by Pat McIntosh
‘Eagleis Chattan,’ said their guide again. He dismounted, and from his scrip produced a cloth bundle. He mimed eating this, with an inclusive gesture, then led his pony across the burn and tethered it within reach of the water.
‘A good idea,’ said the mason, dismounting likewise, ‘and a pleasant spot for a meal.’
It was indeed pleasant enough to make stale oatmeal bannocks and hard cheese palatable. They shared out the food and ate, seated on the grass bank while the bum chattered at their feet and birds darted among the branches. The ponies drowsed in the shade. Then Lachie Mor lay back on the grass and drew his plaid over his face in a way that brooked no argument.
‘A valuable example,’ said the mason, brushing crumbs from his hose. ‘I think I also rest a little. I have not slept well.’ He lay back and tipped his round hat forward, hiding all but the neat black beard.
Gil, though he forbore from contradicting this statement, did not feel like joining the soporific scene. Instead he rose, checked the ponies’ tethers, and strolled up to investigate St Chattan’s Kirk.
A grassy path led round the little building to a narrow doorway in one side. Gil stepped in, and found that the place was in use.
It had the same impact on him as stepping into one of Glasgow’s little chapels. The walls blazed with colour, and a dark figure bent over the lit and furnished altar. He could hear the rhythmic mutter of the Office.
Astonished, he dropped to his knees on the packed bare earth, groping for words of prayer as his beads almost fell into his hands. Gradually, as the familiar phrases slipped past, he realized that he had seen something other than what was there. The red-and-silver walls were not painted, but dappled with the sunlight which came through the overhanging trees; the crucifix on the clean-swept altar was not of silver, but worked from a gleaming slab of rock, and the bright-coloured candle flame beside it was in fact a bunch of wildflowers in a horn cup. And the sound of the Office was the bum, bubbling away somewhere.
He completed the last paternoster, and turned to his own prayers. But in this extraordinary place his habitual request for freedom from doubt seemed inappropriate. He emptied his mind, and after a while words floated up. Thank you for showing me this. Please show me the next step.
He had no idea how long he knelt. After a while the light changed, and he saw without surprise that what bent over the altar was not a priest but a briar-bush, the only thing growing inside the walls. There were no other furnishings. Crossing himself, he rose, bent the knee to the silver stone image, and went out of the narrow door.
Lachie Mor and the mason still lay on the grass. One of them was snoring. Gil grinned to himself and turned to pick his way round the church right-handed.
Clearly, others did the same. The grassy path which led to the door continued round the west gable and into the trees. The sound of water grew louder as he rounded the corner, and he found himself looking at the spring from which the bum rose. The well had been built up with red and silver stones, now mossy, and the water spilled out and chattered away round the other gable of the little building. A thorn tree bent over the pool, shedding mayblossom into the water, its branches decked with rags and ribbons. Clumps of primroses studded the grass.
‘A clootie well,’ he said aloud, and bent to drink. As he raised a dripping palm to his mouth a twig cracked sharply in the trees. He froze, staring, and the shadows congealed into the form of a red deer hind, her head up, staring back at him unafraid. She stood for five or six heartbeats, then wheeled and trotted off between two beech-trees, her little feet brushing among the pale primroses. Gil stared after her, open-mouthed. Almost he could believe he had seen St Giles’s own pet. And something else - a message…
More twigs crackled behind him.
‘What do you call it?’ said the mason. ‘A Bootie well? Clootie pudding I know. How can you boil a well in a cloth?’
‘The ribbons - cloths - are offerings,’ Gil explained. ‘I believe such wells are very old. St Tennoch’s well, out the Thenawgait, is a clootie well.’
‘I have seen it.’ The mason gave the well a cursory glance and turned to study the wall of the church. ‘This is rough work, but they had talent, the old builders. If my new work is still standing in five hundred years, I shall be pleased.’ He prodded the mortar between two slabs of ribbed grey rock. ‘Our guide is awake and wishes to leave.’
