The Fourth Crow (21 page)

‘Keep her hidden?’ Gil repeated. ‘Are you thinking it’s someone Sir Edward would never contemplate wedding her wi? That he’s waiting till her guardian’s gone?’

‘What else would it be, man?’ said Muir contemptuously, while Austin grinned and nodded behind him. ‘And if I’d thought it would work, I’d ha done the same. I just wish I’d kent who it was that was after her, I’d ha dealt wi them aforehand. All that land, to go out o the family!’

‘Sir Edward did not wish to see her wedded at all, I thought,’ Gil offered.

‘Foolishness,’ said Muir. ‘Leave her property all unstewarded? Sheer waste. And what is this about the second death, then?’ he demanded, with an abrupt reversion to his subject. ‘The auld fool hadny a plain tale to tell, he’s right stonied by it all and makin’ no sense. When was it?’

‘Yestreen,’ Gil said. Muir frowned.

‘Yestreen. So when was he killed? Who was it? One o the vergers, you said.’

‘Aye,’ Gil said. ‘A man called Barnabas. He was found some time after Compline, and had likely been dead no more than a couple of hours.’

Muir was still frowning, working something out. Austin said,

‘Oh, well, that’s no a worry, Henry—’ He stepped back, not fast enough to avoid the swinging backhander, and recovered himself to stand rubbing his mouth and nose, staring at his brother in dumb reproach.

‘So no that long afore Vespers,’ said Muir, as if nothing had happened. Gil nodded agreement. ‘But why? It’s a daft thing to do, put a man down a well in a kirk!’

‘Daft thing to do, to throttle a lassie after she’s dead,’ Gil observed.

‘What d’you mean by that?’ demanded Muir, hackling up.

‘Why, that it’s a daft thing to do,’ said Gil. ‘No other.’

‘He’s right there, Henry,’ said Austin, ‘the one’s as daft as the other. Here, d’you think it was—’

‘Will you haud your wheesht?’

‘D’you think it was what, Austin?’ Gil asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Austin, rubbing at his mouth again. ‘Forgot what I was going to say.’

‘Henry, Austin, I thought I heard you,’ said Dame Ellen in the doorway of the women’s hall.

‘There you are!’ said Muir in the same breath. ‘Madam,’ he added. She gave them both a simpering smile.

‘You’re here in a good hour, laddies. You can escort me over to St Mungo’s, till I offer another prayer for my poor brother.’

‘Kittock sent these,’ said Alys, setting the basket of pasties down on the bench in the masons’ lodge.

This was not strictly true. When asked for a bite to offer the men Kittock had cast her eye about the kitchen and said reluctantly, ‘Well, they’ve aye liked the cheese pasties, mem, and I could make some more for our own supper, you could take them those if you wanted.’ She had then added a handful of parsley in a cloth and a dozen of the little cakes from the day’s baking; Alys herself had drawn a large jug of ale from the barrel in the brewhouse. Jennet set this down now beside the basket and pushed her fair locks back over her shoulders, smiling at Maistre Pierre’s man Thomas who had paused in his work to watch them.

‘She had no need to do that,’ said Maistre Pierre disapprovingly. ‘We have gone home at noontide in the usual way.’

‘An extra bite is always welcome when the men are working hard,’ Alys suggested. She sat down on the bench, looking out at the busy scene beside the lodge. The men she knew, Wattie and Thomas and Luke, were working on what looked like the mouldings for a window tracery, while two more journeymen were blocking out the stones they would need next. The familiar music of chisel and mell competed with the birdsong in St Mungo’s kirkyard, with the crows which swirled about the tall trees adding their own harsh bass. ‘You make good progress. Is that the second window going forward now?’

‘It is. Blacader has found some funds, so I begin to hope his new work will be completed in my lifetime.’

‘So your marriage has brought you good fortune,’ Alys said brightly. He looked hard at her, and she maintained the smile with a little difficulty. After a moment he grunted, and sat down beside her.

‘Perhaps so, truly. Are you well,
ma mie
?’

‘I am, Father. How does my stepmother?’

‘She is well too. And your husband? How does he fare with this matter of the missing lady? I have not seen him today.’

‘I think he planned to speak to the Provost about it,’ she answered, ‘and then to pursue the death of the cathedral servant. That is a very strange thing. I suppose you saw nothing from here.’

He gestured beyond the fence which separated his industrious men and the building site which was Archbishop Blacader’s contribution to the fabric of his cathedral, from the path which ran between the kirkyard gate and the doorway of the Lower Kirk.

