The Counterfeit Madam

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘I couldny say for sure, my son, but it’s awfy like it, and what’s worse, this very day hardly an hour since there was another great howling, like wild beasts it was, away up the glen, I could hear it from here. So I barred myself within the kirk, and I’ve been asking Our Lady and St Machan for their protection. Maybe that’s who sent you,’ he added, brightening.

  ‘Have you never been to look yoursel?’ Lowrie asked. ‘Tell us what’s happening. When did it begin?’

  It had begun in early December, when a shepherd on the hillside had reported hearing noises from one of the offshoots of the main glen, half a mile upstream from the church.

  ‘Digging, he said, and scraping. And when he went closer, and called to find out who was at work, he heard a groaning and a howling like wild beasts, just the same as the day.’

  ‘Did he not speak to the folk at the House?’ Lowrie demanded. ‘Surely he got a hunt up to deal wi beasts? Was it a wolf, or a wildcat?’

  ‘There’s nobody dwells in the House the now,’ protested Sir Richie, defensive of his parishioner, ‘and though they got a hunt thegither about St Lucy’s Day they came back, saying they’d all heard the sounds and it was like no canny sort of beast whatever, and they’d never gone close enough to see it.’

  Lowrie grunted. Alys said,

  ‘And then what happened?’

  Another man, pursuing a strayed goat about Epiphany, had followed it up the burn and into the foot of the same side valley.

  ‘And there he smelled smoke, and then he saw flames, and two fiends, and they were making the groaning and howling,’ Sir Richie assured them, ‘so the hunt was right to turn back, maister, you can see.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Lowrie, unconvinced.

  ‘That was near four months ago,’ said Alys. ‘Has there been nothing more?’

  Sir Richie shook his head.

  ‘There’s been all sorts, mistress. Times we’ve all heard the cries they make. Why, at Candlemas itself, when Jockie Clerk and I opened up the kirk to say Prime afore the first Mass, we both heard the fiends howling and groaning, and so did the folk that turned out for the Mass and all.’ He swallowed hard. ‘I took the cross from the altar, and we brought that and the candles to the door, and I, I bade them begone in the name o the Blessed Trinity, and there was sic a laughing and shrieking as you never did hear, and, and, well, it never worked, for they were there again a day or two after.’

  ‘But have you told nobody?’ Lowrie demanded. ‘Your bishop, your landlord? Who’s the feu superior?’

  ‘Where do the rents go?’ Alys asked. Socrates padded back to put his chin on her knee, and she scratched his ears.

  The rents, it seemed, were collected by the same man as visited Balgrochan, every quarter for the last year or two; but only yesterday, said Sir Richie earnestly, the feu superior had paid them a call.

  ‘Sempill of Muirend?’ she said. Lowrie glanced sharply at her, but the priest nodded.

  ‘Aye, aye, that’s the man. And I tellt him the tale entire, and showed him how the Clachan’s deserted, and he rode off, swearing to put matters right.’ Did he so? thought Alys sceptically. ‘Indeed I thought when I heard your horses it was to be him returning, maybe wi the Archbishop or the like.’

  ‘So what’s to do, maister?’ asked one of Lowrie’s men from the shadows.

  ‘We go up the glen to see what’s what,’ said Alys promptly.

  ‘Oh, no, we don’t, mistress!’ said Lowrie. ‘We’ll go. You’ll stay here, if you please, wi Sir Richie.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘This is my adventure, I don’t expect you to—’

  ‘We’ll ha enough to do facing fiends frae Hell,’ said Tam rather nervously, ‘let alone worrying over keeping you safe.’

  ‘I can keep myself safe,’ she said.

  ‘No, no, madam,’ protested the old priest, ‘much better you stay here. Indeed I’d as soon you all stayed here, or else left me and went to bring back a greater number and a great retinue of clerks as well—’

  Alys stood by the door of the little kirk, Socrates at her side, and watched the men out of sight. Sir Richie had insisted on blessing each of them with holy water and a tremulous prayer, which had done very little for Luke’s spirits; she had considered asking for the boy to stay with her, and discarded the idea. He would be little help for her next move.

  ‘I am concerned for the horses,’ she said to the old man. ‘I’ll just go as far as the gate and make sure of them.’

