by Pat McIntosh
‘So it might be what was in the flask killed Danny,’ he said earnestly, ‘but it might not.’
‘Aye, but what was it if it wasny?’ asked an assizer. ‘What else could it be?’
Nanty Bothwell raised his head at that, but gave no other sign.
‘A course it was in the flask,’ said Rab Sim.
‘Could a bin something he ate,’ said another assizer. ‘Was there a refreshment afore the play, maybe?’
‘I told you to let me ask the questions,’ said Sir Thomas irritably. ‘Where’s these mummers? Tammas Bowster, come and tell us what passed afore the play.’
‘Does he ken it was the wrong flask?’ asked Nicol in Gil’s ear. ‘Will Tammas tell him?’
‘Likely.’ Gil was watching the assize. It did not seem to him that they were hostile to Bothwell, but the evidence being put to them was not favourable. Bowster was now detailing the events in the kitchen, how the two young men had disagreed over Agnes Renfrew and how the refreshment handed round had been common to all.
‘So there’s your answer, Davie Johnson,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘They all shared the refreshment. It wasny in that, whatever slew the poor lad.’
‘It might ha been a bad cake,’ persisted Johnson.
Sir Thomas glared round the hall, ignoring this. ‘Is any of the Renfrew household here?’ His eye fell on Nicol. ‘Is it just you? Where’s Frankie?’
‘He’ll no be coming,’ said Nicol, pushing forward to the edge of the dais. ‘He’s no able.’ He gave Sir Thomas one of his sunny, heavy-eyed smiles, and the Provost stared at him in growing indignation until he realized what the bystanders were saying.
‘Dead? Are you saying Frankie Renfrew’s dead, man?’
‘Aye, he’s dead,’ agreed Nicol. ‘I found him.’
Sir Thomas looked briefly at Gil, then back at Nicol in some bafflement.
‘I’m right sorry to hear it,’ he said, ‘for he’ll be a sad miss in the burgh, but –’
‘I’m no,’ said Nicol. ‘We’ll none of us miss him in our house, save maybe wee Marion.’
‘But we’re here to deal wi Danny Gibson’s death, and we’ll get on wi that for now. Come up here, man and tell us what your sister Agnes has to do wi the matter.’
‘Oh, she’s nothing to do wi’t,’ said Nicol, stepping obediently on to the dais, ‘for Frankie would never ha let either of them wed her. He’s got other plans for her, seeing Adam didny want her to wife, being a man of good sense.’ Adam Forrest went scarlet at this, and Nanty Bothwell looked up and stared at his sister. ‘But I suppose those will come to naught now,’ went on Nicol. ‘There’s none will want to wed her if she’s to drown for poisoning Robert.’
‘We’re dealing wi Danny Gibson,’ repeated Sir Thomas. ‘If your sister’s naught to do wi that, why were these two lads quarrelling over her in Maister Morison’s kitchen?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nicol, ‘for I wasny there, man, but maybe it was because Agnes fetched the flask to Nanty out of our house, that had the poison in it.’
Nanty Bothwell lunged forward exclaiming, ‘No! No, it was nothing to do wi her, she never knew what it was!’
‘You be quiet,’ said one of his guards, and dragged him back to buffet him round the head. ‘Stand there at peace now!’
Bothwell sagged against the wall, half-stunned, and Sir Thomas said over the sudden buzz of conversation, ‘You’re certain it came from your house?’
‘Oh, aye.’ Nicol smiled at him.
‘How are you so sure it had the poison in it? Wat Forrest’s just tellt us it might not.’
‘Oh, aye, it might not,’ agreed Nicol. ‘But it might, too. Hard to say.’
Sir Thomas snarled faintly. ‘Tell me a straight tale, man, and be quick about it.’
‘It’s no very straight,’ said Nicol, shrugging again. ‘Anyway she said she never. Just Gil Cunningham thought she did.’
Sir Thomas closed his eyes, rubbed his brow, and said wearily, ‘Leave Maister Cunningham out of it and tell me what you know, Nicol Renfrew, till I see if it helps us any.’
‘What I know? You mean all what I know? That’s a lot, man,’ objected Nicol.
‘All that’s to our purpose the now. About your sister Agnes and the flask.’
