The Merchant's Mark (16 page)

‘You sell much music?’ Gil asked, watching his friend leaf through the loose sheets.

The journeyman shrugged. ‘When the court’s here, and the musicians, aye. Other times it’s a slow trade.’ He grinned. ‘There’s many of the gentry likes to have
an instrument and strum it a bit, but playing a tune ye can put a name to’s another matter.’

‘So you sell to the King’s musicians?’ Gil said. ‘And how about the travelling sort, as well? Do they come here for new tunes?’

‘No that often. They’ll get the maist o their music in Edinbro,’ said the man regretfully, ‘what they don’t just learn each frae the ither by ear.’

‘Edinburgh,’ said Gil. ‘I don’t want to go that far. I was hoping you might have seen Barty Fletcher lately.’

‘Barty?’ said the journeyman. ‘Oh, we’ve seen him, aye. No for a week or two, right enough.’

‘A week or two?’ repeated Gil. ‘That’s a pity. I wanted a word with him.’

‘I seen him,’ said the apprentice, looking up. ‘I seen him in the town the other day.’

‘What day was that?’ asked the journeyman. Their master paused in his careful work, and turned to look at them. The apprentice thought briefly, and grinned, showing a chipped
tooth.

‘The day we got that new barrel o lights and put them to soak. For I said to him, my maister’s just started a new load, there’ll be fresh strings in six weeks or so.’

‘Monday, that would be,’ said the journeyman. Socrates, who had been checking the smells of the place, reached his ankles, and he bent to offer the dog his hand to sniff.

‘I’ll just need to keep looking,’ said Gil.

‘Did he say aught?’ asked Maister Cochrane from his bench. Gil was reminded of McIan’s portentous question.

‘Aye, he did,’ nodded the boy. ‘He said that was good to hear and he’d be sure and call by before Michaelmas.’

‘Hmph,’ said Maister Cochrane, and turned back to his carving.

‘I take this,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘See, Gil, it is a piece by that Flemish fellow, and printed too. Alys was speaking of him recently. Myself, I prefer Machaut, but she
seemed to find his music worthwhile.’

‘Ockeghem,’ agreed the journeyman, mangling the name badly. ‘A good choice, maister. The lady’ll ha pleasure out of that.’

Down on the High Street the men were still gathered round a well with a stone lion perched above the basin, deep in conversation with two maidservants. Gil and Maistre Pierre left them there and
set off towards the East Port, and the imposing stone tower-house and its surrounding buildings which the mason had commented on earlier. The two taverns were next to it, one clearly more of a
hostel for the knights of the eight-pointed cross and their guests, the other a sprawling structure very like the Black Bitch at the western end of the town. A group of men emerged from it as they
approached, to stand in the sunshine with their ale. Light glinted on helmets, and on the chewed crosses stitched to sleeve or breast of their leather jacks.

‘The
tonnellerie
is up this vennel, I believe,’ said the mason, gesturing up the side of the tavern. ‘Do all these alleys lead on to the hillside?’

The cooper’s yard, as well as being up a vennel, was full of pieces of wood, but there the resemblance to the luthier’s shop ended. Looking out through the open window of the
cooper’s best chamber, Gil could see a sloping cobbled yard nearly as big as Maister Morison’s. It held two large open sheds and a barn, and a neat kailyard climbed up the hillside
beyond them. Quartered tree trunks lay drying in racks in one corner of the cobbled area, split planks were stacked in another. Finished barrels crowded along the fence opposite the gate, a scrawny
journeyman with prominent ears was sweeping up shavings to add to the brazier which was putting up a thin column of blue smoke, and five or six men were working with hammer or knife.

To one side the big gates were open, and a cart laden with puncheons was being handled out to the waiting horses by several men in leather jacks. Another man was just vanishing into the barn.
Clearly Maister Riddoch’s business was prospering well.

‘Near as noisy as a stoneyard,’ commented the mason.

‘What’s that you say?’ asked Maister Riddoch, bustling into the chamber. He was small, bald and neat-featured, his expression both anxious and wary. Over leggings and a worn
leather jerkin he had put on his good stuff gown to entertain visitors. He flourished the matching hat of tawny wool in a jerky bow and went on, ‘Forgive me keeping you waiting, maisters, a
wee bit business wi my landlord. A boneyard? Aye, it’s like a boneyard, now you say, wi the staves there and the puncheons here instead of the legbones and skulls. A good thought,
maister!’ He laughed nervously. ‘A good thought. Now, Mistress Riddoch’s to bring a refreshment and you can tell me what’s the trouble. Something wrong with Augie
Morison’s last load, you say? I’m sorry to hear that, for he’s a good customer. What is it, was aught damaged? Aught missing?’

