A Pig of Cold Poison

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘No,’ said Alys unequivocally. ‘We have the case to consider.’ She brought the jug of wine over to the hearth and arranged herself on the settle, tense and upright. Socrates lay down heavily on her feet. ‘We need to compare what we know.’

  Slightly to Gil’s surprise, Catherine joined them. The old woman would usually have retired to her own small chamber after supper, where he was aware she regularly spent some hours at prayer before sleep. Tonight she sat quietly in their midst, beads in hand, lips moving, eyes downcast under the black linen folds of her veil, although midway through Maistre Pierre’s account of their interview with Nicol Renfrew Gil realized that her attention was not on her beads but on Alys.

  ‘Can he really tell one flask from another?’ said Alys at the end of her father’s recital.

  ‘He seemed quite certain he could,’ said Gil. ‘We could test it. It must be part of the way his mind works.’ He ventured to put his arm along the back of the settle, behind Alys. She glanced up at him, with a tiny grimace which might have been a smile, then frowned at her hands. The dog looked up at them both, beat his tail twice on the boards and lowered his nose on to his paws again. ‘He thinks he last saw that flask, Allan Leaf he called it, in the workroom waiting to go up to Grace to be filled with Frankie’s drops.’

  ‘But the workroom was locked,’ Alys said. ‘Agnes must have found it somewhere else.’

  ‘He was also certain the poison was for his father,’ observed Maistre Pierre, ‘although Frankie himself found the idea ridiculous.’

  ‘One would, I suppose,’ said Alys thoughtfully. ‘What if I told you such a thing?’

  ‘I should laugh in your face,’ he agreed, ‘but then I think I am a good master.’

  ‘Probably Maister Renfrew does too. If it was not for him,’ said Alys, ‘if it was intended for Danny Gibson, then how could it have happened? Could Nanty Bothwell be lying? Could he have done it alone?’

  ‘I’d say not,’ said Gil. ‘There’s too much circumstance against it. He would have had to lay hold of a flask, not one of his own, and he had to have it ready before the mummers came to Morison’s Yard. And why go to so much trouble, why not use his own flask?’

  ‘If he used his own flask it would be known to be his doing,’ said Maistre Pierre.

  ‘He could hardly avoid that, in the face of half Glasgow.’

  ‘But he claims it is his flask in any case,’ said Alys. ‘No, that doesn’t seem logical. Then could he be in conspiracy with Agnes?’

  ‘I’d believe it of her,’ said Gil, ‘but not of him. He’s quite clear-headed enough to see that he must be found guilty, as things stand.’

  ‘And if it was some other,’ said Alys slowly, ‘Robert for instance, conspiring with Agnes or not –’

  ‘Or Renfrew himself,’ Gil offered. ‘If he keeps such close control over his workroom as he claims, it’s hard to see how any other could make the stuff in his house.’

  ‘Yes, but whoever it was, they could not know in advance that the flask would be needed. No, that doesn’t hold up. Which leaves us with Agnes alone,’ she finished, pulling a face, ‘acting on the spur of the moment. Father says you spoke to her,’ she said to Gil.

  ‘She denied all,’ said Gil, and Maistre Pierre nodded agreement. ‘I thought she was more angry than distressed, though she put up a good imitation of it.’

  ‘I think she is genuinely distressed at the death of her sweetheart,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘She is also frightened. No doubt if she did provide Bothwell with the flask, she has seen that she must be suspected.’

  ‘Angry?’ said Alys. ‘But with whom? As if she had not expected what happened? She might blame Bothwell for her situation – after all if he had not forgotten the flask and asked her help, she would not be involved.’

  ‘Assuming he did ask her help,’ said Gil. ‘They both deny all this.’

  ‘The safest road for both of them,’ said Maistre Pierre.

  ‘But when Renfrew announced that the boy had been poisoned,’ said Gil, the scene in his sister’s hall coming vividly to mind, ‘he asked Bothwell what was in the flask.’

  ‘And Bothwell,’ said Alys, clapping her hands together, ‘turned to look at Agnes!’ Socrates sat up expectantly.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Gil. ‘They gave no signal, but he clearly associated the flask with her.’

  ‘So where have we got to?’ asked Maistre Pierre. Catherine raised her head and looked at him, then went back to her beads. The dog lay down again with a resigned sigh.

