Fate and Fortune (14 page)

‘The man who could tell you more is the printer Henry Charteris. Or the first bailie, Thomas Wishart. You have met him once before. He is the man who arrested you when you arrived.’

Hew pulled a face. ‘I may give that a miss.’

‘I understand your qualms. They are a most officious crowd,’ said Richard, sympathetically. ‘What did you require, specifically?’

‘It is Christian Hall. It appears that another printer has a grudge against her, and has tried to close her down.’

‘She is a widow, who took on her husband’s press,’ Richard remarked.

‘Aye, she is.’

‘And therefore she is vulnerable. The likelihood is that this man – for, of course, it is a man – hopes to put her out of business, or to make her trade so hard she is obliged to sell.’

‘It looks that way.’ Hew told Richard about the fire. ‘But
fire-raising
, surely, is a matter for the justice court, and not the burgh,’ he concluded.

‘For certain, a plea of the Crown. But can it be proved? To leave a candle burning, though it may be careless, does not constitute a crime.’

‘But is Christian not entitled to some reparation, in as much as this occurred on Chapman’s premises?’ Hew persisted.

‘As to that, I cannot say. It is a matter for the burgh court. I hazard, though, it will be thought an accident, and Chapman cleared of any blame, and any debt to her.’

‘Well then, is there a way to stop his intimidation of her?’

‘How is it manifest?’

‘He claims he wants to marry her.’

Richard burst out laughing. ‘I do not think the courts would count that a threat to her. You mentioned that she had a child?’

Hew nodded. ‘Aye, a little boy.’

‘Then I imagine that the council would encourage her to take up Chapman’s offer. It is difficult enough do the work, without a child. Therefore it is hard to prove that there is any ill intent. May I ask you something?’

‘Aye, of course.’

‘You seem a little too …
involved
with Christian Hall. Do you think it wise?’

Hew coloured. ‘My father invested deeply in her press; I feel connected to her,’ he explained.

‘That I understand,’ said Richard thoughtfully. ‘Have you made much progress with the book?’

‘We have started the first chapter. But the work is very long. And, if I dare to say it, rather tedious. It will take a little time to restore the damaged parts. With your permission, I will go this afternoon, and return to it.’

‘You could, perhaps, bring the manuscript here, where there are fewer – shall we say – distractions,’ suggested Richard.

‘I thank you, but the book has been broken in parts, and takes up a great deal of space. And if I make corrections in the printing house, they can be set more quickly, as I go along,’ Hew answered hurriedly. It was a poor excuse, and one that scarcely hid the truth: he wanted to see Christian. Richard looked displeased for a moment, and then smiled. Hew recognised his mood, and his control of it.

‘I am afraid you may be falling in too deep,’ Richard answered thoughtfully. ‘And I think that as your friend I ought to find out more of this. Who is Christian Hall? For I confess, I do not know the press, and I know nothing of her husband. There is a tale attached to the premises she has; for they belonged to someone else before.’

‘Another printer?’ queried Hew.

‘Another printer, aye, that went away. But that is not my point. Where did Christian come from? And how did she know your father? Her house is somewhat far from Kenly Green, and somewhat close to mine, yet I had never heard of it. And since her press prints books about the law, I should perhaps have heard of it.’

‘I think that this is a new departure,’ Hew explained. ‘I have the impression, that it was a small and private press; printing bills and leaflets, pamphlets and so on, and not so many books. It seems my father financed it. Perhaps, after all, it was an old man’s foolishness: he wanted to make sure they would take on his book. It is unlike him, certainly. I never thought him vain. But it is evident his interest in the press ran deep, for he went so far as choosing the device. It was the mark that confused me, at the start, for I had supposed it was Christian’s, though in fact it was her husband’s. He was William Hall.’

‘If he was William Hall,’ Richard mused, ‘then who was she?’

‘That the strangest thing. She does not seem to know, or else she does not want to tell me. I thought perhaps the goldsmith, Urquhart, might know more.’

Richard was silent for a moment. Then he said thoughtfully, ‘I think it very likely that he does. Urquhart is a great repository of facts. He keeps his secrets close. He is the most elusive man, for he has no curiosity. And people tell him things, because he does not care. Well then, we must sound him out, before you fall in love with her.’

Hew was startled. ‘I do not mean to fall in love with her!’ he protested.

Richard laughed, ‘As to that, it is quite clear that you do, and that nothing I can say has hope of dissuading you. Therefore, I suggest that we find out who she is.’

