As Araminta takes the stairs to the second floor, the hallway seems too orderly for what’s occurred in this house. Winifred is asleep in Eilidh’s bedroom. The peach curtains are drawn and the fire newly lit, the dancing flames cast shadows onto the pink walls. Araminta lights a candle and from that sets a flame to the lamps. Winifred doesn’t stir. Araminta shakes her arm gently, then her shoulder. The old woman opens her eyes. She tries to sit up.
‘Was it Thom?’ Araminta asks gently.
Winifred nods. ‘I can’t remember much. The doctor came. There was a man.’
‘My husband, Johnathan,’ Araminta says.
Winifred smiles. ‘Handsome,’ she pronounces. ‘Helpful.’ Then, as a memory returns, ‘What about the girl? The maid?’
‘Bed rest. Anderson has seen to her.’
‘Anderson,’ Winifred says regretfully. ‘I shouldn’t have come back.’
Araminta pauses. ‘I found it, Winifred,’ she says.
The old nun brightens. ‘The crown?’
Araminta nods. ‘There’s something else.’ She reaches into her decolletage and pulls out the velum. Winifred’s eyes narrow. ‘I can’t read without a glass, dear. What is it?’
‘It’s in Latin. An edict signed by Mary Queen of Scots.’
‘What does it say?’
‘This is the true treasure. It’s about the rights of women. Just as Wollstonecraft wrote them. As your mother said, women can have it all.’
Winifred shifts under the counterpane. She recalls the day that Mrs Wollstonecraft’s book came to Edinburgh; the queue along George Street outside the bookshop. The conversations in the weeks that followed about the right to property. The right to divorce. The right to education. The right to vote. Men’s laughter at the very idea. That, she thinks, is when I knew I should never marry. Is this really what her mother meant?
Araminta is rereading the velum, this time in less of a hurry. ‘It says these rights should be enacted “as in the ancient law”. What do you think that means?’
‘Gaelic law,’ Winifred pronounces. ‘Highland law. Redress not punishment. It was the law of the Highlands and of the west for many centuries.’
‘And something about the rights of women to be baillies?’ Araminta translates.
Winifred’s eyes dart. ‘That’s an officer of the burgh. Mary would want that, of course, to combat Knox. The earls must have found out what she was planning. So they kidnapped her after her husband was killed.’
‘And she was made to marry the Earl of Bothwell,’ Araminta recalls from Eilidh’s history books.
‘They’d make her do anything to stop this,’ Winifred says. Walter Scott had laughed at Mrs Wollstonecraft’s book. Smith and Hume would have torn her argument apart, he said. Though stalwarts of the Enlightenment, both Adam Smith and David Hume had both lately died, so several of Edinburgh’s gentlemen undertook the job, while recognising that in Scots law, women had more rights than in England. They pronounced it ‘enough’, she recalls. Gaelic law gave women more. Ad libertatum.
‘This was hidden with the crown?’ Winifred checks.
Araminta nods again. ‘Inside it. I took it out and gave Thom the crown to call him off.’
The old woman is shocked. ‘You forwent the crown?’ she says in disbelief.
‘In favour of this. Yes. It’s the true value of our duty. I suppose Mr Thom thought the crown was imbued with power. After all his books about magic candles and goat heads. But this is the treasure. Freedom, Winifred. Thom was going to kill Eleanor. He’d already stabbed Mr Brodie. So I gave him what he wanted and kept this instead. If it’s ancient law, it’s still law, don’t you think?’
Winifred’s eyes widen. ‘So the Hermits have the crown,’ she reasons.
‘Thom walked away,’ Araminta confirms. ‘The minute he laid hands on it. He has no grounds to follow us. Or so he must believe.’ Araminta folds the velum.
‘A worthy queen. Of course,’ Winifred says, catching up. ‘Otherwise, it could be destroyed or laid aside.’
‘A worthy princess perhaps,’ Araminta repeats. ‘Let’s see.’
‘And you said Mr Brodie is hurt?’ Winifred comes back to it.
‘He’s downstairs,’ Araminta says. ‘The doctor is coming.’
