Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘No, but the lassie’s name’s no Lockhart, it’s Robertson,’ objected her companion.

‘There’s many Lockharts in the town,’ Sir John explained. ‘It’s a common name in this parish, madam. Indeed. I confess I canny place a Marion.’

‘This would be an older woman,’ said Alys. ‘She’d be near sixty, I think, if she still lives.’

‘Oh, Marion Lockhart!’ said the small woman. ‘Marion that was daughter to Robin Lockhart the sawyer, Mally No, she’s dead, ten year since. Afore you came here, that would be, Sir John. Was she kin of yours, lassie?’

‘No, no,’ Alys said. ‘But a friend of mine in Glasgow bade me, if she still lived, to say she was asking for her.’

‘Glasgow?’ said the stout woman suspiciously. ‘I mind Robin Lockhart’s Marion, but I never heard her mention a friend at Glasgow. Did she ever say such a thing to you, Isa?’

‘No, never, Mally,’ said Isa, shaking her head. ‘What friend was that?’

‘Hardly a friend, I think,’ said Alys, ‘merely that Mistress Lockhart did her a good turn once and she minds her kindly. She’ll be sorry to hear she has died. What came to her?’

The two heads turned, and a portentous glance passed.

‘I’ll away about my business,’ said Sir John hastily. Alys curtsied, but the old women hardly noticed him go.

‘Women’s trouble,’ said Mally, lowering her voice. Alys made the appropriate response, the indrawn breath and tilted head, and Mally nodded in satisfaction, sucked her teeth, and folded brawny arms under her large bosom. ‘See,’ she pronounced, ‘she’d the two boys no long after she was wedded.’

‘That was to Will Brownlie across the river,’ supplied Isa, clasping her claw hands at her narrow waist.

Her friend sucked her teeth again. ‘Aye, and she was never the same after the second one. Terrible, it was, so her mammy tellt me.’

‘A big bairn,’ said Isa, nodding in turn, ‘a gey big bairn. Three days crying wi’ him, she was, and then he tore her.’

Alys flinched, and Mally put a hand on her arm.

‘They’re no all like that,’ she said encouragingly, ‘she’d an easy time of it wi’ her first, likely you’ll no have trouble. You’re no. .?’

‘No,’ said Alys.

‘Plenty time, lassie,’ said Isa. ‘Enjoy yer man while you can, it’s never the same after the bairns come.’

‘But was that how Mistress Lockhart died?’ asked Alys, thinking that this comment was more acceptable than others she had had.

‘No, no. She lived another twenty year,’ said Mally

‘Five-and-twenty,’ corrected Isa, ‘for she was buried the year after my George. But she was never no more use to her man, she tellt me that herself once. Troubled her the rest of her life, that did. She would aye see blood, ye ken,’ she confided in a whisper.

‘She’d the lassie, mind you,’ said Mally. ‘When her boys was near grown. Fifteen, the oldest one was, and Marion turned up here on a visit at her mammy’s yett wi’ a lassie bairn in her plaid.’

‘Aye,’ said Isa drily. Alys looked quickly at her, and met the sharp dark eyes under the folded linen headdress.

‘Had she an easier time with the lassie?’ she asked.

‘I never heard,’ said Mally regretfully. ‘Her mammy said it wasny long, the bairn slipped out like a calf, but I never got to ask her myself.’

‘I did,’ said Isa, and looked surprised at her own words. ‘She said the same to me. You mind, her mammy was bad at the time wi’ that spring cough that was in the town, and her at the Pow Burn, that was a great friend of Marion’s mammy, was away and no help to be got there, so I went in to see to the house for her and get her man’s supper, and there was Marion sitting wi’ the bairn, and a lassie from Dalserf wi’ her to nurse it. Easy time or no, she’d nothing to nurse it wi’ herself. No milk. The bairn must ha’ been four week old by then, old enough to ha’ lost the look of its daddy that they all have when they’re newborn. No great look of Marion it had neither,’ she added. ‘Strange, how it happens.’

Mally shook her head, tut-tutting in sympathy.

‘What help could the Pow Burn folk have been?’ Alys asked. ‘Surely you’d never burn coal with a cough in the house, the smoke makes a bad chest worse.’

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Mally ‘Coals is the worst thing there is for a bad chest. You can’t beat a good mustard plaister, I always say.’

‘No, it was that Mistress Weir,’ said Isa. Both women crossed themselves. ‘She was awful handy wi’ a pill or a bottle at the time, if you went up the Pow Burn to ask, but she was away, you ken.’

‘Now is that no a strange thing,’ said Mally, sucking her teeth.

‘What?’ demanded Isa.

‘The bairn we’re speaking of — Marion Lockhart’s lassie — that’s Mistress Weir’s good-daughter now. No the one that does the healing, the other one, Mistress Brownlie.’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Isa. ‘I ken that. For her new man, him that’s missing, was asking me the exact same questions, just after Candlemas.’

‘Do you tell me!’ exclaimed Alys, in genuine astonishment. ‘Now if I’d realized, I could have asked about her mother when I saw her yesterday, and saved myself the walk into Carluke. But then I’d never have met either of you ladies,’ she said gracefully, and they nodded and smiled, much gratified.

‘Nor you’d no ha’ seen St Andrew’s kirk,’ added Mally, ‘and that’s worth a longer walk than here to Belstane.’

‘Was there aught else you wanted to learn, lassie?’ asked Isa.

Alys met her sharp gaze again.

‘Mistress Lockhart’s sons might recall my friend,’ she said. ‘Where did you say they are now? I think neither of them has their father’s land?’

‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed Mally, ‘for they were both wedded and away to their own place long afore Will Brownlie died. Barely saw his lassie wedded, he did, but at least he lasted so long, thanks be to Our Lady.’

‘I’d ha’ looked for him to last a while longer,’ said Isa. ‘Fine upstanding man he was. But there you are, you never can tell when you’ll meet your end, and at least he made a good death, so I heard.’ She crossed herself, and her friend nodded and did likewise. ‘Where did Marion’s boys go, Mally? There’s one of them in Draffan, is there no?’

‘Draffan,’ agreed Mally. ‘That would be Tammas, I’d say. And Hob’s in …’ She paused, and sucked her teeth again. ‘Is it Canderside? Both of them went into Lesmahagow,’ she explained to Alys, who understood her to mean the next parish.

‘Too far for me,’ she said.

‘Depends on why you’re wanting to go there,’ said Isa acutely.

Lady Cunningham was in the stable-yard, seated on the mounting-block watching a young horse being led round, oblivious to the light drizzle which had started. She was booted and spurred, clad in a muddy riding-dress and crowned by a battered felt hat shaped like a sugar-loaf, and drew the eye as she always did.

‘Trot him out, Dod,’ she said, and turned her head as Alys came in at the gate. The young maidservant bobbed nervously to her mistress, then hurried by and into the house. ‘There you are, my dear. You’ve missed Gil.’ She turned back to scrutinize the horse’s action. ‘Aye, he’s still going a wee thing short on that leg, isn’t he? Another hot soak, Henry, I think. Now let me see the piebald.’

‘I have missed Gil?’ said Alys. ‘I thought he had gone out with the colliers, before I left. And he has not taken Socrates,’ she added, as the wolfhound commanded her attention from the end of the cart-shed with one deep imperious remark. ‘Why is he chained up?’

‘The brute’s to get washed,’ said Henry resignedly from his post at Lady Cunningham’s elbow. ‘A bath.’