The Stolen Voice (3 page)

‘Two daughters of James’s and one of Patrick’s,’ Gil elucidated, as much for his own understanding as Alys’s. Murdo nodded. ‘And there are two grandsons, I think.’ Another nod. ‘Quite a household. Now if that was all you wanted, Murdo –’

‘Is it?’ said Alys. She glanced at Gil, and looked back at their visitor. ‘I think Murdo wanted a longer word, not?’

‘
Bha
,’ he agreed, a little reluctantly. There was a pause. ‘It was just,’ he said, and swallowed. The eyelashes swept his cheek as he looked down, then up again, and then he went on hurriedly, ‘Just there is a – there is need of taking care if you are going about the country.’

‘Why?’ asked Gil. ‘Are you warning us? What danger d’you mean?’

The dark gaze slid sideways away from his.

‘There has been a
bodach
seen hereabouts,’ he said. ‘In Glen Buckie, and here by the side of the loch.’

‘A
bodach
?’ said Gil. He had heard the word before. ‘An old man?’

‘Not just an old man,’ said Murdo, again with that reluctance. ‘He is not – he is being –’

‘Is it a spirit of some sort?’ Alys asked. ‘A wicked spirit?’

‘Not wicked,’ prevaricated Murdo. ‘Not friendly, just. That would be it,’ he nodded in satisfaction. ‘Not very friendly at all, at all. So you will take care going about the place? Go nowhere by night, and never by your lone?’

‘Not very friendly,’ Gil repeated. He had met this feeling when trying to talk to other speakers of Ersche. It was like wrestling with fish, or fighting with a featherbed; no sooner was one aspect of the conversation under control than another surged up from nowhere to overwhelm him. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Maister Cunningham,’ said Alys, at her most formal, ‘might we ask Murdo to enter, so we can be seated and hear him in comfort?’

‘I was about to be leaving you,’ said Murdo Dubh hastily, half turning away. ‘No need to be putting you out.’

‘Come in,’ said Gil, recognizing that Alys was right. The young man had all the appearance of an Erscheman with something to impart, but it would have to be coaxed from him.

Like his father Murdo was unwilling to accept a seat, but stood, lean and upright in his swathing of checked wool, looking from one to the other of them as they asked questions. Alys was more successful at getting answers; gradually they pieced together a tale of a small misshapen figure seen at a distance by twilight, where nobody was absent from the township or shieling. Murdo himself had not seen it, but Ailidh nic Seumas of Dalriach and three others together had watched it from the high shieling the same day that Davie Drummond came home. It certainly brought ill luck, Murdo stated simply, for now things were happening at the farm.

‘What sort of things?’ asked Gil resignedly. It had been a long day, and a long ride from Stirling; he was deeply aware of the bed behind him, with its embroidered counterpane and pile of pillows.

Murdo looked down and sideways again, then said slowly, ‘There is all the wee things that happens. The hens got into the garden, the cat was at the cream. Some of them is blaming the
bodach
for that, but they are things that can happen any time. But –’ He hesitated. ‘There was a ladder that broke, before Jamie Beag could climb it. There was a rope gave way, and Davie fell. There was a pitchfork dropped out of nowhere when the barn door was opened, and tore Davie’s shirt from neck to hem. There has been other things the like of those.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Gil.

‘Does it all threaten David Drummond?’ Alys asked. The dark lashes rose like a curtain as Murdo looked at her.

‘Not all,’ he admitted. ‘But many does.’

‘And Ailidh likes her new uncle,’ said Alys.

‘I believe she likes him well,’ agreed Murdo, his face impassive.

‘You’ll be careful, sweetheart,’ said Gil into the darkness.

‘I will,’ said Alys.

Finally, finally, they were alone and curled together in the great bed. Murdo Dubh had eventually left them with promises of horses and an escort for Alys in the morning, and they had made haste to prepare themselves for sleep. But there was too much to talk through first.

‘This David could be the boy returned from wherever he has been, I suppose,’ said Alys thoughtfully, ‘all things are possible under God, but it does seem unlikely.’

