The Rough Collier

Chapter Eight

‘Michael was to start for Lanark at first light,’ said Alys, from her place in the circle of Gil’s arm, ‘so he has had most of the day now to search Lanark. He reckoned he could more easily spare half a dozen men for the day than Madame Mère,’ she explained, with a quick smile at his mother. ‘But I hoped he might send word of my patient.’

Gil drew her closer, relishing her solid warmth. It had been, somehow, a longer ride home than the one out to Blackness, and the thought of her welcome had greatly cheered the journey. He used his other hand to scratch the ears of the rather damp wolfhound who leaned against his knee, making the dog groan ecstatically.

‘Maybe I should have gone on to Lanark to find him myself. I’m reluctant to ride further, to be honest …’

‘Well you might be,’ said his mother, with a wry glance at the cushion of the bench he had chosen to sit on. ‘I can spare Steenie that long, I suppose. Indeed, he should be back soon. And I bade him ask after Fleming while he was about it, my dear,’ she added to Alys.

‘Yes, Fleming,’ said Gil. ‘You say it was Crombie beat him?’

‘So he told us,’ Alys agreed. ‘He made better sense later, once we had got him back to Cauldhope, and washed his hurts and put him to bed. He said he was out in the fields, on his way to wherever it was Michael had sent him, and Crombie and his men found him, and set about him with sticks.’

‘Crombie had one man and no sticks when he left here,’ Gil said.

‘No, I thought that, and I would have said from his bruises they rather used their fists and feet.’

‘Gaif him an outragious blaw, and great boist blew,’ suggested Gil.

Her quick smile flickered as she placed the quotation, but she went on, ‘I suppose Crombie wished to threaten him about the charge against Mistress Lithgo. But Gil, I am still puzzled by his lying in a swoon half the day like that, and by the convulsions. I could find no blow to the head that would account for it. I wonder if Mistress Lithgo would tell me …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘So you think,’ said Lady Egidia, ‘that the man Murray has a mistress in or near Lanark, and visits her once a quarter while these two brothers collect the money for him.’

‘It looks very like it,’ Gil said. Socrates nudged his hand, and he scratched behind the dog’s ears again. A waft of the animal’s fishy breath reached him.

‘It’s odd, mind you,’ persisted his mother, ‘if that’s so, that word’s never got round. It’s a small enough neighbourhood, after all. Carluke folk go down to the market at Lanark, and a juicy bit of gossip like that would travel, you’d think.’

‘He might visit her under another name,’ said Alys.

‘He’d be recognized by someone as he came or went, I’m sure of that.’

‘He goes in disguise,’ said Gil. ‘A turban and a false beard from the Corpus Christi costume kist.’

‘Corpus Christi costume kist. Now yon’s a tongue-trap!’ said his mother, half laughing.

‘Perhaps she lives secluded,’ suggested Alys. ‘In a green desert, with one faithful hound for company.’ She reached across Gil to stroke their own faithful hound’s head, and the dog licked her wrist with a long tongue.

‘The yew tree wouldn’t fit with that,’ said Gil. ‘They mostly grow in a kirkyard or at least by a chapel.’

‘She is the guardian of the chapel, of course.’

‘What, and a man’s mistress these two years as well?’

‘Temptation can strike anyone,’ Alys responded seriously.

‘The yew tree might be on the road to her home,’ said Lady Egidia.

‘Can you think of anywhere that might fit, Mother? You know this side the river better than I do.’

‘If it’s so much out of the way,’ said Alys, ‘surely nobody can know of it.’

‘You get the odd dwelling down by the Clyde itself,’ said Lady Egidia, nodding in acknowledgement of this point, ‘even in the gorge below Lanark. But I’ve a notion I’ve seen something elsewhere. A solitary place in the cut of one of the rivers, on the way to nowhere. Now where was it and why was I going that way?’

‘Exercising the horses?’ suggested Alys.

‘Maybe Michael will have learned something of use,’ said Gil doubtfully. ‘I’d like to find Murray, and get this whole matter dealt with. And what about the corp we do have? Has anyone claimed to know him yet?’

‘No, and it seems there has been a great stream of folk to inspect him,’ Alys said. ‘Henry was kept too busy to wash the dog on his own yesterday. I suppose the whole parish must have heard how he was found, no doubt they want to tell their grandchildren they saw him. Most of those who looked have prayed for him, Henry says, so at least he benefits by that.’

Gil nodded. ‘I’ve been wondering,’ he said, ‘if his death could be much older than we first thought. Maybe as far back as Wallace’s time, or even beyond it. Old Forrest the huntsman had no knowledge of him, and his recollection goes back over a hundred years.’

