The Rough Collier (13 page)

‘I saw them when we went to the peat-cutting,’ Alys recalled. ‘When Sir David was so sure they had dug up Thomas Murray. Do you think we will find the man today?’

‘I’m past caring,’ admitted Michael, ‘save for the need to silence Davy Fleming. He was on at me again this morning before I’d broke my fast, about all the misdeeds witches gets up to, according to his wee book. If I ever learn who lent it to him, I’ll cram it down his throat.’

‘I never thought to hear Gil abuse a book the way he did that one,’ said Alys.

‘I’ve not looked in it myself, but the things Fleming was telling me made my gorge rise.’ Michael rode in silence for a short space. Alys was looking about her despite the rain, admiring the blossom on the fruit trees for which Gil had told her the neighbourhood was famous, when he suddenly said, ‘Mistress Mason!’

She opened her mouth to tell him to use her first name, but he hurried on.

‘Have you – did you see my Tib? Before she was sent to Haddington, I mean?’

She was aware of a great rush of sympathy. No need of birthmarks or stolen children, here was a tale out of the romances, riding beside her under the wet blossom.

‘No, but I assure you she went to Haddington voluntarily – is that the right word?’ He stared at her. ‘I had a letter two weeks since. She said she was bored with her imprisonment, and weary for you, and her sister – Sister Dorothea – had invited her to visit.’

‘Weary for me,’ he repeated, his sharp features softening. Were those tears? ‘And I for her, mistress. Was – were they ill treating her? My godmother, and the rest?’

‘Only by keeping her close, I think, and watching her.’

‘She’d take that ill out,’ he said, with a loving smile.

‘She did.’ He had turned in the saddle to look at her more closely, one hand on the cantle, and she met his eye. ‘I think, by what she said just now, my good-mother is less angry than she was. What of your father?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve heard little enough from him since Yule, till I had this letter about Fleming. I suppose, if he’s trusting me to see to this business, he’s calmed down a bit and all. Would you say there’s any hope for us?’

‘I do not know,’ she admitted. ‘I will do what I can for you.’

He dropped his gaze, going scarlet, and muttered something genuinely grateful. Alys was about to answer him when the groom behind them exclaimed in warning, and another big brown hare zigzagged across the path, immediately under the horses’ muzzles.

The next few moments seemed to pass very slowly. Michael, riding slack-reined, was taken by surprise as his beast shied, half-reared, plunged backwards into Alys’s dapple grey. The grey, also startled, kicked out, lurched aside and pecked on something. Alys, with a better grip on her reins, was just gaining control when the dappled shoulders in front of her vanished and she found herself, with a slow and dreadful inevitability, soaring over her horse’s head.

The ground hit her with a thump. For a moment things went far away. Then she heard Michael’s voice, exclaiming in alarm.

‘Alys – Mistress Mason! Are you hurt? Steenie, get that horse. Willie, come back, man, give me a hand here!’ His face appeared close to hers, staring anxiously. ‘Are you hurt, mistress?’ he asked again. ‘Can you move? Are you –?’

‘I fell off,’ she said foolishly. The world righted itself, and she realized she was lying sprawled on the wet grass, petticoats everywhere, hat askew, one hand trapped under her.

‘Can you move?’ repeated Michael. ‘Does aught pain you? Say you’re no hurt, mistress!’

‘It was a great jill-bawd,’ declared Steenie, appearing beyond his shoulder. ‘Sprung out the dyke under their feet, it did, no wonder they was startled.’

She contrived to sit up, and straightened her skirts.

‘I am unhurt, I think,’ she said cautiously, experimenting with hands and arms. ‘Is my horse –?’

‘He’s right enough,’ Steenie assured her. ‘I’ve got him here, mistress. He’s took no harm, the great gowk.’ He patted the animal’s neck.

‘Our Lady be thanked!’ said Alys. ‘What my good-mother would say if I harmed one of her beasts I do not know.’

‘No, and you don’t want to hear it neither,’ said Steenie forthrightly. ‘But yourself, mistress? Can she rise, Maister Michael?’

‘Should you sit here on the bank a wee while?’ Michael asked anxiously. ‘Can you rise? Do you want to rest somewhere?’ He looked about him. ‘Cauldhope’s nearer than Belstane from here, you could come back to our place and sit for a bit.’

