The Rough Collier Read online

  Gil nodded, but Fleming declared, ‘That was daft, Rab Simson. It would never last the year out in the weather like that.’

  ‘Well, he’s lasted,’ said Simson argumentatively, indicating the corpse.

  ‘So then you came to look,’ prompted Gil.

  ‘Aye, and let out a great skelloch,’ said Paton, grinning. ‘And we all came running, and when we seen it was a head right enough we tried if it was loose, see, and it wasny.’ He demonstrated with a swivelling movement of both hands which was somehow quite unnerving. ‘And then –’

  ‘And then,’ trumpeted Fleming in Gil’s ear, ‘they found the rest of the body was there, and sent for me, as was right, and I oversaw getting him out the peat, and identifying him. Will you see him now, maister?’

  ‘This is where he was buried,’ repeated Gil. Alys looked up at him and nodded.

  ‘Aye, here and nowhere else,’ agreed Simson.

  Gil turned, and bent to the cloak which shrouded the body on its hurdle. Fleming was ahead of him, grasping the corner, but paused to warn them again:

  ‘It’s no a sight for a young lady. You take my advice, you’d be better up yonder wi’ the horses, mistress.’

  ‘Let me see him,’ said Gil. Fleming reluctantly drew back the cloak. Socrates extended his long muzzle, sniffing, and growled faintly. Gil checked him.

  The object revealed was not immediately obvious as human. The shock of hair caught the eye, as red as the summer fox Paton had mentioned, but at first glance it was attached to a bundle of sticks wrapped in old leather, damp and dark like the peat which still clung to them. Then Gil recognized a hand, and a foot, and began to see how the body was disposed, lying on its left side with the hands crossed in front of the chest and its knees drawn up into the shrunken belly, the chin tucked in and the face turned down on the left shoulder like someone asleep.

  ‘He’s near turned to peat himself,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, he is that,’ agreed Simson. He and Paton nodded proudly, as if it was their doing.

  ‘You’ll want to see his face, maister,’ prompted Fleming. Gil stepped round the hurdle, and bent to look. ‘You see, he’s no to be kent by his features. She’s made certain o’ that. If it wasny for the hair we’d never ha’ kent him, maister.’

  Gil nodded. The sight was nowhere near so grisly as Fleming’s warnings had implied, but the face was unrecognizable. The corpse’s features were flattened, the nose bent sideways and the jaw dislocated so that the blackened teeth showed in a misplaced grin. One eye was closed, the lid shrunk into its socket, but the other eyeball had sprung out and lay withered on the crushed cheekbone like a yellow cherry on a stalk. On the peat-brown skin of the jaw was a bloom of gingery stubble.

  ‘How did he die?’ asked Alys.

  ‘How?’ Fleming was taken aback, but recovered quickly. ‘That’s no a matter we need to think on, mistress. He’s dead, and that’s the meat o’t.’

  ‘The law will wish to know how he died,’ said Gil. ‘And when,’ he added, sniffing. ‘He’s been dead a good time. He smells of the peat and nothing else.’

  ‘I was thinking that,’ said Alys. ‘How long does it take, for something left out here to become black and shrink like this?’

  ‘A long time, surely,’ said Gil.

  ‘No, no,’ said Paton argumentatively. ‘It might be no more than a pair o’ weeks.’

  ‘Havers, Wat!’ said Simson. ‘He’s further gone than our old cow was when we found her, the other side of the moor, and she’d been missing two month.’

  ‘As little as that?’ said Gil.

  ‘It must take less than that,’ said Fleming with authority, ‘for it’s certainly Murray by the hair, and he’s no been missing as long as two month.’

  Gil exchanged a glance with Alys, and then turned back to the cavity in the peat.

  ‘Tell me how he was lying,’ he said.

  ‘Just the way you see him,’ pronounced Fleming, ‘for we couldny straighten him, what with the flesh so shrunk on the bones.’

  ‘On that side, or the other?’

  ‘Kind of on his right side,’ said Rab Simson, thinking as he spoke, ‘but no quite. His face was turned right up,’ he added, ‘and no even a cloth ower it.’

  ‘And you dug in from here, from the side of the peat-wall?’ Gil prompted. ‘Not down from the top?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed Paton. ‘We just burrowed in wi’ our fleuchters.’ He pointed to Simson’s peat-spade in illustration. At Gil’s elbow, Alys repeated the new word silently. ‘We didny want to come down from above him, see, in case . . .’ He grinned awkwardly.

