The Stolen Voice Read online

  ‘How much did Robert Blacader tell you?’ said Sir William abruptly.

  ‘Very little,’ said Gil. There had been one hurried interview with his master when the Archbishop halted in Glasgow two days since, on his way to Dumbarton with the King and half the Council. ‘Something about vanishing singers, and now that this one has reappeared his mother wants him back in his place at Dunblane. The Chapter at Dunblane were in disagreement about it, and Bishop Chisholm referred it to the Archbishop. My lord seemed to feel the two matters were connected, and directed me here.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Sir William, sitting down on the bench at the top of the little enclosure and placing the smoking pot beside him.

  ‘They’ve moved gey fast at Dunblane,’ Gil commented, and hitched the knee of his best hose to seat himself beside his host. The dog, who had trotted ahead, returned and settled on his feet. ‘In general sic a thing would take months to be resolved even that far.’

  ‘Aye, well. It’s a Drummond,’ said Sir William, as if that explained all.

  ‘Does your steward genuinely believe it’s his playmate come back, do you think?’

  ‘Murdo?’ Sir William looked about him, as if to make certain they were not overheard. ‘No telling, to be truthful. I like these wild Ersche,’ he said, in the tone of one admitting to liking squirrels, or hares, or some such unchancy creature, ‘but there’s no denying they go their own way. If the old woman accepts the laddie, the rest of the Drummonds will, as my lady was saying, and if the Drummonds accept him Balquhidder folk would never tell me if they’d any doubts.’

  He was silent for a little, then went on, ‘So Blacader never tellt you the full tale?’ Gil made a small negative noise. ‘Aye, well.’ He stared out across the loch, apparently seeking inspiration. ‘These singers,’ he said at length. ‘The great kirks aye hunt about for good singers, you’ll ken that, but in general they arrange matters atween themselves, maybe a donation of money or the gift of a benefice in exchange for a good high tenor. Good tenors are like hen’s teeth, so they tell me.’

  ‘I’ve heard that.’ Gil rubbed Socrates’ ears and grinned, thinking of his friend Habbie Sim’s strictures on the high tenors in the choir of Glasgow Cathedral.

  ‘But now there’s been three or four songmen left their posts in Perthshire alone in the last year, and no sign of where they’ve gone to. It’s almost as if they’re no still in Scotland.’

  ‘No trace of them anywhere?’

  ‘None. Spirited away like the Drummond lad.’

  ‘These are grown men?’ said Gil. ‘Priested?’

  ‘As it happens, no. In minor orders, naturally, but none of them priests.’

  ‘So none of them has broken any vow of obedience. Where have they vanished from? When? Do you have the details? And are they all tenors, indeed?’

  ‘One Dunkeld man,’ said Sir William, ‘one from Dunblane, two from Perth.’ He paused. ‘One less than two weeks since, the two Perth fellows in May, one in March. Not all tenors. I think they’re different voices. One was an alto, I recall.’

  ‘This is hardly the best place to start from, if I’m to ask questions in Dunkeld or Perth,’ said Gil. ‘Hidden away in the mountains like this.’

  ‘It’s closer to either than Glasgow is,’ said Sir William unanswerably. ‘Forbye you’ll find George Brown spends the most of his time in Perth. It’s safer than Dunkeld.’

  ‘And what else has gone missing?’

  The older man turned sharply to look at Gil. After a moment he said, ‘Aye, I see why Robert Blacader speaks well of you. That’s the nub of the matter,’ he acknowledged. ‘No so much what’s missing as what he took wi him in his head, so to speak. The last one that’s vanished, the Dunkeld man, that went in July there just ten days since, is no singer. He’s secretary to Georgie Brown.’

  ‘The Bishop of Dunkeld.’ Gil stared into the gathering evening. The fire had fallen away from the rock above the little church, and the sky was darkening above it. ‘Who assisted William Elphinstone when he received the ambassadors from England in June.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Sir William.

  ‘But why should that be a problem?’ asked Alys. ‘The truce was signed six weeks since. Surely the terms are common knowledge across Europe by now.’

  ‘I assume,’ said Gil cautiously in French, ‘there must be more to learn than that, since the Council is concerned about it.’

