The Rough Collier (11 page)

‘I’m still on the trail.’ Gil followed the two men out into the yard and snapped his fingers for Socrates, who loped over to him from the horse-trough. ‘Alan, you’ll need to keep him safe, or he’ll be round the parish in more fragments than the True Cross. Crombie, do you ken the name of the clerk up at Forth? Who is it you sell coal to?’

The peat-digging told Gil nothing new. He spent a little while confirming what he had observed on the day he had first seen the place, then mounted up again and rode on up the hill. It was a bright day, and much less windy than yesterday; the sun was warm on his face, there were larks singing high up under the fluffy clouds, and the familiar round-shouldered bulk of Tinto Hill showed away to his right. His discontent began to lift. Socrates galloped in great circles on the rough grass, until Gil saw a small flock of ewes with their lambs and whistled the dog in to take him up on the pommel. Even the air seemed cleaner up here, he thought. At times like this he wondered why he stayed in Glasgow.

As Adam Crombie said, Forth village had an unappealing setting. Perched below its chapel on a bald hillside, surrounded by ribbed fields and bent trees, the little group of houses seemed chilly and exposed. However the welcome a stranger received was warm. Gil and Socrates were noticed first by a rough-coated bitch tethered by a doorway, and when she began to hurl abuse at the intruders a group of the children gathered to stare. Gil and Socrates dismounted and spoke to them, and they came slowly closer. One of them, taking his eyes reluctantly from Socrates, admitted that Sir Martin dwelt here.

‘He’s at the plough,’ said another.

‘My da’s at the plough and all,’ confided a diminutive person with cropped hair and no front teeth, bare feet firmly planted in the mud, well-worn tunic revealing nothing of gender.

‘Is your mammy here?’ Gil asked, well aware that he was observed from several doorways.

The tethered dog continued to bark. Socrates, ignoring her loftily, sat down at Gil’s feet. The child with no front teeth shook its head, but the boy who had spoken first said, ‘Her mammy’s went to the wash at the Cleugh. My mammy’s here, but.’ He pointed at one of the low houses.

‘My mammy’s here and all,’ announced someone else. ‘Does yir dog bite, maister?’

‘Only if you’re rough with him,’ Gil said. ‘If you’ll tell your mammy I’d like a wee word with her, you can speak to the dog after.’

The boy he addressed nodded and ran off, leaving behind him a chorus of, ‘Can I? Can I? Can we all get clapping yir dog, maister?’

‘You can take turns,’ Gil temporized, wondering how Socrates would cope with the assault. A bigger girl organized them into a line at his words, and by the time his messenger returned with a woman bundled in a vast sacking apron he was showing the first child how to offer a hand to the dog for inspection.

‘Our John says you’re wanting a word wi’ me,’ she said, bobbing a curtsy while her hands picked nervously at the apron. ‘Are ye from the coal-heugh, maister? Was it about the coin? For it’s no here.’

‘The coin?’ he repeated, straightening up and raising his hat to her. ‘That’s right, show him the back of your hand. Let him sniff you.’

‘It’s kittly!’ said the candidate, snatching the hand away. ‘His whiskers is kittly!’

‘The coin the colliers left,’ said John’s mother. ‘Is that no what you want, sir?’

‘Let me!’ said the messenger, pushing the other child aside. ‘He said I could!’

‘I came up to ask about the colliers. Do you tell me they’ve been here and gone again?’

‘Oh, aye,’ she assured him. ‘Near a month since.’

Someone silenced the barking dog along the street, and the women gathered from their doorways, one or two still settling their linen headcoverings in place

‘There’s nobody here burns coal,’ said one. ‘They’re asking ower much for it when there’s peat in plenty up yonder.’

‘Forbye there’s coal lying on the ground for the gathering, over at Climpy,’ said another, and they all laughed.

‘What happened, then?’ Gil asked. ‘Why did they leave the coin here?’

‘Who’s asking?’ countered one of the older women. Gil introduced himself, raising his hat to them all, at which they curtsied and several giggled nervously.

