‘No the now, lass,’ objected Henry. ‘We want to be back on our own land afore the light goes.’
‘Aye, and I’ve to be back for my supper,’ she said scornfully. ‘I never meant the now, the owls will be flying afore long. Can one of you come back the morn’s morn?’ She looked closely at Alys, much as her mother had done. ‘You’ll be back, won’t you, mistress?’
‘I could come back in the morning,’ Alys admitted, with a glance at Gil.
‘Do that,’ said Phemie, ‘and I’ll find a way to get a word wi’ you. There’s plenty Arbella wouldny tell you, and a few things she doesny ken.’
‘That seems unlikely,’ Gil observed.
Phemie shook her head. ‘She canny be everywhere. I’ll see you the morn’s morn, mistress.’ She stepped back from the edge of the track to let them pass, and set off across the rough grass of the hillside, without looking back.
‘Well, that’s an ill-schooled lassie,’ commented the second groom as they rode on.
‘She has a lot to trouble her,’ said Alys.
Chapter Three
‘What were they hiding, I wonder,’ said Gil.
‘I don’t know that they were hiding anything,’ said Alys. ‘They were simply reluctant to talk to a stranger. Mistress Weir is very certain there is no need to search for this man Murray.’
Gil considered this. He and Alys were in their chamber, halfway through changing their muddy riding-clothes for something fit to go down to supper in, and now he sat on the edge of the box bed and patted the counterpane beside him.
‘I want to find him, as I told her. We have a description,’ he said, putting his arm round his wife as she came to join him. ‘Of the man and the two fellows with him.’
Alys tilted her head back, gazing at the ceiling, and the soft light from the horn window edged the high narrow bridge of her nose.
‘A bare description,’ she observed. ‘Jock and Tam Paterson, who are brothers. One is taller than the other and both have all their fingers yet. I suppose they are young men.’
‘And we have the list of the houses where Murray was to call, and the name of the salt-boiler beyond Blackness.’
‘So someone must work his way down the list,’ prompted Alys, ‘asking if he was there, and when, and if all was well. Gil, if you do that, I am distracted.’ She put her hand over his, stilling his fingers. ‘Blackness is a port, is it not? I wonder if he has simply taken all the money and gone to the Low Countries or England or somewhere.’
‘You had a look at the accounts.’
‘Yes, but the old lady was watching me, so I could not look too close. I thought they appeared sound enough. The income I saw would support the size of household they have there, and pay the colliers in coin and kind. If the man was taking anything out before he left on this collecting-round he was doing it very circumspectly.’
‘And if he ran, why would he take the other two men with him? Sharing the money?’
‘I agree. And also Beatrice said they have kin at the coal-heugh, they might not wish to run off with him. We must speak to the kin.’ She turned her head to look up at him. ‘Will you go out to the houses on the list?’
‘I thought we might persuade Michael to do that. My mother ordered him back here for supper, he should have arrived by now.’
‘Gil, it was an invitation!’ she protested, giggling. ‘And very civil.’
‘I heard her issue it. He’ll not disobey.’
‘He may not be willing to help us,’ she warned him. ‘He is quite afflicted, I think, not to find your sister Tib here.’
‘My heart bleeds at that.’
‘So does mine, to tell truth,’ she said seriously. ‘They have been parted for months, with only a couple of meetings in public, he must wonder whether she still — ’
‘Hah!’ said Gil.
‘We have been fortunate,’ she pointed out. ‘You were never away for more than a few days before we were married, and since then — ’
‘I’m still greatly displeased with him,’ Gil said firmly. ‘Tib apologized to me, for what that was worth, but I don’t recall that Michael ever did, and their behaviour was ill judged and ill disciplined.’
‘They are much in love.’
‘So are we, Alys, and I can’t imagine enticing you to my bed like that. Much though I might have wished to,’ he added wryly, recalling how long the weeks between the contract and the wedding had seemed.
‘Nor I you,’ she admitted. ‘But we were differently placed. We were acknowledged from the start, Gil. We had no need to act in secret.’
He laughed, thinking of the snatched moments of what they had thought at the time was privacy, and tightened his clasp on her waist. ‘I suppose it’s my fault. I should have made sure my sister was better guarded. Well, too late now, and if Michael wants me to support his case with his father he’ll oblige me and be civil about it.’ He glanced at the window, where the sun was warming the greyish-yellow panes. ‘They’ll blow up for supper soon. We must dress.’
She tucked her hand into his as he rose.
‘I suppose,’ she said diffidently, ‘I wish all women to be as fortunate as I am. I married for love and to please my father, and I wish Tib could do the same.’
Gil drew her to her feet and into his arms, looking fondly down into her brown gaze.
‘It was the best day of my life when Pierre proposed the match to me,’ he said, ‘and when he told me you wished it too, I could hardly believe my fortune. It’s near a year since then,’ he discovered. ‘We should hold a feast for the anniversary.’
‘I never realized,’ said Lady Egidia, spooning green sauce over her boiled mutton, ‘that all the Crombie men were dead.’
She was seated at the head of the long board, Alys and Gil at her right hand, her godson at her left, with her steward, his wife Eppie and the rest of the household arrayed below them. At the far end among the grooms Gil could see Henry, by his gestures describing the discovery of the corpse in the peat-digging.
‘The youngest still lives,’ said Alys. ‘Mistress Weir’s grandson. Ralph, did his mother call him?’
‘That’s a by-name, I think,’ said Gil. ‘Adam, she said. He’d be named for his father, or his grandsire. Is there an Adam Crombie at the university, Michael?’
Michael paused with a second oozing wedge of cold pie halfway to his wooden trencher. Socrates, seated at Gil’s elbow, the crown of his rough grey head level with the miniature silver saint on the lid of the salt, watched the pastry crumbs falling on the tablecloth, and his nose twitched.
‘Down,’ said Gil sternly, and the dog lay down with an ostentatious sigh.
‘Aye, he’s at the college,’ Michael admitted. ‘Magistrand.’
‘That is a fourth year man,’ Alys prompted, ‘like you?’
‘Aye.’
Gil waited, but no further information emerged. A difficult situation, he reflected, to be in the same year as your tenant’s son.
‘It was sad how Mistress Weir’s husband died,’ said Alys, passing Gil the salt with her free hand. ‘Did she say it was in ’77, Gil?’
‘Beatrice said that, aye,’ Gil agreed.
‘I was still at court, then.’ Lady Egidia stared into the distance, her long-chinned face remote. ‘Aye, I think I recall, your father must have come over from Thinacre to gather the rents and brought the tale back. Where did it happen? Elsrickle? Douglas?’
‘They never said.’
‘Elsrickle, I think,’ said Alys confidently, ‘from the tone in which Mistress Weir read out the name. Where is that?’
‘It’s a fair way from the Pow Burn,’ observed Michael. ‘It’s in Walston parish, the far end of the county. That way.’ He nodded vaguely south-east.
‘It was sadder yet what happened to the younger son,’ Lady Egidia said. ‘If I mind right, he came home maybe two years back with a new young wife on his crupper, having met and married her incontinent at some place where he’d taken a load of coals. That alone would ha’ been the speak of the parish for weeks, but then he took sick and was dead within the quarter, for all Beattie could do.’