The Rough Collier

Chapter Three

‘What were they hiding, I wonder,’ said Gil.

‘I don’t know that they were hiding anything,’ said Alys. ‘They were simply reluctant to talk to a stranger. Mistress Weir is very certain there is no need to search for this man Murray.’

Gil considered this. He and Alys were in their chamber, halfway through changing their muddy riding-clothes for something fit to go down to supper in, and now he sat on the edge of the box bed and patted the counterpane beside him.

‘I want to find him, as I told her. We have a description,’ he said, putting his arm round his wife as she came to join him. ‘Of the man and the two fellows with him.’

Alys tilted her head back, gazing at the ceiling, and the soft light from the horn window edged the high narrow bridge of her nose.

‘A bare description,’ she observed. ‘Jock and Tam Paterson, who are brothers. One is taller than the other and both have all their fingers yet. I suppose they are young men.’

‘And we have the list of the houses where Murray was to call, and the name of the salt-boiler beyond Blackness.’

‘So someone must work his way down the list,’ prompted Alys, ‘asking if he was there, and when, and if all was well. Gil, if you do that, I am distracted.’ She put her hand over his, stilling his fingers. ‘Blackness is a port, is it not? I wonder if he has simply taken all the money and gone to the Low Countries or England or somewhere.’

‘You had a look at the accounts.’

‘Yes, but the old lady was watching me, so I could not look too close. I thought they appeared sound enough. The income I saw would support the size of household they have there, and pay the colliers in coin and kind. If the man was taking anything out before he left on this collecting-round he was doing it very circumspectly.’

‘And if he ran, why would he take the other two men with him? Sharing the money?’

‘I agree. And also Beatrice said they have kin at the coal-heugh, they might not wish to run off with him. We must speak to the kin.’ She turned her head to look up at him. ‘Will you go out to the houses on the list?’

‘I thought we might persuade Michael to do that. My mother ordered him back here for supper, he should have arrived by now.’

‘Gil, it was an invitation!’ she protested, giggling. ‘And very civil.’

‘I heard her issue it. He’ll not disobey.’

‘He may not be willing to help us,’ she warned him. ‘He is quite afflicted, I think, not to find your sister Tib here.’

‘My heart bleeds at that.’

‘So does mine, to tell truth,’ she said seriously. ‘They have been parted for months, with only a couple of meetings in public, he must wonder whether she still — ’

‘Hah!’ said Gil.

‘We have been fortunate,’ she pointed out. ‘You were never away for more than a few days before we were married, and since then — ’

‘I’m still greatly displeased with him,’ Gil said firmly. ‘Tib apologized to me, for what that was worth, but I don’t recall that Michael ever did, and their behaviour was ill judged and ill disciplined.’

‘They are much in love.’

‘So are we, Alys, and I can’t imagine enticing you to my bed like that. Much though I might have wished to,’ he added wryly, recalling how long the weeks between the contract and the wedding had seemed.

‘Nor I you,’ she admitted. ‘But we were differently placed. We were acknowledged from the start, Gil. We had no need to act in secret.’

He laughed, thinking of the snatched moments of what they had thought at the time was privacy, and tightened his clasp on her waist. ‘I suppose it’s my fault. I should have made sure my sister was better guarded. Well, too late now, and if Michael wants me to support his case with his father he’ll oblige me and be civil about it.’ He glanced at the window, where the sun was warming the greyish-yellow panes. ‘They’ll blow up for supper soon. We must dress.’

She tucked her hand into his as he rose.

‘I suppose,’ she said diffidently, ‘I wish all women to be as fortunate as I am. I married for love and to please my father, and I wish Tib could do the same.’

Gil drew her to her feet and into his arms, looking fondly down into her brown gaze.

‘It was the best day of my life when Pierre proposed the match to me,’ he said, ‘and when he told me you wished it too, I could hardly believe my fortune. It’s near a year since then,’ he discovered. ‘We should hold a feast for the anniversary.’

‘I never realized,’ said Lady Egidia, spooning green sauce over her boiled mutton, ‘that all the Crombie men were dead.’

She was seated at the head of the long board, Alys and Gil at her right hand, her godson at her left, with her steward, his wife Eppie and the rest of the household arrayed below them. At the far end among the grooms Gil could see Henry, by his gestures describing the discovery of the corpse in the peat-digging.

‘The youngest still lives,’ said Alys. ‘Mistress Weir’s grandson. Ralph, did his mother call him?’

‘That’s a by-name, I think,’ said Gil. ‘Adam, she said. He’d be named for his father, or his grandsire. Is there an Adam Crombie at the university, Michael?’

Michael paused with a second oozing wedge of cold pie halfway to his wooden trencher. Socrates, seated at Gil’s elbow, the crown of his rough grey head level with the miniature silver saint on the lid of the salt, watched the pastry crumbs falling on the tablecloth, and his nose twitched.

‘Down,’ said Gil sternly, and the dog lay down with an ostentatious sigh.

