The Stolen Voice Read online

  That Alys could well believe, recalling the young man who had met them. ‘And what clothes was your son wearing? Surely not the same clothes that he went away in,’ she suggested. ‘They must have worn out, in the time.’

  ‘Och, they would so,’ agreed Mistress Drummond, ‘and it was sasainneach dress he went away in, seeing he was walking back to the kirk at Dunblane. Those clothes would not be fitting him any more at all, the way he is grown, so he was not wearing them, but only the plaid on his back. His plaid I knew at once, for it was my own dyeing and weaving. He was clad in what they had given him to wear under the hill,’ she added something quick in Ersche, and Caterin echoed it, ‘fine strange clothing, every bit as fine as Sir William is wearing.’

  ‘I should like to see what the – those people wear,’ said Alys, with perfect truth.

  ‘That I can show you, easy,’ said Mistress Drummond triumphantly, ‘for I put it by. Too good to be wearing about the farm, it is. Jamie Beag’s old doublet and sark fits him fine, and does him for ordinary.’

  ‘So many of your men are called James,’ said Alys, as the old woman rose and made her way cautiously across the chamber. The boy outside screamed again.

  ‘A true word, lassie,’ agreed Mistress Drummond. A small sound by the door, a change of the light, made Alys turn her head just in time to see Caterin slipping out of the house, her head bent. Mistress Drummond, ignoring this, knelt stiffly before a painted kist by the far wall, felt for and removed the stack of turned wooden platters which lay on it. ‘There was my man’s father,’ she enumerated in that musical voice, ‘that was James an-t bean Beurlain, James with the English wife you would say, and there is my man himself, that is James Mor, and my son James, and there was Patrick’s son James, that was James Breac, since he was freckled like a troutie, and died before he was seven year old, poor laddie,’ she paused to cross herself, ‘and Mòr’s James, that is Jamie Beag.’ She counted again on her twisted fingers, and nodded.

  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 diffe
rent, 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:

  ‘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 mus
ic 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.’