‘Roger is privileged,’ he murmured in explanation. ‘Pray proceed, Rab. What secrets did this folio of Aline’s contain? Are we to understand that it mentioned this lover of hers?’
‘Oh, it mentioned him all right, on every page.’ The tone was acid. ‘Their meetings, their kisses, their … their couplings. Yes, you may well look amazed, my lord. You would have said, as I would, that Aline was the most modest woman alive. Do you know that I have never been permitted to see her naked, not once in all the years we were married? Even in bed she insisted on never removing her night rail. And the bedchamber always had to be as dark as pitch.’
‘Unbelievable,’ commented Albany, and looked as though he meant it. ‘Did you never exert your rights as a husband and compel her to obey your wishes?’
Rab Sinclair hung his head, somewhat shamefaced.
‘I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘I loved her too much to risk upsetting her. Don’t misunderstand me, my lord. She never repulsed me, never said no. She did her duty, always. She never pleaded headaches or any of the other womanly excuses — except, of course, when she had the flux — and I had always assumed that she got as much pleasure from the act of love as I did. Women aren’t passionate creatures, like men. It would be unseemly if they were. Not the sort of women one marries, that is. Whores, naturally, are different.’ He paused for a moment, plainly looking back at a misspent youth with considerable pleasure, before continuing, ‘So, you can imagine, my lord, the horror and sense of betrayal with which I read, actually read in her very own words, detailed descriptions of her lovemaking with another man.’
‘So how did Mistress Sinclair refer to this other man?’ I asked, interested now in spite of myself and my hunger. ‘She must have called him something.’
Albany nodded in agreement.
‘She simply called him by an initial. J.’ Rab Sinclair spread his hands in a despairing gesture. ‘J. How many James and Johns are there, do you suppose, in this city alone?’
‘How did you come across this “book”? This diary?’ I asked, leaning forward and resting my elbows on my knees. ‘Surely Mistress Sinclair was not so careless as to leave it where you could find it?’
‘No, of course not.’ He spared me a fleeting glance before turning back to the duke. ‘Aline had gone for a day or two to visit her old aunt, who lives in Roslin. I don’t know if you recollect the woman, my lord? Margaret Sinclair, the sister of Aline’s grandfather and the only living kin that she and her brother had left since the death of their parents. Anyway, be that as it may, my wife had gone to visit her because word had reached us that the old lady had been ill.’
‘You didn’t accompany Mistress Sinclair?’ I broke in to enquire, and got a dirty look for my pains. (I was beginning to get the impression that Rab didn’t like me. In his eyes, I was a low-born interloper poking my long nose into his affairs; but as it was his master, the duke, who had introduced me into their counsels, he was forced to conceal his antagonism as best he could.)
‘No, there was no need of my presence. Her brother, John, escorted her.’ He suddenly seemed a little bewildered. ‘Where was I? What was it you wanted to know?’
‘How you came to discover this confession of Aline’s,’ Albany prompted gently. ‘You say she’d gone to see her great-aunt for a day or two, so obviously she wasn’t in the house when you stumbled across it.’
Rab Sinclair pushed a hand through his thick, dark hair.
‘It wasn’t I who found it,’ he said. ‘It was Maria Beton, my housekeeper. She was cleaning out our bedchamber the day after Aline left. She said it was a good chance to do so, because, when she was at home, Aline spent so much time up there, in that little window embrasure overlooking the street, that she could never find the time to clean it properly. It’s not,’ he interrupted himself indignantly, ‘that I hadn’t made provision for a solar for Aline when we wed. There’s a little room on the ground floor at the back, overlooking a scrap of garden, which I said could be hers. But she preferred the front of the house, where there’s more to see.’
‘Understandable,’ I murmured, and was treated to another glance of distaste.
Albany frowned at me. ‘Go on, Rab,’ he urged. ‘And as quickly as you can, man! It’s past dinnertime and my Cousin Gloucester will be wondering where I am.’
I endorsed this sentiment with a firm nod and the determination not to distract Master Sinclair with any more questions unless it was absolutely necessary. I did feel, however, that a little prompting wouldn’t come amiss, our informant, judging by his vague expression, being not quite sure at which point he had arrived in his story.
‘Your housekeeper found the book while cleaning out your and Mistress Sinclair’s bedchamber. Whereabouts exactly did she discover it? It must have been well hidden not to have come to either your, or her, attention earlier.’
There I was again, not two minutes after making my resolution breaking it almost at once. I just could not curb my natural curiosity.
‘Maria — Mistress Beton, that is — had long wanted to turn out a corner cupboard that Aline had brought with her as a bride and which she normally kept locked. Oh, I had seen inside it many times, and as far as I knew it contained nothing more than a few childhood keepsakes, the gown she wore on our wedding day (and which, for some reason, she had not wished to store in her general coffer with the rest of her clothes) and a cedarwood box holding a few bits of jewellery belonging to her mother. That was all.’
‘Why did Mistress Beton wish to turn it out?’ I’m not sure who asked the question, myself or Albany, but it was probably in both our minds.
Rab Sinclair looked surprised.
‘Dust. Spiders lurking along the shelves. Maria Beton,’ he added heatedly, ‘is a very house-proud woman. It bothered her to think that the cupboard had never been properly cleaned. And when she discovered that my wife had left the key to it behind, she thought it a splendid opportunity to do so at last.’
‘And the parchment leaves — the diary, I suppose, if one may call it that — was inside?’
‘Yes. Concealed in the folds of the wedding gown.’ Rab Sinclair shivered. ‘When Maria shook out the folds of the skirt, in case the moths had got into it, the parchment leaves fell out. We could both see at once that the pages were covered in Aline’s writing, so naturally Maria handed it to me.’
‘So you read it?’
‘Wouldn’t you have done?’
Albany chuckled. ‘He has you there, Roger.’
I was forced to admit he had. If I had discovered a diary in Adela’s handwriting, I would have been unable to resist the temptation to read what she had to say. Besides, wives have no business to conceal things from their husbands: the luxury of secrets is a man’s prerogative, not a woman’s.
‘So you found out that Aline had a lover.’
The duke began rubbing his cramped thighs preparatory to standing up. He told me to shout for the gaoler, but before I could do so, Master Sinclair exclaimed urgently, ‘But not only that!’
Albany’s waning attention was rearrested. He had half-risen from the bed, but at these words, sat down again.
‘What else then?’
‘My lord!’ His friend leaned forward, grabbing unceremoniously at a velvet sleeve. ‘My lord, a whole page — more — was devoted to the different ways she and her lover had thought up to kill me. Poison; an arranged accident; stabbing, making it look as if an intruder had broken in at night; drowning; and other ways I can’t remember for the moment. It was obvious that they were planning to murder me, my lord!’
This put a different complexion on the matter. I asked the one question that mattered. ‘Where is the book now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ Albany seized his friends by both hands and shook them. ‘You still have the book? You kept it, of course? You confronted Aline with it when she returned home?’
‘Not at once. I was too shocked. I didn’t really believe what I’d seen. I … I put it back in the cupboard, under the folds of the wedding gown where Maria had found it. I was so shaken, I was ill for several days. Mistress Beton will confirm what I say.’