The Fourth Crow Read online

  ‘So again we search the kirkyard,’ said Maistre Pierre at his elbow.

  ‘Aye. Have Andro’s men been here?’

  ‘No, they have tramped the other bank of the Girth Burn, through the gardens, but did not enter the kirkyard. I suppose they have no jurisdiction on church land.’

  ‘There’s been nothing bigger than a fox through those bluebells,’ said Lowrie.

  ‘Not in the last day and a night,’ agreed Gil. ‘Let’s take a look at the Cross itself.’

  Chapter Four

  They approached with care along the path, all three men scrutinising the ground about their feet as they went. The Cross was not a cross, but a tall stone with the shadows of ancient images still visible on all four sides; it could easily date back to Kentigern’s time. If it had ever had arms they were long since broken off, but Gil thought he could make out a cross carved in relief on one uneven surface, with the ring, or nimbus, or symbol of the infinite Godhead, or whatever it was, circling the juncture.

  ‘It takes more than one man,’ observed Maistre Pierre, ‘to tie someone to that, unless the subject is willing.’

  ‘Did you say you saw them bind Mistress Gibb?’ Lowrie asked.

  ‘I did. It took three of them. I was rounding up my men like a sheepdog, you understand, and young Berthold was right at the front of the crowd. I had a good view. Two were servants, I should say, and one man in a gown worth a baron’s ransom who held her in her place while the men bound the ropes about her. And one of the clergy, was it that fellow Craigie? offering up prayers.’

  ‘So was the other woman, the one in the chapel now, still alive when she was put here?’ Lowrie stood still to contemplate the idea. ‘Why would she consent? Or was she already dead, or in a great swoon from the beating, or what? I wouldny think it any easier to bind a dead woman here than a live one.’

  ‘We’re looking for traces of at least two people, then,’ said Gil.

  ‘There were more than two about here last evening,’ declared Maistre Pierre.

  Gil stepped cautiously over to the Cross and stood with his back to it, looking about him.

  ‘Unless they crossed the burn,’ he said slowly, ‘whoever released her came down the slope from the gate, and the ground’s by far too trampled to tell how many they were. I wonder, was she awake, expecting them?’

  ‘Like Maister Craigie,’ said Lowrie. Gil, who had already seen the songman making his way towards them, made no comment, but Maistre Pierre tutted audibly. ‘It makes less and less sense, doesn’t it?’ Lowrie went on.

  ‘It never has made sense,’ grumbled the mason. ‘Everything we have learned so far has made the matter more confusing.’

  ‘Well, well, Gilbert,’ said Craigie in Latin, coming close enough to speak. ‘And what have you learned so far? A sad matter, a sad matter, and not good for St Mungo’s.’

  ‘The Sub-Dean is very displeased,’ agreed Gil, accurate but uninformative.

  ‘Very sad,’ repeated Craigie. ‘I little thought, when I offered prayers for Mistress Gibb’s healing, that this would be the consequence of her petition to our saint.’

  ‘It was you offered prayers?’

  ‘It was. Her family wished it, and I was free. And now this has happened.’

  Gil considered him. He was a handsome, stocky man with a wide grin, dressed with less flamboyance than Maister Sim in a fashionably cut long gown of dark green cloth faced with black velvet. His belt was shod with silver, the brim of his round felt hat was pinned up with a bright enamel brooch, and altogether he was the image of a prosperous, modest cleric. Now, becoming slightly uncomfortable under Gil’s gaze, he said, switching to Scots,

  ‘Is that right, what the bellman’s crying? Does it mean someone throttled a complete stranger? Surely not! I canny believe it!’

  ‘She is certainly a stranger so far,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘We have not yet a name for her.’

  ‘But what was she doing here? Where is Mistress Gibb?’

  ‘If I knew that I’d be rattling at her door,’ Gil observed. ‘What did you see when they called you down here this morning, William?’

  ‘What did I see? Well, her men were here at her side, and there the woman was bound to the Cross. You saw her yoursel, Gil. How did the men no recognise her? That’s gey strange!’

  ‘You saw her too,’ Gil pointed out. ‘You must mind how badly she was beaten. Her men saw what they expected to, I suppose. Nobody else was about?’

