The Fourth Crow (7 page)

‘No, no, wee Leckie’s fit enough,’ he said when Gil commented. ‘He’s the laddie that’s paid of the burgh to lead old Jeanie Thomson, that’s been blind these ten year. He was fetching another head-rail to her, to keep her decent, seeing her last one blew away when her neighbour laid it out to dry.’ He pulled a face. ‘That’s their tale, any road. I just hope they got its worth at the rag market. What can I do for you, Gil? I take it this isny a call on my duties?’

‘Maybe no directly,’ admitted Gil. He set the bundle he carried on the table beside the almoner’s great ledger. ‘You’ll have heard what happened at St Mungo’s Cross, then, Alan?’

Sir Alan crossed himself.

‘Aye, poor lady, her servant came up to the vestry just as we were about to sing Matins. She’s free o her troubles now, right enough, but no in the way she—’ He paused as Gil shook his head. ‘What d’you mean, no?’

‘There’s more happened than that,’ Gil said. ‘The lass that was found dead at the Cross this morning wasny the same one that was bound there last night.’ Jamieson gaped at him. ‘She was wearing this,’ he nodded at the bundle, ‘and I’d like to hear if you reckon it’s the same gown you gave out yesterday, or another. It was me cut the inkles,’ he added hastily as the almoner reached for the folds of sacking. ‘I’ll pay for the repairs.’

‘Aye, you did,’ said Sir Alan, inspecting the ragged ends of the tapes. ‘Made a thorough job of it, and all.’ He shook out the light brown folds. ‘Let me see now, where’s the—Aye, this is the gown I lent out to Mistress Gibb’s kinsfolk yesterday afternoon. There’s the mark.’ He pointed to a row of neat red stitches just inside the neckline. ‘Six red lines for gown number six. There’s a dozen,’ he enlarged, ‘but we’ve never needed that many, even when thon band of penitents cam here two summers ago, hoping to flagellate theirsels the length o the High Street. Canon Henderson soon put a stop to that, I can tell you.’

‘He did that,’ agreed Gil, recalling the occasion with faint amusement. It had provided his uncle with food for shocked discussion for days. The parade of the High Street had been reduced, in short order, to a procession round the Upper Town and a vigil by the patron saint’s tomb in the crypt; the weather had been unkind, and the fiddler the group had brought with them had refused to risk his instrument in the pouring rain, so the singing had been doleful indeed. When last heard of the group of penitent pilgrims had been riding out of Glasgow, back to wherever they came from (Arbroath, was it?) quarrelling bitterly about whose idea it had been in the first place. ‘So you’d swear to this being the same gown?’

‘Let me mak certain.’ Jamieson clipped his spectacles onto his nose and drew the great ledger towards him. ‘A plaid to Hoastin Harry, a woad-dyed gown to Maggie Bent, aye, aye, here we are. Penitential gown number six, to the kin o Annie Gibb.’ He turned the great book about so that Gil could read the entry. ‘Clear enough, I’d say, and I’ll just mark it returned.’ Drawing the book towards him, he reached for his pen.

‘Clear enough,’ Gil agreed. ‘Thanks for this, Alan.’ He dug in his purse for a couple of coins. ‘Will that cover the repairs? Is it just clothing and blankets you give out here? I’d thought you’d some provisions to supply the poor and all.’

‘Oh, I do, I do.’ Jamieson shook sand on the new entry and wiped his pen on the blotched rag at his elbow. ‘Such as there is the now.’

‘What, are donations running low? I’ll tell my wife.’

‘No, no, donations is no bad, though we can aye do wi more. The poor we ha aye wi us, after all. No,’ Jamieson straightened up on his stool, shaking his head, ‘it’s hard to keep hold o the stuff the now. It’s all stored next the dry goods for the Vicars’ hall, round the north side o the kirk, and there’s as much vanishing from both dry stores, the last six month or so, it’s a right worry.’

‘Theft, you mean? How secure is the store?’

‘Secure enough, I’d ha said, till now. Aye, it’s theft. There’s aye the odd cup o dried pease or handful o meal goes astray, but this is a half-sack at a time just walking off when naeb’dy’s watching.’ The Sub-Almoner pulled a long face. ‘You don’t see folk at their best in this post, Gil, you’ll believe me, but to my mind that takes the bell, thieving from the poor. I’ve got the vergers warned to look out for it, but it wouldny surprise me if they were in the game and all.’

‘I’d not heard of that,’ Gil confessed. ‘You’ve changed the locks, I take it.’

‘Oh, aye, and a new padlock at my own expense. That walked off and all, I’d to get a second.’

