‘How will you tell that?’ asked Andy, staring at her.
She smiled, but shook her head and drank some of her ale. ‘Find where the barrel is,’ she said.
‘And what about the bairns, my leddy?’ said Babb. ‘That Ursel’s right, she’s enough to do seeing to the men’s dinner without a pair of wee tykes like yon underfoot all day.’
‘I can gie her a hand getting them to bed, maybe,’ said Andy doubtfully.
‘They should be washed,’ said Alys.
‘Aye, well, that’s no happened for a while.’
‘Does any of your men have a sister or a sweetheart or the like?’ Kate asked. ‘A lassie who’d come in to help for a few days?’
Andy looked at her, chewing his lip.
‘I’ll ask,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t think they do, but. There’s only Jamesie that’s courting, and his leman’s well placed in Andrew Hamilton’s household.’
‘I could spare one of my household for a day or so,’ said Alys.
‘Besides,’ continued Andy, pursuing his own train of thought, ‘who’d direct a lassie? I’ve no notion what’s to do for a pair of bairns like that, and she’d maybe no mind Ursel.’
‘She’d mind me,’ said Kate confidently. ‘I’ll be back here after I’ve had my dinner. Babb and I can sleep here the night.’
‘I thought there would have been more argument,’ said Alys, avoiding a puddle.
‘I did too,’ said Kate from the back of her mule, ‘both about me staying at Morison’s and about this idea.’
‘Where is this Hog tavern, anyway?’ Alys wondered. ‘He said the Gallowgait, but we are nearly at the port and I have not seen it.’
‘Andy seems to know where he’s going.’ Kate nodded at the small man making his way along the busy street just ahead of them. ‘Come up, Wallace,’ she said as her mule balked at the sight of a towering cartload of kindling. Babb stepped up from behind them and seized his reins in her free hand. ‘I can get him by, Babb, give him his head.’
‘Hmf,’ said Babb, getting between the mule and the cart.
‘No, let him see it go past, or he’ll think it’s still waiting for him.’ Babb let go the reins but took hold of the animal’s bridle. He turned his head into her grasp, attempting to bite. ‘Deil take you, Babb,’ Kate exploded, ‘will you let me ride my own mule?’
‘Oh, I will, my doo,’ said Babb innocently, ‘just as soon as he’s minding you.’
‘Andy has gone up that vennel,’ said Alys over her shoulder. Wallace flicked his ears towards her voice, then suddenly decided the cart was not a threat and moved on, tugging at Babb’s grasp on his bridle, to follow Alys into the vennel. Two doors down, Andy was waiting for them under a crudely painted sign: a boar with curling white tusks.
‘Will the mule be safe here?’ said Kate doubtfully, as she became aware of curious neighbours appearing in doorways.
‘Aye, if I stay wi him,’ said Babb, helping her down. She handed over the crutches, one by one, and took hold of the bridle again. ‘You go wi Andy, Lady Kate, and be sure and mind what he says. And the same for you, mistress,’ she added sternly to Alys, who smiled quickly and followed Andy into the tavern. Kate adjusted her grip on her crutches and swung after her.
There was one crowded room. By the door, near the barrel of ale on its trestle, groups of people stood about or sat on stools or benches, discussing the day’s work in loud voices. Beyond them some were eating at a long table, and at the far end of the room a peat fire glowed in a brazier and a woman was stirring something in a big cooking-pot hung from an iron crane. The flagstone floor had not been swept that day. As the smells and voices hit her, Kate realized with some relief that there were other women in the place apart from the cook. One of them was saying, across the noise, ‘Yir tavern’s fairly coming on, Mattha. There’s the gentry come calling now.’
A grey-haired man in a tavern-keeper’s apron bustled forward from beside the big barrel, peering intently at their faces.