‘You’ll have heard about the corp found in the Thorn peat-cutting,’ he said.

‘Aye, yestreen,’ said one or two.

‘I have, I have! He’s all dried like leather,’ said one of the boys with relish, ‘Robbie Wishart tellt us that when he came up to drink ale in our house. He said his face is all thrawn.’ He pulled a hideous grimace in demonstration, and the child with no front teeth began to cry.

‘Who is it, maister?’ asked a thin woman in faded blue. ‘They’re saying it’s the man Murray from the heugh, is that right?’

‘Are they?’ said another woman. ‘And him only here last quarter. Is that no a shame!’

‘Last month, surely,’ said Gil. Heads were shaken, their folded linen bobbing in the sunlight.

‘No, he never came last month,’ said John’s mother. ‘It was just the two Paterson lads, and then they went on their way to Blackness.’

Gil looked round the group.

‘You’re saying that last month,’ he said carefully, ‘Thomas Murray was never through Forth on his round.’

‘No last month,’ agreed a stout woman in homespun, ‘though he was here in February, I think it was, him and Tam Paterson but no Jock that time, wi’ the ponies and all the empty creels. Shifted the lot, so he had.’

‘Is it the coin you’re wanting to know about, maister?’ demanded John’s mother. ‘Will we send up the field to Sir Martin to come and let you know what he done wi’ it?’

‘Aye, do that anyway,’ said another woman, ‘and you can take a seat, maister, and a wee refreshment, and tell us all the world’s doing. Is that right, that Jamie Stewart’s looking to wed the King of England’s daughter?’

Much as had happened at Thorn, he was drawn into one of the little houses, given a seat, and a jug of thin sour ale was brought. All the women crowded in to watch and listen as the housewife and the brewster officiated over the receiving of news, in counterpoint to the renewed barking of the dog tethered before the door. They were surprisingly well informed, for cottars at the far end of a large parish.

‘Oh, that’s Sir Thomas’s doing,’ someone assured him, when he commented. ‘Sir Thomas Bartholomew, that’s vicar at St Mary’s down at Carnwath and a man of some importance, so he is. He’s aye over at Linlithgow, you see, signing papers and talking to the King, and he aye stops here on the road back, to rest hisself and get a stoup of Ellen’s brew, and says a Mass for us while he’s here, and tells us all that’s new.’

‘It was Sir Thomas fetched the Paterson lads from Blackness,’ said Ellen the brewster. ‘Which is right beside Linlithgow, ye ken,’ she explained kindly. ‘One time he was in our house drinking ale, and some of the colliers was saying they needed a sinker, for they’d lost one deid in a rock-fall, and Sir Thomas asked about next time he was at Linlithgow. And Jock and Tam was looking for another place, seeing their last one had got flooded wi’ the sea, and was glad to come up here. So they said,’ she finished, nodding.

‘So they are the sinkers, right enough,’ said Gil.

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed several people.

‘That’s what they are. And mighty big fellows, too,’ added someone appreciatively.

‘You need to watch your tongue, Maidie,’ said the woman of the house slyly. ‘You’ll no speak like that in front of your Eck, will you?’

‘When were they here?’ Gil asked.

This gave rise to a brisk argument. By the time the tethered dog outside stopped barking they had reached the conclusion that the men had left Forth village at the end of March. One of the boys, leaping up and down, kept trying to interrupt and finally broke in with, ‘I ken! I ken, maister! It was the day afore Hunt-the-gowk! I mind, for I’d a good gowk to play on them, I was going to tell them the wrong way to Linlithgow, but then they left afore I could play it.’

‘That was just daft,’ said another boy. ‘You’re a gowk yersel, Andro Johnston.’

‘Am no!’

‘Aye ye ur!’

John’s mother, with practised ease, evicted the pair as they struggled, and stood aside to let a thin, balding, muddy man over the doorstep through a group of giggling children.

‘Here’s Martin Clerk,’ she announced. ‘He’ll tell you all about the Paterson lads, maister. It’s a man to hear about the coin from the coal-heugh, Martin.’

