Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘She was very glad to tell someone of it,’ said Alys in French, and urged her horse past a milestone. ‘I think the other folk at the inn were not sympathetic, though at least they told Steenie about her when he asked if anyone knew anything.’

‘And she had heard one of the two speak of mortal sin?’ said Gil. ‘When was that?’

They were making their way back from Lanark to Carluke yet again, the two Belstane grooms behind them talking about the ploughing. Familiar as Gil was with the trackways and lanes of the district, he was beginning to feel he could take this road in his sleep. It was starting to rain.

‘I couldn’t make that out,’ said Alys in apologetic tones, ‘but it was one evening when Syme and Murray were in the place together. I suppose that would be on one of Murray’s trips down to Lanark to go drinking.’ Gil nodded agreement, and whistled to the dog, who was standing up, one paw on a dyke, peering at a small flock of sheep. ‘She told me they would spend the evening talking now with the company in the place, now with one another. Do you suppose they found it hard,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘to dissemble in such a way?’

Gil turned to smile at her, recognizing the same compassion she brought to running her father’s household, and she looked seriously back at him.

‘We never had to,’ she pointed out, ‘as you said when we talked of Michael and your sister. We were always acknowledged.’

‘True. What did this Girzie hear?’

‘Ah. It seems on this occasion they were sitting in the corner by the hearth, talking with their heads together, and Girzie passed them with a tray for someone else, just as Murray said something about mortal sin.’

‘It’s hardly a surprise.’

‘So,’ Alys persisted, ‘she took her time going by them on her return to the kitchen, and heard the forester speak of slitting his throat.’

‘Oh,’ said Gil, and turned to meet her eyes again. ‘That could alter matters.’

‘Yes. I coaxed her as far as I could, but I’m not sure how much of their talk she really heard. She heard one of them say, What’s done’s done , and then there was something about Tell the old beldam what I know , but she recalled nothing more that made sense. She thinks they said also that the old woman was away.’

‘Which old woman did they mean?’ Gil contemplated this. ‘Arbella hasn’t left the coaltown this spring, so far as I’ve learned.’

‘They never mentioned a name.’ Her smile flickered. ‘A good worker, this Girzie, I should think, but rather a silly woman. She kept coming back to the idea of the forester slitting his throat. It seems she had a liking for him, and the thought of him doing such a deed has overset her. I had quite a task to persuade her that he’d done no such thing.’

‘But I wonder,’ said Gil slowly, ‘if that means we need look no further — if it was Murray or Syme supplied the poison, whether the other knew it was there or not.’

‘I think not,’ she said after a moment. ‘It would simplify matters, but — ’

‘It’s too simple, isn’t it?’ he agreed, drawing his plaid up round his neck against the rain.

‘There’s no hint that they’d been recognized or suspected, no threat to separate them. No pursuit that would be a cause to take poison and be together forever.’ He recognized the influence of the romances which were Alys’s favourite reading in this pronouncement. ‘For all Girzie was so sure the forester had killed himself, she had no notion why he might have done so, and the two men you saw at Blackness gave no hint either, I think?’

‘None. And Syme’s maister was astounded to hear of it.’ Gil’s thoughts had run off at a tangent. ‘Alys, was it poison indeed? Did you test what was dried into the flask?’

‘That was why I rode down to Lanark to find you. We did, and I thought you might need to know.’ Again that serious look. ‘We rinsed both the flask and the bottle with well-water, and gave the water to two of the beasts Henry brought us. Whatever was in the bottle, it was just as it left the brewer, the ratling that drank that portion came to no harm, but the other one …’

‘Well?’

Alys pulled a face. ‘It died. It seemed quite normal for a while, and then began to stagger, and turned round as if it was dizzy, and then it fell over and after a time it died.’ She bit her lip, and stared into the distance. ‘I suppose, if the two men died like that, then we know it was quick, and most probably painless.’

‘We do,’ agreed Gil. ‘And we know that whatever it was, there was some in the flask. Have you or my mother any idea what it was?’

She shook her head, scattering raindrops from the brim of her hat.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Poisons are not something I — and all the ones I’ve heard about would induce purging, or vomiting, before death. And your mother has said she does not know this one either.’

‘I thought you knew everything,’ said Gil, amused and faintly relieved to find a gap in her astonishing medical knowledge. She blushed pink, and shook her head again.

‘I need a book,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know who would have such a one, except …’

‘Mistress Lithgo,’ Gil finished for her.

‘Except Mistress Lithgo.’ She reached out her hand, and when he took it her fingers clung to his. ‘And how can I ask her when we — Oh, Gil, how can we do this? The truth must be served, but the accidents it brings about are fearful.’

‘The truth must be served,’ he agreed, keeping a grip of her hand.

They rode up into Carluke town, and along its deep-worn main street between the two rows of cottages facing one another across it. As they passed St Andrew’s kirk at the far end of the town, Sir John Heriot popped out of his house like a figure in a child’s toy, his clerk behind him, and hurried towards them, hand out, exclaiming, ‘Maister Cunningham! In a good hour, indeed! I have great news, sir!’

‘News?’ Gil said blankly, letting go of Alys’s hand to bend down and clasp the priest’s.

‘Indeed, sir. I have a name for our man. I ken who he is.’

The clerk nodded agreement, grinning, and crossed himself energetically. Gil looked from one to the other. Beside him, Alys’s horse laid back its ears at a scavenging pig, and she tightened her reins. Steenie dismounted hastily and went to the grey’s head.

‘A name for …’ Gil repeated.

‘For the man out of the peat-digging. The corp in your feed-store, sir. And we must have him out of there as soon as may be, it’s no right now that I’ve discerned who he could only be.’ Above the worn and dusty black gown Sir John’s face glowed with pride and triumph. His clerk beamed and nodded again. ‘I went through the kirk records, sir, and read over all our documents, and only just now between Sext and Nones I found it! It’s clear to me that he can be no other than the parish’s own saint, the man that first brought the gospel of Christ and Our Lady in this place. Why would Carluke town’s other name be “Ecclesmalesoch” but to signify the kirk of the holy Malessock?’

‘What, that dusty old corp out the peat-cutting?’ said Steenie.

Gil stared at the priest in disbelief. ‘Sweet St Giles,’ he said after a moment. ‘But Sir John, you’ve no proof — ’

Sir John braced himself with a complex movement of his elbows, and settled down to expound on his case, oblivious of the rain beating on his shoulders. ‘No, only consider, maister. He’s clearly been martyred for his faith, you canny deny that, by the injuries you showed to me, and one of the old tales in a roll out of the Parish Kist tells us how Malessock preached the gospel in the wilderness among the thorns.’