The Merchant's Mark (13 page)

‘It was at a dyer’s yard,’ corrected Kate.

Alys nodded. ‘Yes, unfortunately, we can’t be sure it was the same one.’

‘It’s a coincidence, if it’s no the same barrel,’ said Andy.

‘And my father always says he does not believe in coincidence.’ Alys looked thoughtfully at the stained cloth. ‘But even if it’s the same barrel, we are very little
forward.’

‘How?’ said Andy.

‘That barrel must have been at the dye-yard on Tuesday night,’ said Alys, ‘but it could have been put on the cart at any time before that.’

‘Or after it reached the yard,’ Kate supplied.

‘We could have guessed that already,’ said Andy. Alys nodded, and folded the cloth again.

‘You mean all that was for nothing?’ said Babb. ‘And my leddy cast on the floor and her stick chopped in two, just for something we kent before?’

‘There’s one thing more,’ said Kate. They looked at her where she sat enthroned on the kitchen settle, even Ursel turning from the cooking-pots she was scouring. ‘Billy
Walker was in the tavern –’

‘I was that sure I saw him!’ said Andy.

‘Aye, and I did and all,’ said Babb, ‘when he pushed out of the door, just afore you came out, mistress, to tell me my leddy needed me.’

‘The cheek of him!’ said Ursel.

‘Talking,’ Kate continued over them. ‘Talking to a big man in a dark cloak. Billy was trying to hide his face, but I knew him. The other one was a stranger, but I got a look at
him.’ She stopped, thinking of the leering smile, and bit her lip. ‘I think I’d know him again,’ she added. ‘I never saw a weapon. I suppose he had it hidden under his
cloak.’

‘It was him had the axe,’ said Babb, ‘for he followed Billy out the tavern. A big man in a dark cloak, as my leddy says. I never paid any mind to him, since he was a stranger,
but I seen the axe, for it was in his hand, and he raised it up and kissed the flat o the blade. It wasn’t under his cloak then,’ she added darkly.

‘Kissed
it?’ repeated Alys. Babb nodded, and Kate felt a shiver down her spine again.

‘But why did they knock her down?’ asked Ursel. ‘Was it that crowded?’

‘There was room and to spare,’ said Andy witheringly ‘He aye was a clumsy –’

‘It was no accident,’ said Alys, ‘for I saw. There was room to get by, as Andy says, though maybe not to spare. Billy pushed her quite deliberately. The other man went by just
after him, and I suppose struck at her crutch as he went past.’

‘Out of spite,’ said Babb, ‘the nasty creature.’

‘Not only spite,’ said Kate thoughtfully, ‘for if I did anything, falling on that poor man, I provided a diversion.’

‘A what?’

‘So they could get away unchallenged,’ said Alys. Kate nodded. ‘So it was important they get away!’

‘But who was it Billy Walker was talking to?’ asked Ursel.

‘Some broken man, likely,’ said Andy. ‘Who else would have a weapon like that in a Gallowgait tavern?’

‘Would the serjeant know him?’ Kate asked.

‘Him?’ said Andy witheringly ‘Forbye he’s a friend of Mattha Hog’s.’ Kate understood this to be a dismissal of her suggestion. ‘No, I don’t see
that we can find the man, and I don’t see that it’s any of our worry. We can give thanks Lady Kate’s taken no hurt, and put the matter by. I’ve enough to look to, my leddy,
mistress, wi keeping this place orderly for my maister.’ He tossed back the last of his ale and rose. ‘And I better go and see what the men are at.’

As the door closed behind him, the four women looked at each other.

‘Now,’ said Alys, with an air of rolling up her sleeves, ‘we have work to do. Lady Kate will stay here tonight, Ursel, and Babb and Jennet will have an eye to the bairns until
Andy can find a nursemaid for them.’

‘Andy find them a nourice?’ repeated Ursel doubtfully. ‘He found the last two, mistress. They couldny deal with the bairns. They’re orra bairns,’ she said lovingly.
‘The wee one’s so sharp she’ll cut herself, and Wynliane’s a poor wee thing, but I’ve never found them any trouble. It’s my belief they want a grown woman to
mind them, no some bit lassie wi no sense.’

‘That’s a good word,’ said Babb.

‘Could you no help us yoursel, mistress? Does maybe someone in your household ken a woman looking for a place?’

‘I will ask,’ Alys promised. ‘But for now, Babb and I need to make up a bed for Kate.’

