Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘I see what you mean.’ Michael opened his eyes and looked longingly at the door. ‘Can we go outside? I canny breathe in here. You must have a right strong stomach, Maister Gil.’

‘We’ll stand by the doorway. There’s still things to learn here. Can you jalouse why two men should meet their end in the one moment?’

‘A judgement on their unnatural ways.’

‘What, to caus all men fra wicket vycis fle. Aye, possibly, but I’m no so sure it works like that,’ Gil said wryly. ‘Come on, you’re an educated man, and you learned the hunt the same as I did. What can you see, or not see?’

‘Was it maybe some sickness? Christ aid, it’s foul enough in here now to infect the Host of Scotland. I hope we’re no dead by morning ourselves.’

‘Do you see sign of sickness? Has either man’s belly been afflicted, would you say? The jordan’s there below the bed,’ he pointed into the shadows, ‘but it hadny been used.’

‘No, there’s no sign, but the rats might have got the traces.’

‘If one of them sickened first, the other would have got him to bed. I see only that they bedded together. I think when they went into the bed they were hale.’

‘It’s a judgement, then, like I said.’

‘Think, Michael. Two men, hale when they ate their supper, both dead or too far gone to rise afore it was dark. What does that suggest to you?’

‘If it’s no a judgement from Heaven, is it poison?’

‘So I think.’ Gil relaxed. ‘I think they were poisoned.’

‘Poisoned.’ Michael gazed round the sparse, shadowy interior of the cottage, as if looking for a culprit. ‘Who by, then? Was it deliberate, or was the supper bad? Is there any ill going about that would slay two men in that time? Or was it maybe a pact atween them two?’

‘What, a pact to die together? I’ll admit I never thought of that.’ Gil frowned, staring into the shadows beyond the bed. ‘If it was, it was a sudden idea, for Murray gave no sign at the coaltown or to the two sinkers that he’d not return from this trip. I suppose it could have been solely Syme’s doing, a way to keep his leman with him for ever.’

‘What a wickedness!’ said Michael through the handkerchief. ‘Though I’d believe anything of such an unnatural — ’

‘Wickedness? More than the sin it involves?’

‘It’s selfish. It’s thinking more of yourself than your leman. Would you slay Alys — Mistress Mason — if you couldny dwell wi’ her as you wished?’

‘No,’ admitted Gil, ‘and I take nor would you. But the circumstances are different. I’ve no notion what I’d do if I’d stood in Murray’s place, or Syme’s.’

‘Mine are no so different,’ said Michael quietly. ‘Nobody’s like to be disgusted that Tib and I love one another, but we’re kept apart by our families, wi’ no great hopes of reunion. Just the same, I’d never look for her to die wi’ me, like folk in a silly romance.’

Gil paused for a moment to take in this statement, and gripped the younger man’s shoulder with a sympathetic hand. Michael threw him a startled, hesitant smile from behind the handkerchief, and Gil in some embarrassment returned to the subject at issue.

‘Whether it was a pact or no, we need to determine what slew them. Then we might learn whose doing it was. Can you see aught to the purpose?’

They both surveyed the scene before them. Outside the men gossiped uneasily beyond the gurgling burn, the crows croaked in the treetops, a goat bleated. Here in the shadows nothing stirred, but something seemed to nudge at Gil’s mind, a movement just out of sight, a whisper just below hearing. What was it telling him?

There’s the dead rats,’ Michael said suddenly. ‘What slew that pair of kitterels maybe slew the rats as well. Could that be it?’

‘The rats.’ Yes, that was it. Gil stepped carefully round the cold peats on the hearth and looked down at the scatter of little bones. There were two, no, three rat skulls, a powder of tiny teeth, some tatters of skin. ‘And the flask. I admit the flask has been worrying me. It’s a thing out of place.’

‘I’ve heard you say that sort of thing afore,’ observed Michael. ‘You think it was poison in the flask that slew the rats? Or maybe in that wee jug, where the bones are? Why is it on the floor, anyway?’

‘Circumstantial,’ said Gil, ‘but persuasive.’ Michael blinked at the long words. ‘Aye, it looks very much as if flask and bottle fell over, the bottle rolled on to the floor, and the rats drank whatever spilled. But was it that they died of, and which was it in, flask or bottle? Or was it something in the food on the table?’

‘Is there a way to find out?’ Michael asked.

Gil shrugged. ‘Prayer,’ he offered. The younger man grunted, with what Gil felt to be a healthy show of scepticism. ‘And questioning folk, I suppose. Alys might know something to the purpose.’

‘Does she know everything?’ asked Michael, in genuine enquiry.

Gil smiled, but said only, ‘The flask must be the one Murray was given just before he left the Pow Burn.’

‘I wondered about that. It’s a valuable thing for either of these two to have owned. Who gave him it? What was in it?’

‘Mistress Weir, according to Joanna.’ Gil gazed down at the object. ‘There was cordial in it, to drink her health on her birthday, so Joanna told my wife.’

‘St Peter’s bones! So what was really in it, do you suppose? Was it the old woman who poisoned them, then?’

‘Or Joanna, who must have handled the thing, or young Bel when she brought it to Joanna, or even her sister, or certainly her grandam — it could have been any of the folk up there save young Crombie, who was in Glasgow at the time. Or, I suppose, anyone who knew the flask was there, at the places they called on the way, or at Juggling Nick’s.’

Michael whistled.

‘All the folk at the heugh had reason enough, by what we’ve learned so far,’ he admitted. ‘Could it have been a conspiracy, then? All of them plotting together?’

‘It could. There are many possibilities.’

‘Or maybe someone at Nick’s was jealous. What do you suppose they used?’

‘I’ve no notion what it was, or what it was in either.’ Gil stirred the small bones with his toe. ‘And I hope Alys can help me, for we can hardly ask the likeliest to know hereabouts.’

Michael made a questioning noise. Gil bent to lift flask and bottle, and sniffed cautiously at each. The bottle had clearly held usquebae, but on the flask there was a faint smell of old grape spirits, a bitter whiff of something like his mother’s cough syrup, a herbal smell. Had Alys mentioned elderberries? He reached for the stopper of the flask where it lay on the table, flakes of wax still clinging to it, and stowed all three items in his purse with care.

‘Mistress Lithgo, that everyone calls a good woman,’ he said as he fastened the strings, ‘is as likely as any of them to have done it, and if she didny she likely supplied the stuff.’

The Hamiltons’ steward at Bonnington, a Hamilton himself, was quite unable to take it all in.

‘Two dead, you say?’ he repeated anxiously, as if the number might have changed since they first told him. ‘And lying as long amid the wild beasts — dreadful, dreadful. I canny credit it. You’ll take another stoup of this ale, sirs, it’s good to clear the throat and settle an uneasy wame.’ He poured generously, and Michael leaned forward to take his. He was still a pearly greenish colour, and had hardly spoken since they left the forester’s cottage and its dismal lodgers.

‘Two dead,’ Gil confirmed.

John Hamilton shook his head. ‘And to learn such a thing of Andro, the bonnie lad, the good worker he’s aye been. Oh, maister, it’s hard to credit, so it is. And taking a collier lad for his catamite and all — dreadful, dreadful! Are ye certain it’s Andro?’