The Lanimer Bride Read online

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Gil. ‘But I intend to find out.’

  ‘Gil?’ Alys was staring down at him from the road. ‘Did you say his throat is cut?’

  ‘I did,’ he agreed. ‘No sign of the lassie, but I suspect she’s been stolen away and hidden somewhere, otherwise she’d have turned up by now, one way or another.’

  ‘He’s had more than his throat cut,’ said Billy, muffled behind his hand. ‘His doublet’s all to ribbons.’

  ‘Aye, they’ve been making certain, though he was dead already. Only the cut throat’s bled, to judge by the state of his shirt. Then they pitched him down here among the trees.’

  ‘What, you think he was killed up here and then thrown down the slope?’ Henry said from the bank.

  ‘I do.’ Gil was looking about him. ‘No sign of a fight down here. Whose knife is the longest? We need to make a litter for him.’

  ‘Och, indeed, that is easy done,’ said Euan. He drew his big gully-knife and addressed the nearest stand of hazel.

  ‘Then we need to cast up and down the riverside,’ Gil added. ‘There’s still a cuddy, a gelding of Bluebell’s get and Mistress Madur herself outstanding. We need to be certain none of them’s under this bracken afore we take young Adam into Lanark.’

  ‘Lanark?’ said Billy sharply. ‘How no back to Kettlands? What’s Lanark to do wi’t?’

  ‘This is murder,’ Gil said. ‘He’s been slain and then hidden to conceal the killing. The Provost must hold a quest on him, to determine how he died and who’s to blame, though that’s none so easy to discern. After that he can go home to his own.’

  ‘Maister Gil?’ called Henry from the road. ‘I’ve found where he was slain, most like.’

  ‘I think so, Gil,’ Alys chimed in. ‘They have tried to cover it up, but Henry has swept at the dust with a branch, and uncovered a great patch of dried blood.’

  Gil nodded, accepting this new fact.

  ‘The mistress willny like it,’ said Billy, as Euan began trimming the first pole. ‘If he goes to Lanark no Kettlands I mean. She’ll no be pleased.’

  ‘Is he still in her employ?’ Gil countered. ‘I thought he followed Mistress Madur to her husband’s house. Strictly he’s a Lanark man now.’ He looked past the groom to Alys. ‘Will you go home to Belstane, sweetheart? Henry can convoy you. You’d be home in time for supper.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘If you’re to speak to the husband, I’ll come too.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘You’ve no need to trouble yoursel about my wife,’ said Maister Ambrose Vary.

  Gil stared at him.

  The man was very much as he remembered him, gawky and awkward in build, with a thin face and staring blue eyes. As Gil had told Alys, however, Vary was no more than a year or two past thirty, and just now he looked fully ten years older. Dark shadows ringed the blue eyes, the fair hair had been well barbered but was growing out uncombed, his clothes were of good quality but had been dragged on all anyhow and he seemed, despite his words, to be consumed with anxiety.

  ‘Has she left you, maister?’ Alys asked gently. Vary cast her a glance like a beaten dog’s.

  ‘Aye,’ he said briefly.

  ‘Who has she gone to?’ Gil asked. ‘Her mother’s beside herself with fear and worry, Brosie, she needs to learn where the girl is.’

  ‘If I knew, I’d tell you,’ said Vary. He seemed to speak with difficulty, dragging the words from a great distance, his lips stiff.

  ‘Have you had no word?’ Alys asked, still in that gentle tone.

  ‘None.’

  ‘We’ve just found her servant murdered,’ said Gil, ‘a fellow that’s been with her since they were both bairns, by what the mother says. I’m not convinced she’s safe. Are you not concerned for her?’

  Vary turned away, looking down at his desk, and shrugged his thin shoulders. Gil considered the desk too. An abacus, a green-glazed pottery inkstand, two ledgers, a cheap set of tablets and a leather pouch with another set, a stack of paper, were arranged with meticulous neatness. In the shelves on the end of the structure, leather cases presumably contained surveying instruments.

