THE LADY IN THE LOCH
by
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
All rights reserved.
The Lady in the Loch Original Copyright © 1998 by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
All rights reserved
Copyright © September, 2010, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Cover Art Copyright © 2010, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Gypsy Shadow Publishing
Manchaca, TX
www.gypsyshadow.com
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this e-Book are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.
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*****
To Lea Day, trusty research assistant and Power Weasel, with gratitude.
Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank Lea Day for mining Powell's bookstore for all she could find that pertained to my topic and sending it to me. Also I would like to thank Jane Yolen for introducing me to Deborah Turner Harris, who I'd also like to thank for introducing me in turn to Elizabeth Ewing, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for putting me up in Edinburgh while I did my research there. Special thanks to Lady Patricia Maxwell-Scott and her sister Dame Jean for allowing Elizabeth Ewing and me to visit Scott's home, Abbotsford, during the off-season. Finally, my profound thanks are due to copyeditor Carol Lowe who deserves combat pay for editing books with so much Scots dialect.
Chapter I
The mother of the corpse wore solid black as she danced round and round the room to the lamenting coronach of the pipes. With her danced the father of the corpse, also in black. The attire of both showed signs of having been recently, hastily dyed for the occasion. Phantoms of the plaid fabric swam beneath the dye of the mother's gown. The mother wept as she danced and the father scowled. The corpse lay in the middle of the room, her claes deid, her funeral garments, concealing the thirty stab wounds in her chest and the dishonor her killer had subjected her body to before she died. All around the coffin, her brothers and sisters-in-law, her sisters and brothers-in-law, her fiancé and her grandmother, all of them weeping, shuffled in their own awkward dancing. The neighbors danced and wept as well. And close by the coffin, the bound and gagged tinkler man was weeping too, less for the murdered lassie than for himself, he who was the accused.
The time was one minute until midnight by the grand-father clock standing in the candle-cast shadows draping the walls, festooning the ceiling and carpeting the floors. The flickering of these same candles lent astonishing expressions to the corpse's face and deepened the dread on the faces of the other celebrants, dancing, singing, eating, drinking, and weeping for the dead lass.
A danse macabre if ever there was one, Walter Scott mused from his chair in the center of the room, close to the girl's open coffin. Scott was excused from the dancing both because of his semi-official status in the investigation and because of his lame leg. In a way, it was quite thrilling, this lyke-wake, for it was the first he had attended. Lowlanders and Borderers such as himself, people raised in the strictness of the Kirk, did not practice such rituals, but the girl's family, the MacRitchies, were transplanted Highlanders. So on the one hand, this gave Scott a wonderful opportunity to observe a ritual of which he had previously only read. But on the other hand, there was the girl in the coffin, and though he had never known her, never heard her name, she was touchingly young, younger even than his own eighteen years. She should have been beautiful too, an Ophelia, a Lily Lady of Shalot, but she was actually rather ordinary-looking, robust even in death, the freckles standing out like blemishes on the waxiness of her skin, her eyes, at present, closed with coins, her red hair too festive for her own funeral.
The sheriff-depute of Selkirk, Scott's old friend Adam Plummer, stood beside him, both of them shivering, for the room was chill for more common reasons than the eldritch atmosphere that gripped it. The fireplace was cold, as it must be until the body was removed, and the door was still wide open for the moment.
As the clock gonged the first of its twelve notes for midnight, the dancing wound to a shuffling halt and the piped lament died a wheezing death. Plummer crossed the makeshift dance floor in two long strides and closed the door so that it was barely ajar. The mourners hushed, except for one man who continued, unheeding, to gnaw on the drumstick of a goose. As Plummer returned to the corpse's side, the clock struck its second gong. The mother, Mrs. MacRitchie, let loose with her eerie keening cry, the hullulu, as the Irish so accurately termed it, for that was the way it sounded, a long mourning-dove yell.
The MacRitchies' large, pleasant stone farmhouse was wrapped in the boughs of the Ettrick Forest, and both forest and farmhouse kitchen could be entered from the kitchen door. The house was not too far from that of Scott's old friend James Hogg, and his mother. Hogg had been with the search party that discovered the lass's poor body and also with the party that had flushed the tinklers from their camp in the woods and chased the young man through the trees. The murdered girl's fiancé and her brothers had assumed, as had all the neighbors, that the tinkler lad, since he was in the area, was of course the perpetrator of the crime. Had it been left only to them, the young man would by now be hanged. But Hogg, who had some connections with and sympathy for the tinklers, told the accusers that if they proceeded, the current laws of this district would call them murderers as well, that it was best to send for the sheriff-depute and allow him to conduct a proper investigation. Recalcitrant as the younger laddies were, the elder MacRitchies prevailed and allowed Hogg to send a servant with a message to the home of Scott's aunt Janet in Sandy Knowe. Scott was visiting his aunt and uncle for the summer, far away from his studies at the university in Edinburgh. He and Plummer had been whiling away the early afternoon playing chess when the MacRitchies' servant knocked on Aunt Janet's door and told him of the lass's death (never calling her by name. One never called the deceased by name unless in court or kirk or on one other occasion, as the sheriff was soon to demonstrate). Plummer evidently was acquainted with the family, however, and had some idea that the lyke-wake was in order. He told Scott that this might prove a more interesting experience than most and urged the younger man to accompany him.
Riding hard, they had reached the farmhouse shortly after sunset, when the forest shadows gave way to the mist rising from the creeks and ponds, and that was joined by the smoke from the kitchen chimney, blowing a solemn ring around the house.