  ‘The peat above him has never been cut,’ Gil said, and touched the dark caked surface. ‘Do you see there where there’s a lighter band? It goes right across with never a break. The layers have not been disturbed, not till you came along and cut under them with the fleuchters. They’re sagging now, but they’ve never been cut through.’

  ‘Of course they haveny,’ proclaimed Fleming. ‘I saw that and all, Maister Cunningham. That’s how I kent it for witchcraft, for she’s simply slain him and set him under the peat without ever having to dig down. And when you set that with other information I have –’

  ‘More likely,’ said Gil, ‘he was laid here before the peat grew.’

  Simson nodded agreement, but Paton objected: ‘The peat never grew! It was aye there! You’re daft, Rab Simson.’

  ‘You’re daft yerself, Wat Paton,’ retorted Simson. ‘It must ha’ growed, else how did the trees get at the bottom of it, that you find in some of the diggings? Or the old peat-spades, from afore Noy’s Flood, maybe? And my grandsire found an elf-bolt under the peat ower by Braidwood. I’ve seen it when I was wee. So it’s all grown since Noy’s time, likely.’

  ‘Aye, since Noy’s time. A thousand year or more. It never grew in the time the man Murray’s been missing,’ said Fleming, ‘which just goes to prove it’s witchcraft.’

  ‘We still do not know how he died,’ said Alys. She had turned back to the corpse on its hurdle, and was bending for a closer look. ‘He has no clothes on,’ she added, pulling off her glove to touch the peat-dark skin. ‘Except – is this a belt?’

  ‘It isn’t leather,’ said Gil. ‘It still has the fur on.’

  ‘I said he was no sight for a young lady!’ reiterated Fleming.

  The lapwings had begun calling again. A noise of several voices shouting reached Gil, and the dog growled just as Paton looked up the flank of the hill and said, ‘Maisters, is this them coming back from the coal-heugh now?’

  ‘Aye, it is,’ agreed Fleming with enthusiasm. ‘You can confront her wi’ her crime, Maister Cunningham, and then we can get on and deal wi’ it properly.’

  The first heads were surfacing above the curve of the hillside, with gesticulating peat-spades and a loud argument which flew in snatches on the brisk wind. Socrates growled more loudly, and Gil checked him. Five men, clad like Paton and Simson in leather and homespun, were hustling a woman along in their midst. She wore neither plaid nor mantle, and her apron and good woollen gown were muddy from the enforced march across the moorland, her indoor cap askew and her hair blowing in the wind. Her hands were bound before her, but it was clear that her tongue was not restrained.

  ‘And if you hadny lifted me from my stillroom,’ she declared as they came closer, ‘I’d have completed the oil for your mother’s joint-ill, Geordie Meikle, and you could have taken it to her this evening. She tellt me when she asked for more that she was just about out of it –’

  ‘You said that a’ready,’ said one of the men round her, shoving her roughly towards Gil. She stumbled forward, and fell over the edge of the peat-cutting, landing awkwardly on hip and elbow. Alys exclaimed indignantly, and sprang to her assistance, while Fleming pronounced:

  ‘Well may you grovel, witch, afore the evidence of your ill deeds! This is the witch, Maister Cunningham, well kent for miles about as a cunning woman wi’ herbs and ointments, and seen by me to ha�
�� quarrelled wi’ Thomas Murray that lies here slain by witchcraft.’

  ‘Thomas?’ the woman said as she stood upright. She gave Alys a shaky word of thanks, looked at Gil, and bowed awkwardly over her bound hands. ‘Sir, what’s to do here? The men would tell me nothing but that I’m accused of witchcraft and evil-doing, and now – are you saying Thomas is dead?’

  ‘You ken well he’s dead, woman,’ trumpeted Fleming, ‘you that set him here in secret!’ Gil turned and fixed the tubby priest with his eye. ‘But by God’s help and these innocent instruments of justice –’ He became aware of Gil’s gaze and faltered in his oration. ‘Your crime’s been uncovered,’ he ended lamely, and became silent.

  ‘Aye,’ said Gil drily, and turned to the woman. ‘What’s your name, mistress?’

  ‘That’s Beattie Lithgo,’ supplied one of the men around her. Gil eyed him, and he too fell silent.

  ‘Beatrice Lithgo,’ confirmed the woman, ‘relict of Adam Crombie the collier.’ Her accent was not local, but came from further east, Gil thought, the Lothians perhaps.

