Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘We should check,’ said Lowrie. ‘But mind it belongs to the Crown, man, keep your light fingers off it if you see anything. And keep back from that furnace, it may no be yellow any longer but it’s still ower warm.’

‘Yes, we must check,’ said Alys, getting resolutely to her feet and looking round. Sim unwound his plaid and laid it over the dead man with care, hiding the ruined face. Frank followed his example to cover the other corpse. ‘Show me these marks,’ she said to him.

With an indulgent air he pointed out the traces of the different footprints, not easy to see in the rough broken stone underfoot, more readily picked out in the muddy patches near the burn. When she found another set of marks near the shelter he looked at her with more respect.

‘Aye, that’s number fower,’ he agreed, ‘he’s got a narrower heel than these ithers, and his toes is more like the shape o Tam’s or Luke’s and all. These ither three all had their shoon frae the same place, and it wasny hereabouts, I’d say.’

Alys nodded, gazing about her.

‘So these two were about their work,’ she said, ‘and this man with the different feet came and fought with them. One fell in the fire, and the stranger stabbed the other.’

‘Aye, or they fought among the three o them,’ the man offered. ‘Then he made off.’

‘I wonder how far he has gone,’ she said. ‘And where is the other man with these shoes? Could they be out there?’

They were only a few yards from the main valley, but because of the way this smaller burn twisted, they could neither see nor hear the other watercourse. The dell where they stood must once have been pretty, with little white flowers and hawthorn bushes under a ring of taller trees in which jackdaws commented busily on the strangers below them. Now it was scarred by the industry of the dead man and their companion; there was their small shelter of bent branches and hides, a stack of green wood cut for burning, the broken furnace now cooling rapidly, its spoil mixed with broken and crushed rock all about. Not far upstream a bigger spoil heap was smothering the aconites, and a low dark hole in the rocky bank spoke of a mine adit. What did the folk at the mine by Carluke call it? Oh, yes, an ingaun ee .

‘What were they doing here?’ Luke wondered, sniffing. ‘Why would you break the stone so small, mistress?’

‘To get the silver out,’ Lowrie said before she could answer. He bent and lifted a scrap of rock, turning it to the light as Alys had done on the path. There was a small gleam from one angle.

‘Oh, I see!’ said his man Sim. ‘And then they melt it in the furnace, and catch it in thon dish in its midst. That’s right clever. I never kent that was how you got siller.’

‘Was that the flames they all seen?’asked Tam, who was poking about the little shelter. ‘How about the howling and the fiends?’

‘Could two men work and two pretend to be fiends?’ Alys wondered. And this poor soul’s injuries, she realized grimly, would explain the howling Sir Richie heard this morning.

‘That’s what I thought,’ admitted Tam. He straightened up. ‘But there wasny four o them, mistress. There was three, for there’s three scrips here, and three bedrolls, and no sign there’s ever been a fourth dwelling here, the neat way it’s all fitted thegither.’

‘So where is the third?’ Lowrie looked about.

‘There’s four sets o prints,’ said Frank.

‘Aye, and what do we do wi these two, maister?’ asked Sim. He clapped Luke on the shoulder. ‘Here, laddie, it comes to all o us soon or late. No sense in grieving for a man you never met.’

‘I never kent eyes would do that,’ Luke said, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and sniffed again.

‘Take your dagger,’ Alys said in some sympathy, ‘and go cut some hazels to make hurdles, then we may carry them down to the kirk. Maybe Frank would go with you?’ She raised her eyebrows at Lowrie, who nodded briefly. ‘Tam, what else have you found?’ She crossed to the shelter, and bent to peer in. Above their heads the jackdaws rose and swirled, commenting indignantly on the extra movements.

‘Aye, well, they’ve been snug enough in here. Their blankets, a kettle for cooking, a couple lanterns-’

‘They would need the lanterns in the mine,’ Lowrie suggested. ‘No tools?’

‘How neat it all is. Is there nothing to tell us who sent them?’

‘No that I can see.’ Tam straightened up to look at Alys, but his gaze went beyond her. ‘Here, where’s the dog away to?’

She turned, in time to see the lean grey shape hurtling up the eastward slope away from the burn. Alarmed, she called him but he continued, and vanished among the bushes. Around her the men drew their weapons and scanned the valley sides, all three poised for action. Luke and Frank had gone the other way, she realized, westward, and as the thought reached her there was a terrified yell from the crest of the slope, and an outbreak of snarling.

‘Socrates! Hold!’ she shouted, and picked up her skirts, intending to follow the dog.

‘Wait here!’ ordered Lowrie, running past her. Tam and Sim were already part way up the slope, moving cautiously, peering through the branches for the sources of the snarling argument above them. Lowrie, whinger drawn, caught up and passed them. She stood anxiously staring as they worked their way up among the new leaves, trying to make out what Socrates was doing. His low, continuous growl told her he had trapped someone or something, but she thought he was uncertain what to do with his catch. A wolf? Surely not, this close to Glasgow, she told herself. A man? Is this who was watching earlier?

‘Stand still,’ said Lowrie sharply. A man, then. ‘I said stand still! Tam, Sim, get his arms, if he’ll not listen to me. Mistress, will you call the dog?’

It was less simple than that, of course. In the end Alys had to climb the slope to adjudicate between the dog and the three men. Socrates gave up his prisoner with reluctance, and watched jealously while the newcomer was escorted back down to the dell.

He was no more than a boy, she realized as she slithered after them, younger than Luke. He was dressed in shabby clothing of strange cut, jerkin and hose and a jack with holes at the elbows, and must have been hunting for the pot; a sling hung at his belt, and he had two coneys in a bag on his back. His boots were broad and round of heel and toe. He looked terrified, but when he saw the two silent forms in the hollow he checked in horror, and then flung himself forward with a cry. Lowrie dived after him, but was not in time to prevent him pulling back the checked folds of Sim’s plaid and revealing what the intense heat of the furnace had done to the dead man’s face.

‘ Vati! ’ he said, and choked, and heaved drily. ‘ Ah, mein vati! ’

‘High Dutch, I think,’ said Alys, overwhelmed with pity. ‘He says that is his father.’

‘I’ve no tongues other than Latin,’ said Lowrie, ‘and I doubt this laddie — loquerisne latine ?’ There was no reaction; the boy had staggered back a few steps, and was staring at his father’s corpse, still gagging. ‘Either of you speak High Dutch?’

‘No me, maister,’ said Sim, and Tam shook his head. Alys mustered the few words of Low Dutch she knew, and put a hand on the prisoner’s wrist.

‘ Ik Alys,’ she said, pointing at herself. ‘ Du? ’

He stared at her, as if returning from a great distance, then looked round at the men in fear. Lowrie shook his head and made a calming gesture with one hand, but the boy shivered.

‘ Du? ’ Alys repeated.

It took some time, during which Luke and Frank returned with armfuls of withies and began to construct a couple of hurdles, looking askance at the boy. His name was Berthold Holtzmann, the same as his father. Numbly, he identified the man under the other plaid, stroking the cold brow: his uncle Heini. They were here to mine silver, but he could not or would not understand Alys’s attempts to ask who had brought them here. He was clearly terrified about his own fate, and she could not find the words to reassure him.