  ‘No at that moment, though a good few gathered once they saw us.’

  ‘Which of the men came up to St Mungo’s? How did he get in? What did he say?’

  ‘Oh.’ Craigie paused to consider. ‘Well, we were all in the vestry robing up for Prime, and this fellow came in from the nave wi one of the vergers on his heels, likely he’d got in at the west door, crying that his mistress was dead. I’ve no idea which of them it was, likely the one that spoke to you when you got here. And seeing there was only us songmen and Canon Muir in the place, Adam Goudie told off Habbie and me to go and deal wi the matter. We could see at once there was naught to be done, she was cold and stiff, so I began an act of Conditional Absolution and Habbie went to fetch you.’

  ‘Who found the cord about her neck?’

  ‘Oh, that would be Habbie. He was for trying to revive her, patting her face and the like, and here were the ends hanging.’ He crossed himself. ‘A bad business, a very bad business. And no good for St Mungo’s,’ he repeated.

  Gil dug in his purse for the coiled cord. Shaking it loose he said,

  ‘This is what was about her neck. Have you seen the like before? Have you any idea where it might have come from?’

  ‘What, an ell and a half of stout cord?’ said Craigie. ‘Just about anywhere, I’d have thought. Try the candlemakers, they use string and cord, all sorts.’

  Gil nodded, and wound the cord about his fingers again, turning back to the Cross. Its massive sandstone pillar gave nothing away, and the trampled grass around it showed no useful signs, as Lowrie had commented earlier. There was a long silence, into which Maister Craigie finally said,

  ‘Well, I’ll let you get on. But tell me if you learn aught, Gil, so I can put it in my prayers.’

  ‘Do that, William,’ agreed Gil. He turned to raise his hat politely, but Craigie was already on his way up the slope towards St Mungo’s. Maistre Pierre, staring at the man’s green cloth back, remarked in French,

  ‘Does he think we suspect him?’

  ‘He seems concerned,’ Gil agreed. He waited a moment longer, till Craigie was well out of earshot, then said to Lowrie, ‘So what have you got there?’

  Lowrie rose from where he had hunkered down in the shadows twenty yards along the bank of the Girth Burn. Socrates, who had been sitting beside him looking where he looked, splashed into the water and waited hopefully for a stick to be thrown.

  ‘Someone cut across there to the waterside,’ said Lowrie, pointing upstream of where he stood. ‘And I wonder if this is why? It looks like a garment, blue woollen cloth any road. It’s caught under the other bank here, where the Provost’s men would likely ha missed it. Could it be her gown? And someone came down this way to throw it into the burn?’

  ‘Ah!’ Maistre Pierre made for the burn, avoiding the line Lowrie had indicated. Gil followed him more slowly, picking out the signs the younger man had found. They were slight, a matter of bent and flattened grasses, the print of a heel in a softer patch; whoever left them had contrived to avoid the bluebells’ juicier, more easily damaged leaves. Was that luck, he wondered, or good judgement? ‘Or was it daylight by then?’ he said aloud.

  ‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre firmly. He was calf-deep in the burn, fending off the interested dog and gathering up the waterlogged cloth which Lowrie had seen. ‘Not if this was put in the water at the same time as the body we have was bound to the Cross. Lend a hand here.’ Lowrie sprang to help him, with a quick apology. ‘She was put there within perhaps an hour of her death, and then she was
throttled, and left to stiffen like that. After midnight, but long before dawn, I should say.’

  ‘Someone who kens the kirkyard well?’ Lowrie offered. He and the mason splashed out of the burn with the heavy wet garment between them and began to spread it out.

  ‘This has been cut off her,’ said Maistre Pierre, unfurling a ragged sleeve. ‘See, cut the whole length from cuff to neck, and the braid at the elbow too.’

  ‘And the other sleeve,’ said Lowrie, unfolding it to match. ‘The laces are cut and all.’

  ‘So likely she was dead already when she was brought here,’ said Gil. He stared about him, then moved carefully back to the Cross and began quartering the trampled area about its foot. Socrates joined him, and after a moment so did Lowrie, while Maistre Pierre continued to arrange the folds of wet blue wool.

