Chapter Eighteen
A search is started in the household around five of the clock, as the sky darkens.
When it bears no fruit, Brodie sends notes to the houses nearby asking if anyone has seen Eleanor.
This provokes a response, for on the other side of the square a housemaid was scrubbing the steps of number seven South Charlotte Street when Eleanor passed, and she noticed the girl was crying.
‘It may be that she’s bolted,’ Araminta says dismissively upon receipt of this news. ‘She said she wanted to go home.’
Brodie, not knowing enough about Eleanor’s activities to make a solid judgement, satisfies himself by looking doubtful.
The girl is unlikely to have enough money to buy her passage from Leith or even the cheapest ticket on the stage that leaves every afternoon from White Hart Close.
Her room in the attic has been searched and none of her things are missing.
The mistress seems strangely unperturbed.
‘Had you sent her out, ma’am?’ he enquires. ‘Do you have any idea where she went?’
Araminta shakes her head. She can’t admit to Brodie what has passed between her and her maid nor where Eleanor was going.
‘She was upset when she was last spotted, and given it was so close and she was coming from the direction of Princes Street, she was probably on her way back to us. To go missing between South Charlotte Street and the kitchen door seems . . .’ Brodie searches for the word.
‘Odd,’ he finally settles. ‘I wonder if she met somebody she knew. She didn’t seem like a flighty piece.
’ He does not mention seeing Eleanor last night or the time she came in from the back, delivered by the cab.
‘She isn’t flighty,’ Araminta adds and proceeds to pace about the drawing room. Perhaps her plan has gone awry, but she cannot confide that to the old butler.
At ten that evening and still with no sign of Eleanor, Araminta is out of the front door like a shot.
Sister Winifred said this time she’d arrange a key to St John’s on Princes Street.
Araminta checks nobody’s following her as she proceeds past the square and across the main road.
The church is in darkness, so newly built that its stone walls glow white in the light of the moon, which tonight is full and bright with no cloud to obscure it.
Along Princes Street windows are lit by flaming gas lamps.
Carriages come and go, several at once as if a theatre performance has finished somewhere in the East End.
Araminta darts along the terrace to the south of the church and is rounding the corner when she sees the nun pull up on a carthorse.
As Winifred dismounts she takes a swig from a silver hipflask. Araminta’s eyes narrow.
‘A nun riding a carthorse is hardly inconspicuous,’ she says, stepping forward.
Winifred looks over her shoulder. She removes a large iron key from her pocket and leads the way to the door.
‘Eleanor’s gone missing,’ Araminta gets out before the key is even turned.
She finds she’s worried though she feels cross with herself for that.
Eleanor has betrayed her after all. ‘I sent the girl to Mr Thom but she never returned. She was seen on the other side of the square coming back to the house. Then nothing. Brodie has posted notices about the district.’
Winifred takes in this information. ‘I can’t see that Thom would have the kech for a kidnapping. What would he do with the girl? There’s no point in that.’
‘It’s said she was crying.’
‘He scared her then and she’s run.’ The old nun fiddles with the key, finally getting the lock to turn. She leads the way inside to an empty anteroom off the cavernous church hall, where, lighting a candle, she offers Araminta her flask. ‘Sherry,’ she says. ‘Have you made progress?’
Araminta takes a sip and nods. ‘I found another clue.’ She pulls the map from her sleeve.
Sister Winifred opens it against the wall. ‘What did you find?’
‘An equilateral triangle,’ Araminta says. ‘Etched onto the stone of Heriot’s statue.’
She hasn’t marked the map, knowing her great aunt would consider it imprudent.
Instead, she traces the line with her finger, from the castle to Heriot’s and onwards, back into town.
She taps the point on the High Street she visited earlier.
‘This is the apex,’ she says. ‘It’s a run-down back yard between the old fleshmarket and the poultry fair.
I looked but found nothing. I checked the other side of the wall too.
The building next door is where the Act of Union is said to have been signed.
Of course, this map may be slightly different from the one that Berenice had.
We’ve no way to know. But on Eilidh’s map, this is where the triangle lands. ’
Winifred smiles. ‘Show me what was etched,’ she says. ‘Exactly.’
Araminta looks for something to draw with but the room does not house so much as a pencil, so she uses her finger on the wall.
