A Pig of Cold Poison

by Pat McIntosh

  Grace crossed herself, and said, ‘We need to get you within, my laddie, maybe to your bed. Maister Cunningham, would you step out and summon a priest to him? Or no – go through the house and shout again, I’ll need a hand.’

  She looked anxiously down at her brother-in-law, who was wilting visibly, his breathing harsh and rapid. A shudder shook him as they watched. Gil turned to obey, just as the shop door opened with its cheerful jingle of little bells and first Maister Renfrew entered and then James Syme and his wife.

  ‘What are you at now, Robert?’ demanded Renfrew, glaring across the counter at his son. ‘Get on your feet and serve the – oh, it’s you, is it? And Grace, I want you –’

  ‘No the now, sir,’ said Grace, on an odd warning note. At the same moment Robert raised his head and said gasping:

  ‘Faither, I’m pysont. I – I canny –’

  He slid from the stool, and Grace caught him and lowered him to the floor. Renfrew exclaimed in alarm, Syme hurried past him to help Grace, and Eleanor uttered a short scream.

  ‘Pysont? How – who? Who’d pyson you, Robert?’

  ‘He is took very bad, Frankie,’ said Syme, looking up, ‘and I fear it’s the same as poor Gibson.’

  ‘The same as – What have you done?’ demanded Renfrew, seizing the front of Gil’s gown. ‘What did you give him? Why my laddie?’

  Gil stepped back, catching Renfrew’s wrist to hold him off, saying stiffly, ‘See to your son, maister, he needs your help. I’m away out to call a priest to him.’

  ‘No, you’ll stay here where I can –’

  ‘Who’d pyson our Robert?’ demanded Eleanor again. She began to giggle wildly. ‘It canny be Nanty Bothwell this time, he’s still locked away. There’s someone going about Glasgow poisoning laddies.’

  ‘Aye, Maister Cunningham, a priest as quick’s you like,’ said Grace, helping Syme to lift Robert. ‘Frankie, if you’ll leave that and take his feet, we can get him ben the house to his own bed, or at least more comfortable than this.’

  Blackfriars Kirk was closest, and one of the Dominicans easily summoned. Returning on the heels of Father James, Gil found the Renfrew household swirling with fright like a spilled beehive. Several maidservants were weeping in a huddle in the shop, while Renfrew and his partner ran to and fro arguing over treatment, and in a room that looked on the dreary November garden Grace knelt by the stricken Robert, tilting tiny sips of almond milk into his mouth with encouraging words. Eleanor stood beside her with a hand over her mouth, still gulping and giggling in that uncontrolled way, and as Gil followed the priest through from the hall Agnes appeared at a further door, saying:

  ‘Meg wants to know what –’ She broke off, and stared. ‘What’s going on,’ she finished, her eyes fixed on her brother. ‘Is Robert –’

  ‘Robert’s been poisoned,’ said Grace, rising to let Father James take her place. ‘Eleanor, stop that noise.’ She shook the other woman by the shoulders, and when that had no effect dealt her a sharp slap. Eleanor swayed back, gasping, and Agnes clapped her hands and said brightly:

  ‘Robert? So it can’t have been Nanty on Hallowe’en, after all!’

  ‘The cataplasm never helped last time,’ said Syme, speaking over his shoulder as he returned from the shop. ‘Better something cold and moist like this, Frankie, if he’ll swallow it.’

  ‘Agnes!’ said Eleanor, apparently recovering her wits. ‘Robert’s like to die! Is that how you hear the news?’

  ‘Serve him right,’ said Agnes. She turned away, vanishing into the house, and Father James began the familiar quick murmur of the final questions, the prompts to the dying to confess sins and profess belief. Gil, watching, thought the young man stretched on the bench, his doublet unlaced, his head pillowed on his own short gown, was beyond hearing the priest’s voice, but the form of the questions assumed the answers, and absolution would be delivered, which must comfort the family. Eleanor had retired to a stool on the other side of the chamber and was watching, dry-eyed, her face pinched and white. Syme, a beaker in his hand, was looking at his wife, deep compassion in his face; Renfrew appeared from the shop with a heavy step and stood numbly glowering at the scene with an expression of dull rage. Gil suddenly recognized that his own dominant emotion was a matching rage, tempered by guilt; the boy had been murdered before his eyes, like Danny Gibson, and he had been able to do nothing to prevent it.

