A Chorus of Innocents (6 page)

“I can hold out for a while but no' for long,” said the Lady. “Spynie's already sent Hughie a lovely chestnut horse and a boy's back and breast for martial exercises.”

The sarcasm in the Lady's voice could have withered a stand of pine trees.

“Can I ask you if you knew the Burns?”

“The riding surname?” Her voice was wary.

“No, just the minister and Mrs Burn.”

“Ay, I'd come to dinner a few times and fed them as well. Minister Burn was a good sound man as to religion but his wife was a silly little fool.”

“Really?” Elizabeth said, trying not to sound offended on Poppy's behalf.

“I'll say nothing against her kitchen skills, she understood them. In fact, she didn't have a cook. The last one had left and she was doing his job.”

“Oh?”

“Only temporarily of course.”

“Of course.”

“And it kept her away from the books which was all to the good. What business does a woman have with reading, answer me that?”

“Er…she can read the Gospels for herself.”

“Well the Gospels…yes. But not wicked books full of lies and phantasies like that shocking thing the Morte d'Arthur.”

“Hmm.” Elizabeth enjoyed chivalrous romance, though she always found it very funny that there were only three possible women: the young and beautiful maiden, the lady of the house, the wicked crone. “I'm wondering did anyone else see the strangers before they did the murder?”

“Och, aye,” said Lady Hume. “They had quarts of beer at the alehouse and asked the way to the manse.”

“And how was the murder discovered? With Poppy ridden off in a panic?”

“Hmf. In a panic. Ay. He wisnae found until yesterday morning, when the boys came to the school and found him on the floor and blood and brain all over the place.”

“What about the servants? Surely they saw the body?”

“Ay. well, they were trying to save money. They only had a woman coming in to help Poppy and the rest of the men were working on the estate.”

“How about the tithes. Were they paid?” Elizabeth knew how bitterly arguments over tithes could work in a village.

“Ay they were, though usually in kind, ye follow, naebody has much money here.”

“So Poppy and Jamie Burn would be alone in the evening?”

“Ay. They invited me to dinner a few times and ithers of their friends but they were allus pawing at each other, kissing and cuddling and the like. Disgusting, it was.”

“And James Burn's body lay where it fell until the next morning?”

“Ay. Shocking.”

“Could I talk to the schoolboys who made the discovery?”

Lady Hume shrugged. “If ye want, though they'll likely tell ye a pack of lies.”

Elizabeth smiled at that. According to Robin, lies were often more informative than the truth.

“What did the boys do?”

“They ran for the nearest dad and told him and he ran in from the field and saw and sent one of them off on a pony to tell me.”

“So they didn't hit anyone else for his plate cupboard?”

Lady Hume shook her head. It was now getting too dark to see, despite the glow from the brick range with its door open. “I came out as soon as I could. I saw the body with half the head nearby and the blood and I tried to find Mrs Burn but I couldna and so I went and found Jock Crosby, who was there cutting back the hazels, and Sim Routledge to take the corpse into the crypt of the church. Then I turned out the women to clear the blood from everywhere. There was something not quite right about that.”

Elizabeth could imagine it and how the women must have disliked being called from their own work to deal with such horror. “I was still looking for Mrs Burn but then I saw that Prince was missing from the stable and that was when I knew she betrayed her husband.”

Elizabeth got up to light a taper which made the wrinkled planes of Lady Hume's face even stronger. “That's what you learn from that kind of nonsense in books, you mark my words,” she added.

“Goodness,” said Elizabeth, working hard not to sound sarcastic. “And why did she do it? After all she now has nothing since the living was settled on the minister and she doesn't have much for a jointure and the babe on the way. I'm not certain she has anything at jointure. At least I have five hundred pounds a year when Sir Henry dies.” When I'm old and grey at forty and Robin will have gone off and married money by then as he ought to do and as every one of his friends, including me, has advised him to do.

“She was in love with one of the strangers,” said Lady Hume with a straight face.

“Really? How do you know?”

Lady Hume's face tilted up slightly. “It's the only explanation for why she did it, is it no'?”

“Lady Hume, this is fascinating. If you know she was in love with one of the strangers, then you know his name and where he might be found.”

