The Counterfeit Madam (17 page)

‘Who was that, mem?’ asked Jennet. Alys paused and looked about her. They were near the top of the High Street, within sight of the high pink sandstone walls of the Castle, with smaller cottages on either side. A few people were moving about, and some of the boys from the grammar school on Rottenrow were just starting a battle with their book-bags for possession of the Girth Cross. She could see nobody she knew.

‘Who?’ she asked.

‘Was a man that looked as if he kent your face,’ said Jennet, staring at one of the low houses. ‘He dodged down the path yonder, atween that house and the next. Tall fellow wi a padded jack.’

‘Was he wearing a badge?’ She could think of nobody she knew who wore a padded jack about the burgh.

‘None that I saw. No, he’s away, I canny see him. Just it was odd the way he went off, as if he’d avoid us.’

‘Maybe you imagined it,’ said Alys, and walked on.

Magdalen Boyd was not what she had expected. Gil’s rather sparse description had conjured up a pale, chilly, spiritless creature, but she was greeted with warmth and her promise to pray for Dame Isabella was met with genuine gratitude.

‘And you’ve come all the way up here just to tell me that?’ marvelled Lady Magdalen. ‘That’s right kind in you, madam. Come away up and be seated in my chamber,’ she offered, ‘we’ll have a cup of ale and talk a wee while. Maybe you can tell me where your man’s at wi this business? He was here earlier, but he’d only questions, no information.’

‘It’s always like that at the beginning,’ Alys said, following her up a wheel stair into a light bedchamber. ‘If we’re kin by marriage, may we not name names between us?’

‘I’d like nothing better. But Alys,’ she waved her to a seat by the window, beyond a box bed with hangings of worn verdure tapestry, ‘has my kinsman learned nothing, wi all his questions?’

‘He asks questions,’ Alys said, ‘till he has all the answers. Then he fits the answers together, and that’s when he’s sure of who is the criminal.’

‘Criminal,’ repeated Lady Magdalen sadly. She drew up another backstool and sat down. ‘Aye, I’d like best to see whoever killed my godmother given time to repent, and amend his life, but I suppose the law must be involved.’

‘That is truly forbearing,’ said Alys.

‘Vengeance is to the Lord,’ said Lady Magdalen, ‘we must give place to wrath. So Maister Gil is still asking questions? How long does it take?’

‘Until it’s finished.’

A servant entered with ale and small cakes on a tray, and they paused to deal with this. When the man withdrew Lady Magdalen said,

‘Alys, I’m right glad you’re here, for I wished to say something to you.’ She hesitated, then went on, ‘I’ll not speak ill of anyone, but it was others made the decision. I wouldny ha tried to conceal what we were offering to, to the bairn you care for. It’s maybe no a gift you’d want to accept, now you ken who the tenant is.’

‘I’m more concerned wi the tenants of the other toft,’ Alys admitted. ‘But tenants move on, Magdalen, you ken that, and the value of the land remains. Does the offer still stand, even though Dame Isabella is dead?’

‘It was nothing to do wi her,’ said Lady Magdalen in her gentle voice. ‘It’s my offer, wi my husband’s consent, and it still stands.’

‘I’m not certain of this, you’ll appreciate,’ said Alys, and the other woman nodded, ‘but I think my father and my husband are minded to accept it on the boy’s behalf. They’ll speak to you in good time, I’m sure of that.’

‘We’ll drink to a thanksome outcome o that,’ said Lady Magdalen, and they raised their beakers. ‘And then there’s the matter of your good-sister’s gift.’

‘So there is,’ said Alys, who had not forgotten this. ‘I wonder what will happen about that now?’

‘I hope my godmother made a will,’ admitted Lady Magdalen. ‘She’d planned that Lady Isobel would have the land out by Carluke, and I’d as soon see that happen, for I’d not wish to lose the land in Strathblane that she promised me. John sets great store by it and what wi the confusion over which piece was mine already he’s right owerset wi the matter.’

‘I expect he is,’ said Alys with sympathy, wondering just how the newly tamed Sempill would express this. A snatch of an alchemical treatise rose in her mind:
Take a red man and a whyet woman and wede them together, and let them go to chambour
. What sort of philosophers’ stone would these two beget? Had it already come into being, and begun to transmute Sempill? ‘Land is important, after all.’

