Chapter Thirteen #2
‘I did,’ Araminta almost squeals. The women sit on either side of a small desk.
‘And?’
‘Draw the pearl’s seat to the jeweller’s crown,’ Araminta recites.
‘And did you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘On the map, child,’ Winifred says, as if Araminta is an idiot. ‘They are, I expect, the points that my sister already marked for you. On the Carmichael thread.’
Araminta’s eyes light as understanding drops. ‘Ah!’ she lets out.
Winifred confirms. ‘The pearl was Queen Margaret. St Margaret, in fact. She founded the chapel in the castle. The jeweller’s crown, let’s see. The second point. Heriot’s Hospital, I imagine.’
‘A hospital?’
Winifred sighs. ‘George Heriot was the King’s Jeweller.
Really, you’d think you were brought up in an .
. .’ she is about to say ‘English barn’, but she needs to move the child on in her quest, not offend her.
Besides, her time at the convent has taught her not to take out her feelings on others.
‘It’s to the south of the city,’ she explains. ‘That will be the ninth clue.’
‘The south? Where your convent is?’
‘Closer. On the near side of the park.’
‘Perhaps we might go together?’
Winifred rolls her eyes. More than anything she hates having to explain. ‘We cannot be seen together,’ she states baldly.
‘But why?’ Araminta sounds like a mewling infant.
‘You’re almost certainly being watched, child.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Who would want to watch me?’
Winifred leaves a long and disapproving silence.
‘You said if I fetched the clue you’d answer my questions. You shook my hand,’ Araminta complains.
Sister Winifred waits another few seconds before relenting.
She picks up a cushion from a pile behind the door to make herself more comfortable, motioning for Araminta to do likewise.
‘There will be a clue at the hospital. The ninth clue. It’s a school; a charitable concern.
Eilidh clearly did not make it that far, but that’s what will take you onwards. ’
‘Onwards towards what?’
Winifred lets out a sigh as she realises there is no way out of having the conversation that she has been avoiding for a decade; perhaps even longer. ‘It’s the crown,’ the old nun says.
‘Yes,’ Araminta encourages her. ‘I saw the crown. The honours. I’d thought it might be plainer but it’s quite as ornate as the one in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. Colonel Fraser showed me in the castle.’
‘Not that crown. You must understand the times. Firstly, Cromwell was coming. He’d smelted the English honours – quite destroyed them – after he beheaded Charles Stuart. King Charles the First that is.’
Araminta searches her memory. ‘1649,’ she ventures, glad to finally be able to place something of historical importance to her family’s story.
‘In January, as I understand it,’ Winifred confirms. ‘The following year, Cromwell invaded Scotland because we’d crowned Charles’s son at Scone.’
‘Charles the Second.’
‘Indeed, though it would be ten years before he was crowned at Westminster Abbey and fully took the throne. It was an act of extreme loyalty or defiance, depending on which side you were on.’
‘I don’t understand. What has this to do with Culloden?’
‘Nothing at all,’ Winifred says. ‘This was a century before. Let me speak.’
Araminta folds her hands in her lap and curbs her questions. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Please continue.’
‘Charles escaped to France after the coronation. Cromwell headed north with a huge army. He’d have smelted the honours, as he did the English crown, and our people couldn’t have that, so the jewels were spirited away.
Not for the first time either. During medieval times there were often battles, armies .
. . Men!’ Winifred gesticulates. ‘So when Cromwell threatened invasion, the honours went north. To Dunnottar.’
Araminta cannot contain herself. ‘I didn’t know Cromwell came to Scotland at all.’
Her great aunt casts her a look that leaves her in no doubt that this is extremely disappointing. Nonetheless, the old lady continues. ‘So the King’s Honours went to Dunnottar in 1651 because there was a castle. But the Queen’s Honours did not.’
‘The queen?’
‘Well, there was no queen; Charles at that time being unmarried. So while he was being crowned at Scone, your great, great . . . now let me see . . . great great grandmother Aine McKenzie and her sister, Derbhille, were entrusted with the Queen’s Jewels.
For safekeeping. They took the crown westwards, not north. And they hid it.’
Araminta gets out of her seat. ‘The McKenzie women . . .’ she starts. ‘Hid the queen’s crown.’
‘Yes,’ Winifred says, relieved the girl is finally getting the gist of it. ‘We are the keepers of the Queen’s Jewels. The consort’s crown as it’s sometimes known.’
Araminta takes this in. ‘Keepers of the Queen’s Jewels,’ she repeats. ‘Help the Queen. But did we not give them back? Charles the Second was married when he returned from France. He had a queen, did he not? And the King’s Honours must have been returned.’