‘I didny ken what to do wi’ it,’ said the clerk defensively. ‘They never said what to do if Murray didny come for it, maister, and he’s never appeared.’

Patient questioning extracted a little more detail. The Paterson brothers had arrived on the morning of the second last day of March, spent the evening drinking ale in Ellen’s house and slept before the fire there. The next day they had spoken to Martin the clerk.

‘They’d all this coin,’ he explained, ‘said it was the fees for the quarter from all the folks they sold coal to, and they’d been expecting to meet Thomas Murray long afore that. So they said they’d go on to Blackness in case they’d missed him.’

‘Daft, I call it,’ said John’s mother. ‘How would he have got to Blackness except by going through Forth? We’d ha’ seen him.’

‘So we counted the coin, and all marked a paper of how much it was, and they left it wi’ me for safety,’ said the clerk anxiously, ‘but I couldny think to keep it in my house, nor in the kirk,’ he gestured in the direction of the little chapel, ‘nor to ask any of the colliers to take it home, the state they mostly leave here in, so I took it to the Cleugh and asked Somerville to put it in his big kist for me. And it’s still there, maister, and safe enough, I’ll warrant you.’

‘That was well done,’ Gil assured him. ‘Very sensible of you. Did the Patersons say where they last saw Murray?’

The man shook his head, relaxing a little. ‘They never said, just that they’d parted on the road, and looked to meet up again afore ever they reached here.’

‘First they were for going down to the heugh to see if he was there,’ said Ellen, ‘but there was a couple of the colliers up the night afore, and they were saying Murray was still away. They’d been surprised no to find him here. So when I tellt them that, they saw it wasny worth the ride down the hill and back up.’

‘So where did the Patersons go?’ Gil asked, disentangling the various
they
in the statement.

‘Why, they went on to Blackness, like I tellt you, maister,’ said Martin the clerk.

‘Why Blackness? Are they leaving their employment at the Pow Burn?’

‘Well, that’s no what they said,’ said the man. ‘By their conversation, they were still expecting to meet up with Thomas Murray, and they were all to go and talk to some salt-boilers down there.’

The two boys who had been put out sidled back into the house with embarrassed grins, and one of them made his way to the side of the woman who was seated opposite Gil.

‘Mammy,’ he said, in what he clearly imagined to be a whisper, ‘see that man’s big dog?’

‘What’s he doing?’ asked Gil, suddenly aware of the laughter outside in the road. The boy cast him an alarmed glance, and addressed his mother again.

‘He’s been tupping our Fly, Mammy, and she was letting him. Mammy, can I have one of their pups? Can I?’

Chapter Six

‘Dalserf?’ said Lady Cunningham. She waved a hand westward. ‘A mile or two that way, just across the Clyde, but why would you want to go there?’

‘Do you know it?’ Alys asked.

‘It’s on the road between here and Thinacre. It’s Hamilton land, always has been.’

‘Ah.’ Alys digested the fact of a faux pas. She knew that the lands Gil’s father had held, Plotcock and Thinacre, lost to the Cunninghams after the uprising of 1488, were now held by the Hamiltons. This sounded, to judge from her mother-in-law’s tone of voice, as if the two families had been at odds for longer than that. ‘I should like to find out more about Joanna Brownlie,’ she admitted. ‘Her father held Auldton, I think she called it, by Dalserf. He died not long after she was married.’

‘Brownlie.’ Her mother-in-law paused to consider this. ‘In Auldton. It’s a common enough surname in these parts. Who holds it now? No a Brownlie, I think, it’s another name.’

‘That’s likely, I think. Joanna has older brothers, but they were already settled elsewhere when she wedded Matt Crombie,’ Alys supplied. ‘Would any of your household know? Alan, perhaps?’

‘Oh, more than likely. I wonder if they’re kin to the Brownlies over by Thinacre? It’s the same parish, after all.’

Alan Forrest, when summoned, confirmed this idea.

‘Second cousins, they were, mistress, Will Brownlie in Auldton and Tammas at Broomelton just by our bit.’ He paused to consider. ‘Will wedded a Lockhart from this side the river, but she died when her lassie was young. They’d only the three bairns – two boys first, a Tammas again, and Hob, and then the lassie a good while later. A late-come, as they say.’

