by Pat McIntosh
‘Yes.’ The doctor looked disapproving. ‘She has dwelt for nearly three years in two chambers at the end of one wing of the house, with all her own furnishings and some few things which belonged to her dead husband. Her own maidservant oversees all for her, brings in her food, carries messages, she has two men who deal with her share of the outside work. Her good-sisters visit from time to time, the parish priest calls on her regularly – I will say, magister, he is a good man – Dame Ellen attends her daily to exhort her to repent of her vow and wed where Sir Edward might direct.’
‘And where would that have been?’
‘Probably not where Dame Ellen thinks. Sir Edward’s affection is real.’
‘No life for a girl of twenty. She never went out of doors?’
‘Rarely. As you say, no life for a girl of twenty.’
‘Nevertheless, the family’s intentions have been good,’ Gil suggested.
‘I would not say so,’ replied Doctor Januar after a little. ‘In fact I have seen no evidence of that.’ Gil raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, they speak of how much they hold her in affection, but they do little to improve her situation.’
‘Are their intentions evil?’
‘I cannot say.’ Cannot, not would not, Gil noted.
‘Will you come and view the body?’ he asked. ‘My friend the mason has experience in dealing with the dead, but a medical man’s opinion would be—’ He stopped. Doctor Januar was shaking his head.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Perhaps later I will do so. I must go to my patient. Already I have been away too long.’
He bowed, with a sweep of the blue velvet hat, clapped it back on his head, and squaring his shoulders turned away and marched towards the guest-hall. As he reached its doorway, heavy footsteps sounded in the passage from the outer courtyard; he checked for a moment, then resolutely pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Gil stood staring after him for a moment, then turned as his father-in-law emerged into the sunlight, Lowrie on his heels. Socrates hurried past them to thrust his head under his master’s hand in greeting.
‘What is this young Lowrie tells me?’ demanded Maistre Pierre. ‘The woman at the Cross murdered where she stood? And under the saint’s protection, too! A bad business!’
Back in the chapel, the linen drawn aside, the mason scrutinised the dead woman with pity at first. He studied the fingernails, tested the stiffness of the jaw and neck, tweaked at the cord where it was lodged in the flesh of the neck.
‘Bad,’ he said again, working his way down the corpse to check the rigidity of the feet. ‘And she was still tied where we saw her last night.’
‘Yes,’ said Gil, snapping his fingers at Socrates, who obediently left off sniffing at the hem of the sacking gown and came to sit at his side. ‘And her men say she was not beaten like that when they left her.’
‘No, no, I agree,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I had a good sight of her face last evening, and she looked nothing like this.’ He returned to the head of the bier, touching the bruised face. ‘Her death is not as it seems, is it?’
‘Exactly my thoughts,’ said Gil.
‘The ground was too hard and too much trampled to pick up any sign,’ said Lowrie, ‘and the dog found nothing to interest him.’
Maistre Pierre nodded, unfolding the checked plaid which still lay round the dead woman’s shoulders. Gil stared at her, considering what he saw.
Hunched over as she was, her build and stature were not easy to make out, but she seemed to be about Alys’s height, perhaps five and a half feet high. The neck and wrists exposed by the sacking gown were thin, the shoulders bony. Not a well-nourished girl, he thought, despite the family’s wealth. Perhaps, in her melancholy, she picked at her food.
‘There is no mark on this gown,’ Maistre Pierre observed. ‘We cannot be certain what killed her until she is stripped.’
‘I took it it was the cord,’ said Lowrie in surprise. ‘Though it’s clumsy work, both ends at the front of the throat like that. Surely you’d work from behind—’ His voice trailed off as Gil shook his head.
‘Not while she stood tied to the cross like that. You would cross your arms, with the ends of the cord in your hands, and cast it over the victim’s head,’ he mimed the action, ‘and pull hard, whether from before or behind. It’s a professional’s trick. But that wasn’t what killed her.’
‘No, I agree,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘She was already dead when the cord was used.’
‘What? She was throttled after – after she was dead?’ said Lowrie incredulously. ‘Why? Why would anybody do that?’