‘Aye, he’s at the college,’ Michael admitted. ‘Magistrand.’

‘That is a fourth year man,’ Alys prompted, ‘like you?’

‘Aye.’

Gil waited, but no further information emerged. A difficult situation, he reflected, to be in the same year as your tenant’s son.

‘It was sad how Mistress Weir’s husband died,’ said Alys, passing Gil the salt with her free hand. ‘Did she say it was in ’77, Gil?’

‘Beatrice said that, aye,’ Gil agreed.

‘I was still at court, then.’ Lady Egidia stared into the distance, her long-chinned face remote. ‘Aye, I think I recall, your father must have come over from Thinacre to gather the rents and brought the tale back. Where did it happen? Elsrickle? Douglas?’

‘They never said.’

‘Elsrickle, I think,’ said Alys confidently, ‘from the tone in which Mistress Weir read out the name. Where is that?’

‘It’s a fair way from the Pow Burn,’ observed Michael. ‘It’s in Walston parish, the far end of the county. That way.’ He nodded vaguely south-east.

‘It was sadder yet what happened to the younger son,’ Lady Egidia said. ‘If I mind right, he came home maybe two years back with a new young wife on his crupper, having met and married her incontinent at some place where he’d taken a load of coals. That alone would ha’ been the speak of the parish for weeks, but then he took sick and was dead within the quarter, for all Beattie could do.’

‘Oh!’ said Alys in distress. ‘Is that Joanna? Oh, poor soul!’

‘Beatrice mentioned something of the sort,’ said Gil.

‘I mind that too,’ said Michael surprisingly. ‘The old man mentioned it in his letters. He’d found her somewhere by Ashgill, the other side of the Clyde.’

‘That isn’t on the list, is it?’ Gil asked Alys.

She shook her head. ‘They said their round stayed on this side of the river. How far is Elsrickle? Is it near there?’

‘No. Ashgill’s to the west, just across the river in Cadzow parish, Elsrickle is fourteen or fifteen miles east of here. The High House beyond Elsrickle,’ said Gil, helping Alys to some of the cold pie, ‘which I mind is one of the places on the list, must be the furthest away from the coal-heugh. There are ten names altogether, and they told us Murray would stop a night and a day at each, to gather the fees from the surrounding customers, and then ride on to the next.’

‘Maybe two weeks’ travelling, then,’ said Michael, ‘allowing for delays.’

Gil nodded. ‘And he’s been gone more than five weeks.’

‘You think he’s run off?’ asked Michael.

Gil looked at him across the table. ‘That or something else. He might have stayed somewhere to draw up some extra business agreement, as Mistress Weir suggested,’ he counted off, tapping his fingers on the linen cloth, ‘he might have fallen ill or died suddenly, like the grandsire, though I would have thought word would have got back to the coal-heugh by now. He might have gone to the salt-pans at Blackness and been held up there, or he might have decided to take the money he had collected and run to England or the Low Countries. Or I suppose it might be another reason altogether. Whither trow this man ha’ the way take? He could be anywhere.’

‘Surely not England!’ said Lady Egidia.

‘But what about the two other men?’ Alys reminded him.

‘That’s one of the puzzling things,’ agreed Gil.

‘One?’ said his mother.

‘His wife is young and lovely,’ said Alys.

Gil pulled a face. ‘Too sweet a mouthful for me. But yes, you’d think he’d be drawn home to a bed with Joanna in it. And there’s the way all those women see him differently. The old woman seems disappointed with him, Joanna’s his wife and speaks accordingly, but I think Beatrice dislikes him and the daughter who spoke to us was venomous.’

‘Maybe the daughter thought he should ha’ wed her,’ suggested Michael sourly.

‘Aye, that might be it. And what about you?’ Gil raised his eyebrows at the younger man. ‘What did you get from Fleming when you rode him over to Cauldhope? Has he any true information against Mistress Lithgo?’

Michael shrugged. ‘None that I can make out,’ he admitted. ‘He croaked on about having evidence, and how she’s infamous as a witch, and how many folk resort to the coal-heugh to get healing from her, and he wouldny hear of this corp being any other than the man Murray. I asked him what was this evidence, what he’d seen or heard for himself that was proof of witchcraft, but he never answered me other than to say she’d quarrelled wi’ the man. He’s a fool, I wish my father had never set him in place.’

‘So how will you begin, dear?’ asked Lady Egidia, before Gil could speak. He looked at Alys, and she smiled back and squeezed his hand briefly under the table.

‘Someone has to go out and ask each household when they last saw Thomas Murray,’ he said. ‘And while they’re about it, ask each one if there has ever been anything. .’ He paused. ‘Unusual. Aye. Anything unusual about the man or his dealings.’

‘An easy enough task,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘Michael, you may as well do that since you’re here.’

‘Me?’ said Michael, his voice rising to a squeak. ‘I mean — why me? Why should — ?’

‘I’m sure you’d like to be a help,’ Lady Egidia informed him.

