The Rough Collier

by Pat McIntosh

‘Matthew?’ asked Gil.

  ‘Matthew is dead,’ said Beatrice flatly. After a moment she went on, ‘He was my good-brother, and Joanna’s first man. He died near two year since, Christ assoil him, for aught I could do.’ Joanna turned her face away, and Gil thought he saw tears glittering on her eyelashes. ‘Then Joanna wedded Murray, and Arbella set him in Matthew’s place.’

  ‘You have not had to seek for trouble,’ said Alys in sympathy.

  ‘It’s a hard trade, winning coal,’ said Arbella, still behind her hand. ‘We get our livelihood from under the earth, and the earth takes lives in return.’

  Beatrice and Joanna crossed themselves at this, but neither spoke.

  ‘So it’s you that directs matters overall, madam,’ Gil said. Arbella lowered the hand, and he felt the impact of her blue gaze as she turned it on him.

  ‘I was reared here, maister. It was my father cut the first pit,’ she expanded, in gentle pride of possession, ‘more than forty year ago, and brought in Adam Crombie as his grieve. I was sole heir to my father, and Adam wedded me, and he and our sons have worked the Pow Burn coal-heugh ever since.’

  ‘Till they died,’ said Beatrice, still in that flat tone.

  ‘And have you sons yourself, mistress?’ Alys asked her.

  Beatrice’s expression softened. ‘Just the one living. He’s eighteen. His name’s Adam and all, though he aye gets called Raffie. He’s away at the college in Glasgow.’

  ‘And we’ve met Phemie, and this is Bel,’ Alys prompted. Bright colour washed over the girl’s plump face, and she bobbed a curtsy where she stood by her mother, but did not speak.

  ‘Bel’s a spinner,’ Joanna offered. ‘None better for her age in Lanarkshire, I dare say.’

  ‘I’m right fortunate in my grandchildren,’ said Arbella, with that same gentle pride in her voice. ‘My grandson is the boast of the college, and my lassies are kent for their skill for miles about.’

  ‘Hmf!’ said Bel’s mother, but did not contradict this.

  ‘So Murray has charge here under you,’ Gil persisted, ‘and he’s been gone for five weeks wi’ two of the men, and yet you never sent after him?’

  Joanna opened her mouth as if to speak, but Arbella said, ‘No. I see no need for it.’

  ‘But are you not concerned for him?’ asked Alys.

  ‘No yet,’ said Arbella. ‘Time enough to worry when eight or ten weeks are past. I can direct the colliers, and oversee the hill and the tallies.’

  ‘Considering what happened to your own man, Mother –’ said Joanna in her soft voice. Arbella covered her eyes again, and held up the other hand to stop the words. ‘No, I’m sorry, I ken it hurts you to mind it, but think on me, Mother! It’s my man that’s missing now, and never came home for Pace-tide!’

  Gil met Alys’s eye, and she asked, ‘Was that Maister Adam Crombie? Forgive my asking – what happened to him?’

  ‘That was Auld Adam,’ agreed Joanna, in spite of Beatrice’s tight-lipped stare. ‘He must ha’ took ill on the road, and died and was buried afore it was known here.’

  ‘Oh, how sad,’ said Alys involuntarily. ‘When was that? Where did it happen?’

  ‘Afore I came here,’ Joanna admitted. Arbella remained silent, though her lips moved as if in prayer.

  ‘That would be in ’77,’ said Beatrice harshly, ‘for my laddie was just walking when the word came back, his grandsire never saw him on his feet, and Phemie was born that summer.’

  ‘I hope at least you have seen his grave,’ said Alys. Arbella shook her head, without lowering her hand.

  ‘It must have been a great shock,’ Gil suggested.

  ‘Aye,’ said Beatrice. Gil waited, but she added nothing.

  ‘So you tell me Murray and two others left here on the eighteenth of March,’ he said at length. ‘Afoot, or on horseback? Did he seem just as usual when he left? Nothing was out of the ordinary?’

  ‘No,’ said Joanna blankly. ‘They rode on three of the ponies as they aye do, and they left at first light, just as they aye do. Why would it be different?’

  Beatrice’s mouth quirked. Observing this, Gil suggested, ‘Was he happy to go out on the road? Did he enjoy the change in his work? Or was it something he disliked doing?’

  ‘I think he liked getting away,’ said Joanna reluctantly.

