Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

Michael emerged from another outbuilding as Gil dismounted. He cast an anxious glance up the hill, and said, ‘I’m right glad to see you, Maister Gil. All’s to do here!’

‘Where’s Alys?’ demanded Gil. ‘And where’s Fleming?’

‘Underground,’ said Michael. Horror-struck, Gil looked from him to the group at the ingo and the screaming woman. ‘No, no, it’s no that bad. At least, it is, but that’s no where she is.’ He drew a breath, and explained more clearly. ‘Fleming ran in there and fell, went five fathom down that shaft yonder.’ He pointed to the low building from which he had emerged. ‘He’s lying injured at its foot, and Mistress Weir went in by the mid ingo to see to him and took Mistress Mason along wi’ her.’ Gil stared at him, his stomach suddenly churning. ‘Jamesie was to get men and hurdles together and follow her to bear him out, but the two of them had barely gone underground when someone came out at the top ingo shouting that there was a roof-fall in there, and men trapped, and he dropped all to clear it. They’ll be a good while longer, I’d say, that’s only the first one come out now.’

‘And Alys is below ground with Mistress Weir,’ said Gil grimly, tethering his horse. ‘How came you to let her — ’ He bit that off. Michael had no authority over his wife. ‘Fleming fell down a shaft, you said? Which one?’

‘Yonder. Where Henry is.’ Michael followed him towards the wide low structure. ‘I tried to call down to them, but the echoes are too strong, you canny hear a word.’

‘I’ve tried and all,’ said Henry, without looking up from his task. ‘Steenie, can ye wedge that balk there — no, that one — under here?’

Steenie gazed uncertainly at the choice of timbers available, but Michael lifted the length indicated and fitted it into position. Henry looked up, nodded, and handed him another piece.

‘Brace that there,’ he said, pointing. ‘I’m fixing the winding-gear, Maister Gil. Aye, that’s right, it goes there. I’ve no notion how we’d get in by the tunnel, but if we can get this sorted we can send a man down on a stick.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Gil, over the churning of his stomach.

‘Better be me,’ said Michael, now almost standing on his head at one corner of the wooden structure. ‘I’m half your size.’

‘That’s my wife down there,’ said Gil. He leaned over the shaft and peered down it. ‘How long a walk in from the ingo would it be? There’s no light down there yet.’

‘There was,’ said Henry. ‘It went out a while ago. Jamesie Meikle said it would be half a mile. Near half an hour’s walking, I’d say, all in the dark like that.’

‘And where’s the dog?’ Gil asked. ‘Did he go with Alys?’

‘He was somewhere about,’ said Michael. He straightened up. ‘That’s it, Henry.’

‘Why has the light gone out?’ Gil fretted. ‘Have they left to come out again? Surely not. What would — if the man fell down this shaft, five fathom, he’s not fit to walk away and two women would hardly carry him. I don’t like this. Are we ready, Henry?’

‘Near it,’ said Henry, with maddening calm. He looked up at Gil. ‘I’m no going to go home and tell the mistress I dropped you down a winding-shaft, now am I, Maister Gil? She’d have my head up on the gate to fright the horses.’

‘Can we lower a light to them on a rope?’

‘Not a good idea,’ said Michael. ‘See, the light causes an updraught, and the draught makes the light to burn stronger, and either it’s all consumed afore it reaches the bottom, or it blows out, or it burns through the rope.’

Light, faintly yellow, flowered at the bottom of the shaft. There was movement, but it might have been the shadows flickering. Socrates barked somewhere, and it resonated with a sound like the Questing Beast. Gil stared downwards in alarm, and called Alys’s name. The word echoed and rebounded and returned, and with it like a bird’s cry her voice, his name.

‘Ready,’ said Henry. He dragged the rope’s end towards him, and inspected it carefully. ‘Aye, it’s lasting well enough. Just don’t swing about, Maister Gil.’ He lifted another piece of timber and proceeded to knot the rope competently about the groove in its centre. Once he was certain it would hold he handed the assembly to Gil. ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘Steenie, Maister Michael, we’ll all three man the beam.’

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ said Alys into the dark.

‘Aye,’ said Arbella. ‘He’s no breathing. Sancta Maria mater dei, ora pro eo. It was a long drop, and likely his back was broke wi’ landing on these timbers.’

‘Yes,’ said Alys, trying to keep the doubts she felt from her voice.

‘He’d no ha’ lasted much longer, even without the fall,’ continued Arbella. ‘You saw it too, lassie, didn’t you? Beatrice tellt me what ailed him. It’s better this way.’

‘What, dying underground, filthy and in pain?’

‘Better men than him has died underground!’ said Arbella sharply. ‘Coal comes out the earth, but it aye takes blood in exchange.’

‘How much blood?’ asked Alys softly.

‘More than you’d think. But men come and go, lassie. Mind that. Never grieve for one, for you’ll aye get another.’

Impossible, thought Alys. There is no other like Gil.

‘Like Joanna,’ she suggested aloud. ‘I think she might take the man Meikle, when she has done mourning Murray.’

‘She could do worse,’ admitted the other voice.

‘She has no notion to your grandson?’

‘No,’ said Arbella curtly. Then, after a moment, ‘They’re too close kin. Raffie is her nephew. She was married on his uncle, after all.’

‘I forgot that.’ Alys was groping about her. ‘Did one of the candles fall this way?’ She could feel more lengths of wood, smaller timbers than the ones Fleming had landed on, and some flat pieces of metal whose purpose was not clear, and lumps of stone of every size, but not the candle. The top of the shaft showed faintly less dark in the blackness, but no light came down it.

‘No, they went to my other side.’

The conversation at the top of the shaft continued, and in its silences the sounds of the mine grew. Water dripped, there was a distant tapping, stone creaked again. Alys began to be aware of just how much stone lay above her head.

‘What led your man to find Thomas Murray?’ asked Arbella suddenly.

‘He found the place in Lanark where the man went drinking,’ said Alys, ‘and they told him who his friend was. When he knew also that the friend had not been seen for as long as Murray, he went to his house to see what could be learned, and so found them.’

‘Aye.’ Another pause. ‘Mind, I never knew that about Thomas. If I’d ha’ known — ’

‘There was an owl in the trees by the cottage,’ said Alys, as if it was to the point.

‘It wasny within the place,’ said Arbella, as if that answered her.

‘Will you not search for the candles, madam?’ asked Alys. But my flint and tinder are in my purse, she realized.

‘Feart for the dark, are you, lassie?’

‘It doesn’t trouble you, does it — being in the dark, I mean?’

‘It’s never troubled me. You sit here quiet, you’ll hear the voice of the coal. And your man thinks Thomas was poisoned. What makes him so certain?’

‘We tested the dregs of the flask,’ said Alys cautiously. Was that a movement she could hear, along the tunnel they had climbed to reach this place?

‘Oh, aye? The flask. Had they both drunk from the one source, then?’

‘Both are dead,’ Alys said.

‘And they died how? It wasny right clear at the quest.’

I have heard Gil give evidence before, thought Alys, he would have made it very clear. Aloud she said, ‘It seems as if they felt no signs until they were abed, and then perhaps they were dizzy and became unconscious, and so died. There was no other sign to be found, as he told Mistress Lithgo two days since, no effect on their bellies.’