Chapter Eleven
The next morning at Glenfinlas Street, Araminta pens a note to Colonel Fraser and sends it to the castle. Then the coach is brought round.
‘Mind Mrs Moore,’ Brodie instructs the coachman. ‘The haar is rolling in.’ He stands on the doorstep and watches the carriage leave. He’s like a mother hen, Araminta thinks.
Inside the cab, Eleanor asks, ‘Do you like the colonel now, ma’am?’
Araminta isn’t sure how to reply. She’s not in the habit of outright lying. ‘I’m curious,’ she says. ‘Edinburgh Castle is as old as the Tower of London. You said yourself you were intrigued by it.’
Eleanor reluctantly nods as the coach sets off even more slowly than yesterday, the wheels casting water on both sides.
At the Esplanade the women dismount, no private carriages being admitted beyond the wooden palisade.
The city is partly obscured on either side by low cloud, or haar as Brodie would have it.
It’s made a phantom of the panoramic vista that Araminta recalls the colonel describing over turgid ship-bound dinners.
In the rain, Eleanor struggles to open Eilidh’s red Hanway so the mistress pulls up the hood of the green velvet cape she took from the old wardrobe.
The women follow a young lieutenant who has been sent to see them safely inside.
The hill is steep beyond the arched entrance though it’s paved with shards of stone, not as regular as the setts about the town but less slippery in the rain.
‘An invading force would require to fight upwards,’ the officer explains.
‘This castle is difficult to take, by design. The last time these walls were breached was through the Sallyport.’
Araminta places this incident at the time of an earlier Jacobite uprising than the one led by Charles Edward Stuart.
She wants to ask about Bonnie Prince Charlie’s time in the capital but she mustn’t show her cards.
The party passes through three more gates, each one guarded.
There’s a surprising number of stone buildings inside the fortification.
Unlike churches, Araminta is not conversant with the architectural requirements of medieval castles.
She recalls something about a motte and a bailey and the Norman invasion but she suspects this fortification predates King Harold, and again, she chides herself, she’s in a different country. King Harold never ruled the Scots.
Eleanor keeps her eyes on her feet, glancing only now and then at the soldiers as they fetch horses from the carthouses and hoist coiled ropes on their shoulders.
Up the hill, the lieutenant ushers the women towards the thick, low door of a double-fronted stone building.
‘This is the Governor’s House,’ he says.
‘And the officers’ mess.’ A fire is burning in the grate of the reception hallway.
The lieutenant takes Araminta’s cape and Eleanor’s coat, both sodden; also the umbrella.
A drop of water runs down the maid’s nose and she brushes it off. ‘Wet today,’ the lieutenant comments.
‘I couldn’t get the Hanway to open,’ Eleanor admits.
The women proceed up a set of stairs and into a long room furnished with regimental regalia and lit by two oil lamps on a substantial oak table.
The colonel, sitting beside the fire, stands to greet them.
‘Mrs Moore!’ he exclaims, ignoring Eleanor, who, after all, is only the maid.
‘Welcome to Edinburgh Castle!’ He bows in the European fashion.
‘It’s a shame it’s such a cloudy day,’ Araminta says. ‘I’d have liked to take in the view you described when we were on board.’
‘Terrible weather. Scotland,’ the colonel replies, as if it never rains anywhere else. ‘But here you are.’
‘Thank you. Yes.’
‘These medieval buildings have thick walls, I’ll give them that. And these ancient fireplaces’ – he gestures – ‘excellent for heat.’
‘Is the whole castle medieval?’ Araminta enquires politely.
‘It’s been added to and subtracted from over the centuries,’ the colonel starts, somewhat woolly on the details. ‘It’s said one of the medieval kings kept lions, in a pit here.’
‘And the chapel? Has it ever changed?’
He nods in a non-committal fashion, for he doesn’t want to say he isn’t sure.
