Authors: Pat McIntosh
‘Aye, he’s confessed and shriven, and heard the history of St Malessock and drank water that the relic’s been immersed in, and it’s brought him some peace of mind at last,’ agreed the priest, divesting himself with care. ‘Now, maister, he’ll need to fast on well-water for a day and a night, and I’ll be back the morn’s morn to see him. Indeed. But you’ll send to me any time if you’re concerned for him.’ He beamed round the awkward little group. ‘I hope I’ve been of service the day. Is there any other task of my calling required while I’m here?’
Sir Billy Crichton, rector of Walston, was a long-faced, long-limbed Borderer with the gloomy expression natural to a man who spent most of his life in a high, remote parish at the further end of Lanarkshire. His kirk was in Walston itself, a huddle of cottages and two tower-houses on the dark side of a steep lump of hills; Gil surmised that the sun would not reach the thatch between October and March. When he found Sir Billy, following the directions of an ancient fellow at a doorway, the rector was working his glebe land below the village on the flat ground by the River Medwin. More precisely, he was turning the black earth with a foot-plough, with a cloud of white gulls screaming over his head, and was very glad to stop for a word with the stranger he had seen approaching on the track in from Carnwath.
‘Oh, aye, we heard about that,’ he said, as the gulls swirled about, shrieking in discontent. ‘Young Dandy Somerville was at his cousin’s at Carlindean and brought back the tale. Found dead in a peat-heugh, was he no? And doing miracles now, so Young Dandy said.’
‘That was someone else,’ Gil said, marvelling at the way word spread about the countryside. He gave the tale of Thomas Murray’s death, so far as he understood it, and Sir Billy listened attentively, leaning on the tall shaft of his plough in the rain and shaking his head. The gulls settled on the roof of the little kirk, laughing at one another.
‘Terrible, terrible. I’m right glad to ken the truth of it,’ said the priest at length. That’s more than any of us knows, thought Gil, but did not smile. ‘And dead unshriven, pysoned by an unkent hand, you say? Terrible, terrible. God rest their souls. But I’m at a loss to ken how I might help you, maister. I’ve no notion who these folk might be, having never set eye on a one of them, and what I might tell you to your purpose it’s beyond me to say. I’m sorry you should ha’ rid out here only for that.’
‘He’d no reason to call here,’ agreed Gil. ‘No, sir, I’ve ridden here on another matter. Do you mind a man called Adam Crombie, a collier, who died in this parish a good few years back? I think it was over at Elsrickle.’
‘Elgrighill,’ repeated Sir Billy, giving the name a different twist. ‘Crombie. Aye, maister, there’s such a name in the parish records. I was looking in them only last month, when I buried Maggie Jardine’s youngest. What was it you were wanting to hear of him?’
‘Anything you know,’ said Gil hopefully. ‘How he came to die here, whose house he died in, where he’s buried. The date of his burial, if you have it.’
‘Oh, aye?’ The priest looked dismayed. ‘I’m thinking you’re in the wrong place for all that, maister. Can his folk no enlighten you? For there’s naught in the records but the day of his burial, that’s for sure.’
‘Could you show me that?’ asked Gil, thinking that he seemed to spend more time than he wished foraging through old documents. A man of law dealt with such things as a matter of course, but somehow this other occupation seemed to gravitate naturally in the same direction.
‘I could.’ Sir Billy looked at the sky, and then at the strip of ploughed land he had achieved in the day. ‘I need to get this turned, for all that. It’s time the oats was in, or I’ll ha’ no meal next winter. I hope you’ll can wait while I’ve daylight?’
‘I’ve a long ride home,’ Gil said. And a squabble to mend at the end of it, he thought ruefully. ‘And I’d hope for a word with whoever witnessed the man’s death afore I take the road. The quest on the two that were poisoned is for the morn’s morn after Sext, I must be back in Lanark by then.’
‘You’re welcome to a bed in the kirk,’ Sir Billy assured him. ‘My loft’s dry and snug, there’s room for a pallet for you, and your man can lie in the town. Plenty time for the ride back to Lanark the morn, and you look like a man of sense, maister, you’ll can catch us up wi’ the way the world’s turning as Young Dandy would never think to do.’
‘I really –’ Gil began, recalling the way Alys had refused his kiss when they parted before the gates of Cauldhope.