‘Not long after,’ conceded Maistre Pierre. ‘She had barely begun to stiffen. See, the cord has sunk into the flesh a little way, but there has been no swelling round it.’ He lifted one dangling end as he spoke, and began to ease the length of hemp away from the thin neck, working with difficulty round under the jaw. ‘I suppose she hung on those ropes? Her head is so far bent I am surprised this comes free, even without being sunk in the flesh.’
‘And when did she die, I wonder?’ said Gil. His father-in-law shook his head.
‘No certainty, though it was probably within an hour of midnight, a little earlier, a little later.’
‘I spoke to the men,’ said Lowrie after a moment. ‘Sawney and Rab. It was just as Sawney said while you were there, Maister Gil. Their task was to bind her to the cross, and keep an eye on her through the night. They thought she’d be safe enough, and St Nicholas’ chapel was handy and out of the night air.’
‘No way to go about their duty,’ said Maistre Pierre disapprovingly, ‘and see what has come of it. Why could they not stay with her, to keep her from harm?’ He coaxed the last length of cord from its seat and studied its length, then wound it round his hand and handed the tow-coloured loops to Gil.
‘It’s usual to leave them alone at the cross for the night,’ said Gil. ‘But it’s mostly men that are treated like that, and I do wonder at anyone leaving a lassie alone. She was tied there in the dark, her friends out of sight in St Nicholas’ chapel, and someone came along, beat her senseless or near it, slew her in some way we’ve not yet discerned, and only then throttled her. It makes no sense of any sort.’ He bent over the girl’s battered face again. ‘Pierre, can you see any ashes on her?’
‘Ashes?’ His father-in-law came closer. ‘What, on her brow? As for Ash Wednesday?’
‘Lockhart said they applied ashes when she heard Mass, before she was put in place at the Cross. I don’t see any about her now.’ He touched his own forehead involuntarily. ‘It’s fine stuff, it doesny come off readily, save you use soap and water. I wonder how she got rid of it?’
‘That is strange indeed. There is more,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘When I saw her in the evening she was bound so,’ he stood upright, his arms at his sides. ‘Her hands were not free.’
‘That’s how she was before we took her down,’ agreed Lowrie, ‘though she was hanging on the ropes by then, as you said, maister, just the way she’s set now.’
‘Then tell me how she has managed to scratch her attacker.’ The mason cradled one of the corpse’s stiffened hands in his big one, pointing at the fingertips. ‘There is blood under her nails, and two are broken. She has fought. How did she do that, bound as we saw her?’
There was a brief silence.
‘The ropes,’ said Lowrie cryptically. He turned and darted out of the chapel. Gil remained, studying the dead woman.
‘Something else I wonder at,’ he said, ‘is the family. So far I’ve spoken to the good-brother, and we’ve met two serving-men. Where are the rest of them? If they’re all as fond as the man Lockhart gave me to understand you’d think someone would be here to see her, to order her laying-out or the like, or to pray for her.’
‘Perhaps they wait until she is washed,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘For which I should not blame them.’
On the word, footsteps sounded in the courtyard outside, and the mason pulled the linen up over the hunched
shoulders and hideous battered face, just before a woman entered the little chapel, tall against the light for a moment. She checked at sight of them, then came forward, saying,
‘Well, sirs. That must be you that’s put the fear of God into Lockhart, then?’ She stepped aside to let a sturdy maidservant past with a basin of water. ‘Aye, lass, set it all down there, we’ll get to work soon enough. I’ll have to ask you men to leave us, till I get my poor niece made decent.’
‘Dame Ellen, is it?’ said Gil.
‘And what if it is? Who’s asking?’
Gil bowed, and introduced himself and his father-in-law. She heard him out, nodding, and smiled thinly at them both by the light from the doorway. Her front teeth were large, and crossed, giving her mouth a kissable shape greatly at odds with the rest of her expression.
‘Aye, you have it right, I’m Ellen Shaw, that’s run my brother’s house and raised his lassies these twelve year.’ She considered Gil. ‘A Cunningham, are you? You’ll be Gelis Muirhead’s laddie, I suppose. I mind her when we were young. You’ve a look o her.’ She unbuttoned the tight sleeves of her kirtle and began to roll them up. ‘Now I’d ask you to leave, sirs, till Meggot and I get to work, and you can take that great dog wi you.’
‘I need to inspect—’ Gil began.
