The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery Read online

  Alys considered this, twirling the lock of hair round one finger.

  ‘St Paul thought we were capable of more than that. The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife,’ she quoted, in the Latin. ‘Although,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘St Paul contradicts himself more than once. Is that what you think learning is for? To seek salvation?’

  ‘That was not what I said, but it’s surely one of its purposes. You think so too, do you not? You use yours to read Thomas A Kempis and the New Testament.’

  She nodded, pushing the lock of hair back over her shoulder, and hitched her plaid up.

  ‘When free of my duties about the house. Shall we go? Do you know Agnes Hamilton? Or her husband?’

  ‘I was at the College with her brother Hugh,’ he said, accepting the change of subject. ‘She was new married, and generous with the bannocks and cheese when we had a free hour or two.’

  Agnes Hamilton, it was well seen, was still generous with the bannocks and cheese. She met them in her doorway, vast and flustered, with exclamations of distress.

  ‘And the dinner late, and Andrew in such a mood, and not a hand’s turn done in the kitchen since the news came, they’re all so caught up with Bridie’s troubles - my dear, it’s a pleasure to see you any time, you know that, but maybe not the now. And is that you, Gil Cunningham?’ she said, peering up at him under the folds of her linen kerchief. ‘I’d not have known you, you’ve changed that much -‘

  Distantly behind her there was a great outbreak of wailing. Mistress Hamilton cast a glance over her broad shoulder.

  ‘Listen to that!’ she said unnecessarily. ‘The girl will choke herself weeping! And I can do nothing with the rest of them. They’ve let the fire go out.’

  ‘Is it Bridie Miller?’ asked Alys briskly. ‘May I try? We need a word with her about Davie.’

  ‘He’s not - the boy’s not …?’

  ‘He’s not dead,’ Gil said, ‘but he’s still in a great swound. If Bridie knows anything it would be a help.’

  ‘Well …’ said Mistress Hamilton doubtfully. She led them along the screened passage, past the door to the hall where several men sat about listening glumly to the noise, and out to the yard at the back. The kitchen, built of wattle-and-daub, was set a few feet away from the house, and from its door and windows came the sound of many weeping women. Gil found his feet rooted to the spot.

  ‘Do - do you need me?’ he asked, despising himself.

  Alys glanced up at him, and said with some sympathy, ‘You will be no help. Go and find the boy. Agnes, I will need the key to your spice-chest.’

  She took the bunch of keys Mistress Hamilton unhooked from her girdle, hitched up her plaid and plunged forward into the noise. Agnes Hamilton watched her go, hand over her mouth, then turned helplessly to Gil.

  ‘I forget at times she’s just sixteen,’ she confessed. ‘Do you know she reads three languages?’

  ‘Three?’ said Gil, and realized this must be so.

  ‘I had a book once, but Andrew sold it. Gil, it’s grand to see you, but I can offer you nothing but cowslip wine and suckets -‘

  ‘I’ve had my dinner,’ he assured her. ‘I need a word with Andrew, and then I’ll go, and come back another time.’

  Her face changed.

  ‘He’s not very pleased at his dinner being late,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he’d talk to you.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ said Gil. ‘Patrick Paniter bade me tell him -‘

  ‘Oh!’ said Mistress Hamilton in some relief. ‘You mean wee Andrew! Come in here out of all this noise and I’ll find him. Drew! Doodie! Oh, that laddie, where has he got to now?’

  She disappeared, leaving Gil standing in the hall with the hungry men eyeing him sideways. After a moment she returned, towing a grubby boy by one ear, exclaiming over the torn hose, of which a good length was visible below his blue scholar’s gown.

  ‘And you be civil, mind,’ she prompted. ‘Maister Cunningham’s here from St Mungo’s, with a message from Maister Paniter.’

  ‘Not quite that important,’ said Gil hastily, seeing all chance of getting an answer from the boy slipping away. ‘May I get a word with you, Andrew?’

  Andrew stared at him apprehensively. Nudged by his mother he achieved a clumsy bow and muttered something. Gil stepped back out into the yard, where the wailing from the kitchen was not much reduced, and beckoned the boy after him.