‘Quite so,’ agreed Gil. ‘And yet Lady Stewart said he looks like a Drummond. We need to find out who else he might be, and where he could have come from, and who sent him, and if the family have accepted him that won’t be easy.’

‘And who is trying to kill him,’ said Alys. ‘Some of those things Murdo described sound to me like a woman’s actions. I wonder how the sisters-in-law feel about the boy’s return?’

‘No, I don’t like the sound of that.’ Gil clasped her closer. ‘Maybe I should come too.’

‘No, no, that makes it too formal. I think you should pursue these missing songmen. Is it far to Perth from here?’

‘A day’s ride, Sir William said, and another one back again.’

‘Oh!’ she said in dismay. ‘I hadn’t realized – so you’ll be gone for several days.’

‘That’s why I wish you’d stayed in Glasgow. Will you mind being left here?’

‘You have your duty to see to.’ She clung to him. ‘Tell me again what my lord said.’

Gil was silent for a moment, calling up the scene. Blacader, blue-jowled and expensively clad, had been seated at one end of a carpeted table, his rat-faced secretary William Dunbar making notes at the other end while several clerks shuffled papers for the Archbishop to sign, but he had swung away from this scene of industry when Gil entered the chamber.

‘Ah, Gilbert,’ he said. Maister Dunbar had risen to fetch a sealed packet from a rack of shelves, and brought it to his master’s hand. ‘Aye, thank you, William, I mind it. What d’ye ken of Perthshire, Gilbert? No a lot? Well, now’s your chance to learn more.’ He drew out his tablets, and peered at one leaf. ‘There’s singers disappearing all across the shire, which is bad enough and you need to take a look at it for me. But now Jimmy Chisholm’s got a wheen trouble at Dunblane wi a singer reappearing, saying he’s been in Elfhame these forty year.’ He laughed sourly. ‘Singers is aye a trouble, whatever they’re doing, but that’s a new excuse. I want you to visit Will Stewart at Balquhidder and talk to the fellow.’

‘Reappearing?’ Gil questioned, disbelieving. ‘From Elfhame?’

‘Maister Secretary will gie you the story.’ Blacader waved a hand. ‘Jimmy Chisholm’s Chapter couldny agree, so if you can find me a sound reason why this lad shouldny go back to his place at Dunblane, I’ll be pleased and so will he. This ought to cover you to begin wi,’ he thrust the sealed package at Gil, ‘and you’ll report all to me. William! Take him off and gie him the tale, will you?’

‘He never directed you,’ said Alys now, ‘to find the missing singers, only to talk to this one.’

‘I’ve to look at the matter,’ Gil said. ‘Dunbar mentioned them too, though not this matter of the Bishop of Dunkeld’s secretary. It was Sir William gave me that part of the story.’ He rubbed his cheek against her hair. ‘But I think I’ll begin in Dunblane, where the two trails seem to cross.’

‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘And it’s closer.’

‘It’s closer,’ he agreed.

‘You must know this country well,’ said Alys. She relaxed in the saddle, gazing out over the expanse of loch and hills. ‘It seems very wild to me.’

‘I was growing up here,’ said Murdo Dubh.

They had climbed up the south wall of the long glen, beside a tumbling river, and paused at the mouth of another, higher valley to breathe their small shaggy ponies. Even Socrates seemed glad of the halt. Below them Alys could see the rooftops of Stronvar and its outbuildings on the shores of the loch, half a mile to the west, and another group of houses to the east which Murdo said was Gartnafueran.

‘That is where Sir William’s brother Andrew Stewart dwells,’ he explained.

‘Gartnafueran,’ repeated Alys’s groom Steenie. ‘They were telling me last night in the stables, they’ve seen this Bawcan or
bodach
or whatever they cry it there and all.’

‘At Gartnafueran?’ said Murdo, turning to look at him. ‘When? Who was saying that?’

‘One of the men. I never catched his name. I think by what he said it was just a day or two since.’ Steenie laughed. ‘Seems a lassie saw this wee dark shape in the field across the river in the gloaming. I said it sounded more like a bairn going home late for his supper, and he wasny best pleased.’