‘Oh, aye, and this piece seems to have a great attraction for John. Indeed he’s away out there the now, him and his cousin, they rode out afore dinner. It brought John and my godmother together,’ she said, smiling sadly, ‘they were aye discussing what must be done wi one tenant or another.’

That did not make sense, Alys thought, though she kept her face sympathetic. Tenants had names, and so did their holdings; surely Dame Isabella must have been aware that they were talking of different parcels of land. Unless she nourished the confusion on purpose?

‘Did you know your godmother well?’ she asked. ‘I only met her the once. I thought she was a,’ she hesitated, seeking for the right word in Scots, ‘a lady of very strong mind, and very concerned for you and my good-sister.’

Lady Magdalen bent her head, dabbing at her eyes, and agreed.

‘She was aye concerned for those she felt needed her help,’ she said. ‘Lady Tib, and me, and Lowrie, she’d a plan in her head for Lowrie though the Livingstones disagreed, to get Maister Gil to take him on as assistant and train him up as notary.’ She bit her lip and half laughed. ‘There, I meant no to repeat that, I’m all tapsalteerie the day, Alys.’

‘I don’t think Gil needs an assistant,’ said Alys in some annoyance. ‘And he’s well able to choose his own when he does.’

‘There was to be a sum o money to help. I’ve made you cross, I’m right sorry.’ She sighed. ‘I never knew her till after my mother died, my brother wrote to tell her of it, seeing they’d been good friends at one time, and next thing we kent she’d arrived at the gate wi a match for me all ready, and after that she was aye there wi advice when she thought I needed it, though her and William never got on after we were wedded. My first man,’ she elucidated, ‘he was a Chalmers. Chalmers of Glenouthock.’ She sighed again. ‘It seemed a right good match, but – anyway, after my godmother and me were both widows she would have me come and stay wi her, seeing my brother was away about his own dealings, and she took right care of me, aye concerned for my health and my reputation. I’ll miss her sore.’

‘And then you were wedded to Sempill,’ said Alys. ‘Gil tells me you are happy with the match.’

‘Oh, indeed!’ The smile was genuine. ‘John’s as kind to me!’

‘And it pleased your brother?’

The smile remained, though it seemed to lose its light somewhat.

‘I’ve not seen my brother these six months. He came to see me wedded to John, but he’s been out o sight, I hope it’s no down to any misliking between the two o them.’

‘You’ve not heard from him? Does he know about – about—’

‘About this?’ Lady Magdalen looked down at her still-flat waist. ‘Likely no.’

‘And you’ve no idea where he is?’ Alys persisted, her mind working. The other woman shook her head, and reached for the ale-jug.

‘He’s got his own dealings,’ she said again. ‘Likely he’ll turn up.’ She turned her head sharply as a door banged and voices rose in the hall below them. ‘Is that John come home?’

‘Maidie?’

Lady Magdalen put out a restraining hand as Ays prepared to rise, and called,

‘I’m here, John. Here in my chamber.’

‘Maidie?’ The loud voice again, heavy feet on the stair. ‘No, Philip, I’ll no have him brought in on it, it’s my business and none o his! Maidie, are you here?’

‘I’m here,’ she said. His boots sounded on the landing and then on the broad pine floorboards as he entered the chamber, still hidden from them by the great bed, saying,

‘Here’s a bit trouble out yonder, and Philip wanting to get Gil Cunningham in–’ He stopped, staring at Alys. ‘–volved, of all the daft things,’ he finished.

‘So what’s it to do wi us, if some auld wife got hersel killed?’ demanded Adkin Saunders the pewterer. He lifted a small hammer from his workbench and went on, ‘I’ve work to do, maisters, I’ll thank ye to get away and let me get on, and no stand about asking me questions I canny answer.’

His wife, tall and deep-bosomed in her checked gown, two children clinging to her skirts and another in her arms, scowled at them from the hearth. Outside, the lorimer’s dog barked from the door of his workshop. Gil said patiently,

‘The dead woman’s servant was taken up from this toft last night. Was she in this house?’

‘I’ve seen no woman’s servant,’ said Saunders, ‘nor do I want to. I’ve enough trouble wi her,’ he jerked his head, ‘without taking to do wi any more
banasgaleann
.’

