The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  Gil stared, and felt the wooden bench of the porch shift under him with the whole of St Bride’s Hill.

  ‘I …’ he began, and his voice dried up. He swallowed. Had he really heard that?

  ‘Not, of course, if you do not wish to be married,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘But it seems to me it would be a good match.’

  ‘I …’ began Gil again, and recognized, with glorious clarity, the hind’s message, the next step he had asked for. ‘I can - I can think of nothing I would like more, and almost nothing of which I am less worthy.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Maistre Pierre. That is well, then.’ He put out his hand. ‘We are agreed in principle, yes?’

  ‘Well,’ said Gil blankly. ‘Yes. But Alys? How does she feel about marriage? About me? I am six-and-twenty, she is not yet seventeen, she scarcely knows me.’

  ‘Alys,’ said her father, ‘came home on May Day and told me she had seen the man she wanted to her husband. When I said, Well, cherie, but he might be married, she said, No, father, for he is to be a priest. But I think he doesn’t want to be a priest, says she, so he might as well marry me.’

  ‘How did she know that?’ Gil wondered.

  ‘She knows everything,’ said the mason. ‘She is not, perhaps, as pretty as her mother, but I think she is wiser. But there you are. Clearly she affects you. And you? Do you affect her? Is there some feeling there?’

  ‘Je desire de voir la douce desiree … I wish to see the sweet desirable woman: she has everything, beauty and science,’ Gil quoted. ‘I have thought of her day and night since I first saw her. But I am not - Pierre, I have no land, no means. How should I keep a wife? What would I bring to a marriage?’

  ‘Yourself,’ said the mason, ‘warranted sound in wind and limb, your profession, your descent. Your learning and, if you will forgive me, your attitude to Alys’s learning. Alys herself will be well dowered. These are matters for your uncle and me to discuss. If we are satisfied, so may you be.’

  ‘And what my uncle will say -‘

  ‘He was in favour of the idea when I spoke to him. Are you trying to cry off already?’

  ‘God, the old fox -!’

  Gil began to laugh, and took the hand which the mason was still offering.

  ‘You have turned my life round with a few words,’ he said, and realized he was trembling. ‘My hert, my will, my nature and my mind Was changit clean right in another kind. I am finding it difficult to grasp such a shift in my fortune.’

  ‘Do not try,’ said Maistre Pierre seriously. ‘Let it be. You will grow used to it soon enough. Meantime, I think Compline is ended, since there is no singing to slow matters. Sir William will be with us shortly, and we can go back to those appalling mattresses.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Matt was waiting on the strand at Dumbarton when the Mary and Bruoc beached just after Sext. Gil felt astonishingly glad to see him; he was a familiar figure, one of the remnants of his childhood, like Maggie, and it was reassuring to find him here in the midst of change.

  ‘Thrown out of all the ale-houses?’ he asked, wading out of the shallows. Matt grunted in reply, and gave the gallowglass the hostile stare of a small man for a tall one. ‘And have you found any word of Annie Thomson?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Matt.

  ‘Is she safe?’ asked the mason, turning from bidding farewell to the master of the Mary and Bruoc. Matt nodded, and Gil was conscious of a strong feeling of relief.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Where does she live? Is she in Dumbarton?’

  ‘St Giles’ Wynd. But …’ said Matt.

  ‘But what?’ asked the mason. Gil, more familiar with the man’s taciturn nature, simply waited.

  ‘Toothache,’ said Matt finally.

  ‘The poor lassie,’ said Neil with ready sympathy.

  ‘Bad?’ asked Gil. Matt nodded. ‘Bad enough to prevent us questioning her?’

  Matt shrugged, and turned away to walk along the shore. Gil followed him, trying to concentrate his mind on what he must say to the girl.

  He felt quite different this morning. He had slept, badly, two nights in these clothes, and certainly had acquired fleas from the infamous straw mattress, and yet his body felt cleaner than the wind which blew through his hair. His feet in the soggy boots were as light as the wood smoke spiralling up along the shore where someone was heating a tar-kettle. And beach and burgh, rock and hills, the smells of seaweed and tar, seemed as new and unfamiliar as if he had cast up on the shores of Tartary or Prester John’s country. He could not gather his thoughts at all, although that might be down to lack of sleep, or to the dream, which would not leave him.

