The Harper's Quine (18 page)

‘He says the lady was by the church, not in the trees,’ he
reported.

‘By the church?’ repeated Gil. ‘What lady does he mean?
Lady Euphemia was by the church, but -‘

‘Si, si, Donna Eufemia, accanto a la cattedrale,’ agreed
Antonio enthusiastically.

‘Did he see another lady in the trees?’

The answer was emphatic, and scarcely needed to be
translated. There was no lady in the trees.

‘And he saw nothing suspicious? I thought he had his
hand on his dagger.’ Gil demonstrated, and the small man
tensed warily. Maistre Pierre translated, and there was a
longer exchange.

“This is not satisfactory,’ the mason complained at
length. ‘I cannot make sense of what he says. I ask about
his knife. He says he drew because he thought he saw
something - an uomo cattivo, a ladro - in the kirkyard. I say
you have not mentioned such to me.’ He raised his eye brows, and Gil nodded in confirmation. They turned to
study the lutenist, who was now holding the knife across
his palm, looking at them with an ingratiating expression.
The knife was a little one, with a narrow springy blade,
much like the one James Campbell carried.

‘I don’t think he can tell us anything,’ said Gil. ‘It seems
clear he saw nothing, like everyone else in the household.’

‘He seems afraid of something,’ the mason said.

‘He does, doesn’t he? Ask him what it is he’s afraid
of.,

The small man ruffled like a fighting-cock, in the same
way as the Italians Gil had known in Paris. Slamming the
dagger back in its sheath he conveyed in indignant tones
that Antonio Bragato feared nothing and no one. The
mastiff, roused, barked again, and he flinched and glanced
over his shoulder, then squared up to Gil again.

The door above them opened, and James Campbell said,
‘Antonio, vieni suonare. Dai! Oh, your pardon, maisters. Are
you still questioning him?’

‘No, we’ve done,’ said Gil, and nodded to the lutenist,
who hurried up the steps and past James Campbell without a backward glance. ‘Good of John to spare him for a
quarter-hour.’

‘I think you were wasting your time. If a broken man
knifed Bess under his nose,’ said James, ‘Antonio would
see nothing. He’s a rare good lutenist, but that’s all I can
say for him.’

He withdrew, slamming the door with finality. Gil and
the mason looked at one another.

‘Let us go and enquire of your uncle,’ said Maistre
Pierre. ‘I feel sure he will provide us something to
drink.’

‘The man is certainly afraid,’ said Gil thoughtfully, moving towards the gate.

‘Did we ask the right questions?’ wondered the
mason.

‘I keep asking myself that,’ Gil admitted, ‘but I think in this case we would have got no different answers. Niente,
niente,’ he quoted, crossing Rottenrow.

‘But is he afraid,’ said Maistre Pierre, avoiding a pig
which was chasing two hens, ‘because he is guilty, or
because he knows who else is guilty?’

‘Or is he afraid of being suspected, or of casting suspicion?’ Gil countered, and opened his uncle’s front door.

Canon Cunningham was seated by the fire in the hall,
reading as usual, but set his book aside and rose when he
saw the guest. Gil, bowing, began to introduce the mason,
but his uncle cut across that.

‘We have met more than once. Good evening, Maister
Mason. I hope I see you well?’

‘Except for these confounded flowers,’ said the mason,
sneezing again. ‘Good evening, sir.’

‘Gilbert, Maggie’s in the kitchen. Bid her fetch ale for our
guest.’

‘No need, maister.’ Maggie appeared in the doorway to
the kitchen stairs, a tray in her hands. ‘I brought mine as
well, seeing it was poured.’ She set the tray on a stool and
began to draw others forward to the fire. ‘Maister Gil will
be wanting to hear about Sempill’s idea of a funeral feast,
I’ve no doubt.’

‘You listen too much, Maggie,’ said the Official.

‘That was a remarkable funeral; said Maistre Pierre,
accepting a beaker of ale. ‘I had not witnessed that wailing
over the dead before. A local custom, I hear.’

‘Aye,’ said David Cunningham grimly. ‘And they’d have
been better to keep quiet. Someone in Sempill’s household
understood fine what was said, and I was questioned
about the bairn. Fortunately I could say I knew nothing.’

The gallowglass brothers are Erschemen,’ Gil pointed
out.

‘And that Euphemia Campbell speaks their tongue,’
Maggie said. ‘I heard her, rattling away with one of them.
Seems she speaks Italian and all, for I heard her with the
wee dark lutenist. And Campbell of Glenstriven too.’ She nudged the mason with a plate of girdle-cakes. ‘Take a
pancake, maister. My granny’s receipt.’