‘So you knew she’s an Ersche speaker,’ said Gil quickly. Maistre Pierre frowned at this, and Saunders’ wife drew a sharp breath.

‘It’s a word I’d use o many women,’ said Saunders.

‘And the sack of coin,’ said Gil. ‘Did that come from this house too?’

‘They neither of them were coming out of this house,’ said the woman. ‘We knew nothing of any stranger here, nor of any sack of coin.’ She freed one hand to gesture about her, with expressive grace. ‘Do you think we have coins to keep in a sack?’

The house was not so bare as she implied; the bed was well furnished, the draw-bed under it seemed to have plenty of blankets, and a handsome assemblage of crocks was arranged on the sideboard next the wall. An iron cooking-pot hung over the hearth, probably her dowry, Gil surmised.

‘Never mind that, woman,’ growled her husband. ‘And you, maisters, if you want to know about some Ersche trollop, you can ask at Campbell the whitesmith down the toft a bittie, no at my door—’

‘My brother would be having nothing to do with it!’ began his wife indignantly.

‘Will you mind your tongue, woman, and no contradict me under my own roof!’

Gil drew breath to point out that it was not Saunders’ roof but his landlord’s, whoever that might be, and then thought better of it. His caution was repaid.

‘Is that you trying to get my brother into trouble, then? When he’s no more and no less in it than—’

‘Mind your tongue!’

The smallest child began wailing, and the next took up the note.

‘As for him across the way wi his leather scraps and his—’

Saunders flung the hammer down on the bench and took two strides across the room. The children screamed in unison, his wife flung up an arm to protect herself, Maistre Pierre seized the man by the shoulder. Gil stepped quietly away from the melee and inspected the bench closely. Rounds of pewter ready cast for shaping, moulds of differing sizes for cups and platters and bowls, hammers with heads of metal, of wood, of padded leather, a handful of metal dies with which to strike a pattern into the metal. He lifted these, but none of them bore the image of James Third, and in fact none was broad enough to strike a coin.

‘Here, leave my graith be!’ Saunders was at his elbow. ‘And away and let a man earn his bread in peace, will you?’

Gil stepped away from the bench, and nodded to Maistre Pierre.

‘I think we can leave you for now,’ he said. ‘But I’ll likely see you again. Maister Mason and I will be taking over the toft.’ He lifted his hat, with the caution it still required. ‘We’ll be your landlords.’

Out on the muddy path, Socrates and Luke were equally relieved to see them.

‘There’s been all sorts going on down there,’ Luke said, nodding down the toft, while the dog nudged Gil’s knees. ‘I seen a bairn run down from this house, and a woman came running up and into yon workshop,’ he indicated the lorimer’s ramshackle premises, where the dog still barked at Socrates, ‘and away again, and Danny Sproat came by and gave me a look, he’ll ken me again, and away down to the donkey’s shed. And then the man out that workshop went away down the toft as well, and hasny come back yet.’

‘Good lad,’ said Gil. So they were alarmed by his presence, were they? But Dod Muir the image-maker, whom the girl Cleone had seen strike him down, had not been mentioned.

This turned out to be because the image-maker was still not at home. Repeated rattling of the cast-iron ring on its twisted pin on the doorjamb had no result. After a pause, Maistre Pierre stepped to the window and peered in through a crack in the shutter.

‘No movement,’ he reported. ‘Dod Muir! Are you within?’

‘I could ask across the way, maybe,’ suggested Luke. His master hammered on the shutters, which rattled wildly under his big fist.

‘You might as well,’ he was saying, when there was a shout behind them.

‘There they are! Breaking in at Dod’s window, and all!’

Socrates growled. Gil turned, to see the whitesmith and the lorimer, all indignant eyes and pointing fingers, hurrying down the path from the Drygate. Behind them, large and important, strode not the Serjeant but Maister Andrew Hamilton, a neighbour from the High Street and present Dean of the Guild of Hammermen, wearing his Dean’s robe of office over his working clothes and shedding curls of shaved wood as he went.

‘You, Peter!’ he said. ‘I’d thought better of you! What’s afoot here, anyway? These two,’ he indicated his fellow guildsmen, ‘cam running to me saying they’re being harassed unlawful, and here I find you forcing Dod Muir’s shutters? That’s no like you!’

