Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

Sir John bent over the coffin and uncovered, crossing himself, then laid his free hand cautiously on the shock of red hair and snatched it away.

‘It’s like horsehair,’ he said. ‘Aye, poor soul. What a death he’s met. Slain three times over, as your man said. And have you no idea who he might be?’

‘There’s a many folk seen him that’s offered one name or another,’ said Alan, ‘but none of them seems to fit, and no two has come up wi’ the same name. By rights we ought to have someone at their beads by him,’ he admitted, ‘and maybe a couple o’ candles, but Henry willny have candles in here.’

‘Oh, no,’ agreed Sir John, with a glance at the sacks of feed. ‘Indeed no.’

‘My husband thinks he may be a man from an earlier time,’ Alys offered.

‘Earlier?’ The priest looked round at Gil. ‘How much earlier, would you say?’

Gil explained his thoughts, aware of the interest of the stable-hands gathered round the door. Sir John replaced his felt hat and listened with care.

‘You tell me the peat grows,’ he said. ‘I never thought of that. I just thought it was aye there. No, I suppose, I’ve heard the old folk talk of where there was a drowning pool in the moss aforetime, where there’s only peat now.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed Gil. ‘I’ve heard the same.’

‘And at the bottom of the peat you find logs and the like,’ continued Sir John. ‘Aye, I agree, now I think on it that could easy be from the time of the Flood.’

‘And this man was halfway down the peat,’ said Alys.

Gil watched the priest’s expression change slowly as his thoughts followed Alys’s. He could see the moment when enlightenment struck; the man crossed himself hastily, dragging off his hat again, and bent the knee to the indifferent corpse.

‘I must away back to the town,’ he said. ‘I need to go through the kirk records. There may be something … Indeed.’

He turned to the doorway, and the stable-hands scattered, but the light was cut off. Lady Cunningham paused on the threshold, glanced briefly at the corpse, crossed herself, and held out a set of tablets tied with tape.

‘Steenie’s returned, Gilbert, with word from Michael. He will be here for supper, and it seems they may have located Murray’s bolt-hole. ‘

‘You wrote,’ said Gil, handing the little glasses of cordial, ‘that you’d a name for one of Murray’s drinking friends, and directions to find the fellow.’

‘I did,’ agreed Michael. He raised his glass in a toast to his godmother, and she smiled and responded. ‘Your man reached me at a good moment. I’d found Murray’s horse, left standing at Juggling Nick’s for weeks, I was just fending off Bessie Dickson’s demands for five weeks’ livery — which is sheer impudence,’ he added, ‘for the beast’s plainly been working for its keep! Then Steenie arrived wi’ your word, and I was able to turn the argument, why had Bessie no sent to his friends, passed the word round those he drinks wi’. But,’ he concluded, and took another taste of the bright glassful, ‘she claims she couldny.’

‘Why not?’ asked Alys.

‘Seems he mainly drinks wi’ this one fellow, name of Andro Syme, fellow much his age that’s a forester to Bonnington, and he’s not been seen in the town for a few weeks either. I got a description of sorts — ordinary height, ordinary coloured hair, grey eyes. One of the lassies said he was gey handsome but she thought he’d a woman already, he never looked her way,’ Michael grinned. ‘Bessie had a word or two to say about that. So I’ve got the directions to Syme’s cottage, down in the gorge below St Kentigern’s, but it was too late in the day by then to be starting out after him, let alone waiting for you to catch up with us, Maister Gil.’

‘You’re telling me this drinking companion hasn’t been seen either?’ persisted Gil.

‘That’s right,’ Michael agreed. ‘Maybe the two of them have gone off together. Gone to sea, gone to England, gone to the Low Countries. Maybe they’ve both got a lassie in Edinburgh or somewhere.’

‘Why would they leave now? Did they leave Juggling Nick’s together?’

‘Not that Bessie said.’ Michael sounded startled. ‘I got the idea Murray had simply left his horse wi’ her and gone off alone. Syme wasny there.’

