‘To hold the roof up,’ Alys nodded. ‘I see. So there must be a point where it is not worth hewing any deeper.’
‘Aye,’ said Phemie, looking up with grudging admiration. ‘Because you canny take out enough coal to justify the work. That was what happened to my da. Arbella made him go into the pit, and someone had took out too much coal and the roof came down while he was viewing it.’ Alys made a small sympathetic sound, and Phemie shrugged. ‘I was seven, I can scarce mind him,’ she said dismissively, and went on, ‘And that was where Arbella and Thomas wonderful Murray couldny agree.’
She looked round her, and Alys did likewise. They were well above the house here, high enough to look down at the thatched roofs of stables and dwellings. Children played in the trampled space between the two rows, and a group of women were eyeing them covertly from the door of one cottage. Fifty yards away the winding-gear creaked loudly inside the next shaft-house, and an elderly man was pushing a small rumbling cart back and forward along a wooden roadway, adding huge shining black blocks to the upper coal-hill. Further uphill yet, a row of tethered ponies munched at the tussocky grass, ignoring all distractions.
‘Come up here,’ said Phemie. ‘You can see it all from here.’
They tramped across the rough grass away from the coal-hill. Alys let go of the dog’s collar and he loped round them, grinning and sniffing at the wind. Some of the ponies broke off their grazing to stare at him, then decided he was no great threat and returned to more important matters.
‘There are the three ingoes,’ Phemie pointed. ‘There’s the one we use now, and there’s the mid one, and down there’s the very first one that Arbella’s sire cut when he first took on the heugh from this Sir James’s grandsire. Or maybe from that one’s father,’ she added, ‘I forget, what wi’ most of them being called James.’
Alys nodded, identifying the three entries. They were smaller than she had expected, barely five feet high and braced with solid timbers, and from the furthest downhill of the three a channel of grey water spilled away down the slope towards the burn. Making a mental note not to let the dog drink from that stream, she sat on a relatively dry patch of grass and said, ‘So the men go in there to work. Do they walk all the way under the earth to the point where the shafts go down? How many men are there working at once?’
‘Aye, they walk. Or crawl.’ Phemie sat down beside her. ‘The roof gets lower further in. Sometimes we’ve more, times fewer, but for now we’ve four men at a time hewing and four or so bearing, so that’s eight at least in the mine, and two or three at the surface.’
‘In two shifts? Do they work by night as well?’
‘No the now, though we used to have two shifts.’ Phemie gave her another of those admiring looks. ‘You’ve a good understanding of this, mistress. You sure you’ve never seen a coal-heugh?’
‘My father is a mason. And my name is Alys.’
They exchanged shy smiles, and Alys went on hastily, counting on her fingers, ‘Eight — eleven men, and the smith and his helper, the saddler, the chandler, a man to see to the ponies, the two who are gone with your missing man. Which reminds me, Phemie, I should like to speak to their kin if I may. I think your mother said they had kin here?’
‘The Patersons? Aye, their sister’s married on one of the colliers. She works in our kitchen.’
Alys nodded, and looked down at her fingers. ‘There must be twenty men here. There are not so many households in that row of cottages.’
‘There’s ten houses. Five-and-twenty men all told, and a few laddies old enough to work. Then some of the women works in the house like Kate Paterson, and I think there’s one or two of them does some weaving and the like. That’s how our Bel learned her spinning, one of the colliers’ wives taught her.’
‘In those little houses,’ Alys marvelled. ‘Did the man Murray dwell there before he wedded Joanna?’
‘In the end house,’ said Phemie indifferently. ‘It’s got two chambers. Likely he wishes he was still there, the way the old beldam gets after him.’
‘Are you saying your grandam disliked Murray? That was not the impression she gave us.’
‘I’ll wager it wasny,’ Phemie grinned. ‘Nor to him, at first. I’ve seen it afore. She’s aye sweetie-sweetie, as smooth as honey, wi’ guests and strangers, but she has a different voice for the household, I can tell you that. Except wi’ Joanna,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘and my brother.’
‘I have known people like that,’ Alys said.
‘Aye. Well, once Murray had wed Joanna, so he was living in the house, in the north wing, see yonder, wi’ the separate door?’ She pointed, and Alys nodded. ‘Arbella began to argue wi’ him, and he wouldny buckle under and do her bidding where the coal was concerned, and the shouting there was! And Joanna weeping, the silly creature, and my brother getting into it and all, when he was home — ’
‘Which side did he take?’ Alys asked.
‘The side that would cause most argument. Raffie thinks he should ha’ been given the charge of the business. He’s two year older than me, he’s eighteen now, he thinks he could run a coal-heugh, for all he’s been away at school and then at the college since he was ten.’
‘I have no brothers,’ said Alys thoughtfully.
‘They’re no worth it, I can tell you. Anyway, Arbella and Murray near came to blows the last time they argued. It seems the coal we’re working has about given out, there’s a throw showed up at the end of the eastmost road.’ She gestured along the hillside.
‘Whatever does that mean?’
‘Times the coal just stops,’ Phemie said impatiently. ‘The men cut along so far and then there’s a break in the rocks and beyond it there’s no coal. They call that a throw.’
‘Oh, yes! I have seen the same thing in the side of a quarry! But there you can see where the band of good stone has gone to, whether it has stepped up or down, and underground one must guess, I suppose.’
‘Aye, or abandon that working and start again elsewhere. Murray wants to do that. Arbella wouldny hear of it.’
‘I can see that she would be angry,’ agreed Alys. ‘Tell me, has the man any friends about the coal-heugh? Is there anyone he would talk to?’
‘What, him?’ said Phemie, startled. ‘I’ve no notion. I think maybe no, but if you ask Jamesie Meikle likely he could tell you. He’s a good man, wi’ an eye for what’s going on. Joanna should have taken him.’
‘I suppose he is working just now. Where do you think Murray has gone?’
‘I hope he’s run off. I hope we never see him again. Or if he’s stolen the takings, we can put him to the horn for that and then get him hanged for thieving.’ Phemie grinned, without humour. ‘I can picture it well, the Sheriff’s officer blowing the horn at Lanark Cross and reading him out a wanted man.’
‘Why do you dislike him so much, Phemie?’
‘He’s a toad,’ said Phemie roundly.
Alys studied her expression. ‘Was he courting you?’
The girl looked down, and then away. Her fair hair blew across her face, and she shook her head angrily, trying to dislodge it.
‘Was he?’ Alys persisted, recalling Michael’s comment at supper. ‘Or was it your sister he liked?’
‘What, Bel? She’s a bairn yet!’ objected Phemie. Alys waited. ‘Aye, if you have to ken. He was courting me last spring. Full of plans to wed me, he was, and build a house over yonder, across the burn from the workings.’ She tugged savagely at a tussock of grass by her side, and scattered the torn stems on the wind. Socrates bounded back to snatch at the nearest, white teeth snapping in his long narrow jaws. ‘Then he saw how Joanna was placed, and went after her hell-for-leather.’
‘How Joanna was placed?’
‘Oh, aye.’ Phemie turned to meet her eye. ‘She’s Matt’s widow, right? Arbella has said she’s to have Matt’s share. Even though he wed her out of hand wi’ no contract or agreement drawn up, even though he died afore he’d bairned her, when the old witch goes — ’ Alys saw the girl’s expression flicker as she heard her own words, but the angry voice plunged on. ‘When the old witch goes, Joanna gets half the business, and the other half goes to my mother and the three of us. No wonder the wonderful Thomas fancied Joanna to his bed.’