The Fourth Crow

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Oh, aye.’ The man swallowed. ‘Naeb’dy’s head’s that shape that isny dead.’

  This was certainly the case, Gil reflected, studying the body of Dame Ellen by the light of two great racks of candles. He was glad Alys had remained in the courtyard, where the woman Bessie was still sobbing under her apron.

  ‘What has she been struck wi?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘Our good candlestick,’ said Sir Simon glumly. ‘It’s all ower blood and brains, see.’ He indicated the object, its pewter gleam sullied and blackened by what stuck to it. ‘He’s likely all ower blood himsel, the way it’s spattered, whoever’s done it. What a task we have ahead o us, getting this back the way it should be, let alone what Robert Blacader will have to say about it. As for when he’s next in Glasgow, to reconsecrate—’ He sat down again, rather heavily, on the wall-bench where Gil had found him. ‘I keep thinking o other things to be done. The Blessed Sacrament to be destroyed by fire— Who’d do sic a deed in the presence o the Host, can you credit it? The vestments and hangings to be cleaned and reconsecrate. What will Blacader say?’

  ‘This is worse than what came to Peg Simpson,’ said Gil. ‘Let alone the sacrilege. And that’s far worse than what happened wi Barnabas.’ He looked round as Lowrie came pallidly back into the little building, keeping his eyes averted from the body. ‘Where are they all? The family, the servants?’

  ‘Lockhart has them penned up in the dining hall,’ said Lowrie, ‘since they could hardly use the men’s hall. The doctor says Sir Edward canny be told of this, he’s no more than hours from his end.’

  ‘I suppose we’re certain it’s Ellen Shaw,’ Gil said. ‘Most o her face is, well—’

  ‘Past knowing,’ agreed Sir Simon. ‘We had the woman Meggot to her, she agreed it was Dame Ellen, by the teeth and the clothes, and said she kent the hands.’

  ‘The teeth I’ll accept,’ said Gil, looking at the corpse. ‘Did she cry out? Is that how you came to find her?’

  The dead woman lay sprawled, one arm flung up and back as if she had tried to protect herself. There were injuries to both hands, and her sleeves and one shoulder of her gown were torn. Blood, black in the candlelight, soaked the crumpled white linen of her headdress; there had clearly been a fight, which had ended in the shattering blow to her forehead that had split the skull, fragmented the eye socket, laid open the cheekbone. Broken teeth, or perhaps splinters of bone, gleamed palely within the wound in the flickering light, but the crossed front teeth by which Meggot had identified her were also visible, because her mouth was wide open, as if she had died in the moment of screaming at her attacker. Ne is no quene so stark ne stour, he found himself thinking, that deth ne shal by glyde. It had certainly not glided by this woman.

  ‘It was Bessie found her,’ Sir Simon said. ‘You’ll want to get a word wi her yourself, I couldny make sense o her, she was that owerset. I can tell you I never heard a thing mysel, nor had any notion there was anyone in here. I suppose she could ha crossed the yard while I was at my dinner, or – no, for I’d my dinner wi the whole o them in the dining hall, and she was there right enough.’

  ‘That was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘It was. They were all in the hall when I left, save for Sir Edward and his man, a course, and I went to deal wi some papers, sort the accounts,’ he grimaced, ‘which should ha been wi St Mungo’s at the quarter, and I canny get completed for lack of a docket from Alan Jamieson—’

  ‘So she could ha come across here while you were at that,’ Gil said. He hunkered down by the corpse and felt the outspread limbs, judging temperature, testing flexibility. ‘She’s no long gone, I’d say. What time was your dinner?’

  ‘After Vespers,’ said Sir Simon promptly. ‘Maybe seven o’ the clock. It would be eight when I cam away, likely.’

  ‘Two hours since.’ Gil touched the neck and jaw cautiously. ‘She’s been dead no more than an hour or so, I’d say, she’s barely beginning to set. I wonder where she was in between.’

  ‘Likely in here, arguing wi her murderer,’ suggested Lowrie, who was casting about the rest of the small space, his back resolutely to the corpse, a tilted candle in his hand dripping wax on the tiles. Gil suddenly thought of his father-in-law doing the same thing over Barnabas’ body the previous evening. He lifted a fold of the blood-soaked headdress, and said,

  ‘Has anyone sent to tell the Muirs? I think they’re kin, they should hear of this.’

