Chapter Fourteen
The following morning, Araminta wakes at the turn of the handle on her bedroom door.
She thinks fondly, under the warm covers, of Eleanor coming with her breakfast tray.
Then she remembers the girl has betrayed her.
Eleanor draws the curtains and the mistress sits up and takes a piece of toast from the rack.
‘I’ll dress myself,’ she directs, and Eleanor disappears.
It takes a while and she can’t wear the dress with the covered buttons, but Araminta finds this more tolerable than falling into her erstwhile comfortable routine.
‘I’m a Jewel Keeper,’ she recalls with a streak of pride to temper the sadness.
Going downstairs she sets out alone to see Mr Drummond, or rather, she takes the carriage in the direction of Heriot Row before directing the driver to her true destination, up the hill and over the High Street, to the bowling green before Heriot’s Hospital.
Here, beyond the city limits, she takes a stroll to make sure she hasn’t been followed.
She is a different woman this morning to the woman she has ever been before, for she has a mission.
It’s cold but bright today and three pupils aged no more than ten years are kicking an old leather ball on the grass in front of an impressive building.
Beyond, the sound of masons and carpenters refitting the school’s chapel floats on the air.
The building is pristine, the old frontage recently clad in sandstone.
In fact, it looks rather grand with Edinburgh Castle behind like a painted backdrop.
Araminta hardly slept last night, sitting up late to study this place; the subject of the ninth clue.
The hospital was founded in the early seventeenth century, predating, she noted, Oliver Cromwell’s invasion of Scotland and the McKenzie women’s stewardship of the queen’s crown, which, she realised after several hours of searching, is not mentioned in any of the history books in Aunt Eilidh’s library.
A true secret then. She’s decided that the next time she sees Sister Winifred she’ll ask for a description of the item.
Surely the old lady must know what it looks like.
Araminta feels the weight of her duty but still, there’s ballast to it – her new-found sense of pride.
As she strolls confidently across the grass and round the school building with its balustraded terrace, she comforts herself that she isn’t being followed.
She was careful, and she didn’t tell Eleanor where she was going.
She recalls Mrs Rundell’s wise words that a lady should never fully trust her staff.
She’s been foolish. She tries not to think of it.
As she rounds the corner of the terrace, her attention turns to the school which, from reading Great Aunt Eilidh’s papers, she knows was founded to educate orphans.
Cut out, in a file, there were a couple of recent articles from Edinburgh’s broadsheets suggesting that these days, most of the pupils are drawn from needy families.
‘The jeweller’s crown,’ she muses out loud.
The school certainly seems a crowning achievement.
She wanders into the inner quadrangle, nodding at a workman who is unloading wooden chairs from a cart marked Mssrs Trotters the smell of schoolboys.
Out of the bright sunlight the corridor feels stone cold.
The floor is tiled in black and white and at intervals there are wooden boards painted with the names of the prizewinners.
In Mary-le-Bone, Araminta’s school was formed of two large townhouses knocked together, the old morning rooms and drawing rooms becoming classrooms that boasted wide fireplaces and fancy cornicing.
One dining room was used as a library. The other was retained so the young ladies might eat there and thus be taught how their staff ought to keep the silverware.
The school looked like someone’s home, with embossed chintz curtains and comfortable chairs. This place is more functional.
‘How many pupils are there here?’
‘Over a hundred,’ the young master avers.
‘For poor boys, as I understand it. Do they go on?’
‘Some to university,’ the man says proudly. ‘At present, we have two alumni studying to become doctors.’
Araminta raises an eyebrow. This is an achievement for a working-class boy.
‘It’s less unusual in Scotland,’ the master adds, noticing her surprise.
‘Less unusual?’
‘My father was a gardener,’ he admits. ‘On an estate. Scottish education is progressive, madam. If a lad has ability, then funds will be found.’
They round the corner and the teacher indicates the sash-and-case window ahead, halfway down the corridor.
She can just make out the statue’s sleeve, a patch of mossy ochre lichen upon it, like velvet.
Araminta smartly undoes the latch and leans out.
The teacher doesn’t object. George Heriot is to her left.
He’s holding a thick stone book, slightly open.
The bible she supposes. ‘The carving is fascinating,’ she lets out, glancing behind.
‘Such a testament. This building has seen so much.’
‘Indeed,’ the teacher enthuses. ‘Heriot’s has seen kings come and go. Wounded men from the Battle of Dunbar were brought here to recover, when Cromwell invaded.’
‘You’re an antiquarian?’
‘I teach history and classics.’
‘So this building was in use in Cromwell’s day?’ Araminta confirms, coming in from the window.
‘Oh yes,’ the young man says. ‘This floor housed the hospital ward. The view of the castle was said to inspire the soldiers’ recovery. The purser still has the records.’
Araminta is certain now that this is the place Berenice would have left her mark. She puts her head back out of the window. Above the statue, the indented stone is scalloped like a shell, not a crown, though it has the effect of a sandstone halo. She leans out further.
‘Madam.’ The teacher steps forward, concerned.
And then she sees it. Scratched into the open book in Heriot’s hand.
Perhaps Berenice was taller than she is.
The mark is mathematical. She blinks. It is, she realises, the diagram of an equilateral triangle, each line at sixty degrees to the others.
She drew the same thing a hundred times at school. ‘Good heavens,’ she says.
Dodging inside, she thanks the teacher and walks out to her carriage.
The triangle must point to somewhere on that map – the third point a triangulation from the castle to the school and beyond.
She considers Berenice’s thirteen clues.
She’s had the impression they must have been difficult for it’s taken almost a century to get this far. Perhaps now things will be easier.
‘Home!’ she instructs the driver. ‘As fast as you can.’
The man does as she asks, the horses pulling away, if not at a gallop, at least at a spirited trot. Araminta doesn’t care for comfort and holds the worn leather strap above the door as the carriage bounces along the uneven road.
At Glenfinlas Street, she sweeps inside, past Hester who is cleaning the gilded mirror in the hallway with vinegar.
In the drawing room she throws her cape onto the sopha and pulls off her gloves.
Then she checks the door is closed. She will share nothing she doesn’t have to now with Eleanor Thrale.
Pulling the map from Aunt Eilidh’s desk, she bisects the line between the chapel and the school at ninety degrees and creates an even-sided triangle, the apex of which points to garden ground behind a private house on the Lawnmarket, on the far side of the road from St Giles’.
She squints. She had expected this new clue to lead to an institutional building.
Something unlikely to change. The house seems undistinguished; behind it the old fleshmarket where meat was sold and on the other side of the road the Tron Kirk, with a poultry market behind.