Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘Go on.’

‘We’ve a hill of small coal up at the heugh, waiting to be sold on, and Murray was trying to get an agreement to sell it to Willie Wood down at Blackness, that’s all.’

‘What was the problem?’

‘Problem?’

‘What was the delay in getting the agreement?’

‘None that I ken. Well, it was maybe that we couldny be sure how often we’d have a load worth taking so far, what wi’ the throw at one side the working and the seam running thin at the other.’

‘Running thin? How much longer will it hold out?’

‘No telling. Could be years, could be months. The first seam lasted thirty year, this one’s done twenty now. I’d say it was about done, but I could be wrong.’

‘Is that why you’ve only the one shift working, or is the place haunted as they say?’

‘Ha!’ said Jamesie, without humour. ‘There’s aye strange things in a mine. Noises and missing tools, voices in the distance, the folk we call the Knockers, you get used to it. Some of the lads thinks there’s more than that at the Pow Burn, but I’d say myself it’s these owls, which are all ower the place by night. No, you’re right, the auld wife has ordered the work slowed down a bittie till we find a new seam. She put out the order five week since, as soon as Murray was off the place.’

Socrates came back to Gil’s side, and nudged his hand. He scratched absently behind the dog’s soft ears, and said, ‘You don’t like Murray.’

‘Joanna’s feart for him. His sharp tongue, you ken.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Is it no enough? No,’ admitted Meikle. ‘It’s no all. He’s a hard master, demanding, aye looking for a reason to cut a man’s pay. He’s aye after the women behind — behind her back. Nan Tweedie where I lodge says he’s aye sportsome, aye making suggestions, aye got a hand for a rump or a titty. And he’s no easy to work beside neither. You know the way some folk are just aye in the wrong place? He’s like that — forever in the way, and it’s never his fault. Mind you,’ he added, and Gil could hear the wry smile in the man’s voice, ‘he’s learned that if I see Joanna’s been weeping, nothing goes right in the mine for him the next day. Strange, that.’

‘Does he drink in Lanark often?’

‘Once a week, maybe. One of the men’s wives up at the heugh brews a good draught, but he’ll no sit in a common collier’s house and drink ale wi’ the rest of us.’ This time he laughed. ‘Agnes Brewster would likely put a dead mouse in his cup if he tried it.’

‘Does he get on with Fleming?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice. But there’s nobody much he does get on with, maister.’

Gil considered this, and at length said, ‘What do you think has happened?’

‘I think he’s run off,’ said Meikle promptly. ‘Taken the quarter’s money and run. But what he’s done wi’ the two sinker lads I’ve no notion. They might go along wi’ him, unless he’s slit their throats and left them under a bank somewhere. But then, that’s what I would hope he’s done,’ he admitted, ‘and leave Joanna free.’

‘She’d be freer yet if he’s dead,’ said Gil deliberately. ‘You’ve not slain him yourself, or paid the sinker lads to do the same?’

‘Now I never thought of that,’ said Meikle with regret. ‘Though I doubt if I could ever afford the sum they’d ask for it. Besides, you’d think if he was dead the word would ha’ — Is that an owl?’

A pale shape drifted silently across the yard above their heads. Socrates looked up, and something small rustled in the shadows of the cart-shed. The floating shape alighted on the ridge of the far range, and delivered a familiar Hu-hu-hoo.

‘An owl,’ agreed Gil.

‘I’ll away in,’ said Meikle. He turned and hurried up the steps, ignoring Gil’s attempt to question him further.

Alys was at her devotions. When he entered the chamber, leaving the dog sprawled before the embers of the hall fire at the foot of the stairs, she was seated relaxed and upright in the candlelight by the empty hearth, her feet next to a brass box of hot coals, the prayer-book which was her father’s wedding gift open on her lap; her eyes were shut. Gil undressed quietly, considering the interview with Meikle. It was strange that a man who could speak hardily of the odd things in the mine — who or what were the Knockers? he wondered — should retreat so promptly from the mere presence of an owl. But the other information the man had provided was certainly interesting, though he could not yet see where it might fit into the puzzle. Nobody had a good word for Thomas Murray, other than his wife, but there still seemed no reason for him to disappear.

He abandoned these thoughts, and settled down to make his own petition before the crucifix on the end wall of the bed. As he drew back the bedclothes to climb in, Alys closed her book and turned her head to smile at him.

‘Did you speak to the colliers? Did they have anything useful to tell you?’ she asked.

‘A little.’

She put the book carefully in its tasselled velvet bag and set it on a shelf by the hearth, then rose and came forward to him. Her hair was loose, falling over the shoulders of her bedgown, and shone in the lamplight. He put his hands on her shoulders and bent his head to kiss her.

‘What did they say?’

He slid one hand down across her breast, down to the knot of ribbons which fastened the bedgown.

‘Later,’ he said.

But later, much later, lying skin against skin, heart against heart, drowsy with loving, he found a deep reluctance to break the mood with rational thought. It seemed Alys felt the same way, but just before she fell asleep she murmured something he failed to catch. He made a questioning noise, and she repeated it.

‘Joanna. Joanna is the key, I think.’

‘Joanna?’ he said in the morning. ‘What has she — why Joanna? Why not Beatrice?’

They had exchanged fuller accounts of the previous day while they dressed, Gil describing the interview with old William Forrest as he hooked up Alys’s gown for her, she recounting her conversation with Joanna as she laced his doublet in a ritual which had grown up almost immediately after their marriage, and tended to slow the start of the day.

‘Because Beatrice is a good woman,’ Alys answered him now, intent before the dim greenish mirror as she pinned her indoor cap to her braids. ‘And she loved her husband.’

‘I thought you said Joanna loved her first husband too. Why would she kill him?’

‘I don’t think she did. Nevertheless, she is the key.’ She turned away from the mirror. ‘I spoke to Kate Paterson, Gil.’

‘The sinkers’ kin.’

‘Yes, their sister. She works in the kitchen of the house. She is not concerned for her brothers, she said, because she heard some word that they had gone to Linlithgow. Blackness is the port for Linlithgow, I think? Is that where the salt-boilers are?’

‘To Linlithgow?’ he repeated. ‘Why? Did Murray go with them? How did she hear that? It seems strange.’

‘It does,’ she agreed. ‘I questioned her, but all she knew was that the folk at Forth, is that the right name?’ He nodded. ‘Had told some of the colliers that her brothers were gone to Linlithgow. She seemed to think they were to meet Murray there.’

‘Ah!’ said Gil, and then, ‘But that means they were not there together.’

‘So I thought. She knew nothing more.’

‘Forth,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘It’s the last place on the round. I suppose they could have got that far, but why would Murray have left them and gone ahead to Linlithgow?’

She nodded, and straightened the velvet cuffs of her red worsted gown. ‘Would you say Sir David is well liked?’