Thinking it was little wonder that the Sub-Almoner was usually afflicted with melancholy, Gil took his leave of the man and returned to St Catherine’s, where the nameless corpse was now laid out in the little chapel under Annie Gibb’s own shroud, with Sir Simon murmuring in the shadowed chancel. Drawing back the linen he studied the dead woman with care, counting the scars and bruises on her thin body, considering the rough skin of her hands and feet and the broken nails. Meggot had washed these as thoroughly as the rest, and had cleaned under the nails with the point of a knife, extracting dirt and blood and fragments of skin.

‘She’s marked him, whoever he was,’ she had said darkly. ‘And I’d say,’ she twitched her nose fastidiously, ‘she’s lain wi him or wi some man at least, no long afore she was slain. But there’s no sign she was forced, maister, that I can see from here, even wi all these bruises.’

‘Aye,’ agreed Dame Ellen, ‘though we’ll maybe make certain o’t when she softens and I can get a wee look at her—’ She bit off the next words. Curiously, the term which Gil’s unruly mind supplied was French, and not one which Alys used.

Examining the nail-scrapings, he had concluded that there was nothing more to learn there; he had hoped for some clue to the woman’s identity, or at least her trade or profession, but the dirt appeared to be grease from cooking, something nearly all women came into daily contact with.

Now, contemplating her battered body, he reflected that the violence it revealed was also something many women met daily. Who was it? he asked her silently. Who bloodied your mouth and blacked your eyes? Was he your husband, your father, a client? Does he know where his last beating has put you?

‘So what happened, maister?’

Sir Simon had left his prayers again. Gil blinked at him, collecting his thoughts.

‘It’s none so easy to read,’ he admitted.

‘Poor lass,’ said the Master, bending to peer into the corpse’s downturned face, ‘she’s had her troubles, but she’s free o them now. Who must you speak wi next? Your laddie’s away to ask round about if anyone heard anything, and the good-brother, Lockhart, he’s away over to St Mungo’s to complain of their lack of care, but if you’re wanting any of the women I’ll fetch them out.’

‘Aye, if they’re fit to talk to.’

‘I’ll get the lassies out to you, they’re a wee thing calmer now.’

If Annie Gibb’s sisters-in-law were calmer now, Gil was glad he had not attempted to speak to them earlier. Led out into the sunshine they proved to be rather younger than Annie or the dead woman, perhaps fifteen and seventeen, two sturdy girls neither pretty nor plain but something between, with curling brown hair and eyes swollen with weeping. The older one had the hiccups, which provoked increasingly hysterical giggles in the other girl. Their names, it seemed, were Nicholas and Ursula, and like Dame Ellen they had watched from a distance while Annie was bound to the Cross and then had left her.

‘She protested, I think,’ said Gil, sitting down on the opposite bench. The sisters looked at one another, and one nodded.

‘She never wanted it,’ said the other. ‘She wanted just to be left alone.’

‘But it wasny right, living the way she did,’ said her sister, and hiccuped. Blushing, she covered her mouth, and said behind her hand, ‘No company, and never meeting anybody, and we couldny be with her that often, we’d duties about the house.’

‘Had she none?’ Gil asked.

‘Aye, but she renounced them,’ said the hiccuping girl, Nicholas he thought. ‘We’d to see to them all atween us. Feed her hens, take her share o the sweeping and cooking.’

‘Fetch her food,’ said the other, who must therefore be Ursula.

‘Did her maid or her waiting-men not do that?’ It hardly made sense, he thought; he had seen several servants already, and the householder was described as a gentleman and his daughters as heiresses. His own sisters had had their duties certainly, but they hardly amounted to cleaning and kitchen-work.

‘Meggot had enough to do trying to keep her chamber clean.’

‘Tell me about the household,’ he suggested. ‘How many are you?’

They looked at each other. Beyond the outer courtyard, beyond the walls of the hostel, Gil heard the burgh bellman ring his great brass bell and begin the description of Annie Gibb.

‘Well, there’s us,’ said Ursula, counting on her fingers, ‘and Faither, and our aunt, and Annie. And there was Mariota till she wedded Lockhart, and times there’s Henry and Austin—’

‘Who are they?’ Gil asked.

‘Cousins?’ said Nicholas.

‘No, they areny cousins,’ said Ursula. ‘Only by courtesy. They’re no blood kin o ours, Nick, they’re Ellen’s nephews by her first man’s sister Margaret Boyd, they’re Muirs, the both o them.’

Outside, the bellman had dealt with Annie Gibb and was now describing the unknown corpse, inviting any who might know her to visit the chapel of St Catherine’s hostel. A mistake, thought Gil. We’ll be overrun. Reckoning his mother’s Boyd kindred in his head, he located Margaret Boyd and her sons. They were perched on a very distant branch of the pedigree, but the connection with Dame Ellen could be useful.

