The Rough Collier

Chapter One

When the peat-cutters came to report the dead man, Gil Cunningham was up in the roof-space of his mother’s house, teaching his new young wife swordplay.

He and Alys had ridden out from Glasgow to Belstane earlier in the week, planning to stay for a few days so that Lady Cunningham could get to know her daughter-in-law better, and relishing their escape from his duties about the Consistory court and hers in her father’s house. In fulfilment of a promise he had made eight months ago, Gil had persuaded Alys into the attics at the first opportunity, where they had flung wide the shutters to let the light in along with the wide view of Carluke town and the hills of south Lanarkshire beyond it, and cleared an area of the dusty floorboards by shifting the kists and lumber of several generations of Gil’s Muirhead forebears. They had progressed, in three days, to practising with an old straw target and a pair of wooden swords out of one of the kists.

‘Like this,’ Gil said, in the French they used when they were together. Alys’s wide skirts were kilted above her knees, for freedom of movement; he dragged his eyes from the slender legs and ankles in their knitted stockings to demonstrate the grip he wanted her to take on the polished hilt. ‘Keep the point up. Then you can turn it from the elbow — ’

‘Like turning a key?’ suggested Alys.

He reached round her shoulders to put his hand next to hers, and she leaned briefly into his embrace and looked up at him, brown eyes dancing. He bent to kiss her, and remarked, ‘It was never this much of a pleasure when old Drew taught these moves to my brothers and me.’

‘I should hope not,’ said his bride primly. She settled her grip and turned the little stave experimentally. ‘Like this?’

‘Less slantwise.’ Gil tried to recall the old weapon-master’s approach. ‘You need to find the balance.’ He kissed her again, and stepped away. ‘Now strike as I showed you — across, and twist the blade, and back. That’s it!’

‘But surely,’ Alys swung the sword again, striking dust and flakes of straw from the target, ‘your opponent doesn’t wait for you to hit him a second time?’

She checked and turned her head as footsteps sounded on the stairs, and ducked hastily behind the timbers of a dismantled bed, pulling at the folds of wool about her waist. The ankles vanished as Lady Egidia’s waiting-woman appeared at the door to the stair-tower.

‘Maister Gil,’ she said, puffing slightly. ‘The mistress said you was up here. There’s a fellow at the yett, come from the peat-cuttings up ayont Thorn, wants a word wi’ you.’

‘With me?’ said Gil in surprise. ‘I’ve no authority here — it’s my mother holds the land.’

‘No, it’s you he’s wanting.’ Nan had got her breath by now. ‘It’s on Douglas land but wi’ Sir James and all of them being from home he came here to tell you. They’ve found a deid man.’

‘A dead man?’ Alys emerged from her hide. Nan nodded triumphantly, the ends of her white headdress swinging.

‘Aye, and he says he’s all turned to leather wi’ the peat, but they ken fine who it is, and they want you to see to taking up the woman that did it.’

Egidia Muirhead, Lady Cunningham, had come in from inspecting her horses and was interrogating the messenger in the hall. She sat in her great chair by the fire, straight-backed and commanding in a mended kirtle and a loose furred gown which had belonged to her dead husband. At her back stood her steward, a fair, stocky fellow with a pleasant face and the harried manner any man developed in contact with Lady Egidia, and before her a countryman in muddy boots and worn leather doublet was twisting his bonnet in his hands and answering hesitantly. As Gil stepped in from the stair-tower, Alys at his heels, the wolfhound which was sprawled on the hearth leapt to its feet and bounded forward to greet him. The grey cat on the plate-cupboard hissed, and his mother said over the dog’s singing:

‘Here’s Wat Paton, Gil, with some tale of a corp in the peat-diggings.’

The man ducked his shaggy head.

‘Good day to ye, Maister Cunningham,’ he said in some confusion, ‘and good wishes to yer bonny bride and all.’

Alys thanked him, and curtsied, to his further confusion.

‘You’re one of my godfather’s tenants,’ said Gil, studying the man. ‘Down, Socrates,’ he added to the dog, who dropped obligingly to four paws and took his attentions on to Alys.

‘Aye, that’s right, sir, I am, I’m one of Sir James’s tenants,’ agreed Paton. ‘In Thorn, over yonder. There’s seven of us dwells there, and we all went up to the peat-digging the day morn, and here was this dead man. And when we kent who it was that we’d found, and seen that something had to be done about it, we decided I’d come to get you, and it’s right convenient you being here to visit your lady mother the now, sir, what wi’ Sir James being away at Stirling, and his depute gone to Edinburgh this week about the case at law, and Maister Michael no closer than Glasgow.’

Gil flicked a glance at his mother, and saw her face tighten briefly at this mention of her godson, offspring of her nearest neighbour Sir James Douglas.

