The Rough Collier

Chapter Ten

‘There is no owl in the chamber,’ said Alys. ‘It was only a dream.’

He could hear her fumbling with the tinderbox. Sweating, gasping for breath, he stared into the darkness of the box bed, trying to throw off the image and the swamping fear it had generated.

Light flowered, making him blink, showing her face and the sweet curve of her breasts as she bent over the candle to set the tiny glow to it. The candle caught, and she used it to light the two on the pricket-stand and turned to look at him in the brightening room. He devoured the reassuring sight of her, standing there like Eve in the candlelight, holding her hair back with her free hand, and his breathing steadied.

‘Only a dream,’ she repeated. ‘Here, this will help.’ She came to lift his beads from the stool where the candle had lain, and handed them to him. The familiar texture of the carved wood steadied him further, and the prayers that rose to his mind at the touch drew his scattered thoughts together. Alys padded back across the room to the window, the bruises on hip and shoulder showing dark on her white skin, and bent to the cupboard in the panelling below the sill. ‘Catherine always gives me something to eat if I wake in the night like this. What has Nan left in the dole-cupboard?’

The little cupboard proved to hold a dish of small cakes, two glasses and a flask of the German wine his father had favoured. They sat side by side on the edge of the bed, the coverlet drawn round their shoulders, and feasted on these, and Alys said, ‘Do you want to talk about it? Sometimes it helps to tell someone.’

‘No,’ he said, shuddering. He could still feel the claws scraping at his skin, the hooked beak tearing at his belly; there were silent wings in the shadows outside the corners of vision. Describing it would give it power, make it real in some way.

‘Tell me about what you found in the forester’s cottage, then.’

‘Not that, not now. We’ll talk about something else. What did Mistress Lithgo have to say about Fleming? I saw the two of you confer after Michael took him away.’

‘Ah, now, that was interesting.’ She turned within his arm to look at him. ‘I had a long talk with her earlier, before you came. She preserved great discretion, until I told her of the rages Michael reported, and what I suspect. Then we were agreed immediately.’

‘On what?’

‘The man has his death on him, Gil. His water is sweet — sweet as honey, Mistress Lithgo says. He has lost flesh lately on his arms and legs though not his belly, you have only to look at the way his hose hang on him to see how much, and now he has these rages — and it would account for the way he lay in a swound all the day after he was beaten. The complaint has a name in Greek that doctors use,’ she added, seeing his questioning look, ‘but she called it honey-piss. After he left with Michael, she told me she feels it is progressing faster. We discussed whether we should tell him.’

‘Oh,’ said Gil, his mind racing. ‘Oh, I’ve heard of that. It’s caused by excess of cold moist food, isn’t it?’

‘So the doctors say,’ agreed Alys drily. ‘I’m less certain. You would think every man who drank more ale than is good for him would catch it, if so.’

‘But why not tell him? He needs to know — to set his life in order, make a will if he has aught to leave.’

‘Mistress Lithgo says she tried, when she first recognized it, but he wouldn’t listen. She thinks perhaps that’s where his thoughts of witchcraft have come from — that he’s decided she was threatening him rather than warning him of his death.’

‘That would make sense,’ Gil said, still thinking hard.

‘But Phemie admitted,’ she hesitated, then went on, ‘that he became familiar with her and with Bel. Pawing at them, attempting to kiss them. This was last autumn, when he was teaching them Latin.’ She smiled. ‘Phemie and the little Morison girl would get on well. She told me she reckoned she could deal with him herself, but when he started on her sister she went to their grandam about it, and the lessons ended.’

‘Ah!’ Gil looked at the light through the golden wine in his glass, and grinned, thinking of his sister Kate and her younger stepdaughter. ‘And yet he consulted their mother about his ills this spring.’

‘Many men take it for granted they can behave like that.’

‘Murray seems to have done the same.’

‘No, I think not,’ she said seriously. ‘He was courting Phemie, until they all learned how Joanna would be placed in Mistress Weir’s will, I think I told you that.’ He nodded. ‘But I cannot learn that he did other than kiss her on the lips. I asked Kate Paterson about him, too, when I told her that her brothers are well. She seemed unconcerned about them, but she told me that Murray jokes — joked a lot with the lassies in the miners’ row, but no more than talk, and pinching cheeks, and the like, whereas they warn one another not to be alone with David Fleming. It seems his father was the same, by what one of the older women said.’

