Chapter Seven
Eleanor knows there are changes afoot. For a start, Araminta McKenzie Moore is in the habit of going to bed at ten of the clock.
She’s done so nightly since Eleanor first started in her service, so the change in the mistress’s routine is quite a turn up.
Extra candles require to be brought to the drawing room and the fire stoked.
Brodie offers the lady a nightcap at midnight.
She waves him off, then calls him back, demanding a ham sandwich.
Cook, at the end of her tether for she has been up since six, has no ham in the larder for the late Miss McKenzie had not touched a slice of meat for the last five years and in the kitchen hogget stew is preferred.
Luckily, however, the household has a long association with a residence on Moray Place where the housekeeper has an unrequited fondness for Mr Brodie and where Cook once shared a receipt for lemon marmalade when a sufficiency of the fruit arrived at Leith docks in the dead of winter and caused culinary excitement about the town.
An urgent message is sent. This results in half a dozen slices of ham wrapped in waxed paper, with a glass jar of chutney.
At one of the clock, her sandwich eaten, Araminta dismisses Brodie and sends Eleanor to bed, but Eleanor is, firstly, so curious and, secondly, so concerned for her mistress that she waits up, dozing fitfully in the hallway on an ancient carved chair next to the wrought-iron butler’s tray.
In the morning the embers glow in the grate, the candles have burned down and Eleanor finds Mrs Moore asleep on the sopha amid a messy scatter of open books and unfolded papers.
The air smells of cigar smoke for at three in the morning Araminta came across Great Aunt Eilidh’s cedarwood box of Cuban cigars and a smart, Venetian glass ashtray.
Now she regrets lighting up, her head muddled by lack of sleep and copious nicotine from which her mouth is horribly dry.
Brodie discreetly opens one of the windows and has the housemaid stoke the fire.
Eleanor brings breakfast on a tray – two boiled eggs with buttered toast, a saucer of Cook’s famous marmalade and a dainty silver pot of tea, with the cup and saucer her great aunt preferred – Wedgewood creamware, now rather old.
‘Madam, is everything all right?’ Eleanor asks, not for the benefit of the gentlemen but because she is concerned.
Araminta hesitates. A lot has transpired over the last two days and it feels as if she’s evolved to meet her new circumstances.
This is a process in which she’s become, somehow, more like herself.
She wonders if the McKenzie blood was always going to out once she crossed Hadrian’s Wall.
She feels strong. Confident. A vivid version of her schoolgirl self.
Johnathan would like her this way, she thinks.
More self-assured. Coming from a noble family with ties to a royal court.
On the other hand, she has no idea how to explain it to her maid; a scrap of tartan cloth, a map and an unexpected great aunt.
Eleanor is so forthright and Araminta is not yet sure where she will come to settle among these new subtleties. ‘I’m fine,’ she says.
Once the tray is finished, Araminta tidies the papers, holding on to the map she found last night.
As Sister Winifred said, it is from 1746 and depicts a different Edinburgh.
Araminta realises Richmond has not changed half so much over the same century.
Mayfair neither. She hardly knows the Scottish capital, but the transformation is plain.
The Carmichael thread when laid over the old parchment fits exactly the odd shape of the Old Town from Castle Rock to the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
‘It’s a key,’ she breathed long past midnight, feeling a rush at having solved Winifred’s mystery.
The stitches she had taken as darned moth holes mark two different sites, now shown on the map as tiny pinpricks that she pushed through the wool with her mourning brooch.
The whole thing is most intriguing, though she has no idea of the locations Aunt Eilidh has picked, it’s clear that one of them is inside Edinburgh Castle.
Perhaps, she thinks, Sister Winifred is right, and Eilidh meant to go herself. It’s an exhilarating idea.
She walks to the window and gazes out, sorting once more through the calling cards on the silver tray.
Below, Colonel Fraser, unbidden and unexpected, dismounts a fine, black stallion and tethers the animal opposite.
Araminta curses silently. The colonel’s a bore.
She never expected to see him again after they disembarked the ship.
However, it dawns quickly that in fact, this call is most convenient.
Her eyes wander furtively to the papers now tidied on the desk.
