Lily thought of telling Nanse what she had overheard, but Nanse did not approve of people listening at doors. Once when Lily had repeated gossip, Nanse had sternly told her not to scald her mouth with someone else’s broth, but to attend to her own business. Lily reassured herself that Mr. Bell’s apprentice had done nothing wrong, and he was honest. He’d tell Mr. Bell, and Mr. Bell in his turn would warn Captain Graeme, and all would be well.
Lily was deciding how best to reply to Nanse without telling her a falsehood when a sound of drumming coming from outdoors in the direction of the Netherbow distracted her.
Nanse sighed, and told her, “That will be the baxter lad, the one they took up yesterday. The council sentenced him to be whipped from the Tolbooth to the Watergate and back again this morning. He lodges with the widow Fleck, who bakes our bread, and she did tell me earlier. Poor lad. But that’s what comes,” said Nanse, “of keeping the wrong company.”
It was an awful punishment to be whipped through the streets, stripped to the waist, with one official leading you by the same rope that bound your hands while at your back the hangman followed with his knotted whip and drove you on with lashes, like a beast.
At first, Lily was grateful when the shouts and jeers began to rise, because it meant she would not hear the whipping. But the shouting went on growing louder, drowning out the drums, and it became clear something more was going on.
Nanse rose, and crossing to the door opened it just enough to look out on the close. A man passed by, half running, and she hailed him. “What has happened?”
“Keep inside,” was his advice. “A group of the young tradesmen and apprentices just made a bold attack on the town officers and took a soldier’s sword, and they did rescue that poor baxter lad and have him hidden somewhere in a house. Ye would do well to bar your door. I fear there will be trouble.”
Nanse closed the door, but did not bar it yet. “What are they thinking? They’ve all lost their minds.”
But Lily knew their plan, because she’d heard it laid out plainly: First, we’ll rescue those two lads they took—the baxter and the other one. Then arm ourselves and rise against the town guard and kill Captain Graeme…
And now they’d set their plan in motion, rescuing the baxter lad.
The street fell quiet once again, and Lily helped Nanse serve the dinner. Mr. Bell had not returned.
All through the washing up that followed, Lily’s worries grew till she could barely keep her thoughts together, and the clock in the next room kept chiming off the quarter hours till she could hardly bear it, for she knew the afternoon was wearing on and it would soon be growing dark. When Nanse went up to tend the fires in the bedchambers, the urgency that Lily felt would no more be ignored, and without bothering to fetch her hood, Lily took her plaid down from the peg and slipped out through the kitchen door and raced on light feet to the Netherbow.
The guardsman she met first was not inclined to let her pass.
“Go home,” he brusquely ordered her. “Your parents should have more sense than to let ye run about the streets on such a day as this.”
His words stung. Lily raised her chin and told him stubbornly, “My mother’s dead, and ye did kill my daddie.”
He stared down at her. “I did not. I’ve killed no man.”
“Aye, ye did, too. Ye shot him in Trinity churchyard,” she said, “this past summer.”
His face altered then, as when someone remembers. He passed his hand over his eyes, and when he spoke next his voice had also changed—no longer hardened, but bordering on an apology. “You’re Edward Aitcheson’s lass.”
Lily nodded.
He told her, “I’m sorry, I am, but you still shouldn’t be out of doors the day. We have our orders, and I’m only trying to protect you. The streets are fair dangerous.”
Lily, more calm now, said, “I have a message to give Captain Graeme.”
“He’ll come by here later. You tell me your message. I’ll see that he gets it.”
She shook her head. “I need to see that he gets it right now. It’s important.” And then, because she knew the guardsman could not leave his post while she could go wherever the captain was, she told a small lie. “I’m meant to deliver it straight to his own hand.”
The guardsman assessed her, but he seemed to have trouble meeting and holding her gaze. In the end he stood, gave a short nod, and said, “Captain Graeme’s up at Patrick Steell’s house, at the sign of the Cross Keys. Do you know where that is?”