Pat McIntosh - The Stolen Voice

‘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.