‘Eleanor,’ she calls.
The maid’s nose is pink from the cold and her boots are wet.
‘You went out?’
Eleanor pauses. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ There’s no point in denying it. ‘I went to look at the castle. I’ve never seen a castle before.’ The lie trips easily off the maid’s tongue.
‘The rock’s volcanic,’ Araminta says. ‘This city was built on an ancient volcano. We’re in no danger whatsoever now, though,’ she adds.
‘Can I fetch you something, madam?’ the maid enquires. There’s little for her to do here, unlike in Richmond where, when she’s excused from seeing to the mistress’s wardrobe, Eleanor arranges flowers for the bedrooms.
Araminta turns down the girl’s offer with a shake of her head. She’s become distant, she realises, in this strange grief. She’s changing. ‘Did you see the colonel?’ she checks.
‘No, madam. I viewed the castle from Princes Street.’
Araminta believes her. Perhaps in other circumstances she’d notice that the girl is shifty about something. As a schoolgirl she enjoyed a good puzzle.
Araminta stretches out on the old sopha and pulls an Indian cashmere stole from the back of one of the chairs to use as a cover. Before she knows it, she’s fallen asleep, into a fretful set of dreams where a tiger mauls a man in a kilt and she’s chasing Aunt Eilidh down a crowded, nameless street. She’s woken by a clock striking five. Outside it’s dark. The fire has dampened. With an unaccustomed sting of excitement, she realises she has an hour to get to the Cowgate and find the church.
Chapter Five
Araminta is no fool. She knows that the butler will try to stop her or at least insist on sending Douglas to keep her safe. So she makes it known that despite the time of day she intends to speak to Miss McKenzie’s solicitor and orders the carriage. She dons her thickest woollen stockings and packs her reticule, hiding it inside her coat. Once she’s inside the cab, she instructs the coachman to St Giles’ High Kirk and says she wishes to pray. The man’s eyes flick to the house, where no doubt Brodie would have well-considered advice about this decision. ‘The cathedral’s doors are open in the hours of darkness are they not?’ she checks. The man nods. St Giles’, like every respectable high church, is always open. ‘Well then,’ Araminta says, ‘you must take me.’
The city has a glassy glamour at night, the candle-lit windows of the New Town casting softly onto the shadowy trees. The carriage heaves as it turns up the Mound, the road less even than the New Town thoroughfares, which are paved meticulously with thick stone setts. Above, Edinburgh Castle looks menacing with flaming torches on the battlements, that remind Araminta of the Scottish novels she has enjoyed – Scott’sIvanhoeandThe Bride of Lammermuirread over and over.
At the top of the hill, the coach turns down the High Street and pulls off the main drag onto the new paving at Parliament Square. Ahead, the cathedral looms darkly. The driver hands her down at the wide, worn steps where John Knox, Edinburgh’s firebrand preacher, once came and went. ‘I’ll be some time,’ Araminta says. ‘I don’t want to rush my devotions.’ She feels foolish lying, but she doesn’t want the man looking for her ifthis takes a while. The night air nips her cheek. She understands Colonel Fraser’s reservations. This part of the city feels further than the few minutes she has travelled in the cab. It’s as though she’s shifted through time as much as space, but here she pulls in the reins of her imagination. She must remain rational. Glad of her dark mourning clothes, she enters the church. Inside, ahead of a bank of flickering candles, a scatter of women kneel praying, spaced unevenly along the pews. Smartly, as if she has every right, she turns towards the side entrance. She checks over her shoulder but the carriage driver has not followed and none of the praying women has so much as looked up. The iron handle creaks loudly as she slips outside once more into the stony darkness, this time on the other side of the building.
The New Town is spacious by comparison. Here, the black-walled closes are lit only by happenstance, not by design. Araminta swiftly bypasses the straggle of loitering beggars and makes her way towards the Parliament Stairs in the shadow of the new court building, taking care that her driver, sitting on the box smoking, does not notice. As she descends it smells like a sewer and she steels herself against the assault on her senses, intensified by the enclosed space. At the bottom she passes an ancient well-head and turns left, jumping as a gaggle of gentlemen students bursts out of a doorway in a raucous babble. Araminta dodges into a close and waits for them to pass. She recalls the map of the Old Town in Aunt Eilidh’s drawing room. She’s near, she tells herself, to the college’s quad, the medical school’s lecture rooms and the morgue. Places where no decent woman is welcome any more than here, on this vertiginous pend in the hours of darkness.
