Chapter and Hearse (6 page)

‘Before clocks, sir, churches had to have ways of telling folk when to come to services … those who couldn't read anyway.'

‘Agreed, but what about it?'

‘They had something called mass clocks on the church masonry.' The niggle in his mind had clarified into a memory. ‘Usually on the porch door.'

‘Well?'

‘The priest put a little wooden peg into a hole in the stone and then scratched a line outwards from the hole.'

‘But I don't see…'

‘The congregation would know it was time for church when the shadow from the peg fell on the line.'

‘Are you telling me that there's one of these mass clocks on all these churches?'

‘There's one at St Ninian's,' said Sloan. ‘Scratch dials, they're sometimes called.' He paused and then said, ‘It would be easy enough to make a little hole and draw a line on the stonework of the others if they hadn't got one already.'

‘Except St Catherine's, which hasn't got any stonework.'

‘All metal and glass,' agreed Sloan, ‘more's the pity.'

‘And no one would ever notice something like that on an old church, would they?' The Assistant Chief Constable reached for the telephone. ‘Right, Sloan, we'll tell these intelligence types where the next meeting will be…'

‘And when, sir…'

‘Amazing where a bit of ratiocination can get you, isn't it?'

‘Sir?'

‘A Latin word,' said his superior officer airily, ‘for a conclusion reached by reasoning.'

Cold Comfort

Sixteenth-century Scotland

Sheriff Macmillan hadn't at first heard the sound of the approaching bagpipes but the hall-boy at Drummondreach had. Upon the instant, the lad uncurled himself from the rush-strewn floor and reached for his own set of pipes, listening intently the while. He began to pump up the bag under his arm even as he scrambled to his feet, making ready to carry out his duty of first identifying and then heralding any new arrivals at the policies of Rhuaraidh Macmillan, Sheriff of Fearnshire.

Cocking his ear in the direction of the distant pipes, the boy echoed his response with the preliminary notes of a lament. That sound, though, brought the Sheriff to the entrance hall of his dwelling place quickly enough, even though the other bagpipe players were still a mile or more away.

‘They're playing “The Fearnshire Lament”, my lord,' said the boy, his own acute hearing demonstrating one of the many advantages of youth to the older man. ‘I ken it well…'

‘Aye,' said the Sheriff crisply. ‘I hear it quite clearly myself now…'

Rhuaraidh Macmillan stepped back more than a little thoughtfully while the hall-boy took up the bagpipes' chanter again and made to answer those heard from afar but as yet still unseen. The playing of that melancholy tune carried its own sad significance to the Sheriff. It meant not only that those coming near approached in sorrow rather than in anger but that a man was untimely dead somewhere nearby and within his jurisdiction.

It meant more than just dead, of course.

That particular lament told both Sheriff Macmillan and the hall-boy at Drummondreach that the death being announced by the playing of the dirge was of a known clansman. It was not some enemy or stranger of no consequence who was being thus sung. It foretold rather that a man had died from within the tight little circle which comprised the close-knit aristocracy of the Fearnshire clans.

‘Who'll it be this time?' he pondered aloud. The Sheriff's writ ran among clansmen all tied by generations of auld alliances and ancient fealties. Rumour had it that the new Queen in Edinburgh – she who had lately come over from France – had referred to them as unruly tribes, but that was not to understand their allegiances to the land and its people, both of which had been established in these northern parts for time out of mind.

‘I think I can see them now, my lord,' said the boy.

And it must be said, the Sheriff admitted fairly to himself, there were men around too who were locked together by equally ancient enmities. Memories in the Highlands were long and unforgiving. Perhaps this was what Her Majesty at Holyroodhouse had been told …

Perhaps too it was different over in France.

‘There's three of them, my lord,' announced the hall-boy, peering out.

Sometimes, of course, the Sheriff reminded himself as he scanned the horizon, the enmities were still red and raw, just like the scars on Murdo Ross's face. These were still livid from an altercation at hogmanay with Black Ian – Ian Tulloch – of Eileanach. The man had drawn his dirk at Murdo Ross – kinsman and friend – over the delicate matter of which of the pair should at the turn of the year first-foot a certain young lady at Achnagarron, and Ian Tulloch hadn't been seen at Eileanach or anywhere else in Fearnshire from that day to this.

