by Pat McIntosh
‘1481, Lady Day, the fee paid,’ he read aloud as the tale ended. ‘And Arbella Weir’s signature to it. For all Fleming calls these rent rolls, it isn’t strictly rent the coal-heugh pays, is it, Michael?’
‘It’s regular feu duty,’ agreed Michael. ‘And our share of the profits, as part of the conditions of the feu. There should be a note of those at the top of that roll, set out when old man Weir cut the first pit.’ He stopped pacing to peer over Alys’s shoulder. ‘Davy’s writing gets worse every time I look at it.’
‘The man before him was no better,’ said Gil.
‘What does Fleming want us to look for?’ asked Alys. She hitched up the skirt of her riding-dress to reach the purse which hung beneath it at her knee, and extracted her tablets.
‘I’m not certain.’ Gil paused, finger on an entry. ‘He was babbling to me about the dates the Crombie men had died, from which he seemed to deduce witchcraft. If we find those, I suppose, and make a note of them, it should satisfy him. I’d not take the time, save to humour the man when he’s in such a bad way.’
‘He is,’ Michael agreed, glancing at the screen again. Sir John had obviously anointed his penitent and was now chanting; his text seemed to be a life of the newly revealed saint, cobbled together from stock phrases. ‘St Peter’s bones, I think he’s making that up as he goes along. What’s Robert Blacader going to say about a new saint on his land?’
‘I’ve been wondering the same thing.’ Gil bent to the parchment again, and read the entry under his finger. ‘1477, Lammas, the fee paid. Adam Crombie younger, his mark, though it’s a signature, not a mark, and Adam Crombie elder obiit March last. Then before that, in March, Arbella paid the fee, and at Candlemas before that it was Adam the elder. Their signatures are very different. But I see no great meaning in this.’
He copied the three entries carefully, and set the tablets aside.
‘I have the death of Mistress Lithgo’s man,’ said Alys. She turned her scroll so that Gil could read the entry. ‘In March of 1484.’
Adam Crombie secundus obiit, ran the note. Two attempts at a Latin phrase had been scratched out, and Undir a gret faling of the rokkes written after it.
‘Just as Phemie told me,’ she added.
Aware of a lack of system, Gil re-rolled his document to begin at the beginning, and paused to study the original conditions of feu which Michael had mentioned. The steward of the time had copied them with care in a small clear hand; they were interesting, and he thought generous on both sides. The first coalmaster, Arbella Weir’s father, had freedom to conduct the coal-heugh as he wished, and in turn the Sir James Douglas concerned, likely Michael’s grandsire he calculated, was to receive the regular feu duty, paid in person at Lady Day, and a fifth of the proceeds, paid quarterly.
‘Not the profits,’ he commented. Alys looked up, but did not speak.
‘No,’ agreed Michael, and grinned. ‘The old man can tell you about that. He does a good mimic of my grandsire bargaining with old Weir.’ He turned his head as the chanting from beyond the screen reached some kind of culmination, and water splashed. ‘I hope they’re careful wi’ that basin. We don’t want the records getting soaked.’
Gil bent to his task again, picking his way through the cramped lines of script. The year following the first payment a different name appeared. Adam Crombie grieve pro Mats Weir, stated the note beside it. Gil checked the date: August 1451. This must be when Arbella had been married. He frowned, made a note and carried on with his task. Year by year, quarter by quarter, the feu duty was paid, the share of the takings recorded, one man or the other signed the book.
‘I suppose whoever was free would ride over here,’ said Michael when he commented.
On Lady Day in 1465 Arbella had signed instead of her father, and thereafter her name appeared every spring. He frowned, and checked again, and located the brief comment appended to the Lammas entry: Mataeus Were ob mart mcccclxv. March 1465, indeed. He made a note, and went on.
The quarter-days came and went, Arbella or her husband signed the statements. Now and then a payment was missed, and a cryptic explanation accompanied the double amount next quarter. Lammas 1470 Arbela Wyr from home last qr, ran one. Mart’mas 1474 yung crombis maridge last qr fee forgot, was another. That must be when Mistress Lithgo came into the family. He grinned, thinking of the chaos and bustle that had surrounded their own wedding last November, even with Alys in charge.
