The Stolen Voice (28 page)

‘And Mistress Doig is his kinswoman,’ Gil said. ‘I suppose that led Currie to Doig, or the other way about.’

‘I’ll have the woman out of that yard,’ said the Bishop. ‘She’ll not remain on my doorstep. As for her husband, I want him found.’

‘He’s a slippery character,’ Gil said. ‘You may find all he’s done is carry letters, with no certain knowledge of their content.’

If you can find either one, he thought, recalling the sight of Doig and his wife leaving Glasgow a year since, an hour ahead of the pursuit, with the largest mixed leash of hounds he had ever seen.

‘And who is St Dymphna, anyway?’ asked George Brown, Bishop of Dunkeld.

Alys, standing with the Drummond girls on the rough grass of the preaching-field, gazed round her at the people of Sir Duncan’s parish. They were still gathering, the stragglers from the far end of the glen, the last few people from Glenbuckie still hurrying over the causeway. They carried crosses, scraps of linen inscribed with ill-spelled prayers, rosaries, anything to protect the sanctity of the occasion. The old man was drowsing now, lying on his bed of sheepskins at the centre of the bowl of ground, but Robert was still tolling that strange sweet bell, and the people watched in a silence broken by the occasional sob, a child’s question, a hushed adult answer.

‘Sir Duncan is much loved,’ Alys said quietly to Ailidh Drummond.

‘There is not many can recall the man that was before him,’ said Ailidh, equally quietly.

As the last parishioners reached the field, Robert silenced the bell. Sir Duncan opened his eyes. A murmur ran through the gathering, and he raised one hand and delivered a blessing in Latin. Daughter of a master-builder, Alys recognized how it was some trick of the shape of the ground that made his thread of a voice audible to all. People bent their heads, crossed themselves, said
Amen
with that strange Ersche twist to the word. The old priest surveyed them, and began to speak, very slowly, in Ersche.

He spoke for near a quarter of an hour, Alys estimated. After a while, as his voice failed, the aged clerk began to repeat each sentence aloud for him. She had long since lost the thread by then, though the words she recognized told her it was a sermon about love, about duty, about redemption. Instead she watched the people, who were listening to every syllable, many with tears on their cheeks. Most were in the dress of the Highlands, the men in their belted shirts and huge plaids, the women in loose checked gowns, their smaller plaids drawn over their heads; the upper servants from Stronvar and Gartnafueran were conspicuous in their Lowland livery. Next to Alys, Ailidh Drummond gazed intently, chewing a forefinger; Murdo Dubh had appeared beyond her and the younger girls were gathered close. She looked the other way, and found a man in a long homespun gown and faded plaid standing beside her, right at the edge of the crowd, leaning on a long crook and watching the faces in the same way that she was. He was oddly made, tall and broad-shouldered with a small head and greying red hair.

He turned to look at her. She had a momentary impression of a bony face, of an unnaturally high forehead (or was he bald? or shaved?) before she was swamped by a sea-green stare which seemed to look right into her soul. Without having to think about it, she curtsied.

‘Davie needs you, daughter,’ he said.

‘Me?’ she said, startled. ‘Where is he?’

‘Yonder.’ He nodded towards the priest’s house. ‘Go now, daughter. This is nearly done.’

Hurrying up the path towards the stone house, she could hear the voices. They were so intent on their discussion that she reached the door unnoticed.

‘I can’t go yet, Billy. There’s things to sort out. I’ll not leave without telling them –’

‘I have to go now, you wee daftheid! If yon Cunning-ham’s got so far, he’ll have jaloused the rest by Vespers, I need to be out of sight for a bit.’

‘Then go, and I’ll meet you in Perth, or Leith, or somewhere –’

‘Aye, and how will you get to Leith on your own? I’d never look your faither in the ee again if I –’

Alys rattled at the pin and the argument was cut off. She stepped into the house, to find Davie Drummond standing by the glowing peats on the hearth, facing an indignant Doig who scowled at him across the width of the house.

‘My husband has left Balquhidder already, Maister Doig,’ she said politely. ‘Does that affect your decision?’

‘Spoke to you and all, has he?’ Doig snorted, and turned away, opening one of the kists against the far wall. ‘Robert has the rights o’t. Best no to get into conversation wi thon one.’

‘Mistress Alys,’ said Davie. ‘What – I thought you –’

‘I was told you needed me,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said, puzzled. ‘I sent no word. Will you – will you have a seat?’

She took the stool he offered, and looked from one to the other of them.

‘It’s good to see you, Maister Doig,’ she said. ‘The wolfhound is doing well.’

