There’s a knock at the door and Johnathan peers into the room. ‘May I?’
‘Sister Winifred, this is my husband, Johnathan Moore. Johnathan, this is my great aunt Saoirse McKenzie, who has taken orders. You must call her Sister Winifred.’ Araminta makes a formal introduction as if they’re meeting for the first time at some kind of salon. As if Johnathan hadn’t carried the old woman upstairs and put her to bed an hour before.
Winifred lets out a giggle at the ridiculousness of it. ‘Mr Moore, thank you for helping me earlier.’
Johnathan’s expression remains grave. ‘The doctor is downstairs. I’m afraid the man... the butler, that is. He’s fading. Anderson has called for Mr Neill for if he dies it will be murder. It’s a deep stab wound.’
Winifred moves to get out of bed. Her head swims for Anderson’s draught was strong.
‘Take me downstairs,’ she demands, grabbing Araminta’s arm.
Anderson has cut away Brodie’s waistcoat and shirt. Beside him, Hester, her face pink from crying, holds an enamel basin of warm water that’s been used to clean the butler’s wound. Brodie’s breathing is unsteady as Anderson binds his torso, blood seeping through the bandage. Winifred hovers. The world without Eilidh seems strange now she’s back in the family home. The world without Brodie is unthinkable. They might not have been together for over a decade, but somehow he’s always been there. She sits beside him and takes his hand.
‘Cillian.’
‘Saoirse. I always . . .’
She brings her finger to her lips and says something softly, in Gaelic. Then: ‘Dr Anderson will help you.’
The doctor does not confirm this. He’s generally encouraging to his patients, but unless he can staunch the bleeding the man will certainly die.
Downstairs someone raps on the front door. Araminta motions to Hester to go, worried that she’ll have to explain Brodie’s injuries to Mr Neill, but it’s not the magistrate who is shown up to the drawing room but Mother. Winifred rises and the women embrace.
‘Whatever has happened?’ Mother asks.
‘Mr Brodie was attacked. He was defending me,’ Araminta gets out. She finds suddenly she’s crying. ‘It was Great Aunt Eilidh’s sword stick,’ she burbles. ‘I’d put it down and the fellow used it against Mr Brodie. Brodie had disarmed the man already – he was terribly brave – but the blade got the better of him.’
Brodie begins to mumble, low. He’s not speaking English. Mother and Winifred lock eyes.
‘I shall do it,’ Mother says and starts to recite the last rights in Gaelic.
Winifred falls to her knees and intones her own prayer. It’s hard to hear what she’s saying. She stops when Brodie pulls her hand to his lips and kisses her fingers once more. Then he turns away, as if his death should be more private than this, here in the McKenzies’ drawing room. And suddenly, he’s gone. Johnathan curls his arm around his wife’s frame. He’s solid as a tree, she realises gratefully. She’s glad he took the packet north.
‘He’d want to be buried at St Columba’s,’ she says. ‘I’ll send a note to the minister.’
‘Close to Eilidh,’ Winifred adds. ‘Yes. That’s where he belongs.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
Cillian Brodie’s funeral, three days after his death, is an august affair attended by what is left of the McKenzie clan, Johnathan Moore and the household staff of number four Glenfinlas Street, excepting Douglas who has not returned. Also, the Bishop of Edinburgh, Mother, James McLevy, Ina Hamilton and some ne’er-do-wells who reside in the vicinity of the Water of Leith. The grounds of St Columba’s are awash in daffodils. It’s a crisp, bright day and Winifred is put in mind, as she always is in the first days of spring, of the smell of grass being scythed. She feels a twist of sorrow that the world continues.
After Brodie is interred, Winifred declines to accompany her great niece and her husband home to Glenfinlas Street or to return to the convent with Mother. She dreamt last night that she and Brodie recuperated side by side on the yellow sopha. She wishes they had.
‘I’m not ready,’ she explains. ‘I’ll linger.’
Alone in the graveyard she crouches with one hand on Brodie’s freshly filled grave; the other on Eilidh’s, at the head of which there is a newly raised stone. He must have arranged it for the inscription is in GaelicThig crìoch air an t-saoghal, ach mairidh gaol is ceòl.The world may come to an end, but love and music will endure. The old nun’s face twists as she cries, mourning the loss of the people who knew her best, and tortured with regret that she’s only forgiven them now that they’re gone. She wonders what her life would have been like if she hadn’t entered the convent. Eilidh wanted her to stay at Glenfinlas Street. So had he. Pride, she thinks. The sin of it.
At length, she pulls herself upright with some difficulty for her wounds still pain her. Anderson’s draughts make her woozy so Mother has arranged for powders to be sent from the convent’s infirmary, and Winifred’s head is muddled with grief alone now. She sends away the carriage and walks slowly back to the house as a penance. Cook has prepared meat pies piled tidily on a tray and a carafe of warm, honeyed wine in the drawing room. It’s only family now. Johnathan helps Winifred into a yellow satin chair and fetches her a drink.
‘Thank you, dear,’ she says, as he returns to his wife’s side on the sopha. The couple have settled into the bedroom upstairs over the last few days. The sheets are more rumpled than the McKenzie laundry has seen in years, Johnathan relishing his wife’s new independence.
‘To Mr Brodie,’ Araminta raises her glass and so do the others. Once they’ve drunk, she raises her glass again. ‘To Berenice McKenzie,’ she says.
Winifred’s eyes dart to Johnathan who’s as bluff as ever.
‘She seems extraordinary,’ he grins. ‘Of course, once I found out my wife had a family, I knew they would be.’
‘You told him.’ Winifred is shocked.
