‘This is all at second-hand,’ Gil said apologetically, ‘and if you’d sooner go over to the Kirkton and hear it from David, I can ride on alone.’
‘No, no, I’ll trust you for a messenger,’ said Sir William. ‘This is no good, maister. Arson and murder are the Crown’s business, and I’ll not ha folk accused of them on my land and sit by on my backside watching the play. I’m right sorry to hear of old Bessie Drummond’s death, Andrew, she’s been a good tenant and a good woman.’ Andrew bowed over his saddle-bow and crossed himself at this. ‘And this second death — and the laddie accused of it — I canny tell what to think. Maybe when we find your wife, maister, we’ll get a clearer tale.’
‘If Alys observed it,’ said Gil, ‘we will.’
He was still anxious for Alys, though the cord which had drawn him here so relentlessly seemed to have slackened, but he was also aware that he should make the most of the chance which had thrown Drummond into his hands, and had made certain he rode beside the man as the party moved off.
‘I’m sorry for this new loss,’ he went on now. ‘It must ha been a great shock to you when David gave you the word.’
‘No,’ said Drummond, ‘for I kent it already.’
The man was by far less fey than he had been at that first meeting in his own garden, but this remark was startling. Then, with sudden insight, Gil said, ‘Was it a dream fetched you here? Or a — a feeling that — ’
‘Aye.’ Drummond nudged his horse round a boulder. ‘I dreamed the dead summoned me. She stood at my bedside in this day’s dawn, in her good red gown, and the brat Iain at her side, and bid me come home to Dalriach and untangle matters.’
‘Did she so?’ Gil said without inflection. Drummond shot him a wary look. ‘What is there to untangle? This business of your brother reappeared?’
‘Aye, likely.’
‘You don’t accept that fellow in the kirk as your brother, do you?’
‘David,’ said Andrew Drummond, reining in to look at Gil, ‘was three year younger than me. He’s a — if he lives,’ he corrected himself, ‘he’s a man grown, no a laddie wi an alto voice.’
The man behind them pushed his horse past, and Gil checked his own beast as it threatened to kick.
‘You don’t believe he was lifted away by the fairies, then?’
‘You’re a man of learning,’ Drummond stated harshly. ‘Do you?’
‘So what did happen to him?’
‘A better question is, Who’s that yonder in St Angus’ Kirk? I’d accept him as kin, now I’ve set my een on him,’ admitted Drummond, spurring his horse on, ‘but he’s no my brother Davie.’
‘If he’s not your brother, who might he be?’ Gil asked levelly.
‘I’ve never a notion,’ said the other man. ‘Unless my father had bastards we were not knowing of, you understand, and my mother never gave him the opportunity for that.’
‘I’m told he knows the glen and the farm as if he was born there.’
‘That can be taught,’ said Drummond grimly.
‘And the songs your father made? How would he learn those?’
This got a frowning look. ‘Do you say so? That’s harder to guess, but I suppose he could be taught those as well.’
‘But what benefit is there?’ Gil asked. ‘Suppose that laddie has been sent by someone who taught him that way, what would they gain by it?’
‘That’s what’s eating at me!’ burst out Drummond. One or two of the group ahead of them turned at his words. ‘Why is he here? There’s naught to gain but the tenancy o the land, that the cailleach still held, and David had — has little claim on that, as the youngest. It depends on Sir William, I suppose, but most like it will go to Jamie Beag as tenant in chief now, seeing his father is dead that was the oldest of us, and likely Patrick as occupier.’
‘Did Mistress Drummond have any savings?’ Gil asked. ‘Any valuables to leave?’
Drummond snorted.
‘Why do you think I went for the kirk?’ he said. ‘We’re over the Highland line here, maister. Folk eat well enough, in a good year, and dress well enough in their own web and spinning, but goods and furnishings costs siller, and siller’s gey scarce in this country, scarcer than elsewhere in Scotland.’
‘What, barely forty mile from Perth?’
‘It could as well be four hundred. My mother would have little enough to leave. Her gowns to her daughter and good-daughters, likely, her linen to the granddaughters, maybe her spindle and the beams of her own loom, my grandsire’s St James badge to one of us — ’
‘St James? If your grandsire went so far as Spain could the laddie be his get?’
‘No,’ said Drummond briefly, then expanded, ‘We all take our hair, that marks us as Drummonds of Dalriach, from my grandam that was an Englishwoman. My grandsire looked like any other fellow in Balquhidder. I mind him well enough.’
Alys had said that, Gil recalled.
‘What did happen to David, thirty year ago?’ he asked a second time. Drummond’s horse stumbled, pecked, nearly dislodged him, and he spent the length of a Paternoster steadying the beast and settling himself in the saddle again. Finally he looked at Gil.
‘How would I ken better than those that were here?’ he retorted. ‘I was at Dunblane. All I kent was that he never turned up when he was expected.’
‘Did you miss him?’
‘No at the time,’ said Drummond oddly.
‘But later you did?’
‘Aye.’ Drummond looked at the rest of the party, which was some way in front of them, and urged his horse forward. ‘We will be left behind.’
They rode on in silence for a short space; then Gil said, ‘When you were in Perth two weeks since, you spoke with James Stirling.’
Drummond turned to stare at him again.
‘I did,’ he agreed.
‘What was it you learned from him?’
Another silence.
‘I canny be telling you,’ said Drummond at length. ‘It was confession.’
The priest’s escape clause, thought Gil, and I can hardly press him on it.
‘That’s unfortunate,’ he said. ‘Have you heard the man is dead?’
Drummond’s head came round sharply at that. ‘Dead? Last I heard they were asking at Chapter had anyone word o him. Georgie Brown seemed to think he’d gone off somewhere. What’s come to him?’
So he took that much in at Chapter, thought Gil.
‘It looks very much as if you were the last to speak wi him,’ he said carefully.
‘I was? He was hale when I left him.’
‘And when was that? How much can you tell me?’
Drummond halted his steed and stared up through the trees at the rest of the group nearing the skyline; his face was shadowed under his straw hat.
‘I met him by chance,’ he said, ‘the last day I was in Perth. To begin, he was offering sympathy for the death — the death of my friend — ’ Gil made an understanding noise. ‘And then he was talking of another matter, and then he asked if I would hear his confession.’
‘But when did you leave him? Where was he?’
Drummond glanced sideways, and pursed his lips.
‘Not as late as seven of the clock,’ he said at length. ‘We had walked and talked on the open ground by the Blackfriars’ convent, maybe you know it if you’ve been in Perth, and I left him there. I had an errand to see to in the suburb near the tanyards.’
‘Was that with William Doig?’
‘Doig?’ repeated Drummond sharply. ‘No, not — I had a servant to dismiss, that was all. Nothing to do wi Doig.’
‘Did you see Stirling again? What did you do after your errand by the tanyards?’
‘I did not,’ said Drummond firmly. ‘I went on into the town to my supper. I returned to the Blackfriars just as they came from Compline.’
‘Where did you eat your supper?’
‘In the town. But tell me what came to him, man? How can he be dead, and so soon after I saw him hale?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ said Gil grimly. ‘The more you can tell me, maister, the sooner I’ll find his killer.’
‘His killer?’ repeated Drummond. ‘I took it he’d fallen ill, or — or — Who can have killed him? Why would — ’ He broke off, and crossed himself. ‘Christ be praised that we — ’ He stopped again, and shook his head.