The Counterfeit Madam

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘I have a favour to ask of this house.’

  ‘Ask it,’ said Maistre Pierre largely.

  ‘I am bound for the West, for Ardnamurchan. I had as soon not take my sister, for I think the journey is not easy. Is it possible—’

  ‘Pooh! No need to ask,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘You and Mistress Ealasaidh both are welcome under my roof, sir, for as long as you wish it. What takes you into the West?’

  ‘I think we should not ask,’ said Gil quietly.

  ‘Resentment, enmity, tipping of the scales of power.’

  ‘That is true all over Scotland,’ said Maistre Pierre.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said McIan, ‘and of this death here in Glasgow, but I spoke of the Isles. The false coin breeds enmity, and the rest. That is its purpose.’

  ‘To whose advantage?’ asked the mason.

  ‘Always a good question, with always the same answer.’

  The Campbells, thought Gil. The Earl of Argyll. People keep mentioning the Campbells today.

  ‘With good reason,’ said McIan, and he realized he had spoken aloud. ‘The young one, the new earl, may not be the match of his sire, but he has the same nature. Tell me, maisters, has that pair of Campbell brothers been seen in Glasgow lately? Eoghan and Niall, you recall them?’

  ‘Them!’ said Maistre Pierre.

  ‘Euan and Neil,’ Gil agreed. ‘I saw Euan at the quarter-day when he brought the money for John’s keep from Sempill, but I’ve heard nothing of them in the last month. Why, have you? Who are they working for now? Not Sempill, then?’

  ‘For MacIain. No, not myself, but the greatest of the name, the man that holds Ardnamurchan of the King.’ He fell silent. Gil leaned back against the settle and stared at nothing, while the musicians started on yet another tune.

  It seemed to have been a very long day already, and it was not over yet. The sasine transaction which had begun it was unlikely to come back at him, but everything else seemed to have questions attached which would lead him in all kinds of directions, and he was feeling unbelievably weary. Perhaps that was the dunt on the head, he thought. Begin at the beginning: where is the title to Balgrochan? Is it important that the old woman kept it back? Where was Sempill this morning if he didn’t see Dame Isabella?

  ‘Well, Gilbert,’ said Maistre Pierre beside him, sounding amused. ‘And was that the whole tale, son-in-law?’

  He opened his eyes with a start. The hall was much emptier and much darker than it had been a moment ago. The musicians had vanished.

  ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he said hastily.

  ‘No, of course not. But what have you been about, that the whole town is talking of you being rescued naked from the bawdy-house?’

  ‘What?’ he exclaimed, and put a hand involuntarily to his head as pain stabbed. ‘Sweet St Giles, no wonder Alys is displeased. It was nothing of the sort – indeed they saved my life, I think.’

  ‘As strong as that?’ The mason sat down. ‘Tell me again. We have time before supper, I think.’

  ‘Where is McIan gone?’

  Maistre Pierre waved a large hand towards the courtyard.

  ‘They are gone to settle in, or perhaps to see John in his cradle. Now tell me about the bawdy-house.’

  ‘We’ll set up the table shortly,’ said Alys from the other end of the hall. She came forward, still unsmiling. ‘Go over the first part, at least. They took you in and warmed you, sent here for dry clothing. What did they give you for your hurt?’

  ‘Some sort of cordial, and a bowl of broth.’ He looked up at her. ‘We owe them a debt, sweetheart.’

  ‘For certain,’ agreed Maistre Pierre.

  She nodded.

  ‘I suppose we do,’ she agreed, with what seemed like reluctance. ‘I’d sooner have you live, and spoken of all over the town, than otherwise.’ She considered the hand he extended to her, and put her own in it. The world seemed to straighten round him. ‘So how did it happen?’

  McIan and his manservant departed after supper for some engagement in the burgh. The harper was his usual dignified self, clad in a blue velvet gown with his hair combed down over his shoulders, but his sister watched them leave and said,

  ‘The Deil alone knows when himself will be home. It might be before the dawn. By what Whistling Tam was saying it will be a wild night of it.’

  ‘You do not go with him?’ asked Maistre Pierre curiously. She shook her head.

