‘Sickness,’ Giles declared, a little tetchily, Hew thought. His capacity for diagnosing close had been exhausted, he supposed, upon the corpse. Giles preferred, at best, to be equivocal.
‘Then what caused the sickness?’ Hew went on relentlessly.
‘As I am persuaded, something that he ate.’
‘Could he have been poisoned?’
Giles answered with a frown. ‘What is it you suggest?’ he asked reluctantly.
‘That whoever lured the miller to his death made sure that Henry Cairns was indisposed. And since the sickness clears him from the crime, perhaps he did inflict it on himself.’
‘Henry was not well enough to lift his head, much less hit a man, and drive him to his death,’ asserted Giles.
‘Then someone may have had in mind to kill him too. These matters are not random, Giles, there is a purpose to them, that I cannot think divine.’
‘You may be right,’ Giles sighed. ‘Though I can see no purpose, in the death of Gavan Lang. As for Henry Cairns, I had the sense he knew what was the matter, and would not confess it.’
‘That gives weight to the suggestion, that he brought it on himself,’ suggested Hew.
‘I think it likely that he did, though he had no intent to cause himself such harm. He ingested some foul substance, and found it disagreed with him. His wife and children all keep well, and none of them has been affected. His wife is cruel and cross to him, yet she is not a shrew, and so I am inclined to think, he brought it on himself. If he will not confide it, we may never know. For though I treat his body, yet I cannot cure his soul. These matters are perplexing, I admit,’ said Giles. ‘Now let us to the Swallow Gait, to break this news to Meg. She loved your miller well, and she will find it vexing, as I think.’
They found Meg in the nether hall, with Lilias and Maude, ‘Come to see the babbie,’ as Lilias explained to them, with a seraphic smile.
‘The bairn would not rest, till I brocht her to see him,’ said Maude apologetically. ‘I have left Mary in charge and cannot be gone away long.’
‘Let her stay awhile,’ suggested Meg. ‘And Hew will see her home. You will, Hew, will you not?’
‘Beyond a doubt,’ her brother sighed.
Maude accepted gratefully. ‘You are right kind. The lass is close confined, and feels it, desperately.’
Maude looked strained, thought Hew, as though the task of keeping Lilias confined began to take its toll. Her grey eyes settled briefly on Matthew in his crib. ‘You have been well blessed, with a fine fair boy,’ she said, almost inaudibly.
‘Hold him, if you will,’ offered Meg.
Maude put out her hand to touch the baby’s cheek. ‘I will not disturb him at his rest.’
‘I will hold him,’ Lilias said, reaching eager arms towards the sleeping babe.
‘You mauma, pet,’ said Maude.
‘Let her, Maude,’ protested Meg. ‘Show her how to hold him. It can do no harm.’
Maude Benet shook her head. ‘You cannot conceive of the harm that it can do. For she will want her own bairn, for herself. He is not a poppet,’ she explained to Lilias. ‘And he is not a pet. You cannot plague and play with him, as you do Gib Hunter.’
‘He is not Gib Hunter,’ Lilias returned, with an open clarity both fierce and unexpected. ‘Gib Hunter is a cat. And if you put a bonnet on him, he will bite and scratch.’ She sucked her thumb reproachfully.
‘So much she has learned,’ Maude sighed. ‘Twere better, after all, to take her home.’
‘Ah, let her stay,’ insisted Meg. ‘There is no harm.’
Maude hesitated. ‘You will see her safe, sir?’ she inquired of Hew.
‘I shall indeed,’ he promised her.
‘Then I thank you all. Lilias, be good. And do as you are telt.’
‘She is troubled, I think,’ Hew said, as she left.
‘It must vex her,’ Giles reflected, ‘to see her daughter with the little child; that brings to mind what cannot, and what must not be, for Lilias.’
‘It is partly that,’ accepted Meg. ‘She daily frets and fears for what the future holds; what hope is there for Lilias, what vestige of a life for her. And partly that . . .’
Lilias came tugging at Meg’s sleeve. ‘I want to hold the babbie in my arms.’
‘And so you shall,’ Meg promised her. She sat the girl down in a low-backed chair and settled Matthew in her lap. ‘Hold him there, and there.’ Lilias gazed down at him, poking out her tongue in a frown of concentration. ‘And will I sing my song to him?’ she posed.
