The Royal Burgh

by Veerapen, Steven

  ‘Mr Danforth, all towns have bawdy houses. We are fortunate, indeed, that ours is kept separate, and its filthy denizens do not intrude upon the better part of us.’

  ‘Yet it might be that one did.’

  ‘Your meaning, sir?’

  ‘Only this – that it is possible that the creature who slew Mistress Furay was someone connected with her past.’ Danforth floated the idea hoping that it would appeal to the Provost. It worked.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, nodding. ‘I can see how that might be so. It is more likely, indeed, that some vile brute from her younger years set about her than some man of quality who was yet given to carnal weakness. I think you have the measure of it. Aye.’

  ‘And yet,’ Danforth continued, ‘for the better conduct of my search, I must know of any names that were whispered in connection with the lady’s late activities.’

  Once again, the Provost drew himself up in imperious indignation. ‘Sir, I have no knowledge of any names. You must find your murderer in the gutter from which he sprang.’ Danforth’s face turned thunderous, his patience worn away.

  ‘Master Provost, if you refuse me intelligence that might find this killer, then you are like unto those gutter-creatures whom you rail against. They shall protect one another in their own mean way as you shall protect yours in the upper Hiegait. You are all of you thwarting right justice!’

  ‘I am justice,’ said Cochran, his eyes flashing. He gripped the arms of his little throne, his knuckles turning white. ‘In this town, I am justice.’

  ‘And yet there is a greater justice that lies above you.’

  ‘You appeal to religion, do you?’ Cochran managed a wry look.

  ‘No, Provost. The castle lies above you. The Protector Arran and his charge, her Grace Queen Mary lie above you.’

  ‘Bah,’ said Cochran, waving an arm dismissively. ‘A girl-child and an overmighty boy.’

  ‘Treasonous words, Master Provost.’ Cochran paled, the gravity of what he had said dawning on him. Danforth had regained the upper hand, for all he might secretly have shared the man’s sentiments.

  ‘You said,’ he pleaded, ‘that you have some knowledge of who brought fire to the Martin house, and thereby knowledge of who murdered the old whore.’

  ‘I said “perhaps”,’ said Danforth.

  ‘Bring him to me, sir. Bring him to me and I shall have him killed. I shall have him strung up before your friend Martin, his hands struck off, if the boy wishes.’ Cochran’s head was quivering, his twirled whiskers shaking. Danforth saw, he fancied, a glimpse of what lay behind the Provost’s bluster: he was a weak, fallible creature, proud of his position and yet unsure of it. He might almost be pitiable, having the charge of a royal burgh’s governance and yet nervous of his command under the watchful gaze of the greater authority above. Such men were always quick to blame others for inaction and failure, and quicker to mete out rough justice whenever an opportunity to demonstrate their power arose.

  ‘I see I shall have no help by you, Master Provost. I shall therefore bid you good day. You shall have your fellow anon.’ He bowed, turned on his heel and left the Provost, still sitting on his imitation throne.

  Danforth returned to the inn, ignoring its owners as he stormed up to his chamber. He slammed the door behind him in a fury and then threw his cloak and coat on the bed. For a time he paced the room, his mind refusing to calm, his fingers agitating the buttons on his ill-fitting doublet. He could accept that John McKenzie had made the coins, as a small side operation borne of his studies. He could accept that John McKenzie had attempted to burn down the Martin house, purloining the torches he knew he had left in his vacated shop. That should perforce make John McKenzie’s guilt in the death of Madeleine Furay indisputable. He had solicited the lady, killed her, and then attempted to destroy the men he knew to be investigating the crime. A confession could no doubt be wrung from him – with happiness – on the orders of Provost Cochran.

  Yet a man killing by accident, as McKenzie had with Christian Martin, and then tossing burning torches at a house and running – somehow that did not fit with forcing a woman to the ground and crushing the life of her. Pliny’s absurd Bonnacon galloped through his mind: avoiding open battle, avoiding violence, but excreting fire. He had built up an image of McKenzie in his head, and that McKenzie was a Bonnacon. Then again, the cold voice of logic interjected, that was only a construction, the creature a myth. Until the real, living McKenzie was brought before him, the painted figure might be nothing but his own foolish fantasy, seasoned with his past experiences and spiced with what he had read and what little he knew of men’s characters.