‘The line bisecting the first axis was like this?’ Winifred mimics her great niece’s motion. ‘You’re certain?’
Araminta nods.
‘You’ve gone in the wrong direction, dear,’ the nun says. ‘Your triangle doesn’t point to town but the exact opposite. The apex lies beyond Lauriston.’ She peers at the map and lands a bony finger on the point.
Araminta squints in the low light. The area shown is an open space beyond the toll cross.
It’s peppered with pictures of trees. ‘But there’s nothing there,’ she says.
‘If Berenice sited clues in places that couldn’t change, why would she choose the edge of a field, where a boundary could move at any time? Or a building be thrown up?’
Winifred chortles. ‘They’ll never build anything there. They call it the Links. It’s the edge of the plague pits, as were. The very north-western corner. It’ll be open ground in perpetuity.’
‘She buried something?’ Araminta realises. ‘In a mass grave?’
‘Maybe.’
Araminta sighs. She doesn’t relish the idea of digging up a plague pit, where hundreds of bodies may be interred, albeit from centuries before. Apart from feeling sacrilegious, she isn’t sure it’s even safe.
Winifred says, ‘Berenice was most inventive. We’re getting close now.’
‘Clue number ten,’ Araminta confirms. ‘Though I remain unclear about a great deal.’
Sister Winifred folds the map and takes another swig of sherry. ‘Do you have questions?’
Araminta raises her eyes as if to say of course she has.
‘The men lost the honours too,’ Winifred offers.
‘After the Act of Union was signed. The Scottish aristocracy was determined the English should not remove the crown. I think at that point, had things been different, the McKenzie women might have returned the Queen’s Jewels.
However, circumstances conspired against it.
They walled up the King’s Honours in 1707; the ones you saw in the castle’s strongroom.
Over the years they were forgotten. The regiments at the castle often change.
It was Walter Scott who tracked the King’s Jewels, though Eilidh and I gave him a nudge.
I was in Edinburgh, that day,’ she adds wistfully.
‘Not at the castle, but at the party afterwards.’
‘I don’t know enough about history,’ Araminta admits. ‘I read one of Great Aunt Eilidh’s books last night but it didn’t tell me much.’
‘Books seldom do,’ Winifred says sadly. ‘Oftentimes, as a lady, I find the meaning between the lines.’ She lapses into French – quoting from a manuscript she’s been studying in the convent library.
‘L’histoire est juste peut-être, mais . .
. elle a été écrite par les vainqueurs.’ Noticing Araminta’s inability to understand, she translates, ‘History may be just, but it was written by the victors. In this case that means English men and Scottish men. Hanoverians of late. When the queen’s crown was first sent away, nobody would have been able to foresee any of this.
It was a complicated time. I often think that 1647 is the dullest, most complicated year on record.
Then Cromwell triumphed. He was a woman hater.
Well, he hated everything. And the crown was threatened. ’
‘I understand why it was sent away,’ Araminta chimes. ‘I don’t understand why we kept it. Catherine of Braganza,’ she adds.
Winifred waves a hand dismissively. ‘Personality, merely. The McKenzies didn’t judge her a worthy queen.
But as I say, I think in 1707 there must have been a thought it’d be handed over.
Queen Anne was on the throne and she wasn’t a bad egg, though she lost the Stuarts the crown for none of her children lived, poor thing.
Still, the Act of Union put everybody’s nose out of joint.
It really wasn’t supported. Then only a few years later, the Hanoverians took the throne on Anne’s death and they were Germans, you see.
Royal cousins, but distant. You were concerned that the McKenzies have been Jacobites but really George the First’s ascension was a travesty.
They overlooked a lot of royal blood, Catholic or not.
Berenice was only doing her best. She knew after Culloden she’d be arrested, and perhaps Mhairi too, and that she must comprehensively hide the crown in a way that might not be got out of her under torture.
She chose to do it . . . like this,’ Winifred gesticulates at the map.
‘It’s really been bad luck. Were the jewels in our possession in 1818 when Scott unearthed the honours in Edinburgh Castle, Eilidh and I would definitely have unveiled the crown.
We’d have got away with its loss being a triumph, rather as Scott did.
Amid the celebration there were few questions asked. But alas . . .’
Araminta sighs and Winifred offers her the hip flask.
‘No. Thank you.’
‘I’m really very sorry this has fallen to you,’ the old nun adds.