The Royal Burgh Page 7

  In the morning, they ate a light breakfast of bread and cheese, and then prepared to go and hear Mass at the Holy Rude. It was a fine building, its apse rising from the ground in straight, imperious lines. Danforth had been impressed with it on every previous occasion. It sat on the lower slope of castle rock, bidding regal welcome to the grander sweep of its glorious neighbour. They had on their fur-lined cloaks and were preparing to accompany Alison – who usually rode with her servants – when Mistress Wilson came into the solar. In the misty morning light, her face was ashen.

  ‘Mistress Geddes,’ she said, her voice low. ‘I … young Graeme has been into the burgh this morning.’ Danforth pictured the boy, up at the break of dawn to purchase the freshest and best of the town’s produce for their dinner. He did not envy him the task.

  ‘Yes, Wilson? What news?’ Martin and Danforth exchanged glances. Something might have come in about the Cardinal.

  ‘It’s Mistress Furay.’ Both audibly relaxed. ‘She’s dead.’

  It took much coaxing to get news out of Wilson, and ultimately Alison called in Graeme. He was visibly impressed by the solar. As one of the house’s lower servants, his greatest access above the ground floor was dinner in the outer great hall. As he spoke, his eyes kept wandering around the room. ‘It’s the big news down the market cross. Everybody’s sayin’ it. Her servant lassie, she found her. They only had that one lassie.’ Danforth was surprised. He had imagined Madeleine Furay must have employed a team of servants, possibly in place of friends. Like himself, she had kept only one. He felt another little stab of unwelcome emotion. It didn’t seem possible that the pretty woman was dead. He knew what became of bodies once the soul had departed. Only the day before she had lived and breathed, been haughty and oddly charming.

  ‘What became of her?’ Danforth was surprised that his voice, when it came, was choked with the emotion he was trying to conceal.

  ‘The servant lass or Mistress Furay?’

  ‘Mistress Furay, of course.’

  ‘Dunno,’ he shrugged. ‘But it’s murder they’re sayin’. She came to some harm. In her own home, too.’

  ‘What of her husband?’

  ‘He wasn’t there, I never heard anythin’ about him.’

  ‘How long had she lain dead?’ Graeme shrugged again, as if confused by the questioning. He had heard only of the woman’s death and run back to report it, he repeated. ‘Can I go, now, sir?’

  ‘Aye, Graeme,’ said Martin. ‘You can go. Oh, maman.’ Danforth turned to see Alison collapsed on her settle, her face drained and her eyes closed. She wiped at them before opening them. Though they had turned bloodshot, no tears stood out. She picked up one of her cushions and stared at it. ‘Dead,’ she whispered. ‘That poor, foolish wee lass. She was going to bring me cushions.’

  ‘We’ll get to the truth of this. If she’s been murdered, we’ll see that she gets justice. Danforth and I have experience.’ Alison focused on him, a curious look playing across her pale, shocked face. For his part, Danforth did not mind being volunteered. Madeleine Furay had interested him greatly, for all she was a married woman. It need be nothing more than that: casual interest.

  ‘It shall be so, Mistress Geddes. We shall attend upon the lady … upon the lady’s household and discover what has happened.’

  ‘Bless, you Simon, and you, son. Please, please get her justice. I can’t believe she’s dead, not really, not my wee friend. I … I’m really hoping you find this has all been some cruel jest. It could be, couldn’t it?’ Again, they looked at one another. Martin bent and kissed his mother’s cheek, and the two left the solar, finding Graeme and requesting their horses.

  They took off for the burgh at a gallop. It was not difficult to find the Furay house: a gabbing crowd had gathered outside it. As they tied up the horses, a light wind made the stone fronts of the Hiegait houses echo with excited gossip and the drifting cries of merchants from further down the street hoping to attract the crowd’s attention. Danforth elbowed his way through, he and Martin climbing the steps and going in. In the hall – a more compact version of Alison’s great hall, though more richly painted and heaving with gilded plate, they found two men comforting and pawing at a crying, red-faced girl. They would get little sense, thought Danforth and Martin simultaneously, out of her for a while. One of the men turned at their approach, blonde hair giving way to a handsome face.

  ‘What are you, gentlemen? Ho – is this young Martin?’