  ‘And Canon Muir,’ said Sir Simon in dismay. ‘He should hear o’t, it’s his right as patron o the hostel, but he’ll want to owersee all—’

  ‘You have to let him know,’ said Gil, sharing the older man’s consternation. ‘And Will Craigie? He’s some kind of kin to her,’ he elucidated.

  ‘Is he now,’ said Sir Simon, distracted. ‘I’d begun to think it. He’s been here a time or two wi her, and her ordering him about like a lapdog. I heard them arguing out there in the yard this morning, you’d ha thought they were man and wife the way they were abusing one another.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Gil carefully did not look at the priest. ‘What was that about, then?’

  ‘Oh, I couldny say, my son.’ Gil waited, studying the injuries to the corpse’s hands. ‘Well, it seemed something had gone wrong, that he expected her to ha sorted for him and it hadny gone according to plan, or the like.’

  ‘What kind of plan? Money? Land, a position?’

  ‘I never caught that,’ said Sir Simon regretfully. ‘Just by what was said he hadny kept his side o the bargain either, whatever it was. If you’d done what you promised, she said to him, more than once.’

  ‘What did he answer to that?’

  ‘He kept saying, It’s no that easy, it takes time. Never said what, though. Oh, and, What purpose it now, any road? he said. To which she said, Never concern yoursel, she’ll turn up, like bad money.’

  ‘Something concerning Annie Gibb, then?’ said Gil.

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a reason to kill her,’ said Lowrie doubtfully.

  ‘So has he been sent for?’ Gil asked. ‘Or at least let know his kinswoman’s dead.’

  ‘I’ll send Attie round.’ Sir Simon glanced at the small dark windows of the chapel. ‘Will it no do the morn’s morn? It’s ower late to disturb the man wi bad news. Though I suppose the Canon needs to hear, he can get the two o them wi the one lantern.’

  ‘No, I think he should go now. And the Muirs? They’re likely out drinking again, they’d never survive an evening of Canon Muir’s company, someone had best hunt them down and tell them. One of the Shaw servants can go once I’ve spoken to them. We should let the Provost hear and all.’ Gil stood up, hitching at the knees of his hose. ‘He’ll not be pleased, another quest.’

  ‘No after the day’s,’ Sir Simon agreed, grinning sourly. ‘I heard about that. Mind, he got his verdict in the end.’

  ‘He did.’ Gil looked round for Lowrie. ‘Is Alys still in the yard?’

  ‘She’s gone into the hall, to the lassies. She bade me tell you, she questioned Bessie.’

  Chapter Eleven

  In the dining hall, at one of the long fixed tables, Alys and Meggot were attempting to bring Dame Ellen’s nieces to a more balanced state of mind. One of the girls was hiccuping again, the other was simply weeping helplessly. Alys looked round as Gil entered the hall, caught his eye and shook her head. He had to agree; there was no point in speaking to either sister just now, and Meggot was as busy as Alys.

  At the other table, Lockhart had a row of four shocked menservants lined up and had clearly been questioning them; he was now casting an eye over their livery, presumably looking for bloodstains.

  ‘There you are, Cunningham,’ he said as Gil sat down beside him. ‘These lads were all in the hall here thegither, and then went out-by to the stables. They each speak for all.’

  ‘You’d swear to that?’ Gil asked, and they nodded raggedly. ‘Did any of you see Dame Ellen go to the chapel after her dinner? Or anyone else?’

/>   The consensus seemed to be that none of them had.

  ‘Was any of you sent out to fetch someone to meet her? Did she send any messages at all this evening?’

  Again, there was agreement: Dame Ellen had summoned nobody that the men knew of.

  ‘What time did she leave the hall?’

  The four servants looked blank. Lockhart offered,

  ‘An hour or so after we sat down to dine? Maybe a bit more? Sir Simon excused himself to his duties when the meal was done, and she warned the lassies to bide here in company along wi Meggot, to save candles, and went out hersel, I thought she said she would visit her brother, see how he was, though the women say she spoke of going to the chapel . . .’ His voice tailed off. Gil nodded.

  ‘So none of you kens when she entered the chapel?’

  The four looked at one another in the candlelight.

  ‘No, maister,’ said Sawney. ‘But there’s a thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Gil asked.

