The Stolen Voice (11 page)

‘The Bishop got his wee dog out here somewhere?’ he recalled.

‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed Peter. ‘It’s a woman, a cousin o Mitchel MacGregor that’s Maister Currie’s own man, which would likely be how my lord heard o her. She’s got a place over yonder, at the back o the dyeyard. The most o her dogs is no bad,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Were ye wishing a word wi her, or will it be Andy Cornton the tanner’s house?’

‘I’ll see her after,’ Gil decided. ‘Is she on her own? No sign of her man?’

‘I’ve never set eyes on him,’ said Peter, following him back towards the gate. ‘He’s a mimmerkin, they say. A duarch.’ He held his hand out, waist high, to demonstrate. ‘They’ve no bairns, but.’

Maister Cornton was evidently doing well. The house was well maintained, the fore-stair swept clean and a tub of flowers set by the door. When Gil rattled at the tirlingpin the maidservant who leaned out above them to answer took one look at Peter’s livery and vanished, reappearing at the door a moment later.

‘Come in, maister, come in,’ she said, bobbing to Gil. ‘Hae a seat, whiles I find my mistress, or was it the maister ye wanted?’

‘Either of them, lass,’ Gil assured her. She bobbed again, and whisked off, her wooden-soled shoes clattering on the flagged floor. After a moment she could be heard outside, calling to her mistress. Gil moved to the far window, and found himself looking at the yard with its stacked skins, heaped oak-bark chips, two handcarts. Movement in one of the sheds drew his attention, and proved to be two small children playing on another little cart, which they had overturned; they seemed to be competing for which could spin one of the wheels faster. The nearer was a boy, of perhaps eight, and the other child was in petticoats. What had caught his eye was their light hair, standing out in a halo of fine curls on the two little heads.

A stout woman hurried up the yard behind the maidservant, pulling off a sacking apron as she went. This must be Mistress Cornton. She paused to wave to the children, then hurried on into the house. After a moment she appeared in the hall, puffing slightly, exclaiming.

‘Effie, did you never offer the gentleman a refreshment? Away and fetch something, lass, and take his man ben wi you and gie him some of the new ale. Hae a seat, maister, and we’ll get this sorted. It’s about the rent, no? Maister Stirling’s never come back for it, though he was to be here two days after Lammas, so my man said.’

She paused, staring anxiously at Gil. She was a handsome woman in her forties, he estimated, wearing a grey everyday gown of good wool, its sleeves and hem turned back over a striped kirtle whose margins showed a sprinkling of oak-bark flakes.

‘Not so much about the rent,’ he said, taking the seat she indicated, ‘as about Maister Stirling himself. He called here to arrange about uplifting the rent, then?’

‘Aye, that’s what I’m saying,’ she agreed, nodding vigorously. The little brass pins which secured her kerchief caught the light from the windows. ‘He was here on the,’ she shut her eyes and counted on her fingers, ‘six days afore Lammas, so that would be the twenty-fifth day of July, and got a word wi my man, and they arranged what suited both for him to come back and fetch it away. Only he’s never came.’

‘He seems to have left Perth,’ said Gil. ‘I’m trying to find out where he might have gone.’ Or been taken, he thought.

‘Oh.’ Mistress Cornton stared at him blankly. ‘He tellt my man he’d be here.’

‘Had you a word wi him yourself, mistress?’

‘No what you’d call a word.’ She shook her head and the pins glinted again. ‘I’d gone away into the town, maister, wi the bairns.’ Her glance went involuntarily to the window, and Gil said:

‘Those are Canon Drummond’s bairns, am I right? Their mother must have been your daughter.’

Her mouth twisted. She nodded, and bent her head, dabbing at her eyes with the end of her kerchief.

‘My poor lassie,’ she whispered. ‘Christ and his blessed mother bring her to rest. Aye, he brought them here to their grandam. Cornton’s no best pleased at the imposition, but they’re my kin, I’ll not turn them from me, and their father will pay for their keep.’

‘I’m right sorry for your loss,’ said Gil gently. ‘It must be hard for you. When did he bring the bairns here?’

