The Rough Collier

Chapter Seven

Riding back up towards Forth in the drizzle, to pick up the road to Linlithgow and Blackness, Gil found he had selected one of the more garrulous stable-hands to accompany him. He was quite unable to concentrate on his thoughts for the questions Patey fired at him. Where were they going, how long would it take, where would they lie this night? He answered patiently at first, then said sharply, ‘Hold your peace and let me think, man. I’ve matters to ponder.’

‘And would that be this business of the corp in the peat-cutting?’ asked Patey. ‘Or is it the man Murray?’

‘Hold your peace,’ Gil repeated.

‘Just I was going to say,’ persisted Patey in injured tones, ‘there’s one of the collier lassies yonder, watching us.’

Gil looked where the man pointed, and saw a small plump figure standing knee-deep in yellow flowers, under a group of bent hawthorn trees in the hollow of a burn below the track. Plaid over her head against the rain, she was still identifiable: not Phemie but her sister. What was the girl’s name? Bel, that was it. The one who never spoke.

‘The one that doesny speak,’ said Patey helpfully. ‘Tongue-tied, she is. She isny daft, mind you, and they say she’s a grand spinner. No a bad thing in a lassie, to be tongue-tied.’

‘What, and never ask you what you want for your supper?’ Gil dismounted. ‘Bide here and hold my horse. I want a word wi’ her.’

‘You can have a’ the words you want,’ said Patey ‘but she’ll never have a word for you, maister.’ He guffawed at his own wit, then finally became silent under Gil’s glare, and took the reins.

Bel was still watching them warily, and when Gil climbed down from the track she looked around as if judging her chances of escape. He stopped at a little distance from her, the yellow flowers round his boots. She must be thirteen or fourteen, he thought, surveying her, plainer than her sister and still covered in puppy-fat. Tib had been much the same at that age, less anxious but with the same sulky expression. If this girl was tongue-tied, that would explain a lot.

‘You’re Bel Crombie, aren’t you?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘Do you mind me? I’m Gil Cunningham.’ She nodded again, and bobbed in a brief, apprehensive curtsy. ‘Should you be out here your lone, Bel?’

She shrugged, bent to pick another handful of wet flowers, showed them to him and pushed them into a linen sack at her belt. Gathering something for the still-room, he surmised.

‘And it’s raining,’ he added. She looked at him, then at the sky, and shrugged again. This was not going to be easy, he recognized, and there was a strange quality to the girl which made him uncomfortable about questioning her. Still, one had to try. ‘Bel, could I ask you a few things?’

She straightened up to look directly at him, with a withering stare rather like those his mother’s cat turned on Socrates, and waited.

‘Have you any idea where Thomas Murray might be?’ he asked. She shook her head firmly. ‘Or what’s come to him?’ Another eloquent shrug. He paused to consider, trying to frame the question so it could be answered Yes or No. ‘Do you like him?’ An innocent enough question. Bel screwed up her face and shook her head. ‘Does he ever try to kiss you?’

She shook her head again, looked down at her person and carefully lifted away an invisible something that clung about her hips.

‘He’s free with his hands,’ Gil supplied. She nodded. ‘And yet he’s never followed it up?’ A puzzled look. This is a young lassie, he reminded himself. ‘He’s never tried kissing you.’ Another shake of the head, with an impatient glance: I told you that. ‘The day he left,’ he said, and she frowned, still watching him carefully, ‘did anything unusual happen? Anything at all?’

After a moment she nodded. He smiled encouragingly.

‘Who did it happen to? Who was involved?’ he asked. ‘If I name everyone, can you tell me when I say the right names?’

She nodded, and by enumerating the household he learned that Mistress Weir and Joanna had been involved, as well as Murray.

‘Was that when Mistress Weir sent you with a gift for Murray?’ he asked. Her blue eyes widened, and she nodded. ‘Mistress Brownlie told my wife of it. Was that so unusual, for your grandmother to give him something?’

She nodded vehemently, and mimed an angry quarrel, wagging a finger at the rain.

‘They’re usually at odds,’ he interpreted, and she suddenly gave him a shy smile. ‘And then he rode off as usual with the Paterson men?’ Another nod. ‘Do you know why she gave him the gift?’

Bel raised an imaginary glass to drink his health, and counted off one, two, three with the other hand.

