Martha’s play involved the story of a bear that was ‘bitten by the bees’. There were hives at the far end of the garden out of sight, and Frances felt it fell upon her to inform the child, ‘You must not stir the bees. For it is the May, and they are apt to swarm.’ Martha prattled on. She did not want to sit, to suffer to be kissed, or to admire the baby sleeping in her crib, and Frances made small sense of the substance of her talk, a convolute confusion of question and delight. ‘What a lovely tale,’ she said, glad when Meg appeared, to ruffle with her hand through Martha’s tangled locks, that Frances longed to comb and fetter in a cap.
‘Have you been good for your aunt?’
‘She has told me,’ Frances said, ‘the most illuminating story of a bear.’
Meg laughed at that. ‘I have never fathomed what lies in her head. There are no bears in Scotland. I suppose she has seen one in a picture from a book.’
Giles Locke had many books that were supplied with pictures. Sometimes, he would cut one out, and give it to his children to colour in with chalks. The boy filled his minutely, keeping to the lines, with every little detail carefully preserved. But Martha would scrub with her fat little fist, round and round with the stub of the chalk, till the paper was riddled and riven to dust, while her father stood by with a smile. Frances trusted Hew would be less reckless with his own books, which were very fine. ‘There are bear pits in London, on the south bank of the Thames. They give the bears names of the poor folk at Bedlam,’ she said.
‘That is not kindness,’ said Meg.
‘I suppose not. But the bears when they are shackled have the same sprawling gait. They lumber like madmen.’
This image left a strong impression working in Meg’s mind. She pondered it a while. ‘You do not suppose—’
The question on her lips was settled by the child, coming from the press with her father’s shirt.
‘Where do you go with that? Is it for the bear? Bears do not wear clothes,’ her mother called to her.
‘Not bear, Mamma. Bare. The bare man is cold. And sore,’ Martha said, at last relieved of news that she had been attempting to deliver for some time.
V
Returning at the dinner hour, Hew was astonished to discover ‘Bumbaise’ Sempill, propped up at the board in the doctor’s cap and gown, finishing a bowl of his sister’s barley broth.
Frances confirmed, ‘Lord Sempill is here.’ She whispered, ‘He has not been well.’
Lord Sempill set down his spoon. ‘I have been set upon by a band of renegats. They did me grievous harm; the hurts are plain to see. All of them must hang.’
‘The renegats were bees,’ said Meg. ‘I do not think it likely you will hang the bees. Besides, the ones that stung you are already dead. Giles will mourn their loss. Frances will attend you, while I fetch a salve to take away their sting. Come and help me, Hew.’ She drew her brother quietly aside. ‘Martha found him naked in the garden. There is a kind of den, where the children play. It seems he spent the night there. He does not remember much; he is very flustered and confused. But I believe he suffers the effects of physic, taken in excess. The cream he has been using was a compound of henbane.’
‘I knew that you would know,’ said Hew.
‘I did not know,’ said Meg, ‘until he told me what was in it. It is very hard to take apart a compound. What he has not told me is what he used it for. However, I can hazard that it was not witchcraft. The poor man is distracted by the burden of his shame. Wherefore I will not intrude upon his misery. If you must know the reason for it, you will have to ask him.’
‘Could henbane have reduced him to this parlous state?’ asked Hew.
‘I believe it could.’ Meg spoke a little more about the workings of such physic on a feeble body. ‘He is lucky,’ she concluded, ‘that he is not dead. But now the worst is past, the drug is wearing off.’
Hew said, ‘I will talk to him. What shall I tell him? Not the whole, I think.’
He returned to the hall where Lord Sempill sat, and the women with their children quietly withdrew, leaving them to talk. Then Lord Sempill crumbled, all his bluster gone. ‘My pardon to you, sir, but can we speak in confidence? For as I believe, you are an honest man. Your good wife and sister have cared for me with uncommon kindness. I am in your debt.’
‘Not mine,’ answered Hew.
‘No. Perhaps not. Forgive me my manners, if they seem rude. I have had, do you see, the most bumbaising day. I must ask your help.’
How can I help you?’
‘You think I do not ken you, but I do. I mind a green young advocate who spoke before my court. The circumstances were extraordinary. Your argument was curious, exact, and convolute. In parts, it was exasperating, tending to the tedious. And yet there was a brilliance in it I will not forget. You could well have risen to a most prodigious course. It is to your credit you did not.’
‘I had not supposed that you remembered that,’ said Hew, both flattered and astonished.
‘Ah, indeed, why not? Do you now assume a girlish sort of modesty? Or is it, in fact, that you believe old Sempill is wanting in his wits? That because I profess myself so frequently perplexed, I do not understand the working of the world? You are not the first to come to that conclusion. But it is a mistake. I seek for truth, and clarity. Confusion in such cases is a powerful tool. It forces men to look again for ways they may express themselves. The more they must revise, and revisit their accounts, the greater is the hazard they will lose and trip themselves, and inadvertently reveal their secret truths. Do you understand?’
Hew said, ‘I begin to.’