‘But how do you ken who it is?’ he asked.

‘Oh, that’s clear enough, and no trouble to discern,’ said Paton with an access of confidence. ‘See, we came on his head first, and though you wouldny ken his face now, his hair’s as red as a tod in summer, and there’s the one fellow missing the now, and he’s red-headed and all. It’s Tammas Murray from the coal-heugh up by the Pow Burn, clear as day, and he’s been put there by witchcraft so Sir David said, which must ha’ been by the witch that dwells up there and all. So if you’d come wi’ us, maister — ’

‘Hold up here,’ said Gil. ‘Why do you want me? Has the man been formally identified? Who’s bringing the charge of witchcraft?’

‘I wouldny ken about that,’ said Paton, wringing his bonnet again, ‘only that Sir David said we wanted you and I was to come and get you, and we all agreed on that, and the rest of them has went to lift the witch and fetch her to confront the corp.’

‘The impertinence of that Davy Fleming!’ said Nan, from the doorway where she was listening avidly. ‘Why should he take Maister Gil away from visiting you, mistress? And from his bride and all?’

‘Where is this?’ Alys asked. ‘Where are the peat-cuttings?’

‘It’s no far, mem,’ said Alan Forrest the steward, and pointed generally eastward. ‘They’re up yonder, just off our land, no more than a mile or two from here. It’s no as if it’s asking Maister Gil to go out to the coal-heugh.’

‘We’ll no keep your man that long, mistress,’ Paton assured her.

‘I think you must go, Gilbert,’ said Lady Cunningham, meeting his eye significantly. Gil gave her a tiny nod.

‘Give me time to get my boots on,’ he said. ‘Did you ride here, man, or are you afoot?’

‘I rode the old pony,’ said Paton, grinning in relief. ‘I’m glad of that, maister, I’d no wish to go back to Sir David saying you wouldny come out.’

Gil nodded, and turned to go back up the spiral stair, Socrates at his knee. Alys hurried after him to the small chamber his mother had allocated to them, and seized her riding-dress from where it hung on a nail behind the door.

‘May I come with you?’ she said in French, unlacing her blue woollen gown. Gil paused, boot in hand, to watch appreciatively as she squirmed out of the tight bodice. Five months of marriage had altered her, he recognized. Once she would have waited for his answer before she began to change her clothes.

‘I may be some time,’ he warned her.

‘All the more reason.’ She was tugging on the leather breeches which went under the garment. ‘I’ve never seen a peat-digging,’ she added, tying the waistband. Gil kicked off his shoes and pulled the boot on.

‘It’s just a hole in the ground.’ He tramped down on the heel, wriggling his toes in place, and accepted the second boot from Socrates, who stood waving his stringy tail, ears pricked in anticipation of an outing.

‘With a dead man in it.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed thoughtfully. ‘Something I have not heard of before.’

‘It’s a strange place to dispose of a dead person. After all, if people dig the peat, a body must be found sooner or later, no?’

‘You would think so.’

‘And if this woman is to be taken as a witch,’ she added, her voice muffled by the folds of the skirt. Emerging from the swathes of pale brown wool and smoothing it down over her kirtle she went on, ‘someone should be there to support her. Another woman, I mean.’

‘It could be nasty.’

‘I know.’ Her face sobered. ‘I once saw a witch taken up. We were in Paris, and I was too young to do anything.’

Gil, digesting this, exchanged the loose short gown he wore in the house for a closer garment with a budge lining. Alys, having laced her bodice, craned to see into the mirror, settled her hat carefully over the linen cap that hid her long honey-coloured hair, and lifted the gloves to match the blue leather trimmings on the riding-dress.

‘You’re very bien tenue, sweetheart. You could be riding out on the King’s hunt, not crossing our own lands to the peat-cutting.’

‘It’s all I have.’ She gathered up her skirts to precede him down the stairs. ‘Besides,’ she added, and glanced over her shoulder at him with her quick smile as Socrates slithered behind them, ‘now while I am a bride, I must dress as befits your station. Once I’m known as your lady I may wear what I please.’

One of the Belstane menservants rode out with them across the moorland, a scrawny dark-browed fellow called Henry who had been a stable-boy when Gil was a child and was now one of Lady Egidia’s upper stud-grooms. Following him, they could hear the disturbance by the peat-cutting before they saw it, a confusion of the lapwings’ plaintive cries blown on the wind with a loud, nasal tenor carrying the lower line on its own.

‘That’ll be Sir David,’ said Paton confidently. ‘A good clear voice he’s got.’

‘That is your priest?’ asked Alys, turning in the saddle to look at him where he bobbed along in their wake on the old pony. He grinned at her and nodded.

