The Harper's Quine (3 page)

Thomas turned away, frowning, at which the man in the
hat also flounced off into the crowd. The girl closed her
eyes and drew a rather shaky breath, and Gil caught hold
of her elbow.

‘This time I will convoy you,’ he said firmly.

She took another breath, opened her eyes and turned to
him. He met her gaze, and found himself looking into
peat-brown depths the colour of the rivers he had swum in
as a boy. For an infinite moment they stared at one another;
then someone jostled Gil and he blinked. Recovering his manners, he let go of her elbow and offered his arm to lead
her.

She nodded, achieved a small curtsy, and set a trembling
hand on his wrist. He led her out of the crowd and up the
High Street, followed by a flurry of predictable remarks.
He was acutely aware of the hand, pale and well-shaped
below its brown velvet cuff, and of her profile, dominated
by that remarkable nose and turned slightly away from
him. The top of her head came just above his shoulder.
Suppressing a desire to put his arm round her as further
support, or perhaps comfort, he began a light commentary
on the music which they had heard, requiring no
answer.

‘Thomas was trying to help,’ she said suddenly. ‘He saw
Robert Walkinshaw accost me and came to see him off.’

‘Is he another of your father’s men?’ Gil asked. ‘He’s
obviously concerned for you.’

‘Yes,’ she said after a moment, and came to a halt.
Although she still trembled she was not leaning on his
wrist at all. He looked down at her. ‘And this is my
father’s house. I thank you, Maister Cunningham.’

She dropped another quick curtsy, and slipped in at the
pend below a swinging sign. At the far end of the tunnellike entry she turned, a dark figure against the sunlit court,
raised one hand in salute, then stepped out of sight. Gil,
troubled, watched for a moment, but she did not reappear.
He stepped backwards, colliding with a pair of beribboned
apprentices heading homeward.

‘Whose house is that?’ he asked them.

‘The White Castle?’ said one of them, glancing at the
sign. ‘That’s where the French mason lives, is it no,
Ecky?’

Ecky, after some thought, agreed with this.

‘Aye,’ pursued his friend, who seemed to be the more
wide awake, ‘for I’ve taken a pie there once it came out the,
oven. There’s an auld French wife there that’s the devil to
cross,’ he confided to Gil. ‘Aye, it’s the French mason’s
house.’

They continued on their way. Gil, glancing at the sun,
decided that he should do likewise. Maggie Baxter had
mentioned something good for dinner.

Canon David Cunningham, Prebendary of Cadzow,
Official of Glasgow, senior judge of the Consistory Court of
the archdiocese, was in the first-floor hall of his handsome
stone house in Rottenrow. He was seated near the window,
tall and lean like Gil in his narrow belted gown of black
wool, with a sheaf of papers and two protocol books on a
stool beside him. In deference to the warmth of the day, he
had removed his hat, untied the strings of his black felt
coif, and hung his furred brocade over-gown on the high
carved back of his chair. Gil, bowing as he entered from the
stair, discovered that his head was bare in the same
moment as his uncle said,

‘Where is your hat, Gilbert? And when did you last
comb your hair?’

‘I had a hat when I went out,’ he said, wondering at the
ease with which the old man made him feel six years old.
‘It must have fallen off. Perhaps when I louped the
handrail.’

‘Louped the handrail,’ his uncle repeated without
expression.

‘There was a lass being molested.’ Gil decided against
asking when dinner was, and instead nodded at his uncle’s
papers. ‘Can I help with this, sir?’

‘You are six-and-twenty,’ said his uncle. ‘You are graduate of two universities. You are soon to be priested, and
from Michaelmas next, Christ and His Saints preserve us,
you will be entitled to call yourself a notary. I think you
should strive for a little dignity, Gilbert. Yes, you can help
me. I am to hear a matter tomorrow - Sempill of Muirend
is selling land to his cousin, and we need the original
disposition from his father. It should be in one of these.’ He
waved a long thin hand at the two protocol books.

‘That would be why I saw him riding into the town just now. What was the transaction, sir?’ Gil asked, lifting one
of the volumes on to the bench. His uncle pinched the
bridge of his long nose and stared out of the window.

‘Andrew Sempill of Cathcart to John Sempill of Muirend
and Elizabeth Stewart his wife, land in the burgh of
Glasgow, being on the north side of Rottenrow near the
Great Cross,’ he recited. ‘Just across the way yonder,’ he
added, gesturing. ‘I wonder if he’s taken his wife back?’

