I ROSE LATE and leisurely next morning, and as Jamie and Ian were likely to be some time about their business, I dressed and went shopping. Edinburgh being a city of commerce, Jamie had been able to convert our stock of gold—still quite a lot of it left—to bank drafts and cash, as well as to make arrangements for deposition of the cache of letters we had accumulated since Fort Ticonderoga. He had left a fat purse for my use, and I proposed to spend the day shopping, as well as collecting my new spectacles.
It was with these perched proudly on my nose and a bag containing a selection of the best of the herbs and medicines available from Haugh’s Apothecary that I returned to Howard’s hotel at teatime, with a rare appetite.
My appetite received a slight check, though, when the hotel’s majordomo stepped out of his sanctum, wearing a slightly pained expression, and asked if he might have a word, madam?
“We do appreciate the honor of General Fraser’s… presence,” he said apologetically, conducting me to a small, cramped stairwell leading to the basement. “A great man, and a very fine warrior, and of course we are cognizant of the heroic nature of the … er… the manner of his death. It’s only that… well, I hesitate to mention it, madam, but a coal-man this morning mentioned a… smell.”
This last word was so discreet that he fairly hissed it into my ear as he ushered me off the stair and into the Howard’s coal cellar, where we had made arrangements for the general to repose in dignity until we left for the Highlands. The smell itself was not nearly so discreet, and I snatched a handkerchief from my pocket and clapped it to my nose. There was a small window high up in one wall, from which a dim, smeary light seeped into the basement. Beneath this was a wide chute, under which stood a small mountain of coal.
In solitary dignity, draped with a canvas, the general’s coffin stood well apart, lit by a solemn beam from the tiny window. A beam that gleamed from the small puddle beneath the coffin. The general was leaking.
“AND SAW THE skull beneath the skin,” I quoted, tying a turpentine-soaked rag about my head, just under my nose, “and breastless creatures under ground leaned backward with a lipless grin.”
“Apt,” said Andy Bell, giving me a sideways glance. “Your own, is it?”
“No, a gentleman named Eliot,” I told him. “As you say, though—apt.”
Given the agitation of the hotel staff, I thought I had better take steps without waiting for Jamie and Ian to return, and after a moment’s thought, had sent the bootboy on the run to inquire if Mr. Bell might like to come and observe something interesting in the medical line?
“The light’s wretched,” Bell said, standing on tiptoe to peer down into the coffin.
“I’ve called for a couple of lanterns,” I assured him. “And buckets.” “Aye, buckets,” he agreed, looking thoughtful. “What d’ye think, though, for what ye might call the longer term? It’ll be some days to get him intae the Highlands—maybe weeks, this time o’ year.”
“If we tidy things up a bit, I thought perhaps you would know a discreet blacksmith who might be able to come and patch the lining.” A seam in the lead foil lining the coffin had come apart, probably from the jostling involved in getting it from the ship, but it looked like a fairly simple repair—granted a blacksmith with a strong stomach and a low level of superstition regarding corpses.
“Mmm.” He had taken out a sketching block and was making preliminary drawings, light notwithstanding. He scratched his potatolike nose with the end of his silver pencil, thinking. “Could do that, aye. But there are other ways.”
“Well, we could boil him down to the bones, yes,” I said, a little testily. “Though I hate to think what the hotel would say if I asked for the lend of their laundry cauldrons.”
He laughed at that, to the undisguised horror of the footman who had appeared on the stairway, holding two lanterns.
“Ah, dinna fash yoursel’, sonny,” Andy Bell told him, taking the lanterns. “Naebody here but us ghouls.”
He grinned broadly at the sound of the footman taking the stairs three at a time, but then turned and eyed me speculatively.
“It’s a thought, aye? I could take him back tae my shop. Get him aff your hands, and naebody the wiser, sae heavy as your box there is. Mean to say, like, no one’s going to want to gaze upon the dear departed’s face once ye get him where he’s going, are they?”
I didn’t take offense at the suggestion, but shook my head.
“Putting aside the possibility of one or both of us being taken up as body snatchers, the poor man is my husband’s kinsman. And he didn’t want to be here in the first place.”
“Well, nae one does, surely?” Bell said, blinking. “No much help for it, though. The skull beneath the skin, as your man Eliot so movingly puts it.”
“I meant Edinburgh, not a coffin,” I clarified. Fortunately, my purchases from Haugh’s had included a large bottle of denatured alcohol, which I had brought down, discreetly wrapped in a rough apron procured from one of the housemaids. “He wanted to be buried in America.”