  ‘It looks as if Agnes gave Nanty the flask,’ said Alys, ‘but neither of them knew it held poison.’

  ‘So if that is the case, who is guilty in Gibson’s death?’

  ‘I’d need to ask my uncle,’ said Gil. ‘I suspect the two of them must share some guilt, but if it was an accident, not murder, there would be a fine, kinbut, payable to Gibson’s father or kin, with the guilty parties all in their linen at Glasgow Cross for penitence, rather than hanging.’

  ‘Perhaps if we told Agnes that, we might persuade her to confess,’ said Alys.

  ‘I cannot see that young woman in her shift at Glasgow Cross,’ observed the mason.

  ‘Meanwhile, where did the poison come from, and why was it sitting about where Agnes could find it? I’d like to search the house, but Sir Thomas isn’t convinced, and without a direct order from the Provost Frankie would never countenance it.’

  ‘Ah, mon Dieu, what a thought,’ said Maistre Pierre.

  ‘Eleanor Renfrew,’ Gil recalled suddenly, ‘tells me they label poisons with a black cross. Agnes would have recognized that, I’d have thought. It must have had no mark.’

  ‘Simple carelessness?’ asked Maistre Pierre disapprovingly. ‘To keep a pig full of poison standing about the place unlabelled? If that is the case, we do no more business with them, Alys, I think.’

  ‘But where did it come from?’ Gil repeated. ‘Nobody we spoke to has recognized what it is.’

  ‘Or at least has admitted to recognizing it,’ Alys put in.

  He nodded at that. ‘You’re right. Whoever brewed the stuff, he would hardly admit to knowing it now. The Forrest brothers are probably safe,’ he added, ‘they seem to be testing the flask quite thoroughly. They found scraps of what looks like nutmeat at the bottom of it, as if it had got through the bolting-cloth.’

  ‘Nutmeat?’ said Alys. ‘Do you mean they think it was brewed from nuts? I wonder what that might be? I never heard of a poison like that.’

  ‘Nor had Wat.’ Gil grinned, and retailed the conversation about the pine nuts. Maistre Pierre guffawed much as Wat had done, but Alys listened seriously.

  ‘He is right, they are not poisonous except in vast quantities,’ she agreed. ‘But I had not heard of that virtue in them. I must check my Hortus Sanitatis. I wonder – Meg’s mother, Mistress Baillie, said something about pine nuts when she was abusing Maister Renfrew. Could they have been for his own use?’

  ‘Myself, I have no wish to ask him that either,’ said Maistre Pierre.

  ‘No, but,’ said Alys slowly, ‘his wife was –’ She caught her breath. Catherine looked up but did not speak, and after a moment Alys went on, ‘Meg was in childbed, what was he doing preparing something of that sort?’

  ‘To be ready for later?’ Gil suggested. ‘Maybe he wants a son from her. Or perhaps he has a mistress, or planned to –’ he glanced at Catherine, but she had bent her head to her beads again. – ‘visit Long Mina’s, or some such place.’

  ‘The man has a new young wife,’ Maistre Pierre said. ‘How many women does he need, in effect?’

  ‘And does it mean he is planning to poison someone?’ asked Alys.

  Gil sighed. ‘I think, from what Eleanor tells me, any of the Renfrew household is at least capable of making up whatever it is. Poison is a woman’s weapon, or so I’ve read, but in this case it seems to me the men must be included as well, even Frankie.’

  ‘Robert would be my favourite,’ said Maistre Pierre darkly
.

  ‘Let us consider them,’ said Alys. ‘Who might wish to poison someone, who might be a likely target.’ Socrates opened one eye as she bent to draw her tablets from the purse which hung under her skirts, then closed it again when she sat back slightly and took the stylus out of its slot in the carved cover. ‘Maister Renfrew himself. Not a pleasant man, I think.’

  ‘He might wish to rid himself of Nicol out of dislike,’ said Gil slowly, ‘or of the wife if he thought she was cheating him, but surely not any of the others of the household? He seems to favour Robert, he has wedded Eleanor off, Agnes is his pet.’

  ‘The good-mother?’ suggested Maistre Pierre. ‘Mistress Baillie, I mean.’

  Alys nodded, and made a note.