‘Two weeks since, or thereabout,’ she said, still wiping her eyes. ‘They’d been here no more than a day or two when Maister Stirling was here, I’d gone out to buy them shoes and a bat and ball, for their father never thought to bring their toys. So I never spoke wi Maister Stirling, only I saw him in the street coming from Frankie the horner’s house as I passed by, and gave him the time o day, and the bairns made their obedience and had his blessing. He tellt them he was at the sang-schule wi their father,’ she added. ‘I’d never kent that.’

Effie came clattering through from the room beyond the hall with a tray, saying in some excitement, ‘The man Peter says your landlord’s vanished into the air, mistress! Carried off by the Good Folk, most like, he says, never seen again after he was here about the rent! Our Lady save us, were we the last to see him in Perth?’

‘Don’t be daft, lassie!’ responded Mistress Cornton automatically. ‘Pour the ale for our guest and be off wi your nonsense. Carried off by the Good Folk, indeed!’

Gil, wishing the Good Folk would fly off with Peter, accepted the refreshment Effie offered him. The girl withdrew, presumably to hear more of Peter’s speculations, and Gil drank politely to Mistress Cornton’s good health. She raised her beaker in reply, but said:

‘Is that right, he’s vanished? Has he not just left on a journey?’

‘I don’t think he’s travelled,’ said Gil. ‘But it does seem your man or the horner next door likely were the last to see him in Perth, as the girl says. Did Maister Cornton say where Stirling went after he left here?’

She stared at him, and he could see her mind working. After a moment she said, ‘No, he never. He tellt me when he was to get the rent together, and he’s seen to that, maister, it’s lying ready in his strongbox. Maybe you should ask him yoursel about that. He’s out at the yard, just over the Ditch.’

‘Maybe I should,’ agreed Gil. ‘So you saw Maister Stirling in the street that day, and not since then. Tell me, has he been a good landlord? Is he friendly? Does he see to the repairs?’

‘Oh, aye, the best,’ she said with enthusiasm. ‘We took this place three year since, when Cornton and me was wed, and it was him and Cornton thegither saw to putting in new windows, and built me a good charcoal range in the kitchen, and the like. He’s aye been friendly, and been easy about the rent within a day or two, none of your
Twelve noon on quarter-day
demands.’

Gil, with his own experience of collecting rents, nodded at that. It could be difficult for a tradesman to collect the coin needed for the exact date the rent was due; a relaxed landlord could make life much easier for his tenant, but not all were relaxed.

‘Was Mistress Nan your only bairn?’ he asked, as the name of the children’s mother finally surfaced in his head. Mistress Cornton dabbed at her eyes again.

‘I’ve two sons,’ she said, ‘both at sea. Nan was the only lass I raised.’

When Gil stepped through the tanyard gate, Maister Cornton was supervising two sturdy journeymen at the task of topping up a pit full of thick brown liquid and seething skins with bucketfuls of something equally brown which stank richly. He had cast off his gown, which hung over a trestle near him, but was readily identified by his decisive gestures and competent directions.

‘Yon’s the maister,’ said Peter unnecessarily. Gil nodded, and stood waiting, on the other side of the gate from a row of reeking buckets, looking about him and trying not to breathe deeply. The yard was busy; two more journeymen were unloading a cart full of goat-hides, unwinding the stiffened, hairy bundles and tossing them into a pit of water, an older man was scraping with a two-handled blade at a skin draped over another trestle, and three apprentices were discussing a game of football and stirring a steaming vat which smelled nearly as strong as the stuff the journeymen were using. One of them noticed Gil, abandoned his long paddle with obvious relief and came forward.

‘And how can I help you, maister?’ He grinned hopefully. ‘If it’s hides you’re after, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve some good red-dyed the now, make a bonnie doublet for yoursel, and some white-tawed kidskin to make gloves for a lady, fine as silk it is, fit for the Queen herself.’

‘I need a word with Maister Cornton,’ said Gil. ‘I might look at skins after it.’

