‘Right,’ said Sir William. He had halted at the chancel arch, his escort ranged on either side of him, facing Davie and his bodyguard. Nobody was openly hostile; everyone was alert; even in this light Davie was visibly trembling. Men seiden, I loked as a wilde steer, Gil thought. ‘Now,’ the Bailie continued, ‘I’ve spoke wi those that were present at the time, and I’ve heard what the woman that accuses you had to say.’ He did not sound as though he had enjoyed it. ‘And I’ve spoke wi your man Steenie, Maister Cunningham,’ he added formally, ‘and heard his tale and all. So now I’ll hear yours, Davie Drummond.’
‘I have no tale to tell,’ said Davie, spreading his hands. ‘I was asleep within the house, and woken by shouting of Fire! By the time I had my shirt on and tried to waken the old woman, the roof was well alight. She rose in her shift, and would dress herself, and though — though I tried to help her she — she fell down, and could not rise up again. Murdo Dubh MacGregor came into the house to help me lift her and we carried her,’ he looked down for a moment, his voice cracking, ‘we carried her out and laid her down across the yard, and after a wee while she died. And then I was helping to carry water and put the fire out, only we had no success and the Tigh-an-Teine is burned.’
‘Is that in accord wi what you saw, madam?’ Sir William turned to Alys, still very formal. She nodded, and he faced Davie again. ‘Aye, and the man Steenie says he heard you within when he hammered on the door and shouted Fire. It seems like a piece of foolishness to me,’ he stated bluntly. ‘If the thatch was lit from outside, and you were inside, it doesny seem to me you could ha set the fire.’
‘Then who did?’ demanded Andrew Drummond from Sir William’s other side. ‘Someone set the fire, and brought about my mother’s death. Who was it?’
‘Steenie never saw who it was,’ said Sir William. ‘Nor nobody else, so far as I can jalouse.’
Alys stirred beside Gil, but said nothing. He looked down at her again and saw her biting her lip anxiously.
‘I’ll agree it wasny David,’ persisted Andrew, ‘but it must ha been someone.’
The men standing in front of Davie Drummond were looking sideways at one another, in a kind of wordless communion. Finally one of them said quietly, ‘It was maybe Those Ones set the fire. There has been bad luck enough at Dalriach, so they are saying. Maybe this will be part of it.’
Sir William produced an incoherent gobbling sound, like a blackcock in spring, and finally burst out with, ‘Havers, man, how would the fairy-folk do that? I’ve never heard such nonsense!’
‘They would not be using flint and steel,’ observed one of the Stronvar men, ‘how could they set a fire without flint and steel?’
‘Maybe Sir William would not be talking of them so loud,’ said another of the Kirkton men in diffident tones, ‘even here in St Angus’ own place.’
Sir William growled, and Andrew Drummond said, ‘So we’ve still to seek for whoever set the fire. And what about this matter of the boy Iain? Patrick tells me you sang to him, Davie. Why does his mother think you killed him?’
This was not the way Gil would have wished to handle the matter. This confrontation in the shadowy kirk seemed likely to elicit nothing they had not heard already.
‘She said I killed them both,’ said Davie, his voice suddenly thin and lost. ‘She blamed me for all of it, for the fire and all that followed, and I never — ’
‘She said more than that,’ said Sir William. ‘She told me you had moved the bairn into the track of the beasts as they left the fold, so he would be trod to death.’
Davie looked down and shook his head.
‘Likely he crawled into the gateway, poor laddie,’ offered one of the Kirkton men. ‘I was hearing he could crawl a bittie, like maybe a bairn of one year old.’
‘No,’ said Gil. ‘It wasn’t the beasts killed the bairn.’ Sir William turned to glower at him. ‘I saw his body yestreen. His skull was broken, by a blow to the back of the head with a stone, which we found. And he’d been set down in the gateway of the fold, on his back, by someone going barefoot.’
There was a pause, in which several people’s eyes travelled to Davie’s bare feet, planted firmly on the tomb slab before the altar.
‘No,’ said Alys suddenly. ‘Davie had not left the yard when the beasts were let out of the fold. I’ll swear to it.’
‘Will you, madam?’ Sir William swung round to look at her closely. She nodded, and he turned back to Davie.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘All we need now is to know whether your good-sister, or whatever she is to you, will persist in accusing you of arson, for I see no purpose in charging you with the bairn’s death. Far too little to go on, we have — ’
‘Sir William!’ It was Murdo the steward, at the door of the kirk. Sir William turned to glare at the man. ‘Sir William, there is folk coming over the causeway. I am thinking it is a party from Glenbuckie, maybe the young folk all in a body.’
‘From Glenbuckie?’ said the Bailie in surprise, and a faint echo at his side seemed to be Andrew Drummond saying the same thing. ‘I’d best come out into the daylight, I suppose.’
Chapter Twelve
It was indeed the young people from Glenbuckie, and it seemed to be a formal deputation. Jamie Beag at their head, dressed once again in the elaborately folded plaid, the yellow-dyed shirt and velvet bonnet he had worn the previous day to greet the mourners, bowed deeply to Sir William, and behind him his sisters and cousin curtsied and stood silent, faces hidden. Jamie cast one quick glance at the door of the kirk, his colour rising, and said in Scots:
‘I have a word for Sir William from me and my uncle, as the tenants of Dalriach.’
‘Have you now?’ said Sir William, glowering at him under his eyebrows. ‘And what might that be? Do I need to hear it now, or can I get on wi this matter of your uncle Davie or whoever he is?’
‘It concerns D — Davie,’ said Jamie, very upright, quite expressionless. At the hesitation Ailidh turned her head to look at him, but did not speak. Why is he so embarrassed? Gil wondered.
‘Go on, man,’ said the Bailie.
‘We have been talking it through, all the matter of the fire and the death of my grandmother and the death of Iain mac Padraig,’ Jamie said, still without expression, ‘and we are concluding that it was the Good Folk that caused all of it.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Sir William.
Jamie nodded, but Andrew said, ‘I’ve decided no such thing, nephew, and you know that!’
‘It was us on the farm that decided it this morning,’ said Jamie steadily. ‘So you will see there is no need for Sir William to be concerning himself with it at all.’
‘Right,’ said Sir William. ‘So you tell me it was nobody set the fire, and nobody caused the bairn’s death — ’
‘Excepting the Good Folk,’ agreed Jamie.
‘No such thing!’ said Andrew again, but Ailidh drew her plaid away from her face and said quietly, speaking to him direct:
‘My uncle’s wife is agreed to that, in particular.’
‘Caterin?’ said Andrew, arrested. ‘She agrees?’
‘She does,’ said Ailidh.
The two younger girls nodded silently. One of them was Caterin’s daughter, Gil recalled. He looked from one fair-skinned Drummond face to another, and then down at Alys in dismay. Her hand tightened in his, and she nodded, as silent as the Drummond girls; she also had recognized the nature of the bargain which had been struck. So had Sir William, it appeared, and what astonished Gil was that he seemed to accept the matter. The woman will get away with it, he thought, only so that Davie can go free. Is that justice? And who set the fire in any case?
‘Well,’ said Sir William. ‘In that case, you might as well ha your kinsman out of the kirk here. But afore he goes, I want the truth from him.’