My Bones Will Keep
Chapter 1
Edinburgh
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THE hotel overlooked West Princes Gardens. Laura was admiring the view from her bedroom window. Away to the right stood the Episcopal Church of St John, where Princes Street and Lothian Road made a right-angle. Beyond it, and a part of the Gardens, or so it appeared, was St Cuthbert’s; and here and there, although they were not readily identifiable from the hotel windows, were the statues erected to the memory of the faithful departed—the poet Allan Ramsay, the surgeon Sir James Simpson and the visionary who promoted the ragged schools, Doctor Thomas Guthrie.
On the other side of the railway, which appeared to cut the Garden in two, there was the dominating feature of the view. This was the castle, built so high on its formidable eminence that from where Laura stood it was almost impossible to decide at what point the work of man and the work of nature met, so entirely did the castle buildings and defences seem to be part of the rock on which they stood.
She knew all about the Castle. She had been familiar with it, on and off, since the age of four, when she had stomped on sturdy legs, hand in hand with parent or uncle, across the bridge over the moat, past the effigies of Bruce the Scot and Wallace the Welshman, to the portcullis gate and up the narrow, sloping road towards the King’s Bastion.
Memory and imagination carried Laura farther. Most of what she knew of Scottish history had been learned upon these occasions, for that rabid Scottish Nationalist, her Uncle Hamish, after whom she had named her young son, had been wont to embark enthusiastically upon stories of Scottish kings, Scottish plotters, Scottish institutions and Scottish heroes, until an intelligent and imaginative child could see the builders of the Wall of Antoninus, Saint Ninian’s church at Whithorn, the landing of Saint Columba at Iona, the murder of Duncan by Macbeth.
She saw, and deeply felt, the humiliation of William the Lion, compelled, as a prisoner, to acknowledge the supremacy of the ill-tempered, energetic, wrong-headed Henry II and she rejoiced in the long-term revenge of William when he formed the first Scottish alliance with France. She sorrowed over the death of the four-year-old Maid of Norway and thrilled to the story of Bannockburn.
The tales were endless, but Uncle Hamish was a born
‘ “Yea, in my mind these mountains rise,
Their perils dyed with evening’s rose;
And still my ghost sits at my eyes
And thirsts for their untroubled snows.” ’
Since that time Laura had seen most of the mountains of her native land, but, grand, aloof and sombre as she had found them, she had never recaptured the ecstacy with which she had first seen the shadowy corries, the proud, defiant peaks, from the supreme vantage point of the King’s Bastion.
She shrugged off these infantile sentimentalities and began to plan a pilgrimage round Edinburgh itself when she was released from her duties for an afternoon. In imagination she saw herself climbing the two-hundred-feet- high monument to Sir Walter Scott; visiting the Royal Scottish Academy and the Raeburns in the National Gallery; revisiting Lady Stair’s house and the Thistle Chapel in St Giles; avoiding a visit to John Knox’s house, for her detestation of the scourge who had ranted about the ‘Monstrous Regiment of Women’ was unrelenting; standing in the full force of the wind on the Waverley Steps; above all, traversing the narrow and ancient wynds, closes and courts of the Old City and hoping zestfully for the adventures which, in Edinburgh, had never come to her except mentally, inspired by her uncle’s stories.
She had visited, in her thoughts, George Heriot’s School, where a cousin of hers had been educated before going on to the University, and was on her imaginary way to the Greyfriars churchyard, when there came a tap at the door. Laura, coming to herself and recognising her employer’s knock, went to the door and opened it.
‘What ho, Mrs Croc. dear!’ she said. Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, wearing tweeds which did not suit her, cackled harshly, waved a skinny, yellow claw and came into the room. She was consultant psychiatrist to the Home Office and was in Edinburgh to attend a Conference, not a government-sponsored affair, but, in the words of Laura, ‘A get-together of the psychiatric squares for gang warfare and personal combat.’ Dame Beatrice had been asked to read a paper on
Laura’s part, so far, had not been assigned to her, so she mentioned her plans, and then, referring to the Conference, ventured to ask for instructions.
‘Oh, that!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I meant to tell you.’ She accompanied this obvious lie with another cackle of eldritch mirth. ‘I thought, though, I’d better wait until you had rid yourself of your beloved encumbrances so that you will be free to do exactly as you please as soon as we have coped with my notes.’
‘Do you mean it’s all for nothing that I’ve ordered my husband to spend his leave fishing for barracuda, and parked my son on his long-suffering grandparents? What are you at, Mrs Croc.?’ demanded her secretary. ‘I was sure I should sit through the Conference and keep you supplied with over-ripe tomatoes to chuck at your chosen foes. I was looking forward to it.’