‘Castles always have a chapel, Mrs Moore. The night before the battle in medieval days was considered a time of vigil.’ He pours two pewter tankards of brandy and, with a flourish, scalds the liquid with a thin poker that’s been heating in the fire.
‘To warm you,’ he explains, looking pleased with himself as she wraps her fingers round it.
Araminta walks over to a small window cut into the thick stone, with a view back down the hill. ‘It’s like its own village, isn’t it?’
‘We’re self-sufficient,’ the colonel agrees, ‘though these days we don’t keep livestock, apart from bantams for eggs. There’s a well, though, and copious storerooms. We’d last a year were we put to siege.’
‘That’s unlikely, isn’t it?’ Araminta says.
The colonel laughs. ‘You need not concern yourself, ma’am.’
‘So where’s the chapel?’ She gestures through the thick, uneven glass.
The colonel joins her at the pane, misted now by condensation.
‘Further up the hill, next to the Constable’s Tower.
’ He points. ‘You can just make it out at the top of that wall. See – the ornamental crosses.’ Araminta recalls what Winifred said about a cross being a target.
The colonel turns back into the room. ‘It’s not the best day for a tour, but once you’ve warmed up, why don’t I show you? ’
She smiles. ‘So kind.’
Eleanor can feel the warmth of the fire from where she is standing.
Mrs Moore doesn’t generally take much interest in churches.
She might sit on the ladies’ committee of St Mary Magdelene but her mistress is not the type to undertake brass rubbings or the inspection of a spire.
Last summer when the Moores visited friends in the village of Kensington they attended Sunday service, but Mrs Moore showed no inclination to visit the array of pretty churches nearby, though she stopped the carriage to see the workings at the gravel pits.
There’s something here, Eleanor thinks, that’s piqued the interest of the gentlemen.
She shudders as if one of the clouds overhead has passed through her.
Last night she dreamt she was lost in a copse of trees so thick that she could scarcely walk without bumping into them.
In the early hours she woke with a start and, panicking, checked her arms for bruises.
She’s determined to get away still, but until it’s time to do so, she must tell the gentlemen as little as she can.
She might admit to coming to the castle, but will not convey the unlikely nature of her mistress’s interest in the religious life of the regiment.
The lieutenant returns with the women’s outerwear which has been comprehensively dried.
Eleanor helps Araminta with her cape before pulling on her own coat and scarf, still warm from the stove.
The lieutenant whispers, with a shy smile, that he has fixed the Hanway.
‘The brass spring needed oiling.’ As they venture into the cold he opens the umbrella and holds it over Mrs Moore, and they walk up the hill.
‘It feels as if the rain will never stop, doesn’t it? ’ the colonel remarks.
Inside, the church is exactly as might be expected: a line of pews, a pile of hymnals and an altar with a cross.
It smells like all churches, of book bindings and Sunday mornings.
Araminta carefully takes this in, running her eyes along the edges of the ceiling and round the window frames. Examining the floor.
‘Where does that go?’ she asks, motioning to a low, oak-framed entranceway above a run of steps.
The colonel helpfully opens the door.
‘It’s a storehouse,’ he says, his beefy fingers still on the handle. ‘The Major Gunners’ responsibility . . . for ordnance.’ He shrugs to dismiss it, but Araminta understands immediately the store is a remnant of some older arrangement of the building.
‘How interesting,’ she pronounces. She knows how stone is cut, or rather, how it was cut.
The regimental chapel is, by her reckoning, a century old and mostly constructed of wood, but the storeroom is considerably more antiquated, as if it was hewn from Castle Rock itself.
The windows are thin slits, left unshuttered to admit the light.
Only a fool would want to bring a candle into a storeroom full of artillery.
As well as wooden boxes on the uneven floor there are four ancient glass panes, propped against the wall.
Above, the stone ceiling has been altered but once, clearly, was vaulted.
‘May I?’ she asks.