  ‘Mistress Lithgo,’ he said. ‘There’s a corp found here, that’s been identified as Thomas Murray.’ He stepped aside, watching her face. She looked from him to the bundle of bones on the hurdle, and frowned, obviously trying to make it out as a body.

  ‘Is that a man?’ she questioned. ‘From here it could as well be a calf drowned in the mire.’

  Fleming opened his mouth, but Gil caught his eye again and he subsided.

  ‘It’s a man,’ Gil confirmed. ‘Look closer, mistress.’

  She gave him a doubtful look, and stepped forward to bend awkwardly over the corpse, flinching as she located its battered countenance.

  ‘Oh, the poor soul. His mother wouldny ken him,’ she said. ‘Has he been beaten, or did this happen while he lay here, do you suppose, sir?’

  ‘You tell us, woman –’ began Fleming.

  ‘Do you recognize the man?’ Gil asked without expression. Beatrice Lithgo straightened up and turned to him. She was tall for a woman, taller than Alys though shorter than Gil himself, and behind the blowing wisps of reddish-fair hair her face was plain and bony, with a sharp nose and angular jaw. Light eyes between grey and blue considered him, equally without expression.

  ‘I do not,’ she said, ‘no being his mother. It could be Thomas, it could just as well be some other poor soul. The hair’s lighter than his, but –’

  ‘His hair’s bleached wi’ lying out in the peat,’ pronounced Fleming, unable to contain himself longer, ‘and if you beat him past knowing afore you hid him here, small wonder we canny tell him by his face.’ The men around them nodded, and one or two muttered agreement.

  ‘Maister Gil!’ called Henry from among the horses.

  ‘I think it’s no him,’ went on Mistress Lithgo, ‘but I’d sooner you got Thomas’s wife to see him, or one of the men that works by his side.’

  ‘To look for marks on his flesh, you mean?’ said Alys, coming forward.

  ‘Maister Gil, look up yonder!’

  ‘Any collier has scars,’ agreed Mistress Lithgo, ‘and Thomas had a few that I treated, but I’d as soon have some other word for it, and I’ve no doubt you would and all, sir,’ she added, with faint humour.

  ‘Maister Gil!’

  The dog rose, hackles up, from his position at Gil’s feet, and stared up the hillside. Gil looked over his shoulder, and saw another ragged company appearing over the curve of windswept grass. This was a bigger group, grotesque in pointed hoods and long-tailed sarks of leather, and somehow much more threatening even at first sight, before he took in the style of implements the men carried or the tone of the shouting which broke out as they caught sight of Mistress Lithgo.

  ‘It’s the colliers,’ said one of the men beside Fleming, ‘come to fetch the witch home, maybe.’ He took an apprehensive grip of his peat-spade, and looked at the priest, who seized hold of Mistress Lithgo’s arm.

  ‘Gather round, lads,’ he ordered, gesturing with his free hand. ‘They’ll no get a hold of her for aught we can do!’

  ‘No just the colliers and their mells,’ said another man, making no move to obey Fleming. ‘There’s lassies wi’ them. Two lassies.’

  ‘The whole of the day shift, wi’ my older daughter,’ said Mistress Lithgo in resigned tones, ‘and my good-sister Joanna. Joanna Brownlie, Thomas’s wife,’ she added to Gil.

  ‘Ah,’ said Gil. He caught Alys’s eye, and held out his arm. She came forward with one of her flickering smiles, laid her gloved hand on his wrist, and allowed him to lead her across the hollow towards the approaching mob of miners with their heavy short-hafted hammers. There were eight or ten of them, with two very pretty young women in their midst whose white linen and well-dyed red-and-blue wool contrasted sharply with the blackened faces and muddy leathers of the men.

  ‘Give us back our Beattie!’ shouted the man at the front as the group halted on the edge of the peat-cutting, and others echoed him. ‘Set her free, or we’ll –’

  ‘Mistress Brownlie?’ asked Gil formally, raising his felt hat.

  The older of the two girls stiffened warily, and a wiry man beside her said, ‘Who’s asking for her?’

  ‘I’m Gil Cunningham, the Archbishop’s Quaestor, and this is my wife Alys Mason.’

  Gil bowed, and Alys curtsied. The miners fell silent, staring down at them, except for the one who had asked their names, who said, mell at the ready, ‘And what’s Blacader’s questioner to do wi’ Joanna Brownlie? Why can you no free Beattie to us and be done?’

  ‘She’s no witch,’ put in another voice from the back of the group. ‘Our Beattie’s a good woman. Who’s to physic our hurts if she’s ta’en up for a witch?’