  They were alone. The dog and the two grooms they had brought with them were snug above the stables with the other outdoor servants, but Gil and Alys had been lodged in a guest apartment on the principal floor of the house. Its two chambers were furnished with ostentation, and the images and crowned IS monograms on the painted linen bed-hangings suggested that it had housed one King James or the other, presumably on a hunting expedition, in the time since Sir William was put in place here. Two candle-stands and another pot of burning herbs made it a little stuffy, but it was both comfortable and private, and the girl whom Lady Stewart had supplied to be Alys’s tire-woman had left giggling, after unlacing the blue silk gown and hanging it reverently on a peg.

  Now Gil shut the door behind her, and sat down on the faded embroidery of one of the folding chairs by the bed. ‘They would hardly tell me what it is, I suppose, but they are clearly anxious about where the information has gone,’ he added.

  ‘They must be,’ said Alys, closing her jewel-box. She drew off her linen undercap, shook out her hair and took up her comb. ‘So where must we begin?’

  ‘I wish you had not come with me, now,’ said Gil, watching the light sliding down the long honey-coloured locks. He began to pull his boots off. ‘This is a different matter from –’

  ‘I’m your wife,’ she said. ‘Where else should I be but at your side? But why did the Archbishop send you here? Surely we should start by searching in Perth or Dunkeld.’

  ‘Aye, for the missing singers. There is this other one who is not missing – who has reappeared. By what Blacader said, the Chapter at Dunblane has no wish to have him, and I imagine they hope I can prove him to be an impostor. I think he’s crossed the main trail, but it seems as if I’m expected to follow both.’

  ‘It would be a great attraction for pilgrims,’ said Alys, pausing with the carved bone comb in mid-stroke, ‘to have such a singer in their choir I mean, but I suppose it would be very awkward for the Chapter, since Holy Church teaches us that fairies are sent by the Devil.’ She ran the comb to the end of the lock she held, and gathered up another. ‘How does my lord think they are linked? The missing ones and the returned one, I mean.’

  ‘He hasn’t said he does think it,’ said Gil, unlacing his doublet.

  ‘But he has sent you here to investigate both matters.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  She continued combing in silence for a little, then said, ‘I could speak to the family here, while you go to those other places.’

  ‘Yes.’ Gil hung the doublet on a nail considerately placed in the panelling beside him. ‘That’s why I wish you hadn’t come with me, sweetheart. If we aren’t to be together, I’d sooner you were safe in Glasgow than stranded alone here while I ride all over Perthshire.’

  ‘Do you wish to send me home, Gil?’ she asked, looking straightly at him.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. Then, ‘Besides, if you speak Ersche, how can I waste your talents?’

  ‘It was fortunate that Murdo answered me in Scots,’ she confessed. ‘I have only a few words that I have learned from Ealasaidh McIan, and at times I confuse those with Breton.’

  ‘Breton?’ he repeated in surprise.

  ‘When we lived in Nantes,’ she smiled reminiscently, ‘until I was nine, all our servants were bretons bretonnants, they spoke Breton rather than French. My nurse Annec used it all the time. Many of the words are the same, which I find astonishing. Ty is a house, for instance.’

  ‘That is extraordinary,’ he said, digesting all our servants. He knew her father was a wealthy man, wealthy enough to have fostered
Ealasaidh McIan’s motherless nephew without a second thought, and now it seemed he had been well-to-do for most of Alys’s life.

  She set her comb down on the little table beside her, and began to braid her hair for the night.

  ‘So I can speak to the family,’ she said again, ‘and find out what I can.’

  ‘That would be –’ he began. There was a tapping at the chamber door.

  ‘Mo leisgeul,’ said a male voice. They stared at each other, and Gil snatched up his whinger and drew the blade.

  ‘Och, the gentleman has no need of his weapon,’ said another voice.

  ‘Seonaid?’ said Alys.

  ‘It is Seonaid, mistress, and Murdo Dubh MacGregor, that would be wishing a word?’

  Gil gestured, and Alys nodded, lifted her linen cap and moved to the far side of the bed. Whinger in hand, he padded to the door and opened it cautiously. The girl Seonaid was revealed in the lamplight, a plaid drawn over her hair. The man beyond her, far enough away to be half-shadowed, wore doublet and great belted plaid like Murdo, but was dark-haired and beardless.

  ‘You aren’t Murdo,’ Gil said.