  They were in Vary’s closet, where he had taken them as soon as he realised what news they had brought him. It was a spacious panelled chamber built on from the end gable of the house, with windows looking up and down the street. The dwelling as a whole was a substantial edifice, of two jettied wooden storeys over a stone-built ground floor, though its resemblance to the Kettlands building stopped there. Recent paint made the outside bright in the sunlight, but indoors the atmosphere was oppressive, as if the whole house was holding its breath. The serving-man who had admitted them, the maidservant who had brought the jug of ale, were grim and silent, treading softly around their master. Here, surrounded by the paraphernalia of his profession, Vary had the air of an animal in its refuge; Gil had a sudden recollection of a past lapdog of his sisters’, hiding under a bed from a threatened bath.

  At his side, Alys leaned forward from the backstool where she was seated.

  ‘Will you show me the message?’ she said coaxingly. Vary’s back went rigid, his head turning in the same moment. One hand moved jerkily, as if to touch or cover something on the desk, then was thrust down at his side.

  ‘What message?’ he said after a moment, his voice harsh. ‘No message.’

  ‘There might be something in it which would tell us where to seek her,’ Alys said.

  ‘No!’ he said, with sudden violence, and then more moderately, ‘No, there was no message. You needny trouble to seek her. It’s, it’s some accident befallen young Adam, no need to worry yoursels.’

  ‘The boy’s throat was cut,’ Gil said, ‘and then he was hacked about and thrown down the hillside. A strange sort of accident.’

  ‘I don’t wish you to worry yoursels,’ reiterated Vary.

  ‘And what do I tell your good-mother?’ Gil asked, exchanging a puzzled glance with Alys.

  Vary turned to look at them. His cheeks were wet, his jaw working. After a couple of attempts to speak he managed to say, ‘Just leave. Leave now.’ He swallowed hard, made a huge effort, and added with grotesque courtesy, ‘It’s right good to see you, Gil. Maybe another time we can get a good crack thegither, but it’s no a good moment, as you can see.’

  Alys rose and went forward, putting her hand on Vary’s arm.

  ‘Will you not tell us what you know, maister?’ she said. ‘You must be concerned for her.’

  He leaned a little back, staring down at her, drew a shaky breath. Before he could speak she put her other hand to her brow and reeled convincingly, propping herself on the desk.

  ‘Oh! I feel so dizzy!’ she said, contriving to sound helpless. ‘Oh, maister – might I have a drink of water?’

  ‘Water,’ he repeated, as if he had never heard of the stuff. ‘Oh – water! Here, sit down again! Gil, your wi— your wife!’

  He thrust her down onto the backstool, and hurried past her to the closet door to shout for water. Behind him Gil moved to Alys’s side as she turned the cheap set of tablets in her hand, pulling a face at the crudely painted woodcut pasted to one panel in place of the carving which ornamented better goods. He was just in time to catch Vary’s arm as he turned back and lunged at them.

  ‘No! That’s private, that’s my— I’ve no to tell!’

  ‘You haven’t told us,’ Alys said reassuringly. ‘We’d guessed.’

  She looked down at the tablets again, unwound the string which held them shut, and opened out the two leaves. In clumsy, unaccustomed letters, gouged into the wax, they bore the legend: SEIK NOT YIR WYF DO WIR BIDDIGN.

  ‘Seek not your wife, do our bidding,’ Gil repeated. ‘Who is ‘‘we’’?’

  Alys clapped the tablets shut as the same maidservant entered, broad middle-aged face drawn and shadowed with concern, a jug of water in her meaty hand.

  ‘Was the ale soured, maister?’ she asked. Vary gestured fe
ebly at Alys, and Gil took the jug with a word of thanks.

  ‘Mistress Mason was dizzy,’ he said. ‘I’ll pour for her.’

  The woman retreated reluctantly, and Alys opened the tablets again.

  ‘Who is it from, maister?’ she asked gently. It occurred to Gil that she was dealing with Vary as if with a nervous child or animal. ‘Who was the messenger?’

  Vary shook his head, gulping for air, and folded up on to another backstool.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he wailed. ‘I don’t know who has her!’

  ‘Begin at the beginning,’ said Gil, and Alys nodded approval. ‘When did this message reach you?’

  ‘Friday,’ said Vary. He wrapped his arms about his chest, rocking slightly. ‘Friday. The, the morrow after the Lanimer riding. I thought— I’d bidden her no to come down to the fair, no in her condition, and when she didny return by the evening I took it,’ he bit his lip, ‘I took it she was still angered at me. We parted on no very friend-like terms. I hoped she’d be back in good time to hear Mass on the Friday. And then this came.’

