The Rough Collier

Chapter Eleven

‘She was very glad to tell someone of it,’ said Alys in French, and urged her horse past a milestone. ‘I think the other folk at the inn were not sympathetic, though at least they told Steenie about her when he asked if anyone knew anything.’

‘And she had heard one of the two speak of mortal sin?’ said Gil. ‘When was that?’

They were making their way back from Lanark to Carluke yet again, the two Belstane grooms behind them talking about the ploughing. Familiar as Gil was with the trackways and lanes of the district, he was beginning to feel he could take this road in his sleep. It was starting to rain.

‘I couldn’t make that out,’ said Alys in apologetic tones, ‘but it was one evening when Syme and Murray were in the place together. I suppose that would be on one of Murray’s trips down to Lanark to go drinking.’ Gil nodded agreement, and whistled to the dog, who was standing up, one paw on a dyke, peering at a small flock of sheep. ‘She told me they would spend the evening talking now with the company in the place, now with one another. Do you suppose they found it hard,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘to dissemble in such a way?’

Gil turned to smile at her, recognizing the same compassion she brought to running her father’s household, and she looked seriously back at him.

‘We never had to,’ she pointed out, ‘as you said when we talked of Michael and your sister. We were always acknowledged.’

‘True. What did this Girzie hear?’

‘Ah. It seems on this occasion they were sitting in the corner by the hearth, talking with their heads together, and Girzie passed them with a tray for someone else, just as Murray said something about mortal sin.’

‘It’s hardly a surprise.’

‘So,’ Alys persisted, ‘she took her time going by them on her return to the kitchen, and heard the forester speak of slitting his throat.’

‘Oh,’ said Gil, and turned to meet her eyes again. ‘That could alter matters.’

‘Yes. I coaxed her as far as I could, but I’m not sure how much of their talk she really heard. She heard one of them say, What’s done’s done, and then there was something about Tell the old beldam what I know, but she recalled nothing more that made sense. She thinks they said also that the old woman was away.’

‘Which old woman did they mean?’ Gil contemplated this. ‘Arbella hasn’t left the coaltown this spring, so far as I’ve learned.’

‘They never mentioned a name.’ Her smile flickered. ‘A good worker, this Girzie, I should think, but rather a silly woman. She kept coming back to the idea of the forester slitting his throat. It seems she had a liking for him, and the thought of him doing such a deed has overset her. I had quite a task to persuade her that he’d done no such thing.’

‘But I wonder,’ said Gil slowly, ‘if that means we need look no further — if it was Murray or Syme supplied the poison, whether the other knew it was there or not.’

‘I think not,’ she said after a moment. ‘It would simplify matters, but — ’

‘It’s too simple, isn’t it?’ he agreed, drawing his plaid up round his neck against the rain.

‘There’s no hint that they’d been recognized or suspected, no threat to separate them. No pursuit that would be a cause to take poison and be together forever.’ He recognized the influence of the romances which were Alys’s favourite reading in this pronouncement. ‘For all Girzie was so sure the forester had killed himself, she had no notion why he might have done so, and the two men you saw at Blackness gave no hint either, I think?’

‘None. And Syme’s maister was astounded to hear of it.’ Gil’s thoughts had run off at a tangent. ‘Alys, was it poison indeed? Did you test what was dried into the flask?’

‘That was why I rode down to Lanark to find you. We did, and I thought you might need to know.’ Again that serious look. ‘We rinsed both the flask and the bottle with well-water, and gave the water to two of the beasts Henry brought us. Whatever was in the bottle, it was just as it left the brewer, the ratling that drank that portion came to no harm, but the other one …’

‘Well?’

Alys pulled a face. ‘It died. It seemed quite normal for a while, and then began to stagger, and turned round as if it was dizzy, and then it fell over and after a time it died.’ She bit her lip, and stared into the distance. ‘I suppose, if the two men died like that, then we know it was quick, and most probably painless.’

‘We do,’ agreed Gil. ‘And we know that whatever it was, there was some in the flask. Have you or my mother any idea what it was?’

She shook her head, scattering raindrops from the brim of her hat.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Poisons are not something I — and all the ones I’ve heard about would induce purging, or vomiting, before death. And your mother has said she does not know this one either.’

‘I thought you knew everything,’ said Gil, amused and faintly relieved to find a gap in her astonishing medical knowledge. She blushed pink, and shook her head again.