  ‘But, daughter,’ he began from inside the church, but she slipped away, round the corner of the building towards the gate, the dog almost glued to her skirts. The men had scrambled over the tumbledown drystone wall of the kirkyard, but she was not certain she could do the same in her riding-dress before Sir Richie could catch up with her. Through the gate she cast a cursory glance towards the horses, which were standing peacefully enough in the shade of one of the cottages. The taller beasts were making inroads on the edge of its turf roof. Turning right, bending low, she scurried along the wall and then down into the hollow of the burn where it chattered and bubbled among dark smooth stones. Crossing it by the plank bridge she had seen from the door of the kirk, she set off up the glen after the men, Socrates at her heel, oblivious to the faint cries from behind her.

  It was a lovely setting, she thought, looking warily around, with the spring just beginning to breathe across it. On this side of the burn a grassy path led upstream, with occasional tall trees to shade it. On the other, above the church, was a patch of well-tended woodland. Beyond, on both sides, the flanks of the Campsies rose, smooth and grassy, dotted with sheep and lambs. Some of the trees showed green buds, a few small flowers gleamed in the grass, and birds chirped and flitted busily among the branches. Sir Richie had stopped calling after her, and apart from the sheep bleating to their young any other sound was swamped by the noise of the water. There was certainly no sound of fiendish laughter or wild activity.

  She went carefully, paying attention all about her, relishing this moment of freedom. Now she was married she rarely went unattended anywhere, and it was good to have no complaining servant at her back, though perhaps, she thought, one might be glad of company in a few minutes. Whatever had been happening further upstream?

  The dark stones in the burn had been smoothed by the water, but were the same colour as the jagged rocks of a miniature cliff beneath the clasping roots of a hawthorn bush, where a thick vein of some lighter mineral showed gleams of green and rust. The path under her feet had been much trampled, with sign which went both ways. When did it last rain here? she wondered, studying the prints. The dog, sniffing where she looked, raised his head and stared up the glen, his ears pricked.

  The little valley narrowed, curved to the right, then to the left. She paused by a scatter of rougher stones, and bent to lift one which caught her eye, turning it this way and that in the light. Socrates came to see what she was looking at. Satisfied, she pushed his nose out of the way and found her purse again, tucked the scrap of stone into it, and drew out the dagger she had extracted from Gil’s kist last night. Leaving its sheath in the purse she shook her skirts straight and moved cautiously onward, the haft of the little weapon comforting in her hand. She was fairly sure now of what they would find, but if it came to an argument with the occupiers, it might help to be armed.

  The burn beside her widened into a pool with a noisy waterfall at its head. The bank they followed rose, and the path swung away from the pool to skirt the waterfall. Beyond it she could see a wall of dark jagged rock, overhung with ivy and leaning bushes. Moving carefully, she climbed to the crest of the fall and paused warily in the shadow of some trees, studying the land. Socrates waited beside her, looking up at her face.

  This was where the valley forked; the main burn swung to her right, a smaller burn tumbled in from the other side. There was no sign of flames, only a thread of smoke rising up somewhere on her left, but there was a sense of threat, the feeling of being watched, although nothing stirr
ed but some black birds sailing against the brisk clouds, croaking in annoyance, and smaller singing birds hopping in the trees above her. She drew breath, told herself firmly not to be foolish, and moved forward to go and explore the new valley.

  ‘Both dead when we found them,’ said Lowrie.

  ‘The poor souls.’ Alys crossed herself, gazing at the scene, then knelt to close the remaining eye of the body nearest her. ‘What can have happened? I think this one must have fallen into the furnace, but the other?’

  ‘Stabbed,’ said Tam. ‘He was the luckier, I’d say.’

  She nodded without looking up, biting her lips to keep the tears back, and touched the undamaged portion of the dead man’s face and neck with care, silently promising him her prayers.

  Across the hollow the little furnace was still smoking, occasional flames leaping from the charcoal which was exposed where the clay and stones had crumbled. There was what looked like a crucible tilted among the debris, with crushed rock sintered into a lump; the big leather bellows were scorched beyond repair, a pair of tongs lay where they had been flung down, a patch of clay had been smoothed and grooved for pouring whatever should have run from the crucible. The other dead man lay on his face, sprawled, his hands out before him. A narrow slit in the back of his hooded leather sark told of his end. There was a smell, of blood, of burnt flesh and hair, of mud.

