The Counterfeit Madam

Chapter Nine

‘I’m right flattered,’ said Lowrie, ‘that Maister Gil trusts me to keep you safe, but I thought bringing a couple of our lads along as well might be wiser.’

Alys gave him an enigmatic smile, and pressed her horse to a faster walk. She had left Gil still asleep. He had returned some time before dawn, rousing her long enough to give her a confusing account of Sandy Boyd, Archbishop Blacader and a body in a kist, before they had both become distracted; when she woke again at the more usual time and slid out of his embrace he hardly stirred.

It had taken her an hour to organize horses and escort for this outing, while contriving to give both Catherine and Ealasaidh the impression that she was acting on Gil’s instructions. She hoped one of them would wake him in time for the quest on Dame Isabella; meanwhile she preferred to leave Glasgow behind as soon as possible.

‘I was certain you would know the road out to Strathblane,’ she said. ‘I have never ridden that way.’

‘Where are we headed, anyways, mem?’ asked Luke suspiciously from her other side. ‘It’s a bonnie day for a ride, but there’s work to do. The maister wasny best pleased at your message.’

‘Strathblane? Is that to Balgrochan?’ asked one of Lowrie’s men hopefully. ‘Willie Logan that’s grieve there’s got a generous hand wi the ale-jug. Good ale his wife brews and all.’

‘That and Ballencleroch,’ said Alys. Luke frowned, and Canon Cunningham’s groom Tam turned in his saddle and looked hard at her.

‘Is that these two feus the row was about?’ he asked. ‘When yon auld wife was at our house, that asked the maister-’ He broke off what he was about to say.

‘I think so,’ said Alys.

‘Asked him had he had his bowels open, did she?’ said the other of Lowrie’s men, and guffawed. ‘She’d ha asked the Pope himsel the same question, I can tell you, good riddance to her!’

‘Sim,’ said Lowrie repressively, and the man ducked his head and muttered an apology. ‘Mistress Alys, it’s twelve mile. Are you ready for such a ride, and the ride back and all? And the dog,’ he added, as Socrates loped back from his inspection of a milestone.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said confidently, assessing the state of the road. ‘Shall we canter?’

The first part of the journey passed quickly enough. As Luke had said, it was a good day for a ride, dry and fine for April, though with enough cloud moving on the brisk wind to prevent the horses overheating. The road from Glasgow to Stirling went by Cadder and Kirkintilloch, small towns which Alys had heard of but never seen, each with its group of thatched cottages scattered round a little stone church. At Kirkintilloch they paused to admire the vestiges of the wall built by the Romans to keep the savages out, and to let the horses drink and rest briefly. Lowrie, claiming to be thirsty, procured ale for all of them to drink, standing on the grass beside one of the cottages, while the hens clucked round the horses’ hooves and several children gathered to stare at them. Alys relaxed in her saddle and looked at the traffic on the road. One or two people went by on foot, dusty to the waist, bound on who knew what errand. Wagons grumbled past in twos and threes, pulled by oxen or small sturdy ponies, shifting the merchandise of Scotland. Barrels of wine, barrels of fish, barrels of dry goods from the ports of the Low Countries, moving around the kingdom -

‘That’s a soil-cart coming,’ said Lowrie. ‘Drink up, lads. Are you about finished, mistress? We’d best be on the road afore that passes us.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Alys, handing her beaker down to him. ‘Thank you, Maister Lowrie, I was glad of that. Do we continue on this road?’

‘We turn off in a mile or so.’ Lowrie mounted, checked that all the men were in the saddle, and urged his horse into the roadway. The soil-cart was already making its presence felt; in this wind direction they would be aware of it until they left the road, but if they got behind it they would be aware of it for a lot longer. Alys had seen the soil-carts rumbling out of Glasgow, their unsavoury contents dripping in the mud behind them, and splashing on the legs of people and horses who followed. And attracting the burgh dogs to roll in the residue, she realized, and looked round hastily for Socrates, who grinned at her from under the belly of Luke’s horse.

‘Tell me of Dame Isabella,’ she said to Lowrie, nudging her horse alongside his. ‘Did you know her well? Was she always so — so-’

‘So individual,’ he supplied tactfully. ‘All the time I’ve kent her, aye. But I was away at college most of the year, you’ll mind, so I never got the worst of it. My mother had a few tales of her doings.’

‘Lady Magdalen thinks well of her,’ Alys observed.

‘The old dame was fond of the lady, by what she said,’ Lowrie said. ‘We turn off here, mistress, up the Glazert water.’

‘So she could be good to those she thought well of.’ Alys obediently turned her steed onto the new track, a broad stony trail through the low ground beside another river.

‘I’d say so.’ Lowrie laughed shortly. ‘Whether they wanted it or no.’

‘Had she plans for you?’ she asked innocently.

‘She had. Our Lady be thanked she never got putting them into play.’