‘Aye, sing your song,’ said Meg. ‘For he will like that very much.’
Lilias began to sing, clasping tight the swaddling bands. ‘Mixter maxter maks guid baxter.’
Matthew murmured in his sleep. ‘He likes your singing,’ Meg approved.
‘What song is it you sing?’ Hew wondered curiously. Lilias looked up at him. ‘It is a song of the baxters. We do not like the baxters, though. For that they are a trial to us. They break my Minnie’s bread.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Maude’s inn makes little profit, and tis hard to make ends meet,’ Meg explained. ‘She falls fouls of the baxters, for baking her own bread, and fouler of her landlord, for grinding her own corn, what little she can scratch from her own bare patch of land. She does not break the rule from greed, but from necessity, when she cannot well afford to pay the baxters’ price.’
‘I saw that,’ Hew remembered. ‘Yet it seemed to me James Edie was indulgent of her crime.’
‘Tis no loss to him. James Edie sells white wheaten bread, and Maude is baking bannocks, that the law says she should buy from men like Patrick Honeyman. The baxters’ gild, in short, is made of many men, and each man puts his interests first above the rest.’
Lilias, it seemed, grew bored, and thrust the baby back at Meg. ‘He does not speak or sport,’ she complained.
‘He does not,’ Meg agreed. She settled Matthew back into the safety of his crib. ‘Wait, and I will show you something you will like.’ She disappeared into another room, returning with a wooden box, from which she took a small array of toys. They made a tiny village, carved in wood, with horses, cows and sheep, a farmer and his wife, with painted clothes and faces, a windmill and a watermill, with a wheel that turned. The figures and the mills had moving parts. Lilias clapped her hands. ‘A whirligig!’ she cried out in delight.
‘A whirligig,’ Meg promised, ‘of your very own.’ Without hint or warning, she broke into tears.
‘Winds and waters,’ whispered Giles, in confidence, to Hew. ‘It is the little miniature, that moves maternal instinct in the woman’s womb. For so a mother’s milk precipitates the floods, and turns her wits to wetness. It is not to be discouraged.’
Hew had some doubts on the wisdom of this, and Meg, when she heard it, cried hotly, ‘It is not the miniature, that moves my mother’s milk!’ She was stung by indignation into breaking off her tears. ‘It is Sandy Kintor!’
Hew exchanged glances with Giles. ‘What is it you have heard?’
‘Sandy is dead,’ Meg replied desolate. ‘Sandy is dead. I heard the news from Maude, who heard it from the baxters at the inn. And he it was who made these little toys, when I first arrived at Kenly Green. Our father took me there, for solitude and rest, when I was sore afflicted with the falling fits. For it was months, in truth, before we found the medicines to keep the fits at bay, and I was frail and sick. And our father protected me, shut me up close and cloistered from the world.’
‘I did not know,’ her brother answered awkwardly.
‘You were at the school, and at the college, then. And father did not want for you to know. Our coming caused a stir among the tenants of the land, until they were right used to it, and some did spurn and fear this rare, strange, haunted girl, and the nurse who healed her, Annie Law.’
Giles said, ‘Stuff!’ indignantly, still loyal to Meg in retrospect. She smiled at him. ‘I do not blame them for it; they are country folk, and we m
et ignorance enough back in the town. I did not see it like that then, and was a sad and lonely bairn. But Sandy Kintor working at the mill had heard of my sad plight, for the mill is a fine gossip shop, where people pass the time whilst waiting for their turn. “I heard it at the mill,” is what the midwives say when they bring me the news. So doubtless it was broadcast at the mill that Matthew Cullan had a queer wee bairn, who best was to be pitied, and at worst to be reviled. I was like poor Lilias, then. I know what it is like.’
‘You never were like Lilias,’ insisted Giles. I will not hear you talk like that.’
‘Not in my heart, then understand me. But like her enough, in the eyes of the world,’ replied Meg. ‘The miller soon did settle that, coming to the house with a basketful of toys, and his son and daughters that were closest to my age – Janet and Elspet and Sandy his boy, that no one but his mother ever knew as Alasdair. You must remember them, Hew!’
But Hew did not. They were part of Meg’s childhood, not his.
