The Counterfeit Madam

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘I suspect he is right,’ said Alys, her eyes on Jennet and Nancy who were were folding the cloth from the long board. ‘How far is it? Can you be back in a day?’

  ‘No more than twelve miles,’ Gil answered, ‘and sixteen hours of daylight. I should think so, unless I find something untoward out there.’ He dipped his hands in the basin placed ready near the door, and reached for the towel. ‘I could go tomorrow, rather than hear the quest on Dame Isabella, but there are still questions I need to ask in Glasgow. The morning’s lasted longer than I intended.’

  ‘I’ll be at the quest, never fear,’ announced Ealasaidh from the hearth, where she was watching small John playing with his wooden horse. ‘I can bring you word of what’s said, and maybe I can be translating for Forveleth nic Muirteach, too, if need be. Will you be going to hear it, lassie?’ she asked Alys.

  ‘I will.’ Alys stepped back as another maidservant emerged from the kitchen stair with a laden tray. ‘Set it yonder on the small table, Annis. He can serve himself.’ She lifted the small salt down from the cupboard, checked to see how full it was, and gestured at the stool drawn up to the table. ‘Come and eat, Gil. The Provost will not reveal all he knows, I suspect, though the Serjeant might. Did you speak to the woman Annot?’

  ‘I did,’ he said, seating himself obediently, ‘before I left Livingstone’s house. She described the missing purse for me, blue velvet with gold braid and a tassel. I asked her how she kent it was silver in it, if she wasny allowed to touch it, and she admitted to having looked one time.’

  ‘Did she count it?’

  ‘Near twenty-eight merks, all in threepenny pieces.’

  ‘That was a good look,’ said Ealasaidh darkly. Alys threw her a quick smile, but said,

  ‘More of the false coin, do you think?’

  ‘I’d be surprised if it wasn’t, at this rate,’ Gil agreed. ‘What puzzles me is, where was she getting it? Sweetheart, this is more than I deserve, after missing dinner.’

  ‘Is it enough?’ She came to put her hand on his shoulder. He bent his head to rub his cheek against her fingers, and saw a flicker of something bitter cross Ealasaidh’s face; then Alys spoke again, and it was gone. ‘What are the questions you need to ask? Can I help?’

  ‘You can,’ he admitted. ‘I think you might get more from Annot than I have been able to learn, maybe even from the other woman if the Serjeant would let you near her. I’ve still questions for Otterburn and the men who searched Clerk’s Land last night, and I want to go back there myself.’

  She looked down at him in alarm.

  ‘Take my father, or at least take a couple of Otterburn’s men,’ she said.

  ‘Take me where?’ asked Maistre Pierre, stepping into the hall from the courtyard. ‘We have a loose tile above the drawing-loft, Alys. Ah, Gilbert, what progress do you make? What did you learn of this woman who is taken up for it?’

  ‘She never did it,’ said Ealasaidh firmly. ‘I am as certain as I am of my life. My brother bade me tell you the same, before he left for Dumbarton. He is still talking of deceit and falsehood and a false face. And she spoke the truth,’ she added, ‘when she said she had no knowledge of the sack of money.’

  ‘You think?’ said Gil, spooning raisin sauce over the turnips on his plate. Since this had been his own conclusion he merely went on, ‘And did she know the folk on the toft? Was she telling the truth when she said she was just passing through?’

  ‘Of that I have no knowledge,’ admitted Ealasaidh, her dark brows drawing together. ‘Not all she spoke was truth. She is more frightened than she appears.’

  ‘She’d be a fool otherwise,’ Gil said. ‘Pierre, are you busy? Could you spare me the rest of the afternoon?’

  Maistre Pierre, on hearing what Gil’s errand was, enlisted Luke’s presence as a further bodyguard, and all three walked up the High Street, the dog at Gil’s heels, past houses and pends where working people were just stepping out into the afternoon drizzle to return to whatever task earned their daily kale. At the Castle Socrates raised his head to sniff at the strong smell of boiling stockfish which drifted from the buttery; the same air had found its way into Otterburn’s chamber, where it mixed badly with the spices he had cast on the brazier.

  ‘Put you off your supper, it would,’ he complained, holding a pomander under his long nose. ‘Never could stand the smell o stockfish. What did they find yestreen? Apart from the woman wi two names, you mean? See us your notes, Walter.’

