Cunningham 05 - Rough Collier Read online

  The Rough Collier

  Also by Pat McIntosh

  The Harper’s Quine

  The Nicholas Feast

  The Mercahnt’s Mark

  St Mungo’s Robin

  THE ROUGH COLLIER

  Pat McIntosh

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2008

  Copyright © Pat McIntosh 2008

  The right of Pat McIntosh to be identified as the author of this work has been identified by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

  Data is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-84529-•••-•

  Printed and bound in the EU

  For Ros,

  a book about Lanarkshire

  John 1:46

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  When the peat-cutters came to report the dead man, Gil Cunningham was up in the roof-space of his mother’s house, teaching his new young wife swordplay.

  He and Alys had ridden out from Glasgow to Belstane earlier in the week, planning to stay for a few days so that Lady Cunningham could get to know her daughter-in-law better, and relishing their escape from his duties about the Consistory court and hers in her father’s house. In fulfilment of a promise he had made eight months ago, Gil had persuaded Alys into the attics at the first opportunity, where they had flung wide the shutters to let the light in along with the wide view of Carluke town and the hills of south Lanarkshire beyond it, and cleared an area of the dusty floorboards by shifting the kists and lumber of several generations of Gil’s Muirhead forebears. They had progressed, in three days, to practising with an old straw target and a pair of wooden swords out of one of the kists.

  ‘Like this,’ Gil said, in the French they used when they were together. Alys’s wide skirts were kilted above her knees, for freedom of movement; he dragged his eyes from the slender legs and ankles in their knitted stockings to demonstrate the grip he wanted her to take on the polished hilt. ‘Keep the point up. Then you can turn it from the elbow –’

  ‘Like turning a key?’ suggested Alys.

  He reached round her shoulders to put his hand next to hers, and she leaned briefly into his embrace and looked up at him, brown eyes dancing. He bent to kiss her, and remarked, ‘It was never this much of a pleasure when old Drew taught these moves to my brothers and me.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ said his bride primly. She settled her grip and turned the little stave experimentally. ‘Like this?’

  ‘Less slantwise.’ Gil tried to recall the old weapon-master’s approach. ‘You need to find the balance.’ He kissed her again, and stepped away. ‘Now strike as I showed you – across, and twist the blade, and back. That’s it!’

  ‘But surely,’ Alys swung the sword again, striking dust and flakes of straw from the target, ‘your opponent doesn’t wait for you to hit him a second time?’

  She checked and turned her head as footsteps sounded on the stairs, and ducked hastily behind the timbers of a dismantled bed, pulling at the folds of wool about her waist. The ankles vanished as Lady Egidia’s waiting-woman appeared at the door to the stair-tower.

  ‘Maister Gil,’ she said, puffing slightly. ‘The mistress said you was up here. There’s a fellow at the yett, come from the peat-cuttings up ayont Thorn, wants a word wi’ you.’

  ‘With me?’ said Gil in surprise. ‘I’ve no authority here – it’s my mother holds the land.’

  ‘No, it’s you he’s wanting.’ Nan had got her breath by now. ‘It’s on Douglas land but wi’ Sir James and all of them being from home he came here to tell you. They’ve found a deid man.’

  ‘A dead man?’ Alys emerged from her hide. Nan nodded triumphantly, the ends of her white headdress swinging.

  ‘Aye, and he says he’s all turned to leather wi’ the peat, but they ken fine who it is, and they want you to see to taking up the woman that did it.’

  Egidia Muirhead, Lady Cunningham, had come in from inspecting her horses and was interrogating the messenger in the hall. She sat in her great chair by the fire, straight-backed and commanding in a mended kirtle and a loose furred gown which had belonged to her dead husband. At her back stood her steward, a fair, stocky fellow with a pleasant face and the harried manner any man developed in contact with Lady Egidia, and before her a countryman in muddy boots and worn leather doublet was twisting his bonnet in his hands and answering hesitantly. As Gil stepped in from the stair-tower, Alys at his heels, the wolfhound which was sprawled on the hearth leapt to its feet and bounded forward to greet him. The grey cat on the plate-cupboard hissed, and his mother said over the dog’s singing:

  ‘Here’s Wat Paton, Gil, with some tale of a corp in the peat-diggings.’

