35
By a Knight of Ghosts and Shadows,
I summoned am to tourney.
Ten leagues beyond the wide World’s end,
Methinks it is no journey.
ANONYMOUS BALLAD, Tom o’ Bedlam
Leith, 7 April 1848
Dear Jamie,
By the time you read this, I shall have gone to join my beloved husband, Hughie, in Rosebank cemetery.
After that, it is all in the mercy of God, although when I questioned the Reverend Strang about what was on my mind, he looked at me as if I had no right to ask and said, ‘Your sins will find you out.’
He has aye been a miserable wee stick and never liked Hughie since the day somebody threw a Sabbath snowball at him and knocked his hat for sixpence. My husband came under suspicion for the act due to having a good eye and a merry disposition, but what harm is there in a ball of snow?
I fear that Hughie’s sins may weigh more than mine. Besides the drinking, card playing and, I have to admit, occasional blasphemies under the influence, there was also the matter of various fancy women, one in particular, Olive the Gypsy.
On his bended knees, he begged me for pity and I was moved by his passion. The Prodigal Sinner is always worth more than the unco guid. But I was informed by the same nosey-parker neighbour who brought me the news in the first place, her man working the bar in a low dive, The Foul Anchor, in the Leith docks, that Hughie’s knees were not to be trusted.
He had taken up with Olive once more, the charms of a Romany bangle I suppose.
I did not dare to ask him again because I knew I could not forgive him this time, so I took a mean revenge with Tam Imrie the cobbler. But I only did it the once, and Hughie did it all the time.
I hope, wherever we both end up, that I’m not looking down at him or vice versa, or we’re both not looking at each other, level pegging, with the flames of hell spread out behind us.
That’s what I was trying to ask the Reverend Strang. Without going into details, of course.
I have one other thing on my conscience which is the reason for this letter.
Not long ago you stood in front of me proud as punch because you had joined the police force. It’s the first time I’ve seen any colour in your cheeks and I was glad I had asked Judge MacGregor to put in a word, mind you he owed me enough for keeping that crabbit-faced wife of his stuffed with cream crowdie and clootie dumplings.
Anyhow, I was glad for I know how much justice means to you, what with you not getting that much in your own life.
We never spoke of that day you found your mother lying in bed with a throat she stabbed for herself, and I was grateful because I had not the wisdom to puzzle it out.
But the one thing I lied to you about was your father. You often asked me when you were growing up about him and that your mother had always said that he was an Angel of the Lord.
I always answered that it was a mystery to me, but in fact it was not so. I knew more than I was telling. Not much. But a wee bit.
About the right time, by the calculation of the months which the Good Lord has set aside for the purposes of such, the number being nine before you made your appearance in the world, I met a young man in the hallway coming from your mother’s door. It was Easter Monday.
The man was heavy set, white complexion, a sailor by his uniform. He nodded his way past me out the place and I never saw him again.
I believe he may have been a foreign body. The Italian Navy had a ship in the harbour that very week, but Italians are swarthy skinned are they not?
Anyway, Jamie. I think that might have been your Angel of the Lord.
I have not the heart tae see your face when I break that news, you’ve had enough of a hammering.
You are about to start a new life and I have no wish to spoil it with such miserable tidings, so I will give you this letter, sealed, with the solemn admonition that you do not open it till your fiftieth birthday.
By that time, I will be long departed, and you will be of an age where you are able to bear pain as well as any other man. Which is to say, not much. But, enough.
I hope you can forgive me. I have loved you as best I could even when you spilled that beetroot all over my best tablecloth.
I hope that, by now, you are married with a tribe of children, but I doubt it.
Something in your heart closed that day. Love and trust will never come easy to you.
Except for me. You gave it all to me. And I have rewarded you by delaying the truth.
Forgive me again. Be good. Your loving Aunt.
Jean Scott
McLevy’s hand trembled as he put aside the letter which he had now read many times since the opening of it.
Happy Birthday. Well, that was one mystery solved. Or was it? Best accept that he would never know.
Every Easter Maria McLevy had waited for a knock at the door. No one came to call. She looked down at her