‘Right, then, Martin,’ said his master, leaving the journeymen to their task. ‘A word, was it, maister?’ He assessed Gil with quick sharp eyes, taking in Peter’s livery and Gil’s own dress and bearing. ‘Is it about Maister Stirling, then? Come away in the counting-house and get a seat, if you will.’

‘You’re anxious about him, are you?’ Gil prompted, following the tanner into the counting-house, which proved to be merely a weather-tight chamber at one end of the drying-loft. It was evidently the heart of Cornton’s domain; there was a green reckoning-cloth spread on a desk in one corner, a rack of shelves in another, and papers and scraps of leather everywhere.

‘I am. He’s been a good landlord to me, the three years I’ve dwelt here by the port, and if there’s something come amiss to him I’d as soon hear o’t and make my preparations to deal wi whoever inherits his property. No to mention amassing the heriot fee.’ Cornton cleared a bundle of dockets off a stool and gestured to it, then sat down on his own polished seat by the desk. He was a short fair man with a quick manner, rather younger than his wife, Gil thought. Presumably she had brought good money to the match. And when had she come by it, he wondered, recalling that her daughter had lacked a dowry.

‘I’d a word with Mistress Cornton at the house just now,’ he said. ‘I think you saw Maister Stirling ten or twelve days since.’

‘July twenty-fifth,’ said Cornton promptly, and turned to the board which hung by his head, its tapes securing more bills and accounts, along with a brightly coloured woodcut of St Andrew and a child’s drawing of a woman in a striped gown. He picked out a slip with a brief note scrawled on it. ‘I’ve a note o’t here. And we reckoned up when would suit us both for him to uplift my rent, and between him being at the Bishop’s call and me having accounts to collect on we cam down on August third. But he’s never been back, though in general he’s prompt to the very hour of what we’ve agreed, and the word in Perth is that the Bishop’s seeking him, and no knowing where he’s got to.’

‘What time of day was it when he left you?’

‘Three-four hours after noon?’ said Cornton. ‘No later, I’d say.’

‘As early as that? Do you know where he went?’

Cornton shook his head. ‘I saw him to the gate, maister, but other than that he walked off along the Blackfriars path I couldny say.’

‘What, you mean he was here?’ Gil asked, startled. ‘I’d thought he called at the house.’

‘Oh, aye, but Effie sent him out here, since here’s where I was. We’d a load of goat fells to take out of the first soak that day, and the men hates the task, you have to keep them at it.’

‘The men the Bishop’s steward sent out,’ Gil said carefully, ‘asked at all the ports, but nobody had seen Maister Stirling pass.’

Cornton grunted. ‘That’s no surprise. If a party of wild Ersche cam in across the brig here Attie might notice them, but I wouldny warrant it.’

Now why did the Bishop’s men not know that? Gil wondered.

‘And did you speak of aught else?’ he asked. ‘Anything that might tell me what the man was thinking that day?’ The tanner looked hard at him ‘I’m charged wi finding him, as you obviously worked out for yourself, so anything you can tell me that would be a help, I’d be grateful for.’

‘Aye, I see that.’ Cornton paused a moment, arranging his thoughts. ‘Did Mistress Cornton say he’d met her in the street?’

‘Aye, and spoke to the children,’ Gil agreed.

Cornton’s face twisted. ‘Right. So what I got was one of his clever remarks about cuckoo chicks. Mind you, then he said it must be a comfort to herself to have the bairns wi her, and to tell her he’d pray for her lass. The man’s like that, maister,’ he said earnestly, ‘full of jokes at someone else’s expense, and then turns round and offers a kindness you’d not look for.’

‘How did he know the bairns?’ Gil asked.

‘Seems he kent their father, and you’ve only to look at the brats to see whose get they are. Asked me was Drummond still wi us. I was glad to tell him,’ said Cornton with restraint, ‘that the man was never under my roof save to leave his bastards. He lay at the Blackfriars the whole time he was at Perth.’

‘You don’t like Canon Drummond?’

