1588 A Calendar of Crime

by Shirley McKay

  POSTSCRIPT

  DEAD SPANIARD

  ‘a proof that spirits and ghosts do oftentimes appear’

  On November 26, 1588, the minister James Melville was woken from his bed and called to the harbour at Anstruther, where a ship was docked. The ship had sailed from Orkney, and the sailors aboard, who were more than two hundred and fifty, were survivors of the Gran Grifon, the flagship of the Spanish fleet. The men were in a desperate state, and posed no kind of threat. They were received by the civic and the Kirk authorities with civility and kindness, and responded gratefully. James Melville preached a sermon to them on their errors, which was well received. Their commander was extended every courtesy, and proved himself a credit to his rank. The rest were watched, and cared for, on their ship. The captives gave no trouble, and they wanted none. On one occasion only did they cause concern, when it was reported that one among the crew was missing from his berth. The missing man was Andres del Castillo, a young sailor born to a gentle family, who had been wounded badly in the wreck, when a piece of wood had pierced his side. If he were alive, he could not be far. A search was made, but nothing of him found. His captain thought he might have fallen overboard.

  For the rest, they were quiet, honest men. If they had ever brought with them the vengeful tools of torment named in the reports, then they had gone down with the Gran Grifon. James Melville found them Christian, too, at heart. At St Andrews, he acquired a list of all the ships, and where they had come down, to bring back to their captain, who was keen for news. The minister was moved by how much it affected him. ‘They are not monsters, at all,’ he said to Hew when he met him in the street. ‘But just the same as you and I.’

  The college settled down for the winter term. Malcolm Crabbe had left, but promised to come back, and Thomas Crowe returned from his convalescence, with a little flesh upon his bones, and a little colour on his cheeks. The last fair in the year came on St Andrew’s day. And early on that day, before the sun was up, Andres del Castillo came around the coast, looking for the town where the pilgrims used to come. The cathedral church had fallen in decline. But that was not the kirk that caught his eye. He was drawn instead to the chapel of St Salvator, with its steeple spire that towered above the town, and its aspect open to the quiet street. And there it was he chose to say his final prayers.

  Hew was in the turret tower with Giles, when Thomas Crowe came bursting through the door. His eyes were shining. ‘He is there! The Spaniard is there! In the chapel, now. Come, come and see!’

  ‘You were telt,’ scolded Giles, ‘not to go in there.’

  Hew pleaded, ‘No more ghosts.’

  ‘He is not a ghost. He is flesh and blood.’ Thomas tugged his cloak. ‘Come, will you, see!’

  Coming to the kirk, Hew saw Andres kneeling in the place where there was an altar in the Catholic church. He rose at their approach, holding out his hands, opening his mouth as though he meant to speak. Blood began to spring from the wound on his side, and he laced his fingers, closing it again, falling to the ground. As Giles ran to catch him, Thomas said clearly, ‘Now he is dead.’

  There was nothing, after all, remarkable in that. Andres was the man missing from the ship, thought by his friends to have fallen in the sea. There was nothing strange in a foreign sailor, so far from his home, coming here to die in a holy place. The steeple of the chapel was a beacon to the faithful. It was meant to be. And if he did resemble someone Thomas Crowe had seen, or had once imagined seeing in a dream, that was natural too, as everyone agreed, for all the Spanish sailors looked the same.

  NOTE

  The epigraphs to parts 1–4, and to the Postscript, are taken from the 1596 edition of Lewes Lavater, Of Ghosts and Spirits, Walking by Night, with some slight modernisations.

  The epigraph to ‘Martinmas’ is Lavater’s version of the Aeneid, Book 4 384f. (Dido threatening to haunt Aeneas)

  The ‘New Ballet of the straunge and most cruelle Whippes’, by Thomas Deloney, was printed in London, 1588.

  BOOK V

  It is easy to cry Yule at another man’s cost

  PROVERB

  I

  The old miller’s son, John Kintor, at fifteen years of age, was learning to take care of Hew Cullan’s land. He was followed in his work on a clear day in December by a boy of six, who helped with the grafting of the cherry and the pear trees, so there would be fruit, and blossom in the spring.

