The Merchant's Mark (21 page)

‘He’ll come up as soon as he’s free.’

‘Is there anything he should bring with him?’ Alys asked.

Morison shook his head. ‘I’m right well treated,’ he confessed. ‘I think Sir Thomas doesn’t believe ill of me. Unless,’ he added hopefully, ‘Andy
brought one of my books.’

‘Where are they?’ asked Kate, turning the key over. It was warm in her hand.

‘They’re in my counting-house and all, on the shelf above the desk. Just send any of them, but you’ll make sure, Lady Kate, won’t you, if it’s one that’s
bound in two-three volumes, that they’re all there?’

‘No,’ said Kate deliberately, ‘I’ll send you one volume of this and another of that.’ He stared at her and laughed uncertainly. ‘It adds variety,’ she
told him, straight-faced, and opened her purse to stow the key safely.

‘What have you in mind?’ asked Alys as they made their way down the crowded High Street.

‘In mind?’

Alys turned to look up at Kate, her quick smile flickering. ‘You did not say you would leave Morison’s Yard,’ she observed.

Kate, perched on the back of her mule, answered the smile, but at her other side Babb said, ‘Leave? I should think not, my doo! Leave those bairns wi nobody to see them safe but a pack of
daft laddies and that bauchle Andy?’

‘I’m glad you agree,’ said Kate, but Alys said:

‘Oh, the bairns! I meant to ask Maister Morison what ails the older one.’

‘I asked that Ursel this mornin,’ said Babb. ‘She said she’s been that way a year or more. Seems they’d both had a right dose o the rheum, they got it a year past
at St Mungo’s tide when the lass that was minding them let them get chilled at the Fair, and the older lassie took a rotten ear wi it, and after that she seemed never to hear what was said to
her, says Ursel, except it was her sister. What’s her daft-like name, now?’

‘They’re both daft-like names,’ said Kate. ‘Wynliane and Ysonde.’ And how, she wondered, had such a gentle soul managed to get away with naming his daughters out of
the romances, instead of after their grandmothers in the proper way? There was a strong current of determination, she recognized, under the gentleness.

‘Aye,’ said Babb, striding onwards down the hill. ‘Wynliane.’

‘There are simples for a rotten ear,’ said Alys, clicking her tongue in annoyance. ‘And for the rheum, indeed. Poor poppet. So what do you have in mind?’ she asked
again.

‘The house, for one,’ said Kate. Alys nodded. ‘The yard. Those men will sit about all day playing at dice if they’re not put to work.’ Alys nodded again. ‘The
bairns. I asked Jennet this morning and she says there’s barely a stitch in their kist that fits them, and little more in the wash.’

‘And with the rest of the day?’ asked Alys, the smile flickering again.

Kate looked at her, then at Babb, occupied in coaxing the mule past an assertive cockerel on his midden. ‘I thought,’ she said airily, ‘we could ask about a bit, see if we can
learn anything about Billy Walker and the man with the axe. Maybe even have a drink in the Hog.’

‘Oh, yes!’ said Alys.

‘Oh, no, my doo!’ said Babb. ‘Back in that nasty place? Do you want the other pole cut down and all?’

‘I’ll go without you, then,’ said Kate.

‘You will not!’

‘Indeed aye!’ said Ursel, stirring a pot over the fire. ‘There’s store of linen in one of the presses up the stair, we can easy stitch them
shifts.’ She paused for thought, her spoon suspended over the kale. ‘I’ve a notion there’s a bolt of woad-dyed and all, that would make wee kirtles to them. Better for them
running about in than Wynliane’s good brocades.’

‘Excellent,’ said Alys. ‘We can cut them out after dinner.’

Kate was only half attending. She had two of Maister Morison’s books in her hands, a printed
Bevis of Hampton
and a handwritten collection of long poems, and was leafing through
them. The printed book had occasional pencil marks in the margins, which somehow seemed very personal, but the choice of tales in the other book gave her a strange feeling of looking right into the
man’s mind. She could visualize him, sitting over these books like the reader in Chaucer’s poem. How did it go? Here it was, indeed, and the page well-thumbed.
In stede of reste and
newe thynges, Thou goost hom to thy hous anoon; . . . thou sittest at another book Tyl fully daswed is thy look.
What else had he copied? The whole of
Sir Tristram
and a portion of
Greysteil
were followed by an extraordinary poem which seemed to be English and involved babies stolen by wild animals, and then by
Lancelot of the Laik.
None of the humorous or bawdy
tales which went around in such collections, no sign of
Rauf Colyer
or the
Friars of Berwick. But alle is buxumnesse there and bokes, to rede and to lerne.
Morison was clearly a
romantic, through and through.