‘Could he be from even longer ago, from before the Flood?’ asked Alys. ‘The men who were cutting the peat talked of tree-roots and elf-bolts that they found under it, from Noah’s time, so why not this man as well? He’s well enough preserved, I would have thought, he could have lasted so long.’

‘He wasn’t under the peat,’ Gil objected, ‘he was in its midst.’

‘Then he must be from halfway back to the Flood,’ offered Alys. ‘Gil!’ She sat up straight, turning to stare at him, brown eyes round. ‘Gil, do you suppose he could be from the time when Our Lord was born? That he might have seen the star that led the kings?’

‘I suppose he could. There’s no way of telling,’ Gil said cautiously, reluctant to contradict such a notion. Socrates raised his head from his master’s knee to stare at the door. ‘But surely he wouldn’t have seen the star even so. It led the kings out of the east, not the west.’

‘But he might have heard the angels in the sky,’ Alys’s eyes were shining. ‘Perhaps he went to Bethlehem. I would have done.’

‘So would we all. That’s a bonnie thought,’ said Lady Cunningham, abandoning her reflections. ‘What is it, Alan?’

In the doorway of the chamber, the steward ducked in an apologetic bow.

‘Right apposite to what ye were just saying, mistress,’ he said. ‘It’s Jackie Heriot walked out from Carluke asking for a word about the man out of the peat-digging. Will ye see him, or no?’

‘Sir John?’ Lady Cunningham raised her brows, and rose to her feet. ‘Aye, send him in, Alan. Good day to you, Sir John. What can we do for you the day?’

Sir John Heriot, bowing low over his round black hat, had to ask after his parishioner’s health, exclaim over encountering Alys again, congratulate Gil on his marriage, admire the wolfhound, who beat his tail on the floor a couple of times in acknowledgement. Eventually the priest was persuaded to sit down, saying, ‘It’s in a good hour I meet Mistress Mason again. Indeed. I think I have a message for you. You mind you were asking for a Marion Lockhart of this parish, madam?’

‘Who’s that?’ Gil asked. ‘The place is full of Lockharts.’

‘Joanna’s mother,’ Alys supplied. ‘Go on, sir.’

‘Well, after you left St Andrew’s kirk yesterday, Isobel Douglas — Isa — ’

‘Oh, yes.’ Alys nodded, smiling. ‘A good woman, I think.’

A faint grimace crossed Sir John’s broad fair-skinned face. ‘Oh, aye, indeed. A valued member of my flock, Isa is. Aye busy about the kirk or my house. Indeed. And yestreen afore Vespers Isa came to me to say she feared she’d sent you on a fool’s errand. I think she tellt you Mistress Lockhart’s sons were across the river in Lesmahagow?’ Alys nodded again. ‘Indeed. It seems now she’s recalled different. One of them went away into Ayrshire some years ago, and the other moved to Glasgow last Lammas-tide.’

‘To Glasgow?’ repeated Alys.

‘Why ever would he do that?’ Gil asked. ‘If he’d land to farm in Lesmahagow, what’s to take him to Glasgow?’

‘He gave up the farm,’ said Sir John. ‘Isa gave me no sensible idea why, though she said something about birds. Maybe they ate the seed-corn and his crop failed. Indeed. Nor she never said which of the two it was, nor how he would support himself in Glasgow.’

‘There’s ways enough,’ said Gil, ‘but he’d need some skill or other.’

‘You’ve contacts in plenty in Glasgow,’ said his mother, ‘and the burgh’s no that big. You should be able to find the man. What was his surname? Brownlie? Do you know his own name?’

‘Either Hob or Tammas,’ Alys said. ‘If I send to my father, he can put that in motion, I suppose. Sir John, I’m grateful for this. I hope you’ll pass my thanks to Dame Isa too. Did you come all the way out here just for that? It was most kind of you.’

Sir John blushed like a youth, but admitted, ‘No, no, I canny claim it. Indeed. I wished to hear more of this man in the peat-digging, and maybe to get a keek at him if he’s yet above ground.’

‘Oh, he’s above ground,’ said Lady Cunningham sardonically. ‘Lying coffined in my feed-store wi’ half the parish waiting in line to inspect him. You’re welcome to a look at him, Sir John.’

The corpse in the feed-store had deteriorated further, though it still smelled only of peat. Preserved far beyond corruption, Gil thought. He could see cracks in the shrunken flesh now, and the skin was beginning to dry out and peel away in places.

‘Did you get his finger back, Alan?’ he asked. ‘And I hope he’s lost no more oddments.’

‘Aye, it’s there.’ Alan, standing by with the keys, nodded to a small object folded in linen by the corpse’s elbow as if it was a saint’s relic. ‘I wrapped it up decent.’