‘It was to drink her health on her birthday,’ he recalled, and she nodded. ‘Are you saying that was three days after they left?’ Another nod. ‘That was a friendly gesture.’

She stared at him, her expression changing slowly back to the withering cat look. Then she shrugged and turned away, bending to the yellow marsh-marigolds round her feet.

‘Can you tell me anything else?’ Gil asked. Another shrug. ‘Why does your grandam dislike Murray?’ She gave him a pitying glance. ‘Is it simply that he won’t do as she bids him?’

She straightened up, pushing another handful of flowers into the linen sack, and placed one hand flat in the air, a little higher than her own height. She gestured round her face, nimble fingers describing the long ends of a linen headdress. A woman, taller than herself but shorter than her mother.

‘Joanna — Mistress Brownlie?’ he said. Bel nodded. She held up one hand, fingers opening and shutting. Someone talking? She indicated the invisible Joanna, and cowered in fear. ‘Threats to Joanna? Who threatens her? Your grandmother?’

This got him an exasperated stare. She squared her shoulders and stuck out her plump chest and her elbows. A man, and a conceited man.

‘Your brother? Murray? Murray threatens Joanna?’ Another nod. ‘It’s a man’s prerogative to chastise his wife,’ he said on a venture. ‘I’d have thought Mistress Weir would see little wrong in that.’ And that’s hypocrisy, he thought, for if I ever raised my hand to Alys I think I would cut my throat afterwards.

Whether she detected the hypocrisy or not, Bel’s expression would have parched grain. She sighed ostentatiously, established Joanna again with the same deft movements, and then straightened her back, raised her chin and outlined a wired cap on her head. He nodded, and she assumed an expression of simpering affection, and held her hands out to the invisible Joanna.

‘Mistress Weir dotes on Joanna?’

Bel confirmed this. Then she sketched a row of women to her left, and identified them: herself, her sister, her mother. When he named them aloud, she nodded again.

‘Is this how you talk to your family?’ he asked, fascinated. She threw him an irritated look and, stepping into the role of her grandmother again, swept the row of invisible figures aside with one hand while she drew the equally invisible Joanna closer with the other, still simpering with exaggerated affection.

‘So Mistress Weir would place Joanna over all the rest of you,’ he said. Bel nodded encouragingly. ‘Even your brother?’

She had not thought of that. She considered the question briefly while the rain pattered on the hawthorn leaves, then spread her hands.

‘And yet she sent you with the gift for Murray.’

She shrugged, and turned her head away, unmoving for a moment. Then, obviously coming to a decision, she began again. The wired headdress, the elegant stance: Arbella. She steadied a mortar with one hand and worked the pestle with the other, pausing to add a pinch of this and a careful drop of that, and looked expectantly at him.

‘Mistress Weir helps your mother in the stillroom,’ he offered. ‘I thought it was your sister did that.’ She frowned, shook her head, stirred the imaginary mortar again, her lips moving busily as if she was speaking. ‘Mistress Weir taught your mother.’ Bel flicked him a glance, nodded, continued to work the pestle. ‘What are you telling me, Bel?’

She sighed, abandoned the mortar, and pulled up the skirt of her gown to reach the purse that hung at her knee between gown and kirtle. From it she drew out a much-scored piece of grey slaty stone and a slate-pencil, bent to lean the slate on her knee and took a careful grasp of the pencil to write. She was no clerk: she formed each letter laboriously, with the use of elbow, tongue and head. Standing in the rain watching her, he appreciated that she would find all her dumb-show (yes, that was exactly the word) much easier than scribing anything at all.

It took her some time, but at last she handed him the stone, with an air which made him feel what it said was very important. He studied it carefully. The wet surface was much-marked already, with earlier inscriptions partly excised, and the uneven letters were hard to make out. Her spelling was imaginative and there were no breaks in the staggering sequence, but after a moment he decided that RBEL probably meant Arbella. But what did the rest mean? It appeared to read PYSHNUW. After a moment enlightenment dawned, along with surprise that a girl from such a family would use this sort of coarseness.

‘You’re telling me Arbella dislikes me too? Holds me in contempt?’ And yet she was civil enough to my face, he thought. Bel stared at him, open-mouthed, and suddenly shook her head, snatched the slate out of his hand and stuffed it back into her purse, then turned, her back radiating fury, and marched away through the flowers.

‘Bel!’ he called after her. ‘Come back, lassie, I’ll take you home out of the rain.’