  The child, Matthew Locke, took note of all he heard. ‘There are grapes in the house. How is it that we have them in the winter time?’ he asked.

  ‘You maun ask your mammie,’ John Kintor said, ‘for that kind of alchemy. I dinna ken.’

  ‘Alchemy is making base things into gold,’ Matthew said.

  ‘Alchemy is cookery. How are the grapes? Are they good to eat?’

  ‘They are for the feast. I have not tried them yet. My daddie says that they are hot and moist, and an abomination at this time of year.’

  John Kintor said, ‘He will drink them, no doubt.’

  Matthew did not understand. ‘He says they puff the spleen and make it sick.’

  John Kintor laughed at that. ‘Best not eat too many, then. Are you not wanted at your books the day?’

  ‘My master Gavan Baird says it is a ferie day, on account of Yule. But not to tell the Kirk,’ Matthew said.

  John Kintor nodded. He was learning also, at the grammar school. But he did not have to go there every day. ‘Then you can help me with a special task. For it, we will want a length of strong rope. Run to the stable; they will gie you some.’

  ‘What task is that? Is it Yule work?’

  ‘It might be,’ John said.

  There was Yule work all around. Gavan Baird had taught Matthew and his sister Martha three separate songs for the nativity. They were Gude and Godlie ballads, so the minister at kirk could hardly disapprove of them, though Gavan said he would. The children were to sing at the dinner in the hall, while their aunt Frances would play on her lute.

  Martha could not mind many of the words. She sang the balulalow that Minnie used to sing to her to make her go to sleep. In between it, she pulled faces, like the ones the mummers pulled at the Lammas fair. ‘That will bring tears to your mither’s eyes. Your daddie’s too, I doubt,’ Gavan Baird had said.

  ‘Because it is so bad?’

  ‘Because you sing so sweetly.’

  The thought of his parents weeping frightened him a little. ‘I do not want to mak my daddie greet.’

  ‘The tears will be joyful ones,’ Gavan Baird had said.

  ‘Did you ken a man can greet from happiness?’ Matthew asked John Kintor.

  John said, ‘Are you not gone yet? Run, fetch that rope.’

  Matthew went back through the house. He was fond of the stables, where as an infant he had learned to ride, but he never went without an apple for the horse, and another for the boy who had to clean him out. Dun Scottis was an old and filthy-tempered nag, and since he shared his hay with others more refined, there was a danger that he might be overlooked. That was in a verse Gavan Baird had read to him, all about a horse neglected at the Yule. It had made him sad.

  The apples were kept in the laich house below, where the dry air smelt leathery sweet. Matthew liked to go there, to take his time to choose a pippin from the racks. But today, a basketful had been brought up to the hall, and the pippins had been polished to a blush. The apples had been piled up in a bowl, sitting on a board. The board had been covered with a dark green cloth. It also held a bowl of apricots and nuts, and on a dish beside them, in a kind of cluster, were the pale green grapes. They had a whitish bloom on them. Matthew reached to touch.

  ‘Don’t,’ said his mother behind him.

  His mother’s arms were filled with holly boughs. She had made a wreath to hang upon the door. The holly and the rowan trees kept away bad spirits from the house. Now she tucked a sprig into the apple dish.

  ‘If I eat a grape, will I turn to gold?’

  His mother laugh
ed at that. ‘You are gold already, in your heart. But I do not want you to eat them now. They are for tomorrow, after kirk.’

  ‘It is fine an bonny in the house. But cauld,’ Matthew said.

  The hall had been swept out, down to the bare bars of the great iron grate, with its bed of ash, naked of its flame. It was cold outside; the bright winter sunshine born of the frost did not warm the ground. John Kintor blew on his hands, and his frozen breath hung in the air.

  ‘It is warm in the kitchen,’ Minnie said.

  He followed her inside it, and found a blaze of heat. A great haunch of beef roasted on the spit, while several pots and kettles bubbled on the fire. In a cooler place, his aunt and Bella Frew were making coloured tarts, of saffron, plum and spinach, and of almond cream. The tarts would be frosted with a sugar crust, which the flame would fix to make it look like ice. The ice would thaw to syrup, tasting like a rose, sweet upon the tongue. It was like winter and summer in one.