‘Jamesie Meikle said much the same about Murray — that the women say he’s free with his hands. That would make sense, as a defence of sorts.’

‘A defence? Putting up a false face, you mean? To prevent anyone suspecting he was — Italian in his preferences.’ He nodded again, and she went on, ‘You know, Gil, I find that extraordinary. I have known — I have seen men in Paris, who were said to be like that, but that was in a great city. How would someone out here in the countryside learn such practices?’

‘It isn’t like that,’ said Gil awkwardly. It was not a subject he found easy to discuss with his wife; he suddenly understood why the songmen of the cathedral took refuge in coarse jokes about it. ‘Anywhere young men are gathered together, it happens between some of them.’ She glanced sharply at him, but said nothing. ‘Most grow out of it, but a few. .’

‘I see,’ she said after a moment. ‘I still find it strange. And he managed to conceal it well. Joanna, who was wedded to him, seems to have had no idea of it. He was her second man, after all, she must have known what to expect of him, and today I managed to lead the talk to — to how people are expected to go with child within weeks of the wedding. We found we think alike on the subject, and, and …’ She paused, apparently having difficulty completing the sentence.

‘And you’d think,’ he supplied, ‘that if he wasn’t doing his part she might have let on.’

‘Between the two of us like that, yes,’ she agreed gratefully. ‘And I repeated something one of the women in Carluke kirk said to me about the same thing, and she agreed with it.’

‘Alys, have a care,’ he warned her. ‘I believe someone poisoned Thomas Murray, of deliberate malice, and until we know who — ’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she said. ‘I am very careful what I say to any of them. But we may still learn something from one or another, and I keep hoping for a look at the accounts. It could tell us a lot about the business, and I think that may be important.’

‘There’s more than that, sweetheart. Remember I have still to go back and question them all. Justice doesn’t allow for friendships.’

‘I know,’ she said again. ‘I can be dispassionate too, Gil.’

He smiled down at the top of her head where the candlelight shone on her hair, and sipped his wine. It was dry, with a sharp taste of flowers about it, a surprising thing in the middle of the night.

‘But has she admitted she feared Murray? Perhaps she simply doesn’t want to gossip about her own affairs. I believe some women don’t.’

‘No,’ she said, and was silent for a little. He sat still, relishing the feel of her against his flank, drank some more wine and considered what she had just said. He had warned her against getting involved with the Crombie women on a protective reflex, but if she could discuss such a subject, one which she found difficult herself, and analyse Joanna’s part in the conversation like this, then she was quite right, she could be dispassionate too.

‘Did you learn anything else?’ he asked after a space.

‘I talked with Phemie for a while, about how coal is hewn. Gil, it is astonishing. One puts coal on the fire and never thinks of how it’s won, of the difficulties working under the ground in the dark, and the dangers, and the way the coal behaves. Sometimes it simply vanishes, thins down and disappears into the rock, and other times it starts small and suddenly becomes thick enough for a man to stand up in the working. And she showed me — did you know they find fishes and shells in it? And pieces of tree-trunk, and flattened leaves, all wrought in coal?’

‘I’ve heard of that too. Surely they’re not real? The colliers make them in their spare time to show to the credulous.’

‘She showed me one,’ Alys said, ‘a little fish, with all its fins and scales, and a man who could work anything like that, so fine and exact, should be earning more than a collier gets. No, truly I think it is God’s own handiwork, set in the coal. I asked if I might have one to keep, and she said she would speak to the colliers.’ She stretched, and set her wineglass down on the stool by the bed. ‘And we talked of Murray and how he ran the heugh. It seems as if he has been an honest grieve enough, Gil, though with a knack for angering folk.’

‘Did you encounter young Crombie?’

‘He rode out while I was talking to Mistress Lithgo. He came in to take leave, and was civil, but I had no conversation with him. I think from what they said to one another he had been trying to persuade his grandam to let him leave the college and run the place instead of Murray.’

‘Instead of Murray? Do you think they knew already he was dead?’

‘Oh!’ She turned to look at him, considering. ‘I need to think about that. It might only be the young man snatching his opportunity. He seems like that sort to me.’

‘A chancer,’ said Gil in Scots.

She nodded. ‘What will you do tomorrow?’

