Authors: Pat McIntosh
Gil considered the two women. Dame Ellen stood by the head of the bier, tall and indignant in the light of the candles. She was probably past fifty, dressed like any country lady in a plain gown of good woad-dyed homespun over a kirtle of a lighter blue, her head covered by a black Flemish hood. Wisps of grey hair escaped at her temples, and her face was lined and bony. Under his gaze she crossed her arms, hitching up a substantial bosom, and said, with an attempt at a complicit smile,
‘I’ve raised the lassie since she came into my brother’s house, how would I not know her when she’s come to be laid out?’
‘And I’ve served her and dressed her and put her stockings on these six year,’ retorted Meggot. She was shorter than Dame Ellen, a round-faced comfortable young woman in a side-laced kirtle, her shift rolled up over its short sleeves to expose capable hands and forearms, her hair hidden under a kerchief of good linen. She had not partaken of her mistress’s vow, Gil concluded. ‘I ken her feet from a stranger’s,’ she was saying, ‘I ken what length her hair was. These are no her hands, this lassie worked, and just look at these nails! I tell you, maister, it’s some other poor lassie, and what can have happened to my mistress?’
She paused to wipe tears from her eyes. Socrates padded forward, his claws rasping on the tiled floor, to sniff at the corpse’s feet, and Maistre Pierre said,
‘Did you both see her bound to the cross?’
‘I did indeed!’ said Dame Ellen, as Meggot nodded. ‘I stood by and watched while the two lads led her over there and bound her secure. And our good doctor oversaw all.’
‘Oh, he did?’ said Gil.
‘It suited my poor brother to gie him that duty, sir. Now are you to leave us about our business? It’s a sad day enough, without unseemly arguments like this.’
Meggot drew a breath, found Gil’s eye on her and remained silent.
‘Someone must stay and watch,’ pronounced Maistre Pierre. ‘We are both married men, madame, we will not demean the dead. What has happened must be determined.’
Gil turned away for a moment, to find Lowrie still standing watching the discussion in fascination, the lengths of rope dangling from his hands.
‘Go and find those two lads, if you will, and the other servants too,’ he said. ‘Talk them through what happened to Annie after the party arrived in Glasgow, see if you can find how often they looked at her and how close they went to the Cross. Don’t mention this,’ he cautioned. ‘And here, ask them if they’d ever seen this before.’ He held out the coil of cord Maistre Pierre had removed from about the dead woman’s neck.
‘Of course,’ agreed Lowrie. Gathering up the rope he set it in a bundle on the stone bench which ran round the wall, took the cord from Gil and made for the inner courtyard. Gil turned back into the chapel, to find Meggot already working at the ties of the sacking gown, her mouth set in a determined line, while Dame Ellen was still trying to argue the point with Maistre Pierre. Joining the maidservant by the bier, he said quietly,
‘This lassie has no ash on her brow.’
‘No,’ she said shortly.
‘Is all this as you last saw it?’
She paused to look at him, her eyes glittering in the candlelight.
‘I canny mind how I left it. All I can think on’s how Annie begged us no to leave her there, to take her home and let her dee. What’s come to her, maister?’
‘You were fond of her,’ he said. She nodded, and went back to her task.
The garment she was working on was cut loosely, designed to fit almost any size of supplicant and to be easily put on by his or her attendants; it was secured down the back by linen tapes, which were now in tight knots.
‘Take a knife to them,’ Gil suggested.
‘Aye, you’re right, maister,’ she said, and paused to loosen the strings of the purse at her belt. ‘This isny how I left these, you’re right there and all. I fastened it all neat and secure, but so’s I—’ She clapped the back of her hand across her mouth, tears starting to her eyes again. ‘So as I could easy take it off her this morning,’ she finished.
Gil drew his own dagger and sawed through the first of the tapes. By the time he had dealt with all five of the knots Meggot had recovered a little and Dame Ellen had abandoned her argument.
‘What are you doing there?’ she demanded, hurrying over. ‘Have you any idea what the hire of that gown cost my brother? We’ll ha to return it to St Mungo’s in good order! That will come out your wages, my girl. Maister, I beg you no to encourage her!’
‘St Mungo’s should ha took better care o my mistress, then,’ retorted Meggot, and turned back the two sides of the gown to reveal the shift beneath it. She drew a sharp breath. ‘Oh, that settles it, it’s never Annie! This is none of our linen, I’d think black shame o mysel to send my mistress anywhere in a clout like yon. It’s not fit for a floor-cloth!’
