It was a great relief to be outside, away from all of them.
I handed Helen safely up into the chair.
“I feel almost too grand,” she said, settling into the cushions. “And I’m abandoning you.”
Drily, I assured her I was capable of finding my way back alone. “Besides, I’m heading over to the Cross Keys in a while to meet with Gilroy.”
“Will you have your supper there?” she asked.
“Most probably.”
She nodded. Then, before they closed the chair’s door, she leaned forward one last time. “I do believe I shall invite your Mistress Young round for a visit. What harm can it do? She is charming and pretty and of the right class…”
The first man was closing the door of the chair, but her last words slipped through, resolutely.
“And,” Helen said, “I did promise to find you a wife.”
*
As a young lad, when I’d first been brought into these streets I’d looked at every turning for the mounted guns I felt sure were the reason that this place was called the Canongate. I’d been too ignorant then to know “canons” was simply another term used for priests in great cathedrals, like those in the king’s royal abbey of Holyrood just a short way down the street, where the priests, centuries past, had been granted the right to establish a new burgh between their own abbey and the king’s established burgh—Edinburgh.
Visitors could be forgiven for looking on both burghs as one, for a man could begin in the shadow of Edinburgh’s castle and easily stroll down the castle hill and through the Landmarket into the High Street and under the turreted, two-storied arch of the Netherbow port in an almost straight line that would carry him right the way down to the palace of Holyrood, much as I did every evening, and feel he had not left the town. But in truth, once you’d passed below the Netherbow, you’d entered into the Canongate—the more prestigious suburbs set beyond the limits of the old town walls, where in between the ordinary lands, more moneyed houses—rivaling the Earl of Seafield’s with their gates and overhanging galleries and private walls—looked loftily upon the street, or lay concealed from view down quiet closes.
You could smell the gardens.
Common people lived here, too. The Canongate had its own baillies, its own Tolbooth, its own market cross, and its own craftsmen, since the guilds here were kept separate from the guilds above the Netherbow. A baxter from the Canongate was not allowed to sell his baked goods in the town of Edinburgh unless he had the freedom of both burghs, which came by marriage or inheritance or at a fair expense, and so tradesmen kept mostly to their own side of the divide.
Still, one could find whatever one had need of in the Canongate. In the space of a few minutes I passed the street-level shops of a cooper, a glove maker, potter, and chandler, but it was the next sign I wanted.
I’d seen it before, facing onto the street at the edge of Bell’s Close. Today the shutters were drawn back from the front window, and the glint of silver shone through the small panes of glass that cast my own reflection back in pieces.
As I entered the shop, a lad of seventeen or eighteen who I guessed was the apprentice came to greet me and to offer me assistance. Did I have a sword for sharpening? Or did I wish to purchase one? Or had I come instead to buy some cutlery? He showed me several samples, and assured me there was no one in the Canongate whose skill could equal that of Mr. Bell.
I could judge that for myself from the display of forks and knives, the gathering of swords that appeared to be awaiting dressing or repair, a scabbard half-assembled on the workbench in the corner, and the finished hilts that only needed fitting to a blade.
But the apprentice brought a sword to show me anyway—a backsword with a Highland hilt wrought in a cage of silver inlaid hearts and oak leaves intertwined, to shield the hand that held it in a fight. The blade was a Ferara blade, high quality, with on one side a rising sun and stars inscribed, and on the other side the words: “Thy king and countrie’s cause defend, though on the spot your life should end.”
“It is as fine a sword as I have ever seen,” I said to the apprentice.
He looked pleased, but the reply came not from him. It came instead from the man stepping through the private entry from the rooms behind. An older man, perhaps approaching seventy, perhaps already past it—it was difficult to say. He moved easily enough for one his age, his back was straight, and he reached out to take the sword from his apprentice with the strong, sure hands of someone who still worked with them.