I was genuinely at a loss. “I do not understand.”
He had turned from me. “Marion, give him his purchase. Our business is done.”
I’d been so busy watching her father’s reaction I’d failed to see hers, but when she pressed the wrapped parcel into my hands, I could feel her own shaking.
She, too, looked as pale as chalk, but when I opened my mouth to apologize, she frowned a warning.
“Not here,” she said, almost inaudibly. “In the close.”
And with that she turned away from me also, and unsure of what had just happened, I drained my own cup of ale, took up my newly bought blade, and went out again into the street.
*
The swordslipper’s shop ran the width of his house at its front, and its window and door opened onto the street, but it thankfully had no side window that faced Bell’s Close.
In fact, in spite of the houses that crowded and jostled for space in this cul de sac, there weren’t many windows.
There wouldn’t be much light for windows to catch, here. The rooftops leaned too high above the overhanging upper stories. Shadows waited on the stone steps that descended in steep runs along the walls because there was no place for them to turn within a space so narrow.
It was the sort of place where someone might commit a crime unseen. A place for secret assignations. Like the one that I was keeping now.
Behind the shop, the Bells’ house ran back a fair ways, with a short flight of steps leading up to a door that had one small, square window set high in the wall at its side.
I’d not been in the close more than five minutes when that door opened and Marion Bell quickly motioned me to come inside. I did, and found myself within a spacious kitchen that appeared to serve a broader function, for an elbow chair and footstool had been drawn up near the hearth, and on the end wall where might once have been a servant’s pallet was a proper bedstead with a canopy and hangings.
Beside the hearth, a door that led presumably into the other rooms was firmly bolted and secured with a large lock, and at my entry a brown, midsized dog of the mixed breed oft used for fighting half rose in a challenge till a calm word from its mistress made it settle once more into a deceptive slumber near the chair.
A multitude of thoughts chased through my mind as I was entering that kitchen, but I had no time to sort them.
Marion Bell shut the door to the close at my back and she bolted that, too. Then she took a step backward, to put space between us, and came to the point.
“You’ll think me very forward and I’m sorry for it, but it can’t be helped. I have to know if what you said is true,” she said. “I have to know—is Lily still alive?”
Chapter 10
Wednesday, 5 August, 1685
Jamie went first through the Netherbow.
From the beginning, he’d done that to show her that she had no reason to fear. “See?” he’d told her the first time, two years ago. “It’s nothing more than a gate.” She hadn’t believed him then. She’d thought it looked like a castle.
To her eyes, it still had the look of one, blocking the street with its solid, stone walls rising two stories high, and round turrets protecting the arched passage that could be closed off at will with an iron portcullis, now winched up and firmly secured. The tall, pointed roofs of the turrets with their crenellations were dwarfed in turn by the square tower that rose like a castle keep over the archway. The tower soared skyward to end in a spire, and contained both a bell and the works of a clock that faced out to the town.
There were guards here, as well.
Lily tried not to look at them as she passed by, since it raised memories of when her father had taken his turn standing guard here. Captain Graeme, as though understanding, offered her his hand, and Lily took it as they walked together underneath the great portcullis.
Jamie had gone through the smaller door off to the side, meant for foot traffic, but Captain Graeme knew Lily was not over fond of small spaces, so he took her under the arch built for wagons and horses and rich men’s sedan chairs, and as they came through to the other side, into the Canongate, Jamie was already standing there, waiting.
“Ye’ll like Mr. Bell,” Jamie promised her. “And, Lily, his father once made a sword for Montrose. And another for Grandfather.”
“Aye,” said the captain, when Lily looked up at him for confirmation of this. “Mr. Bell’s family has been connected to ours a long time, much like yours.”
She was pleased by that.
“And,” Jamie added, “ye’ve only to ask him and he’ll let ye hold any blade, if ye mind what he says and are careful.”