‘Oh, my poor lass. That was hard for you.’ Alys patted the hand she held. ‘Did he make a peaceful end?’
‘Oh, aye, just as Matt did, wi’ Sir Simon to shrive him, that wedded Matt and me, and take down his will, and my brothers present, and all.’ Joanna crossed herself again. ‘Christ assoil him, he was concerned for me on his deathbed, that Arbella should have an eye to me. Mistress Weir, he said, over and over, Mistress Weir, care.’
‘And I’ve had a care to you ever since, my pet, have I no?’ said Arbella’s sweet voice. Alys looked round, and saw the older woman standing in the doorway which led into the rest of the house, steadying herself with one twisted hand against the doorpost, Bel’s round sullen face visible over her shoulder.
‘Madam,’ she said, and rose to curtsy. I must have been engrossed in Joanna’s story, she thought, not to have heard her come in.
‘Mistress Mason.’ Arbella returned the curtsy, and moved forward into the room. Alys gestured at the backstool she had just vacated, and Arbella smiled, her expressive blue eyes softening. ‘You are kind, my dear. And what brings you back to brighten our day?’ she asked, seating herself with Bel’s help.
To brighten an old woman’s day, thought Alys. That was Gil’s mother, yesterday evening. Distracted, she accepted a lower seat on the bench Bel drew forward, and gave the first answer that came to her.
‘I was curious about the coal-heugh, madam. Phemie has told me a great deal, and I’ve talked of herbs with Mistress Lithgo as well. I’ve spent a most interesting time.’
‘Have you now?’ The old woman was wearing a plainer gown today, of tawny worsted faded almost to the colour of the peaches Alys recalled in the garden in Paris, and a wired headdress of black linen over a white indoor cap; now her exquisite eyebrows rose nearly to the lowest fold where it dipped over her brow. ‘And are you herb-wise, too, my dear?’
‘Beattie was saying — ’ began Joanna, and was checked by Arbella’s uplifted hand. Alys waited a moment, then answered:
‘I have run my father’s house these six years. One learns to deal with kitchen-ills.’
‘Very true. But you’re no Scotswoman, by your speech, I thought that yesterday. Where are you from? From France, you say? Our Lady save us! And how did a Frenchwoman come to be wedded to Lady Cunningham’s son?’
The inquisition ranged wide, over the marriage settlement, the contract, the size of her father’s household, the nature of his business and Gil’s. It was customary, of course, to put a new bride to the question, and Alys had witnessed other girls being subjected to the process as well as having had five months of it herself in Glasgow, but she had never been asked such intrusive questions by a relative stranger before. Parrying with all the politeness she had been taught, she gave away as little as necessary, but it was almost a relief when Joanna said shyly:
‘Mother, I’m certain Mistress Mason would rather tell us what a bonnie man she’s wedded on than how he earns his bread.’
‘Aye, he’s a bonnie man,’ agreed Arbella, ‘and I’ll wager he can play the man’s part well enough when the candles are out, am I right, my dear?’
‘I’ve no complaints,’ said Alys, smiling. It was the reply she had found most useful in the circumstance.
‘I’ll believe that.’ Arbella chuckled knowingly, then paused to study Alys. ‘But he’s no finished his task yet, has he?’
‘Time enough, Mother, surely,’ said Joanna.
‘Not yet,’ said Alys, aware of her face burning.
‘No, I thought not. You’ve not the look.’ The expressive blue gaze flicked from her face to her waistline and back. ‘As you say, Joanna my pet, there’s time enough. I’ve said the same to you a time or two.’
Chapter Four
Gil was finding the women of Thorn a different proposition from the men.
He knew the little settlement slightly, a small fermtoun like so many others where four or five families held a piece of land and worked it in common. The houses in the midst of the four striped fields were low and long, the animals bedded at one end and the people at the other, the thatch supported by the cruck timbers which were the property of the tenant not the landlord.
When he got there the men were all out in the furthest field, visible in a morose group round a heap of stones, but he was welcomed by the women in committee. They gathered from kailyard and drying-green and seated him in state on the bench by the door of Annie Douglas’s cottage, nearest the track. A beaker of Maidie Paton’s ale, as being the best the township could produce, was put in his hand, and all the women crowded round to stare and talk and listen, their children peering round their skirts giggling. Hens wandered through and round the discussion, with a puppy trying to herd them.
‘You’ve no brought your bride to see us,’ complained Mistress Douglas. She was a big brawny woman, widow of a man called Meikle whom Gil recalled as another of his mother’s stable-hands. The two brothers with the cart must be her sons, he realized. ‘You’ll just need to come back another time and bring her. And how’s your lady mother? And your sisters? Did I hear good news o’ Lady Kate? When’s her bairn due?’
These questions and others having been addressed, Gil raised the subject which had brought him. At the mention of the corpse in the peat-cutting, there was a general chorus of disapproval and excitement.
‘The men tellt us when they came home,’ said Rab Simson’s wife, broad red hands on her bony hips. ‘What a thing to find in the peat! Killt three times over, was he no? And never a stitch on him? And you cut him up in your mother’s cart-shed, is that right?’
‘Mind your tongue, Lizzie!’ ordered another woman, very like her in build and face. ‘Or were you looking for ways to deal wi’ your Rab?’ They all laughed at this. ‘Mind you, he’d got a sore fright when he found the corp, Rab did, by the look of him.’
‘Aye, Maggie, he’d got a fright,’ said Lizzie sourly. ‘He’d need of a drink of usquebae to steady him, and then another to wash that away, and then another, till he was that steady he couldny find his way to his bed.’
‘At least he’d more sense than go and take Beattie Lithgo up for a witch,’ said Mistress Douglas, ‘the way my boys did. I skelped them for that when I heard it, I can tell you. The idea!’
‘Beattie’s a good woman,’ agreed Lizzie. ‘It was her cured my boy’s sore eyes, and your wean’s rotten ear, Maidie, you mind.’
‘She is, she’s a good woman,’ said another voice. ‘No like — ’
‘Let alone she’s more sense than bury him in our peat-digging,’ said someone else from the background. ‘If it was Thomas Murray.’
‘Aye, but it wasny,’ said the woman called Maggie. ‘Our Wat tellt me your nephew Jamesie said it wasny him, Annie.’
‘So he did, and Jamesie has more wit than my two put together,’ agreed Mistress Douglas.
‘It was Davy Fleming told them to go and get her,’ said another voice. ‘Our Adam’s no more wit than do as the clerk bid him, neither.’
‘No more did our Eck,’ said Lizzie. ‘Taking that wee fornicator’s word for it, and all.’
‘Aye, well,’ said Mistress Douglas. ‘They’ll none of them make that mistake again soon. And did ye discern yet what man it is, Maister Gil?’
Here was his opening.
‘I did not,’ he admitted. ‘It’s not Thomas Murray, you’re right about that, but it seems to me he’s been dead a long time, with the peat growing over him.’
‘Peat doesny grow!’ objected one woman, as the men had done. ‘It’s aye been!’
‘No, for there’s trees at the bottom of it,’ another reminded her. ‘From Noy’s Flood, our William says. Was this maybe a man from Noy’s time, sir?’
‘I think not so long ago as that,’ Gil said. ‘What I wondered was if he was maybe from our grandsires’ time, or a bit before. Do any of you mind any tales of a man missing on the moor?’