‘I need a book,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know who would have such a one, except …’

‘Mistress Lithgo,’ Gil finished for her.

‘Except Mistress Lithgo.’ She reached out her hand, and when he took it her fingers clung to his. ‘And how can I ask her when we — Oh, Gil, how can we do this? The truth must be served, but the accidents it brings about are fearful.’

‘The truth must be served,’ he agreed, keeping a grip of her hand.

They rode up into Carluke town, and along its deep-worn main street between the two rows of cottages facing one another across it. As they passed St Andrew’s kirk at the far end of the town, Sir John Heriot popped out of his house like a figure in a child’s toy, his clerk behind him, and hurried towards them, hand out, exclaiming, ‘Maister Cunningham! In a good hour, indeed! I have great news, sir!’

‘News?’ Gil said blankly, letting go of Alys’s hand to bend down and clasp the priest’s.

‘Indeed, sir. I have a name for our man. I ken who he is.’

The clerk nodded agreement, grinning, and crossed himself energetically. Gil looked from one to the other. Beside him, Alys’s horse laid back its ears at a scavenging pig, and she tightened her reins. Steenie dismounted hastily and went to the grey’s head.

‘A name for …’ Gil repeated.

‘For the man out of the peat-digging. The corp in your feed-store, sir. And we must have him out of there as soon as may be, it’s no right now that I’ve discerned who he could only be.’ Above the worn and dusty black gown Sir John’s face glowed with pride and triumph. His clerk beamed and nodded again. ‘I went through the kirk records, sir, and read over all our documents, and only just now between Sext and Nones I found it! It’s clear to me that he can be no other than the parish’s own saint, the man that first brought the gospel of Christ and Our Lady in this place. Why would Carluke town’s other name be “Ecclesmalesoch” but to signify the kirk of the holy Malessock?’

‘What, that dusty old corp out the peat-cutting?’ said Steenie.

Gil stared at the priest in disbelief. ‘Sweet St Giles,’ he said after a moment. ‘But Sir John, you’ve no proof — ’

Sir John braced himself with a complex movement of his elbows, and settled down to expound on his case, oblivious of the rain beating on his shoulders. ‘No, only consider, maister. He’s clearly been martyred for his faith, you canny deny that, by the injuries you showed to me, and one of the old tales in a roll out of the Parish Kist tells us how Malessock preached the gospel in the wilderness among the thorns.’

‘I never heard that,’ said Patey

And if it doesn’t tell it now, thought Gil, it will by the time Sir John gets to his bed tonight. Who koude ryme in Englysshe proprely His martirdom? for sothe it am nat I, is clearly not a permissible standpoint here.

‘Thorn, you see, Thorn, maister,’ persisted the priest. ‘It can be none other!’ He clapped his hands together like a child, smiling radiantly. ‘Oh, Maister Cunningham, I’m so joyful I could dance like King David, here in the Worn Way. Indeed! And we’ll get him out of madam your mother’s feed-store as soon as maybe and brought down here to the kirk, and lay him up properly. What a great thing for my parish, sir! To have our own founder, our own evangelist, to dwell here as patron of our kirk!’

‘They’ve nothing like it in Lanark,’ agreed the clerk, nodding again. ‘Them and their wee bit of the True Cross!’

‘Are you saying that’s your saint that Rab Simson found, Sir John?’ asked Patey ‘Never! It’s no but a stinking bundle of rotted leather, and so Henry tellt all the folk standing in line in our stable-yard this morning.’

‘No, surely, sir,’ objected Alys, ‘he has no tonsure, no trappings of a priest — ’

‘There’s no sign on him at all,’ agreed Gil.

‘Did St Roch have the trappings of a priest, madam?’ demanded Sir John eloquently, waving his hand towards the church. ‘Did Our Lady wear a nun’s garments? Besides,’ he added in a more practical tone, ‘you said yourself, maister, they’d have rotted down in the peat. We’ll get him clad as befits him soon enough. Indeed.’

‘Who’s this coming, Maister Gil?’ said Steenie, peering past the buff-coloured folds of Alys’s skirts. Gil turned in the saddle, to see a rider in Cauldhope livery approaching fast, leading a spare horse.

