The Stolen Voice

Chapter Two

‘You must know this country well,’ said Alys. She relaxed in the saddle, gazing out over the expanse of loch and hills. ‘It seems very wild to me.’

‘I was growing up here,’ said Murdo Dubh.

They had climbed up the south wall of the long glen, beside a tumbling river, and paused at the mouth of another, higher valley to breathe their small shaggy ponies. Even Socrates seemed glad of the halt. Below them Alys could see the rooftops of Stronvar and its outbuildings on the shores of the loch, half a mile to the west, and another group of houses to the east which Murdo said was Gartnafueran.

‘That is where Sir William’s brother Andrew Stewart dwells,’ he explained.

‘Gartnafueran,’ repeated Alys’s groom Steenie. ‘They were telling me last night in the stables, they’ve seen this Bawcan or bodach or whatever they cry it there and all.’

‘At Gartnafueran?’ said Murdo, turning to look at him. ‘When? Who was saying that?’

‘One of the men. I never catched his name. I think by what he said it was just a day or two since.’ Steenie laughed. ‘Seems a lassie saw this wee dark shape in the field across the river in the gloaming. I said it sounded more like a bairn going home late for his supper, and he wasny best pleased.’

‘No, he would not be,’ said Murdo. He gathered up the reins of his own steed and the extra beast with the two barrels loaded on its back, a contribution from Lady Stewart for the forthcoming harvest celebration. ‘Will you ride on, mistress?’

They rode on, into a narrow valley between steep, lumpy green slopes, at whose tops were small dots which Alys took to be boulders, until some moved, there was a distant bleating, and she realized that they were sheep and the hills were higher than she had first thought.

‘You’d think these mountains was going to fall on you,’ said Steenie uneasily.

‘That is not often happening,’ said Murdo in a reassuring tone. Alys looked at him, recognized a joke, and thought that, though these people were different in build and habit from the taciturn Bretons of her childhood, they had a lot in common.

‘They are so tall,’ she said. ‘Have you climbed all the way to the top of them? One might almost be able to reach up and touch Heaven from there.’

‘These are not so high,’ said Murdo. ‘That one is Buachaille Breige, which is the Shepherd, and behind him is Beinn an’t Sidhean. And on that side it is Clach Mhor which is just meaning — ’

‘The Big Stone!’ said Alys in triumph. He nodded, with that brilliant smile again.

‘The Big Rock, maybe. There is higher ones across Loch Voil. But it is a strange thing, when you are on the top of them it is still as far up to Heaven as when you are standing by the side of the loch, though sometimes there is clouds below you.’

‘Why would you want to do that?’ asked Steenie. ‘Stand on the top, I mean. The whole thing might fall down, and you wi it.’

Murdo shrugged. ‘The hunting is good,’ he said.

They followed the narrow glen, beside the same tumbling river, with oak woods on either hand and wild flowers growing down the riverbanks. Socrates ranged round them, checking the scents of the place. Overhead the sky was blue, with fluffy clouds sailing in it, and a small wind kept the insects at bay. Alys thought of one of the poems in Gil’s commonplace-book. Dayseyes in the dales, notes swete of nightingales, each fowl song singeth. If Gil had been with her she would never have been happier. She wondered how far he had got.

‘Did Tam say him and the maister was going back to Dunblane?’ asked Steenie. ‘What are they doing there, mem? He’d as well ha stopped there on the way up from Stirling.’

‘The maister needs to talk to someone,’ said Alys. And so do I, she thought. What do I say to these people? What must I find out? That depends on what there is to find out, I suppose.

About them, the signs were growing that this was not the green desert it appeared at first sight. Some of the trees were coppiced, a dry stone wall scrambled up the hillside, a small burn gurgling down to the river spread out over a well-maintained ford where the track crossed it. Someone was about; she heard a snatch of singing on the light wind. Then abruptly the glen widened into a broad green hollow, and Murdo halted his pony.

‘Glen Buckie,’ he said, gesturing widely.

‘Good land,’ said Steenie approvingly. ‘If we were in Lanarkshire I’d almost say you were on lime here,’ he added, ‘it’s that green.’

‘Lime?’ said Murdo. ‘I would not be knowing.’

Alys looked about her. The hay crop on the flat ground near the river had been cut and turned; nearer them stooks of barley-straw marched up a slope in the sunshine. Across the river more tiny white dots bleated on the steep hillside.

