‘And his throat cut as well,’ said Alys.
‘Someone wanted to be certain,’ said Henry.
‘No further wounds on the scalp. He’s got all his front teeth, though they’re loose in the jaw now,’ Gil noted in passing, and Alys wrote this down. ‘And his throat has been cut.’ He eased at the displaced jaw, to scrutinize the leathery recesses under it. ‘On the left side, from under the ear to the windpipe. No sign of maggots or flies.’
‘On the left only?’ said Alys, looking up.
‘From in front, maybe,’ suggested Henry doubtfully.
‘You don’t cut a man’s throat from the front,’ said Gil. ‘Not unless you want to be drenched in blood.’
‘Like a pig-killing,’ agreed Alys, nodding. ‘So it would have been a right-handed man who killed him, standing behind him?’
‘I’d say so, and the blow to the head was right-handed as well.’ Gil peered further into the hollow under the jaw, and identified something fibrous wedged in a fold of the skin. ‘What’s this?’ He poked with one finger, but could get no purchase on the strand. ‘Alys, have you a hook or a key or something about you?’
Searching in her purse in her turn, she handed him a buttonhook. Even with this it took him some time to get a purchase on what he had seen, so embedded in the flesh was it, but finally it lodged in the curve of the little implement and he was able to coax it out.
‘A cord,’ said Alys.
‘A cord,’ Gil agreed, returning the buttonhook. He took the free end in his fingers, and it came away in his grasp. ‘It’s near rotted to dust, but I think this may be what’s killed him. He’s been throttled. Here at the back of his neck where the flesh is so shrunk you can’t see any trace of it, I suppose the cord must have crumbled away, but under his jaw it had sunk so deep it was protected from the bog-waters. If his throat was slit after he was dead, the blood would drain more slowly.’
‘They were really makin’ certain,’ said Henry, much impressed. ‘That’s three ways they slain him — cracked him on the head, throttled him wi’ a rope, and slit his throat,’ he counted off on his fingers. ‘I’d no go so far to put down a horse, save he was a right brute.’
‘But when?’ Gil wondered. ‘When has this happened? Is there any tale of someone going missing on the moor?’
‘No that I mind,’ said Henry, ‘nor that I ever heard tell. You’d maybe want to ask some of the old folk,’ he added, ‘they’ve little enough to do but talk over what’s past.’
‘No need of that, surely,’ expostulated Fleming almost in Gil’s ear, and he realized that the man had ceased his prayers and had been drawing closer for some time, exclaiming indignantly at what was being said. ‘It’s the man Murray, for certain, and everything you’re saying makes it clearer what the witch has been at! Draining his blood after he was dead, and the like, Our Lady protect us from such wickedness. And what did she plan wi’ his blood, Maister Cunningham, tell me that!’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Gil politely. ‘I’ve not studied witchcraft, Sir David. It seems you have.’
‘It isny Thomas Murray, Sir David,’ said Wat Paton beyond the priest, ‘Jamesie Meikle was quite clear on it.’
‘I have to protect my flock, maister,’ protested Fleming, ignoring this. Across the stable-yard there was a disturbance, as the crowd outside the yett parted reluctantly to allow someone through. Hooves clopped on the cobbles. ‘I’ve never studied it close, I only ken what anyone kens!’
‘Aye, I’ve heard a few tales about that,’ said Henry, with humour.
‘Gil,’ said Alys, putting a hand on his sleeve. ‘Is that not Michael Douglas at the yett?’
Just inside the iron-bound leaves a slight young man was dismounting from a tired horse, a groom in blue-grey livery already afoot to take his reins. The newcomer wore the narrow blue belted gown of a student of the University of Glasgow, and untrimmed mouse-coloured hair stuck out below his scholar’s cap. Fleming hurried forward with more exclamations, brushing the peat-cutters aside and reaching his master’s youngest son just before the Belstane steward, to bow and flourish his felt hat, babbling greetings. Michael Douglas stared at him with some surprise, and as Gil joined the group the plump priest waved imperiously at the steward.
