The Fourth Crow

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘It was the candlestick,’ said Alys, ‘so my husband told me. But I think you had spoken with Dame Ellen, not two hours before?’

  ‘I had that! Poor soul, and if she’d kent her end was that near, she’d ha dealt more civilly wi me, I’ve no doubt. Calling me for a’ things, she was, and accusing me o leeing, threatened to get her men to pit me out the place,’ recalled Mistress Templand, indignation rising. ‘And me doing naught but tell her o what my man heard, when her household’s still asking all about for news o that lassie that was throttled at St Mungo’s Cross.’

  ‘And what was it you heard?’ Alys asked, turning to the man of the house. ‘I think it might be helpful.’

  ‘That night the lassie was at the Cross, Will,’ his wife prompted. ‘You mind, you tellt me, you looked out and there was a hoor out there arguing wi a crowd o men.’

  ‘It wasny a crowd o men, woman,’ said Johnson. ‘It was two men. See, she was setting the morn’s meal to soak for the porridge, and rattling crocks, and the like,’ he said to Alys, ‘and I was the other end o the house and about to bar the shutters and the door, and I heard voices out in the street.’ Alys nodded. ‘So I keeked out, and it was a lassie, I’ve seen her about often enough, one o the lassies from the Trindle up the road a bit.’ His wife sniffed eloquently, but did not interrupt. ‘She was cammellin away at two fellows in fine clothes, threapin that they awed her for something they’d gied her, which doesny make sense,’ he added as if he had just thought of it, ‘surely she awed them if they gied her something? Any road, it was working up to a right stushie, yir two fellows were threatening her to keep her voice down and leave them alane, but then one of them seen me keeking out, and they went off down the road, and her after them. Last I heard she was still crying out that they awed her, and threatening to take it further.’

  ‘You must ha misheard,’ said his wife. ‘She’d gied them something, maybe, and that’s how it was them awed her for it.’

  ‘No, I never. You gied me it, she was saying, there was never a sign afore you—’ His eyes slid sideways to his wife. ‘Afore he rummelt her,’ he mouthed. His wife gave another eloquent sniff, but did not comment.

  ‘What were the men like, that she argued with?’ Alys asked. ‘Did you see them?’

  ‘No that well,’ admitted Johnson regretfully. ‘Two well-set fellows, young enough, maybe past twenty. Fine clothes the both o them, velvet gowns,’ he stuck out his elbows to show a short gown with its flaring body, ‘fancy braid on their doublets, great felt bonnets. One o them had a feather in his.’

  ‘You never saw their faces?’

  ‘No clear. It was near dark, it was just the moon and the lantern on the corner o Tammas Tamson’s weaving-shed showed me that much.’ He paused to consider. ‘Neither o them had a beard, nor long hair.’

  Alys thought about this for a moment, stroking the young dog’s soft ears.

  ‘What time was it, do you suppose?’ she asked.

  ‘Time we should ha been in our bed. An hour afore midnight, two hour?’

  Extracting herself and Jennet with difficulty from the house, Alys paused on the street to consider her next move. Jennet, thawing slightly, watched her but said nothing.

  ‘The cadger’s wife,’ Alys said aloud. ‘She dwells at the back of a horner’s shop.’

  ‘They’s one there,’ said Jennet. ‘And another yonder, and two more there.’

  She began by asking at the one nearest the port. Her second enquiry was more fruitful, and the workshop itself far less unsavoury. The trade clearly necessitated working with the cut horns of animals, which must be soaked and cleaned, but the stinking barrels they were soaked in did not have to be kept by the shop door, she felt. This man’s green stock seemed to be stowed somewhere out of sight. She hoped it was also out of reach of his two small sons, who were squabbling over a hobbyhorse outside.

  ‘Mistress Forrest?’ said their father, a short stout man in a red doublet. ‘Oh, aye. Dwells down the back yonder,’ he jerked his head. ‘The path’s at the side o the shop. I canny interest you in a new comb, mistress? Or you, lassie, for that bonnie brown hair?’

  Alys had already cast her eye over the items arranged neatly on the shelves behind the man’s workbench. Beakers, spoons, combs, a stack of bowls, a broad platter, gleamed in the light from the door. A pot of water steamed on a brazier beside the bench, and a clutter of mysterious tools, knives and chisels, pincers and clamps, lay to hand.

