The Rough Collier (22 page)

‘Here’s your basin, clerk,’ announced Simmie, charging in past his master, ‘and your water and all. Is it to be a wee Mass of healing? Or is it this new saint you’ve got? He should be a good help, seeing that Davy himself found him buried.’

‘Ah, thank you, Simmie,’ Sir John turned from the leather case, ‘and you can stay, indeed, and give me a hand wi’ the censer.’

‘New saint?’ said Fleming, distracted from his preoccupation. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s revealed to me,’ said Sir John importantly, and kissed his stole before he set it over his shoulders, ‘the corp from the peat-digging can be none other than St Malessock who first brought the gospel to this parish.’ He bent to the leather case again, and produced a small linen bundle which he unfolded to reveal a leathery stick-like object. ‘And here I have one of the holy man’s fingers –’

‘Oh, so Alan was right,’ said Gil. Sir John gave him a look of blank innocence.

‘You’ll no dip that in the water, will you?’ said Simmie, recoiling. ‘I’d sooner the Lee Penny, myself. At least that’s clean, considering how often it gets dipped.’

‘Lockhart and his folk at the Lee won’t be pleased if there’s another source of healing in the district,’ observed Michael. Sir John’s jaw dropped. Clearly he had not thought of that.

‘Who’s Malessock?’ demanded Fleming. ‘It canny be any Malessock that came out the peat-digging, it’s Thomas Murray.’

‘No, it’s no Murray,’ said Simmie, ‘for we found him by Bonnington yesterday, Davy, you mind Wat and I tellt you all.’

‘I’ll get away,’ said Gil cravenly. Alys looked up and nodded, but Fleming’s grip on her wrist tightened.

‘The rolls, mistress. Yonder on the desk. Take the rolls, or you take them, sir.’

‘Bring them out into the hall,’ suggested Michael. Gil, in some relief, gathered up the two yellowing scrolls and stepped to the door. Alys disengaged her wrist from Fleming’s grasp, and crossed herself.

‘We’ll leave you with Sir John,’ she said. ‘God speed the business.’

‘Amen,’ agreed Sir John.

‘Read them wi’ care, now,’ admonished Fleming.

‘He seemed well enough when I came home,’ said Michael, ‘though he was chastened once I’d done wi’ him. Maister Gil would tell you about him being up at the Pow Burn . . .?’

Alys nodded. Across the hall where he had been ordered to wait, Socrates emitted a single indignant falsetto yip. Gil snapped his fingers, and the dog paced over to join them.

‘You could sit here in the window, and get the light for the task,’ Michael went on. ‘No, he wasn’t so good after supper last night, and this morning he took a wee sup of porridge, with honey in it after what you said about honey the other day, mistress, but it never helped, and then he called for Maister Gil and I thought we’d best get a priest to him and all, and set Simmie on to look for you.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ said Alys. ‘You take that one, Gil, I take this, and then we can tell poor Fleming we’ve been through both. Has he been at the pear comfits again, Michael? I could smell them on his breath.’

‘So did I,’ Michael was striding up and down, ‘but I’ve no notion where he’s hid them.’

‘He should fast now, with well-water to drink and not even bread to eat, till noon tomorrow, if you can manage it, and certainly none of the comfits.’

‘I’ll try, though the other men aye bring him food when he shouts for it.’ Michael looked round as Sir John’s voice rose in the familiar, comforting words from beyond the screens passage. ‘Jackie Heriot’s a powerful singer, isn’t he? What’s he about, anyway? What’s that nasty thing he’s brought wi’ him?’

‘He reckons our corp from the peat-digging is this Malessock he claims is in the parish records.’ Gil had untied the tape on the older roll, and now spread out the end on his knee. Socrates sniffed at the edge of the parchment, then lay down with an ostentatious sigh, his head on Gil’s foot.

‘Could it be?’ asked Michael uncertainly, pausing in his traverse. Gil grunted, but Alys looked up.

‘I would not have said so either,’ she said with regret. ‘One thing to surmise that the corp might be someone from the days of the saints, or even from the time Our Lord was born, but another entirely to give him a name as if we had proof.’

Gil, aware of relief, nodded agreement.

‘He came up out of the peat with nothing,’ he said. ‘All we know of him is the violent way he died. If Sir John wishes to give him a name and honour him, there’s no harm, I suppose, but I’ll believe he’s a saint working miracles of healing when I witness one.’

‘The Lee Penny works,’ Michael argued.

‘What is that?’ Alys asked, finger on her place. ‘Simmie mentioned it too.’