‘Is that the — the sidhean?’ she asked, pointing to a rocky knoll bristling with tall trees, the hay crop washing its margins in a green-gold tide.

Murdo crossed himself and said hastily, ‘Wiser not to be naming it, mistress, here in the open. That is Tom an Eisg, just. The — the place you named is being a lot bigger, and it is away far up the glen, beyond Dalriach, beyond the low shielings.’

‘So when the boy left home,’ said Alys, looking about her, ‘he went that way, up the glen and not down it.’ Murdo nodded. ‘I had thought of him coming down past Stronvar and the kirk, but I see that was wrong.’

‘By far shorter the road he was taking,’ said Murdo. ‘Over the high pass into Strathyre and down the burn at the other side. It would be a scramble, but a fit laddie would have no trouble. He has told us he had got that far before he was lifted away.’

‘Told you? You mean he has spoken of it? Did he describe what happened to him?’ Alys asked, trying to conceal her surprise.

‘Only that much. He saw nothing when he was lifted up, it seems.’

‘And where was he to meet his friend?’

Murdo shrugged. ‘That he never said exactly. Somewhere on the Strathyre side of the hills, I have no doubt. If my father ever heard it in his time, he has not told me.’

‘Your father says he has recognized the young man,’ said Alys carefully. Murdo looked at her, the dark lashes shading his eyes. ‘Is that right, do you think?’

‘Who am I to say?’ said Murdo, in faint surprise. ‘Davie vanished away long before I was born. The family has recognized him, and he is dwelling with the old woman in Tigh-an-Teine, and that will do for me.’

‘Tigh-an-Teine,’ Alys repeated. ‘The house of — of fire?’

He nodded awkwardly. ‘It’s the name they give the chief house of the clachan. Just a name, it is.’

‘But is the fire particular in any way?’

‘No, no. But a woman from further up the glen, one with the two sights, was making a great outcry one time, and saying that she had seen flames leaping from the thatch. Before I was born, too, that was,’ said Murdo dismissively, ‘and it has never burned yet.’

‘And David dwells there with the old lady, and she is certain he is her son.’

‘Indeed, yes.’

‘It’s a daft tale,’ said Steenie roundly. ‘Who ever heard the like, except in the ballads or the old tales? Folk doesny get carried away wi the fairies nowadays.’

‘What do you think, Murdo?’ asked Alys.

‘I think your man should not be mentioning those people aloud,’ said Murdo. He gathered up his reins. ‘It will be another mile or so to Dalriach, past Ballimore. Will you ride on, mistress, and meet the Dalriach folk?’ He smiled, those dark lashes sweeping his cheekbones. ‘They will be ready for us by now. The hills has eyes, we have been counted already.’

‘I was never at Glasgow myself,’ said Mistress Drummond, ‘but my son Andrew was there in the year of eighty-seven.’

Whatever Alys had expected, it was not quite this.

The farm at Dalriach was clearly prosperous, despite the bad luck Murdo Dubh and his father had detailed. The main steading, beside the track which separated infield and outfield, contained three substantial longhouses, built of partly dressed field stones, ranged round a cobbled yard. The cattle-fold at the byre end of one of them stood empty at this hour of the day, and hens crooned to one another among mysterious pieces of farm gear. Gardens, a barn, a stackyard, several smaller cottages down the slope nearer the river, made it almost a village.

A dozen people, men and young women, were visible shearing the barley at the top of the outfield as they approached the farm. Their work-song floated on the breeze, one voice with a line, the other voices with a rhythmic echo, keeping the swing of the sickles. The song never faltered, but the shearers paused, one by one, to straighten up and stare at the approaching riders. An old woman working with a hoe in one of the small kale-yards called to Murdo in cheerful Ersche, and he waved in answer.

They were met in front of the biggest of the houses by two lean black dogs who glared at Socrates, and a sturdy young man of twenty or so, with fair skin burned pink by the sun and a shock of light frizzy hair above a high forehead. Alys thought at first this was the returned singer, but Murdo had addressed him as James and introduced her in Ersche; she had caught Blacader’s name and title and then Gil’s, despite the strange twist the language gave them. James had ordered the dogs off in Ersche, then saluted her gravely in good Scots with a heavy Highland accent, and led her within to meet his grandmother, before excusing himself to return to the field. The harvest would not wait.