  ‘See, I’ve all sizes,’ continued the horner. ‘Carved wi flowers, plain as you like, long teeth or short. Best combs in Glasgow, mistress, I’ll warrant you.’ He lifted half-a-dozen and spread them out on a cloth with a deft movement. ‘See, here’s a bonny one. ’At’s a good size, so it is, there’s as many ladies buys that size. In fact Mistress Forrest that you’re asking for, she bought one of them off me, no two days since, seeing she’d lost her old one. Or so she said.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Alys turned the pretty thing over, admiring the stripes of black and tawny colour. ‘One like this, was it? She has good taste.’

  ‘Aye, just like it, wi the wee flowers, save the raying wasny as dark. Her man buys them off me and all, to take out on his wee cairt.’ He glanced at the window. ‘I’ve no seen her the day, she’s likely in the house, if you wanted to ask her how she’s found her comb.’

  Half an hour later, having bargained successfully for a dozen bowls, a set of beakers, and the flowered comb, and arranged for them to be sent home, Alys and a less sullen Jennet picked their way down the side of the horner’s little workshop.

  ‘The second door, he said it was, mem,’ Jennet said, pausing before a sturdy, well-maintained cottage, its timber framed walls whitewashed, a tub of herbs on either side of the doorsill. Movement within suggested kitchen work, clinking crocks, chopping sounds. ‘Is it this one?’

  ‘I’d think so.’ Alys paused, collected her mind and rattled at the tirling-pin.

  The sounds within stopped abruptly. After a moment the door was opened, wide enough for a face to peer out. A plump, mature face, wary and apprehensive, surrounded by a decent kerchief of sparkling white linen.

  ‘Mistress Forrest?’ Alys asked.

  ‘Aye.’

  Alys waited, but there was nothing more.

  ‘I think you’ve not been out to the market the day. May I come in?’ she said.

  ‘It’s no right convenient.’ Mistress Forrest glanced over her shoulder, into the house, and looked back at Alys. ‘I’m in the midst o making, making, apple cheese.’

  ‘In August?’ said Alys involuntarily. ‘I’d like some of those apples. I think you should let me in, for I’ve a word for Annie Gibb, mistress, but I can deliver it here on your threshold if you prefer.’

  ‘Who would that be?’ countered the woman. Alys, aware of Jennet staring at her, said patiently,

  ‘I think Mistress Gibb needs to know that Dame Ellen Shaw is dead.’

  Mistress Forrest began to answer, shaking her head, but behind her another voice said sharply,

  ‘Dame Ellen dead? Eppie, let her in!’

  ‘Let me go first!’ said Jennet urgently. ‘You be careful, mem, she’s maybe—’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Alys, stepping forward as Mistress Forrest reluctantly drew the door wider. ‘She’s as sane as you or me. She never was mad, were you, Annie?’

  The house was small, its roof composed of one bay of rafters, but it was neat and well stocked. Its floor, of that strange mixture of ash, clay, straw and gravel, rammed down, oiled and burnished with a flat stone, which was common in the better cottages, was clean and well swept. At one end a ladder led up to a loft, where a mattress was airing, and two sturdy kists suggested enough possessions to fill them. At ground level two good wooden chairs and a pair of stools were enough to seat four women round the open hearth; a folding table against the wall, two more kists, a stack of bags and smaller boxes which must be the cadger’s stock-in-trade, furnished the place well, and a quantity of cushions an
d hangings stitched from well-worn verdure tapestry made it easeful and suggested that Mistress Forrest was a good needlewoman.

  ‘Dame Ellen dead,’ said the girl who sat opposite Alys, for the fifth or sixth time. ‘I still canny take it in.’

  ‘And I hope she has her reward for the way she’s dealt wi you, my lamb,’ said Mistress Forrest. She was a comfortable woman in her forties, neatly and decently dressed in good tawny wool; her apron was as white as her headdress. She had clearly been working on the dinner, for a wooden board with a knife and carrots for chopping had been set aside, but there were no apples visible. Beside her, Annie Gibb was young and slender and bundled in what must be her host’s second best kirtle, from the way it was belted in folds about her waist and exposed ankles swathed in clean but faded cloth hose. Her feet were thrust into an elderly pair of wooden-soled shoes. Her hair was fair, and cut short and curling round her head; it seemed as if her vow was set aside.

  ‘But how did you find me?’ she asked now. ‘I’d ha heard the word of the death soon or late, when Eppie went out to the street or when Geordie Horner came by to tell her the news, but here you are on the doorstep to tell me it.’

