The Stolen Voice

by Pat McIntosh

  He turned to look at her. She had a momentary impression of a bony face, of an unnaturally high forehead (or was he bald? or shaved?) before she was swamped by a sea-green stare which seemed to look right into her soul. Without having to think about it, she curtsied.

  ‘Davie needs you, daughter,’ he said.

  ‘Me?’ she said, startled. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Yonder.’ He nodded towards the priest’s house. ‘Go now, daughter. This is nearly done.’

  Hurrying up the path towards the stone house, she could hear the voices. They were so intent on their discussion that she reached the door unnoticed.

  ‘I can’t go yet, Billy. There’s things to sort out. I’ll not leave without telling them –’

  ‘I have to go now, you wee daftheid! If yon Cunning-ham’s got so far, he’ll have jaloused the rest by Vespers, I need to be out of sight for a bit.’

  ‘Then go, and I’ll meet you in Perth, or Leith, or somewhere –’

  ‘Aye, and how will you get to Leith on your own? I’d never look your faither in the ee again if I –’

  Alys rattled at the pin and the argument was cut off. She stepped into the house, to find Davie Drummond standing by the glowing peats on the hearth, facing an indignant Doig who scowled at him across the width of the house.

  ‘My husband has left Balquhidder already, Maister Doig,’ she said politely. ‘Does that affect your decision?’

  ‘Spoke to you and all, has he?’ Doig snorted, and turned away, opening one of the kists against the far wall. ‘Robert has the rights o’t. Best no to get into conversation wi thon one.’

  ‘Mistress Alys,’ said Davie. ‘What – I thought you –’

  ‘I was told you needed me,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said, puzzled. ‘I sent no word. Will you – will you have a seat?’

  She took the stool he offered, and looked from one to the other of them.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Maister Doig,’ she said. ‘The wolfhound is doing well.’

  ‘I seen the brute,’ said Doig, delving in the kist. ‘Heard it was you he wedded,’ he added. ‘I’ll wish you good fortune, mistress.’

  ‘Thank you, maister,’ she replied composedly, hoping he referred to Gil and to Socrates separately. ‘Are you just leaving Balquhidder? Do you have a horse?’ A dwarf from the cyte of Camelot, on horsbak as moche as he myght, she thought, relishing the image. This forceful man could equal any of Malory’s characters.

  ‘I’ll manage, thanks,’ said Doig, without looking round.

  ‘Will you have – will you have some refreshment?’ Davie offered. ‘Ale, or buttermilk, or the like?’

  Drinking the buttermilk, enjoying its sharp flavour, she studied Davie and said, ‘You’re right, there are things that must be said before you leave.’ Bright colour washed up over Davie’s face. ‘How many of them know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘What you have to tell them.’ Two could play at this game. ‘Now Mistress Drummond is gone, there is no need to pretend further.’

  Davie looked down at the glow of the peats, and nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Maister Cunningham bade me talk to you,’ he admitted. ‘He has the rights of it, it was my father that was stolen away thirty year since. I never meant – it was one thing Euan Beag taking me for my father, poor soul, but then the cailleach did the same, and I was so amazed I didn’t contradict her, and then –’

  ‘It would be hard to explain,’ Alys agreed, ‘and it would get harder.’

  ‘Every time I spoke!’

  ‘And it was Maister Doig fetched you here.’

  ‘No such thing,’ said Doig sharply. Davie shook his head, apparently to contradict this denial.

  ‘Billy here was one of the company that lifted my father away, and saw him to the Low Countries.’ Doig growled at this and went on stuffing a scrip. ‘He came back a few year syne to see how my father got on.’

  ‘I cam back,’ corrected Doig, ‘when yir Dimpnakerk burnt down, and found yir faither high in the choir, chapel-maister or whatever they cry it, and him widowed.’

  ‘Never one to miss an opportunity, is Billy,’ commented Davie. ‘We’re building a fine new Dimpnakerk, and there’ll be a fine new choir to sing in it.’

  ‘And you already have three of the voices,’ said Alys, understanding.