Now she was seated in the shadowed interior of the house, answering the inevitable civil inquisition about her background, origins and status and accepting oatcakes and buttermilk from one of the granddaughters, a plain girl of about twelve with a strong resemblance to the young man who had met them. Socrates lay at her feet; Murdo Dubh had vanished, taking Steenie with him. A surprising number of people had passed the doorway, peering casually through it with a greeting in Ersche for the old woman or the girl. Hens wandered in and out, a loom clacked somewhere, and from time to time, echoing across the yard, there was a piercing scream like a peacock’s. Through the open door Alys could see a woman spinning on a great wheel slung on the side of one of the other houses, padding back and forward on bare feet, her slender ankles and calves visible below her short checked skirts. She was singing like the reapers; there seemed to be music everywhere. A long cradle near her rocked erratically and seemed to be the source of the screams.

‘But you came there from France, mistress?’ went on Mistress Drummond. ‘There’s a thing, now. And what brought you into Scotland?’

‘My father is a master-mason,’ she answered. ‘He is building for Archbishop Blacader at the Cathedral.’

‘That would explain it,’ said the old woman, nodding. She wore a dark red gown of ancient cut, laced over a checked kirtle which was probably her everyday dress about the place, and the linen on her head and neck was crisp. She herself was bent and shrunken, so that the wide wool skirts had to be kilted up over a man’s worn leather belt; her face was a veil of wrinkles, her hands crabbed, but her voice was sweet and clear. ‘And what is Robert Blacader building?’ she asked, with interest.

Alys opened her mouth to answer, and there was another of those peacock screams. Mistress Drummond peered round. ‘Agnes, mo chridh, go and see what ails Iain, will you?’ The girl slipped out, and her grandmother turned her smile at Alys, awaiting her answer as if nothing had happened.

This was difficult, she thought, explaining the Fergus Aisle. ‘And yourself, Mistress Drummond,’ she said, finally turning the questioning. ‘Are you from these parts?’

‘Oh aye, indeed. A MacLaren of Auchtoo, I am. My father was the chief man of this country, and my brother after him, until the king put his kinsman William Stewart into Balquhidder as his bailie.’

‘Kings do what they must,’ said Alys.

‘Aye,’ said Mistress Drummond darkly. ‘But I wedded James Drummond,’ she added, ‘and St Angus blessed the marriage, and we dwell here in Glen Buckie now.’

‘Does your man live?’ Alys asked.

‘James?’ she said, suddenly vague. ‘And we have four sons,’ she added, ‘and also a daughter, and all well and doing well.’

‘My!’ said Alys in admiration, comparing this with what the elder Murdo had told them last night and finding it incompatible. ‘Are they all wedded?’

‘Not all,’ the old woman said in that musical voice. ‘For Andrew is a Canon at Dunblane, and my son David is by far too young to be wed.’

Alys caught her breath, trying to work out how to answer that, but was forestalled. There was a shrill babble of Ersche in the yard; Socrates raised his head to stare, and the spinner and another woman came in at the open door, scolding like rival blackbirds and followed by the eerie peacock wail.

‘Caterin! Mòr!’ said Mistress Drummond, and the argument broke off. ‘Not before our guest, lassies,’ she said, though neither woman was young. Alys rose and curtsied. ‘This is my good-daughters, the wife of Patrick and the wife of James.’

‘Indeed I am pleased to meet you both,’ said Alys. ‘Murdo Dubh MacGregor was telling me as we rode up Glen Buckie, that you make the best cloth in Perthshire for colour and web.’

The two looked sideways at one another in the dim light, and curtsied simultaneously in acknowledgement of this, setting their bare feet as precisely as any lady at court.

‘It is my good-sister’s weaving that does it,’ said the spinner, a small woman, her body still curved and sweet under her checked kirtle, her face an extraordinary little triangle within the folds of her linen headdress. ‘She can weave like no other in Balquhidder.’

‘Och, no, Caterin, it will be the colours you put in the thread,’ said the taller woman. Another scream resounded from the other side of the yard, and Caterin jerked like a child’s toy.

‘He’s wanting his uncle,’ she said to her mother-in-law, still speaking Scots. ‘You know how Davie can soothe him. I wished Agnes to go up the field and fetch him, and she will not be permitting it — ’ She tossed her head at the weaver.

‘Agnes has enough to do — ’

‘But Agnes was about her duties under my roof,’ said the old woman. Alys watched, fascinated by the contradictions in the scene. ‘Will you go, Mòr, and fetch the boy in?’