‘I must send to your lady mother to get all arranged,’ warbled the priest. ‘We’ll have a great procession, wi’ music and green branches, and — ’

‘Sir John!’ said the newcomer urgently, reining in beside the group. Gil’s horse shied restlessly, and Socrates hurried back from his inspection of the kirk-yard gate, hackles up. ‘Thanks be to Our Lady I’ve found you, maister. I’m sent for you to Davy Fleming.’

‘Oh!’ said Alys, and caught Gil’s eye.

‘To Davy?’ repeated Sir John in amazement. ‘What’s to do, Simmie? Is he in a bad way? I heard he was on his feet again.’

‘He was,’ said Gil. ‘He was up at the Pow Burn yesterday.’

‘Aye, but he sickened again yestreen after his supper,’ said Simmie. ‘And I’m seeking yourself and all, Maister Cunningham. Maister Michael said to ride on to Belstane for you, but since you’re here I’ve no need. He’s wanting a word wi’ you, and it seems to be eating at him.’

‘I will come too,’ said Alys.

‘Maister Michael wants a word?’ asked Gil.

‘Oh, I couldny say to that,’ said the man confusingly, ‘but it’s for certain Davy Fleming wants you, for I heard him say as much to the maister. Mind you,’ he added, ‘I’m no so sure myself he’s near death, for the way he shouted at Maister Michael this morning out of his bed, you never heard the like.’

‘Just let me pack up what’s needed,’ said Sir John briskly, all professional concern. ‘I’ll need to bear an intinctured wafer wi’ me, Jock, and I must borrow a horse — ’

‘You’ll no need, I brought this beast in for you,’ said Simmie.

‘You’ll be wanting the new box, then,’ said the clerk to his master, with a significant look.

‘Aye, indeed!’ agreed Sir John. He grinned, and clapped his hands together. ‘A good thought, Jock! Just wait here, Simmie, and I’ll be right with you.’

Gil was shocked by the change in David Fleming, and recognized from the sudden stiffening of her back that Alys was equally dismayed. The man was huddled in the steward’s chair in the little chamber off the hall, bundled in rugs and racked by spells of shivering. The truth was self-evident of Alys’s statement that he had his death on him; overnight his plump cheeks seemed to have fallen in, his eyes were sunken, dark-ringed and feverishly bright, and there was a sheen of sweat across his brow, darkening the limp, mousy hair which clung to it.

Alys went forward and began to feel her patient’s forehead and neck with gentle fingers. He looked blankly at her, and then at Gil, then said to Michael where he stood in the doorway, ‘I want a word wi’ Maister Cunningham. It’s right urgent, sir.’

‘I’m here,’ said Gil, wondering if the man could see clearly.

‘There, now, my poor friend,’ said Sir John in sympathy. He set his leather case down on a handy stool and began unbuckling the straps which secured it. ‘We’ll ha’ a bowl and a jug of fresh well-water, maybe, Maister Michael? And I’ll need a towel and basin and all. Indeed.’

Michael nodded and turned to the door of the steward’s room. Over his directions to Simmie out in the screens passage Fleming said hoarsely, ‘This first. I’ve something I must tell you, sir.’

‘Now, now, man,’ chided Sir John. ‘What could be more urgent than your own confession and healing?’

‘You should rest,’ said Alys, ‘and gather your strength.’

‘Aye, well, I’m done for, mistress,’ said Fleming, and licked dry lips, ‘but this is important. I’ll last long enough to set this in your hands, Maister Cunningham. You’ll need to peruse this afore the quest on Thomas Murray, so you can tell the Provost all that’s needful, all the evidence against the witch. One of them or the other — or maybe they’re both in it,’ he added. ‘Aye, I wish I could ha’ seen them took up for witchcraft and put to the test, but if that’s no God’s will for me, I must go without.’

‘Tuts, man,’ said Sir John, ‘we’ll no give up hope for you yet. We’ll see to your spiritual needs, but then I’ve a remedy to try that I’ll swear’s sovereign against all wasting diseases, and who more deserving of it than yourself?’

‘Set what in my hands?’ asked Gil. ‘Let me take it and get away, Sir David, and leave you to your spiritual duties.’

‘The rent rolls,’ said Fleming, catching at Alys’s wrist. ‘There they are on the desk waiting for your man, mistress, the rent rolls for the coal-heugh, the old one and the new one. You’ll need to read it wi’ care, maister, but it’s all in there, all you need to know, you mind I told you of it last time you were in this chamber.’