She went on, ignoring him.

‘Bel! Are you safe out here on your lone?’

She swung round, stared at him, then rotated one finger by her temple in a universal sign and continued on her way. Reluctant to pursue her across the hillside, he gathered his wits and prepared to go back up to the waiting horses. The road to Blackness beckoned.

A gleam in the grass caught his eye from where the girl had been standing. He made his way towards it, and found her slate, lodged in a clump of flowers and shining in the light. It must have missed her purse in her haste. He bent to pick it up and turned it in his hand. None of the other inscriptions was clear enough to read more than a letter or two; only the comment about Arbella stood out.

With a feeling of having missed something important, he put the object into his purse and made his way up to the track, where man and beasts waited for him, heads down against the increasing rain.

‘Can we get on now, Maister Gil?’ asked Patey ‘Just it’s ower cold to be standing about like this.’

‘We’ll go by the Pow Burn,’ said Gil, reclaiming his reins and mounting. ‘I must let them know where that lassie is. I should have left my plaid over this saddle,’ he added, as the damp leather struck cold through his hose.

‘What was she doing wi’ all the waving her arms?’ asked Patey curiously. He demonstrated, causing Gil’s horse to shy.

‘Watch what you’re about, man! That’s how she talks. She was telling me about her grandam and Murray.’

‘I see. She canny wag her tongue, so she wags her arms instead.’ Patey grinned at his own joke. ‘What did you say to her then, maister, that she lost her temper wi’ you? Maybe I can guess!’

Gil stared at him in revulsion, and he fell silent and after a moment mumbled an apology of sorts.

‘So I should think,’ Gil said. ‘If there’s another word like that out of you, I’ll be having a talk with Henry when we get back to Belstane.’ Patey muttered something else. ‘Well, hold your tongue then.’

He spurred his horse forward along the track towards the colliery, without looking back to see if the groom followed him.

The surfacemen were just breaking off for their midday bite when he came over the hillside. Eight or ten men were gathering in the shelter of the smithy, round the fire. On the path which led down from the thatched row of cottages was a procession of children, bareheaded despite the rain, each bearing a father’s or brother’s meal: a wooden bowl with a kale-leaf over it, a plate covered by a cloth, a small package wrapped in dock-leaves. The men underground must take their food in with them and eat it cold, he conjectured.

He dismounted on the cobbled area before the house and looked about, hoping to find one of the family. It seemed likely that the household would be sitting down to eat as well, and he had no wish to interrupt the meal. To his relief, Mistress Lithgo appeared at the door of her stillroom, and came to meet him.

‘Maister Cunningham,’ she said, and nodded in answer to his greeting. ‘What brings you here? Can we do aught for you? Will you stay for a bite?’

‘No, no, I won’t stay,’ he said. ‘I want to get to Blackness today. I met your daughter Bel all on her own over the hill yonder, and thought I should let you know where she was.’

‘On her own,’ she said, sounding annoyed. ‘She will go off like that on her grandam’s errands, and I canny teach her it’s no safe at her age. My thanks, sir. I’ll send her brother after her. And my thanks to your lady mother,’ she added, ‘for his bed and dole last night. He came in an hour or two since.’

‘My dear, you needny trouble about Bel,’ said Arbella’s sweet voice. Gil turned, to see her emerging from the building Phemie had identified as the mine office. ‘I sent her to gather what we need for the spring tonic. She’ll not go far, she’ll be quite safe.’ She approached, leaning on a stick and moving carefully on her high wooden pattens. Her plaid, hitched up over her wired headdress against the rain, hung down in dark folds to her knees, and under it her other hand held her petticoats up out of the grey-black mud. She looked like a mourner at a funeral. ‘But it was right kind of you to let us know,’ she added, smiling at Gil. ‘Was that all that brought you here? I hope you’ve not rid out of your way for my wee lassie?’

‘I was concerned for her,’ he explained. ‘I stopped to speak to her, and something I said annoyed her and she marched off down the burn towards the low shielings.’

Bel’s mother gave him a raking glance, then visibly relaxed.

‘Aye, times she’s like that,’ she admitted. ‘She angers easily, with not being able to say what she wants.’

‘We’d managed fine up to that. She told me clearly how you’d sent her with a gift for Murray just before he left here, madam.’

