The Rough Collier

Chapter Fourteen

Gil gazed in exasperation at Beatrice Lithgo.

‘I’ll not believe you,’ he said. ‘I don’t accept this confession.’

She shrugged, suddenly looking very like her older daughter. ‘I’ll not retract it.’

‘Who are you protecting?’

‘Protecting?’ She raised her eyebrows.

‘Then what about the other deaths?’

‘The forester?’ She crossed herself. ‘I’m right sorry he died, Our Lady bring him to grace. I never intended that.’

‘I meant,’ said Gil, and counted them off, ‘Matt Crombie, Will Brownlie, your own man, your good-father. Did you kill them too?’

‘No,’ she said blankly. ‘Why would I kill any of them?’ There was a pause in which she seemed to be thinking over the list. ‘No, I’d no reason to poison them. They wereny poisoned,’ she added hastily.

‘You’re certain?’ said Gil. She raised her eyebrows. ‘I’ve just come back from Walston.’

‘From where? Oh, aye. The parish where Auld Adam died. And what did you find there, maister?’ she asked in conversational tones. ‘I was never there myself.’

‘You’ve not missed much,’ Gil admitted, ‘it’s two villages and a high hill, but I’d a read of the parish records, kept by Sir Billy Crichton in very good order, and this morning at first light I got a word with the folk that took Adam Crombie in when he fell from his horse.’ She watched him, still giving nothing away. ‘It seems he ate his dinner in the High House at Elsrickle, along with his two men, and drank a toast to Arbella’s birthday from a silver flask he had with him, which he didn’t share. He set out to ride on to the next house on his round.’ She nodded. ‘A mile or so down the road he seemed dazed, as if he was unsure of where he was, and fell from his horse in a swoon, and struck his head. He was carried into the nearest house, and there he died without speaking again.’

‘Was his belly afflicted?’ she asked, frowning.

‘No. I asked about that particularly, after what you said the other day, and he had neither vomited nor purged. I spoke with the woman of the house,’ he added, ‘she’d be like to know.’

She nodded again, accepting this. He waited, but when there was no further reaction said, ‘It seems very like whatever slew Murray and the forester. But of course you’d know that, wouldn’t you?’

Another long look, but no words. This was hard work.

‘My mother has suggested it was orpiment slew your good-brother and Will Brownlie. Does that sound right?’

She nodded again, very slowly, and closed her eyes. ‘Orpiment. Arsenical salts. Of course, it fits, of course. And the collier’s bairns and all, that were took ill the same summer. But why? Who would want to kill Matt, the bonnie lad? And what had the man Brownlie done, save father Joanna?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ he said patiently. ‘You could help me, if you weren’t wasting my time trying to confess to all sorts of wickedness. The falshede of the woman is wonder merveyllous.’

Her eyes flew open, and she gave him another long look. But he had lost her again, he could see that. He would get no further co-operation.

He paused on the stairs down from the steward’s room, looking from one of the slit windows out over the grazing-land towards the peat-digging and the track which led to the coaltown. He had dreamed again before dawn, and it was still with him; this time he had stood on a bare hillside, looking across this same landscape. Someone stood beside him; when he turned to see, it was a man, a stranger, naked but for a leather cap and a russet fox-skin belt. Smiling at Gil, he had held out in one hand a dull black stone with a little fish drawn on it, in the other a sprig of yew, the green needles and waxy red berries vividly identifiable. Thank you, the stranger said. You need these. Then Sir Billy had roused him for the ride over to Elsrickle.

It felt important, but it seemed to mean nothing.

His mother, restored to her working clothes, was in the stable-yard inspecting her horses, and looked round as he came down from the house.

‘Are you for the Pow Burn, dear? Here’s Patey just come in — Alys has your message.’

‘Is all well up there?’ he asked the man.

‘Oh, aye. Well, they’re all to sixes and sevens, but apart from that. And the auld wife away, and Davy Fleming playing merry-ma-tanzie about the yard, and — ’

‘Fleming?’ said Gil sharply.