  ‘I’ve no notion where he gets the strength. There is ower many years on me for riding all day and then playing all night after it. I had sooner be here, where the bairn is.’ She looked round their faces as they stood by the hearth. ‘But I think you have things to discuss. I should go to my rest, maybe.’

  Alys and her father both exclaimed against this, and Gil said, concealing reluctance, ‘You’ve heard the half of it already, and I could do with the woman’s view of what I saw. You and Alys will see things I never noticed.’ And a pity that Catherine always retires immediately supper is cleared, he thought.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ said Alys. ‘We have no usquebae in the house, but there is wine.’

  In fact Ealasaidh was little help. Gil went over the morning again, detailing what he had seen and learned, and she exclaimed over every turn of the tale as she had done earlier, with shocked comments about the customs of Dame Isabella and her household. Alys listened quietly, and said as he finished,

  ‘Scatology not eschatology, despite her age.’ He glanced at her, acknowledging the play on words, and she went on, ‘I think you are right, Gil, there are things which do not make sense.’

  ‘The whole thing makes no sense!’ declared her father. ‘More wine, mistress?’

  ‘But to permit someone to come close enough with a hammer and nail!’ said Ealasaidh, accepting her refilled glass. ‘And occupied like that, the shameless woman!’

  ‘How well did she hear, do you know?’ asked Alys.

  ‘A good point,’ said Gil. ‘Certainly her voice was like a deaf woman’s.’

  ‘I thought she had no trouble when we saw her yesterday,’ objected Maistre Pierre.

  ‘There’s many can hear well enough if they know they’re addressed,’ said Ealasaidh.

  Gil frowned, trying to fit this into the sequence he had assembled.

  ‘She’d have seen him – or her,’ he added scrupulously, ‘over the back of the settle.’ He rose and paced about the hearth, gesturing to place the furniture of the chamber where Dame Isabella died. ‘A settle much like that one, perhaps a little lower, near the window. The close-stool behind it. The bed about here, in the midst of the chamber, so one must approach round one side of it or the other. No chance of creeping up on her.’

  ‘So someone she trusted,’ said Alys. ‘Gil, did you say her head was bare when she lay dead? Could one of her women have been combing out her hair?’

  ‘That would fit,’ he agreed. ‘It was all about her head in locks. Not Annot, I think, she mentioned combing her earlier but not just before she was sent out. Perhaps it was the other one.’

  ‘So you seek the woman who is gone missing,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘Do you think the Serjeant will find her?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Alys. ‘We need to speak to her, but she may not have the answer. Even if she had returned, the woman might have left her mistress again for some reason, and the killer took advantage of the moment.’

  ‘I do not think the Serjeant will find her easily,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘All his shouting of names at the Cross does is tell the pursued he must go to ground.’

  ‘Ah. And if she has kin in Glasgow, they will not give her up. You are right, maister,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘But she has also robbed her mistress.’

  ‘She or another.’ Gil put a hand to his head. ‘I wish I knew how long it was before Annot discovered her, and when the men came back and sat watching the door.’

  ‘You suspect more than one person is involved?’ Maistre Pierre deduced.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He leaned back against t
he settle, wishing he could think clearly. Alys looked at him anxiously, but before she could speak Socrates scrambled up from where he lay sprawled before the hearth, and stood glaring at the door, head down and hackles up. Maistre Pierre rose, feet sounded on the fore-stair outside, someone knocked loudly.

  There were two of the Provost’s men on the step, wearing triumphant grins and bearing a message.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ agreed the senior man, ‘we went through the toft like ripe fruit, me and a couple lads from the top, four more at the back gate wi their arms open, and we got a few things that was well worth it, one suspicion o theft, one fine for a fire too close to the thatch. We never got into the man’s workshop that we was to search, he wasny present, there was no key to his house and no sufficient reason for breaking down the door. But the best of the catch, maister, was the woman that’s wanted by the Serjeant for this matter in the Drygate.’

  ‘What, already?’ said Gil in amazement. ‘She was on the toft you searched? What was she doing there? Who was she hiding wi?’

  ‘Now that, maister,’ admitted the man, ‘I’ve no notion o. Dickon, you took her up, did she say aught in your hearing?’