‘No, no. Away you up the town, maister,’ this appeared to mean the huddle of cottages on the hillside above the church, ‘bid Joan Liddell give you a stoup of her twice-brewed, and I’ll come for you when I’m done here.’
Sir Billy bent his back to the plough again, and Gil stepped reluctantly back from the claggy furrows, watching the man’s expert thrust and heave with the simple device and the way the black soil turned and crumbled away as the culter tilted, the worms wriggling in the fresh tilth. The gulls swooped screaming from the kirk roof, and he turned and picked his way obediently up to the houses.
Patey was already established in Mistress Liddell’s house, buried to the cheekbones in a wooden beaker. He emerged from it grinning as Gil ducked under the lintel, directed by the same ancient as before.
‘Aye, maister,’ he said, and licked the foam from his top lip. ‘I doubt we’ll no get back to Carluke this night. The light’s going already.’
By the time he got the promised sight of the parish records, Gil felt he had paid dear for it. Mistress Liddell’s twice-brewed was strong, but sour; he suspected there were nettles in the mash, and possibly other strange adjuncts, but knew better than to ask. He sat by her door, his feet tucked under the bench to avoid the steady dripping from the thatch, surrounded by an attentive audience who demanded news of the rest of the country, of King James, of the doings in Lanark and Carnwath. They had little interest in Edinburgh or Glasgow, but heard the latest tale of the embassies to English King Henry with judicious noddings. It was worse than his visit to Forth, and reminded him strongly of the examinations which had earned him his two degrees. At least then he had not been interrupted by Patey, who had an opinion on everything.
Sir Billy came up from the glebe land in the midst of the interrogation, and drew a stool into the doorway as of right, stretching his boots out under the eaves-drip so that the last of the mud was washed off. Mistress Liddell, a small determined woman in a sacking apron, had already assured Gil that the priest aye sent strangers to sup her ale, and he was clearly as much at home under her roof as any of the assembly. As the light failed, the hearers slipped away to their suppers, but much to Gil’s relief he and Patey were summoned within, seated with the priest and Mistress Liddell’s man round the peat-fire in the centre of the floor, and served with hard, dark bread and broth in generous wooden bowls. The broth was savoury with roots and meat; when Gil commented, the man of the house, silent until then, said:
‘Aye, the mistress keeps a good stewpot.’
‘Joan and her man feed me for their tithe, ye see,’ said Sir Billy, ‘for I don’t like to have charcoal in my loft. Too close to the thatch.’
‘That’s right handy,’ said Patey, ‘for a woman kens cooking and a priest kens priesting and why mix one wi’ the other? It’s right good, mistress, if you wereny spoke for a’ready I’d be looking to take you back to Belstane wi’ me.’
‘Och, you!’ said Mistress Liddell, not displeased. ‘Now you’d best be down the hill wi’ your guest, Sir Billy, afore the light’s away altogether. Will I draw you a jug of the good stuff to take along wi’ you?’
‘Aye, do that, Joan. Come away, then, Maister Cunningham, we’ll get a look at the books.’ Sir Billy rose to his considerable height, pronounced a blessing, received the promised jug, and made for the doorway, Gil following him. As the man of the house drew back the leather curtain which blocked it, rain rattled on the walls and blew through the aperture. Patey, dim in the glow of the peat-fire, raised his wooden beaker and settled lower on his creepy-stool.
‘Good night to ye, Maister Gil,’ he said, apparently without irony.
Walking into Dalserf from the ferry at Crossford, Alys had no trouble finding the kirk, long before Steenie’s helpful comment. It stood on the flat ground in a bend of the Clyde, neatly built of dressed red stone, and had a tall porch and two glazed windows in its south wall. A dozen or so small cottages crouched round it, and a track led to more perched among the trees in a cleft of the steep valley side, woodsmoke rising through their thatched roofs to mingle with the green haze of the new leaves.
Sir Simon Watt, priest of Dalserf, a small wiry man bundled in a worn budge gown, was delighted to receive a bonnie young lady as a visitor. He said so, a number of times, while he bustled about the low-ceilinged chamber above the porch, setting a stool for Alys, calling down to one of the old women in the church for ale from the best brewster in the place, locating a box of sweetmeats someone had given him last Yule. Finally he sat down opposite her, and surveyed her appreciatively with sharp grey eyes.