Arbella’s finely drawn eyebrows rose. ‘Did she so? You’re perceptive, Maister Cunningham, if you grasped that from her. And are you any nearer finding Thomas for us? To tell truth, since my dear Joanna’s out of hearing, I’m beginning to be a wee bit concerned that we’ve heard nothing.’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I’m on my way to Blackness now, to track down your two sinkers. The word in Forth is that they’ve gone over there to their kin — ’

‘Aye, William Wood that would be,’ agreed Beatrice, nodding.

‘To Blackness?’ said Arbella. ‘In all this rain? You’re going to a deal of trouble for my household, maister. Can we do anything for you while you’re here? We’re about to sit down to dinner — will you join us?’

‘No, no, I want to get on my road, I’ll not disturb your meal,’ he assured her, and then, as a memory surfaced, ‘I’d like a look inside your chapel, if I might. Fleming said something about it.’

‘Fleming!’ Arbella said witheringly, and reached for the bunch of keys at her belt. ‘I’m greatly disappointed in that man, you know, sir. After all I did for him, to turn and accuse my good-daughter in such a way.’ She began moving towards the little wattle-and-daub building. Beatrice nodded to Gil and retreated into her stillroom again.

‘You did him a favour?’

‘I did. I knew his father well, sir, a good man and a clever, and died here, Our Lady save him.’ She crossed herself, her keys clinking. ‘And so Davy was left without sponsor. It was I persuaded Douglas to give him his uncle’s place.’ She unlocked the door of the chapel and stepped inside. ‘And well he’s repaid me for it, too, one way and another.’ She bowed stiffly to the crucified Christ on the altar, and again to a brightly painted figure of St Ninian with his broken chain, perched on a shelf behind it. ‘Forever trying to direct me in the manage of this place and my family. Would you believe, sir, he tried to tell me my grandson would never make a scholar, and I should give him charge here instead of Murray!’

‘Did he?’ said Gil, in what he hoped was a sympathetic tone.

‘Indeed he did, and here’s my laddie with tales of how his teachers admire his every word. And the man canny even find me a decent relic for this kirk, to keep the colliers and their women here instead of trailing down into Carluke or Lanark wi’ their petitions.’

And how should they bring their prayers here if it’s kept locked? Gil wondered, and looked about him. The little space held only the furnished altar, an aumbry on legs for the Mass-vessels, and three benches round the walls. The altar-linen must be shut in the aumbry, and a shelf below the closed portion held an obvious candle-box, its corners gnawed by hopeful rats. A pewter holy-water stoup hung from a nail by the door. Linked ideas made him glance downward, to find the floor made of neatly fitted slabs of grey-blue stone much like Bel’s slate, which was still in his purse. No hope of returning that just now, he thought; I can hardly hand it to Arbella with that inscription, and get the lassie into trouble.

‘You keep the key?’ he asked.

‘I have all the keys, maister,’ said Arbella simply. ‘There’s another lives on a nail by the kitchen door,’ she added. ‘We keep it locked because there’s no priest here, but our folk can aye get in if they wish.’

Beyond Linlithgow, the way out to Blackness was a well-made and well-used road, with heaps of stones at intervals to fill in potholes.

‘Likely the merchants that use the port keep it up,’ said Gil when Patey commented. ‘Or it’s paid out of the port dues. There’s only the one way up from the shore.’

‘And is it the shore we’re making for, maister?’ said Patey. His chastened mood had not lasted long, and Gil had become resigned to the man’s chatter. ‘Did you say you wanted the salt-boilers? I suppose that would be them yonder where the smoke is.’

‘More than likely,’ Gil agreed, eyeing the dark column leaning downwind from the distant point, across the bay from the square outline of the castle. ‘Since it seems they burn coal. I wonder what it’s like in the castle when the wind’s in the west?’

They rode down off the low hills which separated Linlithgow from the Forth, through the settlement of Blackness itself where the smells of supper drifted on the wind, and on to the shore. Two merchant vessels were drawn up on the shingle, one loading, one unloading, and another lay at anchor out in the bay. Round the three legs of the crane a stack of barrels waited to be swung on board, several men were handling bales of wool out of a barn, and a handful of carts stood by, the carters shouting directions to the shore porters about their loads. The custumar in a long belted gown of black trimmed with squirrel bustled importantly through the activity, followed by his clerk with ink-pot and parchment at the ready.

‘Where do we lie tonight, Maister Gil?’ asked Patey, assessing the distance out to the tower of smoke.