  ‘It is a working woman’s kirtle,’ he said at length, ‘with such short sleeves, and in this cheap woollen stuff, though this bit of braid at the sleeve may help us to identify her. The hem is much worn and stained. And also— Pah! Full of insects. The seams are thick with their eggs. Lice, I suppose. I wonder where she worked.’

  ‘A flesher’s? One of the cookhouses?’ Gil suggested. ‘Somewhere the floor is wet and dirty, at any rate, and not in the better parts of the town either.’

  ‘Peut-être. Do we seek her in the alehouses, perhaps?’

  ‘That would certainly account for why nobody has come forward yet to name her.’ Gil was crouched, peering at the ground. ‘We might learn more once they open up for the day’s trade. Lowrie, come and tell me what you see here.’

  Lowrie obeyed, elbowing the dog aside to study the scraps of colour caught under the flattened stems.

  ‘That’s it,’ he agreed. ‘That must be it. She was cut out of the gown here.’

  Gil used his fingernails to extract one wispy blue thread, and laid it on his palm, trying not to breathe on it.

  ‘Or at least, the gown was cut,’ he amended scrupulously. ‘She was probably still in it, but we have no proof.’

  ‘Here’s a bigger bit,’ said Lowrie, now on hands and knees. He pinched something up from a mat of grasses, and turned back to Gil. ‘Look, Maister Gil, it’s a bit of the weave, not just an odd thread.’

  Gil took the fragment, turning it over carefully.

  ‘How did that happen?’ he wondered.

  ‘He used shears,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘One sleeve has been cut using shears, quite small ones such as a needlewoman carries, and the other using a knife.’

  ‘Two people, then,’ said Gil.

  ‘Mistress Gibb herself, with the scissors from her hussif?’ Lowrie said in surprise, and answered his own question. ‘Hardly, she had naught on her but that sacking gown I suppose. Unless whoever freed her brought her clothes to her. No, the tirewoman said her clothes were all in the hostel.’ He looked down at the wisps of cloth in Gil’s hand. ‘I wonder they never kept this whole for Annie to wear, at least till she found shelter.’

  ‘Not so easy,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘to strip a corpse in the dark. I suppose it was quicker this way.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ said Gil, ‘it fits. We have our two people at least, as we reckoned it would take to bind the corp to the Cross, and one of them carried a pair of small shears. Our corp was dead when she was brought here, and then stripped of that blue gown, the sacking gown put on her, and I suppose one held her up while the other tied the ropes.’

  ‘Well, that is clear enough,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, straightening up cautiously. ‘It only leaves the one question, and that greater than all the rest together.’

  ‘Well, I think there are others we’ve not asked yet,’ said Gil, ‘but that is certainly the biggest one right now. Why? What did they gain by it? Why that lassie in particular, why any corp at all, why change her dress? What was the purpose?’

  ‘Time,’ said Lowrie, sitting back on his heels. ‘Did the man Sawney no say he came down to the gate wi a light every hour or so? If he’d found nobody here he’d surely ha raised the alarm immediately. They must have won several hours that way, between making the exchange and Sawney and Rab finally coming to free their mistress.’

  ‘And if we knew how long that was,’ said Gil, ‘we’d have some idea how far afield we’ll need to search for Annie Gibb. I think you must be right, Lowrie.’

  ‘Do we seek her?’ asked Maistre Pierre, still studying the wet kirtle. ‘It is not against the law to run from friends and family.’

  ‘Mistress Gibb, or whoever freed her,’ said Gil deliberately, ‘kens more than we do about the lassie in St Catherine’s chapel and how she died. I want a word wi her and her friends.’

  Lowrie nodded. Maistre Pierre cocked his head, and said,

  ‘Well, for now you may seek her on your own. It is more than time I went back to work if those pillars are to be set up this side of Judgement Day. I have not heard a chisel for the quarter of an hour. Moreover,’ he added, ‘that boy Berthold is no use today. Boys will be boys, I accept that he and Luke went out last night after supper, but Luke came home at a reasonable hour, just before midnight indeed. Saints alone know when Berthold came in, and this morning he cannot lift so much as a mell without dropping it. I wish you joy of him when he serves you, young Lowrie.’

