The Rough Collier

Chapter Thirteen

‘I’ve no recollection,’ said Phemie. ‘You’ll no tell me, Alys, that you rode all the way up here, and two of your good-mother’s men at your back, just to ask me did anyone go into the hall alone that day?’

They were seated in the room she called the window-chamber, before the great glass window, Phemie and her sister side by side on the cushioned bench and Alys on one of the backstools with Socrates’ head on her lap while he watched the girls intently.

‘No, no,’ said Alys hastily, ‘I have more reason than that. But Phemie, you must see, the quest will most likely find that someone here gave the poison to Thomas Murray, and you need to be ready with the right answers when they come to ask them.’

‘Oh.’ Phemie glowered at her, lower lip stuck out, in an expression which reminded Alys again of the younger Morison girl. Apparently she had not thought about this until now. ‘I’ve no recollection,’ she said again. ‘I was here, eating my porridge. What about you, Bel? You were here too, were you no?’

Her sister nodded, and pointed emphatically at the floor of the chamber where they sat.

‘And the others? Joanna, your mother?’ asked Alys innocently. ‘Where is Joanna just now? How is she today?’

‘My mother’s been called out, I suppose, or she could tell you herself and Joanna’s laid down on her bed again. I’ll go to her directly. No, she never came through till Murray did.’ Phemie’s tone was still disparaging when she referred to the man. ‘My mother was in here dishing out the porridge. The kitchen brings it in and sets it up there,’ she indicated the pale oak court-cupboard, ‘and we serve ourselves. Or my mother sees to it.’

‘And you all stayed in here till you went out to see them off.’

‘That’s right. What does it matter, anyway?’

‘We need to find out all we can about how the man died,’ Alys supplied. Bel turned wide blue eyes on her, considering her carefully, but gave no other sign. ‘I should like to look in your mother’s herbal, that she keeps in the stillroom. I wondered, too, if you would let me look at the great account book, the one your grandam showed me the first day we were here.’

‘It’s in her chamber,’ said Phemie. ‘Why? What will that tell you, just columns of numbers and names like that?’

Oh, my dear girl, thought Alys, and you a merchant’s daughter too. Aloud she said only, ‘It will tell me if Murray was an honest workman, as everyone says he was. If he was stealing from the business,’ she amplified, in answer to Phemie’s puzzled look, ‘it should show in the accounts, though it might be far to seek. How long was he here?’

‘Five year, maybe. If he was stealing coin, Arbella would notice,’ said Phemie. ‘Have you not seen yet that nothing happens up here by the Pow Burn that she doesny know of, one way or another?’

And that was not what you said before, thought Alys.

Bel stood up abruptly, gestured for Alys to follow, and led her out into the hall. Socrates’ claws clicked on the flagstones as they went the length of the wide space and through a doorway at the back, into another pair of chambers. This was, quite plainly, Arbella’s apartment. Alys looked about her curiously.

The chamber nearest the hall was panelled and painted, with several figures of saints on the wall by the fireplace and a garland of flowers round under the rafters. A curtained bed took up most of the floor, with a clothes-kist at its foot. There was a musty smell which made Alys wrinkle her nose. Socrates, pressed close against her thigh, raised his head, sniffing, and the hair lifted on his narrow back. Bel glanced at the bed, with its neatly bagged-up curtains of verdure tapestry, almost as if she expected to see it occupied, but went round it to the further door and opened that.

The inner chamber was small and gloomy. A bench at one end held a fortune in glassware, the delicate blown shapes reflecting light from the high tiny window. Alys identified flasks, two alembics and several curving tubes whose use she could only imagine. There was red wax to stop the joints with, and a stand below which one could place a small charcoal burner. This was more than a stillroom, she thought, recalling Mère Isabelle’s working quarters.

The musty smell was stronger here, with a foxy overtone which made her gag, and a definite recollection of a mews she had once been shown. She was unsurprised when Bel pulled open one of the drawers beneath the bench to see it crammed with rustling linen bags, each neatly labelled in the same beautiful hand as in the account book. Arbella’s herb collection also rivalled Mère Isabelle’s.

‘Did you gather all these?’ she asked, bending to look at the labels, but Bel gave her a pitying look, closed the drawer by bumping it with her hip and reached to open another. Over their heads feathers ruffled, and both girls looked up; following Bel’s gaze Alys found she was being watched by round pale eyes, peering from the shadows above the window. ‘An owl?’ she exclaimed. ‘Can it be an owl, here in the house?’

Bel nodded, glowered at the creature, and with some ingenuity extracted something large and rectangular from the drawer she had touched, using her skirt to shield it from — yes, certainly from the owl’s gaze.

