The Counterfeit Madam

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Kirkintilloch would be the nearest,’ agreed Lowrie, lending a hand to steady one of the hurdles as Sim and Frank made their way down towards the burn. ‘Who would take charge in the usual way?’

  Socrates’ ears pricked, and he growled. Alys turned her head, trying to hear over Sir Richie’s rambling answer. Was that more horses? Voices? She moved a little upstream and jumped across the burn, leaving the bridge to the bearers, then hurried up the rough grassy bank and, bending low, picked her way along the kirkyard wall with the dog at her heel. At the corner she paused, listening. Yes, there were voices, they had been heard, there was shouting about Someone’s down yonder by the burn. She moved forward to peer cautiously round the corner of the wall, and found herself almost nose to nose with Philip Sempill.

  She sprang back quickly enough to take her beyond the reach of his aborted sword-thrust, and said, over the dog’s snarling,

  ‘Maister Sempill! What—?’

  ‘Mistress Mason!’ He lowered his whinger, gaping at her as she grasped Socrates’ collar. ‘Of all the people to meet here! What are you doing?’

  ‘Catching demons,’ she said, and indicated the procession behind her. ‘We have found silver miners in the glen, which I am quite certain your kinsman did not know of, and two of them are dead.’

  ‘Dead!’ he repeated, staring. ‘Who – who are they? How did you come to—’

  ‘Philip?’ John Sempill appeared behind his kinsman. ‘Who the deil are you speaking to? You?’ he said incredulously. ‘Deil’s bollocks, woman, can you no keep out of what doesny concern you? You’re worse than that man o yours.’

  ‘Good day to you, sir,’ she said, tightening her grip on the dog’s collar, and dropped him a curtsy. ‘I hope you left Lady Magdalen well?’

  ‘And who’s yonder?’ he demanded, ignoring this. ‘Philip, what’s going on here? Is that that fool o a priest down there and all?’

  ‘Mistress Mason says they have found two dead men in the glen,’ said Philip, with care. ‘They were mining silver. Is that not amazing?’

  ‘What do you—’ His cousin stared at him, pale blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Oh,’ he said after a moment. ‘Aye, that’s amazing. Right enough. Who’s dead? I mean, who are they? Is there just the two? Who killed them, anyways? What are you doing here? And him!’ he added, as Lowrie approached up the bank.

  ‘There’s one still living,’ said Alys.

  ‘Lowrie Livingstone, is that you poking about on my land where you’re no wanted? Was it you killed these two? Why?’

  ‘It was not,’ said Lowrie levelly, ‘and I don’t see why you assume it was. And it’s no your land, Muirend, it’s either my faither’s or Dame Isabella’s.’

  ‘It’s my land,’ Sempill began, and bit the words off as his cousin kicked him on the ankle. Lowrie gave him a small tight smile and stepped round him, guiding the men with the two hurdles up towards the kirkyard gate, the boy Berthold keeping somehow on the further side of the group.

  Inside the little church, the boy made straight for the small bright figure of the Virgin and dropped on his knees before her, and Sir Richie, much reassured by this, directed the bearers where to set the hurdles down and began doing what was required for the dead. Alys took time for a brief word with St Machan in his brown robes, but she had trouble concentrating. Yesterday John Sempill had said there was trouble in Strathblane, and today here he was, presumably to deal with it. But had he already taken some action? He must have known the miners were there; did he also know about their deaths? Had Berthold recognized him just now?

  Emerging from the building she found the two sets of servants eyeing each other warily from different corners of the kirkyard, and a stiff, chilly discussion going on across a table-tomb near the east end.

  ‘It’s still part o the heriot,’ Lowrie was saying as she approached. ‘My faither has the original disposition, it was never Thomas’s to alienate, let alone Dame Isabella’s.’

  ‘She was very clear about it,’ Philip Sempill observed.

  ‘Maidie’s no going to be pleased,’ said his cousin grimly. ‘I don’t know why you had to come meddling out here. Or you!’ he added to Alys, with hostility. ‘Who is it that’s dead, anyway? Who did kill them, if it wasny you? Was it that ill-conditioned laddie that’s in there the now?’

