Free The Stolen Voice by Pat McIntosh Page B

them sang the great hymn at Lammastide, just the two voices. I mind them practising it, and old Rob Clark that was our succentor shouting at them for not holding the tone.’
    ‘It was just after that David Drummond disappeared, was it no?’ said the man in the corner. ‘Do you mind of that and all, Jockie?’
    ‘No much,’ said Kilgour. ‘You ken what it’s like when you come back, you’re straight into the rehearsals for St Blane’s feast, working all the hours of daylight to get the music by heart. It was a wonder for a few weeks that David hadny come back like the rest of us, but he wasny the only one, there were other folk went on to the college at St Andrew’s or Glasgow, or maybe the Grammar School at Perth. Then we forgot about it, except maybe for Billy – aye, Billy Murray that’s at Dunkeld now, and the Stirling boy, that was his bedfellows.’
    ‘Where do the boys lodge?’ Gil asked. Kilgour paused in reaching for the ale-jug.
    ‘At the time,’ he said, ‘we dwelt in the succentor’s attics, and studied in the chapter-house. Some of the younger ones found it hard. These days they’re lodged about the town, in one household or another, which is fine if they get on wi the wife.’
    ‘How did his brother no disappear wi him?’ asked another voice.
    ‘Geordie, it was thirty year since. I canny mind,’ said Kilgour, and took a pull at the ale-jug. After a moment he offered, ‘Likely Andrew never went home wi him, went to a friend’s or stayed here in the town. There’s some of them do that,’ he added to Gil. ‘If they’ve no notion to the walk home and back.’
    ‘Maybe if Andrew had gone home and all, the wee one would never ha vanished,’ said someone. ‘He’ll ha fallen into some crack in those hills, or been lost in a drowning-pool, or the like.’
    ‘It’s strange he was never found then,’ objected Kilgour.
    ‘If you can lose a beast and never find it, you can lose a laddie. Eleven, was he? That’s no a big corp to be seeking.’
    ‘How far do the boys come to sing here?’ Gil wondered. This gave rise to a long discussion, which concluded that the furthest anyone had ever come was one Duncan McIan from some place Gil had never heard of, five days’ walk to the west.
    ‘Most of them’s from Stirling or hereabouts,’ said Adam. ‘But there’s aye a few from further away.’
    ‘How do you find them?’ Gil asked. It was not a problem he had ever heard the Glasgow songmen discuss; there was a sufficient crop of youngsters in the burgh and its immediate surroundings to keep the choir, and the sang-schule in St Mary’s Kirk, well supplied.
    ‘Word gets about,’ said the man in the corner. ‘The most of us has kin that can sing, and we pass names to the succentor. You hear of a laddie wi a good voice in another parish, or the Archdeacon when he visits takes note of a soloist’s name –’
    ‘That’s if the Archdeacon can tell In nomine from In taverna ,’ said someone else sourly, and they all laughed again.
    ‘And is that how the men move about and all? Would that be how John Rattray went?’
    There was an awkward silence.
    ‘It’s a strange thing, that,’ said Adam at last.
    ‘How so?’ asked Gil.
    ‘The Ratton just vanished. Like the Drummond laddie –’
    ‘No, no, Adam, the Drummond boy was on his way back, by what we hear.’
    ‘There’s no knowing that,’ argued Adam. ‘He’d maybe not have told his kin if he was planning to go a long journey.’
    ‘Aye, but he’d a gied his bedfellows some notion, surely!’
    ‘The Drummond boy met wi some accident, how could he warn his bedfellows?’
    ‘So you’d no inkling Rattray was going away?’ Gil put in, before this could build into an argument. ‘You don’t think his servant was right and he’s been taen off by the Deil?’
    ‘Ha!’ said Kilgour.
    ‘Walter Muthill’s a daft laddie,’ said someone else. ‘The Deil kens what he saw, but it wasny the Deil.’ This got a laugh, but the