The Rough Collier (19 page)

‘I’m right glad to see you here, Maister Michael. If you’ll lead me to where this wicked woman is, we’ll take her up now –’

Uproar broke out again among the colliers, and several moved threateningly towards the priest. He straightened up, and raised a peremptory hand.

‘Peace!’ he shouted, and was ignored. Jamesie Meikle shouted something, but it was Michael, turning to face the group, who stilled them briefly.

‘I’ll hear what Fleming has to say,’ he announced. ‘There’s no man can say he went unheard on Douglas lands. So be silent and let me hear him, and then I’ll hear you.’ He turned to Fleming again. ‘What woman is it you want, Sir David?’

‘Why, the woman Brownlie. That’s four men she’s poisoned, clear as day, and –’

‘Joanna?’ repeated one of the colliers incredulously. ‘What’s he saying?’

‘Mistress Brownlie?’ said Michael, as the rumbling discontent spread again. Within the house Gil heard quick footsteps, and a sudden short scream. ‘How do you make that out, man?’

‘That’s her two husbands,’ the priest ticked them off on his fingers, ‘her own father, and the forester of Bonnington, all slain by poison. I discerned that as soon as Wat Currie brought the word home to Cauldhope. She’ll be found guilty of their deaths, that’s for certain, so we need to take her up now and bring her before the Sheriff, to be held in Lanark jail till the justice-ayre.’

‘We need nothing of the sort,’ said Michael. ‘If you’d keep to the tasks afore you, Sir David, namely stewarding my father’s estate and acting as his chaplain, and leave the law and its business to those that’s called to it, we’d all get on a sight better.’

‘Ah, Maister Michael,’ protested Fleming, with an ingratiating smile. ‘You’re young yet, you can take the advice of wiser folk –’

‘Wiser, aye,’ said Michael. ‘I’ve yet to see that that includes you, man! Now get back on that horse and get back to Cauldhope.’

‘No without the poisoner –’

‘David Fleming,’ said Arbella Weir from the house door. ‘Sir David, I’m right disappointed in you, and so would your mother be. As for you men,’ she went on, with that crackle of ice in her voice again, ‘you may get back to your work, or I’ll dock a day’s wages off the whole crowd of you.’

‘They’re wanting to lift Beattie again,’ someone told her loudly.

‘No, man, it’s Joanna they’re after!’ said another voice.

‘They’re saying it was pyson,’ said the smith. ‘That she used pyson on her man and all those others. They’ll no say that about a collier’s wife, even if she is a farm-lassie.’

‘I thank you for your support, George Russell,’ said Arbella, in a tone that made the man quail, ‘but I can deal wi’ Davy Fleming myself, I think, seeing I kent his father and his grandsire and they’re both of them, dead and buried though they are, better men now than he’ll ever be.’ She leaned on her stick and stared between the muddy shoulders and upheld hammers and pickaxes at Fleming. ‘Come here, man, where I can see you properly. I’m sure Maister Michael will give you leave to obey my direction afore you follow his,’ she added, raising her delicate eyebrows at Michael. Gil watched, fascinated, as Fleming approached. He was impressed to see that the colliers had withdrawn, though only to the next corner of the building, out of Mistress Weir’s sight and very convenient for the side door into Joanna’s lodging which Jamesie Meikle must have used earlier.

‘Uncover afore me, man,’ said Arbella as Fleming approached. He gave her another of those ingratiating smiles, and reached up to unbuckle his helm. ‘Now what in Our Lady’s name are you about here? Riding to my door wi’ armed men –’

‘And I’ll have a word to say to them on that count, madam, I can tell you,’ interposed Michael hotly. ‘They’re here by none of my wish or command.’

‘I ken that, maister,’ she assured him, with another lift of her eyebrows. ‘You and your house has aye treated us here at the heugh wi’ courtesy. Well, Davy? What’s it about, then?’

‘Arbella my daughter,’ he began. Ill-advised, Gil thought, watching appreciatively. Beyond Arbella’s apricot wool shoulder he could see movement in the hall: Beatrice? There was no sign of Joanna, and he hoped Alys had remained with her.

‘I’m no daughter of yourn, Davy, and your actions these past few days leave you no right to be our confessor here,’ said Arbella pointedly.

