But although Archie’s temper calmed, Lily knew Walter would have gladly gone himself to join the men who held the Bass for King James.
Through the months that followed, it became a focus for all Walter’s thoughts and hopes, and Lily watched his spirits rise and fall together with that outpost’s fortunes.
Some of the Jacobites were captured on a foray while ashore, taken to Edinburgh, and there imprisoned in the Tolbooth to await their trials. Supply ships came, or did not come. The trials went poorly, and by spring of the next year the prisoners had been condemned to death for treason. One was even hanged. And then the men remaining on the Bass arranged for a surrender.
Having fooled their enemy into believing they had a much larger fighting force, they had been granted generous terms—they kept their arms, they kept their freedom, those who’d given aid to them were left unpunished, those who’d been imprisoned were released, and they were left to sail to France or take their homes again.
But it was a deep wound to Walter, watching this last stronghold yield.
Lily understood, because it stole something from her heart, too, that she could not explain.
When Sabbath came, the grey skies matched her mood, and she was frowning as she fastened Maggie into her best petticoat. Maggie was nearly five now, but she had not learnt the art of keeping still. Lily had trouble with the ties. “Maggie, please will ye stand quietly,” she begged, as Barbara put her head around the door.
“You’re burning daylight,” Barbara said. “The men did get so tired of waiting for us, they’ve gone on ahead.”
Rushing, Lily finished dressing Maggie, tied on both their pairs of shoes, and hurried down the stairs, but when they came out to the close, she could not do it.
Something snapped within her in rebellion, and she could not bring herself to go and sit within that church among the same folk who had cheered for the surrender of the Bass.
In the corner of her apron she had tied the coins meant for the poor box. Handing them to Barbara, she said, “Ye will have to pay the fine for me today, as well.”
She half expected there’d be argument, but Barbara only looked at her and said, “All right, then,” and took Maggie’s hand and walked away toward the church.
Lily felt a moment’s freedom that was quickly doused by her awareness of the quiet of the close and of the windows looking down on her, behind which might be any number of reproving eyes. She briskly began walking toward Tolbooth Wynd. She had not gone far when a familiar voice asked, “Where are you away to?”
Lily jumped a little, startled.
Matthew had been leaning in the narrow arching entrance to a passage between two of the old houses just across the close. She might have walked straight past him if he had not spoken.
“To the Links, to look for Walter,” she said. “What are ye doing lurking there?”
“Not lurking,” he corrected her. “And Walter isn’t at the Links. He’s gone to Mr. Kay’s house, for the private sermon there.”
“I see.” She did not wish to go to any sermon. Not today. But it would not be safe to walk alone. “Is Simon with him?”
“Aye.” He straightened from the wall. “But I can take you to the Links, if you are not afraid of me.”
She meant to tell him in a calm, collected tone, that she was not afraid, but when she met his eyes it all got jumbled somehow, and the words came out as they had done when she had been a child up at Inchbrakie: “I’m no feart.”
She’d missed his smile. She’d missed the way he lightly touched her back when they began to walk. Now, she got both.
Chapter 22
Sunday, 29 April, 1694
The Links were fairly empty, since no one could play the golf upon the Sabbath and the only people here were those who, like themselves, were not at church. The searchers could not catch them all, out here. The space was simply too broad, stretching for a mile or more with ample hills to hide behind and access to the town and sea.
She was, for once, glad of the care she had taken in dressing. She wore one of Barbara’s old gowns, Lily’s favorite—the same gown that Barbara had worn on the day Lily first came to live here, the brown one—made over to fit her, the sleeves turned up over her elbows to show the white ruffles of her linen shift underneath. She’d also, because she was hurrying, taken up Barbara’s old hat from the peg by the door in the place of her own, and not realized it until she’d settled it over her lace pinner and seen the edge of an ivory plume over the straw brim. It was a grand hat. Lily liked it immensely, though she hoped the plume would survive the strong winds that were rising this morning, out here on the Links.