Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘Uncover afore me, man,’ said Arbella as Fleming approached. He gave her another of those ingratiating smiles, and reached up to unbuckle his helm. ‘Now what in Our Lady’s name are you about here? Riding to my door wi’ armed men — ’

‘And I’ll have a word to say to them on that count, madam, I can tell you,’ interposed Michael hotly. ‘They’re here by none of my wish or command.’

‘I ken that, maister,’ she assured him, with another lift of her eyebrows. ‘You and your house has aye treated us here at the heugh wi’ courtesy. Well, Davy? What’s it about, then?’

‘Arbella my daughter,’ he began. Ill-advised, Gil thought, watching appreciatively. Beyond Arbella’s apricot wool shoulder he could see movement in the hall: Beatrice? There was no sign of Joanna, and he hoped Alys had remained with her.

‘I’m no daughter of yourn, Davy, and your actions these past few days leave you no right to be our confessor here,’ said Arbella pointedly.

‘Madam,’ he corrected himself. ‘Mistress Weir. You’re a good woman, and devout, but nevertheless you’re no but a weak woman, it’s no wonder you’re imposed on as you are. It’s clear to me Joanna your good-daughter’s long immersed in wickedness. That’s four men dead in the time since she came here, and her well established in your favour and placed to gain from all her misdeeds.’

Out of Arbella’s sight, beyond the house corner, Jamesie Meikle snarled soundlessly and took a firmer grip on the heavy wooden mell. Catching the man’s eye, Gil shook his head infinitesimally, and the collier gave him a savage grin.

‘Go on,’ said Arbella levelly. ‘How do you make all that out, man?’

‘It’s clear as day!’

‘No to me, Davy. I held Joanna in my arms after my poor Matt breathed his last, and I thought myself she would be dead of her grief afore morning. Beattie and I had our work cut out to bring her back into her right mind. I helped her watch her father’s deathbed, I saw her only now after she received the news that Thomas is dead, God shrive him.’ She crossed herself and closed her eyes briefly. ‘No, Davy Fleming, if that’s all you can say I’ll no hear another word of this. Maister Michael,’ she turned the blue gaze on him, ‘I’d be obliged if your men would see this fellow off the land I hold from your house, and I’d be the more obliged if you’d make sure he doesny return while I dwell here.’

I love you verily at my toe , thought Gil. And one can scarce blame her.

‘You heard Mistress Weir, Fleming,’ said Michael curtly. ‘Mount up, man, as I bade you, and be off home to Cauldhope. And hope you’re back there afore I am.’

‘Will none of you see reason?’ demanded Fleming. He turned to look from Michael to Gil, then at the staring men-at-arms still on horseback by the edge of the cobbled patch. ‘It’s plain as day! Here’s Murray, struck dead in the very midst of his wickedness, and his catamite wi’ him, and it’s clear they’ve been poisoned in their drink — ’

‘Not to me,’ said Gil. Confound the man’s tongue, he thought, it goes like a fiddlestick. ‘I was there, Sir David, and you wereny Poison it may be, but there’s no evidence to say how they took it — ’

‘Catamite?’ said Arbella, the blue eyes opening wide.

‘Pyson?’ said Beatrice Lithgo, appearing at her mother-in-law’s back in the doorway. ‘What pyson? You said …’ She fell silent, looking hard at Gil. ‘No, you never said what killed them,’ she acknowledged.

‘What in Our Lady’s name’s going on here?’ demanded a loud voice. Gil looked round, and saw Adam Crombie striding round the corner of the house, booted and spurred and well pleased with himself, clearly just come down from the stable-row. ‘What’s this Jamesie says? Thomas dead, and Joanna taken up for his murder?’

‘No, my dear,’ said Arbella, her voice like the cooing of wood-pigeons. ‘I’ve shown Sir David the error of his thoughts — ’

‘You, Adam Crombie!’ said Fleming. ‘I wonder you’ve the gall to show yourself afore me, you that raised your hand to an anointed clerk — ’

‘Aye, and I’ll raise it again!’ Crombie’s gaze fell on Michael. ‘Can you Douglases no control your servants? Here’s Fleming running all about the countryside, doing all he can to harm our women, and never a hand raised at Cauldhope to prevent it. Get him off our land, will you, afore I hunt him off it mysel!’

‘Raffie, my dear,’ said Arbella chidingly

‘Raffie,’ said Beatrice from the doorway. He exchanged a long look with his mother. She relaxed slightly, but his chin went up.

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘If I catch him on our land again, I’ll see him off it wi’ a lash.’

‘There is no owl in the chamber,’ said Alys. ‘It was only a dream.’

He could hear her fumbling with the tinderbox. Sweating, gasping for breath, he stared into the darkness of the box bed, trying to throw off the image and the swamping fear it had generated.

Light flowered, making him blink, showing her face and the sweet curve of her breasts as she bent over the candle to set the tiny glow to it. The candle caught, and she used it to light the two on the pricket-stand and turned to look at him in the brightening room. He devoured the reassuring sight of her, standing there like Eve in the candlelight, holding her hair back with her free hand, and his breathing steadied.

‘Only a dream,’ she repeated. ‘Here, this will help.’ She came to lift his beads from the stool where the candle had lain, and handed them to him. The familiar texture of the carved wood steadied him further, and the prayers that rose to his mind at the touch drew his scattered thoughts together. Alys padded back across the room to the window, the bruises on hip and shoulder showing dark on her white skin, and bent to the cupboard in the panelling below the sill. ‘Catherine always gives me something to eat if I wake in the night like this. What has Nan left in the dole-cupboard?’

The little cupboard proved to hold a dish of small cakes, two glasses and a flask of the German wine his father had favoured. They sat side by side on the edge of the bed, the coverlet drawn round their shoulders, and feasted on these, and Alys said, ‘Do you want to talk about it? Sometimes it helps to tell someone.’

‘No,’ he said, shuddering. He could still feel the claws scraping at his skin, the hooked beak tearing at his belly; there were silent wings in the shadows outside the corners of vision. Describing it would give it power, make it real in some way.

‘Tell me about what you found in the forester’s cottage, then.’

‘Not that, not now. We’ll talk about something else. What did Mistress Lithgo have to say about Fleming? I saw the two of you confer after Michael took him away.’

‘Ah, now, that was interesting.’ She turned within his arm to look at him. ‘I had a long talk with her earlier, before you came. She preserved great discretion, until I told her of the rages Michael reported, and what I suspect. Then we were agreed immediately.’

‘On what?’

‘The man has his death on him, Gil. His water is sweet — sweet as honey, Mistress Lithgo says. He has lost flesh lately on his arms and legs though not his belly, you have only to look at the way his hose hang on him to see how much, and now he has these rages — and it would account for the way he lay in a swound all the day after he was beaten. The complaint has a name in Greek that doctors use,’ she added, seeing his questioning look, ‘but she called it honey-piss. After he left with Michael, she told me she feels it is progressing faster. We discussed whether we should tell him.’