‘No, he would not be,’ said Murdo. He gathered up the reins of his own steed and the extra beast with the two barrels loaded on its back, a contribution from Lady Stewart for the forthcoming harvest celebration. ‘Will you ride on, mistress?’

They rode on, into a narrow valley between steep, lumpy green slopes, at whose tops were small dots which Alys took to be boulders, until some moved, there was a distant bleating, and she realized that they were sheep and the hills were higher than she had first thought.

‘You’d think these mountains was going to fall on you,’ said Steenie uneasily.

‘That is not often happening,’ said Murdo in a reassuring tone. Alys looked at him, recognized a joke, and thought that, though these people were different in build and habit from the taciturn Bretons of her childhood, they had a lot in common.

‘They are so tall,’ she said. ‘Have you climbed all the way to the top of them? One might almost be able to reach up and touch Heaven from there.’

‘These are not so high,’ said Murdo. ‘That one is Buachaille Breige, which is the Shepherd, and behind him is Beinn an’t Sidhean. And on that side it is Clach Mhor which is just meaning –’

‘The Big Stone!’ said Alys in triumph. He nodded, with that brilliant smile again.

‘The Big Rock, maybe. There is higher ones across Loch Voil. But it is a strange thing, when you are on the top of them it is still as far up to Heaven as when you are standing by the side of the loch, though sometimes there is clouds below you.’

‘Why would you want to do that?’ asked Steenie. ‘Stand on the top, I mean. The whole thing might fall down, and you wi it.’

Murdo shrugged. ‘The hunting is good,’ he said.

They followed the narrow glen, beside the same tumbling river, with oak woods on either hand and wild flowers growing down the riverbanks. Socrates ranged round them, checking the scents of the place. Overhead the sky was blue, with fluffy clouds sailing in it, and a small wind kept the insects at bay. Alys thought of one of the poems in Gil’s commonplace-book.
Dayseyes in the dales, notes swete of nightingales, each fowl song singeth
. If Gil had been with her she would never have been happier. She wondered how far he had got.

‘Did Tam say him and the maister was going back to Dunblane?’ asked Steenie. ‘What are they doing there, mem? He’d as well ha stopped there on the way up from Stirling.’

‘The maister needs to talk to someone,’ said Alys. And so do I, she thought. What do I say to these people? What must I find out? That depends on what there is to find out, I suppose.

About them, the signs were growing that this was not the green desert it appeared at first sight. Some of the trees were coppiced, a dry stone wall scrambled up the hillside, a small burn gurgling down to the river spread out over a well-maintained ford where the track crossed it. Someone was about; she heard a snatch of singing on the light wind. Then abruptly the glen widened into a broad green hollow, and Murdo halted his pony.

‘Glen Buckie,’ he said, gesturing widely.

‘Good land,’ said Steenie approvingly. ‘If we were in Lanarkshire I’d almost say you were on lime here,’ he added, ‘it’s that green.’

‘Lime?’ said Murdo. ‘I would not be knowing.’

Alys looked about her. The hay crop on the flat ground near the river had been cut and turned; nearer them stooks of barley-straw marched up a slope in the sunshine. Across the river more tiny white dots bleated on the steep hillside.

‘Is that the – the
sidhean
?’ she asked, pointing to a rocky knoll bristling with tall trees, the hay crop washing its margins in a green-gold tide.

Murdo crossed himself and said hastily, ‘Wiser not to be naming it, mistress, here in the open. That is Tom an Eisg, just. The – the place you named is being a lot bigger, and it is away far up the glen, beyond Dalriach, beyond the low shielings.’

‘So when the boy left home,’ said Alys, looking about her, ‘he went that way, up the glen and not down it.’ Murdo nodded. ‘I had thought of him coming down past Stronvar and the kirk, but I see that was wrong.’

‘By far shorter the road he was taking,’ said Murdo. ‘Over the high pass into Strathyre and down the burn at the other side. It would be a scramble, but a fit laddie would have no trouble. He has told us he had got that far before he was lifted away.’