‘Tonight? I hadn’t thought,’ Gil confessed.

‘Aye, I thought not,’ said Patey with a faint resentment, turning to look back at the way they had come. ‘Just if we’re to go back to Linlithgow to seek a bed, we’ll no need to be held up here. The light willny last, ye ken, and it’s turned cloudy again, we’ll ha’ no good of the moon.’

Accosting the custumar got them the information that there were two inns in Blackness, but they didny want to patronize the Blue Bell where all the common mariners lay, they would do better to ask at the Ship.

‘Or you might get a bed at the castle,’ offered the functionary, studying Gil’s horse and clothing, setting it against his lack of a retinue and obviously coming down on the side of his being likely kin or acquaintance of Ross of Hawkhead who held the castle for the Crown.

‘We’ll try the Ship first,’ Gil decided, at which Patey brightened noticeably

Leaving the horses safely stabled and his man sampling the ale in the inn’s public room, Gil walked on along the curving shore and out towards the point on the western side of the bay. The scene round the saltpans came into view as he approached, a chaos of heaps of coal, heaps of ash, wooden sheds with baskets of salt visible in their shelter. The wide pans of rust-coated iron stood in a row under a long thatched roof, the red glow of the fires beneath them, with dark figures moving to and fro in the drifting smoke and steam. Seagulls swirled screaming over their heads. It made Gil think of a vision of hell by that mad Flemish painter Bosch. Almost he expected to encounter half a dozen devils with lolling tongues and extra faces, prodding a fat bishop into the boiling sea-water.

Instead, he found two weather-beaten men and a woman, armed with bleached wooden rakes and long scoops, trudging back and forward along the pans of bubbling white liquor, plying first rake and then scoop in each. Gulls swooped and mewed and pounced on what was spooned out of the pans and there was a tang of rotting fish in the smoke.

‘Aye, you get a’ things in the pans,’ agreed the eldest salt-boiler, a gnarled man with one red-rimmed eye, leaning on his rake. ‘A’ thing but coin,’ he added, and laughed at his own joke. ‘Crabs, o’ course, and whelks and that. A glove or a shoe, often enough.’

‘Never in pairs, but,’ said the woman, who appeared to be his wife. ‘Are they, Wullie?’

‘I found a drowned bairn,’ said the younger man. ‘Din’t I no, Mammy, I found a — ’

‘It wasny a bairn, Jock,’ said his mother repressively ‘The gentleman doesny want to hear about it.’

‘Aye, but it was,’ said Jock. ‘It was a’ green — ’

‘Jock! Get back to the pans!’

‘Can I help you, maister, or was ye just wanting to see the salt-boiling?’ asked the older man. ‘There’s many folk likes to see where their salt comes from. Ye see here,’ he said, without waiting for an answer, ‘we gather the water here wi’ the tide, in yonder tank in the rock, and lift it wi’ the bucket-gang and the auld pony, into the pans. We’ve a great system wi’ sluices to let the water run the length o’ the pans, and then we shut it off and set the fires.’

‘Two days, it takes, to come through the boil, doesn’t it no, Wullie?’ said his wife. ‘These was the first pans on the Forth to have sluices,’ she added proudly. ‘Ye’re looking at the best salt-pans in the Lothians, maister.’

‘I never knew there was so much involved,’ confessed Gil, looking round him. ‘Do you live down here on the shore? Is that your house?’

‘That? That’s no but a shelter for when the weather’s bad. We dwell up yonder.’ Wullie pointed to a cottage crouched some yards back from the shore. His wife turned back to the pans, and he continued to show Gil the process with a fluency which made it clear he was used to visitors. Gil heard him out, fascinated and appalled, peered into the shed at the straw skeps of dry salt waiting to be sold on, learned about creech and bittern and the use of bullocks’ blood to clarify the brine. ‘Swine’s blood’s no good,’ the man informed him, leaning on his rake, ‘the reason being, swine’s flesh has a natural affinity with salt, ye see, so the blood takes up the salt out the brine instead of drawing up the lees. Or so Peter Nicholson our clerk tells me. Ye need to let the blood stand till it turns rotten, o’ course, it’s no use when it’s fresh.’

‘Of course,’ echoed Gil, wondering if he could ever put salt on his food again.