  ‘Two boys found something this morning,’ he said. ‘Maister Paniter was angry, and took it off them, and I found it again.’ Well, by proxy, said his conscience. ‘I need to ask a couple of questions about it.’

  Andrew, fiddling with his belt, said indistinctly that he kenned nuffin.

  ‘Now, that’s a pity; said Gil, ‘for the boy who told me what I need to know might get a penny.’

  Andrew brightened noticeably. Gil fished the harp key out of the breast of his jerkin and held it up.

  ‘Was that what you found?’ he asked. ‘I know it was a harp key - is this the right one?’

  Andrew nodded eagerly.

  ‘It’s got the same flowers on,’ he volunteered. ‘e saw it shining in the grass when we came to Prime.’

  ‘What, just like this? It wasn’t in a purse or anything?’

  ‘No, maister,’ said Andrew, a touch regretfully. ‘There was never a purse. It was just lying in the grass.’

  ‘Where?’ Gil asked. ‘as it among the trees?’ I should be dismissed the court, he thought, for prompting the witness, but Andrew shook his head.

  ‘We’d no have seen it among the trees,’ he pointed out kindly. ‘It was on the grass near the door.’

  ‘Which door?’

  ‘The door we go in by,’ said Andrew. ‘The south door by St Catherine.’

  Gil stood looking down at him, thinking this over. The boy, misreading his silence, said after a moment, ‘It’s true, maister. You can ask Will. Can I get it back, maister?’

  ‘I’ve no doubt it’s true,’ Gil said. ‘I need to keep it, but here’s your penny, Andrew. Those were good answers.’ Andrew seized the coin, but any thanks he might have

  returned were drowned in an extraordinary commotion from the kitchen. The multiple sounds of grief suddenly stopped, to be replaced abruptly by a succession of squeals which escalated into a violent outburst of sneezing. The door flew open, and first one, then another girl staggered out, sneezing and sneezing, until the yard was full of spluttering, wheezing, exploding women.

  Behind the last one came Alys, her plaid drawn over her face, dusting the other hand off on her blue skirts. Letting the plaid fall, she looked at Agnes Hamilton, who was peering round Gil’s shoulder with her mouth open, and said, ‘Well, that was a waste of time.’

  ‘What -‘said Agnes helplessly. ‘What happened? What’s wrong?’

  ‘They quarrelled on Good Friday,’ Alys elaborated. ‘She hasn’t seen him for ten days. I can’t tell if she was weeping for Davie, or for danger avoided, or lost opportunity, and nor can she, but she can’t help us. Agnes, I’ve a cold pie in the larder. If we send someone up for it, you and the men can eat.’

  ‘And the girls?’ said Gil, indicating the suffering household.

  ‘Oh, that.’ Alys flapped her skirts again, face turned away. ‘I’ve seen that happen in a nunnery. Everyone weeping and nobody able to stop. It’s all right, it isn’t the pestilence. Here are your keys, Agnes. I’m afraid I’ve used up your year’s supply of pepper.’

  Chapter Four

  Out in the street, they stood at the foot of the Hamiltons’ fore-stair and looked at one another.

  ‘A false scent,’ said Gil.

  ‘Luke was very certain,’ said Alys in faint apology.

  ‘Would the other men know any more? Or your maidservants?’ Gil suggested hopefully.

  ‘I asked them fast.’ Alys looked up and down the quiet street. ‘I’ll send them out to ask at the market tomorrow. No purpose in searching now, with nobody about. Once they get together with their gossi
ps, the word will pass like heath-fire.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘I have to find the other boy,’ Gil said, ‘the saddler’s youngest, and confirm Andrew’s story. And since that takes me down the Fishergait I will go by the harper’s lodging and ask them about the harp key.’

  ‘May I come with you? I am concerned for them.’

  ‘Do you promise not to throw pepper at them?’

  The smile flickered. ‘That was a special case. In general I would deplore such a waste.’

  ‘Then it would give me great pleasure,’ he said, and offered his arm.

  ‘And after the saddler’s house we must stop and buy a jug of spirits to take with us.’

  The sign of the Pelican swung crookedly from the front of a tall building, apparently a former merchant’s house which had seen better days. Gil, picking a careful path for the two of them through a noisome pend, wondered if he should have brought Alys to the place, and felt his qualms confirmed when they emerged into a muddy yard in which children were squabbling on the midden. Two of them turned to stare at the strangers from under unkempt hair.