Plummer questioned Mrs. MacRitchie, who had laid her daughter out, about the girl's wounds. Scott was relieved his friend had felt no need to remove the funeral linens to see the wounds for himself, but he wondered why. Plummer questioned the tinkler lad as well, but the man refused to say anything except that he had done nothing wrong, and to shake his head stubbornly. The brothers and the girl's fiancé, one Robert Douglas, the son of an even more successful farmer than the girl's father, wanted to "bate the truth oot o' the knacker," and in fact, it looked as if they had already made progress toward that goal before Plummer and Scott arrived. Hogg too bore a couple of visible bruises, although no apparent malice toward those who had inflicted them.
The clock gonged for the fourth time. Plummer began, "By the power vested in me by the Sheriff of Selkirk and through him the King, I will noo commence interrogatin' the victim of this heinous crime."
"What does he mean, interrogate the victim?" Scott asked Hogg, who had drawn near.
Hogg shrugged. "Used to be done whenever there was foul play, according to Mither," he whispered back. "Nowadays nane but the law know the way."
"Why's that?" Scott asked, but just then, one of the men screamed.
"No! Let her rest in peace! We hae Ma—my bride-to-be's murderer there. We should hang him and be done wi' it!"
"Haud yer tongue, man," Plummer commanded. "Let nane speak but her whose foremost business it is, the last witness to this crime. In the pursuit of this investigation, once more I invoke thy name, Mary MacRitchie," he said, in appropriately sonorous tones. "Rise up, lass, and accuse thy slayer."
Though he had never seen such a thing before, Scott had read of the dead accusing their slayers, but had thought it only superstition. He, with the other occupants of the room, held his breath, waiting, to see what would happen, what, if the victim indeed rose up, she would say.
Even the gnawer of the goose bone had finished all the flesh and, putting away his bone, realized that the room was now completely still except for his ever-more-cautious chewing and the echo of Plummer's invocation, and the heartbeats and expirations of all of those who were not now allowed to speak. The first sound other than those was a slight slipping, like jewels against a lady's velvet dress, and then a hollow clink as the coins fell from the girl's eyes and dropped into her coffin as if it were a wishing well.
Even the tinkler was still, as with a sussuration of the claes deid and a long, pain-wracked groan, the body raised itself, hands still bound across its chest, to a sitting position.
With the raising, Scott caught the stench of corruption emanating from her, washed and freshly dressed as she was. On such a warm summer day as this had been, her body had already begun to decay.
Her eyes, which still bore the glaze of unblinking death, slowly examined each person in the room.
"Tell us noo, Mary, was it this tinkler lad who killed ye?"
"Nivver nivver would I lay my love on sich as he," she said, quite haughtily for a corpse, Scott thought. "He'd nae the opportunity tae hae his will o' me."
Good heavens! Just as the ballads implied, the dead did speak in rhyme. And Scott had always thought that a literary device.
Sheriff-depute Plummer was not about to be put off by a bit of versification, however. "Weel, Mary, if no' the tinkler, then who? Is the responsible party in this room?"
It seemed to Scott that while the eyes of all were on the animated corpse of the lassie and Plummer, he had heard a small, scurrying sound, but when he tore his glance from the center of the drama to have a quick look around the room, he noticed no irregularities.
"Nay," Mary said without hesitation. "He is no' here."
"Who was it then, Mary?"
The corpse gave a ghastly gasp—or perhaps it was a sigh—perfuming the room close around her with her breath, which was not at its sweetest at the moment. "I thocht ye'd ne'er ask, mon," she said. "Hoo am I tae be avenged wi' sich batin' roond the bush as yers?"
"Don't be impertinent, dochter," the father said from the other side of the coffin. "Answer Sheriff-depute Plummer's question, and nae sass frae ye."
"Aye, weel then," she said, and though her voice had less tone than that of a university poet declaiming his latest masterpiece, she seemed to be enjoying drawing out the suspense, thought Scott. And then he realized that perhaps what she was enjoying drawing out was her last chance to speak to her family and friends before she was once more and forever silent. "'Twas Rabbie, do ye ken? Rab Douglas, he sare entreated me, but I wouldnae lie wi Rab, and sae he had his will o' me, then drew his dirk and stabbed."
"Douglas! Where's Douglas?" several voices in the crowd demanded. In the commotion, Hogg loosed the bonds of the tinkler lad, now proven innocent in the most profoundly possible way, and the laddie was up and out the door like a shot. Scott seemed to recall Hogg telling him tinklers were extremely superstitious about being in contact with the dead. Though perhaps in light of recent events, "superstitious" was not the correct term.
As for the true murderer, Robert Douglas was nowhere to be seen. The entire wake party trampled each other in running for the doors to effect a capture. Plummer was close behind them. Scott would have run too, but with his lame leg, could not, so only he was there to see that as the door was flung wide, Mary's corpse gave a last wee gasp and subsided into its former inert posture.
When the doorways had cleared and he was quite sure that Mary was not going to rise again to add something she had neglected to say the first time, Scott too started outdoors. But as he reached the window nearest the doorway, he beheld two groups of people. The first were the mourners, who had paused in a clump just outside the front entrance to the house. The second was an angry, concerned group of people in worn and ill-fitting clothing. These were the other tinklers and they carried flaming torches, though probably for no other purpose than to light their way in the darkness as they sought to discover what had become of their kinsman. Some of them were making much over the released prisoner, while others were guarding and containing the hapless Douglas. They could not have known he was a murderer, of course, but they were obviously not in the mood for courtesies to anyone who might have seized their comrade and imprisoned him in this house.
Words were being shouted back and forth, but through the thick walls and sturdy window, Scott could not make them out. Presently, however, Plummer and Mary's father took hold of Douglas, and as they dragged him toward the house, Mary's mother stepped forward and extended an invitation to the tinklers to join them in the wake. The tinklers, folk who seldom needed a second invitation, followed the others back into the house. They backed right out again, however, when they saw the coffin near the food.