‘There’s a house yonder,’ said the other groom. ‘Stinking Dod’s, no half a mile away. Him that’s married on Wat Paton’s sister. They might give her a seat there, and maybe a drink of well-water or the like. Mind you, it’s maybe no suitable.’

She rose, with Michael’s assistance, and stood for a moment, feeling quite strange and unsteady. Shock, she thought. What did Mère Isabelle order for shock? She tested her limbs again. Hip and shoulder hurt where they had made contact with the ground, and would be bruised black by the morning, but everything seemed to be working.

‘I am embarrassed,’ she confessed. ‘I have not fallen off since I was a child. Are you certain the horse is safe, Steenie?’

‘Never mind the horse,’ said Michael, ‘what madam my godmother would say if I’d let you come to harm I never want to hear. And it was my fault,’ he added, though she had not tried to argue. ‘If I’d been looking where we were going I’d ha’ seen that coming.’

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘the creature startled the horses. Perhaps I would like to sit down for a little while. Could we see if there is anyone at home in that house?’

The dapple-grey horse seemed slightly puzzled by her sudden descent and all the fuss, but when Steenie put her expertly back in the saddle it moved forward willingly with an even stride. Michael’s relief was almost comical, despite his claim to be more concerned for Alys than the horse. One of the men rode ahead, and by the time they reached the house had roused out a thin flustered woman in homespun, with a baby on her hip. An older child peeped round the corner of the house at them and vanished.

‘Oh, the Bad Man fly away wi’ all bawds, the evil things. A wee seat?’ the woman was saying. ‘For certain, aye, and no trouble. Will I bring a plaid out to soften the bench a bit maybe, and keep the wet off your bonnie gown, mistress? Or would ye step inside? Only it’s a bit smoky, and there’s the grandam and all –’

A shrill, unintelligible voice from within the dark little dwelling confirmed this.

‘And were ye here for the clerk?’ she continued, as Alys dismounted stiffly. ‘I was going to send one of the men to Cauldhope about it as soon as they all came back from Lanark at the market, only I’m here my lone –’ Another screech from inside the house. ‘– wi’ the grandam and the bairns, and I canny – aye, that’s right, mem, you sit there and get your breath. Would ye take a drop of ale, maybe?’ There was another shrill comment. ‘Or a wee tait spirits? I’ve a drop o’ cordial put by where Dod canny find it. Just let me see the wee one safe, and I’ll –’

‘No, no, ale or water would be good,’ Alys assured her, seating herself cautiously on the bench by the door. She would certainly have bruises by the morning, she recognized.

‘Clerk?’ said Michael. ‘What clerk’s this, Mistress Paton?’

The woman turned from tethering her child to the leg of the bench. ‘Why, Sir David,’ she said. ‘Your own sub-steward. I’m right troubled about him, maister, for he’s no roused nor stirred since I put him to bed. He’ll no be easy to move like that, save if you put him in a cart or the like.’

‘Sir David?’ said Alys in disbelief. ‘What is he doing here? Is he injured, or ill?’

‘Aye, Sir David. Him that’s sub-steward to Douglas,’ she said again, and looked from Alys to Michael. ‘He came stackering in off the fields, no long after the rest went off to Lanark, and fell in a dwam in front of the cart-shed yonder. I washed the worst of the blood off him, and got him in the house and put him in our bed, but being here my lone I couldny do more about it.’

‘But what’s come to him?’ said Michael. ‘He was well enough when I left Cauldhope this morning. Blood? And what’s he about down here?’

‘He never said,’ said the woman. The piercing voice from indoors said something Alys did not catch. ‘I’d say he’d been fighting, if it wasny a clerk, or else he’s maybe taken a beating.’

Michael turned to Alys, spread his hands, and then followed their hostess into the house, ducking under the low lintel. She sat still, thinking that she should follow him, listening to him asking for a light, and then to the scrape of a flint. The grandam shrieked, and beside her the child announced something as unintelligibly as the old woman.

Alys looked at it, and drew a sharp, involuntary breath; the little face was marred by a split upper lip like the hare’s. No wonder its mother cursed the beasts, she thought, and smiled at the baby. It grinned back, showing several teeth, ducked beneath the seat and emerged with a wooden spoon, which it began to bang vigorously on the bench.

‘Mistress Mason?’ Michael was saying, and she realized he had spoken to her already. ‘Would you come and look at Sir David? I don’t like the look of him either.’