‘That’s him right enough, Maister Gil,’ pronounced Henry as they rounded the shoulder of the bleak hillside. ‘David Fleming. He’s a strong man for Sir James’s rights,’ he added in neutral tones.

‘Aye, he is that,’ agreed Paton. ‘He’s chaplain to Sir James, see, and priests for us all when we canny get down to the kirk in Carluke, and takes to do wi’ the estate when Jock Douglas the steward’s away. That’s him in the grey plaid, talking to Rab Simson.’

There were two men in the sharp-edged hollow, one in homespun leaning on a peat-spade, the other stouter and grey-clad, gesticulating at something which lay shrouded by a felt cloak on a hurdle at their feet. A small cart was tilted on end nearby. A hare skipped across the hillside higher up, and the lapwings wheeled and called across the empty sky beyond. Henry halted his horse by the cart, which it inspected suspiciously, and Gil reined in beside him and whistled for his dog. At this the tubby priest looked round, broke off what he was saying and made haste to climb out on to the rough, wind-shaken grass, raising his round felt cap. His wrinkled, mended hose were smudged with peat as if he had been kneeling.

‘Maister Cunningham,’ he said eagerly, coming to Gil’s stirrup. ‘So Wat bore his message. My thanks to you for coming out, maister, and you’ll ha’ Sir James’s gratitude for it and all. And madam your wife honours us!’ He bowed to Alys, gave her an appraising grin and raised the cap again, exposing a fluffy tonsure surrounded by limp mousy hair. ‘I’m David Fleming, maister, madam, chaplain to Sir James and depute to his steward, and they’re both away, you ken, which is why — ’

‘No trouble,’ said Gil politely. ‘What have you to show us, Sir David?’

‘It’s this corp we’ve found in the peat,’ explained the priest, ‘or I’d never have inconvenienced you, for we’ve sent to take up the woman that done it, and it all needs to be dealt wi’ in due process. Will you dismount, maister, and take a look at him? Henry, take Maister Cunningham’s reins,’ he ordered sharply as Gil handed his reins to the man. ‘It’s certain enow who it is, maister,’ he went on, ‘but it needs an authority to call the quest on him, and carry the charge agin the witch.’

‘You’ve proof, have you?’ Gil lifted his wife down from her saddle. ‘Some evidence?’

‘Oh, she’s well kent to ha’ quarrelled with the man.’ Fleming bowed again to Alys. ‘Now you bide here, Mistress Cunningham,’ he went on, in a condescending tone which Gil felt was ill advised, ‘and Henry can have a care to you, while I show your goodman this — ’

‘Thank you,’ said Alys, smiling sweetly at him, ‘but I can get down into the digging.’ Fleming looked askance at this, and his expression turned to indignation as she gathered her skirts together and jumped, without waiting for Gil’s supporting hand. She looked about her with interest, prodding with her booted toe at the dark surface of last year’s cut. Gil followed her.

‘It’s no a fit sight for a young lassie,’ Fleming protested. ‘Maister, I think you should bid her stay here. His face is no — ’

‘My wife makes up her own mind,’ said Gil mildly. Socrates appeared at the gallop over the curve of the hill and leapt down beside his master, tongue lolling. ‘Get on, Sir David.’

‘Aye, but — ’ Fleming bit his lip, and gave up. ‘If you’ll come over here, maister, you can get a look at him, and here’s Rab Simson that found him, all buried in the peat, and — ’

The man by the hurdle touched his blue bonnet as they approached across the springy surface, then bent to draw back the patched felt cloak which covered the corpse. Socrates pricked his ears intently, his nose twitching, but Gil put out a hand.

‘Bide a moment. Before I see him,’ he said, ‘tell me how you found him. Was it you saw him first? What are you doing up here anyway?’ he added. ‘It’s early to be casting peats. Were you setting out this year’s portions?’

Simson looked sidelong at Paton, and nodded, muttering agreement.

‘We was cleaning up a bit,’ volunteered Paton. ‘And looking how wet the peat is and clearing the grass off the cut, and the like. It’s a good day for it, seeing it’s been dry for a week.’

‘How many of you? Was it all seven of you from Thorn? Did you all come up here together?’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Paton. ‘We came up here wi’ the cart, an hour after Prime, since the oats is sown and the land’s no ready for the bere yet. We came all together from Thorn town, Geordie Meikle and his brother Jock, Rab here, William Douglas,’ he counted on his fingers, ‘Eck Shaw, Adam Livingstone and me. And it’s Jock and Geordie’s cart,’ he added. ‘All the rest’s gone up to the coal-heugh to take the witch.’

‘And then we saw this man staring out of the peat-wall like the Judgement Day,’ said Fleming in his nasal tenor.

