Lammas

Other titles in the Hew Cullan Mystery series

Hue & Cry

Fate & Fortune

Time & Tide

Friend & Foe

Queen & Country

Other titles in the Calendar of Crime series

Candlemas

Whitsunday

Yule

This eBook edition published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd
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10 Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
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eISBN 9780857909145

Copyright © Shirley McKay, 2016

The right of Shirley McKay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Contents

August 1

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

August 2

(1)

(2)

(3)

Lammas

And if thou wilt but come vnto our greene, on Lammas day when as we haue our feast, Thou shalt sit next vnto our summer Queene, and thou shalt be the onely welcome guest.

Michael Drayton,
The Shepheards Garland
, 1593

August 1

(1)

Elspet left the sweepings for the tide to take out. There were ships, three or four, coming to the fair. ‘Look out for Spaniards,' Sliddershanks had said, and she could not help but glance across the bay, though she did not really think the fleet would come. It was just his play.

She had belonged to Sliddershanks – she looked on it like that – for almost six years now. She had been fifteen, in service to Maude Benet at the harbour inn, when they first had met. She had woken in her bed one cruel December night to find that Maude had gone, with her daftie daughter and the cat. The lass who worked beside her had not lingered long. ‘I have expectations, d'ye see?'

Elspet herself had had no expectations, no other refuge or friends. She had stayed for three days alone at the inn, and when the sailors came to drink she had telt them bluntly that the house was closed, stopping up the doors and her ears against their oaths, mindful that Maude Benet would not let them curse. She had swept the floors and scrubbed the stools and boards, and, when a mouse appeared, caught it in a trap and left the carcase out as a warning to the rest. She had made pottage and broth with the pulled roots and herbs in the kitchen, and bread from the barley and oats. She had returned to the loft, to her old sleeping place, when the sun had set and had woken again as it rose. On the fourth day, Sliddershanks had come, with a paper from the council, forcing her to open up the locks. He had told her that his name was Walter Bone – though in her head she thought of him as Sliddershanks, for he was slow and crippled in his legs – and he was now the owner of the harbour inn.

Sliddershanks had looked her up and down. ‘Whit age are ye? Ten?'

She had telt him, indignant, ‘I am not ten.'

‘No? An uncomely twattle, are ye no?'

‘A twattle?' she had said.

‘A mimmerkin. A dwarf.'

‘I am not a dwarf.'

Maude Benet had been stern. Sometimes even sharp. But she had not called folk names. Elspet had telt him, as Maude would have done. And he had laughed at her.

‘Ye are a hichty wee quean. But ye will not do here. Ye are the wrang sort.'

She had asked him, ‘What is my sort?'

‘A pin-hippit runt. Not the sort that men like, that will bring in the drinkers. That has something to hing to, up here, and an arse.' He had placed his hands on the offending parts, and told her in a way that was kinder than his words, ‘Flat as a board. Now if ye were a wean, the chance is ye wid sprout. But sin ye are full grown, there is little hope. What man wid want you?'

‘Oh,' she had said. ‘What will I do then?'

‘Have you nowhere to go? No family?'

Elspet had shaken her head. Maude and the daftie she had thought were her family. Now they had left her alone. It was not strictly true. Maude Benet had remembered, when she went to flit, that Elspet had a mammie living still at Crail. Mebbe she forgot she had a faither too, and what that father did. She would not go to them.

Sliddershanks, with his withered smile and his crooked bones, had not looked like a man who was heavy with his fists. He had looked around him, taking in the room that was swept and scrubbed, the savour of the broth and the carcase of the mouse, and he had nodded. ‘Well. Stay, if ye will. But keep out from the tap. That ploukie-facit mow of yours is sure to sour the ale.'

His name for her was Mimmerkin. And she returned his taunts. The first day she had dared to use his name of Sliddershanks he had turned to gawp at her, and she had been feart that she had gone too far. Then his crooked face had split into a smile. ‘You are an impudent quean.'

She was not bonny, he telt her. No man would want her. But he had been wrong about that.

Sliddershanks did not allow her to mix with the men. For that, he brought in the sort of lass he liked, buxom and broad-hipped. All of them, he telt her, were comelier than she. Only when the inn was full, and the heaving bosoms buckled at the strain, would he let her go out with a cup or tray. ‘The hope is that the drinkers do not spy you in the crush, foulsum as ye are. The help is you are slight enough to slip among a crowd.'

‘More help than you are, with your futless leg.'

‘I had a foot once,' he said.