‘There’s no entry for the last two quarter-days,’ said Alys. He looked up, and saw her expression change to one of dismay. ‘Of course, the fee was never paid this year.’
Beyond the screen, Sir John was still chanting. A waft of incense reached the hall, drifting blue in the light of the narrow windows, and making Socrates sneeze. Michael paused in his pacing to uncover his head and cross himself.
‘That is all I can see,’ said Alys, letting her scroll roll itself shut. ‘I have noted anything out of the way, and who signed the book each time. Can I help you, Gil?’ She stepped over the dog and came to sit at his side, studying his notes on the green wax of the tablets, glancing from that to the crabbed blocks of writing on the parchment. ‘Michael, was there a new contract made out when Mistress Weir’s father died?’
‘Aye, and at my grandsire’s death and all,’ Michael agreed. ‘The terms are still the same as the original, so the old man said. I’d wager neither side would think it worth the argument to change them.’
‘What happened to old Weir, do you know?’ Gil asked casually, finger on his place.
‘No a notion.’ Michael considered briefly, and shook his head. ‘No, I think I never heard it spoken of. Could ha’ been anything a collier might meet, including old age.’
‘Not so many of them live to old age,’ Gil said. ‘And Mistress Weir’s man? The first Adam Crombie that died at Elsrickle?’
‘I was still in short coats,’ protested Michael. ‘I’ve no a notion what came to him.’
‘Someone could ride to Elsrickle,’ said Alys. Gil turned to smile at her, suddenly aware of her accent and the pains she had to take over the place-name.
‘Why?’ asked Michael. ‘I thought we were finding who poisoned the man Murray.’
‘To get the exact date of Adam Crombie’s death,’ Alys said, ‘and if anyone remembers it, an account of how he died. Is there time to go today and be back in daylight?’
‘I could,’ said Gil with reluctance. ‘You are right, we need to check that.’
‘I din’t see why,’ said Michael. ‘What will it prove anyway?’
‘If he died in the same way as Murray,’ said Alys carefully, ‘it might mean that the same person poisoned them both.’
‘If it was poison,’ said Gil. ‘It might only mean that the one learned from the other.’
‘And if he didny? If it was a natural death?’
‘Then I suppose,’ said Alys reluctantly, ‘this time it could have been anyone who handled the flask. For I am very sure it was something in the flask, Gil, even if I can’t identify it.’
‘Who had it last?’ Michael asked. ‘The flask.’
‘Joanna,’ said Gil, more grimly than he intended.
‘Only to put it in Murray’s scrip,’ Alys protested. He met her eye. ‘Gil, no! Surely we can’t –’
‘We must suspect all of them,’ he said, ‘and she is the one to benefit most by his death.’
‘It is not in her character!’ she exclaimed, breaking into French. ‘So gentle a girl, always ready to believe the best of everyone – Gil, I can’t believe that she would do such a thing.’
‘What, not kill? Alys, anyone can kill. One simply has to know how.’
‘But there isn’t a scrap of violence in her.’
‘Poison works at a distance,’ Gil reminded her, ‘whoever administered it need not see its effects. No, I think all of them had the chance, and she had more than most, and benefited more than most as well. The emotional argument might do for the assize, but the truth –’
‘What are you saying?’ asked Michael, looking helplessly from one to the other.
‘I apologize, Michael,’ said Alys in Scots, and sat upright away from Gil. ‘We were – discussing whether Joanna might have –’
‘Oh, surely not,’ he said. ‘Then again, I suppose it has to have been someone up there, if it wasny the man Syme, or Murray himself. What a fankle this is.’
‘I’ll go up to Elsrickle,’ said Gil, bracing himself. Sixteen miles each way in the rain had little appeal. ‘You go back to Belstane, Alys, and take the dog, and if Michael has fresh horses for Patey and me –’
‘Well, that went right well,’ announced Sir John, bustling into the hall with the pyx held reverently before him. Simmie followed, his arms full of the priest’s gear, the smoking censer bumping his shins. ‘Indeed. I’m sure our founder and patron will take notice of our petitions, after a celebration like that.’
