‘I’ve no a notion. I never set an eye on any o them, save only the fellow himself when he cam to walk her back to her pony.’ He grinned without humour. ‘Looked ordinar enough to me, a likely fellow in a blue doublet, in sore need o a barber. I don’t think much o the way they clip their hair in Elfhame. Why?’
‘So he never heard her talk about the letter?’ Gil said.
‘No in my presence.’ Another sour laugh. ‘What, you mean she’s made all these plans for him and never consulted him? That’d be right, I suppose.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Gil. ‘As for whether the family kens she’s planning to give away that much land — or what they’ll say when they find out — I wouldny care to guess.’
‘Well, I never asked her. I scrieved the note for her, and I took the coin she gied me for it,’ Robert said bitterly, ‘and learned all the history o the matter from my maister, and that was that.’ He tilted his head. ‘Is that him stirring? No, maybe no. Still and all, I’d best forgo the pleasure o your company, Cunningham, and go back in. If I’m no there when he wakes he’ll take fright, and get up to search for me, and last time he near fell in the peat fire. And if you want a word wi him, come by some morning and see if he’s fit for’t.’
‘I’ll do that.’ Gil studied the young man, noting the dark rings round his eyes, the way the square jaw was pared to the bone. ‘How long have you been here, Robert?’
‘A year, six weeks and two days,’ said Robert Montgomery succinctly, and ducked back into the priest’s house.
‘Penance?’ said Alys.
‘It must be,’ agreed Gil. He picked a sprig of mint growing in a tub by the arbour, and crushed it in his fingers. Socrates came to sniff at his hand, and sneezed. ‘I hardly liked to ask how long he has left to serve, but he’s obviously keeping a tally.’
‘Poor boy,’ said Alys thoughtfully, staring across the loch at the Kirkton in its haze of smoke. ‘I have wondered what became of him. After all, he never intended — and now he is body-servant to a dying man, and I suppose he cannot leave however bad it gets.’
‘If the old man is dying, it must end some time,’ said Gil.
She nodded, and leaned against his shoulder. ‘I wonder if he is allowed company? I suppose Lady Stewart must know more about him than she said. I can ask her.’
‘He might not welcome your company either,’ said Gil. ‘He keeps his low opinion of Cunninghams. Unless it’s his manner,’ he added. ‘Like Death, perhaps, he shewith to all rudesse.’
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Tell me again what you learned these two days.’
He drew her comfortably closer and began the account from the beginning. As always, he had already found that setting it in order had helped, and her penetrating questions shed a different light on the several interviews. By the time he had finished, the dog was asleep.
‘Someone came for the songman,’ she said. ‘I suppose the boy heard the arrangements being made. I wonder what he really saw, and where Hell is. If he had already decided he had seen the Devil, then he might mishear some other word.’
‘Wherever it is,’ said Gil, ‘it’s somewhere with a kirk rich enough to draw away a singer from Dunblane.’
‘Dunkeld?’ wondered Alys. ‘No, surely the songman would have been traced to there by now. Wherever it is, it need not be so big a place itself, even if its kirk is well endowed. You know Scotland far better than I, Gil. Can you think of a likely name?’
‘No,’ admitted Gil, ‘and I’ve never met such a one in a document either. But I’ve never travelled north of here myself. I’ll ask about when I’m at Perth.’
‘And I wonder why the secrecy?’ Alys pursued.
‘To avoid the donation to the Cathedral for freeing him?’
‘Or because the — the agent, whoever he is, prefers to act in secrecy,’ she speculated. ‘I wonder — how reliable a witness is the boy Walter, do you think?’
‘Not very,’ said Gil, pulling a face. ‘His brother called him a daft laddie, and I’d agree.’
‘Hmm,’ she said again. ‘And the Drummond matter — the brother is fallen into a melancholy, you are saying.’
‘So it seems,’ agreed Gil. ‘Sighing and moping, talking endlessly about his guilt. Lost in the Forest of Noyous Hevynes.’
‘So it seems,’ she repeated, and tilted her head to look up at him. ‘Yes. And this strange creature at the farm over the pass — what do you think of his tale?’
‘Clear enough, so far as it goes. Someone lifted young David Drummond that morning, before he met the Murray boy, bound him and bore him off southwards. He does seem to have been an outstanding singer, so I suppose he could have been stolen away for the same reason as John Rattray and the others. But why he was lifted there rather than at Dunblane I don’t understand.’
‘It must have been someone who knew the boy’s movements.’ Alys considered this for a moment. ‘He would be guarded, I suppose, at Dunblane, or at least he would have company and a song-master who would take responsibility for the boys. Easier to steal him away out here on the journey, where he wouldn’t be missed for days. And Euan had seen Davie Drummond returning, you said? And spoken to him?’
‘Aye, and David knew him.’
‘That’s no surprise,’ she said seriously. ‘Davie stood by the track yesterday and named all the hills and farms round about to me. He knows the family song about Dalriach. Whoever he is, Gil, and I’m as certain as Lady Stewart that he’s close kin to the Drummonds, he has been well taught. He has even mentioned having crossed the pass thirty years ago, before he was lifted, but he says he saw nothing when it happened.’
‘Clever,’ said Gil. She nodded agreement. ‘I suppose Euan might have mentioned having seen him stolen away when he spoke to him this time. But why is he here? And where has he come from?’ He looked down at the velvet-covered crown of her head. ‘Who could have taught him? Questions, questions, and precious few answers that I can see.’
‘I would say,’ said Alys, ‘he has been taught by someone who knows Dalriach and all the land and people round about. So it has to be one of the family, or I suppose one of their tenants at Dalriach. Will you go away again tomorrow, Gil?’ She turned to look up at him, and made a face when he nodded. ‘I am invited to the harvest celebration in a day or two, and to sleep there afterwards. They called it a ceilidh — an evening’s merriment. I will keep a close eye on everyone, and perhaps I will see who it might have been.’
‘But he wasn’t taught locally,’ said Gil. ‘In a neighbourhood like this, you could never do such a thing in secret. People gossip. We need to find out whether the sister, the one that is married along the glen, has been out of Balquhidder recently.’
‘I can ask Seonaid. She will likely know.’
He nodded. ‘And I should have asked in Dunblane whether Andrew Drummond or his mistress had had a visitor in recent weeks.’
‘She would never have had a guest so close to her time, poor woman,’ said Alys firmly, and crossed herself, ‘least of all a young man, and the Canon could hardly have kept a kinsman at his manse in the town without it being noticed. I may not know about country life, Gil, but I have lived in towns all my days. Did you say you had spoken to the servant?’
‘Drummond’s man? Yes — I asked him about the children. A boy and a girl, eight and four years old. Drummond stirred himself enough to take them to their other grandmother in Perth, two weeks since, the man told me. She’s remarried to a tanner there, it seems.’
‘The poor poppets,’ said Alys in sympathy. She waved a hand across her face. ‘I think those biting creatures are coming out, and the supper will be ready soon.’
‘Yes, we should go in.’ He rose, and gave her his hand. The dog woke, and scrambled to his feet, shaking himself. ‘I still don’t see why Blacader sent me into this thicket. Nobody is murdered, no crime has been committed.’