  ‘This afternoon, maister. Well, evening, it was, we was waiting out yonder in the yard, till they called us in to our dinner. This woman comes in off the street, saying she kent something about my mistress, about Annie Gibb that is. She wouldny tell it to us, said it was for our maister’s ears, so I set off to fetch Maister Lockhart here, and met Dame Ellen in the other yard, and she would know where I was off to, and said she’d speak wi the woman hersel. She took her into the chapel, to be privy, see, so we never heard what the woman had to say, and she never tellt us what it was neither. Did she tell you, maister?’

  ‘She did not. First I’ve heard of this,’ said Lockhart, reddening in annoyance. ‘Christ’s nails, she was a steering woman!’

  ‘You heard nothing from outside the chapel?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Is that no what I’m saying? Only,’ persisted Sawney, ‘the mistress, she cam away right annoyed and saying something about Never a penny you’ll get for sic lees as this, and the woman sweering at her all across the yard, so I wondered maybe if it was her cam back and slew her acos she never gied her her reward.’

  ‘Was there a reward promised?’ Gil asked, disentangling this.

  ‘Aye,’ said Lockhart. ‘No a great one, just for information concerning Annie.’

  ‘What like was the woman?’ Lowrie asked from Gil’s side. Sawney looked at him, and shrugged.

  ‘Just ordinar.’

  ‘She’d a red kirtle,’ said the man next to him.

  ‘It was green,’ said the one at his other side.

  ‘An apron?’ Lowrie asked. ‘How big was she? Was she carrying anything?’

  Some argument established that the woman had been middling sized, heavily built, wearing an apron and a good headdress and a red, blue, or possibly green kirtle with short sleeves, and had worn no plaid.

  ‘So she hadny come far,’ Sawney explained. ‘I took it she was come in from the street hereabouts.’

  Gil raised an eyebrow at Lowrie, who nodded.

  ‘It could be the woman I spoke to,’ he agreed. ‘Agnes Templand, the name is.’

  ‘Will I go round wi a couple of the lads to take her up?’ Lockhart suggested, pushing back his stool. ‘Fetch her to the Castle, see what the Provost makes of her?’

  ‘No,’ said Gil, ‘but Lowrie could take your lads if you will and speak to her, see if her apron has blood on it. I’d say whoever killed Dame Ellen would be foul wi blood, and brains and all.’

  ‘She could change it,’ objected Sawney.

  ‘If she’s changed it,’ said Lowrie, ‘then we’ll ask to see the other. Come on, man, you’ll do, and you – Rab, is it?’

  ‘A moment,’ said Gil. ‘Sawney, tell me something. The night your mistress Annie was at the Cross.’ The man ducked his head, grimacing as if the words had stabbed him. ‘When you spoke to her, after the prentices had finished their battle and gone home. Was that before or after midnight?’

  ‘After midnight?’ Sawney stared, visibly trying to recall. ‘Aye, I’d say so. I canny mind right, maister, but I’d say aye, it would ha been after midnight. By where the moon was,’ he reflected, ‘it must ha been. Aye, aye, maister, after midnight it was.’ He nodded, touched his knitted bonnet, and hurried after Lowrie.

  ‘And your other two men,’ said Gil to Lockhart, wondering how reliable this might be, ‘if you’ll permit it, could go out and find the Muir brothers, let them hear Dame Ellen’s dead. Sir Simon has sent to their uncle, as patron, but the brothers are likely out in the town.’

  ‘I should ha thought o that,’ said Lockhart, reddening again. ‘Tell truth, Cunningham, I’m right owerset by this. Steering auld witch she might ha been, but I’d thought she’d go on for ever. Certainly never thought o her meeting her end like this, deserved or no.’ He jerked his head at the two remaining men, who nodded and slipped away after Lowrie and their fellows. Lockhart watched them go, then said gloomily, ‘So what’s happened, man? What did come to her? I saw her where she lay,’ he grimaced, ‘wi her brains all ower the tiles, they’ll ha to cleanse that chapel all ways, let alone the sacrilege, and it seemed to me like a madman’s work.’ His gaze slid sideways to Gil. ‘Is there any chance. Is it likely?’ He swallowed. ‘Could it ha been Annie?’ he finished in a rush. ‘Slipped back into the place and taen her revenge on the old—’ He stopped. Gil waited for a moment, then said,

  ‘Revenge?’

  ‘Aye, revenge. For years of—’ He stopped again, and shook his head. ‘Maybe no.’

  ‘Years of what?’

  ‘No. Forget it. I never meant—’

  After another pause Gil said,

  ‘Did Dame Ellen spend much time in the chapel?’

  Lockhart shrugged.

