Chapter 19
Lots of choice, most of it tourist traps.
There’s a nice fish restaurant opposite the High Court but that’s a bit too over the top for a working lunch.
Sucking the juices from a dozen oysters before going back in to listen to the grim details of a teenager’s fatal heart attack feels a bit off somehow.
He does have time for a sit-down meal, though, so after standing on the corner of the Royal Mile for a moment, he heads right before taking a left down Advocate’s Close and heading into the Devil’s Advocate.
He’s passed it a few times in the past and never gone in – it’s the perfect choice for a juror in the middle of a trial.
He’s in luck: while it’s busy, there’s a small table free. He sits down, orders a burger. That’ll sort him out. Nearly asks for a pint, too, but stops himself. Not appropriate. Instead, he asks for a pint of Coke, not too much ice. Food mission accomplished, he leans back, shuts his eyes.
The phantom heart has gone, thank goodness.
He’s calm now, able to think properly about the evidence the pathologist has just given.
By the sounds of it, the girl had a weak heart.
A pre-existing condition. She clearly knew if she was taking beta blockers, but did anyone else know about it?
They’ve been pushing this silent scream business, the prosecution.
Someone mentioned it yesterday, he remembers that.
Are they saying she was scared to death?
Hard to see how that might lead to a murder charge, though they’ll be told, he’s sure.
With another ten days to go of this there’s bound to be a load more evidence.
The teacher, that was another odd one. The way she was simpering over Eliza, the animosity towards Isobel, the twist on her mouth when the photograph of Christian was shown on screen. Matthew has not taken to her.
The waitress puts his drink down in front of him, and a knife and fork wrapped in a napkin.
His mouth is starting to water at the thought of the food, and the cold sweetness of the Coke hits him like rain on a parched garden.
He sighs out in relief, takes another gulp and burps.
When the burger arrives he barely pauses for breath, swallowing mouthfuls washed down by the Coke.
His hangover recedes even further, defeated by fat and sugar.
He’ll go for a run tonight, demolish what’s left of its residue.
Sated, he checks the time. Still nearly half an hour before he’s due back into court.
He could have another Coke, a coffee maybe, but his legs are restless.
He pays his bill and wanders up towards the Royal Mile.
Instead of going back to the court building, he takes a right up to the top, into the Castle Esplanade.
There’s a memory stirring of an impassioned piece he’d read in the paper a couple of months ago, calling for there to be a new memorial for the women executed as witches there, saying that what there was in place wasn’t fit for purpose.
He can’t remember what the issue was. Nor can he explain the compulsion that’s driving him to take a look at the place.
Not until he’s standing looking at the open space over which the castle looms. Then he clocks it.
Witch trial. The words muttered by the irritating juror Emma, before they all shut her down.
They’ve only touched on this so far, not really gone into any of the meat of it since the description of the pigeon sacrifice.
Daisy had got really into all of this stuff a couple of years ago.
She’d tried to drag Matthew and Rosalind off on a witch tour of Edinburgh, one of those foolish late-night performances put on for gullible tourists.
Matthew had laughed at the thought, told her to go with her friends.
She’d come back brimming over with outrage and facts about the terrible number of women killed in the eighteenth century – way worse than England, Dad.
Or Salem. They only killed nineteen women there.
But there were hundreds of women killed up at the Castle. At least three hundred.
He should have listened more. She was still young enough to try to engage him then, but he was always so distracted she gave up.
At least he’ll be able to tell her about this trial.
She’ll find it more interesting than his tales of the operating theatre.
Once you’ve saved one life you’ve saved them all, as far as an unimpressed teen is concerned.
Looking at the Esplanade now, he can’t explain why he didn’t pay more attention.
Three hundred women. How would they have died?
Hanged? Burned? There’s a piper playing ‘Flower of Scotland’, a large group of teenagers carrying multicoloured backpacks, clouds of fruity vapour coming off the kids at the back, but that’s not what Matthew is seeing.
He’s seeing fire, smoke, terror on a woman’s face.
A crackling fills his ears, baying from an invisible crowd, the heat building on his cheeks from the flames as they grow higher and higher and he stumbles back and—
‘Watch where the fuck you’re going.’
He’s walked straight into a mum and her three kids, all of them chewing gum, their jaws moving incessantly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, hands up in apology, but she stares at him blank-faced, the children around her as impassive, and the vacant hostility of it chills Matthew.
He could be bleeding out in front of them, desperate for help, and he’s convinced they would look at him in the same way, nothing but an obstacle in their path.
He pushes through them, apology withered on his tongue, legs unsteady beneath him.
He’s heading for the wall so he can lean against it for a moment, catch his breath, put his hand on the cold stone and bring himself back.
There’s still a faint hissing of flames in his ear, a residual heat.
But where he finds himself is in front of the memorial, the Witches’ Well, an engraved metal drinking fountain with a trough of geraniums in it, a snake’s head peering over the red flowers.
Matthew looks up at the inscription above: .
. . witches burned at the stake . . . some used their exceptional knowledge for evil purpose .
. . evil . . . The word drums in his head.
To the left there’s a sign explaining the history of it but that isn’t what Matthew sees.
He doesn’t read any of the information. What he sees is an old engraving, a ship foundering in the background, groups of women clustered together, held at sword point.
And looming on a tower above them, claws out, wings aloft, the Devil, all in black.
Matthew’s gaze is trapped. He can’t look away, though his hands are cold, his gut twisting with the sense that he needs to get out of here, now, immediately, and as he tries to move, to turn, the head on the sign in front of him moves too.
The Devil turns to look straight at Matthew, his horns proud above him, and as Matthew backs away in horror, the head rears up from the sign, a form pushing up in three dimensions from the two dimensions in which it’s been trapped.
It’s the eyes that render Matthew motionless, amber, flame-ringed, the pupils not round but rectangular.
The mouth opens and Matthew steps back, terror finally giving him strength, and the head laughs and laughs, a noise that rips through Matthew, a stench from its breath that nearly fells him, sulphur and rot and shit.
He backs away, gagging, before turning and running fast, the hounds of hell at his heels.