‘But I–I mean, I have to get back to the college. There’s my — I’ve to deal wi’ Davy Fleming. I canny go riding all over Lanarkshire,’ Michael protested, looking round him in faint panic. Gil caught his eye, aware of a degree of sympathy which surprised him.

‘It would speed your matter, in fact,’ he pointed out, ‘since the sooner we find the man the sooner we’ll convince that fool Fleming, and it would come better from you as your father’s son, riding round asking other folk’s stewards when they paid the bill to his coal-grieve, than from me. Then I can send to the salt-pan, and take the time to ask about here and all, see if there are any old tales of someone going missing, try to find another name for our corp. He must have a name, after all, poor devil.’

‘You’ll get more than you bargain for,’ his mother observed, ‘if you’re going to encourage all the old gossips and their tales. So that’s settled, Michael. Get a note of what questions Gil wants you to ask, and the list of the houses you must call at, before you go home the night, and you can make an early start in the morning.’ Michael nodded, and mumbled something ungracious which might have been assent, and she turned to Alys. ‘And what about you, my dear?’

‘I am bidden back to the coal-heugh,’ Alys admitted.

Lady Egidia’s gaze sharpened, but all she said was, ‘Then you’d best borrow Henry again.’

‘Double-distilled is better for burns,’ said Beatrice Lithgo, ‘and triple is better yet.’

Alys nodded. ‘I keep a small flask of the triple-distilled beside the kitchen salt,’ she agreed. She put the stoneware jar of lavender-water back in its place, and gazed round the crowded stillroom shelves. The sight appealed deeply to her; she would have liked to open and look into every one of the jars and bottles and leather sacks. ‘You are well stocked, mistress. And well informed. Socrates, heel!’ she added.

‘I learned a lot from Arbella,’ admitted Beatrice as the dog reluctantly left the barrel which had attracted him. ‘She was good in her day. You need someone handy wi’ the simples about a coal-heugh.’

‘My father is a stonemason,’ said Alys, ‘and I know stone-cutting and quarry-work, a little. I should like to learn about hewing coal, how it differs.’

‘You want Arbella for that,’ said Beatrice. ‘Or Joanna. She’s got it all at her finger-ends already. My man never liked to have much to do wi’ the pit, Our Lady succour him, and my father was a salt-boiler. I can tell you all about that, but no so much about coal.’

‘I have never seen a salt-pan. I should like to learn about that too,’ said Alys, with truth. ‘Your man was the elder son, mistress? When did he die?’

Beatrice’s face softened, and she gazed through a glass jar of preserved berries into some distant scene.

‘He was the elder son,’ she agreed. ‘His father’s heir, and no so like either Arbella or Auld Adam, either in looks or in temper, though he’d his father’s grey eyes. My Bel, poor lassie, will have a look of him when she loses her fat.’

‘You are saying he was less interested in the business?’ Alys prompted. ‘That must have been difficult.’

‘Oh, it was. You saw Arbella, when you rode in here the day, down in the tally-house inspecting the records and making up the note of what each man had sent up to the hill yesterday?’ Alys nodded. ‘Adam never cared for that. A great burden he found it, and even more he disliked directing the men at their work. He hated going into the pit. Music, he liked, and books, and talking learning with old Sir Arnold. He’d planned to sell the heugh, or at least his share in it, and move down to Linlithgow. He quarrelled wi’ Arbella over that. But then he died. In the pit, in a roof-fall, nine year since. It was his day-mind in March, just after Thomas rode off on the round,’ she added. Both women crossed themselves, and Beatrice turned resolutely to the shelf beside her. ‘Do you ever use this? I find it good for skin troubles.’

‘And Joanna’s man was the younger son,’ said Alys, taking the little jar and sniffing the contents. The dog looked up at her, his nose twitching. ‘Yes, indeed, I use this often.’ She sniffed again. ‘Is that rosemary in it as well? A good thought, I must try that. He died not long after they married, I think?’

‘He brought her home in May, two year ago,’ said Beatrice sadly, ‘and fell ill within the week, a wasting illness where his skin was dry and cracked on the hands and feet, his hair fell, the flesh melted off him. He couldny stomach a thing. Nothing helped. His breath smelled of garlic, and I couldny balance it out.’

‘I never heard of such an ailment!’ said Alys in dismay. ‘Could it have been poison?’

‘I thought that myself, but who would have poisoned him? We were all fond of Matt, he was a bonnie lad and a good maister, better than his brother, though I say it. No, I think it was some sickness, or maybe bad food or some wild plant got into the kailyard, for two of the colliers’ bairns had died of something similar no a week afore he brought Joanna home. Their mother did say they’d been drinking at one of the wells on the hillside, but there was a great smell of wild garlic about them.’

‘What a strange thing,’ said Alys.

‘Aye, strange it was. I tried all the remedies I could think of, and so did Arbella, but he was shriven and shrouded afore Lammas. Joanna, poor lass, truly mourned him, for all he’d courted her no more than a day or two and wed her out of hand.’

