Alys, trying to recall what Murdo had said, reckoned that three at least of these were dead. Had he mentioned another James still about the place? And was Mor the same word as Mòr? The woman’s name had a different twist from the man’s by-name.
‘And of course there is Seumas MacGregor that dwells at the foot of the clachan, but he is not kin, though he is our tenant,’ added Mistress Drummond, lifting a bundle of linen out of the kist. She laid it on the flagged floor before her and unwrapped it. ‘There now. Is that not fine? And there is his boots as well, in the other kist.’
Alys came to kneel beside her, touching the garments she unrolled. The outermost layer was a shirt of fine soft linen, well made, cut and stitched in a subtly different way from the shirts she made for Gil, or the other women of Glasgow made for their men. It was much less full and long than the great belted sarks Murdo and his father wore, and she could imagine that it would seem quite strange to someone used to those. The dog leaned against her shoulder, sniffing at the folded cloth.
‘And see this,’ prompted Mistress Drummond, groping for the sleeve of the garment and holding it out to Alys. Her thick, twisted fingers felt at the cuff, and Alys duly admired the little knots of needle-lace worked along its edge.
The garments wrapped in the shirt were also of good quality, though travel-stained. There was a pair of joined hose, of grey worsted cloth, a blue velvet doublet trimmed with fathoms of bright red cord, two pairs of drawers, and a thigh-length gown of dark blue broadcloth. Alys turned them, half-listening to Mistress Drummond exclaiming over the thickness and quality of the cloth, the strangeness of the cut. The doublet was lined with red linen, and interlined with something which crackled faintly in her hands; the gown was made to fasten on the breast, and was similarly lined, with several pockets cunningly worked into the lining to hold coin or papers. All seemed to be empty.
She realized that she was picking over someone else’s clothes without their owner’s knowledge. Suddenly overwhelmed by embarrassment, she folded the gown neatly and put it down on top of the other garments.
‘We soaked the linen and washed it,’ said Mistress Drummond, ‘but not the others, of course.’ She wrapped the bundle together again and returned it to the kist. ‘I never thought to see my laddie again in this life,’ she confessed, accepting Alys’s help to rise. ‘Such a blessing it is, I have lit candles to Our Lady and to St Angus every Sunday since he came back to me, and so I will be doing the rest of my days, whether there is Mass being said at the Kirkton or no.’
‘And this was all he had with him?’ Alys asked. ‘Had he no scrip, no coin? Surely he must have had something when he left here.’
‘No, no. What would a laddie that age be wanting with coin? He had a roasted collop and a good oatmeal bannock in his pouch, to stay him on his travel, and a spare shirt, and another I was sending to his brother Andrew. And we sang the blessing to him for the road, and he set off up the glen,’ this was also, clearly, a familiar recitation, ‘all in the morning sunshine, and the birds calling, and I stood at the roadside here and watched him out of sight, and I never saw him no more till four weeks since.’
‘It’s a great wonder that he is returned,’ said Alys. ‘You must be thankful indeed.’
‘Thankful indeed,’ agreed Mistress Drummond. She put a hand on Alys’s arm. ‘And also I was blaming St Angus,’ she admitted, ‘for I had wished my laddie to sing here at his feast day, down in the Kirkton, but he was saying he must get back to Dunblane for St Blane’s great feast, that’s the same day. So I was blaming St Angus for not keeping him safe, and it will surely be taking my own weight in candles to put that right.’
‘Has he spoken about his time with — with those people?’ Alys asked. ‘Why did they carry him off?’
‘Och, for his singing.’ The old woman made her way stiffly to her chair by the low peat fire in the centre of the floor. ‘It would be his singing. Him and Andrew both, they had voices like angels, though Andrew lost his afterwards. David has been singing for them under the hill,’ again that muttered phrase in Ersche, ‘since ever he was stolen away.’
Across the yard the loom began clacking again, and then, right on cue, a new voice lifted in a lilting, floating melody. The words seemed to be Ersche, the voice was a clear rich alto, and with the singing came bursts of braying laughter.
‘It is only David can make Iain laugh, the poor soul,’ said Mistress Drummond, settling herself comfortably. ‘If you wait a little, lassie, Mistress Mason I mean, he will come in to speak to his mammy, and you will be meeting him.’
‘He has a fine voice,’ agreed Alys, listening to the singer. It seemed to her to be a trained voice, such as one might encounter in the choir of a great church; the strength and delivery were professional, the tone was true. The tune changed, and changed again. Suddenly she realized that she had sat listening for a long time, and turned quickly to apologize.
‘Och, there is no offence, lassie,’ said the old woman seriously. ‘One could listen for a day and a night and never move. Do you wonder that those others took him away to sing for them?’ She tilted her head. ‘Ah, there it is. He is always singing our own song last of all, as the poor soul falls asleep.’
The tune had changed again, to a slow rocking song, a lullaby. Mistress Drummond sang softly along with the words, Dalriach alainn, Dalriach math, ho ro, ho ruath. Alys’s limited vocabulary covered that: fair Dalriach, fine Dalriach. A song for the farm where they sat.
‘What a bonnie tune. Who made it?’ she asked as it ended.
‘It was my man made it for James our firstborn, and we both sang it to all our bairns.’ The old woman smiled. ‘Do you ken, David was singing it to Iain when he first set eyes on him, the day he came home, I think that would be how Iain was taking to him immediate.’
‘He — ’ Alys paused, and revised what she was about to say. ‘He remembered it, then?’
‘Och, yes, he was remembering it, and just the way his father was singing it. My son Patrick has the tune a wee bit different, you understand, but David minds it his father’s way.’
‘And has he learned other songs while he was away? Do they have other music in the — in the sidhean?’
The quick, averting phrase in Ersche, and then the answer.
‘Fine music indeed, though David tells me none of it they make themselves, all is from singers they’ve carried off from one place or another.’ There was a movement in the yard, and a shadow fell on the doorway. ‘This will be him now. David, mo chridh, come within.’
‘I think it must be the bonniest place in the realm of Scotland,’ said Davie Drummond, gazing round the bowl of the hills in which the farm lay cradled. To Alys’s ear his Scots was not quite like the way Murdo Dubh or Mistress Drummond used the language. ‘My — ’ He checked, and continued. ‘My father aye said it was a place where you are near to the kingdom of the angels.’
‘Bonnier than where you have been?’ she prompted.
He looked quickly at her, and half-smiled.
‘Wherever I was, I think it is not in Scotland,’ he said.
‘And where were you?’ she asked directly.
Her first response to Davie Drummond was liking. He was taller than she was but seemed a year or two younger, perhaps sixteen. Clad in another of those huge sarks belted about him, with a leather doublet over it, he bore a powerful resemblance to the young man who had welcomed them, and to the girl Agnes. A strong-featured, pink-skinned face burnt by the sun, wide open blue eyes, their lashes and brows so fair as to be invisible, and that extraordinary halo of lint-white, frizzy hair, all marked him as their close kin, as Lady Stewart had said. Stepping barefoot into old Mistress Drummond’s house, his great plaid bundled over his arm, he had bowed to Alys, but said gently to the old woman: