Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘The giant’s breathing,’ Lowrie said now. ‘As Luke here says, that’s never likely.’

‘It isn’t a giant,’ agreed Alys. He looked at her, startled.

‘They heard screaming,’ Tam offered. ‘And there was black things flying all about like bats by daylight. I heard the laddie say it mysel.’

‘Crows,’ said Alys firmly. ‘Or is it jackdaws which have a cry like that?’

‘Oh, is that why you asked about the trees?’ Lowrie said.

The track from Balgrochan came round a slight shoulder of the hillside and found itself suddenly in the midst of another huddle of cottages, the usual low structures of field stones and turf. To their left a burn hurried down towards the main valley floor, and on its far bank a bigger house of dressed stone, with several shuttered windows and a wooden door, suggested the property was a wealthy one; up the hill to their right, beyond the cottages, stood a small stone church. A few hens scratched round a gable, and a goat bleated somewhere. A trickle of smoke rose against the hillside from the thatched roof of the kirk, but otherwise the place appeared deserted. Alys sat her horse and looked about her, while the servants drew together and Luke crossed himself. Socrates raised his head, sniffing.

‘The kirk?’ Lowrie suggested. ‘Sir Richie would likely stay longer than the rest.’

‘But where have they all gone?’ wondered Alys. ‘I am surprised none of them have taken refuge at Balgrochan.’

Sim had dismounted, giving his reins to his companion, and now ducked past the leather curtain at the nearest house door and peered inside.

‘Taken the cooking pot and the blankets,’ he reported, emerging, ‘but no the bench or the creepie-stools. I’d say they was hoping to come back. They’ve never taken the roof-trees, after all.’

Alys nodded. It still seemed odd to her, though it was completely natural to Gil, that the tenant of such a place by custom supplied his own roof-timbers; if the little house still had its roof, the tenant hoped to return.

‘Let us seek out the priest,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he can tell us what he knows.’

Like the biggest house, the kirk was constructed of dressed stone, in this case a grey and fawn coloured freestone with prominent chisel-marks. She studied it carefully as they walked round to the low west door, but could not recognize any work-hand she knew. Little surprise in that, she reflected, the building seemed fifty years old or more. Narrow unglazed windows gave no view of the interior. Lowrie tried the door as she reached it, but it did not budge.

‘Barred,’ he said, and hammered on the planks with the pommel of his dagger. ‘Sir Richie! Are you within? It’s Lowrie Livingstone here!’

There was a long pause. Then a faint, quavering voice floated out to them.

‘Come here till I see you first, maister.’

Lowrie, raising his eyebrows, stepped round the corner of the little building, to where he might be seen from the nearest window.

‘I’m no alone,’ he said. ‘I’ve a lady wi me, and four men and a dog. What’s amiss here, Sir Richie?’

‘A lady?’ There was another pause, and then the bar behind the door thumped and rattled into its corner. The door opened a crack, and a wary eye peered out at them. ‘What sort o a lady? Where are ye, Maister Lowrie?’

‘A Christian lady,’ said Alys reassuringly. She bent to find her purse, under the skirts of her riding-dress, and drew out her beads. Clasping the cross on the end of the string, she smiled at the eye. ‘We’re no threat, sir priest.’

‘Aye.’ The door opened further, and the priest stepped back. He was a small man, spare and elderly, one hand at his pectoral cross, a stout cudgel dangling from the other wrist. ‘Come away in, then, till I bar the door again,’ he ordered them, in that quavering voice.

The little building was shadowy inside, the narrow windows admitting little light and the glow of the peat fire against the north wall helping little. Seated on the wall-bench, Alys said with sympathy,

‘Your parish is near empty, Sir Richie. What’s amiss, then?’

‘Oh, Mistress Mason.’ Sir Richie shook his head. ‘Sic a thing as you never heard o. My folk are all feared the Bad Yin himsel has taken up residence in the glen.’ He waved the cudgel northward. Socrates looked up briefly, his eyes catching the light, and returned to his inspection of a distant corner. The men drew closer together. ‘They’ve all run off to stay wi kin in one place or another down Strathblane.’

‘It’s true, then?’ said Luke, crossing himself. The old man shook his head.

‘I couldny say for sure, my son, but it’s awfy like it, and what’s worse, this very day hardly an hour since there was another great howling, like wild beasts it was, away up the glen, I could hear it from here. So I barred myself within the kirk, and I’ve been asking Our Lady and St Machan for their protection. Maybe that’s who sent you,’ he added, brightening.

‘Have you never been to look yoursel?’ Lowrie asked. ‘Tell us what’s happening. When did it begin?’

It had begun in early December, when a shepherd on the hillside had reported hearing noises from one of the offshoots of the main glen, half a mile upstream from the church.

‘Digging, he said, and scraping. And when he went closer, and called to find out who was at work, he heard a groaning and a howling like wild beasts, just the same as the day.’

‘Did he not speak to the folk at the House?’ Lowrie demanded. ‘Surely he got a hunt up to deal wi beasts? Was it a wolf, or a wildcat?’

‘There’s nobody dwells in the House the now,’ protested Sir Richie, defensive of his parishioner, ‘and though they got a hunt thegither about St Lucy’s Day they came back, saying they’d all heard the sounds and it was like no canny sort of beast whatever, and they’d never gone close enough to see it.’

Lowrie grunted. Alys said,

‘And then what happened?’

Another man, pursuing a strayed goat about Epiphany, had followed it up the burn and into the foot of the same side valley.

‘And there he smelled smoke, and then he saw flames, and two fiends, and they were making the groaning and howling,’ Sir Richie assured them, ‘so the hunt was right to turn back, maister, you can see.’

‘Aye,’ said Lowrie, unconvinced.

‘That was near four months ago,’ said Alys. ‘Has there been nothing more?’

Sir Richie shook his head.

‘There’s been all sorts, mistress. Times we’ve all heard the cries they make. Why, at Candlemas itself, when Jockie Clerk and I opened up the kirk to say Prime afore the first Mass, we both heard the fiends howling and groaning, and so did the folk that turned out for the Mass and all.’ He swallowed hard. ‘I took the cross from the altar, and we brought that and the candles to the door, and I, I bade them begone in the name o the Blessed Trinity, and there was sic a laughing and shrieking as you never did hear, and, and, well, it never worked, for they were there again a day or two after.’

‘But have you told nobody?’ Lowrie demanded. ‘Your bishop, your landlord? Who’s the feu superior?’

‘Where do the rents go?’ Alys asked. Socrates padded back to put his chin on her knee, and she scratched his ears.

The rents, it seemed, were collected by the same man as visited Balgrochan, every quarter for the last year or two; but only yesterday, said Sir Richie earnestly, the feu superior had paid them a call.

‘Sempill of Muirend?’ she said. Lowrie glanced sharply at her, but the priest nodded.

‘Aye, aye, that’s the man. And I tellt him the tale entire, and showed him how the Clachan’s deserted, and he rode off, swearing to put matters right.’ Did he so? thought Alys sceptically. ‘Indeed I thought when I heard your horses it was to be him returning, maybe wi the Archbishop or the like.’