‘Madam,’ he corrected himself. ‘Mistress Weir. You’re a good woman, and devout, but nevertheless you’re no but a weak woman, it’s no wonder you’re imposed on as you are. It’s clear to me Joanna your good-daughter’s long immersed in wickedness. That’s four men dead in the time since she came here, and her well established in your favour and placed to gain from all her misdeeds.’

Out of Arbella’s sight, beyond the house corner, Jamesie Meikle snarled soundlessly and took a firmer grip on the heavy wooden mell. Catching the man’s eye, Gil shook his head infinitesimally, and the collier gave him a savage grin.

‘Go on,’ said Arbella levelly. ‘How do you make all that out, man?’

‘It’s clear as day!’

‘No to me, Davy. I held Joanna in my arms after my poor Matt breathed his last, and I thought myself she would be dead of her grief afore morning. Beattie and I had our work cut out to bring her back into her right mind. I helped her watch her father’s deathbed, I saw her only now after she received the news that Thomas is dead, God shrive him.’ She crossed herself and closed her eyes briefly. ‘No, Davy Fleming, if that’s all you can say I’ll no hear another word of this. Maister Michael,’ she turned the blue gaze on him, ‘I’d be obliged if your men would see this fellow off the land I hold from your house, and I’d be the more obliged if you’d make sure he doesny return while I dwell here.’

I love you verily at my toe
, thought Gil. And one can scarce blame her.

‘You heard Mistress Weir, Fleming,’ said Michael curtly. ‘Mount up, man, as I bade you, and be off home to Cauldhope. And hope you’re back there afore I am.’

‘Will none of you see reason?’ demanded Fleming. He turned to look from Michael to Gil, then at the staring menat-arms still on horseback by the edge of the cobbled patch. ‘It’s plain as day! Here’s Murray, struck dead in the very midst of his wickedness, and his catamite wi’ him, and it’s clear they’ve been poisoned in their drink –’

‘Not to me,’ said Gil. Confound the man’s tongue, he thought, it goes like a fiddlestick. ‘I was there, Sir David, and you wereny. Pyson it may be, but there’s no evidence to say how they took it –’

‘Catamite?’ said Arbella, the blue eyes opening wide.

‘Pyson?’ said Beatrice Lithgo, appearing at her mother-in-law’s back in the doorway. ‘What pyson? You said . . .’ She fell silent, looking hard at Gil. ‘No, you never said what killed them,’ she acknowledged.

‘What in Our Lady’s name’s going on here?’ demanded a loud voice. Gil looked round, and saw Adam Crombie striding round the corner of the house, booted and spurred and well pleased with himself, clearly just come down from the stable-row. ‘What’s this Jamesie says? Thomas dead, and Joanna taken up for his murder?’

‘No, my dear,’ said Arbella, her voice like the cooing of wood-pigeons. ‘I’ve shown Sir David the error of his thoughts –’

‘You, Adam Crombie!’ said Fleming. ‘I wonder you’ve the gall to show yourself afore me, you that raised your hand to an anointed clerk –’

‘Aye, and I’ll raise it again!’ Crombie’s gaze fell on Michael. ‘Can you Douglases no control your servants? Here’s Fleming running all about the countryside, doing all he can to harm our women, and never a hand raised at Cauldhope to prevent it. Get him off our land, will you, afore I hunt him off it mysel!’

‘Raffie, my dear,’ said Arbella chidingly.

‘Raffie,’ said Beatrice from the doorway. He exchanged a long look with his mother. She relaxed slightly, but his chin went up.

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘If I catch him on our land again, I’ll see him off it wi’ a lash.’

Chapter Ten

‘There is no owl in the chamber,’ said Alys. ‘It was only a dream.’

He could hear her fumbling with the tinderbox. Sweating, gasping for breath, he stared into the darkness of the box bed, trying to throw off the image and the swamping fear it had generated.

Light flowered, making him blink, showing her face and the sweet curve of her breasts as she bent over the candle to set the tiny glow to it. The candle caught, and she used it to light the two on the pricket-stand and turned to look at him in the brightening room. He devoured the reassuring sight of her, standing there like Eve in the candlelight, holding her hair back with her free hand, and his breathing steadied.