  ‘What did he take?’ Grace asked quietly. ‘What was it?’

  ‘As he said,’ Gil answered. ‘When I came into the shop he was eating a marchpane cherry from under the counter. We spoke, and then he took another one.’ He grimaced. ‘He bit into it, and pretended it was poisoned, so I called for help, and he laughed and ate the thing. And then he said it really was poisoned.’ He considered Robert’s scarlet, unconscious face. ‘If we’d believed him straight way, would it have made a difference?’

  ‘No,’ she said promptly. ‘If a few drops on his skin slew the other man, then swallowing it would kill this time, no matter what antidote –’ She bit her lip and turned away.

  ‘I wonder why he never noticed it at the first bite,’ said Gil thoughtfully.

  Father James withdrew his fingers from the pulse in Robert’s throat, bent his head, crossed himself, and began the prayers for the dead. Eleanor and her husband both knelt to join in. Maister Renfrew muttered briefly, signed himself, and crossed the room to demand of Grace in a furious undertone, ‘Where’s that daftheid Nicol?’

  ‘In his bed,’ she said, looking directly at him. ‘As you should ken, sir. He’s hardly moved this day. You’ll not blame him for this.’

  ‘Have I said I did?’ he said jeeringly. ‘And you, Gil Cunningham, wi your daft notions about my family. Did you pyson my laddie to prove your point?’

  ‘If you say that again,’ Gil said levelly, ‘I’ll have you for slander. I watched Robert eat the sweetmeat, I called for help when he said it was poisoned, he admitted he was joking and then found it truly was poisoned. I’ll swear that on anything you like to name, and Mistress Grace here will bear me out so far as she heard it.’

  ‘He said, I’m no joking now,’ she recalled. ‘Poor laddie. Frankie, I’m right sorry for this. He was a likely boy, and a – a – He was a likely boy,’ she said again.

  Renfrew grunted, and said to Gil, ‘And what brought you here anyway? I can do without you underfoot now, I’ll tell you.’

  Gil dragged the reason for his presence with difficulty from the back of his mind, opened his mouth, and closed it again.

  ‘I still need a word with your daughter Agnes,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ve found a bit more evidence, and I need her story about it.’

  ‘Evidence of what?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘If you’re still at this tale of my lassie helping young Bothwell to pyson his rival, you can put it out your head, I’ll not hear a word of it.’

  ‘I think it was an accident,’ said Gil patiently, ‘and I want her version of what I’ve learned. It’s more important now than ever –’

  ‘What, d’ye think she’s pysont her brother and all?’

  ‘Agnes?’ said Grace sharply, and then, ‘Maister Cunningham, this is surely no the time for yon kind of questions –’

  ‘No, and it’ll never be the time,’ said Renfrew, ‘and you can just leave my house afore I put you out myself.’

  ‘My son, this is not the way to conduct yourself before the dead,’ said Father James, getting to his feet. He was nearly as tall as Gil, with shaggy dark hair which he pushed out of his eyes now to peer round the group. ‘What came to the poor boy? He was far gone when I reached him. Are you saying he was poisoned?’

  ‘Aye, pysont,’ said Renfrew angrily, and dashed tears from his eyes. ‘My bonnie laddie lost to me, and I’m left wi that daftheid above stairs, wi his cantrips and excesses and his names for everything, and if I catch the one that did it –’

  ‘Have you raised the hue and cry?’ prompted the Dominican. ‘Has the Serjeant been sent for? I know you,
maister,’ he bowed to Gil, who acknowledged this, ‘you’re Chancellor Blacader’s quaestor, can you set matters in motion?’

  ‘Maister Renfrew won’t have it,’ said Gil, with faint malice. Across the room a shadow moved, as if someone had passed the doorway.

  ‘I’ll go for the Serjeant,’ said Syme. He met his partner’s eye. ‘He must be told, Frankie. Unless it’s an accident, it must be murder, and how would strong pyson get into a marchpane cherry by accident?’

  ‘Syme,’ said Eleanor through tears, and put her hand out. ‘Don’t – don’t leave me –’

  He turned to her, took the hand and patted it reassuringly.

  ‘I’ll not be long,’ he promised her. ‘Stay with our good-sister the now, mistress.’

