Alys touched the steward’s damaged face. His skin was cool rather than hot, and clammy to the touch. The man’s breathing was alarmingly shallow, and as she watched another small convulsion shook him. She straightened up, gathering her thoughts.
‘Is he fit to be moved, do you think?’ asked Michael. ‘What should we do wi’ him?’
‘You’ll no leave him here?’ said Mistress Paton, on a sharp note very like the old woman’s. ‘That’s our bed. Where are we to sleep?’
‘I think we must move him,’ said Alys. ‘He should be in his own house, and his hurts tended.’ Something sweet for strength, she was thinking, trying to recall the words of the Infirmarer at Saint-Croix. The convent’s infirmary had possessed several books, of which Alys had had free run, but Mère Isabelle had also her own ideas on the treatment of the injured and sick. ‘Mistress Paton, have you given him anything?’ she asked.
‘Deed, no, excepting a drink of ale when he first got here,’ said the woman. ‘And it’s the same jug my man was drinking from this morning,’ she added, ‘so it’s no anything I gave him that’s done this to him.’
‘No, no, I never thought it,’ said Alys. ‘You’ve taken good care of him already. Have you anything sweet in the house? And is there fresh water?’ A foolish question, she told herself, as Mistress Paton stared at her in the dim light. Outside the child was still battering the bench with the spoon. The old woman screeched something, and Mistress Paton started, and nodded.
‘Aye, she’s right, for once. I’ve a wee drop honey in a piggin on the shelf. Would that do ye? It’s last year’s, mind, it’s set like glue.’ Another piercing remark. ‘Aye, by the fire, if the fire was putting out any heat. I canny be everywhere, you auld — ’ She bit off her comment, and moved to the other side of the house, reaching up to the wall-head to lift from among the objects stowed there a small pottery jar with a scrap of flat stone serving as a lid.
‘Honey?’ said Michael blankly. ‘What will that do?’ He watched as Alys set the little jar next to the peat-glow to warm it. One of the men appeared, seized the bellows which lay by the fire and plied them expertly; Michael suddenly moved to the door, and had a word with the other man still outside.
By the time the cart appeared before the house, Alys had contrived a small tisane of thyme and mint from the kailyard with a generous amount of honey in it, and was perched rather painfully on the wooden bar at the outer edge of the bed, dripping her concoction slowly into the clerk’s bruised mouth. The first drops had an immediate effect; Fleming drew a deep breath, and the shuddering convulsions ceased.
‘Honey is wonderful stuff,’ she said, watching this.
The old woman asked a shrill question, and Mistress Paton looked up sharply from the hearth, where she was stirring the iron pot which stood over the revived fire.
‘I never thought o’ that,’ she said. ‘Are you her from the Pow Burn? The auld collier’s widow? For if ye are — ’
‘No,’ said Alys, startled.
‘That’s the lady’s good-daughter from Belstane,’ supplied Steenie.
‘Our Lady be thanked,’ said the woman. ‘If our Dod found I’d let that one over the threshold he’d break a stob across my back.’
‘Do you mean Mistress Lithgo?’ said Alys. ‘What has she done to you?’
‘Lithgo? Who’s she?’
‘Mistress Mason?’ said Michael, coming into the house. ‘Is he fit to be moved, do you think? We’ve a cart here.’
Alys looked down at her patient. He was beginning to stir, and now uttered a heart-rending groan. His eyes opened.
‘Fleming?’ said Michael. He bent over his servant in the gloom. ‘What came to you, man? You’re in a bad way here.’
There was a pause, in which Fleming opened and closed his swollen mouth. The old woman screeched suddenly, and he flinched, croaked something, swallowed, tried again.
‘… t’ss Li’hgo,’ he said.
Chapter Seven
Riding back up towards Forth in the drizzle, to pick up the road to Linlithgow and Blackness, Gil found he had selected one of the more garrulous stable-hands to accompany him. He was quite unable to concentrate on his thoughts for the questions Patey fired at him. Where were they going, how long would it take, where would they lie this night? He answered patiently at first, then said sharply, ‘Hold your peace and let me think, man. I’ve matters to ponder.’
‘And would that be this business of the corp in the peat-cutting?’ asked Patey. ‘Or is it the man Murray?’
‘Hold your peace,’ Gil repeated.
‘Just I was going to say,’ persisted Patey in injured tones, ‘there’s one of the collier lassies yonder, watching us.’
Gil looked where the man pointed, and saw a small plump figure standing knee-deep in yellow flowers, under a group of bent hawthorn trees in the hollow of a burn below the track. Plaid over her head against the rain, she was still identifiable: not Phemie but her sister. What was the girl’s name? Bel, that was it. The one who never spoke.
‘The one that doesny speak,’ said Patey helpfully. ‘Tongue-tied, she is. She isny daft, mind you, and they say she’s a grand spinner. No a bad thing in a lassie, to be tongue-tied.’
‘What, and never ask you what you want for your supper?’ Gil dismounted. ‘Bide here and hold my horse. I want a word wi’ her.’
‘You can have a’ the words you want,’ said Patey ‘but she’ll never have a word for you, maister.’ He guffawed at his own wit, then finally became silent under Gil’s glare, and took the reins.
Bel was still watching them warily, and when Gil climbed down from the track she looked around as if judging her chances of escape. He stopped at a little distance from her, the yellow flowers round his boots. She must be thirteen or fourteen, he thought, surveying her, plainer than her sister and still covered in puppy-fat. Tib had been much the same at that age, less anxious but with the same sulky expression. If this girl was tongue-tied, that would explain a lot.
‘You’re Bel Crombie, aren’t you?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘Do you mind me? I’m Gil Cunningham.’ She nodded again, and bobbed in a brief, apprehensive curtsy. ‘Should you be out here your lone, Bel?’
She shrugged, bent to pick another handful of wet flowers, showed them to him and pushed them into a linen sack at her belt. Gathering something for the still-room, he surmised.
‘And it’s raining,’ he added. She looked at him, then at the sky, and shrugged again. This was not going to be easy, he recognized, and there was a strange quality to the girl which made him uncomfortable about questioning her. Still, one had to try. ‘Bel, could I ask you a few things?’
She straightened up to look directly at him, with a withering stare rather like those his mother’s cat turned on Socrates, and waited.
‘Have you any idea where Thomas Murray might be?’ he asked. She shook her head firmly. ‘Or what’s come to him?’ Another eloquent shrug. He paused to consider, trying to frame the question so it could be answered Yes or No. ‘Do you like him?’ An innocent enough question. Bel screwed up her face and shook her head. ‘Does he ever try to kiss you?’
She shook her head again, looked down at her person and carefully lifted away an invisible something that clung about her hips.
‘He’s free with his hands,’ Gil supplied. She nodded. ‘And yet he’s never followed it up?’ A puzzled look. This is a young lassie, he reminded himself. ‘He’s never tried kissing you.’ Another shake of the head, with an impatient glance: I told you that. ‘The day he left,’ he said, and she frowned, still watching him carefully, ‘did anything unusual happen? Anything at all?’
After a moment she nodded. He smiled encouragingly.
‘Who did it happen to? Who was involved?’ he asked. ‘If I name everyone, can you tell me when I say the right names?’
She nodded, and by enumerating the household he learned that Mistress Weir and Joanna had been involved, as well as Murray.