Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘An easy enough task,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘Michael, you may as well do that since you’re here.’

‘Me?’ said Michael, his voice rising to a squeak. ‘I mean — why me? Why should — ?’

‘I’m sure you’d like to be a help,’ Lady Egidia informed him.

‘But I–I mean, I have to get back to the college. There’s my — I’ve to deal wi’ Davy Fleming. I canny go riding all over Lanarkshire,’ Michael protested, looking round him in faint panic. Gil caught his eye, aware of a degree of sympathy which surprised him.

‘It would speed your matter, in fact,’ he pointed out, ‘since the sooner we find the man the sooner we’ll convince that fool Fleming, and it would come better from you as your father’s son, riding round asking other folk’s stewards when they paid the bill to his coal-grieve, than from me. Then I can send to the salt-pan, and take the time to ask about here and all, see if there are any old tales of someone going missing, try to find another name for our corp. He must have a name, after all, poor devil.’

‘You’ll get more than you bargain for,’ his mother observed, ‘if you’re going to encourage all the old gossips and their tales. So that’s settled, Michael. Get a note of what questions Gil wants you to ask, and the list of the houses you must call at, before you go home the night, and you can make an early start in the morning.’ Michael nodded, and mumbled something ungracious which might have been assent, and she turned to Alys. ‘And what about you, my dear?’

‘I am bidden back to the coal-heugh,’ Alys admitted.

Lady Egidia’s gaze sharpened, but all she said was, ‘Then you’d best borrow Henry again.’

‘Double-distilled is better for burns,’ said Beatrice Lithgo, ‘and triple is better yet.’

Alys nodded. ‘I keep a small flask of the triple-distilled beside the kitchen salt,’ she agreed. She put the stoneware jar of lavender-water back in its place, and gazed round the crowded stillroom shelves. The sight appealed deeply to her; she would have liked to open and look into every one of the jars and bottles and leather sacks. ‘You are well stocked, mistress. And well informed. Socrates, heel!’ she added.

‘I learned a lot from Arbella,’ admitted Beatrice as the dog reluctantly left the barrel which had attracted him. ‘She was good in her day. You need someone handy wi’ the simples about a coal-heugh.’

‘My father is a stonemason,’ said Alys, ‘and I know stone-cutting and quarry-work, a little. I should like to learn about hewing coal, how it differs.’

‘You want Arbella for that,’ said Beatrice. ‘Or Joanna. She’s got it all at her finger-ends already. My man never liked to have much to do wi’ the pit, Our Lady succour him, and my father was a salt-boiler. I can tell you all about that, but no so much about coal.’

‘I have never seen a salt-pan. I should like to learn about that too,’ said Alys, with truth. ‘Your man was the elder son, mistress? When did he die?’

Beatrice’s face softened, and she gazed through a glass jar of preserved berries into some distant scene.

‘He was the elder son,’ she agreed. ‘His father’s heir, and no so like either Arbella or Auld Adam, either in looks or in temper, though he’d his father’s grey eyes. My Bel, poor lassie, will have a look of him when she loses her fat.’

‘You are saying he was less interested in the business?’ Alys prompted. ‘That must have been difficult.’

‘Oh, it was. You saw Arbella, when you rode in here the day, down in the tally-house inspecting the records and making up the note of what each man had sent up to the hill yesterday?’ Alys nodded. ‘Adam never cared for that. A great burden he found it, and even more he disliked directing the men at their work. He hated going into the pit. Music, he liked, and books, and talking learning with old Sir Arnold. He’d planned to sell the heugh, or at least his share in it, and move down to Linlithgow. He quarrelled wi’ Arbella over that. But then he died. In the pit, in a roof-fall, nine year since. It was his day-mind in March, just after Thomas rode off on the round,’ she added. Both women crossed themselves, and Beatrice turned resolutely to the shelf beside her. ‘Do you ever use this? I find it good for skin troubles.’

‘And Joanna’s man was the younger son,’ said Alys, taking the little jar and sniffing the contents. The dog looked up at her, his nose twitching. ‘Yes, indeed, I use this often.’ She sniffed again. ‘Is that rosemary in it as well? A good thought, I must try that. He died not long after they married, I think?’

‘He brought her home in May, two year ago,’ said Beatrice sadly, ‘and fell ill within the week, a wasting illness where his skin was dry and cracked on the hands and feet, his hair fell, the flesh melted off him. He couldny stomach a thing. Nothing helped. His breath smelled of garlic, and I couldny balance it out.’

‘I never heard of such an ailment!’ said Alys in dismay. ‘Could it have been poison?’

‘I thought that myself, but who would have poisoned him? We were all fond of Matt, he was a bonnie lad and a good maister, better than his brother, though I say it. No, I think it was some sickness, or maybe bad food or some wild plant got into the kailyard, for two of the colliers’ bairns had died of something similar no a week afore he brought Joanna home. Their mother did say they’d been drinking at one of the wells on the hillside, but there was a great smell of wild garlic about them.’

‘What a strange thing,’ said Alys.

‘Aye, strange it was. I tried all the remedies I could think of, and so did Arbella, but he was shriven and shrouded afore Lammas. Joanna, poor lass, truly mourned him, for all he’d courted her no more than a day or two and wed her out of hand.’

‘And then she took Murray.’

‘And then she took Murray,’ agreed Beatrice.

Alys watched her face carefully, but it gave nothing away. After a moment she said, ‘Does he beat her?’

The other woman’s gaze snapped to meet hers, and she smiled bitterly.

‘My, but you’re quick, lassie. No, not with his fists, but he uses his tongue. Sharp, sarcastic, making her out to be a fool. She’ll not complain, nor tell Arbella, but I’ve heard him.’

‘And no sign of that when he courted her, I suppose.’

‘Deed, no.’ Again the bitter smile. ‘Near a year she mourned Matthew, and the men were round her like wasps round a windfall, as bonnie as she is. I thought myself she favoured the lad Meikle, and it aye seemed to me Murray had eyes elsewhere, though that would never have — ’ She broke off. ‘But in the end she took Murray, and wed him a year since in July, wi’ Arbella’s blessing, and by Martinmas he was treating her like a scullery-lass.’

‘And was he coal-grieve already when they married?’

‘Oh, yes. It was Matthew raised him to grieve under him, then when he died Arbella put Murray in Matt’s place. He was a sinker afore that, and worked as a bearer the way some of them do when they areny cutting a shaft. Matt called him a natural pitman, said he had a great understanding of the coal and where it goes under the ground. As Matt himself did, I think.’

‘A bearer — that is the man who carries the coals away,’ Alys prompted. Beatrice nodded. ‘The hewer is a craftsman, and the bearer is his labourer, am I right? I should like to see more of this — without offending Mistress Weir,’ she added hastily, before Beatrice could speak. ‘Maybe someone could show me how it all happens.’

‘I’ll get Phemie to walk you up the hill,’ Beatrice offered.

‘I should like that, if she has the time,’ Alys said ingenuously. ‘Tell me, mistress, what do you think has come to Murray?’