  ‘I’d not have said so, I thought she was more ower at St Mungo’s. She’d a right devotion to Our Lady in the Lower Kirk, but there’s St Catherine in the Upper Kirk and all. You could ask at the lassies, they might tell you.’ He glanced across the hall to where Alys was talking soothingly to Dame Ellen’s nieces, aided now by Sir Simon. Nicholas still had the hiccups. ‘If you can get a word o sense out them. My wife got the wits for all three o them, I can tell ye, maister. She’d not be owerset by a wee thing like this.’

  ‘They’re very young,’ said Gil, as he had said to Dame Ellen.

  ‘They’re old enough to be wed,’ retorted Lockhart, much as she had done.

  ‘So how did Dame Ellen deal wi Annie?’

  ‘Ach.’ The man hesitated. ‘Wi a firm hand. Aye you could say that, a firm hand.’

  ‘Too firm?’ Prompting the witness, thought Gil.

  ‘Away too firm, I’d ha thought. Ruled her like they two heedless lassies, wi commands and duties and Get to your needlework when I order it. She was a— She was a steering woman, Cunningham. You ken two o her husbands hanged theirsels?’

  ‘What? Two?’ repeated Gil incredulously.

  ‘Aye. The third one, her last, dee’d o his own accord, his heart they said, afore she could drive him to it. Small wonder she’s been left on Sir Edward’s hands these six or seven year. Annie’s a good lass, save for this daft vow she took, and I’ve aye wondered if that was as much to get her out from under the auld wife’s rule as to mourn her man.’

  William Craigie, predictably, was the first of those summoned to arrive at the hostel. He came hurrying in, a great cloak over his plaid despite the mildness of the night, a lantern bobbing in his hand, staring nervously about the darkling courtyard as if he expected Dame Ellen’s corpse to appear before him.

  ‘What’s this, Gil?’ he demanded. ‘What’s afoot? A fellow came to tell me, there’s been another death. Is that right? Is it my— Is it Dame Ellen right enough? What’s come to her? Some accident, surely, she was well enough this morning!’

  ‘Aye, Dame Ellen,’ said Gil baldly. ‘D’you want to see her? She’s in the chapel.’

  ‘What, is she laid out and received already?’ Craigie turned to follow him.

  ‘No, she died there.’ Gil paused, hand on the chapel door, to
study the other man’s reaction. ‘By violence,’ he added.

  ‘By violence? In the chapel?’ repeated Craigie. He raised his lantern to see Gil’s face; by its light his own expression was one of horror and deep dismay. A churchman’s reaction. Was it too deep, Gil wondered; was his response genuine, or assumed? ‘Who would do sic a thing? That’s terrible! Here, it wasny the same as at St Mungo’s? Has someone copied— Was she throttled like Barnabas?’

  ‘No. Her death has been very different,’ Gil said, pushing the chapel door open. Sir Simon, seated on the wall-bench again with his beads in his hand, looked up briefly and returned to his prayers. Craigie stepped in, halted as he took in the scene before him, and turned his face away, one hand over his mouth.

  ‘Christ aid the poor woman,’ he said, ‘what an end. Here, Gil, she wasny forced as well, was she?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Gil. ‘There’s no sign of it, certainly. Just had her head beaten in wi Sir Simon’s candlestick.’

  ‘No mine,’ said Sir Simon without raising his head. ‘It’s St Catherine’s.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Craigie indistinctly, then hurried out of the chapel. Gil followed, and found him in the yard, heaving drily, his lantern swinging by his knee. ‘You’ll forgive me,’ he managed after a moment, ‘I canny stay in there. The smell—’

  ‘Rich,’ Gil agreed. Craigie breathed deeply a couple of times, then straightened up with a slight laugh of embarrassment.

  ‘Never could abide the smell o blood. I couldny ha made a flesher.’

  ‘Fortunate you went for Holy Kirk instead.’ Gil considered the other man. ‘What way was Dame Ellen kin to you? Are you also kin to her nieces? To the missing woman?’

  ‘No to the lassies,’ said Craigie, shaking his head, ‘and certainly I’m no kin o Annie Gibb’s. As for – for the depairtit, she’s no true kin o mine, but a connection by way o two or three marriages. It suited her to call me kin, but, well—’

  ‘Had you any benefit from the claim?’ Gil asked casually. ‘A busy, devout woman like Dame Ellen could be some assistance to a man in Holy Orders, I’d ha thought.’