The pipes were calling to each other now like urgent vixens …

Moreover – and this was where the Sheriff's responsibilities came in – that lament also meant that the death was of a Fearnshire man who should not have died: that is to say that he – whoever he was – had not died in his bed of a sore sickness or old age.

Thus, according to the old custom of the country, it followed ineluctably that the Sheriff of Fearnshire had duly to be told, and that he had a duty to enquire, had to inspect, had to pronounce and – if it were then proved that the death had been unlawfully at the hand of another – had to punish. What happened in France might well be different, but this was Scotland and, as far as Rhuaraidh Macmillan himself was concerned, this was how things were going to stay, new Queen or not.

The drone of the other pipes could be heard quite clearly now and soon a little gaggle of men hove into view, hurrying down over the brae.

The hall-boy, the keener-eyed of the two, took his lips off the chanter long enough to say, ‘Angus Mackintosh of Balblair, my lord, and a Mackenzie…'

‘Colin of that ilk,' observed the Sheriff without enthusiasm. The man was a troublemaker.

‘And Merkland of Culbokie, Younger,' said the hall-boy, resuming his pipes.

Rhuaraidh Macmillan advanced towards the threshold and waited for the men to reach him, sniffing the air as he did so. It was a little warmer today and not before time. Spring, he decided, must really have come to the Highlands at long, long last – and that after one of the darkest, coldest winters in living memory. It was the same each year, though, he conceded to himself. He always began to doubt the return of warmer weather and then, suddenly, like the midges, it was upon them.

The drone of the pipes died away as the three visitors drew near. Colin Mackenzie stood forward as self-appointed spokesman, while Angus Mackintosh and young Hugh Merkland kept a pace or two behind him.

‘We've found Black Ian,' announced the man Mackenzie breathlessly. ‘Ian Tulloch…'

‘Dead,' added Hugh Merkland.

‘Long dead,' supplemented Angus Mackintosh.

‘And Murdo Ross is away over to the west,' said Mackenzie, adding meaningfully, ‘today.'

‘Just as soon as he heard Black Ian had been found,' chimed in Angus.

Colin Mackenzie said, ‘You'll no' have forgotten, Sheriff, that it was Ian Tulloch that struck Murdo Ross.'

‘I remember,' said the Sheriff shortly.

Striking any man was bad, striking a relative or friend much worse. Doing it with a weapon in the hand was never likely to be forgotten, still less forgiven. Even worse was the crime of following a man to his own dwelling place and assaulting him there – otherwise known as hamesucken. And that was what Ian Tulloch had done.

‘Murdo Ross was off like the De'il himself was chasing him,' contributed Hugh Merkland, ‘as soon as he was told the news.'

‘Perhaps the Devil was chasing him,' said Mackintosh insouciantly. ‘How can any man tell what Satan looks like?'

Merkland ignored this and went on eagerly, ‘Will we be going after him for you, Sheriff?'

‘You will not,' said Rhuaraidh Macmillan firmly. ‘You will be first telling me where you found Black Ian dead.'

‘In a barn at Eileanach.'

‘More bothy than barn,' put in Angus Mackintosh.

Merkland said, ‘The men were taking the sheep up to the hills for the summer…'

Sheriff Macmillan nodded. The annual movement of the sheep to the higher ground was a late spring ritual in Fearnshire. The French had a special word for it –
transhumance
– not that the new Queen would be likely to know about it, for all her regal French connections. Summer pasture for sheep would not be one of the concerns of her world … She had others, though, from all accounts. Mostly to do with the heart, he had heard.

‘… and when they got up there the drovers tried to open up the place as usual but they couldn'a get in,' Merkland was saying.

‘How did you know he was dead?' asked the Sheriff.

There was a pause while Mackenzie shifted from foot to foot. ‘He was hanging from a beam.'

‘We saw him through the cracks in the wood,' vouchsafed Colin Mackenzie. ‘We couldn'a get in either, you see.'

‘Dead long since, with a bang-rape round his neck,' supplied Angus Mackintosh.

‘Someone must have been after the hay,' said the Sheriff.

A bang-rape was a rope with a noose used by thieves for carrying off corn or hay. It would do fine for hanging a man too.

