‘He ill-treats her,’ said Alys softly. ‘He holds her in contempt.’
‘Aye.’ Phemie tore at another handful of grass. ‘I tellt Arbella of it, the last time he went for Joanna. She wouldny believe me.’ She turned her head away, but her next words were just audible: ‘He would never ha’ treated me like that.’
‘Forgive me, mistress,’ said Joanna, dabbing at her eyes with the end of her kerchief. ‘When I heard you at the outside door the now I thought for one moment — That’s the door Thomas aye uses, rather than come through the house in his muddy boots.’
‘It must be very hard for you,’ said Alys with a rush of genuine sympathy, ‘worrying about your man when nobody else seems concerned.’
‘It’s that,’ agreed Joanna, and turned to the other door of the room. ‘Will you come ben, mistress, and be seated? A wee cup of cordial, maybe, if Phemie’s had you up the hill in this wind?’
‘That would be welcome,’ Alys admitted, following her into a neat inner chamber with a high curtained bed against one wall. ‘The view is interesting, from so high up, but I admit I prefer to be more sheltered.’
‘I found the same, when I moved up here.’ Joanna drew a new-fashioned spinning machine, a well-made item with turned legs and a narrow-rimmed wheel, into a corner away from the window and set a back-stool for Alys. ‘The wind never ceases.’
‘You are not from hereabouts, then?’ Alys sat down on the padded leather and shook her skirts round her.
‘I was raised on the other side of the Clyde. My father was William Brownlie, and held Auldton, by Ashgill. It paid a good rent. And it’s nowhere near so high up as this.’
‘My father is a mason,’ Alys countered. ‘He has charge of the Archbishop’s new build at the cathedral in Glasgow.’
‘And your man is some kind of a man of law,’ Joanna offered. She handed Alys a little glass of something brownish and sticky, and sat down herself. ‘Your good health, mistress. It’s made wi’ elderberries — well, mostly elderberries. The colour was no so good last year, but we put the good spirits to it.’
‘And yours.’ Alys raised her glass, and sipped cautiously. The cordial was bitter, despite a generous inclusion of honey, but the base was indeed strong spirits. She identified the elderberries, and several distinct herbs, and perhaps ginger.
‘Mistress Weir seems not to be concerned at all about Maister Thomas,’ she observed.
‘No,’ Joanna agreed, and looked away, turning her own glass in her fingers.
‘Has she said why? It is a long time to be overdue on such a journey.’ Joanna shook her head, and Alys went on, with some sympathy, ‘I think she governs her household firmly.’
‘She’s aye been kind to me,’ said Joanna. ‘Since ever poor Matt brought me across the threshold, two year since.’ She took another sip of cordial.
‘I heard about that — a sad tale. He came to your father’s house, did he? And you loved each other at sight? Tell me about it.’
That appeared to be the gist of it. Alys sat and watched while the girl opposite, brave in her dark red wool and snow-white linen kerchief, described the relentless refashioning of her life in the past two years. Joanna’s mother was dead (‘Mine too,’ said Alys) and her brothers, much older, married and settled; Matt Crombie had appeared at the gate one day, hoping to extend his round, and though he had taken no orders for coal he had given his heart to Joanna on sight. He had spent an evening closeted with her father, and the next day they had sent for the priest from Dalserf and she had packed up her clothes and the gold jewel her mother left her.
‘We rode up here, new-wed and happy, in such hopes,’ she said bleakly. ‘I mind how we halted before the house door,’ she gestured at the cobbled area under the window where they sat, ‘and Phemie and Bel went in all haste for their grandam, and Beattie came running round from the stillroom, only I never knew it was the stillroom then, you understand.’ Alys nodded. ‘And they fetched the maidservants, and when Matt lifted me over the threshold they all clapped their hands and cheered, just as Arbella came into the hall and caught sight of us, she was walking much better in those days, and the noise gave her such a turn that she dropped the tray she was carrying on to that stone floor and broke three of the good glasses.’ She sighed. ‘He took ill within the week, my poor laddie. And d’you ken, Arbella’s never so much as mentioned those glasses to me.’
‘Oh, that’s forbearing,’ agreed Alys, and took another sip from her glass.
‘And then when — when I wedded Thomas, she would have us dwell here in the house, instead of up in the row with the colliers. To tell truth I was glad of it at first,’ she admitted, ‘for bare walls and an earthen floor’s no what I was ever used to.’ Alys made noises of sympathy. ‘But she and Thomas make such an argy-bargy of the least wee thing, shouting and disagreeing over whether black’s white, times there’s no bearing it, Mistress Mason, if you’ll believe me.’
‘Does she dislike him, then?’
‘No, no, she doesny dislike him! Just, they don’t get on,’ Joanna said earnestly. Alys nodded encouragingly. ‘Thomas aye feels he should know more than she tells him, I think. She said to me when she would have me consent, he was a good bargain, and since Matt had respected him as a cunning pitman — ’ She bit her lip, and paused a moment. ‘No, she gave him a gift as they left that morn, so how could she dislike him? Bel brought it here to him as I was packing his scrip. A wee flask of silver,’ she held her hand out flat, fingers together, ‘the size of that, but flat, to fit inside your doublet for travelling, and a drop of something in it to drink Arbella’s health on her birthday, that’s three days after St Patrick, seeing he would be away then. We aye mark folks’ birthdays up here,’ she confided, ‘maybe something good to eat or a new garment for them or the like. It’s a friendly notion. So I put it right in his scrip, and no delay.’
Alys, whose father had always marked her birthday, smiled in agreement. Joanna looked down at her empty glass.
‘Will you take a drop more, mistress?’ She rose and fetched the yellow stoneware pipkin from the cupboard-top. ‘It’s warming stuff, this. Refreshes the heart.’
‘It does indeed,’ said Alys. ‘Perhaps a drop. Have you any thought of what might have delayed your man?’
Joanna topped up Alys’s glass, refilled her own, and sat down again, the little jar by her feet.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ she admitted, looking unseeing at the brown sticky liquid in her glass. ‘I canny think that it’s anything good, by now. He could ha’ taken ill, or met wi’ some accident, but we’d surely ha’ heard by now, would we no? Or he could ha’ heard of a new order someone wanted to give us, though I’m not so certain we could fill it just now. But that would never ha’ taken three weeks to deal wi’. I just — I just don’t know.’
‘Would he have any reason to leave here?’ Alys asked gently.
‘Oh, no. No that I can see.’ Joanna’s eyes focused on the glass of cordial, and she raised it. ‘It’s right kind of you to take such an interest,’ she said innocently. ‘Here’s to your good fortune, Mistress Mason.’
‘I never heard such a sad tale,’ said Alys, accepting this, ‘and every word of it true. What does your father think of your second marriage?’
Joanna looked away again, and crossed herself.
‘He died two months after Matt,’ she whispered. Alys, dismayed, moved her backstool beside Joanna’s, and sat down again, taking the other girl’s hand. ‘He came up here once a week all that summer, while my poor lad was dying, and then I saw he’d begun to sicken of the same thing himself, and then he took to his bed and died.’