Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘Sim,’ said Lowrie repressively, and the man ducked his head and muttered an apology. ‘Mistress Alys, it’s twelve mile. Are you ready for such a ride, and the ride back and all? And the dog,’ he added, as Socrates loped back from his inspection of a milestone.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said confidently, assessing the state of the road. ‘Shall we canter?’

The first part of the journey passed quickly enough. As Luke had said, it was a good day for a ride, dry and fine for April, though with enough cloud moving on the brisk wind to prevent the horses overheating. The road from Glasgow to Stirling went by Cadder and Kirkintilloch, small towns which Alys had heard of but never seen, each with its group of thatched cottages scattered round a little stone church. At Kirkintilloch they paused to admire the vestiges of the wall built by the Romans to keep the savages out, and to let the horses drink and rest briefly. Lowrie, claiming to be thirsty, procured ale for all of them to drink, standing on the grass beside one of the cottages, while the hens clucked round the horses’ hooves and several children gathered to stare at them. Alys relaxed in her saddle and looked at the traffic on the road. One or two people went by on foot, dusty to the waist, bound on who knew what errand. Wagons grumbled past in twos and threes, pulled by oxen or small sturdy ponies, shifting the merchandise of Scotland. Barrels of wine, barrels of fish, barrels of dry goods from the ports of the Low Countries, moving around the kingdom -

‘That’s a soil-cart coming,’ said Lowrie. ‘Drink up, lads. Are you about finished, mistress? We’d best be on the road afore that passes us.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Alys, handing her beaker down to him. ‘Thank you, Maister Lowrie, I was glad of that. Do we continue on this road?’

‘We turn off in a mile or so.’ Lowrie mounted, checked that all the men were in the saddle, and urged his horse into the roadway. The soil-cart was already making its presence felt; in this wind direction they would be aware of it until they left the road, but if they got behind it they would be aware of it for a lot longer. Alys had seen the soil-carts rumbling out of Glasgow, their unsavoury contents dripping in the mud behind them, and splashing on the legs of people and horses who followed. And attracting the burgh dogs to roll in the residue, she realized, and looked round hastily for Socrates, who grinned at her from under the belly of Luke’s horse.

‘Tell me of Dame Isabella,’ she said to Lowrie, nudging her horse alongside his. ‘Did you know her well? Was she always so — so-’

‘So individual,’ he supplied tactfully. ‘All the time I’ve kent her, aye. But I was away at college most of the year, you’ll mind, so I never got the worst of it. My mother had a few tales of her doings.’

‘Lady Magdalen thinks well of her,’ Alys observed.

‘The old dame was fond of the lady, by what she said,’ Lowrie said. ‘We turn off here, mistress, up the Glazert water.’

‘So she could be good to those she thought well of.’ Alys obediently turned her steed onto the new track, a broad stony trail through the low ground beside another river.

‘I’d say so.’ Lowrie laughed shortly. ‘Whether they wanted it or no.’

‘Had she plans for you?’ she asked innocently.

‘She had. Our Lady be thanked she never got putting them into play.’

‘What, was it not something you would want?’

‘It wasny that,’ Lowrie said, going scarlet, ‘so much as the way she’d have gone about it, ordering Mai — ordering people to do her bidding and handing over a great lump o coin to sweeten the bargain. I’d as soon get a post for friendship or kinship, or even on my own merits.’

‘I can see you’d not want a place bought for you in that way,’ Alys agreed. ‘And yet she meant well.’ She looked about her, taking in the lie of the new river valley. The Glazert rattled in its wide bed, wriggling down the valley floor; flat meadow-lands on either side were full of cattle grazing the new spring grass, herd-laddies from different ferm-touns watching each other warily from the dykes. At a distance, the valley sides sloped sharply. A grete forest that was named the Countrey of Straunge Auentures , she thought. ‘How different this country is from Lanarkshire.’

‘It’s got fields and dykes and houses,’ objected Luke, ‘same as any other.’

‘No, but,’ she gestured with one hand, trying to describe what she could see. ‘The fall of the land, the way that burn has cut into its bank, the slope opposite that, all these. The stone is not the same colour, it must have its own properties, so it makes different shapes of the ground.’

‘I know what you mean,’ agreed Lowrie, looking curiously at her. ‘It changes even more when you get closer to the Campsies yonder.’ He nodded at the hills to the north. ‘They go up in layers like a stack o girdle-cakes, a thing you never see in Lanarkshire.’

‘And yourself, Maister Lowrie,’ she went on. The track was less well maintained than the Stirling road, so they could not hurry. That meant it was much easier to talk, and she was determined to learn what she could. ‘Have you brothers and sisters?’

‘Three brothers living, all older than me,’ said Lowrie, ‘and two sisters much younger, still unwed — though Annabella’s been betrothed since she was four. But my faither’s well able to provide for me,’ he added, ‘whatever the old — lady said.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ Alys agreed. ‘He put you to the college, after all. What are his plans for you? Maister Michael, who will be my good-brother, is to take on management of his father’s coalheugh once he is wed, a great responsibility.’

‘Aye, so he wrote me. We’d thought of the law,’ said Lowrie, his head turned away. ‘Anything but Holy Kirk. I’ve no notion to be a priest, and my faither says he’ll not make me, not when my brother Alec’s doing well at Dunblane.’

‘Nor did my husband wish for the priesthood,’ she said, and thought for a moment of Gil as she had left him asleep in their curtained bed, warm and satisfied, his jaw dark with stubble. No, not a suitable priest, despite all his learning. And this young man, though of course he was not Gil, seemed more estimable the more she talked to him, a clene knyght withoute vylony and of a gentil strene of fader syde and moder syde. ‘The law is a good trade.’

‘It’s a way to win a living,’ said Lowrie.

They rode in silence for half a mile or so, during which Socrates started an argument with a cow-herd’s dog and discovered it had friends; Tam beat them off with his whip, and Socrates made a dignified retreat to his previous position under Luke’s horse’s girth.

‘So why are we out here, mistress?’ Lowrie asked suddenly. ‘Maister Gil never said aught about inspecting these two properties. Does it relate to the old dame’s death?’

‘It does,’ she answered, hoping this was true. ‘It — it arose from something John Sempill said, when I visited his wife.’

‘Him again.’ Lowrie frowned. ‘That was right odd, him having the wrong property in mind. He and the old dame must have been taking in one another’s rents for months.’

‘It is strange,’ she agreed. ‘Where are the two properties? Can we see them from here?’

‘The road-end for Balgrochan’s just yonder,’ said Lowrie’s man Sim. He pointed to a track which led up the hillside towards a group of low cottages. ‘And the other’s no more than a couple o mile further, at the foot o yonder glen, see? We’ll get a good mouthful o Balgrochan ale within half an hour.’

‘So what is it we want?’ Lowrie persisted. ‘Willie Logan the grieve can tell us most things, I’ve no doubt, but is there anyone else we should bid him send for?’