by Pat McIntosh
‘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 Noy’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 Noy’s 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 o
ne 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 bi
rdsong 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.