by Pat McIntosh
Beatrice Lithgo nodded, and Joanna said, ‘You’re right, Jamesie. These two are short.’ She touched the last two fingers on her left hand. ‘From a mishap when he was a sinker in Fife, so he told me.’
What is a sinker? Gil wondered, as some of the colliers agreed behind him.
‘Well, this one’s got all the fingers he was born wi’, and the nails on them and all.’ Jamesie jerked his head at the corpse again. ‘It’s never Thomas Murray, whoever it is.’
‘Aye, it is Thomas Murray,’ argued one of the peat-cutters. Jamesie turned to look at him. ‘If it isny Murray, then where is he, Jamesie, tell me that?’
‘I’ve no the least idea where Thomas is,’ said the collier, ‘no being his keeper. All I ken is he’s no lying here on this hurdle wi’ his throat cut. Right, Geordie?’ he ended in a threatening tone, and the other man quailed.
‘Throat cut?’ said Alys quickly. ‘Show me!’
‘Is there no end to this?’ demanded Fleming. Ignoring him, Jamesie turned back to the corpse and eased it over a little so that the cords of the neck were visible where they ran under the misplaced jaw. Gil stayed where he was, alert for sudden movements on the part of either group of supporters, but Alys bent to look closely, and suddenly straightened up, biting at the back of her glove, and met Gil’s eye in some distress.
‘As he says,’ she confirmed. ‘His throat has been cut.’
‘Aye, I tellt you he was no sight for a young lady,’ said Fleming in that condescending tone. ‘I’m sorry if it grieves you, mistress, but I did warn you.’
‘Thomas was well when I last saw him,’ said Joanna again, ‘he canny be lying here wi’ his throat cut, and that’s never –’
‘And how no? I’ll believe it isny Murray when you produce the man alive,’ declared Fleming, his grip still tight on Beatrice Lithgo’s arm. ‘You’re all in collusion, is what I say, the same as before.’
‘Before? What do you mean by that?’ said Mistress Lithgo, turning her head to stare at him down her sharp nose.
‘You know very well what I mean. Are you to pay these women any mind at all, Maister Cunningham?’
Gil tightened his lips on the first reply which came to him. After a moment he said, ‘Whatever we do, I’ve no wish to stand out here on a windy hillside much longer. I want the corp taken somewhere I can examine it closer, and I want to hear more about Thomas Murray and when he was last seen –’
‘That’s easy enough,’ said Joanna Brownlie. ‘He set out on the round the morrow of St Patrick, after Sir David here had come up and said a Mass for us the evening before, and confessed him and the two that were to ride wi’ him. And we looked for him –’ She bit her lip, an action which became her well though she seemed unaware of it, and turned to exchange a glance with Mistress Lithgo. ‘We looked for him by Pace-tide. Near three weeks since,’ she finished.
‘Indeed aye,’ trumpeted Fleming. ‘He never came home to the Good Friday Mass, and that’s when I became right concerned, Maister Cunningham.’
‘Seventeenth – no, eighteenth of March. A Monday. So he’s been gone better than five weeks,’ Gil calculated. Joanna nodded. ‘Has no one ridden out to look for him?’
‘Mistress Arbella willny spare the men,’ said the collier Jamesie, getting to his feet. ‘There’s a delivery more than due to leave, and we’ve been building up the coal-hill ready for it. As it is, he’s away wi’ our two best sinkers.’
‘You’re saying there are three of them missing?’ prompted Gil.
‘What have you done wi’ them, woman?’ demanded Fleming, shaking Beatrice Lithgo’s arm. She said nothing.
‘Three of them,’ said Phemie from her post at her mother’s other side. ‘And whatever coin he’s collected. He’s not away wi’ a string of horse, maister,’ she elaborated, ‘he’s gone to collect the fee for last winter’s deliveries.’
‘Arbella will have his head when he returns,’ whispered Joanna, knotting her hands together at her breast. Jamesie looked down at her, but did not speak.
‘Arbella?’ queried Gil.
‘My grandmother,’ said Phemie. ‘Who’s in charge up yonder. Whatever Thomas bloody Murray thinks.’
‘School your tongue, lassie!’ declaimed Fleming, and she tossed her head. ‘That’s no way to talk of your grandam, the devout woman that she is.’