Sir John bent over the coffin and uncovered, crossing himself, then laid his free hand cautiously on the shock of red hair and snatched it away.

‘It’s like horsehair,’ he said. ‘Aye, poor soul. What a death he’s met. Slain three times over, as your man said. And have you no idea who he might be?’

‘There’s a many folk seen him that’s offered one name or another,’ said Alan, ‘but none of them seems to fit, and no two has come up wi’ the same name. By rights we ought to have someone at their beads by him,’ he admitted, ‘and maybe a couple o’ candles, but Henry willny have candles in here.’

‘Oh, no,’ agreed Sir John, with a glance at the sacks of feed. ‘Indeed no.’

‘My husband thinks he may be a man from an earlier time,’ Alys offered.

‘Earlier?’ The priest looked round at Gil. ‘How much earlier, would you say?’

Gil explained his thoughts, aware of the interest of the stable-hands gathered round the door. Sir John replaced his felt hat and listened with care.

‘You tell me the peat grows,’ he said. ‘I never thought of that. I just thought it was aye there. No, I suppose, I’ve heard the old folk talk of where there was a drowning pool in the moss aforetime, where there’s only peat now.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed Gil. ‘I’ve heard the same.’

‘And at the bottom of the peat you find logs and the like,’ continued Sir John. ‘Aye, I agree, now I think on it that could easy be from the time of the Flood.’

‘And this man was halfway down the peat,’ said Alys.

Gil watched the priest’s expression change slowly as his thoughts followed Alys’s. He could see the moment when enlightenment struck; the man crossed himself hastily, dragging off his hat again, and bent the knee to the indifferent corpse.

‘I must away back to the town,’ he said. ‘I need to go through the kirk records. There may be something … Indeed.’

He turned to the doorway, and the stable-hands scattered, but the light was cut off. Lady Cunningham paused on the threshold, glanced briefly at the corpse, crossed herself, and held out a set of tablets tied with tape.

‘Steenie’s returned, Gilbert, with word from Michael. He will be here for supper, and it seems they may have located Murray’s bolt-hole. ‘

‘You wrote,’ said Gil, handing the little glasses of cordial, ‘that you’d a name for one of Murray’s drinking friends, and directions to find the fellow.’

‘I did,’ agreed Michael. He raised his glass in a toast to his godmother, and she smiled and responded. ‘Your man reached me at a good moment. I’d found Murray’s horse, left standing at Juggling Nick’s for weeks, I was just fending off Bessie Dickson’s demands for five weeks’ livery — which is sheer impudence,’ he added, ‘for the beast’s plainly been working for its keep! Then Steenie arrived wi’ your word, and I was able to turn the argument, why had Bessie no sent to his friends, passed the word round those he drinks wi’. But,’ he concluded, and took another taste of the bright glassful, ‘she claims she couldny.’

‘Why not?’ asked Alys.

‘Seems he mainly drinks wi’ this one fellow, name of Andro Syme, fellow much his age that’s a forester to Bonnington, and he’s not been seen in the town for a few weeks either. I got a description of sorts — ordinary height, ordinary coloured hair, grey eyes. One of the lassies said he was gey handsome but she thought he’d a woman already, he never looked her way,’ Michael grinned. ‘Bessie had a word or two to say about that. So I’ve got the directions to Syme’s cottage, down in the gorge below St Kentigern’s, but it was too late in the day by then to be starting out after him, let alone waiting for you to catch up with us, Maister Gil.’

‘You’re telling me this drinking companion hasn’t been seen either?’ persisted Gil.

‘That’s right,’ Michael agreed. ‘Maybe the two of them have gone off together. Gone to sea, gone to England, gone to the Low Countries. Maybe they’ve both got a lassie in Edinburgh or somewhere.’

‘Why would they leave now? Did they leave Juggling Nick’s together?’

‘Not that Bessie said.’ Michael sounded startled. ‘I got the idea Murray had simply left his horse wi’ her and gone off alone. Syme wasny there.’

‘And that was when Bessie last saw Murray? Did you check that?’

‘Do you know, I did,’ said Michael, with an air of triumph. ‘He was back there no so long after he’d been in wi’ the two other colliers, looked in and asked for his friend, and went away again. Bessie’s not seen him since. And that I’ll believe,’ he went on, ‘for she’d have had the money for his horse’s keep off him if he showed his bonnet round the door.’

‘You’ve done well,’ said Lady Cunningham in approving tones. Michael glanced at her, his colour deepening in the candlelight, and she smiled at him again. ‘And tomorrow you can go to the forester’s house.’

‘David Fleming does that, Mother,’ said Gil. She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Instructs folk to do what they were about to do anyway.’

‘Oh, I ask your pardon, dear,’ she said with irony.

