‘Who’s that?’ Gil asked. ‘The place is full of Lockharts.’
‘Joanna’s mother,’ Alys supplied. ‘Go on, sir.’
‘Well, after you left St Andrew’s kirk yesterday, Isobel Douglas — Isa — ’
‘Oh, yes.’ Alys nodded, smiling. ‘A good woman, I think.’
A faint grimace crossed Sir John’s broad fair-skinned face. ‘Oh, aye, indeed. A valued member of my flock, Isa is. Aye busy about the kirk or my house. Indeed. And yestreen afore Vespers Isa came to me to say she feared she’d sent you on a fool’s errand. I think she tellt you Mistress Lockhart’s sons were across the river in Lesmahagow?’ Alys nodded again. ‘Indeed. It seems now she’s recalled different. One of them went away into Ayrshire some years ago, and the other moved to Glasgow last Lammas-tide.’
‘To Glasgow?’ repeated Alys.
‘Why ever would he do that?’ Gil asked. ‘If he’d land to farm in Lesmahagow, what’s to take him to Glasgow?’
‘He gave up the farm,’ said Sir John. ‘Isa gave me no sensible idea why, though she said something about birds. Maybe they ate the seed-corn and his crop failed. Indeed. Nor she never said which of the two it was, nor how he would support himself in Glasgow.’
‘There’s ways enough,’ said Gil, ‘but he’d need some skill or other.’
‘You’ve contacts in plenty in Glasgow,’ said his mother, ‘and the burgh’s no that big. You should be able to find the man. What was his surname? Brownlie? Do you know his own name?’
‘Either Hob or Tammas,’ Alys said. ‘If I send to my father, he can put that in motion, I suppose. Sir John, I’m grateful for this. I hope you’ll pass my thanks to Dame Isa too. Did you come all the way out here just for that? It was most kind of you.’
Sir John blushed like a youth, but admitted, ‘No, no, I canny claim it. Indeed. I wished to hear more of this man in the peat-digging, and maybe to get a keek at him if he’s yet above ground.’
‘Oh, he’s above ground,’ said Lady Cunningham sardonically. ‘Lying coffined in my feed-store wi’ half the parish waiting in line to inspect him. You’re welcome to a look at him, Sir John.’
The corpse in the feed-store had deteriorated further, though it still smelled only of peat. Preserved far beyond corruption, Gil thought. He could see cracks in the shrunken flesh now, and the skin was beginning to dry out and peel away in places.
‘Did you get his finger back, Alan?’ he asked. ‘And I hope he’s lost no more oddments.’
‘Aye, it’s there.’ Alan, standing by with the keys, nodded to a small object folded in linen by the corpse’s elbow as if it was a saint’s relic. ‘I wrapped it up decent.’
Sir John bent over the coffin and uncovered, crossing himself, then laid his free hand cautiously on the shock of red hair and snatched it away.
‘It’s like horsehair,’ he said. ‘Aye, poor soul. What a death he’s met. Slain three times over, as your man said. And have you no idea who he might be?’
‘There’s a many folk seen him that’s offered one name or another,’ said Alan, ‘but none of them seems to fit, and no two has come up wi’ the same name. By rights we ought to have someone at their beads by him,’ he admitted, ‘and maybe a couple o’ candles, but Henry willny have candles in here.’
‘Oh, no,’ agreed Sir John, with a glance at the sacks of feed. ‘Indeed no.’
‘My husband thinks he may be a man from an earlier time,’ Alys offered.
‘Earlier?’ The priest looked round at Gil. ‘How much earlier, would you say?’
Gil explained his thoughts, aware of the interest of the stable-hands gathered round the door. Sir John replaced his felt hat and listened with care.
‘You tell me the peat grows,’ he said. ‘I never thought of that. I just thought it was aye there. No, I suppose, I’ve heard the old folk talk of where there was a drowning pool in the moss aforetime, where there’s only peat now.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Gil. ‘I’ve heard the same.’