  Martha was here too, helping to paint the marchpanes and the gingerbread, quilting them with nuts.

  The tarts would be fired in the oven in the bakehouse. Minnie had an oven made of tiles, built into the thickness of the kitchen wall. But the oven here was huge, and had a man to fuel it. The tenants of the farms brought their cakes and loaves, saving them a walk and a penny for the baxter. What the bakers did not know could not hurt them, Frances said. For six or seven days, there had been a crowd of people in the park, coming with their cold plates and going back with hot. If they had no spice or currants for their pies, Frances gave them some. And the air round about smelt of cinnamon and cloves.

  Matthew and Martha had been brought here by their mother, to help prepare the Yule. Their father would join them on the morrow for the feast, which was Yule itself, or what their aunt Frances still called Christmas day.

  Frances had made minchit pies. They were filled with fruits, with spice and strips of flesh, and the scent that came from them was deep and rich and savoury. She told him of a pie that she had seen in London once, in a shop belonging to a pastry cook. That pie had been shaped like the castle at Windsor. Each of its turrets was a coffin crust, and each one was filled with a different kind of meat.

  Aunt Frances said in London there were pies of birds and frogs. The frogs and birds were live. And when the pie was cut, they would all fly out. The trick was that the coffin had been filled with bran, and after it was cooked, a hole was made in it; the bran was all poured out, and the animals put in. That would be a dreadful disappointment, Matthew thought. For inside the crust would be nothing to eat.

  Sometimes, Frances said, they put people under it, at the English court. A jester or a dwarf. Maybe a small child. Matthew did not see why that should please the queen. It would not please a man. His father’s face would fall, if Minnie baked a pie, and when it was cut open there was Martha in it.

  His mother and his aunt, and Bella Frew, made cakes and biscuits for the feast of the Epiphany. The twelfth cake was vast, to feed the whole estate. Into it went pounds of raisins of the sun. Minnie made a smaller one, to share among the bairns. That one was bound up in a dough. When it was cooked, and the pastry cut through, the plums would be plump and heavy with spice, the cake sweet and moist, Minnie said. There was a secret inside.

  The big cake was to eat with a drink called lambswool, which Uncle Hew had learned to make at Leadenhall. It was a kind of spiced apple ale, with the flesh of a roasted apple on the top, whisked up in a froth, to look like the wool. It was for Uphalyday, the last day of the Yule, which Frances called twelfth night. Before then, there were other things to eat. There were all the tarts, and pies and roasted meats, the buns and biscuit bread, and the candied fruits. There were presents, too, to give out at New Year. For Frances from the children there was honey from the bees, for the infant Flora, a little silver bell, and for Hew an almanac, for 1589. ‘So he can ken all that is to come,’ Matthew had explained to his father at the shop. His father had declared it a very sound idea.

  Minnie gave him two apples from the store, and he went out to the stables for the rope. Dun Scottis had a blanket, to keep him warm, and some hay to eat. He pretended not to know Matthew when he came, but he took the apple all the same. Matthew asked the stable boy for a piece of rope, and the boy asked a groom. That groom had a dry, cutting kind of manner Matthew did not like. He asked what John Kintor wanted with the rope, and how long it should be, and when Matthew did not ken, gave him a length ‘for to hang himself’. When Matthew told John Kintor that, he laughed. He said that the groom did not like him much. He was jealous that John Kintor would be factor here.

  John Kintor said the piece of rope he brought was grand. He slung it over his shoulder, and went into the wood, whistling as he went. Matthew followed him. He tried to whistle too, but he could not make the tune play between his teeth. He had no rope now to wear on his shoulder, and it had been heavy for him.

  Some of the trees had been damaged by the storms. Some had been felled, and the men who worked the land had chopped them into planks, for burning on the fire or for making things. Those that remained were gathered in a clearing, where they came to now. Here John Kintor knelt, by a great block of wood, cut from the trunk of a birch tree. He tied the rope around the branches on the log. ‘This is our Yule stock,’ he said.