‘Michael spoke to the Provost today, but I had best have a word with him before the quest on the two men, which I suppose means spending at least the morning in Lanark. He has to know about the — the circumstances in which we found the — ’

‘Yes.’ She looked anxiously at him, and he managed a reassuring smile.

‘I’m fine now. And then I must go up to the coaltown and ask more questions. Yesterday was not the best time for that, though I will say I learned a lot. What will you do while I’m in Lanark? You could come down with me and look at the market. There are some fine warehouses, since it’s so close to Edinburgh.’ He reached for another of the little cakes. The coverlet slid down his back and he hitched it up and drew it closer round the two of them.

‘I want to go to Dalserf,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I could ride round by Lanark to meet you. Is it far?’

‘Dalserf? Oh, to find out more about Joanna?’

‘And her family, yes. I cannot get used to that part of being out here in the country. It’s so much further to go to talk to the neighbours, not at all like being able to put my plaid on and step up the High Street.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Gil, it is still the middle of the night, and I am getting cold. Have you recovered a little? Could you sleep now, do you think?’

‘Not yet,’ he said, and kissed the bridge of her nose, ‘but I can think of something else we could do. A swete kos of thy mouth mighte be my leche.’ He moved on to her chin, and then the soft curve of her neck.

‘Ah,’ she said softly, and turned towards him, smiling within his embrace. ‘Perhaps we should put the candles out first.’

‘So it is murder,’ said Lady Egidia.

‘Almost certainly,’ agreed Gil, putting almond butter on his porridge.

‘What happens next?’ asked Alys. ‘I know there is to be a quest. Are the procedures different, this far from Glasgow?’

‘Not in principle,’ said Lady Egidia, and placed her wooden porringer on the plate-cupboard for the grey cat to lick. Socrates looked up at it, his long nose twitching; the cat hissed and he flattened his ears and wagged his tail placatingly

‘Provost Lockhart will likely report all to the Sheriff,’ said Gil. He set the horn spoon down in his bowl in order to count off the points with one hand. ‘That’s Archie Hamilton in Lanark. Lockhart will call the quest soon, I hope, since the deaths must be determined in some way, and take evidence, and if the assize brings it in murder and names anyone he’ll imprison the party or put them to the horn, just as in Glasgow. The difference is the distances involved, as you were saying last night.’ Alys glanced up, and they exchanged a look and a quick, reminiscent smile. ‘At least Bonnington is in the same parish as Lanark town, there’s only that and Carluke involved.’

‘And what will you report to Archie?’ His mother moved over to the hearth, and looked in disapproval at the slender logs on the firedogs. ‘Alan must send the men out for firewood soon, if that’s the best he can produce.’

‘Ah.’ Gil spooned porridge, thinking. ‘What do we know, you mean?’

‘Of the man himself,’ said Alys, ‘we know a certain amount. Thomas Murray, aged six-and-twenty, red-haired, medium height, well-set and missing the last joint of these fingers.’ She held up her left hand, two fingers extended. ‘Wedded to Joanna Brownlie and grieve at the coal-heugh, last seen there on the morrow of St Patrick’s and last seen alive by any we’ve spoken to so far on the twentieth of March, was that right, Gil?’

‘That’s right.’ He helped himself to more porridge from the pot on the plate-cupboard. The cat stared at him indignantly. ‘So far as we can discern, he was honest in his employment, but I suppose we have reason enough to get a look at the accounts now to check that.’ He looked across the room at Alys again. ‘Maybe you could do that for me, sweetheart.’

‘And as to finding the corp,’ said his mother, and crossed herself, ‘you told us more than I wish to know of that last night. A gruesome sight it must have been. You looked as though you’d been through a millwheel when you came home, my dear. And you’ve told Mistress Brownlie?’

‘That was why we went by the coaltown first,’ said Gil. ‘Michael wished to go up there straight and take them the word, as his father’s depute. I’m well impressed by Michael in this, Mother. He knows his duty in the world, and he acts as it demands.’

‘Aye, well.’ Lady Egidia tightened her mouth briefly, contemplating the thought of her godson. Alys put her own bowl on the floor, and Socrates paced over to investigate, his claws clicking on the tiles. The cat seized the opportunity to jump down and make for its mistress’s lap. ‘And you think the man was poisoned,’ Lady Egidia went on, holding her loose gown open for her pet to creep inside. ‘Could it have been anything else? Any other cause? If it was poison, how do you know it was for Murray and not for the other fellow?’