Ursel bit her lip and turned away from the pots, drying her hands on her apron.

‘You’ll no want to get up the stair to the sleeping chambers, my leddy,’ she said, considering the matter. ‘There’s a truckle bed under my maister’s great
best bed, in the chamber next the hall, but I’ve no notion what the strapping’s like, it’s that long since either was slept in.’

‘We can sort the strapping,’ pronounced Babb confidently.

Ursel nodded, and turned to Alys. ‘I’ll show ye where the linen’s kept, mistress, but it’s no in very good order either. I’ve done my best, but I’ve as much
to do keeping the kitchen, and none of the other women would stay, with no mistress about the place.’

‘Indeed, you keep a good kitchen,’ said Alys, looking about the well-ordered room. ‘Come and we will see what can be done.’

Kate, left alone by the fireside, leaned back on the settle and closed her eyes.

She remembered Augie Morison as a friend of her brothers, an awkward fair boy who would wait for a struggling small girl on two sticks while the others, even Gil her favourite brother, ran
ahead. He seldom spoke to her, but hovered nearby, making certain she could manage rough ground without help, or finding an easier path to take. At the time, she recalled, this had made her very
angry, but curiously she had been just as angry when she heard he had married Agnes Cowan and settled in Glasgow. It was very strange now to be sitting stranded in his house in his absence.

Gil had passed on his message of sympathy before he left. That was like the boy she remembered, to think of her problems in the midst of his own. And surely he had problems enough, she thought,
before ever they opened that accursed barrel. This bleak, ill-kept house, the ungoverned children, the thieving servant – he needs a housekeeper, she thought.

‘The lady’s sleepin’,’ said a little voice. She opened her eyes, and found the little girls standing in front of her hand in hand, completely naked and dripping wet. The
older one peeped at her with one eye from behind the elf-locks, but the younger was surveying her with that direct scowl. A trail of wet footprints led across the flagstones to the stair.

‘Jennet will be looking for you to dry you. Why are you two poppets not in bed?’ she asked them.

Ysonde shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Why are you sitting in Ursel’s kitchen?’

‘Because I canny walk about.’

‘How not? Did the man with the axe cut off your leg?’ enquired Ysonde with interest.

Kate bit back her first response. These children, like their father, had problems enough. No need to leave them with the seeds of bad dreams.

‘No,’ she said. ‘He broke my crutch, but he never touched my leg.’

‘Why can you no walk about, then?’

‘My leg doesn’t work.’

‘How not?’

‘When I was Wynliane’s age,’ she said patiently, ‘I was sick with a fever, and after I got better my leg never worked any more.’

They both stared at her, Ysonde with a sceptical air. After a moment Kate drew up her tawny woollen skirts and displayed both legs, the left one sound and muscular in a striped stocking and
stout leather shoe, the right one shrivelled and shortened below the knee, the curled foot encased in its soft slipper.

‘You’ve got odd stockings,’ said Ysonde. But Wynliane, letting go her sister’s hand, leaned forward to stroke the white knitted stocking on Kate’s right leg, with
gentle, wet fingers. Her lips moved soundlessly. Ysonde looked at her, and then at Kate.

‘Wynliane wants it to get better,’ she said.

‘Oh, my poppets,’ said Kate, and tears sprang to her eyes. ‘If anything could mend it, I think that would.’

Footsteps on the stair down from the main house made her hastily rearrange her skirts, but only heralded the arrival of a flustered Jennet.

‘There you are, you wild bairns!’ she exclaimed. ‘Come and be dried before you catch your deaths! I’m sorry for this, mem, I turned my back a moment to find them clean
shifts and they were away. Come back up, the pair of you.’

‘No,’ said Ysonde.

‘Do as you’re bid, now,’ said Jennet, trying to get hold of their hands. Wynliane allowed herself to be captured, but Ysonde squirmed out of reach.

‘Talkin’ to the lady,’ she said indignantly.

‘You can talk to Lady Kate the morn,’ said Jennet, ‘for she’ll be here then and all.’

Ysonde looked searchingly at Kate. ‘Will you?’

‘Yes, I will,’ said Kate. ‘Go with Jennet now. Maybe she’ll tell you a story, if you go to bed quickly.’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Jennet. ‘A’body needs a story once they’re in their bed.’

The child stared at Kate a moment, lower lip stuck out; then she looked consideringly at Jennet, sighed heavily and offered her hand to be led away.

‘And ask Lady Kate for her blessing,’ prompted Jennet, ‘like good wee lassies.’