  ‘Men aye like getting away,’ said Beatrice. ‘Mind that, lassie,’ she added to Alys, who smiled.

  Gil decided not to comment, but said, ‘The two men that went with Murray – the man Meikle said they were sinkers. What does a sinker do?’

  ‘Sinks shafts,’ explained Joanna. ‘By cutting down through the rock, you see.’

  ‘That must be difficult,’ said Alys immediately. ‘And dangerous. What do they use to break the stone?’

  ‘A great spike and a hammer,’ said Joanna, taking this understanding for granted, ‘and the stook and feathers.’

  ‘Wedges of iron,’ Beatrice translated. ‘You drive them in wi’ the hammer, see, and the rock splits. Sometimes it’ll fly up in splinters. It’s a rare sinker that lives to be an auld man.’

  Alys nodded, pulling a face, and Gil said, ‘So there’s no shaft being cut just now.’

  ‘We put in a new one no that long afore Yule,’ said Arbella, raising her head. ‘It serves well. So I allowed Thomas to take the two men along wi’ him, since there was no work for them the now.’

  ‘It was the same two lads he always took,’ supplied Joanna in her soft voice.

  ‘I should like to see inside the mine,’ Alys remarked thoughtfully, ‘though not in these clothes.’

  ‘Nor in any clothes, my dear,’ said Arbella, with her sweet smile. ‘We’d have the entire shift out for the rest of the day.’

  ‘My good-mother willny have a woman in the mine,’ said Beatrice, ‘and the men willny cross her.’ Her daughter Bel turned to look intently at her, but said nothing. ‘Where I’m from,’ she added, ‘on the shores of the Forth, the women work as bearers, to drag the creels of coal from the face to the stair, and then up to the hill, but here in Lanarkshire it’s all done different.’

  ‘So I should hope, Beattie my dear,’ said Arbella, raising those delicate eyebrows. ‘Where should the women be but seeing to the men’s dinner? I pay my colliers enough to live by, they’ve no need to set their women to work as well.’

  ‘Women working in the mine,’ repeated Alys in astonishment.

  ‘So is there,’ said Gil, still trying to keep control of the conversation, ‘any record of where Murray was going? What houses he was to call at? Is there a list, a way-sheet, a book of accounts?’

  Their hostesses looked at one another.

  ‘I’ve no doubt of it,’ said Arbella.

  ‘He’d have a way-sheet,’ agreed Beatrice. ‘My man aye kept a list, and so did Matthew.’ Joanna nodded. ‘Did Thomas? Would you ken where it is?’

  ‘He’d take it with him,’ said Joanna in her soft voice.

  ‘What about the last time he went out?’ Alys prompted. ‘Is there a record from that? Or in the accounts?’ She turned to Arbella Weir. ‘Perhaps in the order the accounts were paid?’

  Arbella nodded gracefully, the velvet fall of her French hood sliding over her grey silk shoulder.

  ‘Aye, for certain,’ she agreed. ‘Bel, my pet, would you be so good?’ The girl came shyly forward from her post at her mother’s shoulder. ‘The great account book, in the kist wi’ the flowers on it. Fetch it here for your granny.’

  The great account book was bound in worn buff leather, and bristling with slips of paper tucked between the leaves. Bel bore it in cradled in her arms as if it was a child; her mother set up a small folding table for the volume, and Arbella turned back first the upper board and then half the heavy pages, using both hands, to find the entry she wanted.

  ‘The Martinmas reckoning,’ she said, and ran her finger down the page. ‘Aye, this would likely be the road he would take. It’s the same road my dear Adam aye took, I ken that.’ Alys rose
and came to look over her shoulder. Arbella looked up at her, the velvet headdress framing her sweet smile. ‘You understand accounts, lassie?’

  ‘My father is a master mason.’ Alys drew her tablets from her purse. ‘May I make a note of these names? What a fine hand – is it your writing, madam?’

  ‘I was well taught,’ said Arbella. ‘I’ve had David Fleming teach my granddaughters the same, though he’s been a disappointment to me and all, and after today’s work I think I’ll not allow him to come back. It was his uncle Sir Arnold Douglas, that was chaplain to Sir James’s grandsire, taught me to read and write and reckon. Wi’ her letters and a good man, what more does a woman need in this life?’

  It was apparent to Gil that several of the younger women in the room could think of answers to that, but none of them spoke.