  His clerk searched briefly in one of the trays at his end of the table, and passed over a sheet of paper. Otterburn turned it for Gil to read.

  ‘Three households and an extra workshop, as you can see, one house holds a single man working his lone, two wi married men though only the whitesmith keeps a journeyman. Whom my lads lifted on suspicion o theft, though we had to let him go, his maister swore he’d given the fellow the stuff himsel, no that I believed him. Also one fine for a fire too close to the thatch, same household, which got us a few curses so Andro said but at least they moved the fire down the yard a piece.’

  ‘A fire in the open yard? What did they burn?’ Maistre Pierre asked.

  ‘Wood scraps, shavings, some old rags, a hantle kale stalks. Stink and smoke and no great heat, so Andro said.’

  ‘And that’s the lot.’ Gil was studying the page of neat writing. ‘They never looked at the workshop, and not at the hammermen’s graith either, I suppose? What mells they have, what other kind of tools? Were they looking for coin, or silver, or the like?’

  ‘No, it was just the usual,’ said Otterburn. ‘Checking there was a fire-cover to every hearth, counting the windows, frightening the weans. Here, are you thinking it was someone from Clerk’s Land nailed the woman Torrance?’

  ‘Not entirely, though it could ha been,’ said Gil. ‘Then again, it could ha been anyone in the burgh, by what I can make out. Has the Erschewoman been questioned again?’

  ‘Aye, wi my own interpreter,’ said Otterburn, ‘no that it made any odds, she lied like the wife of Ananias, or else she claimed she couldny mind.’

  ‘I’d like to know where she was all day,’ said Gil. ‘It might lead us to the missing servants.’ He turned the paper round and passed it back to Otterburn. ‘We’ll away and question them on Clerk’s Land again, see if we can find out why they assaulted me.’

  ‘See if you can provoke an effusion of blood this time,’ recommended Otterburn, ‘then we can take the whole lot up.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘I’m no right certain I can do that, mem,’ said Jennet, pausing with the brush in her hand and Alys’s light brown riding-dress in the other. ‘I never met the lassie, how can I get talking wi her?’

  ‘The same way you talk to any other lass you meet at the pump or the market,’ Alys suggested. ‘You all bring home news daily, some of it must come from folk you’ve never spoken wi before.’ Jennet looked dubious, and applied herself to brushing the garment. After a moment Alys went on, ‘But if you’re not sure you can manage it, I’ll take one of the other lassies with me. Nancy, maybe, or perhaps Kittock would like to get out for a bit.’

  ‘Nancy!’ repeated Jennet. ‘She’s never let a word past her lips she doesny need to, the soul. She’d as soon find out what you want to ken as soar to the moon!’ She stopped, staring at her mistress, and began to laugh. ‘Aye, you’re a fly one. Very well, mem, I’ll try it. But no blame to me if it doesny work, right?’

  ‘Right,’ agreed Alys, ‘so you may help me into the blue broadcloth, and then we will go out to the Drygate.’

  They set out shortly, Alys in the good blue broadcloth and her second-best Flemish hood, Jennet with a clean apron tied on over her striped kirtle, both of them wrapped in plaids against the chill drizzle and mounted on sturdy wooden pattens against the mud.

  ‘I wish May Da was past,’ complained Jennet, pulling her plaid over her head. ‘It’s no that cold for April, but the rain! We’ll all get washed away.’

  Alys made no an
swer, thinking of the May Day two years since when she had first spoken to Gil. It did not seem so long – or else, she thought, we’ve known one another for ever. She set off up the High Street, nodding and smiling to acquaintances. There went Maister Hamilton their neighbour, large and imposing in his Deacon’s gown with the black velvet facings. How glad he must have been that Agnes his wife had seen him in it before she died. The two men with him did not seem to be his journeymen.

  The wright and his two companions were still ahead of them when they turned into the Drygate. Alys was peering through the drizzle, trying to make out which pend they were making for, when Jennet broke off her account of something John had done to say,

  ‘Mistress, here’s the potyngar’s wife calling after you.’

  She turned, startled, to see that they had just passed the shop where the Forrest brothers purveyed apothecary goods and other items to the Upper Town. Christian Bothwell, the new wife of the younger brother, was hurrying towards her, calling her name.

  ‘Mistress Mason! Alys! A moment, will you?’