‘Michael said he left the man abed,’ said Lady Egidia in surprise, ‘and dying, he thought.’

‘He was dying,’ said Gil.

‘Well, he was up at the Pow Burn the now,’ said Patey sulkily, ‘and making Simmie Wilson and me hunt all about the place for proofs of some sort, whatever he meant by that. No candles in the chapel, and Jamesie Meikle shouting, I went back to their kitchen, you can believe it. Only but Henry sent me home, and I’ve had no dinner yet.’

‘We left Michael and Mistress Weir at the road-end, how long since?’ said Gil to his mother. ‘She must be home by now. Alys will need help.’

‘Take the bay with the white blaze,’ said Lady Egidia, ‘he’s fresh and he’s fast.’

The coaltown was in greater disarray even than Patey had said. Gil could see this as soon as he came over the shoulder of the hill. There was no work going on, and many of the colliers were standing about in the yard in twos and threes, staring grimly up the hillside. The women had come down from the row of dwellings and were also waiting in silence near the topmost ingo, plaids drawn round them, the children in their midst. Nothing seemed to be happening, but as he neared the house, two men emerged from the black entry of the mine, supporting a third one; a woman screamed, and hurried forward, and another fell to her knees wailing.

Michael emerged from another outbuilding as Gil dismounted. He cast an anxious glance up the hill, and said, ‘I’m right glad to see you, Maister Gil. All’s to do here!’

‘Where’s Alys?’ demanded Gil. ‘And where’s Fleming?’

‘Underground,’ said Michael. Horror-struck, Gil looked from him to the group at the ingo and the screaming woman. ‘No, no, it’s no that bad. At least, it is, but that’s no where she is.’ He drew a breath, and explained more clearly. ‘Fleming ran in there and fell, went five fathom down that shaft yonder.’ He pointed to the low building from which he had emerged. ‘He’s lying injured at its foot, and Mistress Weir went in by the mid ingo to see to him and took Mistress Mason along wi’ her.’ Gil stared at him, his stomach suddenly churning. ‘Jamesie was to get men and hurdles together and follow her to bear him out, but the two of them had barely gone underground when someone came out at the top ingo shouting that there was a roof-fall in there, and men trapped, and he dropped all to clear it. They’ll be a good while longer, I’d say, that’s only the first one come out now.’

‘And Alys is below ground with Mistress Weir,’ said Gil grimly, tethering his horse. ‘How came you to let her — ’ He bit that off. Michael had no authority over his wife. ‘Fleming fell down a shaft, you said? Which one?’

‘Yonder. Where Henry is.’ Michael followed him towards the wide low structure. ‘I tried to call down to them, but the echoes are too strong, you canny hear a word.’

‘I’ve tried and all,’ said Henry, without looking up from his task. ‘Steenie, can ye wedge that balk there — no, that one — under here?’

Steenie gazed uncertainly at the choice of timbers available, but Michael lifted the length indicated and fitted it into position. Henry looked up, nodded, and handed him another piece.

‘Brace that there,’ he said, pointing. ‘I’m fixing the winding-gear, Maister Gil. Aye, that’s right, it goes there. I’ve no notion how we’d get in by the tunnel, but if we can get this sorted we can send a man down on a stick.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Gil, over the churning of his stomach.

‘Better be me,’ said Michael, now almost standing on his head at one corner of the wooden structure. ‘I’m half your size.’

‘That’s my wife down there,’ said Gil. He leaned over the shaft and peered down it. ‘How long a walk in from the ingo would it be? There’s no light down there yet.’

‘There was,’ said Henry. ‘It went out a while ago. Jamesie Meikle said it would be half a mile. Near half an hour’s walking, I’d say, all in the dark like that.’

‘And where’s the dog?’ Gil asked. ‘Did he go with Alys?’

‘He was somewhere about,’ said Michael. He straightened up. ‘That’s it, Henry.’

‘Why has the light gone out?’ Gil fretted. ‘Have they left to come out again? Surely not. What would — if the man fell down this shaft, five fathom, he’s not fit to walk away and two women would hardly carry him. I don’t like this. Are we ready, Henry?’