Gil immersed himself in the roll he held, only half-hearing Michael’s account of how a Lockhart, of the house by Carluke called the Lee, had brought back a mysterious coin from the Crusades, widely known to cure the pestilence and other serious illness if you drank water it had been dipped in. He was less convinced than Michael of its efficacy, though one heard tales.

‘
1481, Lady Day, the fee paid
,’ he read aloud as the tale ended. ‘And Arbella Weir’s signature to it. For all Fleming calls these rent rolls, it isn’t strictly rent the coal-heugh pays, is it, Michael?’

‘It’s regular feu duty,’ agreed Michael. ‘And our share of the profits, as part of the conditions of the feu. There should be a note of those at the top of that roll, set out when old man Weir cut the first pit.’ He stopped pacing to peer over Alys’s shoulder. ‘Davy’s writing gets worse every time I look at it.’

‘The man before him was no better,’ said Gil.

‘What does Fleming want us to look for?’ asked Alys. She hitched up the skirt of her riding-dress to reach the purse which hung beneath it at her knee, and extracted her tablets.

‘I’m not certain.’ Gil paused, finger on an entry. ‘He was babbling to me about the dates the Crombie men had died, from which he seemed to deduce witchcraft. If we find those, I suppose, and make a note of them, it should satisfy him. I’d not take the time, save to humour the man when he’s in such a bad way.’

‘He is,’ Michael agreed, glancing at the screen again. Sir John had obviously anointed his penitent and was now chanting; his text seemed to be a life of the newly revealed saint, cobbled together from stock phrases. ‘St Peter’s bones, I think he’s making that up as he goes along. What’s Robert Blacader going to say about a new saint on his land?’

‘I’ve been wondering the same thing.’ Gil bent to the parchment again, and read the entry under his finger. ‘
1477, Lammas, the fee paid. Adam Crombie younger, his mark
, though it’s a signature, not a mark, and
Adam Crombie elder
obiit March last
. Then before that, in March, Arbella paid the fee, and at Candlemas before that it was Adam the elder. Their signatures are very different. But I see no great meaning in this.’

He copied the three entries carefully, and set the tablets aside.

‘I have the death of Mistress Lithgo’s man,’ said Alys. She turned her scroll so that Gil could read the entry. ‘In March of 1484.’

Adam Crombie secundus obiit
, ran the note. Two attempts at a Latin phrase had been scratched out, and
Undir a gret
faling of the rokkes
written after it.

‘Just as Phemie told me,’ she added.

Aware of a lack of system, Gil re-rolled his document to begin at the beginning, and paused to study the original conditions of feu which Michael had mentioned. The steward of the time had copied them with care in a small clear hand; they were interesting, and he thought generous on both sides. The first coalmaster, Arbella Weir’s father, had freedom to conduct the coal-heugh as he wished, and in turn the Sir James Douglas concerned, likely Michael’s grandsire he calculated, was to receive the regular feu duty, paid in person at Lady Day, and a fifth of the proceeds, paid quarterly.

‘Not the profits,’ he commented. Alys looked up, but did not speak.

‘No,’ agreed Michael, and grinned. ‘The old man can tell you about that. He does a good mimic of my grandsire bargaining with old Weir.’ He turned his head as the chanting from beyond the screen reached some kind of culmination, and water splashed. ‘I hope they’re careful wi’ that basin. We don’t want the records getting soaked.’

Gil bent to his task again, picking his way through the cramped lines of script. The year following the first payment a different name appeared.
Adam Crombie grieve pro
Mats Weir
, stated the note beside it. Gil checked the date: August 1451. This must be when Arbella had been married. He frowned, made a note and carried on with his task. Year by year, quarter by quarter, the feu duty was paid, the share of the takings recorded, one man or the other signed the book.

‘I suppose whoever was free would ride over here,’ said Michael when he commented.

On Lady Day in 1465 Arbella had signed instead of her father, and thereafter her name appeared every spring. He frowned, and checked again, and located the brief comment appended to the Lammas entry:
Mataeus Were ob
mart mcccclxv
. March 1465, indeed. He made a note, and went on.

The quarter-days came and went, Arbella or her husband signed the statements. Now and then a payment was missed, and a cryptic explanation accompanied the double amount next quarter.
Lammas 1470 Arbela Wyr from home
last qr
, ran one.
Mart’mas 1474 yung crombis maridge last qr
fee forgot
, was another. That must be when Mistress Lithgo came into the family. He grinned, thinking of the chaos and bustle that had surrounded their own wedding last November, even with Alys in charge.