  ‘The good Doctor Chrysostom has told me the news,’ said Sir Edward in the thread of a voice. Chrysostom Januar, fingers on his patient’s pulse, nodded encouragement, and a man in the decent plain clothing of an upper servant, presumably a body-servant, stood by watching jealously. Sir Edward breathed carefully, in and out, in again, and went on, ‘Maister, I couldny say where Annie might be. I hoped,’ another cautious breath, ‘to meet her again freed of her ills, though no as I shall be of mine afore long.’

  Gil studied the sick man with sympathy. This was the wreckage of a warrior, he thought; the flesh had fallen away from a broad frame with a sturdy ribcage and big-boned hands. Silver scars on the yellowish flesh of neck and brow below the linen nightcap told their own story.

  ‘She never said anything to you about friends in Glasgow or hereabouts?’ he asked. Sir Edward considered briefly, but answered a soundless No. ‘Did she speak of her future at all?’ Another No. ‘What had you intended for her, sir? Lockhart thought you planned to treat her the same as your own lassies when you divide the property.’

  This time the answer was Aye. Sir Edward collected himself, lifted a hand slightly and added, ‘My will. Show him.’

  ‘In the small leather kist, I think,’ said Doctor Januar, and received an infinitesimal nod.

  The men’s hall was a big, open chamber with two rows of beds, wide troughs of Norway pine set on short legs against the long walls. Most of them were bare but one opposite and three at the far end held straw mattresses which now, by daylight, were humped up like caterpillars to air, with a clutter of bags and boxes on the floor round them. Here, nearest the door and the light, Sir Edward lay on good linen, propped on a mound of pillows, a featherbed under him and a fine woollen blanket about his shoulders. More kists were stacked on either side of the bedhead; there was a tray with spoons, a beaker, a jug of water on top of one pile.

  Turning away, the servant extracted a leather-bound box from the other stack. He searched briefly in it and drew out a folded parchment, which he handed to Gil, returning to his post. Gil unfolded the document and tilted the writing to the light. It was not the original, which was presumably lodged with the man of law Lockhart had mentioned, but a full copy.

  ‘This is well drawn up,’ he said after a moment. Sir Edward’s thin mouth twitched in a faint smile. ‘It makes matters quite out of doubt.’

  The will was also very wordy, but the testator’s intentions were unmistakable. There were bequests to the servants, to Dame Ellen, to the parish kirk and its priest; then in a long preamble Sir Edward’s affection for his daughters and his good-daughter were set out in terms which could only gratify the four women concerned, and the quite significant property which Sir Edward held was all
ocated, feu by feu, with reasons given for each bequest.

  ‘Would you by any chance,’ Gil asked, still perusing the list, assembling the blocks of land in his head, ‘would you by any chance have any of Annie’s papers wi you? Her contract, the lands from her own faither, that sort of—’ He broke off, as Sir Edward signalled with one finger and pointed at the kist again.

  The servant, searching through it as if he knew what he sought, extracted several documents which he bundled together and handed to Gil. Over his head as he did so the doctor met Gil’s eye with a significant look. Significant of what? wondered Gil, preserving a blank expression. He turned to the papers, skimming through them. Anna Gibb, daughter of James Gibb and Mariana Wallace his spouse, was a wealthy woman, that was immediately obvious; she had no need to live in one room like an anchorite. These documents were the originals, and seemed to be the complete set of her titles to everything that was hers outright, along with a short copy of the deeds to several conjunct fees and a number of properties in which she had the life interest. He raised his eyes to the three men watching him, and met another of those intent looks from the doctor.

  ‘Well, that all seems very clear,’ he said after a moment, and Januar looked away. ‘I’ll make some notes, if I may.’ He drew his tablets from his purse and began a careful list of the properties and their respective values. The doctor moved quietly about while he worked, pouring a spoonful of something from a flask, something else from a jug, into the glass beaker on the tray by his side. The servant lifted the glass and stepped to the bedside, and the sick man accepted the dose gratefully, drinking it in small cautious sips.

  ‘Who has a mind to Annie’s property?’ Gil asked eventually, stacking the documents into their bundle again. ‘There must be more than one family would be glad of the alliance. Who have you turned away?’

  Sir Edward gazed at him unreadably for a long moment. Eventually he said, in that thread of a voice,