‘I hardly think Sir James would be pleased if I went off with his rent rolls,’ objected Gil.

‘Maister Michael will permit it,’ suggested Fleming. Michael, reappearing in the doorway, nodded agreement. His face was thinned by anxiety, exaggerating the curved jaw and pointed chin.

‘I could go through them too,’ said Alys.

‘No, no,’ said Fleming, condescending even in his weakness, ‘maybe you can read, lassie, but you’ve no the experience. It takes a man of law to discern these things — ’

‘Here’s your basin, clerk,’ announced Simmie, charging in past his master, ‘and your water and all. Is it to be a wee Mass of healing? Or is it this new saint you’ve got? He should be a good help, seeing that Davy himself found him buried.’

‘Ah, thank you, Simmie,’ Sir John turned from the leather case, ‘and you can stay, indeed, and give me a hand wi’ the censer.’

‘New saint?’ said Fleming, distracted from his preoccupation. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s revealed to me,’ said Sir John importantly, and kissed his stole before he set it over his shoulders, ‘the corp from the peat-digging can be none other than St Malessock who first brought the gospel to this parish.’ He bent to the leather case again, and produced a small linen bundle which he unfolded to reveal a leathery stick-like object. ‘And here I have one of the holy man’s fingers — ’

‘Oh, so Alan was right,’ said Gil. Sir John gave him a look of blank innocence.

‘You’ll no dip that in the water, will you?’ said Simmie, recoiling. ‘I’d sooner the Lee Penny, myself. At least that’s clean, considering how often it gets dipped.’

‘Lockhart and his folk at the Lee won’t be pleased if there’s another source of healing in the district,’ observed Michael. Sir John’s jaw dropped. Clearly he had not thought of that.

‘Who’s Malessock?’ demanded Fleming. ‘It canny be any Malessock that came out the peat-digging, it’s Thomas Murray.’

‘No, it’s no Murray,’ said Simmie, ‘for we found him by Bonnington yesterday, Davy, you mind Wat and I tellt you all.’

‘I’ll get away,’ said Gil cravenly Alys looked up and nodded, but Fleming’s grip on her wrist tightened.

‘The rolls, mistress. Yonder on the desk. Take the rolls, or you take them, sir.’

‘Bring them out into the hall,’ suggested Michael. Gil, in some relief, gathered up the two yellowing scrolls and stepped to the door. Alys disengaged her wrist from Fleming’s grasp, and crossed herself.

‘We’ll leave you with Sir John,’ she said. ‘God speed the business.’

‘Amen,’ agreed Sir John.

‘Read them wi’ care, now,’ admonished Fleming.

‘He seemed well enough when I came home,’ said Michael, ‘though he was chastened once I’d done wi’ him. Maister Gil would tell you about him being up at the Pow Burn …?’

Alys nodded. Across the hall where he had been ordered to wait, Socrates emitted a single indignant falsetto yip. Gil snapped his fingers, and the dog paced over to join them.

‘You could sit here in the window, and get the light for the task,’ Michael went on. ‘No, he wasn’t so good after supper last night, and this morning he took a wee sup of porridge, with honey in it after what you said about honey the other day, mistress, but it never helped, and then he called for Maister Gil and I thought we’d best get a priest to him and all, and set Simmie on to look for you.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ said Alys. ‘You take that one, Gil, I take this, and then we can tell poor Fleming we’ve been through both. Has he been at the pear comfits again, Michael? I could smell them on his breath.’

‘So did I,’ Michael was striding up and down, ‘but I’ve no notion where he’s hid them.’

‘He should fast now, with well-water to drink and not even bread to eat, till noon tomorrow, if you can manage it, and certainly none of the comfits.’

‘I’ll try, though the other men aye bring him food when he shouts for it.’ Michael looked round as Sir John’s voice rose in the familiar, comforting words from beyond the screens passage. ‘Jackie Heriot’s a powerful singer, isn’t he? What’s he about, anyway? What’s that nasty thing he’s brought wi’ him?’

‘He reckons our corp from the peat-digging is this Malessock he claims is in the parish records.’ Gil had untied the tape on the older roll, and now spread out the end on his knee. Socrates sniffed at the edge of the parchment, then lay down with an ostentatious sigh, his head on Gil’s foot.