‘I’ve heard there’s salt-pans at Ayr,’ conceded Wullie, ‘but the best sea salt comes from the shores of the Forth, maister, mind that. The coal’s handy, the sea-water’s good, and we get rock salt in from the Low Countries to strengthen the brine.’

‘How many salt-boilers are there along this shore?’ Gil asked. ‘I heard of a fellow called Lithgo one time.’

‘Simon Lithgo? Aye, that was a bad business.’ Wullie shook his head, and Gil made a questioning noise. ‘Oh, a bad business. Died at the pans, didn’t he. Found in his own Number Two pan, boiled to a turn. Coffined burial,’ he added with relish.

‘How did that happen?’ Gil asked, his thoughts racing. Surely the trouble at the Pow Burn couldn’t reach this far, he told himself, but -

‘Peter Nicholson reckoned his heart gave out. He should never ha’ been tending the pans on his own. And the worst o’ it was,’ Wullie added, ‘he’d no long got his last daughter wedded, he was working for hisself at last. More than ten year syne, that was. I’d no recalled Simon Lithgo in a many year. A bad business,’ he said again.

‘I never thought of it being a dangerous trade.’

‘That’s a good one!’ Wullie guffawed. ‘A dangerous trade! That’s a good one! Aye, you’re right, maister, it’s a dangerous trade. Now, I need to get back to my pans,’ he announced, scanning the line with his red-rimmed eye. ‘Number Fower’s about ready for skimming, I’d say. Ye’re welcome to take a dander about, maister, afore ye go.’

‘Thanks, I will,’ said Gil. ‘Are the Paterson lads here, by the way? Jock and Tam, I mean, the two sinkers. I was hoping to get a word wi’ them.’

‘Jock and Tam.’ The man stared at him, and rubbed at his closed eye-socket. ‘Aye, they’re here wi’ me. Jess’s nephews, they are. What was ye wanting them for? They’re up at the house, but they’re likely asleep the now. Here, is it you they’re looking for these last two week or more, to talk about the small coal from Lanarkshire? They’ve been right concerned for ye, maister.’

‘No, that’s not me, but I’m looking for the same fellow. I want to ask Jock and Tam about him. I’m hoping they can tell me where they parted from him.’

‘I wouldny know about that,’ said Wullie doubtfully. ‘They’ve never said.’

‘You’re telling me they’re asleep? How long before they’re stirring?’

‘No long.’ Wullie glanced at the sky. ‘They’ve been watching the nights for me while they’re here, since our Jock’s no to be depended on, poor laddie. Will I rouse them, or will ye wait, maister?’

Gil elected to wait, and strolled on along the shore a little in the evening light, leaving the man to get on with his work. Once he rounded the point the shouts of the men by the ships dwindled, and all he could hear was the bleating of sheep and lambs in the pastures inland, and the cries of the seabirds, and the steady swish of the tide beyond the expanse of mud. The east wind blew in briskly from the German Sea, and across the firth the salt-pans of Fife flew similar plumes of smoke.

He sat down on a bank of rough grass to consider what he should ask the Paterson men. He was still not sure whether he was investigating a murder. On previous occasions there had been a body to identify, or at least in one case a head; here he had a body which was not Murray, and Murray whose body was not to be found, whether the man was alive or dead. Perhaps he has been spirited away, he thought, grinning to himself. Maybe Fleming is right about witchcraft. But Alys had seen no sign of such a thing up at the Pow Burn.

And what had taken Alys into Carluke this morning? She had discovered a great deal for him, one way and another. He found himself smiling again at the thought of her, her endless capacity for surprising him, her incisive mind and astonishing competence. And the warmth of her skin under his hands, the way her lips clung to his. As always, he marvelled at his good fortune. An hendy hap ich habbe yhent, he thought. I wonder if she learned anything in the town?

The light was beginning to fail, and the tide was coming in across the wide stretch of mud before him. He rose, stretched, rubbed at the seat of his hose. The grass was not as dry as he had thought, and he must have been sitting here for quite some time.

Wullie and his wife and son had vanished, presumably into their house, and been replaced by two men who were on their knees checking the fires below the row of pans, raking at the hot coals with clanging iron implements. One of them noticed Gil walking in along the tide-line, and spoke to the other; they rose and came forward to meet him, big broad-shouldered men with the same economical walk he had noticed in the colliers.

‘Aye, neebor. Is that you that’s looking for Tam Murray?’ demanded the taller, as soon as he was within earshot. ‘Have you any word of him at all?’