‘What did you do first?’ asked Gil, ignoring this.

‘Walked the ground,’ said Paton promptly.

‘Paced off the portions,’ agreed Simson, with growing confidence, ‘and put the first of the markers down.’ He pointed at a bundle of wooden stobs which lay on the grass nearby.

‘Then Rab and William Douglas came down into the digging to look how dry the peat was,’ went on Paton.

‘And there he was!’ said Fleming.

‘It was you that found him?’ Gil asked. Rab Simson admitted to this. ‘Show me where.’

The man turned to indicate a cavity in the cut face of the peat. The dark, crumbling layers round it were disturbed, and spade-marks indicated where they had used leverage to get the body out. The dog paced forward from Gil’s side to peer into the hollow, snuffling hopefully, and Gil snapped his fingers to recall him.

‘His head was here, see,’ Simson pointed. ‘I seen his hair first, just sticking out a crack in the peat-dyke where it shrunk when it dried out a bit, and I thought first it was maybe a jerkin or the like that someone had left last year.’

Gil nodded, but Fleming declared, ‘That was daft, Rab Simson. It would never last the year out in the weather like that.’

‘Well, he’s lasted,’ said Simson argumentatively, indicating the corpse.

‘So then you came to look,’ prompted Gil.

‘Aye, and let out a great skelloch,’ said Paton, grinning. ‘And we all come running, and when we seen it was a head right enough we tried if it was loose, see, and it wasny.’ He demonstrated with a swivelling movement of both hands which was somehow quite unnerving. ‘And then — ’

‘And then,’ trumpeted Fleming in Gil’s ear, ‘they found the rest of the body was there, and sent for me, as was right, and I oversaw getting him out the peat, and identifying him. Will you see him now, maister?’

‘This is where he was buried,’ repeated Gil. Alys looked up at him and nodded.

‘Aye, here and nowhere else,’ agreed Simson.

Gil turned, and bent to the cloak which shrouded the body on its hurdle. Fleming was ahead of him, grasping the corner, but paused to warn them again:

‘It’s no a sight for a young lassie. You take my advice, you’d be better up yonder wi’ the horses, mistress.’

‘Let me see him,’ said Gil. Fleming reluctantly drew back the cloak. Socrates extended his long muzzle, sniffing, and growled faintly. Gil checked him.

The object revealed was not immediately obvious as human. The shock of hair caught the eye, as red as the summer fox Paton had mentioned, but at first glance it was attached to a bundle of sticks wrapped in old leather, damp and dark like the peat which still clung to them. Then Gil recognized a hand, and a foot, and began to see how the body was disposed, lying on its left side with the hands crossed in front of the chest and its knees drawn up into the shrunken belly, the chin tucked in and the face turned down on the left shoulder like someone asleep.

‘He’s near turned to peat himself,’ he said.

‘Aye, he is that,’ agreed Simson. He and Paton nodded proudly, as if it was their doing.

‘You’ll want to see his face, maister,’ prompted Fleming. Gil stepped round the hurdle, and bent to look. ‘You see, he’s no to be kent by his features. She’s made certain o’ that. If it wasny for the hair we’d never ha’ kent him, maister.’

Gil nodded. The sight was nowhere near so grisly as Fleming’s warnings had implied, but the face was unrecognizable. The corpse’s features were flattened, the nose bent sideways and the jaw dislocated so that the blackened teeth showed in a misplaced grin. One eye was closed, the lid shrunk into its socket, but the other eyeball had sprung out and lay withered on the crushed cheekbone like a yellow cherry on a stalk. On the peat-brown skin of the jaw was a bloom of gingery stubble.

‘How did he die?’ asked Alys.

‘How?’ Fleming was taken aback, but recovered quickly. ‘That’s no a matter we need to think on, mistress. He’s dead, and that’s the meat o’t.’

‘The law will wish to know how he died,’ said Gil. ‘And when,’ he added, sniffing. ‘He’s been dead a good time. He smells of the peat and nothing else.’

‘I was thinking that,’ said Alys. ‘How long does it take, for something left out here to become black and shrink like this?’

‘A long time, surely,’ said Gil.

‘No, no,’ said Paton argumentatively ‘It might be no more than a pair o’ weeks.’

‘Havers, Wat!’ said Simson. ‘He’s further gone than our old cow was when we found her, the other side of the moor, and she’d been missing two month.’

‘As little as that?’ said Gil.

‘It must take less than that,’ said Fleming with authority, ‘for it’s certainly Murray by the hair, and he’s no been missing as long as two month.’

Gil exchanged a glance with Alys, and then turned back to the cavity in the peat.

‘Tell me how he was lying,’ he said.

