I wondered whether Captain Graeme guessed the truth, or whether he but felt himself responsible for leaving Lily here so unprotected.
I asked Marion, “And what did you believe?”
She looked away. “At first, I could not think it possible. She’d seemed content here. But the summer after that, my mother died…” A moment’s pause. “I learned then Lily might have had a cause to be unhappy in this house.” She gathered herself bravely and said, “Still, I did not like to think she would have taken her own life.” And then, remembering, she turned to me. “But now you tell me she did not.”
The way she said those words will always live with me. I hear them still. I hear their hopefulness.
It is no small thing, hope. Without it, darkness wins. My mother used to set me on my feet again and tell me, “Were it not for hope, the heart would break,” and she was right. Sometimes, when all seems darkness and despair, hope is the only thing that does remain for us to grasp—a tree branch beating at the ice within a child’s hand.
And so we make an opening, and day by day press forward, and we hold that hope.
And therein lies its power.
Chapter 13
Wednesday, 24 September, 1707
The Cross Keys had for so long stood in one place on the south side of the High Street that its close was called “Steell’s Close” after its landlord, Patrick Steell—a man who seemed as solid and unchanging as the tavern that he kept. He loved good company, good conversation, and good music, and would often lead the song himself in hearty voice. He’d placed his tavern well to draw a crowd. The market cross stood all but at his doorstep, and St. Giles’s church was his near neighbor, and behind that stood the lofty house of parliament, which would have gone on bringing great men daily past his door had not the Union ended our Scots government in May. In spite of that, so many politicians were his regulars that some would called the Cross Keys “Pat Steell’s Parliament,” and from the sounds that spilled onto the darkened street as I drew near the gilded sign this evening, it did seem that parliament was in full session.
In the play of light outside the entry, it was easy to imagine phantoms of another age—a small lass wrapped within her plaid against the cold, her face upturned in earnest conversation with the captain of the old town guard.
I passed them by, and went inside.
Gilroy was waiting for me at a table in the farther corner. He was not alone.
The man who sat beside him, of an age to be my father, had a sharply featured face that made a contrast to his friendly manner.
Gilroy made the introductions and said drily, “Dr. Pitcairn is certain I’m holding some secret and thinks that this claret will loosen my tongue.”
The older man promised, “It is an exceptional claret.” He called for another pint, and filled a cup for me. “At least in here we still have our Scots measurements, although the terms of Union soon will take those, too, to please the English. Fools. It takes three English pints to fill a Scots one. The commissioners would do much better to increase the size of English pints than to shrink ours.”
I did not know how long they had been sitting here, but Scots pints notwithstanding, Gilroy seemed to be resisting all attempts to make him drunk. He sat casually, but kept the same expression that he always held.
In level tones he told the doctor, “Even if I had a secret, I would hardly tell you here. These walls have ears.”
“And all of them connected to His Grace, the Duke of Hamilton. I do agree. But surely, since he is the leader of our side, he would already know the details of the planned invasion, so to him it would not be a secret, therefore you may freely tell me what you know.” Having thus set down his train of logic, Dr. Pitcairn settled back and helped himself to bread and cheese from the broad platter set between us.
Gilroy’s glance had touched me when the doctor spoke the word “invasion,” but there’d have been no reaction on my face for him to see. I reasoned Dr. Pitcairn was referring to the same Jacobite plot I’d heard discussed at dinner earlier today at Lord Seafield’s table—a proposed invasion that would bring their young James Stewart, living in his shadow court in exile outside Paris, back to Scotland in an effort to reclaim his throne. I also reasoned that the doctor, and most likely Gilroy, too, were Jacobites, from this exchange.
But it was not my business. Merely something to take note of, nothing more.
I drank my wine. The claret was, in truth, exceptional.
The doctor smiled at Gilroy’s stubborn silence. “I should hope, at least, Lord Grange will stand on the right side of the occasion when the moment comes. He is not like his brother, who stands always where the wind will blow most fair.”