‘They might as well be cousins, the way Ellen carries on,’ said Nicholas. ‘Making them ride into Glasgow wi us, keeping on at Annie how handsome they are,’ she added darkly, and hiccuped. Ursula bit back more giggles, and continued,

‘And there’s that doctor the now, and then there’s Meggot, and Gillian that waits on my aunt.’ She proceeded to list a good half-dozen indoor servants before she lost count, looking helplessly from her hands to Gil.

‘Most of those have stayed at home, I think,’ Gil said. Nicholas nodded. ‘Why did you come to Glasgow?’

‘Well, for the miracle,’ said Ursula reasonably. ‘It wouldny work tying her to the farm gatepost, after all.’

‘No, I meant you two in particular.’

They looked at each other again. Nicholas hiccuped, Ursula giggled.

‘To see the High Kirk?’ suggested Nicholas, trying to ignore her sister. ‘And all the vessels on the Clyde, and the market, and that. All the things the chapman tellt us, that was through Glenbuck last month.’

‘We’ve only seen St Mungo’s so far,’ said Ursula. ‘Might as well ha stayed at home.’

‘Ellen wouldny ha left us at home,’ said Nicholas sagely. ‘Where we go, she goes, and where she goes, we go, till we’re wedded. And Ellen had to come wi Annie,’ a shadow flickered across her face, ‘and Faither.’

‘Tell me about Annie,’ he suggested. ‘What like was she before she fell into her melancholy? Was she a good sister?’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Nicholas, and hiccuped. Ursula ducked her head, suppressing more giggles, and her sister went on, ‘She was a good laugh, she was aye fun to be company wi, she’d lend all her gowns and her jewels and borrow yours.’

Gil nodded; his sister Margaret had summed up this sharing as
First up, best dressed.

‘Then she lost the bairn,’ said Ursula, sobering. ‘She was right melancholy after that.’

‘And then Arthur died,’ both sisters crossed themselves, ‘and she vowed she’d never cease mourning him, and all the rest of it.’

‘Sitting in the dark, aye at her prayers, no singing or joking or bonny clothes.’

‘She’d locked her jewels all in her kist,’ said Nicholas resentfully.

‘She must have loved him very deeply,’ said Gil.

‘Aye,’ said Ursula, ‘and the deil knows why, it was just Arthur.’ Her sister hiccuped explosively, and she gasped and turned her head away, biting back the giggles.

‘Has she any friends in Glasgow?’ Gil asked.

‘Just us,’ said Nicholas blankly. ‘Who would she have? She’s never been in Glasgow in her life afore this.’

‘So she’s adrift in a strange burgh,’ said Gil deliberately, ‘barefoot in her shift. What d’you suppose has come to her?’

‘She’ll be safe enough,’ said Ursula, on a sudden uncontrollable burst of giggles. ‘The way she stinks now, nobody’d go next or nigh her!’

Her sister drew breath looking shocked, hiccuped resoundingly, and collapsed in equal laughter. The door to the women’s lodging was flung wide, and Dame Ellen stalked out.

‘What a way to comport yoursels! Your sister missing, a dead woman in the chapel, your faither the way he is. Sit up straight and behave yoursels decent, or the Archbishop’s man will send in sic a report of you, you’ll never be wedded this side o Doomsday.’

Both sisters rose, scarlet with mingled laughter and embarrassment, and collected themselves enough to curtsy briefly to Gil before fleeing past their aunt and into the shadows. He could hear them, still laughing within the hall, and Dame Ellen turned a bony simper on him, the rather dreadful coquetry of her mouth by no means matched in her eyes.

‘What a pair of lassies!’ she was saying. ‘You’ll accept my apologies for their behaviour, I hope, maister.’

‘They’re very young,’ Gil observed. The simper vanished bleakly.

‘Aye, well, if they’re old enough to be wedded, they’re old enough to behave theirsels like modest women. What my kinsman at St Mungo’s would have to say about them I canny think. Have you learned aught yet? That doctor says my brother’s—’ She broke off, her expression softening as voices rose in the outer yard, Sir Simon’s among them. Feet sounded in the passageway, Socrates growled quietly, and two young men burst into the sunshine.

‘What’s this yon fellow says?’ demanded the first of her, as Gil checked his dog. ‘Annie vanished and some dead woman in her place? What have you been at here?’

‘Now, Henry, mind your tongue afore Blacader’s quaestor!’ chided Dame Ellen. ‘These are my nephews, maister, that rode into Glasgow wi us and are lodged wi their kinsman along Rottenrow. Henry and Austin Muir.’