‘Ma mie
, there are many people on that path, a dozen, two dozen in an afternoon.’ This could well be true, she recognised; there were three people visible just now, two women heading for the church, their beads in their hands, gossiping happily, and one of the canons pacing the other way. No, not a canon, it was William Craigie. ‘And in any case, I think the man was killed long after we had gone home to our dinner. We talked it over here in the lodge this morning, and none of us can recall even seeing the man Barnabas, much less someone waving a strangler’s cord. I think the man and his killer both went down from the Upper Kirk to where he was found.’

‘The Dean is very certain that did not happen, so Gil says. That he was killed outside the church and carried to where he was found.’

‘Hah!’ said her father sceptically.

‘What you say seems the most likely,’ she agreed, thinking how much she had missed this, the talking over of events, the companionable sharing of ideas. Since they came to Glasgow from Paris, after her mother’s death, it had been herself and her father, and then Gil who had fitted into the family quite seamlessly. Her stepmother thought in a different way, and would not hear other points of view, which made discussion difficult, and in any case she seemed to be jealous of Alys herself.

Her thoughts paused as that idea presented itself. Jealous? Was that the problem? Why had she not seen it before?

‘I have no idea what Gilbert has learned today,’ her father was saying. ‘They were to search the man’s lodging, I do not know if they discovered anything there.’

‘You could send Luke or Berthold to find Gil and ask him,’ Alys suggested. ‘Or go yourself.’

‘I cannot leave these lazy fellows,’ said her father, nodding at Thomas, who was contriving to talk to Jennet without breaking off his work. ‘And I cannot spare Luke, because Berthold is at home today.’

‘At home?’

Maistre Pierre shrugged.

‘He is not well, one can well see, he has some kind of ague and sits about shivering and complaining of his belly, though none of the other men has taken the same ill. We have dosed him with willow-bark tea and ginger, but it does not help. Élise wished me to leave him home today, to see if a day’s quiet would avail him.’

‘Poor boy,’ said Alys, noting this last point approvingly. ‘It is strange that none of the rest of you is affected.’

Her father grunted agreement, then looked at her sideways.

‘Élise has said,’ he pronounced deliberately, ‘that she sees shadows about him. Shadows, and also crows.’

‘Shadows? What does she mean? And why crows? Crows such as these in the treetops, or metaphorical crows?’

‘I do not know,’ he said, though she did not believe this. ‘That is all she has told me. So I have no time to pursue your husband about the town, and no time to sit here longer talking to you, pleasant though it is,
ma mie
.’

She rose obediently when he did, and looked about for Jennet, finding the woman at her elbow.

‘If I see Gil in the town, I will tell him you are kept here.’ She put up her face for his kiss. ‘Will you send Luke to bring the jug and cloths home at the day’s end? I should like a word with him.’

‘Where now, mem?’ asked Jennet as they crossed the stoneyard. ‘Are we to go into St Mungo’s? I’d like fine to see where that verger was put down the well. It’s pity, so it is,’ she went on, following her mistress towards the door of the Lower Kirk, ‘they none of them saw whoever did it go to and fro on the path, it would ha made our maister’s work a sight easier.’

‘Did Thomas say anything about the boy Berthold?’

‘Him? No, he never mentioned him. Save he said the laddie’s no weel,’ she amended, ‘complaining of his belly. Likely it’s the change from his foreign food that’s disagreed wi him, he’ll be right when he’s accustomed hissel to kale and oatmeal.’

Alys, curtsying to Our Lady, small and ancient on her pillar inside the door, made no answer. She reached up to touch the little figure’s blackened foot, and went past into the Lady Chapel, drawing her beads from her belt. Jennet curtsied in her turn, but made her way purposefully down the steps to where St John’s chapel was firmly cordoned off with some of the blue ropes which were used to pen the multitude on feast days. Kneeling within the curtained Lady Chapel, Alys could hear her servant’s pattens clopping about the east end, and a quiet recitation as if someone was saying Mass in one of the other chapels on the cross-aisle. The Lower Kirk was not empty.