‘Only a dream,’ she repeated. ‘Here, this will help.’ She came to lift his beads from the stool where the candle had lain, and handed them to him. The familiar texture of the carved wood steadied him further, and the prayers that rose to his mind at the touch drew his scattered thoughts together. Alys padded back across the room to the window, the bruises on hip and shoulder showing dark on her white skin, and bent to the cupboard in the panelling below the sill. ‘Catherine always gives me something to eat if I wake in the night like this. What has Nan left in the dole-cupboard?’

The little cupboard proved to hold a dish of small cakes, two glasses and a flask of the German wine his father had favoured. They sat side by side on the edge of the bed, the coverlet drawn round their shoulders, and feasted on these, and Alys said, ‘Do you want to talk about it? Sometimes it helps to tell someone.’

‘No,’ he said, shuddering. He could still feel the claws scraping at his skin, the hooked beak tearing at his belly; there were silent wings in the shadows outside the corners of vision. Describing it would give it power, make it real in some way.

‘Tell me about what you found in the forester’s cottage, then.’

‘Not that, not now. We’ll talk about something else. What did Mistress Lithgo have to say about Fleming? I saw the two of you confer after Michael took him away.’

‘Ah, now, that was interesting.’ She turned within his arm to look at him. ‘I had a long talk with her earlier, before you came. She preserved great discretion, until I told her of the rages Michael reported, and what I suspect. Then we were agreed immediately.’

‘On what?’

‘The man has his death on him, Gil. His water is sweet – sweet as honey, Mistress Lithgo says. He has lost flesh lately on his arms and legs though not his belly, you have only to look at the way his hose hang on him to see how much, and now he has these rages – and it would account for the way he lay in a swound all the day after he was beaten. The complaint has a name in Greek that doctors use,’ she added, seeing his questioning look, ‘but she called it honey-piss. After he left with Michael, she told me she feels it is progressing faster. We discussed whether we should tell him.’

‘Oh,’ said Gil, his mind racing. ‘Oh, I’ve heard of that. It’s caused by excess of cold moist food, isn’t it?’

‘So the doctors say,’ agreed Alys drily. ‘I’m less certain. You would think every man who drank more ale than is good for him would catch it, if so.’

‘But why not tell him? He needs to know – to set his life in order, make a will if he has aught to leave.’

‘Mistress Lithgo says she tried, when she first recognized it, but he wouldn’t listen. She thinks perhaps that’s where his thoughts of witchcraft have come from – that he’s decided she was threatening him rather than warning him of his death.’

‘That would make sense,’ Gil said, still thinking hard.

‘But Phemie admitted,’ she hesitated, then went on, ‘that he became familiar with her and with Bel. Pawing at them, attempting to kiss them. This was last autumn, when he was teaching them Latin.’ She smiled. ‘Phemie and the little Morison girl would get on well. She told me she reckoned she could deal with him herself, but when he started on her sister she went to their grandam about it, and the lessons ended.’

‘Ah!’ Gil looked at the light through the golden wine in his glass, and grinned, thinking of his sister Kate and her younger stepdaughter. ‘And yet he consulted their mother about his ills this spring.’

‘Many men take it for granted they can behave like that.’

‘Murray seems to have done the same.’

‘No, I think not,’ she said seriously. ‘He was courting Phemie, until they all learned how Joanna would be placed in Mistress Weir’s will, I think I told you that.’ He nodded. ‘But I cannot learn that he did other than kiss her on the lips. I asked Kate Paterson about him, too, when I told her that her brothers are well. She seemed unconcerned about them, but she told me that Murray jokes – joked a lot with the lassies in the miners’ row, but no more than talk, and pinching cheeks, and the like, whereas they warn one another not to be alone with David Fleming. It seems his father was the same, by what one of the older women said.’

‘Jamesie Meikle said much the same about Murray – that the women say he’s free with his hands. That would make sense, as a defence of sorts.’

‘A defence? Putting up a false face, you mean? To prevent anyone suspecting he was – Italian in his preferences.’ He nodded again, and she went on, ‘You know, Gil, I find that extraordinary. I have known – I have seen men in Paris, who were said to be like that, but that was in a great city. How would someone out here in the countryside learn such practices?’