  ‘Nicol himself,’ she said. ‘He hates his father, he dislikes his brother and sisters. Is he unbalanced enough to poison them from dislike alone? Or is there some benefit we can’t see?’

  ‘Cui bono? I suppose he could fear that Robert would take his place in the business,’ said Gil slowly, ‘but Nicol has changed since we were boys. It might be something he’s taking now has settled his mind, but he’s by far calmer than he used to be, almost out of the world at times. Just the same, I think his state is still what Aristotle called akrasia, or in Latin impotens sui, not master of himself.’

  ‘Behaving inconsistently,’ said Alys, ‘not in accordance with any discernible principles. Yes, I see. That would fit. So is he capable of killing, do you think?’

  ‘For something he cared about, maybe, and I wouldn’t think he would care enough about the business to kill for it. He’d rather go back to the Low Countries, I think.’

  ‘Grace asked him if he needed some of his drops,’ said Alys, and unaccountably blushed darkly in the candlelight. ‘Perhaps that’s what has changed him.’ She made a note. ‘And Robert?’

  ‘Robert dislikes everyone,’ said Gil. ‘His father, Agnes, probably Syme, certainly Nicol, possibly his stepmother. But he’s not someone I could imagine leaving a flask of poison about unlabelled by accident.’

  ‘So that if he left it,’ said Alys, ‘it was where his intended victim would pick it up. It becomes more and more important to know where Agnes got it from.’

  ‘Nicol said that everyone likes Syme,’ said Maistre Pierre reflectively, ‘but it does not mean that Syme likes everyone.’

  ‘I’d say he’d no good opinion of young Robert,’ agreed Gil. ‘And I suppose it would be to his benefit to be rid of Renfrew, though the method might be bad for trade.’

  ‘And the women,’ said Alys, writing busily. ‘I think we can dismiss Meg as poisoner, though not as victim. She has no training, and –’

  ‘She must know stillroom work,’ Gil observed. ‘If she learned that a given receipt would brew up poison, she would be as able to follow it as you would. And Frankie said much the same of Grace Gordon,’ he recalled.

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’ She made more notes on her list. ‘Does Grace have enough reason to poison anyone, so far as one ever does? She loves Nicol, I think, though it was not a love-match, and surely she hardly knows his family. But Meg’s marriage is certainly not a happy one,’ she added. ‘She might wish to be rid of Maister Renfrew. I know I would, if I was wedded to him.’

  ‘Would you use poison, in such a case?’ Gil asked, half serious. She looked up at him, shook her head, and went on writing. ‘We can probably leave Eleanor out of it, in that she lives elsewhere now, but Agnes is fully capable of making and using such a thing.’

  ‘But if it was hers,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘she would not have given it to Bothwell, unless she intended the result.’

  ‘I think we must include Eleanor,’ said Alys. ‘She is probably about the house daily.’ She bit the end of her stylus, and studied her list. Gil looked over her shoulder, and said:

  ‘It gets us nowhere, you know. It looks as if everyone in the household would cheerfully dispose of any of the others.’

  ‘We need to find out where in the house Agnes got the flask from,’ said Alys. ‘It’s a pity her father insisted on being present when you spoke to her.’

  ‘I don’t know how we do that. Likely she won’t confess to you either, now we’ve had that tale from her. I have no direction yet from the Archbishop, so I can’t question her more pressingly,’ said Gil. ‘And you know, whoever brewed the stuff itself has committed no crime so far, unless it was Agnes after all. There’s no law about making up poisons, only about using them on fellow Christians.’

  ‘There is the moral crime,’ said Alys. ‘The burden of guilt in having provided the means of Danny Gibson’s death.’ She shook her head wearily, and closed up her tablets. ‘It must be wrong to do this. It’s one thing to draw up such a list as a – an exercise for the mind, it’s another entirely to use it to speculate on which of our neighbours might be planning to poison another. These are Christian souls, and –’

  ‘If it offers a means to prevent a Christian soul from committing murder,’ said Catherine unexpectedly, ‘your list has done that person a great service, ma mie.’

  ‘As always, madame, you are right,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘And now, I suppose, having decided that we cannot decide, we had as well go and sleep on it. Will you go to the quest on Danny Gibson, Gilbert?’