‘Near it,’ said Henry, with maddening calm. He looked up at Gil. ‘I’m no going to go home and tell the mistress I dropped you down a winding-shaft, now am I, Maister Gil? She’d have my head up on the gate to fright the horses.’

‘Can we lower a light to them on a rope?’

‘Not a good idea,’ said Michael. ‘See, the light causes an updraught, and the draught makes the light to burn stronger, and either it’s all consumed afore it reaches the bottom, or it blows out, or it burns through the rope.’

Light, faintly yellow, flowered at the bottom of the shaft. There was movement, but it might have been the shadows flickering. Socrates barked somewhere, and it resonated with a sound like the Questing Beast. Gil stared downwards in alarm, and called Alys’s name. The word echoed and rebounded and returned, and with it like a bird’s cry her voice, his name.

‘Ready,’ said Henry. He dragged the rope’s end towards him, and inspected it carefully. ‘Aye, it’s lasting well enough. Just don’t swing about, Maister Gil.’ He lifted another piece of timber and proceeded to knot the rope competently about the groove in its centre. Once he was certain it would hold he handed the assembly to Gil. ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘Steenie, Maister Michael, we’ll all three man the beam.’

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ said Alys into the dark.

‘Aye,’ said Arbella. ‘He’s no breathing. Sancta Maria mater dei, ora pro eo. It was a long drop, and likely his back was broke wi’ landing on these timbers.’

‘Yes,’ said Alys, trying to keep the doubts she felt from her voice.

‘He’d no ha’ lasted much longer, even without the fall,’ continued Arbella. ‘You saw it too, lassie, didn’t you? Beatrice tellt me what ailed him. It’s better this way.’

‘What, dying underground, filthy and in pain?’

‘Better men than him has died underground!’ said Arbella sharply. ‘Coal comes out the earth, but it aye takes blood in exchange.’

‘How much blood?’ asked Alys softly.

‘More than you’d think. But men come and go, lassie. Mind that. Never grieve for one, for you’ll aye get another.’

Impossible, thought Alys. There is no other like Gil.

‘Like Joanna,’ she suggested aloud. ‘I think she might take the man Meikle, when she has done mourning Murray.’

‘She could do worse,’ admitted the other voice.

‘She has no notion to your grandson?’

‘No,’ said Arbella curtly. Then, after a moment, ‘They’re too close kin. Raffie is her nephew. She was married on his uncle, after all.’

‘I forgot that.’ Alys was groping about her. ‘Did one of the candles fall this way?’ She could feel more lengths of wood, smaller timbers than the ones Fleming had landed on, and some flat pieces of metal whose purpose was not clear, and lumps of stone of every size, but not the candle. The top of the shaft showed faintly less dark in the blackness, but no light came down it.

‘No, they went to my other side.’

The conversation at the top of the shaft continued, and in its silences the sounds of the mine grew. Water dripped, there was a distant tapping, stone creaked again. Alys began to be aware of just how much stone lay above her head.

‘What led your man to find Thomas Murray?’ asked Arbella suddenly.

‘He found the place in Lanark where the man went drinking,’ said Alys, ‘and they told him who his friend was. When he knew also that the friend had not been seen for as long as Murray, he went to his house to see what could be learned, and so found them.’

‘Aye.’ Another pause. ‘Mind, I never knew that about Thomas. If I’d ha’ known — ’

‘There was an owl in the trees by the cottage,’ said Alys, as if it was to the point.

‘It wasny within the place,’ said Arbella, as if that answered her.

‘Will you not search for the candles, madam?’ asked Alys. But my flint and tinder are in my purse, she realized.

‘Feart for the dark, are you, lassie?’

‘It doesn’t trouble you, does it — being in the dark, I mean?’

‘It’s never troubled me. You sit here quiet, you’ll hear the voice of the coal. And your man thinks Thomas was poisoned. What makes him so certain?’

‘We tested the dregs of the flask,’ said Alys cautiously. Was that a movement she could hear, along the tunnel they had climbed to reach this place?