  ‘The laddie was away hunting for the pot,’ said Lowrie, ‘came back while we were debating what had happened, and he seems right grieved by the deaths.’ Sempill snorted in disbelief. ‘My man Frank, that’s a good huntsman, found the traces of four men in the clearing, three of them wi footwear they never got hereabouts, the other wi a narrower heel than any of us. If we can get this laddie somewhere there’s a speaker o High Dutch we can learn more from him.’

  Sempill snorted again, and gave the younger man a hard stare, but Alys thought the words good huntsman had their effect. No landowner was likely to argue with an experienced huntsman’s reading of the ground.

  ‘And where was all this siller they’ve been winning?’ he demanded. ‘Stacked waiting to be carried off, I suppose!’

  ‘There was no sign of it,’ said Alys. ‘Perhaps someone had collected it quite recently.’

  He grunted, scowling at her.

  ‘You’d know all about that, I suppose,’ he said, ‘creeping about Glasgow asking questions. You and Gil Cunningham, you’re well matched.’

  ‘Why, thank you sir,’ she said, and dropped him another curtsy.

  ‘What brought you out here?’ asked Philip Sempill. ‘You came here for a purpose, it’s well out the way for a casual ride for pleasure.’

  ‘Unless you were here for pleasure,’ said his cousin, with an unpleasant grin. Alys found her face burning, but Lowrie said calmly,

  ‘Maister Cunningham asked my escort here for madam his wife, since I ken the road.’

  ‘Aye, but why?’

  She had foreseen this question.

  ‘I came to see the two properties out here,’ she offered, hoping she did not sound glib, ‘because of the confusion over what my good-sister was to have. After all, Dame Isabella’s will is yet to be found, one of these might yet go to Tib, and we thought it wiser to—’

  ‘In other words, you were poking that long nose into what doesny concern you,’ said Sempill. ‘Life ’ud be a lot easier if you and your man wereny aye nosing about. Philip, I want a word.’

  He flung away across the kirkyard, and Philip, with a resigned look, followed him. Alys turned to Lowrie.

  ‘What do you wish to do now?’ he asked her. ‘There’s the boy Berthold to think of, and two men to bury, and the murder to cry forth. It all needs seen to. What would Maister Gil do?’

  ‘He’d do what’s right,’ she said without hesitating.

  ‘Aye, he would,’ Lowrie agreed. ‘The trouble is to discern what’s right here.’

  She bit her lip. ‘I had it in mind to take that boy to my father. He speaks High Dutch, he has been in Cologne and places like that, and he can question him kindly.’ Lowrie smiled, and nodded. ‘As to burying the men, that’s for Sir Richie to think on in the first place. If he’ll not have them, we have to think again, but he’s our first road.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Lowrie. ‘But the murder. It’s remarkable how those two,’ he glanced at the Sempill cousins, whose word was becoming an argument, ‘turned up so prompt after it.’

  ‘It is,’ Alys agreed slowly.

  ‘How do you read this, anyway, mistress? What’s afoot? If it was Sempill sent someone to kill those men, then he kent they were there and what they were at. So why kill them?’

  ‘And who did he send?’ She stared up at the trees beyond the kirkyard wall. ‘I think, though I’ve no proof yet, the silver from here is the silver being coined in Glasgow.’

  ‘It’s more economical to believe that,’ said Lowrie, watching her, ‘than that there’s another silver mine within reach. The stuff’s scarce enough, Christ kens.’

  ‘But at whose behest? Dame Isabella, or
Sempill, or Lady Magdalen? What will your father do about it, maister?’

  ‘Report it to the Crown. I’d not think Lady Magdalen would act against the Crown, either. I reckon more like it was the old dame who caused the coin to be struck, seeing it was her making use of it.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘I thought it was,’ he said after a moment, ‘but I’m no so certain now.’

  ‘No, I think you are right,’ she agreed, ‘though I also think we have no proof yet. What is John Sempill coming to say to us?’

  ‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ began Sempill when he was still several graves away. ‘You,’ he nodded at Lowrie, ‘and Philip can go and see what’s all this about narrow heels. You can take your good huntsman wi you, and one o our lads and all, and you’ll be quick about it, for I want to get home for supper.’

  ‘But Mistress Mason—’ Lowrie began.

