‘No need, surely, to be sending Mòr up the field for me when her hip is as sore? One of the lassies could have fetched me.’
‘Och, so it is, mo chridh, but they were arguing again,’ she said, smiling up at him.
‘Just the same, Mammy, there is enough pain in her life without adding more to it.’
‘Well, and that is a true word. David, here is a lassie — here is Mistress Mason come all the way from Glasgow to hear about how you came home to me.’
His back to the door, his face in shadow, he seemed to stiffen slightly, but he said with grave courtesy, ‘I will gladly to talk to the lady. Are you tired, Mammy? Will I take our guest to see the farm?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Alys hastily. ‘Have I tired you with talking, mistress? I’m sorry for it if I have.’
Now she stood at the side of the bridle-road along the glen, which ran here between outfield and steading, while Davie Drummond named the hills for her, pointed out the path to the summer grazing, named the families in the other steadings of the valley. The reapers were still working along the rigs of barley; in the shade of the barn Steenie was minding the ponies and talking to the old woman with the hoe, who seemed to be called Mairead and who was getting a lot of amusement from the conversation. Socrates was exploring the yard.
At Alys’s blunt question Davie looked away, staring northward at a ridge he had just identified. After a moment he said, ‘You know where they are saying I have been.’
‘Is it the truth?’
He turned his head and met her eye.
‘Wherever I have been,’ he said carefully, ‘I am back.’
‘You are,’ said Alys after a moment. ‘You are home, I think.’
A flicker of something like surprise behind the blue eyes, but no answer. After a moment she went on, ‘What was it like there? How do they live, the — those people?’
‘Not so different from us,’ he said. ‘Their houses are fine, their clothes are bonnie. There is more colour in them, perhaps. The old woman would show you the clothes I came home in?’ Alys nodded, and he smiled fondly. ‘She is showing them to everyone. And there is feasting and fasting, the same as here, and music all the time.’
‘What kind of music?’
‘Voice and harp,’ he answered readily, ‘and playing on all kinds of pipes, and fiddle and bells and drums. Much the same as here, indeed.’
‘I heard you singing to the boy John,’ said Alys. He looked away, screwing up his face in compassion.
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘the poor soul.’
‘What ails him?’
‘The hand of God, I suppose. I’ve seen the like in — He will not be touched, he will not be dirty. He won’t walk, though he can crawl. If he is crossed he screams. Likely you heard him.’ He shrugged. ‘If I can help him, I’m glad of it. His mother has a deal to bear. Both the old woman’s good-daughters has a hard life.’
‘I can see that,’ Alys answered seriously.
When they first stepped into the yard, it was occupied by the girl Agnes, seated at a winding-wheel filling a bobbin with blue yarn, and Caterin the spinner, who was once more padding barefoot back and forth over the cobbles while the broad wheel fixed on the house wall turned the dark iron spindle, twisting locks of fleece into thread for the dyeing. Beside her the long cradle was still. The child sleeping in it was small for seven or eight, his face pinched and cream-coloured, the hand which lay outside the covers long-fingered and twisted. Caterin had paused in her work as they approached, turning her head under its heaped and folded linen, with that wry smile for Alys and an ambiguous look at her guide.
‘He is asleep,’ she said in Scots. ‘There is none but you can soothe him now, it seems.’
Davie shook his head.
‘I’m still a new thing to him,’ he said. ‘If Elizabeth had some of my tunes she could be singing him to sleep as well.’
‘I must be glad you are come home, then,’ said Caterin. ‘We are all glad he is come home,’ she said slyly to Alys. ‘The songs and the tales he has to tell, you would not believe. You would almost be wishing to visit the — the place he has been, to see the marvels for yourself.’
‘Och, not so much,’ said Davie, colouring up. ‘And I think not all are so pleased to see me.’
‘She will become used to it,’ said Caterin, as the door of the other longhouse swung wider. ‘Och, Mòr, we were just speaking of you. Have you finished that shuttle of thread, then?’
‘I have.’ Mòr added two empty bobbins to the heap beside Agnes and crossed the yard towards them in uneven steps, bending her head to Alys. She was a tall lean woman, clad in a kirtle of checked cloth which looked like her own weaving, in the natural browns of the yarn; the sleeves were rolled up, baring muscular forearms, and the skirt was as short as Caterin’s. The linen on her head was much plainer than the other woman’s. ‘And is that you at the crack with our good-brother, then, when he should rather be at shearing the barley?’
‘No, no,’ said Caterin. ‘Davie is showing Mistress Mason the land his brother and his nephew works, are you no, Davie mhic Seumas? Better that than the shearing, when your hands are still soft.’
‘I’ll go back to work in good time,’ Davie assured them, his colour rising further. ‘Will you be showing Mistress Mason some of your weaving, then, Mòr, while Agnes winds the next shuttle?’
‘The shuttle is wound,’ said Mòr, shaking her head, ‘and the lady is not wanting to be bored with a heap of cloth.’
Alys, recognizing her cue, had protested firmly, and found herself at Mòr’s door being shown folded lengths of cloth fresh from the loom, in colours and patterns such as she had not seen in Glasgow. She said so, and admired the work with truth, setting off another competition in modesty between the two women which lasted until Caterin said, with a sidelong look at Davie:
‘And then the cloth must be fulled, of course. You will not have seen that since you came home, Davie.’
‘No, he has not,’ agreed Mòr, like a fish rising to a piece of bread. ‘You will not be knowing our waulking song, Davie.’
‘Why, has it changed?’ asked Davie, and began a lilting tune with a regular beat. Both women joined in, smiling, and Mòr’s hands moved in time with the music as if she was shifting and beating a length of cloth.
‘And what do they use for waulking songs under the hill?’ asked Mòr. Davie shrugged.
‘That and others,’ he said. ‘I had little to do with the weavers, you understand, for all they were near as good as — as someone standing near me.’
Mòr looked modest, and Caterin nodded approval at the ellipsis.
‘They admired my plaid, often,’ he continued, ‘if they could see this work they would admire it even more. I hope you are keeping it safe, good-sister.’
‘Rowan twigs in all the folds,’ said Mòr succinctly.
‘Patrick’s plaid is just like it,’ said Caterin, looking at the bundle of cloth on Davie’s arm. ‘The colours would be the same, if they were not faded.’
‘The cailleach was weaving that and all,’ said Davie. ‘She was weaving for all her bairns.’
Agnes said something in Ersche; Mòr inclined her head briefly to Alys, took the handful of bobbins her daughter held out, and vanished into her house again.
‘This will not get the yarn spun for the tribute-cloth,’ pronounced Caterin, and turned towards her wheel. ‘We must all of us be working longer, if what we get is to be split three ways, rather than two. You will be showing Mistress Mason the stackyard and the barns, Davie.’
And now they stood by the track, and Davie Drummond said, ‘Here is Ailidh nic Seumas and Murdo Dubh coming down from the shearing.’
The two figures making their way down the field were quite separate, but somehow might as well have been entwined. Watching them approach, Alys said, ‘And what did you eat, under the hill?’
‘The food is good enough. Less meat than here, maybe. Bread of wheat and rye, eggs and cream, butter and nuts and fruit.’