The Rough Collier (2 page)

‘Oh, aye,’ said Paton. ‘We came up here wi’ the cart, an hour after Prime, since the oats is sown and the land’s no ready for the bere yet. We came all together from Thorn town, Geordie Meikle and his brother Jock, Rab here, William Douglas,’ he counted on his fingers, ‘Eck Shaw, Adam Livingstone and me. And it’s Jock and Geordie’s cart,’ he added. ‘All the rest’s gone up to the coal-heugh to take the witch.’

‘And then we saw this man staring out of the peat-wall like the Judgement Day,’ said Fleming in his nasal tenor.

‘What did you do first?’ asked Gil, ignoring this.

‘Walked the ground,’ said Paton promptly.

‘Paced off the portions,’ agreed Simson, with growing confidence, ‘and put the first of the markers down.’ He pointed at a bundle of wooden stobs which lay on the grass nearby.

‘Then Rab and William Douglas came down into the digging to look how dry the peat was,’ went on Paton.

‘And there he was!’ said Fleming.

‘It was you that found him?’ Gil asked. Rab Simson admitted to this. ‘Show me where.’

The man turned to indicate a cavity in the cut face of the peat. The dark, crumbling layers round it were disturbed, and spade-marks indicated where they had used leverage to get the body out. The dog paced forward from Gil’s side to peer into the hollow, snuffling hopefully, and Gil snapped his fingers to recall him.

‘His head was here, see,’ Simson pointed. ‘I seen his hair first, just sticking out a crack in the peat-dyke where it shrunk when it dried out a bit, and I thought first it was maybe a jerkin or the like that someone had left last year.’

Gil nodded, but Fleming declared, ‘That was daft, Rab Simson. It would never last the year out in the weather like that.’

‘Well, he’s lasted,’ said Simson argumentatively, indicating the corpse.

‘So then you came to look,’ prompted Gil.

‘Aye, and let out a great skelloch,’ said Paton, grinning. ‘And we all came running, and when we seen it was a head right enough we tried if it was loose, see, and it wasny.’ He demonstrated with a swivelling movement of both hands which was somehow quite unnerving. ‘And then –’

‘And then,’ trumpeted Fleming in Gil’s ear, ‘they found the rest of the body was there, and sent for me, as was right, and I oversaw getting him out the peat, and identifying him. Will you see him now, maister?’

‘This is where he was buried,’ repeated Gil. Alys looked up at him and nodded.

‘Aye, here and nowhere else,’ agreed Simson.

Gil turned, and bent to the cloak which shrouded the body on its hurdle. Fleming was ahead of him, grasping the corner, but paused to warn them again:

‘It’s no a sight for a young lady. You take my advice, you’d be better up yonder wi’ the horses, mistress.’

‘Let me see him,’ said Gil. Fleming reluctantly drew back the cloak. Socrates extended his long muzzle, sniffing, and growled faintly. Gil checked him.

The object revealed was not immediately obvious as human. The shock of hair caught the eye, as red as the summer fox Paton had mentioned, but at first glance it was attached to a bundle of sticks wrapped in old leather, damp and dark like the peat which still clung to them. Then Gil recognized a hand, and a foot, and began to see how the body was disposed, lying on its left side with the hands crossed in front of the chest and its knees drawn up into the shrunken belly, the chin tucked in and the face turned down on the left shoulder like someone asleep.

‘He’s near turned to peat himself,’ he said.

‘Aye, he is that,’ agreed Simson. He and Paton nodded proudly, as if it was their doing.

‘You’ll want to see his face, maister,’ prompted Fleming. Gil stepped round the hurdle, and bent to look. ‘You see, he’s no to be kent by his features. She’s made certain o’ that. If it wasny for the hair we’d never ha’ kent him, maister.’

Gil nodded. The sight was nowhere near so grisly as Fleming’s warnings had implied, but the face was unrecognizable. The corpse’s features were flattened, the nose bent sideways and the jaw dislocated so that the blackened teeth showed in a misplaced grin. One eye was closed, the lid shrunk into its socket, but the other eyeball had sprung out and lay withered on the crushed cheekbone like a yellow cherry on a stalk. On the peat-brown skin of the jaw was a bloom of gingery stubble.

‘How did he die?’ asked Alys.

‘How?’ Fleming was taken aback, but recovered quickly. ‘That’s no a matter we need to think on, mistress. He’s dead, and that’s the meat o’t.’

‘The law will wish to know how he died,’ said Gil. ‘And when,’ he added, sniffing. ‘He’s been dead a good time. He smells of the peat and nothing else.’

‘I was thinking that,’ said Alys. ‘How long does it take, for something left out here to become black and shrink like this?’

‘A long time, surely,’ said Gil.

‘No, no,’ said Paton argumentatively. ‘It might be no more than a pair o’ weeks.’

‘Havers, Wat!’ said Simson. ‘He’s further gone than our old cow was when we found her, the other side of the moor, and she’d been missing two month.’

‘As little as that?’ said Gil.

‘It must take less than that,’ said Fleming with authority, ‘for it’s certainly Murray by the hair, and he’s no been missing as long as two month.’

Gil exchanged a glance with Alys, and then turned back to the cavity in the peat.

‘Tell me how he was lying,’ he said.

‘Just the way you see him,’ pronounced Fleming, ‘for we couldny straighten him, what with the flesh so shrunk on the bones.’

‘On that side, or the other?’

‘Kind of on his right side,’ said Rab Simson, thinking as he spoke, ‘but no quite. His face was turned right up,’ he added, ‘and no even a cloth ower it.’

‘And you dug in from here, from the side of the peat-wall?’ Gil prompted. ‘Not down from the top?’

‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed Paton. ‘We just burrowed in wi’ our fleuchters.’ He pointed to Simson’s peat-spade in illustration. At Gil’s elbow, Alys repeated the new word silently. ‘We didny want to come down from above him, see, in case . . .’ He grinned awkwardly.

‘The peat above him has never been cut,’ Gil said, and touched the dark caked surface. ‘Do you see there where there’s a lighter band? It goes right across with never a break. The layers have not been disturbed, not till you came along and cut under them with the fleuchters. They’re sagging now, but they’ve never been cut through.’

‘Of course they haveny,’ proclaimed Fleming. ‘I saw that and all, Maister Cunningham. That’s how I kent it for witchcraft, for she’s simply slain him and set him under the peat without ever having to dig down. And when you set that with other information I have –’

‘More likely,’ said Gil, ‘he was laid here before the peat grew.’

Simson nodded agreement, but Paton objected: ‘The peat never grew! It was aye there! You’re daft, Rab Simson.’

‘You’re daft yerself, Wat Paton,’ retorted Simson. ‘It must ha’ growed, else how did the trees get at the bottom of it, that you find in some of the diggings? Or the old peat-spades, from afore Noy’s Flood, maybe? And my grandsire found an elf-bolt under the peat ower by Braidwood. I’ve seen it when I was wee. So it’s all grown since Noy’s time, likely.’

‘Aye, since Noy’s time. A thousand year or more. It never grew in the time the man Murray’s been missing,’ said Fleming, ‘which just goes to prove it’s witchcraft.’

‘We still do not know how he died,’ said Alys. She had turned back to the corpse on its hurdle, and was bending for a closer look. ‘He has no clothes on,’ she added, pulling off her glove to touch the peat-dark skin. ‘Except – is this a belt?’

‘It isn’t leather,’ said Gil. ‘It still has the fur on.’

‘I said he was no sight for a young lady!’ reiterated Fleming.

The lapwings had begun calling again. A noise of several voices shouting reached Gil, and the dog growled just as Paton looked up the flank of the hill and said, ‘Maisters, is this them coming back from the coal-heugh now?’

‘Aye, it is,’ agreed Fleming with enthusiasm. ‘You can confront her wi’ her crime, Maister Cunningham, and then we can get on and deal wi’ it properly.’

The first heads were surfacing above the curve of the hillside, with gesticulating peat-spades and a loud argument which flew in snatches on the brisk wind. Socrates growled more loudly, and Gil checked him. Five men, clad like Paton and Simson in leather and homespun, were hustling a woman along in their midst. She wore neither plaid nor mantle, and her apron and good woollen gown were muddy from the enforced march across the moorland, her indoor cap askew and her hair blowing in the wind. Her hands were bound before her, but it was clear that her tongue was not restrained.

‘And if you hadny lifted me from my stillroom,’ she declared as they came closer, ‘I’d have completed the oil for your mother’s joint-ill, Geordie Meikle, and you could have taken it to her this evening. She tellt me when she asked for more that she was just about out of it –’

‘You said that a’ready,’ said one of the men round her, shoving her roughly towards Gil. She stumbled forward, and fell over the edge of the peat-cutting, landing awkwardly on hip and elbow. Alys exclaimed indignantly, and sprang to her assistance, while Fleming pronounced:

‘Well may you grovel, witch, afore the evidence of your ill deeds! This is the witch, Maister Cunningham, well kent for miles about as a cunning woman wi’ herbs and ointments, and seen by me to ha’ quarrelled wi’ Thomas Murray that lies here slain by witchcraft.’

