The Fourth Crow

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘He might make better sense if he was confessed again.’ Gil disengaged himself and straightened up, looking down at the rocking prisoner. ‘Take him away. I’ll speak to my lord about a priest for him.’

  Henry Muir was even less helpful. Rather more resilient than his brother, he was resentful rather than tearful, but it seemed to Gil he was frightened too. As well he might be; he faced death or imprisonment for his part in two killings, and a heavy penance from the church. He was disinclined to answer questions, nevertheless, even those relating to his signed confession.

  ‘I can see you were protecting your brother,’ Gil said at length, ‘and he was protecting you. But you could help me now, at no cost to yoursel, and maybe do yoursel some good as well.’

  Henry gave him a sour look, and shrugged one shoulder so that his chains clattered.

  ‘Will I get the pilliwinks heated?’ suggested Andro hopefully. ‘Or the boot, maybe?’

  ‘What’s this about taking letters across Ayrshire for Dame Ellen?’ Gil asked, ignoring this. ‘D’you ken what she wrote in them?’

  ‘No.’

  Well, that was an answer of sorts.

  ‘When did she ask you to kill Annie Gibb?’

  Another sour look, but no answer.

  ‘Put him back,’ said Gil in resignation. ‘The Provost can deal wi him later.’

  In the outer courtyard of the castle, matters were being set up for the quest on Dame Ellen Shaw and Barnabas the verger. A table had been carried out to the foot of the steps from the main hall, and Otterburn’s great chair set behind it, with a stool for Walter the clerk at one end. Walter himself was already standing by, clasping the worn red velvet Gospel book and directing matters crisply while the wind snatched at his long gown. The area for the members of the assize had been roped off. People were gathering, standing by in gossiping knots; Maistre Pierre was in discussion with Andrew Hamilton the joiner, other neighbours were present. The two central actors in the proceedings lay on trestles under a wildly flapping striped awning, and to Gil’s surprise he saw Alys there, with the boy Berthold at her side.

  As he looked, Alys raised the linen cloth from the battered countenance of Dame Ellen. Washed clean of blood the woman’s face was, he knew, a less fearsome sight than it had been by candlelight in the chapel where she died, but both of them flinched from the sight. Alys gathered her resolve and looked again, and spoke coaxingly to the boy. After a moment, perhaps not to be outdone by a young woman, he also looked, visibly forcing himself to gaze steadily at the ravaged countenance. Then he glanced at Alys, apparently surprised, and said something, with complicated gestures.

  Elbowing his way through the crowd, Gil reached them just as Alys laid the linen sheet down, pulling it straight, tucking the edges under so that the wind would not catch it. The boy ducked away from him, but she looked up with a troubled expression.

  ‘Berthold has just said he has seen Dame Ellen, arguing with someone,’ she said. ‘Tell Maister Gil, Berthold.’

  Berthold swallowed, opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, and shook his head helplessly.

  ‘Meister Peter?’ he said, craning to look about him. ‘Lucas? Ich kann nicht—’

  Alys patted his arm in reassurance.

  ‘Try, Berthold. Try to say it in Scots.’

  ‘Come over here.’ Gil drew them both away from the two bodies, into a relatively quiet corner.

  With encouragement, Berthold succeeded in explaining that he had indeed seen the woman before. He was certain it was her; he tapped his own front teeth, and gestured at the corpse under its flapping shelter.

  ‘When did you see her?’ Gil asked, thinking hard. The boy had been kept at home since the same day that Peg had been found at the Cross; it must have been the day before, the day the Glenbuck party had arrived in Glasgow.

  ‘After,’ said Berthold, and mimed eating something in his hand. ‘After food.’ Gil nodded. ‘In, in kirkyard. She spoke. Verärget.’

  ‘Argued?’ guessed Gil. Berthold nodded in his turn.

  ‘Sie stritt mit ihn.’

  ‘Who did she argue with?’ Alys asked.

  ‘A man, a man of the kirk.’

  ‘A priest?’ Gil conjectured.

  ‘Nein, nein.’ Berthold patted his skinny chest, below his left collarbone, then drew an oval shape like a badge there.

  ‘One of the vergers.’ Alys looked up at Gil.

  ‘What did they quarrel about?’ Gil asked, but that was more than the boy could answer; he shrugged, grinned beseechingly, spread his hands. ‘Then what?’

  The man had dropped something, and the woman had picked it up. ‘Schnell, schnell,’ said Berthold, miming someone pouncing on the item. They had argued more. Berthold wound an invisible cord about his hand; the woman had insisted on keeping it, and sent the man away.

  ‘Where did he go?’ Gil asked.

  ‘In kirk,’ said Berthold.

  ‘And the woman?’

  She had seen Berthold watching, and threatened him, so he had run away, back to the masons’ lodge.

  ‘A cord,’ said Gil. ‘Berthold, come here.’

  He led the reluctant boy back to the two corpses, and uncovered Barnabas’ face. It had smoothed out, and was by far more recognisable than it had been immediately after he had been dragged out of the well. Berthold considered it for a few moments, then looked at Gil and nodded.

