Barbara, in her selfless way, served up more for the rest of them than for herself, but Archie last week had set down a jar of honey-colored paste beside her plate at dinner, saying, “That’s from the apothecary. He said if ye take a spoonful daily, it will help to make ye strong again.”
At first, Lily had been suspicious. But then she’d seen Archie’s eyes, and realized he was genuinely worried.
“He does care for me, in his way,” Barbara had told Lily years before, and Lily’s observations bore this out. It was a tragedy that Archie could not care for Barbara in the way that she deserved, but if he had a heart at all, then Barbara was the only person who had ever been allowed to come within its reach.
Even today, when Lily stepped into Barbara’s chamber and joined the others, she noticed that Archie, who stood by the wall, wasn’t watching the bairn. He was looking at Barbara with quiet concern.
But his head turned when Maggie brought Lily in. “Home from your wanderings, are ye?”
“Aye.” She kissed Walter and his wife warmly. “I’m sorry I’m late.” Lily hadn’t been ready to come straight home after she’d watched Jamie leaving. She’d feared that her face would reveal her emotions, so she’d walked awhile longer, taking the roundabout way from the Tolbooth Wynd into the Kirkgate and down past the churchyard and back up the curve of St. Giles’s Street into the close.
Walter said, “Ye can hardly be late when ye don’t ken we’re coming.”
A tug at her hand. Maggie told her, “Ye’ve missed the best part—he rolled over!”
It was a new trick that the bairn had apparently mastered just yesterday, and he repeated it now when Walter laid him on the blanket spread upon the floor.
Amid the cheering, Henry swept the infant up, blanket and all, pronouncing him a genius.
“He is clever,” Walter said with pride. “The other day I think he called me ‘daddie.’”
“Och, he’s still too small for that,” his wife declared. “Though it would be the way, now, would it not, for him to start with ‘daddie’ and not ‘minnie’？ Never mind that I’m the one who wakes to feed him in the night and walk the floors with him.”
Barbara reassured her all bairns did the same. “And yet a lad is aye his mother’s son. Ye’ll never lose him.”
Lily looked at Barbara’s face in her turn, thinking to see sadness, but instead she only saw a patient certainty. As though aware of her appraisal, Barbara looked at Lily, smiled, and settled in her favorite chair. “Well then. What did ye see on your walk the day?”
Lily told her nothing of Jamie of course, but she did tell her of the new ship that had just arrived from Holland, and of the little dog she’d seen that had snatched up a seaman’s hat and made a game of it, and led a merry chase all up and down the pier until both dog and hat were swimming in the harbor. “But it ended well,” said Lily, “for the seaman dove in after them, and saved his hat, and kept the dog.”
Maggie agreed that was a perfect ending to the story. “Was it a sailor from one of the ships of the African Company? Will he be taking the dog to the colony?” And without waiting for Lily to answer, she asked Walter, “Did ye hear the drummers, Walter? Weren’t they grand? That means the ships are sailing soon. Would not ye wish to sail beyond seas to some foreign land? I would. I think it would be an adventure.”
Lily held her breath while watching Walter, knowing how much he’d once longed to do exactly that, but Walter looked at his wee son in Henry’s arms, and reached a hand to stroke the bairn’s soft head, and shared a smile with his wife.
“No,” Walter said to Maggie, “I’ve no desire for foreign lands. Everything I need is here in Leith.”
Archie cleared his throat and, coming forward, motioned Lily to the door. “That minds me. I’ve a bit of work to show ye.”
Barbara asked him, “Now? Cannot it wait?”
“We’ll be done afore dinner.”
Lily would have much preferred to stay and play with Walter’s bairn, but every piece of work she did for Archie brought more money to the household so she followed him into the passage, uncomplaining. But she did have one thing she would do, first. “I’ll just fetch my apron, Archie.” For she still had Jamie’s letter in her pocket, and it needed to be safely stowed upstairs within its hiding place.
“No need,” said Archie. With a hand he guided her along toward to the workroom. “I but mean to show ye what needs doing, I’ll not keep ye long.”