by Pat McIntosh
As their landlord entered the yard the two Drummond men swept off their bonnets and bowed with a grace one might barely see equalled in Edinburgh. The oldest granddaughter stepped forward with a lugged bowl in her hands, to offer refreshment to the guests, and amid Sir William’s bluntly expressed sympathies and the general dismounting, Gil thought he was the only person to notice Andrew Drummond’s expression as he stared at the black ribcage of his mother’s house. He moved to the man’s side and said quietly:
‘She got out of it, man. She breathed clean air afore she died.’
Drummond nodded, without looking round, and turned away to greet his brother with a curt nod and a word in Ersche. Gil went closer to the ruin, gazing in at the doorway. The thatch, he supposed, would have burned most completely at the point where it first caught fire. If the fire had been set, presumably that would be at the eaves somewhere, within reach of the person responsible, whereas if it had begun from a spark flying up from the peat fire the higher parts of the roof would have burned first. Or would a firesetter have thrown a burning brand up on to the roof? No, Steenie had talked as if the eaves caught first. The collapsed layer of ash and bracken leaves draped over the internal structures of the house told him nothing useful, and the smell of damp ashes was overwhelming. He stepped back, and found the younger Drummond at his elbow, velvet bonnet in hand.
‘I am thinking,’ said the young man, ‘you are Maister Cunningham, that is Mistress Alys’s man.’ Gil admitted this. ‘I tell you, maister, she is our heart-friend so long as she lives for last night’s work. She and your man Steenie carried water the night long and she helped to dress burns and wash the dead.’ He turned his face away briefly, then went on, ‘Can you tell me where is – where is Davie?’ he ended in a rush, going scarlet.
‘He’s in St Angus’ Kirk,’ said Gil. Jamie sighed in relief, and crossed himself, the bright colour fading already. ‘Sir Duncan sent his clerk to say he can stay there.’
‘Then there is things we would like to tell you.’
‘My wife bade me talk to you,’ Gil said, nodding.
The dead, it seemed, were laid out in Patrick’s house, on the southern side of the yard, and the most of the visitors were there or in the yard itself. Seated by the hearth in the other longhouse, his back to the tall loom with its half-worked web of bright checks, Gil listened to Jamie’s account of the fire and the death of his grandmother while one of the younger granddaughters offered him usquebae and oatcakes, and the other watched at the door.
‘But it was the fire itself killed her,’ he said as the tale ended, ‘not a direct injury?’
‘That is so,’ agreed Jamie. ‘The cailleach had no injury, thanks be to Mary mild and Angus.’ Gil waited. ‘My cousin Iain,’ Jamie said at last. ‘He is dead, poor laddie, when the beasts ran over him out of the fold.’ He pointed, out and across the yard, at the lower end of the other house. ‘He was a changeling, poor bairn, he neither walked nor spoke, it’s a mystery how he got there when his mother says she was putting him safe by the wall away from the flames.’
‘Could he crawl?’ Gil asked.
‘He might have crawled so far,’ admitted the prettier of the girls.
‘What are his injuries?’
‘Dreadful to see,’ said the other girl, who seemed a little younger. ‘There is bruises all over him, and a great gash here,’ she drew a hand across below her ribs, ‘and not a mark on his face. I was there when they washed him.’ Her cousin made a small distressed sound, and she put her arm round her, murmuring in Ersche.
‘Do you know where he was found?’ Gil asked.
‘It was his mother picked him up,’ said Jamie, ‘and bore him up into the yard. Will I be asking her?’
‘Not yet,’ said Gil. ‘May I see him? I’d want to look close.’
‘Aye, you would,’ said Jamie darkly.
The younger girl left her cousin and slipped out, to return in a moment saying, ‘There is nobody there just now but Ailidh. If the gentleman were to be quick it would be good.’
Across the busy yard with its subdued conversations, the other house was similar in size and shape to the weaver’s, as if the two had been built at the same time, but it was furnished differently, and the chill smell of death overlaid that of the dried plants hung in the roof and the brews in the row of dyepots by the wall. Directly before the door Mistress Drummond was laid out in her shroud on several planks set across two barrels; at the foot of the makeshift bier stood a cradle, draped in clean linen, with the dead child reposing in it as if he slept. The oldest granddaughter was kneeling by his head, her beads in her hand, but her lips were still, her eyes distant. She looked up as they entered. The two younger girls stayed outside.
