The Rough Collier

Chapter Six

‘Dalserf?’ said Lady Cunningham. She waved a hand westward. ‘A mile or two that way, just across the Clyde, but why would you want to go there?’

‘Do you know it?’ Alys asked.

‘It’s on the road between here and Thinacre. It’s Hamilton land, always has been.’

‘Ah.’ Alys digested the fact of a faux pas. She knew that the lands Gil’s father had held, Plotcock and Thinacre, lost to the Cunninghams after the uprising of 1488, were now held by the Hamiltons. This sounded, to judge from her mother-in-law’s tone of voice, as if the two families had been at odds for longer than that. ‘I should like to find out more about Joanna Brownlie,’ she admitted. ‘Her father held Auldton, I think she called it, by Dalserf. He died not long after she was married.’

‘Brownlie.’ Her mother-in-law paused to consider this. ‘In Auldton. It’s a common enough surname in these parts. Who holds it now? No a Brownlie, I think, it’s another name.’

‘That’s likely, I think. Joanna has older brothers, but they were already settled elsewhere when she wedded Matt Crombie,’ Alys supplied. ‘Would any of your household know? Alan, perhaps?’

‘Oh, more than likely. I wonder if they’re kin to the Brownlies over by Thinacre? It’s the same parish, after all.’

Alan Forrest, when summoned, confirmed this idea.

‘Second cousins, they were, mistress, Will Brownlie in Auldton and Tammas at Broomelton just by our bit.’ He paused to consider. ‘Will wedded a Lockhart from this side the river, but she died when her lassie was young. They’d only the three bairns — two boys first, a Tammas again, and Hob, and then the lassie a good while later. A late-come, as they say.’

‘Where are Joanna’s brothers now?’ Alys asked.

‘Now that I couldny say, but likely my wife could,’ suggested Alan, ‘seeing as she’s gossips wi’ Jess Lockhart that dwells by St Andrew’s kirk in the town. Will I send out for her, mistress?’

‘Aye, do that, Alan,’ agreed Lady Cunningham, ‘and then tell Nan I want her, till I get my boots on. I must be off to the horses afore it gets any later.’

Alan’s wife Eppie, drifting across the outer yard with two children in tow and one in her arms, did not appear as a likely source of good information, but when she had settled the two little girls to play house in a corner of the hall, she sat down at Alys’s invitation with her son on her knee and paid more attention to the enquiry than her vague appearance portended.

‘Lockhart,’ she said. ‘Oh, aye, madam, I think Jess mentioned it when the lassie was wedded. What a tale that was! A speak for the whole countryside, it was.’ She pushed a stray lock of waving yellow hair back under her linen kerchief, and bounced the baby. ‘Let me see, what was it Jess said? Joanna Brownlie’s mother’s name was Marion, I think. Aye, Marion Lockhart, and she was a second cousin to Jess’s father and forbye …’ She paused, frowning, and the baby burbled something and tugged at the ends of her kerchief. ‘First cousin to her mother’s good-sister,’ she produced triumphantly. ‘No, baba, leave Mammy’s kerchief alone. Here, chew on a bonnie crust. Num-num-num!’ She produced a baked crust from the pocket of her apron and gave it to her son, who waved it at Alys, burbling again.

‘Would your friend know when this Marion died?’ Alys asked, smiling at the baby.

‘Ten year ago last autumn,’ said Eppie promptly. Her son leaned over and thrust the dried bread at Alys’s mouth. ‘I mind that, for I think Joanna Brownlie’s of an age wi’ me, and I worked it out that she was twelve when she lost her mammy, a sad time for a lassie. Forgive me, madam, he’ll no rest till you take a bite at that. Just pretend, mind.’

Alys obediently pretended to nibble the proffered crust, and the baby beamed at her, received it back and stuffed it into his own mouth.

‘He’s a bonnie fellow. What is his name?’ Alys asked. ‘How old is he?’

‘That’s John. After Alan’s father, you ken. He’ll be a year old in two weeks’ time. You’ve none of your own yet, madam?’

‘I was married only in November.’ Alys managed to ignore the swift glance at her waist. ‘John is a good name. My father has a foster-child who is now a year and a half, and I have care of him. He is also called John.’

‘He’s in Glasgow, is he? You’ll miss him.’

‘I do,’ Alys admitted, and realized it was true. ‘He is just beginning to talk. He says my name already, and his nurse’s, but he had some new words just last week before we came away.’

‘He’ll have more when you get back. Mind you, boys is often late talking,’ said Eppie sagely. She pushed another straggling lock back under her kerchief, and adjusted her clasp on her son. ‘Then they make up for it later.’

‘They do,’ agreed Alys, thinking of the way Gil and her father could talk when they were together. ‘It’s strange, here you are with three lovely bairns, and yet Joanna Brownlie is of an age with you and twice married, and has none.’

‘Aye, poor soul. Mind, her first man could never ha’ done her any good, the way he sickened as soon’s he brought her home, but this one that’s been murdered in the peat-cutting is a different matter, you’d think.’ Eppie glanced round the hall, checked that her daughters were engrossed, and lowered her voice. ‘He’s near as bad as that Fleming that’s sub-steward at Cauldhope. Free wi’ his hands, and full of bold talk. I’ll wager he’s one to insist on his rights.’