The house lived up to its occupant’s by-name, and the inside was very dark. This was hardly a surprise, she told herself, since there was no window, the peat on the hearth was smouldering rather than burning, and the light Michael had asked for was provided by a single tiny flame. As her eyes adjusted, she made out two box beds built into the wall at her left. The bundle of rags in the nearest stirred, shaded its eyes against the flame, and produced another shrill comment. She smiled, curtsied, and passed on to the further bed.

‘You see,’ said Michael. ‘He doesny answer, and his breathing’s no right. And he keeps twitching.’ The man in the reeking bed shuddered as he spoke, and she bent closer.

‘Is it truly Sir David?’ she asked, looking at the battered, swollen features in the dim light.

‘Oh, it’s him, all right, poor devil, and I’d say Mistress Paton was right, he’s been fighting, or been beaten. Likely some lassie’s brothers have caught up wi’ him,’ he added sourly. ‘But what are we to do wi’ him, and what’s best to do for him first?’

Alys touched the steward’s damaged face. His skin was cool rather than hot, and clammy to the touch. The man’s breathing was alarmingly shallow, and as she watched another small convulsion shook him. She straightened up, gathering her thoughts.

‘Is he fit to be moved, do you think?’ asked Michael. ‘What should we do wi’ him?’

‘You’ll no leave him here?’ said Mistress Paton, on a sharp note very like the old woman’s. ‘That’s our bed. Where are we to sleep?’

‘I think we must move him,’ said Alys. ‘He should be in his own house, and his hurts tended.’ Something sweet for strength, she was thinking, trying to recall the words of the Infirmarer at Saint-Croix. The convent’s infirmary had possessed several books, of which Alys had had free run, but Mère Isabelle had also her own ideas on the treatment of the injured and sick. ‘Mistress Paton, have you given him anything?’ she asked.

‘Deed, no, excepting a drink of ale when he first got here,’ said the woman. ‘And it’s the same jug my man was drinking from this morning,’ she added, ‘so it’s no anything I gave him that’s done this to him.’

‘No, no, I never thought it,’ said Alys. ‘You’ve taken good care of him already. Have you anything sweet in the house? And is there fresh water?’ A foolish question, she told herself, as Mistress Paton stared at her in the dim light. Outside the child was still battering the bench with the spoon. The old woman screeched something, and Mistress Paton started, and nodded.

‘Aye, she’s right, for once. I’ve a wee drop honey in a piggin on the shelf. Would that do ye? It’s last year’s, mind, it’s set like glue.’ Another piercing remark. ‘Aye, by the fire, if the fire was putting out any heat. I canny be everywhere, you auld –’ She bit off her comment, and moved to the other side of the house, reaching up to the wall-head to lift from among the objects stowed there a small pottery jar with a scrap of flat stone serving as a lid.

‘Honey?’ said Michael blankly. ‘What will that do?’ He watched as Alys set the little jar next to the peat-glow to warm it. One of the men appeared, seized the bellows which lay by the fire and plied them expertly; Michael suddenly moved to the door, and had a word with the other man still outside.

By the time the cart appeared before the house, Alys had contrived a small tisane of thyme and mint from the kailyard with a generous amount of honey in it, and was perched rather painfully on the wooden bar at the outer edge of the bed, dripping her concoction slowly into the clerk’s bruised mouth. The first drops had an immediate effect; Fleming drew a deep breath, and the shuddering convulsions ceased.

‘Honey is wonderful stuff,’ she said, watching this.

The old woman asked a shrill question, and Mistress Paton looked up sharply from the hearth, where she was stirring the iron pot which stood over the revived fire.

‘I never thought o’ that,’ she said. ‘Are you her from the Pow Burn? The auld collier’s widow? For if ye are –’

‘No,’ said Alys, startled.

‘That’s the lady’s good-daughter from Belstane,’ supplied Steenie.

‘Our Lady be thanked,’ said the woman. ‘If our Dod found I’d let that one over the threshold he’d break a stob across my back.’

‘Do you mean Mistress Lithgo?’ said Alys. ‘What has she done to you?’

‘Lithgo? Who’s she?’

‘Mistress Mason?’ said Michael, coming into the house. ‘Is he fit to be moved, do you think? We’ve a cart here.’

Alys looked down at her patient. He was beginning to stir, and now uttered a heart-rending groan. His eyes opened.

‘Fleming?’ said Michael. He bent over his servant in the gloom. ‘What came to you, man? You’re in a bad way here.’