‘Agnes and the flask?’ repeated Nicol. ‘She fetched it to him, since he’d forgot the one he should ha had. I never saw her fetch it, seeing I was in Augie’s house at the time, but it’s the flask that should ha held my father’s drops for his heart, one of those that he keeps in his workroom. I saw it in our house just afore we left to see the play.’
‘Those were never drops for the heart,’ said Wat Forrest clearly.
Sir Thomas nodded at him, leaned back and spoke to his senior man-at-arms, then said to Nicol, ‘Why are you so certain it was your sister fetched it?’
‘Because he said so.’ Nicol made one of his wide gestures in Gil’s direction.
‘Would it no be more likely Nanty Bothwell stole it out of your father’s house?’ demanded one of the assize. ‘What’s he say himself, anyway, Provost? Has he been put to the question?’
‘I’m asking the questions,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘We’ll have Anthony Bothwell’s statement read out in a wee while. Nicol Renfrew, are you telling us your sister stole a flask of poison out of your father’s workroom and gave it to one of her sweethearts to poison the other?’
Gil closed his eyes for a moment. Prompting the witness, he thought, is the presiding officer’s prerogative.
‘You’re putting words into my mouth, Provost,’ said Nicol, laughing indulgently. ‘I’m saying Agnes fetched the flask from our house, for I’d seen it there afore we came out, but where she found it or what she thought was in it I’ve no knowledge. Nor what Nanty Bothwell thought he’d do wi it.’
‘Have you asked her if she’d done sic a thing?’
‘We don’t talk,’ said Nicol simply. ‘Besides, there’s been all to do in our house these last days, what wi my minnie brought to bed and now the old man struck down. There’s been more to think on than a silly lassie. You’ve more chance than I have, now she’s locked up here.’
‘What’s a flask of poison doing lying about the house,’ asked one of the assize, ‘where a lassie can find it? That’s no very good practice.’
‘Oh, it wasny lying about,’ objected Nicol, ‘for it would all have run out if it was lying, and pysont the whole lot of us wi the foul airs. It was standing just where it ought to be when I saw it, all at peace on the shelf. Mind, I’ve no notion whether it was poison in it then,’ he qualified.
This generated a three-cornered argument involving Sir Thomas, Nicol and the assize, who seemed unable to accept that any householder, much less an apothecary, could have a container in his house whose contents he could not identify at once. Gil, despite his several anxieties, found the exchange amusing, as did most of the women in the audience. Sir Thomas, eventually losing his temper, ordered the assize to leave the subject and attempted to get out of Nicol a statement of who might have filled up the flask. Finally he abandoned that too.
‘Right, that’ll do for that,’ he said. ‘Walter, let’s have Bothwell’s deposition, afore we’re all demented wi this.’
Walter the clerk rose, selecting a sheet of parchment from the array before him, found his place and began in a clear monotone, ‘Anthony Bothwell compearing, deponit that on All Hallows Eve in the year of Our Lord 1493, in acting of the play of Galossian …’
It was roughly what the man had said yesterday, Gil realized, tidied into continuous narrative in Walter’s competent prose. The failure to bring the right flask, the statement about almond milk, were included. Whatever had prompted them to use the thumbscrews, Sir Thomas and Andrew had got no new facts out of Bothwell.
‘I should not be here,’ he muttered to Morison. ‘I need to speak to Syme.’
‘Never worry your head,’ said Nicol at his other side. ‘The auld man went quiet in his sleep. I’d say it was his heart, myse
l, he would forget he was past fifty.’
And by now he would be washed and laid out, Gil recognized, as the assize began asking questions about Bothwell’s statement. Was a third sudden death in the same group of people really something to look at closely, or was he being unduly suspicious?
‘Can we no ask the lassie what it was she brought him?’ asked one of the assize.
‘She should be here by now,’ said Sir Thomas irritably. ‘Where’s Andro got to?’
With the words, a door was flung open, raised voices reached them, and Agnes was hustled in shrieking furiously and striking out with her manacled hands at the two men-at-arms who gripped her shoulders. One of them contrived to get hold of her fetters and dragged her up on to the platform.
‘Let me go, you villains!’ she shouted. ‘Let me go, afore my faither comes – he’ll slay you, he’ll have the law on you, he’ll –’
‘Be silent, lassie!’ bawled Sir Thomas, and she stopped, open-mouthed, and stared at him. ‘Your faither can be no help to you now.’