‘Just the way you see him,’ pronounced Fleming, ‘for we couldny straighten him, what with the flesh so shrunk on the bones.’

‘On that side, or the other?’

‘Kind of on his right side,’ said Rab Simson, thinking as he spoke, ‘but no quite. His face was turned right up,’ he added, ‘and no even a cloth ower it.’

‘And you dug in from here, from the side of the peat-wall?’ Gil prompted. ‘Not down from the top?’

‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed Paton. ‘We just burrowed in wi’ our fleuchters.’ He pointed to Simson’s peat-spade in illustration. At Gil’s elbow, Alys repeated the new word silently. ‘We didny want to come down from above him, see, in case …’ He grinned awkwardly.

‘The peat above him has never been cut,’ Gil said, and touched the dark caked surface. ‘Do you see there where there’s a lighter band? It goes right across with never a break. The layers have not been disturbed, not till you came along and cut under them with the fleuchters. They’re sagging now, but they’ve never been cut through.’

‘Of course they haveny,’ proclaimed Fleming. ‘I saw that and all, Maister Cunningham. That’s how I kent it for witchcraft, for she’s simply slain him and set him under the peat without ever having to dig down. And when you set that with other information I have — ’

‘More likely,’ said Gil, ‘he was laid here before the peat grew.’

Simson nodded agreement, but Paton objected: ‘The peat never grew! It was aye there! You’re daft, Rab Simson.’

‘You’re daft yerself, Wat Paton,’ retorted Simson. ‘It must ha’ growed, else how did the trees get at the bottom of it, that you find in some of the diggings? Or the old peat-spades, from afore Noy’s Flood, maybe? And my grandsire found an elf-bolt under the peat ower by Braidwood. I’ve seen it when I was wee. So it’s all grown since Noy’s time, likely.’

‘Aye, since Noy’s time. A thousand year or more. It never grew in the time the man Murray’s been missing,’ said Fleming, ‘which just goes to prove it’s witchcraft.’

‘We still do not know how he died,’ said Alys. She had turned back to the corpse on its hurdle, and was bending for a closer look. ‘He has no clothes on,’ she added, pulling off her glove to touch the peat-dark skin. ‘Except — is this a belt?’

‘It isn’t leather,’ said Gil. ‘It still has the fur on.’

‘I said he was no sight for a young lassie!’ reiterated Fleming.

The lapwings had begun calling again. A noise of several voices shouting reached Gil, and the dog growled just as Paton looked up the flank of the hill and said, ‘Maisters, is this them coming back from the coal-heugh now?’

‘Aye, it is,’ agreed Fleming with enthusiasm. ‘You can confront her wi’ her crime, Maister Cunningham, and then we can get on and deal wi’ it properly.’

The first heads were surfacing above the curve of the hillside, with gesticulating peat-spades and a loud argument which flew in snatches on the brisk wind. Socrates growled more loudly, and Gil checked him. Five men, clad like Paton and Simson in leather and homespun, were hustling a woman along in their midst. She wore neither plaid nor mantle, and her apron and good woollen gown were muddy from the enforced march across the moorland, her indoor cap askew and her hair blowing in the wind. Her hands were bound before her, but it was clear that her tongue was not restrained.

‘And if you hadny lifted me from my stillroom,’ she declared as they came closer, ‘I’d have completed the oil for your mother’s joint-ill, Geordie Meikle, and you could have taken it to her this evening. She tellt me when she asked for more that she was just about out of it — ’

‘You said that a’ready,’ said one of the men round her, shoving her roughly towards Gil. She stumbled forward, and fell over the edge of the peat-cutting, landing awkwardly on hip and elbow. Alys exclaimed indignantly, and sprang to her assistance, while Fleming pronounced:

‘Well may you grovel, witch, afore the evidence of your ill deeds! This is the witch, Maister Cunningham, well kent for miles about as a cunning woman wi’ herbs and ointments, and seen by me to ha’ quarrelled wi’ Thomas Murray that lies here slain by witchcraft.’

‘Thomas?’ the woman said as she stood upright. She gave Alys a shaky word of thanks, looked at Gil, and bowed awkwardly over her bound hands. ‘Sir, what’s to do here? The men would tell me nothing but that I’m accused of witchcraft and evil-doing, and now — are you saying Thomas is dead?’

‘You ken well he’s dead, woman,’ trumpeted Fleming, ‘you that set him here in secret!’ Gil turned and fixed the tubby priest with his eye. ‘But by God’s help and these innocent instruments of justice — ’ He became aware of Gil’s gaze and faltered in his oration. ‘Your crime’s been uncovered,’ he ended lamely, and became silent.

‘Aye,’ said Gil drily, and turned to the woman. ‘What’s your name, mistress?’