  He had lain most of the night in Sir William’s loft chamber, listening to his two companions snoring, and to the occasional rattle of rain on the slates of the chapel above his head, imagining strange and glorious ways in which he could earn land and money to support a wife. To support Alys. None of them, he had to admit, was practicable, and he had eventually fallen asleep, and dreamed that he was sailing a small boat, just big enough for one, across billows of grey ribbed silk. A rope in his hand led to a sail bluer than the sky. The boat sped on, until he came to a high rock rising out of the folds of silk. Seated on its crest, Euphemia was combing a lock of her long yellow hair and singing. At her side was an armed man, entangled in another yellow lock; as the boat slid past he raised a mailed fist in salute, or in farewell, and Gil saw without surprise that it was his brother Hugh. He looked back, but the boat sailed on, followed by the singing. The annoying thing was that he knew the tune, and he had woken trying to remember the words.

  ‘Do you know this one?’ he said to Maistre Pierre, and whistled a few notes. The mason joined in, nodding.

  ‘We sang it. The other night at my house, you remember? A new song Alys had from somewhere. D’amour je suis desheritee …’

  ‘I remember. I am dispossessed by love,’ Gil quoted, ‘and do not know who to appeal to. Alas, I have lost my love, I am alone, he has left me … to run after an affected woman who slanders me without ceasing. Alas, I am forgotten, wherefore I am delivered to death.’

  ‘What has brought that into your head?’ asked Maistre Pierre, at his most quizzical. ‘I hope it has no bearing on the present?’

  ‘I don’t know. Oh, none upon Alys or the - the matter you broached last night. Merely, I dreamed of Euphemia Campbell singing that.’

  ‘Hardly likely,’ said the mason.

  ‘She is singing like a ghillie-Bride - an oyster-catcher,’ said Neil, who had apparently taken Gil for his lord and protector. ‘High and thin and all on one note.’

  ‘It keeps coming back to my mind. Matt! Where are we going?’

  ‘St Giles’ Wynd,’ said Matt, jerking a thumb towards the vennel that led inland.

  They could hear the screaming as they picked their way along the busy High Street, and when they turned in at the entry under the figure of St Giles the sounds echoed hollowly in the vault. A little knot of neighbours was gathered along the wynd outside the house, nodding and exclaiming, and as Matt pushed his way through someone looked round saying hopefully, ‘Here’s the tooth-drawer!’

  ‘That’s no the tooth-drawer,’ said someone else. ‘He’s away across the river to St Mahew’s to see to a horse, he’ll no be back before Vespers. Oh, my, will you listen to that, the poor lassie.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked the mason. ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘A lassie with a rotten tooth,’ said someone else. Several voices explained how the girl’s mouth was swelled the size of a football and she couldny eat or speak.

  ‘And her minnie waited till this morn to send for the tooth-drawer, and found him out of the town.’

  ‘Why’d she wait so long?’

  ‘The lassie wouldny have it. Aye, aye, she’s regretting it now.,

  Gil, listening to the screams, felt it unlikely that the sufferer had thought for anything but her pain.

  ‘Is it Annie Thomson?’ he asked.

  ‘It is that,�
�� said someone. ‘Here, widow Thomson, here’s a man asking for Annie.’

  ‘If you’re no the tooth-drawer I don’t want you,’ said the widow Thomson, appearing in her doorway. She was a big-framed, bulky woman, with a strong resemblance to the girl they had seen in Glasgow. ‘I don’t know, there’s been as many folk asking for her since she came home, and the worse she gets the more folk come asking.’

  ‘Who else has been looking for her?’ Gil asked quickly.

  ‘Him yonder, for a start,’ said the widow, pointing at Matt, who ducked hastily behind the mason. ‘And a black- avised fellow in a green velvet hat came round the door yesterday stinking of musk, seemed to feel all he had to do was show enough coin and she’d tell him some story or other.’ She flinched as another scream tore at their ears. ‘I ask you, maisters, how could she speak to anyone?’ She wiped her eyes with the end of her kerchief. ‘What she needs is that tooth drawn, and then she can get some rest.’

  ‘Then maybe we can all get some rest,’ said a voice from the back of the crowd. ‘Two days this has been going on.’

  ‘I wish we could do something,’ said Gil helplessly.

  ‘I could,’ said Matt suddenly.