This had not been the answer Mòr hoped for or expected. She recoiled, drew breath on a retort of some sort, then turned on her heel and walked out of the house with uneven steps.

‘Is that the laddie that’s returned to you?’ Alys asked, snatching her chance.

‘That it is,’ said Caterin. ‘You would think we were in one of the old tales, for such a thing to happen here at Dalriach.’

‘I could hardly believe what Murdo Dubh was telling us,’ Alys confessed. ‘Does he have the right of it?’

‘Murdo? Likely he does. He’s hardly off Dalriach land long enough to sleep, the notion he has to Mòr’s Ailidh,’ pronounced Caterin, confirming Alys’s deduction. ‘He is knowing more of our business than we are ourselves.’

‘It was a wonderful thing, and Our Lady be praised for the moment it happened. My laddie came walking down the glen,’ said Mistress Drummond, ‘and I caught sight of him from where I sat at the end of the house there.’ She had clearly been waiting to recite her tale again. ‘I thought to myself, There is Davie coming now, and then I minded that Davie was gone for thirty year, and then I looked again and I saw it was Davie right enough. Is that not a strange thing?’

‘It must have given you a great shock,’ said Alys.

‘Och, indeed yes, such a turn it gave me, I thought the heart would fly away out of my breast. I hurried to meet him, and he saw me coming and he said, do you know what he said to me? He said, Is it my grandmother? Did you ever hear the like? And I said, Heart of my heart, it is your own mother. And he said, Do you know me, then? As if I would not know my own bairn!’

Alys glanced at Caterin, who still stood near the open house door, and caught a strange, wry expression crossing her tiny face. Sensing Alys’s gaze, she looked round and gave her a smile which seemed to convey sympathy for Mistress Drummond and something else besides. There was another scream from outside.

‘But how did you know him at such a distance?’ Alys asked carefully. ‘Was it his bearing, or the way he walked, or what he wore?’

‘All of those,’ said the old woman, nodding. ‘And the great shock of hair, white as flax, like a coltsfoot gone to seed. All my bairns have that hair, you see, lassie. Mistress Mason,’ she corrected herself. ‘They take it from their father, and he took it from his mother, an Beurlanaich, that was English.’

‘English?’ repeated Alys in astonishment. ‘How ever did that come about?’ The two countries have been at war for centuries, she thought, how would a man living in this remote place find an English wife?

‘My good-father met her at Stirling when he was there selling beasts, and her a sewing-woman in Queen Joan’s household. My man was the only child they reared, all the others was carried off with the Good People. But there is nobody else in the whole of Balquhidder that has such hair.’ She chuckled. ‘I was always saying to my man, he would never stray from me, for I would be knowing his get wherever I saw it, and my sons’ the same.’

That Alys could well believe, recalling the young man who had met them. ‘And what clothes was your son wearing? Surely not the same clothes that he went away in,’ she suggested. ‘They must have worn out, in the time.’

‘Och, they would so,’ agreed Mistress Drummond, ‘and it was sasainneach dress he went away in, seeing he was walking back to the kirk at Dunblane. Those clothes would not be fitting him any more at all, the way he is grown, so he was not wearing them, but only the plaid on his back. His plaid I knew at once, for it was my own dyeing and weaving. He was clad in what they had given him to wear under the hill,’ she added something quick in Ersche, and Caterin echoed it, ‘fine strange clothing, every bit as fine as Sir William is wearing.’

‘I should like to see what the — those people wear,’ said Alys, with perfect truth.

‘That I can show you, easy,’ said Mistress Drummond triumphantly, ‘for I put it by. Too good to be wearing about the farm, it is. Jamie Beag’s old doublet and sark fits him fine, and does him for ordinary.’

‘So many of your men are called James,’ said Alys, as the old woman rose and made her way cautiously across the chamber. The boy outside screamed again.

‘A true word, lassie,’ agreed Mistress Drummond. A small sound by the door, a change of the light, made Alys turn her head just in time to see Caterin slipping out of the house, her head bent. Mistress Drummond, ignoring this, knelt stiffly before a painted kist by the far wall, felt for and removed the stack of turned wooden platters which lay on it. ‘There was my man’s father,’ she enumerated in that musical voice, ‘that was James an-t bean Beurlain, James with the English wife you would say, and there is my man himself, that is James Mor, and my son James, and there was Patrick’s son James, that was James Breac, since he was freckled like a troutie, and died before he was seven year old, poor laddie,’ she paused to cross herself, ‘and Mòr’s James, that is Jamie Beag.’ She counted again on her twisted fingers, and nodded.

