She nodded again, accepting this. He waited, but when there was no further reaction said, ‘It seems very like whatever slew Murray and the forester. But of course you’d know that, wouldn’t you?’
Another long look, but no words. This was hard work.
‘My mother has suggested it was orpiment slew your good-brother and Will Brownlie. Does that sound right?’
She nodded again, very slowly, and closed her eyes. ‘Orpiment. Arsenical salts. Of course, it fits, of course. And the collier’s bairns and all, that were took ill the same summer. But why? Who would want to kill Matt, the bonnie lad? And what had the man Brownlie done, save father Joanna?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ he said patiently. ‘You could help me, if you weren’t wasting my time trying to confess to all sorts of wickedness. The falshede of the woman is wonder merveyllous.’
Her eyes flew open, and she gave him another long look. But he had lost her again, he could see that. He would get no further co-operation.
He paused on the stairs down from the steward’s room, looking from one of the slit windows out over the grazing-land towards the peat-digging and the track which led to the coaltown. He had dreamed again before dawn, and it was still with him; this time he had stood on a bare hillside, looking across this same landscape. Someone stood beside him; when he turned to see, it was a man, a stranger, naked but for a leather cap and a russet fox-skin belt. Smiling at Gil, he had held out in one hand a dull black stone with a little fish drawn on it, in the other a sprig of yew, the green needles and waxy red berries vividly identifiable. Thank you, the stranger said. You need these. Then Sir Billy had roused him for the ride over to Elsrickle.
It felt important, but it seemed to mean nothing.
His mother, restored to her working clothes, was in the stable-yard inspecting her horses, and looked round as he came down from the house.
‘Are you for the Pow Burn, dear? Here’s Patey just come in — Alys has your message.’
‘Is all well up there?’ he asked the man.
‘Oh, aye. Well, they’re all to sixes and sevens, but apart from that. And the auld wife away, and Davy Fleming playing merry-ma-tanzie about the yard, and — ’
‘Fleming?’ said Gil sharply.
‘Michael said he left the man abed,’ said Lady Egidia in surprise, ‘and dying, he thought.’
‘He was dying,’ said Gil.
‘Well, he was up at the Pow Burn the now,’ said Patey sulkily, ‘and making Simmie Wilson and me hunt all about the place for proofs of some sort, whatever he meant by that. No candles in the chapel, and Jamesie Meikle shouting, I went back to their kitchen, you can believe it. Only but Henry sent me home, and I’ve had no dinner yet.’
‘We left Michael and Mistress Weir at the road-end, how long since?’ said Gil to his mother. ‘She must be home by now. Alys will need help.’
‘Take the bay with the white blaze,’ said Lady Egidia, ‘he’s fresh and he’s fast.’
The coaltown was in greater disarray even than Patey had said. Gil could see this as soon as he came over the shoulder of the hill. There was no work going on, and many of the colliers were standing about in the yard in twos and threes, staring grimly up the hillside. The women had come down from the row of dwellings and were also waiting in silence near the topmost ingo, plaids drawn round them, the children in their midst. Nothing seemed to be happening, but as he neared the house, two men emerged from the black entry of the mine, supporting a third one; a woman screamed, and hurried forward, and another fell to her knees wailing.
Michael emerged from another outbuilding as Gil dismounted. He cast an anxious glance up the hill, and said, ‘I’m right glad to see you, Maister Gil. All’s to do here!’
‘Where’s Alys?’ demanded Gil. ‘And where’s Fleming?’
‘Underground,’ said Michael. Horror-struck, Gil looked from him to the group at the ingo and the screaming woman. ‘No, no, it’s no that bad. At least, it is, but that’s no where she is.’ He drew a breath, and explained more clearly. ‘Fleming ran in there and fell, went five fathom down that shaft yonder.’ He pointed to the low building from which he had emerged. ‘He’s lying injured at its foot, and Mistress Weir went in by the mid ingo to see to him and took Mistress Mason along wi’ her.’ Gil stared at him, his stomach suddenly churning. ‘Jamesie was to get men and hurdles together and follow her to bear him out, but the two of them had barely gone underground when someone came out at the top ingo shouting that there was a roof-fall in there, and men trapped, and he dropped all to clear it. They’ll be a good while longer, I’d say, that’s only the first one come out now.’
‘And Alys is below ground with Mistress Weir,’ said Gil grimly, tethering his horse. ‘How came you to let her — ’ He bit that off. Michael had no authority over his wife. ‘Fleming fell down a shaft, you said? Which one?’
‘Yonder. Where Henry is.’ Michael followed him towards the wide low structure. ‘I tried to call down to them, but the echoes are too strong, you canny hear a word.’
‘I’ve tried and all,’ said Henry, without looking up from his task. ‘Steenie, can ye wedge that balk there — no, that one — under here?’
Steenie gazed uncertainly at the choice of timbers available, but Michael lifted the length indicated and fitted it into position. Henry looked up, nodded, and handed him another piece.
‘Brace that there,’ he said, pointing. ‘I’m fixing the winding-gear, Maister Gil. Aye, that’s right, it goes there. I’ve no notion how we’d get in by the tunnel, but if we can get this sorted we can send a man down on a stick.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Gil, over the churning of his stomach.
‘Better be me,’ said Michael, now almost standing on his head at one corner of the wooden structure. ‘I’m half your size.’
‘That’s my wife down there,’ said Gil. He leaned over the shaft and peered down it. ‘How long a walk in from the ingo would it be? There’s no light down there yet.’
‘There was,’ said Henry. ‘It went out a while ago. Jamesie Meikle said it would be half a mile. Near half an hour’s walking, I’d say, all in the dark like that.’
‘And where’s the dog?’ Gil asked. ‘Did he go with Alys?’
‘He was somewhere about,’ said Michael. He straightened up. ‘That’s it, Henry.’
‘Why has the light gone out?’ Gil fretted. ‘Have they left to come out again? Surely not. What would — if the man fell down this shaft, five fathom, he’s not fit to walk away and two women would hardly carry him. I don’t like this. Are we ready, Henry?’
‘Near it,’ said Henry, with maddening calm. He looked up at Gil. ‘I’m no going to go home and tell the mistress I dropped you down a winding-shaft, now am I, Maister Gil? She’d have my head up on the gate to fright the horses.’
‘Can we lower a light to them on a rope?’
‘Not a good idea,’ said Michael. ‘See, the light causes an updraught, and the draught makes the light to burn stronger, and either it’s all consumed afore it reaches the bottom, or it blows out, or it burns through the rope.’
Light, faintly yellow, flowered at the bottom of the shaft. There was movement, but it might have been the shadows flickering. Socrates barked somewhere, and it resonated with a sound like the Questing Beast. Gil stared downwards in alarm, and called Alys’s name. The word echoed and rebounded and returned, and with it like a bird’s cry her voice, his name.
‘Ready,’ said Henry. He dragged the rope’s end towards him, and inspected it carefully. ‘Aye, it’s lasting well enough. Just don’t swing about, Maister Gil.’ He lifted another piece of timber and proceeded to knot the rope competently about the groove in its centre. Once he was certain it would hold he handed the assembly to Gil. ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘Steenie, Maister Michael, we’ll all three man the beam.’
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ said Alys into the dark.
‘Aye,’ said Arbella. ‘He’s no breathing. Sancta Maria mater dei, ora pro eo. It was a long drop, and likely his back was broke wi’ landing on these timbers.’