"I thought they were hungry," Scott said to Hogg. "Are they squeamish, the tinklers?"
"Nay," Hogg said. "Not as you mean. Death is unclean, you see. The food in this room is contaminated. Perhaps the missus would let them eat back in the kitchen?" He said this loudly enough so Mary's mother could hear.
She looked somewhat offended, but these people had captured her daughter's murderer and Scott could tell she felt she owed them.
He knew what he owed as well. Much as he wanted to speak with the tinklers, to ask more about their customs and lore, he was a lawyer in training and as such should learn more about this process. Besides, Plummer would probably need his help to keep the prisoner in custody as they escorted him to jail.
He was rather surprised, therefore, to find a trial already in progress when he re-entered the drawing room. Mary's coffin formed a sort of judge's bench, across which Plummer presided.
The prisoner, despite the chill of the room, was sweating copiously, making his lank dark hair appear greasy. His chin was square and stubborn, making him, no doubt, appear handsome to the ladies. To Scott, however, he resembled some of the bullies whose thuggery he, while a child crippled by a form of infantile paralysis, had endured far too much. Robert Douglas was a man who would have things his way, whatever the wishes or interests of others. No doubt he had felt that, having declared himself for Mary, he would sample her favors before making the final commitment, and had little respect for her wish to remain pure until the marriage took place. Scott had heard of fellows cut from the same cloth who succeeded at this sort of thing and then, particularly if the girl was of a lower class than they themselves, drop her, and in many cases, ruin her. Mary had been wise, but not wise enough to realize that Douglas denied was a dangerous Douglas indeed. The man's eyes fairly popped with anxiety as one of Mary's brothers placed a noose around his murderous neck.
"The evidence given to us by the victim is uncontestable," Plummer said. "Therefore, it is the decision of this court that the accused, Robert Douglas, should with all dispatch, in the presence of his victim, still above ground, and her family and friends, be taken to the tallest tree on the highest place in this area and hanged by the neck until dead."
Chapter II
So much for learning more legal procedure, Scott thought. He had already witnessed a hanging or two in Edinburgh. It was no novel experience, nor was it one that he fancied. Robert Douglas was a scoundrel, a ruffian, a bully and a murderer and deserved to die, it was true. But Scott did not feel he himself particularly deserved to witness the death. He retired to the kitchen, where the former prisoner was regaling his family and friends with the story of his narrow escape.
All looked up expectantly as Scott entered. Scott said simply, "He's to hang. Immediately."
"Hangin's mak me unaisy jist noo," the former accused said.
"Aye, and wi' reason," another man declared. "Unless there's hawkin' amang the crowd or idle coin tae be freed frae careless pockets, I've nae use for a hangin'."
"I saw me fither hanget," said a pretty dark-haired woman with a shudder. "I've nae wish tae see anither."
All in agreement, they gathered into pockets and aprons what food remained and departed into the forest via the kitchen door. At the last the former accused looked back and said to Hogg, "Mon, ye stood by me tae ca' the King's man when them ithers would hae hangit me. Will ye and yer young friend nae come wi' us?"
"I will," Hogg said, without hesitation. "Wattie?"
"I'll just leave Mr. Plummer a note," Scott said. He scrawled a hasty one on a leaf of the book he carried with him always, and followed Hogg and the tinklers into the woods.
A girl somewhat younger than himself, perhaps fourteen, perhaps sixteen, lagged behind to saunter beside him. She was very small and he was quite tall—a good six feet two inches—and she had to turn her little face up, so it must have hurt her neck to make conversation with him. "Ye're t'lad coom wi' the sheriffs mon, aye?"
"I am," Scott said, smiling at her. Though dirty and with flaxen curls tangled and clothing torn, she was a bonny wee thing. He thought it would take only one of his shovel-sized hands to span her tiny waist. Her wide eyes were the color of the open sky—here, where it was often blue, not in Edinburgh, where it tended to be herring-gray year round. He knew he need not elaborate to her, but Hogg told him that his mother, one of Scott's best informants for his collection of traditional ballads, had obtained many of her songs from tinklers.
"Are ye ane o' them depitties?" she asked. "Is that why ye carry that wee book alang and write things doon? I can read, y'ken, me an Geordie as weel. Oor fither taught us. Are ye makin' note o' a' we do and say?"
"No, gracious, no," Scott said, "but I had hoped perhaps—well, I have heard that some of your people are excellent singers of traditional songs, songs that other people have forgotten."
"Have you?" she asked, and he could almost see her ears prick forward like a cat's while those innocent blue eyes coolly appraised every article of clothing he wore.
"Why, yes," he said, and felt foolish at once as he realized that he hoped she might see him as something more interesting than a fool to be bilked of money or goods. "The way it was explained to me, your people are descended from some of the old races—the pre-Celtic and Pictish people who were Scotland's first denizens. Then, when the clans disbanded, the armorers, the metalsmiths, silversmiths, and jewellers among them went on the road to sell their services to the country folk, making pails and plows rather than swords or—er—shining armor." He looked sideways at her, but she had not picked up that the last bit was an embroidery of his own because he liked the sound of it. To the best of his knowledge, the Highlands had never boasted knights in shining armor, but Scott was very fond of the image of knights in shining armor and it was his story and he would put them in if he wished.
"Musta gie 'em an affu chafin', a' that metal worn ow'er their kilts," the formerly accused murderer said.
