Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
A drunk man birls out of a door. ‘Och, lassie,’ he says, wagging a finger.
But she presses onwards down the hill past Hingy’s house, superstition be damned.
At the bottom, she glances back again. The lamplighter loiters at the top of the stairs.
The minister, she concludes, must have gone to raise the alarm.
Glancing left and right, she thinks that the road east will take her to the church where she first met Sister Winifred.
She knows nobody in that direction so instead she turns westwards.
She’s glad the light is fading and that her clothes are dark.
Her senses heightened, she takes off, feeling the cold so keenly that her teeth chatter.
She smells burning coal and a tinge of hops from cheap beer being brewed.
A child crying. Two men laughing. The sound of a drum far off.
Now and again she glances over her shoulder but it seems she’s not being followed, or at least, her pursuers are far enough behind.
She keeps her head down for Thom is sure to come after her and the lamplighter saw the direction she took.
She must go as fast as she can and not draw notice; that’s the main thing.
After perhaps three hundred yards, the road opens onto a paved market with the castle above.
The Grassmarket, she thinks, recalling the name from Aunt Eilidh’s maps and the view of it from above when she visited Colonel Fraser.
She keeps to the south side of the cobbles, as far from the public houses as she can.
An old woman slumped in a doorway snores suddenly, and the sound makes Araminta jump but she doesn’t stop.
Head down, she takes the muddy bow on the far side of the square into a rats’ nest of streets with ramshackle tenements and tumbledown hostels on either side.
‘Hello, lovely,’ a male voice says and a hand catches her arm, but she pulls away.
‘You’re not a cheery one, are you?’ She doesn’t stop to remonstrate, and as she turns, Harry Thom and two men in uniform appear in view on the far side of the market square.
She starts to run beyond the tenements, dodging in and out until she emerges at a rough patch of waste ground.
Ahead in the distance, there’s a road along which an old cart pulled by a Clydesdale is being driven by a nun.
‘Winifred,’ she shouts. ‘Thank God.’
She races towards it, waving, and then remembers her great aunt’s broken rib and the impossibility of this conveyance bearing the old woman.
One nun looks much like another from a distance.
She glances behind but they haven’t caught up yet.
There are four exits to the Grassmarket.
They’ll have to figure out which one she’s taken.
Ahead, the cart stops. A nun climbs down, wearing different robes to the woman driving – pale blue with a prayer rope tied to a leather belt and a wimple that’s fitted incorrectly.
She looks rather young. Araminta peers. The nun starts running towards her. ‘Madam!’ she shouts.
Before she knows it, Araminta is crying. She’s shaking. She’s flung her arms round the girl. ‘He took me, Eleanor,’ she babbles. ‘But I got away. He’s behind. He’s following.’
The nun driving the cart tethers the reins to the brake pole efficiently and dismounts.
Neither she nor Eleanor ask questions. ‘Come on,’ Eleanor says urgently, as they hoist Araminta onto the back.
Araminta cannot stop talking as she clambers up.
‘I didn’t understand how terrifying he was.
I didn’t look after you properly when he hurt you.
I sent you back. You must have been so brave.
’ Her nose is streaming. Her eyes are pink.
Her hand touches Eleanor’s cheek. ‘He’s the worst kind of person. I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.’
‘It’s all right, ma’am,’ Eleanor says. ‘It’s my fault he’s after you at all.’
Araminta shakes her head vehemently. ‘It’s my fault you were pulled into it. If he hadn’t sent you, he’d have engaged another.’
‘Did he get the clue?’ Eleanor asks, ever pragmatic.
Araminta lets out a stifled laugh. She’s more than one clue further on from when Eleanor left. ‘He did not. He has that old box, though. The gold one.’
Sister Cecilia does not enquire about this odd conversation. She clambers into the driving seat and looks to Eleanor for instruction. ‘We must still go to the address on the paper,’ Eleanor says decisively, climbing into place behind her mistress. ‘Quickly.’
Sister Cecilia gees the horse. Araminta cannot take her eyes off the opening beyond the tenements where she emerged.
As they trot smartly down the road, she makes out one of the policemen emerging onto the wasteground.
He looks around, foxed. The cart is far ahead now and the man is looking, she realises, for a woman alone.
A woman running. Still, she ducks down. Thom will not be far behind.
‘I can see where he struck you, ma’am,’ Eleanor says. ‘The devil. We shall fix that with a little witch hazel.’
‘He’s coming,’ is all Araminta can get out.
‘He’s on foot, though, isn’t he? Too slow,’ Eleanor says with a smile.
Araminta clasps the girl’s hand. This is not a matter of a few stray ribbons or some missing change. No household management book could cover this situation. Mrs Rundell be damned.
‘Did the nuns look after you?’ She squeezes Eleanor’s fingers.
‘Yes, madam,’ Eleanor says. ‘Though it was a little too quiet for my liking.’