believe
stole it.’

‘Hmf,’ she said. She reeked of eau-de-vie. Gil took her
arm.

‘Will you come within,’ he asked politely, ‘and we may
discuss this?’

‘That is fery civil of you,’ she said.

For a moment Gil thought he had won; then, behind the
gates, somebody swore at the mastiff, and somebody else
demanded loudly, ‘ho the devil is that at this hour?’

Ealasaidh whirled to the fray again, staggering slightly,
and launched into a tirade in her own language. There was
a series of thuds as the gate was unbarred, and it swung
open to reveal John Sempill, not entirely sober himself,
with his cousin and both of the gallowglasses. Torchlight
gleamed on their drawn swords.

‘Oh, brave it is!’ exclaimed Ealasaidh. ‘Steel on an
unarmed woman!’

‘Get away from my gate, you kitterel besom, you puggie
jurrock!’ roared Sempill. ‘You stole my wife away out of
my house! If she had never set eyes on you I would have
an heir by now Away with you!’

‘It was not your house,’ said Ealasaidh shrilly. Several
neighbours shouted abuse, but she raised her voice effortlessly above them. ‘It was her house, entirely, and well you
know it. Many a time she said to me, how it was hers to
dispose of as she pleased, and never a straw of it yours.’

‘I will not listen to nonsense at my own gate,’ bawled
Sempill with stentorian dignity. ‘Get away from here and
be at peace, partan-faced baird that you are!’

There were shouts of agreement from up and down the
street, but Ealasaidh had not finished.

‘And you would never have had an heir of her, the way you treated her! I have seen her back, I have seen
what you -‘

‘Shut her mouth!’ said Sempill savagely to the nearest
Campbell, snatching the torch from the man’s grasp. ‘Go
on - what are you feart for?’

‘In front of a lawyer?’ said Gil, without expression,
under Ealasaidh’s dreadful recital.

Sempill turned on him. ‘You call yourself a man of law,
Gil Cunningham? You let her stand there and slander me
like that in front of the entire upper town -‘

‘Rax her a rug of the roast or she’ll rime ye, indeed,’ Gil said,
in some amusement. Sempill snarled at him, and slammed
the gate shut, so fast that if Gil had not dragged her
backwards it would have struck Ealasaidh. The bar
thudded into place as she reached her peroration.

‘And two husbands she may have had, ye countbitten
braggart, but it took my brother to get a bairn on her she
could carry to term, and him blind and a harper!’

On the other side of the gate there was a momentary
silence, then feet tramped away towards the house-door.
The mastiff growled experimentally, then, when no rebuke
came, began its full-throated barking again. Other dogs
joined in, to the accompaniment of further shouting.

Ealasaidh turned triumphantly to Gil.

‘That’s him tellt,’ she said.

When Gil entered the kitchen, earlier than he would have
liked, Ealasaidh was huddled by the kitchen fire with a
bowl of porridge under her plaid, the kitchen-boy staring
at her across the hearth. Maggie was mixing something in
a great bowl at the table and talking at her, getting the
occasional monosyllabic answer. Gil cut across this without
ceremony.

‘Maggie, I have a task for you.’

She eyed him, her big hands never ceasing their
kneading.

‘Have you, now, Maister Gil?’ she said.

‘Have you any kin across the way?’

‘In Sempill’s house, you mean? No what you’d call kin;
she said thoughtfully. ‘My sister Bel’s good-sister has a
laddie in the stable. I say laddie,’ she amended, ‘but he
must be your age, by now. That’s as dose as it gets.’

‘Any friends?’

‘Aye, well, Marriott Kennedy in the kitchen’s good company from time to time. A rare talker, she is. Sooner gossip
than see to the house.’

‘Would she need a hand, do you think,’ said Gil, ‘with
the house being so full- of people?’

‘I’ve no doubt of it.’ Maggie finally paused in her work
and straightened up, to look Gil in the eye. ‘What are ye at,
Maister Gil? Do ye want me in their kitchen?’

‘I do, Maggie.’ Gil slipped an arm round her broad
waist. ‘And in as much of the house as you can manage.’

‘And for what?’ She slapped affectionately at his hand,
scattering flour. ‘To look for what’s lost, is that it? A green
and black plaid, a cross, a purse?’

Ealasaidh looked up, but made no comment.

‘Maggie,’ said Gil, kissing her cheek, ‘that’s why my
uncle brought you to Glasgow, because you’re a canny
woman, and not because you make the best porridge in
Lanarkshire.’

A dimple appeared in the cheek, but she pushed him
away firmly, saying, ‘If I’ve to waste my time on your
ploys I’ll need to set this to rise.’

‘Just keep your eyes open,’ Gil warned. ‘Don’t get yourself into any unpleasantness.’

‘I’m no dotit yet,’ said Maggie. ‘Get you away down the
town with that poor soul, before the harper calls out the
Watch.’

Picking his way along Rottenrow beside a sullen
Ealasaidh with her plaid drawn round her head against the
early light, Gil said diffidently, ‘It seems likely that Bess
Stewart was killed by someone she knew.’

‘I was telling you already,’ said Ealasaidh without looking at him, ‘it will have been the husband. Sempill. She
went out to meet him.’

‘It could have been,’ agreed Gil, in an attempt to mollify
her, ‘but I had him under my eye all through Compline.’
She snorted. ‘Is it possible Bess could have met someone
else in St Mungo’s yard, that she would trust at close
quarters?’

‘Who could she have known that well?’ said Ealasaidh,
striding past the Girth Cross. ‘Here in Glasgow or when
she was on the road, she had ourselves and the baby.
Before that she was in Rothesay. There is nobody she knew
in Rothesay that is in Glasgow just now, except the Campbells and Sempill.’

‘She never went out alone, or stayed in the Pelican Court
without the rest of the household?’

‘No, she -‘ Ealasaidh stopped in her tracks. A hand shot
out of the folds of the plaid and seized Gil’s arm in a brutal grip. ‘Are you suggesting,’ she hissed, ‘that Bess had
another man?’

‘The suggestion was made to me,’ said Gil, realizing
with dismay that her other hand had gone to the gullyknife at her belt. ‘I have to ask.’ He kept his voice level
with an effort, trying not to envisage a knife-fight here in
the street with this formidable woman. She stared at him
from the shadows of the checked wool.

‘I can guess who suggested it,’ she said at length. ‘No,
she never had the privacy, not while we lived in Glasgow.
Besides, you only had to see her with Aenghus.’

‘I apologize for asking it,’ said Gil. She bowed her head
with great stateliness, accepting this, then let go his arm
and stalked on down the High Street.

The upper town was still quiet, but below the Bell o’ the
Brae the street grew busy, with people hurrying to their
day’s work, schoolboys dragging their feet uphill towards
the Grammar School, and the occasional student in his
belted gown of blue or red, making his way from lodgings
to an early lecture.

At the end of the Franciscans’ wynd Ealasaidh halted,
and put back her plaid to look at him.

It is a great courtesy in you to convoy a poor singingwoman,’ she said, without apparent irony. ‘Do you leave
me here, or will you come in? I must wash the dead and
shroud her for burial, and there is things I wish to show
you. I came by here after Vespers, to say goodnight to
her.’

‘There are things I wish to see,’ said Gil, letting her
precede him into the wynd. The wound that gave her her
death, for one.’

She nodded, and strode in under the stone gateway at
the far end of the wynd.