‘And here’s Alan Forrest to make you welcome, Maister Michael. Alan, bring Maister Douglas a stoup of ale, can you no see he’s thirsty?’
‘Alan can manage his duties without your advice, Sir David,’ Gil observed, as the maidservant behind the steward came forward with a tray with jug and beakers. ‘Good day to you, Michael.’
‘Good day to you, Maister Gil,’ said Michael warily in his deep voice. He accepted the ale the steward poured him with gratitude. ‘I’d no notion you were here. Madam your mother’s no ill?’ he added anxiously. ‘Or — or your sisters?’
‘No, no, Lady Egidia is well, Maister Michael,’ Fleming assured him, ‘and all the young ladies and all, by what Maister Cunningham tells me!’
‘It’s a wedding-visit,’ explained Gil, deliberately obtuse.
‘But what’s brought you out from Glasgow, Maister Michael?’ Fleming rushed on. ‘I hope it’s no bad news from Sir James?’
‘He sent Attie here to me,’ said Michael, nodding at the groom who was intent on his own beaker, ‘bade me ride out to the house about — about something, and I thought I’d call here on the way. Pay my respects to my godmother,’ he expanded. ‘And, well, anyone else that was here. Mistress Mason,’ he added, and bent the knee to Alys as she came to Gil’s side. ‘You’re looking well. Your good health.’ He raised the beaker and drank.
‘Tib’s at the convent in Haddington, Michael,’ Alys said. Ale splashed down the front of the blue gown. ‘As a guest of Sister Dorothea,’ she added hastily.
‘But you could make yourself very useful here,’ said Gil, ‘if you can spare the time.’
Michael swallowed, handed the beaker back to the maidservant, and patted drops from his chest and shoulders.
‘I don’t know that I can,’ he said ungraciously, wiping his chin. ‘I’ve only a few days’ leave, and I need to see to this matter of the old man’s. What’s to do, anyway? Is that no half the men from Thorn hiding by the cart-shed?’
‘It’s good of you to call by, godson,’ said Lady Egidia, with faint malice, ‘to brighten an old woman’s day.’
‘What old woman would that be, Mother?’ asked Gil politely, pouring wine in the little glasses set in a sparkling row on the plate-cupboard.
Her mouth twitched, but she went on: ‘And what brings you out here away from your studies? I hope you’ve permission to be out of the college.’
‘Oh, aye.’ Michael felt at the breast of his gown. ‘I’d a letter from my father, that when I showed it to the Principal he agreed I must have leave. I’ve no notion what’s worrying him, but he writes that he canny leave the court, and Jock Douglas is away at Edinburgh, and my brothers both about other business, and he’s concerned about that fool Fleming and something up at the coal-heugh.’
‘The coal-heugh again,’ said Alys, accepting wine in her turn from Gil. ‘Is that the same one where a man called Thomas Murray dwells, Michael?’
‘Aye, it is,’ he said, startled, ‘and it’s the man Murray my father wants me to speak to. It seems the winter fee’s long overdue, and he’s had a daft word from David Fleming all about witches or some such, and I’ve to sort it out.’
‘Witches,’ repeated Alys. ‘His mind seems to run on witches.’
‘Of course, the Pow Burn crosses your ground,’ said Gil, sitting down beside Alys, across the hall hearth from his mother. ‘The coal-heugh is your father’s then?’
‘Well, it’s on our land, we have the mineral rights. He gets a good fee for it.’
‘What is this about?’ demanded his mother. ‘I’d a long tale from Alan and from Nan the now about you cutting up this corp in our cart-shed, Gil — ’
‘I did no such thing!’ said Gil indignantly.
‘We simply examined the body, madame,’ Alys assured Lady Egidia, ‘to see if we could tell how he died, and how long ago it was. We cut nothing open. It would be interesting to do that,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I wish Holy Kirk was not so set against it.’