‘And that was when Bessie last saw Murray? Did you check that?’

‘Do you know, I did,’ said Michael, with an air of triumph. ‘He was back there no so long after he’d been in wi’ the two other colliers, looked in and asked for his friend, and went away again. Bessie’s not seen him since. And that I’ll believe,’ he went on, ‘for she’d have had the money for his horse’s keep off him if he showed his bonnet round the door.’

‘You’ve done well,’ said Lady Cunningham in approving tones. Michael glanced at her, his colour deepening in the candlelight, and she smiled at him again. ‘And tomorrow you can go to the forester’s house.’

‘David Fleming does that, Mother,’ said Gil. She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Instructs folk to do what they were about to do anyway.’

‘Oh, I ask your pardon, dear,’ she said with irony.

He grinned at her affectionately, and Alys said, ‘How is Sir David, Michael? I think Steenie forgot to ask.’

‘Crabbit as a drunkard,’ said Michael crisply. ‘Flies into a rage for nothing. Threw his shoes at the laddie that brought his porridge, began abusing me when I wouldny fetch him his pestilent book. Otherwise, I suppose, he’s going on well enough. The fever’s left him, he’s had no more of those twitching fits.’

‘I assume your notion of first light is later than mine, Michael,’ said Lady Cunningham, ‘if the man had his porridge afore you left.’

‘I wonder why the rages?’ said Alys.

‘They’re often like that when they’re recovering from something,’ said her mother-in-law.

‘Yes, but this is very soon. It was a severe beating he had.’

‘Aye, they’re saying that,’ said Alan Forrest in the doorway. He bowed to his mistress, who said rather sharply:

‘What do you want, man? Is it to the point?’

‘Near enough, mistress. I’ve heard from two folk the day how your man was taken up for dead, Maister Michael,’ he said, grinning, ‘and one of them tellt me when the funeral was to be. But since they said and all that the young mistress was lying at death’s door after she fell from her horse,’ he nodded politely at Alys, who stared at him in amazement, ‘I wasny concerned.’

‘Get to the point, man,’ said Lady Egidia.

‘Aye, well. It was for Maister Gil. About the mannie in the feed-store.’

‘Have you a name for him yet?’ Michael asked.

‘Not yet,’ said Gil. ‘John Heriot was here asking the same thing. What is it, Alan?’

‘You ken that finger you’re so keen to keep by the corp?’ Gil nodded. ‘Well, I think Jackie Heriot’s away wi’ it, and its wee bit cloth and all. It’s no in the coffin now, and I’ve threatened the household wi’ all sorts since supper and none of them will admit to lifting it.’

‘The house should be up this burn somewhere,’ said Michael over the rumble of the nearby falls, ‘though it wasny clear how far.’ He paused in picking his way up the slope among the trees. Behind them his men spread out to trample through the young bracken. ‘I’m right glad Mistress Mason stayed behind.’

‘She was reluctant,’ said Gil, ‘but I pressed her to it. We’re surely close to finding Murray, and it may be unpleasant. She’s ridden up to the Pow Burn instead, to talk about Fleming with Mistress Lithgo.’

He paused to look about him, considering the ground.

They were in a deep hollow of the banks of the Clyde. Not far away the huge waterfall called Corra Linn roared and thundered, but here it was still and somehow oppressive, the trees tall and well-grown but dripping with moss, knee-deep in bracken and ferns just uncurling round the green-and-brown trunks. The spring was well advanced in this sheltered spot; primroses and violets hid among the tree-roots, the hawthorn was in full bloom, the beech trees were leafing out. At the bottom of the hollow a small burn rattled down to join the Clyde. Butterflies flitted, an early bumblebee blundered through a shaft of sunlight. One of the men tripped in a rabbit-hole and cursed, and away above the edge of the valley crows cawed over their nest-building in a stand of elm. Lef and gras and blosme springes in Averil, I wene , Gil thought, and gazed round, wondering what was missing. The back of his neck crawled as if he was being watched.