Chapter 10
What I was born with...?
I thought of that encounter at the Grassmarket as the driver Munro had found eased our way through early morning traffic on Princes Street.
It didn’t mean anything. It was simply... The truth was that I had no idea what it was.
“How did ye come by the scars on yer back?” Munro asked across the silence inside the coach.
I looked up at the question I had not expected. But there it was. He had obviously seen the scars as he sat beside my bed.
My throat tightened, and I looked away from that sharp gaze that missed nothing, watched me now, and waited for the answer.
In the very least, I should have been embarrassed, angry at something that others might have considered an invasion of my privacy. I felt neither one.
Something was different in his manner, less the person who worked for Lady Antonia and counted it among his duties to watch over me. More someone with a similar past who might very well have wanted to tie me up like a piece of baggage and send me back to London, but had not.
The past was painful, his own as well, from stories Mikaela told me about his time in Edinburgh on the streets as a lad with Mr. Brodie.
I understood it perhaps too well. It was there in his manner, that direct gaze as if he saw right through a person.
There was risk in trusting someone with something so personal and painful, even though the wound had long since healed. I was not yet that brave.
“It was all a long time ago,” I replied and said nothing more of it.
“Ye spoke of someone named Abby.”
He had his secrets. I had mine as well.
I quickly stepped down from the coach into the pouring rain.
Jenners Department store was a four-story stone building with a pink stone facade that filled the corner of Princes Street across from the Princes Street Gardens.
Once in the past, I had stood just there by the gardens, an older child then, and watched the customers who arrived there. Fashionable ladies and gentlemen who made purchases I could only imagine.
I’d heard there was a fire a handful of years earlier. The store I saw now had been rebuilt, I realized as I looked up from the sidewalk to the top story. It reminded me of Harrods in London.
According to Elizabeth, it had electric lighting, lifts that whisked customers to the top floors rather than patrons forced to climb several floors of stairs, and a central court that was open to all four floors.
On those vast four floors, it offered both ladies’ and gentlemen’s ready-made fashions that included a shoe department where both men’s and ladies’ shoes could be purchased, fabrics from France and Italy, furniture, a full half-floor filled with home decorating, including area carpets, and the haberdashery.
Elizabeth had also described the roof-top cafe for tea or dining.
“Though there’s not much to see when the weather sets in.”
An attendant appeared and directed us to the haberdashery department on the ground floor.
Glass-top counters lined the floor on both sides of a wide aisle, with shelves behind and smaller aisles for clerks to assist customers. Much the same as at Harrods, those shelves were filled with men’s shirts on one side of the main aisle, ladies’ on the opposite side of the aisle.
Ties and cravats were displayed behind the men’s counter with wood trays under those glass-top counters that contained woollen scarves, handkerchiefs, and gloves lined up perfectly, like guests who’d been invited to the satin-lined case.
A gentleman could purchase full suits of clothes, wool trousers, evening wear, and long coats in the area just beyond those rows of fine wood cabinets with glass countertops.
A clerk greeted us, and I inquired if Mr. Woolsey was available this morning. He was most congenial, with a quick glance at Munro and no doubt made note of the long coat, wool trousers, the long jacket he wore under, and the vest over the dark shirt.
“I will tell him that you wish to see him.”
He returned with Mr. Woolsey a short time later.
The man was immaculately dressed in a full suit of clothes, a white shirt and tie, with a pleasant expression beneath thinning silver hair and thick brows.
I explained that I was presently a guest of a friend in Edinburgh and in need of information about something I had found. I mentioned that my friend had suggested he might be able to assist in the matter.
“Elizabeth Cheney?” he commented when he asked the name. “I remember her very well. We do not often have ladies making purchases from the men’s department. She was very specific about what she wanted, unusual for a woman and a delight as a customer.”
A delight. I smiled to myself as he recalled assisting her with her purchase.
“How may I assist you this morning?”
I retrieved the feather from my bag and laid it on the glass counter.
“It is quite the worse for wear. The weather in Edinburgh,” I began the story that I had planned to tell, as if the feather belonged to me.
