by Pat McIntosh
‘Tammas,’ he said, as the big man came back with a fresh jug. ‘What was in the plantation you saw?’
‘Plantation?’ the man repeated. He poured ale for the three of them and sat down again. ‘Oh, aye, the plantation. I couldny right see, it’s ower the far side o the muir, but it’s a’ fenced wi woven withies, high enow to keep the beasts out and it’s fu o what looks like wee trees.’
‘Trees?’ Gil repeated. ‘What d’you mean, trees?’
‘Trees,’ agreed Tammas, gesturing to describe branches and trunk. ‘Wee tottie trees, maybe this big.’ He indicated a couple of feet off the ground. ‘I never got a look at what sort they were, but someone’s growing timber there.’
‘On the Burgh Muir,’ said Gil. ‘Which is common land.’
Chapter Five
‘Indeed I did call on my poor brother,’ said Maister Jerome Vary primly. ‘I offered him the solace of my prayers, for him and for his wife, that she might find forgiveness for her headstrong nature and unbiddable ways. But he turned his head fro me and wouldny speak, so I left him.’
‘And you have no notion of where she might be?’ Alys prompted, trying to maintain a respectful tone, wondering how Mistress Madur had offended. Vary drew himself up, looking disapprovingly down his long nose at Socrates, who was checking the smells of the kirk-yard. The man was very like his brother, a gangling creature with large hands and feet and a narrow face, though his normal expression was as sour as week-old milk.
‘My good-sister wouldny hear my considered advice on her household,’ he said, ‘nor on her deportment neither. And after the business wi the gunpowder we had little to say to one another.’
‘Gunpowder?’ Alys repeated in astonishment. ‘Whatever— I mean, surely not in the midst of the burgh?’
‘Indeed it was!’ said Maister Jerome, swelling with indignation at the memory. ‘A man at my door wi a kinkin-barrel o black powther, saying it was for a Maister Vary, and my good-sister had sent him to me, saying it wasny for her household. The idea! As if a priest would have aught to do wi the nasty stuff, and so I tellt her when I saw her next, and had an earful of impertinence for my pains.’
‘How shocking,’ said Alys, with all the sympathy she could muster, trying not to think of the replies she would have made to such strictures. ‘When was that? What happened to the gunpowder?’
‘Oh, a fortnight since or mair. As to what happened wi’t, that was none o my concern. Any road, after that we’d little to say to one another. She’d scarce be likely to advise me of her plans.’
‘I doubt if she planned to disappear,’ said Alys. ‘Her groom was slain, she’s been carried off, and Maister Vary has had a message threatening her. Her time is very near, no moment to be away from her home and her friends. Is there anybody wi a grudge against you or your brother? Any enemy who might choose this way to get money or cooperation from either of you, or your oldest brother indeed? Gregory, is that his name?’
A flash of dark anger leapt in Maister Jerome’s eyes at the mention of the third brother. There was true dislike there, thought Alys.
‘A priest has no enemies,’ said the priest, his expression inimical. ‘If you’re looking for enemies to my family, look at my good-sister’s uncles. All her kin, indeed. They never cared for the match, as if we wereny good enough for them, and grudged every penny of her dowry. Aye, mistress, look at Somerville or Madur. Question them, no me.’
‘And none of the Franciscans neither?’ said Henry, as they reached the bridge over the Mouse Water.
‘None would admit to having called on Maister Vary,’ Alys confirmed. ‘Nor could the Prior think of any reason they might have done. I wonder,’ she went on, encouraging her horse on to the bridge while Socrates left his mark on the ends of the parapet, ‘whether someone went disguised as a friar? Would Jessie not have known him for a stranger, at least?’
‘No if he kept his hood down ower his brow,’ offered Henry, demonstrating with the floppy crown of his blue bonnet. ‘He’d be hid in it. But what would he do that for?’
‘Mistress,’ said the other groom behind them. ‘You were asking about they caves.’ Alys turned her head to look at him. ‘Just they’re in that way.’ The man nodded to his left, indicating a stand of trees. He was one of the younger Belstane grooms, and went by the name of Mealsack for no reason Alys could discern. ‘Mind, I canny see that anyone’s been that way these ten days or mair.’
