Pat McIntosh: The Rough Collier

When the peat-cutters came to report the dead man, Gil Cunningham was up in the roof-space of his mother’s house, teaching his new young wife swordplay.

He and Alys had ridden out from Glasgow to Belstane earlier in the week, planning to stay for a few days so that Lady Cunningham could get to know her daughter-in-law better, and relishing their escape from his duties about the Consistory court and hers in her father’s house. In fulfilment of a promise he had made eight months ago, Gil had persuaded Alys into the attics at the first opportunity, where they had flung wide the shutters to let the light in along with the wide view of Carluke town and the hills of south Lanarkshire beyond it, and cleared an area of the dusty floorboards by shifting the kists and lumber of several generations of Gil’s Muirhead forebears. They had progressed, in three days, to practising with an old straw target and a pair of wooden swords out of one of the kists.

‘Like this,’ Gil said, in the French they used when they were together. Alys’s wide skirts were kilted above her knees, for freedom of movement; he dragged his eyes from the slender legs and ankles in their knitted stockings to demonstrate the grip he wanted her to take on the polished hilt. ‘Keep the point up. Then you can turn it from the elbow — ’

‘Like turning a key?’ suggested Alys.

He reached round her shoulders to put his hand next to hers, and she leaned briefly into his embrace and looked up at him, brown eyes dancing. He bent to kiss her, and remarked, ‘It was never this much of a pleasure when old Drew taught these moves to my brothers and me.’

‘I should hope not,’ said his bride primly. She settled her grip and turned the little stave experimentally. ‘Like this?’

‘Less slantwise.’ Gil tried to recall the old weapon-master’s approach. ‘You need to find the balance.’ He kissed her again, and stepped away. ‘Now strike as I showed you — across, and twist the blade, and back. That’s it!’

‘But surely,’ Alys swung the sword again, striking dust and flakes of straw from the target, ‘your opponent doesn’t wait for you to hit him a second time?’

She checked and turned her head as footsteps sounded on the stairs, and ducked hastily behind the timbers of a dismantled bed, pulling at the folds of wool about her waist. The ankles vanished as Lady Egidia’s waiting-woman appeared at the door to the stair-tower.

‘Maister Gil,’ she said, puffing slightly. ‘The mistress said you was up here. There’s a fellow at the yett, come from the peat-cuttings up ayont Thorn, wants a word wi’ you.’

‘With me?’ said Gil in surprise. ‘I’ve no authority here — it’s my mother holds the land.’

‘No, it’s you he’s wanting.’ Nan had got her breath by now. ‘It’s on Douglas land but wi’ Sir James and all of them being from home he came here to tell you. They’ve found a deid man.’

‘A dead man?’ Alys emerged from her hide. Nan nodded triumphantly, the ends of her white headdress swinging.

‘Aye, and he says he’s all turned to leather wi’ the peat, but they ken fine who it is, and they want you to see to taking up the woman that did it.’

Egidia Muirhead, Lady Cunningham, had come in from inspecting her horses and was interrogating the messenger in the hall. She sat in her great chair by the fire, straight-backed and commanding in a mended kirtle and a loose furred gown which had belonged to her dead husband. At her back stood her steward, a fair, stocky fellow with a pleasant face and the harried manner any man developed in contact with Lady Egidia, and before her a countryman in muddy boots and worn leather doublet was twisting his bonnet in his hands and answering hesitantly. As Gil stepped in from the stair-tower, Alys at his heels, the wolfhound which was sprawled on the hearth leapt to its feet and bounded forward to greet him. The grey cat on the plate-cupboard hissed, and his mother said over the dog’s singing:

‘Here’s Wat Paton, Gil, with some tale of a corp in the peat-diggings.’

The man ducked his shaggy head.

‘Good day to ye, Maister Cunningham,’ he said in some confusion, ‘and good wishes to yer bonny bride and all.’

Alys thanked him, and curtsied, to his further confusion.

‘You’re one of my godfather’s tenants,’ said Gil, studying the man. ‘Down, Socrates,’ he added to the dog, who dropped obligingly to four paws and took his attentions on to Alys.

‘Aye, that’s right, sir, I am, I’m one of Sir James’s tenants,’ agreed Paton. ‘In Thorn, over yonder. There’s seven of us dwells there, and we all went up to the peat-digging the day morn, and here was this dead man. And when we kent who it was that we’d found, and seen that something had to be done about it, we decided I’d come to get you, and it’s right convenient you being here to visit your lady mother the now, sir, what wi’ Sir James being away at Stirling, and his depute gone to Edinburgh this week about the case at law, and Maister Michael no closer than Glasgow.’

Gil flicked a glance at his mother, and saw her face tighten briefly at this mention of her godson, offspring of her nearest neighbour Sir James Douglas.

‘But how do you ken who it is?’ he asked.

‘Oh, that’s clear enough, and no trouble to discern,’ said Paton with an access of confidence. ‘See, we came on his head first, and though you wouldny ken his face now, his hair’s as red as a tod in summer, and there’s the one fellow missing the now, and he’s red-headed and all. It’s Tammas Murray from the coal-heugh up by the Pow Burn, clear as day, and he’s been put there by witchcraft so Sir David said, which must ha’ been by the witch that dwells up there and all. So if you’d come wi’ us, maister — ’

‘Hold up here,’ said Gil. ‘Why do you want me? Has the man been formally identified? Who’s bringing the charge of witchcraft?’

‘I wouldny ken about that,’ said Paton, wringing his bonnet again, ‘only that Sir David said we wanted you and I was to come and get you, and we all agreed on that, and the rest of them has went to lift the witch and fetch her to confront the corp.’

‘The impertinence of that Davy Fleming!’ said Nan, from the doorway where she was listening avidly. ‘Why should he take Maister Gil away from visiting you, mistress? And from his bride and all?’

‘Where is this?’ Alys asked. ‘Where are the peat-cuttings?’

‘It’s no far, mem,’ said Alan Forrest the steward, and pointed generally eastward. ‘They’re up yonder, just off our land, no more than a mile or two from here. It’s no as if it’s asking Maister Gil to go out to the coal-heugh.’

‘We’ll no keep your man that long, mistress,’ Paton assured her.

‘I think you must go, Gilbert,’ said Lady Cunningham, meeting his eye significantly. Gil gave her a tiny nod.

‘Give me time to get my boots on,’ he said. ‘Did you ride here, man, or are you afoot?’

‘I rode the old pony,’ said Paton, grinning in relief. ‘I’m glad of that, maister, I’d no wish to go back to Sir David saying you wouldny come out.’

Gil nodded, and turned to go back up the spiral stair, Socrates at his knee. Alys hurried after him to the small chamber his mother had allocated to them, and seized her riding-dress from where it hung on a nail behind the door.

‘May I come with you?’ she said in French, unlacing her blue woollen gown. Gil paused, boot in hand, to watch appreciatively as she squirmed out of the tight bodice. Five months of marriage had altered her, he recognized. Once she would have waited for his answer before she began to change her clothes.