‘We!’ she said furiously. ‘Why we? Why must you always be meddling in my life? Just because you’re settled down with a perfect French shrew of a housewife — ’
‘She’s nothing of the sort!’
‘I heard her yesterday biting your head off for nothing,’ said Tib triumphantly ‘and scolding at the servants when your back was turned. I wish you joy of her, Gil — ’
‘Alys is on edge about the marriage,’ said Gil defensively quelling the surge of anxiety her words set off, ‘and she’s organizing the feast herself. You try that and see what it does to your temper, madam!’
The incident she referred to had dismayed him badly. The clever, competent girl he admired and worshipped seemed to have vanished in the past weeks, to be replaced by a distracted snappish individual who drove the servants and herself unmercifully. The household, taking its tone from Alys’s aged French duenna, kept its collective head down and smiled tolerantly behind her back. Gil himself had escaped the worst of her wrath, had in fact been able to soothe her, until the previous afternoon when a chance remark in support of one of the maidservants had brought the skies down on his head. He had backed off in dismay, and his sister Kate, also visiting the mason’s house in the High Street, had drawn Alys to her side, asking about music for the feast, but the disagreement had not been resolved.
‘A perfect shrew,’ Tib repeated now, ‘so Kate and me and everyone else is to be boxed up and tidied away out of sight — ’
‘My marriage has nothing to do with it!’ he began.
‘Then why did we never hear a word of this till after it was arranged?’
‘Why did I never hear a word of you not being content till now?’
‘Nobody asked me!’ she flashed. ‘And you needny bother yourself, I’ll see to my own future and no need for meddling from a lot of old women!’
She slammed her empty bowl down on the tray with such force that the wood split, and flounced off to the kitchen stairs. Gil finished his own porridge, rather grimly, set his bowl on the floor for the dog to lick and went up to put his boots on. Like their uncle the Official, Canon David Cunningham, senior judge of the diocese, he had documents of his own to see to over in the Consistory tower, but first he would go down to speak to Alys.
In his attic chamber, he kicked off the heel-less shoes he wore about the house and sat down on his narrow bed, aware of the strapping creaking under him. He lifted one boot from the kist at the bed-foot, but paused, staring at the small image before which he had said his prayers earlier. St Giles looked enigmatically back at him, his pet doe leaping at his side. Sweet St Giles, he thought, help me to mend this quarrel with Alys.
It had flared up very quickly. Alys had asked Kittock for a piece of paper with the menu for some part of the marriage feast on it, and scolded furiously when Kittock admitted it was mislaid. Gil had lost track of Alys’s plans long since, but was dimly conscious that there were to be several instalments of the feast, over three or even four days, with different groups of friends and family invited. He had said, half joking, ‘Does it matter, sweetheart? Will anyone notice, if there’s one meal the less?’
Kittock’s expression had frozen, and Alys had turned on him, scarlet-faced, brown eyes sparking dangerously, and upbraided him in a torrent of wrathful French.
‘Of course it matters! Your status and ours matter. I’m working all the hours there are so our marriage can be celebrated appropriately, at least you could be grateful, instead of trying to undermine me with my own household!’
‘Alys!’ he had said, astonished. ‘Sweetheart, I am grateful, and I’m amazed at what you’re doing, but I don’t — I’m not trying to — ’
‘Then keep out of my business!’ she said sharply. ‘Let me manage things my own way.’
‘It seems to me,’ he began unwisely, and attempted to put his arms round her, ‘as if you’re doing too much. You’ll be exhausted — ’
‘Just leave me alone,’ she ordered, and stuck her elbows out so that one dug into his stomach. ‘I’ve enough to do here without you getting in my way.’
Appalled, he had backed away, and found both Alys’s duenna Catherine and his sister Kate trying to catch his eye with identical warning expressions. Kate had managed to change the subject to the music for the feast, and he had made his escape. Stout Kittock found him before he reached the house door.
‘Never mind her, Maister Gil,’ she had said comfortably. ‘She’s set herself far too much to oversee, but there’s nothing even the maister can do to stop her when she gets like this, so never worry. She’ll be fine once it’s all over. Or once you’re all over,’ she added, nudging him and winking broadly. He had managed a smile, and got himself out of the house somehow.
Sweet St Giles, he thought again. Grant me wisdom to manage this girl. I love her, I admire her, I want only her happiness. Help us both to make a good marriage. Help us both to make it to the wedding.
The image seemed to stir, the painted face to flicker in a smile. At his side the candle flame leapt again in the draught from the window, where the grey light was growing. He bent to pull on the first boot, wondering why it was that when Tib shouted at him he shouted back, but when Alys snapped he was horrified.
Down the wet High Street, past lit windows and dripping eaves, he turned in at the tunnel-like pend which led to the courtyard of the mason’s large stone house. Overhead, heavy feet tramped on the floorboards of the room above the entry, and a burst of raucous song and a smell of linseed oil told him that the painters were still at work. The courtyard itself was empty, though two paint-splashed ladders and a plank lay at the foot of the stair-tower in the near corner. Socrates bounded ahead across the shining flagstones to the main door, which opened as Gil climbed the fore-stair. The dog sprang in, tail waving.
‘Gil,’ said Alys. She acknowledged the dog’s greeting, then drew his master in, helped him unwrap his wet plaid, and stepped into his embrace, slipping her arms round him under his furred gown. ‘Gil, I am sorry,’ she said into his collarbone. ‘You are a passynge good knyght and the best that euer I found and I did wrong to shout at you.’
‘I’m marrying a shrew,’ he said teasingly, in the French they used when they were together. Then as she tensed in his grasp, ‘I’m sorry too, that I angered you, sweetheart. What is it?’ he asked, feeling her draw back slightly. She shook her head, not looking up at him. ‘Alys, what is wrong?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head again, and freed one hand to rub at her eyes. ‘But the painters say they need another week, and we still have to furnish our lodging, and the apothecary has no more rose petals or ginger, and we’ve run out of braid to trim my gown with, and everything’s going wrong. Where has the dog gone?’
He held her away from him and looked at her, a slender girl in a mended gown of blue woollen, her honey-coloured hair dragged back out of the way, her face pinched with distress so that the high thin bridge of her nose stood up like a razor.
‘Likely down to the kitchen, to find Nancy and the bairn. Is he well?’
‘John?’ She blinked distractedly, and gave him a brief smile. ‘Yes, he is well. He said my name this morning.’
‘Good. Alys, rose petals and ginger you can manage without, a housekeeper like you,’ he said firmly, ‘and I can’t advise you about the braid. Ask Kate, or use ribbons, or something. Whatever you wear, you’ll be the loveliest woman in Glasgow. Come and sit down, sweetheart, and tell me about the painters.’
‘You make it sound so trivial,’ she said, following him into the hall. The household’s breakfast was long over, and the great trestle table had been taken down and the board propped in its daytime place against the wall.