  ‘And who brought it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the man said again. He stilled his rocking, and concentrated. ‘Jessie said it was a laddie brought it, and one she’d not seen about the town. You get all sorts in from the farms for the fair and the riding,’ he explained, as if they could have no idea about it, ‘no to mention the folk that’s here to buy and sell.’

  ‘What time of day?’ Alys asked. ‘And if it’s any comfort, Mistress Madur seems not to have told her mother she was at outs with you, maister. I think her anger has not lasted. What time did the message reach you?’

  He glanced at her, and away again.

  ‘Atween Terce and Sext. Maybe nine o the clock?’ He shivered. ‘I ran to the door, but I never saw a laddie like she described.’

  ‘What did she describe?’ Gil asked.

  ‘A black-avised barefoot laddie in a tattered plaid, so she said, that handed her the tablets and ran off, and never spoke.’

  ‘A tinker laddie, maybe?’ Gil suggested.

  Vary shook his head, as if trying to dislodge something, and began rocking again.

  ‘Gil, you need to leave it. I canny have her sought.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Alys, still using that gentle tone. ‘Do you not wish for her return?’

  ‘They said,’ said Vary helplessly, nodding at the tablets still in her hand, ‘they said. You see what they said there. And, and,’ he swallowed, ‘the same day, as I was crossing the marketplace through the Fair, for the Provost wished a word, a man spoke in my ear and said, Tell nobody. No a word to a soul.’

  ‘Did you see who it was?’ Alys asked.

  ‘I turned, you can believe it, and there was two-three men at my back, and a duarch, no bigger than Big Will of this burgh,’ he held out his hand to show the low stature of the man, ‘and some country wives, but they none o them saw who spoke to me, nor heard, for there was a piper and a dance going no ten feet away. Then they asked what he’d said,’ he went on, in increasing desperation, ‘and I had to leave it, say it was no matter.’

  ‘No other word since?’ Gil asked. ‘No instructions, no bidding?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m waiting! I’m waiting for— and I don’t know, Gil, I canny tell what they’ll ask o me, if it’s something I’ll be able to perform or no. What if it’s no within my power to borrow what they ask? I don’t even know if she’s safe or no! And her mother shouting at me yestreen, and naught I could say.’

  ‘Who could have taken her? Who is there that might wish you ill?’ Gil asked carefully. ‘You’re not unco well to do, are you?’ He gestured at the house around them. ‘You’re comfortable, but I’d say the Provost is a richer man and he’s not the wealthiest in Lanark either. It seems to me the object may not be to get money from you.’

  Vary looked at him, frowning, still rocking slightly, apparently construing this remark with difficulty. Alys looked down at the tablets again, studying the message.

  After a moment, Vary said cautiously, ‘I canny think that I’ve enemies. I do my duty to the burgh, I’ve displeased a few by it, but that’s by the way. I’ve no enemies that I know of.’

  ‘Is anything about to come to the Council that you would advise on?’ Gil suggested. ‘Is anyone planning to build in the burgh, or the like? Have you ordered anyone’s foreshot taken down, any middens moved?’

  ‘If it’s yet to come to the Council, how would I ken?’ said Vary, making the question sound reasonable. Gil, indweller in a burgh not much larger than Lanark, was unconvinced; in his experience the gossips on the High Street knew the business of Glasgow before the bailies did.

  ‘You keep a register,’ Alys prompted. ‘An account of all the decisions you advise on. Could we see it?’

  ‘A casebook, you mean?’ said Vary, staring at her. ‘Aye— aye, I do. But what would— oh. You think I might ha something writ down that would tell me who has my lass?’ Alys nodded, and he turned away, looking in the shelves on the end of his desk, and then at the bookshelf, finally lifting the upper of the two ledgers lying on the desk. Checking the flyleaf, he handed it to her. ‘Yon’s the current one. But I canny think you’re right. Who would steal away my wife, just to get my agreement to— it must be siller they’re after. I’m just the one voice, I canny sway the Council.’

  ‘You’re their expert,’ Gil observed. ‘You’re employed of the Council to deal wi boundaries and roadways, if your duties are like your fellow’s in Glasgow.’