  ‘You know the whole of Glasgow is seeking you?’ Alys said carefully.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Mistress Forrest. ‘I seen the men out beating the Stablegreen, keeking under bushes, and the Provost’s men asking at all the houses. But nobody kent my lammie was here, and I never said a thing, and let Geordie and his wife think I’d some woman’s trouble on me and couldny talk at the door, so they’ve never found her. And yet here’s you, lassie, come straight to my door as Annie says.’

  ‘My mistress kens a’ things,’ said Jennet proudly.

  ‘Annie’s good-sisters mentioned the cadger, more than once,’ Alys said. ‘I wondered if he had carried some message for you. Then I learned that he was a Glasgow man, and had a wife. I thought it was worth looking here, seeing nobody else had tried it. Were you Annie’s nurse, mistress?’

  ‘I was that,’ said Mistress Forrest fondly, ‘and her mammy’s before her. Who else would she turn to? We set it all together, her and Billy and me, so soon as the scheme of St Mungo’s Cross was mentioned. And that foreign fellow that helped and all.’

  ‘But how did you get free of the Cross?’ asked Jennet, and looked from her mistress to Annie. ‘I just wondered,’ she added. ‘Was it St Mungo himsel freed you, mistress?’

  ‘No,’ said Annie regretfully. ‘Though I— No.’

  ‘I thought it couldny be,’ said Jennet, equally regretful.

  ‘It was Doctor Januar, wasn’t it?’ said Alys.

  Annie stared at her, her colour rising, and crossed herself.

  ‘Who are you? You ken too much by far!’ she said in alarm.

  ‘I told you, my man is Blacader’s quaestor, charged with finding you and with determining who has killed Dame Ellen,’ Alys reminded her. ‘I have spoken with your family, and with the doctor. He is clever, very clever, but he could not disguise that he was not concerned for you.’

  ‘He is concerned for her,’ objected Mistress Forrest. ‘You should ha seen him when he brought her here, wrapped up in his gown, stinking dirty though she was. Keep her safe, he said to me, as though I’d do anything else, my pet.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alys, eyeing the girl opposite her. ‘Perhaps I should have said, not worried about you. He knew you were safe.’

  Annie looked down, then up again, and suddenly smiled.

  ‘How is he? And how,’ her expression changed again, ‘how is my good-father? Is he yet living?’

  ‘The last I heard,’ Alys said gently, ‘he was still living, but very near the end, and Doctor Januar was attending him closely.’

  Annie bent her head, dabbing at her eyes.

  ‘I forgot,’ she admitted. ‘It was so good to be out of that, to be clean again, to be free of— I forgot how near death he was. He’s been a good father to me, as loving as my own daddy. We said our farewells when we reached Glasgow, afore I went out to St Mungo’s, I knew I might no see him again, but it’s still—’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Alys. ‘Tell me from the beginning. Was it your idea entirely, or Sir Edward’s?’

  ‘Oh, no, it was Christie’s,’ said Annie proudly. ‘Chrysostom’s. He saw how I was imprisoned, when he cam to Glenbuck, and planned it all, wi my good-father’s aid, and sent his own man to Glasgow in secret to help. Our daddy was the only one could deal wi Dame Ellen, and he was right glad to see a way out for me. My sisters are betrothed already, they’ll be safe enough when he’s away, but neither him nor me could see how to get me out o her power, and he’d aye promised me he would see me safe.’ She paused, and looked sideways at Alys. ‘I’ve wondered often if he kent more about her than he’s ever said, he was that determined I should have some protection afore he went.’

  ‘You’ve no idea what?’ Alys asked, curious. Annie shook her head.

  ‘None. Any road, she’s had one man or another ready for me every month since Arthur dee’d, it was clear enough she’d have me carried off by the latest in her favour afore Sir Edward was buried, and I may tell you, Alys did you say your name was? I’d not wed a man she recommended if he was the last in Scotland.’

  ‘I can well imagine,’ said Alys.

  ‘Vicious, all of them,’ said Annie, her face twisting. ‘There are decent men in Ayrshire, there must be, but she—’ She broke off, and Mistress Forrest patted her hand.

  ‘There now, my lamb, you’re safe now. She’s gone where she’ll not hurt you.’

  ‘Aye, and how did that happen? What slew her?’ Annie asked, as if it had only now occurred to her. ‘Was it an apoplexy struck her down in one of her rages, or what?’

