A Chorus of Innocents (5 page)

It was a nuisance that Poppy Burn was at Widdrington and not here, thought Elizabeth. Blast the woman for taking it into her head to ride away. It gave a perfect opportunity for all the clacking nasty tongues to work.

Looking at the problem from a man's point of view, Elizabeth had to admit that the killers would have had an easy job of it if they had had Poppy's help—and it was very difficult to show she hadn't helped them. Elizabeth was sure she hadn't, but who could be certain of anything like that? The bruises and the state of her showed it had been rape, but a man might say she was willing to start with, and then changed her mind and it wasn't his fault if he couldn't stop.

Elizabeth shook her head and frowned. Lady Hume had been welcoming the headmen of the surnames coming in to the funeral, who certainly were an impressive bunch of killers and robbers. Now she was gathering herself up to go, and so Elizabeth went over to her and asked where she would advise Elizabeth to find lodging?

“Are ye afeared of ghosts?”asked Lady Hume.

“I've never seen one,” Elizabeth answered steadily.

“Well I'm staying at the manse since it's a ten-mile ride back to my Lord Hughie. You're welcome to join me, Lady Widdrington, and your stepson as well, though your men will have to find space in the alehouse.”

“Thank you, Lady Hume.” Elizabeth was relieved at solving the problem so easily. She went back to Young Henry with the news and discovered that he'd rather find a space at the alehouse than the manse. Not that he was afeared of ghosts, oh no, but he felt he should stay with his cousins since there were a number of reivers come into the village and while none of his men had feuds with anyone likely to come that he knew of, it would be well if no feuds started up, especially with the Burns, who were dangerous that way.

With the village full of reivers, she decided to bring the hobbies and Mouse and Rat into the manse with her. Lady Hume was agreeable and so Elizabeth went back to Young Henry who thought it was an excellent idea and sent the youngest Widdrington cousin with her to lead the horses.

They went round the back to the stableyard where the hobbies shared two loose-boxes and Mouse and Rat shared another since they were friends. There wasn't much horse feed there but all the horses got enough to tide them over.

The manse was a small stone-built house, the chantry of St Cuthbert's somewhat altered by the previous incumbent. Poppy had been proud of that—living in a stone house with a slate roof was better than one of wattle and daub and thatch, though she admitted that it was a lot colder and harder to heat. There was a large handsome entrance hall, decorated with Papistical carvings nobody understood anymore—who was the woman with a towel in her hand and why did a stag have a cross between its antlers?

The small parlour was still damp and had no rushes on the tiled floor. Lady Hume led Elizabeth to it and opened the door.

“Ye may as well satisfy yer curiosity,” she said.

“Thank you, Lady Hume,” said Elizabeth and went in to look. That the plate cupboard was open and bare of plate was the first thing she saw, gone were the three silver goblets and a handsome bowl with dancing cherubs on it that she had seen when she stayed with Poppy. The benches along the wall were a little at angles, probably moved by the village women when they cleaned out the rushes. There must have been a lot of brains to clean up, very unpleasant and fatty.

The gore was gone but she could trace where it had been from the scrubbing and wet walls. It was mainly around the plate cupboard, though not on the cupboard itself. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine James going to get the plate, probably the three goblets, and then one man coming up behind him with a knife, the other man sweeping his sword out and finishing the job when it went a little wrong.

Who had held Poppy still? Or no, she had been fetching wafers and wine. And who had taken the plate which belonged to Poppy?

“Hm,” she said aloud, “where are Poppy's silver goblets and bowl?”

Lady Hume shrugged. “Nae doubt but they took them. Why not?”

Reivers would know someone who could melt it down for the silver, probably Richie Graham of Brackenhill who made a very good thing out of buying plates off reivers for not very much and then minting it up himself into the debauched Scottish shillings to trade over the Border. The plate had been taken by way of a bonus; it was far too little to be worth the raid by itself.

Still, the fact Jamie had opened the plate cupboard was very interesting, since it showed that the men were indeed known to Jamie, were in fact honoured guests. You wouldn't give them wine in silver goblets if they were just messengers or strangers unless there was something else about them that made them important.