  McKenzie had to be taken up. But Danforth would not raise his voice in accusation until Martin was present. The law, Danforth knew, should be swift in dealing justice. It should be equitable, and not based on the prejudices of those wronged. Yet his friend had sought this man. His friend had lost a sister to this man. Martin deserved the chance to face and accuse him, not to have it taken from him.

  He wondered again where Martin and Alison might be. It would be some days before the boy returned. He must try and turn his mind to other matters. He turned his attention to the room, looking for inspiration. Once he would have had any number of things to occupy his mind: political strategies; the likely location of reliable sources of knowledge; the wording for important documents; the planning of a future journey across the nation. Now he had nothing but cots, candles and chairs. As if in sympathy, his stomach provided a solution by grumbling. Danforth smiled. When temporal affairs failed to satisfy, the body natural could always be relied upon to demand attention.

  Danforth regained his coat and his cloak and let his mind wander to food. He could not stomach the thought of eating with his host and his wife. The innkeeper gave him the creeps. He would have to find somewhere out in the market cross that sold cooked meats. He was standing in front of the door, still thinking, when a light rap made him start. Before he could answer, it flew open and he jumped back.

  ‘Martin! What news? What has happened? Your mother–’

  ‘Peace, Mr Danforth. My mother and the servants are well on their way to Edinburgh.’

  ‘How is this? Without you as a protector? You have seen the criminals that haunt this land.’

  ‘She’s in need of a protector. Mon dieu! I fear any desperate creature who presumed upon her would come off the worse for it. Off she trotted, quite the thing.’

  ‘Why are you here, Arnaud?’

  ‘I am come,’ said Martin, crossing the room and sitting down easily, ‘because my sweet mother had had enough of my face. She knows where she’s going.’ Danforth’s face was still all confusion, and so Martin continued. ‘I followed them a wee bit out of Linlithgow. I left her with letters of introduction to my man at home. She told me to take her no further but return here and give aid in pursuit of her slain friend. Quite vocal on it, she was.’

  ‘A woman travelling alone.’

  ‘Not alone. With her retainers.’

  ‘How does old Wilson?’

  ‘Well. I think she has a great shame at discovering the fire and running shrieking back to my mother.’

  ‘It roused us.’

  ‘Aye, but her fainting has left her pretty shame-faced. She’s all over my mother like a rash, wants to protect her, she says.’

  ‘A woman on the road is in need of protection.’

  ‘She’s a Scotswoman, my friend, lest you forget. She’ll accept no argument nor fear any fiend. If anyone tried anything, she said, she’d stick a pin in their eye herself.’

  ‘I do not like it.’

  ‘She did say that you’d worry, and why. And wishes that you wouldn’t.’

  ‘You spoke of me?’ Embarrassment and a little tendril of anger crept into Danforth’s voice. Martin only shrugged.

  ‘Well, sir, I got back my cloak, and it’s my favourite. Though still I can smell the smoke on it.’

  Danforth crossed his arms, leaning back against the door. ‘An
d so you are flown back with haste, wings on your feet, like Hermes. But not Hermes Trismegistus, for his arts are being read by another.’

  ‘I don’t follow you. A-bloody-gain.’

  ‘You follow no one, it seems, even when you should be following your mother. Pay me no mind. I shall explain later.’ A thought struck him. ‘Martin, what news is there of the Cardinal? Did you hear talk in Linlithgow of what is happening?’ It was strange that the Cardinal’s fate had become an afterthought. It should be shameful. It wasn’t.

  ‘Our master,’ said Martin, ‘is said to be kept still in fine confinement at Dalkeith. The word is that he’s angling to be put into the care of Lord Seton.’

  ‘Seton? Well that is good news.’ Seton, knew Danforth, was the Cardinal’s friend. A good Catholic.

  ‘Yes, everyone seems to think the confinement’s to be short lived. Seton won’t be a gaoler. And even at Dalkeith he’s apparently being allowed visitors. It’s not really confinement, to be honest.’