‘And then she took Murray.’

‘And then she took Murray,’ agreed Beatrice.

Alys watched her face carefully, but it gave nothing away. After a moment she said, ‘Does he beat her?’

The other woman’s gaze snapped to meet hers, and she smiled bitterly.

‘My, but you’re quick, lassie. No, not with his fists, but he uses his tongue. Sharp, sarcastic, making her out to be a fool. She’ll not complain, nor tell Arbella, but I’ve heard him.’

‘And no sign of that when he courted her, I suppose.’

‘Deed, no.’ Again the bitter smile. ‘Near a year she mourned Matthew, and the men were round her like wasps round a windfall, as bonnie as she is. I thought myself she favoured the lad Meikle, and it aye seemed to me Murray had eyes elsewhere, though that would never have — ’ She broke off. ‘But in the end she took Murray, and wed him a year since in July, wi’ Arbella’s blessing, and by Martinmas he was treating her like a scullery-lass.’

‘And was he coal-grieve already when they married?’

‘Oh, yes. It was Matthew raised him to grieve under him, then when he died Arbella put Murray in Matt’s place. He was a sinker afore that, and worked as a bearer the way some of them do when they areny cutting a shaft. Matt called him a natural pitman, said he had a great understanding of the coal and where it goes under the ground. As Matt himself did, I think.’

‘A bearer — that is the man who carries the coals away,’ Alys prompted. Beatrice nodded. ‘The hewer is a craftsman, and the bearer is his labourer, am I right? I should like to see more of this — without offending Mistress Weir,’ she added hastily, before Beatrice could speak. ‘Maybe someone could show me how it all happens.’

‘I’ll get Phemie to walk you up the hill,’ Beatrice offered.

‘I should like that, if she has the time,’ Alys said ingenuously. ‘Tell me, mistress, what do you think has come to Murray?’

Beatrice shrugged, and rearranged two yellow-glazed pipkins on the bench at her side.

‘I’ve no notion. The day they left he mounted up at the door and bade farewell, just as he aye does, never said aught to us about where he was going or who he would meet, nor about when to expect him back, but that’s nothing unusual. The two lads wi’ him were cheery enough, but Jamesie Meikle tells me both had tellt the folk they lodge wi’ that they’d no idea how long they’d be away. Whether Murray said aught to Joanna in private I don’t know, but I’d ha’ thought she’d ha’ brought it out by now if he did.’

Alys nodded in agreement. ‘If he had decided to run off,’ she said, ‘for whatever cause, where would he go, do you think? Where is he from originally?’

‘Fife, somewhere,’ said Beatrice, with a vagueness to which Alys gave no credence. ‘He’s a trick of calling folk neebor the way they do over that way. He’d likely cross the Forth if he’d no cause to come back here. That’s never him in the peat-digging.’

‘No, I agree.’

‘What’s come to him — the man from the digging? Will he get a decent burial?’

‘He will,’ Alys assured her. ‘The Belstane carpenter was to make a coffin for him today. My — my husband would like to give him a name before he’s buried, if we can. And maybe find who killed him.’

‘No easy task. I’d say he’s been there a while.’

‘And the man Fleming.’ Beatrice looked away at the words, and shivered. Yes, thought Alys, you were more afraid yesterday than you showed us. ‘Why would he have such a spite for you?’ she said aloud. ‘There was venom there.’

‘I’ve never a notion,’ said Beatrice firmly.

‘Oh, he’d consulted my mother,’ said Phemie. She peered into the furthest of the shaft-houses, a squat structure walled with hurdles and thatched with heather, merely intended to keep the worst of the weather off man and pony working it. The winding-gear was silent astride the dark maw of the shaft, the long beam with its dangling harness propped on the heading-bar. ‘I noticed him slinking into the stillroom by twilight, when we thought he’d gone home. It’s no so easy to get out here to the coaltown unseen,’ she added.

‘Maister Fleming had consulted your mother?’ Alys repeated, standing cautiously in the doorway with a tight grasp of Socrates’ collar. ‘When was that?’

Phemie walked forward and kicked the timber frame of the winding-gear. Her wooden sole made a loud thump which resonated in the hollow of the shaft, vanished downward and returned to them mixed with the tap and clatter of metal tools. Were there voices too? Alys wondered. I am being fanciful, she told herself firmly. In the shadows over her head something made a ruffling sound, like feathers. She drew the dog closer to her knee, and he put his head up to look at her.

‘A month ago, maybe,’ Phemie said. ‘Aye, that would be right, about Lady Day. I don’t know what it was about,’ she admitted, ‘I stayed within sight, and made sure he kent I was there, but I never got close enough to hear. He went away wi’ a wee jar of ointment, and a paper of pills, I could tell that by what was lying to be washed when I went into the stillroom.’

‘You assist your mother?’ Alys realized.

The girl nodded. ‘I’ve helped her mix simples since I could walk,’ she said, with some pride.

‘And Bel? Does she help too, or is she always at her spinning?’

