by Pat McIntosh
‘Come up here,’ said Phemie. ‘You can see it all from here.’
They tramped across the rough grass away from the coal-hill. Alys let go of the dog’s collar and he loped round them, grinning and sniffing at the wind. Some of the ponies broke off their grazing to stare at him, then decided he was no great threat and returned to more important matters.
‘There are the three ingoes,’ Phemie pointed. ‘There’s the one we use now, and there’s the mid one, and down there’s the very first one that Arbella’s sire cut when he first took on the heugh from this Sir James’s grandsire. Or maybe from that one’s father,’ she added, ‘I forget, what wi’ most of them being called James.’
Alys nodded, identifying the three entries. They were smaller than she had expected, barely five feet high and braced with solid timbers, and from the furthest downhill of the three a channel of grey water spilled away down the slope towards the burn. Making a mental note not to let the dog drink from that stream, she sat on a relatively dry patch of grass and said, ‘So the men go in there to work. Do they walk all the way under the earth to the point where the shafts go down? How many men are there working at once?’
‘Aye, they walk. Or crawl.’ Phemie sat down beside her. ‘The roof gets lower further in. Sometimes we’ve more, times fewer, but for now we’ve four men at a time hewing and four or so bearing, so that’s eight at least in the mine, and two or three at the surface.’
‘In two shifts? Do they work by night as well?’
‘No the now, though we used to have two shifts.’ Phemie gave her another of those admiring looks. ‘You’ve a good understanding of this, mistress. You sure you’ve never seen a coal-heugh?’
‘My father is a mason. And my name is Alys.’
They exchanged shy smiles, and Alys went on hastily, counting on her fingers, ‘Eight – eleven men, and the smith and his helper, the saddler, the chandler, a man to see to the ponies, the two who are gone with your missing man. Which reminds me, Phemie, I should like to speak to their kin if I may. I think your mother said they had kin here?’
‘The Patersons? Aye, their sister’s married on one of the colliers. She works in our kitchen.’
Alys nodded, and looked down at her fingers. ‘There must be twenty men here. There are not so many households in that row of cottages.’
‘There’s ten houses. Five-and-twenty men all told, and a few laddies old enough to work. Then some of the women works in the house like Kate Paterson, and I think there’s one or two of them does some weaving and the like. That’s how our Bel learned her spinning, one of the colliers’ wives taught her.’
‘In those little houses,’ Alys marvelled. ‘Did the man Murray dwell there before he wedded Joanna?’
‘In the end house,’ said Phemie indifferently. ‘It’s got two chambers. Likely he wishes he was still there, the way the old beldam gets after him.’
‘Are you saying your grandam disliked Murray? That was not the impression she gave us.’
‘I’ll wager it wasny.’ Phemie grinned. ‘Nor to him, at first. I’ve seen it afore. She’s aye sweetie-sweetie, as smooth as honey, wi’ guests and strangers, but she has a different voice for the household, I can tell you that. Except wi’ Joanna,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘and my brother.’
‘I have known people like that,’ Alys said.
‘Aye. Well, once Murray had wed Joanna, so he was living in the house, in the north wing, see yonder, wi’ the separate door?’ She pointed, and Alys nodded. ‘Arbella began to argue wi’ him, and he wouldny buckle under and do her bidding where the coal was concerned, and the shouting there was! And Joanna weeping, the silly creature, and my brother getting into it and all, when he was home –’
‘Which side did he take?’ Alys asked.
‘The side that would cause most argument. Raffie thinks he should ha’ been given the charge of the business. He’s two year older than me, he’s eighteen now, he thinks he could run a coal-heugh, for all he’s been away at school and then at the college since he was ten.’
‘I have no brothers,’ said Alys thoughtfully.
‘They’re no worth it, I can tell you. Anyway, Arbella and Murray near came to blows the last time they argued. It seems the coal we’re working has about given out, there’s a throw showed up at the end of the eastmost road.’ She gestured along the hillside.
‘Whatever does that mean?’
‘Times the coal just stops,’ Phemie said impatiently. ‘The men cut along so far and then there’s a break in the rocks and beyond it there’s no coal. They call that a throw.’
‘Oh, yes! I have seen the same thing in the side of a quarry! But there you can see where the band of good stone has gone to, whether it has stepped up or down, and underground one must guess, I suppose.’