‘I seen the brute,’ said Doig, delving in the kist. ‘Heard it was you he wedded,’ he added. ‘I’ll wish you good fortune, mistress.’

‘Thank you, maister,’ she replied composedly, hoping he referred to Gil and to Socrates separately. ‘Are you just leaving Balquhidder? Do you have a horse?’
A dwarf from the cyte of Camelot, on horsbak as moche as he myght,
she thought, relishing the image. This forceful man could equal any of Malory’s characters.

‘I’ll manage, thanks,’ said Doig, without looking round.

‘Will you have – will you have some refreshment?’ Davie offered. ‘Ale, or buttermilk, or the like?’

Drinking the buttermilk, enjoying its sharp flavour, she studied Davie and said, ‘You’re right, there are things that must be said before you leave.’ Bright colour washed up over Davie’s face. ‘How many of them know?’

‘Know what?’

‘What you have to tell them.’ Two could play at this game. ‘Now Mistress Drummond is gone, there is no need to pretend further.’

Davie looked down at the glow of the peats, and nodded reluctantly.

‘Maister Cunningham bade me talk to you,’ he admitted. ‘He has the rights of it, it was my father that was stolen away thirty year since. I never meant – it was one thing Euan Beag taking me for my father, poor soul, but then the
cailleach
did the same, and I was so amazed I didn’t contradict her, and then –’

‘It would be hard to explain,’ Alys agreed, ‘and it would get harder.’

‘Every time I spoke!’

‘And it was Maister Doig fetched you here.’

‘No such thing,’ said Doig sharply. Davie shook his head, apparently to contradict this denial.

‘Billy here was one of the company that lifted my father away, and saw him to the Low Countries.’ Doig growled at this and went on stuffing a scrip. ‘He came back a few year syne to see how my father got on.’

‘I cam back,’ corrected Doig, ‘when yir Dimpnakerk burnt down, and found yir faither high in the choir, chapel-maister or whatever they cry it, and him widowed.’

‘Never one to miss an opportunity, is Billy,’ commented Davie. ‘We’re building a fine new Dimpnakerk, and there’ll be a fine new choir to sing in it.’

‘And you already have three of the voices,’ said Alys, understanding.

‘And more,’ said Doig. ‘Scots singers are weel thought on, but they’re no the only ones.’ He looked round the house, and crossed with his rolling gait to fetch a pair of heelless shoes from the shadows under one bed. ‘Right, that’s me. I’ll just need to wait for Robert, I’ll not go without a word to him.’

‘But Sir Duncan –’ objected Davie.

‘The two o you can sit up wi him, and see you behave yoursels. He’ll no last the night, particular after this.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the preaching-field.

‘Dimpnakerk,’ Alys repeated. ‘That is the shrine to St Dymphna, am I right? And she heals mad people?’

‘The folk o Gheel heal the mad people,’ corrected Doig.

‘With St Dymphna’s help,’ said Davie.

‘They take them into their own homes,’ Doig said to Alys, ‘and treat them like family. More than I’d do, for no kin –’

‘Billy, we are all kin! We’re all God’s children, and Our Lady is our mother!’

‘Hush,’ said Alys. ‘What’s that?’

‘Is that him away?’ said Doig, listening.

There were only a few voices at first, singing in Ersche. Then gradually more joined them, some above the note, some below it, rising in the song Alys had heard before, the song for the departing soul. More and more voices, high and low, swooped through the summer noon, till the melody seemed to be braided out of shining ribbons of sound, slow and heartbreaking.

‘
Lead this soul on your arm, o Christ
,’ Davie translated softly, ‘
o king of the Kingdom of Heaven. Since it was you that bought this soul, have its peace in your keeping. May Michael, high king of the angels, prepare the path before the soul
.’

‘That was what you sang for your grandmother,’ Alys said. He nodded, his eyes glittering in the glow from the peat fire.

‘They’re coming back,’ said Doig from the door. ‘I doubt he’s no deid yet, the way they’re carrying him.’

‘Mistress Alys,’ said Davie, in a sudden rush. ‘Would you – will you – if Billy’s leaving, will you come back and watch wi Robert and me?’

When she returned some hours later, the house was surrounded. Still clutching their talismans, linen and crosses and rosaries, against the dangers of the night, Sir Duncan’s people watched with him, a steady murmur of prayers drifting into the darkening air. Leaving her escort by the little kirk Alys approached through the velvety summer twilight and they made way for her, but she felt like an intruder, a stranger in the house of the dying. As she and Lady Stewart had suspected there was no need of a third person under Sir Duncan’s roof; there was a group of people at the door, waiting to take their turn within the house, and Robert and Davie had been relegated to the bench at the gable of the house.