  ‘Aye, it’s a strange thing. It’s being said that the Cardinal’s not really in prison, nor even a bit like one – and yet I heard it whispered also that the coming parliament will make it right in law for the Bible to be read in Scots. English too.’

  Danforth drew a hand to his throat, his mouth gaping. ‘No. It cannot be.’

  ‘It is just a rumour.’

  ‘It is a fool’s notion.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Martin spread his hands behind him on the bed and shifted his weight. ‘The English can read the Bible in their native tongue. It won’t make any difference to anything. I mean, how many can read?’

  ‘How can you ask such a question, sir? The word of God jangled in alehouses and taverns, debated weakly by men with little wit and no learning?’

  ‘I can’t imagine that men with little wit and no learning would want to debate.’

  ‘It is dangerous, Martin – I have seen it.’ Danforth closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Religion … the true religion has its place, in church and amongst Godly companies steeped in its mysteries. It as any other thing, having its place and its time, and as badly handled out of them as a fish upon the land. In a world of disorder, of men disagreeing, giving them the word of God will lead to division, and division to hatred, and that to great wars. Men in taverns, Martin, drinking and descending into bloody argument. Unlearned people will live in fear of the wrath of a God they feel they do not yet know, and evangelicals will prey on that fear like hawks.’

  ‘I reckon you give the people little credit.’

  ‘People are ignorant, Martin.’ Martin frowned. ‘I mean it as honest truth. If their ignorant fellows, not schooled in debate nor learned in study, feed them any corruption of the truth, then that ignorance will breed ignorance. If you give a man tools, a hammer and a fine piece of metal, but keep from him the skill of a smithy, then you will have no fine jewellery to wrap about your neck, but jagged, broken pieces.’

  Martin stifled a yawn. ‘As I said, Simon, it’s just a rumour – they’re saying the Cardinal was only put away so that the governor could test the idea. And he’ll be free soon enough. The parliament shan’t even ride until March. What news have you got?’

  Danforth tried to turn his mind back to his discoveries, but it kept drifting to images of alehouses, with tables and liquor smashed about the floor, and men thrusting dirks and jagged metal at one another. Without his mind being entirely on Madeline Furay, he recounted her reversion – if she had ever truly left it – to a life of bawdy service, with the endorsement of her husband. Martin listened, his eyes bulging.

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he gasped. ‘Sweet Jesus. She was still a whore: an old lady.’

  ‘She was far from old, sir, for all she was friend to your mother.’

  ‘Friend! The old bawd entertained men for money, whilst strutting the streets of a royal burgh as a gentle goodwife. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Her husband has confessed to it.’

  ‘I don’t mean that, Simon. I mean it scarce credits belief. No one can know of it.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Oh?’ Martin seemed surprised.

  ‘The woman is dead. What good can be had of publicly exhibiting her foul life, and the creature that brought her to it.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Martin, massaging his knuckles as he thought. ‘She was married, for all her wicked trade. That strange life was the fault of her husband, no other.’

  ‘Yes. Yet there is something else.’ Danforth stepped slowly across the room and took a seat on the second bed, gnawing on his bottom lip.

  ‘Go on, then. If you’ve discovered something, tell me. I’ve never known you wish to keep your knowledge close.’

  ‘It concerns … it concerns John McKenzie.’ An alertness spread across Martin’s face, his eyes sharpening.

  ‘Tell me, Simon.’

  ‘I believe it was he who put light to your mother’s house. I looked into the place he used to ply his trade, and found the torches taken from it. They are the same torches used to burn the house, I think.’ Martin stared silently, his jaw clenched. Danforth plunged on. ‘I think him also the creature responsible for producing the false coin found in Madeleine Furay’s bedchamber. He had the learning and the tools.’

  ‘Anyone might have taken the torches from that place. You saw as I did that it lay open and abandoned.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Danforth was surprised, and the surprise worried him. He had expected a sudden explosion from Martin – for him to jump from his seat and demand immediate action. He did not anticipate caution. ‘Yet it was his shop, and the torches his.’

  ‘And so we have our killer.’