Alys, trying to recall what Murdo had said, reckoned that three at least of these were dead. Had he mentioned another James still about the place? And was Mor the same word as Mòr? The woman’s name had a different twist from the man’s by-name.

‘And of course there is Seumas MacGregor that dwells at the foot of the clachan, but he is not kin, though he is our tenant,’ added Mistress Drummond, lifting a bundle of linen out of the kist. She laid it on the flagged floor before her and unwrapped it. ‘There now. Is that not fine? And there is his boots as well, in the other kist.’

Alys came to kneel beside her, touching the garments she unrolled. The outermost layer was a shirt of fine soft linen, well made, cut and stitched in a subtly different way from the shirts she made for Gil, or the other women of Glasgow made for their men. It was much less full and long than the great belted sarks Murdo and his father wore, and she could imagine that it would seem quite strange to someone used to those. The dog leaned against her shoulder, sniffing at the folded cloth.

‘And see this,’ prompted Mistress Drummond, groping for the sleeve of the garment and holding it out to Alys. Her thick, twisted fingers felt at the cuff, and Alys duly admired the little knots of needle-lace worked along its edge.

The garments wrapped in the shirt were also of good quality, though travel-stained. There was a pair of joined hose, of grey worsted cloth, a blue velvet doublet trimmed with fathoms of bright red cord, two pairs of drawers, and a thigh-length gown of dark blue broadcloth. Alys turned them, half-listening to Mistress Drummond exclaiming over the thickness and quality of the cloth, the strangeness of the cut. The doublet was lined with red linen, and interlined with something which crackled faintly in her hands; the gown was made to fasten on the breast, and was similarly lined, with several pockets cunningly worked into the lining to hold coin or papers. All seemed to be empty.

She realized that she was picking over someone else’s clothes without their owner’s knowledge. Suddenly overwhelmed by embarrassment, she folded the gown neatly and put it down on top of the other garments.

‘We soaked the linen and washed it,’ said Mistress Drummond, ‘but not the others, of course.’ She wrapped the bundle together again and returned it to the kist. ‘I never thought to see my laddie again in this life,’ she confessed, accepting Alys’s help to rise. ‘Such a blessing it is, I have lit candles to Our Lady and to St Angus every Sunday since he came back to me, and so I will be doing the rest of my days, whether there is Mass being said at the Kirkton or no.’

‘And this was all he had with him?’ Alys asked. ‘Had he no scrip, no coin? Surely he must have had something when he left here.’

‘No, no. What would a laddie that age be wanting with coin? He had a roasted collop and a good oatmeal bannock in his pouch, to stay him on his travel, and a spare shirt, and another I was sending to his brother Andrew. And we sang the blessing to him for the road, and he set off up the glen,’ this was also, clearly, a familiar recitation, ‘all in the morning sunshine, and the birds calling, and I stood at the roadside here and watched him out of sight, and I never saw him no more till four weeks since.’

‘It’s a great wonder that he is returned,’ said Alys. ‘You must be thankful indeed.’

‘Thankful indeed,’ agreed Mistress Drummond. She put a hand on Alys’s arm. ‘And also I was blaming St Angus,’ she admitted, ‘for I had wished my laddie to sing here at his feast day, down in the Kirkton, but he was saying he must get back to Dunblane for St Blane’s great feast, that’s the same day. So I was blaming St Angus for not keeping him safe, and it will surely be taking my own weight in candles to put that right.’

‘Has he spoken about his time with — with those people?’ Alys asked. ‘Why did they carry him off?’

‘Och, for his singing.’ The old woman made her way stiffly to her chair by the low peat fire in the centre of the floor. ‘It would be his singing. Him and Andrew both, they had voices like angels, though Andrew lost his afterwards. David has been singing for them under the hill,’ again that muttered phrase in Ersche, ‘since ever he was stolen away.’

Across the yard the loom began clacking again, and then, right on cue, a new voice lifted in a lilting, floating melody. The words seemed to be Ersche, the voice was a clear rich alto, and with the singing came bursts of braying laughter.

‘It is only David can make Iain laugh, the poor soul,’ said Mistress Drummond, settling herself comfortably. ‘If you wait a little, lassie, Mistress Mason I mean, he will come in to speak to his mammy, and you will be meeting him.’

