The Stolen Voice Read Online Free PDF Page B

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