‘It can wait. She was aye a modest lassie, even in her melancholy, and we’ll just maintain her modesty now she’s dead. Away ye go.’ She made shooing motions with her large bony hands.
‘Have you been told what happened to her?’ Gil asked. She looked more intently at him and nodded, her face grimly set. ‘Beaten and then throttled, or so we think. We need to know if you find any more injuries, anything at all, and if anything seems out of place or not right about her clothes or her body.’
‘I’ll keep a look out, maister, you can be sure o that, and so will Meggot, but we must have your room afore we begin.’
Gil went, not very hopefully. Out in the yard Maistre Pierre was already kicking gloomily at a clump of grass growing between two cobbles.
‘The world is full of high-handed women,’ he complained.
‘Certainly Scotland is,’ agreed Gil.
‘And where did young Lowrie go? That is a useful fellow, you were wise to take him on, Gilbert.’
‘Alys suggested it.’
‘Hmm,’ said Alys’s father, but said no more, as Lowrie entered from the street with his arms full of a great tangle of rope.
‘Euan had it,’ he said. ‘Deil kens what he was planning to do with it. Look at this, Maister Gil.’
He dropped most of the tangle, in order to hold up one length. Euan, or one of his helpers, had cut the loops of rope to free the dead woman from the upright of the cross, and the knots were still present. But clearly to be seen were the kinks and curves of a previous knot, unpicked with care some time before the dead woman was bound in her place.
‘So was she freed, beaten, and tied up again?’ speculated Lowrie.
‘Mon Dieu!’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Or was it not a new rope, perhaps?’
‘We need to check,’ said Gil. ‘It’s usually a new rope. This one has certainly been tied and untied once at least, I agree, Lowrie.’
‘Would the family tell us?’ Lowrie asked, colouring up at the commendation in Gil’s tone.
‘Lockhart, or the men—’ began Gil, and was interrupted. There was a sudden outbreak of shouting within the little chapel, the two women’s voices raised, one in anger, one protesting, the sound of a hearty slap. Gil, striding towards the discord, collided in the chapel doorway with the maidservant Meggot backing out.
‘I swear it, mistress!’ she was protesting, one hand nursing her ear, ‘it’s no her, it’s no our Annie! It’s some other woman, Our Lady kens who it is, but it’s never her!’
‘Fool of a lassie!’ Dame Ellen was in pursuit, hands reaching for her shoulders to shake her, ‘who else could it be? Barefoot in a sacking gown and bound to the Girth Cross, a course it’s Annie! No matter if her own mammy wouldny ken her face!’
‘What’s this?’ demanded Gil, and they both stopped to stare at him. ‘Is there some doubt about the corp?’
‘This gomeril—’ began Dame Ellen, and visibly controlled herself to assume her thin smile. ‘This foolish lassie tries to tell me—’
‘No, mistress, I swear it!’ said Meggot again. ‘It’s no her! It’s no Annie Gibb!’
Beside the bier, despite the indignant comments of Dame Ellen, she offered more reasoned argument, lifting a lock of the corpse’s elbow-length mud-coloured hair.
‘Our Lady kens who she is,’ she said again, ‘but her hair’s away too long, maister, my mistress’s hair never came ablow her shoulder-blades, and see here,’ she pulled the hem of the penitential gown aside to expose the small bare feet, twisted sideways by the way the body had sagged in its bonds and somehow very pitiful, Gil thought. Meggot seemed to feel the same way, for she curved a gentle hand round one instep as she said, ‘See, this lassie’s gone barefoot the most o her days. Her feet’s hard as neat’s leather. Annie wears hose and shoon, I took them off her yestreen afore she— Afore she— What’s come to her, maister? Where is she? Is she deid, or hurt, or—?’
‘The lassie’s run mad like her mistress,’ declared Dame Ellen. ‘Who else could it be but Annie? Maister Cunningham, I think we need hardly trouble you wi this nonsense. We’ll get on wi our duty to the dead, if you’ll just leave us.’