Phemie looked curiously at Alys, but answered civilly enough. ‘Bel’s aye wi’ our grandam. Times she sits and spins while the old — old lady rests, times she helps her wi’ the accounts, times she fetches greenstuff for her off the hillside.’

‘Off the hillside?’ Alys repeated in surprise.

‘Aye. Water from this or that spring, herbs from some burnside for Arbella or my mother. The old woman’s none so spry on her feet now, but time was she could find any plant you could name in the parish, so my mother says, and she can still tell my sister where to seek them.’ She peered into the cavity beside her, then lifted a piece of dull black stone from the floor, and dropped it down the shaft. There was a long silence, then a distant rattle and thud, and an angry shout. Phemie grinned. ‘That’ll learn somebody no to stand under the shaft.’

‘How deep is it?’ So there were voices, thought Alys.

‘Fifteen fathom.’

‘Fifteen — that is seven-and-twenty ells,’ Alys calculated, and opened her eyes wide. ‘I had no idea you could go so deep.’

‘There’s deeper.’

‘But does the roof not fall down?’

‘No if the stoops are wide enough.’ Phemie stepped out of the hut, and Alys followed her with relief, away from the winding-gear and the black gaping maw of the shaft. ‘Look.’ She bent, lifted another flake of stone, and drew a square in the gritty mud underfoot. ‘That’s a pillar. We call it a stoop.’ She drew another square a little distance from the first. ‘That’s another. And another. And between the stoops are what we call the rooms. Each hewer works in a room by his lone, wi’ a bearer to carry the coal away as he howks it out. The deeper the coal gets, the bigger the stoops and the narrower the rooms has to be.’

‘To hold the roof up,’ Alys nodded. ‘I see. So there must be a point where it is not worth hewing any deeper.’

‘Aye,’ said Phemie, looking up with grudging admiration. ‘Because you canny take out enough coal to justify the work. That was what happened to my da. Arbella made him go into the pit, and someone had took out too much coal and the roof came down while he was viewing it.’ Alys made a small sympathetic sound, and Phemie shrugged. ‘I was seven, I can scarce mind him,’ she said dismissively, and went on, ‘And that was where Arbella and Thomas wonderful Murray couldny agree.’

She looked round her, and Alys did likewise. They were well above the house here, high enough to look down at the thatched roofs of stables and dwellings. Children played in the trampled space between the two rows, and a group of women were eyeing them covertly from the door of one cottage. Fifty yards away the winding-gear creaked loudly inside the next shaft-house, and an elderly man was pushing a small rumbling cart back and forward along a wooden roadway, adding huge shining black blocks to the upper coal-hill. Further uphill yet, a row of tethered ponies munched at the tussocky grass, ignoring all distractions.

‘Come up here,’ said Phemie. ‘You can see it all from here.’

They tramped across the rough grass away from the coal-hill. Alys let go of the dog’s collar and he loped round them, grinning and sniffing at the wind. Some of the ponies broke off their grazing to stare at him, then decided he was no great threat and returned to more important matters.

‘There are the three ingoes,’ Phemie pointed. ‘There’s the one we use now, and there’s the mid one, and down there’s the very first one that Arbella’s sire cut when he first took on the heugh from this Sir James’s grandsire. Or maybe from that one’s father,’ she added, ‘I forget, what wi’ most of them being called James.’

Alys nodded, identifying the three entries. They were smaller than she had expected, barely five feet high and braced with solid timbers, and from the furthest downhill of the three a channel of grey water spilled away down the slope towards the burn. Making a mental note not to let the dog drink from that stream, she sat on a relatively dry patch of grass and said, ‘So the men go in there to work. Do they walk all the way under the earth to the point where the shafts go down? How many men are there working at once?’

‘Aye, they walk. Or crawl.’ Phemie sat down beside her. ‘The roof gets lower further in. Sometimes we’ve more, times fewer, but for now we’ve four men at a time hewing and four or so bearing, so that’s eight at least in the mine, and two or three at the surface.’

‘In two shifts? Do they work by night as well?’

‘No the now, though we used to have two shifts.’ Phemie gave her another of those admiring looks. ‘You’ve a good understanding of this, mistress. You sure you’ve never seen a coal-heugh?’

‘My father is a mason. And my name is Alys.’

They exchanged shy smiles, and Alys went on hastily, counting on her fingers, ‘Eight — eleven men, and the smith and his helper, the saddler, the chandler, a man to see to the ponies, the two who are gone with your missing man. Which reminds me, Phemie, I should like to speak to their kin if I may. I think your mother said they had kin here?’

‘The Patersons? Aye, their sister’s married on one of the colliers. She works in our kitchen.’

Alys nodded, and looked down at her fingers. ‘There must be twenty men here. There are not so many households in that row of cottages.’

‘There’s ten houses. Five-and-twenty men all told, and a few laddies old enough to work. Then some of the women works in the house like Kate Paterson, and I think there’s one or two of them does some weaving and the like. That’s how our Bel learned her spinning, one of the colliers’ wives taught her.’