‘We’ll stand out here no longer,’ Gil said firmly. ‘We’ll have the corp borne somewhere we can clean him up till I get a right look at him. I’ll ride out to the coal-heugh after I’ve done that.’ He met Alys’s gold-brown gaze. She nodded slightly, and gathered up her skirts with one hand as if prepared for a further journey. ‘There’s questions I want answered afore I make a decision here.’
‘And the witch?’ demanded Fleming. ‘Will we put her secure and all?’
‘Set her free,’ said Gil, over a rising hostile rumble from the colliers.
‘What?’ squawked Fleming. ‘Wi’ the proof of her misdeeds –’
‘Set her free,’ repeated Gil. ‘Now.’
Chapter Two
The stable-yard at Belstane was not the ideal place to study a corpse, but it was probably the best they were going to get. Accompanying the Meikle brothers’ cart in at the gateway, Gil managed to dismiss most of the entourage which had followed it down from the diggings and was now swollen by the addition of his mother’s stable-hands, several women from the surrounding cottages, and all their children. They gathered outside the great wooden yett peering in and commenting loudly.
‘We’ll have him here,’ he directed over the noise, pointing to the front of the cart-shed, ‘under the pent but in the light. Henry, can you get us a pair of trestles, man, and Alys, would –’ He looked round, and discovered her horse standing riderless by the groom’s.
‘She’s away to the house, Maister Gil,’ said Henry, taking Gil’s bridle as well. ‘Likely gone to ease herself,’ he offered. ‘Give us just a wee bittie, maister, and we’ll have your corp laid out where you want him. Is he to be washed?’
‘No, no,’ said Gil hastily. ‘I’ve no notion what water would do to him.’
‘Aye, very wise,’ said Fleming, bustling forward from the horse trough, wiping his hands on the paunch of his grey gown, ‘get Maister Cunningham his trestles, Henry, as he ordered you, very wise, maister, we’ll no risk losing the traces of the witch’s ill deed.’
The tubby priest had argued violently against freeing Beatrice Lithgo, but finally, seeing that Gil was determined and that the farm men were reluctant to press the point against the miners with their heavy mells, he had given in, swallowed his indignation, and accompanied the corpse rather possessively, passing the short journey asking effusively after Gil’s sisters in between giving loud directions to the Meikles on the management of their own cart. Gil had ignored most of his discourse, but now, hoping to avert the man’s supervision, he said politely:
‘I know you’ll not want to delay your prayers for him any longer, Sir David, whoever he is, even with neither incense nor holy water. If you stand there,’ he indicated the far end of the cart-shed, ‘you’ll be well placed.’
Much gratified, Fleming hurried to the spot, and watched with his beads over his hand while the hurdle was removed from the cart and set up on a pair of trestles. It was still draped in the felt cloak, and just as Henry removed this Alys reappeared, a sacking apron over her riding-dress and her hands full of brushes of different sizes. Socrates left his inspection of the cart-shed to wave his tail at her, sniffing at the brushes.
‘That’s a good thought!’ Gil said.
‘Some are bristle and some are hair,’ she said, colouring with pleasure. ‘This kind we use at home for dusting the panelling.’
‘A good harness-cloth would be as apt for the task, mistress,’ said Henry with humour, ‘seeing he’s all turned to leather.’
It was like Alys, Gil reflected, that after only a day or two under his mother’s roof, she was on good enough terms with the household to borrow anyth
ing she needed. He smiled at her, and bent over the corpse on its support. It was already beginning to dry out, and here and there the leathery skin was split over the long bones and joints.
‘He’ll not keep long,’ he observed. ‘We’ll have to bury him soon, named or no, or he’ll fall into dust.’
‘I suppose it is a man,’ Alys said doubtfully.
‘Look at the beard.’ Gil pushed his dog’s long nose away from the bright shock of hair.
‘His baggie’s well shrunk,’ Henry said from the other end of the hurdle, ‘but you can see it clear. He’s a man grown, right enough.’
‘His . . .?’ Alys began, and coloured up again as she understood. ‘I brought a cloth to cover his face,’ she added hastily. ‘I thought it would be better.’
‘I need to study his head first,’ Gil said.
