29
CULLODEN’S LAST VICTIM
In the morning, I saw Jamie and Ian off on their pious errand, and then set off myself, stopping to purchase a large wicker basket from a vendor in the street. It was time I began to equip myself again, with whatever I could find in the way of medical supplies. After the events of the preceding day, I was beginning to fear I would have need of them before long.
Haugh’s apothecary shop hadn’t changed at all, through English occupation, Scottish Rising, and the Stuart’s fall, and my heart rose in delight as I stepped through the door into the rich, familiar smells of hartshorn, peppermint, almond oil, and anise.
The man behind the counter was Haugh, but a much younger Haugh than the middle-aged man I had dealt with twenty years before, when I had patronized this shop for tidbits of military intelligence, as well as for nostrums and herbs.
The younger Haugh did not know me, of course, but went courteously about the business of finding the herbs I wanted, among the neatly ranged jars on his shelves. A good many were common—rosemary, tansy, marigold—but a few on my list made the young Haugh’s ginger eyebrows rise, and his lips purse in thoughtfulness as he looked over the jars.
There was another customer in the shop, hovering near the counter, where tonics were dispensed and compounds ground to order. He strode back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, obviously impatient. After a moment, he came up to the counter.
“How long?” he snapped at Mr. Haugh’s back.
“I canna just say, Reverend,” the apothecary’s voice was apologetic. “Louisa did say as ’twould need to be boiled.”
The only reply to this was a snort, and the man, tall and narrow-shouldered in black, resumed his pacing, glancing from time to time at the doorway to the back room, where the invisible Louisa was presumably at work. The man looked slightly familiar, but I had no time to think where I had seen him before.
Mr. Haugh was squinting dubiously at the list I had given him. “Aconite, now,” he muttered. “Aconite. And what might that be, I wonder?”
“Well, it’s poison, for one thing,” I said. Mr. Haugh’s mouth dropped open momentarily.
“It’s a medicine, too,” I assured him. “But you have to be careful in the use of it. Externally, it’s good for rheumatism, but a very tiny amount taken by mouth will lower the rate of the pulse. Good for some kinds of heart trouble.”
“Really,” Mr. Haugh said, blinking. He turned to his shelves, looking rather helpless. “Er, do ye ken what it smells like, maybe?”
Taking this for invitation, I came round the counter and began to sort through the jars. They were all carefully labeled, but the labels of some were clearly old, the ink faded, and the paper peeling at the edges.
“I’m afraid I’m none so canny wi’ the medicines as my Da yet,” young Mr. Haugh was saying at my elbow. “He’d taught me a good bit, but then he passed on a year ago, and there’s things here as I dinna ken the use of, I’m afraid.”
“Well, that one’s good for cough,” I said, taking down a jar of elecampane with a glance at the impatient Reverend, who had taken out a handkerchief and was wheezing asthmatically into it. “Particularly sticky-sounding coughs.”
I frowned at the crowded shelves. Everything was dusted and immaculate, but evidently not filed according either to alphabetical or botanical order. Had old Mr. Haugh merely remembered where things were, or had he a system of some kind? I closed my eyes and tried to remember the last time I had been in the shop.
To my surprise, the image came back easily. I had come for foxglove then, to make the infusions for Alex Randall, younger brother of Black Jack Randall—and Frank’s six-times great-grandfather. Poor boy, he had been dead now twenty years, though he had lived long enough to sire a son. I felt a twinge of curiosity at the thought of that son, and of his mother, who had been my friend, but I forced my mind away from them, back to the image of Mr. Haugh, standing on tiptoe to reach up to his shelves, over near the right-hand side…
“There.” Sure enough, my hand rested near the jar labeled FOXGLOVE. To one side of it was a jar labeled HORSETAIL, to the other, LILY OF THE VALLEY ROOT. I hesitated, looking at them, running over in my mind the possible uses of those herbs. Cardiac herbs, all of them. If aconite was to be found, it would be close by, then.
It was. I found it quickly, in a jar labeled AULD WIVES HUID.
“Be careful with it.” I handed the jar gingerly to Mr. Haugh. “Even a bit of it will make your skin go numb. Perhaps I’d better have a glass bottle for it.” Most of the herbs I’d bought had been wrapped up in squares of gauze or twisted in screws of paper, but the young Mr. Haugh nodded and carried the jar of aconite into the back room, held at arm’s length, as though he expected it to explode in his face.
“Ye’d seem to know a good deal more about the medicines than the lad,” said a deep, hoarse voice behind me.
“Well, I’ve somewhat more experience than he has, likely.” I turned to find the minister leaning on the counter, watching me under thick brows with pale blue eyes. I realized with a start where I had seen him; in Moubray’s, the day before. He gave no sign of recognizing me; perhaps because my cloak covered Daphne’s dress. I had noticed that many men took relatively little notice of the face of a woman en décolletage, though it seemed a regrettable habit in a clergyman. He cleared his throat.
