Free The Rough Collier by Pat McIntosh Page A

peat-digging.’
    ‘No, I agree.’
    ‘What’s come to him – the man from the digging? Will he get a decent burial?’
    ‘He will,’ Alys assured her. ‘The Belstane carpenter was to make a coffin for him today. My – my husband would like to give him a name before he’s buried, if we can. And maybe find who killed him.’
    ‘No easy task. I’d say he’s been there a while.’
    ‘And the man Fleming.’ Beatrice looked away at the words, and shivered. Yes, thought Alys, you were more afraid yesterday than you showed us. ‘Why would he have such a spite for you?’ she said aloud. ‘There was venom there.’
    ‘I’ve never a notion,’ said Beatrice firmly.
    ‘Oh, he’d consulted my mother,’ said Phemie. She peered into the furthest of the shaft-houses, a squat structure walled with hurdles and thatched with heather, merely intended to keep the worst of the weather off man and pony working it. The winding-gear was silent astride the dark maw of the shaft, the long beam with its dangling harness propped on the heading-bar. ‘I noticed him slinking into the stillroom by twilight, when we thought he’d gone home. It’s no so easy to get out here to the coaltown unseen,’ she added.
    ‘Maister Fleming had consulted your mother?’ Alys repeated, standing cautiously in the doorway with a tight grasp of Socrates’ collar. ‘When was that?’
    Phemie walked forward and kicked the timber frame of the winding-gear. Her wooden sole made a loud thump which resonated in the hollow of the shaft, vanished downward and returned to them mixed with the tap and clatter of metal tools. Were there voices too? Alys wondered. I am being fanciful, she told herself firmly. In the shadows over her head something made a ruffling sound, like feathers. She drew the dog closer to her knee, and he put his head up to look at her.
    ‘A month ago, maybe,’ Phemie said. ‘Aye, that would be right, about Lady Day. I don’t know what it was about,’ she admitted, ‘I stayed within sight, and made sure he kent I was there, but I never got close enough to hear. He went away wi’ a wee jar of ointment, and a paper of pills, I could tell that by what was lying to be washed when I went into the stillroom.’
    ‘You assist your mother?’ Alys realized.
    The girl nodded. ‘I’ve helped her mix simples since I could walk,’ she said, with some pride.
    ‘And Bel? Does she help too, or is she always at her spinning?’
    Phemie looked curiously at Alys, but answered civilly enough. ‘Bel’s aye wi’ our grandam. Times she sits and spins while the old – old lady rests, times she helps her wi’ the accounts, times she fetches greenstuff for her off the hillside.’
    ‘Off the hillside?’ Alys repeated in surprise.
    ‘Aye. Water from this or that spring, herbs from some burnside for Arbella or my mother. The old woman’s none so spry on her feet now, but time was she could find any plant you could name in the parish, so my mother says, and she can still tell my sister where to seek them.’ She peered into the cavity beside her, then lifted a piece of dull black stone from the floor, and dropped it down the shaft. There was a long silence, then a distant rattle and thud, and an angry shout. Phemie grinned. ‘That’ll learn somebody no to stand under the shaft.’
    ‘How deep is it?’ So there were voices, thought Alys.
    ‘Fifteen fathom.’
    ‘Fifteen – that is seven-and-twenty ells,’ Alys calculated, and opened her eyes wide. ‘I had no idea you could go so deep.’
    ‘There’s deeper.’
    ‘But does the roof not fall down?’
    ‘No if the stoops are wide enough.’ Phemie stepped out of the hut, and Alys followed her with relief, away from the winding-gear and the black gaping maw of the shaft. ‘Look.’ She bent, lifted another flake of stone, and drew a square in the gritty mud underfoot. ‘That’s a pillar. We call it a stoop.’ She drew another square a little distance from the first. ‘That’s