The Stolen Voice

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Reappearing?’ Gil questioned, disbelieving. ‘From Elfhame?’

  ‘Maister Secretary will gie you the story.’ Blacader waved a hand. ‘Jimmy Chisholm’s Chapter couldny agree, so if you can find me a sound reason why this lad shouldny go back to his place at Dunblane, I’ll be pleased and so will he. This ought to cover you to begin wi,’ he thrust the sealed package at Gil, ‘and you’ll report all to me. William! Take him off and gie him the tale, will you?’

  ‘He never directed you,’ said Alys now, ‘to find the missing singers, only to talk to this one.’

  ‘I’ve to look at the matter,’ Gil said. ‘Dunbar mentioned them too, though not this matter of the Bishop of Dunkeld’s secretary. It was Sir William gave me that part of the story.’ He rubbed his cheek against her hair. ‘But I think I’ll begin in Dunblane, where the two trails seem to cross.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘And it’s closer.’

  ‘It’s closer,’ he agreed.

  Chapter Two

  ‘You must know this country well,’ said Alys. She relaxed in the saddle, gazing out over the expanse of loch and hills. ‘It seems very wild to me.’

  ‘I was growing up here,’ said Murdo Dubh.

  They had climbed up the south wall of the long glen, beside a tumbling river, and paused at the mouth of another, higher valley to breathe their small shaggy ponies. Even Socrates seemed glad of the halt. Below them Alys could see the rooftops of Stronvar and its outbuildings on the shores of the loch, half a mile to the west, and another group of houses to the east which Murdo said was Gartnafueran.

  ‘That is where Sir William’s brother Andrew Stewart dwells,’ he explained.

  ‘Gartnafueran,’ repeated Alys’s groom Steenie. ‘They were telling me last night in the stables, they’ve seen this Bawcan or bodach or whatever they cry it there and all.’

  ‘At Gartnafueran?’ said Murdo, turning to look at him. ‘When? Who was saying that?’

  ‘One of the men. I never catched his name. I think by what he said it was just a day or two since.’ Steenie laughed. ‘Seems a lassie saw this wee dark shape in the field across the river in the gloaming. I said it sounded more like a bairn going home late for his supper, and he wasny best pleased.’

  ‘No, he would not be,’ said Murdo. He gathered up the reins of his own steed and the extra beast with the two barrels loaded on its back, a contribution from Lady Stewart for the forthcoming harvest celebration. ‘Will you ride on, mistress?’

  They rode on, into a narrow valley between steep, lumpy green slopes, at whose tops were small dots which Alys took to be boulders, until some moved, there was a distant bleating, and she realized that they were sheep and the hills were higher than she had first thought.

  ‘You’d think these mountains was going to fall on you,’ said Steenie uneasily.

  ‘That is not often happening,’ said Murdo in a reassuring tone. Alys looked at him, recognized a joke, and thought that, though these people were different in build and habit from the taciturn Bretons of her childhood, they had a lot in common.

  ‘They are so tall,’ she said. ‘Have you climbed all the way to the top of them? One might almost be able to reach up and touch Heaven from there.’

  ‘These are not so high,’ said Murdo. ‘That one is Buachaille Breige, which is the Shepherd, and behind him is Beinn an’t Sidhean. And on that side it is Clach Mhor which is just meaning –’

  ‘The Big Stone!’ said Alys in triumph. He nodded, with that brilliant smile again.

  ‘The Big Rock, maybe. There is higher ones across Loch Voil. But it is a strange thing, when you are on the top of them it is still as far up to Heaven as when you are standing by the side of the loch, though sometimes there is clouds below you.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’ asked Steenie. ‘Stand on the top, I mean. The whole thing might fall down, and you wi it.’

  Murdo shrugged. ‘The hunting is good,’ he said.

  They followed the narrow glen, beside the same tumbling river, with oak woods on either hand and wild flowers growing down the riverbanks. Socrates ranged round them, checking the scents of the place. Overhead the sky was blue, with fluffy clouds sailing in it, and a small wind kept the insects at bay. Alys thought of one of the poems in Gil’s commonplace-book. Dayseyes in the dales, notes swete of nightingales, each fowl song singeth. If Gil had been with her she would never have been happier. She wondered how far he had got.