‘Oh, aye? The flask. Had they both drunk from the one source, then?’

‘Both are dead,’ Alys said.

‘And they died how? It wasny right clear at the quest.’

I have heard Gil give evidence before, thought Alys, he would have made it very clear. Aloud she said, ‘It seems as if they felt no signs until they were abed, and then perhaps they were dizzy and became unconscious, and so died. There was no other sign to be found, as he told Mistress Lithgo two days since, no effect on their bellies.’

‘Aye,’ said the other voice in the darkness. ‘That would be right. And has your wisdom discerned yet what it was they took?’

‘Not yet.’ Well, she thought, I am not certain yet. She turned her head to listen; there was definitely movement, stones shifting under a footfall. What was the voice of the coal, anyway? Closer at hand Arbella’s leather sark creaked.

‘You’re slow, for one that claims to be herb-wise. And what will your man do next to find who is to blame?’

‘He will ask more questions.’

‘Aye, he’s good at that,’ said Arbella. It was clearly not a compliment. ‘Did my good-daughter talk to you yestreen?’

‘Mistress Lithgo?’ There was a thumping overhead, as if someone was hammering timbers, but there was also certainly movement close to her, on both sides. Arbella was stirring, the little sounds of leather and stone suggesting that she was indeed searching for the candle, and from down the sloping tunnel came the footfalls again. Something was approaching slowly through the dark. She stretched her ears, trying to hear the tiny noises. Not booted feet, surely? ‘Yes, I spoke to her. She said she poisoned Thomas Murray, because he was annoying her daughters and Joanna.’

‘She never did such a thing.’

‘No, I think not,’ agreed Alys.

‘You said that afore. Why d’you think not?’

‘I think she is protecting her daughters.’

‘You think one of my lassies poisoned Thomas?’

‘I think Mistress Lithgo fears it, or fears my husband might think it.’

Close beside her, something large moved, a waft of hot fishy breath reached her. She recognized it just as the cold wet touch came on her cheek.

Socrates.

Stifling laughter, she put an arm across his reassuring narrow back, and he licked her face as Arbella said, ‘But not you. Why not?’

Where are Jamesie and his men? she wondered. What is happening overhead? I do not know how long I can hold off this inquisition, and what if she becomes angry?

‘Why not?’ repeated Arbella. ‘What does your man think?’

‘We haven’t spoken of it since yesterday,’ she parried.

The scrape of flint and steel alerted her. Almost automatically she turned her head away and closed her eyes, and light flared beyond her eyelids. Beside her the dog tensed, and she felt him growl. Her free hand closed on one of the lengths of wood which lay beside her, and she opened her eyes, to find the space where she sat lit by one candle, in brilliant contrast to the total darkness. David Fleming lay on the heap of timbers staring blankly at the stone roof, and Arbella was on her feet, lunging towards her, knife in one hand and a lump of rock in the other.

Scrambling up and swinging the balk of wood she struck the knife, and it flew glittering into the tunnel and rattled down the slope. She hefted the stave, twisted it, swung it back, realized she had grasped it in the hold which Gil had shown her — how many days ago? — and struck Arbella’s wrist. The woman cried out, and recoiled. The dog bounded snarling round them, threatening to upset the candle again, and wonder of wonders Gil’s voice echoed down the shaft, booming and resounding but heart-warmingly familiar.

‘Gil!’ she shrieked. Wood creaked high up, and stones rattled down the shaft and fell on her leather hood. Her opponent hissed, and lunged again, and Socrates leapt to seize the old woman’s arm. Arbella struck at the soft of his nose with the stone, breaking his grip, and flung herself forward. Alys swung her wooden stave again, across, and twist the blade, and back, stepped backwards to avoid the reaching hands, and went down as her foot turned on a stone, writhing round to land on one knee. Using the stave to hold off her attacker, she scrambled to her feet, and the dog leapt past her, snarling hideously, struck Arbella at shoulder height with his forepaws, and brought her down.