  ‘I’m sure I’ll be safe in Sempill of Muirend’s keeping,’ Alys said sweetly. Sempill of Muirend scowled at her, but Lowrie bowed, and said politely to Philip,

  ‘My pleasure, then.’

  ‘And I’ll go and take a look at these dead men, and see what I think they dee’d from,’ Sempill went on with emphasis, ‘and get a word wi the priest about getting them in the ground. You can come too if you must, I suppose,’ he added disagreeably to Alys. ‘And there’s never a word o use trying to talk to that boy, either, he’s got no more Scots than your dog there.’

  Possibly less, thought Alys, considering the number of words Socrates understands, but how do you know that? She paused to speak to her own men about watering the horses and allowing them to graze a little, and followed Sempill into the little church.

  Sir Richie, having dealt with the matter of conditional absolution and said a charitable Mass for the dead, was much more willing to talk to his visitors now. Exclaiming over the flesh-and-blood nature of the demons, thanking Sempill repeatedly for returning to take care of the problem, he displayed the corpses and their wounds as if he had discovered them himself, shooing Socrates away.

  ‘Terrible injuries, terrible,’ he said as he uncovered the older Berthold’s burns. ‘Only see how dreadful! Get away, away wi you!’

  Alys stepped back from Sempill’s unmoved consideration of the sight, snapping her fingers to call the dog, and looked at the younger Berthold. He had turned from his intent conversation with the Virgin, and was watching anxiously. What must it be like, she wondered, to be trapped in a strange country, where you spoke none of the language, and you had just lost your kinsfolk. She moved quietly to his side and put a hand on his arm, making him jump.

  ‘Berthold,’ she said gently. He touched his brow to her, and bobbed a shy bow. She drew him to the stone bench at the wall-foot, and launched again into the mixture of language and gesture which she had used before. With difficulty, she established that he was fourteen, that his hunting had taken him further up onto the hills, that he had seen nobody, or perhaps that nobody had seen him. He seemed dubious about that. She raised questioning eyebrows, and he mimed someone peering from cover, watching something. She nodded understanding and looked cautiously over one shoulder and then the other, and he said, ‘Ja, ja, ich fühlt’ überwacht,’ and shivered. He pointed at the two dead men, and turned his face away.

  Was it the man with the narrow heels, she wondered. And had he been watching as she picked her way up the burn? If the dog had not been with her – She put a hand on the rough hairy head at her elbow and shivered as Berthold had done.

  She was about to assemble another question when the church door was flung wide and Luke tumbled in.

  ‘Mistress, are you here? Here’s Maister Livingstone coming back, and all them wi him, and he’s got someone prisoner, so he has!’

  ‘Prisoner?’ John Sempill swung round, staring. ‘What prisoner? What’s going on?’

  ‘I wouldny ken what prisoner, maister, but you can see for yoursel,’ Luke said, gesturing at the door. ‘You’ve only to look! They’re having a right time of it, Tam’s gone to gie them a hand.’

  Alys was already hurrying out into the sunlight, shading her eyes to stare across the little burn. The party on the far bank was having some trouble, as Luke said, the figure in its midst writhing in the grasp of all four men. As she watched someone tired of the battle and clouted the struggling man across the head. It made little difference, but a second blow and then a third had more effect, and brought an approving grunt from John Sempill behind her, though Sir Richie protested faintly.

  ‘Aye, that’s the way to deal wi him,’ said Sempill. ‘Who is it, anyway? What were you no telling us, Mistress Mason? Have they found someone else at the mine?’

  ‘I’ve no more notion than you, sir,’ she said politely. The returning party hoisted their limp captive across the burn, and Lowrie, leaving Tam to take his share of the burden, hurried up the bank towards the kirkyard wall.

  ‘He was searching the place,’ he said, scrambling over the mossy stones. ‘Frank was in the lead, and took the huntsman’s approach, and saw him before he saw us, so we got him by surprise.’ He paused to acknowledge Socrates’ greeting.

  ‘Searching the place?’ repeated Sempill. ‘What was there to find?’

  ‘Little enough,’ said Lowrie, ‘though he obviously thought there was more.’ He nodded to the group now carrying the prisoner in on the easier path by the gate. ‘One thing, though. Frank reckons his heels fit the tracks he found, and the rest of us are agreed.’

