‘He’d a temper,’ said Matt from further down the table. Gil looked at him. ‘Veitch.’
‘He’s right, you ken,’ said Maggie doubtfully. ‘I mind you and him fighting, Maister Gil. I’ve no knowledge o this man Elder — did I hear he was an Ayrshire man, from whatever port John sails out of?’
‘That would be the accent,’ Gil agreed.
‘They’re saying he’s her sweetheart home from sea,’ contributed Tam from opposite Matt. ‘And he’s driven off this giant wi the bloody sword that was haunting the wynd where she dwells.’
‘Certainly,’ said Gil, ‘I’d believe he was wee Frankie’s father.’ He looked at Alys. ‘Just like that romance we thought of. She’s even named the child for him, if Rankin is a by-name for Francis the way it usually is.’
‘Is that right!’ said Maggie. ‘I aye thought it wasny the Deacon.’
‘Maister Gil,’ said Matt. ‘The woman Chisholm.’
‘I found her,’ said Gil, ‘but she’s no a Chisholm, she’s a Dodd.’
‘Oh, her,’ said Patey ‘My sister Jessie and her waiting-woman is gossips. Thinks gey well o herself, she does.’
‘Chisholm, Dodd. One of they names,’ said Matt, spooning yesterday’s kale.
‘A Dodd? Is that Ellen Dodd?’ said Maggie sharply. ‘Dwells off the Drygate?’ Gil nodded. ‘Well, well. Thomas Agnew’s mistress, is she? No wonder she puts on airs. Her and her jewels.’ She spread one large red hand and looked at it. ‘If I’d gone that road, nae doubt I’d have jewels and all.’
‘You have treasure in Heaven, Maggie,’ said Dorothea softly.
Maggie sniffed. ‘Aye, very like. But I’ll have a word to say to Jennet Clark, so I will, letting her sit in at her hearth talking as if she’s a married woman.’
When the meal was ended, the table cleared, the men retired to the kitchen with Maggie, and the family gathered round the hearth, Dorothea and Alys looked at one another. Dorothea nodded slightly, and Alys turned to Gil.
‘Gil,’ she said formally, ‘Tib has something to say to you. Will you hear her?’
Assuming the well-worn phrase meant an apology of some kind, Gil grimaced, but nodded, and she slipped from the hall.
‘Did you tell Kate?’ Gil asked Dorothea.
‘I did, and stayed with her a while,’ agreed his sister. ‘She’s fair grieved to think Tib met the laddie under her roof, but I think that can’t be right.’
‘Surely not,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Perhaps in the market, or about the burgh?’
‘She’s known him most of her life,’ Gil pointed out, ‘and so has Kate. None of us could ha guessed they’d — ’ He stopped, biting off the words.
‘Bed one another,’ supplied Dorothea bluntly, just as Alys returned hand-in-hand with Tib. There seemed to be a new understanding between the two girls; Gil glanced at Dorothea, who smiled encouragingly. Maistre Pierre strolled casually to the far side of the room, and fell into contemplation of the little altarpiece in David Cunningham’s small oratory where master secretary Herbert was already engrossed in copying out a document. Tib let go of Alys and came forward to where Gil stood by the hearth. Stiff-necked, she went down on one knee and whispered uncomfortably,
‘My brother, I acknowledge that I have behaved badly, and I ask your pardon.’
Embarrassed and astonished, he stared at her. Although she had obviously spent the morning weeping, behind the puffiness her eyes were hot with anger. The formal apology was costing her dear. Nor, it occurred to him, had she expressed any sort of contrition. She had said just enough to allow him to answer her without loss of dignity as nominal head of the family, a consideration which meant nothing to him but a great deal to Alys.
Across the hearth Dorothea cleared her throat meaningfully, and he realized that he was still staring at Tib, who was beginning to look apprehensive.
‘Oh, get up, Tib,’ he said, putting his hand out to her. ‘That was well done. Do it again for the old man and we may dig you out of the pit yet.’