‘Mind you, I have heard otherwise about Fleming now.’

‘Oh, aye, now.’ A giggle, a sideways glance, an upward flick of the eyebrows. ‘His culter’s rusted away, all right. That’s three lassies they say he’s persuaded to his bed since St John’s Day last, and then found he couldny stand to do his part. What a judgement on him!’ Another gurgling laugh which made the baby chuckle in sympathy.

‘A judgement?’

‘Well, Agnes Paton in Cauldhope kitchens never had a penny piece for the bairn he gied her last year, that was born at Yule, and he did no better by any of the other lassies. Deserves him right, that’s what I say, and a pity it doesny happen to others.’

‘It’s no way to behave,’ agreed Alys, ‘and him a priest too. And Murray? Is he the same, then? Does he go after other women?’

‘I’ve never heard it,’ admitted Eppie with regret. ‘But you can aye tell, the way he talks, he’d like to. My man says it’s no him that was got out of the peat-digging,’ she recalled. ‘Maybe that’s where he’s vanished away to, he’s gone off to somebody else. Poor Mistress Brownlie.’

‘I wonder what she will do now. Does she have kin? Can she go to them?’

‘Oh, I think she’s well placed up at the coal-heugh, by what you hear,’ said Eppie. ‘She’s got two brothers, I think Jess tellt me at the time, but they’re a good piece older. One of them’s got bairns near her age. They’d maybe no want to take her in.’

‘Two brothers,’ Alys repeated. ‘Where are they, then? I’d have thought they would be here to help her in this trouble.’

‘Oh, not them.’ Eppie looked down at her son, who was lying against her breast chewing drowsily on his crust. ‘The way I heard it,’ she said happily, ‘they never had much time for her. I suppose they were no too pleased when she was born, they must ha’ thought all their father’s gear would be theirs and here was another to share it wi’, and they both got themselves wedded and settled elsewhere as soon as they might. And that, said Jess to me, just made it worse, for there was the lassie still at home to be made a pet of, and after her mother died she kept her father’s house and he bought her jewels and all sorts, and then made sure she’d a good tocher when she was wedded, and all that was so much less to divide amongst the three of them at his death.’

‘It’s a sad tale,’ said Alys, privately wondering if Eppie’s last statement was correct. Her own considerable dowry, she knew, had been by way of an advance against whatever she might inherit when — when — but then, there was no brother or sister to share it with. ‘No wonder Mistress Brownlie prefers to stay up at the coal-heugh. Where did you say her brothers were settled?’

‘Let me see now.’ Eppie adjusted the weight of the sleeping baby and considered, staring into the distance with vague blue eyes. ‘Is one of them in Draffan, maybe? I know who would tell you,’ she suggested, ‘and that’s Sir Simon over at St Mary’s in Dalserf. Or maybe Sir John here in the town.’

Sir John Heriot and his clerk were singing Sext in the chancel of St Andrew’s kirk. There were a few old women in the nave, murmuring over their beads in a soft organum to the chant which floated out under the double chancel arch. Alys sat down on the ledge at the wall and looked about, and the maidservant who had walked down with her, a young girl quite overcome by the responsibility of accompanying Maister Gil’s lady, retreated to the other side of the door and drew her own beads from their place in her girdle.

The stonework of the little building was good, though the carving at the head of the chancel pillar was simple; the windows were neatly constructed and carefully set, and the swallow’s-nest pulpit on the south wall was well done. The church was too old, she thought, for Gil’s father to have been the original donor, but whoever had built it had summoned experienced masons. The paintings on the plastered walls were clumsy, but the saints they depicted were clear enough: St James the pilgrim, St Roch, St Anne teaching the Virgin to read, a gruesome and comical Doom on the west wall. St Andrew presided as a small, brightly coloured statue on an altar beside the double chancel arch.

The Office was ended. The final Amen, drawn out on enough notes to stuff a cushion, faded into the rafters, and the sounds of tidying began with the heavy slither and flap of pages turning as the book was set up for Nones. Alys rose, shaking out her skirts, and watched the arches for the appearance of Sir John.

She had considered her appearance with care; her wired headdress and good wool gown set her aside from the country women, but she had deliberately chosen a plaid rather than a mantle to put round her shoulders. No point in alarming her quarry. She had also considered her story on the walk in from Belstane, quite relieved that the girl with her was too shy to chatter. With regret, she had discarded various constructions based on the romances she loved; it seemed improbable that anyone would believe her to be a long-lost scion of the Lockharts, or the daughter of a nobleman stolen by pirates. Besides, she thought, and laughed at herself, she had no convenient birthmark to support such a fiction.

Sir John emerged from the dim chancel, a big fair man with a broad face, and his clerk slipped past as the priest was pounced on by two of the old women with a complicated tale of wrongdoing by a neighbour. Alys waited, watching how he dealt with them, and at length he noticed her and drew her into the conversation.