‘And father, when he saw how much it pleased me, let me run and play with them, and paddle in the burn, and they became my friends. Sandy, most of all. He was the dearest boy. Subtle, and a dreamer. You would have liked him, as I think.’
‘I think that she was sweet on him,’ her brother winked at Giles. He was trying to subdue the aching in his heart.
‘When I was six years old, I loved him, unequivocally,’ Meg conceded openly. ‘But we were not long friends, for millers’ bairns are not weans long, and he was put to work. He did not have the knack for it. He longed to go to sea.’
‘Childhood sweethearts!’ smiled her husband. ‘This is news to me!’
‘In truth, I had forgotten it myself,’ admitted Meg. ‘This whirligig,’ she said to Lilias, who clutched it tightly in her hand, ‘will spin round in the wind.’
‘I confess I am astonished,’ muttered Hew, ‘how quick the baxters were to spread the news.’
‘Rumour travels fast,’ reflected Giles, ‘both good and bad.’
‘We do not like the baxters,’ Lilias said complacently, spinning round the sails upon the wooden mill. ‘And they do not like him.’ She pointed up at Hew.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Meg. ‘They do not like Hew?’
‘He meddles in their gild. It is a thing they keep locked in a box.’
‘They are a gild. They do not keep the gild locked up in a box,’ smiled Hew.
‘They do,’ insisted Lilias. ‘It is a secret box.’
‘What does she mean, that you meddle?’ pressed Meg.
Hew pulled a face. ‘I gave them some advice,’ he admitted. ‘Legal advice. In short, they demanded it. It turned out awry, and was not well received.’
Lilias shook her head. ‘You meddled with the windmill. Now your miller’s dead. And that should be a warning to you, so the baxters said.’
‘Who was it said that?’ demanded Giles.
Lilias shook her head. ‘The baxters said it. Mixter maxter maks guid baxters. But we do not like the baxters, for they take our bread.’
‘It is the foolish chatter of a child,’ concluded Hew.
‘She hears things; you should heed her, Hew,’ his sister countered anxiously.
‘She has told us nothing we did not already know. Tam Brooke said the same thing at the green this afternoon. The baxters are unsettled, and they want the mill; the rumours start to spread, and that is what she heard.’
‘Even so,’ muttered Giles, ‘you should take better care.’
‘What say you, that it was because of me that Sandy Kintor died?’ demanded Hew.
‘We do not say that. You know that we do not say that.’
‘His was not the first suspicious death,’ said Hew. ‘Then there is Henry Cairns.’
‘What of Henry Cairns?’ asked Meg.
‘There, at least,’ said Hew, ‘we steal a march on you. The miller Henry Cairns is taken sore and sick. Most likely poisoned, as I think.’
‘Poisoned, aye,’ conceded Meg, ‘though by no human hand.’
Her brother stared at her. ‘What do you say?’
‘His wife came by this morning, Giles – I forgot to mention it – for vomiter and purgative, and told to me the tale. Henry has been eating mussels,’ she replied.
‘Mussels?’ echoed Hew.
‘Mussels would account for it,’ Giles accepted sagely. ‘Trust a woman’s tale.’
‘He bought them from a fishwife,’ Meg explained, ‘on his way to kirk, a little pot of mussels, steaming in their broth. Effie told him not to, for Henry broke the Sabbath rule, in buying them that day. But he could not resist them, and drank them at a gulp. It was God’s judgement, Effie said, that he defiled the sacrament. She did not care if Henry went to Hell, but she would not be dragged there in his wake. She is sour and cross, and Henry Cairns is mortally ashamed.’
‘Dear, dear, poor man,’ said Giles. ‘Together with the horrors he has seen, he must think himself upon the brink of Hell. You see, Hew,’ he went on, ‘there is no malice there, but foolish misfortune.’
‘I see,’ Hew exclaimed, ‘that there are no secrets to be kept from Meg, while she is close confined; and I must marvel at it. How is it that you hear things, Meg? All things come to you!’
His sister smiled. ‘As Lilias, in her confinement, hears the baxters’ secrets, and writes them in her song. She hears their secrets closest, for they take no note of her. Men do things; women know things. And that is the way of the world.’