  ‘Did Tam say him and the maister was going back to Dunblane?’ asked Steenie. ‘What are they doing there, mem? He’d as well ha stopped there on the way up from Stirling.’

  ‘The maister needs to talk to someone,’ said Alys. And so do I, she thought. What do I say to these people? What must I find out? That depends on what there is to find out, I suppose.

  About them, the signs were growing that this was not the green desert it appeared at first sight. Some of the trees were coppiced, a dry stone wall scrambled up the hillside, a small burn gurgling down to the river spread out over a well-maintained ford where the track crossed it. Someone was about; she heard a snatch of singing on the light wind. Then abruptly the glen widened into a broad green hollow, and Murdo halted his pony.

  ‘Glen Buckie,’ he said, gesturing widely.

  ‘Good land,’ said Steenie approvingly. ‘If we were in Lanarkshire I’d almost say you were on lime here,’ he added, ‘it’s that green.’

  ‘Lime?’ said Murdo. ‘I would not be knowing.’

  Alys looked about her. The hay crop on the flat ground near the river had been cut and turned; nearer them stooks of barley-straw marched up a slope in the sunshine. Across the river more tiny white dots bleated on the steep hillside.

  ‘Is that the – the sidhean?’ she asked, pointing to a rocky knoll bristling with tall trees, the hay crop washing its margins in a green-gold tide.

  Murdo crossed himself and said hastily, ‘Wiser not to be naming it, mistress, here in the open. That is Tom an Eisg, just. The – the place you named is being a lot bigger, and it is away far up the glen, beyond Dalriach, beyond the low shielings.’

  ‘So when the boy left home,’ said Alys, looking about her, ‘he went that way, up the glen and not down it.’ Murdo nodded. ‘I had thought of him coming down past Stronvar and the kirk, but I see that was wrong.’

  ‘By far shorter the road he was taking,’ said Murdo. ‘Over the high pass into Strathyre and down the burn at the other side. It would be a scramble, but a fit laddie would have no trouble. He has told us he had got that far before he was lifted away.’

  ‘Told you? You mean he has spoken of it? Did he describe what happened to him?’ Alys asked, trying to conceal her surprise.

  ‘Only that much. He saw nothing when he was lifted up, it seems.’

  ‘And where was he to meet his friend?’

  Murdo shrugged. ‘That he never said exactly. Somewhere on the Strathyre side of the hills, I have no doubt. If my father ever heard it in his time, he has not told me.’

  ‘Your father says he has recognized the young man,’ said Alys carefully. Murdo looked at her, the dark lashes shading his eyes. ‘Is that right, do you think?’

  ‘Who am I to say?’ said Murdo, in faint surprise. ‘Davie vanished away long before I was born. The family has recognized him, and he is dwelling with the old woman in Tigh-an-Teine, and that will do for me.’

  ‘Tigh-an-Teine,’ Alys repeated. ‘The house of – of fire?’

  He nodded awkwardly. ‘It’s the name they give the chief house of the clachan. Just a name, it is.’

  ‘But is the fire particular in any way?’

  ‘No, no. But a woman from further up the glen, one with the two sights, was making a great outcry one time, and saying that she had seen flames leaping from the thatch. Before I was born, too, that was,’ said Murdo dismissively, ‘and it has never burned yet.’

  ‘And David dwells there with the old lady, and she is certain he is her son.’

  ‘In
deed, yes.’

  ‘It’s a daft tale,’ said Steenie roundly. ‘Who ever heard the like, except in the ballads or the old tales? Folk doesny get carried away wi the fairies nowadays.’

  ‘What do you think, Murdo?’ asked Alys.

  ‘I think your man should not be mentioning those people aloud,’ said Murdo. He gathered up his reins. ‘It will be another mile or so to Dalriach, past Ballimore. Will you ride on, mistress, and meet the Dalriach folk?’ He smiled, those dark lashes sweeping his cheekbones. ‘They will be ready for us by now. The hills has eyes, we have been counted already.’

  ‘I was never at Glasgow myself,’ said Mistress Drummond, ‘but my son Andrew was there in the year of eighty-seven.’

  Whatever Alys had expected, it was not quite this.

