The Fourth Crow (3 page)

‘It willny do for St Mungo’s, and any road Canon Henderson’s no going to be pleased. We’re no wanting this kind o thing on our ground!’

Abandoning the matter, Gil moved round him to touch the body where it hung slumped and stiffened in its bonds.

‘She’s long gone, maister,’ said one of the men beside her. ‘But sic a way to go! Who’d ha done that to a poor mad lassie?’

The woman was quite certainly dead, there was no doubt about it. She had been bound to the Cross with a stout new hemp rope, no cheap item, which in happier circumstances would have been gifted to St Mungo’s altar by now, to be sold on later to pay for lights. It had been tied with care, though not particularly tightly, perhaps leaving her enough room to flex arms and legs to prevent cramp, and as a result she now leaned forward and sideways, her head bent. Unkempt mud-coloured hair was trapped under the cord which Maister Sim had mentioned where it crossed the nape of her neck, but more locks fell free, hanging below her waist, and obscured her face. She was clad in a penitential sacking gown, a surprisingly threadbare woollen plaid bundled over it, her bare feet visible below its bedraggled hem. There was a strong smell, not merely of stale urine as one might expect, but of a ripely unwashed body. He felt her hand and then her neck; the dead flesh was quite rigid. The dog nosed at the body, and turned to look up at his master’s face.

‘She’s deid, maister,’ said the man who had spoken before, while Maister Craigie switched from
Requiem aeternam
to
Pater noster.
‘She’s cold and set, and I thought she was sleeping.’ He spoke quite calmly, but his hands shook.

‘Was it you found her?’ Gil asked, moving a hank of hair aside to look at the dangling ends of the cord. They seemed as new as the rope. Who would use a cord like that, he wondered, and for what?

‘Aye, it was. Rab and me.’ The man indicated his silent companion. ‘We was watching in St Nicholas’, over yonder, seeing St Mungo’s was locked for the night, and I keeked out every hour or so, cam across to the kirkyard wall wi a lantern to see that all was well, she spoke to me a couple o times and asked me to set her free, and I wish I had, maister, I wish I had. And then I cam down and it was, it seemed, it was all quiet, she’d ceased her raving and fell asleep, and there was the moonlight, and the laddies that were about had all went hame by midnight and— When we cam down to loose her afore dawn I still thought she’d fell asleep, I— I thought she was sleeping,’ he repeated, ‘till I spoke her name and she never stirred, and then I seen— I seen—’ He crossed himself, tears springing to his eyes. ‘It’s no just that she’s deid. Look at her face, maister, look what’s come to her! Who could ha done that?’

Gil lifted away the rest of the dangling hair, and flinched. Maister Craigie’s steady murmur checked at what was revealed, and flowed on with extra fervour. The woman had been beaten, and savagely. Blackened eyes, pulped nose, a swollen and purple cheek, torn mouth, were all caked in blood, which had run across her chin before it dried.

‘Sweet St Giles!’ he said. ‘I take it she never looked like that when you left her.’

‘We left her hale and healthy, maister, save she was mad,’ the man assured him. ‘Who could ha done this to her, bound as she was, the poor lassie?’

‘Nobody from St Mungo’s!’ said Barnabas indignantly.

‘And you heard nothing from where you were?’

‘Nothing, maister! And we were awake the whole night, so we were, the both of us. Surely she’d ha screamed if she was— Could she no ha cried out? We’d ha heard her, maister, we would that!’ The man swallowed hard. ‘Poor lass, she never wished— She bade us take her away as many times, she never felt it would do her good. I wish I’d listened. I wish I’d watched at her side.’

‘Have you been with her long?’ Lowrie asked, fetching up at Gil’s elbow, tucking his tablets back into his purse. Much of the crowd had evaporated rather than have its names written down, as Gil had hoped, and the remaining handful had retreated to a safe distance, Euan among them. He caught the words
Blacader’s quaestor
passing around.

‘I followed her fro her faither’s house,’ said the man. ‘And Rab here’s been wi her near as long. Maister, who could ha done this? She was under the saint’s protection, she’d never ha been a harm to anyone, we bound her only to prevent her running off. Why throttle a lassie that canny— And to treat her like that and all—’ He turned away, his hand going to his eyes. Lowrie patted him on the shoulder, and looked at Gil.

‘What do you see?’ Gil prompted, as Maister Craigie embarked on another round of the prayers for the dead. ‘Anything useful?’

