by Pat McIntosh
‘Wi’ Murray?’ Sir John looked from her to Lady Egidia. ‘I did, indeed, a small acquaintance. A good enough fellow, but a good opinion of himself.’
Confession, thought Alys. He has confessed the man.
‘Was he honest in his employment?’ asked Lady Egidia, stroking the cat.
‘He was. I can safely say that he was.’ Sir John nodded judiciously.
The two women looked at one another again. One thing he cannot have confessed, thought Alys, and saw the same assumption in her mother-in-law’s face.
‘He died in mortal sin,’ said Lady Egidia, as Alan Forrest entered the hall, followed by the women with responsibility for the linen and tableware. ‘Ah, supper must be ready.’
‘You asked me of his employment, madam,’ said Sir John, ‘and I say he was an honest workman.’
Alys’s estimate of Sir John rose. It took a strong character to stand up to her mother-in-law.
Over supper, by unspoken agreement, they allowed the priest to soliloquize almost uninterrupted on the forthcoming translation of St Malessock. Alan Forrest listened from his place next him at the board, with a wary expression as if he was certain too much of the planned junketing would devolve on him.
‘It’ll be a longer procession than the opening of Parliament, Jackie,’ he said at last. ‘You should send to Lanark and get the carts from Corpus Christi, and save your feet –’
‘No, no,’ broke in Lady Egidia, in tones of innocence. ‘I’m certain you should put the corp – the saint on the Meikles’ cart, Sir John. They brought him here, after all.’
‘The men of Thorn must have a part,’ said Alys, keeping her face straight despite the image this conjured up. ‘And if he should recover, so must Sir David.’
The meal was over, the long table cleared away, and the two women, Socrates and Sir John had retired to sit by the brazier in one of the smaller chambers before Alys accepted that Gil would not be home that night. The evening ahead of her suddenly seemed very long and empty, though the board had been set up for the game of tables, and she knew there was a piece of plain sewing waiting in their chamber. She sat smiling and nodding and caressing the dog as her elders conversed, wondering whether he had stayed away because she had argued with him, or because it was too late to come home. When the priest finally rose to take his leave, and extricated himself in a flurry of compliments and Indeeds, Lady Egidia looked wryly at her and said:
‘My dear, if you’re only now learning that love hurts, you have been fortunate.’
‘Am I so obvious? I’m sorry, madame – I was better reared than that.’
‘Not to our guest, I imagine, but I could tell you were elsewhere. Gil will put his duty first, you know that. He’ll be home when he’s done it.’
‘I wouldn’t have him otherwise,’ Alys said firmly. Lady Egidia turned her head sharply as a step sounded in the hall, but Socrates had done no more than prick his ears, so Alys was not disappointed when it was Alan who appeared in the doorway, looking harassed.
‘It’s her from the Pow Burn at the yett, mistress,’ he said. ‘She’ll not say what she wants, save it’s for Maister Gil only. I’ve tellt her he’s not here and won’t be back this night, but she’s saying she’ll wait.’
‘Which of them?’ asked Alys with sudden anxiety. ‘Is something wrong up there?’
Alan looked at his mistress, who nodded. And I was trying not to put myself forward, thought Alys.
‘It’s Mistress Lithgo. The one that does the healing. She was up at the yett as soon as I saw Jackie Heriot out to the road, just walked down from the coaltown. She’ll not say what it is,’ he repeated, ‘only it’s for Maister Gil.’
‘See if she’ll speak to one of us,’ said Lady Egidia, regaining control.
Beatrice Lithgo was seated in the steward’s room, still wrapped in a great blue plaid, her indoor cap covered by a veil of coarse black linen secured with a carved wooden pin. Her feet were propped on a brass box of charcoal, a cloth bundle and a jug of hot buttered ale beside them, and she held a cup in her hands. Her face was shadowed from the candlelight but she was as still and tense as a strung bow. As Alys stepped into the room and closed the door, she looked up and her mouth twitched in a small smile.
‘M-my husband is not here,’ Alys said. ‘He went – he went on an errand. We think he may not come back till morning now.’ Beatrice considered this, the expression of her eyes hidden. ‘Is there some difficulty at the coal-heugh? Can I help, or should we send someone with torches to Cauldhope?’
