A Trust Betrayed (16 page)

“Not Janet Webster’s husband?” Standing in the smiddie yard, holding his hammer . . .

“Aye,” said Sim. “What went on there, I ask you? First Harry, now Davy.”

“Who is Harry?”

“He was a cobbler, a friend of Davy’s. Found floating in the Tummel a few weeks ago,” said Sim.

“He and Davy went missing the same time,” said Geordie.

“Both were stripped naked,” Sim added.

“Quiet,” Roy muttered.

Margaret remembered hearing that a body had been found in the Tummel a few days after Jack’s death.

“They say he looks like he’s been in the water all this time,” said Sim. He seemed to enjoy relating the more unpleasant details.

Margaret remembered Jack’s bloated body after only four days. She did not want to imagine what the smith would look like after having been exposed to the waters of the bog and the creatures that fed in it for a fortnight. “All that time,” she whispered. “How did they know him?”

“The men who found him knew him well,” said Sim.

“Where has he been taken?”

“The canons have him at the abbey,” said Roy. “His wife is on her way down.”

Poor Janet. “How did you hear of this?”

“Men of the town have been watching that place ever since Harry was found downstream of it,” said Sim. “It’s the abbot, they say. Edward Longshanks’s man. None of the English king’s men have been found murdered.”

With a spreading chill she remembered the hostility Andrew had suffered in the tavern. So all the brethren at the abbey were under suspicion. She could not believe her brother would have any part in such an act. “Why would Longshanks’s men murder a cobbler and a smith?”

“You may as well ask why they murdered all the men of Berwick and left them in the streets to be eaten by the gulls and ravens,” said Roy.

Some of the drinkers sat sallow-faced and shocked, others drew heads together, talking earnestly. An argument had broken out near the door. “Will you close up when it’s time, Roy?” Margaret asked.

“Aye, mistress. This is no place for you.”

9

There Won
’
t Be Many Mourn Him

The dark, silent backlands swallowed Margaret as she stepped out of the tavern. Anything, anyone, could hide behind a building, in the shadows beneath the stairs, against the houses. But that was not what she feared. To be alone, abandoned by all her kin—that was what she feared. And she feared Edward Longshanks. He had betrayed the trust of her countrymen, humiliated their king and stolen his crown, butchered the citizens of Berwick, and now his poison was seeping into all their lives. She would not believe that Andrew supported him. No matter what else he might lack, Andrew had a conscience. His abbot might be a traitor to this country, but not Andrew. If she was right, she feared for him.

But what of Murdoch? All the other taverns in Edinburgh had been taken over by the English or closed because of trouble. Only Murdoch’s remained open to the folk. Might the same moral lack that drove him to smuggling and thieving lure him to treason against his people? No. She could not believe that of him.

She shivered and thought to go up to bed, but her eyes were drawn to the lantern that hung over the doorway to the next house, the house in which Murdoch would rest his head if he were here tonight. Margaret headed for it. With the lantern in hand, she mounted the steps to her uncle’s temporary bedchamber. Slipping through the hide door she set the lantern on a small chest, considered the sparse furnishings. A bed, a shelf beside it with an oil lamp, a stool, the chest on which she had set the lantern. That was padlocked. Kneeling, she examined the lock. It looked like the sort opened with a slide key. Simple to open with the proper tool. She had a slide key and a notched post up in her room—they had served her well when her mother lost household keys and she carried them with her out of habit.

Margaret stepped onto the landing and froze, sensing someone there.

“Uncle?”

Redbeard stepped into the light. “Murdoch’s not returned?”

Seeing who it was did not ease her fear, even though his chamber was just behind him so he had cause to be here. Something in his manner frightened her, and she did not like that he knew Murdoch was away. “You made your way up without the light?”

“A man who cannot pick his way in the dark is worthless, lass.”

He seemed huge in this low, narrow space, and his calling her “lass” meant to her that he knew the effect he had. He had approached so silently up a dark, unfamiliar stair. His stealth added to her uneasiness.

Margaret shone the light toward his chamber. “You will find a cruisie in there with a twig for lighting from my lantern.” She watched him use it.

When he had lit the rush wick of his lamp he said, “God keep you,” and bowed to her.

Sweating with fear, Margaret hastened back to her own chamber.

Celia opened the door before Margaret knocked.

“You have been so long. Was it a fight?”

“The body of Janet Webster’s husband was found in the bog.”

“Holy Mother of God!” Celia’s eyes were dark beads in the lamplight. “That poor woman.”

“Aye. I cannot think how a wife looks on such a sight.”

“Will you go to her?”

“She has gone to the abbey.”

They finished the pitcher of ale before retiring to the great bed.

Margaret lay down only for the warmth—she would not sleep. Redbeard’s appearance without her uncle’s chamber had been the finishing touch for her. He might have snapped her neck without anyone knowing. She tried to push down such thoughts. She had no proof he meant her harm. He might simply have been headed for his chamber. But she had felt such a darkness in his presence, such a burning anger.

