Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘I suppose whoever was free would ride over here,’ said Michael when he commented.

On Lady Day in 1465 Arbella had signed instead of her father, and thereafter her name appeared every spring. He frowned, and checked again, and located the brief comment appended to the Lammas entry: Mataeus Were ob mart mcccclxv. March 1465, indeed. He made a note, and went on.

The quarter-days came and went, Arbella or her husband signed the statements. Now and then a payment was missed, and a cryptic explanation accompanied the double amount next quarter. Lammas 1470 Arbela Wyr from home last qr , ran one. Mart’mas 1474 yung crombis maridge last qr fee forgot , was another. That must be when Mistress Lithgo came into the family. He grinned, thinking of the chaos and bustle that had surrounded their own wedding last November, even with Alys in charge.

‘There’s no entry for the last two quarter-days,’ said Alys. He looked up, and saw her expression change to one of dismay. ‘Of course, the fee was never paid this year.’

Beyond the screen, Sir John was still chanting. A waft of incense reached the hall, drifting blue in the light of the narrow windows, and making Socrates sneeze. Michael paused in his pacing to uncover his head and cross himself.

‘That is all I can see,’ said Alys, letting her scroll roll itself shut. ‘I have noted anything out of the way, and who signed the book each time. Can I help you, Gil?’ She stepped over the dog and came to sit at his side, studying his notes on the green wax of the tablets, glancing from that to the crabbed blocks of writing on the parchment. ‘Michael, was there a new contract made out when Mistress Weir’s father died?’

‘Aye, and at my grandsire’s death and all,’ Michael agreed. ‘The terms are still the same as the original, so the old man said. I’d wager neither side would think it worth the argument to change them.’

‘What happened to old Weir, do you know?’ Gil asked casually, finger on his place.

‘No a notion.’ Michael considered briefly, and shook his head. ‘No, I think I never heard it spoken of. Could ha’ been anything a collier might meet, including old age.’

‘Not so many of them live to old age,’ Gil said. ‘And Mistress Weir’s man? The first Adam Crombie that died at Elsrickle?’

‘I was still in short coats,’ protested Michael. ‘I’ve no a notion what came to him.’

‘Someone could ride to Elsrickle,’ said Alys. Gil turned to smile at her, suddenly aware of her accent and the pains she had to take over the place-name.

‘Why?’ asked Michael. ‘I thought we were finding who poisoned the man Murray.’

‘To get the exact date of Adam Crombie’s death,’ Alys said, ‘and if anyone remembers it, an account of how he died. Is there time to go today and be back in daylight?’

‘I could,’ said Gil with reluctance. ‘You are right, we need to check that.’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Michael. ‘What will it prove anyway?’

‘If he died in the same way as Murray,’ said Alys carefully, ‘it might mean that the same person poisoned them both.’

‘If it was poison,’ said Gil. ‘It might only mean that the one learned from the other.’

‘And if he didny? If it was a natural death?’

‘Then I suppose,’ said Alys reluctantly, ‘this time it could have been anyone who handled the flask. For I am very sure it was something in the flask, Gil, even if I can’t identify it.’

‘Who had it last?’ Michael asked. ‘The flask.’

‘Joanna,’ said Gil, more grimly than he intended.

‘Only to put it in Murray’s scrip,’ Alys protested. He met her eye. ‘Gil, no! Surely we can’t — ’

‘We must suspect all of them,’ he said, ‘and she is the one to benefit most by his death.’

‘It is not in her character!’ she exclaimed, breaking into French. ‘So gentle a girl, always ready to believe the best of everyone — Gil, I can’t believe that she would do such a thing.’

‘What, not kill? Alys, anyone can kill. One simply has to know how.’

‘But there isn’t a scrap of violence in her.’

‘Poison works at a distance,’ Gil reminded her, ‘whoever administered it need not see its effects. No, I think all of them had the chance, and she had more than most, and benefited more than most as well. The emotional argument might do for the assize, but the truth — ’

‘But Gil, there are other reasons for killing Murray. All she did was handle the flask, by her account, she had no time to put anything into it without him seeing her do so — ’

‘What are you saying?’ asked Michael, looking helplessly from one to the other.

‘I apologize, Michael,’ said Alys in Scots, and sat upright away from Gil. ‘We were — discussing whether Joanna might have — ’

‘Oh, surely not,’ he said. ‘Then again, I suppose it has to have been someone up there, if it wasny the man Syme, or Murray himself. What a fankle this is.’

‘I’ll go up to Elsrickle,’ said Gil, bracing himself. Sixteen miles each way in the rain had little appeal. ‘You go back to Belstane, Alys, and take the dog, and if Michael has fresh horses for Patey and me — ’

‘Well, that went right well,’ announced Sir John, bustling into the hall with the pyx held reverently before him. Simmie followed, his arms full of the priest’s gear, the smoking censer bumping his shins. ‘Indeed. I’m sure our founder and patron will take notice of our petitions, after a celebration like that.’

‘Davy’s asleep, Maister Michael,’ said Simmie in what he obviously intended to be a confidential tone. ‘Dropped ower in the midst o’ that last narration. Mind you, how anyone could sleep through Sir John here’s singing I canny tell.’

‘Aye, he’s confessed and shriven, and heard the history of St Malessock and drank water that the relic’s been immersed in, and it’s brought him some peace of mind at last,’ agreed the priest, divesting himself with care. ‘Now, maister, he’ll need to fast on well-water for a day and a night, and I’ll be back the morn’s morn to see him. Indeed. But you’ll send to me any time if you’re concerned for him.’ He beamed round the awkward little group. ‘I hope I’ve been of service the day. Is there any other task of my calling required while I’m here?’

Sir Billy Crichton, rector of Walston, was a long-faced, long-limbed Borderer with the gloomy expression natural to a man who spent most of his life in a high, remote parish at the further end of Lanarkshire. His kirk was in Walston itself, a huddle of cottages and two tower-houses on the dark side of a steep lump of hills; Gil surmised that the sun would not reach the thatch between October and March. When he found Sir Billy, following the directions of an ancient fellow at a doorway, the rector was working his glebe land below the village on the flat ground by the River Medwin. More precisely, he was turning the black earth with a foot-plough, with a cloud of white gulls screaming over his head, and was very glad to stop for a word with the stranger he had seen approaching on the track in from Carnwath.

‘Oh, aye, we heard about that,’ he said, as the gulls swirled about, shrieking in discontent. ‘Young Dandy Somerville was at his cousin’s at Carlindean and brought back the tale. Found dead in a peat-heugh, was he no? And doing miracles now, so Young Dandy said.’

‘That was someone else,’ Gil said, marvelling at the way word spread about the countryside. He gave the tale of Thomas Murray’s death, so far as he understood it, and Sir Billy listened attentively, leaning on the tall shaft of his plough in the rain and shaking his head. The gulls settled on the roof of the little kirk, laughing at one another.