  ‘Christian!’ She put out her hands. ‘How good to see you. Are you well?’

  ‘I’m well. And you, lassie?’ Christian stopped in front of her, a stocky woman in a new gown of tawny woollen, staring earnestly at her face, and took a firm grip of her hands. ‘Have you a moment? I’ve a thing to tell you, we think your man ought to hear of.’

  Both brothers were in the shop, serving a very stout cleric whom Alys did not recognize, their manner confidential. All three paused as the women shed their pattens and went past them, and though Adam smiled at his wife he did not speak; only when Christian led the way through into the house and closed the door did the low voices start again.

  ‘In here,’ said Christian, and opened another door. ‘They’ll no hear us, or we them. He’s come all the way fro Paisley to consult,’ she divulged. ‘Little point, for he’ll not listen to the first advice any potyngar will give him.’

  Seated by the window of the little parlour with its view of the Drygate, she put aside a tray of wizened roots which she had obviously been sorting, gave Alys another earnest look and said,

  ‘It’s maybe no connected, but we talked o this last night, and then the day—’ She paused, and visibly put her thoughts in order. ‘We’d a gathering yestreen, see, all the potyngars o Glasgow.’

  Alys nodded. There were three apothecary businesses in the burgh: Syme in the High Street dealt with the luxury end of the trade, selling cosmetics and spices and exotic candies, this shop sold herbs and spices and medicaments, and a hair-dye which some of Canon Cunningham’s colleagues found very useful, and Christian’s brother Nanty Bothwell still ran the booth by the Tolbooth which served the lower town and the suburbs across the river. The three households were close, mainly as a result of the traumatic events six months since when James Syme had inherited his business.

  ‘And Jimmy was talking about how he’d sold a package of goods, yesterday morn,’ Christian went on, ‘to one of the servants of the woman that’s slain, away along the Drygate here.’

  ‘That is so,’ agreed Alys. ‘Our lad Luke told me he had spoken to Maister Syme of it, too.’

  ‘Aye, and the laddie thought there were two men about the errand,’ Christian said. They obviously discussed it thoroughly, thought Alys. ‘And being Jimmy, he gave us a list of all what was in the package,’ She looked away and enumerated on her fingers, ‘Root ginger, cloves, flowers of sulphur, senna-pods, rhubarb, and anise laxative. Aye, that’s right. And a wee bottle of Jimmy’s restorative for the hair, she’d a done better wi ours, it works far quicker and doesny smell as bad.’

  ‘Yes, but what—’ Alys began. Further into the house a child laughed: Wat, the older brother, and his wife had one child, who had survived the measles last winter. What was it like, she wondered fleetingly, to share a household, two women in a kitchen, two men overseeing the accounts?

  ‘Wait and I’ll tell you. My brother, when he heard that, he said, Was it wrapped in the ordinary white paper, or another sort? And Jimmy said, Aye, a new sort, we’ve just taen a delivery of paper and it’s more a kind o yellowy colour.’ This did not sound like Syme’s phrasing, but Alys made no comment. ‘And my brother, he said, So that’s where she had it. It seems there was some Ersche lassie trying to return just sic a package at his booth, wrapped in this kind o yellowy paper, wanting the money back.’

  ‘When? What did she look like?’ Alys asked. Christian shrugged.

  ‘Nanty wasny very plain about it. Nor he never said what she was like, other than being Ersche. Sometime the afternoon, I’d say. He turned her away,’ she added.

  ‘That is interesting,’ said Alys. ‘And useful. My thanks, Christian, and I will tell my husband when he—’

  ‘Aye, but there’s more,’ said Christian bluntly. ‘We talked o that, and wondered a bit, but what sent me out when I saw you passing,’ she nodded at the window, ‘was, we had another one in here the day wi the selfsame package, or else one gey like it.’

  ‘In here?’

  ‘Aye. Yellowish paper, folded the way Jimmy does, no the way my brother does, the contents being ginger, cloves, flower o sulphur, rhubarb, anise lax, senna, and a bottle o Jimmy’s hair restorative.’

  ‘Did you know her?’ Alys asked. ‘Was it the same lassie?’

  ‘It was no lassie, it was Barabal Campbell fro Clerk’s Land down the road here,’ Christian jerked a disparaging thumb eastward, ‘forty if she’s a day, borne six weans, and a digestion like a washhouse boiler, never a day’s trouble wi her belly says Adam though she’s been here afore wi women’s troubles. So we neither o us believed her tale about it being something she’d bought earlier and needed none of. We turned her away and all.’