There was a pause, in which Fleming opened and closed his swollen mouth. The old woman screeched suddenly, and he flinched, croaked something, swallowed, tried again.

‘..t’ss Li’hgo,’ he said.

Chapter Seven

Riding back up towards Forth in the drizzle, to pick up the road to Linlithgow and Blackness, Gil found he had selected one of the more garrulous stable-hands to accompany him. He was quite unable to concentrate on his thoughts for the questions Patey fired at him. Where were they going, how long would it take, where would they lie this night? He answered patiently at first, then said sharply, ‘Hold your peace and let me think, man. I’ve matters to ponder.’

‘And would that be this business of the corp in the peat-cutting?’ asked Patey. ‘Or is it the man Murray?’

‘Hold your peace,’ Gil repeated.

‘Just I was going to say,’ persisted Patey in injured tones, ‘there’s one of the collier lassies yonder, watching us.’

Gil looked where the man pointed, and saw a small plump figure standing knee-deep in yellow flowers, under a group of bent hawthorn trees in the hollow of a burn below the track. Plaid over her head against the rain, she was still identifiable: not Phemie but her sister. What was the girl’s name? Bel, that was it. The one who never spoke.

‘The one that doesny speak,’ said Patey helpfully. ‘Tongue-tied, she is. She isny daft, mind you, and they say she’s a grand spinner. No a bad thing in a lassie, to be tongue-tied.’

‘What, and never ask you what you want for your supper?’ Gil dismounted. ‘Bide here and hold my horse. I want a word wi’ her.’

‘You can have a’ the words you want,’ said Patey, ‘but she’ll never have a word for you, maister.’ He guffawed at his own wit, then finally became silent under Gil’s glare, and took the reins.

Bel was still watching them warily, and when Gil climbed down from the track she looked around as if judging her chances of escape. He stopped at a little distance from her, the yellow flowers round his boots. She must be thirteen or fourteen, he thought, surveying her, plainer than her sister and still covered in puppy-fat. Tib had been much the same at that age, less anxious but with the same sulky expression. If this girl was tongue-tied, that would explain a lot.

‘You’re Bel Crombie, aren’t you?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘Do you mind me? I’m Gil Cunningham.’ She nodded again, and bobbed in a brief, apprehensive curtsy. ‘Should you be out here your lone, Bel?’

She shrugged, bent to pick another handful of wet flowers, showed them to him and pushed them into a linen sack at her belt. Gathering something for the stillroom, he surmised.

‘And it’s raining,’ he added. She looked at him, then at the sky, and shrugged again. This was not going to be easy, he recognized, and there was a strange quality to the girl which made him uncomfortable about questioning her. Still, one had to try. ‘Bel, could I ask you a few things?’

She straightened up to look directly at him, with a withering stare rather like those his mother’s cat turned on Socrates, and waited.

‘Have you any idea where Thomas Murray might be?’ he asked. She shook her head firmly. ‘Or what’s come to him?’ Another eloquent shrug. He paused to consider, trying to frame the question so it could be answered
Yes
or
No
. ‘Do you like him?’ An innocent enough question. Bel screwed up her face and shook her head. ‘Does he ever try to kiss you?’

She shook her head again, looked down at her person and carefully lifted away an invisible something that clung about her hips.

‘He’s free with his hands,’ Gil supplied. She nodded. ‘And yet he’s never followed it up?’ A puzzled look. This is a young lassie, he reminded himself. ‘He’s never tried kissing you.’ Another shake of the head, with an impatient glance:
I told you that
. ‘The day he left,’ he said, and she frowned, still watching him carefully, ‘did anything unusual happen? Anything at all?’

After a moment she nodded. He smiled encouragingly.

‘Who did it happen to? Who was involved?’ he asked. ‘If I name everyone, can you tell me when I say the right names?’

She nodded, and by enumerating the household he learned that Mistress Weir and Joanna had been involved, as well as Murray.

‘Was that when Mistress Weir sent you with a gift for Murray?’ he asked. Her blue eyes widened, and she nodded. ‘Mistress Brownlie told my wife of it. Was that so unusual, for your grandmother to give him something?’

She nodded vehemently, and mimed an angry quarrel, wagging a finger at the rain.

‘They’re usually at odds,’ he interpreted, and she suddenly gave him a shy smile. ‘And then he rode off as usual with the Paterson men?’ Another nod. ‘Do you know why she gave him the gift?’