Scott blushed but the girl said, "Aye, weel, I suppose some of 'em musta known that a suit o' shinin' armor would better stop an arrow than a patch o' tartan." She gave Scott a grin worthy of an elf and he recognized a kindred soul— one who preferred a good story approximating the truth rather than the unvarnished and somewhat grimier truth as it had happened. "Then what did we do?" she asked.
"Why, when the clan chieftains were outlawed by the Sassenach, they went on the road and into hiding with your folk. Also some of the great highwaymen and outlaws."
"Och, aye," she said nodding. "I mesel' am descenet frae Rab Roy MacGregor on the one hand and Willum Wallace on t'ither."
Though it was possible, Scott thought it unlikely but did admire her taste in ancestors, real or imaginary. "How extraordinary."
"Them auld sangs as ye collectet? I ken them a'," she said with a wisdom that was entirely showing off.
"Remarkable!" Scott said. "But how did such a wee lassie as you learn auld songs so young?"
"Oor mither, Geordie's an' mine," she said, nodding at the former accused. "She knew aye the best sangs ever was."
"She did that," Geordie called back. "Here we are, then," and with a sweep of his hand that might have invited them to behold a ballroom, he indicated a forest glade, where bow tents made of bent saplings covered with cowhides and sacking stood beside caravans parked near a burbling stream. Lush grass grew plentiful on the banks, and on that grass, Scott was amused and somewhat dismayed to see, the tinkler ponies as well as the horses ridden by himself and Adam Plummer now grazed.
Geordie saw Scott staring at his horse and said, "Wee Alan fetchet it for ye and the good sheriffs man. So's ye'll no' have tae walk back by the hoose—" He shuddered a little when he spoke and Scott saw that Geordie's smile was still rather tremulous and his eyes as skittish as a highly bred horse's. And why not? He had narrowly escaped hanging by hearing his supposed victim accuse her true murderer. Such events didn't happen even to tinklers every day.
Hogg spoke up, saying to Geordie, "Mr. Scott would sair love tae hear some of the sangs ye ken. Me mither has gi'en him some."
"Aye, weel, Mr. Hogg, had ye nae spoken up and made them kinfolk o' yon deid lassie gae fer the King's man and had ye nae stayed by my side to make sure I didnae strangle mesel' accidental-like while waitin' amang the lass's kin, nivver would I sing anither sang. Aye, I'll teach Mr. Scott a sang or twa he can sing."
Scott laughed. "If you could do that, sir, you would be not only a fine singer but a miracle worker. I fear I'm completely tone deaf. But I would very much appreciate it if you would sing some songs through slowly, so I might write down the words or any variations on words from other versions of the same I have already collected."
Geordie nodded and bowed with practiced obsequiousness before singing several uninteresting versions of ballads Scott had long ago collected all too many times.
"He's heard a' them, Geordie," the blonde lassie said. "Tis mesel' wha kens the best o' mither's sangs."
"Aye," said a soft voice from beside a fire being kindled in the glade. A spit was erected over it now and women's fingers busily plucked fresh chickens that Scott was certain had not been included in Mrs. MacRitchie's proffered largesse. The doe eyes and lovely face of a dark-haired young woman, heavily pregnant, regarded Geordie with affection and amusement. "Midge Margret learnit a' the unco' ballads o' yer mither's, love."
Geordie seemed a bit reluctant to surrender the central place in his guests' attentions, but perhaps his recent experience as an all too prominent feature of the evening's proposed entertainment somewhat softened his disappointment, for after a moment, he said, "Sing for the gentleman, Midge Margret."
"Wha' shall I sing, Geordie? I'm sae chuffed yer nae hangit I'll sing wha' ye please."
"Weel, then, I'll have 'Young Benjie,' Midge Margret, tae honor the puir murdert rudli wha' coom back frae death tae save me neck."
Some of the others frowned, but Geordie stared them down. Scott stumbled over the unfamiliar word but Midge Margret, reading his face, said, "He means the lassie. Rudli, we ca' it in oor cant."
Geordie's wife left her tending of the roasting chicken to another woman and came to hold fast to her man's arm. Midge Margret squared her shoulders, threw back her head and began to sing with her whole person the story of a love affair gone wrong, of Marjorie and Benjie who had been true lovers, but whose quarrel unhinged the man so that on their next meeting he determined to take his true love's life. Midge Margret's ringing voice softened as she sang:
"Then soft she smiled and said to him,
'O what ill hae I done?'
He took 'er in his armis twa
And threw her o'er the linn."
Scott heard a stirring behind him and turned to see Plummer walking softly into the glade, in deference to the song. Plummer's mouth described a line as taut as the hangman's rope and his jaw was hard set. His bushy brows lowered like storm clouds over eyes lost in shadow. Scott returned his attention to Midge Margret.
"The stream was Strang, the maid was strong,
And laith laith to be dang,
But ere she won the Lowden banks,
Her fair color was wan."
Midge Margret was as vivid as the lady in the ballad was wan. Her eyes reflected the firelight, the excitement of the day and of the ballad, causing them to glitter like those of a woodland creature. From beneath her headscarf her tangled pale curls bobbed emphatically over her forehead as she declaimed the words in a sweet, low, dramatic voice, at first standing still and singing with open mouth. Soon however, her hands began to move and she put her whole self into the song, her posture and hands vividly illustrating the events taking place in the ballad. She resembled, to Scott, a somewhat bloodthirsty cherub.
Scott had met some of the tinklers long ago when they came to his grandparents' home in Sandy Knowe and had seen them on the road, but this was his first opportunity to visit one of their camps, though he had heard and read a great deal about them in the course of his ballad studies. Most of the people from whom he gathered his ballads were intellectuals and collectors like himself, who culled the songs from old manuscripts, or else were quite elderly people—it was rare to hear a young person, in good voice, singing the songs of antiquity. He had his pad on his knee, himself seated on a fallen log, and busily copied down the words.