‘That’s Beattie Lithgo,’ supplied one of the men around her. Gil eyed him, and he too fell silent.

‘Beatrice Lithgo,’ confirmed the woman, ‘relict of Adam Crombie the collier.’ Her accent was not local, but came from further east, Gil thought, the Lothians perhaps.

‘Mistress Lithgo,’ he said. ‘There’s a corp found here, that’s been identified as Thomas Murray.’ He stepped aside, watching her face. She looked from him to the bundle of bones on the hurdle, and frowned, obviously trying to make it out as a body.

‘Is that a man?’ she questioned. ‘From here it could as well be a calf drowned in the mire.’

Fleming opened his mouth, but Gil caught his eye again and he subsided.

‘It’s a man,’ Gil confirmed. ‘Look closer, mistress.’

She gave him a doubtful look, and stepped forward to bend awkwardly over the corpse, flinching as she located its battered countenance.

‘Oh, the poor soul. His mother wouldny ken him,’ she said. ‘Has he been beaten, or did this happen while he lay here, do you suppose, sir?’

‘You tell us, woman — ’ began Fleming.

‘Do you recognize the man?’ Gil asked without expression. Beatrice Lithgo straightened up and turned to him. She was tall for a woman, taller than Alys though shorter than Gil himself, and behind the blowing wisps of reddish-fair hair her face was plain and bony, with a sharp nose and angular jaw. Light eyes between grey and blue considered him, equally without expression.

‘I do not,’ she said, ‘no being his mother. It could be Thomas, it could just as well be some other poor soul. The hair’s lighter than his, but — ’

‘His hair’s bleached wi’ lying out in the peat,’ pronounced Fleming, unable to contain himself longer, ‘and if you beat him past knowing afore you hid him here, small wonder we canny tell him by his face.’ The men around them nodded, and one or two muttered agreement.

‘Maister Gil!’ called Henry from among the horses.

‘I think it’s no him,’ went on Mistress Lithgo, ‘but I’d sooner you got Thomas’s wife to see him, or one of the men that works by his side.’

‘To look for marks on his flesh, you mean?’ said Alys, coming forward.

‘Maister Gil, look up yonder!’

‘Any collier has scars,’ agreed Mistress Lithgo, ‘and Thomas has a few that I treated, but I’d as soon have some other word for it, and I’ve no doubt you would and all, sir,’ she added, with faint humour.

‘Maister Gil!’

The dog rose, hackles up, from his position at Gil’s feet, and stared up the hillside. Gil looked over his shoulder, and saw another ragged company appearing over the curve of windswept grass. This was a bigger group, grotesque in pointed hoods and long-tailed sarks of leather, and somehow much more threatening even at first sight, before he took in the style of implements the men carried or the tone of the shouting which broke out as they caught sight of Mistress Lithgo.

‘It’s the colliers,’ said one of the men beside Fleming, ‘come to fetch the witch home, maybe.’ He took an apprehensive grip of his peat-spade, and looked at the priest, who seized hold of Mistress Lithgo’s arm.

‘Gather round, lads,’ he ordered, gesturing with his free hand. ‘They’ll no get a hold of her for aught we can do!’

‘No just the colliers and their mells,’ said another man, making no move to obey Fleming. ‘There’s lassies wi’ them. Two lassies.’

‘The whole of the day shift, wi’ my older daughter,’ said Mistress Lithgo in resigned tones, ‘and my good-sister Joanna. Joanna Brownlie, Thomas’s wife,’ she added to Gil.

‘Ah,’ said Gil. He caught Alys’s eye, and held out his arm. She came forward with one of her flickering smiles, laid her gloved hand on his wrist, and allowed him to lead her across the hollow towards the approaching mob of miners with their heavy short-hafted hammers. There were eight or ten of them, with two very pretty young women in their midst whose white linen and well-dyed red and blue wool contrasted sharply with the blackened faces and muddy leathers of the men.

‘Give us back our Beattie!’ shouted the man at the front as the group halted on the edge of the peat-cutting, and others echoed him. ‘Set her free, or we’ll — ’

‘Mistress Brownlie?’ asked Gil formally, raising his felt hat.

The older of the two girls stiffened warily, and a wiry man beside her said, ‘Who’s asking for her?’

‘I’m Gil Cunningham, the Archbishop’s Quaestor, and this is my wife Alys Mason.’

Gil bowed, and Alys curtsied. The miners fell silent, staring down at them, except for the one who had asked their names, who said, mell at the ready, ‘And what’s Blacader’s questioner to do wi’ Joanna Brown-lie? Why can you no free Beattie to us and be done?’