‘He has a fine voice,’ agreed Alys, listening to the singer. It seemed to her to be a trained voice, such as one might encounter in the choir of a great church; the strength and delivery were professional, the tone was true. The tune changed, and changed again. Suddenly she realized that she had sat listening for a long time, and turned quickly to apologize.

‘Och, there is no offence, lassie,’ said the old woman seriously. ‘One could listen for a day and a night and never move. Do you wonder that those others took him away to sing for them?’ She tilted her head. ‘Ah, there it is. He is always singing our own song last of all, as the poor soul falls asleep.’

The tune had changed again, to a slow rocking song, a lullaby. Mistress Drummond sang softly along with the words, Dalriach alainn, Dalriach math, ho ro, ho ruath. Alys’s limited vocabulary covered that: fair Dalriach, fine Dalriach. A song for the farm where they sat.

‘What a bonnie tune. Who made it?’ she asked as it ended.

‘It was my man made it for James our firstborn, and we both sang it to all our bairns.’ The old woman smiled. ‘Do you ken, David was singing it to Iain when he first set eyes on him, the day he came home, I think that would be how Iain was taking to him immediate.’

‘He — ’ Alys paused, and revised what she was about to say. ‘He remembered it, then?’

‘Och, yes, he was remembering it, and just the way his father was singing it. My son Patrick has the tune a wee bit different, you understand, but David minds it his father’s way.’

‘And has he learned other songs while he was away? Do they have other music in the — in the sidhean?’

The quick, averting phrase in Ersche, and then the answer.

‘Fine music indeed, though David tells me none of it they make themselves, all is from singers they’ve carried off from one place or another.’ There was a movement in the yard, and a shadow fell on the doorway. ‘This will be him now. David, mo chridh, come within.’

‘I think it must be the bonniest place in the realm of Scotland,’ said Davie Drummond, gazing round the bowl of the hills in which the farm lay cradled. To Alys’s ear his Scots was not quite like the way Murdo Dubh or Mistress Drummond used the language. ‘My — ’ He checked, and continued. ‘My father aye said it was a place where you are near to the kingdom of the angels.’

‘Bonnier than where you have been?’ she prompted.

He looked quickly at her, and half-smiled.

‘Wherever I was, I think it is not in Scotland,’ he said.

‘And where were you?’ she asked directly.

Her first response to Davie Drummond was liking. He was taller than she was but seemed a year or two younger, perhaps sixteen. Clad in another of those huge sarks belted about him, with a leather doublet over it, he bore a powerful resemblance to the young man who had welcomed them, and to the girl Agnes. A strong-featured, pink-skinned face burnt by the sun, wide open blue eyes, their lashes and brows so fair as to be invisible, and that extraordinary halo of lint-white, frizzy hair, all marked him as their close kin, as Lady Stewart had said. Stepping barefoot into old Mistress Drummond’s house, his great plaid bundled over his arm, he had bowed to Alys, but said gently to the old woman:

‘No need, surely, to be sending Mòr up the field for me when her hip is as sore? One of the lassies could have fetched me.’

‘Och, so it is, mo chridh, but they were arguing again,’ she said, smiling up at him.

‘Just the same, Mammy, there is enough pain in her life without adding more to it.’

‘Well, and that is a true word. David, here is a lassie — here is Mistress Mason come all the way from Glasgow to hear about how you came home to me.’

His back to the door, his face in shadow, he seemed to stiffen slightly, but he said with grave courtesy, ‘I will gladly to talk to the lady. Are you tired, Mammy? Will I take our guest to see the farm?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Alys hastily. ‘Have I tired you with talking, mistress? I’m sorry for it if I have.’

Now she stood at the side of the bridle-road along the glen, which ran here between outfield and steading, while Davie Drummond named the hills for her, pointed out the path to the summer grazing, named the families in the other steadings of the valley. The reapers were still working along the rigs of barley; in the shade of the barn Steenie was minding the ponies and talking to the old woman with the hoe, who seemed to be called Mairead and who was getting a lot of amusement from the conversation. Socrates was exploring the yard.

At Alys’s blunt question Davie looked away, staring northward at a ridge he had just identified. After a moment he said, ‘You know where they are saying I have been.’

‘Is it the truth?’

He turned his head and met her eye.