‘They are everywhere,’ Alys said. Bel nodded again, clutching her prize under the folds of blue wool, and jerked her head to summon Alys into the outer room. Kicking the door shut behind them, she set the great account book carefully on a little prayer-desk by the head of the bed, then smoothed down her skirt and mimed someone holding a bird, stroking its feathers, simpering with affection. ‘It’s your grandam’s pet?’ Alys guessed. Bel nodded, but turned to the book. Opening the leather-bound boards, she leafed through the pages until she found the most recent entries, and stood back in triumph.

The accounts were very clear, and gradually drew Alys’s thoughts away from the presence of the owl. The movement of coin, in and out of the coaltown, was meticulously itemized. The coal was tracked with equal precision. The numbers added up, marching down the pages, each line a distillation of some man’s labour in the dirty, sweaty dark of the mine. I am fanciful, Alys told herself, turning back leaf by clearly inscribed leaf. It must be the effect of kneeling before the book like this, as if it was a prayer-book. The dog sat tall beside her, his chin on her arm, almost as if he too was reading the elegant writing.

Bel touched her hand to get her attention, and when she looked up sketched Arbella’s wired headdress and upright stance, then folded her hands as if in prayer.

‘She prays over the book?’ Alys guessed. Then she thought, how silly, it is such an illogical fancy, but Bel nodded, unsmiling. How did she guess what was in my head? she wondered.

Two years back, in ’91, a flurry of extra work was recorded. A winding-shaft and its shelter, yhe new over wyndhous, was carefully accounted for, along with the wood to build the gear and a heavy hemp rope. Joanna’s dowry and inheritance being put to the good, thought Alys, and yet they don’t seem to use the shaft. There was no mention of Matt’s death. She turned further back, and became aware that the figures were changing. Comparing the Lady Day accounting year by year, when the returns on the winter’s coal would have come in, she could see that the profits were not so good in recent entries as the earlier ones. She detected no abrupt change when Murray came to the coaltown, nor when he was promoted to grieve, though both these events were noted.

She turned more pages. The death of the younger Adam Crombie, Beatrice’s husband, was signalled only by a record of the extra work needed in 1484 to clear the roof-fall. Studying the numbers which lay on the page before and after it, she came to the reluctant conclusion that business improved after his death, and then slowly deteriorated to the present figures.

Why should that be so? she wondered. Was it a question of the control of the business, or of who had a say in where the money went? What difference had it made when the younger Adam died? She heard Beatrice’s voice in her head — My man never liked to have much to do wi’ the pit, Our Lady succour him. Presumably matters went better when Arbella had sole control.

She turned back through the book, considering the implications of this. But even if her suspicions were correct, there was no need to poison Thomas Murray. Unless he had uncovered the same facts that she had recognized. Murray had questioned Isa in the kirk in Carluke, she recalled. But Sir Simon at Dalserf had no knowledge of him, had presumably never met him.

‘Does anyone else look at these accounts?’ she asked Bel, who was still watching her intently. The other girl shook her head, and pointed firmly in the direction of the drawer where the book had been stowed. ‘Not Thomas, not anyone else?’ Another shake of the head. She turned a leaf, and registered the same change in the figures in March of 1477. The year Arbella’s own husband, the older Adam, had died. And what has Gil discovered? she wondered. How did the man die, sixteen miles from here, too far to bring the body home? I would bring Gil back if he died in — in — in Paris, she thought.

Bel was becoming restless. She put a hand out as if to redirect Alys’s attention to the most recent accounts, but did not touch the book.

‘I will not be long,’ Alys assured her. ‘I have seen nearly enough.’ She turned more pages back with care, one and then several together, and there it was, the information she was sure she would find, laid out on the page in complex looping letters. ‘Bel,’ she said slowly, ‘do you know whose hand this is? There’s half a year in a different writing.’

Bel shrugged, and pointed to the date: mcccclxx. Alys nodded.

‘1470. Before you were born,’ she agreed. ‘Or I. No reason you should know. I wonder where your grandam was, that she couldn’t keep the accounts herself.’ She looked closer at the slanting columns crawling down the page. ‘It was someone who could scarcely add up, whoever it was.’

Bel peered over her arm at the loops of writing, and put out a pointing finger at the same moment as Alys recognized that the curling scroll near the foot of the page was in fact a name. Under it a double line had been ruled, with a chilling finality.

‘Gulielmus,’ she made out. ‘That is William.’ Bel gave her a withering look. ‘And the surname is — is — Fleming. William Fleming. Was that David Fleming’s father, I wonder? I know he worked here.’

Bel shrugged, then turned her head sharply as voices sounded in the hall, and footsteps approached rapidly. Socrates got to his feet, head down, staring.

‘Alys? There’s a laddie out here asking for you.’ Phemie halted in the doorway. ‘Says he’s got a word from your man.’