The girl paused for breath and then continued, her voice deep and fierce as she, portraying the murdered girl's brothers, interrogating the maiden's corpse at midnight, as Plummer had done with Mary MacRitchie.
"Oh, whae has done the wrang, sister?
Or dared the deadly sin?
Whae was sae stout, and feared nae doubt
As thraw ye o'er the linn ? "
Scott knew that by "stout," the song did not mean the murderer was chubby, but that he was arrogant or haughty.
In sepulchral, wavery tones, the murdered maiden answered:
"Young Benjie was the first ae man
I laid my love upon;
He was sae stout and proud-hearted
He threw me o'er the linn."
Her voice lowered to a growl and she fixed Scott's face with a threatening glare, her fingers curled at her side as if over the hilt of a dagger:
"Sail we young Benjie head, sister,
Sail we young Benjie hang?
Or sail we pike out his twa grey een,
And punish him ere he gang?"
Midge Margret crossed her hands over her breast, tried to look drowned, and sang with immense ghastly, ghostly relish:
"Ye maunna Benjie head, brothers,
Ye maunna Benjie hang,
But ye maun pike out his twa grey een,
And punish him ere he gang.
Tie a green cravat round his neck,
And lead him out and in,
And the best ae servant about your house
To wait young Benjie on."
Midge Margret let the last two lines drop, as though she were irritated with Sister Marjorie in the song.
The ballad seemed to have acquired new meaning for Geordie too, who growled,
"Noo, saft o' her, weren't that? To let him live but blind him? And hae a servant wait on him?"
Scott continued writing the last few words and looked up from his notebook, smiling, "Oh no. I hardly think she meant it as kindness. Rather she had the servant there to be certain he did not trip and end his misery prematurely."
"Hangin' isnae sae chancy," Plummer said wearily, making his presence known.
"Is the murderer dancin' wi' the dawn, then?" Geordie asked.
"Aye. The lass's fither pu'ed the rope and her brothers let him strangle until they grew tired o' his jig and dragged doon his feet until his neck snapit."
Belatedly, Scott noticed Midge Margret still standing as she had when she finished the song. He stuck his pen in his teeth, balanced his notebook on his knee, applauded and shouted "Bravo!" in a garbled fashion, around the pen, which he then removed and returned to his pocket. "That was finely done indeed, lassie, and most appropriate considering the events of the night."
Midge Margret grinned and stuck out her hand. Scott fished out a shilling from his watch pocket and ceremoniously laid it in her palm. Her fingers snapped closed over it like a trap on the leg of a wild and flighty beast. The first glimmer of dawn pushed through the trees now. The chicken was roasting with a savory fragrance that tickled Scott's nostrils and he realized suddenly that he had not eaten since noon. He and Adam Plummer had ridden with all haste from Sandy Knowe and even though they were offered refreshments at the MacRitchie home, both were so intent upon the case that neither had supped nor sipped.
The mist rose over the stream, lapping the caravans and tents as the water lapped the banks.
When they had finished eating and were sitting for a moment before remounting to return with Plummer's report, Scott could not resist asking, "Have ye extracted testimony in that fashion often before, Adam?"
"Aince or twice," Plummer said, and gave a great sigh.
Hogg said cautiously, glancing at their hosts to judge their reaction, " 'Tis an unco way o' solvin' a homicide."
If Hogg thought these tinklers would be squeamish to speak of the night's events, filled with death and doom as it were, he was wrong. Not only did Geordie make no objection to the discussion, but both he and Midge Margret and everyone else within immediate earshot were listening, while trying to seem not to do so, as intently as if Plummer were about to tell them where a great treasure was buried.
Scott was glad, feeling that they all, and Plummer in particular, had need to talk of what had transpired to put it into perspective and at rest. Plummer had a hard job and in some ways was a hard man, but he had a daughter and a son near to the ages of the murderer and his victim.
"I never have seen the like of your examination of the witness," Scott said.
Plummer shrugged massively and poked a stick at the fire, then sat back on his heels and began to pick his teeth with a straw.
"The thing is," Scott pursued the subject, "all I saw you do, Adam, was to close the door until it was a wee bit ajar and call the lass by name. If that's all there was to it, why did ye need to be called?"
"So that justice would be done," Hogg told him. "It was no' as simple as it looked, Wattie. Aince every mon knew the spell and could ca' forth the deid gi'en the proper conditions, but when the kirk took over, sich things in the hands of ordinary men were deemed heathenish and dangerous and best handled by the law."
"It's nay sae much tha', Jaimie," Plummer told Hogg. "'Tis the misuse the spell may be put tae in the wrang hands. . ."
"What is that?" Scott asked.
"Why, you saw it tonight, Watt. As in the ballad the lassie sang, in auld times 'twas true the family would dae the ritual and pose the question tae the victim at midnight on the day o' death. But, see here, as aft as no', in a murder case, 'tis often a member o' the family has done the deed himself, as it happened in this instance wi' Rab Douglas. Had he ta'en it upon himself tae question the girl, he might hae devised a way tae hide its truth frae the others and accuse some other wretch in her name. For that reason, an official witness is always needed, and in fact, is the sole man can question the victim. That way we always hae the straight o' it frae the horse's mou'. And there's anither problem wi' allowin' the family tae question the deceased as weel."
"Is there, noo?" Hogg asked. "I have nivver heard anither."
