Winifred glances at her great niece. ‘You told Brodie where I am?’
Araminta shakes her head. ‘He held the coach door. I told Davey the address,’ she ventures.
Winifred’s lips purse in annoyance. ‘What is it, then?’
Araminta opens the paper. ‘It’s from Mr Winter. The librarian. He’s found something.’ She gets to her feet and briefly clasps Winifred’s hand. ‘You must send for me if there’s anything you need.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
It’s raining again as the carriage pulls up at Parliament Square. Beggars shelter in the doorway of St Giles’, none of them under the colonnade in front of the library. Araminta surmises the doorman must be as efficient at keeping them away as he is at repelling the enquiries of women. She sends Davey to ask for Mr Winter, who emerges, this time having donned his hat and a green knitted scarf. The coachman holds the door and Winter climbs into the carriage. The raindrops beat a steady grumble on the roof.
‘Good day, Mrs Moore.’ The librarian’s breath clouds even inside.
‘Did you find the lady’s grave?’ Araminta asks.
‘It’s interesting.’ Winter pauses. ‘Unusual,’ he adds.
‘Well?’
‘She died in 1596. I can’t find a birth date but she was in her fifth decade, I would guess a few years into her forties, for she had a run in with John Knox when she was barely twenty years old and he an old man.’
‘What did they fight about?’
‘A theological point about the nature of marriage. Mistress Maitland took marriage vows later in life. She would have been considered a spinster, then as now. It seems she wasn’t keen on the institution. Reverend Knox’s view was that it was a woman’s duty to wive. To have children.’
Araminta remembers, in a flash, her own failed attempts to fulfil this wifely duty. She puts her hand on her stomach. Winter doesn’t register her reaction. He’s a man who lives for words and keeps himself quite separate from the effects of them.
‘Knox died long before Mistress Maitland made her marriage vows, but it seems she took to the institution in the end.’
‘And you’ve found where she’s buried?’
‘That’s the interesting part. Her father was a high court judge, and her husband sheriff principal of the city, so she came from a well-connected family and married into one too. Lauder, her husband, was younger. I doubt their union was a love match – he married again after her death. It seems they scarcely lived together. He’s buried at the palace of Holyroodhouse, down the hill, in the Chapel Royal with his second wife.’
Araminta becomes testy. ‘My enquiry is about Marie Maitland not her husband or anyone else.’
‘Indeed. Forgive me.’ Winter’s nose is pinking in the cold. He takes a breath as if he’s about to unveil a work of art. ‘The thing is, the lady was interred with a different family. I can’t understand why her husband agreed to it, although he remarried so quickly, perhaps he simply didn’t care. Her will doesn’t state the arrangement, but there may have been other papers, lost over time.’
‘So where is she?’ Araminta’s tone is insistent.
Winter seems almost surprised to be brought back to the point. ‘She’s interred at the Chapel Royal at Holyrood Palace. Not with her husband. She was buried with the Gibsons.’
‘Who are they?’
Winter’s eyes widen. ‘I’d need another day or two to fully ascertain that. I’ve never come across them before. Minor nobility, I should think. Only one of the Gibsons died in Edinburgh, Isobel McKinnon. She must have been similarly well connected to Mistress Maitland to be allowed space at the abbey. The tomb is close to the Lauder family’s plot – that is, Mistress Maitland’s husband, but she was interred with the Gibson woman, no doubt about it.’
Araminta recalls the second fresco. ‘Isobel McKinnon,’ she says. ‘So she was a Gibson by marriage, you think?’
‘It was a different time.’ Winter’s tone is dismissive. ‘Women then didn’t take their husband’s name.’
‘And the McKinnons?’
‘Highlanders, I should think. Gaels. Minor nobility.’
‘Like my family,’ Araminta notes.
Winter regards her as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Good heavens,’ he says. ‘I’d never have guessed. You seem so very English.’
Araminta doesn’t respond. She withdraws three crowns from her reticule and hands them over. Winter scrambles in his pockets, revealing a threadbare patch around the seam of his trousers. ‘It’s all right. You may keep the change, Mr Winter,’ she says. ‘Although I’ll impose a condition.’