  ‘Es war dieser Mann. This man.’

  ‘I must say,’ said Otterburn, ‘I could ha done wi hearing this an hour or two sooner. You say the woman had words wi the man that’s dead. What about?’

  ‘I wonder if she knew of Craigie’s thefts. She was trying to support his money-gathering, I suppose she was aware of his penance. She was certainly writing to men of law in Ayrshire, I suspect with a view to claiming property on his behalf, and without his knowledge. I need to question him, once Blacader is finished wi him. So yes, she might have tried to instruct Barnabas about the matter, which he would not have taken well.’

  ‘And then she lifted a cord and kept it. Is that the cord she strangled him wi? Why would she strangle him, any road?’

  ‘No, I think she used that cord on Peg Simpson. Barnabas was strangled wi the cord he had in his hand when he went off from the Almoner’s store.’

  ‘On Peg Simpson. You’ve still no explained why, either o them.’

  ‘I think,’ said Gil carefully, ‘she had just realised that her schemes for Annie’s marriage were coming to naught. So she slipped out in the night, greasing the hostel door hinges so that she could return in silence, and strangled the girl at the Cross. She was very insistent that nobody had left the women’s hall, but she was our only witness for that. I suppose she could have made certain they all slept soundly, just as the doctor did in the other hall.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Otterburn, not particularly encouraging.

  ‘I think Barnabas either recognised her part in what happened to Peg, or suspected Craigie of involvement as we originally thought. It was his misfortune to meet Dame Ellen rather than Craigie, whether it was in the Lower Kirk or out in the kirkyard as the Dean would prefer to believe.’

  ‘She was a big strong woman,’ said Otterburn thoughtfully.

  ‘And she had done it before,’ said Gil. ‘Sir Edward died peacefully, a couple of hours back, but he made a deposition in his last hour, witnessed by Sir Simon and myself.’ He drew the folded paper from his purse. ‘It’s interesting reading.’

  Otterburn shot him a wary look, but took the paper and unfolded it.

  ‘All circumstantial,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘But it all points in the same direction,’ Gil observed. ‘She had tried to strangle her brother with a cord when they were children, and he was never satisfied that her first two husbands hanged themselves. That detail of the bruising on the first fellow’s neck is very convincing.’

  ‘Aye, but that was twenty year or more ago. No way to tell now.’ Otterburn laid the document flat and smoothed it onto
his desk. ‘Does it satisfy you?’

  ‘I think it fits better than accusing Will Craigie,’ Gil admitted. ‘He’s still swearing he did not kill Barnabas, and I’m inclined to think it’s the truth.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Otterburn again. ‘It would be tidy, I’ll admit. It’s no like you to go for the tidy solution.’

  ‘I’m none so sure it is tidy,’ Gil said. ‘We still don’t know just why Barnabas died, or why Peg Simpson was throttled, though we can guess, and it’s still no clear whether Habbie Sim was involved or no. In some ways it would be neater if we could blame Craigie, but he swears innocence o both those crimes.’

  Otterburn folded the paper and handed it back to Gil.

  ‘Well, we’ll put it to the assize, though what they’ll make of it Deil alone kens. And now I’d best make a start on this quest, afore my lord sends out to know what we’re up to.’

  ‘So that abominable laddie,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘had the answer to your questions the whole time?’

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Gil.

  The day had been longer than he liked. The assize had accepted his evidence and brought in the verdicts Otterburn required of them, but its aftermath had included a long and difficult interview with Robert Blacader and a very painful one with John Lockhart. The Archbishop had been rather less surprised than Lockhart to learn that Dame Ellen had been malefactor as well as victim, but saddened to realise that she had died without being confessed and absolved of her crimes, particularly those against Holy Kirk.

  ‘A lesson to us all, Gilbert,’ he said in his rich Latin. ‘Death can strike at any time, and without warning. That unhappy woman has died in the midst of her villainy, with no opportunity for repentance or amendment of life. I hope our two songmen, Craigie and Sim, will learn from her example and make full confession and restitution for their sins.’

  Lockhart had been more realistic about the consequences.

  ‘It falls to me, I suppose,’ he said in harassed tones, ‘as good-son, to order all, Sir Edward’s burial and Dame Ellen’s, and executing his will, and dealing wi her property, and I’ll have the first hairst, the wheat field, to get in as soon as we’re back in Lanarkshire. As for what to do wi these daft lassies, I’m at my wits’ end. Annie will wed her doctor and be off my hands, and I’m glad of it, for she’s by far less biddable than she was, but the other two, well! My wife will take them under her eye, but I’ve to get them to her first.’

  ‘Maybe Mistress Forrest would mind them the now,’ Gil suggested. ‘She seems a capable woman.’

