‘It might help. Is Juggling Nick’s the same place he goes drinking, do you know? I’m told he goes down into Lanark once a week or so.’
‘You don’t think he takes us wi’ him,’ said Jock.
‘Just the same,’ said his brother, ‘I’d say it might be. He’s a kent face there, aye joking wi’ the lassies and taking snash from the ostlers he’d never take from us.’
‘It sounds like it,’ Gil agreed. He rose, and stretched his back. ‘I had best get back to the Ship afore they bar the doors. My thanks to the both of you for all this. If you think of anything else I’ll be glad to hear it, though I’ll be away back into Lanarkshire at first light.’
‘Aye well, here’s a thing,’ said Jock. ‘Just talking of it now, it comes into my mind. Could his lassie maybe work at Juggling Nick’s? They’ve two or three lassies about the place, to see to the chambers and the kitchen and that.’
‘No yew trees in the midst of Lanark town, but,’ said his brother.
‘Aye there is,’ retorted Jock, ‘there’s a great yew tree in St Nicholas’ kirkyard leans ower the wall.’
‘I think I need to head for Lanark the first chance I get,’ said Gil.
Chapter Eight
‘Michael was to start for Lanark at first light,’ said Alys, from her place in the circle of Gil’s arm, ‘so he has had most of the day now to search Lanark. He reckoned he could more easily spare half a dozen men for the day than Madame Mère,’ she explained, with a quick smile at his mother. ‘But I hoped he might send word of my patient.’
Gil drew her closer, relishing her solid warmth. It had been, somehow, a longer ride home than the one out to Blackness, and the thought of her welcome had greatly cheered the journey. He used his other hand to scratch the ears of the rather damp wolfhound who leaned against his knee, making the dog groan ecstatically.
‘Maybe I should have gone on to Lanark to find him myself. I’m reluctant to ride further, to be honest …’
‘Well you might be,’ said his mother, with a wry glance at the cushion of the bench he had chosen to sit on. ‘I can spare Steenie that long, I suppose. Indeed, he should be back soon. And I bade him ask after Fleming while he was about it, my dear,’ she added to Alys.
‘Yes, Fleming,’ said Gil. ‘You say it was Crombie beat him?’
‘So he told us,’ Alys agreed. ‘He made better sense later, once we had got him back to Cauldhope, and washed his hurts and put him to bed. He said he was out in the fields, on his way to wherever it was Michael had sent him, and Crombie and his men found him, and set about him with sticks.’
‘Crombie had one man and no sticks when he left here,’ Gil said.
‘No, I thought that, and I would have said from his bruises they rather used their fists and feet.’
‘Gaif him an outragious blaw, and great boist blew,’ suggested Gil.
Her quick smile flickered as she placed the quotation, but she went on, ‘I suppose Crombie wished to threaten him about the charge against Mistress Lithgo. But Gil, I am still puzzled by his lying in a swoon half the day like that, and by the convulsions. I could find no blow to the head that would account for it. I wonder if Mistress Lithgo would tell me …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘So you think,’ said Lady Egidia, ‘that the man Murray has a mistress in or near Lanark, and visits her once a quarter while these two brothers collect the money for him.’
‘It looks very like it,’ Gil said. Socrates nudged his hand, and he scratched behind the dog’s ears again. A waft of the animal’s fishy breath reached him.
‘It’s odd, mind you,’ persisted his mother, ‘if that’s so, that word’s never got round. It’s a small enough neighbourhood, after all. Carluke folk go down to the market at Lanark, and a juicy bit of gossip like that would travel, you’d think.’
‘He might visit her under another name,’ said Alys.
‘He’d be recognized by someone as he came or went, I’m sure of that.’
‘He goes in disguise,’ said Gil. ‘A turban and a false beard from the Corpus Christi costume kist.’
‘Corpus Christi costume kist. Now yon’s a tongue-trap!’ said his mother, half laughing.