‘You begin to. Good. Then let me tell you this. I have had a life. When I was a bairn, I was first a page, at the court of James the fifth. When I was full grown, I studied for the law. For years, I was first depute in the justice court, second only to the lord justiciar. I saw many trials, and many men were hanged, at my word of command. I am not a fool.’
‘I understand you, sir. How then may I help you?’
To Hew’s dismay, Lord Sempill’s eyes began to dim with tears. ‘The trouble now is this. For the first time in my life, I find myself afeart. I woke up in a field, naked to the skin, and I have no notion how I came to be there. I have stolen honey from a guid wife’s hive, and startled her small child. I have been stung by some scores of bees, and I cannot tell you why. And I am afraid that I may lose my mind. There is a man at my back, on the king’s commission, who will do all he can to oust me from my place. He must not learn of this.’
‘That is Colluthie,’ Hew supposed.
‘Colluthie, aye. What have you heard?’
‘He thinks you are a witch, transfigured to a bird.’
‘Oh, my dear Lord,’ Sempill groaned.
‘We shall prove him wrong. Your clothes have been found, in the place where you had left them. The woman who found them chose to sell them on. The man who bought them from her is suspected of your murder.’
‘What, so much wrong?’ Lord Sempill dropped his face into his hands.
‘There may yet be worse. But we shall put it right. You must tell me this. The potion in your pocket. What do you use it for?’
Lord Sempill whimpered, ‘Trust me, that it is not what you think.’
‘You cannot know what I think. But it is imperative that you answer honestly.’
‘Then I see no help but to tell the truth. The pot continues an ointment for a sore affliction, of which I am ashamed. I bought it from a guid wife in the Canongate, who assured me of discretion. She is not, I may say, my usual practitioner.’
Hew asked, ‘What affliction?’
‘I prefer not to say.’
‘And I prefer some hope of making out a case for you.’
‘Ah, very well. It is an ointment prescribed for griefs of the fundament. The candle stub is instrumental in its application,’ Lord Sempill answered wretchedly. ‘The truth is that the woman warned me not to use so much. But I have been cruelly afflicted. It was a long ride from Ed
inburgh.’
Hew said, a little grimly, ‘Aye, no doubt it was. My sister is acquainted with medicinal herbs. She tells me that the henbane active in your ointment, taken in excess, can lead to fits of frenzy and paralysis. Therein is explained your lapse in sensibility.’
‘Then I am not mad! I thank God for that. Yet am I ashamed. What happened,’ Sempill whispered, fearful in relief, ‘in those desperate hours that I cannot recall? What happened to my clothes? And why should Colluthie take me for a witch?’
‘As I believe,’ said Hew, ‘you went to St Leonard’s to find out what secrets they kept hidden from you. The physic you had applied had already done its work, else I do not think you would have ventured out at night. Whatever was the purpose foremost in your mind, while you were there, you made use of the latrines. And there applied more of your ointment, which already you were using to excess. It tipped you to the brink of a strange delirium. A fever perhaps, for you took off your clothes. There it was you left them; there were they found. You ran back through the woods.’
Here Hew chose to edit, straying from a truth that Sempill, he was certain, would not care to hear. He would never learn it from the four men at St Leonard’s, who were sworn to secrecy; their interests mirrored his. What purpose was in truth, if the humiliation of it was too hard to bear? The version Hew presented now caused Sempill pain enough. ‘At St Mary’s,’ he improvised, ‘you collapsed, insensible. A student saw you there. He took you for dead – henbane can disguise any sign of life – and went to call for help. He came back with a friend, and found the corpse was gone, and in its place a bird. You had woken up, and meanwhile wandered off, coming to Meg’s garden, where you found a bed. The silly boys believed that you had been transformed.’
Lord Sempill was too vexed to dwell upon this foolishness. ‘A student saw me bared? Then I am undone. No more. A laughing stock. The butt of rude boys’ jests.’
‘It is not as bad as you think. The student was too delicate – or perhaps too feart – to recount your nakedness. He is very young.’
‘Aye, but the clothes?’ Sempill moaned.
‘The man who is accused has nothing but a coat. You need only find a reason why you left it there.’
‘Then, can it be possible? Something can be saved?’
‘All can be saved. I will take you back, washed and dressed and salved, and we shall both flesh out the bones of your account. Your appearance will restore and set the thing to rights. And the man and the bird who are imprisoned will be freed.’
‘Then I thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart. For reputation, though tis hard to win, is very quickly lost.’
‘I will fetch some clothes from your baggage at the inn. It will not do, I think, to dress like Doctor Locke.’
‘I am much obliged to you. The student who observed me – how long was the grass?’
‘Exceedingly, no doubt. For we are now in May.’
‘And you are sure, you say, that there was no one else but your sister and her bairn, confronted with my nakedness?’
‘If anyone comes forth to lay a claim to that,’ Hew chose his words with care, ‘I will eat my hat.’
He turned back at the door. ‘When you were at the court, when you were a bairn, did you use to dance?’
Lord Sempill’s eyes lit up with a kind of wonder. ‘To dance? Why, then, we did. You mind me of a thing I have not done for years. Why do you ask that?’