‘His wife?’ said Gil, turning pages. ‘You know my
mother’s sister Margaret was married on Sempill of
Cathcart? Till he beat her and she died of it.’

‘Your mother’s sister Margaret never stopped talking in
my hearing longer than it took to draw breath,’ said his
uncle. ‘Your sister Tibby is her image.’

‘So my mother has often said; agreed Gil.

‘There is no proof that Andrew Sempill gave his wife the
blow that killed her. She was his second wife, and there
were no bairns. John Sempill of Muirend would be his son
by the first wife. She was a Walkinshaw, which would be
how they came by the land across the way. I think she died
of her second bairn.’

‘And what about John Sempill’s wife?’ Gil persisted.

‘You must not give yourself to gossip, Gilbert; reproved
his uncle. ‘Sempill of Muirend married a Bute girl. While
you were in France, that would be. She and her sister were
co-heirs to Stewart of Ettrick, if I remember. She left
Sempill.’

‘There was a lady with him when he rode in just now.’
Gil turned another page, and marked a place with his
finger. ‘Dainty creature with long gold hair. Child in the
crowd thought she was the Queen of Elfland.’

‘That does not sound like his wife.’

‘It’s not his wife.’ Maggie Baxter, stout and red-faced,
appeared in the doorway from the kitchen stair. Will ye
dine now, maister? Only the May-bannock’s like to spoil if
it stands.’

‘Very well.’ The Official gathered up his papers. ‘Is it not
his wife, Maggie?’

‘The whole of Glasgow kens it’s not his wife,’ said
Maggie, dragging one of the trestles into the centre of the
hall, ‘seeing she’s taken up with the harper that stays in
the Fishergait.’

‘What, the harper that played for the King last winter?’
said the Official. ‘When was this? Is that who she left
Sempill for?’

Maggie counted thoughtfully on her fingers.

‘Before Yule a year since? I ken the bairn’s more than six
month old.’

‘There is a bairn, is there? And has she gone back to
Sempill? I had not heard this,’ said Canon Cunningham in
disgruntled tones.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Maggie with grim significance. Gil rose and went to fetch in the other two
trestles. ‘But what I saw an hour since was Sempill of
Muirend ride in across the way there, and his cousin with
him, and Lady Euphemia Campbell tricked out in green
satin like the Queen of the May.’

‘Ah,’ said the Canon. He lifted his over-gown from the
back of his chair and began searching among the intricacies of black brocade and worn fox-fur for the armholes.

‘Is that something else that happened while I was in
France?’ Gil asked. ‘Maggie, will you take the other
end?’

‘Aye, it would be,’ agreed Maggie as they set the great
board up on the trestles. ‘Her first man fell at Stirling field
- who was he now? I think he was on the old King’s side,
like the Sempills and the Cunninghams. She never grieved
ower lang for him, for she was already getting comfort
with John Sempill when you came home, Maister Gil. Or
so I hear,’ she added piously.

‘I think we conclude that Sempill’s wife has not returned
to him; David Cunningham said. He and Maggie began an
involved discussion of who Euphemia Campbell’s first
husband might have been, while Gil quietly went on setting up the table for dinner with the long cloth of bleached linen from the smaller carved cupboard, and the wooden
trenchers from the open base of the great cupboard. May
Day or no, he knew better than to touch the silver dishes
gleaming on top of the great cupboard; they were only
used when the Archbishop or the other canons dined with
them. He added horn spoons and wooden beakers from
the small cupboard, lining them up carefully, dragged his
uncle’s chair to the head of the board, set the two long
benches on either side, and said across the genealogy,

‘Maggie, will I bring in anything else?’

‘Aye, well,’ said Maggie, ‘I’ve work to do, maister. Sit
you in at the table and I’ll-call the household.’

She stumped off down the stairs to the kitchen. By the
time she returned, Gil had finally assisted his uncle into
the long furred gown, and both Cunninghams had washed
their hands under the spout of the pottery cistern by the
other door and were seated waiting for their food.

‘A May blessing on the house,’ she said, setting a pot of
savoury-smelling stew at the top of the table. Behind her,
Matt, the Official’s middle-aged, silent manservant, and
the two stable-hands echoed her words as they bore in
bread and ale, a dish of eggs, a bowl of last year’s apples.
Last of all came the kitchen-boy, scarlet with concentration,
carrying the May-bannock on a great wooden trencher.
The custard of eggs and cream with which it was topped
quivered as he set it in the centre of the table and stood
back.