Lachie Mor slipped out of the little chapel as they passed the door. For a moment he wore a distant, bemused look which chimed well with the way Gil felt; then his customary unreliable expression took over, and he leered at them, gap-toothed.
‘Tobar Chattan,’ he said, jerking a thumb at the bum. Then, pointing to their mounts, ‘Rothesay.’
‘We might be in time for dinner in the castle,’ said Maistre Pierre hopefully, as they rode south around the bay towards Rothesay. ‘You think Sir William will feed us?’
Gil, still grappling with a strong sense of unreality, made no answer, but found himself dragged back to the problems confronting them when the mason continued, as if they had never halted, ‘But had Campbell the time? He said himself he saw Bess Stewart with the gallowglass, going into the trees, when he came to the kirkyard. She was still alive then.’
‘He was not with the rest of the group throughout the whole length of Compline,’ Gil pointed out. ‘He was one of those that came and went, he said to say a word before St James’s altar, which is nearer to the south door from where they were standing. He could have slipped out and spoken to her, taken her into the building site for a word in private - perhaps he claimed to have a message from her sister. He carries a fine-bladed knife like the one we think was used. It fits together.’
‘You think the money is the only motive?’
‘If I had cheated John Sempill out of the best part of a hundred merks’ rent,’ said Gil frankly, ‘I’d go to considerable lengths to conceal it. I have known of men killed for a couple of placks, maister.’
‘So have I. I think perhaps you are right. So what do we do next?’
Gil hitched up his plaid against the rain. If it had rained all afternoon, why had there been sunshine at St Chattan’s Kirk?
‘I wish to talk to Neil Campbell, and- then I think we try for a passage back to Dumbarton tomorrow. The wind has changed, with this rain, so we may be lucky.’
‘Gil,’ said the mason. Gil turned his head to look at him. ‘You will stop calling me maister, no? We use names between us?’
‘I should count it a privilege, Pierre.’
They grinned at one another.
‘Ah, mon Dieu,’ said the mason. ‘Does that mean another night in that little chamber? On the straw mattress with fleas in, and Sir William snoring?’
They went in by the Gallowgait Port, and clattered up to the castle where they dismounted with some relief in the courtyard. Gil thanked their guide in Scots, now quite certain of his understanding; he certainly understood the coin which made its way into his grubby fist. Whistling cheerfully, he led the horses off towards the stables.
‘Now we find Sir William,’ said Maistre Pierre, turning towards the chapel. ‘You think he is in his chamber?’
‘He will be in the buttery,’ said Neil Campbell, straightening up from the chapel doorway. ‘He is sending me here to wait for the gentlemen. There is things I should be telling them.’
‘Can you tell us them over some food?’ asked the mason.
Sir William was seated in a corner of the buttery, beyond a noisy game of Tarocco. The gallowglass looked longingly at the cards as he passed with his bowl of pease broth. Gil, with a cursory glance at the play, recognized it as the kind of game in which someone who won twice would be accused of cheating. He abandoned interest, slid along the bench beside Sir William, and said, ‘Now what is it you should be telling us?’
The long dark face, intent on the bowl of broth, gave nothing away.
‘Go on, Neil,’ prompted the priest. ‘Tell them what you told me.’
‘Is i
t about Edward Stewart’s silver plate,’ asked Gil, ‘or about how Bess Stewart left Bute, or is it about how Maister Sempill sent you down here to ask about Bess’s money again?’
‘Or is it about how you and your brother killed Mistress Stewart and then the girl Miller?’ said the mason. Neil exclaimed something in Gaelic and leapt up and away from the table, knocking over the bench as he went. The players at the next table paused, watching with interest.
‘I never -! She was our lady, she was good to us! We never did nothing to harm her!’
‘Sit down,’ said Gil. ‘Sit down and tell us the truth, man.’
After a moment the gallowglass bent, set the bench up, and sat down slowly. The Tarocco game resumed, with an air of disappointment hanging over the table.
