Hazel Sinnett
Hawthornden Castle
At the very least, he could point her in the direction of the proper literature from the scientific community. But in the most secret parts of herself, Hazel did fantasize about what his reply might be, the chance that he might write back with his ink splattered in excitement, every sentence punctuated with an exclamation point because she had solved it, the answer had been there all along! And no one need ever suffer from the Roman fever again, because her vaccine could be sent all over Scotland. Edward Jenner’s namesake society would celebrate her with a dinner and gala event. The King himself would send for her to be presented at court. She would scarcely even need the Physician’s Examination; she would instantly be the most famous physician in the kingdom, all before the age of twenty.
When she wasn’t in the laboratory examining a new patient or on the first floor of Hawthornden Castle going cot to cot, Hazel found herself lingering in the entrance hall, hoping for Beecham’s reply. When she heard a knock at the castle’s front door, her stomach tightened into a knot. Outside the window, she could see Jack on the south lawn behind the castle, teaching Charles the basics of sword fighting.
“No, no,” she called to Iona. “I’ll get the door.” Smoothing her skirts, she opened the door to find something even more unexpected than a letter.
“Greetings, miss,” said the boy, sinking into a deep bow. His face and hair were streaked with soot. He offered her a grin with several missing teeth as he rose. “I ’eard Jack Currer’s been hanging around these parts. Tell ’im Munro is back from the dead.”
Dumbfounded, Hazel ushered the boy inside and helped to remove his coat. One of his sleeves flopped loose and empty. This boy, the missing Munro, had returned to the land of the living with only one arm.
28
MUNRO DRANK TWO POTS OF TEA and ate a full tray of biscuits before he reclined on the couch, slapped his belly, and smiled out at Hazel and Jack, who had been staring at him with fascination ever since he arrived at Hawthornden Castle.
Munro smacked his lips. “Now, those were some fine biscuits, if I can say, miss. Fine biscuits indeed.”
“Thank you,” Hazel said.
“Munro,” Jack said, unable to help himself any longer. “Where have you been? And how did you lose your arm!”
Munro exhaled with a heaving sigh, fluttering his top lip. “Shame, isn’t it?” he said, lifting the empty left sleeve of his shirt. “Still, thank the good Lord it’s not my shooting hand, eh? I reckon you get a pistol in my right hand, and I still take out half a dozen grouse before the master of the house knows I’m on his land at all.” He turned and gave a saucy wink to Iona, who had been tending to the fire in the grate while pretending she wasn’t listening intently to what they were all saying. “I cook up a mean grouse, roasted over a fire with some chestnuts in its belly if I can find ’em. Finest Christmas I ever had was a stolen grouse and chestnuts, back in the old squat in Fleshmarket Close. Remember that place, Jack-boy? The roof half caved in and the floors bit by termites, but still not a bad place far as those things go.”
“Munro,” Jack said again. “Your arm. You’ve been missing. For weeks.”
“Right, right. The story. ’Fore I start, just supposing it were possible to get more of these biscuits? Oh, thank ye, love, you’re an angel, really. From heaven above.
“Before I start, I should tell ye now, I don’t remember it all. It comes and goes, like the fog. Like I’m seeing it all through the smoke of some’un’s burning dinner. But I at least know where it started, that part is easy enough: I was on a dig in Greyfriars, trying to get the body of a poor bird who died with her baby still in her belly. Killed herself, they said. Boyfriend didn’t love her no more. Arsenic, I heard. But o’ course the family wouldn’t admit it, so they just said it was the Roman sickness. Convenient excuse, having a plague running around the city, that’s all I’ll say.
“So I went round midnight to the kirkyard by my lonesome. Usually, would have been nice to have a partner in this sort of thing, but you know Bristlwhistle left for Calais and Milstone died last month—tragic thing, tragic—and who else of the crooks am I supposed to trust? Specially when I was looking to make a fortune with that poor pregnant girl. I’ve been working this game long enough that I don’t like to split the profits if I don’t have to. When you’ve been poor as long as I have, greed don’t quite seem so bad of a sin, I think.