  He strode out of the open door. His footsteps did not check; whoever had cast that shadow must have moved on. For a moment everyone in the chamber stood as if turned to stone; then Father James said, ‘Not for us to question the ways of Heaven, my son. If this poor boy was poisoned, and deliberately, the miscreant must be found, but your chief duty to your son now is to pray for the remission of his sins, to shorten his time in Purgatory.’

  ‘No, it’s to find who sent him there and see them hang for it,’ said Renfrew. He jerked his head at his older daughter, who was now sitting weeping quietly. ‘I’ve no doubt she could do wi your comfort the now, though why she’s bubbling like that, when she never had a civil word for the laddie when he was alive, is more than I can tell you. As for you,’ he said angrily to Gil, ‘come and show me these cherries you say slew my boy.’

  The three maidservants were still in the shop, staring nervously about them. The oldest bobbed a curtsy as her master entered, saying, ‘Is he – is the laddie –?’

  ‘Dead,’ said Renfrew curtly, at which they all crossed themselves and one began weeping again. Renfrew snarled and ordered them out, then stopped them to ask whether they had touched anything.

  ‘No likely,’ said the third one, sniffing dolefully, ‘if something in here slew the poor laddie, that knew what was here, we’d no ken what was pyson and what wasny.’

  ‘Mind your tongue, Jess,’ said her master, ‘and get back to your duties, the whole parcel of ye. Now, maister, where was these cherries?’

  ‘Cherries?’ The weeping girl stopped in the doorway, looking back. ‘Was it cherries that slew the poor laddie?’

  ‘So it’s claimed,’ said Renfrew, peering under the counter. ‘Was it these?’ He lifted a small box, the kind of woven chip box commonly used to hold sweetmeats. Gil took it from him. It was more than half empty, holding five marchpane cherries and a scattering of the sugar they had been rolled in before they were boxed up.

  ‘They look no different from the usual,’ said Renfrew. He looked up. ‘Here, Babtie, what are you standing about for? Get to your duties.’

  ‘Was the cherries pysont?’ asked Babtie faintly. ‘Oh, maister, never say so!’

  ‘Did you eat one?’ asked Gil.

  ‘We all did,’ she confessed, twisting her hands in her apron. ‘We thought no – we thought – cherries is cherries, no like all the other things in the shop –’

  ‘Well, that’ll learn you no to steal from your maister,’ said Renfrew. ‘And Jess saying you’d touched nothing, I canny believe a word you women say.’

  ‘Robert ate one without harm,’ Gil said. ‘It was the second one which killed him. They may not all be poisoned.’

  ‘But they might be,’ said Babtie. ‘Oh, maister – oh, what will I do –’

  ‘You’ll go and get on wi your duties,’ said Renfrew, ‘for if the one you stole was pysont you’d be on the floor by now. Get away with you, lassie! What a tirravee about nothing, and my laddie lying there dead!’

  The woman turned away, moving like a sleepwalker, and disappeared into the depths of the house. Renfrew snorted.

  ‘She’s frightened,’ Gil said.

  ‘She’s a fool, and a thief,’ said Renfrew.

  Gil looked down at the cherries, tightening his mouth on a comment. ‘How are these things made?’ he asked instead.

  ‘My daughters make them. Dried cherries, I suppose, crystallized, and then stuffed with marchpane.’

  ‘Yes.’ Gil tilted the box so that the cherries rolled around. ‘Look at this. These four are the same as one another, but this one –’ He looked round. ‘I’d rather not touch it. Is there a stick, or something?’

  ‘Here.’ Renfrew led him into the workroom. Searching briefly in a jar of instruments on the bench by the window, he handed Gil a small pair of tongs and a copper rod. ‘What have you spied? They all come out different, you’ll realize, for that all cherries is different and takes a different quantity of marchpane to fill them.’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said Gil. ‘See this.’ He turned the sweetmeat, gripped it carefully with the tongs, and pointed. ‘The marchpane in the others is smooth, this one looks as if it’s been …’ He paused, searching for a word. ‘Reworked,’ he finished. ‘As if the marchpane has been broken open and mended again. Or perhaps …’ He paused again, and Renfrew snorted.

  ‘Or there’s been mice at it, or a cockatrice has laid an egg in it,’ he said sourly.

  ‘Not a cockatrice,’ said Gil thoughtfully, ‘but – may I have a wee fine knife, maister, and a dish of some sort?’

  ‘What are you after?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘I’ve matters to see to, maister. I can’t be standing about here watching you learn yoursel potyngary.’

