The object at their centre was not readily recognizable. It was longer and thicker than Alys’s thumb, yellowish, wrinkled and waxy. She stared at it for a moment, and said, ‘Is it a root of some herb? A mandrake, perhaps? I never saw one.’
‘Nor did I, mistress,’ said Henry drily, ‘but I never heard that a mandrake had a fingernail. See, this side.’ He indicated one end of the thing. She tipped it over on her palm, and saw the nail, thick and cracked, as yellow as the rest of the finger. She jerked the object away from her in a sudden convulsion of horror, and it flew between the two men and landed in a clump of heather.
Socrates pounced, and came up grinning, the hideous thing clutched in his teeth. Alys lunged at him, but he bounded away, tail waving.
‘Give!’ she ordered. ‘Leave it! Leave!’
‘What is it, anyway?’ demanded Steenie, crossing himself again.
‘A thumb,’ said Henry grimly. Alys drew a deep breath, and forced herself to stand still and consider matters.
‘It could be a relic of some sort,’ she said, ‘all wrapped up like that, but there was no paper with it to name it, as a relic should have. I don’t — ’ A crunching sound alerted her, and she flung herself at the dog again. ‘Socrates! Give, you dreadful dog, give!’ This time, despite Steenie’s attempt to help, she managed to get the animal by the collar, and prised his narrow, powerful jaws open with difficulty. The fragments of bone and dried flesh which emerged were bonded with saliva; she caught them in the linen binding and pushed the dog away, holding the unpleasant bundle out of his reach.
‘What do we do wi’ it, mistress?’ asked Henry, scratching the back of his head. ‘If it’s a relic it’ll no do to let on the dog got it — ’
‘It’s no relic,’said Steenie scornfully. ‘Hid in a filthy place like that? I say we put it in the bag and drop it down the shaft, mem, and nobody’s to ken how it got there if it’s ever found.’
‘It is a proof of witchcraft,’ said Alys, stuffing the bundled linen back into the bag. Socrates pushed at her hand with his long nose, hoping to get his new toy back, and she tapped his muzzle with her finger. ‘No! No, I think I must show it to Gil at least, though I do not like taking it with me.’ She pulled up her skirt to reach her purse, and after a moment’s thought wound her beads round the damask as some protection, before she stowed it beside Gil’s tablets. ‘Did you find anything in the thatch?’
‘Only the hole where Simmie Wilson pulled out whatever he got,’ said Henry. ‘Mistress, is that the family coming home? There’s a deal o’ ponies coming across the hill yonder.’
‘Your brother stayed behind,’ said Arbella in a faint voice, ‘to see to the coffining and arrange a burial. But Maister Michael here, seeing how weary I was, offered to bring me away.’ She accepted a glass of the omnipresent cordial from Bel, sipped at it, and gave Joanna a smile of infinite sympathy.
‘It went well enough,’ reported Michael, nodding at her words. ‘The assize brought it in as murder, and directed Maister Gil to search out who was the guilty one.’
‘He was there in time, then?’ said Alys. She moved her feet to allow the offended dog to lie down under her backstool, and her purse bumped against her leg.
‘Oh, never doubt it, my dear,’ said Arbella. ‘So all will be well. I’m certain he’ll get that settled in good order. And what brings you up here? Did I see you at the over windhouse the now?’
She has eyes like — like an owl, thought Alys.
‘Davy Fleming’s on the policies,’ burst out Phemie before she could speak, ‘and searching the place for evidence of witchcraft so he says. Cauldhope’s man Simmie found something up at the windhouse, so he said, and she went up for another look at it. Did you find aught, Alys?’
‘We found the hole in the thatch where Simmie got the bundle he had,’ said Alys truthfully, though the object in her purse seemed to burn her shin through kirtle and shift.
‘Fleming?’ said Arbella, her voice suddenly much stronger. ‘I thought he was dying!’
‘So did I,’ said Michael. ‘Mistress Weir, I’m right sorry if he’s up here again making a nuisance of himself — ’
‘He’s barred himself into the office,’ said Phemie, ‘wi’ the great desk across the door, and Jamesie set three of the men to have an eye to the place in case he got out. They’d found — Simmie found — ’ She halted, and looked at Alys.
‘Wax figures,’ said Joanna into the hesitation, and shivered. ‘Jamesie told me. Little mommets, all clothed and stabbed through wi’ thorns. Who would make such things here, Mother? Is it all true, then? Mother, I canny believe it, that one of this household — ’
‘I’ll not believe it,’ said Arbella, and slammed her stick on the floorboards. ‘There’s none in my household would practise such a thing. Fleming has made them himself, to cast suspicion on us!’
Alys preserved her countenance, aware of Michael looking at her.
‘Where is Gil?’ she asked him quietly.
‘He went back to Belstane with Lady Cunningham. I think he expected to find you there, and he wanted a word with Mistress Lithgo.’
‘Aye, where is my good-daughter?’ asked Arbella, catching the name. ‘Phemie, my pet, where is your mother? Not in her stillroom yet, surely?’
‘She’s at Belstane,’ said Phemie, ‘locked up they tell us, seeing she went there to confess to poisoning Thomas.’ She watched with evident satisfaction as Arbella stared at her. The old woman’s mouth fell open, her pale clear skin went an unpleasant blotchy yellow, and it was suddenly obvious that she painted her face.
‘Beatrice?’ she said sharply, making some recovery. ‘Beatrice has confessed to — ’
‘She spoke to me last night,’ said Alys. ‘I do not believe it, madame.’
Arbella studied her narrowly, then said much as Phemie had done, ‘Why no?’
To Alys’s relief, she was spared the need to answer this. Yet again, shouting broke out in the colliery yard below the house. Phemie craned to see down the hill, and sprang to her feet with an exclamation.
‘He’s out! Fleming’s out! He must ha’ slipped by the watch. Where’s he making for?’
Alys jumped up to look, and through the writhing glass saw the running figures, the pursuit, the staggering quarry. He reeled down the hillside between the scatter of huts as though he was drunk, the colliers slithering after him through the grey mud, and suddenly changed direction and dived into the doorway of another low wide building like the upper shaft-house. Two men reached it almost immediately, and Alys waited for them to follow him in and drag him out into the light, but they checked in the doorway as if frozen where they stood. Another reached them, and two more, and all stood staring into the little building in what seemed to be dismay.
‘What has happened?’ Alys said in alarm.
‘He’ll have gone down the shaft,’ said Phemie. ‘That’s the low shaft-house. He’ll ha’ fell in, the state he was in.’
‘Just like his father,’ said Arbella slowly, with a strange emphasis. She bent her head, crossing herself. ‘What an end.’
Alys hurried forward into the dark, half crouched, thinking that this was less of a treat than she had imagined it would be a week ago.
‘He still lives,’ said Arbella ahead of her. ‘Mind how you go, mistress.’
Alys nodded, then realized the movement would not be seen.
‘I am minding,’ she said, stooping lower where the candle lit a low curve in the roof.
The mine stank. She had not expected this. Brought up with stone, she knew the scents of damp rock, of the blood-red, rusty water and strange colourless plants which one found in dark places, but she had not been prepared for the distant smell of human ordure and rotted food. And rats, which scrabbled in the dark. Ahead of her Arbella picked her way up the slope, moving freely and confidently like a fish in water.