‘What, was it not something you would want?’

‘It wasny that,’ Lowrie said, going scarlet, ‘so much as the way she’d have gone about it, ordering Mai — ordering people to do her bidding and handing over a great lump o coin to sweeten the bargain. I’d as soon get a post for friendship or kinship, or even on my own merits.’

‘I can see you’d not want a place bought for you in that way,’ Alys agreed. ‘And yet she meant well.’ She looked about her, taking in the lie of the new river valley. The Glazert rattled in its wide bed, wriggling down the valley floor; flat meadow-lands on either side were full of cattle grazing the new spring grass, herd-laddies from different ferm-touns watching each other warily from the dykes. At a distance, the valley sides sloped sharply. A grete forest that was named the Countrey of Straunge Auentures, she thought. ‘How different this country is from Lanarkshire.’

‘It’s got fields and dykes and houses,’ objected Luke, ‘same as any other.’

‘No, but,’ she gestured with one hand, trying to describe what she could see. ‘The fall of the land, the way that burn has cut into its bank, the slope opposite that, all these. The stone is not the same colour, it must have its own properties, so it makes different shapes of the ground.’

‘I know what you mean,’ agreed Lowrie, looking curiously at her. ‘It changes even more when you get closer to the Campsies yonder.’ He nodded at the hills to the north. ‘They go up in layers like a stack o girdle-cakes, a thing you never see in Lanarkshire.’

‘And yourself, Maister Lowrie,’ she went on. The track was less well maintained than the Stirling road, so they could not hurry. That meant it was much easier to talk, and she was determined to learn what she could. ‘Have you brothers and sisters?’

‘Three brothers living, all older than me,’ said Lowrie, ‘and two sisters much younger, still unwed — though Annabella’s been betrothed since she was four. But my faither’s well able to provide for me,’ he added, ‘whatever the old — lady said.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ Alys agreed. ‘He put you to the college, after all. What are his plans for you? Maister Michael, who will be my good-brother, is to take on management of his father’s coalheugh once he is wed, a great responsibility.’

‘Aye, so he wrote me. We’d thought of the law,’ said Lowrie, his head turned away. ‘Anything but Holy Kirk. I’ve no notion to be a priest, and my faither says he’ll not make me, not when my brother Alec’s doing well at Dunblane.’

‘Nor did my husband wish for the priesthood,’ she said, and thought for a moment of Gil as she had left him asleep in their curtained bed, warm and satisfied, his jaw dark with stubble. No, not a suitable priest, despite all his learning. And this young man, though of course he was not Gil, seemed more estimable the more she talked to him, a clene knyght withoute vylony and of a gentil strene of fader syde and moder syde. ‘The law is a good trade.’

‘It’s a way to win a living,’ said Lowrie.

They rode in silence for half a mile or so, during which Socrates started an argument with a cow-herd’s dog and discovered it had friends; Tam beat them off with his whip, and Socrates made a dignified retreat to his previous position under Luke’s horse’s girth.

‘So why are we out here, mistress?’ Lowrie asked suddenly. ‘Maister Gil never said aught about inspecting these two properties. Does it relate to the old dame’s death?’

‘It does,’ she answered, hoping this was true. ‘It — it arose from something John Sempill said, when I visited his wife.’

‘Him again.’ Lowrie frowned. ‘That was right odd, him having the wrong property in mind. He and the old dame must have been taking in one another’s rents for months.’

‘It is strange,’ she agreed. ‘Where are the two properties? Can we see them from here?’

‘The road-end for Balgrochan’s just yonder,’ said Lowrie’s man Sim. He pointed to a track which led up the hillside towards a group of low cottages. ‘And the other’s no more than a couple o mile further, at the foot o yonder glen, see? We’ll get a good mouthful o Balgrochan ale within half an hour.’

‘So what is it we want?’ Lowrie persisted. ‘Willie Logan the grieve can tell us most things, I’ve no doubt, but is there anyone else we should bid him send for?’

‘Likely not.’ She took a moment to arrange her thoughts into Scots. ‘Principally I wish to find out about where the Ballencleroch rents go, as you say, and what they are, and who is in charge, and what-’ She bit her lip, and then went on, ‘what trouble there might be on the property. But it seems foolish to come all the way out here and not check the other place as well.’

Lowrie looked warily at her.

‘Ride onto the place and ask what the rents are?’ he said. ‘What — where will that get you, apart from hunted off the ground wi a pitchfork? Why does he need to ken the rents?’

She shook her head.

‘We’re looking for anything out of place. I’m — my husband suspects that-’

‘If Sempill of Muirend’s involved,’ said Tam over his shoulder, ‘I’d say aught Maister Gil suspects is right.’

It was less simple than that, of course. For one, she had not thought of the tenants being Ersche speakers.