Chapter 12
Kenly Mill
The mill at Kenly Green was working still, for Sandy had resumed where his father had left off. Hew continued past it to the little cottage where the miller had lived with his wife, further up the burn. The cottage was clean swept and neat; the widow had contrived to keep everything in place. She welcomed him, with a deferential patience that he felt he did not deserve, bidding him to sit close by her at the fire, and feeding him with biscuit bread left over from the wake. The baxters had provided it, from kindness, free of charge.
‘Was that no’ a’fy guid of them?’
Hew agreed it was. The sugary confection turned to powder in his mouth. The miller’s eldest daughter had been married in the spring, and he had sent a hogshead from his cellars for the feast; he worried now it had not been enough. The mill house, he remembered, had been dressed with yellow flowers.
‘It is kind of you to come and see us,’ said the miller’s wife. Ellen was her name. And he had been afraid that he would not remember it. Sandy, Ellen, Janet, John, he whispered in his mind.
‘Your faither ay was kind to us,’ she said.
‘Mistress . . . Ellen, I am sorry for your loss. If there is aught you need . . .’ There would not be, of course. ‘The papers are drawn up today; the mill and cottage are secured, in Sandy’s name and yours. My nephew is your landlord now, though that is but in name, for nothing else has changed.’
He cursed himself, for want of tact: for nothing else has changed. Yet Ellen did not seem to notice it. ‘That is your sister’s wean. How do they now?’ she asked.
‘Well . . . they do well. They both are . . . quite well. Matthew will be christened, at the Holy Trinity.’
‘Aye? Then that is braw,’ she approved. ‘Is he a bonny bairn?’
‘He is,’ he answered desperately. ‘A fine and bonny bairn.’
‘And is it then his mammie, he looks after? Or has he mair a likeness o’ his dad?’
‘Of both of them, I think.’
‘His mammie is a bonnie lass,’ she said.
He found the small talk stifling, and could think of no way out. ‘I thought that I might have a word with Sandy at the mill.’
‘With Sandy?’ Ellen echoed, baffled for a moment. ‘Oh, you mean with Alasdair.’
‘With Alasdair. Of course.’
‘Now that is a kindness, sir, and he will be pleased. That will please your brother, will it not?’ She turned to her daughter Janet, who was standing by the fire, as though she w
anted confirmation of the fact. Janet stirred a pan of pottage on the flame.
‘He will like it well enough,’ she answered, Hew sensed disapprovingly.
‘He will like it more than that,’ her mother said. ‘He liked your sister, too,’ she turned again to Hew. He sensed that she was drifting now; he did not know if it was Sandy that she meant, or Alasdair.
Janet murmured, ‘Maw . . .’
‘Whisht. He does not mind an auld wife’s tale. You dinna mind it, dae ye, son?’
Hew promised he did not. ‘They played thegither at the burn when they were bairns. A miller’s boys are not bairns long. She likely has forgotten it.’
‘He does not want to hear it, maw,’ the daughter sighed.
‘She has not forgotten it,’ said Hew.
‘He never meant to have the mill. He never wanted it.’
‘Is it Sandy that you mean?’
The miller’s wife meant Alasdair. ‘He does not want the windmill. And I am glad for that. They say there is a curse upon it. It brings death by drowning.’
‘I do not believe that, Ellen. Nor should you,’ insisted Hew. ‘Your husband did not drown.’
‘Did he not, though?’ she looked at him curiously. ‘His breath was stopped with corn. And is that not a drowning, after all?’ Ellen dropped her eyes, and stared into the fire, as if she did not see him there. She did not say another word, and so at last her daughter answered for her with a sigh. ‘I think, sir, you should go, and see my brother at the mill.’
Ellen had been right, that her son was pleased to see him. It was for a reason Hew had not supposed. Alasdair was by the dam that ran into the mill. ‘There is something I must show you, sir.’ He closed the sluice, that acted as a brake to stop the wheel. ‘Will you come into the mill?’
Inside, his younger brother looked up from the stones. ‘The wheel has stopped.’
‘I stopped it. Go and tell your mammie you are come hame for your supper.’
The small boy gawped at him. ‘But it isna suppertime.’
‘Do it, John.’
John lingered at the door. ‘Since Master Hew is come, will you not say about the pig?’ he asked.
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