‘You’re a stranger here, daughter?’ he said. His accent was not local, though Alys could not place it. She curtsied, and introduced herself, at which all three exclaimed, blessed themselves, blessed her, offered good wishes on her marriage. It was clear that Lady Cunningham was well regarded in the town.

‘And is it no Belstane where the man’s came up out the peat all uncorrupted?’ said the larger and stouter of the women. ‘Who is he, do they ken yet?’

Alys explained the situation, and they discussed it with interest, Sir John concerned, the two women offering various wild guesses about the identity of the corpse. This took a while, but eventually the second woman, a small withered person with claw-like hands and sharp eyes, said, ‘So you came in to hear the Office, mistress?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Alys agreed, ‘and to admire this kirk, which my good-mother told me was worth the walk. She was certainly right in that.’

This was well received. The best features of the building had to be pointed out and described as if she was unable to see them, and the donors identified. Lady Egidia had given the candlesticks to the Lady-altar.

‘And Sir James Douglas sees to St James’s altar,’ said the first woman, ‘and Lockhart at the Lee gave us that St Roch, o’ course.’

‘Naturally,’ said Sir John. ‘Indeed.’

‘Lockhart,’ said Alys, seizing the chance. ‘I wonder, could you tell me something. Is there a Marion Lockhart lives here in Carluke town?’

‘Marion?’ said the small woman. ‘No a Marion. There’s Mysie, and Eppie, and Jess.’ She counted on her fingers. ‘Aye, and Maggie and Nan.’

‘Eppie Lockhart’s youngest is a Marion,’ said the other woman, and sucked noisily on her remaining teeth.

‘No, but the lassie’s name’s no Lockhart, it’s Robertson,’ objected her companion.

‘There’s many Lockharts in the town,’ Sir John explained. ‘It’s a common name in this parish, madam. Indeed. I confess I canny place a Marion.’

‘This would be an older woman,’ said Alys. ‘She’d be near sixty, I think, if she still lives.’

‘Oh, Marion Lockhart!’ said the small woman. ‘Marion that was daughter to Robin Lockhart the sawyer, Mally No, she’s dead, ten year since. Afore you came here, that would be, Sir John. Was she kin of yours, lassie?’

‘No, no,’ Alys said. ‘But a friend of mine in Glasgow bade me, if she still lived, to say she was asking for her.’

‘Glasgow?’ said the stout woman suspiciously. ‘I mind Robin Lockhart’s Marion, but I never heard her mention a friend at Glasgow. Did she ever say such a thing to you, Isa?’

‘No, never, Mally,’ said Isa, shaking her head. ‘What friend was that?’

‘Hardly a friend, I think,’ said Alys, ‘merely that Mistress Lockhart did her a good turn once and she minds her kindly. She’ll be sorry to hear she has died. What came to her?’

The two heads turned, and a portentous glance passed.

‘I’ll away about my business,’ said Sir John hastily. Alys curtsied, but the old women hardly noticed him go.

‘Women’s trouble,’ said Mally, lowering her voice. Alys made the appropriate response, the indrawn breath and tilted head, and Mally nodded in satisfaction, sucked her teeth, and folded brawny arms under her large bosom. ‘See,’ she pronounced, ‘she’d the two boys no long after she was wedded.’

‘That was to Will Brownlie across the river,’ supplied Isa, clasping her claw hands at her narrow waist.

Her friend sucked her teeth again. ‘Aye, and she was never the same after the second one. Terrible, it was, so her mammy tellt me.’

‘A big bairn,’ said Isa, nodding in turn, ‘a gey big bairn. Three days crying wi’ him, she was, and then he tore her.’

Alys flinched, and Mally put a hand on her arm.

‘They’re no all like that,’ she said encouragingly, ‘she’d an easy time of it wi’ her first, likely you’ll no have trouble. You’re no. .?’

‘No,’ said Alys.

‘Plenty time, lassie,’ said Isa. ‘Enjoy yer man while you can, it’s never the same after the bairns come.’

‘But was that how Mistress Lockhart died?’ asked Alys, thinking that this comment was more acceptable than others she had had.

‘No, no. She lived another twenty year,’ said Mally

‘Five-and-twenty,’ corrected Isa, ‘for she was buried the year after my George. But she was never no more use to her man, she tellt me that herself once. Troubled her the rest of her life, that did. She would aye see blood, ye ken,’ she confided in a whisper.

‘She’d the lassie, mind you,’ said Mally. ‘When her boys was near grown. Fifteen, the oldest one was, and Marion turned up here on a visit at her mammy’s yett wi’ a lassie bairn in her plaid.’

‘Aye,’ said Isa drily. Alys looked quickly at her, and met the sharp dark eyes under the folded linen headdress.

‘Had she an easier time with the lassie?’ she asked.

‘I never heard,’ said Mally regretfully. ‘Her mammy said it wasny long, the bairn slipped out like a calf, but I never got to ask her myself.’