‘Aye, the whole pack o them,’ said the grieve, refilling her beaker. ‘Seat yoursels, mistress, Maister Lowrie. This bench here’s a good seat, you get a pleasant view o the best land in the shire o Stirling. Aye, there’s one or two has enough Scots to get by at the market in Kirkie, but for the most part you’ll ha to make do wi me. So ask away, mistress, I’ll answer if I can. If ye’re a friend o Maister Lowrie’s that’s enough for me.’

‘But is it my faither holds the feu?’ Lowrie asked bluntly before Alys could speak. Maister Logan attended to his beaker too, delaying his answer in a way which told Alys the man spent most of his time among his Ersche tenants, and then placed himself at the end of the bench beside them, by the door of his house where hens wandered in and out crooning.

Balgrochan lay some way up the slope of the Campsie hills, so the view was indeed pleasant. The Glazert wound its way down a flat valley, the cattle they had seen grazing were now smaller than John’s toy horse, and a lark tossed on the wind above them, its song reaching them in gusts. A man walked purposefully on the track by the river. The far skyline seemed to be the hills of Renfrew and Lanarkshire. Could that be Tinto Hill away to the southeast, Alys wondered? Nearer, two of the Ersche speakers were dragging a broad wooden rake along the ridges of the infield, small birds chirped in the dyke, and several women in loose checked gowns like Ealasaidh’s were gossiping by another house door, with covert glances at Alys’s riding-dress.

‘I’d say no,’ the grieve pronounced finally. ‘That is, I’d say he does and he doesny.’

‘Talk sense, Willie,’ invited Lowrie. ‘Where do the rents go?’

‘Oh, the rents?’ repeated Logan. ‘If it’s the rents you’re asking me about, that’s easy. They go to the old dame, the widow of your uncle Thomas, maister, your grandsire’s brother.’

‘So it’s her holds the feu?’

‘Oh, that I wouldny ken,’ Logan peered into the jug of ale, ‘for it was your faither let me know I’d to send her the rents and no argument. Three year since, that was, when your uncle Thomas was yet alive.’

Alys glanced at Lowrie, who shook his head, looking blank. Socrates returned triumphant from somewhere, scattering the hens, and sat down at her side.

‘And then,’ Logan went on, ‘I’d a word from the old dame hersel, brought me by the lad that came to fetch the rents, that they were to go to a Lady Magdalen somebody. But since it’s still the same fellow that fetches them away, I made no mind. So that’s how the rents are, maister. As to the feu, I suppose Livingstone o Craigannet thinks he holds it, since he’s gied me instruction on it, but maybe the lady thinks she holds it and all.’

‘Was there no taking of sasines?’ Alys asked. ‘That is why it happens, after all, so that everyone may see who holds the land.’

Logan shrugged.

‘No that I recall, mistress. No since the heriot fee was paid, when Maister Lowrie’s faither came into the property. Ten year syne, that’d be.’

‘And who is it fetches the rents?’ she asked. Logan grinned.

‘No doubt o that, at least. It’s a great long dark fellow, name o Campbell, that turns up just afore the quarter-days.’ Alys closed her eyes a moment in resignation. Of course it would be that pair, she thought. ‘Mind, times he answers to Euan, times to Neil, but it’s aye the same man.’

‘Do you know aught of a man called John Sempill?’ asked Lowrie. ‘Aye, I’ll ha more of that ale. It’s uncommon good.’

‘Sempill?’ The grieve considered briefly, then refilled the beaker. ‘Is that the man, a cordiner down at Kirkie? No, he’s cried Stenhouse. Canny say I’ve heard of a Sempill, maister.’

‘Perhaps at Ballencleroch?’ Alys suggested, scratching the dog’s ears.

‘There’s no cordiner at Ballencleroch.’ The name sounded different in this man’s pronunciation from her own. ‘In fact,’ Logan divulged, ‘there’s no as many of any trade at Ballencleroch as there was. The Clachan’s like to be deserted if any more folk leaves it.’

‘Leaves it?’ repeated Lowrie. ‘Why? Why are folk leaving?’

‘They’re saying the Deil’s taken up residence in the glen,’ Logan said, ‘wi smoke and thunder and foul airs, and hellfire flickering at night. There’s folk has seen it.’

‘What, in Campsie Glen?’ said Lowrie incredulously.

‘Aye, you may laugh, Maister Lowrie, but my boy Billy and a hantle of friends went to hae a look, you ken what laddies are like, and that’s what they seen and all. And one o the deils took a run at them wi a pitchfork, he said, so they fled, the whole pack o them, never stopped running till they came to our house and fell in ahint the door.’

‘They had a bad fright, then,’ said Alys seriously. ‘How old is Billy?’

‘Eleven past at Candlemas, and a sensible laddie for the maist part,’ said Logan, a little defensively. ‘I’d an idea to go mysel by daylight and see what it was that frighted them, but it’s been ower busy, what wi lambin-time, and getting the ground ready for the oats, I’ve never gone yet.’