Gil nodded. ‘You’re quite right, we don’t know enough there. I’m hoping the Provost will send someone else out to question the folk at Bonnington, though whether I can rely on the findings from that … Anyway, I’ve my own observations and Michael’s.’ He finished his second helping of porridge, and put the bowl down for the dog. ‘Assuming it was poison, and was meant for Murray, and was added to the flask of cordial, I need to find out what it might have been that would be available here in Lanarkshire and would act so quickly.’

Alys and Lady Egidia exchanged a look.

‘And would not be noticed in a cup of the cordial,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘What does it taste of, the cordial, do you know?’

‘I didn’t taste what we found, believe me. It smells like your cough syrup,’ said Gil, pulling a face.

‘Elderberries,’ said Alys, ‘and honey, and perhaps ginger, if it was the same brew that Joanna gave me.’

‘Enough to disguise most things,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘Particularly with another spoonful of honey in it. How big is this flask?’

‘I can show you it. Bide a moment.’

Going quickly up the stair to their chamber, he lifted his outer clothes from the kist where he had flung them down the previous evening. The big purse he had carried was with them, a commodious object of worn leather with half the trim missing. Reflecting that he could now afford a new one, he went back down to the hall, extracting the flask and the pottery bottle as he went. He handed both to Alys, who took them to her mother-in-law, sniffing at one and then the other as she did so.

‘I think the cordial is the same,’ she said, and looked back at Gil. ‘What have you there, Gil? Apiece of stone? Is it one of the little fishes from the coal?’

‘No,’ he said, turning the flat slab over. ‘It’s Bel’s slate, that she dropped. I put it in my purse to give back to her, but I haven’t seen the lassie on her own. I’d forgotten it was there.’ He put the stone on the plate-cupboard, and nodded at the flask and bottle in his mother’s hand. ‘Do those tell us anything?’

‘The flask is quite dry,’ said Alys, ‘but if we rinsed it out with a very little water, we might learn what was in it.’

‘A good thought.’ Lady Egidia held the silver flask to her nose again, then turned it in her hand, admiring it. ‘It’s a valuable gift. German work, to judge by the pattern. I wonder how Mistress Weir came by it?’

‘And why she gave it to Murray. She demanded it back, yesterday before we left, as being now Mistress Brownlie’s property.’

‘What did you say?’ his mother asked.

‘Oh, I denied all knowledge. The Provost will want it for the quest.’

‘True. I’ll keep it close for you. And given that you think you know how this man died,’ Lady Egidia went on, ‘who might have brought about his death? Do you know enough to name anyone to Provost Lockhart?’

‘No.’ Gil sighed. ‘Any of the women at the coal-heugh, I suppose. Much depends on what was in the flask and who put it there.’ He brightened. ‘I suppose it would be wiser to leave questioning them further till I know more about that.’

Alys caught his eye and nodded agreement.

‘True,’ said his mother, and indicated the two bowls on the floor. ‘You may as well pick those up, if the dog’s finished, and save Nan bending for them. And then you’d best be off to Lanark and talk to the Provost, afore the day gets any older.’

Lanark town was significantly bigger than Carluke, and now before Sext its long, curving market-place was bustling with folk, on foot, on horse, even in a couple of tilt-carts with their passengers peering out from under the oiled canvas hoods at the displays on booths and counters. Leaving the garrulous Patey at the Nicholas Inn and the horses tied up in the yard, Gil made his way up the hill to the handsome stone house belonging to the Provost, and gave his name to the maidservant who answered the door.

Provost Lockhart was a pink self-consequential man in a magnificent gown of tawny velvet lined with fur. Torn between a desire to oblige the Archbishop’s man and the need to preserve his own pre-eminence in the burgh, he took a little persuading to see Gil’s viewpoint. He sat by the neat coal fire in his private closet and frowned across the hearth at his guest, shaking his head.

‘Only the facts, Maister Cunningham,’ he repeated dubiously, and hitched the furred gown further on to his shoulders. ‘I’m no so sure about that. Is it within the law, now? I was always tellt it was my duty to find a name for the man responsible. Or woman, I suppose,’ he added.