“Really,” Bell murmured. “Quaint notion. Ah, well. Two things I can think of, then. Repair the leak, and fill up the box wi’ a gallon or twa o’ cheap gin—well, it’s cheaper than what ye’ve got there,” he said, seeing my look. “Or… how long can ye stay in Edinburgh, do ye think?”
“We hadn’t meant to stay longer than a week—but we might stretch it a day or two,” I said cautiously, unbundling the bale of rags the majordomo had given me. “Why?”
He tilted his head back and forth, contemplating the remains by lantern light. An apt word, “remains.”
“Maggots,” he said succinctly. “They’ll do a nice, clean job of it, but they do take time. Still, if we can take most o’ the flesh off—hmm. Got a knife of any sort?” he asked.
I nodded, reaching into my pocket. Jamie had, after all, given me the knife because he thought I’d need it.
“Got maggots?” I said.
I DROPPED THE misshapen ball of lead into a saucer. It clinked and rolled to a stop, and we all looked at it in silence.
“That’s what killed him,” I said at last. Jamie crossed himself and murmured something in Gaelic, and Ian nodded soberly. “God rest him.”
I hadn’t eaten much of the excellent tea; the smell of corruption lingered at the back of my throat, in spite of the turpentine and the virtual bath I had taken in alcohol, followed by a real bath in the hotel’s tub with soap and water as hot as I could stand.
“So,” I said, clearing my throat. “How was Madame Jeanne?”
Jamie looked up from the bullet, his face lightening.
“Oh, verra bonnie,” he said, grinning. “She had a good bit to say about the state of things in France. And a certain amount to say about one Percival Beauchamp.”
I sat up a little straighter.
“She knows him?”
“She does indeed. He calls at her establishment now and then—though not in the way of business. Or rather,” he added, with a sidelong glance at Ian, “not in the way of her usual business.”
“Smuggling?” I asked. “Or spying?”
“Possibly both, but if it’s the latter, she wasna telling me about it. He brings in quite a bit of stuff from France, though. I was thinking that maybe Ian and I would go across, whilst the general’s doing whatever he’s doing—how long did wee Andy think it would take to make him decent?”
“Anything from three or four days to a week, depending on how, um, active the maggots are.” Ian and Jamie both shuddered reflexively. “It’s just the same thing that happens underground,” I pointed out. “It will happen to all of us, eventually.”
“Well, aye, it is,” Jamie admitted, taking another scone and ladling quantities of cream onto it. “But it’s generally done in decent privacy so ye havena got to think about it.”
“The general is quite private,” I assured him, with a shade of acerbity. “He’s covered in a good layer of bran. No one will see a thing, unless they go poking about.”
“Well, that’s a thought, isn’t it?” Ian chipped in, sticking a finger in the jam. “This is Edinburgh. The place has a terrible reputation for body snatching, because of all the doctors wanting them to cut up for study. Had ye best not put a guard on the general, just to be sure he makes it to the Highlands wi’ all his pieces?” He stuck the finger in his mouth and raised his brows at me.
“Well, in fact, there is a guard,” I admitted. “Andy Bell suggested it, for just that reason.” I didn’t add that Andy had made a bid for the general’s body himself—nor that I had told Mr. Bell in no uncertain terms what would happen to him if the general turned up missing.
“Ye said Andy helped ye with the job?” Jamie asked curiously.
“He did. We got on extremely well. In fact…” I hadn’t been going to mention the subject of our conversation until Jamie had had a pint or so of whisky, but the moment seemed opportune, so I plumped in.
“I was describing various things to him while we worked—interesting surgeries and medical trivia, you’ll know the sort of things.”
Ian murmured something under his breath about ghoulies of a feather, but I ignored him.
“Aye, so?” Jamie was looking wary; he knew something was coming but not what it was.
“Well,” I said, taking a breath, “the long and the short of it is that he suggested I write a book. A medical book.”
Jamie’s eyebrows had risen slowly, but he nodded at me to go on.
“A sort of manual for regular people, not for doctors. With principles of proper hygiene and nutrition, and guides to the common sorts of illness, how to make up simple medicines, what to do for wounds and bad teeth—that sort of thing.”
The brows were still up, but he kept nodding, finishing the last bite of scone. He swallowed.
“Aye, well, it sounds a good sort of book—and surely ye’d be the person to write it. Did he happen to ‘suggest’ how much he thought it might cost to have such a thing printed and bound?”
“Ah.” I let out the breath I’d been holding. “He’ll do three hundred copies, a maximum of a hundred fifty pages, buckram binding, and distribute them through his shop, in exchange for the twelve years’ rent he owes you for your printing press.”
Jamie’s eyes bulged and his face went red.