‘From Gil?’ Alys jumped up and came round the end of the bed. ‘Is he safe? Who — is it Patey?’ Behind her Bel was closing up the book and lifting it off the prayer-desk, and a faint annoyance crossed her mind — I wanted more time at that — but word from Gil took precedence.

It was indeed Patey out in the dim hall, hung over and disgruntled at being sent on again from Belstane, ducking in a graceless bow and pushing Gil’s own set of tablets at her. The dog’s nose twitched as he identified the familiar scent.

‘Oh, he’s taken no harm,’ Patey agreed, ‘other than by sleeping snug in the kirk loft in Walston, while I lay wi’ the rats in a alehouse where I wouldny keep pigs, however good her ale might be. So he would have me ride on home and then they sent me up here to seek you, so you might as well look at what he’s sent and I hope it was worth it, mistress.’

Alys was already moving to the open door, drawing the tablets from their soft leather pouch, turning the thin wooden leaves to find the message intended for her. Here it was, in French, in his clear, neat letter-hand.

My dearest, she read, and her stomach swooped at the words, the man we sought died on the twentieth of March in the year we knew of. He ate dinner with others, and drank alone from a flask he had with him. Later he fell from his horse in a swoon and struck his head, and died without speaking again.

She gazed at the writing, suddenly aware of two layers of thought in her head. One was competently assessing this news and concluding that it only added to their suppositions rather than confirming anything. The other was studying the salutation, over and over, while her heart sang. My dearest, he had written. Ma plus chère. She knew well that she was loved, but here it was in writing.

‘Is it a billy-doo from your man?’ asked Phemie in envy, and she realized that yes, indeed, it was a billet-doux, the first he had ever sent her.

‘In a sense,’ she said, and put the tablets away, stowing the brocade pouch in her purse and straightening her skirt over it. ‘Where did you leave Maister Gil, Patey?’

‘He went straight down to Lanark for the quest,’ said Patey resentfully, ‘which I wanted to hear and all, and I’d ha’ thought you’d be down there yourself, mistress. And the mistress has went,’ he added, ‘all in her good gown to take him the word of the woman Lithgo and her — ’

‘What about my mother?’ said Phemie sharply.

Alys, suppressing annoyance, said, ‘She is at Belstane, and perfectly well. Patey, go see your horse attended to, and find out if Mistress Weir’s kitchen can give you some refreshment.’

‘Why is she at Belstane?’ demanded Phemie, as the man took himself reluctantly out of the house door. ‘When did she go there? I’ve not seen her since yestreen.’

‘She fetched up at my good-mother’s yett last night just before dark,’ said Alys guardedly.

Phemie stared at her. ‘So why’s she no come home this morning? Is she still there?’ Then, her suspicions growing, ‘It’s no a call on her healing, is it, Alys. What are you no telling us?’

‘She’s locked in the steward’s chamber at Belstane, that’s where she is,’ said Patey, still standing just outside the door.

‘Patey!’ said Alys, furious.

‘What?’ said Phemie.

‘And chained and all, they’re saying, seeing she’s confessed to slaying the man Murray wi’ strong poison.’

‘Patey!’ exclaimed Alys again, but her voice was drowned by Bel’s sudden sharp cry, and that by a heartbroken wailing from the doorway to Joanna’s chamber.

‘She’s done what?’ demanded Phemie, as Joanna herself tottered out into the hall, arms outstretched, her bedgown falling away from her slender kirtled figure, and collapsed on the swept stone floor at Bel’s feet. ‘Alys, what has my mother done?’

She kept repeating this while the three of them contrived to get Joanna on to her feet and supported back to her own bed. Alys, chafing at one of the widow’s limp hands, finally had no option but to reply.

‘She has confessed, as Patey said, to poisoning Thomas Murray.’ The hand she clasped tightened convulsively. ‘I do not think she did it.’

‘Then why has she — ? And why did you no tell us when you came up here? What are you at here? Whose side are you on, anyway?’

‘My husband’s,’ said Alys, as the first answer that came to her.

‘Aye, I suppose,’ said Phemie sourly. ‘And here I thought you were my friend.’

‘I hope I am,’ said Alys, flinching from this blow. ‘And Joanna’s, and Bel’s.’

‘Then why — ?’ She stopped, and stared at Alys from the foot of Joanna’s bed. ‘You’re saying you don’t believe her? Why not? Why’s she still locked in chains if you don’t think it was her doing?’

‘She isn’t in chains, believe me. Do you think it?’ Alys countered.

‘No, but …’ Phemie stopped to consider this. Alys watched with interest, despite the awkwardness of the situation, recognizing that the other girl was putting her undoubted intelligence to work perhaps for the first time. ‘She’s my mother. I ken her mind, her way o’ working. I could never see her using her craft for that kind of purpose. You’re no family, you must have a reason for no thinking it.’

