by Pat McIntosh
Gil turned this over in his mind, considering Mistress Madur’s appearance when he had seen her just now.
He had given Vary as long as he could bear to before following the man up the attic stair. By the time he emerged on to the creaking floorboards, whatever raptures the couple had indulged in were over, but he somehow felt there had been none; Vary and his wife were seated decorously side by side on a balk of timber, gazing raptly at their infant, the only sign of deep emotion the grasp Vary had on Mistress Madur’s free hand, as tight as a drowning man’s. As if, Gil found himself thinking, the man had indeed felt himself drowning, out in the world without her support. How foolish a fancy was that, he thought, and stepped forward to congratulate the new parents on the crumpled red creature on its mother’s lap. The baby did bear a startling resemblance to Vary, he realised, and had a remarkable amount of hair.
‘He’s well?’ he said. ‘He looks strong.’
‘Oh, he’s strong!’ said Audrey Madur, smiling up at him with that stunned expression he had seen on his sisters’ faces at a like time. ‘He’s like to suck me dry!’
She was not what he had expected. He had formed the impression of a dainty creature, perhaps a little clinging, a little shy. Instead, Audrey Madur was a big-framed girl with bright blue eyes and curling mouse-coloured hair, a high colour and a bountiful figure, though that might be due to the present circumstances; her voice was soft but very cheerful and she smiled a lot, and looked at Vary with affection.
The baby stirred and snuffled, and Vary said anxiously, ‘What’s wrong? Is he waking? What’s he need? You’ve nothing for him, lass, what can we do?’
‘He’s well, maister,’ she said, turning to smile at him. ‘Beattie says he’s a fine lad, like to do well. Beattie’s been such a support, Vary, you’d never believe. From the time they brought her to me in yon cave where he was born, she’s been like a mother to me.’
‘In a cave?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘Oh, my lassie!’
Gil slipped away unnoticed; finding Alys below he sent her up to admire the infant, and prowled about the first floor, lifting the scatter of papers, and looking in a press in the smaller chamber.
When Alys came down again she was standing by the window, leafing through the papers. She came to lean against him, and he put his arm about her and hugged her firmly to his side. She put her head on his chest for a moment, then drew a deep breath.
‘What have you there?’ she said, in the resolute tone of one changing a difficult subject.
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea how these came to be left behind, they should be in the steward’s possession. Pages waiting to be pasted into an account roll, I suppose. But look at this.’
She ran her finger down the page, her lips moving silently, apparently totalling the amounts as she went. It seemed to be a list of incoming entries, rents in coin and a few in kind. In the midst of the page her finger stopped. She glanced at Gil, and he nodded.
‘Item fro mr varrie,’ she read, ‘c merk. One hundred merks? Whatever for?’
‘I take this to be the man who called at The Cleuch,’ Gil said. She nodded absently, still staring at the page.
‘He can’t add up,’ she said suddenly. ‘The total is off by a good sum. Fifty merk short, I should say.’
‘Doubly interesting,’ said Gil. ‘I wonder where the money went to?’
‘And twenty on this page,’ she added, turning the sheets over, ‘and ten – another ten – he is skimming off a great deal. No wonder Somerville has been short of money. And yet he was building.’ She paused, staring at nothing. ‘Perhaps the coin for the building came from elsewhere, into Somerville’s own hands.’
‘I need to talk to Vary,’ said Gil. ‘When I can get sense from him.’
Now he looked at the men about him.
‘Henry,’ he said. ‘You and Archie bring the horses into the yard and make disposition. Two of them must be fit to carry an extra burden surely. The rest of you, I want the house searched.’
‘They’ve stripped it bare,’ objected someone.
‘There’s aye something left. I saw an odd shoe above stairs. Anything that’s not nailed down, bring it here to me. Bits of wood, that broken stool, a black plack out a corner. Check the panelling upstairs for presses, look ahint the doors, look in all the corners.’
‘You are thinking they are maybe leaving something that will tell us who they are, maister?’ said Euan.
‘We ken who they are,’ said Gil, ‘or at least who they were working for. I want anything that lets us have proof o’t.’
When the men had drifted off, Mistress Lithgo said, ‘They’re ower weary.’