‘Nothing of the kind, Andrew,’ retorted Maistre Pierre, reddening. ‘We are here about two errands, one of them to find out why my good-son was assaulted on this toft yesterday morning.’

‘Nothing to do wi me,’ said the lorimer quickly. ‘I wasny on the toft!’ His dog, more courageous in his presence, snarled at Socrates from behind his knee.

‘Aye, I heard about that,’ said Maister Hamilton. ‘Was it on this toft then? Now that’s serious, lads,’ he said to his guildsmen. ‘Which of them was it struck you, maister? Was there any effusion of blood?’

‘No,’ said Gil, wondering why the whole of Glasgow wished to see his blood let. ‘It was this fellow Dod Muir that struck me,’ he nodded at the shutter still rattling faintly, and turned back towards Hamilton in time to catch a startled expression crossing Campbell’s face. ‘I’ve witnesses,’ he concluded. ‘He had help throwing me in the burn, and all.’

‘Oh, you have, have you?’ said Maister Hamilton grimly. ‘And who was the help, then?’

‘No me!’ said the whitesmith quickly, and the lorimer shook his head.

‘Aye, well,’ said their Dean, eyeing them, ‘I’ll see you right when you’re doing right, lads, but assault wi witnesses is a different matter. What had you done to provoke it, maister?’

‘Poking his nose in here, thieving in Danny Sproat’s stable,’ began the lorimer.

‘You know a deal about it for one that wasny here,’ Gil said. And you were here, he recalled, eyeing the bright red hair which hung below the lorimer’s blue bonnet. ‘Maister Hamilton, if the offer we’ve had still stands, Pierre and I will shortly be landlords here on wee John’s behalf. I was inspecting the place, trying to decide if it was worth taking on, and I was struck down all unsuspecting.’

‘Asking questions!’ said the whitesmith.

‘There’s no law agin asking questions,’ said Hamilton. He hitched up his black gown, stroked its velvet facings and braced his elbows importantly. ‘We’ll have to have this out, lads. Go and summon the other fellows, Saunders and the donkey man and all I suppose, and we’ll hear all here and now. And where might Dod be, d’ye ken?’

‘Never seen him the day,’ admitted the lorimer. ‘Nor yesterday neither, when I think on it.’ Danny Bell, that was his name, Gil recalled, and the whitesmith was a Campbell. And the pewterer’s brother-in-law. He stepped sideways, head cocked to hear Campbell banging on the pewterer’s door. The woman answered it, with a spate of anxious Ersche which got a ‘Wheesht, Vari!’ from her brother. Then there was a half-whispered exchange among the three adults, almost inaudible through the wailing of another of the children, in which he caught Dod Muir’s name, and then suddenly, clearly, the phrase
Alan agus Nicol
.

Next to him, the lorimer’s dog suddenly got its courage up and went for Socrates. Kicking it away Gil restrained his own dog, his mind working furiously.

He knew only a few words of Ersche, unlike Alys, but he could recognize that: Alan and Nicol. Two of Dame Isabella’s missing servants.

‘From Madam Xanthe?’ repeated Gil.

‘Aye, from my mistress,’ agreed the boy Cato.

‘What does she want?’ Alys asked, coming forward from the hearth. The boy gave her an ingratiating grin and bobbed nervously, scattering raindrops from his plaid. Gil turned the note over in his hand, broke the seal, and held the orange-scented paper to the light from the candle she held.

‘She wants to see me,’ he said after a moment. ‘About the false coin.’

‘When?’ said Alys.

‘Maybe now?’ said Cato hopefully. ‘She bade me say, if you’d see your way to calling on us the night, she’d be right glad of it.’

‘But I’m not,’ Gil began, and bit that off.

‘She bade me say and all,’ Cato assured him, ‘she kens you’re no charged wi it, but she’d like fine to talk wi you just the same.’

‘Did she say anything else?’ And how did she know that much? he wondered.

‘No, no, that’s all, excepting it was about Strathblane, she said. The coin, I mean.’

‘Strathblane?’ Gil looked at the boy, then at Alys. ‘I think I must go,’ he said in French.

‘I think you must,’ she acknowledged, eyebrows raised, ‘but not alone, surely. Maybe you could take Luke with you again. And the dog.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the group by the hearth; Maistre Pierre and the two McIans were still engrossed in a debate on the merits of different styles of harp. Socrates, recognizing
chien
, raised his head and looked at her.

