‘Who’s Malessock?’ demanded Fleming. ‘It canny be any Malessock that came out the peat-digging, it’s Thomas Murray.’
‘No, it’s no Murray,’ said Simmie, ‘for we found him by Bonnington yesterday, Davy, you mind Wat and I tellt you all.’
‘I’ll get away,’ said Gil cravenly Alys looked up and nodded, but Fleming’s grip on her wrist tightened.
‘The rolls, mistress. Yonder on the desk. Take the rolls, or you take them, sir.’
‘Bring them out into the hall,’ suggested Michael. Gil, in some relief, gathered up the two yellowing scrolls and stepped to the door. Alys disengaged her wrist from Fleming’s grasp, and crossed herself.
‘We’ll leave you with Sir John,’ she said. ‘God speed the business.’
‘Amen,’ agreed Sir John.
‘Read them wi’ care, now,’ admonished Fleming.
‘He seemed well enough when I came home,’ said Michael, ‘though he was chastened once I’d done wi’ him. Maister Gil would tell you about him being up at the Pow Burn …?’
Alys nodded. Across the hall where he had been ordered to wait, Socrates emitted a single indignant falsetto yip. Gil snapped his fingers, and the dog paced over to join them.
‘You could sit here in the window, and get the light for the task,’ Michael went on. ‘No, he wasn’t so good after supper last night, and this morning he took a wee sup of porridge, with honey in it after what you said about honey the other day, mistress, but it never helped, and then he called for Maister Gil and I thought we’d best get a priest to him and all, and set Simmie on to look for you.’
‘Indeed, yes,’ said Alys. ‘You take that one, Gil, I take this, and then we can tell poor Fleming we’ve been through both. Has he been at the pear comfits again, Michael? I could smell them on his breath.’
‘So did I,’ Michael was striding up and down, ‘but I’ve no notion where he’s hid them.’
‘He should fast now, with well-water to drink and not even bread to eat, till noon tomorrow, if you can manage it, and certainly none of the comfits.’
‘I’ll try, though the other men aye bring him food when he shouts for it.’ Michael looked round as Sir John’s voice rose in the familiar, comforting words from beyond the screens passage. ‘Jackie Heriot’s a powerful singer, isn’t he? What’s he about, anyway? What’s that nasty thing he’s brought wi’ him?’
‘He reckons our corp from the peat-digging is this Malessock he claims is in the parish records.’ Gil had untied the tape on the older roll, and now spread out the end on his knee. Socrates sniffed at the edge of the parchment, then lay down with an ostentatious sigh, his head on Gil’s foot.
‘Could it be?’ asked Michael uncertainly, pausing in his traverse. Gil grunted, but Alys looked up.
‘I would not have said so either,’ she said with regret. ‘One thing to surmise that the corp might be someone from the days of the saints, or even from the time Our Lord was born, but another entirely to give him a name as if we had proof.’
Gil, aware of relief, nodded agreement.
‘He came up out of the peat with nothing,’ he said. ‘All we know of him is the violent way he died. If Sir John wishes to give him a name and honour him, there’s no harm, I suppose, but I’ll believe he’s a saint working miracles of healing when I witness one.’
‘The Lee Penny works,’ Michael argued.
‘What is that?’ Alys asked, finger on her place. ‘Simmie mentioned it too.’
Gil immersed himself in the roll he held, only half hearing Michael’s account of how a Lockhart, of the house by Carluke called the Lee, had brought back a mysterious coin from the Crusades, widely known to cure the pestilence and other serious illness if you drank water it had been dipped in. He was less convinced than Michael of its efficacy, though one heard tales.
‘1481, Lady Day, the fee paid,’ he read aloud as the tale ended. ‘And Arbella Weir’s signature to it. For all Fleming calls these rent rolls, it isn’t strictly rent the coal-heugh pays, is it, Michael?’
‘It’s regular feu duty,’ agreed Michael. ‘And our share of the profits, as part of the conditions of the feu. There should be a note of those at the top of that roll, set out when old man Weir cut the first pit.’ He stopped pacing to peer over Alys’s shoulder. ‘Davy’s writing gets worse every time I look at it.’
‘The man before him was no better,’ said Gil.
‘What does Fleming want us to look for?’ asked Alys. She hitched up the skirt of her riding-dress to reach the purse which hung beneath it at her knee, and extracted her tablets.
‘I’m not certain.’ Gil paused, finger on an entry. ‘He was babbling to me about the dates the Crombie men had died, from which he seemed to deduce witchcraft. If we find those, I suppose, and make a note of them, it should satisfy him. I’d not take the time, save to humour the man when he’s in such a bad way.’
‘He is,’ Michael agreed, glancing at the screen again. Sir John had obviously anointed his penitent and was now chanting; his text seemed to be a life of the newly revealed saint, cobbled together from stock phrases. ‘St Peter’s bones, I think he’s making that up as he goes along. What’s Robert Blacader going to say about a new saint on his land?’
‘I’ve been wondering the same thing.’ Gil bent to the parchment again, and read the entry under his finger. ‘1477, Lammas, the fee paid. Adam Crombie younger, his mark, though it’s a signature, not a mark, and Adam Crombie elder obiit March last. Then before that, in March, Arbella paid the fee, and at Candlemas before that it was Adam the elder. Their signatures are very different. But I see no great meaning in this.’
He copied the three entries carefully, and set the tablets aside.
‘I have the death of Mistress Lithgo’s man,’ said Alys. She turned her scroll so that Gil could read the entry. ‘In March of 1484.’
Adam Crombie secundus obiit, ran the note. Two attempts at a Latin phrase had been scratched out, and Undir a gret faling of the rokkes written after it.
‘Just as Phemie told me,’ she added.
Aware of a lack of system, Gil re-rolled his document to begin at the beginning, and paused to study the original conditions of feu which Michael had mentioned. The steward of the time had copied them with care in a small clear hand; they were interesting, and he thought generous on both sides. The first coalmaster, Arbella Weir’s father, had freedom to conduct the coal-heugh as he wished, and in turn the Sir James Douglas concerned, likely Michael’s grandsire he calculated, was to receive the regular feu duty, paid in person at Lady Day, and a fifth of the proceeds, paid quarterly.
‘Not the profits,’ he commented. Alys looked up, but did not speak.
‘No,’ agreed Michael, and grinned. ‘The old man can tell you about that. He does a good mimic of my grandsire bargaining with old Weir.’ He turned his head as the chanting from beyond the screen reached some kind of culmination, and water splashed. ‘I hope they’re careful wi’ that basin. We don’t want the records getting soaked.’
Gil bent to his task again, picking his way through the cramped lines of script. The year following the first payment a different name appeared. Adam Crombie grieve pro Mats Weir, stated the note beside it. Gil checked the date: August 1451. This must be when Arbella had been married. He frowned, made a note and carried on with his task. Year by year, quarter by quarter, the feu duty was paid, the share of the takings recorded, one man or the other signed the book.
‘I suppose whoever was free would ride over here,’ said Michael when he commented.
On Lady Day in 1465 Arbella had signed instead of her father, and thereafter her name appeared every spring. He frowned, and checked again, and located the brief comment appended to the Lammas entry: Mataeus Were ob mart mcccclxv. March 1465, indeed. He made a note, and went on.