The Green Man (22 page)

‘Can't you tell me?'

He shrugged. ‘Many of those houses look alike. It'll be easier if someone shows you the way.'

I could see by the obstinate set of his mouth that I would get nothing more out of him.

‘Very well,' I agreed. ‘Although it may still be dinnertime.' It struck me that if that were indeed the case, I might be able to grab some food for myself, so I made no further demur and shouted for the gaoler.

It was a relief to be out in the fresh air again, free from the fetid atmosphere of the cells. I filled my lungs with it, drawing in great, deep breaths and letting my head clear, shaking my whole body to rid myself of the dirt and grime, much as a dog will shake itself free of water. I didn't immediately go in search of Murdo, Donald and the others, but stretched my cramped limbs by walking from one end of that towering crag to the other. In one direction I could see below me the smoke of houses, billowing grey wreaths in the windy sunshine of that early August morning, the trees in the orchards looking no bigger than dandelion heads. In another, away in the distance, I could just make out – with the white foam flecking its blue and with the occasional flash of a white sail – the wide expanse of what Davey had told me was the River Forth as it broadened out towards the open sea. Clouds were scudding inland, and I felt I had only to lift my hands in order to touch them. Edinburgh Castle rock, I decided, was the nearest to heaven that I was likely to come in this life. (And as for the next, I decided not to speculate, but hoped that when the time came, my sins would be forgiven me.)

On this pious hope, I made my way to the great hall where my luck held, for although the trestles were being dismantled and moved to stand against the walls until suppertime, the baskets of broken meats which had been cleared from the tables had not yet been carried into the kitchens. I was able to help myself to bread, cheese and several hunks of beef. Excellent beef, too: someone had once told me that the Scots bred good cattle in spite of a largely barren landscape.

‘Stuffing your face again, chapman?' asked a mocking voice, and I turned to find Donald Seton at my elbow.

‘Ah! Just the man I was looking for,' I said, grasping his wrist and seizing another lump of meat to chew on as I led him outside. ‘I need you to show me Master Sinclair's dwelling.' And in answer to his raised eyebrows, I told him how I had so far spent my morning.

He regarded me meditatively for a moment or two, then nodded.

‘Follow me.'

He didn't, as I had half-expected, make further enquiries as to what exactly had been said or what I intended to do. In his place, I would have been unable to curb my curiosity, especially when it concerned someone I knew. But Donald displayed no such interest. I had thought, just for a fleeting second, that he had looked at me rather pityingly, but I was used to people underrating my ability to winkle out the truth, even when a problem seemed insoluble.

We left the castle, reversing the route by which we had entered earlier that same morning; descending the steep stairs by the Portcullis Gate, past the Constable's Tower to the rugged forecourt that gave on to the town outside.

Donald led me down the main street a little way and then pointed to a house on the right-hand side as we stood with the castle at our backs. It was one of the newer timber-built dwellings, but differing from its neighbours in that it had no outside staircase. The first storey window, like many others, hung out over the street and, I reflected, it must have been there that Aline Sinclair had sat in preference to the solar so lovingly provided for her by her husband, at the back of the house. Watching for the lover whose name began with J? Writing her secret diary and plotting the death of that same husband? I suddenly felt cold, and it had nothing to do with the general chill of the day.

‘I'll be leaving you then.'

Donald's voice broke in on my reflections and made me jump.

‘Oh … Yes. Very well, then,' I said. ‘If His Grace asks for me, you'll tell him where I am?'

‘I'll tell him.'

The squire gave me a brief nod before striding away, uphill towards the castle. I looked after his retreating form for a minute or two, vaguely disturbed, but not knowing why. Then I gave myself a little shake, crossed the street and knocked loudly on the door of Master Sinclair's house.

B
efore I had time to knock twice, however, the door flew open and the gaoler's son emerged, helped on his way by a pat on the back from the woman who was holding the inner latch. They both started at the sight of me, the boy glancing up with a shifty, white-eyed look of uneasy surprise, his companion giving me a haughty stare of enquiry.