  ‘The gentleman will pardon me, maybe,’ said the young man. He stepped into the light and drew off his feathered bonnet in a graceful bow. ‘Murdo Dubh mac Murdo mac Iain MacGregor, to serve you,’ he said. His face was lean and handsome and he had an amazing wealth of long dark eyelash.

  ‘So you’re Murdo’s son,’ said Gil in puzzlement. ‘Is that a reason for lurking in our chambers after the rest of the household’s abed?’

  ‘He is to wait on you,’ said Seonaid, bobbing a curtsy, ‘and it’s myself is telling you, mistress,’ she craned her neck, searching for Alys within the chamber, ‘he is a good servant, if maybe he is talking too much.’

  Alys came quietly forward from her concealment, her hair covered once more, and the young man’s glance flicked to her and back to Gil.

  ‘I am to wait on you, as this – as Seonaid says,’ he said, and bowed again, with a glowing smile. ‘My father was giving me the instruction just now, and I thought I would be coming to make myself known.’

  ‘And?’ said Gil.

  ‘Och, nothing more,’ Murdo mac Murdo assured him. ‘Nothing more. Excepting only –’

  ‘Yes?’ said Gil unhelpfully.

  ‘Would there be orders for the morning, maybe?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Gil. ‘I’ve made no decisions.’

  ‘I have,’ said Alys. ‘I would like to meet this David Drummond who has returned – who has been away for thirty years. Can you arrange that, Murdo?’

  ‘Och, he’s just a laddie,’ said Seonaid. ‘Hair like bog-cotton, he has, like all his kin, and never looking at the lassies in the Kirkton at all when he comes down on a Sunday.’

  Murdo spoke sharply to her in Ersche, and she giggled, pushed him playfully, bobbed another curtsy to Alys, and departed. As soon as the outer door closed behind her Murdo said, ‘That can be easy arranged.’ Had he relaxed a little? Gil wondered. ‘Indeed I can be taking the lady to Dalriach myself. If you were to ride up Glen Buckie to see the sidhean, what more natural than to call at the house? The more so since I am well acquainted with the family.’

  ‘Are you, then?’ said Gil.

  ‘I know everyone in this country,’ said Murdo Dubh modestly. Allowing for the common use of country to mean the stretch of land bounded by the mountains one could see, Gil felt he could believe this.

  ‘Mistress Drummond has granddaughters living with her at – at Dalriach, I suppose,’ said Alys.

  ‘She has indeed,’ agreed Murdo, with that brilliant smile. ‘There is Elizabeth nic Padraig, and Agnes nic Seumas,’ he enumerated, the Lowland and Highland names mixing oddly, ‘and Ailidh nic Seumas. That is all her granddaughters that lives up the glen.’

  ‘Two daughters of James’s and one of Patrick’s,’ Gil elucidated, as much for his own understanding as Alys’s. Murdo nodded. ‘And there are two grandsons, I think.’ Another nod. ‘Quite a household. Now if that was all you wanted, Murdo –’

  ‘Is it?’ said Alys. She glanced at Gil, and looked back at their visitor. ‘I think Murdo wanted a longer word, not?’

  ‘Bha,’ he agreed, a little reluctantly. There was a pause. ‘It was just,’ he said, and swallowed. The eyelashes swept his cheek as he looked down, then up again, and then he went on hurriedly, ‘Just there is a – there is need of taking care if you are going about the country.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Gil. ‘Are you warning us? What danger d’you mean?’

  The dark gaze slid sideways away from his.

  ‘There has been a bodach seen hereabouts,’ he said. ‘In Glen Buckie, and here by the side of the loch.’

  ‘A bodach?’ said Gil. He had heard the word before. ‘An old man?’

  ‘Not just an old man,’ said Murdo, again with that reluctance. ‘He is not – he is being –’

  ‘Is it a spirit of some sort?’ Alys asked. ‘A wicked spirit?’

  ‘Not wicked,’ prevaricated Murdo. ‘Not friendly, just. That would be it,’ he nodded in satisfaction. ‘Not very friendly at all, at all. So you will take care going about the place? Go nowhere by night, and never by your lone?’

  ‘Not very friendly,’ Gil repeated. He had met this feeling when trying to talk to other speakers of Ersche. It was like wrestling with fish, or fighting with a featherbed; no sooner was one aspect of the conversation under control than another surged up from nowhere to overwhelm him. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Maister Cunningham,’ said Alys, at her most formal, ‘might we ask Murdo to enter, so we can be seated and hear him in comfort?’