Socrates, finding they were doing nothing interesting, went off about his own affairs, and the two of them worked together to brush away the drying peat which clung to the visible portions of the corpse. This provoked some comment from the near audience, which included the muttering Fleming, the Meikle brothers and Wat Paton as well as Henry and the stable-hands, but nobody offered to help. Under the dark, crumbling stuff, the dreadful face was even more gruesome to look at, but Gil studied it with care, poking with a brush handle behind the stained teeth and feeling cautiously at the nose and cheekbones.
‘As I thought,’ he said eventually in French.
‘Mm?’ said Alys.
‘For one thing,’ he pointed with the brush handle, ‘his skin’s intact over these injuries, the flattened nose and broken bones in his face. I think they’ve happened after he was buried, I suppose with the pressure of the peat over him. And for another, there’s no sign of scavenging, no insects in the peat, no beetles or maggots, as you get with fox kill or the like.’
‘So he has been buried as soon as he was dead,’ said Alys. Then, with more confidence, ‘But we knew that, surely? He must have been folded up like this before he set. But that doesn’t tell us how soon he was buried,’ she answered herself before Gil could comment, ‘and the beetles do. What about –’ She bit her lip. ‘Flies will settle on a fresh wound. Is there any sign at his throat?’
‘I haven’t got there yet.’ Gil dislodged a caked lump of peat from behind the corpse’s small, neat ear. ‘His hair’s longer than mine. And –’ He felt the side of the head through the damp hair. It gave under his fingers. ‘This is strange. See this?’ He prodded again. ‘My fingers leave a hollow – Sorry, sweetheart!’ he exclaimed, as she covered her mouth and turned away. He set down the brush and stepped quickly round the hurdle, to put a supporting hand under her elbow. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, ‘I forget that you’ve never been at the hunt. Do you want to go into the house?’
‘No, no,’ she protested, but leaned gratefully against him. ‘How strange, his face and his poor shrivelled body don’t disturb me, but that – urgh!’
‘I’m sure you should go in,’ he said. ‘I find it so enthralling, that all our old huntsman taught me about the study of a kill in the forest can be applied to a dead body, that I forget myself. I can work alone, sweetheart.’
‘No, I want to help. Let me – let me go on.’
She drew away and turned back to her task, whisking crumbs of peat from the folded arms and legs of the corpse. He watched her in concern for a moment, then looked up and found Henry grinning knowingly at the far end of the hurdle. Catching Gil’s eye, the man winked, but said nothing. It was clear he thought he knew the reason for Alys’s squeamishness.
But he’s wrong, Gil thought, we know that. There was no reason yet for her to be sick, and that in itself – it was barely five months since their wedding, far too soon to be concerned, Alys kept saying. Nevertheless some of her acquaintance among the merchants’ wives of Glasgow had begun to ask arch questions, and raise eyebrows at her answer, and now here was the same attitude showing itself. He shook his head, got another knowing wink, and bent over the corpse again.
It was as if the skull had gone from inside the skin, he decided, prodding again at the leathery scalp. And beneath it – he felt carefully at the hollows his fingers had left already. Beneath it the brains had turned to something which felt very like butter. Why would that happen? And why should the skull-bones vanish and the bones of the face remain?
Abandoning these questions for later, he explored the rest of the scalp, parting the harsh bright hair and brushing flakes of peat and strands of moss away from the skin. On the crown of the head, rather to the right side, the skin was split and drawn back, and the yellowish stuff visible within the wound did resemble butter. The whole corpse smelled of the peat it so much resembled, but here it was underlaid, very faintly, by another scent like old cheese. Peering closely at the gash in the scalp, he decided that its edges were slightly thickened, as if this injury had happened before death.
‘This is not a working man,’ said Alys. He looked up, to find her studying the corpse’s hands where they were tucked against its chest. ‘See, there are no calluses on his fingers, as the collier said, and his fingernails are neatly trimmed. And his feet –’ She gestured with the brush she was using. ‘He has no shoes on, but his feet are as soft as his hands. He has gone well shod.’
‘There’s none of the gentry missing,’ said Henry. ‘And none wi’ that hair hereabouts anyway. He’s maybe a traveller of some kind, lost on the moss, Maister Gil.’
‘We should be making notes,’ said Gil.
‘I left my tablets in our chamber,’ said Alys. He laid the cloth she had brought across the distorted face, drew his own set of tablets from his purse, and passed them over when she held out her hand.
‘Use Scots,’ he requested, ‘so I don’t have to translate if it’s needed for evidence.’
