‘You’re not leaving me, surely!’ cried James. ‘I only have what I stand up in … a purse with little more than dross in it and not even a short sword to defend myself. And where am I here? I could be in Timbuctoo, for all I know!’
‘Your way lies across the bog, and once over it, down the hill to Leith, even in the dark, it’ll not take you much more than a brace of hours at a stiff pace,’ said Davy, ignoring his friend’s fright, and scrabbling in his pocket to produce a notebook and pencil. ‘I’d not fain join you on the scaffold, my friend,’ added Davy as he scribbled, ‘and anyways, it’s your safe passage from danger I’m off to arrange. Now when you get to Leith, head to the docks then turn left and take the Newhaven road, you will see a house at this address … it’s a door where I am known … by the mistress of the place.’
‘The place? What place?’
‘It is an … establishment, James. Where it is … friendly to young men. Now shut up and listen. You will need more money, and some kind of passport.’
‘Passport? What do you mean a passport, why do I need a pa …?’
‘Will ye no’ shut up! With muskets and bayonets on yer tail, I fear your options to linger in this country are done. And if you are to take ship abroad, then you’ll need a letter, something notarised, signed by a person of substance, identifying you to foreign officialdom … in other words, a passport. It is a necessary document in this age, for travel. Or even better, a letter of introduction to some grand person in the country to where you are bound. Of course! One who will then speak for you. I will be thinking …’
‘Dear God!’ breathed James. ‘That a fellow’s life can turn in a blink! Well, let’s be at it, man! What are my instructions?’
‘They’re starting to drain this sink in front of us, at last, so the path across it is safe enough, but tread carefully man, and don’t stray off the path by even one step, or you’re like tae never be seen again. Smell it. The run-offs from tanneries and slaughterhouses and aw the chamber pots o’ every hoose … it’s been the cess hole for the old town for 300 years, and ye don’t want to know what unspeakable abominations must now lurk in its depths, and I mean depths. So go canny. Right?
‘Right!’
‘And when ye get to Mistress Cantly’s place, say you are a friend to Mr Hume of the university and give her this note. I will see you tomorrow. Now, speed … but no’ too much, ’til ye get to the other side o’ the loch!’
And with that, Davy vanished into the night.
The darkness was not complete; candles in windows, lanterns above taverns or under the arched entrances to closes leaked light upwards and were weakly reflected off the mist that clung to all these slime-soaked tenement bluffs. James stepped out onto the path across the loch, and found it not quite as dry under foot as Davy had said. He began picking his way across, and had barely gone a dozen yards when he encountered a crone coming the other way, a basket on her back filled with kindling. She gurned something unintelligible at him as she elbowed past him, forcing him to step off the path, and instantly his right foot sank to his shin in filth. He turned to remonstrate, but his voice died in his throat. A light, waving from out the gloom at the foot of the tenement walls was moving towards the path end. Voices.
He finally managed to free his foot from the suction, but his shoe remained in the mire.
‘Hell! Damn and blast!’ he muttered to himself, at a loss. He dropped to his knees – nothing else for it – and plunged his arm into the collapsing hole where his foot had come from. The cloying, stinking wet made his gorge rise as he groped for his shoe; no walk to Leith could follow, unless he freed it.
Voices again, and this time the crone’s was added to the babble. He looked back, and in the wash of the lantern waving behind him, he could dimly see three figures. Two were obviously militia, the red of their coats could just be made out, but it was the barrels of their slung muskets, jutting above their shoulders, that said all that was needed. That, and the crone pointing back down the path to where he crouched.
One of the militia separated, and James could just make out his back tearing up the Fleshmarket steps, obviously going for assistance. And then the lantern began to advance on him. He felt his fingers squelch sickeningly in the ooze, groping for … and then they closed round the metal of a buckle, and he wrenched. The shoe, full of filth, shot free. James could have wept for his fine stockings, worn specially for his trip to Edinburgh. The right one at least must end in the fire after this.
‘You there, on the path!’ The voice came out of the night. ‘I command ye tae halt where ye are, in the name o’ the watch!’ A tired, angry, uncouth voice, in no mood for putting up with any trouble. If the militia man could have seen beyond the spill of his lantern, would have beheld a figure crouching like a wild animal, head jerking here, there, looking for escape. And not finding any.
The militia man unshouldered his musket. ‘Ah’ll shoot ye deid, if ye dinnae show yersel’!’
James jumped to his feet, turned and ran. He heard the man growl, ‘baistert!’ and then the pounding of a heavy