‘Aye, or abandon that working and start again elsewhere. Murray wants to do that. Arbella wouldny hear of it.’
‘I can see that she would be angry,’ agreed Alys. ‘Tell me, has the man any friends about the coal-heugh? Is there anyone he would talk to?’
‘What, him?’ said Phemie, startled. ‘I’ve no notion. I think maybe no, but if you ask Jamesie Meikle likely he could tell you. He’s a good man, wi’ an eye for what’s going on. Joanna should have taken him.’
‘I suppose he is working just now. Where do you think Murray has gone?’
‘I hope he’s run off. I hope we never see him again. Or if he’s stolen the takings, we can put him to the horn for that and then get him hanged for thieving.’ Phemie grinned, without humour. ‘I can picture it well, the Sheriff’s officer blowing the horn at Lanark Cross and reading him out a wanted man.’
‘Why do you dislike him so much, Phemie?’
‘He’s a toad,’ said Phemie roundly.
Alys studied her expression. ‘Was he courting you?’
The girl looked down, and then away. Her fair hair blew across her face, and she shook her head angrily, trying to dislodge it.
‘Was he?’ Alys persisted, recalling Michael’s comment at supper. ‘Or was it your sister he liked?’
‘What, Bel? She’s a bairn yet!’ objected Phemie. Alys waited. ‘Aye, if you have to ken. He was courting me last spring. Full of plans to wed me, he was, and build a house over yonder, across the burn from the workings.’ She tugged savagely at a tussock of grass by her side, and scattered the torn stems on the wind. Socrates bounded back to snatch at the nearest, white teeth snapping in his long narrow jaws. ‘Then he saw how Joanna was placed, and went after her hell-for-leather.’
‘How Joanna was placed?’
‘Oh, aye.’ Phemie turned to meet her eye. ‘She’s Matt’s widow, right? Arbella has said she’s to have Matt’s share. Even though he wed her out of hand wi’ no contract or agreement drawn up, even though he died afore he’d bairned her, when the old witch goes –’ Alys saw the girl’s expression flicker as she heard her own words, but the angry voice plunged on. ‘When the old witch goes, Joanna gets half the business, and the other half goes to my mother and the three of us. No wonder the wonderful Thomas fancied Joanna to his bed.’
‘He ill treats her,’ said Alys softly. ‘He holds her in contempt.’
‘Aye.’ Phemie tore at another handful of grass. ‘I tellt Arbella of it, the last time he went for Joanna. She wouldny believe me.’ She turned her head away, but her next words were just audible: ‘He would never ha’ treated me like that.’
‘Forgive me, mistress,’ said Joanna, dabbing at her eyes with the end of her kerchief. ‘When I heard you at the outside door the now I thought for one moment – That’s the door Thomas aye uses, rather than come through the house in his muddy boots.’
‘It must be very hard for you,’ said Alys with a rush of genuine sympathy, ‘worrying about your man when nobody else seems concerned.’
‘It’s that,’ agreed Joanna, and turned to the other door of the room. ‘Will you come ben, mistress, and be seated? A wee cup of cordial, maybe, if Phemie’s had you up the hill
in this wind?’
‘That would be welcome,’ Alys admitted, following her into a neat inner chamber with a high curtained bed against one wall. ‘The view is interesting, from so high up, but I admit I prefer to be more sheltered.’
‘I found the same, when I moved up here.’ Joanna drew a new-fashioned spinning machine, a well-made item with turned legs and a narrow-rimmed wheel, into a corner away from the window and set a backstool for Alys. ‘The wind never ceases.’
‘You are not from hereabouts, then?’ Alys sat down on the padded leather and shook her skirts round her.
‘I was raised on the other side of the Clyde. My father was William Brownlie, and held Auldton, by Ashgill. It paid a good rent. And it’s nowhere near so high up as this.’
‘My father is a mason,’ Alys countered. ‘He has charge of the Archbishop’s new build at the cathedral in Glasgow.’
‘And your man is some kind of a man of law,’ Joanna offered. She handed Alys a little glass of something brownish and sticky, and sat down herself. ‘Your good health, mistress. It’s made wi’ elderberries – well, mostly elderberries. The colour was no so good last year, but we put the good spirits to it.’