“I do not.”

“I think you do,” said Elizabeth, thoroughly annoyed with the old lady now. “I think you know a great deal more about this killing than you say. Either that or you are allowing romantic phantasy to run away with you.”

“I?”

“Yes, Lady Hume. If you have a reason for thinking that Mrs Burn knew the strangers, then say what it is—it may help us to find them. If your only reason is that you dislike Mrs Burn, then, with respect ma'am, that is not enough.” Though it might be enough for a Scottish jury of men.

Lady Hume glared at Elizabeth and then rose with final dignity. “Good night, Lady Widdrington, I am going tae my bed. Thank ye for the supper.”

Elizabeth rose and curtseyed to her and watched her as she went out and to the hall where the smart stair used each of the walls in turn as support. So much for charming her like a bird out of a tree, Elizabeth thought, that's put her against me and Poppy as well.

Although it was cold in the rest of the house and still quite warm in the kitchen, Elizabeth felt too restless to sit there and too wide awake to go to bed yet. She slid the crock of mixed porridge into the warmer, ready for the morning, and put the curfew over the coals. She picked up the taper and went back to the parlour with its odd-looking tiles bare of rushes. It was still damp in places. She tried again to imagine what had happened.…

The strangers come to the manse and Jamie invites them in. He goes to unlock the plate cupboard and while his back is turned, they kill him. Poppy says she was out of the room because she went to fetch the wine and wafers, so she might have come in later, perhaps after she heard the body slump to the floor. She is raped. Then the two of them leave, mount up and ride away. Later two good horses turn up south in Tully's keeping with West March brands on them, so the men must have come from the Debateable Land or possibly Carlisle. If the horses are theirs.

And then nothing happens. Poppy is riding desperately south on Prince; they have no live-in servants, no children, no relatives. A very peculiar household, in fact. Poppy had told Elizabeth how lonely she sometimes was in the evenings when Jamie was riding around his large parish, and Elizabeth had advised that she should certainly bring in a woman to keep her company. She said she did, one of the boys' mothers usually.

Had she perhaps found a friend, someone who could comfort her ? It wouldn't be easy in a place where everyone knew everyone else and their business, but Elizabeth supposed it could be done. She had never tried it but it was possible.

So her lover comes with a friend of his and cuts off Jamie's head. One of them rapes her, they leave, and Poppy rides about forty miles to her friend Elizabeth in England, without even a cloak against the wet. Why?

She had made soused herring for their supper and taken trouble over it. Why would you do that if your husband was about to be killed and you knew it?

There was another room downstairs—James' large study—which Elizabeth hadn't looked in yet. She went to it, carrying the taper, and found the door locked. She checked for a key but there wasn't one. Infuriated, she pushed it hard and then put the taper on the table and went out the kitchen door and round the house to see if there was another way in. That part of the manse joined onto the church alehouse in the higgledy-piggledy way of old church architecture. If there was another door into the study, it was through the alehouse and at nearly midnight, it was locked and there was no one in the place to let her in. The village was as quiet and dead as a doornail.

She went back into the house through the kitchen and as she passed into the hall and went toward the stairs to go to bed, someone hit her with a piece of wood.

It cracked across the side of her skull and made stars cartwheel round the place, she went sideways and almost down and glimpsed white linen, thought briefly about ghosts, then grappled the very solid though small attacker. She was used to being hit; she wasn't as shocked by it as someone who wasn't. She twisted the arm up the back and managed to take the bit of wood away, although it had broken when it connected with her. The taper was still alight on the table and then she realised that it was an old face and white straggly hair plaited for sleep.

“Lady Hume?” she asked in astonishment.

“Ye'll no' get me again, ye wilna, ye bastard…Lady Widdrington?”

“Jesu, ma'am, why did you hit me?”

“I didna.”

“What?”

“I hit a reiver that was sneaking in the house. What are ye doing here?”

“You hit me with a piece of firewood and…” She felt her ear which had taken some of the blow though her cap had protected it a little.”…crushed my ear.” She shook her head to try and clear it. “What were you thinking, ma'am?”