Bel crossed the chamber with a small cup in her hand, and offered it to Alys for Joanna. It held the familiar brown sticky cordial, with its scent of cough-syrup. Alys glanced across at the cupboard, to see the yellow-glazed pipkin she had encountered before sitting there with its cover askew. She sniffed the cordial again, trying to compare the smell with that on the flask Gil had brought home.

‘It’s her own store of the stuff,’ said Phemie roughly. ‘You’ve no need of suspecting Bel of trying to poison her.’

‘I know that.’ Alys raised Joanna’s head, and gave her a few sips of the stuff. ‘It was a good thought. Joanna, do you feel better now? Can you talk?’

Joanna pulled herself to a sitting position, but shook her head, putting one hand to her brow. Phemie watched her, frowning, and then said, ‘Why would my mother confess to something she’d no done?’

Bel turned to look at her sister, but made no sign. Alys waited for a moment, and said, ‘For a good reason, I’d assume.’

‘She was asking at me yestreen,’ said Joanna faintly. ‘After the others left for Lanark.’ She put her hand over her mouth, staring wide-eyed at the coverlet. ‘She asked me how the poison might ha’ got into Thomas’s flask, and I said I had no notion. Oh, say she never did it!’

‘Had you talked about it at all before that?’ Alys asked.

‘The old witch wouldny have it discussed,’ said Phemie. Bel tossed her head in disagreement, and Phemie added, ‘No that that stopped Raffie, o’ course, but Joanna was in here most of the time, so she never heard him, did you?’

‘No, I never,’ agreed Joanna wearily. ‘I tellt your mother how Bel brought us the flask that morning and how I put it in his scrip and never saw it again. Nor I never want to see it again neither,’ she added, with a flicker of that spirit she had shown before. ‘I’ll sell it and give the money to the poor. He was never an easy man, but he was my man, I never wanted him dead.’

‘Did she believe you?’ demanded Phemie.

‘I’ve no notion.’

This is getting me nowhere, thought Alys. She was about to ask another question when the shouting began outside. Socrates scrambled to his feet and put his paws up on the windowsill.

‘No again!’ said Phemie. ‘Is it another fight? They shouldny be up on the surface the now anyway.’ She strode across to the window as she spoke, and drew an indignant breath. ‘Would you believe it? There’s that fool Fleming in the place again, after Arbella told him no to come back here!’

‘Fleming?’ said Joanna apprehensively. ‘What’s he here for? Don’t let him — ’

‘Fleming?’ repeated Alys, hurrying to look. ‘I had thought him dead by now!’

‘Never you worry,’ said Phemie. ‘Jamesie has him in hand. That’s what the shouting’s all about.’ She looked at her sister, and then at Joanna. ‘I’ll get a word wi’ Jamesie. You stay here,’ she instructed, and left the room, without glancing at Alys.

There was a knot of men by the small building Phemie had identified as the office. Several were colliers or surfacemen, caked with silvery mud and brandishing their tools. In their midst, Jamesie Meikle and David Fleming stood face to face, the man Simmie nodding at the priest’s back while Fleming shouted incoherently at the collier, pointing wildly at the office, at the little chapel, up at the house. As Alys watched through the window Phemie came into sight, clumping purposefully over the cobbles on her wooden soles, but the men seemed not to notice her.

There was a tugging at her sleeve, and Alys turned to find Bel at her elbow, gesturing urgently towards the door.

‘You want me to go too?’ she asked. The girl nodded, and indicated by more gestures that she would stay with Joanna.

‘You’ll likely can stop them getting to blows,’ said Joanna, with a confidence which Alys found touching, and craned unsteadily to see out of the window. ‘Oh, my, what’s Jamesie — oh, what will he do? Please, will you go and stop them?’

Jamesie Meikle was still trying to be reasonable. As Alys approached, he was saying, ‘Our mistress forbade you these policies last time you were here. You shouldny be on her land at all, let alone trying to search the office where the tallies and the accounts are kept. We’d be well within our duties to fling you in the burn and leave you — ’

‘The law will support me,’ declared Fleming feverishly, ‘I’ll take the evidence to the Sheriff straight way, and he’ll see the right o’ my actions! I ha’ proof positive now of the witchcraft that’s being worked here, and one or all of these wicked women will — ’

‘We’ll ha’ no more of that,’ said one of the colliers, hefting his mell.

‘And as for you, Simmie Wilson,’ continued Jamesie, ‘I’d ha’ thought you’d more sense than turn up here poking your nose where this glaikit sumph tells you.’

‘Sumph, is it?’ howled Fleming. Alys studied him anxiously; she was astonished to see him on his feet, but it was clear his recovery was anything but complete. The man was trembling and sweating, hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, his clothes hanging from him as if he had lost half his weight. She could smell the pear comfits from where she stood.