  Her escort stood bareheaded and awkward in the presence of death. Luke was now openly weeping. Socrates sat at her elbow, subdued by the mood of the group.

  ‘But what has happened here?’ she asked, sitting back on her heels. ‘Have they fought one another? Was there a third man? I think,’ she tested the rigid neck again, ‘he is dead perhaps three hours or a little more.’

  ‘I’ve made out four men a’thegither,’ said Lowrie’s man Frank, gesturing at the trampled earth. ‘It’s no that clear, you’ll understand, but I’ve saw both their marks, and two others. Three o them’s all over the place here, one above the other, they’ve been here days I’d say or even longer. The last one’s just on the top o the rest, and him, well, it’s like he’s been fighting, the marks go all ways and the heels is right dug in, you can see where he jumped aside to get this fellow.’

  ‘Is this what you expected, mistress?’ Lowrie was trying for a normal tone of voice. ‘The mining? I take it they’re getting silver?’

  ‘I – yes,’ she admitted. ‘I wasn’t certain, you understand, but it seemed the best explanation. When I saw the rocks in the burn I thought it more likely. I saw a silver mine once before,’ she explained, ‘in France, in just such rock as this.’

  ‘A siller mine?’ said Sim hopefully. ‘Is there like to be siller lying about for the taking?’

  ‘We should check,’ said Lowrie. ‘But mind it belongs to the Crown, man, keep your light fingers off it if you see anything. And keep back from that furnace, it may no be yellow any longer but it’s still ower warm.’

  ‘Yes, we must check,’ said Alys, getting resolutely to her feet and looking round. Sim unwound his plaid and laid it over the dead man with care, hiding the ruined face. Frank followed his example to cover the other corpse. ‘Show me these marks,’ she said to him.

  With an indulgent air he pointed out the traces of the different footprints, not easy to see in the rough broken stone underfoot, more readily picked out in the muddy patches near the burn. When she found another set of marks near the shelter he looked at her with more respect.

  ‘Aye, that’s number fower,’ he agreed, ‘he’s got a narrower heel than these ithers, and his toes is more like the shape o Tam’s or Luke’s and all. These ither three all had their shoon frae the same place, and it wasny hereabouts, I’d say.’

  Alys nodded, gazing about her.

  ‘So these two were about their work,’ she said, ‘and this man with the different feet came and fought with them. One fell in the fire, and the stranger stabbed the other.’

  ‘Aye, or they fought among the three o them,’ the man offered. ‘Then he made off.’

  ‘I wonder how far he has gone,’ she said. ‘And where is the other man with these shoes? Could they be out there?’

  They were only a few yards from the main valley, but because of the way this smaller burn twisted, they could neither see nor hear the other watercourse. The dell where they stood must once have been pretty, with little white flowers and hawthorn bushes under a ring of taller trees in which jackdaws commented busily on the strangers below them. Now it was scarred by the industry of the dead man and their companion; there was their small shelter of bent branches and hides, a stack of green wood cut for burning, the broken furnace now cooling rapidly, its spoil mixed with broken and crushed rock all about. Not far upstream a bigger spoil heap was smothering the aconites, and a low dark hole in the rocky bank spoke of a mine adit. What did the folk at the mine by Carluke call it? Oh, yes, an ingaun ee.

  ‘What were they doing here?’ Luke wondered, sniffing. ‘Why would you break the stone so small, mistress?’

  ‘To get the silver out,’ Lowrie said before she could answer. He bent and lifted a scrap of rock, turning it to the light as Alys had done on the path. There was a small gleam from one angle.

  ‘Oh, I see!’ said his man Sim. ‘And then they melt it in the furnace, and catch it in thon dish in its midst. That’s right clever. I never kent that was how you got siller.’

  ‘Was that the flames they all seen?’asked Tam, who was poking about the little shelter. ‘How about the howling and the fiends?’