  Gil stared at him. ‘Can you draw teeth, Matt?’

  ‘You can draw teeth?’ asked the widow. ‘Oh, maister, if you could help my lassie!’

  ‘He will need someone to hold her down,’ said the mason in practical tones.

  ‘Aye.’ Matt nodded at Gil. ‘You can help,’ he said firmly. At the sound of the word, the crowd around them began to break up like a dandelion-clock, but Matt put out a hand and seized the sleeve of a bowlegged man in a carpenter’s apron. ‘Pinchers,’ he said, and held out his other hand.

  The next half-hour or so was among the most unpleasant Gil had ever spent. Inside, the house was small and dark and smelled of peat smoke, rancid bacon and illness. Matt took one look, scuffed at the earth floor, shook his head and said, ‘Out in the street.’ He looked about, past the oblivious girl writhing and sobbing in the bed. ‘Chair?’

  ‘Maister MacMillan’s got a fine chair he’d maybe lend us,’ said the widow. She hurried off to see to this. Matt stepped into the street and looked at the crowd, which was gathering again.

  ‘Rope,’ he said. ‘Clean clouts.’

  People ran to and fro, and these were produced. The chair was set on a level patch in front of the house door, and Annie was carried out, struggling and screaming, and tied down. It took four of them to restrain her, the mason and Neil Campbell as well as Gil and Matt himself, with a great deal of advice from the onlookers, and it was clear that even a new tarred rope was not going to keep her still. Her face was indeed badly swollen, and she was conscious enough of her surroundings to offer considerable resistance when Matt tried to look at the tooth.

  ‘It’s one of the big ones,’ said her mother anxiously. ‘One of the wee big ones, not the great big ones, if you take my meaning, maister. I was packing it with pigeons’ dung pounded with an onion, but it never did any good.’

  ‘Oh, no, no!’ said the mason, hanging on to a flailing wrist. ‘The pigeon being a bird of Venus, its dung generates heat, excellent to draw a gumboil but not in this instance -‘

  ‘Ah!’ said Matt, peering into the swollen tissue. ‘There!’ He let the girl’s mouth close and succeeded, with a few gestures, in placing his helpers in the most useful manner, despite complaints from the crowd that the mason’s broad back was obstructing someone’s view. Pliers in one hand, he got behind the screaming, squirming girl, issued a word of command, and grabbed her head in an arm-lock, forcing her jaw open with his left thumb precisely as Gil had seen him do to a horse.

  There were a few minutes of hectic action. There were screams, and scuffling and sobbing, and then some really unpleasant noises. Gil, intent on keeping Annie’s shoulders as still as possible, was aware of the feet of the onlookers closing in. Then suddenly, all the noise ceased and the girl stopped struggling. Gil, wondering if he had gone deaf, let go and straightened up.

  Matt was holding up a bloody morsel in his pliers. The girl was lying alarmingly still and was quite white where she was not already bloodstained, but as her mother hurried forward with a cry of, ‘Annie! Oh, my lassie!’ her eyelashes fluttered. The crowd was commenting freely and loudly on the success of the operation.

  ‘Clouts,’ said Matt, handing the pliers to Gil, who took them reluctantly. With a little difficulty Annie was persuaded to open her mouth, and Matt mopped gently at the mess, pausing to point out the amount of pus on the cloth.

  ‘Oh, maister, how can I thank you!’ said the widow, patting her daughter’s hand. ‘What’s your fee?’

  Matt shrugged.

  ‘I hope there’s no trouble with the burgh tooth-drawer,’ said Gil, beginning to untie the knots in the rope.

  ‘Well, if he’d been here when he was wanted,’ said someone behind him.

  The carpenter reclaimed his pliers and went out into the High Street, and the rest of the crowd, the entertainment over, began to drift after him. Annie was helped back into her house, her mother still exclaiming about a fee, and Matt delivered some terse advice which Gil expanded for him.

  ‘Make well-water hot, mistress, and put salt in it, and have her hold it in her mouth and spit it out - don’t swallow it - for the space of three Aves, three times a day till it stops bleeding. And feed her on broth for a day or two.’

  ‘What will that do?’ the widow asked suspiciously.

  ‘The salt will draw out the excess humours; said the mason quickly over Gil’s shoulder, ‘which is what has been causing the swelling.’