‘None,’ said Gil frankly. ‘I was hoping you could tell me more. Where did you see him last? I think you parted from him somewhere on the round before you reached Forth.’

‘Oh, long afore that,’ said the other man. ‘Lanark. We left him in Lanark.’

‘Lanark?’ repeated Gil incredulously. ‘But — Do you mean he left it to you to collect the whole of the fees?’

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed the taller brother. ‘He mostly does. Meets us outside Forth town.’

‘Sweet St Giles!’ He looked from one man to the other. ‘I take it Mistress Weir doesny know of it.’

‘What do you think?’ said the taller man, the light catching his teeth as he grinned.

‘So where does he go? Does he simply stay in Lanark drinking?’ Gil looked about at the twilight. ‘Will we sit down and you can tell me what you know about the man.’

There were three stumps of driftwood drawn up in the mouth of one of the sheds, an unlit wood fire set and the ashes of many more fires scattered on the shore around them. Seated here, the Patersons answered his questions, slowly at first, then more confidently. The taller brother, it seemed, was Jock, and it had been his idea originally to take up Sir Thomas Bartholomew’s suggestion and seek work in Lanarkshire.

‘Lanark folks is all right,’ he said dismissively ‘A bit soft, especial in the head, but they’re kind enough.’

‘Lanark lassies is more than all right,’ observed Tam, smacking his lips.

His brother kicked his ankle. ‘Och, see you? Anyway, we get there, maister, and find Tammas Murray, that was at the sang-schule in Kincardine wi’ our brother Davy, set in authority in the place. He was right pleased to see us and all.’

‘Took us on like a maid embracing her lover, so he did,’ supplied Tam. ‘Treated us well, too. Choice of lodging, bed to oursels, laddie to carry our gear whenever we was working, fetch our sister to mind the house — though that never lasted, she up and wedded Attie Logan.’

‘And we hadny been in our place six month afore he sends for us one morning and he says to us, private like — ’

‘I’ve a proposition, he says.’

‘Aye, a proposition. D’ye think, he says, ye can find your way about Lanarkshire and back here with a bag of coin.’

‘What’s in it for us, says I.’

‘And he says, ye’ll get paid extra for it if ye can keep your mouths shut, says he. So we agreed a fee, and he sets out wi’ us, and in Lanark he leaves us wi’ a list of where we’ve to call, and the names of who to ask for at each place, and what’s owed, and we do the whole round and then meet him in Forth.’

‘And we’ve done it every quarter since,’ contributed Tam.

‘And no a word to anyone, till now.’

‘Well!’ said Gil. ‘And where was Murray while you were collecting the coin?’

‘Now that,’ said Jock with deep regret, ‘we’ve never jaloused. It’s aye the same place he leaves us, in the midst of Lanark.’

‘We took it he was wi’ a lassie, but we never found out where.’

‘A pity, that, seeing what like his wife is at the Pow Burn,’ said Jock thoughtfully. ‘If I’d that Joanna in my bed, I’d no feel the need to keep another in secret.’

‘No accounting for tastes.’

‘You never asked him?’

‘We did not. He’s no one for idle chat, Tammas Murray.’

‘And how long has this been going on?’

The brothers looked at one another in the firelight.

‘Two year?’ said Tam.

‘No as long,’ said Jock. ‘It was after Matt Crombie died, no the first quarter’s reckoning but the next. A year past at Martinmas, I’d say.’

‘A year and a half, then. Since before he wedded Joanna,’ Gil said.

‘Aye, but it went on after.’

‘But where does he go? Do you think he stays in the town, or does he venture out elsewhere?’ Gil asked.

‘I followed him one time,’ said Tam, ‘but I lost him afore the top of the town. It was market-day, ye see, and he just vanished in the crowd. Must ha’ jouked up a vennel.’

‘What, you lost a red-haired man?’ said Gil in faint disbelief.

‘Aye, red-haired, wi’ a great blue bonnet on like a’body else’s.’

‘So how come you’re asking for him, maister?’ asked Jock. Tam, looking along the row of salt-pans, rose and went to poke at one of the fires.

‘The men from Thorn found a red-haired corp in their peat-cutting,’ Gil explained.

‘A corp? St Peter’s bones, what’s that doing in a peat-cutting?’ exclaimed Jock. ‘Is it Tammas Murray, then? Is he dead right enough, and you never said?’