And yet a brief glance at the account book lying open on his tall desk had revealed still another side of the man. Details of load after load of goods from Irvine or Dumbarton or Linlithgow,
with exotic ladings and amazing prices, showed a trim profit on every barrel.

‘Aye, well, mem,’ said Jennet from the kitchen doorway. She cast a glance out into the yard, where Babb and several reluctant men were weeding or shifting rubbish, and the two little
girls were constructing an elaborate maze out of shards of pottery. ‘I washed them both as best I could last night, but they could do wi a bath.’ She grimaced. ‘And their hair
needs a good seeing to, mem, if you tak my meaning. We’ll likely need to cut it and all, afore we’ll can get a comb through it.’

‘It’ll take all of us to bath them,’ Ursel warned. She put the lid back on the pot and turned away from the fire. ‘Wynliane screams till she boaks at the sight of that
much water. That’s how they’ve no been washed right for months.’

‘Well,’ said Alys, ‘we must start the bath heating, and then get to work on the house.’ She craned to see past Jennet as the yett swung open. ‘Who is this? Someone
with a horse?’

‘Three folk,’ said Jennet. ‘Is that Maister Gil’s Matt? Who’s he got there on the crupper?’

‘And here’s that Mall Anderson,’ said Ursel, swelling with indignation. ‘The cheek!’

Firm footsteps on the flagstones by the door heralded Matt, who dragged off his bonnet and ducked in a general bow.

‘Brought ye a nourice,’ he said. ‘Name’s Nan Thomson. Widow woman. Raised five. Great hand in a house and all.’

His passenger’s voice floated in from the yard. ‘My, that’s a fine building. What’s it to be?’

And, after a pause, Ysonde’s reply, almost civil by her standards: ‘It’s the Queen’s palace. Can you no see that?’

Anything Mistress Thomson might have said to this was lost in an explosion from Andy as he recognized the third arrival at the yett.

‘Mall Anderson, what are you doing in this yard? Get your thievin’ shiftless face out of my sight afore I slap it for you!’

‘Fetch Mall in here,’ said Kate urgently, setting the books aside. ‘I want a word with her.’

‘I’ll get the bairns out of the yard,’ said Alys. ‘I want to try physicking that ear. Ursel, have you tartar of wine?’

Mall was propelled into the kitchen by a furious Ursel, with Andy exclaiming angrily behind them. Ignoring them both, she stopped in front of Kate, wringing her plump hands in her apron. There
were tear stains on her face, and her lip quivered.

‘Oh, mem,’ she pleaded, ‘what’s this they’re saying about my Billy? Tell me it’s no true, mem?’

‘Oh, my dear lassie,’ said Kate, with a rush of sympathy. ‘I’m afraid it is. Billy’s dead, Mall. He was slain in the night.’

She was aware of Alys pausing in the doorway on her way out to the children, but all her attention was on the girl in front of her, who had collapsed in a wailing heap, flinging her apron over
her head. Amid the racking sobs words could be made out.

‘I tellt him no to do it, I begged him to leave it! He wouldny listen to me. Oh, my Billy, my dawtie, my dearie!’

Andy abandoned his indignation, heaved the girl up and set her down beside Kate. Ursel, in grim practicality, dragged away the apron and forced a mouthful of aqua vitae down her throat, which
made her choke but stopped the wild sobbing, and Kate took her hands with a sudden recollection of Augie Morison clasping her own hands not an hour earlier, and said earnestly, ‘Mall, if you
tried to persuade him against it, you did your duty by him. Now tell me all about it. Who put him up to it? It was never his own idea.’

Mall nodded, gulping, and freed one of her hands to scrub at her eyes with her apron.

‘Tell me what happened to him, mem,’ she begged, sniffling. ‘Was it one of the household took him? How did he dee? Tammas constable wouldny tell me, he just said he was found .
. .’

Kate bit her lip.

‘He was taken redhand in the night,’ she said carefully, ‘here in the house, breaking into a lockfast kist. We questioned him, but got no sense of him.’

‘No, you wouldny,’ said Mall, shaking her head. Subdued like this, with the cockiness all gone out of her, she seemed much more reasonable than her lover.

‘So we bound him, and shut him in the coalhouse for the rest of the night,’ Kate continued. ‘Now, Mall, he was man alive when Andy here shut him in.’

‘And cursing,’ put in Andy.

‘He can curse like a mariner,’ agreed Mall, and her lip quivered.

‘But when Andy went to fetch him out this morning, to see if he’d tell us any more before we sent for the serjeant, he was lying dead.’

