Chapter Twenty-Seven
Davey gets back to Glenfinlas Street a full hour later.
He has no idea for how long he lost consciousness, but when he wakes, he stumbles out of the empty Chapel Royal to find the carriage gone.
There’s no transport for hire along the Canongate – it’s too poor for that.
He runs up the hill, dodging the beer carts and children playing hopscotch and cuts across the bridge where he picks up a driver at Waterloo Place.
The cab returns him to Glenfinlas Street at a pace fired by the extra shilling Davey has the sense to promise the man.
‘Wait for me,’ he orders and wheels down the basement stairs straight into Cook.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ she berates him.
‘The mistress,’ he pants.
Cook puts her hands on the boy’s shoulders and makes him sit. She pours a cup of milk. ‘Dinnae fash,’ she says. ‘It cannae be as bad as that.’
‘Is she here?’
Cook doesn’t keep note of the mistress’s comings and goings. She rarely ventures upstairs and the mistress so far has never ventured down. ‘Is she no with you, son?’
‘Mr Brodie,’ Davey says. ‘Where is he?’
Brodie is in his sitting room copying a tidy pile of receipts into the household ledger.
‘I’ve given him milk but he hasnae touched it,’ Cook reports.
‘The mistress is gone!’ Davey exclaims. ‘He took her!’
Cook glances sideways as if the boy has gone mad. Brodie, however, swings immediately into action. ‘Where?’ he asks. ‘Was it the same man who hurt Mistress McKenzie?’
Davey nods to confirm it. ‘Holyrood. In the Chapel Royal,’ he says. ‘He stole the carriage anaw. Knocked me flat.’
‘You took Mrs Moore to Holyrood? Unaccompanied?’ Brodie sounds furious.
‘She insisted. She had a gun, sir.’
The butler realises he’ll get nowhere berating the boy. ‘When was this?’
But the carriage man has no pocket watch and little sense of time.
‘We went from the boarding house on North St David Street to Parliament Square and thence to Holyrood,’ he reasons.
‘We weren’t there long before he turned up.
He knocked me out cold. I can’t say how long for. His name is Mr Harry Thom.’
Brodie calls Douglas and instructs him to the magistrate, Mr Neill, on Heriot Row, with a mandate to report the mistress being taken by force in her own carriage.
Then the butler grabs his hat and greatcoat.
He should have been more insistent, he thinks.
He should have protected the mistress and Saoirse too.
‘I’ve a cab waiting, sir,’ Davey says.
‘Good lad. You’d better come with me.’ Brodie is already making for the door. ‘You’ll answer my questions on the way.’
By the time they get to St Andrew Square, Davey has told Brodie what he knows. The butler pays the cab man and sends the boy to Mr McGhie’s to make what he terms ‘discreet enquiries’ of the shop boy. ‘If the mistress is there, fetch me immediately.’
‘Where will you be, sir?’ Davey asks.
Brodie tips his chin to indicate North St David Street. ‘Mistress Campbell’s,’ he says.
Despite the urgency he cannot help but pause before knocking. It’s the work of seconds to lift his hat and draw a hand over his hair. Bella answers, and when Brodie introduces himself as the McKenzies’ butler, she sees him up to Sister Winifred’s room. ‘Someone to see you.’
Winifred has been asleep. She comes to slower than usual.
It’s a moment before she feels the pain in her rib.
Then she sees Brodie. Time stops. She stares.
It’s almost impossible to take in that he’s here.
She curses herself for blushing. She puts her hands over her face.
There’s a whiff of dried lavender from the nightstand.
Her palms are icy. Her side aches. Between her fingers, she can’t look him in the eye. ‘Get out!’ she calls. ‘Dear God.’
Brodie thinks how nice it is to see her again, like this, in a colourful nightgown. How little she’s changed.
‘Sister,’ he manages, stifling the urge to call her Saoirse. ‘It’s Mrs Moore. She’s been taken.’
Winifred peers round her raised palms. ‘Was it Thom?’
Brodie nods. ‘The lady went to Parliament Square and met the librarian from the Faculty of Advocates. Then she had the coachman take her to . . .’ here he pauses because it’s so inadvisable. ‘Holyrood. The Chapel Royal.’
Winifred’s hands return to her lap. ‘She found the eleventh. Clever girl.’
Brodie doesn’t ask what Winifred means. ‘The coachman says Mrs Moore fired her gun into a plaque – a grave perhaps. He heard more than one shot. If she was armed, I don’t understand why she didn’t fire on Thom when he attacked her? Do you have any idea where she may have been taken?’