‘I do not. Nor does he like me.’ The tanner grinned wryly. ‘And that’s exactly what Maister Stirling asked me, and I said to him. Whereupon he said,
You’re one of a mighty company, Maister Cornton
, and then asked me if I’d heard the tale of the laddie returned from Elfhame. Which I had, a course, as who in Perthshire hasny, but I’d no notion it was Drummond’s brother. Mind you, since I took care no to exchange a needless word wi the man, he could hardly ha tellt me hissel. So it seems Maister Stirling was a friend o this laddie at the sang-schule, and hoped to hear more of him.’ He eyed Gil warily. ‘I wonder if he went along to the Blackfriars when he left me? The path he took would lead him that way, for certain.’

‘I’ll ask there,’ said Gil. ‘You’ve been a lot of help, Maister Cornton.’ He rose to take his leave, and as the other man rose likewise said, ‘Tell me, was Drummond in his normal state when you saw him?’

Cornton shrugged.

‘Near enough. He’s never been more than civil to Nan – to Mistress Cornton, for all he made a hoor of her one daughter.’ He paused. ‘See, my wife’s first man, Jimmy Chalmers, had a few reverses to his business in his time. Dealt in fells and skins, he did, and lost a couple shiploads, oh, twelve year syne it would be, had to sell up. His two sons – Nan’s laddies – went to sea, and done well, but the lass took service with a kinswoman in Dunblane, and met Drummond.’ He scowled. ‘And then when Chalmers’ business recovered and he could dower his lass, Drummond wouldny release her from the agreement they’d made.’

Gil pulled a face.

‘He was within his rights, I suppose,’ he said. ‘And the lass herself? How did she feel about it?’

‘She’d the laddie, a bairn at the breast by then,’ said Cornton, ‘and I’d wager he threatened to keep the boy. Whatever the way o’t, she stayed.’ He grunted. ‘Any road, he was much as usual when we saw him, full of orders about how the boy was to be reared and schooled, never a word about the wee lass. I bade him be civil to my wife under her own roof, and he’d to swallow the rebuke, seeing he wanted a favour of us, but he was ill pleased.’ He looked about him. ‘I’d best put all secure in here and then get the men to start locking down. Nobody’s like to thieve a pit-full of half-cured skins,’ he said, grinning again, ‘but the finished hides needs to be stowed safe for the night.’

Leaving the man shuffling papers, Gil paused in the yard, where Peter was gossiping with the journeymen by the cart, and took the time to bargain for some of the white kidskins, which were indeed unusually soft and fine and would make excellent gloves for Alys. The apprentice Martin folded the leathers and tied them with a length of cord, and said with interest:

‘Is that right, what your man says, maister, that that priest has vanished away?’

‘I’m trying to find him,’ said Gil.

‘What priest is it?’ asked the youngest apprentice, a small lad in an out-at-elbows doublet and wrinkled hose, still prodding glumly at the stinking vat. They had put the fire out beneath it, but the smell seemed even more powerful.

‘How d’you mean, what priest?’ said the third one.

‘Well, there was two,’ said the smaller boy.

‘There was just the one, Malky,’ said Martin kindly. ‘Him wi the badges on his hat. He cam in here and spoke wi the maister, as he’s done before.’

‘There was two,’ said Malky. ‘I saw them on the bank when I went home to my supper.’

‘Did you?’ said Gil. ‘Who was the other one?’

‘Och, the other one,’ said Malky vaguely. ‘Him that brought the bairns to the maister’s house. Wi the hair, you ken.’ He gestured, describing fluffy hair below a hat.

‘When was that?’ Gil asked.

‘When I went home to my supper,’ the boy repeated. ‘After the badge one was here. So which one is it that’s vanished away, maister?’

‘The badge one,’ said Gil.

‘I thought so,’ said Malky. ‘See, he left his hat. My, he’s passed on a many pilgrimages to collect those badges. I wonder what he’s doing penance for, and him a priest too?’

Across the yard, Maister Cornton checked in the doorway of the counting-house, met Gil’s eye for a moment, and deliberately stepped out of sight. And just in time, thought Gil as Malky looked over his shoulder for his master.

