Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘We have been fortunate,’ she pointed out. ‘You were never away for more than a few days before we were married, and since then — ’

‘I’m still greatly displeased with him,’ Gil said firmly. ‘Tib apologized to me, for what that was worth, but I don’t recall that Michael ever did, and their behaviour was ill judged and ill disciplined.’

‘They are much in love.’

‘So are we, Alys, and I can’t imagine enticing you to my bed like that. Much though I might have wished to,’ he added wryly, recalling how long the weeks between the contract and the wedding had seemed.

‘Nor I you,’ she admitted. ‘But we were differently placed. We were acknowledged from the start, Gil. We had no need to act in secret.’

He laughed, thinking of the snatched moments of what they had thought at the time was privacy, and tightened his clasp on her waist. ‘I suppose it’s my fault. I should have made sure my sister was better guarded. Well, too late now, and if Michael wants me to support his case with his father he’ll oblige me and be civil about it.’ He glanced at the window, where the sun was warming the greyish-yellow panes. ‘They’ll blow up for supper soon. We must dress.’

She tucked her hand into his as he rose.

‘I suppose,’ she said diffidently, ‘I wish all women to be as fortunate as I am. I married for love and to please my father, and I wish Tib could do the same.’

Gil drew her to her feet and into his arms, looking fondly down into her brown gaze.

‘It was the best day of my life when Pierre proposed the match to me,’ he said, ‘and when he told me you wished it too, I could hardly believe my fortune. It’s near a year since then,’ he discovered. ‘We should hold a feast for the anniversary.’

‘I never realized,’ said Lady Egidia, spooning green sauce over her boiled mutton, ‘that all the Crombie men were dead.’

She was seated at the head of the long board, Alys and Gil at her right hand, her godson at her left, with her steward, his wife Eppie and the rest of the household arrayed below them. At the far end among the grooms Gil could see Henry, by his gestures describing the discovery of the corpse in the peat-digging.

‘The youngest still lives,’ said Alys. ‘Mistress Weir’s grandson. Ralph, did his mother call him?’

‘That’s a by-name, I think,’ said Gil. ‘Adam, she said. He’d be named for his father, or his grandsire. Is there an Adam Crombie at the university, Michael?’

Michael paused with a second oozing wedge of cold pie halfway to his wooden trencher. Socrates, seated at Gil’s elbow, the crown of his rough grey head level with the miniature silver saint on the lid of the salt, watched the pastry crumbs falling on the tablecloth, and his nose twitched.

‘Down,’ said Gil sternly, and the dog lay down with an ostentatious sigh.

‘Aye, he’s at the college,’ Michael admitted. ‘Magistrand.’

‘That is a fourth year man,’ Alys prompted, ‘like you?’

‘Aye.’

Gil waited, but no further information emerged. A difficult situation, he reflected, to be in the same year as your tenant’s son.

‘It was sad how Mistress Weir’s husband died,’ said Alys, passing Gil the salt with her free hand. ‘Did she say it was in ’77 , Gil?’

‘Beatrice said that, aye,’ Gil agreed.

‘I was still at court, then.’ Lady Egidia stared into the distance, her long-chinned face remote. ‘Aye, I think I recall, your father must have come over from Thinacre to gather the rents and brought the tale back. Where did it happen? Elsrickle? Douglas?’

‘They never said.’

‘Elsrickle, I think,’ said Alys confidently, ‘from the tone in which Mistress Weir read out the name. Where is that?’

‘It’s a fair way from the Pow Burn,’ observed Michael. ‘It’s in Walston parish, the far end of the county. That way.’ He nodded vaguely south-east.

‘It was sadder yet what happened to the younger son,’ Lady Egidia said. ‘If I mind right, he came home maybe two years back with a new young wife on his crupper, having met and married her incontinent at some place where he’d taken a load of coals. That alone would ha’ been the speak of the parish for weeks, but then he took sick and was dead within the quarter, for all Beattie could do.’

‘Oh!’ said Alys in distress. ‘Is that Joanna? Oh, poor soul!’

‘Beatrice mentioned something of the sort,’ said Gil.

‘I mind that too,’ said Michael surprisingly. ‘The old man mentioned it in his letters. He’d found her somewhere by Ashgill, the other side of the Clyde.’

‘That isn’t on the list, is it?’ Gil asked Alys.

She shook her head. ‘They said their round stayed on this side of the river. How far is Elsrickle? Is it near there?’

‘No. Ashgill’s to the west, just across the river in Cadzow parish, Elsrickle is fourteen or fifteen miles east of here. The High House beyond Elsrickle,’ said Gil, helping Alys to some of the cold pie, ‘which I mind is one of the places on the list, must be the furthest away from the coal-heugh. There are ten names altogether, and they told us Murray would stop a night and a day at each, to gather the fees from the surrounding customers, and then ride on to the next.’

‘Maybe two weeks’ travelling, then,’ said Michael, ‘allowing for delays.’

Gil nodded. ‘And he’s been gone more than five weeks.’

‘You think he’s run off?’ asked Michael.

Gil looked at him across the table. ‘That or something else. He might have stayed somewhere to draw up some extra business agreement, as Mistress Weir suggested,’ he counted off, tapping his fingers on the linen cloth, ‘he might have fallen ill or died suddenly, like the grandsire, though I would have thought word would have got back to the coal-heugh by now. He might have gone to the salt-pans at Blackness and been held up there, or he might have decided to take the money he had collected and run to England or the Low Countries. Or I suppose it might be another reason altogether. Whither trow this man ha’ the way take? He could be anywhere.’

‘Surely not England!’ said Lady Egidia.

‘But what about the two other men?’ Alys reminded him.

‘That’s one of the puzzling things,’ agreed Gil.

‘One?’ said his mother.

‘His wife is young and lovely,’ said Alys.

Gil pulled a face. ‘Too sweet a mouthful for me. But yes, you’d think he’d be drawn home to a bed with Joanna in it. And there’s the way all those women see him differently. The old woman seems disappointed with him, Joanna’s his wife and speaks accordingly, but I think Beatrice dislikes him and the daughter who spoke to us was venomous.’

‘Maybe the daughter thought he should ha’ wed her,’ suggested Michael sourly.

‘Aye, that might be it. And what about you?’ Gil raised his eyebrows at the younger man. ‘What did you get from Fleming when you rode him over to Cauldhope? Has he any true information against Mistress Lithgo?’

Michael shrugged. ‘None that I can make out,’ he admitted. ‘He croaked on about having evidence, and how she’s infamous as a witch, and how many folk resort to the coal-heugh to get healing from her, and he wouldny hear of this corp being any other than the man Murray. I asked him what was this evidence, what he’d seen or heard for himself that was proof of witchcraft, but he never answered me other than to say she’d quarrelled wi’ the man. He’s a fool, I wish my father had never set him in place.’

‘So how will you begin, dear?’ asked Lady Egidia, before Gil could speak. He looked at Alys, and she smiled back and squeezed his hand briefly under the table.

‘Someone has to go out and ask each household when they last saw Thomas Murray,’ he said. ‘And while they’re about it, ask each one if there has ever been anything. .’ He paused. ‘Unusual. Aye. Anything unusual about the man or his dealings.’