‘Told you? You mean he has spoken of it? Did he describe what happened to him?’ Alys asked, trying to conceal her surprise.

‘Only that much. He saw nothing when he was lifted up, it seems.’

‘And where was he to meet his friend?’

Murdo shrugged. ‘That he never said exactly. Somewhere on the Strathyre side of the hills, I have no doubt. If my father ever heard it in his time, he has not told me.’

‘Your father says he has recognized the young man,’ said Alys carefully. Murdo looked at her, the dark lashes shading his eyes. ‘Is that right, do you think?’

‘Who am I to say?’ said Murdo, in faint surprise. ‘Davie vanished away long before I was born. The family has recognized him, and he is dwelling with the old woman in Tigh-an-Teine, and that will do for me.’

‘Tigh-an-Teine,’ Alys repeated. ‘The house of – of fire?’

He nodded awkwardly. ‘It’s the name they give the chief house of the clachan. Just a name, it is.’

‘But is the fire particular in any way?’

‘No, no. But a woman from further up the glen, one with the two sights, was making a great outcry one time, and saying that she had seen flames leaping from the thatch. Before I was born, too, that was,’ said Murdo dismissively, ‘and it has never burned yet.’

‘And David dwells there with the old lady, and she is certain he is her son.’

‘Indeed, yes.’

‘It’s a daft tale,’ said Steenie roundly. ‘Who ever heard the like, except in the ballads or the old tales? Folk doesny get carried away wi the fairies nowadays.’

‘What do you think, Murdo?’ asked Alys.

‘I think your man should not be mentioning those people aloud,’ said Murdo. He gathered up his reins. ‘It will be another mile or so to Dalriach, past Ballimore. Will you ride on, mistress, and meet the Dalriach folk?’ He smiled, those dark lashes sweeping his cheekbones. ‘They will be ready for us by now. The hills has eyes, we have been counted already.’

‘I was never at Glasgow myself,’ said Mistress Drummond, ‘but my son Andrew was there in the year of eighty-seven.’

Whatever Alys had expected, it was not quite this.

The farm at Dalriach was clearly prosperous, despite the bad luck Murdo Dubh and his father had detailed. The main steading, beside the track which separated infield and outfield, contained three substantial longhouses, built of partly dressed field stones, ranged round a cobbled yard. The cattle-fold at the byre end of one of them stood empty at this hour of the day, and hens crooned to one another among mysterious pieces of farm gear. Gardens, a barn, a stackyard, several smaller cottages down the slope nearer the river, made it almost a village.

A dozen people, men and young women, were visible shearing the barley at the top of the outfield as they approached the farm. Their work-song floated on the breeze, one voice with a line, the other voices with a rhythmic echo, keeping the swing of the sickles. The song never faltered, but the shearers paused, one by one, to straighten up and stare at the approaching riders. An old woman working with a hoe in one of the small kale-yards called to Murdo in cheerful Ersche, and he waved in answer.

They were met in front of the biggest of the houses by two lean black dogs who glared at Socrates, and a sturdy young man of twenty or so, with fair skin burned pink by the sun and a shock of light frizzy hair above a high forehead. Alys thought at first this was the returned singer, but Murdo had addressed him as James and introduced her in Ersche; she had caught Blacader’s name and title and then Gil’s, despite the strange twist the language gave them. James had ordered the dogs off in Ersche, then saluted her gravely in good Scots with a heavy Highland accent, and led her within to meet his grandmother, before excusing himself to return to the field. The harvest would not wait.

Now she was seated in the shadowed interior of the house, answering the inevitable civil inquisition about her background, origins and status and accepting oatcakes and buttermilk from one of the granddaughters, a plain girl of about twelve with a strong resemblance to the young man who had met them. Socrates lay at her feet; Murdo Dubh had vanished, taking Steenie with him. A surprising number of people had passed the doorway, peering casually through it with a greeting in Ersche for the old woman or the girl. Hens wandered in and out, a loom clacked somewhere, and from time to time, echoing across the yard, there was a piercing scream like a peacock’s. Through the open door Alys could see a woman spinning on a great wheel slung on the side of one of the other houses, padding back and forward on bare feet, her slender ankles and calves visible below her short checked skirts. She was singing like the reapers; there seemed to be music everywhere. A long cradle near her rocked erratically and seemed to be the source of the screams.

