Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘So what’s to do, maister?’ asked one of Lowrie’s men from the shadows.

‘We go up the glen to see what’s what,’ said Alys promptly.

‘Oh, no, we don’t, mistress!’ said Lowrie. ‘ We ’ll go. You ’ll stay here, if you please, wi Sir Richie.’

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘This is my adventure, I don’t expect you to-’

‘We’ll ha enough to do facing fiends frae Hell,’ said Tam rather nervously, ‘let alone worrying over keeping you safe.’

‘I can keep myself safe,’ she said.

‘No, no, madam,’ protested the old priest, ‘much better you stay here. Indeed I’d as soon you all stayed here, or else left me and went to bring back a greater number and a great retinue of clerks as well-’

Alys stood by the door of the little kirk, Socrates at her side, and watched the men out of sight. Sir Richie had insisted on blessing each of them with holy water and a tremulous prayer, which had done very little for Luke’s spirits; she had considered asking for the boy to stay with her, and discarded the idea. He would be little help for her next move.

‘I am concerned for the horses,’ she said to the old man. ‘I’ll just go as far as the gate and make sure of them.’

‘But, daughter,’ he began from inside the church, but she slipped away, round the corner of the building towards the gate, the dog almost glued to her skirts. The men had scrambled over the tumbledown drystone wall of the kirkyard, but she was not certain she could do the same in her riding-dress before Sir Richie could catch up with her. Through the gate she cast a cursory glance towards the horses, which were standing peacefully enough in the shade of one of the cottages. The taller beasts were making inroads on the edge of its turf roof. Turning right, bending low, she scurried along the wall and then down into the hollow of the burn where it chattered and bubbled among dark smooth stones. Crossing it by the plank bridge she had seen from the door of the kirk, she set off up the glen after the men, Socrates at her heel, oblivious to the faint cries from behind her.

It was a lovely setting, she thought, looking warily around, with the spring just beginning to breathe across it. On this side of the burn a grassy path led upstream, with occasional tall trees to shade it. On the other, above the church, was a patch of well-tended woodland. Beyond, on both sides, the flanks of the Campsies rose, smooth and grassy, dotted with sheep and lambs. Some of the trees showed green buds, a few small flowers gleamed in the grass, and birds chirped and flitted busily among the branches. Sir Richie had stopped calling after her, and apart from the sheep bleating to their young any other sound was swamped by the noise of the water. There was certainly no sound of fiendish laughter or wild activity.

She went carefully, paying attention all about her, relishing this moment of freedom. Now she was married she rarely went unattended anywhere, and it was good to have no complaining servant at her back, though perhaps, she thought, one might be glad of company in a few minutes. Whatever had been happening further upstream?

The dark stones in the burn had been smoothed by the water, but were the same colour as the jagged rocks of a miniature cliff beneath the clasping roots of a hawthorn bush, where a thick vein of some lighter mineral showed gleams of green and rust. The path under her feet had been much trampled, with sign which went both ways. When did it last rain here? she wondered, studying the prints. The dog, sniffing where she looked, raised his head and stared up the glen, his ears pricked.

The little valley narrowed, curved to the right, then to the left. She paused by a scatter of rougher stones, and bent to lift one which caught her eye, turning it this way and that in the light. Socrates came to see what she was looking at. Satisfied, she pushed his nose out of the way and found her purse again, tucked the scrap of stone into it, and drew out the dagger she had extracted from Gil’s kist last night. Leaving its sheath in the purse she shook her skirts straight and moved cautiously onward, the haft of the little weapon comforting in her hand. She was fairly sure now of what they would find, but if it came to an argument with the occupiers, it might help to be armed.

The burn beside her widened into a pool with a noisy waterfall at its head. The bank they followed rose, and the path swung away from the pool to skirt the waterfall. Beyond it she could see a wall of dark jagged rock, overhung with ivy and leaning bushes. Moving carefully, she climbed to the crest of the fall and paused warily in the shadow of some trees, studying the land. Socrates waited beside her, looking up at her face.

This was where the valley forked; the main burn swung to her right, a smaller burn tumbled in from the other side. There was no sign of flames, only a thread of smoke rising up somewhere on her left, but there was a sense of threat, the feeling of being watched, although nothing stirred but some black birds sailing against the brisk clouds, croaking in annoyance, and smaller singing birds hopping in the trees above her. She drew breath, told herself firmly not to be foolish, and moved forward to go and explore the new valley.

‘Both dead when we found them,’ said Lowrie.

‘The poor souls.’ Alys crossed herself, gazing at the scene, then knelt to close the remaining eye of the body nearest her. ‘What can have happened? I think this one must have fallen into the furnace, but the other?’

‘Stabbed,’ said Tam. ‘He was the luckier, I’d say.’

She nodded without looking up, biting her lips to keep the tears back, and touched the undamaged portion of the dead man’s face and neck with care, silently promising him her prayers.

Across the hollow the little furnace was still smoking, occasional flames leaping from the charcoal which was exposed where the clay and stones had crumbled. There was what looked like a crucible tilted among the debris, with crushed rock sintered into a lump; the big leather bellows were scorched beyond repair, a pair of tongs lay where they had been flung down, a patch of clay had been smoothed and grooved for pouring whatever should have run from the crucible. The other dead man lay on his face, sprawled, his hands out before him. A narrow slit in the back of his hooded leather sark told of his end. There was a smell, of blood, of burnt flesh and hair, of mud.

Her escort stood bareheaded and awkward in the presence of death. Luke was now openly weeping. Socrates sat at her elbow, subdued by the mood of the group.

‘But what has happened here?’ she asked, sitting back on her heels. ‘Have they fought one another? Was there a third man? I think,’ she tested the rigid neck again, ‘he is dead perhaps three hours or a little more.’

‘I’ve made out four men a’thegither,’ said Lowrie’s man Frank, gesturing at the trampled earth. ‘It’s no that clear, you’ll understand, but I’ve saw both their marks, and two others. Three o them’s all over the place here, one above the other, they’ve been here days I’d say or even longer. The last one’s just on the top o the rest, and him, well, it’s like he’s been fighting, the marks go all ways and the heels is right dug in, you can see where he jumped aside to get this fellow.’

‘Is this what you expected, mistress?’ Lowrie was trying for a normal tone of voice. ‘The mining? I take it they’re getting silver?’

‘I — yes,’ she admitted. ‘I wasn’t certain, you understand, but it seemed the best explanation. When I saw the rocks in the burn I thought it more likely. I saw a silver mine once before,’ she explained, ‘in France, in just such rock as this.’

‘A siller mine?’ said Sim hopefully. ‘Is there like to be siller lying about for the taking?’