'Do you know,' Jane said to Mannion, finding it easier to confide her excitement to him rather than Gresham, 'they don't live like we do in London with separate areas for the rich and for the poor. Oh, the rich have town houses, but a lot of them here, they all live on top of one another, quite literally — the higher up the building you go, the better class you are.'
She turned to Gresham. 'And do you know what a lot of the lawyers are called?'
'Tell me,' said Gresham, who knew he was going to be told whatever he answered.
'Bonnet-lairds!' Jane exclaimed, who for today had decided to be a young seventeen-year-old, rather than any of the other things Gresham had seen her be. A shrieking fish-wife; a cool matron, seventeen rising fifty; a sulky seductress; a chief librarian… that was only the start. 'A laird is a noble around here, what we might call a gentleman. Apparently a lot of the lawyers buy small estates just outside Edinburgh, and call themselves landowners. The people call them bonnet-lairds. "Bonnet" means… not quite real. Something you put on and off too easily. When do we ride out to find the parents I'm meant to have had?'
Her capacity to change the subject was not the least infuriating of her mannerisms.
'We have to wait the arrival of a package from Cameron Johnstone,' said Gresham. 'We can't make any plans until then.'
Early next morning there was a rattling at the door of Gresham's room, and the Scots lawyer fell rather than walked through it. His left sleeve was torn and there were blood streaks all the way down his arm. He had a livid bruise on the side of his head. He was gritting his teeth with pain.
'What happened?' asked Gresham, rising to his feet, sword out, peering through the door to see if Cameron's attackers had followed him.
'In the street!' muttered Cameron. 'In full view! That's what caught me out. I was expecting something in a back alley, not in the full glare of public approval.'
'Did they try to kill you?'
'I think it was this they wanted.' He grimaced as he brought out two sealed packages. It was James's seal, the one he had stamped into the table. Three of them, great lumps of offal that they were.' 'How did you escape?'
Mannion had come in and, without a word pushed Cameron into a seat. He was expertly stripping the man's jacket off. A bowl and the cleanest cloth they could find were soon sending red streaks into the clear water. Mannion had initially scorned Gresham when on campaign he had always insisted on the water being boiled before it was used to treat wounds. It was advice given to Gresham by Dr Stephen Perse at Cambridge, and Mannion's view of academics was equivalent to his view of Spaniards and Scotsmen. Yet even he had come round when the infection rate in Gresham's men had been insignificant in comparison to the other troops on campaign.
'They came up from behind,' said Cameron, feeling gently with his tongue at a loosened tooth. Tried to rush me into an alley, but I heard their noise, sensed what was happening. So I stopped and ducked down, and they bounced off me rather. Then one of them clubbed me on the head. He'd have got me, I think, but we were in the public street and he had to try and half hide the blow. So I saw most of the stars but kept conscious and tried to run between the legs of the nearest one. He used the knife, caught me here on the shoulder.'
'What then?'
'I stuck my knife into his guts and cut the other one's face. The last man backed off and I was able to run.'
'When did you last appear in a law court?' asked Gresham, bringing a mug of ale to him. 'It doesn't strike me that your legal skills are your greatest strength at the moment, or the ones you use most often.'
'Ouch!' said Cameron, as Mannion touched the entry point of the wound. Cameron felt round the wound gingerly, grimaced, and then yanked something out. It was a tiny splinter of steel. 'Thought so,' he said. 'Point of his dagger. Cheap stuff. Like the men. Och, me and the law? I was in court only last week, actually. I do like to keep my hand in. Unfortunately the woman in question's supposed marriage to the man who walked out on her wasn't supported by any documentary evidence, unlike his actual marriage to the other woman he'd lied about to the first. If you follow me.'
'But the law isn't your primary concern?' continued Gresham, who was beginning to realise that the Scottish advocate was a more interesting figure than he had first thought.
Cameron sighed. 'You could say that. I fear my… other activities have tended to dominate in recent years. Not least of all because they were more profitable. That was at the time, of course, when I had a reason to want more money.'
'Forgive me,' said Gresham, 'but did your wife and children actually exist?'
'Oh yes,' said Cameron. 'I take the point, and in the spirit it was intended. Wonderful sob story, isn't it? But, as it happens, it is true. With one final twist. I became a spy, as distinct from a respectable if rather dowdy lawyer, because it gave me more money. And, if I'm being honest, because it was more exciting. I thought the only danger in it was to me, that I was running the risk. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when my wife and children caught their illness from an agent who asked us to shelter him for two nights in our home. We gave him the children's bedroom. Space is at a premium here in Edinburgh, even for reasonably wealthy families.'
He took a drink from the mug, ran his hand up the side of his face, examined his fingers. There was only a little blood on them.
'You have to admit that life has a sense of humour. We'd just sacked a maid, but let her stay on for two days out of kindness to find somewhere else to go to. Her last job was to change the sheets on the bed. My wife was scrupulous about these things. Except the maid never changed them, and for the first time in her life my wife did not check. She was going to, had actually set off, when there was a knock on the door and her dear mother made one of her unannounced visits. I suspect my friend the agent left some of his fleas as a parting present. He was dead a week later anyway, my wife and children a few days after that. So that's the story. I seem to be left with the job I did for them. And I do seem unable to get myself killed.'
'We're leaving, now,' said Gresham, the alarm bell tolling in his head. The intrigues in the Court of London were like walking through a deep marsh in a thick fog. In Scotland it was like doing the same walk not only in fog but in the pitch black of night.
'I need a fast passage to England,' said Cameron. 'May I take passage on your boat?'
So as to knife me in the back all the more easily, thought Gresham. Out loud he said, 'Why so urgent?'
Cameron grinned. 'For some reason James trusts you to deliver this package to Elizabeth.'
'We sail within the hour. If you can be there by then, you may take passage. If not, we leave regardless.'
Gresham and Mannion both noted the man who scurried away as soon as they left the lodgings, but if he was going to call out help to stop them he failed to do it in time. They made it to the Anna unmolested.
'Why the hell are you lettin' that freak come along with us?' asked an incredulous Mannion.' 'E's about as trustworthy as a spoon with an 'ole in the middle of it!'
They were on the quarterdeck, watching the smoke of Edinburgh recede. Cameron was somewhere down below. ('Probably knocking holes in the bottom of the boat' muttered Mannion.) Jane was standing nearby.
'Trustworthy?' said Gresham. 'Women are witches when it comes to judging character. Here, Mistress Jane, what do you think of our new acquaintance Cameron?'
Jane thought for a moment.
'I think he is evil,' she said, 'and you are mad to bring him with us. Why have you?'
Gresham tried not to show his shock at the certainty of her judgement and its intensity.
'Like you,' he said, 'I don't trust him. Yet I'm like a tennis ball being hit between the factions at Court, and being hit from one Court to another. Already someone's tried to murder us. Cameron is the only enemy I can see! If I can keep him in sight, he might lead me to the others.'