‘And yours.’ Alys raised her glass, and sipped cautiously. The cordial was bitter, despite a generous inclusion of honey, but the base was indeed strong spirits. She identified the elderberries, and several distinct herbs, and perhaps ginger.
‘Mistress Weir seems not to be concerned at all about Maister Thomas,’ she observed.
‘No,’ Joanna agreed, and looked away, turning her own glass in her fingers.
‘Has she said why? It is a long time to be overdue on such a journey.’ Joanna shook her head, and Alys went on, with some sympathy, ‘I think she governs her household firmly.’
‘She’s aye been kind to me,’ said Joanna. ‘Since ever poor Matt brought me across the threshold, two year since.’ She took another sip of cordial.
‘I heard about that – a sad tale. He came to your father’s house, did he? And you loved each other at sight? Tell me about it.’
That appeared to be the gist of it. Alys sat and watched while the girl opposite, brave in her dark red wool and snow-white linen kerchief, described the relentless refashioning of her life in the past two years. Joanna’s mother was dead (‘Mine too,’ said Alys) and her brothers, much older, married and settled; Matt Crombie had appeared at the gate one day, hoping to extend his round, and though he had taken no orders for coal he had given his heart to Joanna on sight. He had spent an evening closeted with her father, and the next day they had sent for the priest from Dalserf and she had packed up her clothes and the gold jewel her mother left her.
‘We rode up here, new-wed and happy, in such hopes,’ she said bleakly. ‘I mind how we halted before the house door,’ she gestured at the cobbled area under the window where they sat, ‘and Phemie and Bel went in all haste for their grandam, and Beattie came running round from the stillroom, only I never knew it was the stillroom then, you understand.’ Alys nodded. ‘And they fetched the maidservants, and when Matt lifted me over the threshold they all clapped their hands and cheered, just as Arbella came into the hall and caught sight of us, she was walking much better in those days, and the noise gave her such a turn that she dropped the tray she was carrying on to that stone floor and broke three of the good glasses.’ She sighed. ‘He took ill within the week, my poor laddie. And d’you ken, Arbella’s never so much as mentioned those glasses to me.’
‘Oh, that’s forbearing,’ agreed Alys, and took another sip from her glass.
‘And then when – when I wedded Thomas, she would have us dwell here in the house, instead of up in the row with the colliers. To tell truth I was glad of it at first,’ she admitted, ‘for bare walls and an earthen floor’s no what I was ever used to.’ Alys made noises of sympathy. ‘But she and Thomas make such an argy-bargy of the least wee thing, shouting and disagreeing over whether black’s white, times there’s no bearing it, Mistress Mason, if you’ll believe me.’
‘Does she dislike him, then?’
‘No, no, she doesny dislike him! Just, they don’t get on,’ Joanna said earnestly. Alys nodded encouragingly. ‘Thomas aye feels he should know more than she tells him, I think. She said to me when she would have me consent, he was a good bargain, and since Matt had respected him as a cunning pitman –’ She bit her lip, and paused a moment. ‘No, she gave him a gift as they left that morn, so how could she dislike him? Bel brought it here to him as I was packing his scrip. A wee flask of silver,’ she held her hand out flat, fingers together, ‘the size of that, but flat, to fit inside your doublet for travelling, and a drop of something in it to drink Arbella’s health on her birthday, that’s three days after St Patrick, seeing he would be away then. We aye mark folks’ birthdays up here,’ she confided, ‘maybe something good to eat or a new garment for them or the like. It’s a friendly notion. So I put it right in his scrip, and no delay.’
Alys, whose father had always marked her birthday, smiled in agreement. Joanna looked down at her empty glass.
‘Will you take a drop more, mistress?’ She rose and fetched the yellow stoneware pipkin from the cupboard-top. ‘It’s warming stuff, this. Refreshes the heart.’
‘It does indeed,’ said Alys. ‘Perhaps a drop. Have you any thought of what might have delayed your man?’