  ‘And more,’ said Doig. ‘Scots singers are weel thought on, but they’re no the only ones.’ He looked round the house, and crossed with his rolling gait to fetch a pair of heelless shoes from the shadows under one bed. ‘Right, that’s me. I’ll just need to wait for Robert, I’ll not go without a word to him.’

  ‘But Sir Duncan –’ objected Davie.

  ‘The two o you can sit up wi him, and see you behave yoursels. He’ll no last the night, particular after this.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the preaching-field.

  ‘Dimpnakerk,’ Alys repeated. ‘That is the shrine to St Dymphna, am I right? And she heals mad people?’

  ‘The folk o Gheel heal the mad people,’ corrected Doig.

  ‘With St Dymphna’s help,’ said Davie.

  ‘They take them into their own homes,’ Doig said to Alys, ‘and treat them like family. More than I’d do, for no kin –’

  ‘Billy, we are all kin! We’re all God’s children, and Our Lady is our mother!’

  ‘Hush,’ said Alys. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Is that him away?’ said Doig, listening.

  There were only a few voices at first, singing in Ersche. Then gradually more joined them, some above the note, some below it, rising in the song Alys had heard before, the song for the departing soul. More and more voices, high and low, swooped through the summer noon, till the melody seemed to be braided out of shining ribbons of sound, slow and heartbreaking.

  ‘Lead this soul on your arm, o Christ,’ Davie translated softly, ‘o king of the Kingdom of Heaven. Since it was you that bought this soul, have its peace in your keeping. May Michael, high king of the angels, prepare the path before the soul.’

  ‘That was what you sang for your grandmother,’ Alys said. He nodded, his eyes glittering in the glow from the peat fire.

  ‘They’re coming back,’ said Doig from the door. ‘I doubt he’s no deid yet, the way they’re carrying him.’

  ‘Mistress Alys,’ said Davie, in a sudden rush. ‘Would you – will you – if Billy’s leaving, will you come back and watch wi Robert and me?’

  When she returned some hours later, the house was surrounded. Still clutching their talismans, linen and crosses and rosaries, against the dangers of the night, Sir Duncan’s people watched with him, a steady murmur of prayers drifting into the darkening air. Leaving her escort by the little kirk Alys approached through the velvety summer twilight and they made way for her, but she felt like an intruder, a stranger in the house of the dying. As she and Lady Stewart had suspected there was no need of a third person under Sir Duncan’s roof; there was a group of people at the door, waiting to take their turn within the house, and Robert and Davie had been relegated to the bench at the gable of the house.

  ‘Martainn clerk is with him just now. I’d be just as glad if you stayed, mistress,’ said Davie, when she commented.

  ‘Robert?’ she asked.

  ‘You might as well,’ he said in his ungracious way.

  ‘Doig got away, did he?’

  ‘He did,’ said Robert. ‘Thanks to your man that he had to go.’

  ‘We went into all that, Robert,’ said Davie. The two were dark shapes against the stonework of the gable, still glowing faintly in the green remnants of the sunset. They seemed to be sitting shoulder to shoulder, as if for comfort. She sat down at Davie’s other side.

  ‘He’s in no pain,’ said Robert after a moment. ‘That’s a grace. My grandsire – Aye, well.’ Davie moved; Alys thought he put a hand over Robert’s. ‘And he’s been confessed, your – your uncle saw to that, and shrived him and all. But it’s taking him so long!’

&nbs
p; ‘It’s a long road,’ said Davie. ‘A long road, and a hard one.’

  ‘Tell me about Gheel,’ said Alys softly.

  After a moment Davie began to describe the town, so vividly she could almost see it, its narrow streets and squares, the tall white kirk growing in its midst with the striped tower beside it, and the poor creatures with their injured minds walking about where they were treated with love and respect rather than being taunted and tormented.

  ‘It’s all some of them need,’ he said, ‘to be treated like ordinary folk, but a lot of them need physicking as well, and there are aye some that are too wild to live out at first, they’re tended in the hospital. They go home cured, or they die, or they stay wi us for ever. As St Dymphna chooses.’

  ‘I’d like to do that,’ said Robert after a thoughtful silence.

  ‘What, cure the mad?’

  ‘Look after the mad,’ Robert corrected. ‘It’s a service. I could do it.’