‘But did you learn anything, sir?’ Gil asked hopefully.

‘Not to say learn,’ the Canon said, pushing his spectacles
back up his nose. ‘Elizabeth Stewart or Sempill’s tocher
I think was in coin or kind, which simplifies that.’

‘ocher?’ queried the mason. ‘I would say her dot, her
dowry. Is it equivalent in law?’

‘Her bride-portion, aye.’ Canon Cunningham nodded
approvingly, as at a bright student, and continued, ‘It is
clear that there is also property in Bute. Some of it was
Mistress Stewart’s own outright, some of it was left her by
her first husband -‘

‘I never knew she was married before,’ said Maggie.

The Official glared at her and continued, ‘And some of
it was the conjunct fee from her kin.’

‘Land given them jointly in respect of their marriage,’
Gil translated for Maistre Pierre, who nodded, absently
taking another girdle-cake.

‘However,’ continued the Official, ‘it is not clear who
now has control over these properties. Even if Mistress
Stewart made a will, and disposed of nothing which it was
not her right to dispose of, we have still to consider the
questions of the bairn’s inheritance, the conjunct fee property, and the precise terms of her first man’s will.’

Gil, recognizing the tone of voice, settled back. Not for
nothing did his uncle lecture at the College from time to
time. Maggie was less patient.

‘So will that be written down somewhere?’ she
demanded. ‘And will it tell us who put a knife into the
poor woman?’

‘Not immediately,’ said Canon Cunningham, put off his
stride. ‘But it may tell us who benefits from her death.’

‘The information may be in her box,’ said Gil. ‘I was on
the point of opening it this morning when something else
happened. It is at the harper’s lodging.’

‘At my lodging,’ corrected Maistre Pierre. ‘Alys sent
Wattie for it.’

‘It must certainly be opened,’ agreed the Official. ‘There
is of course the further point that, whoever finally benefits,
and this is not immediately clear, the person who knifed
Mistress Sempill may have been under the erroneous
impression that he would be a beneficiary.’

There was a pause.

‘You mean he might not have been aware of the bairn’s
existence,’ Gil said. ‘I agree, sir.’

‘It’s all mixter-maxter,’ complained Maggie. ‘You’ve
made things worse, maister.’

‘And we still have no proof it was someone of that
household,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘although I do not know
who else it could be.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Maggie, ‘seeing I found this.’

She dug in the placket of her capacious skirt and produced, from whatever pocket lurked there, a bundle of
grimy cloth. This she unfolded to reveal a limp object
which she planted triumphantly on the stool in front of her
in a waft of rotting cabbage smells. Maistre Pierre snatched
the plate of girdle-cakes away and peered past it.

‘Bones of St Peter, what is it?’ he demanded.

‘The purse?’ said Gil.

Maggie nodded. ‘The purse.’

‘A purse,’ the Official corrected. ‘Where, Maggie?’

‘On the midden. That’s why it stinks a bit; she admitted,
‘it was on a heap of kale. Why throw away a perfectly
good purse, maister, only because the strings is cut? Someone with a bad conscience pitched it there.’

‘Particularly since John Sempill can work leather,’ Gil
observed. ‘He could mend it readily enough if it was his
own.’

‘It’s empty; Maggie said regretfully.

‘Well; said the mason. ‘At last, something concrete.’

‘Anything else, Maggie?’ Gil asked.

‘A lot of gossip,’ she said. ‘Marriott Kennedy’s a terrible
gossip, which is no more than you’d expect from a woman
who keeps a kitchen like yon. A lot of gossip, and most of
it not to the point.’ She cast her mind back. ‘She was telling me how long Mistress Campbell’s been visiting the house.
Since the year of the siege at Dumbarton, she said, only it
was the autumn. And she’d known Sempill well for a year
or more before that.’

‘The siege was in ‘89,’ Maistre Pierre supplied.

‘Near three years, then,’ said Gil.

‘As Sempill’s mistress?’ asked Canon Cunningham.

‘So she had me understand. Her brother’s as bad,
Marriott says. Aye out in the town after the servant lassies,
for all he’s a married man. And it seems now Mistress
Campbell’s no content with Sempill, for Marriott keeps
finding the tags off someone else’s points in her
chamber.’

‘Oh, aye?’ said the Official hopefully. ‘And whose might
they be?’

‘That wee lutenist. The Italian.’

