‘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 remarked.
‘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 that’s lying on my kist. 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.