“And he’s throwing in the maggots for free. And the guard,” I added hastily, shoving the port in front of him before he could speak. He seized the glass and downed it in a gulp.
“That wee grasper!” he said, when he could speak. “Ye didna sign anything, did ye?” he asked anxiously. I shook my head.
“I did tell him I thought you’d maybe want to bargain with him,” I offered meekly.
“Oh.” His color began to recede toward normal levels.
“I do want to,” I said, looking down at my hands, clasped together in my lap.
“Ye’d never said anything about wanting to write a book before, Auntie,” Ian said, curious.
“Well, I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said defensively. “And it would have been terribly difficult and expensive to do while we were living on the Ridge.”
Jamie muttered, “Expensive,” and poured another glass of port, which he drank more slowly, making occasional faces at the taste as he thought.
“Ye really want this, Sassenach?” he said at last, and at my nod, set down the glass with a sigh.
“All right,” he said with resignation. “But ye’re having a leather-bound special edition, too, wi’ gilded end pages. And five hundred copies. I mean, ye’ll want some to take back to America, won’t you?” he added, seeing my stunned look.
“Oh. Yes. I would like that.”
“Well, then.” He picked up the bell and rang for the maid. “Tell the young woman to take away this wretched stuff and bring some decent whisky. We’ll toast your book. And then I’ll go and speak to the wicked wee man.”
I HAD A FRESH QUIRE of good-quality paper. I had half a dozen sturdy goose quills, a silver penknife with which to sharpen them, and an inkwell provided by the hotel—rather battered but filled, the majordomo had assured me, with the very best iron-gall ink. Jamie and Ian had gone to France for a week, to look into various interesting leads given them by Madame Jeanne, leaving me to mind the general and commence my book. I had all the time and leisure I required.
I took a sheet of paper, pristine and creamy, placed it just so, and dipped my quill, excitement thrumming in my fingers.
I closed my eyes in reflex, then opened them again. Where ought I to begin?
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop. The line from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland drifted through my mind, and I smiled. Good advice, I supposed—but only if you happened to know where the beginning was, and I didn’t quite.
I twiddled the quill a bit, thinking.
Perhaps I should have an outline? That seemed sensible—and a little less daunting than starting straight in to write. I lowered the quill and held it poised above the paper for a moment, then picked it up again. An outline would have a beginning, too, wouldn’t it?
The ink was beginning to dry on the point. Rather crossly, I wiped it and was just about to dip it again, when the maid scratched discreetly at the door.
“Mrs. Fraser? There’s a gentleman downstairs, askin’ to see ye,” she said. From her air of respect, I supposed it couldn’t be Andy Bell. Besides, she likely would have said so if it was; everyone in Edinburgh knew Andy Bell.
“I’ll come down,” I said, rising. Perhaps my subconscious would come to some kind of conclusion regarding beginnings while I dealt with this gentleman, whomever he was.
Whomever he was, he was a gentleman, I saw that at once. He was also Percival Beauchamp.
“Mrs. Fraser,” he said, his face lighting with a smile as he turned at the sound of my step. “Your servant, madame.”
“Mr. Beauchamp,” I said, allowing him to take my hand and raise it to his lips. An elegant person of the time would doubtless have said something like, “I fear you take me at a disadvantage, sir,” with anything between haughtiness and flirtation. Not being an elegant person of the time, I merely said, “What are you doing here?”
Mr. Beauchamp, on the other hand, had any amount of elegance.
“Looking for you, dear lady,” he replied, and gave my hand a slight squeeze before releasing it. I repressed a reflexive urge to wipe it on my dress and nodded toward a pair of armchairs arranged by the window.
“Not that I’m not flattered,” I said, arranging my skirts. “But don’t you want my husband? Oh!” I said, another thought occurring. “Or did you want to consult me medically?”
His lips twitched as though he thought this an amusing notion, but he shook his head respectfully. “Your husband is in France—or so Jeanne LeGrand tells me. I came to speak to you.”
“Why?”
He lifted his smooth dark brows at that but didn’t answer at once, instead lifting a finger in a gesture to the hotel clerk to summon refreshment. I didn’t know if he was merely being polite or wanted the time to formulate his address, now that he’d seen me again. In any case, he took his time.
“I have a proposition for your husband, madame. I would have spoken with him,” he said, forestalling my question, “but he had left for France already when I learned he was in Edinburgh, and I, alas, must leave myself before he will return. I thought it better to speak directly with you, though, rather than to explain myself in a letter. There are things it’s wiser not to commit to writing, you know,” he added, with a sudden smile that made him very appealing.
“All right,” I said, settling myself. “Say on.”