Fortified by a slab of bread and cold meat and a handful of raisins, Gil went back out across the Red Brig. Some enquiry took him to Duncan Niven’s house by the dyer’s yard; it proved to be a neat timber cottage down a vennel, where hens picked around the midden and a stout woman in a crisp white headdress and huge dye-splashed linen apron was sweeping the flagstones before the door. She glanced up at him curiously and bobbed a curtsy as he came down the vennel.
‘Good day, mistress,’ he said, raising his hat. ‘I’m seeking Duncan Niven’s house.’
‘And you’ve found it, sir,’ she said civilly, taking a closer look at him under well-groomed eyebrows. ‘What can we do for you, then? Was it a lodging you was wanting?’
‘No, I’m suited, thanks, but I’m hoping to find someone that did lodge here. A Mistress Ross, from Dunblane.’
Her intent look persisted. ‘What might you be wanting wi her?’ she asked, propping the broom against the house wall.
‘I’ve some questions for her, about Canon Drummond that brought her here.’
He waited, while a sequence of expressions chased across her face: surprise, interest, irritation at the mention of the Canon. Finally, confirming his growing suspicions, she said, ‘Well, ask away, maister. I’m Kate Ross, that was waiting-woman to Nan Chalmers, Christ assoil her. You’re lucky to find me — I’ve stayed on here, where I’m suited and Mistress Niven too, to lend a wee hand wi the house for a while, but I’ll go the morn’s morn to a new situation.’ She lifted the besom, and turned to the house door. ‘Will you come within, sir, and take a seat, and we can talk in comfort.’
Seated by the house door, her apron discarded to reveal a good gown of checked wool, she served him Mistress Niven’s ale and answered his questions. It quickly became clear that she needed to talk, as several years’ observation of Drummond’s treatment of her mistress spilled over and swamped him in a wash of rising resentment. He listened carefully, trying to retain as much as possible to share with Alys later; he was aware that she was much better at this sort of conversation than he was. Nevertheless, with two married sisters and five years’ practice at law, he had some grasp of the reality of human relationships. That shared by Andrew Drummond and his mistress had not been uniformly sweet, but he suspected it had not been as sour as Mistress Ross conveyed.
‘He would have no singing in the house,’ she was saying. ‘Not even a servant lassie singing at her work. It’s a strange thing, maister, how you never notice them singing until you’ve to prevent them doing it.’
‘No music at all?’ said Gil.
‘Oh, he’d to hear my mistress harping whenever he visited. Right fond of listening to the harp, he was. I’ve no notion where it went, either, that harp,’ she added, frowning. ‘By rights it should ha gone to wee Annie. But he’d have never a note of singing. She aye said it was the cost o her good life, but I’m no so certain it was a good life.’
‘Tell me more about Canon Drummond,’ he invited.
She snorted. ‘Canon, he calls himsel! No much of a priest, that one. Forbye his having my mistress in his keeping, and getting three bairns on her, may Our Lady receive her into grace,’ she paused to dab her eyes with the long ends of the fine linen kerchief on her head, ‘he was well acquaint wi the rest o the seven sins.’ Gil cocked an eyebrow at her across his empty beaker, and she wiped her eyes again and elaborated. ‘I never kent such a man for envying his fellow mortals. All his conversation was how this or that one about the Cathedral had been honoured above him, or the vote had gone against him at Chapter, or Bishop Chisholm had snubbed him. My poor mistress had her work to do keeping him sweet-tempered, and times it defeated even her to turn his thoughts to a Christian frame of mind.’
‘Lust, envy, pride,’ said Gil, counting off the sins she had identified.
‘Anger,’ she agreed, nodding so that the damp ends of her kerchief swung. ‘If he disliked aught you’d done or thought he’d been disobeyed he’d go all quiet, wi a voice like ice down your back, and nothing for it but to undo what had angered him and apologize.’
‘That’s four out of the seven,’ said Gil.