‘You can postpone the end of the quest,’ Gil prompted him. ‘If you gather all the facts we have, and get them writ down clearly, then you can dismiss the assize for the time being, and reconvene when we’ve more idea who to name. Then we can let the two sets of kin deal with the burials, and — ’

‘Aye, well.’ Maister Lockhart seized on that point. ‘That would be a good thing, and put an end to a pair of six-week-old carcasses cluttering up the town. I’ve no notion how the assize will react, mind you, they’re that used to being allowed to name names and get someone put to the horn or clapped in the jail, but I can see how it might be a good thing to get rid of the cadavers.’ He nodded, pursing his lips anxiously. ‘I’ve been hearing already how it’s bad for trade up that end of the town, for they’re making their presence public, as you might say, everywhere the wind blows from St Mungo’s kirk. And who do you think was responsible anyway, maister? Is it someone we’d ken here in Lanark? Someone out at Bonnington? Was it because they were — ye ken, wicked sinners? That’s a terrible thing to be found in Lanark, and them ordinary folk, no lords or foreigners.’

‘I’m nowhere near naming anyone,’ Gil parried. ‘Did you send a man out to question the folk at Bonnington, Maister Lockhart?’

‘I did that.’ Rising, the Provost went to his tall desk and searched among the papers on its sloping front. ‘John Mathieson went, and a clerk wi’ him to write it all down, and a right pig’s dinner they’ve made of it, no sort of order to the questions and the answers writ down all anyhow.’ He extracted a folded leaf from the slithering mass, and peered at it. ‘This man, the forester — Syme, his name is — was never seen since well afore the quarter-day, so far as I can make out, but his goats have been wandering everywhere and there’s two folk had complained to the steward’s clerk about that. Why nobody went down to his house instead of making a note to tell him when they saw him …’ He turned the page over and perused the back carefully. ‘The man Murray never seen about the policies at all. Get their coal from — aye, aye. And the forester lad no close friends on the estate.’ He held the page nearer, then at arm’s length, and suddenly thrust it at Gil. ‘You can read it for yourself, Maister Cunningham, for what good it does. Just let me have it back afore the quest, which is cried for the morn’s morn after Sext.’

‘Thank you, maister.’ Gil tucked the paper in the breast of his doublet before the man could change his mind. ‘Who will you call for the quest?’

‘Oh, aye.’ Maister Lockhart came to sit down, his anxious expression returning. ‘I’ve to give that some thought and all. Yourself and young Douglas, o’ course.’ Gil nodded agreement. ‘John Hamilton the steward at Bonnington, I suppose, for the forester, as well as for the place they were found. Seems the poor laddie has no kin closer than Ayrshire. The other fellow’s maister and kin, though, I’ve a difficulty there, seeing it’s Mistress Weir from the coal-heugh, or else his wife, Our Lady guard her, poor soul, and I’d no want to ask a woman to view the corp. Either one can testify to when he left his work, and the like, but — ’

‘One of the colliers might take it on, or even young Crombie,’ Gil offered.

The Provost considered. ‘Aye, that might do. I’ll send John Mathieson wi’ the summons, after we’re done here. He canny question a witness properly, but he can arrange such a matter as that.’

Gil nodded, and rose to take his leave. As he reached the door something Arbella Weir had said came back to him, and he paused.

‘Maister Lockhart, did you set eyes on Murray yourself, that day he was in the town?’

Lockhart stared at him, frozen in the act of hitching up his furred gown again.

‘Do you know, maister, I did. I did that.’ He settled the tawny velvet round his shoulders, and contemplated the fact, pursing his lips. ‘For when he asked for the quarter’s payment, my steward found there wasny enough in his kist, having paid out on another account just the day afore it, and came to me to get it made up, and the man Murray on his heels.’

‘And was he just as usual?’

‘Oh, aye. Just as usual. He’s — he’d aye an air about him, of all being right wi’ his world, and the hell wi’ anyone else’s.’

‘And what time of day would that be?’

‘Just afore the noon bite,’ said Lockhart positively. ‘I was in here, d’ye see, putting the answers together to a couple letters, and a clerk to scrieve them. The same clerk that went wi’ John constable yesterday, indeed.’

‘That’s valuable,’ said Gil, considering. ‘You’ve no notion where he went after he left here?’