  ‘I was about to be leaving you,’ said Murdo Dubh hastily, half turning away. ‘No need to be putting you out.’

  ‘Come in,’ said Gil, recognizing that Alys was right. The young man had all the appearance of an Erscheman with something to impart, but it would have to be coaxed from him.

  Like his father Murdo was unwilling to accept a seat, but stood, lean and upright in his swathing of checked wool, looking from one to the other of them as they asked questions. Alys was more successful at getting answers; gradually they pieced together a tale of a small misshapen figure seen at a distance by twilight, where nobody was absent from the township or shieling. Murdo himself had not seen it, but Ailidh nic Seumas of Dalriach and three others together had watched it from the high shieling the same day that Davie Drummond came home. It certainly brought ill luck, Murdo stated simply, for now things were happening at the farm.

  ‘What sort of things?’ asked Gil resignedly. It had been a long day, and a long ride from Stirling; he was deeply aware of the bed behind him, with its embroidered counterpane and pile of pillows.

  Murdo looked down and sideways again, then said slowly, ‘There is all the wee things that happens. The hens got into the garden, the cat was at the cream. Some of them is blaming the bodach for that, but they are things that can happen any time. But –’ He hesitated. ‘There was a ladder that broke, before Jamie Beag could climb it. There was a rope gave way, and Davie fell. There was a pitchfork dropped out of nowhere when the barn door was opened, and tore Davie’s shirt from neck to hem. There has been other things the like of those.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Gil.

  ‘Does it all threaten David Drummond?’ Alys asked. The dark lashes rose like a curtain as Murdo looked at her.

  ‘Not all,’ he admitted. ‘But many does.’

  ‘And Ailidh likes her new uncle,’ said Alys.

  ‘I believe she likes him well,’ agreed Murdo, his face impassive.

  ‘You’ll be careful, sweetheart,’ said Gil into the darkness.

  ‘I will,’ said Alys.

  Finally, finally, they were alone and curled together in the great bed. Murdo Dubh had eventually left them with promises of horses and an escort for Alys in the morning, and they had made haste to prepare themselves for sleep. But there was too much to talk through first.

>   ‘This David could be the boy returned from wherever he has been, I suppose,’ said Alys thoughtfully, ‘all things are possible under God, but it does seem unlikely.’

  ‘Quite so,’ agreed Gil. ‘And yet Lady Stewart said he looks like a Drummond. We need to find out who else he might be, and where he could have come from, and who sent him, and if the family have accepted him that won’t be easy.’

  ‘And who is trying to kill him,’ said Alys. ‘Some of those things Murdo described sound to me like a woman’s actions. I wonder how the sisters-in-law feel about the boy’s return?’

  ‘No, I don’t like the sound of that.’ Gil clasped her closer. ‘Maybe I should come too.’

  ‘No, no, that makes it too formal. I think you should pursue these missing songmen. Is it far to Perth from here?’

  ‘A day’s ride, Sir William said, and another one back again.’

  ‘Oh!’ she said in dismay. ‘I hadn’t realized – so you’ll be gone for several days.’

  ‘That’s why I wish you’d stayed in Glasgow. Will you mind being left here?’

  ‘You have your duty to see to.’ She clung to him. ‘Tell me again what my lord said.’

  Gil was silent for a moment, calling up the scene. Blacader, blue-jowled and expensively clad, had been seated at one end of a carpeted table, his rat-faced secretary William Dunbar making notes at the other end while several clerks shuffled papers for the Archbishop to sign, but he had swung away from this scene of industry when Gil entered the chamber.

  ‘Ah, Gilbert,’ he said. Maister Dunbar had risen to fetch a sealed packet from a rack of shelves, and brought it to his master’s hand. ‘Aye, thank you, William, I mind it. What d’ye ken of Perthshire, Gilbert? No a lot? Well, now’s your chance to learn more.’ He drew out his tablets, and peered at one leaf. ‘There’s singers disappearing all across the shire, which is bad enough and you need to take a look at it for me. But now Jimmy Chisholm’s got a wheen trouble at Dunblane wi a singer reappearing, saying he’s been in Elfhame these forty year.’ He laughed sourly. ‘Singers is aye a trouble, whatever they’re doing, but that’s a new excuse. I want you to visit Will Stewart at Balquhidder and talk to the fellow.’