‘And how can I help ye, leddies?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘What’s your will of the house, then? We’ve a barrel of good ale, broached just yesterday, and a wee tait o the twice-brewed from last week, and a pot of mutton broth on the cran, wi barley and onions in’t,’ he recited, still watching them carefully. Kate, testing the manifold odours of the place, identified all these, and wondered if there were turnips in the broth as well.
‘Aye, Mattha,’ said Andy. ‘I sent the boy down no an hour ago to ask about the puncheon.’
‘Oh, aye, Andy Paterson, so ye did,’ said the other man, his suspicions obviously borne out. ‘What was it ye wanted about it?’
‘I’d like to look at it,’ said Alys, smiling at him. He looked at her blankly. ‘Was that not why you bought it? So that people would come into your tavern to see it?’
‘There you are, Mattha,’ said a bystander in jocular tones. ‘It’s fetching folk in already.’
‘It’s no much to see, mistress,’ said a man seated near Kate. ‘It’s just an ordinary barrel. No even any bloodstains.’
‘It’s my belief it’s the wrong barrel,’ said the stout woman with him. ‘It’d no be the first time Mattha Hog cried up wares he never had.’
‘It is the right barrel an all, Eppie!’ said Hog indignantly. ‘I bought it off the serjeant afore ever I left the castle this morning, and fetched it home myself on Willie Sproat’s donkey-cart. You tell her it’s the right barrel, Andy Paterson!’
‘I canny tell her that,’ said Andy reasonably, ‘till I set my own een on it. So where is it, Mattha?’
‘Aye, bring it out, Mattha,’ said the man with Eppie. ‘Let’s all hear what he has to say.’
Kate, standing back on her crutches, watched as the barrel was handled out from behind the trestle. The bystanders fell silent, though the noise in the room was not much diminished. Andy bent to look at the marks on the staves, muttering names to himself, and then took the barrel-head from Hog and tilted it to the light from the door.
‘Well?’ demanded its owner.
‘Oh, aye,’ said Andy sourly. ‘It’s the same puncheon I opened yesterday morn. Ye can see where I set the hook to the withies.’
‘It was you that opened it?’ said a younger woman hopefully. ‘And what all was in it? Was it a Saracen’s head? And is that right there was treasure?’
The last word fell into a break in the noise, and heads turned. Kate, watching, had a glimpse of a face on the edge of her vision which seemed to be familiar, but when she looked round the room she could not see it.
‘What was in here,’ said Andy, ‘all went up to the castle. The Sheriff kens all.’
‘Aye, right,’ said someone else, with irony.
There was general laughter, and Hog said, ‘Is that it, then? You’ve seen it, lassie. Can I put it by now?’
‘In a moment,’ said Alys. She opened her purse, at which Hog looked hopeful, but all she drew out was a white cloth, which she unwrapped to disclose a small flask.
‘What’s that?’ demanded Hog, all his suspicion returned. ‘It’s no holy water, is it?’
‘No, no,’ said Alys soothingly, and drew the stopper. ‘Only well-water.’ She tilted the flask so that water ran on to the cloth, then bent over the puncheon as Andy had done.
‘What are you doing now?’ said Hog, alarmed, ‘I’m no wanting it washed!’ He tried to pull the barrel away, but Andy prevented him with a firm grip of the rim.
‘What are you after, mistress?’ asked the man with Eppie. ‘Is it bloodstains you’re looking for?’
Alys, intent on her work, did not answer him.
‘Gold dust, likely,’ offered the girl who had asked about treasure.
‘What, on the outside?’ said someone else.
Kate, looking about the room again, found the bystanders had shifted. The familiar face was still hidden, but this time she could see the back of its owner’s shaggy, sandy head, the shoulders hunched uncomfortably away from her where he sat at the long table. Who, she wondered, was Billy Walker talking to in this tavern? She turned carefully, so that she could keep an unobtrusive watch in that direction, but a squat man in a patched red doublet kept getting in her way and all she could establish was that it was someone large, wrapped in a dark cloak despite being seated close to the fire.