‘No, Maister Michael’s not who I need.’ The other woman looked down at the cup of buttered ale, and up again. Her shadowed gaze met Alys’s and slid aside. She looked higher still, at the broad boards stretched between the rafters, and took a breath. ‘I want to ask Maister Cunningham who I should tell.’
‘Tell what? Has something happened? Are your daughters safe? Is Joanna –?’
‘They’re well enough.’ Again, the quick glance at the ceiling. Then, squaring her shoulders and looking Alys in the eye, she said, ‘I need to ask your man who I should tell that I poisoned Thomas Murray.’
Alys put out a hand and steadied herself on the corner of the steward’s desk. She became aware that her mouth had fallen open; closing it, she said very carefully, ‘You wish to confess to poisoning Thomas Murray?’
‘You heard me right,’ Beatrice assured her, with a faint flicker of her usual irony.
‘Do – do you know what that will lead to? If you confess? If you are found guilty?’
‘Drowning.’
The Scottish form of execution for a woman, thrust into a pit with the hands tied, held down by long poles. Probably better than hanging, if one had the choice. Alys stared at her, then turned away and poured herself a cup of the buttered ale, as much for something to do with her hands as anything else. She sat down, and sipped the fast-cooling brew, her mind still racing. After a moment she said, ‘But what about your children?’
An infinitely small shrug was the only response.
‘How.’ She swallowed. ‘How did you do it? What did you use? Why did you do it?’
This could not be happening. Gil should be here. Why had he not come home?
‘I put the poison into the flask,’ said Beatrice, patiently and very slowly. ‘Seeing Arbella had tellt him to use it to mind her birthday.’
‘When? When did you put it in the flask? And what did you use?’
‘You keep asking me that. I should ha’ thought you could work it out for yourself, lassie.’
‘No, I think you have to tell us.’ Alys frowned, trying to fit this into what she knew already. ‘I don’t understand why, either. Should we send after Sir John Heriot? Would you wish to confess to him?’
‘No,’ said Beatrice briefly. ‘He was annoying my lassies, Thomas I mean. And Joanna,’ she added as an afterthought.
‘When did you put the poison in the flask?’ Alys asked again.
‘I got the chance while he made his farewells.’
‘But where was the flask then?’
‘In his scrip. In the hall. They were all in the window chamber, and nobody saw.’
It fits together, thought Alys. As I should have expected.
‘And what was it? What did you use?’
‘Work it out, lassie.’ Beatrice sat back, her shoulders softening as if she had laid down a burden. ‘Now, if your man’s no looked for till the morn’s morn, you’ll have to keep me here,’ she prompted. ‘A dangerous felon like me’s no safe to be running about the countryside in the dark. Will your good-mother be wanting to chain me?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Alys found she was still staring at the older woman, unable to read her expression. ‘Sir John cannot be far on his road – would you like me to send after him? Will you not confess to him?’
‘Our Lady save you, my dear,’ said Beatrice, with a flicker of amusement, ‘I stood out there in the mirk getting chilled to the bone, waiting for him to take his leave. No, we’ll not trouble Sir John. Your
man can hear me when he comes home.’
‘Won’t they miss you at the coal-heugh? Your daughters will be worried.’
‘Not them. I sent them off to bed, after Raffie left for Lanark wi’ Arbella, and shut myself into the stillroom. They’ll no ken till the morn that I’m no in there minding a triple-distillation.’
‘What – what will happen to them? They can’t . . .’ Alys ran out of words, and Beatrice gave her another ironic smile.
‘They’ll can go wi’ their brother. I’ve got him a good position as under-grieve wi’ Russell at Laigh Quarter, over in Cadzow parish, though his grandam doesny know of it yet. Have no fears for them, lassie.’
There was another pause, while Alys’s thoughts swirled and submerged like linen surging in a washtub. A fresh point surfaced, and she seized on it.
‘What about the other man, the forester? Did you know about him? Did you know about Murray being –’
‘No, I never discussed his tastes wi’ the man. And I never knew about the other fellow. I’m right sorry about him,’ Beatrice said. It sounded like the truth.