‘I can tell you that and all, and d’ye ken how? I was at my window,’ he gestured towards it, a splendid glazed aperture with a painted blaze of arms at its centre, ‘and spied him and his two men going down the High Street. I stood and watched them go down past where poor Andro Bothwell’s pothecary shop used to be and into the tavern, Juggling Nick’s as they cry it, and remarked to Dandy clerk that I hoped he’d no spend the whole of his takings in there, and the daft loon writ it down.’ He guffawed. ‘Right put out he was, when he’d to scrape it all out and scrieve it again, but I tellt him, I said, that’s no going in a letter to my partner in a venture. So that’s how I mind that, Maister Cunningham!’

Following Murray’s footsteps, Gil went back down the wide street, past the shuttered shop with the wooden mortar and pestle above the door, and paused under the inn sign to admire it again. He had always appreciated the way St Nicholas’ right hand, raised in blessing over the market-place, also appeared to be ready to catch the first of the three fat purses which floated round his head. The bishop was due a coat of paint; his colours were fading, his mitre reduced to an indeterminate grey Hoping the next painter would do the image justice, he put a hand on the taproom door; then, on a sudden impulse, he turned away and stepped into the saint’s small chapel next to the inn.

There was a hum of conversation in the nave, where perhaps two dozen townsfolk were standing about to hear the Mass. He found a quiet spot by St Giles’s altar, folded his hat and knelt on it to go over the shreds of the midnight dream which still troubled him, to ask for help in putting it from his mind and in reading the puzzle before him. Or did the dream have some bearing on the puzzle? He shivered slightly, as it returned to him in vivid detail.

He had thought he was standing in the clearing by Syme’s house, looking in at the door. In the trees to one side a naked man approached, and inside the house something stirred in the shadows, who or what he did not know but suddenly he had been certain that he must not set eyes on it. As he turned to flee the owl had swooped down over the roof, its wings huge and overshadowing, and seized him in its claws, tearing with its beak at his bare flesh. His back still crawled with the feeling that he was threatened. St Giles, preserve me from all ill, he thought. Perhaps I should go down to the forester’s house again.

After a while he rose from his knees, with no feeling of having been answered, and went to sit near St Roch on the stone bench at the wall-foot, half listening to the singing from beyond the chancel arch and turning matters over in his mind.

His mother and Alys had proposed some experiment, involving one of a nest of young rats which Henry had been saving to teach some terrier pups their business. But whether or not the creature died from drinking the water which had rinsed out the flask, what would that tell him? The man Murray was dead, and Andrew Syme with him, that was inarguable, and it seemed almost certain that their deaths were murder. But if I’m wrong, he thought, if it was an accidental poisoning or even a double suicide, what then? He had studied too much law to have any illusions about the judicial process; if he named someone to Maister Lockhart, or to his master the Archbishop, that person would suffer the penalty for murder as likely as not, whether innocent or guilty And in this case …

In this case, the guilty person was most probably someone he had had civil dealings with in the past few days. Someone from the coaltown, or just possibly one of the two fellows he had left at the saltworks on the shores of the Forth. Or David Fleming, or one of the customers whose fees Murray had collected — the list got longer and longer, though he could probably rule out the people of Forth — or someone from the Nicholas Inn. And I must go in there and ask questions, he told himself. But suppose I name the wrong person to the Archbishop?

He opened his eyes and stared at St Roch’s dog, a splendid black-and-white creature gazing adoringly up at his master. The man who carved the statue was better at dogs than at people, he thought irrelevantly.

But what if Murray’s death was an accident, and the intended victim was Syme? Or perhaps the two of them had been killed deliberately by someone who knew one of the men, knew he had a lover. Now that would work whether the lover was known to be a man or thought to be a woman, but was the poisoner a friend or a would-be lover of Murray or of Syme? Or a friend of Joanna Brownlie, he thought, which takes me back to the coal-heugh and its household.

For the first time since the corpse had come up out of the peat-digging, he wished Alys’s father was present. Pierre was good at this sort of exploration of the wider possibilities, and as he had found last night, it was not an easy subject for a man to discuss with his wife. Even Alys. He thought for a moment about her warm sympathy and the matter-of-fact way she had dealt with his dream, and wondered if perhaps she would find the subject less awkward than he did. Her capacity to surprise him really did seem to be endless.

The townspeople round about him were moving, leaving the little chapel. The Mass must be over. He stretched his back, then drew the paper with the report from Bonnington out of his doublet, and tilted it to the light from the nearest window.