He grinned at her affectionately, and Alys said, ‘How is Sir David, Michael? I think Steenie forgot to ask.’

‘Crabbit as a drunkard,’ said Michael crisply. ‘Flies into a rage for nothing. Threw his shoes at the laddie that brought his porridge, began abusing me when I wouldny fetch him his pestilent book. Otherwise, I suppose, he’s going on well enough. The fever’s left him, he’s had no more of those twitching fits.’

‘I assume your notion of first light is later than mine, Michael,’ said Lady Cunningham, ‘if the man had his porridge afore you left.’

‘I wonder why the rages?’ said Alys.

‘They’re often like that when they’re recovering from something,’ said her mother-in-law.

‘Yes, but this is very soon. It was a severe beating he had.’

‘Aye, they’re saying that,’ said Alan Forrest in the doorway. He bowed to his mistress, who said rather sharply:

‘What do you want, man? Is it to the point?’

‘Near enough, mistress. I’ve heard from two folk the day how your man was taken up for dead, Maister Michael,’ he said, grinning, ‘and one of them tellt me when the funeral was to be. But since they said and all that the young mistress was lying at death’s door after she fell from her horse,’ he nodded politely at Alys, who stared at him in amazement, ‘I wasny concerned.’

‘Get to the point, man,’ said Lady Egidia.

‘Aye, well. It was for Maister Gil. About the mannie in the feed-store.’

‘Have you a name for him yet?’ Michael asked.

‘Not yet,’ said Gil. ‘John Heriot was here asking the same thing. What is it, Alan?’

‘You ken that finger you’re so keen to keep by the corp?’ Gil nodded. ‘Well, I think Jackie Heriot’s away wi’ it, and its wee bit cloth and all. It’s no in the coffin now, and I’ve threatened the household wi’ all sorts since supper and none of them will admit to lifting it.’

‘The house should be up this burn somewhere,’ said Michael over the rumble of the nearby falls, ‘though it wasny clear how far.’ He paused in picking his way up the slope among the trees. Behind them his men spread out to trample through the young bracken. ‘I’m right glad Mistress Mason stayed behind.’

‘She was reluctant,’ said Gil, ‘but I pressed her to it. We’re surely close to finding Murray, and it may be unpleasant. She’s ridden up to the Pow Burn instead, to talk about Fleming with Mistress Lithgo.’

He paused to look about him, considering the ground.

They were in a deep hollow of the banks of the Clyde. Not far away the huge waterfall called Corra Linn roared and thundered, but here it was still and somehow oppressive, the trees tall and well-grown but dripping with moss, knee-deep in bracken and ferns just uncurling round the green-and-brown trunks. The spring was well advanced in this sheltered spot; primroses and violets hid among the tree-roots, the hawthorn was in full bloom, the beech trees were leafing out. At the bottom of the hollow a small burn rattled down to join the Clyde. Butterflies flitted, an early bumblebee blundered through a shaft of sunlight. One of the men tripped in a rabbit-hole and cursed, and away above the edge of the valley crows cawed over their nest-building in a stand of elm. Lef and gras and blosme springes in Averil, I wene, Gil thought, and gazed round, wondering what was missing. The back of his neck crawled as if he was being watched.

‘Fleming!’ said Michael as they moved on. ‘He’s still in a rage this morning. It’s not like the man. He’s aye full of orders and directions to his inferiors, but in general he crawls like a spaniel with the family — wi’ my father and brothers and me — and there he was, frothing like a mad dog because his porridge was over-salted, shouting at me and all.’

‘Strange,’ said Gil, almost at random. ‘I wonder if the beating shook something loose in his head?’

‘Seems like it. I hope Mistress Lithgo can help.’

‘Are we on the right track here?’ Gil asked. He halted again, and waved at the Cauldhope men to stand where they were. ‘Bide here,’ he said, giving in to his rising sense of unease. ‘Let me go ahead. There’s too many of us for stealth.’

‘You think we need to creep up on him?’ Michael turned back to look at him. ‘Wi’ the linn roaring like that? And no birds to startle?’

That was the missing thing, he acknowledged. There was no birdsong, no flitting wings from tree to tree as one would expect in woodland at this time of year, only the distant crows. He had smelled a fox trail, noted badger droppings, seen more rabbit-holes, so the four-legged creatures were about as well as the insects, but there were no birds where there should be birds in plenty.

‘I’m not happy,’ he said. ‘Something’s not right. Bide here, all of you. I’ll bark like a dog fox, twice, if I want to call you forward, and come softly.’

Working his way quietly up the hollow on his own, moving from thicket to thicket, senses alert, he turned over Michael’s information in his head. If neither Murray nor his drinking-companion had been seen for five weeks, where were they? What would take two young men, one of them wedded to a lovely girl like Joanna, out of their habitual paths for that length of time?