‘But you came there from France, mistress?’ went on Mistress Drummond. ‘There’s a thing, now. And what brought you into Scotland?’

‘My father is a master-mason,’ she answered. ‘He is building for Archbishop Blacader at the Cathedral.’

‘That would explain it,’ said the old woman, nodding. She wore a dark red gown of ancient cut, laced over a checked kirtle which was probably her everyday dress about the place, and the linen on her head and neck was crisp. She herself was bent and shrunken, so that the wide wool skirts had to be kilted up over a man’s worn leather belt; her face was a veil of wrinkles, her hands crabbed, but her voice was sweet and clear. ‘And what is Robert Blacader building?’ she asked, with interest.

Alys opened her mouth to answer, and there was another of those peacock screams. Mistress Drummond peered round. ‘Agnes,
mo chridh
, go and see what ails Iain, will you?’ The girl slipped out, and her grandmother turned her smile at Alys, awaiting her answer as if nothing had happened.

This was difficult, she thought, explaining the Fergus Aisle. ‘And yourself, Mistress Drummond,’ she said, finally turning the questioning. ‘Are you from these parts?’

‘Oh aye, indeed. A MacLaren of Auchtoo, I am. My father was the chief man of this country, and my brother after him, until the king put his kinsman William Stewart into Balquhidder as his bailie.’

‘Kings do what they must,’ said Alys.

‘Aye,’ said Mistress Drummond darkly. ‘But I wedded James Drummond,’ she added, ‘and St Angus blessed the marriage, and we dwell here in Glen Buckie now.’

‘Does your man live?’ Alys asked.

‘James?’ she said, suddenly vague. ‘And we have four sons,’ she added, ‘and also a daughter, and all well and doing well.’

‘My!’ said Alys in admiration, comparing this with what the elder Murdo had told them last night and finding it incompatible. ‘Are they all wedded?’

‘Not all,’ the old woman said in that musical voice. ‘For Andrew is a Canon at Dunblane, and my son David is by far too young to be wed.’

Alys caught her breath, trying to work out how to answer that, but was forestalled. There was a shrill babble of Ersche in the yard; Socrates raised his head to stare, and the spinner and another woman came in at the open door, scolding like rival blackbirds and followed by the eerie peacock wail.

‘Caterin! Mòr!’ said Mistress Drummond, and the argument broke off. ‘Not before our guest, lassies,’ she said, though neither woman was young. Alys rose and curtsied. ‘This is my good-daughters, the wife of Patrick and the wife of James.’

‘Indeed I am pleased to meet you both,’ said Alys. ‘Murdo Dubh MacGregor was telling me as we rode up Glen Buckie, that you make the best cloth in Perthshire for colour and web.’

The two looked sideways at one another in the dim light, and curtsied simultaneously in acknowledgement of this, setting their bare feet as precisely as any lady at court.

‘It is my good-sister’s weaving that does it,’ said the spinner, a small woman, her body still curved and sweet under her checked kirtle, her face an extraordinary little triangle within the folds of her linen headdress. ‘She can weave like no other in Balquhidder.’

‘Och, no, Caterin, it will be the colours you put in the thread,’ said the taller woman. Another scream resounded from the other side of the yard, and Caterin jerked like a child’s toy.

‘He’s wanting his uncle,’ she said to her mother-in-law, still speaking Scots. ‘You know how Davie can soothe him. I wished Agnes to go up the field and fetch him, and
she
will not be permitting it –’ She tossed her head at the weaver.

‘Agnes has enough to do –’

‘But Agnes was about her duties under my roof,’ said the old woman. Alys watched, fascinated by the contradictions in the scene. ‘Will you go, Mòr, and fetch the boy in?’