Kate, taken aback, recalled her own nurse giving her the same order before carrying her up the wheel stair to the chamber she shared with her sisters. She had a moment’s panic as she tried
to recall the blessing her mother had used, and then found her hand raised to make the sign of the Cross and the words coming readily to her tongue.

‘Christ and His blessed mother guard your sleep, my poppets.’

‘Amen,’ said Jennet firmly, and led the children away.

‘The linen is of the best quality,’ said Alys, ‘but it has been neglected. We found a pair of sheets fit for use, and good blankets, and you should be
comfortable enough here.’

‘I should say so,’ agreed Kate. ‘We’ve shared worse, Babb and I.’

‘And I tightened the strapping,’ said Babb. ‘Sagging to the floor, it was.’ She prodded the pile of blankets on the truckle bed and it creaked in a satisfactory way.

‘You would hardly have slept in the great bed,’ said Alys, ‘but it must be cleaned before anyone does, or they will choke on the dust.’

They were in the chamber next the hall, at the head of the short stair down into the stone kitchen wing. Maister Morison’s best bed stood against one wall, imposing in a set of very dusty
hangings of dark blue dornick. Two plate-cupboards, bare and equally dusty, occupied two other walls; the plate was presumably locked in the iron-strapped kist at the foot of the bed which
completed the major furnishings of the chamber. Several stools had been rounded up and set aside, and the truckle bed drawn out and made up on the inmost side of the room, away from the window.

‘The moon’s well past the full,’ continued Alys, ‘but I thought best to keep you out of its light just the same. You must be very weary, and it might keep you
awake.’

‘At least I have my other crutches now,’ said Kate.

Babb snorted. ‘The laddie took his time about getting back wi them. As for that Matt, down here speiring how you were –’

‘My uncle will have sent him,’ said Kate.

‘Aye, very likely. But coming in here, looking about him and going away with never a word,’ said Babb indignantly, ‘was that not just like him, my leddy?’

‘I must go home,’ said Alys. ‘I will come back tomorrow, and we will consider what to do next.’

‘About what, exactly?’ asked Kate. Their eyes met, and Alys nodded.

‘There are many different problems,’ she acknowledged. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow,’ agreed Kate.

Lying awake in the dark, listening to Ursel’s snores from the upper floor and Babb’s quiet breathing at her back, Kate found the problems crowded in on her without
waiting for the morrow. They tangled round her like ropes, and whenever she tried to pick at one, another tightened its grip. She could not bear to think about her experience this morning, of the
end to her hopes of a miracle or the bitter flavour left by the words of the man in her dream, but if there was to be no miracle, what of the other things which had happened in this very long day
and which somehow demanded her attention? Here in Maister Morison’s own house, it seemed impossible not to help him in his difficulties, but what could she do, thumping about on two sticks or
carried up stairs by her muscular servant, that could not be done faster and better by another? Would he wish to be helped, or was it simply meddling?

The house itself, neglected for two years by a dwindling succession of careless servants, cheerless and disordered, begged to be put right. It needed willing workers and someone to direct them.
As for the two little girls – the older one, whatever was wrong with her, had a sweet face and seemed to have the nature to match. Her sister, on the other hand, reminded Kate of a nest of
wild kittens she and Tib had once found. The mother was a house cat, not a wildcat of the woods, but she had reared the kits away from people, and they were fierce and furious, with no smatch of
timidity in them, spitting and lashing out with sharp little claws at a grasping hand.

She smiled into the dark, thinking of what had happened after Alys left. Not yet ready to sleep, Kate had taken herself into the hall again, to look at the jumble of dusty instruments in the
corner. A lute with five broken strings lay on top of a harp-case, two recorders had rolled against the panelling, and under all was a painted box. Babb, with much argument, had dragged this out
and set it on a small table for her, and she had opened the lid. As she had suspected, it contained a set of monocords, the dark keys and brass wires dull with disuse but clean inside their case.
She opened out the folding prop for the music.

‘Now, my doo, that’s none of yours,’ Babb had protested. Ignoring her, Kate pressed one or two of the boxwood keys. To her surprise, the little instrument was out of tune but
otherwise in good order.

‘It’s a good set,’ she said, reaching for the tuning-key in its slot at the side of the lid. ‘It’s not been touched for a while.’

‘No, and you shouldn’t be touching it,’ grumbled Babb. ‘It’s time you were in your bed, my doo.’