“It was a reiver.”

“No,” said Elizabeth, “it was me. I was coming upstairs to go to bed. Are you quite well, ma'am?”

“Oh.” Lady Hume's eyes had cleared. “Perhaps I was dreaming.”

“Yes.” She let go of the old woman's arm and picked up the bit of firewood that had broken. “If I come to bed upstairs, will you knife me?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Elizabeth rubbed her ear and blinked at Lady Hume. “Do you remember me?” she asked, “Lady Widdrington? Mrs Burn's friend?”

“Of course I do. Now the reiver's gone, will ye come ben to bed?”

Elizabeth was too tired and still muzzy from the blow to work out what was going on. She picked up the taper, gestured for Lady Hume to go in front of her and followed, feeling a headache on its way.

There were four bedrooms upstairs and Lady Hume gestured to one where there were rushes on the floor and hangings on the wall to try to do something about the perennial chill from the stone. Really, thought Elizabeth abstractedly, you needed to put in paneling to get it to warm up a little. Sir Henry had required careful manoevring to get paneling installed in the main bedroom at Widdrington castle, but it had been worth it.

There was a four-poster bed and a truckle under it as well, a jordan, and a couple of clothes chests and a table covered with clutter that Elizabeth couldn't identify in the darkness. Lady Hume went and used the jordan and then sat on the bed and watched her every move like a little bird while Elizabeth got ready for bed.

Despite the freezing cold, she took her gown and riding habit off because she wasn't prepared to go to bed fully clothed for a second night running. She draped them on a clothes chest because Lady Hume's clothes were on all the available hooks, dropped her petticoats, bumroll, and stays and left her stockings on because they were warm knitted ones. She shivered in her shift and started to pull the truckle bed out.

“Get in wi' me,” ordered Lady Hume. “There's a hole in the truckle's mattress and it's aye cold.”

There was indeed a hole in the truckle's mattress, and it was indeed cold. But Elizabeth hesitated. She didn't mind sharing a bed, what she minded was being hit on the head with firewood by an old lady.

“Get in,” said Lady Hume. “That reiver's gone and he's hurt my wrist forebye.” She held out her wrist and Elizabeth saw that she had grabbed it tighter than she thought and there would be bruises in the morning. Well, she'd been stunned. “I'll see to him if he comes back, hinny. Ye're safe wi' me.”

Jesu, thought Elizabeth, I'm too tired and muzzy-headed for this. So she smiled and climbed in next to Lady Hume, who immediately curled onto her side.

“Now curl into mah back to keep me warm there,” said the old lady. “Dinna kick, dinna wriggle, dinna talk, and we'll hae a story to help ye sleep. Would ye like a story?”

“Ah…”

“Ay, I'll tell ye of when I wis a girl and it wis all different, eh?”

Lying curled into the old lady's back with her ear throbbing and her headache setting in properly, Elizabeth thought that the last thing she needed was a story. She got one anyway.

Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there was a little girl called Agnes, which means lamb in the Latin, and she had three brothers called Ralph and Jock and Hughie, ay, Hughie like you, and they played nicely though sometimes Jock and Hughie were rough. Jock and Hughie were boys so they would practise with swords and spears and Agnes had to learn to be a wife so she had to learn huswifery and a little cooking, which she didn't like, and needlework, which she loved. She had a beautiful piece of silk that she was embroidering for an altar front, for it was before the change and churches were pretty places, all fu' wi' pictures ye could make up stories wi'. And they were as happy as could be in their tower and farm with all their surname around them and so they were as happy as birds in a tree, as happy as conies in a meadow. Then Agnes went away to her aunt at the big castle to learn huswifery better and that was sad for then they weren't together anymore and the boys were riders like their father and uncles before them.

And then war came and Agnes rode away with her aunt from Bad King Henry's men, she rode and rode, all day and night she rode for there was no telling which way to go, and all you could see was the smoke by day and the fire by night and she didna know what had happened to Ralph and Jock and Hughie nor any of her family, for Bad King Henry's men were burning and killing all the way up the Merse to Edinburgh, the Rough Wooing they called it, for it was to get the little Queen to marry the little Prince Edward.