He walked towards the window, looking out. ‘The streets begin to fill. It is never still for long,’ he said. ‘Already I can hear the
hucksters
, practising their cries, though the markets do not properly begin till noon. The restless monster does not does not sleep for long. You mentioned a device. What was that?’

‘The letter H entwined about a cross, for Christian and for Hall.’

‘I thought you said it was the husband’s mark?’

‘Aye, it was. It makes no sense. The H was for him, and the cross was meant for her, and so it seems the press belonged to both of them. And above this is the tree of knowledge, that is often found on books, and sitting in the tree there is a black bird, like a raven or a crow, and no one seems to know what that might mean, but Christian says, it was my father’s wish to have the corbie.’

‘A corbie?’ Richard murmured. ‘That is strange. You don’t know, I suppose, what that signified to him?’

‘I confess, I can’t imagine,’ answered Hew. ‘It is another mystery.’

‘We are running out of ink,’ Richard remarked, poking his head round the door, ‘and the clerk is at the council house. Perhaps you would be good enough to fetch some from the stationer, and to call at home, where I have left a letter I shall have to answer presently. It is from a distant cousin of my wife, and bears the Preston seal. You will find it in the writing desk, in my private closet.’ He handed Hew a key.

Hew accepted gladly, grateful for the air. He was pleased at Richard’s trust, for Richard had been occupied all morning with a stream of personal clients that showed no sign of slowing, none of whom would let him listen in. Hew had spent the hours in the servant’s cubicle, feeling stiff and bored. He left Richard to his work and wandered through the town, prepared to take his time. The stationer kept shop across the street, at the east end of the luckenbooths, the row of shops that stretched down from the tolbooth, along the northern aspect of St Giles. They occupied the space of seven tenements, with over buiths above, and further storeys in the process of construction, in keeping with the upward progress of the town. They had narrowed the street on the north side to a tight little lane, known as the buith raw, squeezing out the light from every house. In the middle of the luckenbooths an arched passage led through to the kirk stile, the porch of the kirk of St Giles. More commonly referred to as the stinking stile, this passageway collected all the debris from the shops, thrown from upper windows to the backside of the street. Behind it, between luckenbooths and kirk, were makeshift stalls set out against the north wall of the church, spilling from each buttress, nook and cranny. Hew walked now among these chapmen, watching as they opened out their stalls. He was astonished at how much they could fit in so small a place. Some sold haberdashery, silks and linens, buttons, lace and threads. Others offered silverware or pewter spoons and cups. There were vinegars and oil, cinnamon and cloves, and every type of metalwork, from knife and pot handles to buckles and locks, from scissors to purses and pins. There were chess sets too, and playing cards, and tiny painted horses made of lead or wood. All the trappings and effects of an inner world were found among the crames, the small essential fragments that made up domestic life. And yet the merchants were ephemeral, locking up their secrets when the markets closed. Hew thought he recognised a figure at the far side of the lane, but by the time he made his way there, the man had disappeared. And that was the sense that he had of the cramers, like Egyptian story-tellers, fugitive from law, they could come and go as easily as dreams.

Hew bought the ink and continued to the house for Richard’s letter. He found the children playing in the hall and paused to watch, for Grace was building cards into a house.

‘Those are pretty,’ Hew observed, as the card tower tumbled down. ‘Where did you get them?’

‘Minnie bought them from a man in town. She thought that they might help me learn.’ The child pulled a face. ‘My father has sent away the nurse, and engaged a mistress. She speaks to me in French.’

‘She was once a maid,’ explained Roger, ‘that belonged to the old queen, Mary. Father thought she might teach Grace some better manners. I think that unlikely, though.’

‘I have good manners, don’t I?’ the little girl appealed to Hew.

‘Certainly, you do.’

‘I don’t like Jehanne,’ she pouted. ‘She is old, and smells of garlic.’

‘My sister, you recall, has a most discerning nose,’ Roger said unpleasantly to Hew.

His sister scowled. ‘Is he making fun of me?’

‘I might suspect he mocked us both,’ Hew told her solemnly, ‘if I believed, he could be so discourteous.’ Roger had the grace to blush.

‘Are you not at school today?’ asked Hew.

‘Roger has the cough, and the master finds it tiresome,’ Grace answered for him. ‘
Actually
, so do we.’

Hew laughed. ‘Poor Roger! We must hope he will be better soon.’

‘Do you speak French?’ Grace went on.

‘A little,’ Hew admitted.