‘Maybe so, Sheriff, but they didn't steal what hay was there,' said Angus Mackintosh. ‘It's still strewn about in the bothy.'

‘Ian's axe is there too,' said Mackenzie. ‘It's standing against the wall.'

‘Nobody could get in to take it, you see,' contributed Hugh Merkland. ‘The door was barred on the inside.' He waved a hand. ‘It still is.'

‘So why then did Murdo Ross go away to the west when he heard?' asked the Sheriff, not unreasonably. For a man to take his own life in these parts was rare enough, but a man who had harmed friend and family might well feel that he should. ‘If the door had been barred on the inside by Ian Tulloch …

‘Anyone,' sighed the Sheriff, ‘who had reached man's estate could have told Black Ian that remorse was the most difficult – in fact, the only intolerable – emotion with which to live.'

There was an uncomfortable pause and an uneasy shuffling of feet as it became apparent that not one of the three wished to answer his question about Murdo Ross.

‘Well?' demanded Rhuaraidh Macmillan.

Eventually Colin Mackenzie said uneasily, ‘We couldn'a see anything there, Sheriff, that Black Ian could have been standing on … before…'

‘Nothing at all,' said Merkland.

‘Not a thing.' Mackintosh of Balblair endorsed this. ‘We looked.'

‘Whoever had put him there must have taken it away with them,' said Hugh Merkland, adding, ‘Whatever it was.'

‘I see,' said the Sheriff.

‘Now shall we go after Murdo Ross for you, Sheriff?' said Merkland impatiently. ‘He'll be well away by now.'

‘No,' said Rhuaraidh Macmillan at once. ‘You'll come with me back to Eileanach. First I must see the body.'

Now,
super visum corporis
was a phrase Her new Majesty at Edinburgh, a daughter of Mary of Guise or not, would surely understand. They said she was good at the Latin as well as at the French. It was her lack of comprehension of the Gaelic, indeed of nearly all matters Scottish, that was the worry …

*   *   *

Mounted on his palfrey, his clerk riding a little behind him, the Sheriff led the party out towards the broad strath above which lay Ian Tulloch's lands. The journey took time. The bothy was far away up in the hills, alongside the route of one of the old coffin roads over to a clan burial ground and already halfway to the west as it was.

His mount stumbled and slipped from time to time as it tried to pick its way over the bare stony track towards the rough building. What was possible for men on foot and hardy sheep was not so easy for a horse. Spring might have come to the lower-lying ground, but higher up winter had only just left. Rhuaraidh Macmillan could see that even higher there was still snow and ice lying on the side of the ben. On a north-facing hillside, both could linger all summer.

‘There, Sheriff –' Colin Mackenzie pointed. ‘You see yon bothy over there?'

‘Aye,' agreed Macmillan, automatically noting that any footprints in the snow leading to the building were long gone. And so were any footprints in the snow leading away … Equally, any marks made by footprints on the ground since the thaw would have been overlaid by those made more recently by men and sheep.

‘Look, Sheriff, through this gap here…' Colin Mackenzie already had his eye to a crack in the door.

Rhuaraidh Macmillan reluctantly brought his horse to a standstill on the track. There would be those – and plenty – who held that Murdo Ross had been well within his rights in exacting his revenge on Ian Tulloch for raising his weapon – if he had, that is – against Murdo in anger, let alone in jealousy; who would insist for all time that Black Ian had received only his just desserts for an attack on a life-long friend – to say nothing of one with blood ties.

That, however, was not the law and the law must be served above anger and jealousy. This applied in Fearnshire if not any longer in Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. Aye, there was the rub. Rhuaraidh Macmillan straightened himself up in the saddle. The difference was that he himself was responsible for the upholding of law and order in Fearnshire. Who exactly it was who was responsible for law and order and not anger and jealousy triumphing at the Scottish court today was not for him to say …

The Sheriff dismounted and bent his eye – albeit unwillingly – to the crack in the wooden door of the bothy.

What the three men had told him was true. Swinging from a high beam without handholds to reach it was a body. That it was of Ian Tulloch he was in no doubt. ‘Black' might have been how the man had been known in his lifetime; it was assuredly an accurate description of how he now looked many weeks after his death.