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘I won’t take your father out again tonight. Warn Luke, then, if you will, and I’ll put on my boots. And a cloak.’

‘Aye, you’ll want a cloak, maister,’ agreed Cato. ‘It’s right wet out there, we’ll ha a quiet time o it in the house. Keeps the customers away, so it does, the rain,’ he informed Alys, nodding wisely.

Sending Cato to the kitchen to alert Luke, Alys lit a lantern and followed Gil out into the rain and across the yard to their apartment, Socrates on her heels.

‘It’s curious she mentioned Strathblane,’ she said as they picked their way past the tubs of flowers.

‘Very curious.’

‘Sempill was out there today.’

‘Was he now?’ Gil looked down at her, and opened the heavy door to their stair. ‘What was he doing?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said regretfully, ‘but he came home in a great temper, saying there was some trouble, and that Philip wanted to involve you. Then he saw me, and would say no more.’

‘Did you ask?’

‘Of course I did,’ she said indignantly, ‘but he was rude to me, so Lady Magdalen rebuked him, and he went off in a sulk.’ She followed him into their outer chamber, put the lantern on a kist and sat down to watch him pull on his boots. ‘I learned some useful things today,’ she added. ‘I was waiting to tell you when we were alone.’

‘Go on.’ He straightened the heels of his hose, folded the wide leg of each boot about his calf, the soft leather waxy under his fingers, and buckled the straps while Alys recounted the visits she had made and the information she had gathered. He did not ask why she had not told him this before; supper had been a lively meal, with a sparkling conversation about the power of music and little opportunity to discuss the case.

‘This is all useful, sweetheart,’ he agreed at last, stamping to settle his feet in the boots. ‘It confirms all the servants’ stories, so far as it goes. I wonder what the bag of coin was doing in Clerk’s Land?’

‘Maybe Madam Xanthe will know,’ she suggested, with an odd emphasis on the name. Their eyes met in the lantern-light, and he nodded slightly, then looked about him for his plaid. She rose to fetch it from its nail in the inmost chamber, taking the light with her. He stood quietly in the dark, wondering what the reference to Strathblane might mean, while the dog nudged his knee.

The House of the Mermaiden was lit and humming with conversation behind its shutters, but Cato led them round the side of the house and in at the back door. Madam Xanthe, gorgeously dressed and turbaned, was alone in the room where Gil had been dried off the previous day, seated by a branch of candles with a ledger open on the table before her. When they entered she looked up, smiled, and pushed the heavy volume away.

‘Maister Cunningham! In a good hour,’ she declared. ‘Oh, and a wee lapdog wi you!’ She stretched a long white hand to Socrates, who paced forward to inspect it, then on to thrust his nose into her lap. She fended him off. ‘Cato, take Maister Cunningham’s man out to the kitchen and see him dried off, and then bring us some of the good wine.’

‘And the wee cakes, madam? Ste– Strephon’s made some of his wee cakes, they’re right good this time—’

‘Aye, you daft laddie, some o the wee cakes! Now get off wi the two o ye, till I get talking to my guest.’

Luke departed hopefully with Cato, and Madam Xanthe turned to Gil, her hand still busy about the dog’s ears.

‘You’re recovered from your wetting, then?’ she observed. ‘And the dunt on the head?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said politely. ‘I hope I see you well, madam?’

‘Oh, if we’re to be formal!’ She rose and swept him a magnificent curtsy, the wide folds of her dark blue taffeta gown rustling in a great pool round her, the gold turban gleaming in the candlelight. Gil responded, and she took his arm and drew him to a seat by the brazier in the centre of the chamber. Socrates padded about, inspecting the place.

‘And madam your wife’s in good health? Your good-father? Right, now that’s seen to,’ she went on without waiting for a reply, ‘will you tell me what you ken o these false coins, or will I go first?’

‘What was the reference to Strathblane about?’ he countered, watching the painted face, which was now partly shadowed. The paint and the turban combined to remind him suddenly of one of the players in a student play two years since, a repellent boy playing Dame Fortuna in fluent Latin, who met his death within the hour. With an effort he brought his mind back to the present. What was the purpose of this summons? How much information did this pretentious individual hold, and where had it come from?