‘Was that when Mistress Weir sent you with a gift for Murray?’ he asked. Her blue eyes widened, and she nodded. ‘Mistress Brownlie told my wife of it. Was that so unusual, for your grandmother to give him something?’
She nodded vehemently, and mimed an angry quarrel, wagging a finger at the rain.
‘They’re usually at odds,’ he interpreted, and she suddenly gave him a shy smile. ‘And then he rode off as usual with the Paterson men?’ Another nod. ‘Do you know why she gave him the gift?’
Bel raised an imaginary glass to drink his health, and counted off one, two, three with the other hand.
‘It was to drink her health on her birthday,’ he recalled, and she nodded. ‘Are you saying that was three days after they left?’ Another nod. ‘That was a friendly gesture.’
She stared at him, her expression changing slowly back to the withering cat look. Then she shrugged and turned away, bending to the yellow marsh-marigolds round her feet.
‘Can you tell me anything else?’ Gil asked. Another shrug. ‘Why does your grandam dislike Murray?’ She gave him a pitying glance. ‘Is it simply that he won’t do as she bids him?’
She straightened up, pushing another handful of flowers into the linen sack, and placed one hand flat in the air, a little higher than her own height. She gestured round her face, nimble fingers describing the long ends of a linen headdress. A woman, taller than herself but shorter than her mother.
‘Joanna — Mistress Brownlie?’ he said. Bel nodded. She held up one hand, fingers opening and shutting. Someone talking? She indicated the invisible Joanna, and cowered in fear. ‘Threats to Joanna? Who threatens her? Your grandmother?’
This got him an exasperated stare. She squared her shoulders and stuck out her plump chest and her elbows. A man, and a conceited man.
‘Your brother? Murray? Murray threatens Joanna?’ Another nod. ‘It’s a man’s prerogative to chastise his wife,’ he said on a venture. ‘I’d have thought Mistress Weir would see little wrong in that.’ And that’s hypocrisy, he thought, for if I ever raised my hand to Alys I think I would cut my throat afterwards.
Whether she detected the hypocrisy or not, Bel’s expression would have parched grain. She sighed ostentatiously, established Joanna again with the same deft movements, and then straightened her back, raised her chin and outlined a wired cap on her head. He nodded, and she assumed an expression of simpering affection, and held her hands out to the invisible Joanna.
‘Mistress Weir dotes on Joanna?’
Bel confirmed this. Then she sketched a row of women to her left, and identified them: herself, her sister, her mother. When he named them aloud, she nodded again.
‘Is this how you talk to your family?’ he asked, fascinated. She threw him an irritated look and, stepping into the role of her grandmother again, swept the row of invisible figures aside with one hand while she drew the equally invisible Joanna closer with the other, still simpering with exaggerated affection.
‘So Mistress Weir would place Joanna over all the rest of you,’ he said. Bel nodded encouragingly. ‘Even your brother?’
She had not thought of that. She considered the question briefly while the rain pattered on the hawthorn leaves, then spread her hands.
‘And yet she sent you with the gift for Murray.’
She shrugged, and turned her head away, unmoving for a moment. Then, obviously coming to a decision, she began again. The wired headdress, the elegant stance: Arbella. She steadied a mortar with one hand and worked the pestle with the other, pausing to add a pinch of this and a careful drop of that, and looked expectantly at him.
‘Mistress Weir helps your mother in the stillroom,’ he offered. ‘I thought it was your sister did that.’ She frowned, shook her head, stirred the imaginary mortar again, her lips moving busily as if she was speaking. ‘Mistress Weir taught your mother.’ Bel flicked him a glance, nodded, continued to work the pestle. ‘What are you telling me, Bel?’
She sighed, abandoned the mortar, and pulled up the skirt of her gown to reach the purse that hung at her knee between gown and kirtle. From it she drew out a much-scored piece of grey slaty stone and a slate-pencil, bent to lean the slate on her knee and took a careful grasp of the pencil to write. She was no clerk: she formed each letter laboriously, with the use of elbow, tongue and head. Standing in the rain watching her, he appreciated that she would find all her dumb-show (yes, that was exactly the word) much easier than scribing anything at all.
It took her some time, but at last she handed him the stone, with an air which made him feel what it said was very important. He studied it carefully. The wet surface was much-marked already, with earlier inscriptions partly excised, and the uneven letters were hard to make out. Her spelling was imaginative and there were no breaks in the staggering sequence, but after a moment he decided that RBEL probably meant Arbella. But what did the rest mean? It appeared to read PYSHNUW. After a moment enlightenment dawned, along with surprise that a girl from such a family would use this sort of coarseness.
‘You’re telling me Arbella dislikes me too? Holds me in contempt?’ And yet she was civil enough to my face, he thought. Bel stared at him, open-mouthed, and suddenly shook her head, snatched the slate out of his hand and stuffed it back into her purse, then turned, her back radiating fury, and marched away through the flowers.
‘Bel!’ he called after her. ‘Come back, lassie, I’ll take you home out of the rain.’
She went on, ignoring him.
‘Bel! Are you safe out here on your lone?’
She swung round, stared at him, then rotated one finger by her temple in a universal sign and continued on her way. Reluctant to pursue her across the hillside, he gathered his wits and prepared to go back up to the waiting horses. The road to Blackness beckoned.
A gleam in the grass caught his eye from where the girl had been standing. He made his way towards it, and found her slate, lodged in a clump of flowers and shining in the light. It must have missed her purse in her haste. He bent to pick it up and turned it in his hand. None of the other inscriptions was clear enough to read more than a letter or two; only the comment about Arbella stood out.
With a feeling of having missed something important, he put the object into his purse and made his way up to the track, where man and beasts waited for him, heads down against the increasing rain.
‘Can we get on now, Maister Gil?’ asked Patey ‘Just it’s ower cold to be standing about like this.’
‘We’ll go by the Pow Burn,’ said Gil, reclaiming his reins and mounting. ‘I must let them know where that lassie is. I should have left my plaid over this saddle,’ he added, as the damp leather struck cold through his hose.
‘What was she doing wi’ all the waving her arms?’ asked Patey curiously. He demonstrated, causing Gil’s horse to shy.
‘Watch what you’re about, man! That’s how she talks. She was telling me about her grandam and Murray.’
‘I see. She canny wag her tongue, so she wags her arms instead.’ Patey grinned at his own joke. ‘What did you say to her then, maister, that she lost her temper wi’ you? Maybe I can guess!’
Gil stared at him in revulsion, and he fell silent and after a moment mumbled an apology of sorts.
‘So I should think,’ Gil said. ‘If there’s another word like that out of you, I’ll be having a talk with Henry when we get back to Belstane.’ Patey muttered something else. ‘Well, hold your tongue then.’
He spurred his horse forward along the track towards the colliery, without looking back to see if the groom followed him.
The surfacemen were just breaking off for their midday bite when he came over the hillside. Eight or ten men were gathering in the shelter of the smithy, round the fire. On the path which led down from the thatched row of cottages was a procession of children, bareheaded despite the rain, each bearing a father’s or brother’s meaclass="underline" a wooden bowl with a kale-leaf over it, a plate covered by a cloth, a small package wrapped in dock-leaves. The men underground must take their food in with them and eat it cold, he conjectured.