“He will see me cared for, Archie.”
Lily wondered why the younger Patrick Graeme did not simply marry Margaret Malcolm, if she were to have his child. It seemed the simplest and most honorable way to solve the problem.
Later on that night, she said as much to Barbara.
Barbara smiled. “A man like Patrick Graeme of Inchbrakie does not marry someone like my sister. What would put that in your mind?”
“But Margaret’s very beautiful.”
“Fairest flowers soonest fade. And beauty’s not enough to gain ye entry to the world of those who live so high above us.”
There’s a difference between us and them. The Graemes and ourselves. Lily remembered what her grandmother had said. There are some bridges in this life, lass, that ye cannot cross.
And yet, a letter came as Margaret had been sure it would, directing payment for her care and signed by Patrick Graeme, and enclosing for his future bairn a bracelet of small, polished coral beads to ward off any illness.
At the end of June, the bairn was born—a little girl they christened Margaret and called Maggie, fair of hair and face, who waved her tiny fists about as though she would herself do battle with King William’s forces.
One month later, at a place called Killiecrankie, Maggie’s kinsman the brave Viscount Dundee led his army to their greatest victory. But the winning of it cost his life. He died there on the field, and the commanders who came after him could not reclaim the glory of that battle. Loss followed loss as King William’s men chased them north into the Highlands.
In November, Barbara’s sister took a sudden fever and was gone, as suddenly as if a wind had carried her, and Lily minded Barbara saying, “Fairest flowers soonest fade.”
The day after the burial, the woman from the Canongate brought down the bairn, asleep within a basket, and a portmanteau of Margaret’s clothes and things, and then departed.
It was Henry who had first opened the door to her, and Henry who stood cradling the bairn when she had gone.
And it was Henry, with the bairn’s hand tightly wrapped around his fingers, who decided, “She’s like us, now. One more foundling.”
Archie said, “We cannot keep a bairn.”
But in that house, as Lily was to learn, all things were possible.
Chapter 16
Thursday, 25 September, 1707
I was watching Henry Browne. He could not sit in any one position long without it causing pain. While he’d been talking, he’d been restless in his chair, and he was restless now. “Well, anyway,” he finished. “That’s what I can tell ye.”
Gilroy stood before a cabinet, examining its contents. He asked, “Are these the copy books?”
I saw the frown that Henry did not bother hiding. “Aye.”
Gilroy went on, “Your brother Walter’s are among them?”
“I expect so.”
“May I?” Taking Henry’s shrug to be permission, Gilroy started searching through the copy books to find one scribed with Walter’s name.
Henry asked, “What good will that do?”
I could answer that, because I had been studying my new-bought book of law. “By your brother’s death, we lost the direct manner of proving he did sign our document, since he’s no longer able to attest to it himself. But we can still use the indirect method of matching Walter’s signature upon the paper that we hold to something he is known to have signed while he did live.”
Gilroy’s eyebrow lifted slightly and he glanced at me, but he did not correct me, and I cannot say I did not take a certain satisfaction from that fact. He only said, to Henry, “Have you anything that Barbara Malcolm signed?”
“No.”
Up the eyebrow went again. “No letters?”
Henry stared him down. “We lived in the same house. Why would she write me letters?”
“But she could write?”
“Aye, of course she could. Are ye implying that my mother was a fool?”
“I am implying nothing,” Gilroy said. He’d found the copy books he wanted. Taking them in hand, he closed the cabinet. “Tell me, what happened to Simon? Your brother who did nearly kill that man?”
The wind struck hard against the window, and it must have chased a cloud across the sun because the light changed. “He went south to Bristol. I hear from him now and again.”
“And your father?” asked Gilroy.
“He isn’t my father.”
“Archibald Browne, then. You said that he rarely comes by. Does he still live in Leith?”