  ‘Where does the harper live?’ Alys asked.

  ‘Is it the wake ye’re after?’ asked the taller child. Alys nodded, and the boy gestured with a well-chewed chicken bone at the side of the yard which was probably the original house. ‘He stays up yon stair, mistress. Two up and through Jiggin Joan’s. Ye can hear them from here,’ he waved the chicken bone again. There was indeed a buzz of voices from one of the upper windows.

  ‘Through?’ Gil queried, and got a withering look.

  ‘Aye. She’s nearest the stair. D’ye ken nothing?’

  Gil would have enquired further, but Alys thanked the child and moved towards the stair tower. As Gil turned to follow her, a woman hurried along the creaking wooden gallery opposite.

  ‘Your pardon, maisters!’ she exclaimed, with an Ersche- speaker’s accent even heavier than the gallowglass’s. She leaned over the rail, pulling her plaid up round her head, to ask in a tactful whisper, ‘Could you be saying, maybe, when is the poor soul to be buried?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Gil. ‘It’s surely a matter for the harper to determine.’

  ‘Oh, ‘tis so, ‘tis so,’ she agreed, ‘it iss for mac lain to decide, but it will be needful to send round to the keeningwomen, and they will be wishing to know what time to gather.’

  ‘Perhaps Mistress Mclan will know,’ Gil suggested.

  The woman nodded, a dissatisfied look crossing her broad face. ‘I will be at the wake as soon as the bannocks is cooked,’ she said, drawing back from the railing. ‘I cannot be calling empty-handed.’

  Alys was waiting at the stair-mouth. Gil followed her up two turns of the spiral, past a doorway where a woman was scrubbing a small boy’s face, on up where the protests were drowned by the sound of loud conversation which came from the open door on the next landing. The untidy room seemed deserted, but the noise came from within.

  ‘This should be it,’ Alys said doubtfully. ‘Dame Joan is not at home, I think.’

  ‘Does the harper stay here?’ Gil called loudly. The door to the inner room opened, and Ealasaidh appeared on a redoubled blast of sound and a smell of spirits.

  ‘It is the man of law,’ she said, accepting Alys’s proffered jug of brandy with grace. ‘Come within. Mac lain is at home.’

  The room was crowded, and so noisy that it was a moment before Gil realized there was a baby crying somewhere. Amid the press of people, the harper was seated in a great chair by the fire, dressed in saffron-dyed shirt and velvet jerkin, the formal dress of the Highlander, with deerskin buskins laced up his bare legs. A Flemish harp with a curved soundboard hung behind his head. As Gil entered behind Alys he rose and bowed to them, saying with great dignity, ‘I bid you welcome, neighbours.’

  He was not as old as Gil had thought at first, possibly not yet fifty. Hair and beard were white, but his eyebrows were dark and shaggy and the high forehead was relatively unlined. He listened courteously to Gil’s formal words of sympathy, and bowed again.

  ‘I must thank you for your care of her, sir. Woman, bring refreshment for our guests.’

  Ealasaidh was already returning from yet another, further, room, the one where the baby was crying. She handed Gil a tiny wooden beaker brimming with liquid, and offered him a platter of oatcakes. As Gil had feared the liquid proved to be barley eau-de-vie, fierce enough to burnish brass, but he offered a toast to the memory of Bess Stewart and drained his little cup resolutely. Around him, the harper’s neighbours and acquaintances were talking, not in the least about the departed. Alys had disappeared.

  .’You are not yet a man of law,’ said the harper suddenly.

  ‘I soon will be,’ said Gil, startled.

  ‘But you will not be a priest.’

  ‘I must,’ said Gil, utterly taken aback, ‘or live on air. Sir, I have a couple questions for you or your sister.’

  ‘In a little space,’ said the harper, turning to greet another mourner. Gil stood quietly, wrestling with the surge of conflicting feelings which assailed him. He was used to the sinking in his stomach when he thought of his approaching ordination (Lord, strengthen me, remove my doubts! he thought) but why should he feel panic at the thought of not being a priest?

  The baby, he discovered after a moment, had fallen silent.