  Gil ignored this, accepted the implements the older man handed him, transferred the suspect sweetmeat to the pottery dish, and sliced it carefully in two. The halves fell apart, mirror images, the dark flesh of the cherry cupping the round ball of marchpane with the small, milky, oozing patch at its centre. The apothecary stared grimly at it.

  ‘Not a cockatrice,’ said Gil again, ‘but a rod like this one, I’d say, used to make a hole in the marchpane, then a drop of the poison placed into the hole and the marchpane mended over the top of it. That would be how Robert could take one bite with no harm,’ he realized. ‘The poison must have been in the other half of the marchpane. Do you see?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Maister Renfrew after a moment. ‘I see.’ He moved away from Gil and sat down on a stool at the end of the workbench. ‘I see plenty,’ he said. ‘Which of them can it have been? And was it meant for my laddie indeed? He’d a right sweet tooth, a box of those things left open under the bench wouldny be safe from him. No that he’d have taken a fresh box from the stock,’ he added defensively. Gil nodded, in complete disbelief of the encomium. ‘Aye, I’ll accept this as evidence, maister. It tells me clear enough, there’s someone in my household willing to use pyson on another.’ He turned his face away.

  ‘One of your household,’ said Gil with considerable sympathy, ‘and aimed at your son. Who dislikes him that much?’

  ‘You expect me to answer that?’

  ‘And what was the poison, do you suppose?’Gil persisted. Renfrew shook his head without looking round. ‘Maister Syme said it looked to be the same as what killed Danny Gibson. Wat Forrest thinks that might be something made from almonds, but he doesn’t know any more than that.’

  ‘Almonds?’ The other man visibly pulled himself together, to attend to the conversation. ‘And here was Grace giving the laddie almond milk? Well, he’d got his death long before we bore him through to the house. I never heard of a pyson made wi almonds.’

  ‘So everyone says,’ Gil commented. He looked at the evidence on the bench, and then at Renfrew’s back, still resolutely turned.

  ‘Well, well.’ A loud voice, a loud tread. Serjeant Anderson, entering by the house door, stepping into the shop and across to the workroom. ‘Aye, Maister Renfrew. I hear there’s been a murder. More pyson, is it? And you couldny save your own neither? Well, man, I’m sorry to hear it, sorry for your loss,’ he added more civilly. ‘And you again, Maister Cunningham. I suppose it’s no wonder I’m aye finding you where there’s been a murder, but you’d
have to admit it doesny look good.’

  ‘Serjeant.’ Renfrew got to his feet. He seemed to have aged by twenty years since he had returned from hearing Mass. ‘He’s ben the house. Come and see him.’

  ‘I’ll hear what you’ve to tell me first,’ said the Serjeant, tucking his thumbs into his belt. ‘And you, Maister Cunningham. I’m told you were present when the dead man took the pyson.’

  ‘We’ve just now uncovered how it was ministered,’ said Renfrew. ‘Look here.’

  Gil allowed him to expound the poisoning method as if it was his discovery, only relieved that he had accepted the idea. The Serjeant listened, and peered suspiciously at the drop of milky fluid oozing from the centre of the ball of marchpane.

  ‘And it slew him the same way as poor Danny Gibson?’ he said. ‘Danny never ate any marchpane cherries, did he?’

  ‘No,’ said Gil. ‘Danny’s friends say he couldn’t abide nuts, even almonds.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the Serjeant. ‘So it was maybe the same pyson, but it likely wasny the same person, if the way it was ministered differs like this. Well, we ken that, seeing Nanty Bothwell’s still in chains up the Castle, he couldny ha been down here pysoning expensive kickshawses.’

  ‘He could ha made it up earlier,’ said Renfrew rather desperately. ‘He could ha left them there, and my laddie only now found them. Or his sister – ask at her, Serjeant, whether she slipped in here and put them ready to his hand.’

  ‘Aye, right,’ said the Serjeant. ‘Now, maister, tell me what transpired when the laddie took the pyson.’

  Gil gave him as clear an account as he could of what had passed. The Serjeant listened attentively, inspected the shelf under the counter where the box had been placed, and asked where Gil had been standing when Grace Gordon entered the shop.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ he said, scanning the unswept floorboards as if he expected to find footprints on them, ‘that’s clear enough, maister. And now I’ll see the corp, if you please.’