‘Aye,’ Simmie was saying, ‘but I found what he said I’d find, which is proof o’ witchcraft, Jamesie Meikle, so what do you think of that?’

‘Proof? Aye, proof of your own soft-headedness,’ said someone.

‘There’s all the candles gone from the chapel,’ protested Simmie, ‘just as Davy here said I’d find, though he put new ones just the other week — ’

‘Is that what Agnes Brewster’s been burning?’ said another voice, to laughter.

‘Well, what d’you call this?’ said Simmie, goaded. He fetched a bundle out of the breast of his doublet and opened it out into an appalled spreading silence. Between the coal-blackened shoulders Alys saw as clearly as any of them what lay within the sacking. Four little mommets, clumsily modelled of white wax, clad in scraps of cloth and pierced with thorns through heart or head, three with bare crumbling waxen legs, the fourth in petticoats. Her heart sank. This was definite proof of witchcraft. But who — which of the people here — had made and hidden these?

For perhaps five breaths the silence hung, and then incongruously a lark burst into song over their heads. As if it was a signal, the man nearest to Simmie struck out, knocked the little figures to the ground, and stamped on them with a muddy boot, saying savagely, ‘Where’s yer proof now, Simmie Wilson? Show that to the Sheriff, won’t ye?’

The other men began shouting round him. Fleming threw himself forward with a cry of rage, scrabbling in the dirt for the fragments of wax, and Phemie, white and trembling, seized Jamesie Meikle’s elbow saying under the noise, ‘He made that up! Surely he made that up, he must ha’ made those things himself!’

Meikle turned to look at her, as some of the men laid large rough hands on Fleming, and Simmie held the sacking wrapper up above the mêlée saying indignantly, ‘No I never, I found them, they were up yonder hid in the thatch!’

‘Up where?’ demanded Phemie, but Alys, who had seen where he pointed, stepped back away from the group and set off round the end of the house and up the hill, the dog at her heels. One for Thomas Murray, she was thinking, one for David Fleming. And the others must be — yes, they must represent Gil and herself, newly constructed, the immediate reason for the absence of candles in the little chapel. And Gil had that terrifying dream. She shivered, crossed herself, and turned uphill, making for the new over wyndhous which Arbella had accounted for so meticulously. For the first time, she had begun to consider that there might be some foundation for Fleming’s persistent ideas, and it was an unpleasant thought.

Halfway up the slope, she found the two men who had accompanied her from Belstane were beside her.

‘What’s ado, mem?’ asked Steenie, still wiping ale from his mouth. He acknowledged Socrates’ greeting and added, ‘Davy Fleming was like to die yesterday, and now he’s up here shouting at the colliers, is it a miracle right enough?’

‘More like the fasting has helped him,’ said Alys, pausing to look over her shoulder at the group in the yard. As she watched Phemie spoke, distracting the men, and Fleming seized the chance and ducked away from the grasping hands round him, slipped into the colliery office and slammed the door. By the time the sound floated up to them Jamesie Meikle had already deployed three men to guard the little building, and was confronting a belligerent Simmie.

‘And what’s the stushie about?’ asked Henry at her other elbow.

‘Fleming has been searching the place for signs of witchcraft,’ said Alys.

‘Witchcraft?’ said Henry in alarm. ‘Here, if Beatrice Lithgo’s taken up for a witch, where am I to get supplies for dosing the horses?’

‘Embro?’ suggested Steenie. ‘Where are we going, mem?’

‘Here,’ said Alys, pausing before the wide, low structure of the upper shaft-house. ‘Simmie said he found something here, hidden in the thatch, and I wondered if there was anything else to find.’

‘Proof?’ asked Henry sharply. ‘Simmie Wilson wouldny ken proof if it bit him on the bum, any more than our Patey Who I’ve sent back to Belstane, by the way, mistress.’

‘This could have been proof,’ admitted Alys, ‘but one of the colliers destroyed it.’ She shivered. Her skin was still crawling at the sight of the little figures, brief as it had been, with their tatters of clothing and their pierced bodies.

‘Colliers is odd folk,’ pronounced Steenie. ‘But who’s he naming for the witch? Who’d hide something up here as far from the house? What are we seeking anyways?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alys. ‘I want to look for a hiding-place, but there may not be anything left in it, if Simmie found it.’

Both men looked at her a little oddly, but they began to inspect the thatch obligingly enough, looking under the eaves at the bundled ends of the heather-stems and prodding as far up the roof as either could reach. Alys ordered the dog to sit at the doorway, stepped inside and peered up into the shadows at the purlins which supported the thatch, trying to ignore the shaft gaping blackly at the centre of the hut. There seemed to be nowhere to hide anything; the clay-daubed hurdles rose to meet the roof-frame, with no ledge or wall-plate at the top, and she could see nothing like a shelf or niche under the thatch. Up in the crown of the roof there was the ruffling sound she had heard before, exactly like feathers, like a bird settling its plumage. She turned towards the winding-gear, and something fell from the rafters in silence and swooped at her face, missing her as she ducked and exclaimed in terror, sailed on out of the doorway and up over the hillside, the dog in delighted pursuit.