  ‘No to say a useful word,’ said his companion. ‘She’d a bundle wi her, and a bit roastit cheese in her hand, and cam running out the back gate like a roe deer, right into my arms.’ He rubbed his ear. ‘Gied me a good bang on the lug wi her bundle, she did, right heavy it was, and I was one o the lucky ones, and calling us for everything, so we searched the bundle, and here was this bag o siller. We’ve got her for theft any road, whatever else she’s done.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the other man, ‘and the Provost says, if you’d wish to see her questioned afore she gets handed to the Serjeant, come by first thing the morn’s morn and you can ask her what you will, and he’s sent the same word to Maister Livingstone that’s her maister.’

  ‘She will have kin there,’ said Ealasaidh from the background. ‘There will be someone on the toft that is out of the Highlands, I have no doubt.’

  ‘At least two of the women,’ agreed Gil. ‘Tell Maister Otterburn I’ll be at the Castle at Prime, man.’

  ‘If the woman,’ said Maistre Pierre, closing the great door behind the two men, ‘is a speaker of Ersche, you need an interpreter.’

  ‘She speaks Scots well enough to be employed,’ Alys said.

  ‘None the less.’ Maistre Pierre looked at Ealasaidh. ‘It might be wise to take another speaker of the language with you.’

  ‘Och, yes,’ she agreed, ‘I would be happy to help. I can find out for you why she killed her mistress, no trouble.’

  ‘Why did your father do that?’ Gil asked. ‘I’ve no need of help to question the woman, and if I do, I’ve no doubt Otterburn can put his hand on an Ersche-speaker.’

  Alys, shaking her hair out of its long braid, lifted the comb and said,

  ‘Perhaps she will be useful.’ He grunted, and she looked intently at him in the candlelight. ‘How is your head?’

  ‘Sore. I’ll live. I am soo ful of knyghthode that knyghtly I endure the payne.’ He unlaced his doublet and drew it off. ‘I suppose I can hardly take you as well now, it would look—’

  ‘As if I really couldn’t trust you,’ she finished, and gave him an enigmatic stare. ‘No, not after today’s work.’

  ‘That’s not what I was going to say,’ he said ruefully. ‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry if you’re to be embarrassed by it.’

  ‘I can deal with it,’ she said. ‘I sent Luke to the apothec-ary’s when he came in, with a list of sweetmeats and delicacies. Tomorrow by daylight he will take them round to the bawdy-house in a basket with ribbons, to the front door, as a gift from me. Oh, and a purse for the laddie. Cato, did you say he was called?’

  ‘The wisdom of an heap of learned men,’ he quoted. ‘Alys, that is true cunning.’

  She looked at him sideways, round the honey-gold curtain of her hair. Her mouth twitched as if she was repressing a smile.

  ‘And what is it worth,’ she asked, ‘if I promise not to tell your mother?’

  ‘Fights like a wildcat,’ Otterburn said succinctly. ‘One man wi a hot ear, two more wi scratches, and wee Allie wi a bitten thumb, and we’ll all pray that doesny infect.’

  ‘Annot’s saying she’s aye had a temper,’ said Maister Livingstone sourly.

  ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of that,’ objected Lowrie beside him. ‘She’s aye seemed to me one that took what life threw at her, and stayed calm about it.’

  ‘So she’ll stay in chains, maister,’ continued Otterburn, ignoring this, ‘but apart fro that you can all ask her what you please. And Mistress McIan to be interpreter, I take it?’

  ‘What was in her bundle?’ Gil asked. ‘The men said something about coin.’

  ‘Oh, aye.’ Otterburn looked slightly less gloomy, and indicated the rack of shelves behind him, where a swathe of checked cloth suggested a plaid knotted round a collection of objects. ‘That’s a rare piece of good fortune. Well, I think it is. She’d a leather bag o coin about her, which I take to be the one that’s missing from the dead woman’s kist, according to her other waiting-woman, as you reported to me last night. Where’s that note, Walter? It’s quite a sum, and the interesting thing about it, maister,’ he accepted a sheet from his clerk and turned it towards Gil, ‘is that it’s all false money, every piece.’

  ‘False?’ Livingstone repeated, startled. ‘How would the old – woman come by false coin?’

  ‘All of it?’ Gil stared at the Provost, then looked down at the inventory of Forveleth’s bundle. Walter’s neat clerk-hand listed a few personal items, and beneath them quantities of coin, line upon line, the totals adding up to a magnificent amount.