  ‘We must away, afore the light goes,’ he said after a pause. ‘I think I’ve gathered enough to go on with. If you can furnish me wi’ a description of the man Murray, and the two others, I can send after him, to see if we can track him down. Then we’ll know for certain the corp in the peat is some other fellow.’

  They mounted before the door, and were given a ceremonious farewell by Arbella, leaning on her granddaughter’s arm on the threshold.

  ‘We’ll see you again, I hope,’ she said in that gentle voice.

  Joanna nodded, and Gil saw that her hands were clasped at her waist, the knuckles showing white. Behind her good-mother Beatrice studied them, and said suddenly, her eyes on Alys, ‘Aye, we’ll see you again, won’t we no?’

  ‘We must return,’ Alys answered, ‘if only to report what we have learned about your missing man.’

  ‘You’ll be back afore that,’ said Beatrice. ‘I’ll be here, lassie.’

  ‘You’ve no need to concern yourselves wi’ Murray,’ said Arbella. ‘It’s only for putting the lie to Davy Fleming that I’d pay any mind to the matter at all.’

  ‘I think we can do that,’ said Gil, and hitched his cloak closer. He gathered up his reins in one hand, bent his head and crossed himself with the other in response to Arbella’s offered blessing for the journey, and heeled his horse forward. Alys followed him, and the two grooms fell in behind as they set off up the track, past the bleak garden and over the shoulder of the hill.

  Half a mile further on, out of sight of the house and the coal-workings, Gil was unsurprised to see a solitary figure standing by the side of the track waiting for them, red-and-blue plaid over her head against the pervasive wind.

  ‘That’s the lass from the coal-heugh,’ observed Henry.

  ‘It is,’ agreed Alys. ‘Good evening to you, Phemie.’

  ‘I must talk wi’ you,’ said Phemie, without preamble.

  ‘No the now, lass,’ objected Henry. ‘We want to be back on our own land afore the light goes.’

  ‘Aye, and I’ve to be back for my supper,’ she said scornfully. ‘I never meant the now, the owls will be flying afore long. Can one of you come back the morn’s morn?’ She looked closely at Alys, much as her mother had done. ‘You’ll be back, won’t you, mistress?’

  ‘I could come back in the morning,’ Alys admitted, with a glance at Gil.

  ‘Do that,’ said Phemie, ‘and I’ll find a way to get a word wi’ you. There’s plenty Arbella wouldny tell you, and a few things she doesny ken.’

  ‘That seems unlikely,’ Gil observed.

  Phemie shook her head. ‘She canny be everywhere. I’ll see you the morn’s morn, mistress.’ She stepped back from the edge of the track to let them pass, and set off across the rough grass of the hillside, without looking back.

  ‘Well, that’s an ill-schooled lassie,’ commented the second groom as they rode on.

  ‘She has a lot to trouble her,’ said Alys.

  Chapter Three

  ‘What were they hiding, I wonder,’ said Gil.

  ‘I don’t know that they were hiding anything,’ said Alys. ‘They were simply reluctant to talk to a stranger. Mistress Weir is very certain there is no need to search for this man Murray.’

  Gil considered this. He and Alys were in their chamber, halfway through changing their muddy riding-clothes for something fit to go down to supper in, and now he sat on the edge of the box bed and patted the counterpane beside him.

  ‘I want to find him, as I told her. We have a description,’ he said, putting his arm round his wife as she came to join him. ‘Of the man and the two fellows with him.’

  Alys tilted her head back, gazing at the ceiling, and the soft light from the horn window edged the high narrow bridge of her nose.

  ‘A bare description,’ she observed. ‘Jock and Tam Paterson, who are brothers. One is taller than the other and both have all their fingers yet. I suppose they are young men.’

  ‘And we have the list of the houses where Murray was to call, and the name of the salt-boiler beyond Blackness.’

  ‘So someone must work his way down the list,’ prompted Alys, ‘asking if he was there, and when, and if all was well. Gil, if you do that, I am distracted.’ She put her hand over his, stilling his fingers. ‘Blackness is a port, is it not? I wonder if he has simply taken all the money and gone to the Low Countries or England or somewhere.’

  ‘You had a look at the accounts.’

  ‘Yes, but the old lady was watching me, so I could not look too close. I thought they appeared sound enough. The income I saw would support the size of household they have there, and pay the colliers in coin and kind. If the man was taking anything out before he left on this collecting-round he was doing it very circumspectly.’

