St Mungo's Robin (12 page)

‘But I thought he was slain in the night,’ said Marion, looking troubled, ‘or maybe right early this morn. Was it no someone inside the bedehouse? Why does it matter where he
was afore that?’

‘It’s quite possible it was someone inside,’ agreed Gil non-committally ‘but if we know what his movements were last night, who he met or spoke to, we might learn why he
was killed.’

‘Oh.’ She stared at him with those wide blue eyes.

‘You said he got here at supper-time. When would that be?’

‘After they said Compline at the bedehouse? They’re earlier than St Mungo’s or St Nicholas, so Sissie can get the old men to bed and get her evening to herself. It was about
his usual time,’ she asserted.

‘And he left about half an hour after seven. So he was here maybe an hour and a half, and had supper.’ She nodded. ‘What did you talk about? Was he glad to see your brother
here at supper?’

‘Aye, he was.’ Was that a trace of reluctance? ‘We spoke of this and that. My brother’s prospects, the voyages he’s made. The Deacon’s rents. Your
marriage,’ she added, with a slight smile.

‘His rents?’ said Gil. ‘Was there any sort of problem with his finances?’

‘No that he mentioned. I think all was well there,’ she said vaguely

‘And then he went out. He didny come back?’

‘No. Why would he do that?’

‘Could he have been going on to friends? Who were his friends?’

‘He never said where he was going. Oh, he’d friends,’ she added, a faint bitter note in her voice. ‘All well-doing gentlemen of his own sort. Maister Agnew, Maister
Walkinshaw, Maister – I canny mind. They’ve supped in this house, but I haveny met them.’

Gil frowned, aware of his sister looking at him in puzzlement, but decided to let that one pass meantime.

‘So he left this house about half an hour after seven,’ he said. She nodded.

‘And that was the last you saw him,’ said Dorothea. Marion nodded again, like a fairground toy. ‘Marion, will I come wi you when you witness his shrouding? You’ll want to
say a farewell to him, will you no?’

‘Oh, I’ll no be there,’ said Marion. ‘I’ve nothing I want to say to Robert Naismith.’

Gil lost patience.

‘Why not?’ he demanded bluntly.

There was a pause, in which Eppie’s voice could be heard downstairs; then Marion closed her eyes and put up her hand. It covered her face, but did not conceal the way her mouth twisted, or
the tears which spilled from under her dark eyelashes. Dorothea set down her own beaker and crossed to sit beside her, taking her free hand in a comforting clasp. Marion put her head down on the
creamy wool shoulder, golden hair tumbling loose to shine in the candlelight as her cap slipped sideways, and a great wail escaped her.

Dorothea caught Gil’s eye and deliberately indicated the stair.

Following the voices, Gil found Eppie in the inner room downstairs, leaning against the frame of the kitchen doorway, her spindle in her hand. The child sat at her feet, crooning quietly to a
wooden mommet. They both looked round as he crossed the room, but the voice grumbling in the kitchen continued.

‘Who she thinks she is I’d like to ken, it’s all ower the town she hasny a penny to call her own but what the man Naismith gave her, but there she goes, setting herself above
honest working folk –’

‘Danny,’ said Eppie warningly. The voice was silenced, and its owner stepped into view, a small man with a belligerent expression and receding ginger hair. He was wrapped in an apron
even more enveloping than the one which protected the child, but the sleeves of his jerkin were mottled with stains and white blotches and he clutched a wooden spoon in a menacing way in one broad
hand. This was clearly the cook. Beyond him another young woman was rolling pastry at the big table.

Gil glanced quickly at the man’s soft deerskin house shoes. The spreading folds of hide made it difficult to judge the size of the feet within, but they seemed to be large.

‘You’re Maister Cunningham that dwells in Rottenrow, aren’t you?’ said Eppie, and cast her spindle. ‘It’s you that’s getting wedded next week,
isn’t it no?’ she went on, drawing out the thread from the roll of carded wool in her other hand. ‘No that many gets wed in the Upper Town.’

‘That’s so,’ Gil admitted.

She nodded, watching the spindle twirl and swing. ‘I thought that. We’ve the plans all laid for the rough music,’ she assured him, and caught the spindle at the moment before
it stopped turning.

Gil managed a smile, but Danny said, ‘No wi my cooking pots you’re no, Eppie Dunlop.’

The girl with the rolling pin giggled, and Eppie threw him a look.

‘Oh, you,’ she said. ‘We’ll use others, then, and you’ll no get any of the sweetmeats when we’re done.’

