Free Lammas by Shirley McKay

If Michael had remained, then the pressure of his hands, with Elspet’s, could have staunched the flow. But that was not a thing a common man might ken, and Michael was not culpable if he had in mind to run off for the surgeon, as he said he did. That was yet a hopeless cause; no surgeon could have come in time. By his estimation, it took Walter Bone a little over four and a little under five minutes to bleed out, until his life was drained.
    Elspet spoke at that, wondering aloud. ‘Four minutes! And no more!’ It felt to her a lifetime she had held him in her hands, while his life slipped out, and no time at all.
    Sir Andrew made a note of it and dismissed the doctor. He looked upon the others with disdain. He had no interest in the life or death of Walter Bone, who had few fine friends to press the crownar to avenge him. Nor was he concerned with Michael or with Elspet, whose squalid love affair might trouble the kirk’s courts, but did not trouble his. What caught his interest more, in all of this, was Hew. Hew stood by, white-faced. And the crownar was intent on finding out his part, to hold him to account.
    â€˜You telt me,’ he said, ‘to keep this man locked up, or evil would be done. Now he is a corpse. Perhaps you can explain to me how such things jump together as to be coincident, in this place and time.’
    â€˜He would not be a corpse,’ Hew said, ‘if you had kept your word, and kept him under lock until the girl was found.’
    Sir Andrew said, ‘ My word? No word of mine, but yours. This is strange work, sir. What was it? Did you have a premonition that he would be killed? Speak, or I will take your silence for a darker kind of magic. What was in your mind?’
    Hew was forced to say, for Michael’s sake if not his own, that Walter had confessed to him he meant to take a life. Therefore he corroborated Michael’s self-defence, that Walter had attacked him.
    â€˜He slipped and fell on his ain blade. That is all I ken,’ Michael said. He looked at Hew. ‘I had no reason to expect it.’
    Hew said, ‘I did not ken the life he meant was yours. I see now that it was. But I did not know it at the time.’
    The crownar stared at him. ‘You heard this yesterday. And yet you did not think it worthy of report?’
    â€˜No. I will not report a man’s intent as truth, when it is telt in confidence. Besides, if I had told you, you might have hanged him then, taking as confirmed what Marie said.’
    The crownar said, ‘I should have done. But that does not excuse you, nor should it clear your conscience. If you had but spoken, these sad events would not have come about.’
    â€˜What? If you had hanged him, he would not now be dead?’ Hew asked. ‘Strange reason, that.’
    â€˜Chop logic as you will, I see your hand in this. You set yourself above the law, and fortune too. This fortune has caught up with you and Walter Bone. The law can watch and wait, and bide the time when it will catch you too. When it does, understand, I will come for you. No one hangs today. You three are free to go.’
    Sir Andrew turned his back on them and left. These small lives, this death, disgusted him. His pledge to serve his king and to keep the peace had exhausted him, draining his estates, and he had grown indifferent to the part. There would come a time, he hoped not far away, when he would put the rope around his last man’s neck. If that man was Hew Cullan he would rest content. It would bring his service to a satisfying end.
    Michael knelt to Hew. ‘Master, you have saved my life.’
    â€˜I am not your master,’ answered Hew. He looked across at Elspet. ‘Do you want this man?’
    Elspet answered clearly, ‘Not ever in my life. Whatever is the law, I ken it in my heart that he killed Sliddershanks. I will not have him die for it. But I can never bear to look on him again.’
    Michael swore to Hew,