  ‘All false coin,’ repeated Otterburn, ‘the most o’t these James Third placks and the threepenny piece wi the four mullets, same as we’ve been finding all about Glasgow. Now what do you make of that, maister? I,’ he said in faint triumph, ‘think you’re in the matter now whatever my lord says. And I’d like it if you’d cast an eye over the coins themselves, Maister Livingstone,’ he added, ‘now we’ve as many of them gathered in the one place, and see what you can tell us.’

  ‘Aye, gladly,’ agreed Livingstone.

  ‘Was she maybe collecting it?’ offered Ealasaidh from beside Gil. ‘Maybe she would take it out of use.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Gil. ‘It’s near five hundred merks’ worth. Even Blacader couldny spare that easily out of a year’s income.’ He looked at Otterburn, and back at the notes. ‘Have you questioned the woman about it at all?’

  ‘No a word. I wanted my supper, and I reckoned she’d keep. Will we have her up here, or go down to her? It’s warmer here.’

  The woman Marion or Forveleth was somewhat battered by her experiences, but her spirit was not affected. Dragged struggling into the little panelled chamber by two of Otterburn’s men she halted before his desk, glared at him, and spat something in Ersche which made Ealasaidh’s mouth tighten.

  ‘You speak civil to the Provost!’ ordered one of her escort, with a blow to her shoulder. She turned on him, manacled hands aiming for his crotch in a rising hammer-blow which he avoided expertly. His companion seized and flung her to the floor, where she knelt hissing more virulent Ersche.

  ‘Compose yoursel, woman!’ said Livingstone. Otterburn looked down at her, then over to where Gil and Ealasaidh sat near the window.

  ‘Do we want to ken what she’s saying, mistress?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I would say not,’ agreed Ealasaidh disapprovingly. ‘You should think shame, a decent woman, using language the like,’ she added to the prisoner. Forveleth turned her head to see who spoke, and froze, her mouth open, staring.

  ‘You!’ she said after a moment. The men in the chamber looked at one another.

  ‘Do you know her?’ asked Otterburn. Ealasaidh shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I was never seeing her in my life. She speaks the Gaelic of the Lennox, we have not t
ravelled there much.’

  ‘She seems to know you,’ said Gil warily. Forveleth glanced at him, then addressed Ealasaidh in Ersche. There was a brisk exchange of what seemed to be repeated assertion and denial, before Otterburn broke in with,

  ‘Enough of this. Speak Scots, woman, or we’ll ha what you say put into the Scots, one or the other. What’s it about, mistress?’

  Ealasaidh shook her head again, reddening.

  ‘She claims she was seeing me, here in Glasgow two days since, when I was still at Stirling and witnesses to say so. Nonsense, it is. What do you wish to ask her, maister?’

  ‘How could she do that?’ Otterburn asked. ‘If you’ve witnesses, why did she persist? When was this, anyway?’

  ‘I never saw you in Glasgow before, mistress,’ said Livingstone, ‘and I’d say this woman’s been nowhere I haveny been mysel in the last two days.’

  Not quite true, thought Gil.

  ‘It is nothing, nothing at all,’ said Ealasaidh, the scarlet sweeping down her neck under the black woollen veil of her formal hood. ‘She is babbling.’

  ‘I am not, and you know it,’ said the prisoner in her accented Scots. ‘If it isny true now, it will be, I tell you that. You were always at the man’s shoulder, him that is man of the house where this one,’ she nodded at Gil, ‘is good-son. A better gown, you were wearing. Red brocade and velvet sleeves,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘Never mind this now,’ said Otterburn, losing patience. ‘There’s as much to go over afore she gets handed to the Serjeant. You, woman, what’s your name?’

  Her name was Forveleth nic Iain nic Muirteach, which caused Walter some trouble, and she was born in Balloch in the Lennox. She had served Dame Isabella five years now, before and after her marriage to Thomas Livingstone, and the old carline’s temper was getting worse, she’d have left anyway at the quarter-day –

  ‘That’s enough o that,’ said Otterburn. ‘Why did you run off when you found her dead?’

  ‘Did she find her dead?’ Gil asked. ‘I’d as soon go over yesterday from the start, maister, if you’ll allow it.’