‘I did,’ said Isa, and looked surprised at her own words. ‘She said the same to me. You mind, her mammy was bad at the time wi’ that spring cough that was in the town, and her at the Pow Burn, that was a great friend of Marion’s mammy, was away and no help to be got there, so I went in to see to the house for her and get her man’s supper, and there was Marion sitting wi’ the bairn, and a lassie from Dalserf wi’ her to nurse it. Easy time or no, she’d nothing to nurse it wi’ herself. No milk. The bairn must ha’ been four week old by then, old enough to ha’ lost the look of its daddy that they all have when they’re newborn. No great look of Marion it had neither,’ she added. ‘Strange, how it happens.’

Mally shook her head, tut-tutting in sympathy.

‘What help could the Pow Burn folk have been?’ Alys asked. ‘Surely you’d never burn coal with a cough in the house, the smoke makes a bad chest worse.’

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Mally ‘Coals is the worst thing there is for a bad chest. You can’t beat a good mustard plaister, I always say.’

‘No, it was that Mistress Weir,’ said Isa. Both women crossed themselves. ‘She was awful handy wi’ a pill or a bottle at the time, if you went up the Pow Burn to ask, but she was away, you ken.’

‘Now is that no a strange thing,’ said Mally, sucking her teeth.

‘What?’ demanded Isa.

‘The bairn we’re speaking of — Marion Lockhart’s lassie — that’s Mistress Weir’s good-daughter now. No the one that does the healing, the other one, Mistress Brownlie.’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Isa. ‘I ken that. For her new man, him that’s missing, was asking me the exact same questions, just after Candlemas.’

‘Do you tell me!’ exclaimed Alys, in genuine astonishment. ‘Now if I’d realized, I could have asked about her mother when I saw her yesterday, and saved myself the walk into Carluke. But then I’d never have met either of you ladies,’ she said gracefully, and they nodded and smiled, much gratified.

‘Nor you’d no ha’ seen St Andrew’s kirk,’ added Mally, ‘and that’s worth a longer walk than here to Belstane.’

‘Was there aught else you wanted to learn, lassie?’ asked Isa.

Alys met her sharp gaze again.

‘Mistress Lockhart’s sons might recall my friend,’ she said. ‘Where did you say they are now? I think neither of them has their father’s land?’

‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed Mally, ‘for they were both wedded and away to their own place long afore Will Brownlie died. Barely saw his lassie wedded, he did, but at least he lasted so long, thanks be to Our Lady.’

‘I’d ha’ looked for him to last a while longer,’ said Isa. ‘Fine upstanding man he was. But there you are, you never can tell when you’ll meet your end, and at least he made a good death, so I heard.’ She crossed herself, and her friend nodded and did likewise. ‘Where did Marion’s boys go, Mally? There’s one of them in Draffan, is there no?’

‘Draffan,’ agreed Mally. ‘That would be Tammas, I’d say. And Hob’s in …’ She paused, and sucked her teeth again. ‘Is it Canderside? Both of them went into Lesmahagow,’ she explained to Alys, who understood her to mean the next parish.

‘Too far for me,’ she said.

‘Depends on why you’re wanting to go there,’ said Isa acutely.

Lady Cunningham was in the stable-yard, seated on the mounting-block watching a young horse being led round, oblivious to the light drizzle which had started. She was booted and spurred, clad in a muddy riding-dress and crowned by a battered felt hat shaped like a sugar-loaf, and drew the eye as she always did.

‘Trot him out, Dod,’ she said, and turned her head as Alys came in at the gate. The young maidservant bobbed nervously to her mistress, then hurried by and into the house. ‘There you are, my dear. You’ve missed Gil.’ She turned back to scrutinize the horse’s action. ‘Aye, he’s still going a wee thing short on that leg, isn’t he? Another hot soak, Henry, I think. Now let me see the piebald.’

‘I have missed Gil?’ said Alys. ‘I thought he had gone out with the colliers, before I left. And he has not taken Socrates,’ she added, as the wolfhound commanded her attention from the end of the cart-shed with one deep imperious remark. ‘Why is he chained up?’

‘The brute’s to get washed,’ said Henry resignedly from his post at Lady Cunningham’s elbow. ‘A bath.’

‘A bath? Has he rolled in something?’

‘Gil came back,’ said his mother, ‘lifted a clean shirt and a bannock, and left again half an hour since for Linlithgow or somewhere of the sort, saying he might not be back tonight. He’s not alone, he took that fool Patey with him.’

‘Oh,’ said Alys blankly, over the sudden lurching feeling in her stomach.

‘I have a kiss for you,’ continued Lady Cunningham. ‘I will say, it’s a long time since he kissed me like that. He’ll be back the morn’s night, I should think. Then maybe Patey can get on with his work here.’

He would not wish to delay by waiting for me, thought Alys. How far is it to Linlithgow? Can he be there in daylight?

‘And the dog?’ she said, to distract herself. Socrates sat down as she spoke and scratched vigorously at his ribs with a narrow grey hind foot.

‘That’s why the bath,’ said Henry. ‘Maister Gil said he’s been after a strange bitch up at Forth, and likely picked up all sorts off her. I’d as soon wait till he gets back, but I suppose it had best be done the day.’

Alys looked at the dog again. He grinned at her and thumped his tail; there was a self-satisfied air about him which it occurred to her she had seen on his master at times.