‘Martainn clerk is with him just now. I’d be just as glad if you stayed, mistress,’ said Davie, when she commented.

‘Robert?’ she asked.

‘You might as well,’ he said in his ungracious way.

‘Doig got away, did he?’

‘He did,’ said Robert. ‘Thanks to your man that he had to go.’

‘We went into all that, Robert,’ said Davie. The two were dark shapes against the stonework of the gable, still glowing faintly in the green remnants of the sunset. They seemed to be sitting shoulder to shoulder, as if for comfort. She sat down at Davie’s other side.

‘He’s in no pain,’ said Robert after a moment. ‘That’s a grace. My grandsire – Aye, well.’ Davie moved; Alys thought he put a hand over Robert’s. ‘And he’s been confessed, your – your uncle saw to that, and shrived him and all. But it’s taking him so long!’

‘It’s a long road,’ said Davie. ‘A long road, and a hard one.’

‘Tell me about Gheel,’ said Alys softly.

After a moment Davie began to describe the town, so vividly she could almost see it, its narrow streets and squares, the tall white kirk growing in its midst with the striped tower beside it, and the poor creatures with their injured minds walking about where they were treated with love and respect rather than being taunted and tormented.

‘It’s all some of them need,’ he said, ‘to be treated like ordinary folk, but a lot of them need physicking as well, and there are aye some that are too wild to live out at first, they’re tended in the hospital. They go home cured, or they die, or they stay wi us for ever. As St Dymphna chooses.’

‘I’d like to do that,’ said Robert after a thoughtful silence.

‘What, cure the mad?’

‘Look after the mad,’ Robert corrected. ‘It’s a service. I could do it.’

‘You could,’ said Davie, considering it in a way that told Alys he knew why Robert was here. ‘It would be a – yes, you could!’ he exclaimed.

Would Robert’s uncle permit it, Alys wondered.

‘No ropes round the neck?’ he was asking. ‘No chains?’

The two voices murmured on in the shadows. Alys leaned back against the house wall, listening carefully, but she was still very weary and after a time she lost the thread of their conversation.

A sharp movement woke her. She sat up straight, closing her mouth, and discovered that it was full dark, they sat under a field of stars, and her companions were silent, though the hum of prayers still surrounded the house, like bees in clover. Then she became aware of tension beside her, of someone – Davie? – taut as a bowstring and breathing fast, of Robert suddenly sitting at the further end of the bench. What had happened?

‘I’m sorry,’ whispered someone, almost inaudible. Had there been a sound before the movement? A tiny sound, like a kiss?

The house door opened, shedding lamplight which gleamed on weary faces and prayerful hands in front of it, but cast the three of them into shadow here at the gable. A tall figure strode round the corner, broad shoulders black against the stars, stick in hand.

‘It is near ended, my son,’ said a voice. The same voice that had spoken to Alys in the preaching-field, the red-haired man’s voice. ‘Go within now, it is your turn. You have earned the right.’

Robert stood up, hesitated as if he looked back at Davie, or Alys, or the red-haired man; then he moved obediently towards the house door. Beside Alys Davie rose, and she -heard him trying to calm his breathing.

‘Will I go too?’

‘No. Your duty together is not yet.’ The dark shape moved, as if to set a hand on his forehead. ‘The calumny is avenged, for the woman was swearing falsely, but there is things you must be setting right and all, Davie Drummond.’

‘I ken that,’ said Davie.

‘The blessing of Angus be upon you,’ said the man. ‘And upon you, my daughter.’

‘Amen,’ Alys said. Something touched her bent head, lightly. When she looked up the tall figure had gone, though it was too dark to move swiftly.

There was a sudden outbreak of wailing at the house door, and within Robert’s voice rose in Latin. The prayer for the dead.

‘They’ll regret waiting this long,’ observed Sir William.

‘It’s no more than three days,’ said his lady.

‘Aye, but in this heat?’

Alys kept silent. She was not entirely sure whether she should be present at Mistress Drummond’s burying, but she had been determined to attend.

She had already taken a liking to her hostess, but the heroism with which Lady Stewart had refrained from questioning her until she was ready to talk had won her deep respect. They had spent the whole of yesterday afternoon in the solar discussing the events in Glenbuckie and in the Kirkton. The Bailie’s wife had taken a pragmatic attitude to the death of the child Iain.

‘He was an innocent. He’d likely go straight into Our Lady’s arms, for I ken he was baptised, so he’s in a better place and his people are better without him and all.’