Bel raised an imaginary glass to drink his health, and counted off one, two, three with the other hand.

‘It was to drink her health on her birthday,’ he recalled, and she nodded. ‘Are you saying that was three days after they left?’ Another nod. ‘That was a friendly gesture.’

She stared at him, her expression changing slowly back to the withering cat look. Then she shrugged and turned away, bending to the yellow marsh-marigolds round her feet.

‘Can you tell me anything else?’ Gil asked. Another shrug. ‘Why does your grandam dislike Murray?’ She gave him a pitying glance. ‘Is it simply that he won’t do as she bids him?’

She straightened up, pushing another handful of flowers into the linen sack, and placed one hand flat in the air, a little higher than her own height. She gestured round her face, nimble fingers describing the long ends of a linen headdress. A woman, taller than herself but shorter than her mother.

‘Joanna – Mistress Brownlie?’ he said. Bel nodded. She held up one hand, fingers opening and shutting. Someone talking? She indicated the invisible Joanna, and cowered in fear. ‘Threats to Joanna? Who threatens her? Your grandmother?’

This got him an exasperated stare. She squared her shoulders and stuck out her plump chest and her elbows. A man, and a conceited man.

‘Your brother? Murray? Murray threatens Joanna?’ Another nod. ‘It’s a man’s prerogative to chastise his wife,’ he said on a venture. ‘I’d have thought Mistress Weir would see little wrong in that.’ And that’s hypocrisy, he thought, for if I ever raised my hand to Alys I think I would cut my throat afterwards.

Whether she detected the hypocrisy or not, Bel’s expression would have parched grain. She sighed ostentatiously, established Joanna again with the same deft movements, and then straightened her back, raised her chin and outlined a wired cap on her head. He nodded, and she assumed an expression of simpering affection, and held her hands out to the invisible Joanna.

‘Mistress Weir dotes on Joanna?’

Bel confirmed this. Then she sketched a row of women to her left, and identified them: herself, her sister, her mother. When he named them aloud, she nodded again.

‘Is this how you talk to your family?’ he asked, fascinated. She threw him an irritated look and, stepping into the role of her grandmother again, swept the row of invisible figures aside with one hand while she drew the equally invisible Joanna closer with the other, still simpering with exaggerated affection.

‘So Mistress Weir would place Joanna over all the rest of you,’ he said. Bel nodded encouragingly. ‘Even your brother?’

She had not thought of that. She considered the question briefly while the rain pattered on the hawthorn leaves, then spread her hands.

‘And yet she sent you with the gift for Murray.’

She shrugged, and turned her head away, unmoving for a moment. Then, obviously coming to a decision, she began again. The wired headdress, the elegant stance: Arbella. She steadied a mortar with one hand and worked the pestle with the other, pausing to add a pinch of this and a careful drop of that, and looked expectantly at him.

‘Mistress Weir helps your mother in the stillroom,’ he offered. ‘I thought it was your sister did that.’ She frowned, shook her head, stirred the imaginary mortar again, her lips moving busily as if she was speaking. ‘Mistress Weir taught your mother.’ Bel flicked him a glance, nodded, continued to work the pestle. ‘What are you telling me, Bel?’

She sighed, abandoned the mortar, and pulled up the skirt of her gown to reach the purse that hung at her knee between gown and kirtle. From it she drew out a much-scored piece of grey slaty stone and a slate-pencil, bent to lean the slate on her knee and took a careful grasp of the pencil to write. She was no clerk: she formed each letter laboriously, with the use of elbow, tongue and head. Standing in the rain watching her, he appreciated that she would find all her dumb-show (yes, that was exactly the word) much easier than scribing anything at all.

It took her some time, but at last she handed him the stone, with an air which made him feel what it said was very important. He studied it carefully. The wet surface was much-marked already, with earlier inscriptions partly excised, and the uneven letters were hard to make out. Her spelling was imaginative and there were no breaks in the staggering sequence, but after a moment he decided that RBEL probably meant Arbella. But what did the rest mean? It appeared to read PYSHNUW. After a moment enlightenment dawned, along with surprise that a girl from such a family would use this sort of coarseness.

‘You’re telling me Arbella dislikes me too? Holds me in contempt?’ And yet she was civil enough to my face, he thought. Bel stared at him, open-mouthed, and suddenly shook her head, snatched the slate out of his hand and stuffed it back into her purse, then turned, her back radiating fury, and marched away through the flowers.

