‘Aye,’ said Sir Simon, nodding sagely. He lifted a marchpane cherry from the box, and bit into it. ‘I can see how that would be. Well, I canny prevent my flock running after such a thing, and if one or two finds peace of mind by it, well and good, it’s a grace. So how can I help you, madam?’
Alys set her beaker down and folded her hands in her lap.
‘I am a friend of Joanna Brownlie,’ she said. ‘I think you know her, and you’ll know she has not to seek for her troubles.’
‘Aye, I do. But I heard she’d taken a second husband. Is that not succeeding — ?’
‘That’s the man who is missing from the coal-heugh. And now he is dead.’
‘Never!’ The priest crossed himself with the hand that held the cherry, and muttered briefly in Latin. They both said Amen, and he continued, bright-eyed, ‘I’d heard about that, but I never knew it was Joanna’s man, the poor lassie. Been gone for months, is that right?’
‘Five weeks,’ said Alys precisely. ‘Since the morrow of St Patrick’s day. And found dead only yesterday, though we think — my husband thinks,’ she corrected scrupulously; she might still be annoyed with Gil but she would give him all credit, ‘he has been dead since before Lady Day.’ She smiled earnestly and the priest nodded again. ‘Joanna needs the support of her kin, good though the folk at the coal-heugh are to her, and I hoped you might have some clearer idea than she does herself about where her brothers are.’
‘Her brothers!’ Sir Simon sat back, looking at her in some dismay. ‘She’ll get no support from them. Still, I suppose they should be given the chance. You never can tell, wi’ kin.’
‘They are not close, then?’
‘Oh, they’re not close. Never were. I suppose it’s no wonder, two great laddies wi’ the farm work to see to would take it ill out that their mother made such a pet of the wee thing, but they never took to her, as bonnie as she was, and then they both left home no long after I came to the benefice, and got set up for themselves.’
‘Yes, I think Joanna was a late bairn. They would already be well grown when she was born. Mistress Lockhart must have missed her sons when they left,’ said Alys, and got a sharp look at her use of the surname.
‘She’d the lassie still at home. Told me once she’d always wanted a lassie to raise.’
‘But then she died before Joanna was grown. Like my mother,’ added Alys.
‘It comes to many of us,’ said Sir Simon in compassion. ‘Aye, Marion died, poor woman, and grievous hard she found it to leave her daughter. Could hardly go to her rest, the poor soul, till she had her man swear in front of me that he’d cherish Joanna as his own ewe lamb.’ He sighed, and shook his head. ‘That’s a deathbed I’ll recall my life long. The lassie weeping, and her father sat by the pillow like a stone statue, and the two brothers summoned from their homes the one leaning on either bedpost,’ he gestured with one hand and then the other, ‘watching their mother as she failed. Cherish her, she kept repeating, as your own ewe lamb. Swear it, Will, she said. One of the sons said, What need of him swearing, he’s aye been doted on the wench, and the other said, Swear it, Father, and get this over. But you’ve no need of hearing this, madam. What was it you were asking me? Where would the brothers have got to?’
‘Yes. Yes, I hoped you might know more than Joanna.’ Alys brought her thoughts to bear on the question. ‘I’d heard they might be in Lesmahagow, but then — ’
‘Oh, no, they’ve both left there and all. One of them moved on a while back, I mind that, for he was nearly too late in returning when their father reached his end.’
‘I wonder where they went,’ said Alys hopefully.
‘Ayrshire,’ said Sir Simon with confidence. ‘Sorn way. I’m from thereabouts myself, you understand, lassie, so it stuck in my mind when I heard. But where the other one — Glasgow? Ru’glen?’
‘No matter,’ said Alys without truth. ‘What was it Maister Brownlie died of? I heard he took ill not long after Joanna’s first husband died.’
‘He did,’ agreed Sir Simon, nodding. ‘Poor soul, he’d a bad time of it. Two month of a wasting illness, wi’ cramps to his belly and his legs, and pains in his wame to make him cry out. I visited often. He was wandering in his mind at the last,’ he added, ‘talking of owls on the bed-foot, and trying to make Joanna swear to have a care to Mistress Weir the same way he’d sworn to her mother, but he made a good end none the less, and made his confession and died at peace.’
‘Our Lady be praised for that,’ said Alys, and Sir Simon said Amen. ‘What did they treat him with? It sounds like a sorry case.’
‘Oh, there was a fellow over from the coal-heugh almost day by day wi’ one receipt or another, a simple, a decoction, a tincture. Auld Mistress Weir and the other good-daughter both are herb-wise, maybe you’ve noticed that, and they kept sending anything they thought might ease him a wee bittie. But nothing helped.’ The priest smiled ruefully. ‘They all make me feel worse, Will said to me one time.’
‘Poor man,’ said Alys. ‘At least he saw all his children established in the world before he died. Rutherglen, you said?’
‘Or Cambuslang. Or maybe it was Glasgow right enough.’ Sir Simon lifted the box of sweetmeats and held it out to her. ‘There’s a strange thing, I’ve only the now thought of it. That was Hob that moved away down the Clyde, to Ru’glen or Glasgow, and I’ve heard them say the reason why he moved was, the place he had in Lesmahagow was full of owls.’
‘Owls?’ Alys repeated, since this seemed to be expected.
‘Aye, owls. The story goes that they sat on the roof-tree and screeched all night, and stole the seed-corn out the meal kist, and he couldny take it longer and left the place. And there was his father as he lay dying talking of owls at the bed-foot, where, let me tell you, there was never an owl when I was there, poor soul.’
‘How extraordinary!’ said Alys. Do owls eat grain? she wondered. I thought they caught the mice and rats who would eat it. ‘Are there a lot of owls in Lesmahagow?’
‘I was never there,’ admitted Sir Simon.
‘And both the sons came back to the burial,’ said Alys.
‘Aye, and the displenishing, which is what brings most folk back to the old home,’ said Sir Simon drily. ‘It’s seldom an edifying sight, the family after the funeral.’
‘I hope the Brownlie funeral was harmonious.’
‘No,’ said Sir Simon. ‘I wouldny say it was.’ He shook his head, contemplating the past, and took another sweetmeat. ‘I wouldny say it was,’ he repeated.
‘Did they disagree over the will?’
Another of those sharp looks.
‘Aye, though it was clear enough. I scribed and witnessed it. All the outside gear to the sons, to divide equably atween my sons Thomas and Robert Brownlie, and the inside gear to our dear Joanna that was born in the year of 1470.’
‘How odd,’ said Alys. ‘What a strange way to put it. As if there was another Joanna.’
‘I thought that myself,’ agreed Sir Simon, ‘but there was never no more than the one lassie in the household. But that was the way Will dictated it, and he’d no be shifted. Poor man,’ he sighed, ‘he doted on the lassie, even though — Then the coin in his kist was to be split three ways after payment of his debts and a gift to the kirk. Straightforward, you’d think.’ Alys nodded. ‘Aye, you’d think, and you’d be wrong. What must they do but argue about what was inside gear, and discover a sum owing to Tammas that must be settled afore the coin was split. In the end, I’d say, Joanna got little more than half what was her due.’
‘It’s a strange thing, human nature,’ said Alys. ‘A great sum or a small one, neither is easy to share out.’