She gave him as good as she got. But sometimes in the night, when she was in her bed, she felt beneath the sheet her slender hips and thighs, the sweet bud of her breasts, and wondered if she was so foul that she could not be loved.

By day, she kept the house. And when the drinkers came she sent out broth and bannock, herrings, bread and cheese from the kitchen larder she now thought of as her own. The lassies in the front room she saw come and go, Alys and Isobel, Jonet and Em. All were of a kind, and none of them stayed long. Some went off with sailors who had come across the sea. Some of them were married. Some of them went wrong. She saw Jonet on a Sunday, stripped down to her shirt, weeping at the kirk. They had cut her hair. Not long after that, a council from the kirk had come to talk to Sliddershanks. The minister himself was there – for that was before he was taken at the plague – and Elspet had heard his censure, strenuous and stern. Sliddershanks had called her in, and she had been afraid.

‘This is Elspet Bell,' Sliddershanks had said, ‘who has worked for me since the day I came. She lives in this house. There is nothing here that she does not ken. Ask her what she sees that is not clean or seemly.'

The four men from the kirk had seemed to be discomfited. It had seemed to Elspet that they did not like to look at her. Perhaps it was her kirtle they found unbecoming, or they were offended at the plainness of her face. Was she yet so foul, they could not meet her gaze?

The minister had cleared his throat. ‘I know Elspet well. She is a communicant of conscience in the kirk. A guid kind of girl,' he had telt them.

Encouraged, she had looked at him. But he had not looked back. ‘I have to ask you, Elspet, if you have been privy to uncleanness in this house.'

‘I keep the house clean,' she had said.

‘I can see that you do. That is not what I meant. Have you been attendant, while men have conversed?'

‘I do not listen, sir.'

‘I refer to converse of the carnal kind.'

And she had answered, ‘Oh. I have heard of that. But only at the kirk. I have not seen it done.'

‘You are a fine lass,' Sliddershanks had said, once the men had left. ‘Foul in the face, but fine none the less. I have a mind to marry you.'

He had not seemed, at that moment, to intend a jest, and Elspet for her part was not displeased with him. Sliddershanks was old – forty if a day – and with his ravaged body was unlikely to live long. She, at that time, had just turned seventeen. She could see a day when she would be like Maude, hostess and proprietor of the harbour inn, and hoped for it to come. But Sliddershanks had married someone else. He had chosen for his bride the kind of lass he liked – Maggie from the inn – the plumpest and most fetching of the slutherouns. ‘She trapped him,' the others had said, and Elspet had not understood. She had pictured Sliddershanks, clamped in Maggie's thighs.

And that was not far from the truth. For they were not married a month when Maggie gave birth to a child, a lusty bawling boy. The infant had been given up to Elspet to look after, and she had not liked it much. It was red and round, all of it of Maggie, nought of Sliddershanks. She had not been sorry when the bairn and mother both were sent away, to escape the plague. She had not been very sorry when they died.

The plague had been bad, and a good year for her. The harbour had been closed, but she had stayed with Sliddershanks when the rest were gone. And they had come accustomed to each other's ways. Their words were not kinder, or fonder. They had not had between them enough to eat and drink, and Elspet had grown thinner, Sliddershanks more frail; he had not spared to tell her quite how ill she looked. He grieved his wife and bairn. Yet they had been content enough to keep each other company.

If he had asked her then to marry him, she thought, she would have accepted, not to have the inn, but for the sake of Sliddershanks, for him. He had not asked again. Maggie Mauchlin's vice had squeezed out all his marrying, and none of it was left.

That, she thought, was then. Things were different now. She was twenty-one. Far too old, said Sliddershanks, for any man to want her. ‘You are a guid lass. But ugly as sin.' But Sliddershanks was wrong. And he had told a lie to her that she could not forgive.

Michael was a labourer, who had come at seedtime. When the seeds were planted, he had gone away. And Elspet had believed her hope of him was gone. Sometimes she believed that he had not been real. That she had thought him up. But she did not forget. How could she forget, when he was in the ale?

Elspet hugged herself. Sliddershanks would say that she had lost her mind. But Sliddershanks told lies. She must not think of him.

At seedtime, he had waited for her outside at the pier, where she poured the slops. She had heard her name, and took it for the gulls, mewling in the froth. But then she had seen that it was a man, with fair tousled hair like tufts of ripe corn and a face coloured dark from the sun.

Elspet had asked him, ‘How do you ken me?'

‘You are the girl from the inn. Will you fetch me a drink?' Michael had said. Though she had not kent he was Michael then.