‘Ground’s too dry, even this close to the burn,’ said Lowrie, ‘and there’s been too many feet around here in any case. No tracks to recognise. No marks on the gown or plaid, I’d think she hasny been stabbed at all, just beaten and strangled.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s like what they tell of the Inquisition, isn’t it, maister?’ He prowled around the high carved cross, tugged at the rope which bound the woman, peered at the hemp strands as Gil had already done. Socrates followed him, sniffing carefully where he looked. ‘These knots haveny been untied, have they?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Gil. Socrates sat down at the feet of the more talkative servant, nudging his hand. The man stroked the soft ears, smiling crookedly at the dog, and Gil said to him, ‘Do you mind how she was bound last night? Would you say all was as you left her?’

The man looked at him, startled, then at the restraints which held the corpse upright. He appeared to count the loops which circled the skirts and torso, then stepped behind the cross to check the knots.

‘It looks like it,’ he agreed. ‘You can see, we put plenty good knots in it, Rab and me. She’d never ha got them undone, maister, we— We took good care o that.’

‘Well it was nobody from St Mungo’s,’ declared Barnabas officiously. ‘I tellt the woman, I tellt her plain, it’s naught to do wi us what happens down here at the Cross, there’s nobody to spare to have an eye to her. It was nobody from St Mungo’s untied they knots.’

‘Sawney,’ said Rab suddenly. He glanced beyond his colleague, beyond the cross, just as Gil became aware of a commotion approaching the kirkyard gates, of raised voices and women weeping.

‘Oh, Christ aid us all, it’s the lassies,’ said Sawney. ‘Maister, it’s her good-sisters, we’d best head them off, she isny a sight for young lassies, no till she’s laid out, if then.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Maister Sim, who had stood by silently until now. ‘Will, come wi me, I think the living need you.’

Maister Craigie, finishing the prayer he was reciting, crossed himself, looked round and nodded. Maister Sim was already hurrying towards the group of women. As the priest followed Gil said,

‘Barnabas, if you would fetch Euan a board or the like we can cut her down, afore it gets any busier here.’

‘A board?’ repeated Barnabas, as if he had never heard the word before. ‘Oh, no. The boards we’ve got are all accounted for, it’s more than my position’s worth to let them out my hands.’

‘There will be something there that would not be missed for an hour or two,’ said Euan. ‘Come and show me what you have.’

‘But where’ll we take her to, maister?’ asked Sawney helplessly. ‘I’ve no— I canny— Our maister’s no fit to direct me, and it’s no a matter to take to Dame Ellen.’

This was the first Gil had heard of a head of the household. He set the point aside for later and said, ‘If you’re lodged at St Catherine’s, we should take her there. They’ll put her in the chapel for now. I want to see her afore she’s laid out.’

‘Better to wait till she’s washed, maister,’ said Sawney, watching Euan making for the Cathedral, the protesting Barnabas beside him. Several of the spectators were following, possibly in the hope of learning more. ‘She’s pretty ripe. See, it’s been since her man dee’d,’ Sawney expanded. ‘What wi that and she’d lost the bairn he gave her, she fell into a great melancholy, poor lassie, and she vowed she’d live single all her days, and never wash, nor be combed, nor anything of the sort. Nothing her sisters said would budge her from it.’

‘Sweet St Giles!’ said Gil, but Lowrie was nodding.

‘I’ve heard of that. There was a woman away beyond Stirling did the same, so my mother once told me. It’s in a song, too.
Sall neither coif come on my head, nor kaim come in my hair, Nor neither coal nor candlelight come in my bower mair,’
he quoted, and added thoughtfully, ‘doesn’t say anything about never washing.’

The group of women had been persuaded to retrace their steps, though one of them kept looking over her shoulder. The two songmen were going with them, gesturing past the rose-coloured sandstone walls of the castle in the direction of the pilgrim hostel.

‘Tell me about her,’ said Gil. ‘Who is she?’

She was, as Maistre Pierre had said, Annie Gibb, daughter and heiress of a gentleman of Kyle, one James Gibb of Tarbolton. Wedded at fourteen to Arthur, son of Sir Edward Shaw of Glenbuck, a bonnie lad a year younger than herself, she had lost a bairn at seventeen, by which time her husband was already racked by the coughing sickness which killed him a year later, shortly after her own father died.

‘So he never gave her another,’ said Sawney, ‘and here she was a widow at eighteen, poor lass, and by then she was over ears in love wi him, and fell into a great melancholy like I said. And given that Sir Edward’s got his death and all, he was hoping to see her cured so he could wed her safe afore he dees hissel, and not leave her a charge on his lassies or their husbands. There’s no other heir,’ he explained.