Alys checked her horse and looked about her. Here, just across the bridge, the road swung to the right, to climb slantwise up the slope past the place where they had found the dead man yesterday evening. Downstream, to their left, the river curled round the low-lying spur on which the trees stood, birch and hazel and a clump of hawthorn. The valley side itself was set back, steep and thick with bushes; further downstream it turned into a cliff of striped rock, grey and red and dark layers dotted with tufts of grass. At the roadside the usual ditch and bank showed a brave display of wildflowers, white campion and yellow trefoil, purple vetch and azure traveller’s joy. Bracken and nettles flourished in the ditch itself. As the groom had said, the growing things showed no sign of disturbance.
‘Aye,’ Henry said, ‘it hardly looks as if that’s where they’re hid. Bide here.’ He dismounted, threw the other man his reins, and prowled up and then down the length of the curve in the road while Alys watched, finding no evidence that anything bigger than a fox had crossed the dyke in the past week or so. Socrates, assisting, seemed to come to the same conclusion, and returned to sit beside Alys’s horse, his tongue hanging out.
‘They’re no that big, the caves,’ said Mealsack when Henry commented. ‘I’d no ha thought they’d be much use as a shelter, mysel.’
‘You knew about them?’ Alys asked.
‘Oh, aye.’ Mealsack was a round-faced, fairish fellow with a cheery grin which he displayed now. ‘See, I’m fro Lanark town. Henry, he’s no, he’s a Carluke man. He’d likely no think o the caves, would you, man? They’re no that big, mind,’ he repeated.
‘So I’ve heard,’ said Alys as Henry retrieved his reins, and mounted up again. ‘I wonder where they did go. They must have hidden somewhere.’
‘Maybe the other cave,’ suggested Mealsack. Alys, about to give her horse the office to move on, turned to look at him instead. ‘There’s another cave, mistress. Upstream,’ he waved expansively at the slope ahead of them, ‘ayont the old mill, and it’s a sight deeper, you could hide a good few folk there if you had to.’
‘Show us,’ she said.
The path to the old mill took off halfway up the slope. It led down to their right, towards the waterside, slipping unobtrusively between two twisted thorn trees. Its dry and stony entry showed no immediate traces, and when Mealsack pointed to it Alys recognised that even if something large had brushed through the grass and bracken, the fronds would have sprung back long since.
Henry dismounted, and handed his subordinate his reins again, bending to inspect the surface of the path.
‘Is there—?’ said Alys.
‘I think so, mistress.’ He straightened up. ‘How far is this cave, laddie?’
‘Maybe better I show you,’ said Mealsack. ‘But we’d no want to leave the mistress here her lane.’
‘Of course not,’ said Alys briskly. ‘Do we ride, or lead the horses?’
‘Best lead them,’ said Mealsack.
‘Let me go ahead,’ said Henry, and drew his whinger.
After a few paces the path became overgrown, with moss and grasses spreading over the stones. Hoofprints and scrapes appeared, all several days old, for the dog to inspect carefully; Henry pointed out more than one animal’s tracks, and the marks of two different feet, probably man-sized. It was Alys who found the donkey’s little print.
‘I’ve been right,’ said Mealsack hopefully.
‘They’d hardly stay here, though,’ Henry said. ‘They’d need provisions, a fire, grazing for the beasts. We’d smell them by now if they’d settled in the ca
ve.’
‘I hope so,’ said Alys ambiguously.
The path went on slantwise down the bank, towards the remains of a small building which must be the mill. A few balks of timber from its clack-wheel still lay in the river, but of the mill itself only the earthen floor remained, strewn with flotsam from the last high water. Before they reached it, a trampled trail swung off to their left, to go round it and then on upstream among the trees, leaving a sign a child could follow.
‘How far from here?’ Alys asked quietly.
‘Maybe a quarter-mile?’ Mealsack offered.
