‘That was part of it.’ Alys lay back against the pillows of her sister-in-law’s best bed, still feeling disorientated. ‘I-We should be better friends. I thought it falls to me to make- And then she-’ She swallowed, and started again. ‘My father said something about Berthold, I wished to ask her more about it. And to speak to Berthold.’
‘You’re making little sense.’ Kate objected. ‘What about Berthold? He’s coming on, or so John Paterson says, his Scots is no bad at all and he was out at the prentice battle the other night, it seems. A numnum!’ she said to the noisily suckling baby, who ignored her.
Alys tried to gather her thoughts.
‘My father said,’ she recounted slowly, ‘that my good-mother had seen shadows round the boy. He has been unwell for a day or two, ever since the prentice battle. We suspect he saw something that night which has frightened him, and what my father said confirms it to me. I wished to speak to him myself, but it was no good, he would not tell me either.’
‘Shadows.’
‘And also crows. She thought, not his death, but something around him.’
Kate eyed her doubtfully, but did not comment. After a moment she said,
‘Where is Gil at with this matter, anyway? We heard about the man dead at St Mungo’s. Is it connected to the other death? Is someone going about the High Kirk killing folk? That’ll do the pilgrim trade no good.’
‘I don’t know what Gil might have learned today,’ she said. ‘There is no trace of the missing lassie, which is strange, you would think if she has been taken to be wed by force, or for her money, her kin would have heard of it by now. I wanted to ask my good-mother something about that, too,’ she added, ‘but she has never met Cadger Billy, though she has heard of him.’
‘Cadger Billy?’ Kate repeated. ‘The chapman wi the cart?’
‘You know him?’ Of course, she realised, Kate had grown up out in Lanarkshire. Likely Gil knew the man too, and she had had no need to ask, to get into conversation with-
‘Known him all my life. He’d come by every two or three months, first at Darngaber, then after we went to Carluke, he’d turn up wi his wee cart and a great load of knick-knacks and useful things, on his way out into Lanarkshire. Pins and needles, braids and threads, belt buckles, laces, you name it, he carries it all round the West, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire as well as north of the river.’
‘Where does he come from, do you know? Where is his home?’
‘Oh, he’s a Glasgow man.’ Alys sat up with an exclamation, and Kate looked surprised. ‘Why are you asking? What’s he to do wi’t?’
‘The Shaw girls, the missing lady’s good-sisters, mentioned him. I think he may have carried messages for Annie.’
‘He’s out on his round the now,’ Kate said. ‘I had a word from Tib just yesterday, and she mentioned him, said he’d been by Carluke and went on towards Lesmahagow the day she wrote. So even if he carried word, it’s none so likely he carried Annie herself off.’
‘Does he have kin here in Glasgow, do you know?’
‘Never a notion.’ Kate disengaged the drowsy baby from her breast, leaned forward to put him in his cradle, and began to fasten her gown. ‘No, wait, I think he once mentioned having taken a wife out of Renfrewshire, which disappointed my sister Margaret at the time, she’d a fancy for him. Tib and I used to tease her about it. Good-looking fellow, wi fair hair, though he doesny have as many teeth as he used to have.’ She reached for her crutches, and levered herself to her feet to clump across to the bed. ‘How are you feeling now? Aye, I think you’re more like yourself. Were you wanting to track down Cadger Billy? Will we ask the men if they ken where he might dwell?’
Making her way home an hour or so later with Jennet watchful at her elbow, Alys picked her way along the path by the mill-burn, past the gardens of the houses on the High Street, past the tumbledown wall at the foot of the College lands, turning over what she had learned in the afternoon, though her thoughts flinched away from the one fact, the unthinkable thing, which she must not share yet with anyone, not even with Gil. Andy Paterson, steward to Kate’s husband Augie Morison, had promised to ask about for Cadger Billy’s lodging, though he could not see what Alys wanted with such a man, and said so.
‘He’s honest enough,’ he admitted grudgingly, ‘but you’ve all the warehouses o Glasgow about you, mistress, what business would you have wi him?’
Andy’s nephew John had been more helpful. Aye, he minded Berthold fine at the prentice boys’ battle; he had been near the Cross, and then he had slipped away, maybe no liking the tussle. John had seen him by St Nicholas’ chapel, hiding in the shadows. Seeing Luke was in the thick of things, John had kept half an eye on the German laddie, and saw the two fine fellows come down Rottenrow, past Berthold, and turn up the Stablegreen, and then again later coming by the Cross, making for the High Street. They had called encouragement to the defenders of the Cross.
‘Likely they was going drinking,’ he said. ‘And Berthold was still by the chapel then, mistress, but I lost sight o him after that, we was sore pressed by the Drygate lot, and he never cam home wi Luke and me, we took it he’d gone ahead.’
‘And will you lie down on your bed when we get in?’ Jennet was saying now. ‘Or at the least put your feet up on the settle for a wee while-’
‘It’s near dinner time,’ said Alys.
‘I don’t know,’ the other girl said, ‘you’d be better if you’d take a wee rest now and then, stead o running about Glasgow till you’re all owerset by a wee word wi your good-mother, even if she did say what I thought she said,’ she added darkly. ‘And did you hear what it was she was telling you afore we cam away? No that you can set great store by what these Ersche say, great leears they are, though maybe no your good-mother, mem,’ she added hastily, ‘but just the same. Did you hear it, mem?’
‘No,’ said Alys curtly.
‘Why, she was saying-’
‘Mistress! I thought that was you!’ said a voice. They both swung round, to confront Euan Campbell, weary and travel stained on the path behind them. ‘I am back, mistress,’ he said triumphantly, ‘and though I never found the missing lady, I have found where she is selling all her stolen goods!’
Chapter Ten
Gil was not convinced by what Euan was saying.
‘So you’ve been to Dumbarton,’ he said, eyeing his henchman, ‘and found where someone is selling stolen goods from Glasgow.’
‘Indeed I have,’ agreed Euan proudly, ‘all labelled with the Cathedral’s stamp they are and everything.’
‘Mind out the road, maister,’ said Annis, ‘till we set up the board.’
‘Begin at the beginning,’ Gil said, stepping aside while the women shifted trestles and Lowrie went to help them. ‘I sent you — yesterday afternoon,’ he added pointedly, ‘down to the shore to see if the fisher-folk knew anything about a lady leaving the burgh by night.’
‘Indeed, so it was,’ agreed Euan with even more pride. ‘Och, are you thinking I should have been back sooner? I could not, for I was carried all the way to Dumbarton while I found out all you were wanting to know, and I walked home today.’
Gil sat down on the bench Annis had just dragged into position.
‘I sent you to the shore,’ he said patiently. ‘What did you do when you got there?’
‘Why, I asked as you bade me, maister,’ Euan avouched, ‘about a lady missing from the Cross in nothing but her shift, though I never told them that bit, for decency you understand, and first one said he knew nothing and then another, and then one was telling me that the man Stockfish Tam might have something to say.’
‘Maister Gil,’ said Jennet beside him, ‘will you raise your elbow till I put the cloth out. If you please,’ she added implausibly.
‘So you spoke to Stockfish Tam?’ Gil prompted.
‘No, no, for he was not there at that time. So I sat down and had a wee crack wi the fisher folk, seeing I ken the most o them from one time or another I’ve voyaged down the watter. They were right interested to hear o the goings on up at St Mungo’s,’ he added, ‘and I made sure to tell them you’d have the murderer by the heels in no time at all.’