‘Wherever I have been,’ he said carefully, ‘I am back.’

‘You are,’ said Alys after a moment. ‘You are home, I think.’

A flicker of something like surprise behind the blue eyes, but no answer. After a moment she went on, ‘What was it like there? How do they live, the — those people?’

‘Not so different from us,’ he said. ‘Their houses are fine, their clothes are bonnie. There is more colour in them, perhaps. The old woman would show you the clothes I came home in?’ Alys nodded, and he smiled fondly. ‘She is showing them to everyone. And there is feasting and fasting, the same as here, and music all the time.’

‘What kind of music?’

‘Voice and harp,’ he answered readily, ‘and playing on all kinds of pipes, and fiddle and bells and drums. Much the same as here, indeed.’

‘I heard you singing to the boy John,’ said Alys. He looked away, screwing up his face in compassion.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘the poor soul.’

‘What ails him?’

‘The hand of God, I suppose. I’ve seen the like in — He will not be touched, he will not be dirty. He won’t walk, though he can crawl. If he is crossed he screams. Likely you heard him.’ He shrugged. ‘If I can help him, I’m glad of it. His mother has a deal to bear. Both the old woman’s good-daughters has a hard life.’

‘I can see that,’ Alys answered seriously.

When they first stepped into the yard, it was occupied by the girl Agnes, seated at a winding-wheel filling a bobbin with blue yarn, and Caterin the spinner, who was once more padding barefoot back and forth over the cobbles while the broad wheel fixed on the house wall turned the dark iron spindle, twisting locks of fleece into thread for the dyeing. Beside her the long cradle was still. The child sleeping in it was small for seven or eight, his face pinched and cream-coloured, the hand which lay outside the covers long-fingered and twisted. Caterin had paused in her work as they approached, turning her head under its heaped and folded linen, with that wry smile for Alys and an ambiguous look at her guide.

‘He is asleep,’ she said in Scots. ‘There is none but you can soothe him now, it seems.’

Davie shook his head.

‘I’m still a new thing to him,’ he said. ‘If Elizabeth had some of my tunes she could be singing him to sleep as well.’

‘I must be glad you are come home, then,’ said Caterin. ‘We are all glad he is come home,’ she said slyly to Alys. ‘The songs and the tales he has to tell, you would not believe. You would almost be wishing to visit the — the place he has been, to see the marvels for yourself.’

‘Och, not so much,’ said Davie, colouring up. ‘And I think not all are so pleased to see me.’

‘She will become used to it,’ said Caterin, as the door of the other longhouse swung wider. ‘Och, Mòr, we were just speaking of you. Have you finished that shuttle of thread, then?’

‘I have.’ Mòr added two empty bobbins to the heap beside Agnes and crossed the yard towards them in uneven steps, bending her head to Alys. She was a tall lean woman, clad in a kirtle of checked cloth which looked like her own weaving, in the natural browns of the yarn; the sleeves were rolled up, baring muscular forearms, and the skirt was as short as Caterin’s. The linen on her head was much plainer than the other woman’s. ‘And is that you at the crack with our good-brother, then, when he should rather be at shearing the barley?’

‘No, no,’ said Caterin. ‘Davie is showing Mistress Mason the land his brother and his nephew works, are you no, Davie mhic Seumas? Better that than the shearing, when your hands are still soft.’

‘I’ll go back to work in good time,’ Davie assured them, his colour rising further. ‘Will you be showing Mistress Mason some of your weaving, then, Mòr, while Agnes winds the next shuttle?’

‘The shuttle is wound,’ said Mòr, shaking her head, ‘and the lady is not wanting to be bored with a heap of cloth.’

Alys, recognizing her cue, had protested firmly, and found herself at Mòr’s door being shown folded lengths of cloth fresh from the loom, in colours and patterns such as she had not seen in Glasgow. She said so, and admired the work with truth, setting off another competition in modesty between the two women which lasted until Caterin said, with a sidelong look at Davie:

‘And then the cloth must be fulled, of course. You will not have seen that since you came home, Davie.’

‘No, he has not,’ agreed Mòr, like a fish rising to a piece of bread. ‘You will not be knowing our waulking song, Davie.’

‘Why, has it changed?’ asked Davie, and began a lilting tune with a regular beat. Both women joined in, smiling, and Mòr’s hands moved in time with the music as if she was shifting and beating a length of cloth.

‘And what do they use for waulking songs under the hill?’ asked Mòr. Davie shrugged.