"Aye," Plummer said, once again briefly worrying his teeth with the end of the straw before explaining. "Jist suppose, say, the victim is the husband of a woman doin' the interrogation. That woman may nivver hae listened tae her man while he was living. Why would she then after he was dead? Like as not she'd pin the murder on whoever she wanted tae be guilty, whatever the poor dead fella taud her."
Scott would have loved to linger longer, and ask Margaret and Geordie more about their songs, but Plummer felt duty-bound to return and make out his report to the sheriff. Hogg, whose horse was also at the tinkler's camp, decided to go with them. The lost opportunity grieved Scott afterwards, and he resolved to return on his own, but when, at long last, he was able to do so, the band had already shifted to another campsite or halt.
Chapter III
As the century turned, Edinburgh, the city of Scott's birth, turned as well. From a narrow medieval fortress, pitched steep as a rooftop, crowned at its craggy peak with a great blocky castle, and all surrounded by an ancient wall, the city was spreading its wings to soar into a glorious, enlightened future.
The Nor' Loch, a long, narrow man-made lake, had guarded the northern side of Edinburgh since antiquity. Once swans had glided upon its waters, which were fed by springs beneath the castle rock and dammed at the other end below Halkerson's Wynd. Once only the best houses had retained the water view and access for their boating parties and winter skating. But the Nor' Loch had also, since antiquity, been the receptacle for the raw sewage washed from the city streets. It had become so noisome and polluted that its stink, as well as the pall and reek of chimney smoke, announced to travellers miles away that they were approaching the city.
For generations, fornicators and transgressors of other sorts had been dunked in the loch as punishment by the righteous religious forefathers of the city. Should the culprits be fortunate enough to escape drowning in the effluvia, disease and infection presented them with other hazards.
For the best part of the last fifty years this great civic cesspool had been in the process of being drained. Disease among the workers, exceptionally rainy summers and hard early freezes, along with other problems, had delayed the emptying of the loch. Eventually, the area once under water would be filled in to create pleasant gardens that would link the old town to the new.
The New Town was laid out on a grid of spacious, tree-lined streets, with fine tall houses linked by long stone facades. The mode was imposing and classical, complete with columns and porticos, grand front entrances with fan-shaped windows above them, each window spoked with moldings and paned with imported glass. These homes would be free from the stench of the Old Town, and while the wealthy new inhabitants would continue to need to employ sedan chairs while visiting in the Old Town, they could now own or hire carriages to drive from their doors to those of their other fortunate neighbors, or into the countryside, or to London if they desired.
The New Town was as long and wide as the old one was, but less densely populated, with little parks and squares and pleasant walks where families could picnic or play games. At present it still looked rather empty and the houses severe and raw, since the trees that had been cut down to build the area had not yet been replaced by the trees that were to landscape it. Still, Scott's own family had purchased a house there, as had most of the wealthier families of the city.
The bridge that now spanned the loch on the site of the old dam joined the Old Town to the new. The bridge's broad lanes teemed with people carrying supplies from the Old Town merchants who would provide furnishings and fine appointments as well as the usual necessities for the new homes. The breadth of the bridge even allowed horse-drawn carriages to join the sedan chairs and pedestrians on the High Street, though of course most of the wynds and closes between the houses were far too narrow to permit access to such vehicles.
Just beyond the New Town the raw stumps and beds of new roads marked the beginnings of an even newer town, on the site of the old Moray Estate.
These streets were not laid in squares, but in crescents and circuses, and promised to be less monotonous than the first. The initial crescent of homes and a few stand-alones had been built but were still largely empty. The foundations of others were barely mortared when winter came.
At the beginning of winter, the loch was almost a quarter full, its emptiness being replenished by heavy autumn rains. The remaining mud and water was so foul and stinking that the homeowners in the New Town required the workmen to continue the drainage well into the winter.
Scott observed this progress on his daily walks, where he thought over either the intricacies of the cases he had heard and recorded as Clerk of Sessions for the city, or, more often, the twists of plot and complexities of character of the denizens of whichever new story or book he happened to be writing in his head. The first volume of three in his collection of folk songs, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders, had been well received and the second was ready for publication.
On this particular day, he was thinking that he wished to capture old Edinburgh as he had known it and as he wished he had known it. His own Old Town was a pokey, busy, rabbit warren of a place, as familiar to him as his mother's voice. However, Old Edinburgh in bygone days had been a rowdy, filthy, stinking, barbaric place in many ways, where a citizen had not only God to fear should he or she put a foot wrong, but the wrath of the mob as well. But honor and glory were there too, and marvelous stories full of mystery, mayhem and magic abounded. Every house and every passage, be it street or close, had its own tale to tell. The structure of the city itself formed the warp and woof of much of Scotland's history. Much of this significance was being stripped from the city with the so-called modernization, and Scott mourned the loss.
He and a few others decried the destruction of one historic monument after another, and now, almost more pitifully, the Old Town's greatest grace, its wee forest of Bellevue, was being denuded of its trees. Now that the work was ceasing for the winter, the endless noise had stopped and only the silence of the raw stumps, and the occasional cry of a bewildered bird unable to locate its former nest, remained. Scott knew, of course, that it was all for progress, that fine new houses would be built here to save the Old Town from being inhabited only by the poor and destitute who were already starting to fill the rapidly emptying buildings. In former times the poor had occupied only the lower floors, close to the slops and garbage that were poured onto the streets every night at ten o'clock to the cry of "Gardy-loo!"
Now even the upper stories, once the sole province of the well-to-do, and the back rooms with the long windows facing north and south where they could observe the area surrounding the city, were being overtaken by the lower classes.
