Pat McIntosh: The Rough Collier

‘But was Mistress Weir already suspicious? Is that why she demanded you accompany her?’

‘I think she feared Gil was close to her,’ Alys admitted. She returned to her place at his side, and he put his arm round her again, still grateful for the reassurance of her safe, solid presence within his clasp. ‘But she had been less clever than she thought. None of the men was surprised to see her bound, were they, Gil? And I think her granddaughters were more relieved than anything else. Bel in particular must have known a lot of what she was about.’

‘It was only Joanna who made an outcry,’ said Michael ruefully.

‘That was difficult.’ Gil pulled a face, recalling the scene, with Joanna in a hurriedly laced gown, her kerchief half unpinned, first trying to free Arbella and then, as she realized why the old woman was being held, shrinking back in horror.

‘If Arbella truly made a pact with the Devil, as witches are said to do,’ said Alys seriously, ‘I think that was when it came home to her what she has lost by it.’

‘But she has confessed to killing Murray,’ said Lady Egidia. Her grey cat came into the hall, and she made room on her knee.

‘She has confessed,’ agreed Michael, ‘and repeated it just now before witnesses, down in Lanark.’

‘Aye, and what did you use to bargain with her, sweetheart?’ Gil asked. ‘I’m not sure what we’ve agreed to keep secret. It was obvious it was the only way we would get a confession, and we’d no grounds for holding her without one, but I still don’t see what we were swearing to conceal.’

The cat strolled past its mistress and paused, one paw in the air, glaring at the somnolent dog. Alys watched the animals, biting her lip.

‘The real reason she killed Thomas Murray,’ she said at length. ‘That’s what I’ve been seeking out, talking to the folk who knew Will Brownlie and his wife. It wasn’t the question of control of the heugh, though that may have been the demand that tipped the balance. He had guessed something she didn’t want known.’

‘You said that,’ Gil said patiently. The cat stepped forward and sniffed delicately at Socrates’ injured nose. The dog opened an apprehensive eye but made no other move, and the cat put out a small pink tongue and began to wash the bruised and swollen tissue.

‘She isn’t Will Brownlie’s daughter, of course,’ said Lady Egidia. Alys nodded. Gil looked from one to the other of his womenfolk, assailed yet again by a feeling that they could communicate in a way that was closed to him.

‘Who isn’t?’ said Michael. ‘Do you mean Joanna? So whose daughter is she?’

‘Who else?’ said Alys seriously. ‘I think her father may have been David Fleming’s father. There is a William Fleming in the coal-heugh accounts about the time she was born, and Arbella was clearly absent for a time.’

‘And her mother is — ah!’ Gil stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘You mean she sacrificed her lover as well as — sweet St Giles! No wonder she doesn’t want Joanna to know.’ And how had his young, gently reared wife recognized that so quickly, he asked himself. From helle to Heven and sonne to see, nis non so wys.

‘No wonder,’ agreed Alys. ‘It never happens in the romances,’ she added, ‘only in the ballads. I suppose it shortens the tale quite painfully, to have hero and heroine realize too late they are brother and sister.’

‘Brother and — oh, no!’ exclaimed Michael in horror. ‘Oh, the poor souls. What wickedness! To let them meet, and fall in love, and never know — ’

‘And so Matt had to go,’ said Gil, working it out, ‘and Will Brownlie. In case the secret came out.’

‘The man Brownlie can’t have known Joanna’s parentage,’ Alys said. ‘If his wife had still been alive she would have prevented the marriage.’

‘But is it right to keep it secret?’ Michael objected. ‘Such a great sin should be confessed and penance assigned, for the sake of her soul — ’

‘Why?’ said Gil. Michael stopped, staring at him. ‘What benefit? We have no proof of Joanna’s parentage, Michael, only strong supposition. Apart from Arbella, everyone who might have known is dead.’

‘She saw to that, I think,’ said Alys.

‘If there is a sin it was committed in all innocence, it’s hardly mortal. Why add to the poor woman’s un-happiness?’

‘But — ’ the younger man began. ‘Someone should — someone should — ’

‘Talk to your confessor when you get back to Glasgow, if it troubles you,’ advised Lady Egidia. ‘Without naming names, perhaps. But I can assure you now, you and Tib are not blood kin in any degree that matters.’

There was a short pause, in which Michael slowly went first dark in the firelight, then quite pale. He turned to his godmother with his mouth wide open, and she put out an elegant, weather-roughened hand and pushed his chin up.

‘You look like a carp in a pond,’ she said. ‘There is the spiritual relationship to deal with yet, but if you’re still of one mind, the two of you, I’ll talk to your father about it next time he comes home. Likely, between the two households, we can afford a dispensation.’

‘Perhaps Gil can help,’ said Alys diffidently, ‘as head of the family.’

‘I’ve no doubt of it,’ said Gil, recognizing the code in this statement. Michael, apparently quite unable to speak, looked from one to another of them and a grin spread over his face.

‘And if you wait a few days,’ prompted Lady Egidia, ‘you’ll be able to give thanks to our new saint down in St Andrew’s in Carluke town. You realize none of this would have come to light if he hadny come up out of the peat-digging so that you all began asking questions.’

‘Possibly not,’ said Gil.

‘The procession is to be tomorrow,’ his mother went on, ‘with singers and garlands and I don’t know all what. I wonder what the man himself would have made of it, whoever he is? Would he have been grateful?’

‘I think he is,’ said Gil, thinking suddenly of his dream. ‘I think he is.’

The grey cat, satisfied that Socrates was clean enough, surveyed the fire and the dog’s sprawled shaggy limbs. Selecting a spot in the crook of one long foreleg, it curled up, its back against the new draught-stop, blinked once at its mistress, and tucked a paw over its ear.

Socrates licked his nose, sighed, and went back to sleep.