‘His man?’ Alys queried, stopping to look at the other girl. ‘Your maister never mentioned a manservant. Is he still there?’
‘No by what Meggot says,’ Jennet agreed. ‘Seems he found it too quiet and all, for he vanished away one day along wi the doctor’s purse wi ten merks in siller in it. Then there was the young leddies’ two men cam for the betrothal, wi all their folk, and went away again, and that Dame Ellen comes and goes, and apart from the cadger they spoke o that’s all the company there’s been in the place since Yule. Away too quiet for me, that would be. Oh, no, I tell a lee, there was her two nephews came calling a few times, it seems, but Meggot wasny that keen to see them, by what she said. Kind o free wi their hands, or one o them is, any road.’
‘That was well done. You learned more than I did,’ said Alys, moving on. ‘What did she tell you of her mistress’s life? Did any of these visitors call on her?’
‘Oh, aye. Aye pestering her, so Meggot says, to gie up her vow and come back into the world. That Dame Ellen telling her what a bonnie husband her nephews would make, even trying to persuade her wi ribbons and gewgaws off the cadger’s cairt. Meggot said,’ Jennet negotiated the stepping-stones of the Girth Burn behind Alys, her skirts caught up in either hand, ‘Meggot said, she’d as soon see the lassie live her life like any other, but she’d not see her forced to it. She said,’ she confided, ‘she’d ha thought those nephews had something to do wi Annie disappearing, maybe snatched her away and hid her, save that they looked as astonished as the rest o them when it turned out it was another lassie that was dead.’
‘So I thought too, by what your maister said.’
‘I hope she’s no to get a beating, only for talking to me.’ Jennet stopped, pushing back her hair, and stared about her. ‘Here, mem, where are we away to now? This is us on the High Street, no the Drygate. Are we no bound for home?’
‘We’re going to the old house. I want a word with Berthold,’ Alys said. The other girl gave her a sidelong look, but said nothing. ‘So maybe you should stay with me, rather than go off to the kitchen.’
‘Och, there’s nothing for me in that kitchen now,’ Jennet pointed out. ‘Talking away in Ersche, they are, and never a bite for a guest to eat neither. No neighbourly, I call it, no to mention the way the dust’s rising in the hall, you’d think they never knew what a besom was for. I’d just as soon attend you, mem.’
‘Ich sah nichts!’ said Berthold, his eyes rolling like a nervous horse’s. ‘Ich kann nicht — ich sah nichts!’
Alys reached along the bench and patted his hand. About them the garden of her father’s house lay in the sunshine, the scents of lavender and gillyflowers rising from the neat plots. At least her stepmother was tending that, she thought irrelevantly.
‘I know,’ she agreed, and paused, mustering the little Low Dutch she knew. It was rather different from Berthold’s High Dutch, but she had found it served to talk to him before now. She suspected the boy understood a lot more Scots than he would admit, but the answer she wanted was going to take some persuasion, and something approaching his own language would work better. ‘Ziet u de vrouw?’ she said cautiously. Berthold shrank slightly from her. ‘De dood vrouw? The dead woman?’
The boy shuddered, and dragged his hand from her clasp. Jennet, standing by the lavender hedge, narrowed her eyes.
‘That’s worried him, mem,’ she observed unnecessarily. ‘Here, Berthold, tell the mistress all about it, whatever it is. She’ll can sort it for you, so she will.’
‘Nein, nein! Ich weiss nichts!’ said Berthold, shaking his head emphatically. Alys smiled at him, and reclaimed his hand, which was sweating and trembling.
‘Waar?’ she asked him. ‘Waar zij is?’ Another shake of the head. ‘On the Drygate? Or on the Stablegreen?’
‘Ich sah nichts,’ Berthold almost wailed.
‘En u? Waar u was?’
‘What are you saying to him, mem?’ Jennet asked. ‘He’s in a right tirravee about it, whatever it is.’
‘I asked him where he was,’ Alys said, ‘the night he went out with Luke.’
‘What, the night afore last? The night the lassie was slain?’ Jennet looked intently at Berthold. ‘Did he see it, are you thinking? Is that why he’s feart, he thinks they’ll come and get him and all?’
Berthold, his pale blue gaze going from one face to the other, said nothing.
‘Waar u was?’ Alys repeated. He shook his head. ‘Luke says you were not with him. Were you on the Stablegreen? By St Nicholas’ perhaps?’
‘Sankt Nikolaus,’ said Berthold after a moment. Alys nodded, and patted the hand she still held.
‘See, that was easy,’ she said. ‘Where were all the others? The prentices? Where was the fighting?’ She mimed a punch with her free hand. ‘On the Drygate? By the Cross?’
Berthold eyed her doubtfully, and after another pause said,
‘Das Kreuz. Neben dem Kreuz.’
‘Is he saying they were by the Cross, mem?’ said Jennet. ‘For that’s right, that’s what Luke tellt us. Been a right good battle, by the sound o’t, and nobody hurt neither.’
Berthold’s gaze flicked to her at the words, and his expression changed, as if he did not agree. Alys considered him thoughtfully.
‘Berthold,’ she said. His eyes turned to her, and she let go his hand. ‘Hier ist das Kreuz.’ She drew an X on the wooden bench between them with her forefinger, and another a handspan away. ‘Hier ist Sankt Nikolaus. Hier is u.’ She looked up at him, and he nodded. She waved her hand over the little scene she had mapped. ‘Wat u zien? What do you see? De dood vrouw?’
‘Nein!’
‘Is hier,’ she drew a line away from St Nicholas’, ‘Rottenrow.’ Another nod. ‘Hier kom twee mensen.’ She held up two fingers, then walked them along the line of Rottenrow. ‘Ja? Twee mensen.’ She mimed fine clothes, patted rich sleeves, adjusted a hat. Berthold nodded hesitantly.
‘My, you’re as good as a play, mem,’ said Jennet, laughing.
‘Twee mensen,’ Alys said, and walked them down Rottenrow again. By the spot which represented St Nicholas’ she paused. Berthold was watching her fingers; after a moment he stole a glance at her, then looked back at her hand. ‘Wat u zien?’ she asked again. The boy shook his head and looked away again, staring intently at the flagstones under the bench. ‘Berthold,’ she persisted. ‘Wat u zien?’
His chest heaved.
‘Nichts!’ he burst out. ‘Ich sah nichts!’ He sprang to his feet, bobbed a perfunctory bow, the civility heartbreaking in the circumstances, and fled towards the house.
‘Well!’ said Jennet. ‘Did he tell you anything, mem? I canny make out his babble. It’s right clever the way you can understand him, and Luke can tell what he’s saying and all.’
‘He saw the two brothers,’ Alys said, gazing after the boy. ‘The same two that Meggot was telling you about. I know Luke saw them so that must be right. But he insists that he saw nothing else.’
‘He’s feart for something,’ said Jennet. ‘Or someone, maybe.’
‘So I thought,’ agreed Alys. She drew a deep breath, and got to her feet. ‘Come, I must be civil to my good-mother.’
Ealasaidh nic Iain, very upright on the settle in the hall, her red worsted skirts spreading round her and her dark curling hair hidden by a very new French hood which did not entirely suit her, studied Alys with faint hostility.