‘It isn’t like that,’ said Gil awkwardly. It was not a subject he found easy to discuss with his wife; he suddenly understood why the songmen of the cathedral took refuge in coarse jokes about it. ‘Anywhere young men are gathered together, it happens between some of them.’ She glanced sharply at him, but said nothing. ‘Most grow out of it, but a few . . .’

‘I see,’ she said after a moment. ‘I still find it strange. And he managed to conceal it well. Joanna, who was wedded to him, seems to have had no idea of it. He was her second man, after all, she must have known what to expect of him, and today I managed to lead the talk to – to how people are expected to go with child within weeks of the wedding. We found we think alike on the subject, and, and . . .’ She paused, apparently having difficulty completing the sentence.

‘And you’d think,’ he supplied, ‘that if he wasn’t doing his part she might have let on.’

‘Between the two of us like that, yes,’ she agreed gratefully. ‘And I repeated something one of the women in Carluke kirk said to me about the same thing, and she agreed with it.’

‘Alys, have a care,’ he warned her. ‘I believe someone poisoned Thomas Murray, of deliberate malice, and until we know who –’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she said. ‘I am very careful what I say to any of them. But we may still learn something from one or another, and I keep hoping for a look at the accounts. It could tell us a lot about the business, and I think that may be important.’

‘There’s more than that, sweetheart. Remember I have still to go back and question them all. Justice doesn’t allow for friendships.’

‘I know,’ she said again. ‘I can be dispassionate too, Gil.’

He smiled down at the top of her head where the candlelight shone on her hair, and sipped his wine. It was dry, with a sharp taste of flowers about it, a surprising thing in the middle of the night.

‘But has she admitted she feared Murray? Perhaps she simply doesn’t want to gossip about her own affairs. I believe some women don’t.’

‘No,’ she said, and was silent for a little. He sat still, relishing the feel of her against his flank, drank some more wine and considered what she had just said. He had warned her against getting involved with the Crombie women on a protective reflex, but if she could discuss such a subject, one which she found difficult herself, and analyse Joanna’s part in the conversation like this, then she was quite right, she could be dispassionate too.

‘Did you learn anything else?’ he asked after a space.

‘I talked with Phemie for a while, about how coal is hewn. Gil, it is astonishing. One puts coal on the fire and never thinks of how it’s won, of the difficulties working under the ground in the dark, and the dangers, and the way the coal behaves. Sometimes it simply vanishes, thins down and disappears into the rock, and other times it starts small and suddenly becomes thick enough for a man to stand up in the working. And she showed me – did you know they find fishes and shells in it? And pieces of tree-trunk, and flattened leaves, all wrought in coal?’

‘I’ve heard of that too. Surely they’re not real? The colliers make them in their spare time to show to the credulous.’

‘She showed me one,’ Alys said, ‘a little fish, with all its fins and scales, and a man who could work anything like that, so fine and exact, should be earning more than a collier gets. No, truly I think it is God’s own handiwork, set in the coal. I asked if I might have one to keep, and she said she would speak to the colliers.’ She stretched, and set her wineglass down on the stool by the bed. ‘And we talked of Murray and how he ran the heugh. It seems as if he has been an honest grieve enough, Gil, though with a knack for angering folk.’

‘Did you encounter young Crombie?’

‘He rode out while I was talking to Mistress Lithgo. He came in to take leave, and was civil, but I had no conversation with him. I think from what they said to one another he had been trying to persuade his grandam to let him leave the college and run the place instead of Murray.’

‘Instead of Murray? Do you think they knew already he was dead?’

‘Oh!’ She turned to look at him, considering. ‘I need to think about that. It might only be the young man snatching his opportunity. He seems like that sort to me.’

‘A chancer,’ said Gil in Scots.

She nodded. ‘What will you do tomorrow?’

‘Michael spoke to the Provost today, but I had best have a word with him before the quest on the two men, which I suppose means spending at least the morning in Lanark. He has to know about the – the circumstances in which we found the –’

‘Yes.’ She looked anxiously at him, and he managed a reassuring smile.

