Chapter 8
An icy rain began to fall as I left the police station, with a reminder that it might well snow before end of day. I found a driver and gave him the destination of the Grassmarket.
I was familiar with the marketplace in the Old Town from my time at the brothel, when I was sent to make purchases for the cook at The Church.
I had gone there more than once with Dory to make certain that I didn’t lose my way, or cross paths with those who usually lived on the street. It was just one of the ways she protected me.
“Like a young sister,” she once said.
When I was older, I went with my basket hooked over my arm, bundled up with an oversized coat one of the ladies gave me to disguise myself. That part of Old Town could be dangerous, particularly to young girls and women.
The Grassmarket was not far. I had walked from The Church to the marketplace in the past, that ancient castle looming over from the hill above.
At the base of the hill there had once been huge cattle yards, someone once said, cattle herded to other markets through the streets to Waverly Station. Over time, the cattle yards had given way to the tenements, taverns, and inns.
In the time I had been in London, some of the worst tenements had been torn down, but only a handful replaced on the High Street that connected Princes Street to the Grassmarket.
At the far end of the old Grassmarket, a web of streets crossed each other, including Cockburn Street near the Close, unchanged, where many of the old tenements remained along with taverns, the Clydesdale Inn that had once been a well-known brothel, and the MacKenzie Spirit dealer with vendor carts and stalls by the sidewalks, no matter the weather.
When I last walked the Grassmarket in the past and made purchases for the cook at The Church, escape from the tenements had seemed impossible. And yet...
“Here, please,” I called out to the driver as we reached the market square very near the warehouse for the grain exchange.
Here, in spite of the weather, vendors had set up stalls and tables covered with canvas. Just as I remembered, they offered day-old bread and produce, along with poultry for those who lived in the tenements as well as owners of nearby pubs and taverns.
“Do ye want me to wait, miss?” the driver inquired.
I assured him that it wasn’t necessary as I had no way of knowing how long I would be there.
He tipped his hat, then departed. I turned toward the square where Meggy Adams’s body had been found behind the poulterer’s stall.
A random attack as the police report indicated? An argument over something the old woman tried to steal as she was known to do? Or was it something else?
I entered the open marketplace and inquired about the location of Calvin Meeks’s vendor stall.
“That would be down the way just beyond the bake shop,” a woman, one of the vendors, looked at me with more than a little curiosity.
She sold rags and old clothes and wore the expression of weariness that was familiar in someone who had lost hope of anything better.
“Do ye have a need for somethin’ today?” she inquired, with more than a little doubt as she took in my appearance, the well-made gown I wore, and the leather bag I carried.
“A neck scarf, if you have one?”
She went to the back of her stall, searched through a crate filled with garments, then returned.
“This one looks to be from some fine gentleman. Not lace, like the ladies prefer, but on a day like this one, it’s good against the cold.”
I inquired about the cost. She was thoughtful,l and I fully expected an amount far more than what the scarf was worth. Instead, there was a smile that revealed two missing teeth.
“I’ll let ye have it for a shilling.”
It was obviously made of wool in a deep burgundy colour, and had been well worth more than a shilling. I gave her two.
“I ain’t never had no one do that. Pay more fer something?” she exclaimed. “Anyone else would try to talk it down.” She continued to look at me with more than a little surprise. “I make certain everythin’ I take in is picked clean and washed,” she assured me.
No doubt to avoid the curse of fleas in places like London and Edinburgh, where poor people were crowded into tenements and flats with trash that collected in the gutters along the streets.
I thanked her, wrapped the scarf around my neck, then continued my search for the baker’s stall and the poulterer just beyond, as I followed a trail of white feathers and the sound of chickens in the crates.
“Wot might I do fer ye, miss?” the poulterer inquired. “Some meat fer yer table? I can have a nice plump hen plucked and quartered fer yer husband’s supper.”
I explained that I’d heard about the woman whose body was found behind his stall. His manner immediately changed when he realized the sale of a fine, plump hen was not likely.
“Gossip. It’s bad for business.”
“Did you know her?”
“Most round here knew old Meggy. She was a regular, more often beggaring food, complainin’ that it was old and not worth the price,” he explained.