‘Could it be?’ asked Michael uncertainly, pausing in his traverse. Gil grunted, but Alys looked up.

‘I would not have said so either,’ she said with regret. ‘One thing to surmise that the corp might be someone from the days of the saints, or even from the time Our Lord was born, but another entirely to give him a name as if we had proof.’

Gil, aware of relief, nodded agreement.

‘He came up out of the peat with nothing,’ he said. ‘All we know of him is the violent way he died. If Sir John wishes to give him a name and honour him, there’s no harm, I suppose, but I’ll believe he’s a saint working miracles of healing when I witness one.’

‘The Lee Penny works,’ Michael argued.

‘What is that?’ Alys asked, finger on her place. ‘Simmie mentioned it too.’

Gil immersed himself in the roll he held, only half hearing Michael’s account of how a Lockhart, of the house by Carluke called the Lee, had brought back a mysterious coin from the Crusades, widely known to cure the pestilence and other serious illness if you drank water it had been dipped in. He was less convinced than Michael of its efficacy, though one heard tales.

‘1481, Lady Day, the fee paid,’ he read aloud as the tale ended. ‘And Arbella Weir’s signature to it. For all Fleming calls these rent rolls, it isn’t strictly rent the coal-heugh pays, is it, Michael?’

‘It’s regular feu duty,’ agreed Michael. ‘And our share of the profits, as part of the conditions of the feu. There should be a note of those at the top of that roll, set out when old man Weir cut the first pit.’ He stopped pacing to peer over Alys’s shoulder. ‘Davy’s writing gets worse every time I look at it.’

‘The man before him was no better,’ said Gil.

‘What does Fleming want us to look for?’ asked Alys. She hitched up the skirt of her riding-dress to reach the purse which hung beneath it at her knee, and extracted her tablets.

‘I’m not certain.’ Gil paused, finger on an entry. ‘He was babbling to me about the dates the Crombie men had died, from which he seemed to deduce witchcraft. If we find those, I suppose, and make a note of them, it should satisfy him. I’d not take the time, save to humour the man when he’s in such a bad way.’

‘He is,’ Michael agreed, glancing at the screen again. Sir John had obviously anointed his penitent and was now chanting; his text seemed to be a life of the newly revealed saint, cobbled together from stock phrases. ‘St Peter’s bones, I think he’s making that up as he goes along. What’s Robert Blacader going to say about a new saint on his land?’

‘I’ve been wondering the same thing.’ Gil bent to the parchment again, and read the entry under his finger. ‘1477, Lammas, the fee paid. Adam Crombie younger, his mark, though it’s a signature, not a mark, and Adam Crombie elder obiit March last. Then before that, in March, Arbella paid the fee, and at Candlemas before that it was Adam the elder. Their signatures are very different. But I see no great meaning in this.’

He copied the three entries carefully, and set the tablets aside.

‘I have the death of Mistress Lithgo’s man,’ said Alys. She turned her scroll so that Gil could read the entry. ‘In March of 1484.’

Adam Crombie secundus obiit, ran the note. Two attempts at a Latin phrase had been scratched out, and Undir a gret faling of the rokkes written after it.

‘Just as Phemie told me,’ she added.

Aware of a lack of system, Gil re-rolled his document to begin at the beginning, and paused to study the original conditions of feu which Michael had mentioned. The steward of the time had copied them with care in a small clear hand; they were interesting, and he thought generous on both sides. The first coalmaster, Arbella Weir’s father, had freedom to conduct the coal-heugh as he wished, and in turn the Sir James Douglas concerned, likely Michael’s grandsire he calculated, was to receive the regular feu duty, paid in person at Lady Day, and a fifth of the proceeds, paid quarterly.

‘Not the profits,’ he commented. Alys looked up, but did not speak.

‘No,’ agreed Michael, and grinned. ‘The old man can tell you about that. He does a good mimic of my grandsire bargaining with old Weir.’ He turned his head as the chanting from beyond the screen reached some kind of culmination, and water splashed. ‘I hope they’re careful wi’ that basin. We don’t want the records getting soaked.’

Gil bent to his task again, picking his way through the cramped lines of script. The year following the first payment a different name appeared. Adam Crombie grieve pro Mats Weir, stated the note beside it. Gil checked the date: August 1451. This must be when Arbella had been married. He frowned, made a note and carried on with his task. Year by year, quarter by quarter, the feu duty was paid, the share of the takings recorded, one man or the other signed the book.