She said something, plainly a question, at which the lad turned and muttered in the same tongue. Then he slid from under the woman's hand and raced off in the direction of the castle as fast as his legs would carry him, not even pausing to look back over his shoulder.

‘Mistress Beton?' I asked.

I wasn't sure that I would get a comprehensible reply, but after only a second's hesitation, while she sized me up from head to toe in a somewhat unnerving manner, the housekeeper nodded.

‘You must be the Sassenach young Archie was just telling me about.' She spoke perfectly clear, if heavily accented English, but in the correct, slightly stilted way of someone speaking a foreign tongue. ‘My lord duke has sent you to try to find Mistress Sinclair's diary. I am right?'

‘Yes,' I agreed in some relief.

Whatever Master Sinclair's purpose had been in sending the gaoler's son ahead of me – and I recalled how he had appeared to be asking a favour of the gaoler himself – it had certainly saved me a long and involved explanation. Perhaps that had indeed been his object, but somehow I doubted it, and couldn't help wondering what message the boy had really brought to Mistress Beton.

The housekeeper held the door wide and beckoned me inside with a brief motion of her head.

‘Come with me, if you please.'

There was no deference in her tone, and I guessed that quite apart from what the boy had told her, she had summed up my social standing as no better, if as good, as her own. Women are cleverer than men at that sort of thing. (Adela and Margaret Walker could always distinguish at fifty paces or more if a female was a gentlewoman or not, and whether she merited a curtsey or a mere nod of the head.)

I followed Mistress Beton along a narrow, stone-flagged passageway, where an open door to our right showed the interior of what was a comfortable, well-furnished parlour, to a smaller chamber at the back of the house. This, too, showed signs of luxury with painted beams and ceilings, cushions piled up at one end of a high-backed settle, two colourful tapestries hung on a north-facing wall and windows of oiled parchment, one of which stood wide, revealing a little garden. This latter was a mere patch of ground, maybe three or four yards in both directions, but it was neatly kept and pleasant to look at, with two beds of herbs and an apple tree in one corner, spreading its leafy branches against one of the enclosing walls. This, I decided had to be the solar mentioned by Master Sinclair and made by him for his wife – who had spurned it in favour of the overhanging window in their bedchamber.

‘Please to sit down, Master.'

Mistress Beton indicated one end of the settle – the bare end, naturally – then sat down at the other, nestling into the bank of cushions with something of a sigh. She made no attempt to offer me anything to drink, which, if whisky was all she had in the house (as was probable) was just as well. It was a liquid neither my stomach nor my brain could take. She regarded me expectantly, but made no effort to break the silence, sitting with her hands folded quietly in her lap.

It was my first chance to view her properly, and I saw a tall woman, too tall for her sex, almost the same height as myself. But there was nothing scrawny about her, either, as you sometimes find with people who have outgrown their strength in youth. She was deep-breasted and well-fleshed and would probably, if she ever married, give a man pleasure in bed – provided, that was, that the lights were out. For the most striking thing about her was her plainness of feature.

It would be too unkind to say that Maria Beton was ugly, but, having conceded as much, it would be no more than the truth to state she was one of the least attractive women I had ever seen in my life. She had a broad, square face in which sat an equally broad nose flanked by smallish eyes of an indeterminate hue and fringed with sandy lashes. Eyebrows of the same colour were almost invisible. I was unable to guess how old she was, although I learned later that she was my own age – or the age I should be in two months' time – thirty.

She flushed under my scrutiny, but still said nothing, simply waiting expectantly. I cleared my throat awkwardly, realizing how rudely I had been staring.

‘Mistress Beton, you were with Master Sinclair, I understand, when the diary first came to light. Indeed, I believe you were the person who found it.'

She nodded. ‘If you have seen and talked with Master Sinclair in prison, as Archie informed me that you have, then you will know this for the truth.'

‘But you had no idea what was in it.'

‘Not then. I know now, of course. I have had speech with Robert. He has told me.'

‘Robert?' Then I realized she meant Rab Sinclair. ‘You call him by his baptismal name, Mistress?'

She seemed somewhat confounded by my surprise.