‘Left his hat?’

‘I found it,’ said Malky, nodding.

‘Tell me about it,’ Gil invited.

Reading between the awkward statements, he ascertained that Malky, going home for his supper on the twenty-fifth of July, had spied the man in the hat with many badges and the man with the fluffy hair, walking together near the Blackfriars wall. Curious to know what priests discussed at their leisure, he had slipped up behind them.

‘But they were talking sermons,’ he said in disappointment.

‘Don’t be daft,’ said the third apprentice. ‘What else would priests talk of, you gowk?’

‘Many things,’ said Gil. ‘What made you think it was sermons, Malky?’

‘Well, it was all about forgiving,’ explained the boy. ‘And maybe confession, and all long words like that.’

Gil nodded. ‘And then what did you do?’

‘Gaed hame to my supper, for it was late. Later than today, maybe.’

‘And what about the hat?’

Malky had found it lying on the bank the next morning, damp with dew but undamaged, when he came by on his way to the yard.

‘I brought it in here,’ he said. ‘I thought when the man cam back to see my maister I could gie it back to him.’

Looking at the innocent expression, Gil reserved judgement. It might well be true.

‘Where is it?’ he asked.

It was in the boy’s kist in the long shed. He ran off to fetch it, and Martin said anxiously, ‘He’ll get himsel took up for theft, maister, if he goes on like that. Will you warn him, maybe?’

‘He’s daft,’ said the third apprentice. ‘Keeping it that way. Now I’d ha sellt it, and got money for ale.’

‘And that is theft, Ally Johnston,’ said Martin roundly. The boy Malky came back, bearing the hat. It was a fairly ordinary round bonnet with a flat top and a brim which turned up all the way round, of wine-coloured felt as Wat the steward had said, rendered unusual by the many badges pinned or stitched to the brim, silver and pewter, each one different.

‘See, it’s no hurt, maister,’ he said in triumph. ‘I took good care of it.’ He thrust it at Gil. ‘Would you maybe take it, maister, if the man’s no coming back to our yard? You could give it back to him?’

‘I’ll take it, Malky,’ agreed Gil, ‘and thank you for looking after it so carefully.’ He glanced over the boy’s head to where the tanner had emerged from the counting-house again. ‘Now if your maister will give you leave, I want you to show me where you found it.’

Out on the track that ran by the Ditch he looked about him again. There were two tanyards cheek by jowl, with a skinner to one side of them and a dyer to the other. A path led off between the two in the general direction of the barking dogs. Cornton’s was the smaller in extent, but seemed to specialize in the luxury end of the trade, with the stacks of small hides dyed in bright colours which he had already admired arranged on pallets and carts where the passer-by could see them over the shoulder-high fence of stout planks.

Malky led him past the other tanyard and the skinner, to pick up a well-trodden path which worked its way westward along the outer bank of the Ditch. The Black-friars’ wall stood high and forbidding, perhaps a hundred paces to the right, and on the open ground between path and wall the evening sunshine was bright on yellow broom and wildflowers.

‘They were walking about and talking there,’ said Malky, gesturing, ‘the two men. I like to go home this way,’ he confided, ‘acos there’s all wee birds in the broom. I like wee birds, see, maister, my granda that’s a forester taught me all their names. Last week there was two gowdspinks eating the thistles there, all red and yellow, right bonnie they were.’

‘Can you remember anything the men said?’ Gil asked, looking at the thistles rather than the boy. There were no goldfinches today, though many small birds chirped and whirred in the bushes. Malky paused a moment in thought.

‘No really,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Just what I said, about forgiving. One of them said,
Even Judas was forgiven
,’ he recalled, brightening. ‘How would he know that, maister? I thought Judas was burning in Hell. And the other one said,
Aye, but he hangit himsel
.’ The intonation said,
Rather than hanging someone else
.

‘Which one said that?’ Gil asked, trying hard to sound casual.

‘The one that brought the bairns to my maister’s house. He’s got a voice like a corncrake in the long grass, so he has.’