More stones rattled down the shaft, and Gil shouted urgently to her, but she was panting too hard to answer him. The dog was standing over Arbella, his teeth at her throat. Blood dripped on her from his muzzle. Rope creaked and twanged, and suddenly Gil arrived beside her with a rush and a clatter of wood, blinking in the light, whinger in hand.

One breath, and he took in the situation.

‘You picked a strange place to practise,’ he said. ‘I told you to keep the point up.’

‘I was distracted,’ she said. ‘Gil, she killed Fleming, before he could tell me what he knew.’

‘He was next thing to dead already,’ said the woman on the ground. Socrates growled. ‘I gave him his quietus, no more. Call your dog off me, Maister Cunningham, if you would, and you’ll need to have a care to your wife, for I think her mind’s turned wi’ the dark. It does that to folks.’

‘Does it?’ said Gil politely.

‘And she poisoned Thomas Murray,’ said Alys.

‘It could be nobody else,’ he agreed.

‘You’ve no even worked out what slew him,’ said Arbella, though the dog growled again. ‘How can you tell who it was?’

‘I know very well what slew him. Where is the yew tree, madam?’ asked Alys. Gil looked down at her, and smiled in the candlelight.

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Your mind’s turned, lassie,’ said Arbella again. Socrates’ snarl grew louder. ‘Call this brute off me, maister, I’m an old woman and it’s no right to keep me here on the cold ground wi’ a savage beast standing ower me — ’

‘Was it right to kill Murray and an innocent bystander?’ Gil asked. He handed Alys his whinger, and lifted the stick which had fallen the last few feet of the shaft with him, measured the broken end of the rope which was tied to it, and began to unravel the knots about the stick. Arbella shrank away from the dog’s teeth, the hood of her leather sark falling back. Her linen undercap had come askew, and her white hair straggled loose, the blood from the dog’s nose darkening it in the candlelight.

‘None so innocent, was he?’ she retorted. ‘Filthy catamite!’

‘He had done you no harm, and he should have had his chance at repentance. But those were only the most recent, I think. What about the others?’

‘What others?’ said Arbella scornfully. ‘You’re raving, the pair of you.’

‘Your husband,’ said Gil. ‘Your son Adam, seven years after him — ’

‘Attie went under a roof-fall, ten fathom that way.’ She jerked her head sideways, and the dog growled deep in his chest.

‘Like the one today?’ said Gil. Alys glanced at him in the dim light, then hastily back at her target. ‘So you admit to poisoning your husband?’

‘I said no such thing.’

‘And there was your other son, seven years after Adam.’

‘You’re reading a strange lot into our ill fortune, sir.’ Arbella stirred, and the dog snarled in her face. ‘Free me of this monstrous brute, afore the roof falls here — ’

‘Is that a threat?’ Gil was still working on the knots. The light could be no help, thought Alys, glancing at him again. He must be working by touch alone. ‘Why did you kill Murray?’

‘Have I said I did?’

‘I know you did, and I’ve a good guess at why. I just want to know which reason you’ll give me.’

‘No, maister, you tell me. Why should anyone kill Thomas Murray?’

‘He asked too many questions, didn’t he?’ said Alys, still holding the sword ready. ‘He had got too close to the secret.’

‘Secret!’ scoffed Arbella from her prone position. ‘What secret?’

‘Give me the sword,’ said Gil, ‘and you tie her arms.’

Alys obeyed, the dog was persuaded with difficulty to stand back, and Arbella sat up, still scoffing. Alys bound her arms at elbow level, and said quietly, in the old woman’s ear, ‘Did he know who her father was?’

The spare body between her hands jerked convulsively at the words, but what Arbella said was, ‘Whose father? All the fathers in the place is dead.’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Alys. And whose doing is that, madam? she thought. ‘But had he guessed it?’

Arbella threw her a glance of acute dislike, but did not answer. Gil watched carefully, saying nothing. Alys sat back on her heels and went on.