  ‘Maister,’ said the harper. ‘We will not talk here. Come ben and ask your question.’ He moved confidently towards the other door, and those round him fell back to let him pass.

  The inmost room contained three adults and the baby, and a quantity of stained linen drying on outstretched strings. Ealasaidh, by the window, was opening another flagon of eau-de-vie. Before the fire, Alys was dandling the baby while a sturdy young woman looked on. The small head turned when the door opened, but at the sight of Gil the infant’s mouth went square and the crying started again.

  ‘What ails the bairn?’ Gil asked, dismayed. His sister’s children had never reacted like this.

  ‘He is looking for one who will not return to him,’ said Ealasaidh remotely.

  ‘Every time the door opens,’ said Alys over the baby’s head. ‘There, now! There, now, poor little man. Nancy, shall we try the spoon again?’

  ‘Ask your question, maister lawyer,’ said the harper again. ‘Here is mac lain and his sister both.’

  ‘And I must go out in a little,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘We will not be having enough usquebae for all the mourners, and I must borrow more cups.’

  Gil drew the harp key from his jerkin again.

  ‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked, through the baby’s wailing.

  Ealasaidh gave it a glance, then another.

  ‘It is hers,’ she agreed heavily. ‘The key to her little harp. Where was AT

  ‘In the kirkyard,’ said Gil. The harper’s hand went out, and he put the key into it. Mclan’s long fingers turned the little object, the nails clicking on the metal barrel, caressing familiar irregularities of the shape, and his mouth twisted under his white beard .

  ‘It is hers. Where in the kirkyard?’

  ‘By the south door. Could she have dropped it?’

  ‘No,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘Not Bess - not that.’

  ‘She took care of what I gave her,’ said the harper harshly, ‘for that it was given in love. This dwelled in her purse always.’

  ‘Her purse? There was no purse at her belt. I must talk to you,’ said Gil, ‘but this is not the moment.’

  ‘Aye, I must return to my guests. You will come back.’ It was not an order.

  Alys handed the baby back to the other girl and rose.

  ‘The bairn will be better with Nancy,’ she said, ‘and we should be gone. My father the mason sends his sympathies, maister harper.’

  A fine rain was now falling. They walked through it in silence back to the White Castle, Gil turning over the harper’s words in his mind. As they reached the pend Alys paused, and he loo
ked down at her.

  ‘I feared you might lead me on up the High Street,’ she said, smiling at him.

  ‘I’m sorry - I was discourteous.’

  ‘ou were thinking,’ she pointed out. ‘And so was I. Will you come in, Maister Cunningham? My father will be home, it is near Vespers.’

  The mason was brooding in his closet with a jug of wine. Alys showed Gil in and slipped away to see how Davie did, and Maistre Pierre said with sour enthusiasm, ‘Sit down, lawyer, and have some wine, and we consider where we are at. I think we are no further forward than this morning.’

  ‘I would not agree,’ said Gil. ‘We have named the lady, and arranged for her burial. Father Francis will accept her - he is willing to believe that since she had gone to meet her husband she may have repented of her adultery. And I told you I have spoken with Serjeant Anderson. He has no wish to meddle in something concerning the Chanonry.’

  ‘Of that I have no doubt. But in everything else we have raised up two problems where one was before,’ complained the mason.

  ‘What do we know?’ said Gil. ‘She went out before Compline, to meet her husband after the Office in St Mungo’s yard. She was not waiting for him when Compline ended. I think most likely she was already dead inside the Fergus Aisle by then, for otherwise surely she would have come out to meet him when she heard the Office was ended.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, scratching his beard with a loud rasping. ‘But how many people could have killed her? We do not look for a beggar or robber, no?’

  ‘I do not think it, although her purse is missing. Why should she follow such into the chapel? There were no signs of violence - fresh violence,’ he amended, ‘other than the wound that killed her. Her husband is the most obvious, but he was inside St Mungo’s at the time I think she died, and I would swear he was shocked to learn of her death today. I saw the gallowglass come in - I suppose he could have directed her there and then killed her. There is also James Campbell, who has an Italian dagger, and I sup pose the Italian lutenist must have such a knife, but I do not know why either of them should have killed her.’