  The stock was to burn in the great hall hearth. John Kintor said it came from ancient times, and the flame signified the returning of the sun, after the dark days of Yule. His dad had telt him that, when he was a bairn, and they went together, looking for a tree. Matthew knew John Kintor’s dad was dead. The story made him feel sad and pleased. Sad because John Kintor had no father now, but happy still and proud that John had chosen him to help bring home the log.

  They dragged the stock behind them up towards the house. Which was to say, John Kintor dragged it, for Matthew ran ahead, making clear the path, kicking over stones and skipping as he went, singing to himself a carol of the Yule. But they had not come far when they met a girl, little Jennie Kintor, coming to the mill. Jennie was the daughter of John Kintor’s older brother, who was miller now. She was four or five years old, and weeping inconsolably. Not the coloured kind of crying Martha did, when she wanted folk to pet her, but with heavy tears. John Kintor asked her what was wrong, as an uncle should. Her answer took them some while to make out. At last they understood that her grandame at the mill had sent her up to Frances, for a poke of spice. They were making gingerbread for bringing in the Yule. Frances had given her some ginger in a cup, cinnamon and cloves and a little box of sugar-candied fruits, for putting on the top. She was coming home with it, joyful at her spoils, when she had met a man who took them all away. He had asked her name, and put it in a book. He had said that her parents would be fined in court, for the sin of superfluous cheer.

  Matthew had not known that cheer could be a crime, though his father warned him sometimes of excess. It was, it now appeared, a very dreadful one, for John Kintor telt him he must run at once to fetch his Uncle Hew, while he would halt the man, whom they both could see before them on the path, striding in a fixed and most determined manner to the entrance of the hall. Matthew ducked down, and ran past, not daring to look back, or heeding to his call. He shot into the house.

  Hew was in the cellar where he kept his wine, with his man, Robert Lachlan, choosing things to drink. Both men came at once. Robert Lachlan, who was rough and strong, lifted Matthew up to carry on his shoulders, where he felt quite safe. It gave him a clear vantage on the path ahead.

  John Kintor had caught up with the man, and had kept him back, in furious dispute. He broke off as they approached, and Hew introduced himself as master of the house.

  The man said, ‘I ken you.’

  ‘And I ken you, I doubt,’ Robert Lachlan said. ‘You are Alan Petrie, the clatterer from Kirk.’

  The man was fearful now. Robert Lachlan often had that power on folk. And Matthew on his shoulders saw what Robert did. It was different, looking down from what his
father said was a high perspective. He felt Robert’s strength. Under his breath, he said ‘clatterer’. He thought he had whispered it. But his uncle heard, for he looked at him and frowned. Hew told Robert Lachlan to set his nephew down. He told Matthew to go back to his mother in the house. And Matthew did set off. He went a little way, before his curiosity forced him back again. He wanted to hear what other things were said.

  Alan Petrie said he had not come from the Kirk. He was here on behalf of the provost in the town.

  Robert Lachlan said, a prier was a prier, and a clype a clype.

  Alan Petrie read a paper out, which was his authority to search Hew Cullan’s house, for any sign of feasting or excessive cheer, over and above the proper rank assigned to him.

  Uncle Hew was not cross. He allowed the man to state his case in full, before he answered quietly that he would not give him access to his house, or to the farms and houses that were rented out to tenants on his land. He asked that Alan Petrie leave them peacefully.

  Alan Petrie waved his paper all about, and said that Hew was in a thing he called contempt, and that he would be taken into ward and fined, if he did not give the access asked for here.

  Hew told him calmly, it was the provost who was in contempt, for he had disturbed the peace of Yule. ‘Tell him I refuse. And in defence, I invoke Yule Girth. He understands the law. You can come again, after the Epiphany, and I will let you in.’

  Alan Petrie spluttered. ‘After the Uphalyday, the feasting will be done.’

  ‘That I cannot help. Your prosecutions, sir, are not lawful at this time. Tell him. He will ken.’

  ‘I know you, sir. You are slippery, and you use the law,’ Alan Petrie said, ‘to your ain most subtle and perverted ends. You will not get away with it. I will come again. I know you live like kings. You treat your men like kings.’