accusation of inadequacy. Not that he could dispute it.
Agnes squatted down by the hearth, and lit a taper from the ashy, gleaming coals there. She puffed away at the pipe to get it going, watching Quire out of the corner of her eye. The baby had set her delicate lips about the tip of his finger, and was once more content.
“That’ll do, that’ll do,” Agnes told him as she returned to her stool.
Wisps of smoke coiled up from her pipe. Quire went back to his place on the bed, relieved to have successfully discharged at least that one small responsibility.
“Let’s have it, then,” Agnes said.
“I’ve seen things lately I can’t explain. Not easily. The kind of things… I don’t know, but maybe the kind of things you would know about.”
“Is that right? What manner of things are we talking about?”
“I’ve met men who feel no pain, and don’t mind broken bones nor a musket ball in their chest, and can go down under ice and come up through it again. They don’t utter a word, and you don’t see much of anything when you look in their eyes. And with strange writing, like tattoos or something, all over their hands. Dogs, just the same.”
He said it all at once, in a rush, as if by doing so he might make it sound less implausible to his own ears. What Agnes might make of it, he had no idea, whether he spoke it quick or slow. She said nothing, chewing thoughtfully at the stem of her pipe. Quire shifted uneasily on the bed.
“I’m no great believer in anything but flesh and blood,” he said with a shrug, “but there’s something here. God knows, I need help from somewhere. What these men are doing… there’s grave robbing a part of it, and murder a part of it, and I’m sure as I can be there’s something unnatural a part of it, too.
“And because I know all that, they’ll come for me now. As soon as I’m cut loose from the police. It’s what I’d do. They can’t leave someone who’s seen what I have wandering about free.”
“Aye,” Agnes said around her pipe, “you’ve the look of a man who thinks he needs help, right enough. And it’s not much odds whether you’re a believer or not. There’s more things in the world that are old and deep than these men of philosophy and science we’re infested with these days can admit of. Forgotten, maybe, by most; not the same as being gone.”
She exhaled a great cloud of bluish smoke.
“Not sure what you think I can do for you, though,” she said. “I’m more in the way of gentle wee charms these days, son. Easing a hard birth, softening a laddie’s heart for a lass who’s after him. Ridding a bairn of a fever. That sort of thing.”
“I’ve had a feathered star of twigs nailed to my door,” Quire said. “Is that some sort of gentle wee charm?”
“Oh, that’s interesting. What sort of feathers?”
“Black. A crow, maybe. Does it matter?”
“Might do. Might not. Who are these folk you think are doing such things?”
“John Ruthven, for one.”
“Aye, I ken him,” she said, much to Quire’s surprise. “Never did meet him, though.” She gave a pleased little laugh. “He came down this way, a few years back, wanting to talk to me. Ask me some questions. How he heard of me, I’ve no idea, but there he was, waiting on the quayside, poking around in his fancy trousers and his pretty wee necktie. I watched him for a while, but I didn’t like the look of him, so he never did lay eyes on me.”
The baby was softly smacking her lips in her sleep, as if to savour the spicy scent of her grandmother’s pipe smoke.
“Do you know what he was wanting from you?” Quire asked quietly, careful not to disturb the babe’s slumber.
“No. Can guess, if you like. Ruthven’s an old name. Lots of history in it. Plenty of folk as have worn it down the years thought themselves seekers of lost arts. Most of them just dabblers, playing around with things they’d not understand. That’s the worst sort, the most dangerous sort: them as want to make themselves important and clever. I’m guessing he thought I could tell him something or other would help in whatever dabbling of his own he had in mind.”
“There’s another man, called Blegg. Or Weir, perhaps, or something else. His name’s not a fixed thing, I’ve been told. Works for Ruthven.”
“Never heard of a Blegg. Weir, I ken. So do you.”
“Weir?”
“Major Weir. Do you not ken your history, son?”
Quire frowned. A connection he had not made before, struggling to be born in his mind: Macdonald, the antiquary, had said that Ruthven had taken items found in Major Weir’s house from their collections.
“Well? You’re sitting there like a glaikit sheep,” Agnes prompted.
“The name’s familiar, aye. Major Weir. Burned at the stake. Might be Ruthven’s interested in him too, from what I hear.”
Quire was remembering old stories. Silly little tales, told around drinking tables, or to frighten children; tales he had not thought of for so long that they had lain buried, all but forgotten, in his mind.
“Hundred and fifty years ago,” Agnes mused. “Weir was strangled and burned at the stake at the Gallowlee. They’re building their fine houses over it, on the road between here and their nice New Town. That’s the way of things now, isn’t it? They build over the past, think that makes it gone.
“His sister hanged in the Grassmarket. There was hundreds burned, and hardly a one of them deserving the fate, but Weir maybe did. There was something fierce in him, no doubting it. Something dark.”
She rose slowly from her stool, and crouched by the fire, taking one piece of coal at a time in her hand and tossing each on to the dwindling embers. The place was hardly needing more warmth, Quire thought, but her movements had the absent-minded sloth of habit, a soothing exercise to keep the thoughts moving in her mind.
“These are old names you’re tossing about,” she mused. “They’ve got a long reach, back to before all this gas and steam and bright new world folk are making. Back to different times. Inscriptions upon a man’s skin, that might be binding work, or a protective endowment.
“A feathered cross nailed to your door: now that might be just a thing meant to frighten, but it’s the shape of old workings. Divination, or curse, or both. Bring down misfortune on a man’s head, that could, if done right. Mark him for death.”
“I’ve not been overburdened with good fortune, the last month or two,” Quire grunted. “I’m of a mind to share around some of the misery now.”
“Is that right?” Agnes was distracted, hardly listening to him. “Weir. Not a good name to be talking about, not if there’s dark business being done. I’ll be damned if it’s not an ill omen. His house is still there, you know. Empty, for a century and a half.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Been a long time since those who think themselves sensible worried about such things. But it’s still there. I’d thought it’d been forgotten, and good riddance to the memory, but if there’s folk using his name, thinking on him… maybe not.”
She tapped the bowl of her pipe gently against the edge of the table, spilling a tiny drift of spent ash.
“Can you show me?” Quire asked her.
“Might be I could. Might be worth a wee look, now you’ve brung up the old times. I’d a mind to come up to the big town anyway, get myself some cloth for the making of a skirt. Are you paying, though, son?”
“I could put a shilling or two your way,” Quire said.
And Agnes nodded at that, and took a hard enough suck through her pipe to set the tobacco glowing in the bowl.
XXII