As she steps back onto the Cowgate, the sound of someone playing the fiddle wafts towards her. There’s a sliver of moon in the sky. A hawker selling oysters vies with another selling pies. Lamplight butters the windows of the public houses andbrothels dotted between more respectable businesses and the decaying accommodation up the wynds on either side. A child runs past and shouts, ‘Mind Hingy’s Hoose, lady! He’ll come for ye.’ She cleaves to the uneven walls and, glad of her woollen stockings in the cold, keeps walking eastwards until she reaches St Andrew’s Kirk, marked by a peeling, painted sign. Here she discovers that the main double doors are locked; a clear indication of the area’s low society, lower than on the shabby High Street. There’s no light emanating from within, so she slips silently down the side of the building, the pathway barely wide enough to accommodate her skirts. Squinting, she searches out the dim glow of candlelight from the fanlight above the side door. She raps and waits. When there’s no answer she knocks again. Silence. Why, she wonders, has this person asked her to come if they aren’t going to be here? Perhaps there’s another way in at the rear, she thinks and walks up the passage, emerging into a graveyard that stretches up the steep hill behind. Glancing regretfully back towards the side door, she sets off through the graves as if tendrils of ivy are pulling her into the cemetery.
Almost immediately she hears the sound of an affray and glances round, her eyes getting used to the darkness. Heart pounding, she makes out two men kicking a figure on the ground. ‘Oi!’ she shouts, surprising herself. She should hide, of course. But what if the man who is down is badly injured? ‘Oi! What are you doing?’ One of the assailants runs off through the graves in a jumble of ragged clothes – a nimble if cowardly pauper. ‘Benny, come on,’ he shouts to his friend. But Benny is made of sterner stuff. He turns towards Araminta, his face so pale that it’s as good as a gas lamp in this darkness. ‘Bloody women,’ he sneers, and without warning he lands two staunch punches like pistons to her stomach. Araminta, shocked and winded, finds her reaction is immediate, if unexpected. She pullsout the tiny gun she stowed in her reticule and holds it up so he can see. ‘I’ll shoot you,’ she threatens steadily, the mother-of-pearl handle glowing in the dark. ‘Your friend had the right idea. You’d better run.’ The man puts his hands up. Araminta cocks the firing pin. ‘Go on,’ she says, hardly recognising the steel in her own voice. The man considers a moment. ‘Fuck you, lady,’ he sneers before taking off. Araminta watches as the ne’er-do-well trips over the wrought-iron surround of a burial plot and lets out a blasphemy, the last to be heard of the man.
She thinks she might be sick as she fumbles in the dark to help the injured party to their feet. ‘Here,’ she says, offering a hand. As the adrenaline subsides, the smell of the victim comes as a shock – a tang of stale sweat on well-worn clothes.
‘Thank you,’ says a female voice. ‘You’re Araminta? The McKenzie girl?’
Araminta’s blood runs cold. The two men might have been engaged in more than a robbery. ‘You’re a woman,’ she says, unnecessarily. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I think so,’ the woman replies. ‘You’re a quick thinker. I’d expect nothing less.’
She’s old. Araminta can make out that much. And the smell of her continues disarming. In addition to the sweat Araminta notes a pungent dash of onion on the woman’s breath. ‘I’m Winifred,’ she introduces herself. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked you to come alone.’
‘Plainly,’ Araminta says.
‘Involving others is dangerous,’ the old woman explains, as her mud-spattered wimple catches what little light there is.
‘You’re a nun,’ Araminta lets out.
The old woman chortles at this exclamation. ‘Sister Winifred,’ she confirms. ‘Come along.’ Limping, she leads Araminta back down the side of the church. She seems to have accepted the beating, making no fuss about it. Araminta’s stomach aches asthe nun opens the side door with a key on the medieval chain at her waist. ‘They didn’t get the key, thank God.’ Her tone is gravelly, as she continues into a surprisingly comfortable room off a small vestibule. Inside, Sister Winifred lights several candles. The flames illuminate a stained-glass window – shards of saffron, ruby and emerald. The old nun smiles. Her teeth are a long way from pearls and her cheeks are not like roses, but her eyes sparkle as if she is a far younger woman – a startling, clear, pale blue. There’s something familiar about her.
Without asking what Araminta would prefer, Winifred pours dark, sticky sherry into two old glasses engraved with roses. Araminta secretes the muff gun and accepts the drink. Winifred raises her glass in a silent toast. ‘I hear the New Town is alight with change,’ she says and sinks onto a carved-oak chair. ‘I’ve not been in a long time.’
Araminta is not sure how to reply. The New Town is a mere mile away. She takes a sip which distracts her from the old woman’s odour, now contained by the walls of the office and growing stronger. Her hand is shaking but it seems churlish to point it out, as if she requires further thanks for saving the old nun who has, after all, received a worse beating. The sherry is sweet as frumarty. As it steadies her, Araminta realises she doesn’t regret the affray. She feels unexpectedly strong. Competent, even. She finishes the drink and puts the glass back on the tray.
‘A nun is an easy target,’ Sister Winifred carries on as she pours them each another dram. ‘But then, that’s rather the point, isn’t it? To hide in plain sight.’ She puts down the decanter and inspects the girl. ‘You were wise to dress as you have. Of course, a cross is a target too. Quite literally, the easiest target.’
‘This is mourning dress, Sister,’ Araminta says plainly.