She grabs the Carmichael thread and secretes it in a drawer, safer than her pocket, where it was spotted yesterday evening by Sister Winifred.
In London when someone was at the door she would check the mirror to make sure her hair was tidy and her collar flat.
Today, she slips her finger across the saucer not to waste the last of the marmalade.
Great Aunt Eilidh was right about Cook, she thinks.
Perhaps she’ll tempt the woman back to Richmond.
Johnathan likes marmalade and a decent bowl of soup.
Brodie knocks. ‘Mrs Moore there’s an officer—’ he starts.
‘Yes, yes, bring him up, please, Brodie,’ Araminta cuts in.
Colonel Fraser is no less the showy sunset than he was on the journey north.
On entering the room he booms, ‘Mrs Moore,’ as if announcing her name at court.
‘I’m early I know,’ he says before she can berate him.
‘I heard about your bereavement and knowing you’ve no acquaintances in Edinburgh and no family other than your late great aunt, I wanted to offer my condolences and any assistance you might require. ’
‘How kind,’ Araminta replies, for what else can she say?
‘When will the funeral take place?’ The colonel’s tone is earnest.
‘Tomorrow morning at St Cuthbert’s,’ she says, realising as the words come out of her mouth that the day is coming round fast and she still has no idea where St Cuthbert’s is.
‘It was my great aunt’s favourite church,’ she adds, as if she knew Great Aunt Eilidh’s religious preferences.
As if she’s been in Edinburgh for longer.
Fraser adopts a grave expression. ‘You’re quite alone, madam?’
Araminta nods. He’s trying to be kind but she wants to direct him to the map.
This is a man, after all, who knows the castle.
He can surely identify the spot Eilidh marked.
‘I’ve inherited this house and everything in it,’ Araminta gestures round.
‘I’ve been exploring the library. Do you know, I found an old map that includes your castle. ’
She leads Fraser to a side table and lays out the parchment. ‘It’s detailed,’ she adds cheerily. ‘The individual buildings are sweet little squares. I wonder what they all are.’
Fraser peers. She knows he’ll enjoy being the expert.
It’s a role men fall into easily whether they are experts or not, and three days aboard a ship with the colonel made it clear that he likes to talk.
‘This old map must be, let me see, almost a century old. How fascinating. Drawn in the 1740s,’ he proclaims.
‘No New Town at all!’ Araminta encourages him. ‘Just fields for miles on the north side of the old loch,’ she points. ‘Farmland!’
Fraser chortles. ‘Good Lord. And someone has stuck a pin in our garrison chapel.’
Araminta acts nonchalant. ‘Perhaps it marks some ancient treasure. Might I offer you a drink, Colonel? Brandy?’
Fraser acquiesces and Araminta pours a glass. ‘Do soldiers still worship in the chapel?’ she asks.
‘Indeed, though oftentimes I walk down to St Giles’ on a Sunday.
If I feel the need of a larger space.’ Fraser gesticulates to indicate that the spirituality of a man such as himself can hardly be contained.
‘Of course, I’m Church of England for preference,’ he adds.
‘That was the joy of being back in London. A proper service.’
Johnathan would never be so bluff. So obvious, she thinks.
‘But the chapel in the castle must have been there for some time,’ Araminta continues.
Fraser nods. ‘I should think so. The castle’s been a stronghold for centuries, some parts are almost a thousand years old.’
‘And at the time of this map?’ She lays a finger on the spot.
‘After the Jacobite uprising it was used mostly as a prison,’ the colonel says, taking a sip of the brandy. ‘Prisons across the nation were full of treasonous Jacobites.’
Araminta pours herself a glass to join him. ‘My goodness. I’d no idea. Captured soldiers, was it?’
‘Renegades,’ Fraser almost spits the word. ‘Curs.’
The day he received news of his posting to Scotland the colonel had dinner with the major general at a military club in St James.
The Jacobite uprisings are long quelled but, as the major general pointed out, it does no harm to pay attention.
‘Rebellious Scots to crush, eh?’ he had said.
In Fraser’s mind, the Stuart faithful remain a threat.