‘In those little houses,’ Alys marvelled. ‘Did the man Murray dwell there before he wedded Joanna?’

‘In the end house,’ said Phemie indifferently. ‘It’s got two chambers. Likely he wishes he was still there, the way the old beldam gets after him.’

‘Are you saying your grandam disliked Murray? That was not the impression she gave us.’

‘I’ll wager it wasny,’ Phemie grinned. ‘Nor to him, at first. I’ve seen it afore. She’s aye sweetie-sweetie, as smooth as honey, wi’ guests and strangers, but she has a different voice for the household, I can tell you that. Except wi’ Joanna,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘and my brother.’

‘I have known people like that,’ Alys said.

‘Aye. Well, once Murray had wed Joanna, so he was living in the house, in the north wing, see yonder, wi’ the separate door?’ She pointed, and Alys nodded. ‘Arbella began to argue wi’ him, and he wouldny buckle under and do her bidding where the coal was concerned, and the shouting there was! And Joanna weeping, the silly creature, and my brother getting into it and all, when he was home — ’

‘Which side did he take?’ Alys asked.

‘The side that would cause most argument. Raffie thinks he should ha’ been given the charge of the business. He’s two year older than me, he’s eighteen now, he thinks he could run a coal-heugh, for all he’s been away at school and then at the college since he was ten.’

‘I have no brothers,’ said Alys thoughtfully.

‘They’re no worth it, I can tell you. Anyway, Arbella and Murray near came to blows the last time they argued. It seems the coal we’re working has about given out, there’s a throw showed up at the end of the eastmost road.’ She gestured along the hillside.

‘Whatever does that mean?’

‘Times the coal just stops,’ Phemie said impatiently. ‘The men cut along so far and then there’s a break in the rocks and beyond it there’s no coal. They call that a throw.’

‘Oh, yes! I have seen the same thing in the side of a quarry! But there you can see where the band of good stone has gone to, whether it has stepped up or down, and underground one must guess, I suppose.’

‘Aye, or abandon that working and start again elsewhere. Murray wants to do that. Arbella wouldny hear of it.’

‘I can see that she would be angry,’ agreed Alys. ‘Tell me, has the man any friends about the coal-heugh? Is there anyone he would talk to?’

‘What, him?’ said Phemie, startled. ‘I’ve no notion. I think maybe no, but if you ask Jamesie Meikle likely he could tell you. He’s a good man, wi’ an eye for what’s going on. Joanna should have taken him.’

‘I suppose he is working just now. Where do you think Murray has gone?’

‘I hope he’s run off. I hope we never see him again. Or if he’s stolen the takings, we can put him to the horn for that and then get him hanged for thieving.’ Phemie grinned, without humour. ‘I can picture it well, the Sheriff’s officer blowing the horn at Lanark Cross and reading him out a wanted man.’

‘Why do you dislike him so much, Phemie?’

‘He’s a toad,’ said Phemie roundly.

Alys studied her expression. ‘Was he courting you?’

The girl looked down, and then away. Her fair hair blew across her face, and she shook her head angrily, trying to dislodge it.

‘Was he?’ Alys persisted, recalling Michael’s comment at supper. ‘Or was it your sister he liked?’

‘What, Bel? She’s a bairn yet!’ objected Phemie. Alys waited. ‘Aye, if you have to ken. He was courting me last spring. Full of plans to wed me, he was, and build a house over yonder, across the burn from the workings.’ She tugged savagely at a tussock of grass by her side, and scattered the torn stems on the wind. Socrates bounded back to snatch at the nearest, white teeth snapping in his long narrow jaws. ‘Then he saw how Joanna was placed, and went after her hell-for-leather.’

‘How Joanna was placed?’

‘Oh, aye.’ Phemie turned to meet her eye. ‘She’s Matt’s widow, right? Arbella has said she’s to have Matt’s share. Even though he wed her out of hand wi’ no contract or agreement drawn up, even though he died afore he’d bairned her, when the old witch goes — ’ Alys saw the girl’s expression flicker as she heard her own words, but the angry voice plunged on. ‘When the old witch goes, Joanna gets half the business, and the other half goes to my mother and the three of us. No wonder the wonderful Thomas fancied Joanna to his bed.’

‘He ill-treats her,’ said Alys softly. ‘He holds her in contempt.’

‘Aye.’ Phemie tore at another handful of grass. ‘I tellt Arbella of it, the last time he went for Joanna. She wouldny believe me.’ She turned her head away, but her next words were just audible: ‘He would never ha’ treated me like that.’

‘Forgive me, mistress,’ said Joanna, dabbing at her eyes with the end of her kerchief. ‘When I heard you at the outside door the now I thought for one moment — That’s the door Thomas aye uses, rather than come through the house in his muddy boots.’

‘It must be very hard for you,’ said Alys with a rush of genuine sympathy, ‘worrying about your man when nobody else seems concerned.’

