Pat McIntosh: The Rough Collier

‘School your tongue, lassie!’ declaimed Fleming, and she tossed her head. ‘That’s no way to talk of your grandam, the devout woman that she is.’

‘We’ll stand out here no longer,’ Gil said firmly. ‘We’ll have the corp borne somewhere we can clean him up till I get a right look at him. I’ll ride out to the coal-heugh after I’ve done that.’ He met Alys’s gold-brown gaze. She nodded slightly, and gathered up her skirts with one hand as if prepared for a further journey. ‘There’s questions I want answered afore I make a decision here.’

‘And the witch?’ demanded Fleming. ‘Will we put her secure and all?’

‘Set her free,’ said Gil, over a rising hostile rumble from the colliers.

‘What?’ squawked Fleming. ‘Wi’ the proof of her misdeeds — ’

‘Set her free,’ repeated Gil. ‘Now.’

The stable-yard at Belstane was not the ideal place to study a corpse, but it was probably the best they were going to get. Accompanying the Meikle brothers’ cart in at the gateway, Gil managed to dismiss most of the entourage which had followed it down from the diggings and was now swollen by the addition of his mother’s stable-hands, several women from the surrounding cottages, and all their children. They gathered outside the great wooden yett peering in and commenting loudly.

‘We’ll have him here,’ he directed over the noise, pointing to the front of the cart-shed, ‘under the pent but in the light. Henry, can you get us a pair of trestles, man, and Alys, would — ’ He looked round, and discovered her horse standing riderless by the groom’s.

‘She’s away to the house, Maister Gil,’ said Henry, taking Gil’s bridle as well. ‘Likely gone to ease herself,’ he offered. ‘Give us just a wee bittie, maister, and we’ll have your corp laid out where you want him. Is he to be washed?’

‘No, no,’ said Gil hastily. ‘I’ve no notion what water would do to him.’

‘Aye, very wise,’ said Fleming, bustling forward from the horse trough, wiping his hands on the paunch of his grey gown, ‘get Maister Cunningham his trestles, Henry, as he ordered you, very wise, maister, we’ll no risk losing the traces of the witch’s ill deed.’

The tubby priest had argued violently against freeing Beatrice Lithgo, but finally, seeing that Gil was determined and that the farm men were reluctant to press the point against the miners with their heavy mells, he had given in, swallowed his indignation, and accompanied the corpse rather possessively, passing the short journey asking effusively after Gil’s sisters in between giving loud directions to the Meikles on the management of their own cart. Gil had ignored most of his discourse, but now, hoping to avert the man’s supervision, he said politely:

‘I know you’ll not want to delay your prayers for him any longer, Sir David, whoever he is, even with neither incense nor holy water. If you stand there,’ he indicated the far end of the cart-shed, ‘you’ll be well placed.’

Much gratified, Fleming hurried to the spot, and watched with his beads over his hand while the hurdle was removed from the cart and set up on a pair of trestles. It was still draped in the felt cloak, and just as Henry removed this Alys reappeared, a sacking apron over her riding-dress and her hands full of brushes of different sizes. Socrates left his inspection of the cart-shed to wave his tail at her, sniffing at the brushes.

‘That’s a good thought!’ Gil said.

‘Some are bristle and some are hair,’ she said, colouring with pleasure. ‘This kind we use at home for dusting the panelling.’

‘A good harness-cloth would be as apt for the task, mistress,’ said Henry with humour, ‘seeing he’s all turned to leather.’

It was like Alys, Gil reflected, that after only a day or two under his mother’s roof, she was on good enough terms with the household to borrow anything she needed. He smiled at her, and bent over the corpse on its support. It was already beginning to dry out, and here and there the leathery skin was split over the long bones and joints.

‘He’ll not keep long,’ he observed. ‘We’ll have to bury him soon, named or no, or he’ll fall into dust.’

‘I suppose it is a man,’ Alys said doubtfully.

‘Look at the beard.’ Gil pushed his dog’s long nose away from the bright shock of hair.

‘His baggie’s well shrunk,’ Henry said from the other end of the hurdle, ‘but you can see it clear. He’s a man grown, right enough.’

‘His …?’ Alys began, and coloured up again as she understood. ‘I brought a cloth to cover his face,’ she added hastily. ‘I thought it would be better.’

‘I need to study his head first,’ Gil said.

Socrates, finding they were doing nothing interesting, went off about his own affairs, and the two of them worked together to brush away the drying peat which clung to the visible portions of the corpse. This provoked some comment from the near audience, which included the muttering Fleming, the Meikle brothers and Wat Paton as well as Henry and the stable-hands, but nobody offered to help. Under the dark, crumbling stuff, the dreadful face was even more gruesome to look at, but Gil studied it with care, poking with a brush handle behind the stained teeth and feeling cautiously at the nose and cheekbones.

‘As I thought,’ he said eventually in French.

‘Mm?’ said Alys.

‘For one thing,’ he pointed with the brush handle, ‘his skin’s intact over these injuries, the flattened nose and broken bones in his face. I think they’ve happened after he was buried, I suppose with the pressure of the peat over him. And for another, there’s no sign of scavenging, no insects in the peat, no beetles or maggots, as you get with fox kill or the like.’

‘So he has been buried as soon as he was dead,’ said Alys. Then, with more confidence, ‘But we knew that, surely? He must have been folded up like this before he set. But that doesn’t tell us how soon he was buried,’ she answered herself before Gil could comment, ‘and the beetles do. What about — ’ She bit her lip. ‘Flies will settle on a fresh wound. Is there any sign at his throat?’

‘I haven’t got there yet.’ Gil dislodged a caked lump of peat from behind the corpse’s small, neat ear. ‘His hair’s longer than mine. And — ’ He felt the side of the head through the damp hair. It gave under his fingers. ‘This is strange. See this?’ He prodded again. ‘My fingers leave a hollow — Sorry, sweetheart!’ he exclaimed, as she covered her mouth and turned away. He set down the brush and stepped quickly round the hurdle, to put a supporting hand under her elbow. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, ‘I forget that you’ve never been at the hunt. Do you want to go into the house?’

‘No, no,’ she protested, but leaned gratefully against him. ‘How strange, his face and his poor shrivelled body don’t disturb me, but that — urgh!’

‘I’m sure you should go in,’ he said. ‘I find it so enthralling, that all our old huntsman taught me about the study of a kill in the forest can be applied to a dead body, that I forget myself. I can work alone, sweetheart.’

‘No, I want to help. Let me — let me go on.’

She drew away and turned back to her task, whisking crumbs of peat from the folded arms and legs of the corpse. He watched her in concern for a moment, then looked up and found Henry grinning knowingly at the far end of the hurdle. Catching Gil’s eye, the man winked, but said nothing. It was clear he thought he knew the reason for Alys’s squeamishness.

But he’s wrong, Gil thought, we know that. There was no reason yet for her to be sick, and that in itself — it was barely five months since their wedding, far too soon to be concerned, Alys kept saying. Nevertheless some of her acquaintance among the merchants’ wives of Glasgow had begun to ask arch questions, and raise eyebrows at her answer, and now here was the same attitude showing itself. He shook his head, got another knowing wink, and bent over the corpse again.