‘Davy’s asleep, Maister Michael,’ said Simmie in what he obviously intended to be a confidential tone. ‘Dropped ower in the midst o’ that last narration. Mind you, how anyone could sleep through Sir John here’s singing I canny tell.’
‘Aye, he’s confessed and shriven, and heard the history of St Malessock and drank water that the relic’s been immersed in, and it’s brought him some peace of mind at last,’ agreed the priest, divesting himself with care. ‘Now, maister, he’ll need to fast on well-water for a day and a night, and I’ll be back the morn’s morn to see him. Indeed. But you’ll send to me any time if you’re concerned for him.’ He beamed round the awkward little group. ‘I hope I’ve been of service the day. Is there any other task of my calling required while I’m here?’
Sir Billy Crichton, rector of Walston, was a long-faced, long-limbed Borderer with the gloomy expression natural to a man who spent most of his life in a high, remote parish at the further end of Lanarkshire. His kirk was in Walston itself, a huddle of cottages and two tower-houses on the dark side of a steep lump of hills; Gil surmised that the sun would not reach the thatch between October and March. When he found Sir Billy, following the directions of an ancient fellow at a doorway, the rector was working his glebe land below the village on the flat ground by the River Medwin. More precisely, he was turning the black earth with a foot-plough, with a cloud of white gulls screaming over his head, and was very glad to stop for a word with the stranger he had seen approaching on the track in from Carnwath.
‘Oh, aye, we heard about that,’ he said, as the gulls swirled about, shrieking in discontent. ‘Young Dandy Somerville was at his cousin’s at Carlindean and brought back the tale. Found dead in a peat-heugh, was he no? And doing miracles now, so Young Dandy said.’
‘That was someone else,’ Gil said, marvelling at the way word spread about the countryside. He gave the tale of Thomas Murray’s death, so far as he understood it, and Sir Billy listened attentively, leaning on the tall shaft of his plough in the rain and shaking his head. The gulls settled on the roof of the little kirk, laughing at one another.
‘Terrible, terrible. I’m right glad to ken the truth of it,’ said the priest at length. That’s more than any of us knows, thought Gil, but did not smile. ‘And dead unshriven, pysoned by an unkent hand, you say? Terrible, terrible. God rest their souls. But I’m at a loss to ken how I might help you, maister. I’ve no notion who these folk might be, having never set eye on a one of them, and what I might tell you to your purpose it’s beyond me to say. I’m sorry you should ha’ rid out here only for that.’
‘He’d no reason to call here,’ agreed Gil. ‘No, sir, I’ve ridden here on another matter. Do you mind a man called Adam Crombie, a collier, who died in this parish a good few years back? I think it was over at Elsrickle.’
‘Elgrighill,’ repeated Sir Billy, giving the name a different twist. ‘Crombie. Aye, maister, there’s such a name in the parish records. I was looking in them only last month, when I buried Maggie Jardine’s youngest. What was it you were wanting to hear of him?’
‘Anything you know,’ said Gil hopefully. ‘How he came to die here, whose house he died in, where he’s buried. The date of his burial, if you have it.’
‘Oh, aye?’ The priest looked dismayed. ‘I’m thinking you’re in the wrong place for all that, maister. Can his folk no enlighten you? For there’s naught in the records but the day of his burial, that’s for sure.’
‘Could you show me that?’ asked Gil, thinking that he seemed to spend more time than he wished foraging through old documents. A man of law dealt with such things as a matter of course, but somehow this other occupation seemed to gravitate naturally in the same direction.
‘I could.’ Sir Billy looked at the sky, and then at the strip of ploughed land he had achieved in the day. ‘I need to get this turned, for all that. It’s time the oats was in, or I’ll ha’ no meal next winter. I hope you’ll can wait while I’ve daylight?’
‘I’ve a long ride home,’ Gil said. And a squabble to mend at the end of it, he thought ruefully. ‘And I’d hope for a word with whoever witnessed the man’s death afore I take the road. The quest on the two that were poisoned is for the morn’s morn after Sext, I must be back in Lanark by then.’
