Lammas: 1588: A Calendar of Crime, Book Three

August 1

(1)

Elspet left the sweepings for the tide to take out. There were ships, three or four, coming to the fair. ‘Look out for Spaniards,’ Sliddershanks had said, and she could not help but glance across the bay, though she did not really think the fleet would come. It was just his play.

She had belonged to Sliddershanks – she looked on it like that – for almost six years now. She had been fifteen, in service to Maude Benet at the harbour inn, when they first had met. She had woken in her bed one cruel December night to find that Maude had gone, with her daftie daughter and the cat. The lass who worked beside her had not lingered long. ‘I have expectations, d’ye see?’

Elspet herself had had no expectations, no other refuge or friends. She had stayed for three days alone at the inn, and when the sailors came to drink she had telt them bluntly that the house was closed, stopping up the doors and her ears against their oaths, mindful that Maude Benet would not let them curse. She had swept the floors and scrubbed the stools and boards, and, when a mouse appeared, caught it in a trap and left the carcase out as a warning to the rest. She had made pottage and broth with the pulled roots and herbs in the kitchen, and bread from the barley and oats. She had returned to the loft, to her old sleeping place, when the sun had set and had woken again as it rose. On the fourth day, Sliddershanks had come, with a paper from the council, forcing her to open up the locks. He had told her that his name was Walter Bone – though in her head she thought of him as Sliddershanks, for he was slow and crippled in his legs – and he was now the owner of the harbour inn.

Sliddershanks had looked her up and down. ‘Whit age are ye? Ten?’

She had telt him, indignant, ‘I am not ten.’

‘No? An uncomely twattle, are ye no?’

‘A twattle?’ she had said.

‘A mimmerkin. A dwarf.’

‘I am not a dwarf.’

Maude Benet had been stern. Sometimes even sharp. But she had not called folk names. Elspet had telt him, as Maude would have done. And he had laughed at her.

‘Ye are a hichty wee quean. But ye will not do here. Ye are the wrang sort.’

She had asked him, ‘What is my sort?’

‘A pin-hippit runt. Not the sort that men like, that will bring in the drinkers. That has something to hing to, up here, and an arse.’ He had placed his hands on the offending parts, and told her in a way that was kinder than his words, ‘Flat as a board. Now if ye were a wean, the chance is ye wid sprout. But sin ye are full grown, there is little hope. What man wid want you?’

‘Oh,’ she had said. ‘What will I do then?’

‘Have you nowhere to go? No family?’

Elspet had shaken her head. Maude and the daftie she had thought were her family. Now they had left her alone. It was not strictly true. Maude Benet had remembered, when she went to flit, that Elspet had a mammie living still at Crail. Mebbe she forgot she had a faither too, and what that father did. She would not go to them.

Sliddershanks, with his withered smile and his crooked bones, had not looked like a man who was heavy with his fists. He had looked around him, taking in the room that was swept and scrubbed, the savour of the broth and the carcase of the mouse, and he had nodded. ‘Well. Stay, if ye will. But keep out from the tap. That ploukie-facit mow of yours is sure to sour the ale.’

His name for her was Mimmerkin. And she returned his taunts. The first day she had dared to use his name of Sliddershanks he had turned to gawp at her, and she had been feart that she had gone too far. Then his crooked face had split into a smile. ‘You are an impudent quean.’

She was not bonny, he telt her. No man would want her. But he had been wrong about that.

Sliddershanks did not allow her to mix with the men. For that, he brought in the sort of lass he liked, buxom and broad-hipped. All of them, he telt her, were comelier than she. Only when the inn was full, and the heaving bosoms buckled at the strain, would he let her go out with a cup or tray. ‘The hope is that the drinkers do not spy you in the crush, foulsum as ye are. The help is you are slight enough to slip among a crowd.’

‘More help than you are, with your futless leg.’

‘I had a foot once,’ he said.

She gave him as good as she got. But sometimes in the night, when she was in her bed, she felt beneath the sheet her slender hips and thighs, the sweet bud of her breasts, and wondered if she was so foul that she could not be loved.

By day, she kept the house. And when the drinkers came she sent out broth and bannock, herrings, bread and cheese from the kitchen larder she now thought of as her own. The lassies in the front room she saw come and go, Alys and Isobel, Jonet and Em. All were of a kind, and none of them stayed long. Some went off with sailors who had come across the sea. Some of them were married. Some of them went wrong. She saw Jonet on a Sunday, stripped down to her shirt, weeping at the kirk. They had cut her hair. Not long after that, a council from the kirk had come to talk to Sliddershanks. The minister himself was there – for that was before he was taken at the plague – and Elspet had heard his censure, strenuous and stern. Sliddershanks had called her in, and she had been afraid.

‘This is Elspet Bell,’ Sliddershanks had said, ‘who has worked for me since the day I came. She lives in this house. There is nothing here that she does not ken. Ask her what she sees that is not clean or seemly.’

The four men from the kirk had seemed to be discomfited. It had seemed to Elspet that they did not like to look at her. Perhaps it was her kirtle they found unbecoming, or they were offended at the plainness of her face. Was she yet so foul, they could not meet her gaze?

The minister had cleared his throat. ‘I know Elspet well. She is a communicant of conscience in the kirk. A guid kind of girl,’ he had telt them.

Encouraged, she had looked at him. But