The Lanimer Bride

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘My good-brother?’ Gil repeated, startled, aware of his mother’s chin going up. ‘Which one? D’you mean Michael Douglas? Tib’s husband?’

  ‘Aye, Lady Tib’s husband. His faither Sir James had approached me, but I thought the lad ower flighty for my lassie.’

  ‘Oh, he’s no proved flighty as Lady Isobel’s husband,’ said Lady Egidia tartly, emphasising the name. ‘He’s steady and reliable, he and my daughter are doing well thegither, and his faither’s well pleased wi his management of the coalheugh.’ She turned her penetrating gaze on Gil. ‘I think you must lend your aid, Gil. Mistress Somerville is right anxious about her lassie. Barely a year wedded, still a bride indeed, since the bairn’s yet to be born, and gone missing like this, it would drive any mother to distraction. What a blessing you hadny got your boots off, you can ride out again as soon as our guest’s ready to leave. And Mistress Mason with you,’ she added as Alys came into the chamber from the stair, clad in her wide-skirted riding-dress. ‘Nan, will you call Alan, please, and have him send out to the stables?’

  Mistress Somerville rode, like her daughter, on a lady’s saddle, perched sideways with her feet on a foot-board. She also wore a canvas safeguard to protect her skirts from the dust of the roads, and inserting her into this vast bag, fastening it about her waist, and hoisting the resulting sarpler on to the saddle took the best part of half an hour, thanks to her contrary instructions, complaints and objections.

  Watching the process, Gil said quietly in French to Alys, ‘What do you make of this? It’s a strange tale.’

  ‘I think the girl has not left her husband of her own will,’ said Alys promptly, ‘though he fears she has.’ Gil made an agreeing sound, and she went on, ‘Your mother dislikes this woman, but she has directed you to help her. She also thinks the girl has met with a mischance, I would say.’

  He glanced at his mother, standing tall and cool by the mounting-block, holding the reins of Mistress Somerville’s solid bay mule. The animal nudged her as he looked, and she obediently began caressing its soft chin, still watching the maid and two grooms assisting Mistress Somerville. Another groom hovered carefully beside her, and her own man Henry stood at a distance, ready to bring forward the Belstane horses. Next to him one of the two men Gil had brought out from Glasgow, the ubiquitous Euan Campbell, gazed round him at the bustle.

  ‘James Madur, the girl’s father, was injured at Sauchieburn,’ Gil said. ‘On the Prince’s side. So he got a gift of land, a customs post, other favours, and his wife was much made up by it all and boasted about it. He died a year or two after from the wound, but my mother never forgave her.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Alys. She tucked her hand into his arm. ‘How tactless, to boast in front of someone who had lost a husband and two sons on the late King’s side. Is it worth speaking to her men, to get a clearer idea of where they have searched?’

  ‘I was thinking that myself,’ said Gil. He succeeded, finally, in catching the eye of Mistress Somerville’s third groom, and summoned him with a jerk of his head. The man, accepting Lady Egidia’s ability to hold the mule, came over to them, ducking his head in a brief bow. He was a broad-shouldered fellow in a leather doublet, dyed the same serviceable blue as the indoor man’s velvet livery; brown hair in a neat clip showed under his woollen bonnet, and his eyes were intelligent.

  ‘Maister?’ he said.

  ‘This is a strange thing about Mistress Audrey,’ Gil said. The man simply nodded, concern in his face. ‘Have you been out with the search? Where have you covered? Was there any sign at all?’

  ‘No sign that I seen, none at all,’ agreed the man. ‘The roads are no that busy, but there’s enough traffic, you couldny make out what was five days old and what was seven under the dust. Her jennet’s got wee dainty feet, I thought once or twice I’d a glimp o its marks, but I lost them again.’

  ‘Were those on the road she’d ha taken?’

  ‘Oh, aye. Nothing unexpeckit.’

  ‘What was her groom riding?’

  ‘One of madam your mother’s breeding,’ the groom said, grinning awkwardly. ‘A wee sturdy bay gelding wi a sock and a star, out that bay wi the four socks she’s got.’

  ‘Bluebell.’ Gil nodded. ‘I’ll ken that one if I see him. Bluebell aye throws true like hersel. Did you speak to any on the road?’