  ‘Aye, maybe,’ said Lockhart dubiously, and then with more enthusiasm, ‘Aye, you could be right. A good thought, maister. And meantime I can get a word wi Sir Simon about getting Sir Edward in the ground, and who I should ask about whether Dame Ellen’s fit to put in a kirkyard, or if she’s to go out at a crossroads somewhere. I canny believe it o her, she was aye a steering argumentative woman, but you never think o sic wickedness in someone that’s kin, even by marriage. I don’t know, if I’d seen what would come o’t I’d never ha got involved in this whole enterprise.’ He rose to leave Otterburn’s office, where Gil had taken him to explain his findings, and offered his hand. On the doorstep he turned back. ‘At least Sir Edward’s got his release now, and dee’d at peace, sic a grace as that was.’

  Maistre Pierre had appeared at the back door after dinner, apparently in the hope of picking over the outcome of the case, so now they were once more in the comfortable little solar, with its windows firmly shuttered against the insistent wind, and Lowrie was handing wine. Catherine accepted her glass from him and remarked,

  ‘The boy knew a great deal more than anyone realised, I think, including himself.’

  ‘He’s confirmed the time of Peg Simpson’s death,’ Gil agreed, ‘which I could ha done with knowing earlier, as well as this tale of the argument in the kirkyard.’

  ‘But what did he fear?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘What kept him silent?’

  ‘I think,’ said Alys, ‘so far as Luke and I can understand him, he had hidden from the battle at the Cross, by going up the Stablegreen beyond St Nicholas’. He saw the Muirs, and described them well, going up the street and down again.’

  ‘To call on Dame Ellen at the hostel?’ interrupted her father.

  ‘We think so,’ agreed Gil.

  ‘When they returned,’ Alys continued, ‘there was a woman with them, arguing, who must have been Peg Simpson. They passed him, and he didn’t see what happened. But when the battle ended and all turned for home, he set off down the Stablegreen, and found the woman lying dead in the street.’ She grimaced. ‘He seems to have decided that some of the other prentices must have killed her, rather than the Muirs. That was what frightened him.’

  ‘What, that they might come after him if he told anyone?’ Lowrie said in surprise. ‘He’s no very sharp, is he?’

  ‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre with feeling.

  ‘He is barely fourteen, and without friends in a strange country,’ said Alys.

  ‘I suppose. But when did he see these other two arguing in the kirkyard?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘Some time when he should have been working, most likely.’

  ‘That was in the afternoon of that same day,’ Gil said. ‘Dame Ellen must have been newly arrived in Glasgow.’

  ‘Then how did she know the man?’ Alys wondered. ‘What did they argue about?’

  ‘I know!’ said Lowrie. ‘Barnabas kept saying he tellt the woman that he wouldny have an eye to what happened at the Cross. You mind? When we were called to the dead woman?’

  ‘So he did,’’ recalled Gil. ‘I took it he was talking about Annie herself, but it must ha been Dame Ellen. Likely she accosted him, asked him to watch, and got an earful.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Lowrie. ‘He’d never have obliged anyone like that. More than my place is worth,’ he quoted, and grimaced.

  ‘And then he dropped the cord and she insisted on keeping it.’ Alys was nodding. ‘It fits better, Gil. It explains why he went looking for her, and why she killed him.’ She made a face. ‘You know, when I spoke of crows, I did not expect Berthold to be the fourth crow. The one who was not there at all.’

  Gil turned his head as two figures passed the window. The house door opened and closed, and there was a scratching at the chamber door.

  ‘Maister Gil?’ It was Euan. ‘There’s a chiel here for you from Canon Muir’s house, he was getting a crack with us in the kitchen and now he is wishing to get a word wi you. I tellt him you were busy and private,’ he went on importantly, ‘but he’ll not listen. Will I be sending him away?’

  ‘No, you will not,’ said Gil, on a reflex. ‘I’ll come out. Who is it?’

  It was the man Nory, neat in his dark blue garments, with his bundle at his feet, and he had come to take service with Gil.

  ‘You’ve put an end to my service wi the Muirs, maister,’ he said reasonably, ‘and it was very clear to me when I seen you afore that you’ve need o a man to see to your garments. So I’ve heard about your household, and here I am, and I’ll ha the same as you pay this fellow,’ he nodded at Euan, still listening suspiciously from across the hall, ‘and my keep, and a new suit o clothes at New Year.’

  ‘Will you now?’ said Gil, looking at him in amazement.

  ‘That seems like a good idea,’ said Alys, tucking her hand through Gil’s arm. ‘What else will you do? The garden? Sweeping the house?’

  ‘A garden?’ Nory brightened. ‘I’ll lend a hand to the garden, mistress, and gladly. And I can work in sugar-plate, make saints and subtleties for the table, if you’re so inclined. And I suppose,’ he conceded, ‘I can take on the household tasks the women canny manage. But my main duties would be looking after your man’s clothes and himself as well.’

  ‘It’s a very different household from your last one,’ Gil warned him. Nory nodded.

  ‘Be a pleasant change.’

  ‘Well!’ said Maistre Pierre, when they reported this, returning to the solar
. ‘Your household increases daily, Gilbert. You will be Provost yourself before you know it.’

  ‘Sweet St Giles, I hope not!’ said Gil.