Winifred takes a breath. ‘I don’t know, but there’s a connection with St Giles, Cillian,’ she admits. ‘I went through Thom’s things.’
Brodie’s eyes light at the sound of his name in her mouth. He smiles. It’s been so long. He wants to take her hand, but he doesn’t. ‘I’ve never intruded on your business,’ he says, ‘but I’m not sure how to help if I don’t understand what’s going on.’
‘If there’s one thing my devotions have taught me, it’s that we don’t always need to understand to follow instruction,’ Winifred responds crisply. Her gaze falls to her lap. ‘I can’t get up,’ she adds. ‘I can’t do anything.’
Brodie takes this in. ‘I’ll be your hands. Your legs,’ he says. ‘Your eyes. I can lift you if you’d like.’
Winifred feels her heart skip. Silently she curses that he’s still so handsome. Then she recalls why she left Glenfinlas Street. Brodie belonged to Eilidh first. The betrayal still twists.
‘No,’ she says baldly.
Brodie, however, ventures ahead. ‘I hoped you might come to the funeral,’ he says, restraining himself once more from using the name he knew her by when they were lovers. ‘I’ve missed you.’
Winifred will not have that. ‘The cheek,’ she gets out.
‘Of course I didn’t go to my sister’s internment.
Thom was already in Edinburgh. I sought to protect both myself and my great niece.
She’s quite extraordinary, Brodie. She reminds me .
. .’ her voice trails, unable to put words to exactly what Araminta has reminded her of. Hope, perhaps. Family. Trust. Duty.
‘Please, let me bring you home,’ Brodie says. ‘Cook’s broth is as good as a rest cure.’ This, he recalls, is something one of the McKenzie sisters said a long time ago.
Winifred shakes her head. ‘I need you to find Araminta,’ she says. There’s no time for this dilly-dally.
‘I’ve sent Davey to make enquiries and Douglas to the magistrate.’
‘Will you enquire at St Giles’?’ Winifred pushes. ‘There’s a connection there. This man’s order bears the name.’
‘He’s a monk, you think?’
‘Not as we think of a brother,’ Winifred says. ‘More dangerous.’
Brodie knows when he is dismissed. He nods in a businesslike fashion and glances back as he closes the door.
Winifred listens as he descends the stairs.
When she’s sure he’s gone she bursts into tears.
She’s not certain if she’s snivelling at the shame of being seen this way or the fact Araminta has been taken.
Both perhaps. And all the things that happened before.
She blows her nose and pulls Mr Thom’s book onto her lap.
There must be something here. There has to be. Araminta needs help.
*
It takes almost two hours for the news of Araminta McKenzie Moore’s kidnap to reach the nunnery at Sciennes.
Mr Neill, the magistrate, has a cousin residing at the order, and Neill’s daughter, in regular correspondence, sends a note.
It’s not a silent order and the news spreads quickly.
Eleanor is one of the first to be told. She won’t stay put under the circumstances and makes an application to leave.
Within a few minutes she’s sent upstairs, to Mother’s sanctum.
Mother has a good deal on her mind. It’s been a troublesome day.
She received a missive from Sister Winifred before Mr Neill’s niece so much as put quill to paper, and has been pacing her study ever since, turning the key Winifred sent with the letter in her hand as she pieces together events.
She’s slowly coming to an understanding of Sister Winifred and indeed all the McKenzie women, that has heretofore passed her by.
When Eleanor knocks on her door she’s so distracted that she doesn’t even hear at first, for she’s in the process of making a decision.
The convent’s library is kept in order by the redoubtable Sister Gloria, a nun from Tranent who, as a child, survived the massacre when the king’s dragoons repressed an uprising against the Militia Act.
Sister Gloria recalls her mother saying they had to make a stand, for she didn’t want to lose her husband to the army.
In the event, however, the child lost both parents that day and was sent to an orphanage run by nuns where it was discovered she had an extraordinary talent with words.
Gloria didn’t so much promise herself to God when she was eighteen as to the convent’s library, where she’s been cataloguing the nuns’ collection ever since.
On receipt of the note Winifred sent that morning, Mother summoned Gloria.
‘I require anything we hold about the Order of the Hermit or, indeed, St Giles,’ she said.
But although Gloria has checked the stacks, little has been forthcoming.
The convent library is dedicated to the works of female saints and philosophers.
To fulfil Winifred’s request, Mother has realised she may have to send Sister Gloria beyond the convent’s walls and possibly, in addition, contact the bishop.
What Winifred says is disturbing on many levels.
A renegade order. A secret Winifred cannot reveal.
A family quest. Not any family, either. But the McKenzies who, like Mother’s own forebears, served the Stuart royal house for generations.