Pat McIntosh - The Stolen Voice

‘What a bonnie tune. Who made it?’ she asked as it ended.

‘It was my man made it for James our firstborn, and we both sang it to all our bairns.’ The old woman smiled. ‘Do you ken, David was singing it to Iain when he first set eyes on him, the day he came home, I think that would be how Iain was taking to him immediate.’

‘He — ’ Alys paused, and revised what she was about to say. ‘He remembered it, then?’

‘Och, yes, he was remembering it, and just the way his father was singing it. My son Patrick has the tune a wee bit different, you understand, but David minds it his father’s way.’

‘And has he learned other songs while he was away? Do they have other music in the — in the sidhean ?’

The quick, averting phrase in Ersche, and then the answer.

‘Fine music indeed, though David tells me none of it they make themselves, all is from singers they’ve carried off from one place or another.’ There was a movement in the yard, and a shadow fell on the doorway. ‘This will be him now. David, mo chridh , come within.’

‘I think it must be the bonniest place in the realm of Scotland,’ said Davie Drummond, gazing round the bowl of the hills in which the farm lay cradled. To Alys’s ear his Scots was not quite like the way Murdo Dubh or Mistress Drummond used the language. ‘My — ’ He checked, and continued. ‘My father aye said it was a place where you are near to the kingdom of the angels.’

‘Bonnier than where you have been?’ she prompted.

He looked quickly at her, and half-smiled.

‘Wherever I was, I think it is not in Scotland,’ he said.

‘And where were you?’ she asked directly.

Her first response to Davie Drummond was liking. He was taller than she was but seemed a year or two younger, perhaps sixteen. Clad in another of those huge sarks belted about him, with a leather doublet over it, he bore a powerful resemblance to the young man who had welcomed them, and to the girl Agnes. A strong-featured, pink-skinned face burnt by the sun, wide open blue eyes, their lashes and brows so fair as to be invisible, and that extraordinary halo of lint-white, frizzy hair, all marked him as their close kin, as Lady Stewart had said. Stepping barefoot into old Mistress Drummond’s house, his great plaid bundled over his arm, he had bowed to Alys, but said gently to the old woman:

‘No need, surely, to be sending Mòr up the field for me when her hip is as sore? One of the lassies could have fetched me.’

‘Och, so it is, mo chridh , but they were arguing again,’ she said, smiling up at him.

‘Just the same, Mammy, there is enough pain in her life without adding more to it.’

‘Well, and that is a true word. David, here is a lassie — here is Mistress Mason come all the way from Glasgow to hear about how you came home to me.’

His back to the door, his face in shadow, he seemed to stiffen slightly, but he said with grave courtesy, ‘I will gladly to talk to the lady. Are you tired, Mammy? Will I take our guest to see the farm?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Alys hastily. ‘Have I tired you with talking, mistress? I’m sorry for it if I have.’

Now she stood at the side of the bridle-road along the glen, which ran here between outfield and steading, while Davie Drummond named the hills for her, pointed out the path to the summer grazing, named the families in the other steadings of the valley. The reapers were still working along the rigs of barley; in the shade of the barn Steenie was minding the ponies and talking to the old woman with the hoe, who seemed to be called Mairead and who was getting a lot of amusement from the conversation. Socrates was exploring the yard.

At Alys’s blunt question Davie looked away, staring northward at a ridge he had just identified. After a moment he said, ‘You know where they are saying I have been.’

‘Is it the truth?’

He turned his head and met her eye.

‘Wherever I have been,’ he said carefully, ‘I am back.’

‘You are,’ said Alys after a moment. ‘You are home, I think.’

A flicker of something like surprise behind the blue eyes, but no answer. After a moment she went on, ‘What was it like there? How do they live, the — those people?’

‘Not so different from us,’ he said. ‘Their houses are fine, their clothes are bonnie. There is more colour in them, perhaps. The old woman would show you the clothes I came home in?’ Alys nodded, and he smiled fondly. ‘She is showing them to everyone. And there is feasting and fasting, the same as here, and music all the time.’

‘What kind of music?’

‘Voice and harp,’ he answered readily, ‘and playing on all kinds of pipes, and fiddle and bells and drums. Much the same as here, indeed.’

‘I heard you singing to the boy John,’ said Alys. He looked away, screwing up his face in compassion.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘the poor soul.’

‘What ails him?’

‘The hand of God, I suppose. I’ve seen the like in — He will not be touched, he will not be dirty. He won’t walk, though he can crawl. If he is crossed he screams. Likely you heard him.’ He shrugged. ‘If I can help him, I’m glad of it. His mother has a deal to bear. Both the old woman’s good-daughters has a hard life.’

‘I can see that,’ Alys answered seriously.

When they first stepped into the yard, it was occupied by the girl Agnes, seated at a winding-wheel filling a bobbin with blue yarn, and Caterin the spinner, who was once more padding barefoot back and forth over the cobbles while the broad wheel fixed on the house wall turned the dark iron spindle, twisting locks of fleece into thread for the dyeing. Beside her the long cradle was still. The child sleeping in it was small for seven or eight, his face pinched and cream-coloured, the hand which lay outside the covers long-fingered and twisted. Caterin had paused in her work as they approached, turning her head under its heaped and folded linen, with that wry smile for Alys and an ambiguous look at her guide.

‘He is asleep,’ she said in Scots. ‘There is none but you can soothe him now, it seems.’

Davie shook his head.

‘I’m still a new thing to him,’ he said. ‘If Elizabeth had some of my tunes she could be singing him to sleep as well.’

‘I must be glad you are come home, then,’ said Caterin. ‘We are all glad he is come home,’ she said slyly to Alys. ‘The songs and the tales he has to tell, you would not believe. You would almost be wishing to visit the — the place he has been, to see the marvels for yourself.’

‘Och, not so much,’ said Davie, colouring up. ‘And I think not all are so pleased to see me.’

‘She will become used to it,’ said Caterin, as the door of the other longhouse swung wider. ‘Och, Mòr, we were just speaking of you. Have you finished that shuttle of thread, then?’

‘I have.’ Mòr added two empty bobbins to the heap beside Agnes and crossed the yard towards them in uneven steps, bending her head to Alys. She was a tall lean woman, clad in a kirtle of checked cloth which looked like her own weaving, in the natural browns of the yarn; the sleeves were rolled up, baring muscular forearms, and the skirt was as short as Caterin’s. The linen on her head was much plainer than the other woman’s. ‘And is that you at the crack with our good-brother, then, when he should rather be at shearing the barley?’

‘No, no,’ said Caterin. ‘Davie is showing Mistress Mason the land his brother and his nephew works, are you no, Davie mhic Seumas? Better that than the shearing, when your hands are still soft.’

‘I’ll go back to work in good time,’ Davie assured them, his colour rising further. ‘Will you be showing Mistress Mason some of your weaving, then, Mòr, while Agnes winds the next shuttle?’