‘As grieve, he had access to the accounts. There’s a lot to be learned from well-kept accounts, Mistress Weir, and yours are very well kept. I think Murray had come too close to — to a thing you would rather he didn’t spread about. So first of all you wedded him to Joanna, but that was hardly a success, was it?’ Arbella said nothing. ‘Then when he began to ask for more favours, he had to go. What had he asked for? Money? Control of Joanna’s portion?’ Still there was no answer. ‘And you have killed before, madam, haven’t you, many times, as my husband says? But that was different. That was for the coal.’

‘For the coal?’ Gil repeated.

‘Coal takes blood in exchange, she told me.’ Alys leaned closer to Arbella again. ‘If I swear,’ she said coaxingly, ‘to do my best to make sure she never learns, will you confess to poisoning Thomas Murray?’

There was a pause. Bruised, dishevelled, sticky with blood which was not hers, Arbella turned her head to stare at Alys.

‘Now why would I do that?’

‘Because you love her,’ said Alys. ‘You use your grandchildren, don’t you? Raffie to be a learned man, Bel to fetch your herbs home, Phemie to gather intelligence. But you don’t use her, you indulge her and pet her. You love her.’

There were voices, away down the tunnel. A light glimmered on the rock faces. Arbella turned her head to look down that way, and drew a deep breath and released it.

‘What will you swear by?’ she asked harshly.

‘Yew,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘That was what Bel told me,’ said Gil, tightening his clasp on Alys. He was beginning to feel warm again. ‘I misinterpreted what she wrote. Arbella poison yew.’

‘How effective a poison is it?’ asked Michael Douglas, across the hearth.

‘Very,’ said Alys. ‘It will kill a horse that eats some of the leaves.’

‘A brew of the bark or the needles would do it,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘Bitter, I expect, but the cordial tastes strongly enough, by what you say, no doubt it would be disguised.’

Gil nodded, and stretched his feet nearer the fire, beside the sleeping dog. Alys moved closer against his side, and smiled up at him.

When he and Alys had reached the gates of Belstane in the middle of the afternoon, chilled to the bone and caked in the mud of the coal-heugh, Lady Egidia had taken one look at them and ordered the fire lit in the washhouse. They had scandalized Alan Forrest and deeply amused his mistress and her waiting-woman by sharing the resulting hot tub, and were now clean and relaxed. Alys’s hair was still lying loose on her shoulders and shining in the candlelight, to Gil’s quiet pleasure. Even when Michael had arrived to report Arbella’s safe incarceration in Lanark jail, she had not covered it again, but only bound it back with a linen fillet, quite as if the young man was a member of their close family.

‘And was Fleming right about the witchcraft?’ asked Lady Egidia now.

‘Yes and no,’ said Alys. ‘There was — there was certainly evidence. He showed us several wax mommets, all stuck with thorns and pins, and Henry and I found — ugh!’ She shivered. Gil tightened his arm about her again, thinking of the way the little brocade bag had flared yellow smoke and made a great stink when they thrust it into the remains of the washhouse fire. ‘But I think the witchcraft was Arbella’s work, not any of the others. They were as horrified as the men to see it.’

‘You haven’t got her to confess?’

‘Not to that,’said Michael, ‘and no need for it, that I see.’

‘I agree,’ said Gil, ‘though the Sheriff may think otherwise. The charge of murder is enough.’

‘But will that go through?’

‘It should, though it’s only the one charge. I’d dearly like to see her tried for the other three or four, but they’re too long ago, the evidence is too circumstantial. She’ll drown for Murray at any rate, and well served.’

‘Aye, and why was she busy killing all the men round the coal-heugh?’ demanded Michael.

‘I’d like to know and all. It seems an odd way to behave,’ pronounced Lady Egidia.

‘I think you got an answer to that, sweetheart?’ Gil asked, looking at Alys.

‘Not clearly. I wonder if she is a little mad? She told me that the heugh demands blood, that the coal is paid for in blood.’

‘But colliers get killed anyway,’ said Michael. ‘It’s a dangerous trade.’

‘Like horse-breaking,’ agreed Lady Egidia.

‘I think she made sure of a death regularly,’ said Alys. ‘What is worse,’ she added, eyes round with distress, ‘is that it seemed to me as if the profits did improve after each one. She must have reckoned that it worked.’