  The farm at Dalriach was clearly prosperous, despite the bad luck Murdo Dubh and his father had detailed. The main steading, beside the track which separated infield and outfield, contained three substantial longhouses, built of partly dressed field stones, ranged round a cobbled yard. The cattle-fold at the byre end of one of them stood empty at this hour of the day, and hens crooned to one another among mysterious pieces of farm gear. Gardens, a barn, a stackyard, several smaller cottages down the slope nearer the river, made it almost a village.

  A dozen people, men and young women, were visible shearing the barley at the top of the outfield as they approached the farm. Their work-song floated on the breeze, one voice with a line, the other voices with a rhythmic echo, keeping the swing of the sickles. The song never faltered, but the shearers paused, one by one, to straighten up and stare at the approaching riders. An old woman working with a hoe in one of the small kale-yards called to Murdo in cheerful Ersche, and he waved in answer.

  They were met in front of the biggest of the houses by two lean black dogs who glared at Socrates, and a sturdy young man of twenty or so, with fair skin burned pink by the sun and a shock of light frizzy hair above a high forehead. Alys thought at first this was the returned singer, but Murdo had addressed him as James and introduced her in Ersche; she had caught Blacader’s name and title and then Gil’s, despite the strange twist the language gave them. James had ordered the dogs off in Ersche, then saluted her gravely in good Scots with a heavy Highland accent, and led her within to meet his grandmother, before excusing himself to return to the field. The harvest would not wait.

  Now she was seated in the shadowed interior of the house, answering the inevitable civil inquisition about her background, origins and status and accepting oatcakes and buttermilk from one of the granddaughters, a plain girl of about twelve with a strong resemblance to the young man who had met them. Socrates lay at her feet; Murdo Dubh had vanished, taking Steenie with him. A surprising number of people had passed the doorway, peering casually through it with a greeting in Ersche for the old woman or the girl. Hens wandered in and out, a loom clacked somewhere, and from time to time, echoing across the yard, there was a piercing scream like a peacock’s. Through the open door Alys could see a woman spinning on a great wheel slung on the side of one of the other houses, padding back and forward on bare feet, her slender ankles and calves visible below her short checked skirts. She was singing like the reapers; there seemed to be music everywhere. A long cradle near her rocked erratically and seemed to be the source of the screams.

  ‘But you came there from France, mistress?’ went on Mistress Drummond. ‘There’s a thing, now. And what brought you into Scotland?’

  ‘My father is a master-mason,’ she answered. ‘He is building for Archbishop Blacader at the Cathedral.’

  ‘That would explain it,’ said the old woman, nodding. She wore a dark red gown of ancient cut, laced over a checked kirtle which was probably her everyday dress about the place, and the linen on her head and neck was crisp. She herself was bent and shrunken, so that the wide wool skirts had to be kilted up over a man’s worn leather belt; her face was a veil of wrinkles, her hands crabbed, but her voice was sweet and clear. ‘And what is Robert Blacader building?’ she asked, with interest.

  Alys opened her mouth to answer, and there was another of those peacock screams. Mistress Drummond peered round. ‘Agnes, mo chridh, go and see what ails Iain, will you?’ The girl slipped out, and her grandmother turned her smile at Alys, awaiting her answer as if nothing had happened.

  This was difficult, she thought, explaining the Fergus Aisle. ‘And yourself, Mistress Drummond,’ she said, finally turning the questioning. ‘Are you from these parts?’

  ‘Oh aye, indeed. A MacLaren of Auchtoo, I am. My father was the chief man of this country, and my brother after him, until the king put his kinsman William Stewart into Balquhidder as his bailie.’

  ‘Kings do what they must,’ said Alys.

  ‘Aye,’ said Mistress Drummond darkly. ‘But I wedded James Drummond,’ she added, ‘and St Angus blessed the marriage, and we dwell here in Glen Buckie now.’

  ‘Does your man live?’ Alys asked.

  ‘James?’ she said, suddenly vague. ‘And we have four sons,’ she added, ‘and also a daughter, and all well and doing well.’

  ‘My!’ said Alys in admiration, comparing this with what the elder Murdo had told them last night and finding it incompatible. ‘Are they all wedded?’

  ‘Not all,’ the old woman said in that musical voice. ‘For Andrew is a Canon at Dunblane, and my son David is by far too young to be wed.’

  Alys caught her breath, trying to work out how to answer that, but was forestalled. There was a shrill babble of Ersche in the yard; Socrates raised his head to stare, and the spinner and another woman came in at the open door, scolding like rival blackbirds and followed by the eerie peacock wail.