Gil had to agree. As well as the stains from her death, which had not transferred themselves to the outer garment, the dead woman’s shift was torn and dirty, marked with sweat under the arms, and rubbed blue from a woad-dyed gown at the neckband and seams; it had probably not been washed in several months. He could not imagine any of the women he knew wearing such a garment, other than in the direst need.
‘She herself is no less ill used,’ observed Maistre Pierre. Reaching past Gil he pulled the neckband of the shift down to display a dark bruise and several scars on the thin back. ‘Her life has not been kind.’
‘Now do you see?’ demanded Meggot of Dame Ellen. She eased the gown away from the hunched shoulders, down over the rigid arm. The older woman stared at the bruises thus exposed, her expression grim. ‘I’ve never a notion who it is, but it’s no more my mistress than the Queen of Elfland.’
‘She what?’ said Canon James Henderson, Sub-Dean of St Mungo’s Cathedral. He stared at Gil over a laden table; he had been interrupted breaking his fast on smoked fish, white bread and new milk, with a dish of quince marmalade and another of raisins set by his elbow. ‘How can she be so sure? If the face is unrecognisable—’
‘A course she’s sure o’t, if she’s going by the shift,’ said the plump maidservant at his elbow. ‘There’s no a woman in Scotland wouldny ken her own linen from another’s. I’d pick your shirts out anywhere.’
‘Be silent, woman,’ ordered Canon Henderson. He broke off another piece of bread and buttered it with irritable, jerky movements. ‘I don’t like the way you keep turning up corpses – female corpses, at that – on St Mungo’s land, Gil. We’ll ha no more of them, if you don’t mind.’
Gil preserved a careful silence in the face of this injustice; there had been one other female corpse, two years since in rather different circumstances.
‘But what’s come to the lassie that was there?’ entreated the maidservant. ‘Surely St Mungo never carried her away to Paradise?’
‘Will you be quiet?’ demanded her master. ‘Where has that woman gone, Gil? What’s her name again, Annie Gibb. I could see this nonsense wi the Cross far enough, it never does them any good, and now see what’s come of it!’
‘I’ll set up a search,’ said Gil. ‘I need to let the Provost hear of this, since we’ll have to have an inquest on the dead woman, try to find a name for her, find out how she came to be at the Cross. Will I borrow some men from him, or will we use Cathedral servants to search?’
‘To search?’ Canon Henderson frowned. ‘What kind o a search did you have in mind? Rattling at doors, or looking under bushes, or searching outbuildings?’
‘All three, I’d say.’
‘Aye, you’re right, I suppose. She could be anywhere in Glasgow, and dead or alive come to that. Better see what the Provost can do, our men haveny the same powers outside St Mungo’s land.’ A child wailed, elsewhere in the house, and the Canon glanced at the maidservant and gestured at the door. ‘Away and deal wi that bairn, Kirsty, and see if you canny keep it quieter.’
‘Takes after his faither,’ retorted Kirsty with a toss of her head, but left the room with reluctance.
‘Tell me it again,’ said the Canon. ‘Annie Gibb was bound to the cross wi a new rope, and it’s been untied and tied again, you say.’ Gil nodded. ‘So someone freed her, and throttled this woman to put in her place.’ He crossed himself. ‘Wickedness! What would make anyone act that way? And her friends never saw a thing?’
‘Not till they came to untie her in the morning,’ agreed Gil. ‘It makes little sense. We’ve two problems, I think. Who is the corpse, and how did she die and come to be bound to the cross, and where is Annie Gibb and who freed her?’
‘That’s more than two,’ Henderson said fretfully. He took a draught of milk, emerging from the beaker with a white moustache. ‘Well, you sort it out, Gil. If you need folk to help you, likely some o the songmen would be glad o a change of duties. Sim and Craigie are already involved, you can ask them. And the vergers are aye useful men in a stushie, the younger ones at least, though I hope it’ll no come to that.’
‘So do I,’ agreed Gil.
‘Away and speak to the Provost. He’ll need to hear about it all, I suppose.’
‘I was looking for you to call by,’ said Maister Andrew Otterburn, depute Provost of Glasgow, waving at a stool beside his desk. Gil raised an eyebrow. ‘Aye, I’ve heard about it. Andro brought the word in earlier. Did you ever?’
‘Extraordinary business.’ Gil sat down. Socrates sprawled at his feet, grinning up at Otterburn.
‘Tell me about it, then. What have you discerned?’
‘Very little. The women have the corp stripped now. She’s much of an age with their kinswoman, thin as a lath, has probably borne at least one child so Dame Ellen says. How do they tell that?’
Otterburn glanced at him, but said only, ‘Likely some women’s knowledge. Ask at your wife, I should.’