“Mmphm. And d’ye ken what to do for a nervous complaint, then?”
“What sort of nervous complaint?”
He pursed his lips and frowned, as though unsure whether to trust me. The upper lip came to a slight point, like an owl’s beak, but the lower was thick and pendulous.
“Well…’tis a complicated case. But to speak generally, now”—he eyed me carefully—“what would ye give for a sort of…fit?”
“Epileptic seizure? Where the person falls down and twitches?”
He shook his head, showing a reddened band about his neck, where the high white stock had chafed it.
“No, a different kind of fit. Screaming and staring.”
“Screaming and staring?”
“Not at once, ye ken,” he added hastily. “First the one, and then the other—or rather, roundabout. First she’ll do naught but stare for days on end, not speaking, and then of a sudden, she’ll scream fit to wake the deid.”
“That sounds very trying.” It did; if he had a wife so afflicted, it could easily explain the deep lines of strain that bracketed his mouth and eyes, and the blue circles of exhaustion beneath his eyes.
I tapped a finger on the counter, considering. “I don’t know; I’d have to see the patient.”
The minister’s tongue touched his lower lip. “Perhaps…would ye be willing maybe, to come and see her? It isn’t far,” he added, rather stiffly. Pleading didn’t come naturally to him, but the urgency of his request communicated itself despite the stiffness of his figure.
“I can’t, just now,” I told him. “I have to meet my husband. But perhaps this afternoon—”
“Two o’clock,” he said promptly. “Henderson’s, in Carrubber’s Close. Campbell is the name, the Reverend Archibald Campbell.”
Before I could say yes or no, the curtain between the front room and the back twitched aside, and Mr. Haugh appeared with two bottles, one of which he handed to each of us.
The Reverend eyed his with suspicion, as he groped in his pocket for a coin.
“Weel, and there’s your price,” he said ungraciously, slapping it on the counter. “And we’ll hope as you’ve given me the right one, and no the lady’s poison.”
The curtain rustled again and a woman looked out after the departing form of the minister.
“Good riddance,” she remarked. “Happence for an hour’s work, and insult on the top of it! The Lord might ha’ chosen better, is all I can say!”
“Do you know him?” I asked, curious whether Louisa might have any helpful information about the afflicted wife.
“Not to say I ken him weel, no,” Louisa said, staring at me in frank curiosity. “He’s one o’ they Free Church meenisters, as is always rantin’ on the corner by the Market Cross, tellin’ folk as their behavior’s of nay consequence at all, and all that’s needful for salvation is that they shall ‘come to grips wi’ Jesus’—like as if Our Lord was to be a fair-day wrestler!” She sniffed disdainfully at this heretical viewpoint, crossing herself against contamination.
“I’m surprised the likes of the Reverend Campbell should come in our shop, hearin’ what he thinks o’ Papists by and large.” Her eyes sharpened at me.
“But you’ll maybe be Free Church yoursel’, ma’am; meanin’ no offense to ye, if so.”
“No, I’m a Catholic—er, a Papist, too,” I assured her. “I was only wondering whether you knew anything about the Reverend’s wife, and her condition.”
Louisa shook her head, turning to deal with a new customer.
“Nay, I’ve ne’er seen the lady. But whatever’s the matter with her,” she added, frowning after the departed Reverend, “I’m sure that livin’ wi’ him doesna improve it any!”
* * *
The weather was chill but clear, and only a faint hint of smoke lingered in the Rectory garden as a reminder of the fire. Jamie and I sat on a bench against the wall, absorbing the pale winter sunshine as we waited for Young Ian to finish his confession.
“Did you tell Ian that load of rubbish he gave Young Ian yesterday? About where I’d been all this time?”
“Oh, aye,” he said. “Ian’s a good deal too canny to believe it, but it’s a likely enough story, and he’s too good a friend to insist on the truth.”
“I suppose it will do, for general consumption,” I agreed. “But shouldn’t you have told it to Sir Percival, instead of letting him think we were newlyweds?”
He shook his head decidedly. “Och, no. For the one thing, Sir Percival has no notion of my real name, though I’ll lay a year’s takings he knows it isna Malcolm. I dinna want him to be thinking of me and Culloden together, by any means. And for another, a story like the one I gave Ian would cause the devil of a lot more talk than the news that the printer’s taken a wife.”
“‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave,’” I intoned, “‘when first we practice to deceive.’”
He gave me a quick blue glance, and the corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“It gets a bit easier with practice, Sassenach,” he said. “Try living wi’ me for a time, and ye’ll find yourself spinning silk out of your arse easy as sh—, er, easy as kiss-my-hand.”
