Chapter Eighteen #2
Araminta thinks she’s found something in Edinburgh she didn’t expect. A part of herself that’s always been missing. She wants to be a McKenzie. She wants to regain the family honour. ‘Was Berenice tortured?’ she asks, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Winifred nods. ‘She told Archibald Thom nothing. But again, she can’t have known she’d have the strength to withhold. What she did was probably for the best.’
‘And her sister?’
‘Mhairi escaped that particular indignity. Most of the women who had supported the Bonnie Prince were fined. She paid a hundred pounds – a great deal more in those days than it is now. Three years later she was dead. A carriage accident on the way to Duddingston Kirk, not far from where your mother died. I expect Mhairi was trying to unravel Berenice’s first clue – as we all were for the following decades.
McKenzie women tramped around Arthur’s Seat a thousand times.
My sister only uncovered it because she realised an old cairn had been moved.
This made sense of the first clue, and we were off.
Not exactly like greyhounds after a rabbit,’ she chortles, ‘but we had begun. We’ll win this like a game of chess if we win it at all. ’
Araminta is about to say something about how she intends to win. About how different she feels now she knows where she comes from. But there’s a knock, distant, at the church door. Both women start and Araminta hides the map inside her sleeve. ‘I’ll go,’ she says.
When she returns, ushering Eleanor before her, Winifred feels an unaccountable sense of relief.
‘Good heavens, where have you been, Eleanor? I hear the household has been in a state of alarm,’ Winifred says.
‘Mr Thom tried to strangle me, ma’am,’ Eleanor gets out. ‘I had to disappear. I knew you’d be here at ten of the clock. I came the back way out the mews and up Queensferry Street. Nobody saw me.’
‘Are you all right?’
Eleanor nods. She turns to Araminta. ‘Mr Thom’s been paying the carriage man, ma’am. That’s how he knew we’d been to the castle.’
A flash of anger lights Araminta’s eyes. Is there nobody she can trust? Eleanor continues.
‘I talked him round. Davey, that is. He’s on your side when it comes to it. I didn’t manage to tell the falsehood to Mr Thom, but Davey did. He said you went to a house across the Water of Leith. He’ll tell them whatever you like.’
Araminta thinks for a moment. ‘That’s good,’ she manages, tight-lipped. ‘Well done.’
Winifred thinks that her niece appears to have a strange attitude to what’s important.
People, as Mother often says at the convent, are the Lord’s true treasure.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that Eleanor has been hurt today, and not only physically.
But then, Araminta’s been hurt too. Winifred recalls last night and her great niece’s cheeks pink with tears. Still.
‘We must keep you safe, Eleanor,’ Winifred says. ‘That must have been a frightening experience.’
Eleanor is grateful for the nun’s concern. She elaborates, talking in a rush. ‘Mr Thom was furious angry, ma’am. He said he’d pursue me if I ran. He wants me to report to him every day. But I can’t go back there. I won’t.’ Her jaw juts defiantly. ‘He’s set to kill me.’
Sister Winifred takes this in. ‘You must come with me,’ she offers.
The young maid looks nervous but her mistress replies for her. ‘Yes. That would be wise,’ Araminta cuts in. ‘I’ll make up some nonsense to Mr Brodie and call off the search.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Winifred insists. ‘Think for heaven’s sake.
They’ve two of your staff in their pay. There could be a third or more.
I’ll hide Eleanor with my sisters but you keep folk looking for her.
If we’re lucky Thom will take up the chase, which will distract his attention from you, my dear.
Perhaps you and I might investigate this latest clue, Eleanor,’ Winifred suggests.
‘It amazes me that nuns are invisible beings. I used to think they were like angels, but now, I know a good deal more about nuns.’ Her eyes sparkle. ‘You’ll be safe in the convent.’
‘I was hiding in the mews,’ Eleanor starts. ‘I could stay there if it’s inconvenient. Davey wouldn’t mind.’