She sat up in alarm each time one of the boarders mounted the steps. If Murdoch did not return, if his body was found somewhere . . . She tried not to think of that. And in truth, what need she fear, for Andrew would come to her aid. But if his abbot was a murderer . . . Celia moaned in her sleep.

The Englishman came up quite late, just as Roy was shouting that all must leave. Margaret wondered why the men had tolerated him in their midst. Listen to her—she grew like the men in the tavern. Not all the English were like their king. Surely not. Still, any peaceable Englishman with sense was long gone from this place. She held her breath, listening for sounds from the man’s room, wishing she had put him in the next house. But then she would have had Redbeard next door to
her.
Come home, Uncle. Dear God, watch over Murdoch and bring him
home safely.
Andrew and Murdoch were right. This was no place for her.

*
      
*
       
*

In the early morning Margaret bucked up her courage and resolved to examine her uncle’s kitchen and the chest in his chamber. He must have cause to lock them, and that cause might shed light on his disappearance. What she would do with the knowledge she had yet to figure. First she must have it.

Celia woke at the noise Margaret made rummaging for the tools. She sat up, asked sleepily, “What is it?”

“I am going to see if Uncle is in his bed,” Margaret lied.

She unbolted the door. But as she opened it, she heard the floorboards creak unevenly in the room she had given the Englishman. She heard voices, a pair. They quieted.

“What—?” Celia began, but stopped as Margaret shook her head at her.

Halting footsteps approached the other doorway. Margaret shuttered her lantern, blew out the lamp beside the bed, kept the door open a crack.

At the edges of the hide in the guest chamber she saw a light approaching, and prayed it did not illuminate her door.

The hide lifted. The crooked torso explained the halting walk. Harcar, the fishmonger’s lad. The one who had discovered Jack’s body. His eyes swept over her doorway, then the doorway across the way, and lastly the doorway to the outside stairs. With a nod to the person holding the hide—Margaret could not see him—Harcar crossed in his awkward gait to the outside door and exited with caution. The hide curtain fell back in place over the Englishman’s doorway.

It was a suspicious time for a visitor. All the fears of the night washed over Margaret. She shut her door and waited until her heartbeat slowed and she was calm enough to move quietly. She could hear Celia’s frightened breathing. The Englishman might be listening, too. Margaret could not move past his chamber without some noise betraying her. So she must not steal past his door, but walk past as if nothing were amiss.

“I am going to make some noise in leaving,” she whispered to Celia.

“You should come back to bed.”

And lie there soaked in fear? She had borne enough of that for one night. “Bolt the door behind me when I go.” Margaret pulled the bed curtains aside noisily, making one of the posts knock the wall. She relit the cruisie, carelessly drew the bolt on the door, and cursed when she did not find a clean chamber pot. Shut the door. Opened the chest and let the lid drop.

Noisy enough, she hoped. Now she left the room. Someone grunted in the room to her right, but the Englishman’s room was silent. When she slipped through the outer door she resumed her earlier stealth, glad for the quiet stairs as she descended, and the thick fog that had rolled in as dawn approached.

At the bottom of the steps she paused, listening. She did not want to be surprised while working on the lock. A rat scuttled across her foot, followed closely by the dark cat, which growled deep in its throat as it narrowed in on its prey. She crossed to the kitchen in their wake, waited yet again, then crept round to the door at the back.

She shone the lantern on the lock. It was a padlock much like the one on which Murdoch had trained her. But she had no need for her tools—the lock hung open.

She caught her breath, gently tried the latch. The door swung inward. It was dark inside. She took another step forward, reaching out to feel for the windowsill where she could set the tools and free a hand.

Someone grabbed her from behind, twisting her left arm behind her. Margaret pressed back into him as she felt steel against her throat. She tried to move her right arm to shove the lantern back into his groin, but his arm pinned hers down.

“Mother of God!” she gasped, letting go of the lantern.

“Maggie!”

It was her uncle, not a murdering Englishman, not Red-beard. Murdoch let her go. She sank to her knees, weak and gasping for breath. The lantern. It would start a fire. She groped for it, praying that it had hit bare ground.

“God’s blood, you’ll be the death of me.”

Margaret found the lantern and opened the shutter.

“No light, Maggie,” Murdoch hissed.

“Why such stealth in your own kitchen?”

He was wearing a plaid, his legs and feet bare. His shirt was darkly stained, his eyes wild. He grabbed the lantern, shuttered it. “Get out.” His voice was hoarse and shaky.

“Where have you been? Do you ken how worried I’ve been?”

“Get out.” He pushed her toward the door, thrust the lantern at her. “I almost killed you, you foolish woman.”

She reached out for him.

“Uncle—”

“For God’s sake, Maggie, go.”

She backed out; he shut the door, sliding the bolt into place. She sank down on the bench outside to catch her breath. Her neck stung. She gently probed with her fingertips, found the spot sticky. Queasy at the discovery of how close she had come to being seriously injured, if not killed, she dropped her head into her hands. Murdoch was back, he was alive, praise God. But his presence did not mean safety for her. She had been mad to step within after discovering the door unlocked, the kitchen dark.