Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘And would that be this business of the corp in the peat-cutting?’ asked Patey. ‘Or is it the man Murray?’

‘Hold your peace,’ Gil repeated.

‘Just I was going to say,’ persisted Patey in injured tones, ‘there’s one of the collier lassies yonder, watching us.’

Gil looked where the man pointed, and saw a small plump figure standing knee-deep in yellow flowers, under a group of bent hawthorn trees in the hollow of a burn below the track. Plaid over her head against the rain, she was still identifiable: not Phemie but her sister. What was the girl’s name? Bel, that was it. The one who never spoke.

‘The one that doesny speak,’ said Patey helpfully. ‘Tongue-tied, she is. She isny daft, mind you, and they say she’s a grand spinner. No a bad thing in a lassie, to be tongue-tied.’

‘What, and never ask you what you want for your supper?’ Gil dismounted. ‘Bide here and hold my horse. I want a word wi’ her.’

‘You can have a’ the words you want,’ said Patey ‘but she’ll never have a word for you, maister.’ He guffawed at his own wit, then finally became silent under Gil’s glare, and took the reins.

Bel was still watching them warily, and when Gil climbed down from the track she looked around as if judging her chances of escape. He stopped at a little distance from her, the yellow flowers round his boots. She must be thirteen or fourteen, he thought, surveying her, plainer than her sister and still covered in puppy-fat. Tib had been much the same at that age, less anxious but with the same sulky expression. If this girl was tongue-tied, that would explain a lot.

‘You’re Bel Crombie, aren’t you?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘Do you mind me? I’m Gil Cunningham.’ She nodded again, and bobbed in a brief, apprehensive curtsy. ‘Should you be out here your lone, Bel?’

She shrugged, bent to pick another handful of wet flowers, showed them to him and pushed them into a linen sack at her belt. Gathering something for the still-room, he surmised.

‘And it’s raining,’ he added. She looked at him, then at the sky, and shrugged again. This was not going to be easy, he recognized, and there was a strange quality to the girl which made him uncomfortable about questioning her. Still, one had to try. ‘Bel, could I ask you a few things?’

She straightened up to look directly at him, with a withering stare rather like those his mother’s cat turned on Socrates, and waited.

‘Have you any idea where Thomas Murray might be?’ he asked. She shook her head firmly. ‘Or what’s come to him?’ Another eloquent shrug. He paused to consider, trying to frame the question so it could be answered Yes or No. ‘Do you like him?’ An innocent enough question. Bel screwed up her face and shook her head. ‘Does he ever try to kiss you?’

She shook her head again, looked down at her person and carefully lifted away an invisible something that clung about her hips.

‘He’s free with his hands,’ Gil supplied. She nodded. ‘And yet he’s never followed it up?’ A puzzled look. This is a young lassie, he reminded himself. ‘He’s never tried kissing you.’ Another shake of the head, with an impatient glance: I told you that. ‘The day he left,’ he said, and she frowned, still watching him carefully, ‘did anything unusual happen? Anything at all?’

After a moment she nodded. He smiled encouragingly.

‘Who did it happen to? Who was involved?’ he asked. ‘If I name everyone, can you tell me when I say the right names?’

She nodded, and by enumerating the household he learned that Mistress Weir and Joanna had been involved, as well as Murray.

‘Was that when Mistress Weir sent you with a gift for Murray?’ he asked. Her blue eyes widened, and she nodded. ‘Mistress Brownlie told my wife of it. Was that so unusual, for your grandmother to give him something?’

She nodded vehemently, and mimed an angry quarrel, wagging a finger at the rain.

‘They’re usually at odds,’ he interpreted, and she suddenly gave him a shy smile. ‘And then he rode off as usual with the Paterson men?’ Another nod. ‘Do you know why she gave him the gift?’

Bel raised an imaginary glass to drink his health, and counted off one, two, three with the other hand.

‘It was to drink her health on her birthday,’ he recalled, and she nodded. ‘Are you saying that was three days after they left?’ Another nod. ‘That was a friendly gesture.’

She stared at him, her expression changing slowly back to the withering cat look. Then she shrugged and turned away, bending to the yellow marsh-marigolds round her feet.

‘Can you tell me anything else?’ Gil asked. Another shrug. ‘Why does your grandam dislike Murray?’ She gave him a pitying glance. ‘Is it simply that he won’t do as she bids him?’

She straightened up, pushing another handful of flowers into the linen sack, and placed one hand flat in the air, a little higher than her own height. She gestured round her face, nimble fingers describing the long ends of a linen headdress. A woman, taller than herself but shorter than her mother.

‘Joanna — Mistress Brownlie?’ he said. Bel nodded. She held up one hand, fingers opening and shutting. Someone talking? She indicated the invisible Joanna, and cowered in fear. ‘Threats to Joanna? Who threatens her? Your grandmother?’

This got him an exasperated stare. She squared her shoulders and stuck out her plump chest and her elbows. A man, and a conceited man.

‘Your brother? Murray? Murray threatens Joanna?’ Another nod. ‘It’s a man’s prerogative to chastise his wife,’ he said on a venture. ‘I’d have thought Mistress Weir would see little wrong in that.’ And that’s hypocrisy, he thought, for if I ever raised my hand to Alys I think I would cut my throat afterwards.

Whether she detected the hypocrisy or not, Bel’s expression would have parched grain. She sighed ostentatiously, established Joanna again with the same deft movements, and then straightened her back, raised her chin and outlined a wired cap on her head. He nodded, and she assumed an expression of simpering affection, and held her hands out to the invisible Joanna.

‘Mistress Weir dotes on Joanna?’

Bel confirmed this. Then she sketched a row of women to her left, and identified them: herself, her sister, her mother. When he named them aloud, she nodded again.

‘Is this how you talk to your family?’ he asked, fascinated. She threw him an irritated look and, stepping into the role of her grandmother again, swept the row of invisible figures aside with one hand while she drew the equally invisible Joanna closer with the other, still simpering with exaggerated affection.

‘So Mistress Weir would place Joanna over all the rest of you,’ he said. Bel nodded encouragingly. ‘Even your brother?’

She had not thought of that. She considered the question briefly while the rain pattered on the hawthorn leaves, then spread her hands.

‘And yet she sent you with the gift for Murray.’

She shrugged, and turned her head away, unmoving for a moment. Then, obviously coming to a decision, she began again. The wired headdress, the elegant stance: Arbella. She steadied a mortar with one hand and worked the pestle with the other, pausing to add a pinch of this and a careful drop of that, and looked expectantly at him.

‘Mistress Weir helps your mother in the stillroom,’ he offered. ‘I thought it was your sister did that.’ She frowned, shook her head, stirred the imaginary mortar again, her lips moving busily as if she was speaking. ‘Mistress Weir taught your mother.’ Bel flicked him a glance, nodded, continued to work the pestle. ‘What are you telling me, Bel?’

She sighed, abandoned the mortar, and pulled up the skirt of her gown to reach the purse that hung at her knee between gown and kirtle. From it she drew out a much-scored piece of grey slaty stone and a slate-pencil, bent to lean the slate on her knee and took a careful grasp of the pencil to write. She was no clerk: she formed each letter laboriously, with the use of elbow, tongue and head. Standing in the rain watching her, he appreciated that she would find all her dumb-show (yes, that was exactly the word) much easier than scribing anything at all.