‘That and others,’ he said. ‘I had little to do with the weavers, you understand, for all they were near as good as — as someone standing near me.’

Mòr looked modest, and Caterin nodded approval at the ellipsis.

‘They admired my plaid, often,’ he continued, ‘if they could see this work they would admire it even more. I hope you are keeping it safe, good-sister.’

‘Rowan twigs in all the folds,’ said Mòr succinctly.

‘Patrick’s plaid is just like it,’ said Caterin, looking at the bundle of cloth on Davie’s arm. ‘The colours would be the same, if they were not faded.’

‘The cailleach was weaving that and all,’ said Davie. ‘She was weaving for all her bairns.’

Agnes said something in Ersche; Mòr inclined her head briefly to Alys, took the handful of bobbins her daughter held out, and vanished into her house again.

‘This will not get the yarn spun for the tribute-cloth,’ pronounced Caterin, and turned towards her wheel. ‘We must all of us be working longer, if what we get is to be split three ways, rather than two. You will be showing Mistress Mason the stackyard and the barns, Davie.’

And now they stood by the track, and Davie Drummond said, ‘Here is Ailidh nic Seumas and Murdo Dubh coming down from the shearing.’

The two figures making their way down the field were quite separate, but somehow might as well have been entwined. Watching them approach, Alys said, ‘And what did you eat, under the hill?’

‘The food is good enough. Less meat than here, maybe. Bread of wheat and rye, eggs and cream, butter and nuts and fruit.’

‘Kale,’ said Alys wryly. It was one thing she had not yet become used to in her years in Scotland, the relentless serving of the dark green, nourishing stewed leaves, so ubiquitous that kale simply meant food on many tables. Davie Drummond gave a small spurt of laughter.

‘They’ve no great love for it either, mistress.’

‘A good life, then,’ she prompted, aware of that liking again. He nodded. ‘Were you not sorry to leave it?’

‘I wanted to know how they did here,’ he said earnestly. ‘I wanted word of — of my brothers, and the old woman. And of the man of the house too, but it was too late for that.’ He crossed himself and muttered another phrase Alys did not catch, though it did not sound like Ersche.

‘Davie,’ said Murdo Dubh, handing his companion across the turf dyke, and contriving to bend his head in a brief bow to Alys as well. Socrates, recognizing an acquaintance, beat his tail in the dust a couple of times. ‘I saw Mòr nic Laran call you down from your rig. You’ll not reach the end of it before Jamie finishes his, I would say.’

‘Good day to you, Murdo,’ responded Davie Drummond. ‘Ciamar a tha sibh?’

‘The better for seeing you hale,’ said Murdo Dubh enigmatically. ‘Ailidh nic Seumas was wishing a word with the guest.’

The oldest granddaughter was clearly a Drummond too, though her hair was a darker shade, nearer to gold, and clung to her brow under her straw hat in sweaty curls rather than a flyaway frizz; her high forehead and blue eyes made her kinship to Davie very clear. The sleeves of her checked kirtle and her shift were rolled well up past her elbows, displaying sturdy forearms scratched by her work among the harvest. Her skirt, like the girl Agnes’s, was barely knee length. She bobbed a curtsy in answer to Alys’s greeting, and smiled shyly, but whispered something in Ersche to Davie.

‘Mistress Mason is speaking Gaelic,’ said Murdo hastily.

‘Only a very little,’ said Alys equally quickly, as Ailidh Drummond blushed crimson.

‘I have not told her yet,’ said Davie. The girl glanced at him, her colour still high.

‘If you will not say it, then I will,’ she urged in a half-voice. ‘Go on, Davie. It must be said.’

‘What must be said?’ Alys asked. ‘What do you wish me to hear?’

‘I was telling them some of it last night,’ said Murdo.

‘Go on, Davie,’ said Ailidh again. He was silent for a moment. Then he turned to face Alys, meeting her eye.

‘Mistress Mason,’ he said, his accent suddenly more Scots than Ersche, ‘I ken fine, for the word came up the glen yestreen, that you and your man are here from the Archbishop to speir at whether I’m who I say.’ She stared at him, open-mouthed, aware of her face burning like Ailidh’s. ‘But it seems to me there is a more important thing to be speiring at. Since ever I cam hame, someone is trying to kill me, and whoever it is they’ve been near killing the old woman more than once. I’m feart they’ll get her.’