Scott himself, though gently born and gaining rapidly in literary fame and somewhat unsolicited influence, was not yet a wealthy man and had appropriated rooms on the fourth floor of a house on College Wynd. It had a southern exposure and from it he could see the Greyfriar's Kirk, Edinburgh University, where he had attended law school, and where one of the finest medical colleges in Europe flourished, the Deans Cemetery and a portion of the Grassmarket, where the King's cattle were herded in at night via the Cowgate.
In this little square, since olden times highwaymen were hanged, witches were burnt, and those who had fallen into such political disfavor as to be dubbed traitor were drawn, hung, and quartered before their various parts were distributed across the land. In a way that was peculiarly Scottish, it was also where the condemned would be given "a last drap"—his or her last drink of liquor from a tavern that bore the name of the custom. It was such an innocent little plaza otherwise, with shops, pubs and homes facing onto the square which was, of course, rectangular. It was marked by a cross at one end, from the time of the Templars, and a great stone with a hole in it at the other, where the gallows could be inserted for hangings.
Hangings these days were more apt to take place at the Tollbooth, midway down the main street from the castle. Scott was glad he was now recording cases, rather than doing advocate work as he had during his apprenticeship to his father. While he found many cases dry and hard to concentrate on, he was romantic enough to have fancied himself in his role as advocate as the knight champion of each client. Fortunately for his younger self, none of those clients had been guilty of what were now considered hanging offenses.
As Scott neared the Tollbooth, Angus Armstrong, formerly sergeant of a Highland regiment, presently sergeant in the Town Guard, and no Highlander but a Borderer like Scott, emerged from the building. "Mr. Scott, hae ye heard the news aboot the body?"
"What body would that be, Angus?" he asked with a smile, leaning for a moment on his cane for support. His lame leg did not trouble him as he walked these days, but he could not stand for long periods without loss of balance.
"The body frae the loch, man. Or bones I should say."
"No, Angus, I've no heard of bones from the loch. When were they found?"
"Jist a bit ago. The captain is doon havin' a wee look at 'em noo. I was gaein' along meself but when I saw you I thought, Scott would like tae see them bones too."
Scott wasn't sure that he would. He had seen bones before, of course. He had a skull in his study, as a matter of fact. And to approach the banks of the loch in its present condition required a certain facility for holding one's breath. However, it occurred to him that the bones were quite possibly those of one of the Covenanters drowned in the loch for their beliefs. The Covenanters had been holdouts of the old, strict Presbyterianism that didn't hold with the King declaring himself not only King of Scotland, but head of the Church of Scotland. The few thousand holdouts who had signed a covenant stating that the king might be king of the country but only God was head of the Church were hunted down, often tortured, and made to recant or killed. Most of those drowning executions had supposedly been in the sea, with the tides adding an element of agonizing suspense to the death.
And there were some people who said that except for a few troublemakers that needed killing anyway, no one was actually executed at all and the whole thing was a gross exaggeration. The other possibility was that the bones might belong to a suspected witch, who had been drowned in the course of interrogation, or possibly a fornicator who had failed to hold his or her breath when ducked.
In either case, Angus was correct in assuming that Scott was intrigued by the uncovering of those bones. Who knew? Perhaps as the level of the loch decreased, the unhallowed bones of even older denizens would emerge, from centuries back when the loch was made and the castle constructed in its original form.
"That's aye thoughtful of you, Angus," Scott said.
"We'd best backtrack up tae the Nor' Bridge then. Maest o' the bones was found alang the south bank near there, below the gardens."
Back up the long steep street they went, Scott, despite his lameness, managing to keep even with Angus. The sky was gray as ever over Edinburgh, from the smoke, or reek, as it was known in the Scots tongue, pumping out of the hundreds of chimneys perforating the permanent cloud above the city a stinking miasma sometimes evident as far as twenty miles from the city.
Scott had been feeling, as well as smelling, snow in the air. It was long overdue, the snow, for they had had only a wee sprinkle at Christmas and very little before then, with no hard freezes. The old-timers said that once it started, the winter would be fearsome. Folk coming into the city from other parts of the country spoke of horrible storms in the countryside, and the London coach had been canceled for the last two weeks due to snows farther south. Now the wind heralded the storm's arrival, driving along the High Street its blast of freezing air that licked at the collar and tails of Scott's coat. He had to use one hand to hold his hat on. The cobbles beneath his boots were slippery, beginning to ice over even as they walked.
Approaching the bridge, Scott saw James Hogg coming from the other direction. Hogg had become quite well known as a poet, admired for his rustic wit and behavior by some, disparaged for it by others. Scott did not care. His old friend kept the home of his heart close by here in the city. Like Scott himself, Hogg was a tall man, but whereas Scott's face was full, Hogg's was lean, and his frame lanky as compared to Scott's more raw-boned build. Hogg's hair was already a bit less plentiful than it had been when they roamed the Borders together, though perhaps it was literary fame that was causing his forehead to seem higher these days. His eyes betrayed not only intelligence, but humor and shrewdness. He hailed Scott with a wave. "Watt! Come to see the bones, have ye? I was just comin' tae fetch ye. Taud him aboot it, did ye, Angus?"
"Aye, Jaime, I did."
Hogg joined them as the men swung down the new broad street that became the North Bridge.
Just before the bridge left the land to cross the loch, however, Angus scrambled down over the side and through the mud of the portion of the former gardens that had been ruined in building the bridge. Unmindful of their clothing, Scott and Hogg followed quickly behind, and slipped through the freezing mud to the foot of the gardens where the loch now showed ten feet of bank above the level of its stagnant, stinking water. Scott had never allowed his lameness to interfere with scrabbling up and down hills and across difficult terrain.
A small group of men were huddled at one point, including the Captain of the Town Guard.