Another thing to remember, thought Gil in dismay. The night before the wedding at the groom’s house, the wedding night at the bride’s house: a serenade of bawdy songs accompanied by
the beating of pots and pan-lids and any musical instruments whose players could be persuaded to join in, a piper, maybe, or one of the shawms from the burgh band, something good and loud like
that. They would expect to be rewarded with sweetmeats and strong drink. Maybe Maggie would have that in hand.

‘Were you all three here in the house yestreen?’ he asked.

‘Aye, we were,’ said Eppie, winding-on her new thread, ‘though Bel went home after her supper. Danny and I both live in,’ she added, and cast the spindle again. ‘I
sleep up-by, wi the bairn, and my brother has his bed in the kitchen where it’s warm.’

‘Brother?’ said Gil, startled, looking from one to the other.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Eppie, laughing. ‘We’re no like, are we? He takes after our faither, the wee baldy man he was, and I’m the spit image of our mother when she was
young. Or so my auntie tells us. Maister Naismith hired us thegither.’

‘So will that be you all wi no place now?’ Gil asked in sympathetic tones.

Bel shrugged, and Danny snarled something, and turned back to a pot on the charcoal stove. Eppie said more philosophically, ‘Maybe, maybe no. She’s no notion what was in the
maister’s will.’

‘He won’t have had the time to make one, surely,’ said Gil.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Eppie. ‘Did she no say? That’s what they were talking about over their supper, her and the maister and her brother John Veitch.’

‘Eppie,’ said Danny in the same warning tone she had used.

‘Well, we were all in here at the table thegither,’ said Eppie. ‘That’s a bonnie man, her brother,’ she added. ‘I never saw him afore, but the moment I
clapped my een on him, there on the doorsill, I kent who he must be.’ She sighed, and the girl with the rolling-pin sighed in sympathy. ‘And the bonnie things he’s brought the
mistress, too.’

‘What did he have to say about the will?’ Gil asked.

‘Oh, aye. Well, the maister said,’ she recounted, ‘that he was wanting to make a new will, and he’d be going on to see his man of law after his supper to get it drawn
up.’

‘Draw?’ said Frankie in a little piping voice at her feet. ‘Frankie draw?’

‘No the now, my poppet. Go and put Annabella to bed in Danny’s shoe, see, over there. And John Veitch asked him,’ she continued, the spindle idle in her hand, ‘since the
mistress said nothing, what he was looking to alter in it. Then he said he’d made other plans for the future, and he’d be wanting to leave his property elsewhere because of them. Then I
think maybe the mistress kicked her brother under the board, for he fell silent, but after we drew the cloth and turned the board up, they went above stairs and there was a roaring tulzie, you
could ha heard it in St Mungo’s.’

‘I certainly heard it down here,’ said Danny sourly.

‘What was it about?’ Gil asked.

‘All about the will, a course. He never said what the other plans were,’ said Eppie in some regret, ‘or no that I heard, but he was saying he’d leave this house and some
other property to someone else, and if the bairn she’s carrying should be a son he said he’d leave my mistress a house he owns down off the Gallowgait and if no then she was to be out
of here when her forty days was up, and –’

‘Making notes, were ye?’ said Danny, peering into a saucepan. Bel, listening avidly, jumped and applied herself to the pastry again.

‘Did he name the legatee?’ Gil asked. ‘The person he was leaving this house to,’ he corrected himself.

‘And what’s that to you if he did?’ demanded another voice behind Gil. He turned, and found himself looking at a large man in a furred gown, standing with booted feet planted
well apart and glaring at him from the other doorway. Like Eppie, Gil was in no doubt about who this was. He had changed in ten years, but his fair hair and blue eyes creased at the corners would
have identified him, even before Frankie abandoned her mommet, scrambled to her feet and scurried forward exclaiming,

‘Unca John! Unca John!’

The scowl changed to a smile.

‘Where’s my best lassie?’ said John Veitch. He bent and scooped the child up, tossing her high so that she squealed with laughter. ‘Where’s your mammy, wee
lass?’

‘Up,’ said Frankie, pointing to the stairs. ‘Up wi lady. I go up later.’

‘And you’re down here questioning Eppie,’ said the seaman, glowering at Gil again.

‘D’you no mind me, John? Gil Cunningham? I’m Robert Blacader’s Quaestor now,’ said Gil, wondering if he would ever get used to explaining this. ‘I’m
charged wi looking into any murders in Glasgow, or wherever he sends me.’

‘What’s it to do wi Robert Blacader?’ demanded Veitch. ‘Aye, I mind you. You’re the youngest brother, aren’t you no? And there were all those sisters you had
and all.’

