“Oh, Uncle Jamie, I meant to ask, can I borrow your rosary?” he said, as we emerged onto the cobbles of the Royal Mile. “The priest told me I must say five decades for my penance, and that’s too many to keep count of on my fingers.”
“Surely.” Jamie stopped and fished in his pocket for the rosary. “Be sure to give it back, though.”
Young Ian grinned. “Aye, I reckon you’ll be needing it yourself, Uncle Jamie. The priest told me he was verra wicked,” Young Ian confided to me, with a lashless wink, “and told me not to be like him.”
“Mmphm.” Jamie glanced up and down the road, gauging the speed of an approaching handcart, edging its way down the steep incline. Freshly shaved that morning, his cheeks had a rosy glow about them.
“How many decades of the rosary are you supposed to say as penance?” I asked curiously.
“Eighty-five,” he muttered. The rosiness of his freshly shaved cheeks deepened.
Young Ian’s mouth dropped open in awe.
“How long has it been since ye went to confession, Uncle?” he asked.
“A long time,” Jamie said tersely. “Come on!”
Jamie had an appointment after dinner to meet with a Mr. Harding, representative of the Hand in Hand Assurance Society, which had insured the premises of the printshop, to inspect the ashy remains with him and verify the loss.
“I willna need ye, laddie,” he said reassuringly to Young Ian, who looked less than enthusiastic about the notion of revisiting the scene of his adventures. “You go wi’ your auntie to see this madwoman.”
“I canna tell how ye do it,” he added to me, raising one brow. “You’re in the city less than two days, and all the afflicted folk for miles about are clutching at your hems.”
“Hardly all of them,” I said dryly. “It’s only one woman, after all, and I haven’t even seen her yet.”
“Aye, well. At least madness isna catching—I hope.” He kissed me briefly, then turned to go, clapping Young Ian companionably on the shoulder. “Look after your auntie, Ian.”
Young Ian paused for a moment, looking after the tall form of his departing uncle.
“Do you want to go with him, Ian?” I asked. “I can manage alone, if you—”
“Oh, no, Auntie!” He turned back to me, looking rather abashed. “I dinna want to go, at all. It’s only—I was wondering—well, what if they…find anything? In the ashes?”
“A body, you mean,” I said bluntly. I had realized, of course, that the distinct possibility that Jamie and Mr. Harding
The boy nodded, looking ill at ease. His skin had faded to a sort of rosy tan, but was still too dark to show any paleness due to emotion.
“I don’t know,” I said. “If the fire was a very hot one, there may be nothing much left to find. But don’t worry about it.” I touched his arm in reassurance. “Your uncle will know what to do.”
“Aye, that’s so.” His face brightened, full of faith in his uncle’s ability to handle any situation whatever. I smiled when I saw his expression, then realized with a small start of surprise that I had that faith, too. Be it drunken Chinese, corrupt Customs agents, or Mr. Harding of the Hand in Hand Assurance Society, I hadn’t any doubt that Jamie would manage.
“Come on, then,” I said, as the bell in the Canongate Kirk began to ring. “It’s just on two now.”
Despite his visit to Father Hayes, Ian had retained a certain air of dreamy bliss, which returned to him now, and there was little conversation as we made our way up the slope of the Royal Mile to Henderson’s lodging house, in Carrubber’s Close.
It was a quiet hotel, but luxurious by Edinburgh standards, with a patterned carpet on the stairs and colored glass in the street window. It seemed rather rich surroundings for a Free Church minister, but then I knew little about Free Churchmen; perhaps they took no vow of poverty as the Catholic clergy did.
Showed up to the third floor by a young boy, we found the door opened to us at once by a heavyset woman wearing an apron and a worried expression. I thought she might be in her mid-twenties, though she had already lost several of her front teeth.
“You’ll be the lady as the Reverend said would call?” she asked. Her expression lightened a bit at my nod, and she swung the door wider.
“Mr. Campbell’s had to go oot the noo,” she said in a broad Lowland accent, “but he said as how he’d be most obliged to hae yer advice regardin’ his sister, mum.”
Sister, not wife. “Well, I’ll do my best,” I said. “May I see Miss Campbell?”
Leaving Ian to his memories in the sitting room, I accompanied the woman, who introduced herself as Nellie Cowden, to the back bedroom.
Miss Campbell was, as advertised, staring. Her pale blue eyes were wide open, but didn’t seem to be looking at anything—certainly not at me.
She sat in the sort of wide, low chair called a nursing chair, with her back to the fire. The room was dim, and the backlighting made her features indistinct, except for the unblinking eyes. Seen closer to, her features were still indistinct; she had a soft, round face, undistinguished by any apparent bone structure, and baby-fine brown hair, neatly brushed. Her nose was small and snub, her chin double, and her mouth hung pinkly open, so slack as to obscure its natural lines.
“Miss Campbell?” I said cautiously. There was no response from the plump figure in the chair. Her eyes did blink, I saw, though much less frequently than normal.
“She’ll nae answer ye, whilst she’s in this state,” Nellie Cowden said behind me. She shook her head, wiping her hands upon her apron. “Nay, not a word.”
“How long has she been like this?” I picked up a limp, pudgy hand and felt for the pulse. It was there, slow and
