‘Maybe no directly,’ admitted Gil. He set the bundle he carried on the table beside the almoner’s great ledger. ‘You’ll have heard what happened at St Mungo’s Cross, then, Alan?’
Sir Alan crossed himself.
‘Aye, poor lady, her servant came up to the vestry just as we were about to sing Matins. She’s free o her troubles now, right enough, but no in the way she-’ He paused as Gil shook his head. ‘What d’you mean, no?’
‘There’s more happened than that,’ Gil said. ‘The lass that was found dead at the Cross this morning wasny the same one that was bound there last night.’ Jamieson gaped at him. ‘She was wearing this,’ he nodded at the bundle, ‘and I’d like to hear if you reckon it’s the same gown you gave out yesterday, or another. It was me cut the inkles,’ he added hastily as the almoner reached for the folds of sacking. ‘I’ll pay for the repairs.’
‘Aye, you did,’ said Sir Alan, inspecting the ragged ends of the tapes. ‘Made a thorough job of it, and all.’ He shook out the light brown folds. ‘Let me see now, where’s the-Aye, this is the gown I lent out to Mistress Gibb’s kinsfolk yesterday afternoon. There’s the mark.’ He pointed to a row of neat red stitches just inside the neckline. ‘Six red lines for gown number six. There’s a dozen,’ he enlarged, ‘but we’ve never needed that many, even when thon band of penitents cam here two summers ago, hoping to flagellate theirsels the length o the High Street. Canon Henderson soon put a stop to that, I can tell you.’
‘He did that,’ agreed Gil, recalling the occasion with faint amusement. It had provided his uncle with food for shocked discussion for days. The parade of the High Street had been reduced, in short order, to a procession round the Upper Town and a vigil by the patron saint’s tomb in the crypt; the weather had been unkind, and the fiddler the group had brought with them had refused to risk his instrument in the pouring rain, so the singing had been doleful indeed. When last heard of the group of penitent pilgrims had been riding out of Glasgow, back to wherever they came from (Arbroath, was it?) quarrelling bitterly about whose idea it had been in the first place. ‘So you’d swear to this being the same gown?’
‘Let me mak certain.’ Jamieson clipped his spectacles onto his nose and drew the great ledger towards him. ‘A plaid to Hoastin Harry, a woad-dyed gown to Maggie Bent, aye, aye, here we are. Penitential gown number six, to the kin o Annie Gibb.’ He turned the great book about so that Gil could read the entry. ‘Clear enough, I’d say, and I’ll just mark it returned.’ Drawing the book towards him, he reached for his pen.
‘Clear enough,’ Gil agreed. ‘Thanks for this, Alan.’ He dug in his purse for a couple of coins. ‘Will that cover the repairs? Is it just clothing and blankets you give out here? I’d thought you’d some provisions to supply the poor and all.’
‘Oh, I do, I do.’ Jamieson shook sand on the new entry and wiped his pen on the blotched rag at his elbow. ‘Such as there is the now.’
‘What, are donations running low? I’ll tell my wife.’
‘No, no, donations is no bad, though we can aye do wi more. The poor we ha aye wi us, after all. No,’ Jamieson straightened up on his stool, shaking his head, ‘it’s hard to keep hold o the stuff the now. It’s all stored next the dry goods for the Vicars’ hall, round the north side o the kirk, and there’s as much vanishing from both dry stores, the last six month or so, it’s a right worry.’
‘Theft, you mean? How secure is the store?’
‘Secure enough, I’d ha said, till now. Aye, it’s theft. There’s aye the odd cup o dried pease or handful o meal goes astray, but this is a half-sack at a time just walking off when naeb’dy’s watching.’ The Sub-Almoner pulled a long face. ‘You don’t see folk at their best in this post, Gil, you’ll believe me, but to my mind that takes the bell, thieving from the poor. I’ve got the vergers warned to look out for it, but it wouldny surprise me if they were in the game and all.’
