‘Why would he do that?’ Gil asked.
The man shrugged. ‘That is its nature. Mary and Michael and Angus protect him, but when the bodach is dwelling in his own house they will find it hard.’
Gil decided to ignore this. Reaching the kirk, aware once more of eyes on his back and cautious movement among the houses, he pushed open the door, more gently than he had done earlier, and stepped in, removing his hat and identifying himself aloud.
The two youngsters were seated with their heads together, side by side on the same flat stone before the altar where Davie Drummond had been kneeling earlier. As the light from the door reached them, Robert Montgomery sprang up.
‘What are you after, Cunningham?’ he demanded, standing warily in front of his companion. At Gil’s knee the dog growled faintly, head down, hackles up, his stance remarkably like Robert’s.
‘A word with your friend here,’ Gil said, making his way to the chancel arch. ‘I’m no threat to him,’ he added directly, ‘as I told him this morning.’ He dropped his hat on the earthen floor and sat down on it; after a moment Robert sat down likewise, saying:
‘I’m surprised they’re not down from Glenbuckie already, wi swords drawn and roaring for Davie’s blood. They’re wild folk here, Cunningham. Sir Duncan’s told me some orra tales.’
‘So did my father,’ said Davie, and bit his lip.
Gil opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and changed his mind. He was not quite ready for that one. Instead he put an arm across his dog, who had also sat down and was leaning against him, and said, ‘Sir William bade me tell you he’ll be here to speak wi you the morn’s morn.’
‘I’ll not be from home,’ said Davie wryly. ‘But I’d be glad if Mistress Alys was present and all.’
‘My wife?’ said Gil, startled. ‘I’ll tell her that.’
‘Maister, were you up Glenbuckie just now?’ Davie went on. ‘What — Are they all hale? Is Caterin still crying out against me?’
‘She is,’ admitted Gil, ‘but the rest of them are hale enough. The lassies seemed sore afflicted by the two deaths, which I suppose is natural. The place was overrun wi neighbours and guests, but I had a word with James Drummond the younger, and a sight of the two corps.’
‘What would that tell you that you hadny heard already?’ demanded Robert. ‘Better, surely, to find whoever set light to the thatch!’
‘It’s all part of the same tale,’ said Davie.
‘The boy Iain’s skull was broken,’ Gil said. ‘Deliberately, I’d say.’
Davie drew a shivering breath, and bent his head into his hands. Robert reached out and touched his wrist, and after a moment he straightened up, turned his hand to grip Robert’s, and said painfully, ‘I feared it. The poor laddie. He was so — he had so much pleasure of my singing, of any music he was hearing, but he was such a burden on his mother, to be fed and kept clean and amused. When she carried him into the yard, all bruised and bloody, I feared it was no accident.’
‘Who broke it for him?’ asked Robert.
‘That I don’t know yet, though I suspect,’ said Gil. ‘And I don’t suppose anyone would notice who was down by the end of the fold, between the dark and the flames and the commotion in the yard.’
Davie shook his head. ‘They were bringing water up from the stackyard that way. Everyone on the clachan was past there at some point in the night.’
‘That’s no good,’ said Robert, ‘a helpless bairn to be struck down like that. Who would do sic a thing?’
‘Young James’s mother was quite clear it was the fairies,’ said Gil. ‘She ordered him not to meddle in their business.’
Robert snorted. ‘That’s one explanation, I suppose.’
‘It would be one the folk of Dalriach would accept,’ said Davie slowly.
‘Aye, but it’s nonsense,’ objected Robert. ‘You’d think we were in a ballad or an old tale, to hear it!’
‘Sooner that than accuse one of their own,’ said Davie, and shivered.
And of course, Gil thought, to some of them you are not one of their own. But who?
‘Who do you think killed the boy?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Davie said firmly. ‘And I’ve no more reason to suspect any than you have, and maybe less. His — no, his mother loved him beyond reason!’
Gil paused a moment, arranging his thoughts.
‘Tell me, Davie.’ The young man turned his face towards him. In the dim light he seemed to brace himself. ‘Had there been any word before now from Dunblane? From Canon Drummond?’
‘From Andrew? None that I ken,’ said Davie. ‘I know the cailleach sent to him, twice so your wife told me, sir, and Robert has let me know now what she sent. But there’s been no answer yet that I’ve heard. Maybe that was what brought him home today.’
‘You’d be the last to know,’ said Robert rather bitterly.
‘No,’ said Gil deliberately, ‘he’s told me he came home in haste because his mother summoned him, this morning in the dawn.’
‘Och, that’s havers!’ said Robert.
‘No,’ said Davie quietly. ‘I’m believing him. It’s what brought myself, a month since.’
‘Is it, now?’ said Gil. Davie’s chin came up, but he said nothing. ‘Were they concerned, up at Dalriach, about having no answer?’
‘I’d not say so. Andrew was never one for sending home every week, even as a boy.’ The voice was light, confident, but not wholly convincing.
‘Let alone coming home for the Lammastide holiday,’ Gil suggested. There was a pregnant pause. ‘Had he come home in other years, before you were lifted away?’
After another pause Davie said, ‘I don’t recall. Is that not strange?’
‘It was thirty year syne,’ Robert protested, looking from one to the other. ‘At least — ’
‘Not for Davie,’ said Gil. ‘How long has it been, Davie?’
Pale in the shadows, Davie shrugged one linen-clad shoulder.
‘Who can say? Time passes differently under the hill. Andrew was aye glad to get away from Dalriach,’ he added. ‘He never felt he had what was due to him there.’ Gil made a questioning noise. ‘Och, with there being two brothers older, he was never hearkened to, for all he was a clerk and could read the Psalter.’
‘That’s how it is,’ muttered Robert, ‘whatever your place in the family.’ Davie broke the clasp of their hands and laid his own rather diffidently on the other young man’s shoulder, and Robert looked sideways and nodded brief acknowledgement.
‘And last month,’ said Gil. Both faces turned to him. ‘When you were set down at the foot of the path over the hill did you see anyone?’
‘I did,’ he answered readily. ‘A poor misshapen wretch from Stronyre township they cry Euan Beag nan Tobar. Wee Euan of the Well,’ he translated for Robert, who nodded again rather impatiently. ‘He spoke to me, gave me my name. It seems he — saw me taken up, all those years since. We talked about my friends Billy Murray and Jaikie Stirling, and he gave me news of Billy, who was born at Stronyre. He’d no knowledge of Jaikie, and I never expected it.’
‘Jaikie Stirling’s dead,’ said Gil, more abruptly than he had intended.
‘Dead? I’m grieved to hear it. When? What came to him?’
‘Two weeks since,’ said Gil. ‘I’m seeking his murderer.’
‘Murdered,’ Davie repeated in a whisper, and crossed himself. ‘And since I came — the poor man. Poor Jaikie.’ He bent his head, murmuring the same prayer for the dead as Rob the chaplain had used in the Bishop’s garden.
‘Stirling?’ said Robert. ‘Is that — ?’ He broke off, and after a moment Gil said:
‘He was secretary to Bishop Brown.’
‘Oh, at Dunkeld,’ said Robert dismissively.
‘He died in Perth.’
Robert crossed himself, muttered a perfunctory prayer, and said with determination, ‘If you’ve naught more to ask us, Cunningham, we should get on and make that loft fit to dwell in. Davie won’t want to leave the kirk, and it’s over a year since we moved Sir Duncan into his house out of here, it’s likely damp and full of cobwebs.’