,it is about all those other things. I do not know where to be starting.’
‘At the beginning,’ said Gil, taking a spoonful of his own broth. ‘When Bess Stewart ran off with the harper. What was your part in it? When did she go?’
‘She left the house before the curfew.’
‘So early?’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I am sorry - go on.’
‘She went out to the place the mac lains were staying, near the Bishop’s house with kin of theirs from Ardnamurchan. A while later my brother went after her with her box and a bundle with all the clothes she was bringing with her. I stayed back, and the old dame sent the maids to bed and went herself, for I said I’d wait up for Mistress Stewart.’
‘Why this secrecy?’ Gil asked. ‘Why could she not just walk out of her own house?’
‘She knew fine her good-brother would be after her as soon as he knew. Nor she did not want the old dame to be blamed, for she was fond of her.’
‘And then what? Did you bar her chamber door with the kist and climb out by the window?’
‘No.’ The gallowglass crumbled pieces of his bannock into the broth. ‘No, I - my brother went with them as far as the ferry at Ardbeg.’
‘Not Rhubodach?’ said Sir William.
‘Why would they be going so far? It was not a bad evening, it was raining hard but not windy, they went by Ardbeg to Ardyne. They left the burgh quietly after the gates was shut. One man can open the Gallowgait Port, and that was my brother’s task, and then to close it again when he came back, after he had seen them on the boat. Then he came back to the house.’
‘To Bess Stewart’s house?’ Gil asked, wishing to be certain. The man nodded. ‘It was dark by this time, of course, in November. What about the curfew? The Watch?’
‘The curfew was a good thing,’ said Neil earnestly. ‘It meant there was nobody out and nobody looking out. Not when someone goes quiet past the house in the dark, nobody is looking out, not in Rothesay. As for the Watch, well, there is ways to avoid being seen. Particularly in the rain, when the man on the walkway has his plaid well up and his chin down.’
‘I wonder if John of the Isles knows he could take Rothesay in the rain,’ said Gil speculatively. ‘Well, go on. What happened in the morning? Which of you let the horse loose?’
‘I do not know how Maister Cunningham would be knowing about that,’ said the gallowglass, ‘but that was an accident, indeed. I was grooming it, and it got free, and took itself home. It was only five doors away, after all. I did not want to run after it in the street, for fear of attracting attention, but Maister James Campbell was in his stableyard, and when the beast came in he had to know where it had been, and then he came round to Mistress Bess’s house demanding to know where she was.’
‘Who did he speak to?’ asked the mason.
‘Me,’ said the man reluctantly, ‘and my brother. We was in the hall, and he came in furious, and demanded to know where was Mistress Bess. So we said, In her chamber. Then he said, No she is not, and shouted, and called us liars, and said he would see her chamber.’
‘Where were the maids?’ Gil asked, fascinated.
‘In the kitchen screaming, for he frightened them. They were just lassies. So we took him up to her chamber, and he looked in, and dragged a kist to look as if it had been behind the door, and opened the window, and then he took the plate-chest and put some more money in it out of the kist and bade us hide it in the hayloft. Then he called the old dame and shouted at her too. Mind, she shouted back,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘Ah,’ said Gil. ‘And what happened to the platechest?’
‘I have never again set eyes on it,’ said Neil with finality.
‘Never?’
‘He sent the old dame to her kin, and turned the maids away, and got all Mistress Bess’s own possessions packed up and out of the house by Terce, before he took the armed band looking for her. I doubt the plate-chest must have gone with them. Me and my brother looked for it, but we never found it.’
‘Well!’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘What a history!’
‘It’s the truth,’ said the gallowglass desperately. ‘Maisters, it’s the truth, and now I am not knowing what to do, for Maister Sempill has sent me down here to hunt for Mistress Bess’s money and everything. If I am not finding it Lady Euphemia will not be pleased, and if I am telling him where I saw it last Maister James will not be pleased, and either way Maister Sempill will be very angry,
‘Why not go and take service somewhere else?’ the mason suggested. ‘Somewhere safer, like England, or Germany.’