‘You’re welcome to a bed in the kirk,’ Sir Billy assured him. ‘My loft’s dry and snug, there’s room for a pallet for you, and your man can lie in the town. Plenty time for the ride back to Lanark the morn, and you look like a man of sense, maister, you’ll can catch us up wi’ the way the world’s turning as Young Dandy would never think to do.’
‘I really –’ Gil began, recalling the way Alys had refused his kiss when they parted before the gates of Cauldhope.
‘No, no. Away you up the town, maister,’ this appeared to mean the huddle of cottages on the hillside above the church, ‘bid Joan Liddell give you a stoup of her twice-brewed, and I’ll come for you when I’m done here.’
Sir Billy bent his back to the plough again, and Gil stepped reluctantly back from the claggy furrows, watching the man’s expert thrust and heave with the simple device and the way the black soil turned and crumbled away as the culter tilted, the worms wriggling in the fresh tilth. The gulls swooped screaming from the kirk roof, and he turned and picked his way obediently up to the houses.
Patey was already established in Mistress Liddell’s house, buried to the cheekbones in a wooden beaker. He emerged from it grinning as Gil ducked under the lintel, directed by the same ancient as before.
‘Aye, maister,’ he said, and licked the foam from his top lip. ‘I doubt we’ll no get back to Carluke this night. The light’s going already.’
By the time he got the promised sight of the parish records, Gil felt he had paid dear for it. Mistress Liddell’s twice-brewed was strong, but sour; he suspected there were nettles in the mash, and possibly other strange adjuncts, but knew better than to ask. He sat by her door, his feet tucked under the bench to avoid the steady dripping from the thatch, surrounded by an attentive audience who demanded news of the rest of the country, of King James, of the doings in Lanark and Carnwath. They had little interest in Edinburgh or Glasgow, but heard the latest tale of the embassies to English King Henry with judicious noddings. It was worse than his visit to Forth, and reminded him strongly of the examinations which had earned him his two degrees. At least then he had not been interrupted by Patey, who had an opinion on everything.
Sir Billy came up from the glebe land in the midst of the interrogation, and drew a stool into the doorway as of right, stretching his boots out under the eaves-drip so that the last of the mud was washed off. Mistress Liddell, a small determined woman in a sacking apron, had already assured Gil that the priest aye sent strangers to sup her ale, and he was clearly as much at home under her roof as any of the assembly. As the light failed, the hearers slipped away to their suppers, but much to Gil’s
relief he and Patey were summoned within, seated with the priest and Mistress Liddell’s man round the peat-fire in the centre of the floor, and served with hard, dark bread and broth in generous wooden bowls. The broth was savoury with roots and meat; when Gil commented, the man of the house, silent until then, said:
‘Aye, the mistress keeps a good stewpot.’
‘Joan and her man feed me for their tithe, ye see,’ said Sir Billy, ‘for I don’t like to have charcoal in my loft. Too close to the thatch.’
‘That’s right handy,’ said Patey, ‘for a woman kens cooking and a priest kens priesting and why mix one wi’ the other? It’s right good, mistress, if you wereny spoke for a’ready I’d be looking to take you back to Belstane wi’ me.’
‘Och, you!’ said Mistress Liddell, not displeased. ‘Now you’d best be down the hill wi’ your guest, Sir Billy, afore the light’s away altogether. Will I draw you a jug of the good stuff to take along wi’ you?’
‘Aye, do that, Joan. Come away, then, Maister Cunningham, we’ll get a look at the books.’ Sir Billy rose to his considerable height, pronounced a blessing, received the promised jug, and made for the doorway, Gil following him. As the man of the house drew back the leather curtain which blocked it, rain rattled on the walls and blew through the aperture. Patey, dim in the glow of the peat-fire, raised his wooden beaker and settled lower on his creepy-stool.
‘Good night to ye, Maister Gil,’ he said, apparently without irony.
Chapter Twelve
Walking into Dalserf from the ferry at Crossford, Alys had no trouble finding the kirk, long before Steenie’s helpful comment. It stood on the flat ground in a bend of the Clyde, neatly built of dressed red stone, and had a tall porch and two glazed windows in its south wall. A dozen or so small cottages crouched round it, and a track led to more perched among the trees in a cleft of the steep valley side, woodsmoke rising through their thatched roofs to mingle with the green haze of the new leaves.