‘I suppose whoever was free would ride over here,’ said Michael when he commented.

On Lady Day in 1465 Arbella had signed instead of her father, and thereafter her name appeared every spring. He frowned, and checked again, and located the brief comment appended to the Lammas entry: Mataeus Were ob mart mcccclxv. March 1465, indeed. He made a note, and went on.

The quarter-days came and went, Arbella or her husband signed the statements. Now and then a payment was missed, and a cryptic explanation accompanied the double amount next quarter. Lammas 1470 Arbela Wyr from home last qr, ran one. Mart’mas 1474 yung crombis maridge last qr fee forgot, was another. That must be when Mistress Lithgo came into the family. He grinned, thinking of the chaos and bustle that had surrounded their own wedding last November, even with Alys in charge.

‘There’s no entry for the last two quarter-days,’ said Alys. He looked up, and saw her expression change to one of dismay. ‘Of course, the fee was never paid this year.’

Beyond the screen, Sir John was still chanting. A waft of incense reached the hall, drifting blue in the light of the narrow windows, and making Socrates sneeze. Michael paused in his pacing to uncover his head and cross himself.

‘That is all I can see,’ said Alys, letting her scroll roll itself shut. ‘I have noted anything out of the way, and who signed the book each time. Can I help you, Gil?’ She stepped over the dog and came to sit at his side, studying his notes on the green wax of the tablets, glancing from that to the crabbed blocks of writing on the parchment. ‘Michael, was there a new contract made out when Mistress Weir’s father died?’

‘Aye, and at my grandsire’s death and all,’ Michael agreed. ‘The terms are still the same as the original, so the old man said. I’d wager neither side would think it worth the argument to change them.’

‘What happened to old Weir, do you know?’ Gil asked casually, finger on his place.

‘No a notion.’ Michael considered briefly, and shook his head. ‘No, I think I never heard it spoken of. Could ha’ been anything a collier might meet, including old age.’

‘Not so many of them live to old age,’ Gil said. ‘And Mistress Weir’s man? The first Adam Crombie that died at Elsrickle?’

‘I was still in short coats,’ protested Michael. ‘I’ve no a notion what came to him.’

‘Someone could ride to Elsrickle,’ said Alys. Gil turned to smile at her, suddenly aware of her accent and the pains she had to take over the place-name.

‘Why?’ asked Michael. ‘I thought we were finding who poisoned the man Murray.’

‘To get the exact date of Adam Crombie’s death,’ Alys said, ‘and if anyone remembers it, an account of how he died. Is there time to go today and be back in daylight?’

‘I could,’ said Gil with reluctance. ‘You are right, we need to check that.’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Michael. ‘What will it prove anyway?’

‘If he died in the same way as Murray,’ said Alys carefully, ‘it might mean that the same person poisoned them both.’

‘If it was poison,’ said Gil. ‘It might only mean that the one learned from the other.’

‘And if he didny? If it was a natural death?’

‘Then I suppose,’ said Alys reluctantly, ‘this time it could have been anyone who handled the flask. For I am very sure it was something in the flask, Gil, even if I can’t identify it.’

‘Who had it last?’ Michael asked. ‘The flask.’

‘Joanna,’ said Gil, more grimly than he intended.

‘Only to put it in Murray’s scrip,’ Alys protested. He met her eye. ‘Gil, no! Surely we can’t — ’

‘We must suspect all of them,’ he said, ‘and she is the one to benefit most by his death.’

‘It is not in her character!’ she exclaimed, breaking into French. ‘So gentle a girl, always ready to believe the best of everyone — Gil, I can’t believe that she would do such a thing.’

‘What, not kill? Alys, anyone can kill. One simply has to know how.’

‘But there isn’t a scrap of violence in her.’

‘Poison works at a distance,’ Gil reminded her, ‘whoever administered it need not see its effects. No, I think all of them had the chance, and she had more than most, and benefited more than most as well. The emotional argument might do for the assize, but the truth — ’

‘But Gil, there are other reasons for killing Murray. All she did was handle the flask, by her account, she had no time to put anything into it without him seeing her do so — ’

‘What are you saying?’ asked Michael, looking helplessly from one to the other.