Two of the men in particular, Scott saw as he drew nearer, were squatting in the mud, discussing the bones with gestures that pointed out this or that feature on a skull and what he, for the little he knew about it, took to be a femur, or thigh bone.
One of the fellows was young, a medical student Scott recognized from literature classes he taught part time at the university to make his meager salary stretch a bit further. This was William Murray, a lad whom Scott knew well as one who did not believe literature classes were a waste of time for men who wished to become doctors.
"Tis a woman's skull," he was telling his companion, who nodded his head of curling red hair, cut to collar length.
"An accused witch perhaps?" Scott asked.
"No' that," said the redhead. 'The last witch was burnt mair than fifty years ago and nane drooned since then. This lass hasnae been in the loch sae lang as a that."
"Mr. Scott!" Murray said, and rose quickly to his feet, slipping in the mud and nearly tumbling, skull and all, into the loch, except that James and another man gave him a hand. The second man looked familiar to Scott but he could not recall why. "Dr. MacRae here was just explaining to me how one can tell the comparative age of bones. Mr. Walter Scott, may I introduce Dr. Douglas MacRae?"
Scott nodded. "Dr. MacRae. This is fascinating. How did you come by this information?"
"'Tis a study I've engaged in for years," MacRae told him. "When I was at university, I became interested in the differences in the bones of pairsons of one sex frae the other, one race frae the other, and of certain ages. Later, when I served as an Army physician, I spent time wi' specialists in Egypt who study what they call archaeology and anthropology—they have ways of dating fragments of the past, bones, auld pottery, writings and such, sae they can tell when a pairson lived or a thing was made. Wi'oot tests, of course, I couldnae say exactly when oor lassie here went intae the loch, but it wisnae sae lang ago as fifty years."
"Whereas these bones, y'see here, Mr. Scott?" Murray said, holding up one that was quite a bit more decrepit. "These are sure muckle auld. Auld enough tae be frae yer witches or heretics."
"Hmm, you'd think they might be found at different levels in the mud," Scott mused.
"Weel, oor lassie here had on some heavy jewels," MacRae said, picking up another long bone. "See ye these marks near the end o' her fibula? Until the bones separated and it fell aff, she was wearin' these." Now he pulled up from beside him a mucky, stinking, weedy mass that was nevertheless identifiable as a rusted leg iron, with a ball and chain attached. "Would hae sank tae the bottom."
"One odd thing, however," Murray said. "We cannae find her arum bones. Her radius and her ulna are missing, and nae sign of hand or finger bones neither, though it's possible such wee things hae floated awa' or are buried deeper in the mud."
"A murder, then?" Scott asked. "You're quite sure these bones are too recent to have been one of the Covenanters?"
MacRae shook his head. "This lassie has been dead maybe five years at the langest."
"'Twould have to be murder then, as you say," Scott agreed. "The Crown has not been so unsanitary as to drown any poor victim here for half a century. And likely she'd have been someone important enough to have been missed, and recognized," he said with a significant glance at Murray, who nodded and returned a grim smile.
"Aye, had she been some penniless drab, she'd hae ended up on the dissection table in the lab, and the murderer would hae been seven poonds fifty richer for her cadaver."
Everyone nodded. It was well known that the medical school, while bound to report bodies coming their way that had obviously met a violent end, were otherwise none too choosy about where their teaching specimens came from. The school was allotted one body a year from among the condemned, and occasionally the police might donate the corpse of a derelict who died in the streets, but generally, human remains were difficult to come by in the ordinary way of things and the students could hardly learn their anatomy without fresh specimens to study. Families, even in these scientific and enlightened times, were more likely to wish their dead underground than exposed to the bright lights and scalpels—and the practical jokes and japes—of the medical school. The idea that they might be contributing to the future health of mankind made very little impact on such attitudes and Scott, a good kirk-going man from the time he was a boy, could easily understand why. His brain might be enlightened but his soul cringed at the idea of such intimate scrutiny after he was helpless to defend his earthly vessel.
One of the men looking on, the fellow who seemed familiar to Scott, spoke up now, his voice grave with concern, but gentle in respect to the remains of the woman who could no longer hear him. "Puir lassie, whoever she was. I trust you'll be turning these bones over to the kirk for a decent burial, gentlemen?"
The Captain of the Guard, a drinking companion of Scott's named James Laing, hurried to reassure the man. "Have nae fear, Deacon Primrose. As soon as she's nae longer evidence, we'll see her bones are gi'en tae the Kirk. It'll be up tae them tae decide was she a Christian or no."
The man smiled slightly at Laing, his eyes overcast with sorrow in the same shades of pewter as the sky. Hearing the fellow's name, Scott recognized him now. They had been schoolfellows prior to law school and university, but Cornelius Primrose had grown and changed remarkably from the moody, sometimes electrically charming and sometimes brooding schoolboy who had seemed to Scott always to be nursing some secret wound. The boys had not been close friends, but Scott had felt they shared some understanding known only to brooders and dreamers. Primrose's family had attended a different church than the Scotts, and had been quite active in it. They were also far wealthier than Scott's family.
He thought he remembered that Corey, as the boy had been called, though more inclined toward poetry and theology, had first gone to medical school, but though Edinburgh boasted the finest schools of that kind, his parents had preferred, after the first term, to send him abroad to continue his studies, considering him too advanced for the local college.
Now, seeing Primrose as an adult, Scott realized that his former schoolmate had been the prototypical romantic hero in the making. The gangly boy had grown into a tall man with a fine, sensitive face, the storm-cloud eyes long and thickly lashed, the brow noble as any martyr's. In repose the man, even in work clothes, was elegant and in his slightest movement graceful. Scott thought that the knight in the book he was thinking of writing might well resemble this man.