  ‘Could two men work and two pretend to be fiends?’ Alys wondered. And this poor soul’s injuries, she realized grimly, would explain the howling Sir Richie heard this morning.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ admitted Tam. He straightened up. ‘But there wasny four o them, mistress. There was three, for there’s three scrips here, and three bedrolls, and no sign there’s ever been a fourth dwelling here, the neat way it’s all fitted thegither.’

  ‘So where is the third?’ Lowrie looked about.

  ‘There’s four sets o prints,’ said Frank.

  ‘Aye, and what do we do wi these two, maister?’ asked Sim. He clapped Luke on the shoulder. ‘Here, laddie, it comes to all o us soon or late. No sense in grieving for a man you never met.’

  ‘I never kent eyes would do that,’ Luke said, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and sniffed again.

  ‘Take your dagger,’ Alys said in some sympathy, ‘and go cut some hazels to make hurdles, then we may carry them down to the kirk. Maybe Frank would go with you?’ She raised her eyebrows at Lowrie, who nodded briefly. ‘Tam, what else have you found?’ She crossed to the shelter, and bent to peer in. Above their heads the jackdaws rose and swirled, commenting indignantly on the extra movements.

  ‘Aye, well, they’ve been snug enough in here. Their blankets, a kettle for cooking, a couple lanterns—’

  ‘They would need the lanterns in the mine,’ Lowrie suggested. ‘No tools?’

  ‘How neat it all is. Is there nothing to tell us who sent them?’

  ‘No that I can see.’ Tam straightened up to look at Alys, but his gaze went beyond her. ‘Here, where’s the dog away to?’

  She turned, in time to see the lean grey shape hurtling up the eastward slope away from the burn. Alarmed, she called him but he continued, and vanished among the bushes. Around her the men drew their weapons and scanned the valley sides, all three poised for action. Luke and Frank had gone the other way, she realized, westward, and as the thought reached her there was a terrified yell from the crest of the slope, and an outbreak of snarling.

  ‘Socrates! Hold!’ she shouted, and picked up her skirts, intending to follow the dog.

  ‘Wait here!’ ordered Lowrie, running past her. Tam and Sim were already part way up the slope, moving cautiously, peering through the branches for the sources of the snarling argument above them. Lowrie, whinger drawn, caught up and passed them. She stood anxiously staring as they worked their way up among the new leaves, trying to
make out what Socrates was doing. His low, continuous growl told her he had trapped someone or something, but she thought he was uncertain what to do with his catch. A wolf? Surely not, this close to Glasgow, she told herself. A man? Is this who was watching earlier?

  ‘Stand still,’ said Lowrie sharply. A man, then. ‘I said stand still! Tam, Sim, get his arms, if he’ll not listen to me. Mistress, will you call the dog?’

  It was less simple than that, of course. In the end Alys had to climb the slope to adjudicate between the dog and the three men. Socrates gave up his prisoner with reluctance, and watched jealously while the newcomer was escorted back down to the dell.

  He was no more than a boy, she realized as she slithered after them, younger than Luke. He was dressed in shabby clothing of strange cut, jerkin and hose and a jack with holes at the elbows, and must have been hunting for the pot; a sling hung at his belt, and he had two coneys in a bag on his back. His boots were broad and round of heel and toe. He looked terrified, but when he saw the two silent forms in the hollow he checked in horror, and then flung himself forward with a cry. Lowrie dived after him, but was not in time to prevent him pulling back the checked folds of Sim’s plaid and revealing what the intense heat of the furnace had done to the dead man’s face.

  ‘Vati!’ he said, and choked, and heaved drily. ‘Ah, mein vati!’

  ‘High Dutch, I think,’ said Alys, overwhelmed with pity. ‘He says that is his father.’

  ‘I’ve no tongues other than Latin,’ said Lowrie, ‘and I doubt this laddie – loquerisne latine?’ There was no reaction; the boy had staggered back a few steps, and was staring at his father’s corpse, still gagging. ‘Either of you speak High Dutch?’

  ‘No me, maister,’ said Sim, and Tam shook his head. Alys mustered the few words of Low Dutch she knew, and put a hand on the prisoner’s wrist.

  ‘Ik Alys,’ she said, pointing at herself. ‘Du?’

  He stared at her, as if returning from a great distance, then looked round at the men in fear. Lowrie shook his head and made a calming gesture with one hand, but the boy shivered.