‘I can help,’ she said. ‘He will mind me. What do you put in the wash for fleas or lice?’

The piebald clopped out across the yard as Henry began to enumerate the herbs he preferred for the purpose. Lady Cunningham rose and went forward to feel the horse’s legs. The animal tossed his head, taking the groom by surprise, and she seized the halter-rope with calming words as hoofbeats sounded outside the high gate, one horse, approaching fast. Henry moved quickly to the gate, peered through the judas-hole, and visibly relaxed.

‘It’s young Douglas,’ he said, swinging one heavy leaf wide as Michael slowed to a halt and dismounted before the gateway. ‘We never looked for you till this evening, Maister Michael. Was it himself you wanted, or her ladyship?’

‘Is Maister Cunningham here?’ demanded Michael, leading his horse into the yard. Finding first Alys and then his godmother present, he stopped, stammering a greeting, and bowed to both.

‘My son has gone to Linlithgow,’ said Lady Cunningham, still by the piebald’s side.

‘Linlithgow?’ repeated Michael incredulously. ‘Why? I–I mean, I thought we were looking for the man Murray.’

‘I think this is about Murray,’ said Alys. ‘The sister of the two sinkers had heard they had gone there. I suppose he got confirmation of that at Forth, and he has followed them.’

‘Aye, but,’ said Michael, replacing his hat, ‘Murray never got as far as Forth. That’s what I’ve learned this morning. The trail’s crossed — our man never got beyond Lanark.’

‘I thought you said he had collected the money further on,’ Alys said.

‘Aye, at Ravenstruther,’ agreed Michael. He accepted a second beaker of ale from Alan Forrest, and sat down opposite Alys by the great fireplace in the hall. ‘Alan, that’s gey welcome. I’m as dry as a tinker. That’s what I thought too, Mistress Mason. Turns out I had the wrong questions. I asked, had the money for the coal been uplifted, and their steward answered me, Aye it had. I asked him when, and he checked the accounts and told me what days. I never asked him who had been there, or named any names to him yesterday.’

‘Ah,’ said Alys. Alan set the tray of ale and bannocks on a stool at Michael’s elbow, and withdrew to the side of the hall, listening with interest.

‘So today I rode on to Carlindean, that’s by Carnwath, you ken …’ Alys nodded encouragement, though neither name meant anything to her. ‘Jackie Somerville that stays there’s a friend of mine. He was from home, but I’d a word wi’ his mother, and she called their steward for me, and he turned up the accounts. The colliers lay there just the one night, but even so, there was only the one mess of food written down for their dole. When I said I wondered at that, that they must have eaten frugally for three working men, the steward said, Oh, there was but the two of them.’

‘Two?’ repeated Alys. ‘So we have lost only one? Is it Murray?’

‘Aye. There was just these brothers, Paterson, or whatever their name is. Murray was never there.’

‘So where have you lost the trail, Michael?’ asked Lady Cunningham. She swept in from the stair, restored to her indoor garments, and her grey cat sprang down from a shelf of the plate-cupboard and paraded across the floor to meet her.

‘Murray was at Jerviswood, before they went to Lanark, but not at Carlindean after it,’ supplied Michael. ‘And I went round by Ravenstruther the now and asked them, and he wasny there when the fee was uplifted, and he’s not been there since, either. That’s close by Lanark town, mistress,’ he elaborated, and Alys nodded.

‘Somewhere in Lanark, then.’ Lady Cunningham lifted the cat, which turned its smug yellow gaze on Alys. ‘Do you suppose he’s still there?’

‘Well, if he’s elsewhere, I’ve no notion where it might be.’ Michael sat down again as his godmother settled herself in her great chair. ‘Your good health, madam.’

‘Gil told me Murray goes drinking in Lanark. How big a place is it?’ asked Alys.

‘Big enough,’ said Michael gloomily. ‘It’s a burgh, maybe the size of the lower town at Glasgow. It’s got no cathedral or college to draw folk, but there’s good merchants and tradesmen in the place. I suppose there are five or six streets of houses, and all the vennels and back-lands.’

‘It should be simple enough, I suppose. You must search the taverns,’ said Lady Cunningham, ‘until you find some trace of the man. Someone must have seen him. Do we know who he sells coal to? Whatever householders he called on might have information for you.’

‘Aye,’ said Michael.

‘I could come with you,’ suggested Alys. ‘I have never seen Lanark.’

‘No, I don’t think — ’ began Michael.

‘An excellent idea,’ pronounced Lady Cunningham, making room for the cat inside her loose furred gown. ‘You’ll not be in any taverns yourself, of course,’ she continued. ‘I can trust you to take care of Mistress Mason, I know, Michael.’

‘Oh,’ said Michael, and then, as this penetrated, ‘You can? I mean, aye, you can!’

Alys, with a vivid remembrance of the occasion when she and Gil’s sister Kate had visited a tavern off Glasgow’s Gallowgait, simply nodded.

‘But why has Gil gone to Linlithgow?’ she wondered. ‘He did not say exactly what he had learned this morning?’