‘Well!’ said David Cunningham, in some pleasure. ‘Do
you say so?’

‘Did you learn anything else?’ said Gil, before his uncle
could begin to explore this topic. ‘Or find the plaid? The
cross?’

‘I never got into her chamber,’ said Maggie apologetically, ‘though I tried, for that Mally Murray that calls
herself her waiting-woman was fussing about seeing to her
clothes. I never saw a sign of the plaid elsewhere in the
house. There were other plaids in plenty, in any colour you
can name, but not a blink of that green.’

She turned her head, listening.

‘Is that someone in my kitchen? Your pardon, maisters.’

She rose, setting down her ale, and made for the kitchen
stairs. Gil prodded the purse, and teased out the strings
which had hung it to its owner’s belt.

‘Cut,’ he said. ‘I wonder.’

‘It shows a connection with that household,’ Maistre
Pierre observed.

‘If it is the dead woman’s purse,’ reminded the Official.

Maggie’s voice on the stair preceded her entry into the
hall.

‘Come away up, ye daft laddie, and tell Maister Gil your
message to his face.’

‘A message for me?’ Gil turned as she dragged the
mason’s man Luke in by his wrist.

‘Here’s this laddie sent with a word for Maister Gil,’ she
reported, ‘and trying to teach it to wee William, that can
hardly remember his own name, rather than come up and
disturb us.’

‘Bring him in then,’ said the Official.

‘And it’s for the maister too,’ mumbled Luke, trying to
cling to the doorpost.

‘Then come in, Luke, since Maister Cunningham gives
you leave,’ said his master, ‘and tell us what your word
is.,

‘It’s from the mistress,’ said Luke, bobbing. ‘I was to find
Maister Cunningham and yourself, and tell you, Bridie
Miller’s no been seen since she went to the market this
morning, and now they’ve picked her up dead in Blackfriars yard. Mistress Hamilton’s in a rare taking, and I’ve
to come home after I’ve tellt you.’

‘She was certainly in the market this morning,’ said Alys,
patting Mistress Hamilton’s hand.

‘She never came back,’ sobbed Mistress Hamilton, ‘and
I had to make Andrew’s dinner without the beets she was
to bring.’

‘Did any of the other girls go with her?’ Gil asked
uncomfortably. Alys threw him an approving smile, and
Mistress Hamilton wiped her eyes on one long end of her
linen headdress, hiccuping.

‘They all went,’ she said, ‘but they came back by their
lones. They do that, they tarry, if they’ve met a friend, or
a sweetheart. She was a good girl, she knew the beets were
for the dinner, she’d have brought them straight back.’
She dissolved into tears again. ‘Alys, what can have
happened?’

‘Where is she?’ asked the mason. ‘Did they bring her
back here?’

‘Come ben and see her.’ Mistress Hamilton rose, still
dabbing at her eyes, and led them out across the yard, past
the silent kitchen and into a store-room in one of the other
outhouses. One of the dead girl’s colleagues rose from her
knees and stepped back as they entered. ‘It’s not right,
laying her here, but it’s quiet, and fine and cold. Oh, the
poor lass!’

‘Where was she found?’ Gil asked, drawing back the
linen. ‘What happened?’

‘A corner of Blackfriars yard. Dear knows what she was
doing there, she’d gone down to the market, she’d pass the house on the way back up before she got to Blackfriars.
Mally Bowen that washed her says she was stabbed. She
thought maybe sometime between Sext and Nones, by the
way she was stiffening.’

‘She looks as if it was quick,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘She
had not been forced, then?’

‘Mally says not. But she’d been robbed. The money
I gave her to go to the market - a couple of groats, no more
- that wasny on her.’

Gil looked down at Bridie Miller. Young, moderately
pretty, quite ordinary, she lay as if asleep on the board set
up to receive her, and kept her secret.

‘May I see the wound?’ he asked. Alys glanced quickly
at him, and stepped forward past Mistress Hamilton’s
flustered exclamations.

‘It’s very like the one that killed Mistress Stewart,’ she
said, ‘save that it is at the front.’ She drew the shroud
further back, exposing the rigid hands with their bitten
nails, crossed and bound neatly over the girl’s belly. Under
one muscular upper arm, just below the girl’s small breast,
a narrow blue-lipped wound showed between two ribs.
Gil bent close to study it, smelling the harsh soap Mally
Bowen had used to wash the body. He sniffed, and sniffed
again.

‘There is, isn’t there; said Alys. Just a trace of a
scent.’