‘It isn’t Murray,’ Gil said carefully, ‘but I’m beginning to fear he’s dead right enough, for he’s never turned up yet. David Fleming was convinced that the corp was Murray, and that Mistress Lithgo had set it there by means of witchcraft.’

‘Beattie? No Beattie!’ said Tam, sitting back on his heels, the fire-glow lighting his face. ‘She’d no do a thing like that. Davy Fleming’s no done her any harm, has he?’

‘Phemie called out the day shift and rescued her.’

‘She would,’ said Jock, grinning in the firelight. ‘That’s a fechtie lass, that Phemie. And did that sort it? He’s no laid charges against Beattie, has he? He’ll have the whole of the colliers to reckon wi’ if he has.’

‘He’ll have Adam Crombie to reckon with,’ Gil said. ‘The young man came home yestreen, and was for Cauldhope this morning to confront Fleming.’

‘Oh, well. Raffie should sort him. But where has Tammas Murray got to?’ said Tam Paterson. He rose and returned to his log, bringing a lighted stick with him which he set to the fire at their feet. ‘You say he’s no turned up at the Pow Burn either, maister? That’s … that’s …’ He paused, reckoning on the free hand. Flames sprang in the tinder under the driftwood. ‘Aye, five week or more since we parted from him in Lanark town.’

‘We’ve been right concerned,’ said his brother, ‘but you’ll see it’s no just a matter of going back to the Pow Burn to ask for him. The auld wife would ha’ questions for us, and the first would be, Where did he part from you?’

‘And where does he part from you?’ Gil asked. ‘Can you recall anything that might help me track him down?’

‘The Nicholas,’ said Jock promptly. ‘Hard by St Nicholas’ kirk. Juggling Nick’s they call it.’ Gil nodded, familiar with the inn and its sign where the mitred saint stared up the market-place in half-length, his three purses floating round his halo. Its landlady was feared by drinkers in four parishes. ‘We aye light down there for a drink after we’ve rid in from Jerviswood, he collects from the two accounts we’ve got in the town, and then he takes off.’

‘On foot?’

‘On foot.’

‘So not far, then.’ Gil considered. ‘Somewhere in the town, or not far outside it. If it was in the town, I’d ha’ thought he’d ha’ turned up by now, the word about the corp in the peat-cutting should be all over the Middle Ward. Does he leave his horse at Juggling Nick’s?’

‘Aye, that’s right. Then he rides up to meet us when we get to Forth. He’ll get a week wi’ his woman, I suppose,’ reckoned Jock. ‘She must be a patient soul, to put up wi’ that. A week wi’ your man once a quarter doesny seem like a lot.’

‘Joanna Brownlie might think it was enough,’ said Tam darkly.

‘Did he never let anything slip, then? Nothing that might give us a direction?’

The two men considered, and Jock shook his head.

‘He’d a sprig of yew in his hat one time he joined us,’ offered Tam. ‘Tucked behind his St Andrew. Had berries on it.’

‘There’s yew grows everywhere,’ objected his brother. ‘That’s no use.’

‘No, but it might mean the lassie dwells by a yew tree.’

‘It’s still no use, you daft lump.’

‘It might help. Is Juggling Nick’s the same place he goes drinking, do you know? I’m told he goes down into Lanark once a week or so.’

‘You don’t think he takes us wi’ him,’ said Jock.

‘Just the same,’ said his brother, ‘I’d say it might be. He’s a kent face there, aye joking wi’ the lassies and taking snash from the ostlers he’d never take from us.’

‘It sounds like it,’ Gil agreed. He rose, and stretched his back. ‘I had best get back to the Ship afore they bar the doors. My thanks to the both of you for all this. If you think of anything else I’ll be glad to hear it, though I’ll be away back into Lanarkshire at first light.’

‘Aye well, here’s a thing,’ said Jock. ‘Just talking of it now, it comes into my mind. Could his lassie maybe work at Juggling Nick’s? They’ve two or three lassies about the place, to see to the chambers and the kitchen and that.’

‘No yew trees in the midst of Lanark town, but,’ said his brother.

‘Aye there is,’ retorted Jock, ‘there’s a great yew tree in St Nicholas’ kirkyard leans ower the wall.’

‘I think I need to head for Lanark the first chance I get,’ said Gil.