‘Thomas?’ the woman said as she stood upright. She gave Alys a shaky word of thanks, looked at Gil, and bowed awkwardly over her bound hands. ‘Sir, what’s to do here? The men would tell me nothing but that I’m accused of witchcraft and evil-doing, and now – are you saying Thomas is dead?’

‘You ken well he’s dead, woman,’ trumpeted Fleming, ‘you that set him here in secret!’ Gil turned and fixed the tubby priest with his eye. ‘But by God’s help and these innocent instruments of justice –’ He became aware of Gil’s gaze and faltered in his oration. ‘Your crime’s been uncovered,’ he ended lamely, and became silent.

‘Aye,’ said Gil drily, and turned to the woman. ‘What’s your name, mistress?’

‘That’s Beattie Lithgo,’ supplied one of the men around her. Gil eyed him, and he too fell silent.

‘Beatrice Lithgo,’ confirmed the woman, ‘relict of Adam Crombie the collier.’ Her accent was not local, but came from further east, Gil thought, the Lothians perhaps.

‘Mistress Lithgo,’ he said. ‘There’s a corp found here, that’s been identified as Thomas Murray.’ He stepped aside, watching her face. She looked from him to the bundle of bones on the hurdle, and frowned, obviously trying to make it out as a body.

‘Is that a man?’ she questioned. ‘From here it could as well be a calf drowned in the mire.’

Fleming opened his mouth, but Gil caught his eye again and he subsided.

‘It’s a man,’ Gil confirmed. ‘Look closer, mistress.’

She gave him a doubtful look, and stepped forward to bend awkwardly over the corpse, flinching as she located its battered countenance.

‘Oh, the poor soul. His mother wouldny ken him,’ she said. ‘Has he been beaten, or did this happen while he lay here, do you suppose, sir?’

‘You tell us, woman –’ began Fleming.

‘Do you recognize the man?’ Gil asked without expression. Beatrice Lithgo straightened up and turned to him. She was tall for a woman, taller than Alys though shorter than Gil himself, and behind the blowing wisps of reddish-fair hair her face was plain and bony, with a sharp nose and angular jaw. Light eyes between grey and blue considered him, equally without expression.

‘I do not,’ she said, ‘no being his mother. It could be Thomas, it could just as well be some other poor soul. The hair’s lighter than his, but –’

‘His hair’s bleached wi’ lying out in the peat,’ pronounced Fleming, unable to contain himself longer, ‘and if you beat him past knowing afore you hid him here, small wonder we canny tell him by his face.’ The men around them nodded, and one or two muttered agreement.

‘Maister Gil!’ called Henry from among the horses.

‘I think it’s no him,’ went on Mistress Lithgo, ‘but I’d sooner you got Thomas’s wife to see him, or one of the men that works by his side.’

‘To look for marks on his flesh, you mean?’ said Alys, coming forward.

‘Maister Gil, look up yonder!’

‘Any collier has scars,’ agreed Mistress Lithgo, ‘and Thomas had a few that I treated, but I’d as soon have some other word for it, and I’ve no doubt you would and all, sir,’ she added, with faint humour.

‘Maister Gil!’

The dog rose, hackles up, from his position at Gil’s feet, and stared up the hillside. Gil looked over his shoulder, and saw another ragged company appearing over the curve of windswept grass. This was a bigger group, grotesque in pointed hoods and long-tailed sarks of leather, and somehow much more threatening even at first sight, before he took in the style of implements the men carried or the tone of the shouting which broke out as they caught sight of Mistress Lithgo.

‘It’s the colliers,’ said one of the men beside Fleming, ‘come to fetch the witch home, maybe.’ He took an apprehensive grip of his peat-spade, and looked at the priest, who seized hold of Mistress Lithgo’s arm.

‘Gather round, lads,’ he ordered, gesturing with his free hand. ‘They’ll no get a hold of her for aught we can do!’

‘No just the colliers and their mells,’ said another man, making no move to obey Fleming. ‘There’s lassies wi’ them. Two lassies.’

‘The whole of the day shift, wi’ my older daughter,’ said Mistress Lithgo in resigned tones, ‘and my good-sister Joanna. Joanna Brownlie, Thomas’s wife,’ she added to Gil.

‘Ah,’ said Gil. He caught Alys’s eye, and held out his arm. She came forward with one of her flickering smiles, laid her gloved hand on his wrist, and allowed him to lead her across the hollow towards the approaching mob of miners with their heavy short-hafted hammers. There were eight or ten of them, with two very pretty young women in their midst whose white linen and well-dyed red-and-blue wool contrasted sharply with the blackened faces and muddy leathers of the men.

‘Give us back our Beattie!’ shouted the man at the front as the group halted on the edge of the peat-cutting, and others echoed him. ‘Set her free, or we’ll –’