They worked their way along the bank, Alys silent and observant, the two men slowly picking out the marks of individual animals and commenting. One beast had worn down the outer rim on the off fore; one did not lift his near hind properly. One had no burden. In among them, the donkey’s little prints were jotted like spatters of ink on a page. One set of hoofprints seemed to have returned, making for the mill and the road with brisk steps as if the animal was moving at a fast walk. It had a nail missing from the off hind; the same beast had made the journey upriver again most recently, heavy-laden, as if it carried two people or some other extra burden.
‘The other prints all go one way,’ Alys observed.
‘Aye, and they’re a’ several days old,’ Henry agreed, ‘even these last set.’
‘So I suppose they left by a different way. They are not still in this cave.’
‘There’s six horses and the donkey, I make it,’ said Henry, speaking as quietly as she did. ‘Yon’s too many to dwell in a spot like this for near a week without being noticed.’
‘Is there another way out?’
‘Aye, the path goes on,’ said Mealsack. ‘Though it’s a scramble to get up to the road, in places. Likely the beasts could do it, but no the lady I’d ha said.’
‘I suppose,’ Alys said as the thought came to her, ‘we should not assume Mistress Madur is held where her captor dwells. She could be anywhere. Any barn or hut or dwelling house, so it’s secluded.’
They came out of the trees, to a wide sloping tongue of land where the river took a sharp curve. The horses they were tracking had been tethered, or possibly hobbled, here at the edge of the clearing. Many booted feet had trampled round them, one of the trees at least had been well chewed by whatever beast was nearest, and to judge by the number of heaps of droppings lying about, they had been there for some hours.
Socrates sprang past Alys to range about the open space, sniffing and staring. Grass and wildflowers covered the slope, which rose to another cliff of banded rock; at the further side, near where the land dropped again to the river, was a dark shadow. The dog loped over to this, hackles rising. Alys peered after him.
‘Is that the cave? I think there is no one here.’
‘Aye, I think you’re right,’ said Henry, ‘but bide here, mistress, till I mak siccar.’
He went cautiously forward. Alys tipped her head up, scenting the warm air the way Gil had shown her, finding only the rich odours of the summer earth, horse-droppings and green growth. There was an elder-bush somewhere near, the last of the May-blossom was fading on a thorn tree, a tangle of brambles spoke of the dark riches of autumn. Nothing more sinister reached her.
Some of the footprints led towards the cave; studying the bruised grasses, she thought that one set of prints was heavier than the rest, as if their maker had been burdened like the late-coming horse. As if perhaps he carried someone.
‘None here,’ said Henry. ‘Here, dog, out o that.’
Alys went forward to join him, while Mealsack busied himself tethering their horses. The cave, just where the valley wall changed from a steep slope clad in bushes to a cliff of that banded rock, was certainly not large, but it would have provided shelter for a number of people if needed, perhaps all those Henry thought had been present. Under a thicker, slanting lintel which she recognised as a good sandstone, the thinner layers had been eaten away, forming a space perhaps four paces across, high enough to stand up in at the higher side. The floor was dry earth, and extended into the shadowy depths, the roof lowering to meet it. She stood in the entry and sniffed again, while Socrates blew hard at one particular patch of the floor, his hackles raised all down his backbone.
‘You smell it and a’,’ said Henry.
‘Blood,’ she said. ‘After this length of time?’ She breathed more lightly, testing the faint odours. ‘Not just blood. Come out of the light, Henry, I need to see in. Socrates, come away!’
Henry stepped back obediently, and she ducked under the sloping roof, hauled on the dog’s collar and looked about her. Socrates, standing obediently, turned and pressed his nose against her skirt, blowing in the same way, and she pushed his head aside.
‘It’s been protected from the dew, I suppose,’ she said after a moment. ‘Can you see anything in the floor? Are there prints, other than the dog’s? I can see marks, but I can make little sense of them.’
The man crouched to get a better angle, tilting his head to see under the low end of the lintel, and Alys continued to study what she saw. Light and shade were scattered across the dry floor, to no apparent purpose; but after a while she began to see a pattern. Footprints, there and there – and there, smaller ones. Here, where the dog had been sniffing closest, a wider blurred mark as if someone had lain down, two deep marks like heel-prints to one side of it, a complicated mark with two more imprints in it to another side. She looked harder: there was a story in these marks, one she could almost read. And the scents of the place, what were they telling her?