  ‘Aye, sir. And this is Mr Danforth, my colleague. Danforth, this is Mr Lyne and …’ His memory seemed to flee him. The man still trying to stifle the tears of the girl raised a leonine face.

  ‘Morris,’ he said, a little querulously.

  ‘Aye, forgive me, I’ve been so long away. Mr Lyne and Mr Morris. They’re two of the burgh baillies. Gentlemen, where are your fellows?’

  ‘Upstairs, sir, with the Provost.’

  ‘Provost Cochran is here?’ asked Martin. ‘Himself?’

  ‘This is a strange matter,’ said Lyne, his soft brown eyes sliding to the floor. ‘The lady’s body lies in her bedchamber.’

  ‘We should like to aid you in investigating this matter,’ said Danforth.

  ‘Why,’ asked Morris, suspicion gleaming. ‘You work for Cardinal Beaton. He can have no concern for the death of a Stirling goodwife. I should think him more taxed by other matters.’ He flashed a crooked, gap-toothed smile.

  ‘No, his Grace has no part of this,’ agreed Danforth, lost.

  ‘Yet,’ said Martin, ‘Mr Danforth here has experience in these kinds of matters. He’s an Englishman, as you might have heard, and you know how much they like killing one another in London.’ Danforth shot him a sour look. His Scots was a matter of pride. He spoke it fluently, and to his ear it sounded perfect. Learning it had been curiously easy, given its proximity to English, yet that same closeness provided its difficulties. The two languages were as alike and yet as unique as Castilian to Aragonese, and so he studiously took care not to slip into English. Something else, he had decided, must mark him out as a learned rather than a native speaker. At times, it felt like he was indelibly branded, an E emblazoned on his forehead. Martin was still talking. ‘When he dwelled in England a great many years ago–’

  ‘Not so many as all that–’

  ‘He worked for the coroner in London. There he helped to investigate deaths that had come about by foul and unnatural means – murder and that. He has a talent for it.’ Danforth didn’t quite like how that made him sound: like a ghoul.

  ‘Well,’ said Lyne, ‘it’s no skin off my nose. I protect the burgh’s fishing rights in the Forth.’

  ‘And I chase rents and monies owed,’ added Morris. ‘Not murderers.’

  ‘Speak to the Provost, upstairs. Provided the sight of a lady’s corpse doesn’t offend you.’

  Danforth nodded to Martin, who had whitened. Both had seen murder victims. Neither derived any pleasure from it, or had wished to do it again. Yet Danforth had come to find a strange acceptance of the duty. When he had been in Paisley the November before, he had investigated strange deaths, bringing the perpetrator to light, if not to true justice. Then he had, as he had in London, dreaded the sight of bodies, having to steel himself to it. This one he wanted to see. He burned to know what had become of Mistress Furay, and who might have been responsible. Though he knew it to be a morbid thing, he had decided some time before that God had invested him with, as Martin had said, a strange talent for listening to the dead. Perhaps God brought the bodies of the murdered before him with an entreaty that he solve them. Man might have free will, but Danforth had the will to discover and reveal the truth.

  Lightly, he took the stone stairs up from the hall, Martin’s heavier tread behind him. The second floor of the house opened on to the bedchamber, a riot of gaudily coloured carpets and hangings. A bed not very different from that Danforth had slept in the previous night sat against the far wall, its stitched blankets and coverlets black, though laced through w
ith grey threads in an approximation of silver. Three men were huddled in conversation, their heads bowed. In unison, they turned at Martin and Danforth’s entry.

  ‘Good morrow, Provost,’ said Martin. Narrow eyes peered at him from a seamed, silvery-whiskered face.

  ‘Can it be young Martin?’ The Provost’s voice was nasal.

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Good morrow to you. Sir, this is the scene of a great tragedy. I cannot do business with you here.’ He gestured beyond himself and his fellows, but Danforth could not see the body for them.

  ‘It’s this matter that brings us here,’ said Martin. ‘My mother bid us find news of her friend.’