‘There’s no entry for the last two quarter-days,’ said Alys. He looked up, and saw her expression change to one of dismay. ‘Of course, the fee was never paid this year.’

Beyond the screen, Sir John was still chanting. A waft of incense reached the hall, drifting blue in the light of the narrow windows, and making Socrates sneeze. Michael paused in his pacing to uncover his head and cross himself.

‘That is all I can see,’ said Alys, letting her scroll roll itself shut. ‘I have noted anything out of the way, and who signed the book each time. Can I help you, Gil?’ She stepped over the dog and came to sit at his side, studying his notes on the green wax of the tablets, glancing from that to the crabbed blocks of writing on the parchment. ‘Michael, was there a new contract made out when Mistress Weir’s father died?’

‘Aye, and at my grandsire’s death and all,’ Michael agreed. ‘The terms are still the same as the original, so the old man said. I’d wager neither side would think it worth the argument to change them.’

‘What happened to old Weir, do you know?’ Gil asked casually, finger on his place.

‘No a notion.’ Michael considered briefly, and shook his head. ‘No, I think I never heard it spoken of. Could ha’ been anything a collier might meet, including old age.’

‘Not so many of them live to old age,’ Gil said. ‘And Mistress Weir’s man? The first Adam Crombie that died at Elsrickle?’

‘I was still in short coats,’ protested Michael. ‘I’ve no a notion what came to him.’

‘Someone could ride to Elsrickle,’ said Alys. Gil turned to smile at her, suddenly aware of her accent and the pains she had to take over the place-name.

‘Why?’ asked Michael. ‘I thought we were finding who poisoned the man Murray.’

‘To get the exact date of Adam Crombie’s death,’ Alys said, ‘and if anyone remembers it, an account of how he died. Is there time to go today and be back in daylight?’

‘I could,’ said Gil with reluctance. ‘You are right, we need to check that.’

‘I din’t see why,’ said Michael. ‘What will it prove anyway?’

‘If he died in the same way as Murray,’ said Alys carefully, ‘it might mean that the same person poisoned them both.’

‘If it was poison,’ said Gil. ‘It might only mean that the one learned from the other.’

‘And if he didny? If it was a natural death?’

‘Then I suppose,’ said Alys reluctantly, ‘this time it could have been anyone who handled the flask. For I am very sure it was something in the flask, Gil, even if I can’t identify it.’

‘Who had it last?’ Michael asked. ‘The flask.’

‘Joanna,’ said Gil, more grimly than he intended.

‘Only to put it in Murray’s scrip,’ Alys protested. He met her eye. ‘Gil, no! Surely we can’t –’

‘We must suspect all of them,’ he said, ‘and she is the one to benefit most by his death.’

‘It is not in her character!’ she exclaimed, breaking into French. ‘So gentle a girl, always ready to believe the best of everyone – Gil, I can’t believe that she would do such a thing.’

‘What, not kill? Alys, anyone can kill. One simply has to know how.’

‘But there isn’t a scrap of violence in her.’

‘Poison works at a distance,’ Gil reminded her, ‘whoever administered it need not see its effects. No, I think all of them had the chance, and she had more than most, and benefited more than most as well. The emotional argument might do for the assize, but the truth –’

‘But Gil, there are other reasons for killing Murray. All she did was handle the flask, by her account, she had no time to put anything into it without him seeing her do so –’

‘What are you saying?’ asked Michael, looking helplessly from one to the other.

‘I apologize, Michael,’ said Alys in Scots, and sat upright away from Gil. ‘We were – discussing whether Joanna might have –’

‘Oh, surely not,’ he said. ‘Then again, I suppose it has to have been someone up there, if it wasny the man Syme, or Murray himself. What a fankle this is.’

‘I’ll go up to Elsrickle,’ said Gil, bracing himself. Sixteen miles each way in the rain had little appeal. ‘You go back to Belstane, Alys, and take the dog, and if Michael has fresh horses for Patey and me –’

‘Well, that went right well,’ announced Sir John, bustling into the hall with the pyx held reverently before him. Simmie followed, his arms full of the priest’s gear, the smoking censer bumping his shins. ‘Indeed. I’m sure our founder and patron will take notice of our petitions, after a celebration like that.’

‘Davy’s asleep, Maister Michael,’ said Simmie in what he obviously intended to be a confidential tone. ‘Dropped ower in the midst o’ that last narration. Mind you, how anyone could sleep through Sir John here’s singing I canny tell.’