‘How?’ the girl whispered.

‘It looked as if someone wi an axe went at him,’ said Andy bluntly. Mall stared up at him, open-mouthed. The high colour receded from her face, leaving two patches of red flaring on
her round cheeks; then she put up her hands to cover her mouth. A thin high wail escaped from behind them, and she began to rock back and forward.

‘Some more usquebae, I think, Ursel,’ said Kate.

‘It’s no usquebae,’ said Ursel, pouring out another small measure. ‘It’s the good stuff, come from the Low Countries.’

She pulled Mall’s hands from her mouth and administered the dose with efficiency. Mall choked on it, hiccuped a couple of times, and began to weep again, but when Kate said, ‘What
can you tell us about the man with the axe, lassie?’ she shook her head and said coherently enough through the sobs:

‘Aye, it must ha been him. It must ha been him. I never heard his name, mistress. Billy said he cam from Stirling, or Edinburgh, or one of those places. He speaks strange-like.’

‘How, strange?’ asked Kate. ‘Is he maybe no a Scot? Could he be foreign?’

Mall sniffled. ‘He might be. I never heard anyone foreign speaking.’

‘Mistress Mason’s French,’ said Andy.

The girl considered this briefly, and shook her head again. ‘No, I canny tell. He doesny sound like Mistress Mason, but that’s all I ken.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with her
sleeve. ‘Oh, my dear, my Billy. Oh, if he’d never met that man.’

‘When did he meet him?’ Kate asked gently.

‘Yesterday.’ Mall stopped to think. ‘After the noon bite.’

‘What did he tell you about him?’

‘Oh, he’d no need of telling me. I heard it all.’

With careful questioning, she produced an account of how, after the household had eaten, she had slipped away for a tryst with Billy. Ursel exchanged a glance with Andy at this, but neither said
anything. Waiting for her sweetheart in the hayloft of the stable, down at the end of Morison’s property next to the mill-burn, Mall had heard voices on the path beyond the fence.

‘So I keeked out,’ she said, ‘at the eaves where the swallas fly in, and I seen Billy out on the path by the burn, talkin wi this big ugly man. A grim-lookin’
chiel.’

The man had been all dressed in black, with a long-hafted axe, and a silly wee bit beard. He had told Billy that some task was not yet finished; Billy had claimed he was paid only to open the
yett, and had done more than that already.

‘What yett?’ demanded Ursel. ‘This yett here?’

‘He never said. No here, I dinna think, no this one. But Billy said, if he’d kent what he’d have to do he’d never ha taken the chiel’s money.’

The man with the axe had pressed Billy to complete the work, threatening to tell his master what he had done already.

‘He didny want to,’ Mall assured Kate, wiping her eyes again. ‘He tellt me after, it didny seem right. But I think he was feart what the man wi the axe would do to him, no just
for him telling the maister. The man said he cheated him, and he never did.’

‘What was he to do?’

He had been instructed to tell the Provost at the quest that afternoon that he and the other men had been got out of the way when the barrel was opened. Kate, listening, decided the two must
have been talking for some time before Mall heard them; the stranger already seemed to know a great deal about Billy’s part in the day. Billy had objected, saying it would get his master
arrested, and the man with the axe had laughed.

‘It fair made my spine creep,’ said Mall, remembering. ‘Then he said, That was the point, to get the maister out the road, and Billy was to get the key to his kist and all. So
after,’ she closed her eyes, and tears leaked under her lashes, ‘he tellt me to get the key. And if Andy hadny sent him off –’ Andy snorted at this – ‘it would
ha been easy, and he’d never been taken, and never . . .’ She scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Where is he? Can I see him?’

‘The serjeant took him away,’ said Kate gently. ‘There has to be a quest on him.’

‘Up at the castle?’

‘He was mighty cut about,’ warned Andy. ‘You’d maybe no want to see it.’

‘I want to say farewell to him,’ said the girl. ‘And when I think just yesterday . . .’ Her face crumpled again.

‘What else did Billy and this man say?’ Kate asked. ‘Did they say what Billy had done already? Did you hear anything about what the man wanted him to find?’

‘Just the rest of the treasure,’ said Mall, ‘that he said was in the barrel.’

‘There was no –’ began Andy.

Kate shook her head at him. ‘The rest of it?’

‘Aye. He kept on about that, and Billy kept telling him he kenned naught about it. He said, he said,’ Mall shut her eyes to think better,
‘You tellt us it was in the barrel
already. You can find the rest of it, wee man.
Then he laughed.’ She shivered. ‘Made my skin creep, so he did,’ she admitted again, and dabbed her eyes with her apron.