  ‘There’s a corp been found,’ said Gil, still speaking formally to the whole group, ‘and some thought that it might be Mistress Brownlie’s man, who I understand is missing.’ There was a small sound of distress from the girl who had reacted earlier, sweet-faced and graceful in dark red with a married woman’s headdress of folded white linen. One hand rose to her mouth. ‘We need her to look at the corp if she’s willing,’ Gil went on, ‘to tell us if it is or it isny him.’

  ‘What’s that to do wi’ my mother?’ demanded the other girl, a small slender creature just maturing, her long fair hair well set off by a blue woollen gown and red-and-blue checked plaid. She jerked her head at Mistress Brownlie. ‘If it’s the wonderful Thomas then she’s the one to put a name to him and wash him, there was no need to lift my mother wi’ such a tirravee about it. And will you set her free now, or do we make you?’

  ‘Speak civilly to Maister Cunningham, Phemie,’ directed Fleming from behind Gil. The girl opened her mouth on what was obviously to be a sharp answer.

  ‘Mind your tongue, Phemie,’ said her mother. Phemie blushed unbecomingly but fell silent.

  ‘Aye, but we’ll make you set her free,’ said one of the miners, ‘and make someone sorry he ever thought of calling our Beattie a witch, priest or no priest.’

  ‘Will you look at the corp, Mistress Brownlie?’ asked Alys. She put her free hand out encouragingly. The girl in the linen headdress looked at the wiry man beside her. He gave her a heartening nod and sprang into the cutting, reaching up to swing her easily down beside him. She came forward from his clasp with obvious reluctance. ‘He’s not a bonnie sight,’ Alys warned her in her accented Scots, and took her hand. ‘Come, I will show you.’

  The miners, Phemie among them, crowded after her towards the corpse on its hurdle and the guard of peat-cutters. Gil took up a position between the two groups, assessing just what he would do if things turned violent. Over the heads he could see Henry the groom, plainly making similar plans.

  ‘Is that him?’ said Joanna Brownlie, checking as they approached. ‘No, madam, that’s surely never Thomas. His hair’s the wrong colour.’

  ‘It’s bleached wi’ the air, like linen,’ said Fleming from his post at Mistress Lithgo’s side. Gil saw a flicker of a
musement cross Beatrice Lithgo’s bony face, but she did not speak. Joanna curtsied distractedly to the priest, but stayed where she was, eyeing the corpse with misgiving, and dug her heels in against Alys’s coaxing hand.

  ‘That canny be Thomas,’ she said after a moment. ‘His hair’s away too light, he’s thinner than a Death on a monument, he’s –’

  ‘The body is shrivelled with lying buried in the peat,’ Alys explained.

  ‘Thomas was well when I last saw him,’ said Joanna rather desperately. ‘I canny think this is him, I see no purpose in my looking closer –’

  ‘Has this woman bewitched you and all?’ demanded Fleming, shaking Mistress Lithgo’s arm. Joanna looked properly at them both for the first time, and crossed herself.

  ‘Our Lady protect us, Beattie, what have they done to you?’ she exclaimed, and turned to Gil, a pleading look in her wide blue eyes. ‘I don’t understand, maister. What’s all this about anyway? Phemie came running into the house no an hour since saying the Thorn men had come and taken her mother for a witch, and we called out the day shift and made haste to follow, but we never heard aught about a corp, or Thomas – what has this to do wi’ Beattie? Sir David, why have you bound her like that?’

  ‘It isny Thomas Murray,’ said another voice. The man who had been at Joanna’s elbow was on one knee beside the hurdle, inspecting the corpse, easing the cramped limbs with a careful touch. ‘I’ll swear to that, on any relic you can produce,’ he added significantly, and turned to look hard at the priest, who snorted indignantly, though Gil could see no reason why.

  ‘How no, Jamesie?’ asked someone from the miners’ group.

  ‘This lad’s never held a mell in his life.’ Jamesie indicated the corpse’s hands. ‘Look here. His arms are shrunk to the bone but his hands and feet have the flesh on them yet, and you can see the skin. It’s as soft as a priest’s a— it’s got no calluses,’ he amended, and displayed his own palms, the coal-dust ingrained in their hardened skin. He was a sturdy, well-made fellow, his hair fair where it straggled from under his padded bonnet, his teeth very white in his blackened face when he spoke. ‘What’s more,’ he added, after a moment’s thought, ‘was Thomas no lacking a couple of joints?’ He raised his left hand.