‘The Pretender’s mistress was kept in the castle. She raised his standard at Glenfinnan,’ he adds.
Araminta takes a sip of the brandy. ‘How interesting. And the chapel would still have been . . .’
‘In use I’m sure,’ he concurs.
Do you speak Gaelic, Colonel?’ Araminta enquires. It would be good to learn to say her family motto. She can’t recall how Great Aunt Eilidh pronounced it, just that once.
The colonel laughs. ‘Not a word,’ he admits. And then, after he’s downed his brandy, he takes his leave, promising to attend the funeral.
Araminta retires upstairs to wash in the warm, scented water Eleanor provides from the kitchen; sweet gorse oil threaded through the steaming porcelain jug.
The young maid fusses, freshening her mistress’s mourning dress and pinning up her hair.
Araminta wonders if her mother ever lived here, on Glenfinlas Street with Eilidh and her sister.
Around her, the bedroom’s pale green walls are restrained, the paintings are of landscapes with which she is not familiar.
Eleanor stands back to survey her work, a complicated bun today.
Araminta can’t help wonder if her McKenzie forebears offered such services to ancient queens?
‘This house has been in my family since it was built, I should think,’ she says.
‘We might ask Mr Brodie,’ Eleanor suggests.
But Araminta doesn’t feel the need to ask.
She somehow knows it. The furniture, the paintings have been here for decades, brought from a house in the Highlands or perhaps somewhere else in Edinburgh, when number four Glenfinlas Street was built.
This bedroom is the sanctuary Sister Winifred once abandoned for another, more holy place.
Getting up, Araminta opens the wardrobe.
Next to her clothes, which Eleanor has carefully unpacked, is a green velvet cape and some pale-green dresses, now out of date but well cut.
She moves on to the drawer beneath and finds a jade mohair wrap with a silver clasp.
And beneath these a treasure that makes her gasp.
‘My God.’
‘Madam,’ Eleanor says by way of enquiry, but Araminta ignores her.
Instead, she kneels on the pale-green carpet, the shape of ferns woven into the plush, and pulls out an ancient bible, bound in thick leather and fastened with a brass buckle.
Opening it, she’s breathless. The family tree inside runs over two pages, fourteen generations.
Fourteen. She counts them twice. ‘My family,’ she murmurs, as she reads Gaelic names she can hardly pronounce; Beairtle and Irial and Lachtna; Neasa and Eithne and Derbhille.
She thinks this book may help her to identify the people in the drawing room portraits – the dates of their clothing will guide her.
Reading on, the women she notices often die young, her mother among them.
And there, at the bottom, is her own name and date of birth.
She’s the only child of her generation. She casts back to last night at the church, when Sister Winifred asked if she had daughters and here, at the bottom, she realises there’s a place for her children, as yet unborn.
If she’s lucky enough, they’ll appear in the Moore bible and now also have this legacy of people with unpronounceable names alongside Johnathan’s steady, English relations, called Thomas and Mary and John.
Eleanor helps her up and together they lay the book on the dressing table.
‘All these people,’ Araminta gets out. There are tears in her eyes. ‘I didn’t know.’
Eleanor peers at the dog-eared pages. The writing looks as if a spider has walked across the parchment, the iron-ink shades of black, fading to brown.
Araminta passes a finger over her family motto.
Help the Queen. She mouths the names of her ancestors out loud.
They seem less odd that way, related by sound to names she recognises.
Sean and Darragh and Kenzie. The women keep their surnames on marriage.
An old tradition. And then, in the mid-1600s beside some of the women’s names there’s a symbol; a diamond like in a pack of cards, but coloured black.
Her fingers trace downwards, progressing through the eighteenth century to Grainne, her mother and then her own name.
Diamonds beside both. That’s when she realises that unlike her husband’s family bible this family tree follows the female line.
It’s the record of her foremothers. It’s the strangest feeling.
Written up the side of the page, in a different hand, the words Ad libertatum are so small she has to squint to make them out.
Towards freedom. She senses this means something important and ancient.
Something that along with the house and the paintings is her birthright.
She has no idea what it is, other than, because of this book, she knows where she comes from.
She has somewhere she is included by right. Somewhere to belong.