‘We all are,’ said Gil. ‘We’ve been seeking you all across the Middle Ward. So what names did you hear, mistress? What did you jalouse? They came for you on Thursday night, right?’
‘They did,’ she agreed. ‘A man I didny ken, tirling at the door in the twilight, just as I was sat down for a late bite. Couldny wait, said the lass was groaning strong. So I put my things thegither, and lucky I did, seeing where she was, and taken by surprise, no a thing wi her to hap the bairn in. So it went well, in that mother and bairn survived, and I says to the man that fetched me there, Now you can take me back to Belstane, and he says, No, no, we’ll just take you wi us. And since he’d a great knife in his hand at the time,’ she said, with that faint tone of irony he remembered from their first encounter, ‘I accepted the invitation. So they cut sticks and made a hurdle for Audrey, and when there was light enough to go by we went on up the Mouse. I think that was Castlehill they took us to.’ Gil nodded. ‘We’d the day there, shut in a storehouse somewhere, and they fed us and brought some clouts for the bairn, moved us on by twilight again.’ She grimaced. ‘I heard the steward there, what’s his name again, Richie Thomson, I’ve made him up a bottle for his hair once or twice, so I ken his voice. I heard him telling someone we couldny stay there, they’d never keep us hid. So it was on to Throwburn, which I’ve been at once, I think. We were there just the one night, and elsewhere after that, in a barn full wi sacks; we lay in more comfort that night. Then they moved us to The Cleuch, shut us in the old tower up there. Two days we were there, or was it three? And then yestreen they brought us on here, and left us.’
‘You’ve been well treated?’ Alys said.
‘Oh, aye. We lay no worse than the men themselves, I’d say, and they fed us, brought us a jordan and gied us privacy to use it. And in this weather we wereny cold.’
‘Names,’ prompted Gil.
‘Aye, well, for all I never saw them, Audrey guessed it was by order o two o her uncles she’d been lifted, for she kent some o their men, and she said the lad that was slain, her groom, was he? kent them and all. I did lay eyes on Jackie Somerville, the sleekit fellow.’ She considered. ‘There was others. I never met wi her uncles, so I’d no ken their voices, but I heard one or two gie orders, outside wherever we were held, and there was some mention o an Irishman, O’Donnell I think they cried him, folk all seemed feart for him. Even the ones that gied orders.’
‘Did you ever hear Maister Vary?’ Alys asked casually. Mistress Lithgo looked at her, puzzled.
‘Vary? No, how would I hear him? And if we did, Audrey would ken his voice,’ she added, ‘though I’d not. How would he ha been about? D’you think he ordered this done?’
‘It’s no clear who ordered it,’ said Gil. ‘It seems a daft scheme, stealing Vary’s wife to persuade him to approve some plans they had for land on the Burgh Muir. I reckon someone else is behind it, someone wi a bigger plan.’
‘The Irishman?’ she asked. He shrugged.
‘Maister?’ said Euan at his elbow. ‘Maister, I found a press, like you said, and they’ve forgot to clear it. See, there was all sorts there.’
The other men were arriving, by ones and twos. Nobody else had found anything more significant than the single shoe and broken stool, but Euan had a strange assortment of items, stowed and stacked in a dusty basket
of plaited reeds.
‘Set it here, man,’ said Mistress Lithgo, moving aside on the mounting-block to make room.
‘What have you got there?’ Gil said, poking at the assemblage. ‘That looks like the neighbour to that shoe. A broken mousetrap, a cracked beaker, some broken staveware. These should all ha gone on the midden long ago. What’s this?’ He pulled out a sacking bundle, the kind of packing in which a merchant would ship a number of small items. To judge by the folds and stitches in the sacking it had held rather more than it presently contained.
‘Is it—?’ said Alys, craning to see what was inside. He reached into the rough folds and drew out a couple of the flat rectangular objects they concealed.
‘Tablets,’ said Mistress Lithgo.
‘Some of the tablets on which they sent word to Vary,’ said Gil, setting them out on the mounting-block.
‘Excellent!’ said Alys. ‘St Bartholomew, another Crucifixion, and a very bad Annunciation. The dove looks as if it will peck her eyes out.’ She lifted the nearest. ‘These are from the same batch as the first messages. This one has not been written on.’