The little valley climbed round to the right. The rumble of the great waterfall was less overwhelming here, but there was still no birdsong in the dappled shade. He paused under an ash tree whose sooty buds were just breaking into green feathers, drew a deep breath, and extended his senses in the way Billy Meikle his father’s huntsman had taught him. The place was quiet and still; the crows argued in the distance, the little burn gurgled, the tops of the trees stirred. Scents on the air told him of damp earth and growing things, of the fox again, of the different trees around him. There was an elder tree somewhere, its rank odour unmistakable, and a yew among the hawthorn blossom. The fox had hidden a kill somewhere and forgotten it; he could smell carrion. There was no smell of smoke, or of a human habitation.

Up the valley, something rustled. Unmoving, he stared towards the sound, muscles taut as bowstrings, ears stretched. Another rustle, and the bushes stirred: it sounded like a large creature. Then a branch was pushed aside, a horned head peered out of a thicket, yellow slotted eyes studied him disdainfully. A goat.

It stepped delicately out of the bushes, and another one followed, then a third with a kid at its heels. They inspected him, decided unanimously he was of no use, the first one bleated eloquently and they all turned and made their way up the side of the hollow. He watched them go, and then moved on with caution, thinking hard.

The valley bent again, to the left, and opened out a little. Rounding the curve, he stopped to assess the ground again, and after a moment made out the cottage. It was not in the open by the burn but set back and up a little under the trees, clinging to the slope, the usual low structure of drystone and wattle-and-daub, its thatch of bracken and heather sagging on the beams, its door ajar. Nothing moved. He could smell old peat fires, the midden, the goats, but no smoke rose through the thatch. As he watched, the goats themselves reappeared, tittuped in single file down the valley side and up the other, paused to stare superciliously at him and processed into the house. Behind the door, something scurried.

Another whiff of carrion reached him.

He braced himself, and moved forward carefully, alert for any sign he could read. He did not seem to be on the approach the forester used to his cottage; there had been no trodden way up the little valley, no sign of regular passage, and the track the goats had just followed, down from his right, was broader than their little cloven hooves required and must be the usual access. The yew tree stood beside it, a dark ominous shape in the sunlight.

He crossed the burn where it spread out gurgling into a shallow ford, and stepped on to a cobbled path which led up to the house door. More than one patch of hen-feathers on the stones spoke of the fox’s depredations, and the carrion smell was stronger here.

The forester’s gear stood around. A handcart, tilted on to its handles, with a rusting pruning-hook leaning across the flat bed. On the ground beside it a ladder and a tangle of hemp rope, a leather helmet, and a long canvas holdall, damp and red-stained. Gil moved cautiously over to look at it. The stains on the bag were dark, rust-red, smelled like rust. He unfastened the buckle and gingerly drew open the mouth of the bag, to find a set of knives and saws, the handles polished by use, the blades patched and pitted and spoiling. One of the saws had fragments of bark caught in its teeth. Andro Syme’s tools, lying out in the rain where he had dropped them when he came back from the day’s work.

He straightened up, trying to visualize the scene. The forester would have come up the cobbled way from the burn, perhaps manhandling his cart. Or had he gone out without cart and ladder that day? He had reached this point, and something had caused him to drop everything he held and …

And what? What had made him leave his tools and prevented him returning to them? Was it fear, surprise, joy? Had he run to meet someone, run to fetch a weapon? Not a weapon, Gil thought, looking down at the rusting blades at his feet. The man had weapons enough to hand. So not fear, then, but surprise: something or someone he had not expected to see. Or perhaps something to do with the goats — the birth of the kid he had seen, or another such crisis. But why had he left his trade here ever since, to be ruined by the rain?

Gil turned and stepped reluctantly up to the house door. Rustling and scurrying sounds greeted him, not all of them due to the goats. There was a tirling-pin set on the wooden jamb. He rattled the ring up and down its twisted iron bar, and said, ‘Is anyone at home?’

More sharp scuttlings. Inside the house, one of the goats bleated.

There was a loud, inhuman screech, horrifyingly close. He caught at the door-frame for support as something white sailed over the house roof and down, passed within a handspan of his head and soared up into the trees across the burn.

Heart still hammering, whinger in hand, he swung round to watch it as it furled pale wings, hiding the white inner coverts, and became a familiar gold-brown shape. Round eyes blinked from a shadowed hollow in the branches of the yew tree.

A screech-owl, by daylight.

The smell of carrion was stronger than ever. He waited a moment longer while his heart steadied, then pushed the door wider and stepped into the dark interior of the cottage.