  The man ducked his shaggy head.

  ‘Good day to ye, Maister Cunningham,’ he said in some confusion, ‘and good wishes to your bonny bride and all.’

  Alys thanked him, and curtsied, to his further confusion.

  ‘You’re one of my godfather’s tenants,’ said Gil, studying the man. ‘Down, Socrates,’ he added to the dog, who dropped obligingly to four paws and took his attentions on to Alys.

  ‘Aye, that’s right, sir, I am, I’m one of Sir James’s tenants,’ agreed Paton. ‘In Thorn, over yonder. There’s seven of us dwells there, and we all went up to the peat-digging the day morn, and here was this dead man. And when we kent who it was that we’d found, and seen that something had to be done about it, we decided I’d come to get you, and it’s right convenient you being here to visit your lady mother the now, sir, what wi’ Sir James being away at Stirling, and his depute gone to Edinburgh this week about the case at law, and Maister Michael no closer than Glasgow.’

  Gil flicked a glance at his mother, and saw her face tighten briefly at this mention of her godson, offspring of her nearest neighbour Sir James Douglas.

  ‘But how do you ken who it is?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, that’s clear enough, and no trouble to discern,’ said Paton with an access of confidence. ‘See, we came upon his head first, and though you wouldny ken his face now, his hair’s as red as a tod in summer, and there’s the one fellow missing the now, and he’s red-headed and all. It’s Tammas Murray from the coal-heugh up by the Pow Burn, clear as day, and he’s been put there by witchcraft so Sir David said, which must ha’ been by the witch that dwells up there and all. So if you’d come wi’ us, maister –’

  ‘Hold up here,’ said Gil. ‘Why do you want me? Has the man been formally identified? Who’s bringing the charge of witchcraft?’

  ‘I wouldny ken about that,’ said Paton, wringing his bonnet again, ‘only that Sir David said we wanted you and I was to come and get you, and we all agreed on that, and the rest of th
em has went to lift the witch and fetch her to confront the corp.’

  ‘The impertinence of that Davy Fleming!’ said Nan, from the doorway where she was listening avidly. ‘Why should he take Maister Gil away from visiting you, mistress? And from his bride and all?’

  ‘Where is this?’ Alys asked. ‘Where are the peat-cuttings?’

  ‘It’s no far, mem,’ said Alan Forrest the steward, and pointed generally eastward. ‘They’re up yonder, just off our land, no more than a mile or two from here. It’s no as if it’s asking Maister Gil to go out to the coal-heugh.’

  ‘We’ll no keep your man that long, mistress,’ Paton assured her.

  ‘I think you must go, Gilbert,’ said Lady Cunningham, meeting his eye significantly. Gil gave her a tiny nod.

  ‘Give me time to get my boots on,’ he said. ‘Did you ride here, man, or are you afoot?’

  ‘I rode the old pony,’ said Paton, grinning in relief. ‘I’m glad of that, maister, I’d no wish to go back to Sir David saying you wouldny come out.’

  Gil nodded, and turned to go back up the spiral stair, Socrates at his knee. Alys hurried after him to the small chamber his mother had allocated to them, and seized her riding-dress from where it hung on a nail behind the door.

  ‘May I come with you?’ she said in French, unlacing her blue woollen gown. Gil paused, boot in hand, to watch appreciatively as she squirmed out of the tight bodice. Five months of marriage had altered her, he recognized. Once she would have waited for his answer before she began to change her clothes.

  ‘I may be some time,’ he warned her.

  ‘All the more reason.’ She was tugging on the leather breeches which went under the garment. ‘I’ve never seen a peat-digging,’ she added, tying the waistband. Gil kicked off his shoes and pulled the boot on.