  ‘And if he ran, why would he take the other two men with him? Sharing the money?’

  ‘I agree. And also Beatrice said they have kin at the coal-heugh, they might not wish to run off with him. We must speak to the kin.’ She turned her head to look up at him. ‘Will you go out to the houses on the list?’

  ‘I thought we might persuade Michael to do that. My mother ordered him back here for supper, he should have arrived by now.’

  ‘Gil, it was an invitation!’ she protested, giggling. ‘And very civil.’

  ‘I heard her issue it. He’ll not disobey.’

  ‘He may not be willing to help us,’ she warned him. ‘He is quite afflicted, I think, not to find your sister Tib here.’

  ‘My heart bleeds at that.’

  ‘So does mine, to tell truth,’ she said seriously. ‘They have been parted for months, with only a couple of meetings in public, he must wonder whether she still –’

  ‘Hah!’ said Gil.

  ‘We have been fortunate,’ she pointed out. ‘You were never away for more than a few days before we were married, and since then –’

  ‘I’m still greatly displeased with him,’ Gil said firmly. ‘Tib apologized to me, for what that was worth, but I don’t recall that Michael ever did, and their behaviour was ill judged and ill disciplined.’

  ‘They are much in love.’

  ‘So are we, Alys, and I can’t imagine enticing you to my bed like that. Much though I might have wished to,’ he added wryly, recalling how long the weeks between the contract and the wedding had seemed.

  ‘Nor I you,’ she admitted. ‘But we were differently placed. We were acknowledged from the start, Gil. We had no need to act in secret.’

  He laughed, thinking of the snatched moments of what they had thought at the time was privacy, and tightened his clasp on her waist. ‘I suppose it’s my fault. I should have made sure my sister was better guarded. Well, too late now, and if Michael wants me to support his case with his father he’ll oblige me and be civil about it.’ He glanced at the window, where the sun was warming the greyish-yellow panes. ‘They’ll blow up for supper soon. We must dress.’

  She tucked her hand into his as he rose.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said diffidently, ‘I wish all women to be as fortunate as I am. I married for love and to please my father, and I wish Tib could do the same.’

  Gil drew her to her feet and into hi
s arms, looking fondly down into her brown gaze.

  ‘It was the best day of my life when Pierre proposed the match to me,’ he said, ‘and when he told me you wished it too, I could hardly believe my fortune. It’s near a year since then,’ he discovered. ‘We should hold a feast for the anniversary.’

  ‘I never realized,’ said Lady Egidia, spooning green sauce over her boiled mutton, ‘that all the Crombie men were dead.’

  She was seated at the head of the long board, Alys and Gil at her right hand, her godson at her left, with her steward, his wife Eppie and the rest of the household arrayed below them. At the far end among the grooms Gil could see Henry, by his gestures describing the discovery of the corpse in the peat-digging.

  ‘The youngest still lives,’ said Alys. ‘Mistress Weir’s grandson. Ralph, did his mother call him?’

  ‘That’s a by-name, I think,’ said Gil. ‘Adam, she said. He’d be named for his father, or his grandsire. Is there an Adam Crombie at the university, Michael?’

  Michael paused with a second oozing wedge of cold pie halfway to his wooden trencher. Socrates, seated at Gil’s elbow, the crown of his rough grey head level with the miniature silver saint on the lid of the salt, watched the pastry crumbs falling on the tablecloth, and his nose twitched.

  ‘Down,’ said Gil sternly, and the dog lay down with an ostentatious sigh.

  ‘Aye, he’s at the college,’ Michael admitted. ‘Magistrand.’

  ‘That is a fourth year man,’ Alys prompted, ‘like you?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Gil waited, but no further information emerged. A difficult situation, he reflected, to be in the same year as your tenant’s son.

  ‘It was sad how Mistress Weir’s husband died,’ said Alys, passing Gil the salt with her free hand. ‘Did she say it was in ’77, Gil?’

  ‘Beatrice said that, aye,’ Gil agreed.

  ‘I was still at court, then.’ Lady Egidia stared into the distance, her long-chinned face remote. ‘Aye, I think I recall, your father must have come over from Thinacre to gather the rents and brought the tale back. Where did it happen? Elsrickle? Douglas?’

  ‘They never said.’