‘That’ll be one of them up above wi the mistress the now,’ said Eppie. ‘A white nun, she is. Maister Cunningham was asking about the supper, and I was telling him when
the maister left.’

‘Aye,’ said Veitch rather grimly. ‘Too busy to talk to me about my sister. Then I come up the hill the day to get a word wi him at the hour he appointed, face to face and man
to man, and I hear at the gate that he’s deid. But what’s this about the supper? Surely he wasny poisoned? That canny be it, the rest o us have taken no hurt,’ he added with a
sardonic look as Danny’s indignant snarl rose from the kitchen. ‘And what’s it to do wi Blacader?’

‘This is Blacader’s burgh, John,’ Gil reminded him. ‘No like where we grew up out in the Hamiltons’ lands. If Naismith’s killer can be taken, Blacader or his
court will deal wi him first before he’s sent to Edinburgh. And meantime, can you tell me when you left here last night?’

‘Me?’ The sailor contemplated the ceiling briefly, then smiled at the child whom he was still holding on his arm. ‘I sang this wee one a song when she was in her cradle,
didn’t I, my flower?’

‘Passy awa,’ said Frankie triumphantly.

‘That’s right, a clever lassie.
Pasay I’agua, Julietta datna.
And then my sister and I had a long word. She was a wee thing distressed, as you’ll understand if
Eppie’s tongue’s been wagging already,’ said Veitch disapprovingly. In the kitchen Danny clattered the saucepan on the stove and swore quietly. ‘It would be, maybe, about
nine o’ the clock when I came away. Is that right, Eppie?’ Eppie shrugged, and cast her spindle again. ‘I went away down the High Street to where I’m lodged wi the Widow
Napier, and sat a while talking wi her and all, her man’s brother was a sailor and she likes to hear the tales, and then I gaed tae my beddie,’ he concluded.

Frankie wriggled in his arms, and he bent to set her on the ground. She ran to her mommet, still fast asleep in a shoe much the size of Gil’s, and began to sing to it. Veitch looked at
her, then at Gil, and jerked his head towards the outer room. The clattering of Danny’s pans followed as the two men moved out of earshot of the child.

‘Where are you lodged?’ Gil asked, sitting down on the tapestry-covered stool Veitch indicated.

‘I tellt you. The Widow Napier.’

‘Aye, but where’s that? Where does she dwell?’

‘Oh, I see. Away down the Fishergate. St Catherine’s Wynd. It’s right handy for the shore.’

‘Why not here, with your sister?’

‘I wasny certain how she was placed.’ That sardonic look again. ‘As it turned out, I was right to be wary. The deceased was away less happy to clap his een on me than Marion
herself was, poor lass.’

‘Was he, now?’ said Gil. ‘So he’d not have wished you to stay here?’

Veitch laughed shortly.

‘No,’ he said.

‘And you never saw Naismith again after he left here,’ said Gil.

‘No,’ said Veitch again. ‘He was long away and talking wi his man of law by the time I went out. Or so I suppose.’

‘Do you know who that is?’

The seaman reflected briefly staring unfocused at the well-swept floorboards. Gil took the opportunity to inspect his feet, which were encased in a pair of heavy boots, well-worn and tarry but
well-cared-for and rather larger than Gil’s own.

‘Arnot? Andrews? Something like that.’ The man glanced at Gil, his mouth twisting. ‘I was more concerned wi my sister, you can believe it.’

‘I do. Did he name the alternative legatee?’

‘No,’ said Veitch, ‘but it shouldny be hard to find out who she is, if you can find the man of law.’

‘She?’

‘Aye. Did Marion no tell you? That’s what really couped her ower. Three and a half year she’s kept this house and warmed his bed for him, she’s carrying his bairn, and he
picked that moment, over the suppertable wi the household listening, to tell her he was to be wed. And no to her. So can you wonder that I spent the morn hunting for a man of law that would take on
her case?’

‘She told me little more than that,’ said Dorothea. ‘But what she did tell me agrees in substance.’

It had stopped raining, but neither of them wished to loiter in the raw cold, and they had taken refuge in the chapel of the bigger almshouse of St Nicholas, right by the Wyndhead. Seated on the
stone bench which ran round the box-like nave, Gil had summarized what he had learned from the servants and from John Veitch.

‘What more did you get from her?’ he asked. She folded her hands in her lap and considered them for a moment in the attenuated light from the south windows. Suddenly, irrelevantly,
he recognized the biggest change in her. The hunger he recalled had been fed, but there was also, under the poise and the air of command, that stillness at the centre that he had seen in one or two
other great religious he had known.