‘When was that?’ Lowrie asked. Logan glanced at the sky, and counted on his fingers.

‘Six days syne. But whatever it is, it’s still there, for the word is, there’s another family left the Clachan yesterday, feart to dwell that close to Hell’s mouth.’

‘Is it really Hell’s mouth, mistress?’ said Luke.

‘What do you think?’ asked Alys. He rolled his eyes at her, and after a moment said,

‘I think it might no be.’

‘Good.’

‘But I’m no wanting to take the chance,’ he said obstinately.

‘Very well. What will you tell the maister, or Maister Gil?’

‘What do you plan to do, mistress?’ Lowrie asked while Luke digested this.

‘What would you do?’ she countered. The Countrey of Straunge Auentures, she was thinking.

‘Go away and get a Trained Band from Stirling. I’m none so sure the five o us can take on what we’re like to find up the glen.’

‘Six,’ she corrected. ‘And the dog.’

‘Five,’ said Lowrie firmly, and Tam echoed the word. Alys nudged her horse to a faster walk and did not reply. ‘I wish you’d taken Willie Logan’s advice and waited there,’ he went on. ‘His wife’s a decent body, you’d have been fine wi her.’

‘She fed us well,’ said Alys. ‘And the laddie seems truthful enough.’

‘I’d agree he gave us the truth as he recalls it,’ said Lowrie cautiously, ‘but I’d say he’s recalling more than maybe happened at the time.’

‘Oh, yes, for certain,’ agreed Alys.

‘You mean there’s maybe no a giant?’ said Luke, between hope and disappointment.

‘I would discount,’ said Alys, gathering her reins into one hand to enumerate with the other, ‘the flames reaching to the sky, the green devils, the pitchforks.’ She paused to recall what else Billy had told them in hesitant Scots as he stood before the company, wriggling in embarrassment at all the attention while his father looked on proudly, ready to cuff him if he thought the boy was being impertinent. Lowrie had questioned him carefully, but some of the details he had extracted were more credible than others.

‘The giant’s breathing,’ Lowrie said now. ‘As Luke here says, that’s never likely.’

‘It isn’t a giant,’ agreed Alys. He looked at her, startled.

‘They heard screaming,’ Tam offered. ‘And there was black things flying all about like bats by daylight. I heard the laddie say it mysel.’

‘Crows,’ said Alys firmly. ‘Or is it jackdaws which have a cry like that?’

‘Oh, is that why you asked about the trees?’ Lowrie said.

The track from Balgrochan came round a slight shoulder of the hillside and found itself suddenly in the midst of another huddle of cottages, the usual low structures of field stones and turf. To their left a burn hurried down towards the main valley floor, and on its far bank a bigger house of dressed stone, with several shuttered windows and a wooden door, suggested the property was a wealthy one; up the hill to their right, beyond the cottages, stood a small stone church. A few hens scratched round a gable, and a goat bleated somewhere. A trickle of smoke rose against the hillside from the thatched roof of the kirk, but otherwise the place appeared deserted. Alys sat her horse and looked about her, while the servants drew together and Luke crossed himself. Socrates raised his head, sniffing.

‘The kirk?’ Lowrie suggested. ‘Sir Richie would likely stay longer than the rest.’

‘But where have they all gone?’ wondered Alys. ‘I am surprised none of them have taken refuge at Balgrochan.’

Sim had dismounted, giving his reins to his companion, and now ducked past the leather curtain at the nearest house door and peered inside.

‘Taken the cooking pot and the blankets,’ he reported, emerging, ‘but no the bench or the creepie-stools. I’d say they was hoping to come back. They’ve never taken the roof-trees, after all.’

Alys nodded. It still seemed odd to her, though it was completely natural to Gil, that the tenant of such a place by custom supplied his own roof-timbers; if the little house still had its roof, the tenant hoped to return.

‘Let us seek out the priest,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he can tell us what he knows.’

Like the biggest house, the kirk was constructed of dressed stone, in this case a grey and fawn coloured freestone with prominent chisel-marks. She studied it carefully as they walked round to the low west door, but could not recognize any work-hand she knew. Little surprise in that, she reflected, the building seemed fifty years old or more. Narrow unglazed windows gave no view of the interior. Lowrie tried the door as she reached it, but it did not budge.

‘Barred,’ he said, and hammered on the planks with the pommel of his dagger. ‘Sir Richie! Are you within? It’s Lowrie Livingstone here!’

There was a long pause. Then a faint, quavering voice floated out to them.

‘Come here till I see you first, maister.’

Lowrie, raising his eyebrows, stepped round the corner of the little building, to where he might be seen from the nearest window.

‘I’m no alone,’ he said. ‘I’ve a lady wi me, and four men and a dog. What’s amiss here, Sir Richie?’