One repetition of the rosary contented her for the moment. Leaving money for a second candle she moved on for a word with St Mungo himself, setting yet another candle on the bank of lights against the fence which surrounded the tomb. She murmured a section of one of the graduals concerning his miraculous life, drawing together her Latin, which was not, she suspected, as good as Gil thought it was, to petition him in a language he might understand. Though surely prayer should transcend language, she thought suddenly. The priest who had been saying Mass left by the stair towards the Vicars’ hall. Had it been William Craigie? No, surely not, he had crossed the kirkyard earlier. She shut her eyes to avoid distraction. Blessed Kentigern, she said to the saint, you concerned yourself with servants, you raised your teacher’s cook from the dead, whether your servant Barnabas was a thief or no he deserves justice. Help us to find his murderer. And the two women at the Cross, both the one who is vanished and the one who was found dead there, they deserve your care too. What should I do to help them? How can we find Annie and bring her to safety, how can we procure justice for Peg? Let me have a sign, blessed Kentigern.

A little current of air passed her face, as if someone moved beside her. She opened her eyes, but nobody was nearby, not even the priest.

‘Jennet?’ she said.

‘I’m here, mistress.’ Her servant emerged from the Lady Chapel, beads in hand. ‘Where do we go now? Are you going to question all them at St Catherine’s? Has our maister no questioned them a’ready?’

‘That’s right kind in you to call, mistress,’ said Ursula Shaw. ‘And sending your own woman out to fetch in cakes and ale.’

‘A pleasure,’ said Alys conventionally, and glanced beyond the two girls at Jennet, who was now sharing a portion of both with the woman Meggot.

‘They feed us well enough here,’ said Nicholas, ‘but they’s no wee extras the way there is at home.’ She bit into one of the honey-cakes with evident pleasure. ‘No to mention we’re glad o the company. It’s a wee thing tedious, what wi my aunt spending all her time across at St Mungo’s.’

I wonder where, thought Alys. Perhaps she was in the Upper Kirk.

‘We were thinking, when we came to Glasgow we’d get to the market,’ confessed Ursula, ‘and there’s a velvet warehouse so I heard, the chapman said it was a right good choice you’d get there.’

‘Maister Walkinshaw’s warehouse,’ said Alys.

‘Aye, that was the name. I could just fancy a velvet gown.’ The other girl looked down at her own woad-dyed homespun, and then at Alys’s well-cut tawny linen. ‘Is that the sleeves they’re wearing this year? Big enough for a jeely-bag?’

‘Certainly in Glasgow,’ Alys agreed, smoothing the deep facing of yellow silk which turned back one wide sleeve. ‘I have spent all my life in towns,’ she went on. ‘The countryside is bonnie, especially when it is well farmed, and of course one’s food is fresher by far in the country, but I should not like to be so far from warehouses, and have to rely on what the chapman brings. Is yours reliable? Does he carry a good stock?’

‘What, Cadger Billy? Aye, he’s no bad. Comes by every three or four month, wi a pack o stale news—’

‘Cadger’s news!’ said Nicholas, and giggled. Her sister threw her an annoyed glance, and went on rather sourly,

‘We’re missing him the now, indeed, he must be out about Glenbuck wi his wee cairt, and here we’re shut in here instead o viewing the merchant-goods o Glasgow that he’s aye described us.’

‘We’ll both be wedded in homespun yet, for all Ellen cares,’ said Nicholas. ‘Did you say, mistress,’ she went on, ‘you’re wedded on that man that’s trying to find Annie? The one like a long drink—’ She broke off sharply as if she had been nudged. ‘He was here just a wee minute ago, talking wi Dame Ellen, afore she went back to St Mungo’s. Is he a good man to be wedded on?’

A long drink of water, Alys thought, and repressed annoyance.

‘He’s very good to me,’ she said. ‘He tells me you’re both betrothed?’

‘Aye.’ Ursula pulled a face. ‘Though when we’ll get to be wedded, wi Da the way he is—’ She turned her face away briefly, blinking. ‘It was to be next month, ye ken, mistress, and now there’s no saying.’

‘And no velvet gowns neither,’ muttered Nicholas.

‘Will your men not wait? It should all be signed, surely?’

The sisters looked at one another, and Nicholas shrugged.

‘Likely. Hers certainly will.’

‘Och, Nick, so will yours.’

‘Who are they?’

Nicholas, it seemed, was to wed a neighbour of her sister Mariota over into Lanarkshire; Alys, only dimly familiar with the place-names they threw about, thought they might still be too far apart for the sisters to visit easily once both had babies to consider, but Ursula still sounded resentful when she named her future husband’s lands.

‘Away down through Ayrshire,’ she said, ‘next to Tarbolton, no that far from where Annie came from as a matter of fact. A whole day’s ride from her and Mariota.’