Perhaps not, thought Gil.
‘We’ve no idea yet what killed her, unless the beating,’ he went on, ‘let alone who she is or how she came to be there. As for where Mistress Annie Gibb might have got to, that’s anyone’s guess. St Mungo’s isny best pleased about the matter.’
‘I’ll wager.’ Otterburn glanced out of the window at the cathedral towers, visible above the warm sandstone outer wall of the castle. He was a lanky man in his forties with a long gloomy face and a wry sense of humour; he was not fully appreciated in the burgh, but Gil had found him easier to work with than his predecessor. ‘Let Walter have a description of the corp—’ His clerk looked up from the end of the desk and nodded, his pen pausing in its eternal squeaking progress. ‘He’ll get her cried round the town, see if anyone’s missed her. Now tell me what you’ve found, maister, and what you’re doing about it.’
Gil obeyed, summarising the little information they had gathered so far.
‘I’ve yet to speak wi the rest of Mistress Gibb’s family or friends,’ he ended. ‘I thought you’d as soon hear about it now rather than later. Young Lowrie’s talked wi the servants, but all he’s learned so far confirms what the family says. They all arrived together, they seem to ha stayed within the hostel walls, other than Mistress Shaw’s two young kinsmen and two fellows that were sent out on an errand for the doctor and were back within the half-hour, until Mistress Gibb was led out wi the whole household, save Sir Edward and his man, to go to St Mungo’s for confession. I’ll set Lowrie to track down the bystanders from this morning and find out if they know anything, and my man Euan’s away to talk the vergers into searching St Mungo’s, but I’m not hopeful.’
‘Aye.’ Otterburn turned the sand-pot on his desk, frowning at it. ‘So the one we have was beaten till she’s beyond recognising, and slain some way we don’t know yet. Could the beating ha killed her?’
‘It might,’ said Gil cautiously. ‘Pierre found no trace of a head injury, but we won’t know for sure till she softens. There’s no sign she was stabbed or the like.’
Otterburn grunted.
‘And then she was throttled, but no till after she was dead, and then she was tied to the Cross. Why? It makes no sense! And where’s the other one got to?’
‘I’d say she was tied to the Cross first, and then throttled,’ said Gil. ‘The hair at the back of her neck was caught under the cord, but the rest hung free. And at some point the sacking gown Annie Gibb was wearing was put on her.’
‘Is it the same one?’
‘I need to check wi St Mungo’s.’
‘So is Mistress Gibb running about Glasgow in her shift? She’ll be easy enough recognised if that’s so. How mad is she? Is she a danger?’
‘Her friends say not. She seems to be melancholy rather than wood-wild. And she may well be in her shift, I got her maidservant to check and her clothes are all in the pilgrim lodging where the lassie put them last night, naught missing.’
Otterburn grunted again.
‘Give Walter her description and all. We’ll get the two o them cried through the town and see what that turns up, and you can ask at Andro for any help you need. The men should enjoy searching for a stinking lady in her shift. Have you any more to tell me?’
‘Not yet,’ admitted Gil, ‘but I’ve another question.’ He drew from his purse the coil of cord, and laid it on the Provost’s desk. ‘This is what was used to throttle the dead woman. The Shaw servants never saw it afore, so far as they can tell. Can we learn aught from it, do you think?’
‘Cord’s just cord, surely,’ said Otterburn, lifting a honey-pale loop. ‘This doesny look anything out of the ordinar.’
‘A barrel’s just a barrel,’ countered Gil, ‘but I once learned a lot about one barrel by speaking to its maker. Most craftsmen can make their own cordage if they’re put to it, but this looks like a specialist’s work. Do we have any spinners of twine and cord in the burgh?’
‘Walter?’
‘You might ask at Matt Dickson the rope-drawer, maister,’ suggested the clerk. ‘It’s mostly heavier stuff he turns out, so I believe, but he’d likely ken where that came from.’ He assessed Gil’s blank expression. ‘Away out the Thenewgate, almost at Partick. A great long shed o a place, been burned down two-three times. You canny miss it.’
Like most major offices around a great cathedral church, that of Almoner to St Mungo’s was a sinecure, a post whose holder was not expected to take more than a perfunctory interest in its duties. These were carried out by the Sub-Almoner, a depressed individual who inhabited a cramped, sour-smelling chamber up a stair in the northwest tower, surrounded by piles of neatly folded clothing and blankets. When Gil found him there, Sir Alan Jamieson was just dismissing the last of his morning’s supplicants, a surprisingly well-nourished boy of eight or nine.