‘A lady?’ There was another pause, and then the bar behind the door thumped and rattled into its corner. The door opened a crack, and a wary eye peered out at them. ‘What sort o a lady? Where are ye, Maister Lowrie?’

‘A Christian lady,’ said Alys reassuringly. She bent to find her purse, under the skirts of her riding-dress, and drew out her beads. Clasping the cross on the end of the string, she smiled at the eye. ‘We’re no threat, sir priest.’

‘Aye.’ The door opened further, and the priest stepped back. He was a small man, spare and elderly, one hand at his pectoral cross, a stout cudgel dangling from the other wrist. ‘Come away in, then, till I bar the door again,’ he ordered them, in that quavering voice.

The little building was shadowy inside, the narrow windows admitting little light and the glow of the peat fire against the north wall helping little. Seated on the wall-bench, Alys said with sympathy,

‘Your parish is near empty, Sir Richie. What’s amiss, then?’

‘Oh, Mistress Mason.’ Sir Richie shook his head. ‘Sic a thing as you never heard o. My folk are all feared the Bad Yin himsel has taken up residence in the glen.’ He waved the cudgel northward. Socrates looked up briefly, his eyes catching the light, and returned to his inspection of a distant corner. The men drew closer together. ‘They’ve all run off to stay wi kin in one place or another down Strathblane.’

‘It’s true, then?’ said Luke, crossing himself. The old man shook his head.

‘I couldny say for sure, my son, but it’s awfy like it, and what’s worse, this very day hardly an hour since there was another great howling, like wild beasts it was, away up the glen, I could hear it from here. So I barred myself within the kirk, and I’ve been asking Our Lady and St Machan for their protection. Maybe that’s who sent you,’ he added, brightening.

‘Have you never been to look yoursel?’ Lowrie asked. ‘Tell us what’s happening. When did it begin?’

It had begun in early December, when a shepherd on the hillside had reported hearing noises from one of the offshoots of the main glen, half a mile upstream from the church.

‘Digging, he said, and scraping. And when he went closer, and called to find out who was at work, he heard a groaning and a howling like wild beasts, just the same as the day.’

‘Did he not speak to the folk at the House?’ Lowrie demanded. ‘Surely he got a hunt up to deal wi beasts? Was it a wolf, or a wildcat?’

‘There’s nobody dwells in the House the now,’ protested Sir Richie, defensive of his parishioner, ‘and though they got a hunt thegither about St Lucy’s Day they came back, saying they’d all heard the sounds and it was like no canny sort of beast whatever, and they’d never gone close enough to see it.’

Lowrie grunted. Alys said,

‘And then what happened?’

Another man, pursuing a strayed goat about Epiphany, had followed it up the burn and into the foot of the same side valley.

‘And there he smelled smoke, and then he saw flames, and two fiends, and they were making the groaning and howling,’ Sir Richie assured them, ‘so the hunt was right to turn back, maister, you can see.’

‘Aye,’ said Lowrie, unconvinced.

‘That was near four months ago,’ said Alys. ‘Has there been nothing more?’

Sir Richie shook his head.

‘There’s been all sorts, mistress. Times we’ve all heard the cries they make. Why, at Candlemas itself, when Jockie Clerk and I opened up the kirk to say Prime afore the first Mass, we both heard the fiends howling and groaning, and so did the folk that turned out for the Mass and all.’ He swallowed hard. ‘I took the cross from the altar, and we brought that and the candles to the door, and I, I bade them begone in the name o the Blessed Trinity, and there was sic a laughing and shrieking as you never did hear, and, and, well, it never worked, for they were there again a day or two after.’

‘But have you told nobody?’ Lowrie demanded. ‘Your bishop, your landlord? Who’s the feu superior?’

‘Where do the rents go?’ Alys asked. Socrates padded back to put his chin on her knee, and she scratched his ears.

The rents, it seemed, were collected by the same man as visited Balgrochan, every quarter for the last year or two; but only yesterday, said Sir Richie earnestly, the feu superior had paid them a call.

‘Sempill of Muirend?’ she said. Lowrie glanced sharply at her, but the priest nodded.

‘Aye, aye, that’s the man. And I tellt him the tale entire, and showed him how the Clachan’s deserted, and he rode off, swearing to put matters right.’ Did he so? thought Alys sceptically. ‘Indeed I thought when I heard your horses it was to be him returning, maybe wi the Archbishop or the like.’

‘So what’s to do, maister?’ asked one of Lowrie’s men from the shadows.

‘We go up the glen to see what’s what,’ said Alys promptly.

‘Oh, no, we don’t, mistress!’ said Lowrie. ‘We’ll go. You’ll stay here, if you please, wi Sir Richie.’

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘This is my adventure, I don’t expect you to-’

‘We’ll ha enough to do facing fiends frae Hell,’ said Tam rather nervously, ‘let alone worrying over keeping you safe.’