‘Maister Cunningham wishes to see the harm that came to the boy,’ said Jamie quietly.
‘Harm enough,’ said the girl, rising. She bobbed to Gil, and bent to draw back the linen. ‘But it was only the beasts, surely? No blame to them, poor creatures, they were terrified. Or else the – Those Ones, that took him home again. No blame in either case.’
‘No blame,’ agreed Gil, kneeling in his turn.
‘Then why must you be disturbing him?’
Why indeed? Gil wondered. ‘Because,’ he said, feeling carefully along the spindly limbs, ‘Davie Drummond is accused of this death as well as the fire, and –’
‘Och, her!’ said Ailidh. Her brother spoke sharply in Ersche, and she made an equally sharp retort and went on in Scots, ‘She was outside herself, with the fire and my grandmother’s death already, and then Iain, the poor soul. No need to pay her any mind, surely?’
‘I think Sir William will want to ask questions,’ said Gil absently. The wound on the belly might have caused the child’s death, but none of the others seemed severe enough. He touched the little pale face gently, ran his palm behind the curve of the head, fingers pressing gently at the scalp under the pale frizz of hair, and stopped.
‘What is it?’ demanded Jamie. ‘What have you found?’
‘Jamie!’ said one of the girls urgently from the yard.
‘I think,’ Gil began, ‘his skull –’
‘What are you doing?’ demanded a shrill voice in the doorway. ‘Leave my boy alone, whoever you are, have you no notion of respect for the dead? Under his own roof, at that?’
Gil and Jamie tried to speak at once, both stopped to let the other continue, and Caterin took full advantage of the hesitation and stormed into the house, pulling at her nephew’s arm, haranguing him in Ersche. Gil might not understand the words, but her meaning was clear. He apologized, drew the linen back over the small corpse and withdrew in good order to the yard, where several of the neighbours were coming to see what the trouble was, exclaiming and shaking their heads with shocked murmurs as Caterin explained in a rising torrent of Ersche. The two younger girls had vanished.
‘Ailidh is right,’ said Jamie in some embarrassment, drawing Gil down the slope from the door. ‘She is outside herself still. What had you found? Is his skull broke?’
‘I think so,’ said Gil. ‘Skull and scalp both, I believe, though I’d want longer to make certain of it.’
‘Will I get my uncle to make her allow it?’
‘Show me the fold and the gate first.’
The fold below the byre, at the lower end of the longhouse, was a substantial walled structure of field stones, with a hurdle gate standing open, the bar which would hold it in place lying at the wall’s foot. The enclosure was trampled and spattered with animal dung, as was the gateway. The younger girls had taken refuge down here, out of sight from the door of the house.
Gil studied the area carefully. Now he had seen the corpse it was not hard to pick out the place where the child’s body had lain, the imprint of thin shoulders and legs, the marks of his mother’s bare feet where she had bent to lift him.
‘Who penned the beasts last night?’ he asked. The cousins looked at one another.
‘My father, it would be,’ said the pretty
girl.
‘Does he go shod?’
‘Brogainn,’ said Jamie, ‘like mine.’ He held out one foot in its soft deerskin shoe, laced up his ankle with scarlet braid.
‘Only his is laced with leather,’ said the plainer girl.
‘Husha, Nannie! Why do you ask it, maister?’
Gil bent to look closer at the prints which interested him.
‘See this,’ he said, pointing. ‘There is a bare foot there, and another, and the cattle have gone over the top of it. Someone was down by this gate before the beasts were let out.’
‘Maybe it was whoever left them out,’ suggested the girl addressed as Nannie. That must be Agnes, Gil, recalled, and her cousin must be Elizabeth, sister of the dead boy.
‘No, for that was old Tormod,’ said Jamie. ‘I called to him, and he went – aye, here is his print.’ He bent to a spot by the wooden bar at the wall’s foot. ‘See, maister, he goes shod, but his feet is twisted with the joint-ill, his track is easy known.’