‘Tell me again,’ said Alys. ‘You put the poison –’
‘Into the flask, where it was in his scrip in the hall, afore he left. Because he was annoying my lassies and Joanna. That’s the trouble wi’ herbs,’ she said sadly. ‘They can heal, and they can kill, and once you’ve the knowledge in your hand, it’s too easy to use it. Will you lock me in, lassie? I brought my night-cap, I can lie here as well as anywhere.’
As Alys stepped from the chamber, Alan Forrest, on the stair outside with a candle, said in an urgent whisper, ‘Mistress – Mistress Alys – I heard all that.’ He held out a substantial iron key. ‘What are we to do wi’ her? Maister Gil’s no back yet, we’ll no see him till the morn, what will we do?’
‘We tell Lady Egidia first,’ said Alys, turning the key in the lock and giving it back to him. ‘She must direct where we put her or if she stays there. And we must get word to Gil as soon as may be in the morning.’
‘Aye, but where is it he’s gone? And there’s the quest and all, I took it you and the mistress’d want to go down to Lanark first thing to witness that. And an owl out there screeching in the stable-yard, fit to deave every beast in the place,’ he added, following her up the curling stair to the hall.
Lady Egidia was as astonished as Alys had been.
‘Confessed to poisoning Murray?’ she repeated. ‘I canny believe it. It goes against everything I ever heard of her.’
‘I heard her confess and all, mistress,’ Alan assured her.
‘She asked me to lock her in,’ Alys said, ‘but would you wish her to lie in the steward’s chamber? Certainly it is warm and dry and we can give her a pallet and a blanket, but –’
‘Aye, that’s the best plan. You’ll see to that, Alan. And no point in trying to find Gil till the morning.’ Lady Egidia frowned. ‘Will he come home, I wonder? If he’s really gone so far as Elsrickle, it must be fifteen or sixteen mile from here, he may go straight to Lanark for the quest. Well, no sense in fretting over that just now.’ She waved at the door. ‘Go and see Mistress Lithgo comfortable, Alan, and maybe you would let the dog run in the yard a bit, and then you can get to your own rest.’ She delivered a brisk blessing, and her steward departed reluctantly, towing an equally reluctant Socrates. ‘A good man, Alan,’ she said as their footfalls diminished down the stairs, ‘but his ears are by far too long, and everything he hears gets to Eppie. Sit down, my dear, and we’ll see if we can work this out between us.’
‘My head is all in a whirl,’ Alys confessed, obeying. ‘I can make no sense of it. Why would Beatrice do such a thing? She is the one everyone calls a good woman.‘
‘A good healer,’ agreed Lady Egidia. ‘A wise woman, in all senses of the word. So if we assume there is some reason for her action, we’ll get on better.’
‘I can think of only one reason for such an action,’ acknowledged Alys.
‘But who? Who is she protecting?’
‘Someone she loves? Someone important to her?’
‘You’ve spent time with her lately. Who would you say is important enough for her to go willingly to execution for that person?’
Alys considered this, turning over her conversations with Beatrice Lithgo in her mind, but nothing seemed to offer itself. She shook her head.
‘She is a woman of great reserve. Her daughters, of course, and her son if he was suspected, though I don’t think Gil has even considered him –’
‘He was in Glasgow at the time, I believe,’ agreed her mother-in-law.
‘– but as for Joanna and the old woman, I should say she was very fond of Joanna but held Mistress Weir in . . . in . . .’ She paused, searching for a suitable word. ‘Respect, I suppose, as one ought.’ Their eyes met, and she saw amused acknowledgement of this in her mother-in-law’s expression. ‘No more than that. I’ve seen no sign that she dislikes her, but there is no liking.’
‘I wonder why she stays there,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘Has she nowhere else to go?’
‘If her portion is tied up in the business, it will be impossible for her to leave without unpleasantness,’ said Alys. ‘And the same must apply to Joanna, I suppose.’
‘So we think Mistress Lithgo is protecting her daughters, or possibly Joanna. Do you suppose she thinks one of them poisoned Murray, or simply that one of them is suspected? I wonder what the younger girl wanted to confess?’
‘Gil suspects all of them, including Mistress Lithgo herself,’ observed Alys. ‘I suppose he must have given away that much when he was last there.’