‘Aye he can,’ she protested. ‘He’ll get a man of law to speak for me –’
‘Frankie Renfrew is deid,’ said Sir Thomas.
Agnes went very still. She stared at the Provost for a moment, then turned her head and looked direct at her brother. She must have noticed him as she was dragged in, Gil realized. Again, she must be far less upset than she appeared to be, though that seemed to be changing now.
‘Died in his sleep,’ said Nicol cheerfully. ‘Found this morning.’
Agnes swallowed. She had gone white, the blue eyes suddenly huge in her pinched face.
‘Poison?’ she said. ‘Was it poison? It must ha been the same person as poisoned Robert, then.’
Sir Thomas looked at her, his eyes narrowed, then turned to Andro and conferred with him again. As the man made his way down off the dais and through the press of people, the Provost said, ‘Right, lassie, what was this flask you brought out of your house to give Nanty Bothwell on Hallowe’en?’
‘I never brought any flask,’ said Agnes. She seemed to be trembling. ‘It was nothing to do wi me. I’ve no idea what he’s talking about.’
‘It never flew from our house to Augie’s,’ observed Nicol. ‘Somebody shifted it.’
‘Maister Cunningham?’ said Andro at Gil’s shoulder.
‘It’s right hard to believe,’ said James Syme. He was standing at the desk in the workroom, his hand on a stack of papers. He shook his head. ‘I – I suppose it’s grief that slew him, but he seemed stout enough last night. You’d never ha taken him for one to die of grief.’
‘So Nicol said,’ agreed Gil. ‘Did anyone hear anything? He’d no chamber-fellows, no company?’
‘It’s a big enough house there’s no need for the maister to share his chamber,’ divulged Syme, with a flicker of his usual manner. ‘And seeing Mistress Mathieson’s lying apart the now, being new delivered, he’d be all his lone.’ He looked intently at Gil. ‘Is there any suspicion about his death, maister? Is that why you’re here?’
‘The Provost and I would both like to be sure there’s no suspicion.’
‘Oh,’ said Syme slowly. He shuffled the papers into a neat stack and turned from the desk. ‘You’ll want a look at the chamber, then, for a start.’
‘How have the women taken it?’ Gil asked, following the man up the stair.
‘Grace has been a marvel,’ said Syme over his shoulder. ‘My – my wife was that struck down, weeping fit to break her heart, poor lass, and her good-mother was right bad too, but Grace and Mistress Baillie atween them two got them calmed down and resting. Grace had some drops that worked a wee miracle.’
Did she, now? thought Gil.
‘The women are little help,’ Syme added, ‘the maidservants I mean, they were all in pieces already with the one lass being taken up alongside Agnes, they’re useless the day, but Grace saw to getting him laid out, and we’ve taken Mistress Mathieson’s opinion on the burial, and – we ordered as much in the way of mourning yesterday, you’ll understand, for Robert, that it’s no been a hard task for me the day.’
‘How are matters left?’ Gil asked. ‘Who gets the business? I’d have thought you and Robert would be his heirs, by the way he talked, but he’ll not have had time to change that since Saturday.’
‘I’ve no a notion. I was looking for the will just the now. His share might be all left wi Mistress Mathieson.’ Syme led the way through one of the well-furnished chambers Gil had seen before, and into the next. ‘Here it’s, maister. This is where we found him.’
The high tester-bed was stripped, the hangings gone, the woollen mattress bare and hauled up into a ridge to air. Pillows were stacked on the kist at the bed-foot, blankets of several colours were folded on a stool by the wall, and a red worsted counterpane lay forgotten in a heap beyond the bed-frame. There was nothing to be learned here, Gil recognized. Sighing, he looked about him.
‘Did you see him before he was moved?’
‘I did. Nicol came out to find me and break the word to my wife. He’s a kind man, I think,’ said Syme thoughtfully. ‘I never understood Frankie’s – well.’
‘How was he lying? How did he look?’
Syme bent his mind to this.
‘When I saw him,’ he said with care, ‘he was lying in his bed, on his back, with his mouth open and one hand here.’ He pressed a hand to his chest, just below the windpipe. ‘The bedclothes were flung back, but Nicol and Grace both had tried to find a heartbeat, likely that was their doing.’
‘His legs?’