  ‘I think I must,’ said Gil, watching Alys brace herself. For what? he wondered. For privacy with him? For what he might ask her? ‘Sir Thomas may change his mind and decide to call my evidence.’

  Crossing the dark drawing-loft, the light from their candle making leaping shadows of wonderful curves and angles from the wooden patterns which hung from the ceiling beams, he reached out to take her hand. She did not withdraw it, but let it lie quietly in his, and when he drew her to a halt she stood beside him, her shoulders tautly braced. The dog sat down and leaned against her knee, looking up at her face.

  ‘What is it, Alys?’ he asked her. ‘Something is wrong. Can I help? Can I put it right?’ She shook her head. ‘Is it something I’ve done?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Gil, it isn’t you.’

  ‘Is it something about Christian Bothwell? Or about Agnes?’

  ‘No! No, it’s nothing like that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it help to talk about it, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you tried prayer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about a distraction? Would that help?’ He let go of her hand to reach up and caress the line of her jaw within the drape of her black linen hood, and she reared back to snatch at his wrist and freeze, staring at him, her eyes round and dark with distress in the candlelight. Socrates reared up to paw at both of them, whining anxiously.

  ‘Very well,’ Gil said gently, his heart knotted in sympathy. ‘Not that. Come to bed, sweetheart, and sleep on it. Things may look different in the morning.’

  For a moment he thought she would speak; then she turned obediently and moved on through the bounding shadows towards the other door, the dog adhering to her skirts. He followed, riven with anxiety. In the eighteen months since he had first met her he had grown used to her companionship, to her – Yes, he thought, her friendship, she is my good friend as well as my lover and spouse. It put the whole world out of frame if that conjunction did not agree, and he did not know how to put it right.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘I thought we would come to visit anyway,’ said Alys. ‘It’s company for everyone.’

  ‘I’m right pleased to see you,’ said Kate, looking hard at her face. What did she see? Alys wondered. Was it all there to read in her eyes? ‘Babb, will you tell the kitchen?’

  They had risen in the morning to the news, brought in by the men who had fetched the water, that the bellman was crying the quest on Danny Gibson put off for two days. Sir Thomas’s rheum must be worse, Gil had speculated. So after hearing Mass and praying for her mother and everyone else who should be remembered on All Souls’ Day, none of which helped the turmoil in her head, Alys had gathered up John and his nurse
and made for Morison’s Yard.

  ‘Onnyanny!’ announced John behind her from Nancy’s arms. ‘Onnyanny!’

  ‘Ysonde and Wynliane,’ she corrected. ‘Are the girls upstairs?’

  Kate laughed, shook her head, and reached for her crutches. ‘We’re all going out into the garden for some fresh air. Nan took the girls down first, and we were about to follow.’

  Alys looked about the hall, and realized that Mysie was wrapped in a huge striped plaid and holding Edward bundled in a sheepskin. Kate herself was also warmly clad.

  ‘Onnyanny!’

  ‘We’ll just get you down these steps, my doo,’ said Babb, returning from the kitchen door. ‘Do you lassies want to take they bairns down the garden first?’

  Mysie, taking the hint, set off with Nancy. As they crossed the yard John could be heard remarking, ‘Baba. Onnyanny baba.’ One arm in its bright red sleeve emerged from Nancy’s plaid and gestured at Edward.

  Maister Morison’s property, like all the other tofts on the east side of the High Street, was much longer than it was wide and sloped down towards the mill-burn, divided from its neighbours by neat whitewashed fences of split palings shoulder-high on either side. Beyond the yard, past the barn and cart-shed which belonged to the business, past the kaleyard where hens pecked about among the autumnal plants and the kale waited for its first frost, they reached the little pleasure-garden. The low box hedges enclosed only well-dug earth at this time of year, the grassy paths bare of daisies or buttercups, but the spot was sheltered and in the thin sunshine warm enough to sit in. By the time Kate and Alys reached it, Wynliane and Ysonde had borne John off to take part in their game, the three nursemaids had tipped all three benches upright and already had their heads together discussing diet and feeding, and Edward was awake and happy to be handed over to receive attention from his mother and godmother.

  ‘Has Gil learned anything more?’ Kate asked, unwrapping her son a little. Babb surveyed the garden, checked that her mistress wanted nothing more, and strode off towards the house.