‘Bel!’ he called after her. ‘Come back, lassie, I’ll take you home out of the rain.’

She went on, ignoring him.

‘Bel! Are you safe out here on your lone?’

She swung round, stared at him, then rotated one finger by her temple in a universal sign and continued on her way. Reluctant to pursue her across the hillside, he gathered his wits and prepared to go back up to the waiting horses. The road to Blackness beckoned.

A gleam in the grass caught his eye from where the girl had been standing. He made his way towards it, and found her slate, lodged in a clump of flowers and shining in the light. It must have missed her purse in her haste. He bent to pick it up and turned it in his hand. None of the other inscriptions was clear enough to read more than a letter or two; only the comment about Arbella stood out.

With a feeling of having missed something important, he put the object into his purse and made his way up to the track, where man and beasts waited for him, heads down against the increasing rain.

‘Can we get on now, Maister Gil?’ asked Patey. ‘Just it’s ower cold to be standing about like this.’

‘We’ll go by the Pow Burn,’ said Gil, reclaiming his reins and mounting. ‘I must let them know where that lassie is. I should have left my plaid over this saddle,’ he added, as the damp leather struck cold through his hose.

‘What was she doing wi’ all the waving her arms?’ asked Patey curiously. He demonstrated, causing Gil’s horse to shy.

‘Watch what you’re about, man! That’s how she talks. She was telling me about her grandam and Murray.’

‘I see. She canny wag her tongue, so she wags her arms instead.’ Patey grinned at his own joke. ‘What did you say to her then, maister, that she lost her temper wi’ you? Maybe I can guess!’

Gil stared at him in revulsion, and he fell silent and after a moment mumbled an apology of sorts.

‘So I should think,’ Gil said. ‘If there’s another word like that out of you, I’ll be having a talk with Henry when we get back to Belstane.’ Patey muttered something else. ‘Well, hold your tongue then.’

He spurred his horse forward along the track towards the colliery, without looking back to see if the groom followed him.

The surfacemen were just breaking off for their midday bite when he came over the hillside. Eight or ten men were gathering in the shelter of the smithy, round the fire. On the path which led down from the thatched row of cottages was a procession of children, bareheaded despite the rain, each bearing a father’s or brother’s meal: a wooden bowl with a kale-leaf over it, a plate covered by a cloth, a small package wrapped in dock-leaves. The men underground must take their food in with them and eat it cold, he conjectured.

He dismounted on the cobbled area before the house and looked about, hoping to find one of the family. It seemed likely that the household would be sitting down to eat as well, and he had no wish to interrupt the meal. To his relief, Mistress Lithgo appeared at the door of her stillroom, and came to meet him.

‘Maister Cunningham,’ she said, and nodded in answer to his greeting. ‘What brings you here? Can we do aught for you? Will you stay for a bite?’

‘No, no, I won’t stay,’ he said. ‘I want to get to Blackness today. I met your daughter Bel all on her own over the hill yonder, and thought I should let you know where she was.’

‘On her own,’ she said, sounding annoyed. ‘She will go off like that on her grandam’s errands, and I canny teach her it’s no safe at her age. My thanks, sir. I’ll send her brother after her. And my thanks to your lady mother,’ she added, ‘for his bed and dole last night. He came in an hour or two since.’

‘My dear, you needny trouble about Bel,’ said Arbella’s sweet voice. Gil turned, to see her emerging from the building Phemie had identified as the mine office. ‘I sent her to gather what we need for the spring tonic. She’ll not go far, she’ll be quite safe.’ She approached, leaning on a stick and moving carefully on her high wooden pattens. Her plaid, hitched up over her wired headdress against the rain, hung down in dark folds to her knees, and under it her other hand held her petticoats up out of the grey-black mud. She looked like a mourner at a funeral. ‘But it was right kind of you to let us know,’ she added, smiling at Gil. ‘Was that all that brought you here? I hope you’ve not rid out of your way for my wee lassie?’

‘I was concerned for her,’ he explained. ‘I stopped to speak to her, and something I said annoyed her and she marched off down the burn towards the low shielings.’

Bel’s mother gave him a raking glance, then visibly relaxed.

‘Aye, times she’s like that,’ she admitted. ‘She angers easily, with not being able to say what she wants.’

‘We’d managed fine up to that. She told me clearly how you’d sent her with a gift for Murray just before he left here, madam.’