Winifred sighs once more. ‘Charles had a queen, yes, and a great many mistresses. His wife was a Portuguese princess. Catherine of Braganza.’
Araminta wishes she had paid more attention during history lessons.
She can’t picture this dead queen’s face or recall anything about her.
She tries to remember if Sir Walter wrote about Cromwell and recalls that he did in a novel called Peveril of the Peak which was entirely set in England.
She curses her classroom decision to focus on classics.
‘Derbhille took against Catherine of Braganza,’ Winifred admits. ‘I don’t think she was a bad woman.’
‘Which? Great Great Great Great Aunt Derbhille or Charles’s wife?’
‘Well . . . both. Catherine, she said, was not a worthy queen. In any event, the crown remained hidden and you know the rest.’
Araminta shakes her head. ‘I certainly do not know the rest.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Winifred is insistent. ‘After Culloden. Berenice’s incarceration.
The clues. Thirteen of them. We’re at number nine.
’ Winifred wishes the minister had left them some kind of sustenance.
It’s been a long time since dinner, and she feels worn down by the damp journey into town as much as the memories.
She picks up the lamp to see if there’s anything on the shelves by the door – a tin of biscuits, perhaps.
The minister of St George’s was ever the kind of fellow to have shortbread about the place.
As she does so she notices a movement beyond the barred window, in the laneway. A flash of pale cloth.
‘Who’s there?’ she calls, peering through the dark glass.
Araminta is not paying attention. She’s counting the generations of McKenzie women since the time of Oliver Cromwell’s short-lived republic.
Charles’s restoration in 1660, the Jacobite uprising in 1745 .
. . and she, here in the year of 1837. ‘Do you mean that for the last several generations, almost two hundred years, the women in our family have been Jewel Keepers . . . and that is why you think we may be watched? But by whom?’
Winifred ignores her niece, flinging open the door and walking purposefully down the tiled corridor to the entrance.
She douses the lamp, leaving herself in absolute darkness, before opening the outside door and pouncing on the figure waiting halfway up the alley.
Eleanor screams and tries to run but Sister Winifred grabs the girl by the ear and pulls her smartly up the hallway and into the little office.
‘Eleanor!’ Araminta exclaims.
‘You know this child?’ Winifred asks.
‘She’s my maid. You must unhand her.’
Winifred lets go of Eleanor’s ear.
‘Good heavens, whatever are you doing creeping about the streets at this hour?’ Araminta demands.
Eleanor pulls herself upright. ‘I was following you, ma’am. You left the house.’
Araminta sighs. ‘Well, really. There was no need . . .’ But she finds it difficult to finish this sentence. She can’t blame Eleanor. The girl likes to attend her. It’s her job.
Winifred glares in annoyance. The whole point of meeting at St George’s is that the place is a fortress and close enough to Glenfinlas Street for Araminta to sneak out unseen. This kind of thing was not supposed to happen.
‘Madam, do you think to become a nun?’ Eleanor asks, glancing fearfully at Sister Winifred.
Araminta laughs. ‘This is my great aunt. Her name is Sister Winifred,’ she says. ‘She’s my great aunt Eilidh McKenzie’s sister.’
Eleanor bobs a careful curtsey and Winifred waves her off. Such niceties are neither required nor appreciated.
‘I said you were being followed,’ Winifred says, gloomily. ‘And now this.’
‘Eleanor isn’t following me,’ Araminta objects. ‘Not in the way you mean.’
Winifred casts a look at the young maid and senses something – a patch of shade. The girl is afraid, of course she would be, the old nun reasons. She has just been pulled off the street by the lug.
Eleanor’s breathing becomes uneasy. ‘Ma’am,’ she stutters, realising that she must admit what she has been up to, for if she does not do so now, her loyalty will belong to the gentlemen in the backroom at McGhie’s, and that she will not submit to.
She pauses, afraid, for once she speaks Mrs Moore will dismiss her, but that at least means she can go home.
A wave of shame turns her stomach. ‘Your great aunt isn’t wrong,’ she admits steadily.
‘You are being followed. By two gentlemen, and they are bad men. Oh, ma’am.
’ She bursts into inconsolable tears at her disloyalty, momentarily unable to continue.
Businesslike, Winifred removes a clean, cotton handkerchief from her sleeve. ‘Here,’ she says. Eleanor uses it to cover her mouth for she can hardly bear to let the words out.
‘I’ve been terrible bad, ma’am. I’ve been very, very wicked,’ she manages.
‘I don’t believe that.’ Araminta touches Eleanor’s arm. ‘What on earth is it?’
‘They gave me money, ma’am, to tell them things.’
Winifred lets out a snort as if to say that she knew it.