‘She’s no witch,’ put in another voice from the back of the group. ‘Our Beattie’s a good woman. Who’s to physic our hurts if she’s ta’en up for a witch?’

‘There’s a corp been found,’ said Gil, still speaking formally to the whole group, ‘and some thought that it might be Mistress Brownlie’s man, who I understand is missing.’ There was a small sound of distress from the girl who had reacted earlier, sweet-faced and graceful in dark red with a married woman’s headdress of folded white linen. One hand rose to her mouth. ‘We need her to look at the corp if she’s willing,’ Gil went on, ‘to tell us if it is or it isny him.’

‘What’s that to do wi’ my mother?’ demanded the other girl, a small slender creature just maturing, her long fair hair well set off by a blue woollen gown and red-and-blue checked plaid. She jerked her head at Mistress Brownlie. ‘If it’s the wonderful Thomas then she’s the one to put a name to him and wash him, there was no need to lift my mother wi’ such a tirravee about it. And will you set her free now, or do we make you?’

‘Speak civilly to Maister Cunningham, Phemie,’ directed Fleming from behind Gil. The girl opened her mouth on what was obviously to be a sharp answer.

‘Mind your tongue, Phemie,’ said her mother. Phemie blushed unbecomingly but fell silent.

‘Aye, but we’ll make you set her free,’ said one of the miners, ‘and make someone sorry he ever thought of calling our Beattie a witch, priest or no priest.’

‘Will you look at the corp, Mistress Brownlie?’ asked Alys. She put her free hand out encouragingly. The girl in the linen headdress looked at the wiry man beside her. He gave her a heartening nod and sprang into the cutting, reaching up to swing her easily down beside him. She came forward from his clasp with obvious reluctance. ‘He’s not a bonnie sight,’ Alys warned her in her accented Scots, and took her hand. ‘Come, I will show you.’

The miners, Phemie among them, crowded after her towards the corpse on its hurdle and the guard of peat-cutters. Gil took up a position between the two groups, assessing just what he would do if things turned violent. Over the heads he could see Henry the groom, plainly making similar plans.

‘Is that him?’ said Joanna Brownlie, checking as they approached. ‘No, madam, that’s surely never Thomas. His hair’s the wrong colour.’

‘It’s bleached wi’ the air, like linen,’ said Fleming from his post at Mistress Lithgo’s side. Gil saw a flicker of amusement cross Beatrice Lithgo’s bony face, but she did not speak. Joanna curtsied distractedly to the priest, but stayed where she was, eyeing the corpse with misgiving, and dug her heels in against Alys’s coaxing hand.

‘That canny be Thomas,’ she said after a moment. ‘His hair’s away too light, he’s thinner than a Death on a monument, he’s — ’

‘The body is shrivelled with lying buried in the peat,’ Alys explained.

‘Thomas was well when I last saw him,’ said Joanna rather desperately. ‘I canny think this is him, I see no purpose in my looking closer — ’

‘Has this woman bewitched you and all?’ demanded Fleming, shaking Mistress Lithgo’s arm. Joanna looked properly at them both for the first time, and crossed herself.

‘Our Lady protect us, Beattie, what have they done to you?’ she exclaimed, and turned to Gil, a pleading look in her wide blue eyes. ‘I don’t understand, maister. What’s all this about anyway? Phemie came running into the house no an hour since saying the Thorn men had come and taken her mother for a witch, and we called out the day shift and made haste to follow, but we never heard aught about a corp, or Thomas — what has this to do wi’ Beattie? Sir David, why have you bound her like that?’

‘It isny Thomas Murray,’ said another voice. The man who had been at Joanna’s elbow was on one knee beside the hurdle, inspecting the corpse, easing the cramped limbs with a careful touch. ‘I’ll swear to that, on any relic you can produce,’ he added significantly, and turned to look hard at the priest, who snorted indignantly, though Gil could see no reason why.

‘How no, Jamesie?’ asked someone from the miners’ group.

‘This lad’s never held a mell in his life.’ Jamesie indicated the corpse’s hands. ‘Look here. His arms are shrunk to the bone but his hands and feet have the flesh on them yet, and you can see the skin. It’s as soft as a priest’s a- it’s got no calluses,’ he amended, and displayed his own palms, the coal-dust ingrained in their hardened skin. He was a sturdy, well-made fellow, his hair fair where it straggled from under his padded bonnet, his teeth very white in his blackened face when he spoke. ‘What’s more,’ he added, after a moment’s thought, ‘was Thomas no lacking a couple of joints?’ He raised his left hand.

Beatrice Lithgo nodded, and Joanna said, ‘You’re right, Jamesie. These two are short.’ She touched the last two fingers on her left hand. ‘From a mishap when he was a sinker in Fife, so he told me.’