Michael shook his head.

‘One thing to get killed in an accident, or in preventing a worse accident,’ he said, ‘the colliers all know that happens. It’s part of the trade, as I said. But to be slain deliberately, without warning or mercy, only for the profits — what a fate for a Christian soul!’

‘Her husband and her own sons,’ said Gil’s mother in distaste.

‘And David Fleming’s father,’ said Alys quietly.

‘A vicious woman. There is no end to human wickedness.’ Lady Egidia looked at the sprawled dog. ‘And you and Socrates took her captive between you, Alys?’

‘They did,’ agreed Gil, looking down at his wife with pride. ‘I arrived like a god from the skies thanks to Henry and Michael, and praise be to St Giles the rope only broke when I was at the foot of the shaft, and there I found the two of them standing over Arbella Weir, and David Fleming lying dead.’

‘But what possessed you to go underground alone with such a woman, my dear?’

Alys moved uneasily in Gil’s clasp, and he caught her sidelong look. They had already had that out as they rode across the hill, the two grooms at a tactful distance once they had assured themselves that neither had taken any hurt.

‘I couldn’t find a way to refuse,’ she said, as she had said then, ‘without making her suspicious. I’ve learned a lesson,’ she added. ‘I have never been so frightened in my life. And I was protected, of that I am certain.’ She felt under the folds her skirt, and drew something from her pocket. ‘Gil, I have not shown you this. I turned my heel on it when Arbella attacked me, and so I fell and she missed me. Look what it is.’

It was a fragment of black stone, dull and heavy. On one flat surface, clear in the light from the stand of candles beside them, in delicate, perfect detail, was a fish.

‘You can even see the rays in its tail,’ he said, marvelling. ‘Oh, I agree, Alys, this is no work of human hand. It must be God’s work indeed, set in the stone. But how do you know it was this stone that tripped you?’

‘It was in the right place,’ she said simply, ‘and you can see the mark of my shoe. See on the other side?’

He turned the thing over, and nodded at the scrape on the underside. He was not convinced it was the stone which had tripped her, but it did look like the stone which the man in his dream had given him.

‘You wanted one of these,’ he said.

‘And now I have one,’ she said, and rose to show it to Lady Egidia, who inspected the fish in wonder, but passed it to Michael and returned to the point at discussion.

‘But was Mistress Weir already suspicious? Is that why she demanded you accompany her?’

‘I think she feared Gil was close to her,’ Alys admitted. She returned to her place at his side, and he put his arm round her again, still grateful for the reassurance of her safe, solid presence within his clasp. ‘But she had been less clever than she thought. None of the men was surprised to see her bound, were they, Gil? And I think her granddaughters were more relieved than anything else. Bel in particular must have known a lot of what she was about.’

‘It was only Joanna who made an outcry,’ said Michael ruefully.

‘That was difficult.’ Gil pulled a face, recalling the scene, with Joanna in a hurriedly laced gown, her kerchief half unpinned, first trying to free Arbella and then, as she realized why the old woman was being held, shrinking back in horror.

‘If Arbella truly made a pact with the Devil, as witches are said to do,’ said Alys seriously, ‘I think that was when it came home to her what she has lost by it.’

‘But she has confessed to killing Murray,’ said Lady Egidia. Her grey cat came into the hall, and she made room on her knee.

‘She has confessed,’ agreed Michael, ‘and repeated it just now before witnesses, down in Lanark.’

‘Aye, and what did you use to bargain with her, sweetheart?’ Gil asked. ‘I’m not sure what we’ve agreed to keep secret. It was obvious it was the only way we would get a confession, and we’d no grounds for holding her without one, but I still don’t see what we were swearing to conceal.’

The cat strolled past its mistress and paused, one paw in the air, glaring at the somnolent dog. Alys watched the animals, biting her lip.

‘The real reason she killed Thomas Murray,’ she said at length. ‘That’s what I’ve been seeking out, talking to the folk who knew Will Brownlie and his wife. It wasn’t the question of control of the heugh, though that may have been the demand that tipped the balance. He had guessed something she didn’t want known.’