‘What’s up?’ demanded Henry, arriving with Steenie as she straightened up. ‘What made ye squeal, lassie? Mistress,’ he corrected himself. ‘What was yon?’

‘It was a owl,’ said Steenie, looking back over his shoulder. ‘Did it hurt ye, mem?’

‘No,’ she said shakily, her heart hammering, ‘no, it gave me a fright, that’s all. It came down from nowhere, out of the roof.’ Yet another of the creatures. And no wonder Gil had a bad dream, she thought, after the same thing happened to him.

‘Out of the roof? Where was it perching?’ asked Steenie.

Henry nodded. ‘A good thought, Steenie lad. What was it standing on?’ He swung himself up on to the frame of the winding-gear and peered along under the roof-tree. ‘I see it — there’s a cross-beam. Now can I reach it?’

‘Have a care!’ said Alys involuntarily, as he stretched out an arm, but he drew back, with a wary look at the rope disappearing down the shaft, swung himself on to the ground and tried again from the other side of the structure.

‘Aye,’ he said, groping along the beam. ‘I’d say it roosts here. Foot of the shaft must be littered wi’ its pellets. And what’s this? Cloth?’ He came down again, holding his find by one corner, and looked at Alys. ‘We’ll take it into the light, mistress, but are ye for opening it up?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She took the thing from him, and stepped out into the daylight to inspect it. Socrates returned from his pursuit of the owl and sat down, tongue hanging out, as she did so. The cloth bag was as big as the palm of her hand, very dirty though not troubled by owl droppings, and seemed to be of silk damask as if it contained a relic. She untied the cord and drew out a swaddled bundle; both men were watching intently, and Steenie crossed himself as she began to unfold the brown linen wrappings.

The object at their centre was not readily recognizable. It was longer and thicker than Alys’s thumb, yellowish, wrinkled and waxy. She stared at it for a moment, and said, ‘Is it a root of some herb? A mandrake, perhaps? I never saw one.’

‘Nor did I, mistress,’ said Henry drily, ‘but I never heard that a mandrake had a fingernail. See, this side.’ He indicated one end of the thing. She tipped it over on her palm, and saw the nail, thick and cracked, as yellow as the rest of the finger. She jerked the object away from her in a sudden convulsion of horror, and it flew between the two men and landed in a clump of heather.

Socrates pounced, and came up grinning, the hideous thing clutched in his teeth. Alys lunged at him, but he bounded away, tail waving.

‘Give!’ she ordered. ‘Leave it! Leave!’

‘What is it, anyway?’ demanded Steenie, crossing himself again.

‘A thumb,’ said Henry grimly. Alys drew a deep breath, and forced herself to stand still and consider matters.

‘It could be a relic of some sort,’ she said, ‘all wrapped up like that, but there was no paper with it to name it, as a relic should have. I don’t — ’ A crunching sound alerted her, and she flung herself at the dog again. ‘Socrates! Give, you dreadful dog, give!’ This time, despite Steenie’s attempt to help, she managed to get the animal by the collar, and prised his narrow, powerful jaws open with difficulty. The fragments of bone and dried flesh which emerged were bonded with saliva; she caught them in the linen binding and pushed the dog away, holding the unpleasant bundle out of his reach.

‘What do we do wi’ it, mistress?’ asked Henry, scratching the back of his head. ‘If it’s a relic it’ll no do to let on the dog got it — ’

‘It’s no relic,’said Steenie scornfully. ‘Hid in a filthy place like that? I say we put it in the bag and drop it down the shaft, mem, and nobody’s to ken how it got there if it’s ever found.’

‘It is a proof of witchcraft,’ said Alys, stuffing the bundled linen back into the bag. Socrates pushed at her hand with his long nose, hoping to get his new toy back, and she tapped his muzzle with her finger. ‘No! No, I think I must show it to Gil at least, though I do not like taking it with me.’ She pulled up her skirt to reach her purse, and after a moment’s thought wound her beads round the damask as some protection, before she stowed it beside Gil’s tablets. ‘Did you find anything in the thatch?’

‘Only the hole where Simmie Wilson pulled out whatever he got,’ said Henry. ‘Mistress, is that the family coming home? There’s a deal o’ ponies coming across the hill yonder.’

‘Your brother stayed behind,’ said Arbella in a faint voice, ‘to see to the coffining and arrange a burial. But Maister Michael here, seeing how weary I was, offered to bring me away.’ She accepted a glass of the omnipresent cordial from Bel, sipped at it, and gave Joanna a smile of infinite sympathy.