‘And what can we do for you in Dalserf, madam? I take it you’re no after pastoral counsel, seeing Jackie Heriot’s a deal closer to Belstane than we are. You’ve never crossed the Clyde just to view our wee kirk?’
‘No,’ admitted Alys, ‘though it is a pretty kirk, and so well tended. It is mostly old work, I think? But the pulpit is new.’
‘Aye, and Our Lady on the wall by the chancel arch.’ Sir Simon’s lean face split in a grin like Socrates’. ‘The good women about the place were right put out when she was painted fresh,’ he confided, offering the sweetmeats. ‘They had to explain all their petitions to her again, they said, for she looked so different she must certainly be a different person.’
‘But of course!’ said Alys, sharing his amusement.
‘And is it no Belstane where the man’s been raised up out of the peat-digging, all uncorrupted? What’s this I hear about him doing miracles?’
‘Many people have come to view him, and now to make their petitions before him. I think Sir John is hopeful,’ said Alys cautiously, ‘but we have seen no miracles.’
‘Well, the word’s all across my parish the day, and there’s a many folk crossed the Clyde seeking some benison or other. Though what Leezie Lockhart’s looking for, and her past fifty and never wedded, is more than I can jalouse, and so I told her when she was through the place this noon bound for the crossing.’
‘My groom said the ferry was more busy than usual,’ said Alys. ‘I hope they are not disappointed. The body seems to us a man like any other, slain long since and buried there. He’s hardly uncorrupted, rather he’s tanned with the peat like old leather, and he will fall into dust if we do not bury him soon.’
‘Aye,’ said Sir Simon, nodding sagely. He lifted a march-pane cherry from the box, and bit into it. ‘I can see how that would be. Well, I canny prevent my flock running after such a thing, and if one or two finds peace of mind by it, well and good, it’s a grace. So how can I help you, madam?’
Alys set her beaker down and folded her hands in her lap.
‘I am a friend of Joanna Brownlie,’ she said. ‘I think you know her, and you’ll know she has not to seek for her troubles.’
‘Aye, I do. But I heard she’d taken a second husband. Is that not succeeding –?’
‘That’s the man who is missing from the coal-heugh. And now he is dead.’
‘Never!’ The priest crossed himself with the hand that held the cherry, and muttered briefly in Latin. They both said Amen, and he continued, bright-eyed, ‘I’d heard about that, but I never knew it was Joanna’s man, the poor lassie. Been gone for months, is that right?’
‘Five weeks,’ said Alys precisely. ‘Since the morrow of St Patrick’s day. And found dead only yesterday, though we think – my husband thinks,’ she corrected scrupulously; she might still be annoyed with Gil but she would give him all credit, ‘he has been dead since before Lady Day.’ She smiled earnestly and the priest nodded again. ‘Joanna needs the support of her kin, good though the folk at the coal-heugh are to her, and I hoped you might have some clearer idea than she does herself about where her brothers are.’
‘Her brothers!’ Sir Simon sat back, looking at her in some dismay. ‘She’ll get no support from them. Still, I suppose they should be given the chance. You never can tell, wi’ kin.’
‘They are not close, then?’
‘Oh, they’re not close. Never were. I suppose it’s no wonder, two great laddies wi’ the farm work to see to would take it ill out that their mother made such a pet of the wee thing, but they never took to her, as bonnie as she was, and then they both left home no long after I came to the benefice, and got set up for themselves.’
‘Yes, I think Joanna was a late bairn. They would already be well grown when she was born. Mistress Lockhart must have missed her sons when they left,’ said Alys, and got a sharp look at her use of the surname.
‘She’d the lassie still at home. Told me once she’d always wanted a lassie to raise.’
‘But then she died before Joanna was grown. Like my mother,’ added Alys.
‘It comes to many of us,’ said Sir Simon in compassion. ‘Aye, Marion died, poor woman, and grievous hard she found it to leave her daughter. Could hardly go to her rest, the poor soul, till she had her man swear in front of me that he’d cherish Joanna as his own ewe lamb.’ He sighed, and shook his head. ‘That’s a deathbed I’ll recall my life long. The lassie weeping, and her father sat by the pillow like a stone statue, and the two brothers summoned from their homes the one leaning on either bedpost,’ he gestured with one hand and then the other, ‘watching their mother as she failed.