‘Where are Joanna’s brothers now?’ Alys asked.

‘Now that I couldny say, but likely my wife could,’ suggested Alan, ‘seeing as she’s gossips wi’ Jess Lockhart that dwells by St Andrew’s kirk in the town. Will I send out for her, mistress?’

‘Aye, do that, Alan,’ agreed Lady Cunningham, ‘and then tell Nan I want her, till I get my boots on. I must be off to the horses afore it gets any later.’

Alan’s wife Eppie, drifting across the outer yard with two children in tow and one in her arms, did not appear as a likely source of good information, but when she had settled the two little girls to play house in a corner of the hall, she sat down at Alys’s invitation with her son on her knee and paid more attention to the enquiry than her vague appearance portended.

‘Lockhart,’ she said. ‘Oh, aye, madam, I think Jess mentioned it when the lassie was wedded. What a tale that was! A speak for the whole countryside, it was.’ She pushed a stray lock of waving yellow hair back under her linen kerchief, and bounced the baby. ‘Let me see, what was it Jess said? Joanna Brownlie’s mother’s name was Marion, I think. Aye, Marion Lockhart, and she was a second cousin to Jess’s father and forbye . . .’ She paused, frowning, and the baby burbled something and tugged at the ends of her kerchief. ‘First cousin to her mother’s good-sister,’ she produced triumphantly. ‘No, baba, leave Mammy’s kerchief alone. Here, chew on a bonnie crust. Num-num-num!’ She produced a baked crust from the pocket of her apron and gave it to her son, who waved it at Alys, burbling again.

‘Would your friend know when this Marion died?’ Alys asked, smiling at the baby.

‘Ten year ago last autumn,’ said Eppie promptly. Her son leaned over and thrust the dried bread at Alys’s mouth. ‘I mind that, for I think Joanna Brownlie’s of an age wi’ me, and I worked it out that she was twelve when she lost her mammy, a sad time for a lassie. Forgive me, madam, he’ll no rest till you take a bite at that. Just pretend, mind.’

Alys obediently pretended to nibble the proffered crust, and the baby beamed at her, received it back and stuffed it into his own mouth.

‘He’s a bonnie fellow. What is his name?’ Alys asked. ‘How old is he?’

‘That’s John. After Alan’s father, you ken. He’ll be a year old in two weeks’ time. You’ve none of your own yet, madam?’

‘I was married only in November.’ Alys managed to ignore the swift glance at her waist. ‘John is a good name. My father has a foster-child who is now a year and a half, and I have care of him. He is also called John.’

‘He’s in Glasgow, is he? You’ll miss him.’

‘I do,’ Alys admitted, and realized it was true. ‘He is just beginning to talk. He says my name already, and his nurse’s, but he had some new words just last week before we came away.’

‘He’ll have more when you get back. Mind you, boys is often late talking,’ said Eppie sagely. She pushed another straggling lock back under her kerchief, and adjusted her clasp on her son. ‘Then they make up for it later.’

‘They do,’ agreed Alys, thinking of the way Gil and her father could talk when they were together. ‘It’s strange, here you are with three lovely bairns, and yet Joanna Brownlie is of an age with you and twice married, and has none.’

‘Aye, poor soul. Mind, her first man could never ha’ done her any good, the way he sickened as soon’s he brought her home, but this one that’s been murdered in the peat-cutting is a different matter, you’d think.’ Eppie glanced round the hall, checked that her daughters were engrossed, and lowered her voice. ‘He’s near as bad as that Fleming that’s sub-steward at Cauldhope. Free wi’ his hands, and full of bold talk. I’ll wager he’s one to insist on his rights.’

‘Mind you, I have heard otherwise about Fleming now.’

‘Oh, aye,
now
.’ A giggle, a sideways glance, an upward flick of the eyebrows. ‘His culter’s rusted away, all right. That’s three lassies they say he’s persuaded to his bed since St John’s Day last, and then found he couldny stand to do his part. What a judgement on him!’ Another gurgling laugh which made the baby chuckle in sympathy.

