* * *
I stayed in Edinburgh while Jamie and his rival uncles rode to Stirling to straighten out matters with the Prince. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t stay at Holyroodhouse, but found lodgings in one of the wynds above the Canongate. It was a small, cold, cramped room, but I wasn’t in it much.
The Tolbooth prisoners couldn’t come out, but there was nothing barring visitors who wanted to get in. Fergus and I visited the prison daily, and a small amount of discriminating bribery allowed me to pass food and medicine to the men from Lallybroch. Theoretically, I wasn’t allowed to talk privately to the prisoners, but here again, the system had a certain amount of slip to it, when suitably greased, and I managed to talk alone with Ross the smith on two or three occasions.
“ ’Twas my fault, lady,” he said at once, the first time I saw him. “I should ha’ had the sense to make the men go in small groups of three and four, not altogether like we did. I was afraid of losing some, though; the most of them had never been more than five mile from home before.”
“You needn’t blame yourself,” I assured him. “From what I heard, it was only ill luck that you were caught. Don’t worry; Jamie has gone to see the Prince at Stirling; he’ll have you out of here in no time.”
He nodded, tiredly brushing back a lock of hair. He was filthy and unkempt, and a good bit diminished from the burly, robust craftsman he had been a few months before. Still, he smiled at me, and thanked me for the food.
“It willna come amiss,” he said frankly. “It’s little we get but slops. D’ye think…” He hesitated. “D’ye think ye might manage a few blankets, my lady? I wouldna ask, only four of the men have the ague, and…”
“I’ll manage,” I said.
I left the prison, wondering exactly how I would manage. While the main army had gone south to invade England, Edinburgh was still an occupied city. With soldiers, lords, and hangers-on drifting constantly in and out, goods of all sorts were high-priced and in short supply. Blankets and warm clothes could be found, but they would cost a lot, and I had precisely ten shillings left in my purse.
There was a banker in Edinburgh, a Mr. Waterford, who had in the past handled some of Lallybroch’s business and investments, but Jamie had removed all his funds from the bank some months before, fearing that bank-held assets might be seized by the Crown. The money had been converted to gold, some of it sent to Jared in France for safekeeping, the rest of it hidden in the farmhouse. All of it equally inaccessible to me at the moment.
I paused on the street to think, passersby jostling past me on the cobbles. If I didn’t have money, I had still a few things of value. The crystal Raymond had given me in Paris—while the crystal itself was of no particular value, its gold mounting and chain were. My wedding rings—no, I didn’t want to part with those, even temporarily. But the pearls…I felt inside my pocket, checking to see that the pearl necklace Jamie had given me on our wedding day was still safely sewn into the seam of my skirt.
It was; the small, irregular beads of the freshwater pearls were hard and smooth under my fingers. Not as expensive as oriental pearls, but it was still a fine necklace, with gold pierced-work roundels between the pearls. It had belonged to Jamie’s mother, Ellen. I thought she would have liked to see it used to comfort his men.