When Michael and his men appeared in answer to the signal, Gil was sitting on the bench by the house door, beads in hand, watching the goats stripping the leaves on a young beech. He looked up as they rounded the turn of the valley, and Michael’s first words died on his lips.

‘What is it, man?’ he said, staring. ‘You look as if you’d been to Hell and back.’

‘Near enough,’ said Gil. He rose and stowed his beads in his purse, and the newcomers splashed across the ford, the men exclaiming in disgust as the smell reached them. ‘It’s not a bonnie sight. The most of you can wait outside, but I want someone to study it along wi’ me, in case I miss sign that might tell us what happened, for it’s not very clear. Whoever he is he’ll need a strong stomach.’

Michael shrugged. ‘I’ll not ask the lads to do aught I’d not do myself. Will I …?’

‘He’s still in there, is he?’ asked one of the Cauldhope men, the back of his hand across his nose. ‘Or is the pig dead? It stinks like the Devil’s midden.’

‘No pig,’ said Gil. ‘One of the goats has died, likely while it was kidding, but that’s not the worst of it.’ Another of the men bent and threw a stone as he spoke, and something rustled off into the undergrowth at the gable of the house. ‘There are rats.’

‘Should we no raise the hue and cry?’ asked the man who had spoken already.

‘Whoever did this is long out of reach,’ said Gil. The owl in the tree screeched as if in mockery, and several of the men glanced up and crossed themselves. ‘I want a look at the scene with another witness first. We can go up to Bonnington after that.’

Michael swallowed hard and braced his shoulders.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Shall we …?’

He followed Gil across the doorsill and stepped aside to let the light in. Gil watched his face as he stared round, seeing him take in the detail he himself had noted. By the cold hearth in the centre of the room lay an iron cooking-pot, on its side and empty. Beyond the hearth a carved chair and a stool were set to a small table, on which lay empty dishes, two knives and spoons, an overturned beaker. The light gleamed on a flat silver flask. Another beaker lay on the chair as if it had rolled there, and a glazed pottery bottle was overturned on the floor beside a muddle of small bones.

‘A meal,’ said Michael. ‘For two. So has Murray been here?’

‘He came here,’ agreed Gil. ‘Where’s the food? The scraps, the food in the pot?’

‘The rats must have got it.’ Michael looked round again. ‘And everything else they could get into. Butter dish, cheese crock, the flitch over the fire. Filthy creatures.’

‘So I thought,’ agreed Gil. ‘What else can you see?’

‘Where’s our man?’ Michael peered into the shadows. ‘Is he in here? Along the end wi’ the goat?’

‘Not so far as that.’ Gil looked deliberately at the solid box of the bed which separated the living end of the house from the animals’ quarters. Michael stepped forward cautiously, and recoiled with an exclamation of horror as he made out what lay there.

‘Christ aid!’ he said, crossing himself. And then, looking closer, ‘Oh, Christ and Our Lady save us, there’s two of them.’ He turned to Gil, sudden tears glittering at his eyes in the dim light. ‘Is it Murray and his leman, dead in the one moment? Has Syme slain them and run to Edinburgh?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Gil in sympathy. His first reaction had also been pity, though it had not moved him quite to tears. ‘Look closer, would you, if you can bear it.’

Michael took a hesitant step nearer, wadding his handkerchief over his nose, and studied what was visible. After a moment he drew back.

‘It needs a light of some sort,’ he said. ‘That’s Murray in at the wall, right enough, is it no? You can see the red hair still clinging to … to …’

‘Yes,’ agreed Gil. ‘I think that’s our man, right enough.’ He came to stand beside Michael and looked at the bed, the back of his hand to his nose.

Over a month had passed since the two bodies there were warm and live; what the rats, the insects, the fox and time itself had left, tattered and shrunken flesh and naked bones, was still recognizable as human, but little more than that. Two skulls with a little skin still attached, the eye sockets dark and empty, stared into the shadows. As Michael had said, one was identifiable by the hanks of red hair still attached to the taut yellow scalp, though neither Joanna nor anyone else would recognize the face. Two sets of shoulder-bones, two ribcages were tilted inwards as if the lovers had been talking, or as if, Gil thought with another surge of pity, they had realized what was happening and turned to each other for reassurance in the last moments. A linen sheet was under them, and another was drawn over them nearly to waist level, both stained beyond redemption. Brownish skin and drying sinews clung over the joints, keeping the limbs articulated, and though the rats had made off with the fingers and part of the hand, one could still make out the tenderness in the gesture with which the red-haired corpse had laid one arm over the broad shoulders of his bedfellow.

‘But this one,’ said Michael. ‘This is a man and all. The hair’s shorter than mine, look at those shoulders. It’s got no paps. It’s a man!’ He turned to Gil in astonishment and horror. ‘It’s two men. Maister Gil, is that his leman? The forester?’