‘A judgement?’

‘Well, Agnes Paton in Cauldhope kitchens never had a penny piece for the bairn he gied her last year, that was born at Yule, and he did no better by any of the other lassies. Deserves him right, that’s what I say, and a pity it doesny happen to others.’

‘It’s no way to behave,’ agreed Alys, ‘and him a priest too. And Murray? Is he the same, then? Does he go after other women?’

‘I’ve never heard it,’ admitted Eppie with regret. ‘But you can aye tell, the way he talks, he’d like to. My man says it’s no him that was got out of the peat-digging,’ she recalled. ‘Maybe that’s where he’s vanished away to, he’s gone off to somebody else. Poor Mistress Brownlie.’

‘I wonder what she will do now. Does she have kin? Can she go to them?’

‘Oh, I think she’s well placed up at the coal-heugh, by what you hear,’ said Eppie. ‘She’s got two brothers, I think Jess tellt me at the time, but they’re a good piece older. One of them’s got bairns near her age. They’d maybe no want to take her in.’

‘Two brothers,’ Alys repeated. ‘Where are they, then? I’d have thought they would be here to help her in this trouble.’

‘Oh, not them.’ Eppie looked down at her son, who was lying against her breast chewing drowsily on his crust. ‘The way I heard it,’ she said happily, ‘they never had much time for her. I suppose they were no too pleased when she was born, they must ha’ thought all their father’s gear would be theirs and here was another to share it wi’, and they both got themselves wedded and settled elsewhere as soon as they might. And that, said Jess to me, just made it worse, for there was the lassie still at home to be made a pet of, and after her mother died she kept her father’s house and he bought her jewels and all sorts, and then made sure she’d a good tocher when she was wedded, and all that was so much less to divide amongst the three of them at his death.’

‘It’s a sad tale,’ said Alys, privately wondering if Eppie’s last statement was correct. Her own considerable dowry, she knew, had been by way of an advance against whatever she might inherit when – when – but then, there was no brother or sister to share it with. ‘No wonder Mistress Brownlie prefers to stay up at the coal-heugh. Where did you say her brothers were settled?’

‘Let me see now.’ Eppie adjusted the weight of the sleeping baby and considered, staring into the distance with vague blue eyes. ‘Is one of them in Draffan, maybe? I know who would tell you,’ she suggested, ‘and that’s Sir Simon over at St Mary’s in Dalserf. Or maybe Sir John here in the town.’

Sir John Heriot and his clerk were singing Sext in the chancel of St Andrew’s kirk. There were a few old women in the nave, murmuring over their beads in a soft organum to the chant which floated out under the double chancel arch. Alys sat down on the ledge at the wall and looked about, and the maidservant who had walked down with her, a young girl quite overcome by the responsibility of accompanying Maister Gil’s lady, retreated to the other side of the door and drew her own beads from their place in her girdle.

The stonework of the little building was good, though the carving at the head of the chancel pillar was simple; the windows were neatly constructed and carefully set, and the swallow’s-nest pulpit on the south wall was well done. The church was too old, she thought, for Gil’s father to have been the original donor, but whoever had built it had summoned experienced masons. The paintings on the plastered walls were clumsy, but the saints they depicted were clear enough: St James the pilgrim, St Roch, St Anne teaching the Virgin to read, a gruesome and comical Doom on the west wall. St Andrew presided as a small, brightly coloured statue on an altar beside the double chancel arch.

The Office was ended. The final Amen, drawn out on enough notes to stuff a cushion, faded into the rafters, and the sounds of tidying began with the heavy slither and flap of pages turning as the book was set up for Nones. Alys rose, shaking out her skirts, and watched the arches for the appearance of Sir John.