‘Please,’ the colonel encourages her.
Inside, she realises immediately that this was a chapel.
A tiny jewel at the heart of the castle.
The room is oriented east to west, a kind of confirmation.
No more than twenty people could have worshipped here – surely the most important residents of the city’s most important fortification: Scotland’s medieval royals.
The family her ancestors served. Araminta’s heart beats faster as she wonders if Mary Queen of Scots prayed in this place.
She breathes deeply to steady her mind as her eyes bounce off the walls and floor, searching for the clue that Winifred said would be apparent.
‘Perhaps I ought to show you to the strongroom,’ the colonel says through the open doorway. ‘We keep the Honours of Scotland there. The crown. That sort of thing.’
Araminta makes the kind of noise one might emit when offered a slice of particularly sumptuous cake, but she makes no move towards the door.
‘This room is terribly ancient,’ she says. ‘Fascinating.’
‘It’s only an old store,’ the colonel replies, in disbelief that Mrs Moore is interested in such a dowdy part of one of Europe’s oldest castles when there are battlements and royal reception rooms, not to mention a collection of bona fide royal jewels.
She doesn’t correct him. Instead, she checks over the windows and is rewarded with a thin line of writing scratched into a stone sill at the far end.
Draw the pearl’s seat to the jeweller’s crown, it says.
Araminta looks up furtively. Draw the pearl’s seat to the jeweller’s crown, she memorises, almost afraid that her mind is moving too quickly to retain these eight simple words.
The colonel clears his throat. She curses her great aunt who said that she would know when she’d found the clue, and has just been proved right.
‘How fascinating,’ she says. ‘The Honours of Scotland. I oughtn’t put you to it, Colonel. I know how tourists frustrate you.’
The rest of the visit passes in such a flash that Araminta doesn’t notice Eleanor and the lieutenant eyeing each other as they wait on their elders and betters.
In the jewel room, she hardly takes in the crown when it is fetched with an old leather belt and a ceremonial golden staff.
She feels as if a child is showing her treasures from his toy box.
The colonel, pleased as punch, revels in telling the story of the jewels.
Araminta echoes his words, simply to move things on.
‘Walled up? Really? Sir Walter Scott. Good heavens.’ After another scalded brandy and the minimum possible time by the fire, she takes her leave.
When they emerge onto the Esplanade, Great Aunt Eilidh’s old carriage feels like a deliverance.
The coachman has waited inside the box, the window down as he smokes a cheroot.
When they appear, he opens the door and throws the stub to the ground.
The women climb in. Araminta could not be happier as she bids the colonel farewell; the door is slammed and the horses make off across the Esplanade and down the Lawnmarket.
It is the most thrilling thing she’s ever experienced, as if someone has whispered a secret into her ear and she has made off with it.
Not someone random, either, but her own great great grandmother.
A woman she can now put a name to. Berenice McKenzie.
At Glenfinlas Street she leaves Eleanor to deal with their wet things.
The hem of the cape drips onto the flagstones as the maid folds it over her arm.
Araminta does not even think to issue instructions about the drying of the velvet and instead takes the stairs to the drawing room, where she closes the door and makes for Great Aunt Eilidh’s desk.
It isn’t until she sits down that she realises she has no idea what the eight words mean.
A pearl has no seat and all crowns must be made by a jeweller.
She glances at the wall of books, hoping for inspiration, but her foremothers remain disturbingly silent.
She’s almost glad when Brodie comes up. ‘Might I fetch you something, ma’am? Luncheon perhaps?’
Araminta picks up the map that started things off and puts it down again. ‘Fish,’ she says, surprising herself, for she seldom asks for seafood.
‘Fish, Mrs Moore? I shall check with Cook.’
Araminta gets up and stands at the window. The rain has relented slightly, the grey cap over Edinburgh now streaked with blue. She wonders when Sister Winifred will make the next arrangement. She cannot tackle this alone.