Cherish her
, she kept repeating,
as your
own ewe lamb. Swear it, Will
, she said. One of the sons said,
What need of him swearing, he’s aye been doted on the wench
, and the other said,
Swear it, father, and get this over
. But you’ve no need of hearing this, madam. What was it you were asking me? Where would the brothers have got to?’
‘Yes. Yes, I hoped you might know more than Joanna.’ Alys brought her thoughts to bear on the question. ‘I’d heard they might be in Lesmahagow, but then –’
‘Oh, no, they’ve both left there and all. One of them moved on a while back, I mind that, for he was nearly too late in returning when their father reached his end.’
‘I wonder where they went,’ said Alys hopefully.
‘Ayrshire,’ said Sir Simon with confidence. ‘Sorn way. I’m from thereabouts myself, you understand, lassie, so it stuck in my mind when I heard. But where the other one – Glasgow? Ru’glen?’
‘No matter,’ said Alys without truth. ‘What was it Maister Brownlie died of? I heard he took ill not long after Joanna’s first husband died.’
‘He did,’ agreed Sir Simon, nodding. ‘Poor soul, he’d a bad time of it. Two month of a wasting illness, wi’ cramps to his belly and his legs, and pains in his wame to make him cry out. I visited often. He was wandering in his mind at the last,’ he added, ‘talking of owls on the bed-foot, and trying to make Joanna swear to have a care to Mistress Weir the same way he’d sworn to her mother, but he made a good end none the less, and made his confession and died at peace.’
‘Our Lady be praised for that,’ said Alys, and Sir Simon said Amen. ‘What did they treat him with? It sounds like a sorry case.’
‘Oh, there was a fellow over from the coal-heugh almost day by day wi’ one receipt or another, a simple, a decoction, a tincture. Auld Mistress Weir and the other good-daughter both are herb-wise, maybe you’ve noticed that, and they kept sending anything they thought might ease him a wee bittie. But nothing helped.’ The priest smiled ruefully. ‘
They all make me feel worse
, Will said to me one time.’
‘Poor man,’ said Alys. ‘At least he saw all his children established in the world before he died. Rutherglen, you said?’
‘Or Cambuslang. Or maybe it was Glasgow right enough.’ Sir Simon lifted the box of sweetmeats and held it out to her. ‘There’s a strange thing, I’ve only the now thought of it. That was Hob that moved away down the Clyde, to Ru’glen or Glasgow, and I’ve heard them say the reason why he moved was, the place he had in Lesmahagow was full of owls.’
‘Owls?’ Alys repeated, since this seemed to be expected.
‘Aye, owls. The story goes that they sat on the roof-tree and screeched all night, and stole the seed-corn out the meal kist, and he couldny take it longer and left the place. And there was his father as he lay dying talking of owls at the bed-foot, where, let me tell you, there was never an owl when I was there, poor soul.’
‘How extraordinary!’ said Alys. Do owls eat grain? she wondered. I thought they caught the mice and rats who would eat it. ‘Are there a lot of owls in Lesmahagow?’
‘I was never there,’ admitted Sir Simon.
‘And both the sons came back to the burial,’ said Alys.
‘Aye, and the displenishing, which is what brings most folk back to the old home,’ said Sir Simon drily. ‘It’s seldom an edifying sight, the family after the funeral.’
‘I hope the Brownlie funeral was harmonious.’
‘No,’ said Sir Simon. ‘I wouldny say it was.’ He shook his head, contemplating the past, and took another sweetmeat. ‘I wouldny say it was,’ he repeated.
‘Did they disagree over the will?’
Another of those sharp looks.
‘Aye, though it was clear enough. I scribed and witnessed it. All the outside gear to the sons,
to divide equably
atween my sons Thomas and Robert Brownlie
, and the inside gear
to our dear Joanna that was born in the year of 1470
.’
‘How odd,’ said Alys. ‘What a strange way to put it. As if there was another Joanna.’