I burst out laughing.
“I want to see you do that,” I said.
“You already have.” He stood up and craned his neck, trying to see over the wall into the Rectory garden.
“Young Ian’s being the devil of a time,” he remarked, sitting down again. “How can a lad not yet fifteen have that much to confess?”
“After the day and night he had yesterday? I suppose it depends how much detail Father Hayes wants to hear,” I said, with a vivid recollection of my breakfast with the prostitutes. “Has he been in there all this time?”
“Er, no.” The tips of Jamie’s ears grew slightly pinker in the morning light. “I, er, I had to go first. As an example, ye ken.”
“No wonder it took some time,” I said, teasing. “How long has it been since you’ve been to confession?”
“I told Father Hayes it was six months.”
“And was it?”
“No, but I supposed if he was going to shrive me for thieving, assault, and profane language, he might as well shrive me for lying, too.”
“What, no fornication or impure thoughts?”
“Certainly not,” he said austerely. “Ye can think any manner of horrible things without sin, and it’s to do wi’ your wife. It’s only if you’re thinking it about other ladies, it’s impure.”
“I had no idea I was coming back to save your soul,” I said primly, “but it’s nice to be useful.”
He laughed, bent and kissed me thoroughly.
“I wonder if that counts as an indulgence,” he said, pausing for breath. “It ought to, no? It does a great deal more to keep a man from the fires of hell than saying the rosary does. Speaking of which,” he added, digging into his pocket and coming out with a rather chewed-looking wooden rosary, “remind me that I must say my penance sometime today. I was about to start on it, when ye came up.”
“How many Hail Marys are you supposed to say?” I asked, fingering the beads. The chewed appearance wasn’t illusion; there were definite small toothmarks on most of the beads.
“I met a Jew last year,” he said, ignoring the question. “A natural philosopher, who’d sailed round the world six times. He told me that in both the Musselman faith and the Jewish teachings, it was considered an act of virtue for a man and his wife to lie wi’ each other.
“I wonder if that has anything to do wi’ both Jews and Musselmen being circumcised?” he added thoughtfully. “I never thought to ask him that—though perhaps he would ha’ found it indelicate to say.”
“I shouldn’t think a foreskin more or less would impair the virtue,” I assured him.
“Oh, good,” he said, and kissed me once more.
“What happened to your rosary?” I asked, picking up the string where it had fallen on the grass. “It looks like the rats have been at it.”
“Not rats,” he said. “Bairns.”
“What bairns?”
“Oh, any that might be about.” He shrugged, tucking the beads back in his pocket. “Young Jamie has three now, and Maggie and Kitty two each. Wee Michael’s just married, but his wife’s breeding.” The sun was behind him, darkening his face, so that his teeth flashed suddenly white when he smiled. “Ye didna ken ye were a great-aunt seven times over, aye?”
“A great-aunt?” I said, staggered.
“Well, I’m a great-uncle,” he said cheerfully, “and I havena found it a terrible trial, except for having my beads gnawed when the weans are cutting teeth—that, and bein’ expected to answer to ‘Nunkie’ a lot.”
Sometimes twenty years seemed like an instant, and sometimes it seemed like a very long time indeed.
“Er…there isn’t a feminine equivalent of ‘Nunkie,’ I hope?”
“Oh, no,” he assured me. “They’ll all call ye Great-Auntie Claire, and treat ye wi’ the utmost respect.”
“Thanks a lot,” I muttered, with visions of the hospital’s geriatric wing fresh in my mind.
Jamie laughed, and with a lightness of heart no doubt engendered by being newly freed from sin, grasped me around the waist and lifted me onto his lap.
“I’ve never before seen a great-auntie wi’ a lovely plump arse like that,” he said with approval, bouncing me slightly on his knees. His breath tickled the back of my neck as he leaned forward. I let out a small shriek as his teeth closed lightly on my ear.
“Are ye all right, Auntie?” said Young Ian’s voice just behind us, full of concern.
Jamie started convulsively, nearly unshipping me from his lap, then tightened his hold on my waist.
“Oh, aye,” he said. “It’s just your auntie saw a spider.”
“Where?” said Young Ian, peering interestedly over the bench.
“Up there.” Jamie rose, standing me on my feet, and pointed to the lime tree, where—sure enough—the web of an orb weaver stretched across the crook of two branches, sparkling with damp. The weaver herself sat in the center, round as a cherry, wearing a gaudy pattern of green and yellow on her back.
“I was telling your auntie,” Jamie said, as Young Ian examined the web in lashless fascination, “about a Jew I met, a natural philosopher. He’d made a study of spiders, it seems; in fact, he was in Edinburgh to deliver a learned paper to the Royal Society, in spite of being a Jew.”