  ‘I think we need to study this,’ said Alys, looking up from the pages of tiny, neat writing. ‘May we take it away, maister?’

  ‘He what?’ exclaimed Mistress Somerville, on a rising note of indignation. ‘He had a message? Do you tell me he kent from Friday things was amiss, and never sent me word? Nor stirred himsel to seek my lassie? The pultron!’ she uttered explosively, this time genuinely bouncing up and down on her plumply upholstered daybed, so that her cascade of chins quivered and a long grey braid escaped from her plain cap. ‘The dastard! The faizart tillieloot! I’ll have his liver to my pigs!’

  ‘Indeed, madam,’ said Alys soothingly, ‘I can see that you must be distressed. But Maister Vary is equally distressed. I think him paralysed with indecision, and the message did direct him to tell no one, for your daughter’s safety.’

  ‘That’s no the point.’ Mistress Somerville pulled her tawny brocade bedgown more firmly about her massive bosom and looked determined. ‘I should ha been tellt. I should ha heard. And as for Adam, poor laddie, that’s ill news indeed, and how I’m to tell his sweetheart I canny think. And my poor lassie,’ she burst out, ‘seeing him cut down afore her een! Oh, it’s ill to hear, maister. And Our Lady send,’ she crossed herself swiftly, ‘the bairn doesny come out scarred or marred by the sight that’s met his mother’s een. Oh, my poor lassie!’

  They were seated in her solar, a much-furnished upper apartment crammed with curiosities and religious bijouterie, from a Crucifixion carved from an oak-gall to a writing-slope so curiously wrought it was hard to see how it could be used for writing on. The lady had received them there with apologies for not descending to greet them, the bedgown sufficient explanation for that, and listened to them in increasing distress while her tirewoman served strong ale. Now Gil nodded, took another welcome draught of the ale and glanced at the window, where the sky was light and bright. They would still get home in daylight.

  ‘Ill news indeed,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry to be the bearer. Mistress, can you think who might have stolen your daughter away?’

  She stared at him in surprise.

  ‘Who but the tinkers, maister, that was in the neighbourhood for the Fair. You think it’s no them? What would any honest man steal a lassie for, in her state? No, no, I canny think it’s any other than the tinkers! I’ll have the men out first thing the morn, to speir what way they went, raise the neighbourhood to pursue them. You’ll ride wi them, maister, I take it?’

  ‘Vary has had wr
itten word from someone about her,’ Gil said firmly. ‘That’s no tinkers’ work, it’s someone who can write. I think she’s been taken by someone as a threat to Vary, to make him do their bidding.’

  ‘Then how has he no done so,’ she demanded, ‘to get her back? Oh, my lassie! And in sic a state! She should be getting treasured and nourist for her ain safety, no harried about the country at sword’s point, and her ain groom, that she’s kent since they were bairns, slain afore her face!’

  The maidservant murmured something, put a beaker into her mistress’s hand, and began to tuck the escaped braid back into the cap. Mistress Somerville paused to take a gulp of the ale, wiping at her eyes with her free hand.

  Alys said, ‘Has your daughter ever mentioned any who hold her or Maister Vary at odds? Has anyone tried to persuade her to something she’d not wish to do, or to a promise she’d not wish to make?’

  ‘No,’ said Mistress Somerville flatly. ‘Never. And Vary wouldny let me ken if they did,’ she added. ‘No, I canny see that that’s how to find her. If you’ll no ride out wi them, maister, I’ll have the men search on their own. Somebody will have seen the tinkers, seen what way they left the neighbourhood. They’ll no be hard to track down.’

  ‘Where did they camp?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Where they aye do, I expect.’ She drained her beaker and set it down. ‘On the Burgh Muir, to be handy for the races and that. The men can get up there first thing, them that’s no needed for this quest on young Adam, poor laddie, and then we’ll can bring him home and bury him in Carluke where he belongs.’ She wiped at her eyes again.

  Finally escaping Mistress Somerville’s lamentations, they mounted and clopped wearily onwards, up the long hill towards Carluke where the road ran as a hollow way between the tofts. To either side the dwellings were set back amidst summer growth of potherbs and salad crops, a drift of sweet peat smoke rising through the thatch of the smaller roofs, white strong-smelling coal smoke from the bigger houses.