She drew her tablets out of her purse, and smoothed a list of dry stores off the second leaf, burnishing the last marks with the back of her fingernail. Socrates returned midway through this process, and had to be reassured and ordered to lie down. That dealt with, she made a neat list of the five names, and after a moment’s deliberation added Raffie at the end. Incising several columns beside the list, she said thoughtfully, ‘We know some of them have the knowledge of simples and poisons, but how much knowledge does it take?’
‘It has to be something which can be given in liquid,’ supplied Lady Egidia, ‘with a taste that can at least be disguised.’
‘And a single dose must suffice.’ She looked at her list. ‘Much as I like her, I could not credit Joanna with so much sense, any more than a spring lamb, but perhaps I misjudge her. All the others could know that much from either Arbella or Beatrice.’ She made a mark beside each name in the first column.
‘What next?’ asked Lady Egidia. Alys glanced up sharply at her enthralled tone, wary of mockery, but the older woman’s expression matched her voice. ‘Opportunity, or a reason for ministering poison?’
‘Opportunity,’ said Alys firmly. She tried to recall the several conversations about the silver flask, piecing them together as they came to her mind. ‘Mistress Weir gave the flask to Bel to take to Murray before he and Joanna left their apartment. By Joanna’s account, she put it straight in his scrip under his eye.’
‘So Arbella and her granddaughter had the chance, but not Joanna. Raffie was in Glasgow, I suppose. What of the other two?’
‘Phemie told us they all broke their fast together in the other chamber, all of them except Joanna and Murray. You know, Raffie could have given the stuff to one of his sisters to minister, perhaps without saying what it was.’ She made a note at the foot of the leaf. ‘I must ask Phemie, before she knows where her mother is and why she came here.’
‘Ask her what?’
Alys looked up with an apologetic smile, realizing she had not finished the sentence.
‘Whether she or her mother went out into the hall after Joanna came through, but before they all went to see the travellers off.’ She looked at her list, and marked two names off in the second column.
‘And we come to the reason,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘If there can be said to be a reason for killing another Christian.’ Or anyone else, thought Alys, but did
not say so. ‘Did you tell me the lassie Brownlie was afraid of her man?’
‘I thought she was,’ agreed Alys. ‘Beatrice thought she was. Joanna herself will say nothing against him.’
‘Hmm. A well-reared lassie. And the younger girls?’
‘Murray made fun of Bel and her lack of speech. He had slighted Phemie, who thought he would have married her until Joanna’s portion became known –’
‘Aye, Joanna’s portion. That’s a strange matter. Why – no, we must think this through first. What about the older women?’
‘Mistress Weir and Murray were at odds over the running of the business.’ Alys looked down at her list again. ‘She only said that she was disappointed in him, but Phemie told me, and her brother told Gil, that the man had ideas of his own which did not suit the old lady. There was shouting, Phemie said.’
‘That might be enough. Money does strange things to people. As for our penitent down in Alan’s chamber, did she give a reason, or were you to work that out as well?’
‘She said Murray was annoying her lassies, and Joanna.’
‘No,’ said Lady Egidia after a moment. ‘She is a rational woman, and a healer. That makes no sense.’
‘No. I think we are agreed, Beatrice Lithgo may have confessed, but she is probably not the poisoner.’
‘So who is she protecting?’
‘We come back to that,’ agreed Alys.
‘And today,’ said her mother-in-law, with an abrupt change of direction, ‘you went to Dalserf. What’s your interest in Joanna Brownlie?’
‘I heard a lot about the family,’ Alys said. ‘Particularly about her father’s deathbed. And his will was very interesting.’
‘What, you think the man Brownlie was poisoned and all?’
‘Well, I wonder,’ she said earnestly. ‘His death was different from Murray’s, but it sounds very like the way Matt Crombie died.’
Lady Egidia studied her for a time, her long-chinned face solemn in the candlelight.
‘How many?’ she said eventually.
‘Four of the family, I think,’ said Alys. ‘And also Joanna’s father. Five all told, I suppose, though not all by poison.’ Her mother-in-law counted on her fingers, frowning, and finally nodded. ‘But what worries me is why there has been an extra death this year.’
