The Rough Collier by Pat McIntosh Page A

his head.
    ‘Five,’ he said. ‘Aye, five in my time, or that I heard folk tell of, and that takes us back to King Robert’s day, afore Thorn cut its peats on that patch. No counting my mother’s brother Dandy, but he was barely fourteen.’
    ‘And who were they, maister?’ Gil asked. That must be over a hundred years, he realized. His memory and knowledge go back so far. I am in the presence of history.
    ‘Ah. Now you’re asking.’ The old man raised gnarled fingers and began to count. ‘There was Andra Simson, that was our Rab’s grandsire’s cousin at Kilncaigow, in James Second’s time. That’s right, write it down in your wee tablets. But he wasny a red-headed man, and he was a carpenter what’s more and had the marks on his hands to show for it. Did you no say this fellow’s hands and feet were soft?’
    ‘What happened to him?’ Gil asked. ‘How did he disappear?’
    ‘Andra? He was working down in Lanark, I think it was. Aye, Lanark. Set off for Kilncaigow one night from Eppie Watson’s alehouse there and never was seen again. Never seen again,’ he repeated. ‘They found his lantern, if I recall, on Kilncaigow Muir.’
    ‘The road from Lanark to Kilncaigow wouldny take him up here,’ said Gil thoughtfully.
    ‘No, it never would.’ Maister William champed his toothless jaws and cackled suddenly. ‘No unless he’d a woman up the Pow Burn that his wife never kent of!’
    ‘And did he?’
    ‘No that I heard tell,’ said the old man regretfully. ‘Then there was Tam Davison, twenty year since. Aye, the year this Sir James’s father died.’
    With a little coaxing, he recounted the details of the remaining disappearances. None of them seemed promising, all were working men who might be assumed to bear the marks of one trade or another, and he was quite certain that none was red-headed. Moreover, it seemed that the peat-cutting had been in use for most of Maister William’s lifetime. The women listened intently, nodding sagely at each of the names, but as he reached the last one Jeanie said, from where she sat nursing the baby on the bench at the wall:
    ‘You’ve forgot the men up at the coal-heugh, Granda.’
    ‘They’ve never disappeared,’ he retorted. ‘You’ll no talk to me like that, you malapert hizzy. I don’t forget a thing.’
    ‘There was Davy Fleming’s father, so I’ve heard. Fell down one of their nasty holes, so my da said, and never found.’
    ‘Aye, he was,’ objected the old man. ‘They found him a week later, I mind hearing o’t as if it was yesterday. They tracked him by the stink –’
    ‘And then Mistress Weir’s man disappeared,’ she said stubbornly. ‘He went off and died and never came home.’
    ‘Aye, but she kent where he was buried,’ countered the old man.
    ‘Aye, so they say. And Beattie Lithgo’s man and all,’ she persisted. ‘Geordie says Jamesie says they never got him out to bury him decent, just closed up that bit of the working, because the roof wasny safe.’
    ‘Aye, and he walks,’ said someone else. ‘That’s why they’ll no work by night.’
    ‘Geordie’s talking nonsense, for I was at the burial,’ declared Maister William. ‘I could never walk so far now, you’ll understand, sir, but I still had my strength then. Adam Crombie the elder died away at Elsrickle, Will Fleming fell down a shaft, Adam the younger died under a roof-fall. That’s no disappearing. Any road, Beattie would never ha’ slain them and hid them in the peat, no like – she’d a great liking for her man, Beattie did. She tellt me that, one time she was here wi’ a wee pot of grease for my rheumatics. And I’ll tell you,’ a gnarled finger jabbed at Gil’s doublet, ‘whatever she’d put in it, it shifted the pains in my knees. I’m needing a bit more, Agnes, mind that, you’d best get me another wee pot.’
    ‘Best be quick about it, and all,’ said one of the women, ‘afore David Fleming gets his way and she’s hanged for a