There had been blood shed here, though it was hard to pick out any marks in the dark-coloured floor, but there was another scent mingled with it, faint but particular, which reminded her, reminded her – heat rushed into her face as she realised she was thinking of last night, of Gil’s caresses which she had missed so much, of his hands on her back, his kisses on her neck and breasts, her own fingers in the hair on his chest and belly. Gil like Gahmuret in the story, who never partook of a woman’s love without delighting in all her joy. Why was she thinking of that? And so was the dog, she realised. What had it to do with— Had Mistress Madur been forced, taken by one or more of the men, great with child as she was? Was this a scene of violence? Surely that would— No, from what she had heard of such things, the other men would have gathered round the cave to watch, to wait their, yes, to wait their turn. Indeed, why take her into the cave at all? Instead they had given her what little privacy they could, and then blood had been shed, and that particular scent.
A sudden, overwhelming recollection struck her, of her stepmother’s labour, quick and easy and mostly managed in Ersche, the chamber full of strange scents of the charms Ealasaidh had them throw on the fire, but also of this. She had been present, asked to receive her half-brother, to put him in the waiting bath, a great honour and gesture of peace, and he had smelled like this, of blood and waxy stuff and the waters of his mother’s womb, as he lay in her arms in the warm towel and screamed with fury.
‘Ah, mon Dieu!’ she breathed. ‘The baby. She has— the baby came.’
‘What, here?’ said Henry. ‘Here in a cave like this?’
‘Her waters broke,’ said Alys. She touched the ground next to the wide mark, and sniffed her fingers. Socrates looked up at her, his tail waving slowly. ‘Her time, her crying-time came on her. No wonder, after such an experience, no wonder her pains began.’
She bent her head, closing her eyes, with a fervent prayer to Our Lady for the safety of Audrey and her babe, for her support in their hour of need. To give birth here in the wilderness, like a lady in one of the romances, was not so romantic when you realised there was no other woman present, no help, not even a cloth to wrap the baby in—
‘No wonder, then,’ said Mealsack cheerfully from across the clearing, ‘they’s a’ the men’s prints here where the horses were tied up. They’d no want to be anywhere near her!’
‘Did,’ said Alys, collecting herself a little but still
barely able to assemble the sentence, ‘did she survive? Did the bairn—?’
‘No sign itherwise,’ said Henry, looking about them. ‘Unless the bairn dee’d and they threw it in the burn. No sign they’ve buried aught that size hereabout, let alone the lass hersel.’
‘The, the,’ she hesitated. Socrates had left her and was casting about near the cave, along the foot of the cliff. What was she saying? What had she meant to ask? Yes, the secundus. What was it called in Scots? ‘The cleansing. The part that comes away after the bairn. What could they ha done wi that?’
‘If they threw that aside,’ offered Mealsack, ‘likely a fox got it.’
‘That’s enough of that, laddie,’ said Henry sternly. He began to cast about as Socrates was doing, and was just in time to prevent the dog from starting to dig. Brushing the long grasses and bracken aside with his booted foot, he paused, looking down at something. ‘I was wrong. They’ve buried something here.’
Alys stepped out of the little shelter, suddenly needing more air than she could find under the burden of rock and earth. She put her hand against the cliff-face to steady herself, and snapped her fingers weakly at the dog, who came with reluctance to sit at her feet.
‘What – what have they buried? Can you tell?’
‘I’ve no spade,’ said Henry, drawing the whinger at his side again. ‘Depends how deep they— ah!’
‘No very deep, then,’ said Mealsack. Henry, leaning back, free hand over his nose, did not reply but continued to scrape with his whinger at the loose earth he had found. That would do the blade no good at all, thought Alys, hanging onto Socrates’ collar. After a moment the man stepped away, his hand still across his nose.
‘I’d say it was the cleansing,’ he said. ‘Looks like a sheep’s pluck fro here. No a bairn, any road. Here, mistress, are ye weel?’ He stepped quickly to Alys’s side. ‘It’s naught to see, though it stinks like a—’