‘You said that,’ Gil said patiently. The cat stepped forward and sniffed delicately at Socrates’ injured nose. The dog opened an apprehensive eye but made no other move, and the cat put out a small pink tongue and began to wash the bruised and swollen tissue.

‘She isn’t Will Brownlie’s daughter, of course,’ said Lady Egidia. Alys nodded. Gil looked from one to the other of his womenfolk, assailed yet again by a feeling that they could communicate in a way that was closed to him.

‘Who isn’t?’ said Michael. ‘Do you mean Joanna? So whose daughter is she?’

‘Who else?’ said Alys seriously. ‘I think her father may have been David Fleming’s father. There is a William Fleming in the coal-heugh accounts about the time she was born, and Arbella was clearly absent for a time.’

‘And her mother is — ah!’ Gil stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘You mean she sacrificed her lover as well as — sweet St Giles! No wonder she doesn’t want Joanna to know.’ And how had his young, gently reared wife recognized that so quickly, he asked himself. From helle to Heven and sonne to see, nis non so wys.

‘No wonder,’ agreed Alys. ‘It never happens in the romances,’ she added, ‘only in the ballads. I suppose it shortens the tale quite painfully, to have hero and heroine realize too late they are brother and sister.’

‘Brother and — oh, no!’ exclaimed Michael in horror. ‘Oh, the poor souls. What wickedness! To let them meet, and fall in love, and never know — ’

‘And so Matt had to go,’ said Gil, working it out, ‘and Will Brownlie. In case the secret came out.’

‘The man Brownlie can’t have known Joanna’s parentage,’ Alys said. ‘If his wife had still been alive she would have prevented the marriage.’

‘But is it right to keep it secret?’ Michael objected. ‘Such a great sin should be confessed and penance assigned, for the sake of her soul — ’

‘Why?’ said Gil. Michael stopped, staring at him. ‘What benefit? We have no proof of Joanna’s parentage, Michael, only strong supposition. Apart from Arbella, everyone who might have known is dead.’

‘She saw to that, I think,’ said Alys.

‘If there is a sin it was committed in all innocence, it’s hardly mortal. Why add to the poor woman’s un-happiness?’

‘But — ’ the younger man began. ‘Someone should — someone should — ’

‘Talk to your confessor when you get back to Glasgow, if it troubles you,’ advised Lady Egidia. ‘Without naming names, perhaps. But I can assure you now, you and Tib are not blood kin in any degree that matters.’

There was a short pause, in which Michael slowly went first dark in the firelight, then quite pale. He turned to his godmother with his mouth wide open, and she put out an elegant, weather-roughened hand and pushed his chin up.

‘You look like a carp in a pond,’ she said. ‘There is the spiritual relationship to deal with yet, but if you’re still of one mind, the two of you, I’ll talk to your father about it next time he comes home. Likely, between the two households, we can afford a dispensation.’

‘Perhaps Gil can help,’ said Alys diffidently, ‘as head of the family.’

‘I’ve no doubt of it,’ said Gil, recognizing the code in this statement. Michael, apparently quite unable to speak, looked from one to another of them and a grin spread over his face.

‘And if you wait a few days,’ prompted Lady Egidia, ‘you’ll be able to give thanks to our new saint down in St Andrew’s in Carluke town. You realize none of this would have come to light if he hadny come up out of the peat-digging so that you all began asking questions.’

‘Possibly not,’ said Gil.

‘The procession is to be tomorrow,’ his mother went on, ‘with singers and garlands and I don’t know all what. I wonder what the man himself would have made of it, whoever he is? Would he have been grateful?’

‘I think he is,’ said Gil, thinking suddenly of his dream. ‘I think he is.’

The grey cat, satisfied that Socrates was clean enough, surveyed the fire and the dog’s sprawled shaggy limbs. Selecting a spot in the crook of one long foreleg, it curled up, its back against the new draught-stop, blinked once at its mistress, and tucked a paw over its ear.

Socrates licked his nose, sighed, and went back to sleep.