“Really? Did he tell ye a lot about spiders?” Young Ian asked eagerly.
“A lot more than I cared to know,” Jamie informed his nephew. “There are times and places for talkin’ of spiders that lay eggs in caterpillars so the young hatch out and devour the poor beast while it’s still alive, but during supper isna one of them. He did say one thing I thought verra interesting, though,” he added, squinting at the web. He blew gently on it, and the spider scuttled briskly into hiding.
“He said that spiders spin two kinds of silk, and if ye have a lens—and can make the spider sit still for it, I suppose—ye can see the two places where the silk comes out; spinnerets, he called them. In any case, the one kind of silk is sticky, and if a wee bug touches it, he’s done for. But the other kind is dry silk, like the sort ye’d embroider with, but finer.”
The orb weaver was advancing cautiously toward the center of her web again.
“See where she walks?” Jamie pointed to the web, anchored by a number of spokes, supporting the intricate netlike whorl. “The spokes there, those are spun of the dry silk, so the spider can walk over it herself wi’ no trouble. But the rest o’ the web is the sticky kind of silk—or mostly so—and if ye watch a spider careful for quite a long time, you’ll see that she goes only on the dry strands, for if she walked on the sticky stuff, she’d be stuck herself.”
“Is that so?” Ian breathed reverently on the web, watching intently as the spider moved away along her nonskid road to safety.
“I suppose there’s a moral there for web weavers,” Jamie observed to me, sotto voce. “Be sure ye know which of your strands are sticky.”
“I suppose it helps even more if you have the kind of luck that will conjure up a handy spider when you need one,” I said dryly.
He laughed and took my arm.
“That’s not luck, Sassenach,” he told me. “It’s watchfulness. Ian, are ye coming?”
“Oh, aye.” Young Ian abandoned the web with obvious reluctance and followed us to the kirkyard gate.
“Oh, Uncle Jamie, I meant to ask, can I borrow your rosary?” he said, as we emerged onto the cobbles of the Royal Mile. “The priest told me I must say five decades for my penance, and that’s too many to keep count of on my fingers.”
“Surely.” Jamie stopped and fished in his pocket for the rosary. “Be sure to give it back, though.”
Young Ian grinned. “Aye, I reckon you’ll be needing it yourself, Uncle Jamie. The priest told me he was verra wicked,” Young Ian confided to me, with a lashless wink, “and told me not to be like him.”
“Mmphm.” Jamie glanced up and down the road, gauging the speed of an approaching handcart, edging its way down the steep incline. Freshly shaved that morning, his cheeks had a rosy glow about them.
“How many decades of the rosary are you supposed to say as penance?” I asked curiously.
“Eighty-five,” he muttered. The rosiness of his freshly shaved cheeks deepened.
Young Ian’s mouth dropped open in awe.
“How long has it been since ye went to confession, Uncle?” he asked.
“A long time,” Jamie said tersely. “Come on!”
* * *
Jamie had an appointment after dinner to meet with a Mr. Harding, representative of the Hand in Hand Assurance Society, which had insured the premises of the printshop, to inspect the ashy remains with him and verify the loss.
“I willna need ye, laddie,” he said reassuringly to Young Ian, who looked less than enthusiastic about the notion of revisiting the scene of his adventures. “You go wi’ your auntie to see this madwoman.”
“I canna tell how ye do it,” he added to me, raising one brow. “You’re in the city less than two days, and all the afflicted folk for miles about are clutching at your hems.”
“Hardly all of them,” I said dryly. “It’s only one woman, after all, and I haven’t even seen her yet.”
“Aye, well. At least madness isna catching—I hope.” He kissed me briefly, then turned to go, clapping Young Ian companionably on the shoulder. “Look after your auntie, Ian.”
Young Ian paused for a moment, looking after the tall form of his departing uncle.
“Do you want to go with him, Ian?” I asked. “I can manage alone, if you—”
“Oh, no, Auntie!” He turned back to me, looking rather abashed. “I dinna want to go, at all. It’s only—I was wondering—well, what if they…find anything? In the ashes?”
“A body, you mean,” I said bluntly. I had realized, of course, that the distinct possibility that Jamie and Mr. Harding would find the body of the one-eyed seaman was the reason Jamie had told Ian to accompany me.
The boy nodded, looking ill at ease. His skin had faded to a sort of rosy tan, but was still too dark to show any paleness due to emotion.
“I don’t know,” I said. “If the fire was a very hot one, there may be nothing much left to find. But don’t worry about it.” I touched his arm in reassurance. “Your uncle will know what to do.”