  ‘You could,’ said Davie, considering it in a way that told Alys he knew why Robert was here. ‘It would be a – yes, you could!’ he exclaimed.

  Would Robert’s uncle permit it, Alys wondered.

  ‘No ropes round the neck?’ he was asking. ‘No chains?’

  The two voices murmured on in the shadows. Alys leaned back against the house wall, listening carefully, but she was still very weary and after a time she lost the thread of their conversation.

  A sharp movement woke her. She sat up straight, closing her mouth, and discovered that it was full dark, they sat under a field of stars, and her companions were silent, though the hum of prayers still surrounded the house, like bees in clover. Then she became aware of tension beside her, of someone – Davie? – taut as a bowstring and breathing fast, of Robert suddenly sitting at the further end of the bench. What had happened?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered someone, almost inaudible. Had there been a sound before the movement? A tiny sound, like a kiss?

  The house door opened, shedding lamplight which gleamed on weary faces and prayerful hands in front of it, but cast the three of them into shadow here at the gable. A tall figure strode round the corner, broad shoulders black against the stars, stick in hand.

  ‘It is near ended, my son,’ said a voice. The same voice that had spoken to Alys in the preaching-field, the red-haired man’s voice. ‘Go within now, it is your turn. You have earned the right.’

  Robert stood up, hesitated as if he looked back at Davie, or Alys, or the red-haired man; then he moved obediently towards the house door. Beside Alys Davie rose, and she -heard him trying to calm his breathing.

  ‘Will I go too?’

  ‘No. Your duty together is not yet.’ The dark shape moved, as if to set a hand on his forehead. ‘The calumny is avenged, for the woman was swearing falsely, but there is things you must be setting right and all, Davie Drummond.’

  ‘I ken that,’ said Davie.

  ‘The blessing of Angus be upon you,’ said the man. ‘And upon you, my daughter.’

  ‘Amen,’ Alys said. Something touched her bent head, lightly. When she looked up the tall figure had gone, though it was too dark to move swiftly.

  There was a sudden outbreak of wailing at the house door, and within Robert’s voice rose in Latin. The prayer for the dead.

  ‘They’ll regret waiting this long,’ observed Sir William.

  ‘It’s no more than three days,’ said his lady.

  ‘Aye, but in this heat?’

  Alys kept silent. She was not entirely sure whether she should be present at Mistress Drummond’s burying, but she had been determined to attend.

  She had already taken a liking to her hostess, but the heroism with which Lady Stewart had refrained from questioning her until she was ready to talk had won her deep respect. They had spent the whole of yesterday afternoon in the solar discussing the events in Glenbuckie and in the Kirkton. The Bailie’s wife had taken a pragmatic attitude to the death of the child Iain.

  ‘He was an innocent. He’d likely go straight into Our Lady’s arms, for I ken he was baptised, so he’s in a better place and his people are better without him and all.’

  ‘But surely –’ Alys had protested. The older woman looked pityingly at her across her needlework.

  ‘Out here, the way they work the land, they’re never more than one bad summer away from famine. It’s a thought to feed a bairn that willny work for you in its turn.’

  She heard her own voice, talking to Gil. I may not know about country life, but I have lived in towns all my days. Quite so, she thought.

  ‘So it was the Good Neighbours,’ she said aloud.

  ‘It was. And Dalriach might as well blame the fire on them and all, if it stops Caterin making trouble for young David. What do you think of that matter now? Sìne tells me he has spent the day in the loft in the kirk and won’t come down.’

  ‘I think the Good Neighbours may take Davie back soon as well.’

  ‘Do you now?’ Lady Stewart’s needle was arrested again. ‘Even though Patrick has accepted him?’

  ‘Maybe because Patrick has accepted him.’

  So now she stood near the edge of the circular kirkyard, too hot in her best black velvet headdress with the gold wire braid and a great black cloak borrowed from her hostess, and watched while Andrew Drummond, in the vestments out of the kist in the priest’s house, committed his mother and his nephew to the earth. He was dry-eyed, his harsh voice giving nothing away; round him the men of the family in their best clothes watched solemnly, Jamie Beag and Patrick, Davie with Murdo Dubh beside him. The other men of Dalriach were present, a stranger in plaid and feathered bonnet who must be the son-in-law, and a few men of the Kirkton still in their working shirts, but none of the folk from the glen, and no women at all apart from herself and Lady Stewart, not even the boy’s mother.