‘I thought that myself,’ agreed Sir Simon, ‘but there was never no more than the one lassie in the household. But that was the way Will dictated it, and he’d no be shifted. Poor man,’ he sighed, ‘he doted on the lassie, even though – Then the coin in his kist was to be split three ways after payment of his debts and a gift to the kirk. Straightforward, you’d think.’ Alys nodded. ‘Aye, you’d think, and you’d be wrong. What must they do but argue about what was inside gear, and discover a sum owing to Tammas that must be settled afore the coin was split. In the end, I’d say, Joanna got little more than half what was her due.’
‘It’s a strange thing, human nature,’ said Alys. ‘A great sum or a small one, neither is easy to share out.’
‘Aye. Mind, she was still left to the good. A saving man, Will Brownlie, and did well from the property he held.’ Sir Simon considered Alys. ‘Is there aught else I can tell you, lassie? I’d aye a fondness for Joanna Brownlie myself, I’d be glad to help her in her difficulties.’
‘They all made him feel worse,’ repeated Lady Egidia. ‘In what way, do you suppose?’
‘I never asked,’ said Alys with regret. ‘He is a clever man, but I think with no medical knowledge. He might not have been able to tell me. But I think he found something odd about the man’s deathbed, from the way he spoke.’
‘Yes.’ Lady Egidia stroked her cat thoughtfully. ‘I like that hood better on you, with the narrow braid,’ she observed. ‘It becomes you more than the other one. You have good taste, my dear.’
From a woman presently clad in a patched kirtle and a loose budge gown of her late husband’s this did not seem to be much of a compliment, but Alys had seen her mother-in-law dressed
en grande tenue
and took it at its proper valuation. Aware of her cheeks burning, she answered lightly, ‘But of course. I chose Gil.’
‘And he is making you happy?’
‘He is,’ Alys said, resolutely not biting her lip. Of course, the inquisition had to come, and a well-bred woman like this one would conduct it neither too early nor too late in the visit, and certainly in Gil’s absence.
‘You don’t seem certain.’ Lady Egidia raised one eyebrow, in an expression Alys had seen in Gil. Socrates, sprawled before the hearth, raised his head and stared at the hall door. ‘Have you quarrelled? I heard your voices last night.’
What else did she hear? wondered Alys in alarm, her cheeks flaming again. ‘No, no,’ she said hastily. ‘Gil had a dream that woke him, and we talked a while.’
‘And then lay down again.’ There was no hint of innuendo in the tone. ‘So was it today you quarrelled?’
‘We haven’t –’ Alys began, and the eyebrow rose again. ‘It’s a disagreement only. Nothing important – well, it is important, but not –’ She caught herself up, took a deep breath, and explained briefly: ‘He suspects all of the Crombie women, that is he suspects any one out of all of them, and I do not.’
‘It seems to me he must be right – it must be one of them is the
bludy tung undir a fair presence.
Do you have good reason for excluding any of them?’
‘I think so.’
Lady Egidia considered her for a moment, then smiled.
‘He’ll apologize,’ she said. ‘But don’t let him always be the one to apologize. Even when he’s wrong.’
‘I know,’ said Alys, answering more than the smile. Her mother-in-law stretched out a hand to her, over the sleeping cat, and was clearly about to speak when Socrates scrambled to his feet and they heard Alan Forrest’s voice on the stairs.
‘Mistress? It’s Jackie Heriot here, about the corp in the feed-store. Will you see him?’
‘Aye, send him up, Alan,’ said Lady Egidia resignedly in Scots, and scooped the cat up. ‘Come away in, Sir John. You’ll stay to supper?’
‘St Malessock,’ Sir John corrected, sweeping over the threshold. ‘Our martyred St Malessock, that brought the gospel to these parts and was cruelly slain for his faith.’ He seemed to have gained in stature since the morning, Alys noticed, rising with her mother-in-law and bending the knee for his blessing. The ownership of a new and possibly important relic had done much for his self-esteem. ‘I never meant to put your household out, madam,’ he demurred, when the invitation was repeated. ‘But it would be right welcome. Indeed. I’ve been up the Pow Burn wi’ pastoral comfort and a Mass for them in their grief, and thought I’d come by this way to enquire when it would suit you to have us fetch our saint away, with a great procession and music and all.’
‘Aye, St Malessock.’ Lady Egidia sat down again, and the cat settled itself ostentatiously on her knee, glaring at Alys. ‘I heard about that. Has he cured Davy Fleming?’