He didn’t know. “At one time I think there were five or six. Might still be. None of my business.”
“And where do they come from?”
A shrug. “There’s never any shortage in a place like this.”
Lily felt indignant on behalf of all the women who, like Barbara, had been given little choice in life. “Ye think so little of them?”
Matthew’s head turned at her tone of voice. He lightly put one hand within the hollow of her back to steer her down again toward the pier, and started walking with her as though he did not wish to stand too long in that place where someone might be watching them. “Ye ken nothing about me.”
“I ken much about your mother, though,” said Lily. “She’s the reason I was spared that life, the reason I’m not in that house, so I’d think ye might at least find some respect for—”
“I’m a foundling.” Matthew cut across her speech. His voice was even, but there was an edge of steel beneath. “They reckon I was only hours old when I was left within the church porch by the woman who gave birth to me. But I was wrapped well in a blanket, with a note that begged them please to see me cared for. I was wanted, but could not be kept. That’s what happens,” he told Lily, “when you have a church that blames the woman for her weakness when she trusts a man who promises her much and treats her ill. One thing our mother taught us—and she taught us much—was we should never judge the women who gave birth to us. I never have. I never would.” He glanced at Lily, and his jaw was set in such a hard, defensive line, she wanted to take back what she had said and tell him she was sorry, but she knew he wasn’t looking for apologies. He said, “Nor would any of us leave a woman we had loved alone to face the punishment for what we’d done, but there are many men who would. And when they do, there’s Archie, waiting with his promises.”
Again, she thought of Barbara, and the silver ring she wore upon her finger, and the life that Barbara might have had that never came to pass.
They walked a short while without speaking, and then Matthew said, without the bitterness, “It’s not that I think little of them. Never that. I’m sorry for the lasses who do enter in that house, because I ken what they’ve not learned.” His face, when he looked at her, showed her a flash of the boy he’d been once. “With Archie,” he told her, “there’s always a price.”
Chapter 21
Thursday, 22 December, 1692
Lily understood why Matthew kept his distance from the house in Riddell’s Close, although he did join them for the services in church each Sabbath.
While King James’s brave invasion plan had come to naught, his ships cut off by England’s fleet and never come to shore, here in their church at South Leith, Mr. Kay, their minister, had waged a longer battle. He’d refused to give the church up to the Presbyterians, who claimed that, since the government had changed, it should be theirs by rights.
All over Scotland, ministers who failed to give allegiance to King William and Queen Mary and say prayers for them had lost their livings, and the Presbyterians were taking over from Episcopalians.
“The wheel is turning,” Archie said. “Best make sure that ye keep to the right side of it.”
But Mr. Kay cared only for his conscience. He’d continued to appeal to higher church courts while he held the keys to both the church and session house.
In August there’d been mayhem—magistrates had come from Edinburgh, without a warrant but with armed guards, who surrounded by a crowd demanded Mr. Kay give up the keys. When he again refused, they forcibly broke in the church door and replaced the locks, and so the Presbyterians had gained possession of the church.
But they’d taken ground by violence, and could not expect a peace. So Matthew said, and he was right.
There had been more appeals, and Mr. Kay had been allowed to preach on Sabbath afternoons and every other Thursday while he waited for a final judgment, and his elders went on meeting in the Cantore—the small room above the church porch, where they’d once imprisoned sinners, and to which he still retained the key.
This stretched on into the autumn, then past Michaelmas, and not two weeks ago Mr. Kay had sent someone to their door to ask for Archie, asking would he come at once.
“What was it?” Barbara asked, when Archie had returned.
“They needed me to write an instrument to say the Presbyterians had barred them from the Cantore, when it’s where they always meet, and that a new lock had been put upon the door without their knowledge or consent.” Archie had set down his papers. Passed a hand across his eyes.