‘How old is she now?’ Gil asked.

‘Near one-and-twenty,’ said Sawney, ‘and her faither’s dead these two year and all,’ he repeated.

Gil looked at the corpse’s bent head and unkempt hair with pity.
My deth I love, my life ich hate,
he thought. Alys would be nineteen at midsummer; his youngest sister Tib, married a few months ago, had just turned twenty. This girl’s life had taken a very different turn from theirs, and now it was over, and violently. He could not imagine either his wife or his sister succumbing to such a melancholy, but he could see why it might happen.

‘Will we be cutting yon good rope?’ Euan had returned, some of his eager entourage behind him bearing a wattle hurdle. ‘It seems a shame, it does, though I would not be wishing to use it myself after this—’

Gil was not very familiar with the two pilgrim hostels of Glasgow, and had never been inside St Catherine’s, though he had encountered its Master once or twice in the course of his legal practice. The hostel, he discovered, was a series of timber-framed buildings off the Stablegreen, with its own small stone chapel in the outer courtyard and guest halls for male and female pilgrims flanking an inner one. In the Master’s modest dwelling Sir Simon Elder met Gil with concern.

‘They’re all in great distress,’ he said. ‘None o them making much sense, and small wonder. Did you ever hear the like, Maister Cunningham? I’ve broke it to Sir Edward, seeing his lassies were in a right state and Habbie and the other fellow had to get back to their duties.’

‘How did he take it? His man Sawney said he’s sick to death. I hope this won’t hasten his end.’

Sir Simon grimaced.

‘I’m not certain he took it in, to tell truth. Nodded and thanked me for bringing him word, but when I offered to pray wi him he said, No, he’d need time to it. Then his doctor put me out of the chamber, and then the lassies needed comforting.’

‘How big is the party?’

‘Oh, a good number. There’s Sir Edward himsel, poor soul, and his doctor, and his sister, and his own lassies and the husband of one of them, and this poor lass who’s in the chapel now, and all their servants. Fortunately, Sir Edward’s well able to make us a generous donation, or I’d have to be asking them to leave as soon as their three nights was up, no to mention all their beasts out-by in the stables, and I’d not like to do that in the circumstances. And we’re quiet the now, we’ll not get busy again till nearer the Assumption, we’ve a few days yet.’

‘What ails Sir Edward?’ Gil asked.

Sir Simon made another long face. He was a tall, angular, lantern-jawed individual with a thick ring of white woolly hair round his tonsure, a sharp and tolerant eye for human failings, and a sardonic smile which was notably absent just now.

‘Trouble in his water, or the like,’ he divulged. ‘Times it pains him right bad, poor soul. How he managed the journey I couldny say. Sawney’s got the truth o’t, you’ve only to look at the man to see he’s near his end.’ He considered Gil a moment longer across his cluttered chamber. ‘Were you wanting anything more?’

‘I’ll need a word wi Sir Edward, if I can,’ Gil confirmed. ‘And wi the good-sisters, and the servants as well, if I’m to find whoever did this and see him brought to justice. Or her,’ he added. ‘I’d say one woman could strangle another if she was bound fast the way Annie Gibb was, though the beating she had before that might be another matter.’

‘You wouldny think,’ said Sir Simon without much hope, ‘it was some passing ill-doer, someone wi a grudge at madwomen, or the like? Or the prentice-laddies? They had one o their games last night, could some o them— She hadny,’ he said in alarm, ‘she hadny been forced, had she?’

‘No sign of that. Her skirts were bound all about her knees. As for someone wi a grudge, I’d say whoever did it knew what he was doing. It was very deliberate.’

‘You mean,’ said the other man after a short pause, ‘I’ve maybe got a murderer under this roof?’

‘Aye,’ said Gil baldly.

‘Then I’d best get to my prayers,’ said Sir Simon, ‘for him and for the rest of us.’

‘I count it a merciful release,’ pronounced John Lockhart of Kypeside.

Do you, indeed, thought Gil. And I wonder if Annie Gibb would agree?

‘She’s prayed for her death these three year,’ continued Lockhart, as if he had heard Gil’s thoughts. ‘Or so my wife tells me.’

‘And your wife is?’ Gil prompted.

A request to speak to the family of the dead woman had brought this man out of the guest hall in a protective rush; he was a plump, self-important fellow about Gil’s age, with the fair, wind-reddened skin of a man who farmed his own land somewhere around the headwaters of the Avon.