  ‘Not an apoplexy,’ said Alys. Somehow it was difficult to find the words, to form the sentence. ‘She was— She has been—’

  ‘She was murdered,’ supplied Jennet, with no such qualms. Mistress Forrest sat back, exclaiming and flinging up her hands. ‘Struck down wi a candlestock in the chapel at St Catherine’s. My mistress was out all last night comforting your good-sisters, mem, and the whole town’s in disarray wi the crime. Sacrilege on the Stablegreen!’ she pronounced with enthusiasm.

  ‘Murdered?’ repeated Annie in dismay. ‘And in the chapel? But who? Not Christie, surely! Tell me it wasny him!’

  ‘He has hardly left your good-father’s side,’ Alys pointed out, ‘and the servant bears this out, so my husband says.’

  ‘But what happened?’

  Alys recounted what they knew of Dame Ellen’s last hours. Annie listened, frowning, and crossed herself at the end.

  ‘Our Lord hasten her days in Purgatory,’ she said. ‘It sounds as though it wasny any of the household that slew her, and that’s a blessing. To think of anyone I knew doing sic a thing, well, it would right scunner you.’

  ‘So who might it have been?’ Alys asked, over Jennet’s murmur of agreement. ‘Can you think who there might be in Glasgow who would deal with her so violently? I got no help from your sisters,’ she added, ‘and I think my husband learned little from the men.’

  ‘Small wonder that!’ said Annie, smiling wryly. ‘They’re dear lassies, but Mariota got the wisdom for all three o them. No, I couldny say,’ she added, ‘save she might ha summoned one or another o her freens to her, maybe started in to lecture him, and angered him beyond measure.’

  Alys considered this, frowning. It seemed to link to something Gil had said, something— Mistress Forrest leaned forward with an exclamation, and drew a yellow-glazed pot away from the fire.

  ‘I’m that caught up in what you’re saying, lassie, I’m no watching this buttered ale. I’d say it was about ready. Will you take a mouthful?’

  By the time Jennet had assisted in serving out beakers of the foaming, spicy stuff, the connection had vanished into the recesses of Alys’ thoughts. Abandoning it for the moment, she raised her beaker and said,

  ‘Good fortune to you, Annie, and good health.’


  ‘Good fortune to you, Alys,’ the other girl returned conventionally, ‘and your heart’s desire along wi it.’

  Alys caught her breath a moment. Even in the midst of pursuing Gil’s duties, there it was, taunting her. Her heart’s desire—

  ‘Tell me,’ she said resolutely, ‘tell me what happened that night. They bound you to the Cross, and left your men to keep an eye on you from St Thomas’s chapel. What happened then?’

  ‘Were you no feart?’ asked Jennet curiously. ‘I’d ha been mad wi fright, all on my lone like that, and tied up and all.’

  ‘I was,’ Annie said. ‘It was no so bad while the laddies were at their play, out beyond the kirkyard gates, but once they went home it was awful quiet. And then there was noises in the trees, and an owl.’ She shivered. ‘I near dee’d of the fright when the owl screeched. But I said a prayer to St Mungo,’ she went on resolutely, ‘and then Christie came out from the almshouse, like we’d planned, and came to the Cross. Only, when he came to me, he had,’ she swallowed, ‘he had a dead woman wi him.’

  ‘A dead woman?’ repeated Mistress Forrest. ‘You never tellt me that, my lammie!’ She looked from her nurseling to Alys, and back. ‘Is that how that poor soul came to be there? And the Provost calling a quest on her and everything!’

  ‘Poor soul indeed,’ said Annie. ‘He’d found her lying in the roadway, stark dead. I asked him why he’d carried her there, and he, he, he suggested that we bind her to the Cross in my stead, so my men would think it was me.’

  ‘Could you no ha trusted them, mistress?’ asked Jennet. ‘Seemed to me they was all gey fond of you, Meggot and the fellows too by what she said.’

  ‘Ellen. That was why. If they knew nothing,’ Annie said, ‘Dame Ellen could get nothing out of them. She’d ha beaten the lights out of them if she suspected they knew where I’d gone.’

  ‘So you cut the dead woman’s gown off,’ said Alys, ‘and threw it in the burn, and bound her to the Cross.’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘Christie had his wee shears on him, and his knife, and the two o us—’ She grimaced. ‘Poor lassie. I canny forget the way she rolled about as we worked.’