  ‘They’ll bury Sir Duncan tomorrow,’ said Lady Stewart. Alys nodded; that much she could understand. St Angus’ fair had been postponed till after the priest’s burial; the entire parish would wish to see Sir Duncan to his grave and be at the fair as well, and three days in a row away from the harvest was too much.

  Robert was present in the kirkyard too. He had acted as Andrew’s clerk for the Mass. Watching him now, Alys recognized that he had placed himself where he need not see Davie Drummond, though every so often he could not help looking for him. Davie, on the other hand, was conspicuously not looking at Robert.

  ‘I’m glad to see Robert about,’ said Lady Stewart. ‘Sìne says he never crossed the threshold of Sir Duncan’s house yesterday, either, I feared he was going to fall into melancholy. He’s done well by the old man, poor laddie. It’s been a hard road for him.’

  Alys nodded again, thinking of the moments before Sir Duncan died, and then of Lady Stewart’s reply when she had asked about the red-haired man.

  ‘Red hair?’ she had said. ‘No, I don’t think so. Most of our people are dark, except the MacGregors, and he doesn’t sound like any MacGregor I can think of. And if Sìne’s right he was up at Dalriach and all,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘He was going bald. His hair was back behind his ears.’ Alys demonstrated the retracted hairline.

  ‘What was his accent? Ersche or Scots?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alys said in dawning disbelief. ‘He just spoke to me. That’s strange, I can usually tell the difference.’

  The mourners were tossing clods of earth into the grave. Sir William stirred, and muttered a prayer, then strode forward to say something appropriate and accept the invitation to ride back to Dalriach. Lady Stewart crossed herself and said:

  ‘That’s over, then. It’ll no be the same in Glenbuckie without her.’

  ‘I suppose Mòr will take her place,’ said Alys deliberately.

  ‘It will hardly be Caterin,’ said the other woman. Alys nodded. The whole of Balquhidder was buzzing with the news the ubiquitous Sìne had brought her mistress yesterday, of how, while the young Drummonds were down at the Eagleis Beag in the t
wilight, watching the deathbed with the rest of Sir Duncan’s parish, a tall, broad-shouldered stranger had walked into Dalriach, summoned Caterin from her house out into the yard, and spoken to her sternly. Curiously, nobody had got a close sight of the man, and there were many different versions of what he had said, overheard from one corner or another. Caterin herself was no help; she had not uttered a word since, and seemed unable to make any sound at all except, so Sìne reported, a wordless singing of one of the hymns to St Angus.

  ‘I’d best visit her, I suppose,’ continued Lady Stewart. ‘What is it, Murdo?’

  Murdo Dubh replaced his feathered bonnet in order to take it off to them both.

  ‘The Drummonds are wondering,’ he said obliquely, ‘if Mistress Alys could be sparing them a little longer of her time. In the kirk, if you would be able.’

  She looked at him, and then eastward, to where the road out of the glen lifted to the Beannachd Angus stone. Three horsemen – only three? – had halted by the stone. She glanced at Lady Stewart, who nodded slightly.

  ‘I’d be honoured,’ she said. Who were the riders? she wondered as she picked her way past the open grave. Who was missing? One of them had not uncovered his head, surely that one was Gil?

  The interior of the kirk was dark after the sunshine, and full of Drummond men standing about awkwardly in silence. She followed Murdo in, and Andrew’s harsh voice said, ‘I thought this was a family matter.’

  ‘Mistress Alys is a good friend to the family,’ said Patrick, which did not strike Alys as an adequate answer. Andrew appeared to think the same way, for he snorted and flung away into the chancel where he began extinguishing candles.

  ‘I wished her here,’ said Davie. Behind Alys the door was still swinging ponderously shut. The daylight flickered as if a branch stirred across the opening. ‘I have a thing to say to you all,’ he went on, swallowing hard.

  ‘I am thinking we mostly know it,’ said Patrick after a moment.

  ‘What, that I’m not –’