“Aye, that’s so.” His face brightened, full of faith in his uncle’s ability to handle any situation whatever. I smiled when I saw his expression, then realized with a small start of surprise that I had that faith, too. Be it drunken Chinese, corrupt Customs agents, or Mr. Harding of the Hand in Hand Assurance Society, I hadn’t any doubt that Jamie would manage.
“Come on, then,” I said, as the bell in the Canongate Kirk began to ring. “It’s just on two now.”
Despite his visit to Father Hayes, Ian had retained a certain air of dreamy bliss, which returned to him now, and there was little conversation as we made our way up the slope of the Royal Mile to Henderson’s lodging house, in Carrubber’s Close.
It was a quiet hotel, but luxurious by Edinburgh standards, with a patterned carpet on the stairs and colored glass in the street window. It seemed rather rich surroundings for a Free Church minister, but then I knew little about Free Churchmen; perhaps they took no vow of poverty as the Catholic clergy did.
Showed up to the third floor by a young boy, we found the door opened to us at once by a heavyset woman wearing an apron and a worried expression. I thought she might be in her mid-twenties, though she had already lost several of her front teeth.
“You’ll be the lady as the Reverend said would call?” she asked. Her expression lightened a bit at my nod, and she swung the door wider.
“Mr. Campbell’s had to go oot the noo,” she said in a broad Lowland accent, “but he said as how he’d be most obliged to hae yer advice regardin’ his sister, mum.”
Sister, not wife. “Well, I’ll do my best,” I said. “May I see Miss Campbell?”
Leaving Ian to his memories in the sitting room, I accompanied the woman, who introduced herself as Nellie Cowden, to the back bedroom.
Miss Campbell was, as advertised, staring. Her pale blue eyes were wide open, but didn’t seem to be looking at anything—certainly not at me.
She sat in the sort of wide, low chair called a nursing chair, with her back to the fire. The room was dim, and the backlighting made her features indistinct, except for the unblinking eyes. Seen closer to, her features were still indistinct; she had a soft, round face, undistinguished by any apparent bone structure, and baby-fine brown hair, neatly brushed. Her nose was small and snub, her chin double, and her mouth hung pinkly open, so slack as to obscure its natural lines.
“Miss Campbell?” I said cautiously. There was no response from the plump figure in the chair. Her eyes did blink, I saw, though much less frequently than normal.
“She’ll nae answer ye, whilst she’s in this state,” Nellie Cowden said behind me. She shook her head, wiping her hands upon her apron. “Nay, not a word.”
“How long has she been like this?” I picked up a limp, pudgy hand and felt for the pulse. It was there, slow and quite strong.
“Oh, for twa days so far, this time.” Becoming interested, Miss Cowden leaned forward, peering into her charge’s face. “Usually she stays like that for a week or more—thirteen days is the longest she’s done it.”
Moving slowly—though Miss Campbell seemed unlikely to be alarmed—I began to examine the unresisting figure, meanwhile asking questions of her attendant. Miss Margaret Campbell was thirty-seven, Miss Cowden told me, the only relative of the Reverend Archibald Campbell, with whom she had lived for the past twenty years, since the death of their parents.
“What starts her doing this? Do you know?”
Miss Cowden shook her head. “No tellin’, Mum. Nothin’ seems to start it. One minute she’ll be lookin’ aboot, talkin’ and laughin’, eatin’ her dinner like the sweet child she is, and the next—wheesht!” She snapped her fingers, then, for effect, leaned forward and snapped them again, deliberately, just under Miss Campbell’s nose.
“See?” she said. “I could hae six men wi’ trumpets pass through the room, and she’d pay it nay more mind.”
I was reasonably sure that Miss Campbell’s trouble was mental, not physical, but I made a complete examination, anyway—or as complete as could be managed without undressing that clumsy, inert form.
“It’s when she comes oot of it that’s the worst, though,” Miss Cowden assured me, squatting next to me as I knelt on the floor to check Miss Campbell’s plantar reflexes. Her feet, loosed from shoes and stockings, were damp and smelled musty.
I drew a fingernail firmly down the sole of each foot in turn, checking for a Babinski reflex that might indicate the presence of a brain lesion. Nothing, though; her toes curled under, in normal startlement.
“What happens then? Is that the screaming the Reverend mentioned?” I rose to my feet. “Will you bring me a lighted candle, please?”
“Oh, aye, the screamin’.” Miss Cowden hastened to oblige, lighting a wax taper from the fire. “She do shriek somethin’ awful then, on and on ’til she’s worn herself oot. Then she’ll fall asleep—sleep the clock around, she will—and wake as though nothin’ had happened.”
“And she’s quite all right when she wakes?” I asked. I moved the candle flame slowly back and forth, a few inches before the patient’s eyes. The pupils shrank in automatic response to the light, but the irises stayed fixed, not following the flame. My hand itched for the solid handle of an ophthalmoscope, to examine the retinas, but no such luck.