“Hm,” she said, pleased with herself for thinking that one out, and looked around for more interesting details. Robin Carey had told her something about that once, that truth was like gold and essentially indestructible although you could bury it. But there would be traces.

What would he do, faced with such a puzzle? Well for a start he would be in the saddle looking for the tracks and prints that would show which way the killers had gone, probably with Sergeant Dodd alongside. She couldn't do that, and in any case, any hoofprints would be indistinguishable from all the people coming into the village. Robin would also be charming the Dowager Lady Hume like a bird out of a tree.

Before she could get lost in thinking about him, she turned and came out of the parlour, shutting the door firmly behind her.

“I suppose Mrs Burn's larder has been pillaged?” she said to the lady who sniffed.

“Since she no longer has any claim to it, I have taken it over.” She gave Elizabeth a bold look. Elizabeth knew well that the living was not in her gift but in fact in the gift of the man who held the Lord Hughie's wardship, which alas, currently was Lord Spynie, the King's minion. Elizabeth also knew that it could be hard to make ends meet even if you were a lady, here in the north where the living was difficult, certainly if you were trying to hold the lands together for a son and heir aged ten.

It had taken a great deal of conniving and letter-writing for her to get the living for Jamie a couple of years ago when Chancellor Maitland held the wardship, and it was annoying that the effort had all gone to waste. How inconsiderate of Jamie to die like that! she caught herself thinking.

“Ah,” said Elizabeth with a smile, “I wondered if there's anything there I could make a supper out of.”

“I'm afraid I don't know,” was the withering response, from someone who had probably always had a cook and was therefore helpless.

Elizabeth forayed into the kitchen, where the fire hadn't been lit and where there were no servants at all, and found a hacked loaf of bread and the end of a ham hock and some crumbs of cheese. In a crock in the wet larder behind she found some soused herring, and in a bag in the scullery she found some carrots and parsnips, a little withered but perfectly edible. She took a look at the modern brick range and found it was stone cold, which was a pity because her stomach was aching with hunger.

She peered out of the wet larder door into the little stableyard and found two boys there, arguing over whether they should knock and ask for some pennies for a job or two, and pounced. One, she sent to the alehouse to fetch some hot coals. The other she sent to the woodshed for kindling and logs, and then to the well to fetch water.

Half an hour later she was boiling the parsnips in a saucepan on a sharp fire at the small end of the range and heating the soused herring in the warmer.

She found the plates for the Burn's dinner sitting in cold scummy water and gone mouldy, so she trimmed some bread trenchers from the stale loaf and even found a wooden platter and two serving spoons. The pantry had a crock of butter, which was wonderful news, and even a big crock of oatmeal for the morrow, which she immediately mixed up with some water, butter, and salt ready to go in the warmer overnight when the herrings came out.

Best of all, in a carefully hidden crock amongst the dirty pans, she found Poppy's little honey oatcakes which weren't even stale.

Lady Hume seemed astonished when Elizabeth called her to a late dinner at the table in the parlour, but she took the place at the head of the table when Elizabeth invited her. Over the food she folded her hands and said grace.

“Lord and father, we thank thee for this food which thou hast vouchsafed to us here in this house of sorrow…” There was quite a lot more of that until Elizabeth's stomach gave a heroic growl at which Lady Hume said amen halfway through a sentence. They didn't speak for a while after that except to say things like “pass the salt” and “would you help me to some more neeps?”

The soused herrings were very good, well soaked to clear them of salt and then cooked in a mixture of stock and vinegar until they melted like butter in the mouth. Elizabeth's neeps were less good, as they could have done with a little more time in the water, but the butter made up for that.

Lady Hume had a good stomach to her meat despite her frail looks and her eyes lit up when she saw Poppy's honey oatcakes.

“Ay,” she said, a little strictly, “I'll have just the one of those.”

Elizabeth felt pleasantly full if a little guilty at eating Poppy's food. Only it wasn't her food, anymore, was it? Surely Lord Spynie would give her a month or two to get her bearings after the will was read? It wasn't a rich living, nor yet a multiple, surely nobody would want it too quickly.