  ‘The lady is dead.’ Provost Cochran stood aside, and his two baillies followed suit. The horn windows of which Madeleine Furay had been proud lay open, admitting light. On the carpet beyond them, at the foot of the bed’s great coffer, lay her body. She was wearing only a silken white nightgown, which had hitched up to her knees. Her eyes were open, bulging in defiant anger, and her lips were blue. About her head lay her cloud of auburn hair, and next to it her hands were balled in fists.

  ‘What has happened,’ asked Danforth. His voice was husky, his eyes still trained on the staring, sightless face.

  ‘Who are you, sir?’

  ‘This is my friend, Simon Danforth, English secretary to the Lord Cardinal.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cochran. ‘Mr Martin, can you speak for this man, then? You see, this lady has been murdered most foully, and this fellow is not known to me. You can see how that looks.’

  ‘Mr Danforth is a good man and true,’ said Martin. ‘And he lodged under my mother’s roof last night.’

  ‘I see,’ Cochran repeated, sounding almost disappointed. ‘Well, there is nothing we can do. Masters Forrester and Cousland here have already examined her. Likely some thief has come in the night and done the poor woman to death. He will have fled the burgh now, I don’t doubt. Her husband was from home, as he often is. We shall make enquiries, see if anyone of repute has advertised his hand in the matter by flight. But I think we shall find nothing. The thief and killer shall be a wandering criminal.’

  ‘You accept this solution very lightly, Master Provost,’ said Danforth. This time he was met with a look of aggrieved dislike. ‘When other murders have taken place in this burgh.’

  ‘It is well known that a murderer not caught in the act of his foul deed is rarely caught. There is little I can do, save have the baillies’ men keep a greater watch on who comes and goes in the night. I hardly think some criminals putting an end to each other has any significance to … to this. Who are you anyway, sir, to be here?’

  ‘Only a friend to the dead woman.’

  ‘Oh, well that I can understand.’

  ‘Mr Danforth is a gentleman learned in detecting crimes and the evil men … and women … who commit them,’ said Martin. ‘It was his trade in England, before he came to Scotland and the service of his Grace.’

  ‘Is that so?’ A flicker of interest gleamed in Cochran’s eyes, accompanied by greed. ‘A grisly trade. That’s England for you. Well, then you might have leave to look into this matter. I confess I cannot myself bear to look upon the corpse. My men will brook it, will you not? Mr Forrester?’ The shorter of the men shrugged. ‘Cousland?’ A nod.

  ‘I’ve had toil enough helping humph that up the stairs.’ He pointed at a scarred wooden board. ‘Though where we’d supposed to put the corpse, I don’t know, with this bloody refusal of services.’

  ‘I should like to look upon her,’ said Danforth. ‘If you have no objection.’

  ‘None,’ said Cochran, relieved. ‘None at all. There’s nothing here can bring infamy on any man known to me.’

  ‘Infamy? Not guilt?’

  ‘They are one and the same, sir. Pray investigate this matter. If any man can be found he must be brought to justice swiftly, his neck clean broken. I want no word of this to reach the castle. I want no bruits or scandals touching this burgh. Our castle is the property of the queen dowager, and she might come here whenever the desire strikes her. She takes matters touching the town to heart, for she’s a lady of rare charity and virtue.’ Something of the man’s customary pride of office returned, and, with it, confidence. Danforth allowed himself a fleeting smile at the queen dowager’s virtues, pleased by the image of a great lady. Martin’s eyes rolled at the flattery.

  Cochran turned and looked again at the body. The confidence stalled, and he crossed himself. ‘I am returning home. This matter may now lie in your hands, as you wish, for I want no part of it save a hanged man or a fled one. Report to the baillies with any news. Good morrow, gentlemen.’

  Cochran departed, his grey head bent. The baillies looked at each other and shrugged. ‘If you fellows are so bent on making this matter your own, then you’re welcome to it,’ said Cousland, evidently the more talkative of the pair. We’ll send men back for the body after dinner. Not like she’s going anywhere.’

  Left alone with the body, Martin kept quiet. He knew that Danforth had a keen eye for corpses, finding marks and signs upon them that advertised how the soul had fled. Rather than looking at the corpse himself, he let his eyes wander the room, keen to see what it was that had made Madeleine Furay so sure that her own possessions were that much greater than his mother’s. The place, he thought, was coarse and overblown: a parody of what a newly rich person imagined a great room to be. Everything was carved and decorated, though nothing matched. On a side table sat a towel stitched with flowers, next to a silver water laver carved with capering mermaids. He ran a finger around the rim, making the water ripple. Next to both sat a small chest. He picked it up. It was small enough to require only one hand. Shaking it, he heard coins rattle. So much for thievery.

