She nodded.
“Go there, give your message to him, and come straight back down, you hear? I will be watching for you.”
Lily ran the whole way up the High Street to the Cross Keys tavern, her breath making mist in the darkening air that clawed cold at her lungs. At the door of the tavern, a huddle of men stood and talked with their backs to her—men with fine hats and fine wigs and fine cloaks—but among them she recognized one set of sturdier shoulders.
She called, “Captain Graeme!”
He turned. The man nearest him turned, too, and Lily saw it was the Lord Provost, who had the charge of the town and who’d once said he’d rather be Lord Provost here than the Lord Mayor of London, since both did the same exact work for the same honor, only he was not surrounded by Englishmen.
No Englishmen surrounded the Lord Provost here this afternoon. The other men had Scottish voices. Marshalling them all to move inside the Cross Keys tavern, after Captain Graeme asked a moment’s leave to speak to Lily, the Lord Provost said, “I’ll wait for you inside then, with my magistrates. Do not be long—we need you to be with us and in readiness in case this night brings new disorders.”
Left alone outside with Lily, Captain Graeme crouched to her own level and arranged her plaid more snugly round her head and shoulders. “It is cold,” he told her. “Now, what brings ye out when there’s such trouble in the town?”
It was the trouble, she explained, that brought her out to him. She told him what she’d overheard. He listened to her carefully.
“Ye did not see this other lad? The one who spoke to Mr. Bell’s apprentice?”
“No. But the apprentice will ken who he is, if ye do ask him.”
“I intend to ask him,” Captain Graeme said, and something in his tone made Lily blink in sudden realization.
“Ye’ll not punish him, because of what I telt ye? Please don’t punish him.” Her mouth began to tremble. “He did nothing wrong.”
Captain Graeme hugged her shoulders briefly with his hands, and met her gaze with eyes that seemed to understand her struggles to not lose her faith in justice.
“It’s a lesson life does teach us all, in time,” he said. “Ye cannot always judge a man’s heart by the way he looks. Sometimes the people ye best trust may disappoint ye.”
“He is not bad,” Lily told him. “He is honest.”
“Then I promise ye, if he is as ye say, and tells the truth and takes no part in any rising, he will not be harmed.”
“Ye promise?”
“Aye. And that’s a thing ye can take with ye to your grave, the promise of a Graeme.”
Lily was not altogether certain. “Jamie promised me he would not leave me. And now he is gone.”
The captain’s mouth curved faintly at the corner, and he stood to his full height. “He had no choice in that decision, I’m the one ye want to blame. Truth is, he would have wished to stay where ye are, and when this unrest is over, he’ll be at your side again.” He reached for Lily’s hand. “Come, I’ll walk ye back.”
“But the Lord Provost is waiting.”
“I’ll not be gone a quarter of an hour,” he said.
She closed her fingers round his hand, as always finding the firm comfort of his grasp and his sure, easy stride a steady reassurance. “Captain Graeme?”
“Aye?”
“Should ye not have men guarding ye?”
“I will be fine, lass.”
“He said they would kill ye.”
He smiled. “They can try. But my daddie would tell them the devil’s aye kind to his own.”
Lily didn’t think that Captain Graeme was acquainted with the devil, but she knew the captain’s daddie was the old Laird of Inchbrakie, who’d been a great soldier and survived long years of battling the Covenanters, so perhaps that same good fortune would hold for the captain. She wished for it, regardless, and held tighter to his hand.
As they approached the Netherbow, the guardsmen straightened to attention, and the guard who’d let her pass drew up defensively and told the captain, “She did claim to have a message for you, sir, of great importance.”
“Aye, and so it was,” said Captain Graeme. “Very great importance. Ye did right to send her through.”
The guardsman visibly relaxed, and Lily swelled with pride as she passed with the captain through the Netherbow.
The Canongate was quiet yet. Some of the candle lanterns had been lit along the street against the coming darkness, but the windows for the most part were well shuttered as though violence was expected. Lily led the captain up the steps from Bell’s Close and into the kitchen, back the way she’d come, surprising Nanse, who had not realized she had left the house.