‘I think it must be,’ agreed Gil.

‘You mean we’ve gone through all this for a pair of kything kitterel — ’ He broke off, still staring at Gil over the wadded handkerchief. ‘And him a married man, too!’

‘Every one of us deserves time for amendment of life,’ said Gil, noting this reaction with interest. So there’s still innocence abroad, he thought. Or did I simply learn far more in Paris than I was sent for? ‘Not to mention,’ he added, ‘that we need to work out what happened here. How do you read it, Michael?’

‘Some things there’s no amending,’ said Michael. He drew back from the bed, and gazed round again. ‘They’ve died in the same moment,’ he hazarded, ‘or near it.’

‘We canny tell that,’ said Gil. ‘Near it, I’ll allow.’

‘And which of them was the catamite?’ wondered Michael. ‘A collier and a forester — how could either one of them …?’

‘No way to tell,’ said Gil.

‘Perhaps they took it in turns,’ speculated Michael with distaste.

It was, Gil felt, a matter for the priests to worry about; there was no way to guess from the way the bodies were disposed which man had played the woman’s part, endangering his immortal soul and inviting the opprobrium which few would apply to his partner. His concern was more practical: how had the two men died?

‘Start at the beginning. Did you have time to discern aught outside, afore I dragged you in here?’

Michael paused to consider. ‘The forester’s cart’s standing there. Likely he came home from his day’s work to find this one here.’

‘So I thought,’ agreed Gil. ‘His knives are lying out there in his scrip, rusting with the rain where he dropped them.’

Michael shut his eyes, apparently to visualize something the better.

‘He came home, and his nancy was here waiting for him. They came into the house, and had a meal. They went into the bed — where’s their clothes?’ he asked, opening his eyes.

‘Yonder by the bed-foot, all in the one tangle.’ Gil nodded at the shadows. ‘I think the goats have been at them. You know the way they’ll eat linen.’

‘St Peter’s bones! Where are the brutes, anyway? I canny abide goats, the way they leer at you.’

As if on a cue, small hooves clipped on the cobbles and the leader of the little flock peered in at the open door. Michael waved his arms and shouted, and the creature gave him a look of ineffable contempt, turned and pattered away. Her companions followed her, the kid bleating anxiously for its mother.

‘Then what?’ prompted Gil.

Michael, recalled to his task, clamped his handkerchief over his nose, closed his eyes again, and offered indistinctly, ‘Then they died. Both together, or one after the other, as you please.’

‘O lusty gallands gay,’ Gil quoted, ‘full laichly thus sall ly thy lusty held. But why? Why would two grown men fall dead in an afternoon?’

‘Afternoon?’

‘I’d say they bedded well before nightfall,’ Gil observed. ‘If it was near dark Syme would have seen to his beasts, surely, milked the goats and shut the hens in, rather than have to rise and fetch them in later.’

‘I see what you mean.’ Michael opened his eyes and looked longingly at the door. ‘Can we go outside? I canny breathe in here. You must have a right strong stomach, Maister Gil.’

‘We’ll stand by the doorway. There’s still things to learn here. Can you jalouse why two men should meet their end in the one moment?’

‘A judgement on their unnatural ways.’

‘What, to caus all men fra wicket vycis fle. Aye, possibly, but I’m no so sure it works like that,’ Gil said wryly. ‘Come on, you’re an educated man, and you learned the hunt the same as I did. What can you see, or not see?’

‘Was it maybe some sickness? Christ aid, it’s foul enough in here now to infect the Host of Scotland. I hope we’re no dead by morning ourselves.’

‘Do you see sign of sickness? Has either man’s belly been afflicted, would you say? The jordan’s there below the bed,’ he pointed into the shadows, ‘but it hadny been used.’

‘No, there’s no sign, but the rats might have got the traces.’

‘If one of them sickened first, the other would have got him to bed. I see only that they bedded together. I think when they went into the bed they were hale.’

‘It’s a judgement, then, like I said.’

‘Think, Michael. Two men, hale when they ate their supper, both dead or too far gone to rise afore it was dark. What does that suggest to you?’

‘If it’s no a judgement from Heaven, is it poison?’

‘So I think.’ Gil relaxed. ‘I think they were poisoned.’

‘Poisoned.’ Michael gazed round the sparse, shadowy interior of the cottage, as if looking for a culprit. ‘Who by, then? Was it deliberate, or was the supper bad? Is there any ill going about that would slay two men in that time? Or was it maybe a pact atween them two?’