‘At Forth? No, he said little but what he thought of the dog’s exploits, and when he would be back.’ Lady Cunningham looked from Michael to Alys. ‘I suppose, if those two men got as far as Carlindean as you say, Michael, they might have completed the round, which I think would take them to Forth, do I remember right?’ Alys nodded. ‘So he might have found word of them there after all.’

‘And word that took him to Linlithgow. I wonder what it was.’

‘If they were to take one or two of the men, mistress,’ suggested Alan from the wall where he was still listening avidly, ‘they would make a faster job of it. Is there much doing in the stable-yard the day?’

‘Nothing that won’t wait, apart from the young horse’s leg,’ admitted his mistress. ‘Aye, that would make sense.’ She cast a glance at the windows. ‘You’d best go, then. The day’s wearing on. And you can get on wi’ your work, Alan, rather than stand about with your ears flapping like a gander’s wings.’

The rain was getting heavier.

‘Good for the oats, I suppose,’ said Michael, as they rode past the fields of Carluke town, one of the Belstane grooms ahead of them and one bringing up the rear. The fine turned earth of the strips showed dark between the narrow lines of rushes in the intervening ditches, and the boy who was supposed to be scaring the crows was sheltering under a white-blossomed apple tree. ‘So long as it doesny get too heavy.’

‘Is that a coney running on the plough-land?’ said Alys. ‘Surely it’s too big. Oh, and there is another. What are they doing? Do look, they are dancing!’

‘That’s hares,’ said Michael, peering under his hand at the brown creatures skipping across the near field. ‘You can tell by the black tips to the ears.’ He smiled, watching the animals’ antics. ‘They do that all the spring. Some folk says they’re gone mad, but it’s just how they choose their mates, so our huntsman tellt me.’

‘Good eating, a bawd is, if they wereny such unchancy beasts,’ commented the man riding behind them, a fair-haired leather-visaged fellow in his thirties called Steenie, a name Alys knew to be the Scots pet-name for Stephen. ‘You get them up on the grazing land and all.’

‘I saw them when we went to the peat-cutting,’ Alys recalled. ‘When Sir David was so sure they had dug up Thomas Murray. Do you think we will find the man today?’

‘I’m past caring,’ admitted Michael, ‘save for the need to silence Davy Fleming. He was on at me again this morning before I’d broke my fast, about all the misdeeds witches gets up to, according to his wee book. If I ever learn who lent it to him, I’ll cram it down his throat.’

‘I never thought to hear Gil abuse a book the way he did that one,’ said Alys.

‘I’ve not looked in it myself, but the things Fleming was telling me made my gorge rise.’ Michael rode in silence for a short space. Alys was looking about her despite the rain, admiring the blossom on the fruit trees for which Gil had told her the neighbourhood was famous, when he suddenly said, ‘Mistress Mason!’

She opened her mouth to tell him to use her first name, but he hurried on.

‘Have you — did you see my Tib? Before she was sent to Haddington, I mean?’

She was aware of a great rush of sympathy. No need of birthmarks or stolen children, here was a tale out of the romances, riding beside her under the wet blossom.

‘No, but I assure you she went to Haddington voluntarily — is that the right word?’ He stared at her. ‘I had a letter two weeks since. She said she was bored with her imprisonment, and weary for you, and her sister — Sister Dorothea — had invited her to visit.’

‘Weary for me,’ he repeated, his sharp features softening. Were those tears? ‘And I for her, mistress. Was — were they ill-treating her? My godmother, and the rest?’

‘Only by keeping her close, I think, and watching her.’

‘She’d take that ill out,’ he said, with a loving smile.

‘She did.’ He had turned in the saddle to look at her more closely, one hand on the cantle, and she met his eye. ‘I think, by what she said just now, my good-mother is less angry than she was. What of your father?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve heard little enough from him since Yule, till I had this letter about Fleming. I suppose, if he’s trusting me to see to this business, he’s calmed down a bit and all. Would you say there’s any hope for us?’

‘I do not know,’ she admitted. ‘I will do what I can for you.’

He dropped his gaze, going scarlet, and muttered something genuinely grateful. Alys was about to answer him when the groom behind them exclaimed in warning, and another big brown hare zigzagged across the path, immediately under the horses’ muzzles.

The next few moments seemed to pass very slowly. Michael, riding slack-reined, was taken by surprise as his beast shied, half-reared, plunged backwards into Alys’s dapple grey. The grey, also startled, kicked out, lurched aside and pecked on something. Alys, with a better grip on her reins, was just gaining control when the dappled shoulders in front of her vanished and she found herself, with a slow and dreadful inevitability, soaring over her horse’s head.

The ground hit her with a thump. For a moment things went far away. Then she heard Michael’s voice, exclaiming in alarm.

‘Alys — Mistress Mason! Are you hurt? Steenie, get that horse. Willie, come back, man, give me a hand here!’ His face appeared close to hers, staring anxiously. ‘Are you hurt, mistress?’ he asked again. ‘Can you move? Are you — ?’

‘I fell off,’ she said foolishly. The world righted itself, and she realized she was lying sprawled on the wet grass, petticoats everywhere, hat askew, one hand trapped under her.