‘I’d not heard of that,’ Gil confessed. ‘You’ve changed the locks, I take it.’
‘Oh, aye, and a new padlock at my own expense. That walked off and all, I’d to get a second.’
Thinking it was little wonder that the Sub-Almoner was usually afflicted with melancholy, Gil took his leave of the man and returned to St Catherine’s, where the nameless corpse was now laid out in the little chapel under Annie Gibb’s own shroud, with Sir Simon murmuring in the shadowed chancel. Drawing back the linen he studied the dead woman with care, counting the scars and bruises on her thin body, considering the rough skin of her hands and feet and the broken nails. Meggot had washed these as thoroughly as the rest, and had cleaned under the nails with the point of a knife, extracting dirt and blood and fragments of skin.
‘She’s marked him, whoever he was,’ she had said darkly. ‘And I’d say,’ she twitched her nose fastidiously, ‘she’s lain wi him or wi some man at least, no long afore she was slain. But there’s no sign she was forced, maister, that I can see from here, even wi all these bruises.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Dame Ellen, ‘though we’ll maybe make certain o’t when she softens and I can get a wee look at her-’ She bit off the next words. Curiously, the term which Gil’s unruly mind supplied was French, and not one which Alys used.
Examining the nail-scrapings, he had concluded that there was nothing more to learn there; he had hoped for some clue to the woman’s identity, or at least her trade or profession, but the dirt appeared to be grease from cooking, something nearly all women came into daily contact with.
Now, contemplating her battered body, he reflected that the violence it revealed was also something many women met daily. Who was it? he asked her silently. Who bloodied your mouth and blacked your eyes? Was he your husband, your father, a client? Does he know where his last beating has put you?
‘So what happened, maister?’
Sir Simon had left his prayers again. Gil blinked at him, collecting his thoughts.
‘It’s none so easy to read,’ he admitted.
‘Poor lass,’ said the Master, bending to peer into the corpse’s downturned face, ‘she’s had her troubles, but she’s free o them now. Who must you speak wi next? Your laddie’s away to ask round about if anyone heard anything, and the good-brother, Lockhart, he’s away over to St Mungo’s to complain of their lack of care, but if you’re wanting any of the women I’ll fetch them out.’
‘Aye, if they’re fit to talk to.’
‘I’ll get the lassies out to you, they’re a wee thing calmer now.’
If Annie Gibb’s sisters-in-law were calmer now, Gil was glad he had not attempted to speak to them earlier. Led out into the sunshine they proved to be rather younger than Annie or the dead woman, perhaps fifteen and seventeen, two sturdy girls neither pretty nor plain but something between, with curling brown hair and eyes swollen with weeping. The older one had the hiccups, which provoked increasingly hysterical giggles in the other girl. Their names, it seemed, were Nicholas and Ursula, and like Dame Ellen they had watched from a distance while Annie was bound to the Cross and then had left her.
‘She protested, I think,’ said Gil, sitting down on the opposite bench. The sisters looked at one another, and one nodded.
‘She never wanted it,’ said the other. ‘She wanted just to be left alone.’
‘But it wasny right, living the way she did,’ said her sister, and hiccuped. Blushing, she covered her mouth, and said behind her hand, ‘No company, and never meeting anybody, and we couldny be with her that often, we’d duties about the house.’
‘Had she none?’ Gil asked.
‘Aye, but she renounced them,’ said the hiccuping girl, Nicholas he thought. ‘We’d to see to them all atween us. Feed her hens, take her share o the sweeping and cooking.’
‘Fetch her food,’ said the other, who must therefore be Ursula.
‘Did her maid or her waiting-men not do that?’ It hardly made sense, he thought; he had seen several servants already, and the householder was described as a gentleman and his daughters as heiresses. His own sisters had had their duties certainly, but they hardly amounted to cleaning and kitchen-work.