‘No so much missing,’ said Gil, ‘as changed.’

‘Strange, you say?’ Riddoch had put the hat on, and it slipped sideways as he tilted his bald head sharply to catch Gil’s words. He pushed it straight, staring hard at Gil.
‘What way, strange?’

‘One barrel had been exchanged,’ said Gil, pitching his voice louder.

‘Never in my yard, surely!’ Riddoch had obviously heard that clearly. He swallowed. ‘One o the pipes o crockware, was it?’

‘The small barrel. The puncheon.’

‘Puncheon.’ The man swallowed again, and and nodded. ‘I mind it. One o my make. He had it lashed on the back o the cart. But his man aye sleeps the night in the barn,’ he
averred. ‘How would anything get near the cart without waking him?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ said Gil.

The door opened, to admit a comely young woman with a tray in her hands, and Riddoch turned to her. Socrates, at Gil’s feet, raised his head, his nose twitching.

‘Mistress, here’s these gentry telling me a strange thing. One o Morison’s last load was the wrong puncheon when he got it home.’

She paused in setting down the tray, to exchange a long look with her husband.

‘The wrong one?’ she repeated. ‘Saints preserve us! What way the wrong one?’

‘It was a different barrel,’ said Maistre Pierre, eyeing the contents of the tray appreciatively. ‘Mistress, what is this you offer us? It looks very good.’

Mistress Riddoch blushed becomingly, and laid the tray on the stool by the hearth.

‘There’s ale,’ she said unnecessarily, indicating the jug, ‘and today’s bread, and a dish of potted herring. Riddoch’s very partial to a bite of potted
herring to his midday piece, whether it’s a fish day or no.’ Her eyes met her husband’s again in an anxious smile. ‘And some pickled neeps,’ she added, moving the
little dish into sight from behind the ale-jug.

‘Was it marked?’ asked Riddoch.

‘It was well marked,’ said Gil, wishing he had got a list from Andy. ‘Two shipmarks at least – Peterson and Maikison, I think – and several merchants’ marks
including Maister Morison’s.’

‘But not Thomas Tod’s,’ contributed Maistre Pierre, ‘though the barrel we expected had been lifted from Tod’s ship on Monday.’

‘Saints preserve us!’ said Mistress Riddoch again, looking from one to another of them. She had a plump, sweet face under her white linen headdress, and now wore a serious expression
as she counted on her fingers. ‘Monday, you say? So it lay here on Monday night?’ She turned to her husband again, biting her lip. ‘Who else’s cart lay here on Monday,
Riddoch?’

‘But how did Augie’s man not notice it was the wrong puncheon?’ worried Riddoch, not answering her. ‘I mind the man well, he seems a sharp fellow, and helpful enough.
Offered to watch the barn on his own last time he was here, let the other carters go drinking round at the tavern. Right enough I suppose that would ha been Monday.’

‘Nobody noticed the exchange, until it came home and we were about to open it,’ said Gil. ‘I suppose they were alike in size.’

‘Then it must ha been another of my puncheons,’ said Maister Riddoch positively. ‘Any that works wi barrels, maister, will tell ye – a barrel out of one yard’s as
different from a barrel out of another as kale is from neeps. It’s like hand-write. I’ve heard Maister Abernethy the notary say he kens the hand-write in this document or that. Barrels
is the same. Every man has his ain way of doing things.’

‘So also in my craft,’ said Maistre Pierre. He and the cooper exchanged glances. ‘So this puncheon that came home to Glasgow must have been switched for another of your
make.’

‘Monday,’ said Mistress Riddoch again. She faced her husband and raised her voice a little. ‘It was Monday night the thief was in the yard, Riddoch. Could that be it right
enough?’

‘Monday?’ He counted on his fingers as she had done. ‘Aye, mistress, you’re quite right, it was Monday night. But that canny be the answer – he was nowhere near the
carts, whoever he was.’

‘A thief?’ Gil repeated innocently. ‘Did you take him?’

‘No, we never. I heard something fall over in the yard,’ said Mistress Riddoch, concentrating on pouring ale, ‘so I looked out, and I thought something was moving, so I woke
Riddoch, and he rose and put his boots on, but he found nothing. I’ve tellt you, husband, whoever it was, they were moving about near the gate.’

‘There was nobody to see when I went out,’ said the cooper. ‘Time I got on my boots, he was away.’

