Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

The spare body between her hands jerked convulsively at the words, but what Arbella said was, ‘Whose father? All the fathers in the place is dead.’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Alys. And whose doing is that, madam? she thought. ‘But had he guessed it?’

Arbella threw her a glance of acute dislike, but did not answer. Gil watched carefully, saying nothing. Alys sat back on her heels and went on.

‘As grieve, he had access to the accounts. There’s a lot to be learned from well-kept accounts, Mistress Weir, and yours are very well kept. I think Murray had come too close to — to a thing you would rather he didn’t spread about. So first of all you wedded him to Joanna, but that was hardly a success, was it?’ Arbella said nothing. ‘Then when he began to ask for more favours, he had to go. What had he asked for? Money? Control of Joanna’s portion?’ Still there was no answer. ‘And you have killed before, madam, haven’t you, many times, as my husband says? But that was different. That was for the coal.’

‘For the coal?’ Gil repeated.

‘Coal takes blood in exchange, she told me.’ Alys leaned closer to Arbella again. ‘If I swear,’ she said coaxingly, ‘to do my best to make sure she never learns, will you confess to poisoning Thomas Murray?’

There was a pause. Bruised, dishevelled, sticky with blood which was not hers, Arbella turned her head to stare at Alys.

‘Now why would I do that?’

‘Because you love her,’ said Alys. ‘You use your grandchildren, don’t you? Raffie to be a learned man, Bel to fetch your herbs home, Phemie to gather intelligence. But you don’t use her, you indulge her and pet her. You love her.’

There were voices, away down the tunnel. A light glimmered on the rock faces. Arbella turned her head to look down that way, and drew a deep breath and released it.

‘What will you swear by?’ she asked harshly.

‘Yew,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘That was what Bel told me,’ said Gil, tightening his clasp on Alys. He was beginning to feel warm again. ‘I misinterpreted what she wrote. Arbella poison yew.’

‘How effective a poison is it?’ asked Michael Douglas, across the hearth.

‘Very,’ said Alys. ‘It will kill a horse that eats some of the leaves.’

‘A brew of the bark or the needles would do it,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘Bitter, I expect, but the cordial tastes strongly enough, by what you say, no doubt it would be disguised.’

Gil nodded, and stretched his feet nearer the fire, beside the sleeping dog. Alys moved closer against his side, and smiled up at him.

When he and Alys had reached the gates of Belstane in the middle of the afternoon, chilled to the bone and caked in the mud of the coal-heugh, Lady Egidia had taken one look at them and ordered the fire lit in the washhouse. They had scandalized Alan Forrest and deeply amused his mistress and her waiting-woman by sharing the resulting hot tub, and were now clean and relaxed. Alys’s hair was still lying loose on her shoulders and shining in the candlelight, to Gil’s quiet pleasure. Even when Michael had arrived to report Arbella’s safe incarceration in Lanark jail, she had not covered it again, but only bound it back with a linen fillet, quite as if the young man was a member of their close family.

‘And was Fleming right about the witchcraft?’ asked Lady Egidia now.

‘Yes and no,’ said Alys. ‘There was — there was certainly evidence. He showed us several wax mommets, all stuck with thorns and pins, and Henry and I found — ugh!’ She shivered. Gil tightened his arm about her again, thinking of the way the little brocade bag had flared yellow smoke and made a great stink when they thrust it into the remains of the washhouse fire. ‘But I think the witchcraft was Arbella’s work, not any of the others. They were as horrified as the men to see it.’

‘You haven’t got her to confess?’

‘Not to that,’said Michael, ‘and no need for it, that I see.’

‘I agree,’ said Gil, ‘though the Sheriff may think otherwise. The charge of murder is enough.’

‘But will that go through?’

‘It should, though it’s only the one charge. I’d dearly like to see her tried for the other three or four, but they’re too long ago, the evidence is too circumstantial. She’ll drown for Murray at any rate, and well served.’

‘Aye, and why was she busy killing all the men round the coal-heugh?’ demanded Michael.

‘I’d like to know and all. It seems an odd way to behave,’ pronounced Lady Egidia.

‘I think you got an answer to that, sweetheart?’ Gil asked, looking at Alys.

‘Not clearly. I wonder if she is a little mad? She told me that the heugh demands blood, that the coal is paid for in blood.’

‘But colliers get killed anyway,’ said Michael. ‘It’s a dangerous trade.’

‘Like horse-breaking,’ agreed Lady Egidia.

‘I think she made sure of a death regularly,’ said Alys. ‘What is worse,’ she added, eyes round with distress, ‘is that it seemed to me as if the profits did improve after each one. She must have reckoned that it worked.’

Michael shook his head.

‘One thing to get killed in an accident, or in preventing a worse accident,’ he said, ‘the colliers all know that happens. It’s part of the trade, as I said. But to be slain deliberately, without warning or mercy, only for the profits — what a fate for a Christian soul!’

‘Her husband and her own sons,’ said Gil’s mother in distaste.

‘And David Fleming’s father,’ said Alys quietly.

‘A vicious woman. There is no end to human wickedness.’ Lady Egidia looked at the sprawled dog. ‘And you and Socrates took her captive between you, Alys?’

‘They did,’ agreed Gil, looking down at his wife with pride. ‘I arrived like a god from the skies thanks to Henry and Michael, and praise be to St Giles the rope only broke when I was at the foot of the shaft, and there I found the two of them standing over Arbella Weir, and David Fleming lying dead.’

‘But what possessed you to go underground alone with such a woman, my dear?’

Alys moved uneasily in Gil’s clasp, and he caught her sidelong look. They had already had that out as they rode across the hill, the two grooms at a tactful distance once they had assured themselves that neither had taken any hurt.

‘I couldn’t find a way to refuse,’ she said, as she had said then, ‘without making her suspicious. I’ve learned a lesson,’ she added. ‘I have never been so frightened in my life. And I was protected, of that I am certain.’ She felt under the folds her skirt, and drew something from her pocket. ‘Gil, I have not shown you this. I turned my heel on it when Arbella attacked me, and so I fell and she missed me. Look what it is.’

It was a fragment of black stone, dull and heavy. On one flat surface, clear in the light from the stand of candles beside them, in delicate, perfect detail, was a fish.

‘You can even see the rays in its tail,’ he said, marvelling. ‘Oh, I agree, Alys, this is no work of human hand. It must be God’s work indeed, set in the stone. But how do you know it was this stone that tripped you?’

‘It was in the right place,’ she said simply, ‘and you can see the mark of my shoe. See on the other side?’

He turned the thing over, and nodded at the scrape on the underside. He was not convinced it was the stone which had tripped her, but it did look like the stone which the man in his dream had given him.

‘You wanted one of these,’ he said.

‘And now I have one,’ she said, and rose to show it to Lady Egidia, who inspected the fish in wonder, but passed it to Michael and returned to the point at discussion.