‘I can keep myself safe,’ she said.

‘No, no, madam,’ protested the old priest, ‘much better you stay here. Indeed I’d as soon you all stayed here, or else left me and went to bring back a greater number and a great retinue of clerks as well-’

Alys stood by the door of the little kirk, Socrates at her side, and watched the men out of sight. Sir Richie had insisted on blessing each of them with holy water and a tremulous prayer, which had done very little for Luke’s spirits; she had considered asking for the boy to stay with her, and discarded the idea. He would be little help for her next move.

‘I am concerned for the horses,’ she said to the old man. ‘I’ll just go as far as the gate and make sure of them.’

‘But, daughter,’ he began from inside the church, but she slipped away, round the corner of the building towards the gate, the dog almost glued to her skirts. The men had scrambled over the tumbledown drystone wall of the kirkyard, but she was not certain she could do the same in her riding-dress before Sir Richie could catch up with her. Through the gate she cast a cursory glance towards the horses, which were standing peacefully enough in the shade of one of the cottages. The taller beasts were making inroads on the edge of its turf roof. Turning right, bending low, she scurried along the wall and then down into the hollow of the burn where it chattered and bubbled among dark smooth stones. Crossing it by the plank bridge she had seen from the door of the kirk, she set off up the glen after the men, Socrates at her heel, oblivious to the faint cries from behind her.

It was a lovely setting, she thought, looking warily around, with the spring just beginning to breathe across it. On this side of the burn a grassy path led upstream, with occasional tall trees to shade it. On the other, above the church, was a patch of well-tended woodland. Beyond, on both sides, the flanks of the Campsies rose, smooth and grassy, dotted with sheep and lambs. Some of the trees showed green buds, a few small flowers gleamed in the grass, and birds chirped and flitted busily among the branches. Sir Richie had stopped calling after her, and apart from the sheep bleating to their young any other sound was swamped by the noise of the water. There was certainly no sound of fiendish laughter or wild activity.

She went carefully, paying attention all about her, relishing this moment of freedom. Now she was married she rarely went unattended anywhere, and it was good to have no complaining servant at her back, though perhaps, she thought, one might be glad of company in a few minutes. Whatever had been happening further upstream?

The dark stones in the burn had been smoothed by the water, but were the same colour as the jagged rocks of a miniature cliff beneath the clasping roots of a hawthorn bush, where a thick vein of some lighter mineral showed gleams of green and rust. The path under her feet had been much trampled, with sign which went both ways. When did it last rain here? she wondered, studying the prints. The dog, sniffing where she looked, raised his head and stared up the glen, his ears pricked.

The little valley narrowed, curved to the right, then to the left. She paused by a scatter of rougher stones, and bent to lift one which caught her eye, turning it this way and that in the light. Socrates came to see what she was looking at. Satisfied, she pushed his nose out of the way and found her purse again, tucked the scrap of stone into it, and drew out the dagger she had extracted from Gil’s kist last night. Leaving its sheath in the purse she shook her skirts straight and moved cautiously onward, the haft of the little weapon comforting in her hand. She was fairly sure now of what they would find, but if it came to an argument with the occupiers, it might help to be armed.

The burn beside her widened into a pool with a noisy waterfall at its head. The bank they followed rose, and the path swung away from the pool to skirt the waterfall. Beyond it she could see a wall of dark jagged rock, overhung with ivy and leaning bushes. Moving carefully, she climbed to the crest of the fall and paused warily in the shadow of some trees, studying the land. Socrates waited beside her, looking up at her face.

This was where the valley forked; the main burn swung to her right, a smaller burn tumbled in from the other side. There was no sign of flames, only a thread of smoke rising up somewhere on her left, but there was a sense of threat, the feeling of being watched, although nothing stirred but some black birds sailing against the brisk clouds, croaking in annoyance, and smaller singing birds hopping in the trees above her. She drew breath, told herself firmly not to be foolish, and moved forward to go and explore the new valley.

‘Both dead when we found them,’ said Lowrie.

‘The poor souls.’ Alys crossed herself, gazing at the scene, then knelt to close the remaining eye of the body nearest her. ‘What can have happened? I think this one must have fallen into the furnace, but the other?’

‘Stabbed,’ said Tam. ‘He was the luckier, I’d say.’

She nodded without looking up, biting her lips to keep the tears back, and touched the undamaged portion of the dead man’s face and neck with care, silently promising him her prayers.

Across the hollow the little furnace was still smoking, occasional flames leaping from the charcoal which was exposed where the clay and stones had crumbled. There was what looked like a crucible tilted among the debris, with crushed rock sintered into a lump; the big leather bellows were scorched beyond repair, a pair of tongs lay where they had been flung down, a patch of clay had been smoothed and grooved for pouring whatever should have run from the crucible. The other dead man lay on his face, sprawled, his hands out before him. A narrow slit in the back of his hooded leather sark told of his end. There was a smell, of blood, of burnt flesh and hair, of mud.