‘It’s that,’ agreed Joanna, and turned to the other door of the room. ‘Will you come ben, mistress, and be seated? A wee cup of cordial, maybe, if Phemie’s had you up the hill in this wind?’

‘That would be welcome,’ Alys admitted, following her into a neat inner chamber with a high curtained bed against one wall. ‘The view is interesting, from so high up, but I admit I prefer to be more sheltered.’

‘I found the same, when I moved up here.’ Joanna drew a new-fashioned spinning machine, a well-made item with turned legs and a narrow-rimmed wheel, into a corner away from the window and set a back-stool for Alys. ‘The wind never ceases.’

‘You are not from hereabouts, then?’ Alys sat down on the padded leather and shook her skirts round her.

‘I was raised on the other side of the Clyde. My father was William Brownlie, and held Auldton, by Ashgill. It paid a good rent. And it’s nowhere near so high up as this.’

‘My father is a mason,’ Alys countered. ‘He has charge of the Archbishop’s new build at the cathedral in Glasgow.’

‘And your man is some kind of a man of law,’ Joanna offered. She handed Alys a little glass of something brownish and sticky, and sat down herself. ‘Your good health, mistress. It’s made wi’ elderberries — well, mostly elderberries. The colour was no so good last year, but we put the good spirits to it.’

‘And yours.’ Alys raised her glass, and sipped cautiously. The cordial was bitter, despite a generous inclusion of honey, but the base was indeed strong spirits. She identified the elderberries, and several distinct herbs, and perhaps ginger.

‘Mistress Weir seems not to be concerned at all about Maister Thomas,’ she observed.

‘No,’ Joanna agreed, and looked away, turning her own glass in her fingers.

‘Has she said why? It is a long time to be overdue on such a journey.’ Joanna shook her head, and Alys went on, with some sympathy, ‘I think she governs her household firmly.’

‘She’s aye been kind to me,’ said Joanna. ‘Since ever poor Matt brought me across the threshold, two year since.’ She took another sip of cordial.

‘I heard about that — a sad tale. He came to your father’s house, did he? And you loved each other at sight? Tell me about it.’

That appeared to be the gist of it. Alys sat and watched while the girl opposite, brave in her dark red wool and snow-white linen kerchief, described the relentless refashioning of her life in the past two years. Joanna’s mother was dead (‘Mine too,’ said Alys) and her brothers, much older, married and settled; Matt Crombie had appeared at the gate one day, hoping to extend his round, and though he had taken no orders for coal he had given his heart to Joanna on sight. He had spent an evening closeted with her father, and the next day they had sent for the priest from Dalserf and she had packed up her clothes and the gold jewel her mother left her.

‘We rode up here, new-wed and happy, in such hopes,’ she said bleakly. ‘I mind how we halted before the house door,’ she gestured at the cobbled area under the window where they sat, ‘and Phemie and Bel went in all haste for their grandam, and Beattie came running round from the stillroom, only I never knew it was the stillroom then, you understand.’ Alys nodded. ‘And they fetched the maidservants, and when Matt lifted me over the threshold they all clapped their hands and cheered, just as Arbella came into the hall and caught sight of us, she was walking much better in those days, and the noise gave her such a turn that she dropped the tray she was carrying on to that stone floor and broke three of the good glasses.’ She sighed. ‘He took ill within the week, my poor laddie. And d’you ken, Arbella’s never so much as mentioned those glasses to me.’

‘Oh, that’s forbearing,’ agreed Alys, and took another sip from her glass.

‘And then when — when I wedded Thomas, she would have us dwell here in the house, instead of up in the row with the colliers. To tell truth I was glad of it at first,’ she admitted, ‘for bare walls and an earthen floor’s no what I was ever used to.’ Alys made noises of sympathy. ‘But she and Thomas make such an argy-bargy of the least wee thing, shouting and disagreeing over whether black’s white, times there’s no bearing it, Mistress Mason, if you’ll believe me.’

‘Does she dislike him, then?’

‘No, no, she doesny dislike him! Just, they don’t get on,’ Joanna said earnestly. Alys nodded encouragingly. ‘Thomas aye feels he should know more than she tells him, I think. She said to me when she would have me consent, he was a good bargain, and since Matt had respected him as a cunning pitman — ’ She bit her lip, and paused a moment. ‘No, she gave him a gift as they left that morn, so how could she dislike him? Bel brought it here to him as I was packing his scrip. A wee flask of silver,’ she held her hand out flat, fingers together, ‘the size of that, but flat, to fit inside your doublet for travelling, and a drop of something in it to drink Arbella’s health on her birthday, that’s three days after St Patrick, seeing he would be away then. We aye mark folks’ birthdays up here,’ she confided, ‘maybe something good to eat or a new garment for them or the like. It’s a friendly notion. So I put it right in his scrip, and no delay.’

Alys, whose father had always marked her birthday, smiled in agreement. Joanna looked down at her empty glass.

‘Will you take a drop more, mistress?’ She rose and fetched the yellow stoneware pipkin from the cupboard-top. ‘It’s warming stuff, this. Refreshes the heart.’