‘Perhaps she lives secluded,’ suggested Alys. ‘In a green desert, with one faithful hound for company.’ She reached across Gil to stroke their own faithful hound’s head, and the dog licked her wrist with a long tongue.
‘The yew tree wouldn’t fit with that,’ said Gil. ‘They mostly grow in a kirkyard or at least by a chapel.’
‘She is the guardian of the chapel, of course.’
‘What, and a man’s mistress these two years as well?’
‘Temptation can strike anyone,’ Alys responded seriously.
‘The yew tree might be on the road to her home,’ said Lady Egidia.
‘Can you think of anywhere that might fit, Mother? You know this side the river better than I do.’
‘If it’s so much out of the way,’ said Alys, ‘surely nobody can know of it.’
‘You get the odd dwelling down by the Clyde itself,’ said Lady Egidia, nodding in acknowledgement of this point, ‘even in the gorge below Lanark. But I’ve a notion I’ve seen something elsewhere. A solitary place in the cut of one of the rivers, on the way to nowhere. Now where was it and why was I going that way?’
‘Exercising the horses?’ suggested Alys.
‘Maybe Michael will have learned something of use,’ said Gil doubtfully. ‘I’d like to find Murray, and get this whole matter dealt with. And what about the corp we do have? Has anyone claimed to know him yet?’
‘No, and it seems there has been a great stream of folk to inspect him,’ Alys said. ‘Henry was kept too busy to wash the dog on his own yesterday. I suppose the whole parish must have heard how he was found, no doubt they want to tell their grandchildren they saw him. Most of those who looked have prayed for him, Henry says, so at least he benefits by that.’
Gil nodded. ‘I’ve been wondering,’ he said, ‘if his death could be much older than we first thought. Maybe as far back as Wallace’s time, or even beyond it. Old Forrest the huntsman had no knowledge of him, and his recollection goes back over a hundred years.’
‘Could he be from even longer ago, from before the Flood?’ asked Alys. ‘The men who were cutting the peat talked of tree-roots and elf-bolts that they found under it, from Noah’s time, so why not this man as well? He’s well enough preserved, I would have thought, he could have lasted so long.’
‘He wasn’t under the peat,’ Gil objected, ‘he was in its midst.’
‘Then he must be from halfway back to the Flood,’ offered Alys. ‘Gil!’ She sat up straight, turning to stare at him, brown eyes round. ‘Gil, do you suppose he could be from the time when Our Lord was born? That he might have seen the star that led the kings?’
‘I suppose he could. There’s no way of telling,’ Gil said cautiously, reluctant to contradict such a notion. Socrates raised his head from his master’s knee to stare at the door. ‘But surely he wouldn’t have seen the star even so. It led the kings out of the east, not the west.’
‘But he might have heard the angels in the sky,’ Alys’s eyes were shining. ‘Perhaps he went to Bethlehem. I would have done.’
‘So would we all. That’s a bonnie thought,’ said Lady Cunningham, abandoning her reflections. ‘What is it, Alan?’
In the doorway of the chamber, the steward ducked in an apologetic bow.
‘Right apposite to what ye were just saying, mistress,’ he said. ‘It’s Jackie Heriot walked out from Carluke asking for a word about the man out of the peat-digging. Will ye see him, or no?’
‘Sir John?’ Lady Cunningham raised her brows, and rose to her feet. ‘Aye, send him in, Alan. Good day to you, Sir John. What can we do for you the day?’
Sir John Heriot, bowing low over his round black hat, had to ask after his parishioner’s health, exclaim over encountering Alys again, congratulate Gil on his marriage, admire the wolfhound, who beat his tail on the floor a couple of times in acknowledgement. Eventually the priest was persuaded to sit down, saying, ‘It’s in a good hour I meet Mistress Mason again. Indeed. I think I have a message for you. You mind you were asking for a Marion Lockhart of this parish, madam?’