‘Straight. One foot turned out a wee bit.’ Syme eyed Gil. ‘He’d gone quite peaceful, I’d say. He’d neither struggled nor voided. There was no blood, nor other signs.’
‘But,’ Gil prompted after a moment.
Syme shook his yellow head. ‘I’d not like to start anything – anything –’
‘But,’ Gil said again.
‘It was just –’ He bit his lip. ‘Just somehow awful like the way Robert looked, once we’d laid him out, and the way poor Gibson looked. And yet, one peaceful death’s much the same as another, and those two slipped away easy enough at the very end. There’s nothing to go on.’
‘Nothing but an experienced man’s feeling that something wasny right,’ Gil said. He bent to look under the bed-frame. ‘The jordan is missing. Had it been used? Has Mistress Grace taken it away to empty it?’
‘Aye, likely. He’d voided urine in it, a reasonable quantity for a man his age, the colour what you’d expect considering his state of health.’
The apothecary’s response to the question, Gil thought. He stood by the head of the bed and surveyed the chamber. There were two painted kists against one wall, the initials MM displayed in a wreath of daisies on each. The one at the bed-foot, he recalled, had Renfrew’s initials. ‘Most of us can find the jordan in the dark. Was there any sign that he’d tried to strike a light, maybe to get at his drops, to call for help?’
‘Ah.’ Syme considered. ‘When I saw him, which was maybe half an hour after they’d found him, for I came straight away and left Nicol to bring my wife, when I saw him there was an empty candlestock on the dole-cupboard yonder, which was at the bedhead then. Grace must ha taken it for cleaning, like the jordan.’
‘Empty. As if the candle had burnt out.’ Gil moved to the dole-cupboard, a well-made piece whose spiral-turned legs matched the more massive posts of the bed. He lifted the neat brass latch and opened the little door to peer in at the empty platter.
‘I suppose so.’
‘What do they usually put in the dole-cupboard?’ he asked. ‘I think Nicol mentioned oatcakes and cheese.’ His uncle’s housekeeper Maggie had always left little sweet cakes and a cup of ale; he had encountered this more substantial dole first in his father-in-law’s house, oatmeal bannocks and hard cheese, or sometimes a cold meat pasty, set ready to deal with night-time hunger in a household devoted to manual labour.
‘When I was prentice here,’ said
Syme carefully, ‘it was aye oatcakes and a finger of hard cheese. I’ve no notion whether Mistress Mathieson has changed that.’
Gil nodded, and lifted a few crumbs of oatcake from the platter. ‘And was the wee flask of his drops anywhere?’
‘No that I saw.’ Syme looked about as Gil had done earlier. ‘I wonder where Grace would have put his clothes from yesterday?’
‘In the kist?’ He nodded at the bed-foot.
Syme moved the stack of pillows on to the bed-frame and opened the painted lid. ‘Indeed, aye.’ He lifted the dead man’s purse from a corner of the box and came to empty the contents out on to a flat portion of the mattress. ‘This and that, his coin-purse, his beads, his tablets and seal.’
‘And his drops.’ Gil lifted the little flask and shook it, then drew the stopper and sniffed cautiously. ‘It seems to have been the drops, right enough, but it’s empty.’ He offered the mouth of the flask to Syme, who sniffed with equal caution and nodded.
‘That’s his drops. Nothing odd about them, I’d say.’
‘Did he ever keep a separate store of the remedy here in the chamber?’
‘I wouldny know. You might ask at Mistress Mathieson, if she’s fit to talk, or at Grace.’
Gil looked about him again, then moved around the room, bending to peer under the bed again, looking into the kist where Renfrew’s clothes had been folded. His linen had been removed, presumably with the sheets from the bed, which would all be in the washhouse by now. There was no sign of anything untoward, other than Syme’s unease and his own feeling that this death must be considered carefully.
‘Might I see him?’ he said.
Maister Francis Renfrew was laid out in the same chamber where his son had lain, washed and shrouded, candles burning at his head and feet. The maidservant Isa was on her knees in a corner of the chamber, her beads in her hand; she looked up when they entered, and rose, saying in some relief, ‘Will I just get back to the kitchen now, Maister Jimmy? There’s the dinner to see to, and Babtie no feeling too good again, no to mention the wash willny wait, it being Monday and the first wash of the month.’