She found a clean leaf and noted her own findings, and he summarized his for her.
‘You think he has been struck on the head?’ she asked as he finished.
‘It looks very like,’ he admitted.
‘Lost on the moss and attacked,’ offered Henry, who had listened with interest.
‘And his throat cut as well,’ said Alys.
‘Someone had to be certain,’ said Henry.
‘No further wounds on the scalp. He’s got all his front teeth, though they’re loose in the jaw now,’ Gil noted in passing, and Alys wrote this down. ‘And his throat has been cut.’ He eased at the displaced jaw, to scrutinize the leathery recesses under it. ‘On the left side, from under the ear to the windpipe. No sign of maggots or flies.’
‘On the left only?’ said Alys, looking up.
‘From in front, maybe,’ suggested Henry doubtfully.
‘You don’t cut a man’s throat from the front,’ said Gil. ‘Not unless you want to be drenched in blood.’
‘Like a pig-killing,’ agreed Alys, nodding. ‘So it would have been a right-handed man who killed him, standing behind him?’
‘I’d say so, and the blow to the head was right-handed as well.’ Gil peered further into the hollow under the jaw, and identified something fibrous wedged in a fold of the skin. ‘What’s this?’ He poked with one finger, but could get no purchase on the strand. ‘Alys, have you a hook or a key or something about you?’
Searching in her purse in her turn, she handed him a buttonhook. Even with this it took him some time to get a purchase on what he had seen, so embedded in the flesh was it, but finally it lodged in the curve of the little implement and he was able to coax it out.
‘A cord,’ said Alys.
‘A cord,’ Gil agreed, returning the buttonhook. He took the free end in his fingers, and it came away in his grasp. ‘It’s near rotted to dust, but I think this may be what’s killed him. He’s been throttled. Here at the back of his neck where the flesh is so shrunk you can’t see any trace of it, I suppose the cord must have crumbled away, but under his jaw it had sunk so deep it was protected from the bog-waters. If his throat was slit after he was dead, the blood
would drain more slowly.’
‘They were really makin’ certain,’ said Henry, much impressed. ‘That’s three ways they slain him – cracked him on the head, throttled him wi’ a rope, and slit his throat,’ he counted off on his fingers. ‘I’d no go so far to put down a horse, save he was a right brute.’
‘But when?’ Gil wondered. ‘When has this happened? Is there any tale of someone going missing on the moor?’
‘No that I mind,’ said Henry, ‘nor that I ever heard tell. You’d maybe want to ask some of the old folk,’ he added, ‘they’ve little enough to do but talk over what’s past.’
‘No need of that, surely,’ expostulated Fleming almost in Gil’s ear, and he realized that the man had ceased his prayers and had been drawing closer for some time, exclaiming indignantly at what was being said. ‘It’s the man Murray, for certain, and everything you’re saying makes it clearer what the witch has been at! Draining his blood after he was dead, and the like, Our Lady protect us from such wickedness. And what did she plan wi’ his blood, Maister Cunningham, tell me that!’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Gil politely. ‘I’ve not studied witchcraft, Sir David. It seems you have.’
‘It isny Thomas Murray, Sir David,’ said Wat Paton beyond the priest, ‘Jamesie Meikle was quite clear on it.’
‘I have to protect my flock, maister,’ protested Fleming, ignoring this. Across the stable-yard there was a disturbance, as the crowd outside the yett parted reluctantly to allow someone through. Hooves clopped on the cobbles. ‘I’ve never studied it close, I only ken what anyone kens!’
‘Aye, I’ve heard a few tales about that,’ said Henry, with humour.
‘Gil,’ said Alys, putting a hand on his sleeve. ‘Is that not Michael Douglas at the yett?’
Just inside the iron-bound leaves a slight young man was dismounting from a tired horse, a groom in blue-grey livery already afoot to take his reins. The newcomer wore the narrow blue belted gown of a student of the University of Glasgow, and untrimmed mouse-coloured hair stuck out below his scholar’s cap. Fleming hurried forward with more exclamations, brushing the peat-cutters aside and reaching his master’s youngest son just before the Belstane steward, to bow and flourish his felt hat, babbling greetings. Michael Douglas stared at him with some surprise, and as Gil joined the group the plump priest waved imperiously at the steward.