  ‘From Clerk’s Land,’ said Alys thoughtfully. ‘That would fit well. My thanks, Christian, and I know Gil will be grateful for this.’

  ‘Is that the lassie that’s taken up for murder?’ asked Jennet with interest. ‘I wonder she never took it all back to Maister Syme, if she wanted rid o’t. Or threw it in the mill-burn.’

  ‘Aye, we wondered the same,’ agreed Christian, ‘but it was the man that purchased the goods, and the lassie trying to return it yesterday, so maybe he’d not told her which apothecary it was or that it was all on the slate and no paid for.’

  ‘Or not told her right,’ agreed Jennet.

  ‘And now the people at Clerk’s Land have it,’ said Alys. ‘Or did, this morning.’ And where was Gil, she wondered. He should know of this. Had he reached Clerk’s Land himself yet?

  There was no sign of him as they passed the head of the toft. Alys paused in the drizzle, considering the muddy path past the pewterer’s house, and two children at the door ceased their squabbling to watch her. No other adults were visible, though loud angry male voices were audible from beyond the buildings, including Maister Hamilton in full cry. So that was where he was bound, she thought, and moved on.

  Averting her eyes modestly from the mermaid on the door of the next house and wishing she could study it, she stepped up the fore-stair of the house beyond it and rattled at the pin. Behind her Jennet drew an apprehensive breath, and she said quietly,

  ‘Never fear, lass, it’s just to get talking wi the girl. Good day to you,’ she went on as the door opened, to reveal a maidservant as neat as any of her own. ‘Is Maister Fleming within? Or your mistress? I’d like to talk about some blankets.’

  * * *

  An hour later, striking the bargain with Maister Fleming for a dozen blankets of new wool, with a further half-dozen of half size for John’s planned trundle-bed, she felt that the afternoon was not wasted whatever Jennet had learned.

  ‘And a pleasure to do business wi a lady that kens her own mind,’ said Maister Fleming. ‘I aye say to my wife, if the customer kens what she wants, we can weave it to her. If she canny tell me, I canny tell my weavers. You’ve a note o all that, Jaik?’ he added to his apprentice, solemn at the tall desk with a pair of tablets i
n his hand.

  ‘Very true, maister,’ agreed Alys. ‘And I wanted the best, so I came to you.’ They smiled at one another, pleased with this exchange of compliments. ‘I’m sure you must supply the whole of the Upper Town,’ she went on, ‘though I think that was no customer of yours that died so strangely the other day.’

  ‘Oh! A dreadful business,’ declared Maister Fleming. He was a brisk, middling-sized, competent man, stripped to his doublet for the task of showing the samples to a customer; now he cracked the last one, folded it neatly with the apprentice who hurried to help, stowed it back on the rack, and lifted his short gown. ‘And comes closer to home than I’d care for,’ he admitted. ‘There’s one of my lassies, a good worker and a right promising weaver, has hardly thrown a pick these two days, for she’s taken it into her head it was some laddie she’s a notion to that slew the old woman. And I don’t have to tell you, mistress, if one lassie’s dowy, the rest’s sure to be infected. I hardly dare step into the weaving-shed the now.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Alys, unable to believe her good fortune. ‘Maister Fleming, is that by any chance a girl called Bess Wilkie?’

  ‘Aye, it is, that’s her name,’ he said, holding the door open for her.

  ‘If I might have a word wi her,’ she said hopefully, ‘I may be able to cheer her, and I think she might be able to tell me something useful as well.’ She saw his blank look. ‘My husband is investigating the death,’ she pointed out, ‘as the Archbishop’s quaestor.’

  ‘Oh, aye, I’d forgot that,’ he said, preceding her to the stairs. ‘Come away up to the hall, mistress, and we’ll send for the lass. No, I was thinking you’re ordering all this for your father’s household, I wasny thinking o your man at all.’

  Alys forbore to comment, but followed the weaver up to the comfortable hall where Fleming’s wife Barbara Graham, whom she knew slightly, was instructing her two older daughters in needlework. Alys admired the wobbly seams and settled down to chat about the weather and the wool crop while Bess was sent for. When the girl appeared, Jennet arrived with her.