‘None of them has,’ said Gil, investigating. ‘Very useful, Euan.’
‘What else is in there?’ Alys was poking in the basket of finds. ‘Nothing of any import, I think. No, here is a – something off a horse-harness, is it, Gil? An ornament from a bridle or the like?’
‘Could be.’ He held out a hand, and she dropped the little metal object into his palm. It was of gilded lead, the gilt rubbing badly, and the loop by which it had been attached to something was broken. He turned it over; it seemed to be a badge, depicting a horse’s head, perhaps a couple of inches across.
‘Whose badge is it?’ she asked.
‘There’s a many uses a horse’s heid,’ observed Henry, approaching the mounting-block leading several reluctant horses. ‘Him at Ravenstruther, for one, though I’d think his looks the other way, and someone up by Cam’nethan has one wi the background cut out, like a pilgrim badge. These beasts is about ready, Maister Gil, and we should get on the road if we’re to get back afore the light goes.’
‘Are we leaving, then?’ said Vary from the house door. He came down the steps. ‘I was just coming to say that. I’d like to get Mistress Madur back to Lanark, and the wee one washed and in his cradle.’ He looked at Mistress Lithgo and smiled, probably for the first time in days, and went on, ‘We’ve named him, mistress. His name is Lithgo Vary.’
‘You didny need to do that,’ she said, looking embarrassed.
‘We did,’ he said. ‘What’s that, Gil? It looks like a trinket off my brother’s horse-harness. My brother o Kersewell,’ he elaborated. ‘Gregory. What’s it doing here?’
Chapter Eleven
‘So you’ve sorted the matter,’ said Sandy Boyd.
‘No entirely,’ said Gil, equally softly. ‘The lassie’s home safe, but I’ve yet to find who was at the back of this. I don’t believe it was her uncles on their lone, they’d encouragement from somewhere at the very least, and maybe funds and all.’
‘Mmm,’ said his cousin, on a sceptical note. From beyond him, where the dark shape of William Doig showed against the sky, came a quiet laugh.
They were seated in the shadow of a clump of hawthorns, overlooking the ford at Hyndford Lea. The moon would not rise for another hour, but the night was not dark, and a blaze of stars showed the outlines of Tinto Hill, Culter Fell, a row of other hills as black shapes across the horizon, and glinted on the Clyde where it coiled lazily across the landscape on its way to the Falls of Clyde and the gorge which ran past Lanark. The road from Lanark down to the ford showed faintly, paler in the dimness. The night smelled of dust, of the trees behind them, of a fox which had passed that way a day or so since, of honeysuckle and wild garlic and the yellow flowers of the broom thicket behind them.
‘But the women’s all got home safe,’ said Doig.
‘Aye,’ said Gil, hoping it was true. Alys had certainly appeared very weary; it seemed likely she would ride for Belstane as he had asked her to.
He had parted from her not far from Tarbrax, when Henry had announced that the best way to Belstane lay through Forth and not by the Lanark road.
‘I’m for Lanark,’ he had said. She looked sharply at his face, then put her hand out. He took it, and she squeezed his fingers briefly and let go.
‘Take care,’ she said. ‘Put Sandy in front of you.’
‘You’re a rare huntsman, maister,’ said Mistress Lithgo from the crupper of Alys’s horse. ‘I’m owing you much for the day’s work.’
‘He is,’ Alys agreed over her shoulder.
Mistress Lithgo and her patient exchanged farewells, emotional on Audrey’s part, matter-of-fact but with much blinking on Mistress Lithgo’s, and promises to meet again soon. Then the Belstane party rode off into the fading light. The dog looked anxiously after them and then up at Gil, till he said, ‘Home, Socrates. Go home with Alys.’
‘Right, my lass,’ said Vary as the wolfhound loped off, and settled his arms about his wife where she sat uncomfortably across his saddlebow. ‘Let’s get you hame.’