“Well, not to say all right,” Miss Cowden said slowly. I turned from the patient to look at her and she shrugged, massive shoulders powerful under the linen of her blouse.
“She’s saft in the heid, puir dear,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Has been for nigh on twenty year.”
“You haven’t been taking care of her all that time, surely?”
“Oh, no! Mr. Campbell had a woman as cared for her where they lived, in Burntisland, but the woman was none so young, and didna wish to leave her home. So when the Reverend made up his mind to take up the Missionary Society’s offer, and to take his sister wi’ him to the West Indies—why, he advertised for a strong woman o’ good character who wouldna mind travel to be an abigail for her…and here I am.” Miss Cowden gave me a gap-toothed smile in testimony to her own virtues.
“The West Indies? He’s planning to take Miss Campbell on a ship to the West Indies?” I was staggered; I knew just enough of sailing conditions to think that any such trip would be a major ordeal to a woman in good health. This woman—but then I reconsidered. All things concerned, Margaret Campbell might endure such a trip better than a normal woman—at least if she remained in her trance.
“He thought as the change of climate might be good for her,” Miss Cowden was explaining. “Get her away from Scotland, and all the dreadful memories. Ought to ha’ done it long since, is what I say.”
“What sort of dreadful memories?” I asked. I could see by the gleam in Miss Cowden’s eye that she was only too ready to tell me. I had finished the examination by this time, and concluded that there was little physically wrong with Miss Campbell save inactivity and poor diet, but there was the chance that something in her history might suggest some treatment.
“Weel,” she began, sidling toward the table, where a decanter and several glasses stood on a tray, “it’s only what Tilly Lawson told me, her as looked after Miss Campbell for sae long, but she did swear it was the truth, and her a godly woman. If ye’d care to take a drop of cordial, mum, for the sake o’ the Reverend’s hospitality?”
The chair Miss Campbell sat on was the only one in the room, so Miss Cowden and I perched inelegantly on the bed, side by side, and watched the silent figure before us, as we sipped our blackberry cordial, and she told me Margaret Campbell’s story.
Margaret Campbell had been born in Burntisland, no more than five miles from Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth. At the time of the ’45, when Charles Stuart had marched into Edinburgh to reclaim his father’s throne, she had been seventeen.
“Her father was a Royalist, o’ course, and her brother in a government regiment, marching north to put down the wicked rebels,” said Miss Cowden, taking a tiny sip of the cordial to make it last. “But not Miss Margaret. Nay, she was for the Bonnie Prince, and the Hielan’ men that followed him.”
One, in particular, though Miss Cowden did not know his name. But a fine man he must have been, for Miss Margaret stole away from her home to meet him, and told him all the bits of information that she gleaned from listening to her father and his friends, and from her brother’s letters home.
But then had come Falkirk; a victory, but a costly one, followed by retreat. Rumor had attended the flight of the Prince’s army to the north, and not a soul doubted but that their flight led to destruction. Miss Margaret, desperate at the rumors, left her home at dead of night in the cold March spring, and went to find the man she loved.
Now here the account had been uncertain—whether it was that she had found the man and he had spurned her, or that she had not found him in time, and been forced to turn back from Culloden Moor—but in any case, turn back she did, and the day after the battle, she had fallen into the hands of a band of English soldiers.
“Dreadful, what they did to her,” Miss Cowden said, lowering her voice as though the figure in the chair could hear. “Dreadful!” The English soldiers, blind with the lust of the hunt and the kill, pursuing the fugitives of Culloden, had not stopped to ask her name or the sympathies of her family. They had known by her speech that she was a Scot, and that knowledge had been enough.
They had left her for dead in a ditch half full of freezing water, and only the fortuitous presence of a family of tinkers, hiding in the nearby brambles for fear of the soldiers, had saved her.
“I canna help but think it a pity they did save her, un-Christian thing it is to say,” Miss Cowden whispered. “If not, the puir lamb might ha’ slippit her earthly bonds and gone happy to God. But as it is—” She gestured clumsily at the silent figure, and drank down the last drops of her cordial.
Margaret had lived, but did not speak. Somewhat recovered, but silent, she traveled with the tinkers, moving south with them to avoid the pillaging of the Highlands that took place in the wake of Culloden. And then one day, sitting in the yard of a pothouse, holding the tin to collect coppers as the tinkers busked and sang, she had been found by her brother, who had stopped with his Campbell regiment to refresh themselves on the way back to their quarters at Edinburgh.
“She kent him, and him her, and the shock o’ their meeting gave her back her voice, but not her mind, puir thing. He took her home, o’ course, but she was always as though she was in the past—sometime before she met the Hielan’ man. Her father was dead then, from the influenza, and Tilly Lawson said as the shock o’ seeing her like that kilt her mother, but could be as that were the influenza, too, for there was a great deal of it about that year.”