  ‘It’s just a hole in the ground.’ He tramped down on the heel, wriggling his toes in place, and accepted the second boot from Socrates, who stood waving his stringy tail, ears pricked in anticipation of an outing.

  ‘With a dead man in it.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed thoughtfully. ‘Something I have not heard of before.’

  ‘It’s a strange place to dispose of a dead person. After all, if people dig the peat, a body must be found sooner or later, no?’

  ‘You would think so.’

  ‘And if this woman is to be taken as a witch,’ she added, her voice muffled by the folds of the skirt. Emerging from the swathes of pale brown wool and smoothing it down over her kirtle she went on, ‘someone should be there to support her. Another woman, I mean.’

  ‘It could be nasty.’

  ‘I know.’ Her face sobered. ‘I once saw a witch taken up. We were in Paris, and I was too young to do anything.’

  Gil, digesting this, exchanged the loose short gown he wore in the house for a closer garment with a budge lining. Alys, having laced her bodice, craned to see into the mirror, settled her hat carefully over the linen cap that hid her long honey-coloured hair, and lifted the gloves to match the blue leather trimmings on the riding-dress.

  ‘You’re very bien tenue, sweetheart. You could be riding out on the King’s hunt, not crossing our own lands to the peat-cutting.’

  ‘It’s all I have.’ She gathered up her skirts to precede him down the stairs. ‘Besides,’ she added, and glanced over her shoulder at him with her quick smile as Socrates slithered behind them, ‘now while I am a bride, I must dress as befits your station. Once I’m known as your lady I may wear what I please.’

  One of the Belstane manservants rode out with them across the moorland, a scrawny dark-browed fellow called Henry who had been a stable-boy when Gil was a child and was now one of Lady Egidia’s upper stud-grooms. Following him, they could hear the disturbance by the peat cutting before they saw it, a confusion of the lapwings’ plaintive cries blown on the wind with a loud, nasal tenor carrying the lower line on its own.

  ‘That’ll be Sir David,’ said Paton confidently. ‘A good clear voice he’s got.’

  ‘That is your priest?’ asked Alys, turning in the saddle to look at him where he bobbed along in their wake on the old pony. He grinned at her and nodded.

  ‘That’s him right enough, Maister Gil,’ pronounced Henry as they rounded the shoulder of the bleak hillside. ‘David Fleming. He’s a strong man for Sir James’s rights,’ he added in neutral tones.

  ‘Aye, he is that,’ agreed Paton. ‘He’s chaplain to Sir James, see, and priests for us all when we canny get down to the kirk in Carluke, and takes to do wi’ the estate when Jock Douglas the steward’s away. That’s him in the grey plaid, talking to Rab Simson.’

  There were two men in the sharp-edged hollow, one in homespun leaning on a peat-spade, the other stouter and grey-clad, gesticulating at something which lay shrouded by a felt cloak on a hurdle at their feet. A small cart was tilted on end nearby. A hare skipped across the hillside higher up, and the lapwings wheeled and called across the empty sky beyond. Henry halted his horse by the cart, which it inspected suspiciously, and Gil reined in beside him and whistled for his dog. At this the tubby priest looked round, broke off what he was saying and made haste to climb out on to the rough, wind-shaken grass, raising his round felt cap. His wrinkled, mended hose were smudged with peat as if he had been kneeling.

  ‘Maister Cunningham,’ he said eagerly, coming to Gil’s stirrup. ‘So Wat bore his message. My thanks to you for coming out, maister, and you’ll ha’ Sir James’s gratitude for it and all. And madam your wife honours us!’ He bowed to Alys, gave her an appraising grin and raised the cap again, exposing a fluffy tonsure surrounded by limp mousy hair. ‘I’m David Fleming, maister, madam, chaplain to Sir James and depute to his steward, and they’re both away, you ken, which is why –’

  ‘No trouble,’ said Gil politely. ‘What have you to show us, Sir David?’