Roger said, ‘French is for girls and dancing masters,’ and Hew ignored him. Grace replied, ‘I should like a dancing master. But we don’t have dancing here. Who was it taught you French?’

‘A French girl called Colette,’ Hew answered gravely.

‘Was she bonny?’

‘Aye, she was,’ he smiled at her.

‘Jehanne is fat and ugly. And she does not know how to dance. I think that was why the queen left her behind, when she went away.’

‘How stupid you are,’ Roger sneered.

Hew said hurriedly, ‘May I see the cards? I have a pack like this at home.’

‘Aye, very well,’ Grace sighed. ‘I cannot make them stand up, anyway. They keep on falling down. Look, I do know the names. This one is the sun,
le soleil
, and this one is
le roy
, the king; and here is the devil,’ she made a little shiver, ‘
le diable
; and this one,’ she screwed up her face, ‘is …
le pen-du
…’

‘The hanged man,’ said Roger, looking over her shoulder.

‘I
know
that, he’s the hanging man. Why is he upside down?’

‘Because he is a traitor,’ Roger said maliciously, ‘the worst type of thief. Tis likely that before they hanged him they would—’

‘Likely, aye, but not for little girls,’ Hew interrupted hurriedly. Roger grinned.

‘They make up a game of triumphs. Do you know how to play it?’ he asked Hew.

‘Certainly, I do.’

‘Then will you teach it to us?’ Grace implored.

‘If your mother will allow it – though I fear that means no. Meantime, let us try again to build your tower.’

Hew was thoughtful as he handed back the cards. He had seen the pack before, or one very like it, in St Andrews on the stall of Marten Voet.

Hew fell into a pattern of attending Richard in the morning, either in the court house or his buith in Leche’s close. When the courts were not in session, his afternoons were free. Most of them he spent in Christian’s shop, correcting Matthew’s copy, or reading out to Phillip as he set the type. Hew came to admire the compositor’s skill, and the speed with which he set the type by touch, without looking down to the letters, and he learned to stand where he did not block the light, and not to touch the formes before they were locked into the chases. Walter and Phillip worked in curious harmony, each regulated by the motions of the other, each goading on the other to increase his speed. Michael meanwhile ran between them, and fetched and carried as required, while Christian collected and collated the texts, prepared the sheets for binding, and dealt with any customers. And Hew began to learn the printer’s cant and customs, which amused him with their quaintness; how each new year they made fresh paper windows, to protect the pages from the sun; how Walter was a
horse
and Phillip was a
galley slave
, though to say so in their hearing resulted in a solace, or a fine. These solaces, for transgressions of the printing house, were collected at the week’s end and translated into liquor, for the little suppers that the chapel shared. And Hew began to look forward to those evenings most of all, when Christian would pull off her apron and cap, shake loose her hair and sit down by the fire, and Phillip would take out his fiddle and play, while William spun himself dizzy and chased round the room, flushed from his walks on the muir.

On Thursday next, unusually, the pattern was reversed, for Richard had some private business in the late hours of the morning, and excused Hew from his office till the afternoon. Hew arrived at Christian’s shop a little after ten, to find the place in sombre mood. Walter and Phillip were both working furiously, while Michael and Christian were nowhere to be seen.

‘What has happened?’ Hew inquired of Phillip, who simply replied with a shrug, without taking his eyes from the frame. It was Walter who answered, ‘Christian has dismissed Michael.’

‘Whatever for?’ asked Hew.

‘He made a mistake,’ muttered Phillip. ‘One of his tricks missed its mark.’

‘I should say, rather, it hit it. It was not proper to dismiss him though,’ reasoned Walter. ‘And it was not reasonable. For what are we to do without a week boy? We are hard enough pressed at it is.’

Hew smiled at the pun, but clearly no jest was intended.

Phillip warned, ‘Since that is the case, more work, less talk, must be the remedy here.’

‘But what has Michael done?’ persisted Hew.

Walter jerked an elbow to the door of the collating room. ‘Look over there.’

Pushing open the door, Hew saw nothing amiss. The uncorrected parts of Matthew’s manuscript were stacked in a pile on the table to the right, next to the corrected copy and a stack of folded sheets for Henry Charteris. There was nothing out of place. Then he noticed a small packet on the floor, lying careless in a corner, as though someone had dropped it there, incongruous in the neatly ordered room. He placed it on the table and unwrapped it. Inside he found the carcass of a bird, a blue-black ball of feathers on a brittle stack of bones. A translucent eye protruded limply from its socket. Pinned to the breast was a white scrap of paper, printed with the words ‘Ane corbie messenger.’