The whole affair had left Archibald Campbell deeply embittered against both Highland Scots and the English army, and he had resigned his commission. With his parents dead, he found himself middling well-to-do, but the sole support of his damaged sister.
“He couldna marry,” Miss Cowden explained, “for what woman would have him, and she”—with a nod toward the fire—“was thrown into the bargain?”
In his difficulties, he had turned to God, and become a minister. Unable to leave his sister, or to bear the confinement of the family house at Burntisland with her, he had purchased a coach, hired a woman to look after Margaret, and begun to make brief journeys into the surrounding countryside to preach, often taking her with him.
In his preaching he had found success, and this year had been asked by the Society of Presbyterian Missionaries if he would undertake his longest journey yet, to the West Indies, there to organize churches and appoint elders on the colonies of Barbados and Jamaica. Prayer had given him his answer, and he had sold the family property in Burntisland and moved his sister to Edinburgh while he made preparations for the journey.
I glanced once more at the figure by the fire. The heated air from the hearth stirred the skirts about her feet, but beyond that small movement, she might have been a statue.
“Well,” I said with a sigh, “there’s not a great deal I can do for her, I’m afraid. But I’ll give you some prescriptions—receipts, I mean—to have made up at the apothecary’s before you go.”
If they didn’t help, they couldn’t hurt, I reflected, as I copied down the short lists of ingredients. Chamomile, hops, rue, tansy, and verbena, with a strong pinch of peppermint, for a soothing tonic. Tea of rose hips, to help correct the slight nutritional deficiency I had noted—spongy, bleeding gums, and a pale, bloated look about the face.
“Once you reach the Indies,” I said, handing Miss Cowden the paper, “you must see that she eats a great deal of fruit—oranges, grapefruit, and lemons, particularly. You should do the same,” I added, causing a look of profound suspicion to flit across the maid’s wide face. I doubted she ate any vegetable matter beyond the occasional onion or potato, save her daily parritch.
The Reverend Campbell had not returned, and I saw no real reason to wait for him. Bidding Miss Campbell adieu, I pulled open the door of the bedroom, to find Young Ian standing on the other side of it.
“Oh!” he said, startled. “I was just comin’ to find ye, Auntie. It’s nearly half-past three, and Uncle Jamie said—”
“Jamie?” The voice came from behind me, from the chair beside the fire.
Miss Cowden and I whirled to find Miss Campbell sitting bolt upright, eyes still wide but focused now. They were focused on the doorway, and as Young Ian stepped inside, Miss Campbell began to scream.
* * *
Rather unsettled by the encounter with Miss Campbell, Young Ian and I made our way thankfully back to the refuge of the brothel, where we were greeted matter-of-factly by Bruno and taken to the rear parlor. There we found Jamie and Fergus deep in conversation.
“True, we do not trust Sir Percival,” Fergus was saying, “but in this case, what point is there to his telling you of an ambush, save that such an ambush is in fact to occur?”
“Damned if I ken why,” Jamie said frankly, leaning back and stretching in his chair. “And that being so, we do, as ye say, conclude that there’s meant to be an ambush by the excisemen. Two days, he said. That would be Mullen’s Cove.” Then, catching sight of me and Ian, he half-rose, motioning us to take seats.
“Will it be the rocks below Balcarres, then?” Fergus asked.
Jamie frowned in thought, the two stiff fingers of his right hand drumming slowly on the tabletop.
“No,” he said at last. “Let it be Arbroath; the wee cove under the abbey there. Just to be sure, aye?”
“All right.” Fergus pushed back the half-empty plate of oatcakes from which he had been refreshing himself, and rose. “I shall spread the word, milord. Arbroath, in four days.” With a nod to me, he swirled his cloak about his shoulders and went out.
“Is it the smuggling, Uncle?” Young Ian asked eagerly. “Is there a French lugger coming?” He picked up an oatcake and bit into it, scattering crumbs over the table.
Jamie’s eyes were still abstracted, thinking, but they cleared as he glanced sharply at his nephew. “Aye, it is. And you, Young Ian, are having nothing to do with it.”
“But I could help!” the boy protested. “You’ll need someone to hold the mules, at least!”
“After all your Da said to you and me yesterday, wee Ian?” Jamie raised his brows. “Christ, ye’ve a short memory, lad!”
Ian looked mildly abashed at this, and took another oatcake to cover his confusion. Seeing him momentarily silent, I took the opportunity to ask my own questions.
“You’re going to Arbroath to meet a French ship that’s bringing in smuggled liquor?” I asked. “You don’t think that’s dangerous, after Sir Percival’s warning?”