‘We was all down here,’ said Agnes. ‘We came down to find buckets and the like, for the water.’
‘Not here,’ said the other girl. ‘We went that way, to the stackyard and the burn beyond it. No need to go by the wall here.’
‘Someone did,’ said Jamie. He returned to stare down at the marks Gil had pointed out, then at the prints close by the marks of the body, where the boy’s mother had lifted him. His mouth tightened.
‘But there was no need,’ objected Elizabeth again. ‘Why come by here, into the shadows, when the stackyard is yonder, and the path lit up bright as day by the – the flames from the house –’ Her face crumpled again, and she turned away. Jamie, who had wandered off along the wall, looked up and spoke to his sister in Ersche. As Ailidh had done, she argued in the same language, but led her cousin off towards the house where they had sat before. Jamie watched them out of sight, and said quietly to Gil:
‘See this, maister.’
‘What have you found?’ Gil went to his side, and found him looking at one of the dark grey field stones.
‘That is skin,’ said Jamie. He lifted the stone, and turned it to the light. It was small in his big hand, but big enough for its purpose. It might have fallen off the top of the dyke, though if so it was not lying immediately below its place of origin, for the grass where it had lain was green rather than white. On one ragged corner of the stone something was clinging. ‘Skin, a little blood, white hair.’
‘Likely one of the beasts hurted itself on the stones,’ said another voice. Gil turned, and found the other daughter-in-law, the widowed Mòr, standing by the corner of the fold watching them. ‘Jamie, what are you doing down here, upsetting your cousin, poor lass?’
‘Is any of the beasts lame?’ Jamie challenged her. She shrugged, and moved forward with an uneven step. ‘Mammy, it’s not the hair of a beast. Look here – it’s as fine as any of ours, and curls the way Iain’s does.’
‘Or yours, or your sisters’.’
‘My sisters and I do not have a broken head. Is this what broke Iain’s skull, do you think, Maister Cunningham?’
‘Yes,’ said Gil deliberately. ‘I think it could be.’
‘Is the bairn’s skull broke?’ said Mòr with a show of indifference. ‘That would be when Those Ones were taking him back. Leave it, Jamie, we’ll not be meddling with their business.’
‘Mammy, look!’ Jamie held it out to her, pointing out the stains along its sharp edge. She took it in her hand, turned it over, looking impassively at the marks, and suddenly sent it spinning off into the rough ground between them and the nearest of the cottages. Jamie exclaimed, but she repeated, with emphasis, ‘No need to be meddling in that. Maister Cunningham, Sir William is asking for you, and my good-brother Patrick would be glad of a word before you are leaving.’
‘That will be a speak for the whole of Balquhidder,’ said Gil’s guide chattily. ‘The more so if the Tigh-an-Teine has burned after all, and the cailleach dead in the flames, and the changeling stolen away back under the hill in exchange for Davie Drummond. Is it the kirk we’re for just now, so you can be seeing young Davie again, or no?’
‘No, I’ll speak with him later,’ Gil said. He stepped on to the bridge and whistled to the dog. ‘I’m for the priest’s house. I could do with a word with Sir Duncan, if he’s equal to it, and certainly with young Robert.’
‘I was hearing Sir Duncan is good today,’ offered the guide. He was a stocky, fair-haired fellow with a broad, open, guileless face. Murdo had referred to him as Alasdair nan Clach, whatever that might mean. ‘He has good days and bad days, you understand. It’s no more than you’d be expecting, the age he is.’
‘I understand,’ agreed Gil. ‘What age is he?’
Alasdair nan Clach shrugged.
‘Maybe ninety?’ he said. ‘Maybe one hundred? Old as these hills, you would say.’
Discounting this, Gil strode on up the slope from the river, past the watchful haymakers and quietly ripening oats. A bite to eat, a word with Steenie, and the assurance of Lady Stewart and the girl Seonaid that Alys was unhurt and was now asleep had helped a lot, but he was still slightly shaky with relief, and his head was whirling with the information he had gathered this noontime. He would infinitely rather have stayed to talk it through with Alys when she woke, and hear the full tale of her adventures in Glenbuckie, but if his suspicions were correct he had already put off more time than he should before making this visit. He hoped his third quarry might not realize yet that he was pursued.