Her escort stood bareheaded and awkward in the presence of death. Luke was now openly weeping. Socrates sat at her elbow, subdued by the mood of the group.

‘But what has happened here?’ she asked, sitting back on her heels. ‘Have they fought one another? Was there a third man? I think,’ she tested the rigid neck again, ‘he is dead perhaps three hours or a little more.’

‘I’ve made out four men a’thegither,’ said Lowrie’s man Frank, gesturing at the trampled earth. ‘It’s no that clear, you’ll understand, but I’ve saw both their marks, and two others. Three o them’s all over the place here, one above the other, they’ve been here days I’d say or even longer. The last one’s just on the top o the rest, and him, well, it’s like he’s been fighting, the marks go all ways and the heels is right dug in, you can see where he jumped aside to get this fellow.’

‘Is this what you expected, mistress?’ Lowrie was trying for a normal tone of voice. ‘The mining? I take it they’re getting silver?’

‘I — yes,’ she admitted. ‘I wasn’t certain, you understand, but it seemed the best explanation. When I saw the rocks in the burn I thought it more likely. I saw a silver mine once before,’ she explained, ‘in France, in just such rock as this.’

‘A siller mine?’ said Sim hopefully. ‘Is there like to be siller lying about for the taking?’

‘We should check,’ said Lowrie. ‘But mind it belongs to the Crown, man, keep your light fingers off it if you see anything. And keep back from that furnace, it may no be yellow any longer but it’s still ower warm.’

‘Yes, we must check,’ said Alys, getting resolutely to her feet and looking round. Sim unwound his plaid and laid it over the dead man with care, hiding the ruined face. Frank followed his example to cover the other corpse. ‘Show me these marks,’ she said to him.

With an indulgent air he pointed out the traces of the different footprints, not easy to see in the rough broken stone underfoot, more readily picked out in the muddy patches near the burn. When she found another set of marks near the shelter he looked at her with more respect.

‘Aye, that’s number fower,’ he agreed, ‘he’s got a narrower heel than these ithers, and his toes is more like the shape o Tam’s or Luke’s and all. These ither three all had their shoon frae the same place, and it wasny hereabouts, I’d say.’

Alys nodded, gazing about her.

‘So these two were about their work,’ she said, ‘and this man with the different feet came and fought with them. One fell in the fire, and the stranger stabbed the other.’

‘Aye, or they fought among the three o them,’ the man offered. ‘Then he made off.’

‘I wonder how far he has gone,’ she said. ‘And where is the other man with these shoes? Could they be out there?’

They were only a few yards from the main valley, but because of the way this smaller burn twisted, they could neither see nor hear the other watercourse. The dell where they stood must once have been pretty, with little white flowers and hawthorn bushes under a ring of taller trees in which jackdaws commented busily on the strangers below them. Now it was scarred by the industry of the dead man and their companion; there was their small shelter of bent branches and hides, a stack of green wood cut for burning, the broken furnace now cooling rapidly, its spoil mixed with broken and crushed rock all about. Not far upstream a bigger spoil heap was smothering the aconites, and a low dark hole in the rocky bank spoke of a mine adit. What did the folk at the mine by Carluke call it? Oh, yes, an ingaun ee.

‘What were they doing here?’ Luke wondered, sniffing. ‘Why would you break the stone so small, mistress?’

‘To get the silver out,’ Lowrie said before she could answer. He bent and lifted a scrap of rock, turning it to the light as Alys had done on the path. There was a small gleam from one angle.

‘Oh, I see!’ said his man Sim. ‘And then they melt it in the furnace, and catch it in thon dish in its midst. That’s right clever. I never kent that was how you got siller.’

‘Was that the flames they all seen?’asked Tam, who was poking about the little shelter. ‘How about the howling and the fiends?’

‘Could two men work and two pretend to be fiends?’ Alys wondered. And this poor soul’s injuries, she realized grimly, would explain the howling Sir Richie heard this morning.

‘That’s what I thought,’ admitted Tam. He straightened up. ‘But there wasny four o them, mistress. There was three, for there’s three scrips here, and three bedrolls, and no sign there’s ever been a fourth dwelling here, the neat way it’s all fitted thegither.’

‘So where is the third?’ Lowrie looked about.

‘There’s four sets o prints,’ said Frank.

‘Aye, and what do we do wi these two, maister?’ asked Sim. He clapped Luke on the shoulder. ‘Here, laddie, it comes to all o us soon or late. No sense in grieving for a man you never met.’

‘I never kent eyes would do that,’ Luke said, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and sniffed again.

‘Take your dagger,’ Alys said in some sympathy, ‘and go cut some hazels to make hurdles, then we may carry them down to the kirk. Maybe Frank would go with you?’ She raised her eyebrows at Lowrie, who nodded briefly. ‘Tam, what else have you found?’ She crossed to the shelter, and bent to peer in. Above their heads the jackdaws rose and swirled, commenting indignantly on the extra movements.