Jamie glanced at me with one brow still raised, but answered patiently enough.
“No; Sir Percival was warning me that the rendezvous in two days’ time is known. That was to take place at Mullen’s Cove. I’ve an arrangement wi’ Jared and his captains, though. If a rendezvous canna be kept for some reason, the lugger will stand offshore and come in again the next night—but to a different place. And there’s a third fallback as well, should the second meeting not come off.”
“But if Sir Percival knows the first rendezvous, won’t he know the others, too?” I persisted.
Jamie shook his head and poured out a cup of wine. He quirked a brow at me to ask whether I wanted any, and upon my shaking my head, sipped it himself.
“No,” he said. “The rendezvous points are arranged in sets of three, between me and Jared, sent by sealed letter inside a packet addressed to Jeanne, here. Once I’ve read the letter, I burn it. The men who’ll help meet the lugger will all know the first point, of course—I suppose one o’ them will have let something slip,” he added, frowning into his cup. “But no one—not even Fergus—kens the other two points unless we need to make use of one. And when we do, all the men ken well enough to guard their tongues.”
“But then it’s bound to be safe, Uncle!” Young Ian burst out. “Please let me come! I’ll keep well back out o’ the way,” he promised.
Jamie gave his nephew a slightly jaundiced look.
“Aye, ye will,” he said. “You’ll come wi’ me to Arbroath, but you and your auntie will stay at the inn on the road above the abbey until we’ve finished. I’ve got to take the laddie home to Lallybroch, Claire,” he explained, turning to me. “And mend things as best I can with his parents.” The elder Ian had left Halliday’s that morning before Jamie and Young Ian arrived, leaving no message, but presumably bound for home. “Ye willna mind the journey? I wouldna ask it, and you just over your travel from Inverness”—his eyes met mine with a small, conspiratorial smile—“but I must take him back as soon as may be.”
“I don’t mind at all,” I assured him. “It will be good to see Jenny and the rest of your family again.”
“But Uncle—” Young Ian blurted. “What about—”
“Be still!” Jamie snapped. “That will be all from you, laddie. Not another word, aye?”
Young Ian looked wounded, but took another oatcake and inserted it into his mouth in a marked manner, signifying his intention to remain completely silent.
Jamie relaxed then, and smiled at me.
“Well, and how was your visit to the madwoman?”
“Very interesting,” I said. “Jamie, do you know any people named Campbell?”
“Not above three or four hundred of them,” he said, a smile twitching his long mouth. “Had ye a particular Campbell in mind?”
“A couple of them.” I told him the story of Archibald Campbell and his sister, Margaret, as related to me by Nellie Cowden.
He shook his head at the tale, and sighed. For the first time, he looked truly older, his face tightened and lined by memory.
“It’s no the worst tale I’ve heard, of the things that happened after Culloden,” he said. “But I dinna think—wait.” He stopped, and looked at me, eyes narrowed in thought. “Margaret Campbell. Margaret. Would she be a bonny wee lass—perhaps the size o’ the second Mary? And wi’ soft brown hair like a wren’s feather, and a verra sweet face?”
“She probably was, twenty years ago,” I said, thinking of that still, plump figure sitting by the fire. “Why, do you know her after all?”
“Aye, I think I do.” His brow was furrowed in thought, and he looked down at the table, drawing a random line through the spilled crumbs. “Aye, if I’m right, she was Ewan Cameron’s sweetheart. You’ll mind Ewan?”
“Of course.” Ewan had been a tall, handsome joker of a man, who had worked with Jamie at Holyrood, gathering bits of intelligence that filtered through from England. “What’s become of Ewan? Or should I not ask?” I said, seeing the shadow come over Jamie’s face.
“The English shot him,” he said quietly. “Two days after Culloden.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and smiled tiredly at me.
“Well, then, may God bless the Reverend Archie Campbell. I’d heard of him, a time or two, during the Rising. He was a bold soldier, folk said, and a brave one—and I suppose he’ll need to be now, poor man.” He sat a moment longer, then stood up with decision.
“Aye, well, there’s a great deal to be done before we leave Edinburgh. Ian, you’ll find the list of the printshop customers upstairs on the table; fetch it down to me and I’ll mark off for ye the ones with orders outstanding. Ye must go to see each one and offer back their money. Unless they choose to wait until I’ve found new premises and laid in new stock—that might take as much as two months, though, tell them.”
He patted his coat, where something made a small jingling sound.
“Luckily the assurance money will pay back the customers, and have a bit left over. Speaking of which”—he turned and smiled at me—“your job, Sassenach, is to find a dressmaker who will manage ye a decent gown in two days’ time. For I expect Daphne would like her dress back, and I canna take ye home to Lallybroch naked.”