‘Can you move?’ repeated Michael. ‘Does aught pain you? Say you’re no hurt, mistress!’

‘It was a great jill-bawd,’ declared Steenie, appearing beyond his shoulder. ‘Sprung out the dyke under their feet, it did, no wonder they was startled.’

She contrived to sit up, and straightened her skirts.

‘I am unhurt, I think,’ she said cautiously, experimenting with hands and arms. ‘Is my horse — ?’

‘He’s right enough,’ Steenie assured her. ‘I’ve got him here, mistress. He’s took no harm, the great gowk.’ He patted the animal’s neck.

‘Our Lady be thanked!’ said Alys. ‘What my good-mother would say if I harmed one of her beasts I do not know.’

‘No, and you don’t want to hear it neither,’ said Steenie forthrightly ‘But yourself, mistress? Can she rise, Maister Michael?’

‘Should you sit here on the bank a wee while?’ Michael asked anxiously. ‘Can you rise? Do you want to rest somewhere?’ He looked about him. ‘Cauld-hope’s nearer than Belstane from here, you could come back to our place and sit for a bit.’

‘There’s a house yonder,’ said the other groom. ‘Stinking Dod’s, no half a mile away. Him that’s married on Wat Paton’s sister. They might give her a seat there, and maybe a drink of well-water or the like. Mind you, it’s maybe no suitable.’

She rose, with Michael’s assistance, and stood for a moment, feeling quite strange and unsteady. Shock, she thought. What did Mère Isabelle order for shock? She tested her limbs again. Hip and shoulder hurt where they had made contact with the ground, and would be bruised black by the morning, but everything seemed to be working.

‘I am embarrassed,’ she confessed. ‘I have not fallen off since I was a child. Are you certain the horse is safe, Steenie?’

‘Never mind the horse,’ said Michael, ‘what madam my godmother would say if I’d let you come to harm I never want to hear. And it was my fault,’ he added, though she had not tried to argue. ‘If I’d been looking where we were going I’d ha’ seen that coming.’

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘the creature startled the horses. Perhaps I would like to sit down for a little while. Could we see if there is anyone at home in that house?’

The dapple-grey horse seemed slightly puzzled by her sudden descent and all the fuss, but when Steenie put her expertly back in the saddle it moved forward willingly with an even stride. Michael’s relief was almost comical, despite his claim to be more concerned for Alys than the horse. One of the men rode ahead, and by the time they reached the house had roused out a thin flustered woman in homespun, with a baby on her hip. An older child peeped round the corner of the house at them and vanished.

‘Oh, the Bad Man fly away wi’ all bawds, the evil things. A wee seat?’ the woman was saying. ‘For certain, aye, and no trouble. Will I bring a plaid out to soften the bench a bit maybe, and keep the wet off your bonnie gown, mistress? Or would ye step inside? Only it’s a bit smoky, and there’s the grandam and all — ’

A shrill, unintelligible voice from within the dark little dwelling confirmed this.

‘And were ye here for the clerk?’ she continued, as Alys dismounted stiffly. ‘I was going to send one of the men to Cauldhope about it as soon as they all come back from Lanark at the market, only I’m here my lone — ’ Another screech from inside the house. ‘- wi’ the grandam and the bairns, and I canny — aye, that’s right, mem, you sit there and get your breath. Would ye take a drop of ale, maybe?’ There was another shrill comment. ‘Or a wee tait spirits? I’ve a drop o’ cordial put by where Dod canny find it. Just let me see the wee one safe, and I’ll — ’

‘No, no, ale or water would be good,’ Alys assured her, seating herself cautiously on the bench by the door. She would certainly have bruises by the morning, she recognized.

‘Clerk?’ said Michael. ‘What clerk’s this, Mistress Paton?’

The woman turned from tethering her child to the leg of the bench. ‘Why Sir David,’ she said. ‘Your own sub-steward. I’m right troubled about him, maister, for he’s no roused nor stirred since I put him to bed. He’ll no be easy to move like that, save if you put him in a cart or the like.’

‘Sir David?’ said Alys in disbelief. ‘What is he doing here? Is he injured, or ill?’

‘Aye, Sir David. Him that’s sub-steward to Douglas,’ she said again, and looked from Alys to Michael. ‘He came stackering in off the fields, no long after the rest went off to Lanark, and fell in a dwam in front of the cart-shed yonder. I washed the worst of the blood off him, and got him in the house and put him in our bed, but being here my lone I couldny do more about it.’

‘But what’s come to him?’ said Michael. ‘He was well enough when I left Cauldhope this morning. Blood? And what’s he about down here?’

‘He never said,’ said the woman. The piercing voice from indoors said something Alys did not catch. ‘I’d say he’d been fighting, if it wasny a clerk, or else he’s maybe taken a beating.’

Michael turned to Alys, spread his hands, and then followed their hostess into the house, ducking under the low lintel. She sat still, thinking that she should follow him, listening to him asking for a light, and then to the scrape of a flint. The grandam shrieked, and beside her the child announced something as unintelligibly as the old woman.