‘I’m fine now. And then I must go up to the coaltown and ask more questions. Yesterday was not the best time for that, though I will say I learned a lot. What will you do while I’m in Lanark? You could come down with me and look at the market. There are some fine warehouses, since it’s so close to Edinburgh.’ He reached for another of the little cakes. The coverlet slid down his back and he hitched it up and drew it closer round the two of them.

‘I want to go to Dalserf,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I could ride round by Lanark to meet you. Is it far?’

‘Dalserf? Oh, to find out more about Joanna?’

‘And her family, yes. I cannot get used to that part of being out here in the country. It’s so much further to go to talk to the neighbours, not at all like being able to put my plaid on and step up the High Street.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Gil, it is still the middle of the night, and I am getting cold. Have you recovered a little? Could you sleep now, do you think?’

‘Not yet,’ he said, and kissed the bridge of her nose, ‘but I can think of something else we could do.
A swete kos of
thy mouth mighte be my leche
.’ He moved on to her chin, and then the soft curve of her neck.

‘Ah,’ she said softly, and turned towards him, smiling within his embrace. ‘Perhaps we should put the candles out first.’

‘So it is murder,’ said Lady Egidia.

‘Almost certainly,’ agreed Gil, putting almond butter on his porridge.

‘What happens next?’ asked Alys. ‘I know there is to be a quest. Are the procedures different, this far from Glasgow?’

‘Not in principle,’ said Lady Egidia, and placed her wooden porringer on the plate-cupboard for the grey cat to lick. Socrates looked up at it, his long nose twitching; the cat hissed and he flattened his ears and wagged his tail placatingly.

‘Provost Lockhart will likely report all to the Sheriff,’ said Gil. He set the horn spoon down in his bowl in order to count off the points with one hand, ‘that’s Archie Hamilton in Lanark. Lockhart will call the quest soon, I hope, since the deaths must be determined in some way, and take evidence, and if the assize brings it in murder and names anyone he’ll imprison the party or put them to the horn, just as in Glasgow. The difference is the distances involved, as you were saying last night.’ Alys glanced up, and they exchanged a look and a quick, reminiscent smile. ‘At least Bonnington is in the same parish as Lanark town, there’s only that and Carluke involved.’

‘And what will you report to Archie?’ His mother moved over to the hearth, and looked in disapproval at the slender logs on the firedogs. ‘Alan must send the men out for firewood soon, if that’s the best he can produce.’

‘Ah.’ Gil spooned porridge, thinking. ‘What do we know, you mean?’

‘Of the man himself,’ said Alys, ‘we know a certain amount. Thomas Murray, aged six-and-twenty, red-haired, medium height, well-set and missing the last joint of these fingers.’ She held up her left hand, two fingers extended. ‘Wedded to Joanna Brownlie and grieve at the coal-heugh, last seen there on the morrow of St Patrick’s and last seen alive by any we’ve spoken to so far on the twentieth of March, was that right, Gil?’

‘That’s right.’ He helped himself to more porridge from the pot on the plate-cupboard. The cat stared at him indignantly. ‘So far as we can discern, he was honest in his employment, but I suppose we have reason enough to get a look at the accounts now to check that.’ He looked across the room at Alys again. ‘Maybe you could do that for me, sweetheart.’

‘And as to finding the corp,’ said his mother, and crossed herself, ‘you told us more than I wish to know of that last night. A gruesome sight it must have been. You looked as though you’d been through a millwheel when you came home, my dear. And you’ve told Mistress Brownlie?’

‘That was why we went by the coaltown first,’ said Gil. ‘Michael wished to go up there straight and take them the word, as his father’s depute. I’m well impressed by Michael in this, Mother. He knows his duty in the world, and he acts as it demands.’

‘Aye, well.’ Lady Egidia tightened her mouth briefly, contemplating the thought of her godson. Alys put her own bowl on the floor, and Socrates paced over to investigate, his claws clicking on the tiles. The cat seized the opportunity to jump down and make for its mistress’s lap. ‘And you think the man was poisoned,’ Lady Egidia went on, holding her loose gown open for her pet to creep inside. ‘Could it have been anything else? Any other cause? If it was poison, how do you know it was for Murray and not for the other fellow?’