‘I apologize, Michael,’ said Alys in Scots, and sat upright away from Gil. ‘We were — discussing whether Joanna might have — ’

‘Oh, surely not,’ he said. ‘Then again, I suppose it has to have been someone up there, if it wasny the man Syme, or Murray himself. What a fankle this is.’

‘I’ll go up to Elsrickle,’ said Gil, bracing himself. Sixteen miles each way in the rain had little appeal. ‘You go back to Belstane, Alys, and take the dog, and if Michael has fresh horses for Patey and me — ’

‘Well, that went right well,’ announced Sir John, bustling into the hall with the pyx held reverently before him. Simmie followed, his arms full of the priest’s gear, the smoking censer bumping his shins. ‘Indeed. I’m sure our founder and patron will take notice of our petitions, after a celebration like that.’

‘Davy’s asleep, Maister Michael,’ said Simmie in what he obviously intended to be a confidential tone. ‘Dropped ower in the midst o’ that last narration. Mind you, how anyone could sleep through Sir John here’s singing I canny tell.’

‘Aye, he’s confessed and shriven, and heard the history of St Malessock and drank water that the relic’s been immersed in, and it’s brought him some peace of mind at last,’ agreed the priest, divesting himself with care. ‘Now, maister, he’ll need to fast on well-water for a day and a night, and I’ll be back the morn’s morn to see him. Indeed. But you’ll send to me any time if you’re concerned for him.’ He beamed round the awkward little group. ‘I hope I’ve been of service the day. Is there any other task of my calling required while I’m here?’

Sir Billy Crichton, rector of Walston, was a long-faced, long-limbed Borderer with the gloomy expression natural to a man who spent most of his life in a high, remote parish at the further end of Lanarkshire. His kirk was in Walston itself, a huddle of cottages and two tower-houses on the dark side of a steep lump of hills; Gil surmised that the sun would not reach the thatch between October and March. When he found Sir Billy, following the directions of an ancient fellow at a doorway, the rector was working his glebe land below the village on the flat ground by the River Medwin. More precisely, he was turning the black earth with a foot-plough, with a cloud of white gulls screaming over his head, and was very glad to stop for a word with the stranger he had seen approaching on the track in from Carnwath.

‘Oh, aye, we heard about that,’ he said, as the gulls swirled about, shrieking in discontent. ‘Young Dandy Somerville was at his cousin’s at Carlindean and brought back the tale. Found dead in a peat-heugh, was he no? And doing miracles now, so Young Dandy said.’

‘That was someone else,’ Gil said, marvelling at the way word spread about the countryside. He gave the tale of Thomas Murray’s death, so far as he understood it, and Sir Billy listened attentively, leaning on the tall shaft of his plough in the rain and shaking his head. The gulls settled on the roof of the little kirk, laughing at one another.

‘Terrible, terrible. I’m right glad to ken the truth of it,’ said the priest at length. That’s more than any of us knows, thought Gil, but did not smile. ‘And dead unshriven, pysoned by an unkent hand, you say? Terrible, terrible. God rest their souls. But I’m at a loss to ken how I might help you, maister. I’ve no notion who these folk might be, having never set eye on a one of them, and what I might tell you to your purpose it’s beyond me to say. I’m sorry you should ha’ rid out here only for that.’

‘He’d no reason to call here,’ agreed Gil. ‘No, sir, I’ve ridden here on another matter. Do you mind a man called Adam Crombie, a collier, who died in this parish a good few years back? I think it was over at Elsrickle.’

‘Elgrighill,’ repeated Sir Billy, giving the name a different twist. ‘Crombie. Aye, maister, there’s such a name in the parish records. I was looking in them only last month, when I buried Maggie Jardine’s youngest. What was it you were wanting to hear of him?’

‘Anything you know,’ said Gil hopefully. ‘How he came to die here, whose house he died in, where he’s buried. The date of his burial, if you have it.’

‘Oh, aye?’ The priest looked dismayed. ‘I’m thinking you’re in the wrong place for all that, maister. Can his folk no enlighten you? For there’s naught in the records but the day of his burial, that’s for sure.’

‘Could you show me that?’ asked Gil, thinking that he seemed to spend more time than he wished foraging through old documents. A man of law dealt with such things as a matter of course, but somehow this other occupation seemed to gravitate naturally in the same direction.