  ‘It’s this corp we’ve found in the peat,’ explained the priest, ‘or I’d never have inconvenienced you, for we’ve sent to take up the woman that done it, and it all needs to be dealt wi’ in due process. Will you dismount, maister, and take a look at him? Henry, take Maister Cunningham’s reins,’ he ordered sharply as Gil handed his reins to the man. ‘It’s certain enow who it is, maister,’ he went on, ‘but it needs an authority to call the quest on him, and carry the charge agin the witch.’

  ‘You’ve proof, have you?’ Gil lifted his wife down from her saddle. ‘Some evidence?’

  ‘Oh, she’s well kent to ha’ quarrelled with the man.’ Fleming bowed again to Alys. ‘Now you bide here, Mistress Cunningham,’ he went on, in a condescending tone which Gil felt was ill advised, ‘and Henry can have a care to you, while I show your goodman this –’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Alys, smiling sweetly at him, ‘but I can get down into the digging.’ Fleming looked askance at this, and his expression turned to indignation as she gathered her skirts together and jumped, without waiting for Gil’s supporting hand. She looked about her with interest, prodding with her booted toe at the dark surface of last year’s cut. Gil followed her.

  ‘It’s no a fit sight for a young lady,’ Fleming protested. ‘Maister, I think you should bid her stay here. His face is no –’

  ‘My wife makes up her own mind,’ said Gil mildly. Socrates appeared at the gallop over the curve of the hill and leapt down beside his master, tongue lolling. ‘Get on, Sir David.’

  ‘Aye, but –’ Fleming bit his lip, and gave up. ‘If you’ll come over here, maister, you can get a look at him, and here’s Rab Simson that found him, all buried in the peat, and –’

  The man by the hurdle touched his blue bonnet as they approached across the springy surface, then bent to draw back the patched felt cloak which covered the corpse. Socrates pricked his ears intently, his nose twitching, but Gil put out a hand.

  ‘Bide a moment. Before I see him,’ he said, ‘tell me how you found him. Was it you saw him first? What are you doing up here anyway?’ he added. ‘It’s early to be casting peats. Were you setting ou
t this year’s portions?’

  Simson looked sidelong at Paton, and nodded, muttering agreement.

  ‘We was cleaning up a bit,’ volunteered Paton. ‘And looking how wet the peat is and clearing the grass off the cut, and the like. It’s a good day for it, seeing it’s been dry for a week.’

  ‘How many of you? Was it all seven of you from Thorn? Did you all come up here together?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Paton. ‘We came up here wi’ the cart, an hour after Prime, since the oats is sown and the land’s no ready for the bere yet. We came all together from Thorn town, Geordie Meikle and his brother Jock, Rab here, William Douglas,’ he counted on his fingers, ‘Eck Shaw, Adam Livingstone and me. And it’s Jock and Geordie’s cart,’ he added. ‘All the rest’s gone up to the coal-heugh to take the witch.’

  ‘And then we saw this man staring out of the peat-wall like the Judgement Day,’ said Fleming in his nasal tenor.

  ‘What did you do first?’ asked Gil, ignoring this.

  ‘Walked the ground,’ said Paton promptly.

  ‘Paced off the portions,’ agreed Simson, with growing confidence, ‘and put the first of the markers down.’ He pointed at a bundle of wooden stobs which lay on the grass nearby.

  ‘Then Rab and William Douglas came down into the digging to look how dry the peat was,’ went on Paton.

  ‘And there he was!’ said Fleming.

  ‘It was you that found him?’ Gil asked. Rab Simson admitted to this. ‘Show me where.’

  The man turned to indicate a cavity in the cut face of the peat. The dark, crumbling layers round it were disturbed, and spade-marks indicated where they had used leverage to get the body out. The dog paced forward from Gil’s side to peer into the hollow, snuffling hopefully, and Gil snapped his fingers to recall him.

  ‘His head was here, see,’ Simson pointed. ‘I seen his hair first, just sticking out a crack in the peat-dyke where it shrunk when it dried out a bit, and I thought first it was maybe a jerkin or the like that someone had left last year.’