  ‘Aye, we asked all we met had they seen them, and at the houses at the roadside and all. One fellow close to home had met wi them, about where I seen the jennet’s marks, but we’ve no more sightings this far, save for an idiot that’s talking o a lady and a battle.’

  ‘A battle?’ Alys repeated.

  ‘Aye,’ said the groom sourly. ‘Twelve big men, he says, hitting one another wi swords, and a lady cheering them on. Wasted an hour getting him to show me where it was. Turns out he canny count past three, and makes up these tales a’ the time.’

  ‘Was there any sign where he said the battle had been?’ Gil asked.

  ‘None that I could make out.’

  ‘Haw, Billy!’ shouted one of the grooms by the mounting-block.

  ‘I’ll need to go, maister,’ said Billy uneasily.

  ‘Aye, you will,’ Gil said. ‘I’ll get another word wi you later.’

  ‘A bad business this, maister,’ said Euan Campbell chattily in his ear as Billy made his way across the yard. ‘What d’you think will be coming to the lady? Is she lying dead on the moorland, maybe, or is she hidden away somewhere?’

  ‘That’s for us to find out,’ said Gil, his tone repressive. ‘Away and get yourself on a horse if you’re coming with us.’

  Mistress Somerville was now enthroned on her saddle, her feet on the foot-board and the safeguard rising in stiff folds about her knees. Billy mounted and took her leading-rein, her maidservant was put up behind another of the grooms, and the Belstane horses were brought forward, snorting at the strange beasts, for Gil and Alys to mount. Henry and one of his minions fell in behind them, Euan joined them, Lady Egidia delivered a suitable blessing for travellers, and the cavalcade set off at a brisk walk, a speed at which Gil reckoned it would take them well over an hour to reach Kettlands.

  ‘You could get a word wi Mistress Somerville’s woman,’ he suggested quietly to Alys. She nodded, and began to thread her way through the procession while he turned his attention to the third Kettlands man.

  This man could add little to the tale Billy had told. He had seen no trace at all of Mistress Madur’s jennet or her groom’s beast, and reckoned the girl had run off with some chance-met stranger, a pedlar or the like.

  ‘Stands to reason,’ he said, with a wary glance at his mistress. ‘Maister Vary’s a dry stick o a fellow, and buried three wives a’ready. No lassie’s going to stay wi a fellow like yon.’

  ‘You think?’ said Gil.

  The present house of Kettlands, on the top of a rounded rise in the land, was quite modern, and boasted a stone ground floor with two further storeys of wood perched on top, and a tumble of outhouses within the barmekin wall. As soon as they were seen approaching several servants ran out into the road, peering anxiously under their hands; from their demeanour there was clearly no further word of Mistress Madur.

  Gil, having spent the most part of the journey listening to Mistress Somerville’s alternate lamentations and accounts of her daughter’s excellence, refused her invitation to step in for a mouthful of ale.

  ‘I’d as soon get a look at the land and get back to Belstane while the light lasts,’ he said. ‘Show me what road they took from here, and then I think you should try to rest.’

  The maidservant, just being swung down from her pillion seat, threw him a sharp glance, but Mistress Somerville took the words at face value.

  ‘I’ll no rest till my lassie’s returned to me, maister, but it’s kind o you to think it. They went out that way.’ She pointed south-eastward, rather than due south. The fields fell away from the barmekin wall, rolling down to a line of trees a mile or so away which Gil knew marked the
valley of the Mouse Water.

  ‘So they went by the mill-bridge,’ he said, ‘rather than down to the crossing at Cartland Crags.’

  ‘Oh, a course,’ said Mistress Somerville, startled. ‘We aye use that road into Lanark, it’s closer by far.’

  ‘And what time was it when they left?’

  ‘About this time, a couple of hours afore supper.’

  ‘So maybe four or five hours after noon.’

  ‘Aye, about that.’ She rubbed tears from her eyes again. ‘She’d ha been in Lanark for her supper, so I thought. Oh, maister, find her for me. Even if her man’s no troubled about it, find her for me!’

  ‘The maidservant’s name is Christian,’ said Alys. ‘She says Audrey was just as usual when she was here, talking of her sewing, asking about family names to give the bairn and who might stand godparent and the like. She seemed very happy, apart from the backache.’

  ‘That bears out what Mistress Somerville says.’ Gil was peering down at the roadside, inspecting the drifted dust and cracked earth.