Maister Lockhart’s strictures on the two men who had compiled it were well deserved. The document was simply a list of answers, in no particular order, with few notes of who had supplied each fact. The spelling was eclectic, but the writing was clear enough. He worked his way down the page, trying to fit the short statements into some kind of narrative. Syme had not been seen since before the quarter-day; the fact of his not having been paid was noted again. None of those asked had known of any reason to kill the man, he seemed to have no quarrel with any of his fellows, the lassies liked him but he favoured none of them. One woman apparently had aye suspicioned him, but even the interrogators thought this was hindsight speaking. The tale about the goats occupied half the page, the fact that Murray was unknown to the Bonnington household was dismissed in one line. Sighing, Gil turned the sheet over and studied the other side. Here they had apparently turned to the question of poison, without success. It was surely a bad mushroom, it was a judgement, it was pestilence or witchcraft. Nane here is abil to mak use o pyshn, had written the clerk, in simple trust.

Further questioning might uncover something, but at the moment it was plain that no strong trail led from the forester’s cottage to Bonnington. The clearest scent led back towards the Pow Burn, and all his training at the hunt told him that was what he should be following. Metaphor, he thought, and grinned as he thought once more of Pierre and his dislike of figures of speech.

He rose and shook the creases out of his hat, and made for the door, pausing again before St Giles. Are the goats your creatures? he asked the oblivious figure. You made a pet of a deer, perhaps goats appeal to you too. Their master was poisoned. Help me win justice for him, whatever sort of sinner he was. The saint made no reply, but a gleam of light lay on the white hind couched at his feet.

In the busy taproom of the inn, there was no sign of Patey, but Bessie Dickson was supervising the distribution of ale of two different strengths from a pair of large barrels by the further door. She greeted him with disapproval.

‘I’ve no notion why you should think I’ve any more time for you,’ she announced. ‘Is it still this man Murray and his horse you’re after? I’ll sit down and talk wi’ you if you’ll sweep the draff out the brewhouse for me when we’re done.’

‘I’ll not take up your time,’ he said, without answering this offer. ‘I wondered if you or any of your folk had a notion of what Murray and his friend talked about when he was in here.’

‘Talked about?’ She stared at him. She was a big woman with a broad red face; muscular forearms showed below the rolled-up sleeves of kirtle and shift, and the ends of her kerchief, knotted up on top of her head, were threatening to come untied. ‘What would they talk about? The same as any that sits in here drinking, I’ve no doubt. How they could run the world better than them that’s set in authority, what lassie’s willing for a walk round the kirkyard by night, a’things like that.’

‘You’ve never overheard them?’

‘I’ve more to do than stand about all day listening to my customers.’ Bessie pushed her rolled sleeves higher up her arms. ‘Like sweeping up that draff out there. If you’ll no do it, I’ll ha’ to find someone that will.’

‘Mistress?’ The man at the other barrel was looking at Gil. ‘Should he maybe get a word wi’ Girzie? She’s been on about what she heard all day, it might shut her mouth if someone heard her out. The twice-brewed, Annie?’ He half-turned to the spigot and drew brown ale foaming into a fat yellow-glazed jug for a maidservant in a drab homespun gown, who bobbed a curtsy in thanks. ‘There you are, lass. On your maister’s slate, is it?’

Bessie snorted.

‘Her? I’ve no wish to encourage her. She’s barely done a hand’s turn since the word came back the man was dead.’

‘What did she hear?’ Gil asked, in no great hopes. ‘Was it Murray?’

‘Aye,’ said the tapster, ‘him or the other fellow. She’s out in the yard the now, mistress, I could fetch her in.’

‘I’ll go out there,’ said Gil hastily. ‘I’ll not keep her long from her work.’

‘Hah!’ said Bessie bitterly, but did not prevent him from going out through the rear door of the taproom.

The first thing he saw as he stepped into the yard was Socrates, who looked up from his inspection of a storehouse door and hurried across to meet him, tail waving. Acknowledging the dog’s greeting, he looked about and found Patey, deep in conversation with another of the Belstane grooms. Two empty beakers were on the ground at their feet, and four of his mother’s horses stood tethered beside them.

‘The mistress is yonder, Maister Gil,’ the second man called, pulling off his bonnet. ‘The young mistress,’ he added. ‘In the kitchen yard, ayont the brewhouse, talking to some weeping lassie.’