‘Aye, well, they’ve been snug enough in here. Their blankets, a kettle for cooking, a couple lanterns-’

‘They would need the lanterns in the mine,’ Lowrie suggested. ‘No tools?’

‘How neat it all is. Is there nothing to tell us who sent them?’

‘No that I can see.’ Tam straightened up to look at Alys, but his gaze went beyond her. ‘Here, where’s the dog away to?’

She turned, in time to see the lean grey shape hurtling up the eastward slope away from the burn. Alarmed, she called him but he continued, and vanished among the bushes. Around her the men drew their weapons and scanned the valley sides, all three poised for action. Luke and Frank had gone the other way, she realized, westward, and as the thought reached her there was a terrified yell from the crest of the slope, and an outbreak of snarling.

‘Socrates! Hold!’ she shouted, and picked up her skirts, intending to follow the dog.

‘Wait here!’ ordered Lowrie, running past her. Tam and Sim were already part way up the slope, moving cautiously, peering through the branches for the sources of the snarling argument above them. Lowrie, whinger drawn, caught up and passed them. She stood anxiously staring as they worked their way up among the new leaves, trying to make out what Socrates was doing. His low, continuous growl told her he had trapped someone or something, but she thought he was uncertain what to do with his catch. A wolf? Surely not, this close to Glasgow, she told herself. A man? Is this who was watching earlier?

‘Stand still,’ said Lowrie sharply. A man, then. ‘I said stand still! Tam, Sim, get his arms, if he’ll not listen to me. Mistress, will you call the dog?’

It was less simple than that, of course. In the end Alys had to climb the slope to adjudicate between the dog and the three men. Socrates gave up his prisoner with reluctance, and watched jealously while the newcomer was escorted back down to the dell.

He was no more than a boy, she realized as she slithered after them, younger than Luke. He was dressed in shabby clothing of strange cut, jerkin and hose and a jack with holes at the elbows, and must have been hunting for the pot; a sling hung at his belt, and he had two coneys in a bag on his back. His boots were broad and round of heel and toe. He looked terrified, but when he saw the two silent forms in the hollow he checked in horror, and then flung himself forward with a cry. Lowrie dived after him, but was not in time to prevent him pulling back the checked folds of Sim’s plaid and revealing what the intense heat of the furnace had done to the dead man’s face.

‘Vati!’ he said, and choked, and heaved drily. ‘Ah, mein vati!’

‘High Dutch, I think,’ said Alys, overwhelmed with pity. ‘He says that is his father.’

‘I’ve no tongues other than Latin,’ said Lowrie, ‘and I doubt this laddie — loquerisne latine?’ There was no reaction; the boy had staggered back a few steps, and was staring at his father’s corpse, still gagging. ‘Either of you speak High Dutch?’

‘No me, maister,’ said Sim, and Tam shook his head. Alys mustered the few words of Low Dutch she knew, and put a hand on the prisoner’s wrist.

‘Ik Alys,’ she said, pointing at herself. ‘Du?’

He stared at her, as if returning from a great distance, then looked round at the men in fear. Lowrie shook his head and made a calming gesture with one hand, but the boy shivered.

‘Du?’ Alys repeated.

It took some time, during which Luke and Frank returned with armfuls of withies and began to construct a couple of hurdles, looking askance at the boy. His name was Berthold Holtzmann, the same as his father. Numbly, he identified the man under the other plaid, stroking the cold brow: his uncle Heini. They were here to mine silver, but he could not or would not understand Alys’s attempts to ask who had brought them here. He was clearly terrified about his own fate, and she could not find the words to reassure him.

‘When did he leave here?’ Lowrie asked. That took a lot of sign language and pointing, but eventually the boy pointed at the sun and tracked it back to where it had been when he left. ‘Five, maybe six hours,’ Lowrie estimated. ‘And you thought these two were dead three or four hours. This laddie’s been fortunate.’

‘You think it was not him who slew his uncle,’ Alys stated. He looked at her.

‘I think he’s the third man living in the shelter,’ he said. ‘There’s been another here the day, by what Frank sees, and this one touched both corps without a qualm. And their shoon came from the same soutar, all three pair. I think we seek the fourth man.’ He looked again at the sky. ‘We should leave here. We’ve to ride back to Glasgow, after all, wi an extra-’

‘Glasgow?’ repeated the prisoner. He was sitting shivering on the ground now, one of the blankets from the shelter wrapped about him, clutching his beads like a lifeline.

‘Aye, Glasgow. You know that word, do you?’ Lowrie said. The boy looked up at him, apparently trying to read his expression; then he looked at his father’s body again, bent his head meekly and nodded. Tears fell on the rough wool of the blanket.