She had shaken her head. ‘I canna. We are closed.'

‘Oh, but I am thirsty, Elspet Bell.'

She had fallen for him then, right at those words, as though the saying of her name had cast a kind of spell. But she had not liked to show it. ‘You should have come before.'

Michael had telt her, ‘I did. I was turned away. The landlord said I'd rue it if I ever came again.'

‘That does not sound like him. Why would he do that?'

‘Because I asked your name. Because I never saw another lass as lovely. And when he would not tell me, I asked your friend Marie.'

Elspet had answered with ‘Oh'. She did not like it that Marie had a part to play. If she had made it up – and sometimes she believed that she had made it up – that part would be left out.

‘Your master must be fond of you, to keep you to himself.' He had winked at her.

Elspet had felt a flood of confusion. ‘Mebbe,' she had said, ‘I could fetch a drink for you. Just one.'

When she had returned to the inn, Sliddershanks had gone already to his bed. Elspet had been thankful not to face him then. She had poured the ale and taken it outside. She had half expected Michael to have gone. She thought she had imagined him. But he was waiting still. He had drunk the ale in a single draught. He had been as thirsty as he said. When the drink was done, he had bent and kissed her, covering her mouth with a spray of foam that was bitter-sweet and frothy in its breath.

Marie had been waiting when she took the cup back. She sensed that Marie knew, and could not look at her. She could hardly speak. She was trembling with such violence that she feared to waken Sliddershanks, shaken from his sleep. Her teeth were chattering too. Yet when Marie asked her why she had the cup she answered her quite easily. ‘One of the fishermen left it outside. I was bringin it in.' The lie had astonished her, but no more than the truth. Michael had been planted, sprung up like a seed.

Marie was not fooled. ‘Oh, aye?' she had said. ‘You had better mind that he does not find out.'

Michael made a promise that he would return for her when the harvest came. She had not believed it then. She did not tell Marie. But Michael kept his word. He came on Lammas eve, to find her by the pier and claim her for his own. She would be his sweetheart at the Lammas fair. Lammas was today. And Elspet kept her secret close and safe from Sliddershanks, knowing that her friend would not be welcome here. Michael had been kind to him. ‘You cannot blame a man that wants ye for himself.' Yet that could not be right. For Sliddershanks, she knew, had never wanted her.

(2)

The colleges were closed on Lammas day. For Hew Cullan of St Salvator's, the start of the vacation came as a relief. The last days of the term had been stormy ones. Giles Locke had spent the dog days of July – canicular, he called them – bearding the apocalypse. According to the compass of the ancient almanacs, the world was set to end in 1588. Giles had proved them wrong, with endless sheets of sums and logic so abstruse that it had baffled Hew. The storms were summer squalls, with fairer winds on course for 1589.

Hew was pleased to hear it. ‘I have planted trees, and would be annoyed if the world should end before the grove is grown.'

‘The world is good,' said Giles, ‘for a few years yet.'

The lightness of their words concealed a present threat, which Hew took very seriously indeed. There were wild reports that the Spanish army had landed on the coast, and the town was placed on perpetual alert. Giles had drawn a chart of the British Isles, on which he marked the progress of the Spanish fleet. The Spanish made no secret of their ships; rather, they had leaked their lists and inventories, the powder kegs and armoury of thirty thousand men, the ripple of their forces gripping at the sea. The lists had been enhanced with varying accounts of the types of torture that were taught on board, with their end effects. The students were distraught. Their spare hours were wrung out in practice at the butts, where their summer contests ceased to be a sport, and they sparred and squabbled over the results. Some were eager to be out and fighting for their faith, frustrated at the college that had penned them in. Others were afraid, and spent their days in prayer, fearful that a way of life to which they were attuned might soon become unstrung, their brittle futures plucked from them before they were begun. Most were ill and fretful by the end of term.

Giles had marked on his map the place in Flanders where the fleet had mustered, following its course into the English Channel. Hew remarked his interest with a deep unease. The Spanish had, officially, no quarrel with the Scots. But if England were occupied, and her queen overthrown, how likely was it then the Scottish king would treat with them, to gain the English throne? Or, if he did not, would join her fight with them, and sacrifice his people to the English cause? Nor was the Spanish army like to rest content while there were reformers on adjacent shores. The king in betwixt them, to serve his own ends, could scarcely stay neutral for long. There were open spies, willing to assist the Spanish in their aim, and though the king had taken measures to deter them, some had found his efforts feeble and lukewarm.