  ‘You see what I mean, maister,’ said Billy, twisting in the saddle to look back at them. ‘There’s no telling whether it’s marks from yesterday or marks from ten days since, aside from the jennet’s prents I showed you.’

  ‘So they’d ha rid along here,’ said Henry, ‘and past yon ferm-toun, Brockbank is it, Billy? And down to the Mouse past the mill. Naeb’dy at Brockbank saw them pass, then?’

  ‘Just this daftie I was telling you o,’ said Billy. ‘Wi his tale o a battle.’

  ‘Where was the battle?’ Alys asked, a moment before Gil could do so.

  ‘Yonder,’ Billy nodded, ‘down the banks o the Mouse. Gied me a lang tale o’t, but there was naught to be seen. Him and his twelve men!’

  He spat into the dust. Gil straightened up, gazing about him.

  ‘They’ll be able to start the haying soon,’ he observed. ‘They might get two cuts if the weather keeps up. So there was nobody about, the same as now?’

  ‘A couple o folk said they was out weeding the bere and oats,’ Billy said, ‘but they never looked up. I suppose if they’d their backs to the road, maybe at the foot o the field,’ he waved at the infield where it sloped away from the track, ‘they’d never ha heard them.’

  ‘That’s an amazing thing,’ said Euan, ‘that anyone might pass along the road and never be noticed, let alone be spoken to.’

  Ignoring this, Gil nudged his horse forward.

  ‘We’ll get a look at this battle,’ he said. ‘I’m not acquaint wi this road, I take the other way down to Lanark from Belstane. How steep is the climb down to the waterside?’

  ‘Steep enow,’ admitted Billy. ‘It goes sideyways down the brae. If we’ve goods to bring by cart fro Lanark we take it round by the other road, but this is shorter if you’ve no wheels to worry you.’

  ‘Now that is wise,’ approved Euan. ‘But was there no battle? No fighting at all?’

  ‘None that I could see a sign of,’ said Billy glumly. ‘Maybe you’ll do better.’

  They moved on, without haste. Gil was studying the verges, which were thick with wildflowers, clover and vetch and trefoil, campion and bellbine. Bees hummed busily in the great drifts of foliage, and a rowan tree in full blossom spread its cloying scent on the breeze. There was no disturbance, no sign that anything untoward had occurred.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Alys when he remarked on this, ‘if anything had happened here they would have seen or heard it from Brockbank, so open as this country is.’

  ‘Aye, quite,’ he said. ‘But I’d as soon make certain.’

  ‘Audrey is a name I haven’t heard before,’ she went on.

  ‘It’s a shortening of a saint’s name,’ Gil said, still reading the verge. Most of these marks were older than he looked for; the road was not much frequented. ‘She’s a local saint in some part of England – Norwich or Ely, as Mistress Somerville said. I think the whole name is Edreda or Etheldreda or the like.’

  ‘I see,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘What’s puzzling me,’ he added, nudging his horse forward, ‘is the French lady’s name she mentioned. Limpie Archibeck? Archibecque or Archéveque, I suppose, but Limpie?’

  ‘Olympe?’ Aly, suggested after a moment. ‘That would be, Olympias.’

  ‘The mother of Alexander of Macedonia! Of course, I should have thought of that.’

  ‘I wonder what a French lady is doing in Lanark? It’s a long way from Edinburgh or the court.’

  ‘I’m surprised my mother hasn’t mentioned her.’

  ‘Perhaps she does not know of her.’

  ‘Is that likely? Is it even possible?’ he asked without looking up. She giggled, but made no answer.

  They came to the edge of the river valley without finding anything of significance. It was a steep-sided winding cut in the landscape, heavily wooded, the track curving down to their right through oak and beech and hazel. Looking out and down from the brow of the slope, Gil reckoned the river they could hear was a good forty fathom below them. A quarter-mile away on the other side of the gorge, lower than this one, were more fields, a couple of ferm-touns, and off to the left among trees the roofs and smoke of what must be Jerviswood, one of the Livingstone strongholds.

  ‘We need to send to the Livingstones,’ he said aloud, ‘ask if any of theirs were on the road that evening.’

  ‘Aye, and Woodend over yonder,’ said Billy. ‘I only got started this morning, and then the mistress would ride to Belstane, which took three o us off the search. I sent a couple more lads on towards Lanark to ask about it, but I took it they’d no luck, since there was no word at the house the now.’

