“My what?”
“Your birth brief. I should like to see it, if I may.”
There was no point telling him I didn’t have one. I was going traveling, and Gilroy very likely knew to where. “Wait here,” I said.
It did not take me long to fetch the single document from where I’d safely stowed it in my portmanteau. When I returned, Gilroy was standing at the scrutore, studying the square door of the small central compartment.
“The thing is,” he said, noticing the way that I was watching him, “these scrutores tend to have a secret drawer somewhere around…here.” With an expert touch he slid aside the inset piece of wood that kept the drawer concealed, and from the hiding place removed three letters. They were all addressed to me, in Lily’s handwriting. It had not been an easy thing for us to keep our correspondence hidden from the others—I’d relied upon the kindness of the Latin master upstairs to receive the letters for me—but we’d needed some way to make our arrangements.
Gilroy said, “You’ll want to take these with you, when you leave. And this.” He added to them one more paper from his file. I had to read it over twice before I could be sure I’d read it properly.
I told him, “It’s a pardon.”
“For your brother Simon, yes. Lord Grange did see to that, at my suggestion. It was very obvious, from testimony at the time, your brother did not know the bond he’d been sent to redeem was forged. Since Archie Browne gave him that bond, and Archie Browne has, since his death, been shown to be a forger and a liar of the first order, it hardly seems fair Simon should be made to pay the penalty.”
He held his hand out for the birth brief and, unrolling it, read through the neat, lined levels of its pedigree. “It’s very good. She made this for you, did she?”
Part of me did want to trust him. I tried focusing my mind upon the motto on the whinger that reminded me to take good care in whom I placed that trust, particularly when it came to someone else’s freedom, and I did not answer.
Gilroy seemed unbothered. “I would guess she used a page from your book with the plant pictures,” he told me. “It was large enough. She’s made a few mistakes, though. Here, and here. And then of course you did not have the right names for the generations beyond Adam’s parents. Anyone who thought to look into the records would discover this was false.”
He turned and threw it on the small fire in the hearth before I guessed at his intent.
I swore, and took a step toward him, but he held his hand up and said, “You’d do better with the real one.” And produced a second birth brief from within his files.
Had he conjured it from thin air I’d not have been more astonished. “How did you…？”
Taking the first set of papers he’d shown me—the ones from the trial—he began feeding them to the fire.
“The way I see it,” Gilroy said, “there was a lad named Matthew Browne, once. Born a foundling, raised at Leith, who was ill-used and sent to the Americas. But there his trail ends. It was never Matthew who marched up from Albany to fight the French, and it’s for certain Adam Williamson came back.”
He said it in a sure tone, as if he understood the stigma of the Browne name and how badly I wished to be free of it and everything it represented.
“Some say Matthew Browne came back to Leith awhile,” said Gilroy, “but I am not certain that he did. I think the man people saw then was Adam Williamson as well, he only needed to find out who he was meant to be.”
I did not know how to reply. “He took his time.”
“We get there in the end.” He held his hand out. “It’s been good to know you, Sergeant Williamson.”
Above the handshake, I found myself searching for words that would not sound inadequate. None came, at first. And then suddenly, there they were.
I asked him, “How would you like to come dance at my wedding?”
Chapter 40
Friday, 17 October, 1707
We had to wait for Gordon.
He arrived just after seven in the evening, very dashing in his blue coat with gold buttons and gold braid. “I found this bit of baggage lying about,” he said, as he drew Maggie across the threshold with him, “so I thought I’d bring her with us.”
She apologized. “It’s my fault we are late,” she said. “My classes ran on longer than they ought to have.”
Behind her came a gentleman who looked to me as though he might be seventy or so, with steel-grey hair showing beneath his hat, and kindly eyes that met mine warmly.