It had been surprisingly easy to locate Sandy Boyd in Lanark; Doig had been drinking in Juggling Nick’s, had followed him when he went out the back, with a muttered, ‘East port, an hour afore midnight,’ and had spoken from the shadows of the east gate when he drifted up there. Sandy had materialised a few minutes later, black-clad, pale face and hair floating ghostly in the light night, completely unsurprised to see him. They had left the sleeping burgh not by the gate, which was well barred at that hour, but by going up a vennel, out across someone’s garden where they startled a pair of cats discussing hunting rights, and through a break in the fence at the end of the toft.
‘You can come by this way the morn’s morn, Billy,’ said Sandy as they made for the road to the ford, ‘offer to mend their fence.’
‘D’ye think they’ll turn up?’ Doig asked now.
‘No idea,’ said Sandy lightly. ‘If they hope for their coin, they’ll show.’
Doig snorted. ‘If they believe in it,’ he said sceptically.
‘What’s the aim of the meeting?’ Gil asked. ‘Are you looking for your quarry to be there?’
‘No him,’ said Sandy. ‘He’ll be hiding up somewhere. But I’m hoping I might get a word of where he is, or the like. Depends who he’s sent to collect.’
The night wore on. Gil, his back against a hawthorn trunk, was grateful for the rest, the silence, the time to do nothing whatever, even to think. When Sandy hissed he came awake slowly, to find the horizon lightening away to their left where the moon would rise.
‘I see them,’ said Doig, barely audible. Gil concentrated, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and recognised movement near the river, more like wind in a barley-field than any actual moving figure. A shadow flitted between two trees, and another, and a third.
‘Five or six at least,’ he said quietly. ‘The tinkers?’
‘Aye.’ His cousin was silent for a space, still watching. Finally he said, speaking hardly above a breath, ‘Changes things. We wait till moonrise.’
The stealthy movements down by the ford continued. It seemed to Gil that the group, whether the tinkers or another party, now had the ford surrounded, with people on both banks, hidden under trees, melted into the bushes. He saw the wisdom in arriving as early as they had; someone simply obeying the summons for moonrise would have walked blind into a trap, unless he had brought an armed escort.
How dangerous were the tinkers, he wondered. The boy who had appeared this evening up at Tarbrax had seemed well disposed, on the whole (and how had he known they would be there? Why was he watching the place? Did he know the two women were in the house? Surely not, since he had claimed the place was empty.) These groups of wanderers had a bad reputation, of course, but principally for opportune theft and general dishonesty and stealing children, for fighting and drunkenness. They were not given to organised violence, though they
were held to be bonnie fighters.
The moon lifted above the Lothian hills, only a day older than last night at The Cleuch but somehow much thinner. It cast some light on the scene before them, though the greater effect was to deepen the shadows where the stealthy movements had settled. Trying to keep a tally in his head of where one dimly seen figure and another had halted, Gil gathered his feet under him, preparing to rise.
‘Right,’ said Sandy beside him. ‘Let’s away down there.’
Emerging from the shadows of their clump of trees, he sauntered down the slope. Gil followed him, Doig with his rolling gait alongside. By the ford, first one, then another figure emerged from obscurity, till there were four people standing where the track ran down the river bank, watching them approach. Their stance was vigilant, rather than threatening; they did not seem to be armed. Without turning his head or seeming to look, Gil reckoned there were perhaps two more still lurking this side of the ford, ready to appear, and another four or five on the opposite bank.
Sandy strolled down to a point perhaps ten feet from the four men, and halted, nodding to the nearest.
‘A bonnie evening,’ he said casually.
‘It is that, maister, indeed it is that,’ agreed the man.
‘Been a while, Blue Doo.’
‘It has that. It’s been away too long, indeed.’ The accent, like the boy’s up by Tarbrax, was lilting, strange.
‘Cauf’s Heid,’ continued Sandy, with a nod to another man. ‘Hauf a Sark. Wooden Toe. A bonnie evening.’
There was general agreement on this. After a few moments, the man addressed as Blue Doo remarked, ‘And I see you ha freens at your back, maister. A bonnie evening, wee man.’
Doig grunted, apparently impatient with this ritual. There was a waiting pause, and Sandy finally said, ‘My cousin.’
‘A bonnie evening,’ Gil contributed, raising his hat to the four.
‘A bean gadgie like yoursel, maister, I can tell that,’ said Blue Doo to Sandy.