He passed the circle of tall stones, where Socrates pricked his ears at the children playing among them, and turned along the little path to the priest’s snug stone house, aware of eyes on his back from the other cottages of the Kirkton. Rattling at the tirling-pin, he pushed the door wider without waiting for an answer, saying, ‘Robert? Are you within?’
There was a startled movement, a deep-voiced exclamation. Not Robert Montgomery’s voice, not the priest’s. Socrates pricked his ears again, then rushed forward, his tail wagging wildly. Gil stepped after him under the lintel.
‘Maister Doig,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you here.’
The place was sparsely furnished, and smelled of damp earth and illness. A three-legged stool and a great chair of solid local work stood by the hearth in the centre of the house, where a pot simmered on the peats. There was a bench against the wall by the door; beyond the fire a mealkist stood on top of a bigger, painted kist, and two books and a silver crucifix were propped on a shelf. In the partition between the lodging of human and animal yawned two dark shut-beds, and there Socrates had rolled on to his back, yammering like a pup and waving his paws before a squat bulky shape, no higher than an ell-stick, which stood beside one of them.
‘I’ll no say the same o you, Maister Cunningham,’ returned the deep voice, and the outline changed as if the short figure bent, extending a big hand to rub the dog’s narrow ribcage. ‘What brings you and your dog to the Kirkton? You’re no here to distress the auld yin, I hope?’
‘I’ve no intention of distressing him,’ said Gil. ‘How is he? I’d hoped for a word.’
‘He’s asleep for now. Maybe once he wakes he’ll be up to talking.’ The dark shape moved forward into the light from the door, and became the figure Gil remembered, like someone from his nurse’s tales: short legs, broad shoulders, powerful hairy arms, a big head. Unlike his wife William Doig presented a much sprucer persona than the last time they had met, clad as he was in a red velvet jerkin and blue hose, the sleeves of his good linen shirt rolled back. Socrates scrambled to his feet and followed Doig, head level with his, nosing at the angle of his neck, tail wagging again. There was no doubt he remembered him.
‘You’ve given up the dog breeding?’ Gil asked. Doig shrugged, a seismic movement of the broad shoulders, and flung an arm round the wolfhound’s neck.
‘Herself has care of the dogs for now. She’s a good eye for it. I miss it,’ he admitted.
‘Leaves you fr
ee for other business,’ suggested Gil. Doig eyed him resentfully, much as his wife had done in Perth, but said nothing. ‘I’ve a thing or two to ask you as well. Shall we sit out at the door, no to disturb Sir Duncan?’
‘No,’ said Doig bluntly. ‘We’ll sit here. I’m no welcome in the Kirkton, I’ll no remind them I’m here, if it’s all one to you.’ He hoisted himself on to the bench next the wall, glowering through the open door at Alasdair nan Clach who was quite openly making the horns against the evil eye at the sight of him. ‘Ask if you must,’ he said grudgingly, patting Socrates, whose chin was on his knees.
Gil sat down beside him and thought briefly.
‘When were you last in Dunblane?’ he asked. Doig’s head snapped round; whatever questions he had been expecting, it was not this one.
‘Dunblane? Never been near the place,’ he returned, almost automatically.
‘That won’t do,’ said Gil, allowing amusement to show. ‘You were seen at John Rattray’s window.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Where did you take him to?’ Gil countered. ‘I’m guessing it was nowhere in Scotland, or we’d ha heard of him, seeing how word gets about. The Low Countries? France?’
‘I’ve no notion what you’re talking about,’ said Doig steadfastly. The dog looked from one man to the other, and wagged his tail uneasily.
‘Rattray’s servant took you for the Deil himsel, with your wings down your back.’
Doig’s wide mouth twitched, but he said nothing.
‘But you know Canon Drummond,’ Gil stated. ‘Andrew Drummond of Dunblane.’
‘Do I?’ said Doig. ‘No that I can think of.’
‘That’s a pity, for he speaks well of you,’ said Gil mendaciously.
‘Beats me where he gets the knowledge.’
‘And then in Perth,’ Gil went on. The sturdy figure beside him seemed to brace itself. ‘The two brothers from St John’s Kirk.’