‘It went well enough,’ reported Michael, nodding at her words. ‘The assize brought it in as murder, and directed Maister Gil to search out who was the guilty one.’

‘He was there in time, then?’ said Alys. She moved her feet to allow the offended dog to lie down under her backstool, and her purse bumped against her leg.

‘Oh, never doubt it, my dear,’ said Arbella. ‘So all will be well. I’m certain he’ll get that settled in good order. And what brings you up here? Did I see you at the over windhouse the now?’

She has eyes like — like an owl, thought Alys.

‘Davy Fleming’s on the policies,’ burst out Phemie before she could speak, ‘and searching the place for evidence of witchcraft so he says. Cauldhope’s man Simmie found something up at the windhouse, so he said, and she went up for another look at it. Did you find aught, Alys?’

‘We found the hole in the thatch where Simmie got the bundle he had,’ said Alys truthfully, though the object in her purse seemed to burn her shin through kirtle and shift.

‘Fleming?’ said Arbella, her voice suddenly much stronger. ‘I thought he was dying!’

‘So did I,’ said Michael. ‘Mistress Weir, I’m right sorry if he’s up here again making a nuisance of himself — ’

‘He’s barred himself into the office,’ said Phemie, ‘wi’ the great desk across the door, and Jamesie set three of the men to have an eye to the place in case he got out. They’d found — Simmie found — ’ She halted, and looked at Alys.

‘Wax figures,’ said Joanna into the hesitation, and shivered. ‘Jamesie told me. Little mommets, all clothed and stabbed through wi’ thorns. Who would make such things here, Mother? Is it all true, then? Mother, I canny believe it, that one of this household — ’

‘I’ll not believe it,’ said Arbella, and slammed her stick on the floorboards. ‘There’s none in my household would practise such a thing. Fleming has made them himself, to cast suspicion on us!’

Alys preserved her countenance, aware of Michael looking at her.

‘Where is Gil?’ she asked him quietly.

‘He went back to Belstane with Lady Cunningham. I think he expected to find you there, and he wanted a word with Mistress Lithgo.’

‘Aye, where is my good-daughter?’ asked Arbella, catching the name. ‘Phemie, my pet, where is your mother? Not in her stillroom yet, surely?’

‘She’s at Belstane,’ said Phemie, ‘locked up they tell us, seeing she went there to confess to poisoning Thomas.’ She watched with evident satisfaction as Arbella stared at her. The old woman’s mouth fell open, her pale clear skin went an unpleasant blotchy yellow, and it was suddenly obvious that she painted her face.

‘Beatrice?’ she said sharply, making some recovery. ‘Beatrice has confessed to — ’

‘She spoke to me last night,’ said Alys. ‘I do not believe it, madame.’

Arbella studied her narrowly, then said much as Phemie had done, ‘Why no?’

To Alys’s relief, she was spared the need to answer this. Yet again, shouting broke out in the colliery yard below the house. Phemie craned to see down the hill, and sprang to her feet with an exclamation.

‘He’s out! Fleming’s out! He must ha’ slipped by the watch. Where’s he making for?’

Alys jumped up to look, and through the writhing glass saw the running figures, the pursuit, the staggering quarry. He reeled down the hillside between the scatter of huts as though he was drunk, the colliers slithering after him through the grey mud, and suddenly changed direction and dived into the doorway of another low wide building like the upper shaft-house. Two men reached it almost immediately, and Alys waited for them to follow him in and drag him out into the light, but they checked in the doorway as if frozen where they stood. Another reached them, and two more, and all stood staring into the little building in what seemed to be dismay.

‘What has happened?’ Alys said in alarm.

‘He’ll have gone down the shaft,’ said Phemie. ‘That’s the low shaft-house. He’ll ha’ fell in, the state he was in.’

‘Just like his father,’ said Arbella slowly, with a strange emphasis. She bent her head, crossing herself. ‘What an end.’

Alys hurried forward into the dark, half crouched, thinking that this was less of a treat than she had imagined it would be a week ago.

‘He still lives,’ said Arbella ahead of her. ‘Mind how you go, mistress.’

Alys nodded, then realized the movement would not be seen.

‘I am minding,’ she said, stooping lower where the candle lit a low curve in the roof.

The mine stank. She had not expected this. Brought up with stone, she knew the scents of damp rock, of the blood-red, rusty water and strange colourless plants which one found in dark places, but she had not been prepared for the distant smell of human ordure and rotted food. And rats, which scrabbled in the dark. Ahead of her Arbella picked her way up the slope, moving freely and confidently like a fish in water.

‘I take it right kind in you,’ the old woman continued, ‘to agree to come below ground with me. If she’d been here I’d ha’ brought my good-daughter, you understand, but you’re near as herb-wise so she tells me, and by what Jamesie said the man still lives.’