‘It does indeed,’ said Alys. ‘Perhaps a drop. Have you any thought of what might have delayed your man?’

Joanna topped up Alys’s glass, refilled her own, and sat down again, the little jar by her feet.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ she admitted, looking unseeing at the brown sticky liquid in her glass. ‘I canny think that it’s anything good, by now. He could ha’ taken ill, or met wi’ some accident, but we’d surely ha’ heard by now, would we no? Or he could ha’ heard of a new order someone wanted to give us, though I’m not so certain we could fill it just now. But that would never ha’ taken three weeks to deal wi’. I just — I just don’t know.’

‘Would he have any reason to leave here?’ Alys asked gently.

‘Oh, no. No that I can see.’ Joanna’s eyes focused on the glass of cordial, and she raised it. ‘It’s right kind of you to take such an interest,’ she said innocently. ‘Here’s to your good fortune, Mistress Mason.’

‘I never heard such a sad tale,’ said Alys, accepting this, ‘and every word of it true. What does your father think of your second marriage?’

Joanna looked away again, and crossed herself.

‘He died two months after Matt,’ she whispered. Alys, dismayed, moved her backstool beside Joanna’s, and sat down again, taking the other girl’s hand. ‘He came up here once a week all that summer, while my poor lad was dying, and then I saw he’d begun to sicken of the same thing himself, and then he took to his bed and died.’

‘Oh, my poor lass. That was hard for you.’ Alys patted the hand she held. ‘Did he make a peaceful end?’

‘Oh, aye, just as Matt did, wi’ Sir Simon to shrive him, that wedded Matt and me, and take down his will, and my brothers present, and all.’ Joanna crossed herself again. ‘Christ assoil him, he was concerned for me on his deathbed, that Arbella should have an eye to me. Mistress Weir, he said, over and over, Mistress Weir, care.’

‘And I’ve had a care to you ever since, my pet, have I no?’ said Arbella’s sweet voice. Alys looked round, and saw the older woman standing in the doorway which led into the rest of the house, steadying herself with one twisted hand against the doorpost, Bel’s round sullen face visible over her shoulder.

‘Madam,’ she said, and rose to curtsy. I must have been engrossed in Joanna’s story, she thought, not to have heard her come in.

‘Mistress Mason.’ Arbella returned the curtsy, and moved forward into the room. Alys gestured at the backstool she had just vacated, and Arbella smiled, her expressive blue eyes softening. ‘You are kind, my dear. And what brings you back to brighten our day?’ she asked, seating herself with Bel’s help.

To brighten an old woman’s day, thought Alys. That was Gil’s mother, yesterday evening. Distracted, she accepted a lower seat on the bench Bel drew forward, and gave the first answer that came to her.

‘I was curious about the coal-heugh, madam. Phemie has told me a great deal, and I’ve talked of herbs with Mistress Lithgo as well. I’ve spent a most interesting time.’

‘Have you now?’ The old woman was wearing a plainer gown today, of tawny worsted faded almost to the colour of the peaches Alys recalled in the garden in Paris, and a wired headdress of black linen over a white indoor cap; now her exquisite eyebrows rose nearly to the lowest fold where it dipped over her brow. ‘And are you herb-wise, too, my dear?’

‘Beattie was saying — ’ began Joanna, and was checked by Arbella’s uplifted hand. Alys waited a moment, then answered:

‘I have run my father’s house these six years. One learns to deal with kitchen-ills.’

‘Very true. But you’re no Scotswoman, by your speech, I thought that yesterday. Where are you from? From France, you say? Our Lady save us! And how did a Frenchwoman come to be wedded to Lady Cunningham’s son?’

The inquisition ranged wide, over the marriage settlement, the contract, the size of her father’s household, the nature of his business and Gil’s. It was customary, of course, to put a new bride to the question, and Alys had witnessed other girls being subjected to the process as well as having had five months of it herself in Glasgow, but she had never been asked such intrusive questions by a relative stranger before. Parrying with all the politeness she had been taught, she gave away as little as necessary, but it was almost a relief when Joanna said shyly:

‘Mother, I’m certain Mistress Mason would rather tell us what a bonnie man she’s wedded on than how he earns his bread.’

‘Aye, he’s a bonnie man,’ agreed Arbella, ‘and I’ll wager he can play the man’s part well enough when the candles are out, am I right, my dear?’

‘I’ve no complaints,’ said Alys, smiling. It was the reply she had found most useful in the circumstance.

‘I’ll believe that.’ Arbella chuckled knowingly, then paused to study Alys. ‘But he’s no finished his task yet, has he?’

‘Time enough, Mother, surely,’ said Joanna.

‘Not yet,’ said Alys, aware of her face burning.

‘No, I thought not. You’ve not the look.’ The expressive blue gaze flicked from her face to her waistline and back. ‘As you say, Joanna my pet, there’s time enough. I’ve said the same to you a time or two.’