‘I could.’ Sir Billy looked at the sky, and then at the strip of ploughed land he had achieved in the day. ‘I need to get this turned, for all that. It’s time the oats was in, or I’ll ha’ no meal next winter. I hope you’ll can wait while I’ve daylight?’

‘I’ve a long ride home,’ Gil said. And a squabble to mend at the end of it, he thought ruefully. ‘And I’d hope for a word with whoever witnessed the man’s death afore I take the road. The quest on the two that were poisoned is for the morn’s morn after Sext, I must be back in Lanark by then.’

‘You’re welcome to a bed in the kirk,’ Sir Billy assured him. ‘My loft’s dry and snug, there’s room for a pallet for you, and your man can lie in the town. Plenty time for the ride back to Lanark the morn, and you look like a man of sense, maister, you’ll can catch us up wi’ the way the world’s turning as Young Dandy would never think to do.’

‘I really — ’ Gil began, recalling the way Alys had refused his kiss when they parted before the gates of Cauldhope.

‘No, no. Away you up the town, maister,’ this appeared to mean the huddle of cottages on the hillside above the church, ‘bid Joan Liddell give you a stoup of her twice-brewed, and I’ll come for you when I’m done here.’

Sir Billy bent his back to the plough again, and Gil stepped reluctantly back from the claggy furrows, watching the man’s expert thrust and heave with the simple device and the way the black soil turned and crumbled away as the culter tilted, the worms wriggling in the fresh tilth. The gulls swooped screaming from the kirk roof, and he turned and picked his way obediently up to the houses.

Patey was already established in Mistress Liddell’s house, buried to the cheekbones in a wooden beaker. He emerged from it grinning as Gil ducked under the lintel, directed by the same ancient as before.

‘Aye, maister,’ he said, and licked the foam from his top lip. ‘I doubt we’ll no get back to Carluke this night. The light’s going already.’

By the time he got the promised sight of the parish records, Gil felt he had paid dear for it. Mistress Liddell’s twice-brewed was strong, but sour; he suspected there were nettles in the mash, and possibly other strange adjuncts, but knew better than to ask. He sat by her door, his feet tucked under the bench to avoid the steady dripping from the thatch, surrounded by an attentive audience who demanded news of the rest of the country, of King James, of the doings in Lanark and Carnwath. They had little interest in Edinburgh or Glasgow, but heard the latest tale of the embassies to English King Henry with judicious noddings. It was more taxing than his visit to Forth, reminding him strongly of the examinations which had earned him his two degrees. At least then he had not been interrupted by Patey, who had an opinion on everything.

Sir Billy came up from the glebe land in the midst of the interrogation, and drew a stool into the doorway as of right, stretching his boots out under the eaves-drip so that the last of the mud was washed off. Mistress Liddell, a small determined woman in a sacking apron, had already assured Gil that the priest aye sent strangers to sup her ale, and he was clearly as much at home under her roof as any of the assembly. As the light failed, the hearers slipped away to their suppers, but much to Gil’s relief he and Patey were summoned within, seated with the priest and Mistress Liddell’s man round the peat-fire in the centre of the floor, and served with hard, dark bread and broth in generous wooden bowls. The broth was savoury with roots and meat; when Gil commented, the man of the house, silent until then, said:

‘Aye, the mistress keeps a good stewpot.’

‘Joan and her man feed me for their tithe, ye see,’ said Sir Billy, ‘for I don’t like to have charcoal in my loft. Too close to the thatch.’

‘That’s right handy,’ said Patey, ‘for a woman kens cooking and a priest kens priesting and why mix one wi’ the other? It’s right good, mistress, if you wereny spoke for a’ready I’d be looking to take you back to Belstane wi’ me.’

‘Och, you!’ said Mistress Liddell, not displeased. ‘Now you’d best be down the hill wi’ your guest, Sir Billy, afore the light’s all away. Will I draw you a jug of the good stuff to take along wi’ you?’

‘Aye, do that, Joan. Come away, then, Maister Cunningham, we’ll get a look at the books.’ Sir Billy rose to his considerable height, pronounced a blessing, received the promised jug, and made for the doorway, Gil following him. As the man of the house drew back the leather curtain which blocked it, rain rattled on the walls and blew through the aperture. Patey, dim in the glow of the peat-fire, raised his wooden beaker and settled lower on his creepy-stool.

‘Good night to ye, Maister Gil,’ he said, apparently without irony.