  ‘Strangled. Or throttled, rather.’ Martin replaced the box, turning at the sound of Danforth’s voice. The older man had taken the news of the death strangely. He was down on one knee by the body. ‘See here, Martin – the lady was thrown backwards. There is a lump on the back of her head. The killer then might have sat upon her, mastering her with force, and lain his hands upon her throat. I should judge this to have happened … perhaps eight hours ago. Her limbs begin to stiffen. Ho, what is this?’

  Danforth had turned from Madeleine and was looking instead at something brown lying a yard or so above her head. He picked it up. ‘A coin,’ he said.

  ‘Yet I fancy this is her strongbox,’ said Martin, reaching again for the small chest. ‘It rattles.’

  ‘Might you get it open?’

  ‘I’m not a master thief, Simon. I could probably smash it with a hammer if you have one.’

  ‘Pass it to me,’ sighed Danforth. ‘It is but a little thing, weak and defenceless.’ In one smooth gesture, he rapped the box against the wooden bedframe, and it cracked along the seam between lid and body. He deposited the lid on the bed, and Martin joined him, stepping around the dead woman. Inside were the lady’s little purse of money and some cheap, counterfeit jewellery, the kind manufactured for poor women who sought to ape the aristocracy.

  ‘How much is there?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Not much, yet it is of far greater value than that coin on the floor.’

  ‘Well yes, there’s more of it.’

  ‘No, Arnaud. That coin is brass. It is false.’ Though it glittered, its little face was only masquerading as a ducat.

  ‘Left behind by the killer?’

  ‘Very possibly.’

  ‘That’s a serious thing. Someone might hang for that.’

  ‘Only if he tries to pass it at the market or some other shop as real.’

  ‘Shall we inform Morris? He’s our man deals with monies in the burgh.’

  ‘Not yet, I think.’ Danforth rubbed the coin between his thumb and forefinger ‘Damnatio ad bestias,’ he whispered.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Condemned to the beasts. That peaceable sovereign Augustus Caesar. He proclaimed that men who counterfeited coinage should be
thrown naked to the lions.’

  ‘A hard end.’

  ‘Well, I believe it was later turned only to banishment. At any rate, I should think that forging false coin is the least of our fellow’s crimes. Did you find anything else?’

  ‘No, sir. The lady’s things are as one might expect. Wait – it appears Mistress Furay was engaged in reading when she was attacked.’ By the left side of the bed was a discarded book, its cover blank. Danforth frowned, and Martin understood why: reading alone was a lonely occupation, and he would not have expected Mistress Furay to have the skill at all.

  Martin crossed to the book first, picking it up. His eyes widened, and a smile spread across his face. ‘What can you find to laugh at?’ asked Danforth. ‘Have you no heart in you, sir?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Simon,’ said Martin, shaking his head. He blew out a long whistle. ‘But this you must see. It appears a false coin may not be the only thing the killer left behind, for to be sure this was not Mistress Furay’s.’ He offered the book to Danforth, interested in his response. He took it without looking down, his disapproving look still fixed on Martin.

  The book was a tatty old thing, not a printed volume but a grizzled folio with a thicker paper cover, little strings binding the whole. He opened it at random. One the verso side was some writing, arranged in verse, but his eyes were drawn to the recto page. There, a crudely drawn man with an exaggerated phallus was chasing a bare-breasted woman, who was gazing back at him with lustful eyes. He turned the page quickly. Again, a bawdy verse faced a nude couple, this time copulating frantically. He slammed the book shut, his cheeks blooming. He had not seen such things since he lived in London, where they circulated freely, yet were seldom spoken of.

  ‘It is … an immoral book.’ He could not think of any other way of describing it.

  ‘What did you see? I opened it at a woman swiving a donkey. Pair of dirty beasts.’

  ‘It is all the same. These things … they are a stain on any community, wrapped as they are in the clothes of wisdom and knowledge.’