‘And at the bottom of the peat you find logs and the like,’ continued Sir John. ‘Aye, I agree, now I think on it that could easy be from the time of the Flood.’
‘And this man was halfway down the peat,’ said Alys.
Gil watched the priest’s expression change slowly as his thoughts followed Alys’s. He could see the moment when enlightenment struck; the man crossed himself hastily, dragging off his hat again, and bent the knee to the indifferent corpse.
‘I must away back to the town,’ he said. ‘I need to go through the kirk records. There may be something … Indeed.’
He turned to the doorway, and the stable-hands scattered, but the light was cut off. Lady Cunningham paused on the threshold, glanced briefly at the corpse, crossed herself, and held out a set of tablets tied with tape.
‘Steenie’s returned, Gilbert, with word from Michael. He will be here for supper, and it seems they may have located Murray’s bolt-hole. ‘
‘You wrote,’ said Gil, handing the little glasses of cordial, ‘that you’d a name for one of Murray’s drinking friends, and directions to find the fellow.’
‘I did,’ agreed Michael. He raised his glass in a toast to his godmother, and she smiled and responded. ‘Your man reached me at a good moment. I’d found Murray’s horse, left standing at Juggling Nick’s for weeks, I was just fending off Bessie Dickson’s demands for five weeks’ livery — which is sheer impudence,’ he added, ‘for the beast’s plainly been working for its keep! Then Steenie arrived wi’ your word, and I was able to turn the argument, why had Bessie no sent to his friends, passed the word round those he drinks wi’. But,’ he concluded, and took another taste of the bright glassful, ‘she claims she couldny.’
‘Why not?’ asked Alys.
‘Seems he mainly drinks wi’ this one fellow, name of Andro Syme, fellow much his age that’s a forester to Bonnington, and he’s not been seen in the town for a few weeks either. I got a description of sorts — ordinary height, ordinary coloured hair, grey eyes. One of the lassies said he was gey handsome but she thought he’d a woman already, he never looked her way,’ Michael grinned. ‘Bessie had a word or two to say about that. So I’ve got the directions to Syme’s cottage, down in the gorge below St Kentigern’s, but it was too late in the day by then to be starting out after him, let alone waiting for you to catch up with us, Maister Gil.’
‘You’re telling me this drinking companion hasn’t been seen either?’ persisted Gil.
‘That’s right,’ Michael agreed. ‘Maybe the two of them have gone off together. Gone to sea, gone to England, gone to the Low Countries. Maybe they’ve both got a lassie in Edinburgh or somewhere.’
‘Why would they leave now? Did they leave Juggling Nick’s together?’
‘Not that Bessie said.’ Michael sounded startled. ‘I got the idea Murray had simply left his horse wi’ her and gone off alone. Syme wasny there.’
‘And that was when Bessie last saw Murray? Did you check that?’
‘Do you know, I did,’ said Michael, with an air of triumph. ‘He was back there no so long after he’d been in wi’ the two other colliers, looked in and asked for his friend, and went away again. Bessie’s not seen him since. And that I’ll believe,’ he went on, ‘for she’d have had the money for his horse’s keep off him if he showed his bonnet round the door.’
‘You’ve done well,’ said Lady Cunningham in approving tones. Michael glanced at her, his colour deepening in the candlelight, and she smiled at him again. ‘And tomorrow you can go to the forester’s house.’
‘David Fleming does that, Mother,’ said Gil. She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Instructs folk to do what they were about to do anyway.’
‘Oh, I ask your pardon, dear,’ she said with irony.
He grinned at her affectionately, and Alys said, ‘How is Sir David, Michael? I think Steenie forgot to ask.’
‘Crabbit as a drunkard,’ said Michael crisply. ‘Flies into a rage for nothing. Threw his shoes at the laddie that brought his porridge, began abusing me when I wouldny fetch him his pestilent book. Otherwise, I suppose, he’s going on well enough. The fever’s left him, he’s had no more of those twitching fits.’