  ‘Caterin! Mòr!’ said Mistress Drummond, and the argument broke off. ‘Not before our guest, lassies,’ she said, though neither woman was young. Alys rose and curtsied. ‘This is my good-daughters, the wife of Patrick and the wife of James.’

  ‘Indeed I am pleased to meet you both,’ said Alys. ‘Murdo Dubh MacGregor was telling me as we rode up Glen Buckie, that you make the best cloth in Perthshire for colour and web.’

  The two looked sideways at one another in the dim light, and curtsied simultaneously in acknowledgement of this, setting their bare feet as precisely as any lady at court.

  ‘It is my good-sister’s weaving that does it,’ said the spinner, a small woman, her body still curved and sweet under her checked kirtle, her face an extraordinary little triangle within the folds of her linen headdress. ‘She can weave like no other in Balquhidder.’

  ‘Och, no, Caterin, it will be the colours you put in the thread,’ said the taller woman. Another scream resounded from the other side of the yard, and Caterin jerked like a child’s toy.

  ‘He’s wanting his uncle,’ she said to her mother-in-law, still speaking Scots. ‘You know how Davie can soothe him. I wished Agnes to go up the field and fetch him, and she will not be permitting it –’ She tossed her head at the weaver.

  ‘Agnes has enough to do –’

  ‘But Agnes was about her duties under my roof,’ said the old woman. Alys watched, fascinated by the contradictions in the scene. ‘Will you go, Mòr, and fetch the boy in?’

  This had not been the answer Mòr hoped for or expected. She recoiled, drew breath on a retort of some sort, then turned on her heel and walked out of the house with uneven steps.

  ‘Is that the laddie that’s returned to you?’ Alys asked, snatching her chance.

  ‘That it is,’ said Caterin. ‘You would think we were in one of the old tales, for such a thing to happen here at Dalriach.’

  ‘I could hardly believe what Murdo Dubh was telling us,’ Alys confessed. ‘Does he have the right of it?’

  ‘Murdo? Likely he does. He’s hardly off Dalriach land long enough to sleep, the notion he has to Mòr’s Ailidh,’ pronounced Caterin, confirming Alys’s deduction. ‘He is knowing more of our business than we are ourselves.’

  ‘It was a wonderful thing, and Our Lady be pra
ised for the moment it happened. My laddie came walking down the glen,’ said Mistress Drummond, ‘and I caught sight of him from where I sat at the end of the house there.’ She had clearly been waiting to recite her tale again. ‘I thought to myself, There is Davie coming now, and then I minded that Davie was gone for thirty year, and then I looked again and I saw it was Davie right enough. Is that not a strange thing?’

  ‘It must have given you a great shock,’ said Alys.

  ‘Och, indeed yes, such a turn it gave me, I thought the heart would fly away out of my breast. I hurried to meet him, and he saw me coming and he said, do you know what he said to me? He said, Is it my grandmother? Did you ever hear the like? And I said, Heart of my heart, it is your own mother. And he said, Do you know me, then? As if I would not know my own bairn!’

  Alys glanced at Caterin, who still stood near the open house door, and caught a strange, wry expression crossing her tiny face. Sensing Alys’s gaze, she looked round and gave her a smile which seemed to convey sympathy for Mistress Drummond and something else besides. There was another scream from outside.

  ‘But how did you know him at such a distance?’ Alys asked carefully. ‘Was it his bearing, or the way he walked, or what he wore?’

  ‘All of those,’ said the old woman, nodding. ‘And the great shock of hair, white as flax, like a coltsfoot gone to seed. All my bairns have that hair, you see, lassie. Mistress Mason,’ she corrected herself. ‘They take it from their father, and he took it from his mother, an Beurlanaich, that was English.’

  ‘English?’ repeated Alys in astonishment. ‘How ever did that come about?’ The two countries have been at war for centuries, she thought, how would a man living in this remote place find an English wife?

  ‘My good-father met her at Stirling when he was there selling beasts, and her a sewing-woman in Queen Joan’s household. My man was the only child they reared, all the others was carried off with the Good People. But there is nobody else in the whole of Balquhidder that has such hair.’ She chuckled. ‘I was always saying to my man, he would never stray from me, for I would be knowing his get wherever I saw it, and my sons’ the same.’