She scrambled to her feet, acknowledging his comment with a wry look, accepted his kiss and said, ‘Aye, but there’s more, Gil.’ Alys came forward to stand beside her, and she looked along her shoulder at the other girl. ‘Alys thinks I might have something useful to tell you.’
There was a muffled exclamation, and Maistre Pierre swung round from his study of the little Annunciation scene. Gil stared at his sister in dismay, and after a moment she looked down, fidgeting with one foot.
‘I never thought, till the day,’ she admitted. ‘And how could I ha told you if I had?’
‘I suppose that’s true,’ said Gil fairly. ‘Go on.’
‘When I was — when I — ’ She swallowed, straightened up, and began again in the middle of the tale. ‘I went to the back gate of the bedehouse and waited for M-Michael to let me in.’ Gil nodded. ‘I had a light, but I held it low. There was somebody else moving about the Stablegreen, wi no light, or maybe a shut-lantern. I saw nothing, but I could hear movement.’
‘Could it have been an animal?’ Gil asked. ‘A goat, maybe? A pig?’
She shook her head.
‘It was bigger than that. It could ha been Finn mac Cool,’ she said, with a sort of inverted bravado. ‘I was that feart, and Michael took for ever to come to the gate, and someone had left a great cart by the wall that I walked into and bruised my hip. I tell you, Gil, by the time I got through the gate and into the light I was near screaming.’
‘A cart,’ he said. Alys nodded; beyond the hearth Dorothea turned and moved to the settle. ‘What kind of cart, Tib?’
‘One of those handcarts. Two wheels and two handles.’
‘And two legs at one end to hold it steady when it’s not being pushed along,’ he said, and met Maistre Pierre’s eyes across the room. ‘What like was it, Tib? Did you see what colour it was?’
‘Colour? By lantern-light? It was dark-coloured,’ she said rather sharply, ‘that’s all I can tell you, and there was a fancy pattern on the end bit between the handles, done in light paint.’
‘But no name or sign of who it belonged to?’ She shook her head. ‘Could you draw me the pattern?’
‘Likely.’
‘Tib, was the cart empty?’
She swallowed hard. ‘No, it wasny. There was a kind of big dark bundle tied on it wi a rope. Was — was that the dead man, Gil?’
‘You tell me,’ he said. ‘Was it big enough to be a body?’
‘It could have been,’ she said, and swallowed again. ‘If he was maybe curled up.’ She bent her head and whispered something he did not catch.
‘Oh, no, Our Lady be praised you did not look closer!’ said Alys, putting an arm round her. ‘Who knows what might have happened?’
‘Amen to that,’ said Gil.
There was a pause, and then Tib looked up in consternation. ‘Yo u’re saying it was whoever killed him that I heard moving about out on the Stablegreen? So I was right to be feart?’
‘Likely it was,’ agreed Gil. Across the room Maistre Pierre met his gaze again, and reached for his cloak. As his friend’s footsteps diminished down the stair to the front door, Gil continued, ‘Tib, thank you for telling me this. I’d ha thought of asking you sooner or later, I’ve no doubt, but you’ve saved us some time.’
‘Aye, well. You haveny gone into the speech about See what happens when a lassie misbehaves,’ she said. ‘I’m grateful for that, Gil.’
‘Can you add anything else?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘I’ve thought and thought, but I don’t recall any more.’
‘The gate was locked, was it? And you left it locked again?’
‘Oh, the gate. Aye, it was locked fast, and M-Michael took the time to secure it again, though I was trying to pull him away to come into the light. And in the morning …’ She paused, thinking it through. ‘Aye, it was still locked in the morning.’
‘What about lights in the bedehouse? Movement?’
‘I wasny attending,’ she said, with one of her wry looks, and suddenly blushed scarlet. Then, just as suddenly and to her own obvious embarrassment, she began to cry. ‘Oh, Michael! Oh, Alys, when will I see him again?’