‘Mistress Mudie,’ said Gil, and she stopped briefly, staring open-mouthed at him. In the background a girl and an older woman he had not seen before had become ostentatiously busy over a basket of vegetables. ‘I’m sorry if we’ve inconvenienced you,’ he offered, ‘coming by at a bad moment. Maybe we can find another time when you’re less busy in here.’
‘- don’t know why you’re asking more questions, Maister Cunningham, indeed I don’t, you must have heard all there is to know about what happened, and as for this malapert lassie telling me sic nonsense, it’s no your own lassie, is it? I’ve heard better things o your bride — ’
‘It was the truth!’ exploded Tib. Gil put a hand on her shoulder and she ducked away and fell silent, looking warily sideways at him. Socrates growled in warning. The younger of the two maidservants shrieked dramatically, but Gil gestured with his other hand, and the dog retreated to the hallway.
‘My sister was here at my bidding,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m truly sorry, mistress, if we’ve inconvenienced you. I can see now this is no a good time to be in your way.’
‘- you should ken better by your age, though I suppose men never ken when a house is at its most taigled, but a well-reared lassie ought to ha more sense and all, and as for you, Nannie, I’ll no hear another word from you the day — ’
The older maidservant scowled at her. Tib seemed about to speak, but Gil tightened his grip on her shoulder, drawing her towards the doorway.
‘We’ll get away out your road now,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later, Mistress Mudie, for I still have questions for you.’
‘Questions!’ She flung her hands above her head. ‘Aye questions! You’ll be lucky if I’ve an answer left. Aye, you can take that malapert lassie out o my sight, and if I never set een on her again it’s too soon. And good riddance to the pair of ye!’
They retreated in some disorder. Socrates nudged at his master in relief, but Gil pushed him away and drew Tib out into the yard.
‘Are you going to let her talk to you like that?’ she demanded in a whisper, trying to free her wrist as he towed her up the stair to Naismith’s lodging. ‘I never said any of those things, except that you’d sent me, and that was true — ’
‘I know that,’ he said, closing the door behind the dog. ‘Keep your voice down, we’re above the kitchen here.’
‘I know that!’ she said pettishly. ‘It’s not my fault if she keeps a pair of stupid women like that to work under her. As soon as I mentioned last night they started on about intruders, and worked each other up talking about it. The older one says it was witchcraft, the young one says it was the Deil in the garden made away wi the man. They’re fixed in their minds about it. And the laddie was just feart for what that woman would say when she heard them.’ She giggled. ‘He kept saying to them, What if the mistress hears you? I’ll tell her on you! And finally he did.’
‘It was a good try,’ said Gil. And how do I question them now? he wondered. Sissie will never let me near them after that. ‘My thanks, Tib,’ he added, exerting all his charity.
‘Oh, well.’ She shrugged one shoulder. ‘I’m sorry I never got what you wanted to know. But what an old harridan, scolding at me like that and never believing a word I said. And the way she spoke to you, and all!’
‘She’s anxious for her position here, since the Deacon’s death,’ Gil pointed out. ‘A new man will likely make changes.’
Tib snorted, but said only, ‘What will you do now?’
‘These accounts.’ He turned to the rack of little drawers and pulled out the topmost bundle of papers. ‘And when I get the keys from Millar I must go through the papers in the man’s kist through there. Get another look at the body, look for the ladder — ’
‘Ladder? Oh, at the back gate,’ she said, and shivered, but went on sharply, ‘What, hunting all round the outhouses in the rain? I fancied you’d ha been seated somewhere in comfort, asking questions, and a clerk to write down the answers.’
‘No,’ Gil said, as the recollection of previous investigations rose in his mind, of pursuing and being pursued through moonlit scaffolding by a whispering killer, of playing cards with his enemy in a cushionless hall. ‘You’re thinking of the old man,’ he added. ‘Time enough for that when I’m his age. But if you still want to help, and you want to be seated in comfort, I can give you some of these documents to sort.’
She looked doubtful, but once he had explained what he wanted and lent her his own tablets in which to make notes, she settled by a window and began extracting the names of the various parcels of land for him. Gil took another bundle of papers from the rack and tried to concentrate on the same task, but his sister kept up an irregular flow of comments on the names of places and persons in the documents, with remarks about the weather and about Maggie’s activities the day before, and he found himself thinking more of how he could get her off his hands again, and where. Could I induce her to go back to the house in Rottenrow, he wondered, or would she go down to see Kate?
‘What a name!’ she said, for the fifth or sixth time. ‘Some folk have no thought for their bairns, the names they saddle them with. Imagine being called Wenifreda. And this is another Douglas donation,’ she added. ‘Four — seven — eight of them witnessing this paper.’
‘The bedehouse is a Douglas foundation.’
‘Oh, is that why — ’ she began, and broke off. After a moment she went on diffidently, ‘Gil, do you think it was the Devil in the garden that night?’
‘Seems unlikely,’ said Gil. ‘What reason would he have to come for Naismith rather than anyone else in Glasgow?’
‘Maybe he was — well, carrying on wi black Masses, or witchcraft as those silly women said, or the like.’
‘We’ve found nothing to suggest it.’
Tib seemed about to answer him, but was forestalled by a sudden mixed shouting from the garden. As she turned to stare out of the window, the separate voices became identifiable, and running feet sounded in the passage below the chamber where they sat.
‘Humphrey calm yoursel! Help! Help me!’
And Humphrey’s resounding Latin: ‘Trust them not, for all their fine words! Day and night they accuse him before our God — ’
‘Humphrey be still. Let go, man!’
Tib looked in horror at Gil, who was already making for the door.
‘What’s happening?’ she demanded. ‘Gil, stop them!’
‘Stay here, Tib,’ he ordered. ‘Socrates, stay! Guard!’
In the narrow passage through the building there was a complicated struggle going on, with many exclamations and choking noises, and two dangerously waving sticks. As Gil arrived, Mistress Mudie burst out of the kitchen and dived under an elderly elbow, babbling in two very distinct tones of voice.
‘- whatever’s happening, who’s upset you my poppet? It’s no that brother of yours is it, now, now, Humphrey, that’s no way to treat your brother whatever he’s been saying, if that’s Maister Agnew he deserves what’s come to him, such things as he’s been trying to — ’
‘The accuser shall be overthrown — ’
‘Sissie, get him off!’ That was Millar’s voice. ‘He’s about throttled Maister Agnew!’
Gil pushed past a bony shoulder, deflected Anselm’s stick from Cubby’s head, and assisted Mistress Mudie in attempting to prise Humphrey’s fingers from about his brother’s throat. The Latin flowed over the whole scene.
‘Trust them not, for all the fine words they give you!’ That isn’t the Apocalypse, thought Gil, trying to dislodge a thumb. ‘How long must it be before we are vindicated, before our blood is avenged? It calls out to the mountains and the crags — ’
‘- saying such things about his own brother, trying to make out he would take a knife to anyone, let alone the Deacon that’s been so good to him, no wonder the poor soul’s owerset wi it, hearing the like from his own kin — ’