‘You may not have been told,' she answered with dignity, ‘that I am … I mean that I was kin to Mistress Sinclair. Aline was my cousin in the third degree. Therefore I am also kin to her husband.'

‘Nevertheless, you are his housekeeper.'

The naturally high colour of her cheeks deepened almost to crimson.

‘You are a Sassenach,' she said contemptuously. ‘You do not understand these things. But if it upsets your notions of propriety, I will refer to him as Master Sinclair.'

Her fluency in the English tongue was greater than I had at first thought it. But I was becoming sidetracked.

‘After you had discovered the diary and given it to your mas— to Master Sinclair to read, what was his reaction?'

‘He seemed extremely distressed. Disturbed beyond all measure. A man who had received a desperate blow.'

‘You didn't ask him what was wrong?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘If he had wanted me to know, he would have told me. I do not pry into other people's affairs. Their business is their own.'

I set my trap. ‘You didn't, later, read it yourself?'

She turned her limpid gaze on me. ‘I am unable to read, Master. I was never schooled in my letters.'

Why did I feel that the answer came a little too pat? I shrugged the question aside.

‘But you do know now?'

‘I have told you. I have had speech with Rob … With Master Sinclair.' She smiled slightly as she said it.

‘You have seen him since his arrest?'

‘Of course. I have visited him at the castle. Yesterday,' she added.

‘And that's when he told you the truth?' She inclined her head in assent. ‘Were you shocked by his revelations?'

There was a long pause, so long that I began to wonder if she had understood my question. But just as I was about to repeat it in a simpler form, she said, ‘No. I was not even surprised.'

I was startled. ‘You mean you knew about your mistress's lover?'

‘No. But I knew my cousin.' She emphasized the last word, making it plain that she deeply resented any assumption of her menial position in the household. I raised my eyebrows and she went on, ‘Aline was not the innocent she pretended to be. Even as a child, she had only to put on that sweet, pretty face of hers and everyone would believe every word she said. She could … I do not know the English phrase.'

‘Get away with murder?' I suggested drily. ‘But in this instance, it was not she who did the killing.'

‘Not for the want of trying,' was the fierce response. ‘She had already plotted and planned to kill her husband, and indeed tried to do so. Robert says that it was only by God's grace that she failed.'

‘Is he telling the truth do you think?'

She rose majestically to her feet, drawing herself to her full height and expanding that magnificent bosom.

‘Will you please to go now?'

I didn't answer immediately. At full stretch, her head, in its white linen coif and cap, was a mere inch or so lower than the solar's ceiling beams; and I was suddenly aware that both ends of each beam were decorated with painted carvings – birds, insects, flowers, masks. This in itself was not unusual, and was frequently to be found in houses where money and time were no object. But the particular carving that met my eye, picked out in green and gold, was the head of the Green Man. There were the branches wreathing out of his mouth, up around his head to form his leafy hair and down around his chin to make his beard. It reminded me of the warnings of my mysterious friend, which I had managed to forget for the past few days, and gave me a nasty jolt.

With an effort, I withdrew my gaze and set myself to the task of placating Mistress Beton, whom I had managed to offend. It was obvious that her sympathies lay with Master Sinclair and not her late cousin.

I had risen with her, and now invited her to sit down again.

‘My only object, Mistress, is to uncover the truth, I promise you. But to do that, I must ask questions. I must know why you believe what Master Sinclair tells you. On your own admission, you never saw the contents of the diary and could not have understood them even had you done so. Why should he not be lying to you?'

She allowed herself, somewhat grudgingly, to be mollified and resumed her seat at the other end of the settle, but this time with a stiff back as though ready to jump to her feet again if I re-offended.

‘I do not think Robert is lying because I saw with my own eyes how shocked – how horrified – he was when he read what Aline had written. I shall never forget the look on his face and the way his hands trembled. He was a man who had received a … a death blow. But more than that, as I have already told you, I knew my cousin. I knew her far, far better than other people; better than her brother, better than her parents. They were fools. They accepted Aline as she was on the surface, not as she really was underneath.'