“More than one of us ran her off when she was caught stealing. Not that she couldn’t afford to pay like the others. She always had coin in her purse.”
Robbery. It was all too common.
He slammed a meat cleaver down onto the carcass of a chicken. I almost felt sorry for it even though the creature was already dead.
“It was Saturday,” he added. “The marketplace was full of all sorts of folk making purchases. It could have been anyone wot did the old girl in. Ye might let that be a warnin’ and keep an eye out fer yerself.”
He looked past me and greeted a customer who approached his stall.
“Late in the day fer ye, Mrs. Mac.” He greeted the woman. “Wot can I do fer ye?”
There was the usual sort of conversation that followed in such places. While Mr. Meeks and his customer discussed the weather, her husband laid off at the warehouse, and her brother had just moved in with them, I slipped around behind his stall where empty crates were stacked.
The ground was soggy and my boots sank into the mud as I carefully searched among the crates.
I don’t know what I expected to find, yet Mikaela Forsythe had said there were often small details that might go overlooked, something small or insignificant to anyone else. Particularly in places such as the marketplace, where there were a great many people every day.
There were dozens of empty crates, stacked two and three high. As well as a half dozen more that were presently occupied by white and grey chickens who had not yet met their fate.
I then found one set apart covered with a square of canvas. I lifted the edge of the cover. The inside of the crate was covered with dried blood.
I made my way around the crate as the conversation continued at the front of the stall. The canvas protected it from the rain, but the bottom of the crate sat deep in mud.
It was just a glimpse, a bit of colour that poked up out of the muck. I took out the knife I carried and used the tip of the blade to pry that bit of colour from the mud. It was a dark blue feather!
It was soggy and caked with mud, but nonetheless a feather in a brilliant shade of blue.
I glanced at the crates all about that still held chickens that had not yet been sold. They were all a light shade of grey or white, and grey and white feathers covered the ground. There was not a blue one among them.
It had obviously gone unnoticed or was thought to be of no significance. I tucked the feather into my bag. With another look around, I left the stall, as Mr. Meeks and the woman exchanged the usual conversation found in a marketplace as they haggled over the price of a hen.
I heard the sound of raucous squawking as the sky overhead suddenly darkened, and a flock of crows burst into flight. They swept low, one near enough that I saw the flash of that dark eye as it winged past.
“Look out, miss!” a lanky boy cried out as a man in a long coat came at me.
He caught me at the shoulder. He was not large, but powerful, and reeked of some sharp pungent smell as he grabbed for my bag. I refused to let go.
A blow caught me on the cheek, sharp and painful. I slipped in the mud and almost went down as he attempted to wrench away my bag that contained the little money I had left and those bundles of letters Dory had sent me.
Heat exploded in my hand as I fought back. I was certain that it was no more than a glancing blow, yet it was enough as my attacker screamed in pain.
Anger and deadly purpose drained from the expression on his face as his hand loosened about my throat. He staggered back, then stumbled.
He stared at me, his expression stunned. The colour drained from sharp features partially hidden under the brim of his hat and the collar of the long coat he wore. He cursed as if he’d been struck as several people gathered, then turned and fled the marketplace.
“Jings! I ain’t never seen the like!”
The boy reached me, that impish gaze familiar. It was Kip, the streetwise grubby boy I had first encountered in the Close outside Dory’s flat.
“I never seen a woman do that! He musta outweighed ye by a good three stone. Are ye all right?”
I had no idea what he was chattering about. I had been attacked and fought back.
I would admit there was no time for more. I wasn’t able to retrieve the knife from my bag, and the man was too near for any of the defensive moves I had learned at the gymnasium in London.
He had come out of the shadows without warning and I had reacted instinctively.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Kip.
“I scrounge the market for food. There’s some that take pity on a poor child like meself and toss me a cabbage or bread.”
He didn’t seem at all bothered by how sad that sounded as he grinned up at me.
“If sales are thin, they might slip me a sausage at end of day.”
That was obviously the reason he was there.
“How did ye do it?” he asked again. “One minute I was certain the wanker would hurt ye, the next he was runnin’ like his arse was on fire.”
I didn’t know, I had simply fought back.