Gil considered the two women. Dame Ellen stood by the head of the bier, tall and indignant in the light of the candles. She was probably past fifty, dressed like any country lady in a plain gown of good woad-dyed homespun over a kirtle of a lighter blue, her head covered by a black Flemish hood. Wisps of grey hair escaped at her temples, and her face was lined and bony. Under his gaze she crossed her arms, hitching up a substantial bosom, and said, with an attempt at a complicit smile,
‘I’ve raised the lassie since she came into my brother’s house, how would I not know her when she’s come to be laid out?’
‘And I’ve served her and dressed her and put her stockings on these six year,’ retorted Meggot. She was shorter than Dame Ellen, a round-faced comfortable young woman in a side-laced kirtle, her shift rolled up over its short sleeves to expose capable hands and forearms, her hair hidden under a kerchief of good linen. She had not partaken of her mistress’s vow, Gil concluded. ‘I ken her feet from a stranger’s,’ she was saying, ‘I ken what length her hair was. These are no her hands, this lassie worked, and just look at these nails! I tell you, maister, it’s some other poor lassie, and what can have happened to my mistress?’
She paused to wipe tears from her eyes. Socrates padded forward, his claws rasping on the tiled floor, to sniff at the corpse’s feet, and Maistre Pierre said,
‘Did you both see her bound to the cross?’
‘I did indeed!’ said Dame Ellen, as Meggot nodded. ‘I stood by and watched while the two lads led her over there and bound her secure. And our good doctor oversaw all.’
‘Oh, he did?’ said Gil.
‘It suited my poor brother to gie him that duty, sir. Now are you to leave us about our business? It’s a sad day enough, without unseemly arguments like this.’
Meggot drew a breath, found Gil’s eye on her and remained silent.
‘Someone must stay and watch,’ pronounced Maistre Pierre. ‘We are both married men, madame, we will not demean the dead. What has happened must be determined.’
Gil turned away for a moment, to find Lowrie still standing watching the discussion in fascination, the lengths of rope dangling from his hands.
‘Go and find those two lads, if you will, and the other servants too,’ he said. ‘Talk them through what happened to Annie after the party arrived in Glasgow, see if you can find how often they looked at her and how close they went to the Cross. Don’t mention this,’ he cautioned. ‘And here, ask them if they’d ever seen this before.’ He held out the coil of cord Maistre Pierre had removed from about the de
ad woman’s neck.
‘Of course,’ agreed Lowrie. Gathering up the rope he set it in a bundle on the stone bench which ran round the wall, took the cord from Gil and made for the inner courtyard. Gil turned back into the chapel, to find Meggot already working at the ties of the sacking gown, her mouth set in a determined line, while Dame Ellen was still trying to argue the point with Maistre Pierre. Joining the maidservant by the bier, he said quietly,
‘This lassie has no ash on her brow.’
‘No,’ she said shortly.
‘Is all this as you last saw it?’
She paused to look at him, her eyes glittering in the candlelight.
‘I canny mind how I left it. All I can think on’s how Annie begged us no to leave her there, to take her home and let her dee. What’s come to her, maister?’
‘You were fond of her,’ he said. She nodded, and went back to her task.
The garment she was working on was cut loosely, designed to fit almost any size of supplicant and to be easily put on by his or her attendants; it was secured down the back by linen tapes, which were now in tight knots.
‘Take a knife to them,’ Gil suggested.
‘Aye, you’re right, maister,’ she said, and paused to loosen the strings of the purse at her belt. ‘This isny how I left these, you’re right there and all. I fastened it all neat and secure, but so’s I—’ She clapped the back of her hand across her mouth, tears starting to her eyes again. ‘So as I could easy take it off her this morning,’ she finished.
Gil drew his own dagger and sawed through the first of the tapes. By the time he had dealt with all five of the knots Meggot had recovered a little and Dame Ellen had abandoned her argument.
‘What are you doing there?’ she demanded, hurrying over. ‘Have you any idea what the hire of that gown cost my brother? We’ll ha to return it to St Mungo’s in good order! That will come out your wages, my girl. Maister, I beg you no to encourage her!’
‘St Mungo’s should ha took better care o my mistress, then,’ retorted Meggot, and turned back the two sides of the gown to reveal the shift beneath it. She drew a sharp breath. ‘Oh, that settles it, it’s never Annie! This is none of our linen, I’d think black shame o mysel to send my mistress anywhere in a clout like yon. It’s not fit for a floor-cloth!’
