The Forest Laird(64)

“We, you said. You were involved in this tallying?”

“Of course I was. Will had seen the two bales of prime wool proffered for a year of Masses to shorten the old man’s years in Purgatory. That cleared his mind wondrously and set a value on his thoughts concerning how he had been wronged and how much he had lost thereby, in forfeiture. He would have made a canny merchant, our Will. And once I saw the way his mind was set, I helped him out. So …”

He began to count on his fingers. “For the two major offences against him, threat of death and loss of marriage prospects, two bales each. For the loss of work, wage, and good name, one bale apiece, making seven bales in all. But then, as any good merchant will, he included his costs. He added in the costs of transportation—two wagons with teams and drivers, he thought—and covered those with two more bales, making nine altogether.”

“You stole nine bales of wool?”

“Nine bales of prime wool, Jamie. But we didna steal it and it wasna really nine, as things turned out. We just claimed nine as due to us. Or as owed to Will. The whole thing was”—he thought for a moment—“straightforward. Bar a few earlier arrangements.”

I sat there immobile, my mind consumed with the thought that my cousin had become a thief and placed himself beyond the law. No wonder, then, that he had stayed away so long and that Ewan had been alert to the presence of others.

“Tell me exactly what took place,” I said, “because all you’ve done to this point is confuse me. Start again at the beginning.”

“It’s a gospel you want, then.” He sighed, then took a long swallow of ale. “Well, if I fall asleep in the telling, in God’s name don’t wake me.

“It started at the main road. I made to turn right and Will went left instead, as though towards Glasgow. When I asked him where he was going, he said Kilbarchan and pointed west. I kept my mouth shut and followed him for the next while until we reached the village.

“It’s a strange wee place, a cluster of cottages, less than ten, I think, and all the folk are weavers. The houses all have looms in them, sometimes more than one, so there’s hardly any room left for the folk to sleep. We stopped at one house and asked how we would find the Graham place, and the weaver pointed out the way to us. It was another mile distant. He said we couldn’t miss it, and he was right, there it was.

“I said Kilbarchan was a strange wee place, but Graham’s property was a strange big place. Four stone buildings in a walled enclosure. Prosperous, as you’d expect. One of the four was the main house and the other three were warehouses, we discovered. We sat on the crest, looking down at it, and counted the people moving about down there. There weren’t many. I counted eight of them, and they were all around the main house. I thought we would leave then, but Will kicked his horse forward, and we rode down.”

He pulled thoughtfully at his ale again. “Some self-important fellow met us at the front of the house, asking to know our business. He was the household steward, but with the old man dead, he thought himself in charge of everything. Your cousin amazed me by presenting himself as a well-bred man of affairs, addressing the fellow in Latin until it became clear that the man could not understand a word. From then on, he spoke plain Scots, saying he had been sent to make inquiries by his master, Lord Ormiston of Dumfries, regarding a contract that Sir Thomas had with Alexander Graham the wool merchant for the purchase of raw wool. Told the fellow that Sir Thomas had paid in advance months earlier but that upon reaching Paisley the previous day, with the intent of taking delivery, he had been informed of the merchant’s untimely death and, not wishing to trespass upon the family’s grief, had sent us two to ask when we might return to complete our business to everyone’s satisfaction. That impressed even me—to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“So what did this fellow say?”

“Nothing much. Will’s manner had cowed him. He was the old man’s steward, as I said, but a mere house servant. He had little knowledge of the working end of the old man’s business, and he mumbled something about the workforce all having gone home to wait for what would happen next. And then he told us that another wool merchant, a Master Waddie, would be coming over from Paisley in two days’ time to act in the interests of the son and heir, taking a detailed inventory of the materials in store and the contracts outstanding. He said word would not yet have had time to reach young Master Graham, who served the Lord Robert Bruce as a verderer and would most likely be somewhere on the Bruce lands in Annandale. It would take him, the man believed, at least two days to reach home, so he and the Waddie fellow might well arrive at the same time.