‘That won’t last, child,’ Sister Winifred dismisses the idea. ‘There are a dozen lads coming and going – you think a lass biding in the hayloft won’t be noticed? I’d give you a day.’
Eleanor looks sheepish.
The old nun gets to her feet.
‘Come along,’ she says. ‘Araminta, you must manage your coachman. Have him pass more false leads to Thom. It’s a tried and tested way of dealing with these men.
Send him to the Pentlands. To Trinity. As far as Leith.
Meanwhile, Eleanor and I shall take the tenth clue in hand tomorrow and meet you after, at the usual time. I’ll send note to say where.’
Araminta nods. Neither she nor Winifred consults Eleanor further and the maid obediently follows the women to the door. Outside, Winifred locks the church with the large, iron key.
‘I must write to my husband again,’ Araminta says absentmindedly. ‘And start packing Great Aunt Eilidh’s things.’
‘You watch out,’ Winifred says. ‘That’s what you need to do.’ And with that they bid each other good night.
Eleanor stares as her mistress’s figure recedes across Princes Street, walking smartly back towards Charlotte Square in her cape, like a dark princess in a fairytale. Winifred watches too. She always liked that green velvet. She stitched it herself. Eilidh helped with the hood.
‘My horse is this way,’ she tells the girl, pulling herself back to the here and now. ‘You might ride behind. It’s not more than twenty minutes.’
Eleanor gulps. She’s ridden before. She was brought up a farm girl but it’s been a while. ‘Will I serve as your maid, ma’am?’
Winifred chortles. ‘You must call me sister,’ she says. ‘We’ve no maids at the nunnery. You’ll be our guest, child.’
On Princes Street, Eleanor thinks that the old nun’s horse is the biggest she’s ever seen.
‘She’s old, but strong,’ Winifred says cheerfully as she unties the Clydesdale from the post. ‘This breed comes from the west. She’s a carthorse, really, but she’ll get us there.
’ She pulls a carrot out of her pocket and feeds it to the chestnut nag, before mounting more nimbly than Eleanor expected.
Eleanor climbs up behind. This horse must be eighteen hands, she thinks.
She wonders if her father might like such a beast on his smallholding.
As they set off, she smiles at the sound of hooves on the setts and the animal’s pale fetlocks streaking below as they head into the black night, past the looming grey outline of the castle just visible above the tenement roofs on Lothian Road, on and on through the city until there are open fields.
With the clear sky tonight the temperature has plummeted.
A tiny vortex of snow swirls through the dark air.
‘I’ll be a guest,’ Eleanor repeats, low, under her breath.
Then she feels the old nun’s body ripple with laughter.
‘You’ll have chores, mind,’ Winifred says. ‘But there will also be singing.’
*
At Glenfinlas Street Araminta sneaks upstairs. She pulls her notebook from the desk drawer and reads back what she’s written.
Aunt Eilidh left me a tartan kerchief.
Clue 8 led to the castle.
Clue 9 from the castle to Heriot’s: a third point on the triangle.
Clue 10 The triangle led to a house on the High Street.
Raising the pencil she scores out Clue 10 and amends it to The third point was a plague pit. Then she shudders and rings for Brodie. The old butler appears in the drawing room immediately. If Araminta were less distracted she might notice his cheeks are still pink from the cold.
‘We ought to notify the constables about Eleanor’s disappearance,’ she says.
Brodie nods, his grave expression not shifting an inch.
‘As you wish, madam,’ he replies. Since they last spoke he’s checked everywhere he can think of and even alerted Mrs Hamilton to spread the word along the Water of Leith.
However, he’s now appraised of the mistress’s nighttime jaunts to see her great aunt and has just watched the girl mount behind Sister Winifred.
The mistress knows Eleanor is safe and so does he, but like the first-class butler he is, he says nothing and retreats to his sitting room in the basement.
Here he peers out towards the mews and decides that to get any further, he’ll have to speak to Davey. Tomorrow.