‘It is a matter, now, of no consequence at all.’
The commissioners at the West Port were flustered to receive a letter from Lord Sempill, requiring their attendance at the college of St Salvator at three o’clock, ‘to conclude that business that was there left off’. ‘He has turned,’ said Colluthie, ‘just as I telt ye. What did I say? A witch cannot keep the shape it takes for long.’
‘But if he has turned,’ objected Philip Clench, ‘how is he at large, to send to us a letter? Surely Doctor Locke has not set him free again?’
‘He could not send a letter,’ Colluthie reasoned carefully, ‘if he was a bird.’
‘The feather of a bird,’ William Soutar said, ‘is, properly, a pen.’ Both men stared at him. ‘Perhaps,’ he ventured timidly, ‘we should go and see.’
They found Lord Sempill whole, in the figure of himself and in his own black coat, together with the rook, still huddled in its cage. Giles Locke and Hew Cullan stood on either side. Colluthie was the first to speak. ‘Where have you been to, my lord?’
Sempill answered, ‘I have not been well. I was tended, in my sickness, by Doctor Locke’s wife, who is a woman of outstanding virtue. Now I have recovered.’
Colluthie shot the doctor an accusing look. ‘Why did ye not say?’
‘I did not know,’ said Giles.
Philip Clench observed, ‘He does not look well. You do not look well, my lord. Are those pustules on your face? God forbid it is infecting.’
‘Sadly, it is not,’ said Giles, who was bitter still about the damage to his bees. ‘The danger has passed.’
‘Aye, I am well. And restored to health, yet have I been vexed by strange, fantastic tales. A man has been detained for picking up my coat, which I left off in haste. He has been released, and the coat returned,’ said Sempill.
Philip said uneasily, ‘Good, then, no harm done.’
‘No? Then what is this?’ Sempill picked up the rook in its cage and allowed it to swing close to his face. The effect, Hew saw, was terrifying. In private, he applauded the performance.
‘A boy brought it to us. He telt us – well, he was mistaken,’ Philip said. ‘It does not matter what he telt us.’
Giles said, ‘Sirs, your sport is done. Let the creature go.’
But Colluthie was not easily distracted from his mark. He opened up the cage, and lifted out the bird, which fluttered faint and feebly in his hand. He held it aloft, to show to it the window, and for a moment Hew believed he meant to let it go. Then, with a snap of his figures, he broke the bird’s neck. His eyes, all the while, had remained fixed on Sempill. He let the rook fall, a loose sack of feathers, soft, to the ground.
Giles gave a small cry of disgust. Hew asked, ‘Why do that?’ But it was Sempill who replied.
‘I can tell you why. He did it because he thought – because he hoped – that it would hurt me. He looks to cause me pain. Is that not the pith of it, David?’
The laird of Colluthie rubbed his hand upon his coat, as though the place was sore. ‘A witch may have a familiar,’ he said. His eyes were dark with doubt.
William Soutar said, looking at the coat, ‘There is a mark that may not come out.’
‘And the rook is my familiar? Is that it?’ Lord Sempill said, in a terrible voice. He towered above them then, sober, sharp and scornful. And Hew could see the ghosts of all the desperate men that he had once condemned and sentenced to their deaths, gathered in Colluthie, trembling and perplexed.
‘I think, I think,’ Colluthie said, ‘we may have been misled. But ye will apprehend, there are questions to be answered,’ he concluded weakly.
‘Aye, there are, indeed,’ Sempill said, returning to his normal self. ‘There is, first and foremost, our commission in the college, and the question of accounts.’
‘I can help you there,’ Giles said unexpectedly. ‘It is an extraordinary thing. But this morning, our gardener was digging up some radishes, and he found a box.’
He lifted down the box from a shelf behind him and placed it on the board. The four men gathered round. ‘It is, as you can see, a thing of great antiquity. And there is no doubt that we will find inside it the ancient college charters.’ A hush descended as he opened up the lid, and Hew, who craned behind him to see inside its vaults, saw nothing there but dust.
Colluthie said, ‘What? Have we more of your tricks?’
But Sempill said benignly, ‘Thank you, Doctor Locke. William, take this down: The Report of The Auld College, on the ninth of May, 1588: “There is no complete inventory of their documents, the provos
t alleging that Master William Cranston has the great part of the same documents” – you did say that, Doctor Locke? – “and that the rest was put in a kist under the earth and long thereafter found there by chance, but that the documents were altogether consumed therein.” That will do nicely, I think.’
‘It will not do,’ Colluthie said. ‘What of the accounts?’
Sempill fixed him with a look. ‘Peace, I come to that. Do you have accounts?’ He returned to Giles.
‘They are not complete.’
‘Excellent. Write, “There is no perfect account this nine years bygone.” We shall return, Doctor Locke, on the twentieth of May, which will give you time to gather what accounts you have. Hew tells me your economus is ill. Please tell him he is held in my regard. We go now to St Leonard’s, in hope they make amendment for their previous faults.’ He swept his men before him, with a clear command.
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