‘Aye, and him a priest.’ She shook her head. ‘And the way he treats those bairns — see, wee James would make a bonnie singer if he’s ever taught right, and the lassie, Annie, would aye sing at her play the way a bairn will, and if he heard them he’d call them afore him in a rage and though he’d never lay a finger on them, just talk at them wi that same voice like ice, they were both feart of his temper. I saw the laddie wet himsel one time his father was chastising him.’
Gil frowned, trying to reconcile this image of Andrew Drummond with the others he had received. It did not seem to fit.
‘When I saw him in Dunblane the other day — ’ he began.
‘And that’s another thing,’ Mistress Ross pursued. ‘He brought the bairns here, would have me accompany them, then paid me off, and he’s away back to Dunblane and left me here. He never asked if it would suit me to be set down in Perth wi no employment, nor gave me the gown and velvet headdress my mistress left me in her will.’
Could this be the crux of her resentment? Gil wondered.
‘He seems to have slipped into a great melancholy since he was here in Perth,’ he continued. ‘Is that like him, would you say?’
She gazed at him, arrested for a moment, then leaned forward and poured more ale for both of them while she thought about this.
‘I’d never ha said so,’ she pronounced. ‘I’d ha thought it more like him to fly in one of those quiet rages and take it out on those round him. But there’s no saying how a man will react to a great loss, and when all’s said he was right fond o my mistress, however ill he treated her. None of your great romantic passions like in the ballads,’ she qualified, ‘but you’d only to see him smile at her, and the way he wept the night she — ’ She broke off, and turned her head away. It was clear she had loved her mistress too.
‘Did he speak to you before he left the Blackfriars?’ Gil asked.
‘Aye, he was here that evening. He came to let me know he’d be away and leaving me here, and that they’d cease to carry my food here after that night’s supper.’ She faced him again, a sour smile on her lips. ‘We’d plainer fare to eat after that, I can tell you, maister. The friars keep a high diet, poverty or no poverty. And Jennet — Mistress Niven — swears they went off wi two of her good dishes instead of their own when they collected the last ones.’
‘What time would that be, that the Canon was here that evening?’
‘About the time Niven came home from the dyer’s yard,’ she said promptly, ‘for he passed him in the vennel there.’
‘And what time would that be?’ he persisted. She paused to consider.
‘Niven was late that evening,’ she said at length. ‘Jennet was home afore him, on account of wishing to see to his supper and her tasks was finished. She works at the dyeyard and all,’ she explained. ‘She was in at maybe her usual time, and she’d got the stewpot on the fire and simmering, for the Canon made mention of how good the smell was. She was right gratified, till he turned round and gave me my place wi no notice.’
‘So that was an hour or so after she got home?’ Gil hazarded, with a glance at the peat fire in the centre of the room.
‘Aye, likely,’ she agreed, in a tone which left him disinclined to rely on the fact. ‘What’s your interest in Drummond, maister? What’s it to you when I last set eyes on him?’
‘I’m tracking this man that’s missing,’ he explained, ‘the Bishop’s secretary, and it seems as if Canon Drummond was the last to speak wi him. He was alone when he came here?’
‘Oh, aye.’ She hesitated, then went on, ‘Maybe that would account for his mood, if he spoke to a man that’s disappeared.’ Gil made an encouraging noise, and she gave him a reluctant glance. ‘I’ve no liking for clypes, maister, but — ’ She closed her mouth tightly, stared at the two pewter dishes on the plate-cupboard for a moment, then began again. ‘There was one of the songmen at Dunblane that just up and vanished one day a month or so back, they’ve never got to the bottom of it and folk were saying it was the Deil flew off wi him, though why — I’d spoken wi the man mysel a time or two, and one of my cousins is in Bishop Chisholm’s household and knew him to be a decent body, you’d never take him for a man the Deil would — though they tell us any of us is wicked sinner enough — ’ She broke off this muddled utterance and drew a breath. ‘The Canon was right satisfied about it.’