Alys looked at it, and drew a sharp, involuntary breath; the little face was marred by a split upper lip like the hare’s. No wonder its mother cursed the beasts, she thought, and smiled at the baby. It grinned back, showing several teeth, ducked beneath the seat and emerged with a wooden spoon, which it began to bang vigorously on the bench.

‘Mistress Mason?’ Michael was saying, and she realized he had spoken to her already. ‘Would you come and look at Sir David? I don’t like the look of him either.’

The house lived up to its occupant’s by-name, and the inside was very dark. This was hardly a surprise, she told herself, since there was no window, the peat on the hearth was smouldering rather than burning, and the light Michael had asked for was provided by a single tiny flame. As her eyes adjusted, she made out two box beds built into the wall at her left. The bundle of rags in the nearest stirred, shaded its eyes against the flame, and produced another shrill comment. She smiled, curtsied, and passed on to the further bed.

‘You see,’ said Michael. ‘He doesny answer, and his breathing’s no right. And he keeps twitching.’ The man in the reeking bed shuddered as he spoke, and she bent closer.

‘Is it truly Sir David?’ she asked, looking at the battered, swollen features in the dim light.

‘Oh, it’s him, all right, poor devil, and I’d say Mistress Paton was right, he’s been fighting, or been beaten. Likely some lassie’s brothers have caught up wi’ him,’ he added sourly. ‘But what are we to do wi’ him, and what’s best to do for him first?’

Alys touched the steward’s damaged face. His skin was cool rather than hot, and clammy to the touch. The man’s breathing was alarmingly shallow, and as she watched another small convulsion shook him. She straightened up, gathering her thoughts.

‘Is he fit to be moved, do you think?’ asked Michael. ‘What should we do wi’ him?’

‘You’ll no leave him here?’ said Mistress Paton, on a sharp note very like the old woman’s. ‘That’s our bed. Where are we to sleep?’

‘I think we must move him,’ said Alys. ‘He should be in his own house, and his hurts tended.’ Something sweet for strength, she was thinking, trying to recall the words of the Infirmarer at Saint-Croix. The convent’s infirmary had possessed several books, of which Alys had had free run, but Mère Isabelle had also her own ideas on the treatment of the injured and sick. ‘Mistress Paton, have you given him anything?’ she asked.

‘Deed, no, excepting a drink of ale when he first got here,’ said the woman. ‘And it’s the same jug my man was drinking from this morning,’ she added, ‘so it’s no anything I gave him that’s done this to him.’

‘No, no, I never thought it,’ said Alys. ‘You’ve taken good care of him already. Have you anything sweet in the house? And is there fresh water?’ A foolish question, she told herself, as Mistress Paton stared at her in the dim light. Outside the child was still battering the bench with the spoon. The old woman screeched something, and Mistress Paton started, and nodded.

‘Aye, she’s right, for once. I’ve a wee drop honey in a piggin on the shelf. Would that do ye? It’s last year’s, mind, it’s set like glue.’ Another piercing remark. ‘Aye, by the fire, if the fire was putting out any heat. I canny be everywhere, you auld — ’ She bit off her comment, and moved to the other side of the house, reaching up to the wall-head to lift from among the objects stowed there a small pottery jar with a scrap of flat stone serving as a lid.

‘Honey?’ said Michael blankly. ‘What will that do?’ He watched as Alys set the little jar next to the peat-glow to warm it. One of the men appeared, seized the bellows which lay by the fire and plied them expertly; Michael suddenly moved to the door, and had a word with the other man still outside.

By the time the cart appeared before the house, Alys had contrived a small tisane of thyme and mint from the kailyard with a generous amount of honey in it, and was perched rather painfully on the wooden bar at the outer edge of the bed, dripping her concoction slowly into the clerk’s bruised mouth. The first drops had an immediate effect; Fleming drew a deep breath, and the shuddering convulsions ceased.

‘Honey is wonderful stuff,’ she said, watching this.

The old woman asked a shrill question, and Mistress Paton looked up sharply from the hearth, where she was stirring the iron pot which stood over the revived fire.

‘I never thought o’ that,’ she said. ‘Are you her from the Pow Burn? The auld collier’s widow? For if ye are — ’

‘No,’ said Alys, startled.

‘That’s the lady’s good-daughter from Belstane,’ supplied Steenie.

‘Our Lady be thanked,’ said the woman. ‘If our Dod found I’d let that one over the threshold he’d break a stob across my back.’

‘Do you mean Mistress Lithgo?’ said Alys. ‘What has she done to you?’

‘Lithgo? Who’s she?’

‘Mistress Mason?’ said Michael, coming into the house. ‘Is he fit to be moved, do you think? We’ve a cart here.’

Alys looked down at her patient. He was beginning to stir, and now uttered a heart-rending groan. His eyes opened.

‘Fleming?’ said Michael. He bent over his servant in the gloom. ‘What came to you, man? You’re in a bad way here.’

There was a pause, in which Fleming opened and closed his swollen mouth. The old woman screeched suddenly, and he flinched, croaked something, swallowed, tried again.

‘… t’ss Li’hgo,’ he said.