‘What, a pact to die together? I’ll admit I never thought of that.’ Gil frowned, staring into the shadows beyond the bed. ‘If it was, it was a sudden idea, for Murray gave no sign at the coaltown or to the two sinkers that he’d not return from this trip. I suppose it could have been solely Syme’s doing, a way to keep his leman with him for ever.’

‘What a wickedness!’ said Michael through the handkerchief. ‘Though I’d believe anything of such an unnatural — ’

‘Wickedness? More than the sin it involves?’

‘It’s selfish. It’s thinking more of yourself than your leman. Would you slay Alys — Mistress Mason — if you couldny dwell wi’ her as you wished?’

‘No,’ admitted Gil, ‘and I take nor would you. But the circumstances are different. I’ve no notion what I’d do if I’d stood in Murray’s place, or Syme’s.’

‘Mine are no so different,’ said Michael quietly. ‘Nobody’s like to be disgusted that Tib and I love one another, but we’re kept apart by our families, wi’ no great hopes of reunion. Just the same, I’d never look for her to die wi’ me, like folk in a silly romance.’

Gil paused for a moment to take in this statement, and gripped the younger man’s shoulder with a sympathetic hand. Michael threw him a startled, hesitant smile from behind the handkerchief, and Gil in some embarrassment returned to the subject at issue.

‘Whether it was a pact or no, we need to determine what slew them. Then we might learn whose doing it was. Can you see aught to the purpose?’

They both surveyed the scene before them. Outside the men gossiped uneasily beyond the gurgling burn, the crows croaked in the treetops, a goat bleated. Here in the shadows nothing stirred, but something seemed to nudge at Gil’s mind, a movement just out of sight, a whisper just below hearing. What was it telling him?

There’s the dead rats,’ Michael said suddenly. ‘What slew that pair of kitterels maybe slew the rats as well. Could that be it?’

‘The rats.’ Yes, that was it. Gil stepped carefully round the cold peats on the hearth and looked down at the scatter of little bones. There were two, no, three rat skulls, a powder of tiny teeth, some tatters of skin. ‘And the flask. I admit the flask has been worrying me. It’s a thing out of place.’

‘I’ve heard you say that sort of thing afore,’ observed Michael. ‘You think it was poison in the flask that slew the rats? Or maybe in that wee jug, where the bones are? Why is it on the floor, anyway?’

‘Circumstantial,’ said Gil, ‘but persuasive.’ Michael blinked at the long words. ‘Aye, it looks very much as if flask and bottle fell over, the bottle rolled on to the floor, and the rats drank whatever spilled. But was it that they died of, and which was it in, flask or bottle? Or was it something in the food on the table?’

‘Is there a way to find out?’ Michael asked.

Gil shrugged. ‘Prayer,’ he offered. The younger man grunted, with what Gil felt to be a healthy show of scepticism. ‘And questioning folk, I suppose. Alys might know something to the purpose.’

‘Does she know everything?’ asked Michael, in genuine enquiry.

Gil smiled, but said only, ‘The flask must be the one Murray was given just before he left the Pow Burn.’

‘I wondered about that. It’s a valuable thing for either of these two to have owned. Who gave him it? What was in it?’

‘Mistress Weir, according to Joanna.’ Gil gazed down at the object. ‘There was cordial in it, to drink her health on her birthday, so Joanna told my wife.’

‘St Peter’s bones! So what was really in it, do you suppose? Was it the old woman who poisoned them, then?’

‘Or Joanna, who must have handled the thing, or young Bel when she brought it to Joanna, or even her sister, or certainly her grandam — it could have been any of the folk up there save young Crombie, who was in Glasgow at the time. Or, I suppose, anyone who knew the flask was there, at the places they called on the way, or at Juggling Nick’s.’

Michael whistled.

‘All the folk at the heugh had reason enough, by what we’ve learned so far,’ he admitted. ‘Could it have been a conspiracy, then? All of them plotting together?’

‘It could. There are many possibilities.’

‘Or maybe someone at Nick’s was jealous. What do you suppose they used?’

‘I’ve no notion what it was, or what it was in either.’ Gil stirred the small bones with his toe. ‘And I hope Alys can help me, for we can hardly ask the likeliest to know hereabouts.’

Michael made a questioning noise. Gil bent to lift flask and bottle, and sniffed cautiously at each. The bottle had clearly held usquebae, but on the flask there was a faint smell of old grape spirits, a bitter whiff of something like his mother’s cough syrup, a herbal smell. Had Alys mentioned elderberries? He reached for the stopper of the flask where it lay on the table, flakes of wax still clinging to it, and stowed all three items in his purse with care.

‘Mistress Lithgo, that everyone calls a good woman,’ he said as he fastened the strings, ‘is as likely as any of them to have done it, and if she didny she likely supplied the stuff.’