Of course, if they did, that could be a motive for murder by itself.

Lady Hume ate four of the oatcakes and then declared herself full. Elizabeth gave the bread trenchers to the boys who had done errands for her and an oatcake each, plus a penny each from her private funds. The lads ran off with the news, very happy to be gulping down the soaked bread, and Elizabeth suspected that every boy in the village would turn up in the morning. That suited her because she suspected there would be things she could find for them to do.

“I can fetch the coals from the kitchen range and get a fire going here in the parlour,” she said as it finally got too dark for her to see. “Or perhaps we could move to the kitchen where it's already quite warm.” It was going to be extremely cold in the bedroom.

After only a moment's hesitation, Lady Hume approved the move to the kitchen where Elizabeth sat her in the only chair there and brought a stool in from the pantry for herself. She had also found some aqua vitae in a small bottle, or uisgebeath as the Scots called it, and Lady Hume accepted a small cupful.

Like many elderly people, Lady Hume didn't know when she was cold and hungry. Now she was fed and warm she began slowly to thaw.

“Yes, I was married for twenty years until my lord died of gout,” she told Elizabeth. “And my son died of a quartan fever a few years ago. I never thought he would, which was my black sin and God's just judgement upon me. I thought he might die in a raid, never of sickness.”

Elizabeth made a sympathetic noise. She learned many things about the son but the main one was that he had left her a grandson called Hughie who was the light of Lady Hume's life and the apple of her eye. And she would sooner die than let him go to the household of the Lord Spynie to learn knighthood.

“Ah,” said Elizabeth, “is he a good-looking child?”

“Ay,” said Lady Hume, sourly, “fair as the month of May and blue eyes and blond hair. Lord Spynie saw him last year and since then has been badgering me to let him come to Court, saying it will be the making of him and I'll have a dower house and a better jointure and such things.” The firm jaw clenched. “But I willna.” The eyes narrowed. “He's wasting the land, too. He's already cut down two woods and sold the timber and nobody's seen to the drainage ditches since my son died.”

“Does Chancellor Maitland know this?”

Lady Hume shrugged. “Disnae know, disnae care.”

“How did the wardship change hands? Was it when my Lord Maitland was in trouble with the King a couple of years ago?”

“Ay. That's when. How d'ye know?”

“I took in Maitland's son for a year when he was frightened for the boy. He's an old friend of mine.”

“Ay?”

That had been an odd year. Carey had been in France and she had been praying for his safety every night. Maitland's son had been running about the place, full of delight at getting away from his tutor and riding for England in the middle of the night with his father. The political weather had changed again in Scotland a year later and he'd left her without a backward look, feeling even sadder that she had no children and wasn't likely to have any.

Sir Henry, surprisingly, had been very pleased to take in Maitland's son and had taught him to use a longbow. She had seen a glimpse of her husband then that had made her confused: He had been a little bit kind to the boy, why couldn't he be kind to her?

Kindness. It was such an important thing, she thought, once more seeing Robin with his horse Thunder and how he had gentled the animal, how he had even dealt gently with Young Hutchin Graham, despite the fact that the boy betrayed him. You could say that the entirety of the Gospels was a plea for kindness. Not the Epistles, though, nor yet the Apocalypse.

Lady Hume had been speaking. “I'm sorry, my Lady?”

“I asked, would ye be willing to try and get the wardship shifted to the Chancellor again? I'd make it worth your while.”

Elizabeth paused, thought about this. “I'm not sure, my Lady. I could tell you all sorts of lies about how I'm certain I could, but you wouldn't believe me.” There was a tiny grunt and a little flash of a smile. “I'll think about it. Chancellor Maitland is quite old now and doesn't want to deal with wardships anymore.” Also Chancellor Maitland had made enough money out of wardships and other perks to build a large and handsome fortress for himself at Thirlstane. Quite good for a man who had been arraigned for treason on account of fighting for Mary Queen of Scots many years before.