‘They would be finding me when I came back to Ardnamurchan.’
‘You see why I said he must tell you; said Sir William.
‘Indeed,’ said Gil. The Tarocco game, which had been getting steadily noisier, suddenly erupted in loud disagreement. Whingers were drawn. Sir William got hastily to his feet and moved in on the altercation with a courage Gil would not have expected.
‘Peace, peace, my sons!’ he exclaimed, and switched to Gaelic.
‘He’ll be lucky,’ said the mason.
‘No, I think he will succeed.’ Gil was watching the bearing of the two principal antagonists, who were now shouting at their priest as much as each other. ‘Meanwhile, what can we do with Neil here?’
‘What should we do?’
‘I think he deserves some return for telling us all this. Will you come back with us to Glasgow?’ he asked the gallowglass, who looked alarmed.
‘I have no word yet to tell Maister Sempill. He will be angry when I am coming back without the money.’
‘No, but I must go home, for I have learned a lot. Not from you alone,’ he said reassuringly. ‘We are going down to the shore now to bargain for a boat to Dumbarton in the morning. Once we get back to Glasgow we will see about taking the person who stabbed Mistress Stewart -‘
‘And Bridie Miller,’ said Maistre Pierre.
‘And Bridie Miller.’ Gil paused to think about that. Deciding that it could be made to fit, he went on, ‘If you come with us, we can shield you from Maister Sempill until all is made clear.’
‘But can you tell who has the plate-chest?’ persisted Neil, staring in awe.
‘It may tell us who had it last,’ said Gil.
Outside, the rain had ended, though a brisk southwester was herding white clouds across the sky. Down on the strand, they arranged a passage for three without difficulty, and agreed a time for departure unpleasantly early in the morning. Then they turned inland and strolled up the Kirkgait past the lawyer’s house, where Neil Campbell slipped away with a murmured excuse, and inspected the church of St Mary and St Bruoc, half a mile from the castle.
‘Not bad,’ said the mason critically. ‘These tombs are good. Old-fashioned work, but well done. And that arch is well shaped. Sir William tells me he is also chaplain of St Bride’s, on the hill yonder. Shall we go and hear Vespers there?’
Gil, having no strong feelings on the question, agreed to this, and they made their way unhurriedly back down into the town and up to St Bride’s. This was a diminutive structure, scarcely bigger than St Chattan’s, with a box-like nave and smaller chancel, and even the mason felt no pressing need for a longer look after Vespers. Leaving
Sir William preparing to say Compline before a probable congregation of two old women, they went out to sit in the wooden porch and look out over the water, watching the cloud-shadows climbing up and over the round hills of the mainland.
‘We look north here,’ said the mason. ‘There is yet another arm of this river. It must have more arms than an octopus. Well, I suppose we have finished our enquiries.’
‘I wonder,’ said Gil.
The mason turned to look at him. ‘You are not sure?’
‘I am not sure. I can’t put my finger on it but something doesn’t fit.’
‘Will you confront James Campbell tomorrow?’
‘We have uncovered so much that we must.’
‘I have wondered how we can make an arrest. We have no authority in the burgh and so cannot employ the serjeant, but we are only two and can hardly overpower a determined man - particularly if his friends also resist.’
‘This occurred to me too.’ Gil closed the chapel door as Sir William’s voice rose in the opening words of the Office. ‘Some of the apparitors might act in the matter. I must consult my uncle.’
And he had to find an answer to give his uncle as well, he thought. He had hoped the answer might make itself dear overnight, but this had not happened. Certainly he had not slept well. The straw mattress, as the mason said, had more than straw in it, and Sir William had snored the whole night and Maistre Pierre for a large part of it. And what-was-the message the hind brought?
‘Gil,’ said the mason. ‘Gilbert.’
Gil looked up.
‘I have a proposal to make. I have a marriageable daughter and you are a single man. How would you wish to marry my daughter?’