What is a sinker? Gil wondered, as some of the colliers agreed behind him.

‘Well, this one’s got all the fingers he was born wi’, and the nails on them and all.’ Jamesie jerked his head at the corpse again. ‘It’s never Thomas Murray, whoever it is.’

‘Aye, it is Thomas Murray,’ argued one of the peat-cutters. Jamesie turned to look at him. ‘If it isny Murray, then where is he, Jamesie, tell me that?’

‘I’ve no the least idea where Thomas is,’ said the collier, ‘no being his keeper. All I ken is he’s no lying here on this hurdle wi’ his throat cut. Right, Geordie?’ he ended in a threatening tone, and the other man quailed.

‘Throat cut?’ said Alys quickly. ‘Show me!’

‘Is there no end to this?’ demanded Fleming. Ignoring him, Jamesie turned back to the corpse and eased it over a little so that the cords of the neck were visible where they ran under the misplaced jaw. Gil stayed where he was, alert for sudden movements on the part of either group of supporters, but Alys bent to look closely, and suddenly straightened up, biting at the back of her glove, and met Gil’s eye in some distress.

‘As he says,’ she confirmed. ‘His throat has been cut.’

‘Aye, I tellt you he was no sight for a young lady,’ said Fleming in that condescending tone. ‘I’m sorry if it grieves you, mistress, but I did warn you.’

Thomas was well when I last saw him,’ said Joanna again, ‘he canny be lying here wi’ his throat cut, and that’s never — ’

‘And how no? I’ll believe it isny Murray when you produce the man alive,’ declared Fleming, his grip still tight on Beatrice Lithgo’s arm. ‘You’re all in collusion, is what I say, the same as before.’

‘Before? What do you mean by that?’ said Mistress Lithgo, turning her head to stare at him down her sharp nose.

‘You know very well what I mean. Are you to pay these women any mind at all, Maister Cunningham?’

Gil tightened his lips on the first reply which came to him. After a moment he said, ‘Whatever we do, I’ve no wish to stand out here on a windy hillside much longer. I want the corp taken somewhere I can examine it closer, and I want to hear more about Thomas Murray and when he was last seen — ’

‘That’s easy enough,’ said Joanna Brownlie. ‘He set out on the round the morrow of St Patrick, after Sir David here had come up and said a Mass for us the evening before, and confessed him and the two that were to ride wi’ him. And we looked for him — ’ She bit her lip, an action which became her well though she seemed unaware of it, and turned to exchange a glance with Mistress Lithgo. ‘We looked for him by Pace-tide. Near three weeks since,’ she finished.

‘Indeed aye,’ trumpeted Fleming. ‘He never came home to the Good Friday Mass, and that’s when I became right concerned, Maister Cunningham.’

‘Seventeenth — no, eighteenth of March. A Monday. So he’s been gone better than five weeks,’ Gil calcu lated. Joanna nodded. ‘Has no one ridden out to look for him?’

‘Mistress Arbella willny spare the men,’ said the collier Jamesie, getting to his feet. ‘There’s a delivery more than due to leave, and we’ve been building up the coal-hill ready for it. As it is, he’s away wi’ our two best sinkers.’

‘You’re saying there are three of them missing?’ prompted Gil.

‘What have you done wi’ them, woman?’ demanded Fleming, shaking Beatrice Lithgo’s arm. She said nothing.

‘Three of them,’ said Phemie from her post at her mother’s other side. ‘And whatever coin he’s collected. He’s not away wi’ a string of horse, maister,’ she elaborated, ‘he’s gone to collect the fee for last winter’s deliveries.’

‘Arbella will have his head when he returns,’ whispered Joanna, knotting her hands together at her breast. Jamesie looked down at her, but did not speak.

‘Arbella?’ queried Gil.

‘My grandmother,’ said Phemie. ‘Who’s in charge up yonder. Whatever Thomas bloody Murray thinks.’

‘School your tongue, lassie!’ declaimed Fleming, and she tossed her head. ‘That’s no way to talk of your grandam, the devout woman that she is.’

‘We’ll stand out here no longer,’ Gil said firmly. ‘We’ll have the corp borne somewhere we can clean him up till I get a right look at him. I’ll ride out to the coal-heugh after I’ve done that.’ He met Alys’s gold-brown gaze. She nodded slightly, and gathered up her skirts with one hand as if prepared for a further journey. ‘There’s questions I want answered afore I make a decision here.’

‘And the witch?’ demanded Fleming. ‘Will we put her secure and all?’

‘Set her free,’ said Gil, over a rising hostile rumble from the colliers.

‘What?’ squawked Fleming. ‘Wi’ the proof of her misdeeds — ’

‘Set her free,’ repeated Gil. ‘Now.’