He could be heard groaning, Jamesie Meikle had said, the shaft being no more than five fathom deep. This had earned a sharp response from Arbella, along the lines that she had watched them sink it before he was born or thought of. Ignoring this, he had declared that he would not risk sending a man down by the shaft, because the winding-gear was old and needed to be repaired. He would need to get someone to go in with him from the mid ingo. Alys understood this to mean the middle of the three entries, the one not in current use. At this his mistress had announced that she would go, commandeered Alys’s help, and ordered Jamesie to assemble what was needful to get the man out, alive or dead, and follow them in.

So now, her riding-dress and hat left in the office, the skirts of her kirtle belted up, and one of the miners’ hooded leather sarks over all to protect her from falling stones, Alys was groping her way up the surprisingly steep slope behind a similarly clad Arbella, wondering how wise this had been, errand of mercy or no. Whatever Gil resolved about the death of Thomas Murray, it seemed likely to inconvenience the Pow Burn household, and she was uncertain how much Arbella knew she had discovered. Quite apart from Bel’s message on the slate, she reflected. Her purse, with the gruesome find from the upper shaft-house, was in the office with her riding-dress, and though she might feel as if it was outlined in red ink nobody else had reason to notice it, which was a small comfort.

‘I’ll not have Will Fleming’s son fall to his death in my coal-heugh,’ said Arbella suddenly, as if there had been an argument, ‘and let folk say I did nothing about it. If this one is no more than half the man the father was.’

Alys made some mechanical answer. She was staring about her, moving cautiously. The candle flame leaped and flickered in surprising draughts, but showed gaping dark places to right and left, perhaps the rooms Phemie had described, which meant that the massive pillars of living rock between them were the stoops. The roof was uneven, but seemed to be the lower surface of a bed of sandstone, the flame striking tiny sparks in the grains of sand in its matrix. The tunnel walls were black, but only a section at knee height was coal. There were sounds — dripping water, the rattle of an occasional falling stone, a faint creaking now and then. A shout, presumably from the surface, which resounded eerily in the tunnels and spaces. And it was dark, darker than she would have believed possible, outside the patches of candlelight.

At least, she reflected, there were likely to be no owls underground.

There was a groan which echoed along the tunnel, and faint voices, sounding oddly flat. Of course, if we are close, she thought, we must hear the men at the top of the shaft even when they don’t shout.

‘Here he is,’ said Arbella. She had halted, and was holding the candle over a sprawled shape on the tunnel floor. ‘Bring your light, lassie, and we’ll see what ails him.’

The tunnel was wider here, and there were various items strewn about, a broken basket full of spare tools, a couple of coils of rope, two wooden buckets big enough to hold a ten-year-old child. A bundle of timbers lay just to one side of the patch of stones and earth which had come down the shaft, and on it, back ominously reflexed, lay Fleming. Alys came forward, turned up one of the buckets and fixed both candles on its base by dripping wax to secure them.

‘It does not look good,’ she said.

‘Aye, he’s about ready for the priest, I fear,’ agreed the old woman. She bent and patted Fleming’s face. ‘Davy! Davy Fleming! Can you hear me?’

There was a pause; then the man’s eyes opened.

‘Who — ?’ he croaked.

‘That’s me, Davy. Arbella Weir. I’m sorry to find you like this, Davy. Death unshriven’s no what I’d ha’ wished on your father’s son.’

‘I am shriven,’ he croaked.

‘Where does it hurt?’ Alys asked, taking his hand. His eyes rolled towards her, and in the light of the two candles he knew her. A wisp of his ingratiating smile crossed his face, and he drew a harsh breath.

‘Mistress,’ he whispered. ‘Doesny hurt. Thanks be — Our Lady. Did you read — ?’

‘I read it,’ she said. And keep quiet, man, she thought. ‘Save your strength, Sir David. We’ll get you out of here and made comfortable as soon as maybe.’

‘I willny — last so long.’

‘Aye, well, you meddled in things that wereny your concern,’ said Arbella, her face in shadow, ‘and it’s brought you to this end, the same as your father. I’m right sorry, man.’

‘I’ve learned,’ Fleming whispered. ‘I know. I know what you’ve been — ’

Arbella sat back, and knocked the bucket which supported the candles. They fell over, rolling across the flat wooden base, sending shadows leaping wildly round the three of them, then on to the floor of the tunnel. One went out. Arbella twisted awkwardly in pursuit of the other, and put her hand on it.

Alys exclaimed as darkness complete enveloped them.

‘Never fear, lassie,’ said Arbella’s voice. Alys could hear movement close to her, the rustle of clothing, a creak from the thick leather of the collier’s sark Arbella wore. Fleming drew another harsh breath, and breathed out, and made a short choking noise. In sudden alarm she crouched there in the dark, waiting for his next breath.

It never came.