  ‘Should she no be bled?’

  ‘The tooth-drawer might want to bleed her,’ said Gil diplomatically. He handed the coiled rope back to its owner at the door, and turned back to the widow where she was heaping blankets on the shivering girl. ‘Mistress, did you tell me someone was asking for Annie yesterday?’

  ‘Aye, I did.’

  ‘Did you get his name? Or what he wanted to ask her?’

  ‘I did not. He’d some story about a boy and a bang on the head, but I’d more to worry about than a Campbell in a green hat. There, then, my lassie, he there and get warm. It’s over now, poor lass.’

  ‘He was a Campbell, was he?’

  She paused in tucking the blankets at Annie’s feet.

  ‘Oh, he was a Campbell all right. You’d only to look at him.’

  Sitting in a nearby ale-house, they stared at one another.

  ‘Poor lassie,’ said Neil again.

  ‘Thank you, maisters,’ said Matt.

  ‘And we still have not questioned the girl,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I would say it will be a day or two before she is fit to talk. Do we wait here for that?’

  ‘No need, I think,’ said Gil. ‘I have learned enough from her mother.’

  ‘What, that James Campbell was here asking for her? How does that help?’

  ‘We know he has an interest in what she heard or saw,’ Gil pointed out.

  ‘But we knew that already.’

  ‘And now we know that he does not yet know what she saw.’

  ‘Ye-es.’ The mason eyed Gil, scowling.

  ‘Are ye for ordering, maisters?’ demanded the girl at Matt’s elbow.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Gil. ‘There is something I want to do in Dumbarton, but if we get a bite here, we can be in Glasgow for a late dinner. What can you offer us, lass?’

  David Cunningham came down to the door to meet them, spectacles in hand.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said as Gil dismounted. ‘Here’s a surprise. I’d not have looked for you before Vespers. Welcome back, Gilbert. Welcome back, maister. You’ll eat with us? Maggie has something ready, I dare say. Aye, Matt.’

  Matt, gathering up reins, merely grunted. The gallowglass, silent, was keeping his horse between himself and the gateway of the Sempill house.

  ‘I thank you, maister, but no,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I am anxious to get home t
o my daughter. After all, she will soon be leaving me,’ he added.

  ‘A drink of ale, to wash the dust from your throat, then?’ suggested the Official, his thin smile crossing his face in answer to the mason’s significant grin. ‘Maggie! And shall we see you later today, then? John Sempill has been sending twice a day to ask when you’ll be back. I think it would suit him to get this matter sorted with the bairn. Tam can go down to tell the harper, if we can arrange a tryst.’

  Maggie was already bustling forward out of the kitchen gate, a tray in her hands. Gil, taking a pull at his beaker, realized with surprise that it contained the good ale, the stuff she rarely brewed. Is this for me, he wondered, or for the mason who will be visiting frequently this week, no doubt.

  ‘For you, of course,’ said his uncle, when the mason had clattered away and they went into the house. ‘I happened to mention the mason’s approach, and she was greatly moved. She is gey fond of you, Gilbert. I hope your bride can brew as well.’

  ‘I’m told she can bake and brew with the best,’ said Gil.

  ‘And had you good hunting in Rothesay?’

  ‘I did, but it’s good to be back. William Dalrymple sends his salutations. Sir, if John Sempill is to be here before Vespers I must talk to you, but before that I must shift my clothes and wash off the dust. Will you excuse me?’

  ‘Come to my chamber once you are dean. You are aware, I take it, that you have lost your hat?’

  ‘Have I? It must have fallen off. Likely when Matt drew the lassie’s tooth.’

  His uncle paused in the door to the stairs, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘You have dearly a lot to tell me,’ he said.

  Maggie looked up as Gil entered the kitchen.

  ‘You might have warned me you were bringing a Campbell back with you,’ she said. The Campbell, seated in a corner, ducked his head in embarrassment and took a bite of barinock and cheese. ‘And so you’re to be wed, are you, Maister Gil?’

  ‘So it seems,’ said Gil. ‘Are you pleased?’

  ‘Oh, aye. It’ll get you out from under my feet.’ She thumped at the dough under her hands. ‘And you’ll no be so far away, you’ll can visit your uncle, I’ve no doubt. Is she bonnie? I’ve seen her at the market, but no close to.’