  ‘So what does that tell you?’ demanded Sempill. ‘Are you saying this is who slew the two fellows in there?’

  ‘He was certainly at the mine earlier today,’ Alys amended. Sempill threw her a surly look and said to his cousin, approaching over the rough grass,

  ‘Better tie him up, Philip, in case he gets away. The priest might have some rope. If you’re all agreed he’s guilty we could string him up here, there’s plenty trees. I’ve not had a good hanging in months.’

  ‘Oh, surely no, he must have a trial, maister,’ protested Sir Richie. ‘We should see if the boy recognizes him, maybe, or question him, aye, we should question him!’

  ‘Who is he?’ Alys asked. The prisoner was dropped on the ground, where he bounced slightly, groaning. She seized the dog’s collar before he could investigate the newcomer. ‘Did you question him?’

  ‘He drew his dagger on us,’ said Frank, twisting to look at a gash in the side of his leather doublet. ‘Near enough got me, and he’s nicked Harry there’s ear.’ Harry, standing beside him in John Sempill’s livery, grinned selfconsciously and mopped at the dripping blood. ‘So no, mem, we didny take the time to question him ower much.’

  ‘I can see you wouldny,’ she said, looking down at the man. He seemed to be of more than middling height, aged perhaps twenty or twenty-five, with well-barbered dark hair. His jerkin was dark red broadcloth, his boots were good but very dusty. ‘We must search him. Had he taken anything from the miners’ shelter?’

  ‘No that I saw, he was just poking about,’ Frank said, ‘looking amongst their graith and the like.’ He bent to turn the prisoner onto his back, and the limp figure convulsed like a mantrap Alys had once seen, came up snarling, a knife in his hand from nowhere in a sweeping gesture which had Frank flung sideways and crying out.

  It all seemed to happen very slowly next. Lowrie dived forward, shouting, Harry grabbed at the man’s wrist, which slipped from his grasp, Alys leapt away from the action wishing she had not put Gil’s dagger back in her purse, and caught her heel in a tussock of grass and went down. The same dark lightning movement seemed to happen above her, and she was dragged to her feet, painfully by one arm, and hauled against a panting chest. A hoarse voice spoke over her shoulder.

  ‘Keep aff me. Keep aff me or the lassie gets it. And if that dog comes here I’ll knife it and all.’

  ‘Down!’ she ordered, almost on a reflex, and relief swept over her as the dog obeyed, reluctantly, quivering with eagerness to attack.

  There wa
s a knife sharp against her ribs. A small part of her mind recognized that it must have found one of the gaps in the whalebone bodice of her riding-dress. There were not many.

  ‘My son, consider what you are doing!’ protested Sir Richie. Behind him Philip Sempill emerged from the church carrying a hank of rope, and stopped, staring in horror. His cousin looked grim. Lowrie was standing poised, hands twitching, trying to work out what to do, staring at her with almost exactly the same expression as Socrates. The hoarse voice spoke again next to her ear.

  ‘Just stay nice and quiet where you are, and I’ll walk her down to the horses.’

  Yes, and what then? Her mind raced, the whalebone forgotten. This man would never let her go alive, he used a knife too readily. This had happened to her before, perhaps there was a sign written on her brow, Take this lassie hostage at knifepoint, but since that time Gil had taught her one or two tricks to use against a man with a knife.

  ‘Right, lassie. You be quiet, the way you’re doing, and I’ll no hurt ye. We’re going to take a wee walk, see? Nice and gentle, to see the bonnie horses.’

  She collected herself as the pressure of his arm tried to turn her slightly, to move backwards down to the gate. She caught Lowrie’s eye, indicated her dangling right hand as well as she could without moving. His gaze dropped, and she counted off ostentatiously with her fingers. One. Two. Three.

  She went limp, so that her entire weight fell on the arm which restrained her, then as her captor braced himself against the sudden burden she dug in her heels and thrust backward. They both went over and down, hard, and she heard the wind go out of the man.

  She rolled frantically aside, seized the fallen knife, scrambled up out of the way of the rushing feet and the snarling.

  ‘Mistress!’ It was Lowrie at her elbow. ‘That was well done! You’re no hurt, are you?’

  ‘I’m hale.’ She found she was grinning in relief. ‘Gil taught me it.’