‘You say you saw something moving?’ said Maistre Pierre to Mistress Riddoch.

‘Aye,’ she said, handing him a cup of ale. ‘It was a clear night, and the moon near full, you ken, so the yard was well lit. There was a banging, like something going over, and
a kind of shouting, and it woke me, and when I looked out I saw . . .’ She faltered, and glanced at her husband.

‘I tell you, you were dreaming, Jess,’ he said sternly. ‘Better safe than sorry, and you did right to wake me, for there had been someone in the yard, but there was nothing
like what you thought you saw. There was nothing taken, and never a great roll of stuff here that night.’

‘I wasny dreaming,’ she said, as if she had said it often already. ‘I was dreaming before I wakened, about the yard and the men working, but what I saw was never part o my
dream.’

She handed Riddoch his ale, and began to cut the loaf on the tray.

‘What did you think you saw?’ Gil asked.

‘Movement,’ she said, and paused in her work. ‘Like, maybe, two or three men. There was certainly two in the light, and I thought another moving in the shadows by the
barn.’

‘What were they doing?’

She looked at her husband, and back down at the loaf. ‘I couldny see what the man by the barn was up to. If there was one,’ she added, before her spouse could comment. ‘But the
two out in the moonlight were bent over some big thing, I couldny make it out. Almost like as if it was someone lying on the ground, it was. So then I woke Riddoch, and he woke the men, and then I
had to help him wi his boots.’

‘There was nothing of the sort in the yard when I got down,’ said Riddoch firmly.

‘Aye, for they never waited while you went down and got the door open,’ she responded, and sawed another wedge off the loaf. ‘I tell you, husband, I saw them go when I looked
out again.’

‘How many?’ asked Gil. ‘Did they have a puncheon with them?’

‘I never saw a puncheon. One was away up the kailyard. Likely he went out the back yett. And the other – the other went by the barn.’ She paused, biting her lip, and began
spreading potted fish.

‘Did you see what he looked like?’ asked Maistre Pierre, watching her hands.

She shook her head. ‘Like a big man in a black cloak,’ she said, and hesitated, with another glance at her husband. ‘And he was carrying something, it might ha been the same
thing that was on the ground. I never saw what it was, except it was long and seemed heavy – maybe like a roll of cloth, or a side of meat, or such. Then he stepped into the shadow next the
gate, and Riddoch cam back from waking the men, and wanted his boots on,’ she went on with more certainty.

‘This man in the cloak,’ said Gil slowly, ‘was he one of the two you saw earlier standing in the moonlight?’

‘She never saw anything,’ said Riddoch.

‘N-no,’ said his wife, thinking hard. ‘It’s hard to say, maister, but I think the two I saw first were smaller.’ She shut her eyes, the better to conjure up the
image she needed. ‘I tell ye what, sir, one of them had a hat wi a feather, it might ha been him that was away up the kailyard, and the other wasny in a cloak.’

‘So there were three men in the yard,’ said Gil. She gave him a serious look, and nodded.

‘At least three. You saw only the one man at the yett?’ asked Maistre Pierre.

‘Aye.’ She shivered. ‘Just the one.’

‘Augie Morison’s man saw nothing of that kind, and so I said to –’ said the cooper, and bit off his words. After a moment he continued, ‘He tellt me –
Morison’s man tellt me he woke, and came to the barn door, and saw one man running for the gate. I asked, what was he wearing, and he said he thought just shirt and hose. And right enough the
gate was opened.’

‘Aye,’ said his wife.

‘Shirt and hose,’ repeated Gil. Mistress Riddoch handed the platter, and he took a slice of bread smeared with a generous portion of potted herring. Maistre Pierre was already
chewing. ‘I’d ha thought a man would dress in darker clothing if he was planning a theft.’

‘Aye, he’d left,’ agreed Riddoch, helping himself as the platter went past him. ‘Whoever he was. And Morison’s man swore he was never near the carts. There was
three carts in that night,’ he recalled.

‘Madame, this is excellent,’ said Maistre Pierre with enthusiasm, reaching for another portion. Socrates watched the movement of his hand, nose twitching. ‘Is it your own work?
What do you put with the fish? I am sure my daughter would like to know.’

‘The secret’s in the salting,’ confided Mistress Riddoch, dimpling in pleasure at the compliment. ‘I salt my own, ye ken, and I put a chopped onion in the brine to every
dozen fish. Will you have some more ale, maister?’

‘And then nutmeg when you pound the salted fish?’ said Maistre Pierre speculatively, and took another mouthful. ‘And is it galangal?’