  ‘I do not go so far. Not yet. All this talk of there being some man behind him, some criminal king. Would that king not have a treasury, a minter? Yet killer or no, he shall hang for his crimes.’

  ‘Hang. Aye. Why did you not go and accuse him, Simon? Why are you here?’

  ‘It was my feeling that you ought not to be denied that honour. The man has done you divers grievous wrongs, and you have the right to drag him to justice. Scots law comes from the old Romans, you know. And it is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man up to die before the accused has met his accusers face-to-face.’

  ‘I thought the law was blind.’

  ‘Mmm. Justitia was said to be blind, that is true, and to work without regard to the victims. Yet, Arnaud, as I keep telling you, I am no lawyer.’

  Martin smiled weakly. ‘Shall we go now, find him in that filthy stew and take him before the baillies to be hanged? It’ll be swift. It’ll be immediate, if the Provost wills it.’ His face had paled, though his eyes retained a sharp look. Something else stirred in them. Danforth suspected it was fear. Faced with the immediate execution of the enemy he had hunted for months the boy was now scared of the swinging rope.

  ‘I see no reason to take him tonight. I, for one, am hungry, and should like to eat. The knave is not likely to run if he has not by now. Let him breath in his filth tonight, Martin. He might die on the morrow.’

  19

  They rose and got ready in silence, each trooping to the garderobe in turn. Danforth had slept little. Today he would wring answers from the elusive Doctor McKenzie, and with luck he might confirm his suspicions. But even if he did not, the man would die for his attack on the Martin home, and for his creation of false coins. Martin might see him swing from the gibbet that afternoon, if the Provost demanded a summary execution. It was common in burghs for criminals deemed guilty – by confession or certain proofs – to be hanged without glory. The Provost was the law in a royal burgh, his baillies his officers, and a hangman his executioner. No one would care if due process was not followed. Not in a time of upheaval.

  They trooped downstairs in grim procession, intending to again visit the stew off St Mary’s Wynd, when Mr McTavish came in the front door. For once he was not humming, but still his mouth was working and twitching convulsively. He caught sight of them on the stairs and fidget
ed over quickly, shaking his head in his usual fussy manner.

  ‘Oh, gentlemen, oh dear, I must rest, I –’

  ‘What news, Mr McTavish. What ails you?’ asked Danforth.

  ‘Another murder, sir, a body, oh, fearful it is, stabbed, by my reckoning.’

  ‘What?’ asked Martin. ‘Who’s been slain?’

  ‘A fellow, sir, as lives somewhere by the wynd. At least I suppose he must, sir, for I’ve surely never seen him.’

  Martin began pushing past him towards the door, but Danforth stopped him with a hand. ‘Where was this man’s body found?’

  ‘By St Mary’s Wynd, sir, where it meets the Hiegait.’

  ‘Who found it? When?’

  ‘Why, I did, sir. It’s why I must rest, why I must lie down, oh, the shock of it, sir, you wouldn’t imagine, finding it right there on the street.’

  ‘When was this?’

  McTavish turned suddenly shifty. ‘Earlier, sir.’

  ‘And why were you down by St Mary’s Wynd early?’

  ‘I take a walk, sir, each morning I walk abroad early, for my health.’

  ‘I see. And you came upon this slain man?’

  ‘I did, sir. And I cried out and cried out until the baillies arrived.’

  ‘They are with him?’

  ‘Aye, sir, the four of them are attending to it.’

  ‘Very good, Mr McTavish. Ah.’ Danforth half-turned to the bar, behind which Mistress Scott had appeared, her cheeks drawn. ‘Your graceful wife. Sir, you might wish to explain to her what has befallen you on your morning walk down by the stew off St Mary’s Wynd.’

  Danforth and Martin departed the inn amid the birth of an argument between wife and husband.

  The Hiegait and market cross were already gathering crowds, as shop owners stuck out their heads and asked news of those who had already sensed the beating heart of a new-born scandal and come out to take its pulse. Danforth led the way down the centre of the street, avoiding the clusters of people who clutched at each other’s shoulders and shouted questions. ‘Who has been slain?’