She had considered her appearance with care; her wired headdress and good wool gown set her aside from the country women, but she had deliberately chosen a plaid rather than a mantle to put round her shoulders. No point in alarming her quarry. She had also considered her story on the walk in from Belstane, quite relieved that the girl with her was too shy to chatter. With regret, she had discarded various constructions based on the romances she loved; it seemed improbable that anyone would believe her to be a long-lost scion of the Lockharts, or the daughter of a nobleman stolen by pirates. Besides, she thought, and laughed at herself, she had no convenient birthmark to support such a fiction.

Sir John emerged from the dim chancel, a big fair man with a broad face, and his clerk slipped past as the priest was pounced on by two of the old women with a complicated tale of wrongdoing by a neighbour. Alys waited, watching how he dealt with them, and at length he noticed her and drew her into the conversation.

‘You’re a stranger here, daughter?’ he said. His accent was not local, though Alys could not place it. She curtsied, and introduced herself, at which all three exclaimed, blessed themselves, blessed her, offered good wishes on her marriage. It was clear that Lady Cunningham was well regarded in the town.

‘And is it no Belstane where the man’s came up out the peat all uncorrupted?’ said the larger and stouter of the women. ‘Who is he, do they ken yet?’

Alys explained the situation, and they discussed it with interest, Sir John concerned, the two women offering various wild guesses about the identity of the corpse. This took a while, but eventually the second woman, a small withered person with claw-like hands and sharp eyes, said, ‘So you came in to hear the Office, mistress?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Alys agreed, ‘and to admire this kirk, which my good-mother told me was worth the walk. She was certainly right in that.’

This was well received. The best features of the building had to be pointed out and described as if she was unable to see them, and the donors identified. Lady Egidia had given the candlesticks to the Lady-altar.

‘And Sir James Douglas sees to St James’s altar,’ said the first woman, ‘and Lockhart at the Lee gave us that St Roch, o’ course.’

‘Naturally,’ said Sir John. ‘Indeed.’

‘Lockhart,’ said Alys, seizing the chance. ‘I wonder, could you tell me something. Is there a Marion Lockhart lives here in Carluke town?’

‘Marion?’ said the small woman. ‘No a Marion. There’s Mysie, and Eppie, and Jess.’ She counted on her fingers. ‘Aye, and Maggie and Nan.’

‘Eppie Lockhart’s youngest is a Marion,’ said the other woman, and sucked noisily on her remaining teeth.

‘No, but the lassie’s name’s no Lockhart, it’s Robertson,’ objected her companion.

‘There’s many Lockharts in the town,’ Sir John explained. ‘It’s a common name in this parish, madam. Indeed. I confess I canny place a Marion.’

‘This would be an older woman,’ said Alys. ‘She’d be near sixty, I think, if she still lives.’

‘Oh, Marion Lockhart!’ said the small woman. ‘Marion that was daughter to Robin Lockhart the sawyer, Mally. No, she’s dead, ten year since. Afore you came here, that would be, Sir John. Was she kin of yours, lassie?’

‘No, no,’ Alys said. ‘But a friend of mine in Glasgow bade me, if she still lived, to say she was asking for her.’

‘Glasgow?’ said the stout woman suspiciously. ‘I mind Robin Lockhart’s Marion, but I never heard her mention a friend at Glasgow. Did she ever say such a thing to you, Isa?’

‘No, never, Mally,’ said Isa, shaking her head. ‘What friend was that?’

‘Hardly a friend, I think,’ said Alys, ‘merely that Mistress Lockhart did her a good turn once and she minds her kindly. She’ll be sorry to hear she has died. What came to her?’

The two heads turned, and a portentous glance passed.

‘I’ll away about my business,’ said Sir John hastily. Alys curtsied, but the old women hardly noticed him go.

‘Women’s trouble,’ said Mally, lowering her voice. Alys made the appropriate response, the indrawn breath and tilted head, and Mally nodded in satisfaction, sucked her teeth, and folded brawny arms under her large bosom. ‘See,’ she pronounced, ‘she’d the two boys no long after she was wedded.’

‘That was to Will Brownlie across the river,’ supplied Isa, clasping her claw hands at her narrow waist.

Her friend sucked her teeth again. ‘Aye, and she was never the same after the second one. Terrible, it was, so her mammy tellt me.’