Hew took the parcel back into the printing house. ‘What’s this?’ He dropped the bird on the correcting stone.

‘God’s truth, but not on there!’ objected Phillip. ‘The wretched boy has played a trick and Christian has dismissed him for it. He has gone too far.’

‘What can he have meant by it?’ asked Hew.

Phillip shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

‘He will not admit to it,’ interjected Walter. ‘He claims, the packet was already in the shop, when he came in with the ink this morning. Plainly, he was lying.’

‘Is it so plain?’ Hew wondered quietly. He folded the dead crow back in its packet. ‘Where’s Christian?’ he demanded.

‘It is not convenient for you to be here,’ Phillip said tersely. ‘We are too busy. And Christian is not well today. She has no time to help you with your father’s book. Go and worry some poor debtor, or whatever else you do.’

As he spoke, Christian appeared from upstairs. ‘I heard voices. Is something amiss?’ she inquired anxiously. Then she saw the package in Hew’s hands.

‘I told the boy to take that with him,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Since he has not done so, Walter must dispose of it.’

‘I can take it with me, if you like,’ offered Hew.

Christian answered coldly, ‘Put it down.’

‘I would like to call a meeting,’ Phillip said abruptly.

‘Call it now, we are all here,’ Christian replied. ‘And if you can call it without stopping work, then so much the better. We are behind enough.’

Phillip sighed. ‘If you will leave the work a moment, but to hear me out, it would oblige me. The matter is of some importance.’

‘If you would pick up your letter, and go on with it, it would oblige me, Phillip. Or Walter will stand idle, and it will fall to you to make good his losses.’

‘This wants reason!’ Phillip countered crossly, ‘though I know the bird upset you—’

‘How is that?’ Christian turned on him. ‘A child’s trick! How should that upset me?’

‘It should not,’ he told her earnestly, ‘for that is all it was. Michael at his tricks and afraid to own it. He has gone too far. But was it proper to dismiss him, for a childish jape? And besides, we want a week boy. Who will fetch and carry? Let me speak with him, and Walter here will bring him to a state of right contrition. Let him say he’s sorry, and allow him back.’

‘I will correct him,’ Walter promised cheerfully, ‘on the correcting stone.’ He winked humorously at Hew, who was sickened.

‘You think it
was
Michael?’ Christian hesitated.

‘I am convinced of it,’ Phillip assured her. ‘He is still a bairn, and did not understand that it would fright you. Let me put it right.’

‘As you will,’ she conceded quietly. ‘I pray you, do not mention this again.’

Hew spent the afternoon in conference with Richard, who wanted to discuss the finer points of spuilzie, and the hours passed slowly. But excused at last, while Richard had some business in the court house, he came by the printing house to see the week boy emerge, red-eyed, with the crow held out in front of him, swinging by its feet, like a leper’s bell, or the heretic’s indictment of his sin. On impulse, Hew caught up with him.

‘Where do you go with that, I wonder?’

‘I am to drown it in the loch,’ the boy mumbled, in a voice suggesting he had not long dried his tears. Not
drown
it, for tis dead already, but to be rid of it there,’ he corrected, unnecessarily.

‘The north loch is foul enough without that, don’t you think? Why not bury it upon the shore. I will help you find a place.’ Hew took advantage of the boy’s hesitation, leaning forward to relieve him of the bird, and walked along beside him till they reached the loch. Michael sniffed a little, but did not demur.

‘Here’s a likely spot, now. Make a grave,’ suggested Hew.

The act of digging seemed to cheer the boy, as it was meant to; and when they had a chasm they judged big enough to hold the bird, Hew placed it in the hole and crossed its wings, with a grave
solemnity
well-judged to make him grin, in shared and secret sacrilege. Michael smiled a little wanly, and was brave enough to lift the paper from the corpse, and venture timidly. ‘
Ane corbie messenger
. What does that mean?’

‘The raven that Noah sent forth from the ark, in the story of the flood; it signifies false messenger, or one that comes late, or comes not at all.’ Hew looked at him curiously. ‘You did not write it, then?’

The boy shook his head. ‘I cannot write, sir. Phillip has been teaching me my letters,’ he said simply. ‘But we have little time for it. I can read a little, though,’ he added proudly.

‘And you did not kill the crow?’

The boy looked close to tears. He shook his head. ‘I never saw the bird, before Christian found the parcel. And I never brought the parcel. It was lying in the shop, when we opened up.’