‘May Day luck to us all!’ he said breathlessly, and licked
custard off his thumb.

Once grace was said and all were served, Maggie and
the Official continued their discussion. The men were
arguing about whether to graze the horses on the Cow-
caddens Muir or to take them further afield, perhaps
nearer Partick. Gil ate in silence, thinking about the day,
and about the girl he had left at the house of the White
Castle. He was surprised to find that he could not remember what she wore, except that it had velvet cuffs, or
anything about her other than that direct gaze and the incisive, intelligent voice. What colour was her hair? Was
she bareheaded? And yet he could not stop thinking
about her.

‘Gilbert,’ said his uncle sharply. He looked up, and
apologized. ‘I am to say Compline in the choir tonight.
Will you invest me, so that Matt can go to his kin in the
Fishergait?’

‘I can invest you, sir. I’m promised to Adam Goudie
after Vespers. I’ll come down to St Mungo’s and attend
you at Compline, and Matt can go as he pleases.’

Matt grunted a wordless acknowledgement, and David
Cunningham said, ‘Playing at the cards, I suppose, with
half the songmen of St Mungo’s.’

‘I’m in good company,’ Gil pointed out, and seized a
wrinkled apple from the bowl as Maggie began to clear the
table. ‘The Bishop himself plays at cards with the King.
Archbishop,’ he corrected himself.

‘The King and Robert Blacader both can afford to lose
money,’ said his uncle. ‘Neither you nor any of the Vicars
Choral has money to lose. Remember the gate to Vicars
Alley is locked at nine o’clock.’

‘I will, sir.’

‘And that reminds me. I have a task for you. You mind
the Archbishop’s new work? Where he’s decided to complete the Fergus Aisle?’ Gil nodded, biting into his apple.
‘It seems St Mungo’s is not big enough now we’re an
archdiocese. Christ save us, is it only four months since the
Nuncio was here? Anyway, the mason wants a word with
one of the Chapter, I suppose to talk about some detail or
other. You might as well deal with it. Don’t promise the
Chapter to any expenditure - or the Bishop either.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Before the mom’s work starts, he said, after Lauds.’ The
Official took his hands from the board as the stable-lads
lifted it off the trestles. ‘Have you found the Sempill disposition yet? I want to see it tonight.’

Compline, that folding-together of the hands at the day’s
end, was always a satisfactory service. In the vaulted
sacristy, where fingers of late gold sunlight poked through
the northward windows, David Cunningham accepted his
vestments one by one from Gil, and finally bent his head
under the yoke of his own stole from the bundle Gil had
carried over before Vespers. He paused for a moment, his
lips moving, then said, ‘I’ll disrobe myself, Gilbert. You
may hear the service or go, as you please.’

‘I’ll hear it, I think, sir,’ said Gil politely. He knelt for his
uncle’s blessing, and slipped out into the nave.

This late in the evening those present were principally
servants or dependants of the cathedral community, more
familiar to Gil than the habitants of the lower town.
Maggie Baxter was there, with her friend Agnes Dow who
kept house for the sub-chanter. Adam Goudie’s sister Ann,
who ran the sub-Thesaurer’s household, the Canon himself and some said his share of the Treasury too, had a new
gown of tawny wool in honour of the May. Beyond them
a flash of black-and-gold caught Gil’s eye.

Shifting position he saw John Sempill, with some of the
party he had seen ride past the Tolbooth: Sempill’s handsome cousin, and also the small dark fellow and one of the
men-at-arms, and furthest away, beyond her stout companion, Lady Euphemia Campbell, small and fragile in
sapphire-blue with her golden hair rippling from under a
velvet hat like a man’s. Another quotation popped into his
head, from the bawdy tale of the Friars of Berwick: A fair
blyth wyf … sumthing dynk and dengerous. Was such a
dainty lady dangerous? he wondered.

At his movement she glanced his way, and smiled at
him, then returned to her prayers. Her actions as she stood
or knelt, crossed herself, bent her head over her beads,
were fluid and graceful, and Gil watched, fascinated, hoping she would look his way again. Beyond the massive
stone screen the Vicars Choral launched into the evening
psalms. Down here in the nave the other man-at-arms
came in with a word for his master, and behind him another expensively dressed man joined the group, hiding
Lady Euphemia from his view.