‘Aye, at Ravenstruther,’ agreed Michael. He accepted a second beaker of ale from Alan Forrest, and sat down opposite Alys by the great fireplace in the hall. ‘Alan, that’s gey welcome. I’m as dry as a tinker. That’s what I thought too, Mistress Mason. Turns out I had the wrong questions. I asked, had the money for the coal been uplifted, and their steward answered me, Aye it had. I asked him when, and he checked the accounts and told me what days. I never asked him who had been there, or named any names to him yesterday.’
‘Ah,’ said Alys. Alan set the tray of ale and bannocks on a stool at Michael’s elbow, and withdrew to the side of the hall, listening with interest.
‘So today I rode on to Carlindean, that’s by Carnwath, you ken …’ Alys nodded encouragement, though neither name meant anything to her. ‘Jackie Somerville that stays there’s a friend of mine. He was from home, but I’d a word wi’ his mother, and she called their steward for me, and he turned up the accounts. The colliers lay there just the one night, but even so, there was only the one mess of food written down for their dole. When I said I wondered at that, that they must have eaten frugally for three working men, the steward said, Oh, there was but the two of them.’
‘Two?’ repeated Alys. ‘So we have lost only one? Is it Murray?’
‘Aye. There was just these brothers, Paterson, or whatever their name is. Murray was never there.’
‘So where have you lost the trail, Michael?’ asked Lady Cunningham. She swept in from the stair, restored to her indoor garments, and her grey cat sprang down from a shelf of the plate-cupboard and paraded across the floor to meet her.
‘Murray was at Jerviswood, before they went to Lanark, but not at Carlindean after it,’ supplied Michael. ‘And I went round by Ravenstruther the now and asked them, and he wasny there when the fee was uplifted, and he’s not been there since, either. That’s close by Lanark town, mistress,’ he elaborated, and Alys nodded.
‘Somewhere in Lanark, then.’ Lady Cunningham lifted the cat, which turned its smug yellow gaze on Alys. ‘Do you suppose he’s still there?’
‘Well, if he’s elsewhere, I’ve no notion where it might be.’ Michael sat down again as his godmother settled herself in her great chair. ‘Your good health, madam.’
‘Gil told me Murray goes drinking in Lanark. How big a place is it?’ asked Alys.
‘Big enough,’ said Michael gloomily. ‘It’s a burgh, maybe the size of the lower town at Glasgow. It’s got no cathedral or college to draw folk, but there’s good merchants and tradesmen in the place. I suppose there are five or six streets of houses, and all the vennels and back-lands.’
‘It should be simple enough, I suppose. You must search the taverns,’ said Lady Cunningham, ‘until you find some trace of the man. Someone must have seen him. Do we know who he sells coal to? Whatever householders he called on might have information for you.’
‘Aye,’ said Michael.
‘I could come with you,’ suggested Alys. ‘I have never seen Lanark.’
‘No, I don’t think — ’ began Michael.
‘An excellent idea,’ pronounced Lady Cunningham, making room for the cat inside her loose furred gown. ‘You’ll not be in any taverns yourself, of course,’ she continued. ‘I can trust you to take care of Mistress Mason, I know, Michael.’
‘Oh,’ said Michael, and then, as this penetrated, ‘You can? I mean, aye, you can!’
Alys, with a vivid remembrance of the occasion when she and Gil’s sister Kate had visited a tavern off Glasgow’s Gallowgait, simply nodded.
‘But why has Gil gone to Linlithgow?’ she wondered. ‘He did not say exactly what he had learned this morning?’
‘At Forth? No, he said little but what he thought of the dog’s exploits, and when he would be back.’ Lady Cunningham looked from Michael to Alys. ‘I suppose, if those two men got as far as Carlindean as you say, Michael, they might have completed the round, which I think would take them to Forth, do I remember right?’ Alys nodded. ‘So he might have found word of them there after all.’
‘And word that took him to Linlithgow. I wonder what it was.’
‘If they were to take one or two of the men, mistress,’ suggested Alan from the wall where he was still listening avidly, ‘they would make a faster job of it. Is there much doing in the stable-yard the day?’
‘Nothing that won’t wait, apart from the young horse’s leg,’ admitted his mistress. ‘Aye, that would make sense.’ She cast a glance at the windows. ‘You’d best go, then. The day’s wearing on. And you can get on wi’ your work, Alan, rather than stand about with your ears flapping like a gander’s wings.’
The rain was getting heavier.
‘Good for the oats, I suppose,’ said Michael, as they rode past the fields of Carluke town, one of the Belstane grooms ahead of them and one bringing up the rear. The fine turned earth of the strips showed dark between the narrow lines of rushes in the intervening ditches, and the boy who was supposed to be scaring the crows was sheltering under a white-blossomed apple tree. ‘So long as it doesny get too heavy.’
‘Is that a coney running on the plough-land?’ said Alys. ‘Surely it’s too big. Oh, and there is another. What are they doing? Do look, they are dancing!’
‘That’s hares,’ said Michael, peering under his hand at the brown creatures skipping across the near field. ‘You can tell by the black tips to the ears.’ He smiled, watching the animals’ antics. ‘They do that all the spring. Some folk says they’re gone mad, but it’s just how they choose their mates, so our huntsman tellt me.’
‘Good eating, a bawd is, if they wereny such unchancy beasts,’ commented the man riding behind them, a fair-haired leather-visaged fellow in his thirties called Steenie, a name Alys knew to be the Scots pet-name for Stephen. ‘You get them up on the grazing land and all.’
‘I saw them when we went to the peat-cutting,’ Alys recalled. ‘When Sir David was so sure they had dug up Thomas Murray. Do you think we will find the man today?’
‘I’m past caring,’ admitted Michael, ‘save for the need to silence Davy Fleming. He was on at me again this morning before I’d broke my fast, about all the misdeeds witches gets up to, according to his wee book. If I ever learn who lent it to him, I’ll cram it down his throat.’
‘I never thought to hear Gil abuse a book the way he did that one,’ said Alys.
‘I’ve not looked in it myself, but the things Fleming was telling me made my gorge rise.’ Michael rode in silence for a short space. Alys was looking about her despite the rain, admiring the blossom on the fruit trees for which Gil had told her the neighbourhood was famous, when he suddenly said, ‘Mistress Mason!’
She opened her mouth to tell him to use her first name, but he hurried on.
‘Have you — did you see my Tib? Before she was sent to Haddington, I mean?’
She was aware of a great rush of sympathy. No need of birthmarks or stolen children, here was a tale out of the romances, riding beside her under the wet blossom.
‘No, but I assure you she went to Haddington voluntarily — is that the right word?’ He stared at her. ‘I had a letter two weeks since. She said she was bored with her imprisonment, and weary for you, and her sister — Sister Dorothea — had invited her to visit.’
‘Weary for me,’ he repeated, his sharp features softening. Were those tears? ‘And I for her, mistress. Was — were they ill-treating her? My godmother, and the rest?’
‘Only by keeping her close, I think, and watching her.’
‘She’d take that ill out,’ he said, with a loving smile.
‘She did.’ He had turned in the saddle to look at her more closely, one hand on the cantle, and she met his eye. ‘I think, by what she said just now, my good-mother is less angry than she was. What of your father?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve heard little enough from him since Yule, till I had this letter about Fleming. I suppose, if he’s trusting me to see to this business, he’s calmed down a bit and all. Would you say there’s any hope for us?’
‘I do not know,’ she admitted. ‘I will do what I can for you.’