Quire as he followed it. He entered through the village gates with the kirk on his right. It was a modest building, entirely surrounded by a small walled graveyard. At the cemetery gate hung a set of jougs: an iron collar attached by a chain to the wall. It was an old punishment for miscreants, not practised any more.
The most striking feature of the gateway, though, was the watchtower. It was a squat construction, just two storeys, but other than in height it could have been the very twin of a tower in some medieval castle; a six-sided, castellated fortress in miniature. Latticed, arched windows stood in each flat face of the tower. Half the graveyards of Edinburgh were thus fortified now, so great was the need of the dead for protection against the avaricious living. That, Quire reflected as he stood looking up at the tower’s battlements in the gathering night, was a state of affairs fit to amaze and dismay any who spared it some thought. Any, at least, not so bedazzled by the city’s glorious reputation as a centre of learning as to be blind to the dark foundations of that glory. He allowed himself only a moment of bemused, rather mournful, reflection.
Quire unhooked his baton from his belt—its presence there in the first place being open to question, since it was in all ways that mattered his badge of police office and, as Baird had made entirely clear, this was not a matter for the police—and rapped upon the door.
A tremulous voice arose from within, barely seeping out through the wooden planking on to the night air.
“Who’s there?”
“Edinburgh police,” Quire said, putting a decorative flourish upon his wilful disregard of Baird’s instructions. There were any number of things that kept Quire from sleep of a night; disobeying Lieutenant Baird was not one of them.
“Oh no,” the inhabitant of the watchtower said, and then fell silent. To Quire’s surprise, the door showed no sign of opening. He looked up and down the road. It was empty, and the village quiet. He took hold of the iron handle on the door and pushed, but some lock or bar stymied him.
“Would you let me in?” he called with studied calm.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, sir.”
Again a silence ensued, instead of the further explanation Quire would have appreciated.
“Why is that?” he asked heavily.
“Not without my father’s say-so, sir. He’s an elder of the church. In charge of the watch.”
“Where is your father?” Quire asked, his spirits sinking rapidly.
“In the Sheep Heid.”
“Oh, aye? And what’s his name?”
“Mr. Munro, sir. Duncan Munro. The elder. By which I don’t mean a church elder—I said that already—but Duncan the elder. I’m the younger.”
“Of course you are,” said Quire.
The Sheep Heid was an inn of some repute. On another night, Quire might have found its seductive advances wholly irresistible. As he stepped across the threshold, he was taken in a warm and welcoming embrace of fire-heat and tobacco fumes, neighbourly talk and laughter.
Mounted on the wall above the bar was the head for which the tavern was named: that of a four-horned ram, observing the comings and goings with what struck Quire as a somewhat judgemental eye. It was quite a beast, one set of horns re-curved around its ears and back towards its cheeks, the others erect and sharp as knives. For all the smoke and chatter bubbling about it, it had an air of detachment, as if come from another time and place to gravely preside over this assemblage of men.
“I’m after Duncan Munro,” Quire said to the nearest of the drinkers, and was directed to a corner table currently occupied by a boisterous party exhibiting good cheer and ruddy cheeks. Curlers most of them, Quire reckoned, cheeks and humour alike enlivened by their return from the ice to this cosy lair.
The man he sought was no recent arrival, though. He was settled in his chair with a loose ease only lengthy occupation could bestow, and the colour in his face was all too clearly the product of drink and the heat of the inn’s fire.
“I was looking for you in the watchtower,” Quire said by way of blunt introduction.
The conversation faltered. Every eye turned to him, Munro’s a little more sluggishly and blinkingly than most.
“Me?” the church elder asked.
“I’m a sergeant of police, over from the city, and wanting a word with those watching the graveyard tonight.”
“That would be me, right enough,” Munro confirmed.
“What are you doing here, then?”
“Preparing for the long night ahead,” Munro replied with an explanatory shake of his tankard, and an appreciative chuckle from his companions.
“Well, the night’s not waited for your preparations to be completed,” Quire observed, pointing to the little thick-paned window behind Munro. “It’s gone and started itself.”
“Surely not.”
Munro twisted in his seat, those closest at hand shrinking away from his dangerously rocking mug. He took in the darkened scene beyond the glass at some length, and then gave out a considered, thoughtful grunt.
“The nights do come in fast this time of year,” he observed.
Quire walked close at Munro’s side as they covered the short distance from the Sheep Heid to the gates of the kirk. Before leaving the inn, he had set a light to his lantern, and now angled its shutters to lay out a guiding beam before them. He was concerned for the other man’s safety, since the roadway was snowbound and Munro’s stride a touch unsteady. His concern proved unfounded, though. The man was sure-footed, perhaps aided by the ballast of a girth that placed considerable demands upon the belt and waistcoat tasked with its containment.
A feast of stars was strewn above them, food for the eye, and the crescent moon like a knife of polished ivory.
“Quire, eh?” Munro said as they drew near to the watchtower. His good humour had survived his removal from the inn thoroughly intact. “That’s a name with a fine religious tone to it. A churchgoing family, perhaps?”
“No,” Quire said, glad that he had not shared his forename as well. “A farming family. Until I left the land, at least.”
“Ah. Ah.”
Munro sounded a little disappointed, but shrugged it off easily enough.
“Well, a believer in the sanctity of life, at least, and that of the righteous dead, or you’d not be troubling yourself with our business tonight. Am I right?”
“More or less.”
Munro pounded on the door of the tower.
“Open up, lad. We’ve an officer of the law come calling, to share our heavy duty.”
Duncan the younger gave them admittance to a cramped little chamber which a crackling fire had packed with so much heat that Quire felt dizzy. The son eyed his father cautiously as the older man sank into a low wooden chair with a contented sigh, while Quire’s attention was taken by the gun resting across pegs above the hearth.
It was properly known as a Land Pattern flintlock musket, but Quire, and everyone else with any soldiering in them, knew it as the Brown Bess; a soft, almost companionable name, he always thought, for something that had spat such storms of smoke and fire and lead and spilled such torrents of blood the world over these last hundred years. This lady had been midwife and nursemaid in the savage birth and nurturing of Britain’s empire.
“What is it you’re here for?” the youth asked him.
“He thinks there’s those who mean to rob our grave tonight,” his father said before Quire could answer.
The older man’s eyes were already closed, and his clasped hands rested comfortably upon his stomach.
“I’ve explained that we’ve had no trouble like that here in years, and not likely to have when there’re lights in the windows of this tower, and smoke from our chimney.”
He opened one eye and cast an investigate glance towards the window that looked out over the graveyard.