  Gil leaned over the cantle, studying the immediate footing and the young bracken fronds at the edge of the trees, then turned his horse and began to make his way down the track, saying over his shoulder, ‘Follow me, but not too close.’

  ‘A rare place to take someone by surprise,’ observed Henry, as he obeyed.

  ‘I was thinking the same,’ said Euan.

  ‘My thought and all,’ agreed Billy. ‘It aye makes me uneasy coming down this bit.’

  Here among the trees, sheltered by the sides of the gorge, there was little or no breeze. Sunlight lay in patches on the track and on the tangled growth on the raised banks at either side; insects flickered among the trees, bees hummed, there was birdsong all about them. A cloud of butterflies rose up as Gil passed through a clearing.

  The sound of the bees grew louder. Something must be attracting them. He looked about, but could see no flowering tree, no bank of wildflowers. The sound was more of a buzz than a hum, higher in pitch. Were they bees, or were they flies? A faint unpleasant scent touched his nostrils, and he tipped his head back, sniffing.

  ‘Maister?’ said Euan from ten feet behind him. ‘What are you scenting?’

  ‘I smell it and all,’ said Henry in ominous tones.

  ‘Where?’ Gil said, turning from side to side. ‘Can you make it out?’

  ‘The flies are thicker that way,’ said Alys, pointing ahead and left, down towards the river. ‘Gil, do you think—?’

  ‘I hope not,’ he said, and swung down from the saddle, handing his reins to Henry’s silent minion. ‘Bide here, all of you.’

  A few steps down the track he paused, looking about him. The roadway itself told him little, but one of the overhanging oak branches showed scores as if someone’s booted feet had scuffed it, and something large had come down the bank from the right in two strides, breaking the stems of vetch and ragged robin, probably a few days since. He craned to see the top of the bank, and found a trampled spot by the rugged bole of the oak tree. One or more people had waited up there, and at least one had been in the tree overhead, hidden by the leaves, where he could leap down in front of the right passer-by.

  ‘What have I missed, maister?’ asked Billy, disquiet in his tone. ‘I’m no huntsman, tracking was never my gift. What have I missed?’

  Where had they left their
horses, Gil wondered, ignoring the man. He turned slowly, extending all his senses into the summer evening. A pair of titmice exchanged their metallic, monotonous call, a blackbird scolded somewhere. The roadway still held no signs, its dry dusty surface telling only of the lack of rain. The flies buzzed endlessly, and the familiar, sickly scent floated past him. The sound of the river blended with it all, but the buzzing seemed loudest, as Alys had said, downhill from the track.

  He crossed to the other bank and set a foot on it with caution, gazing down the slope. Below him, a stand of bracken was unfurling, the scrolls so light a green they almost seemed to glow in the dappled shade. He considered it; at this time of year the stuff appeared to rise while you watched it, like bread. Five days ago the fronds might have been no higher than the rest of the green stuff around them. And beyond them, a cloud of dark flies whirled and hummed.

  He stepped up on to the bank and picked his way carefully down the steep slope, moving from tree to tree, looking intently about him. When he saw the first boot he was unsurprised; when he saw the second it told him how the body which still wore them was disposed, and when he pushed the bracken aside, he knew that he had not found Mistress Madur.

  ‘What d’ye have there, Maister Gil?’ asked Henry from the track. ‘Ye’ve found something?’

  ‘A young man,’ he answered. Somebody above him groaned. ‘Leather doublet. Fair hair.’ He stepped closer, holding his breath. ‘His throat’s been cut. Billy, come down and see if you know him.’

  The body had been here for several days; it was already beginning to melt into the landscape, the limbs flattening and taking on the curve of the earth beneath them. The young face was not as the lad’s mother, or the sweetheart whom Mistress Somerville had mentioned, would wish to remember it; the crows had got his eyes, and something had chewed one hand. Gil crossed himself and muttered a prayer for the dead while Billy slithered down the bank towards him.

  ‘Aye,’ the man said heavily after a moment’s inspection. ‘That’s young Adam. Poor laddie. I should ha found him yestreen. I should ha seen the sign you found. But where’s Mistress Audrey got to? What’s come to her, maister?’ He looked wildly about, as if expecting to find the lady under another tree.