Joanna topped up Alys’s glass, refilled her own, and sat down again, the little jar by her feet.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ she admitted, looking unseeing at the brown sticky liquid in her glass. ‘I canny think that it’s anything good, by now. He could ha’ taken ill, or met wi’ some accident, but we’d surely ha’ heard by now, would we no? Or he could ha’ heard of a new order someone wanted to give us, though I’m not so certain we could fill it just now. But that would never ha’ taken three weeks to deal wi’. I just – I just don’t know.’
‘Would he have any reason to leave here?’ Alys asked gently.
‘Oh, no. No that I can see.’ Joanna’s eyes focused on the glass of cordial, and she raised it. ‘It’s right kind of you to take such an interest,’ she said innocently. ‘Here’s to your good fortune, Mistress Mason.’
‘I never heard such a sad tale,’ said Alys, accepting this, ‘and every word of it true. What does your father think of your second marriage?’
Joanna looked away again, and crossed herself.
‘He died two months after Matt,’ she whispered. Alys, dismayed, moved her backstool beside Joanna’s, and sat down again, taking the other girl’s hand. ‘He came up here once a week all that summer, while my poor lad was dying, and then I saw he’d begun to sicken of the same thing himself, and then he took to his bed and died.’
‘Oh, my poor lass. That was hard for you.’ Alys patted the hand she held. ‘Did he make a peaceful end?’
‘Oh, aye, just as Matt did, wi’ Sir Simon to shrive him, that wedded Matt and me, and take down his will, and my brothers present, and all.’ Joanna crossed herself again. ‘Christ assoil him, he was concerned for me on his deathbed, that Arbella should have an eye to me. Mistress Weir, he said, over and over, Mistress Weir, care.’
‘And I’ve had a care to you ever since, my pet, have I no?’ said Arbella’s sweet voice. Alys looked round, and saw the older woman standing in the doorway which led into the rest of the house, steadying herself with one twisted hand against the doorpost, Bel’s round sullen face visible over her shoulder.
‘Madam,’ she said, and rose to curtsy. I must have been engrossed in Joanna’s story, she thought, not to have heard her come in.
‘Mistress Mason.’ Arbella returned the curtsy, and moved forward into the room. Alys gestured at the backstool she had just vacated, and Arbella smiled, her expressive blue eyes softening. ‘You are kind, my dear. And what brings you back to brighten our day?’ she asked, seating herself with Bel’s help.
To brighten an old woman’s day, thought Alys. That was Gil’s mother, yesterday ev
ening. Distracted, she accepted a lower seat on the bench Bel drew forward, and gave the first answer that came to her.
‘I was curious about the coal-heugh, madam. Phemie has told me a great deal, and I’ve talked of herbs with Mistress Lithgo as well. I’ve spent a most interesting time.’
‘Have you now?’ The old woman was wearing a plainer gown today, of tawny worsted faded almost to the colour of the peaches Alys recalled in the garden in Paris, and a wired headdress of black linen over a white indoor cap; now her exquisite eyebrows rose nearly to the lowest fold where it dipped over her brow. ‘And are you herb-wise, too, my dear?’
‘Beattie was saying –’ began Joanna, and was checked by Arbella’s uplifted hand. Alys waited a moment, then answered:
‘I have run my father’s house these six years. One learns to deal with kitchen-ills.’
‘Very true. But you’re no Scotswoman, by your speech, I thought that yesterday. Where are you from? From France, you say? Our Lady save us! And how did a Frenchwoman come to be wedded to Lady Cunningham’s son?’
The inquisition ranged wide, over the marriage settlement, the contract, the size of her father’s household, the nature of his business and Gil’s. It was customary, of course, to put a new bride to the question, and Alys had witnessed other girls being subjected to the process as well as having had five months of it herself in Glasgow, but she had never been asked such intrusive questions by a relative stranger before. Parrying with all the politeness she had been taught, she gave away as little as necessary, but it was almost a relief when Joanna said shyly:
‘Mother, I’m certain Mistress Mason would rather tell us what a bonnie man she’s wedded on than how he earns his bread.’
‘Aye, he’s a bonnie man,’ agreed Arbella, ‘and I’ll wager he can play the man’s part well enough when the candles are out, am I right, my dear?’
‘I’ve no complaints,’ said Alys, smiling. It was the reply she had found most useful in the circumstance.
‘I’ll believe that.’ Arbella chuckled knowingly, then paused to study Alys. ‘But he’s no finished his task yet, has he?’