“It came apart from the garment. It seems quite unusual. I’m hoping you know of someone who might be able to replace it. My great aunt will be extremely disappointed if it cannot be replaced.”
He inspected the feather that I had washed before leaving Albany Street.
“A most unusual colour,” he commented. “It does seem to be natural. One can see any dye that may have been applied just here at the shaft. If a dye was used, there would be traces of it here,” he indicated.
“Which would mean that the colour of your feather is naturally blue, very exotic for ladies’ evening wear and the theatre as well. I have a catalogue of such things, that could be helpful.”
“Yes, I would like to see what ye have.”
He eventually returned with a large leather-bound catalogue that included not only samples of items requested by gentlemen as decoration or embellishment for evening wear, but also included examples of feathers used for finer women’s wear as well.
He placed the catalogue on the counter, then turned through several pages.
“Our customers, particularly the ladies, often request colourful decorations, particularly for a walking costume. I was hoping to find something that might resemble the feather you found.
“However, I do not find any sample that is similar to what you have.” He looked over several more pages that included feathers, ribbons, and gold-painted buttons.
“There is another possibility. A man on George Street, a taxidermist by trade, has provided feathers for us in the past. He is extremely knowledgeable and might be able to tell you more about this.”
He wrote the man’s name and the location of his shop on a piece of note paper and handed it to me.
I was disappointed. Yet the taxidermist might be able to tell us something about the feather.
Further, he might be able to tell us who the customer was for such an extravagant decoration.
We passed several other departments as we returned to the main floor, including another ladies’ wear department.
As the morning grew later, more customers had arrived, women chattering amongst themselves, more than one accompanied by a young girl, obviously a daughter or other relative.
I felt a twinge of loss at the sight of something I had never experienced.
Mikaela Forsythe understood that feeling of loss as well as anyone might have, even though she had memories as a young child of her mother.
Still, it was not the same as never having known my own mother and father, what had happened to them, and the reason I was sent to that Foundling Hospital.
Were they alive somewhere, forced by some dreadful circumstance to send me away. Or were they dead?
Questions I had struggled with as long as I could remember.
We arrived at the main entrance and waited to leave as several more customers, men and women alike, arrived through those ornate doors.
It was a glimpse. At the corner of my eye, no more, and I might have ignored it as a reflection in the glass doors as more customers arrived for a day’s shopping.
Except for the way the woman stood there, not moving, staring at me, and for several moments it seemed that she waited expectantly. I turned to look at her.
She was dressed in a worn and stained skirt and a thin, plain blouse, her hair in disarray, in sharp contrast to others who swept past. And there was a sad, mournful expression on her face.
Dory stood there! As real as I remembered her, as if I could reach out and touch her.
Impossible, I thought. She was dead. I had found her body and then seen her at the police morgue. Yet...
Her expression was sad. It seemed that she tried to say something, but I couldn’t hear with the chatter of others who passed by. She smiled, then slowly turned.
“Don’t go!” Had I said it or only imagined it? “Dory?”
She didn’t stop. Instead, she slowly walked into the crowd of customers who passed by, then disappeared.
“What is it?” Munro asked. “Are ye all right? Ye look as if ye’ve seen a ghost.”
I was not at all certain that I hadn’t. Except that I didn’t believe in them.
If not a ghost, then what had I seen for those few seconds? Someone who looked like Dory? Or was it all my imagination?
I shook my head even as I looked back over my shoulder, everything as it was moments before, as customers arrived and moved past us.
Attendants greeted them to see to their needs, and across that wide aisle in the haberdashery department, Mr. Woolsey spoke with an older gentleman at the counter.
I had no explanation for what had happened. Yet, I was certain I had seen my friend. But for what reason?
How was it possible? What was it she tried to tell me before she had disappeared?
The driver found the taxidermist shop on George Street in good time.
It was a discreet shop north of the Royal Mile in the New Town, situated in a line of other shops that included a tobacconist and a millinery shop. It might have gone unnoticed except for the large owl that appeared to take flight in the display window.
“Aye, taxidermist,” Munro commented as we entered the shop. “What might the man feed the poor creature.”