Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘No, no, ale or water would be good,’ Alys assured her, seating herself cautiously on the bench by the door. She would certainly have bruises by the morning, she recognized.

‘Clerk?’ said Michael. ‘What clerk’s this, Mistress Paton?’

The woman turned from tethering her child to the leg of the bench. ‘Why Sir David,’ she said. ‘Your own sub-steward. I’m right troubled about him, maister, for he’s no roused nor stirred since I put him to bed. He’ll no be easy to move like that, save if you put him in a cart or the like.’

‘Sir David?’ said Alys in disbelief. ‘What is he doing here? Is he injured, or ill?’

‘Aye, Sir David. Him that’s sub-steward to Douglas,’ she said again, and looked from Alys to Michael. ‘He came stackering in off the fields, no long after the rest went off to Lanark, and fell in a dwam in front of the cart-shed yonder. I washed the worst of the blood off him, and got him in the house and put him in our bed, but being here my lone I couldny do more about it.’

‘But what’s come to him?’ said Michael. ‘He was well enough when I left Cauldhope this morning. Blood? And what’s he about down here?’

‘He never said,’ said the woman. The piercing voice from indoors said something Alys did not catch. ‘I’d say he’d been fighting, if it wasny a clerk, or else he’s maybe taken a beating.’

Michael turned to Alys, spread his hands, and then followed their hostess into the house, ducking under the low lintel. She sat still, thinking that she should follow him, listening to him asking for a light, and then to the scrape of a flint. The grandam shrieked, and beside her the child announced something as unintelligibly as the old woman.

Alys looked at it, and drew a sharp, involuntary breath; the little face was marred by a split upper lip like the hare’s. No wonder its mother cursed the beasts, she thought, and smiled at the baby. It grinned back, showing several teeth, ducked beneath the seat and emerged with a wooden spoon, which it began to bang vigorously on the bench.

‘Mistress Mason?’ Michael was saying, and she realized he had spoken to her already. ‘Would you come and look at Sir David? I don’t like the look of him either.’

The house lived up to its occupant’s by-name, and the inside was very dark. This was hardly a surprise, she told herself, since there was no window, the peat on the hearth was smouldering rather than burning, and the light Michael had asked for was provided by a single tiny flame. As her eyes adjusted, she made out two box beds built into the wall at her left. The bundle of rags in the nearest stirred, shaded its eyes against the flame, and produced another shrill comment. She smiled, curtsied, and passed on to the further bed.

‘You see,’ said Michael. ‘He doesny answer, and his breathing’s no right. And he keeps twitching.’ The man in the reeking bed shuddered as he spoke, and she bent closer.

‘Is it truly Sir David?’ she asked, looking at the battered, swollen features in the dim light.

‘Oh, it’s him, all right, poor devil, and I’d say Mistress Paton was right, he’s been fighting, or been beaten. Likely some lassie’s brothers have caught up wi’ him,’ he added sourly. ‘But what are we to do wi’ him, and what’s best to do for him first?’

Alys touched the steward’s damaged face. His skin was cool rather than hot, and clammy to the touch. The man’s breathing was alarmingly shallow, and as she watched another small convulsion shook him. She straightened up, gathering her thoughts.

‘Is he fit to be moved, do you think?’ asked Michael. ‘What should we do wi’ him?’

‘You’ll no leave him here?’ said Mistress Paton, on a sharp note very like the old woman’s. ‘That’s our bed. Where are we to sleep?’

‘I think we must move him,’ said Alys. ‘He should be in his own house, and his hurts tended.’ Something sweet for strength, she was thinking, trying to recall the words of the Infirmarer at Saint-Croix. The convent’s infirmary had possessed several books, of which Alys had had free run, but Mère Isabelle had also her own ideas on the treatment of the injured and sick. ‘Mistress Paton, have you given him anything?’ she asked.

‘Deed, no, excepting a drink of ale when he first got here,’ said the woman. ‘And it’s the same jug my man was drinking from this morning,’ she added, ‘so it’s no anything I gave him that’s done this to him.’

‘No, no, I never thought it,’ said Alys. ‘You’ve taken good care of him already. Have you anything sweet in the house? And is there fresh water?’ A foolish question, she told herself, as Mistress Paton stared at her in the dim light. Outside the child was still battering the bench with the spoon. The old woman screeched something, and Mistress Paton started, and nodded.

‘Aye, she’s right, for once. I’ve a wee drop honey in a piggin on the shelf. Would that do ye? It’s last year’s, mind, it’s set like glue.’ Another piercing remark. ‘Aye, by the fire, if the fire was putting out any heat. I canny be everywhere, you auld — ’ She bit off her comment, and moved to the other side of the house, reaching up to the wall-head to lift from among the objects stowed there a small pottery jar with a scrap of flat stone serving as a lid.

‘Honey?’ said Michael blankly. ‘What will that do?’ He watched as Alys set the little jar next to the peat-glow to warm it. One of the men appeared, seized the bellows which lay by the fire and plied them expertly; Michael suddenly moved to the door, and had a word with the other man still outside.

By the time the cart appeared before the house, Alys had contrived a small tisane of thyme and mint from the kailyard with a generous amount of honey in it, and was perched rather painfully on the wooden bar at the outer edge of the bed, dripping her concoction slowly into the clerk’s bruised mouth. The first drops had an immediate effect; Fleming drew a deep breath, and the shuddering convulsions ceased.

‘Honey is wonderful stuff,’ she said, watching this.

The old woman asked a shrill question, and Mistress Paton looked up sharply from the hearth, where she was stirring the iron pot which stood over the revived fire.

‘I never thought o’ that,’ she said. ‘Are you her from the Pow Burn? The auld collier’s widow? For if ye are — ’

‘No,’ said Alys, startled.

‘That’s the lady’s good-daughter from Belstane,’ supplied Steenie.

‘Our Lady be thanked,’ said the woman. ‘If our Dod found I’d let that one over the threshold he’d break a stob across my back.’

‘Do you mean Mistress Lithgo?’ said Alys. ‘What has she done to you?’

‘Lithgo? Who’s she?’

‘Mistress Mason?’ said Michael, coming into the house. ‘Is he fit to be moved, do you think? We’ve a cart here.’

Alys looked down at her patient. He was beginning to stir, and now uttered a heart-rending groan. His eyes opened.

‘Fleming?’ said Michael. He bent over his servant in the gloom. ‘What came to you, man? You’re in a bad way here.’

There was a pause, in which Fleming opened and closed his swollen mouth. The old woman screeched suddenly, and he flinched, croaked something, swallowed, tried again.

‘… t’ss Li’hgo,’ he said.

Riding back up towards Forth in the drizzle, to pick up the road to Linlithgow and Blackness, Gil found he had selected one of the more garrulous stable-hands to accompany him. He was quite unable to concentrate on his thoughts for the questions Patey fired at him. Where were they going, how long would it take, where would they lie this night? He answered patiently at first, then said sharply, ‘Hold your peace and let me think, man. I’ve matters to ponder.’