Beggars Banquet

The drinker who’d toasted Bo

He slumped back, having to his mind made his point. Master Gisborne looked like he had tumbled into Bedlam.

‘Now now,’ Scott calmed. ‘We’re here to celebrate montgolfiers.’ He handed Gisborne a stemless glass filled to the brim. ‘And new arrivals. But you’ve come to a dangerous place, sir.’

‘How so?’ my master enquired.

‘Sedition is rife.’ Scott paused. ‘As is murder. How many is it now, Cully?’

‘Three this past fortnight.’ I recited the names. ‘Dr Benson, MacStay the coffin-maker, and a wretch called Howison.’

‘All stabbed,’ Scott informed Gisborne. ‘Imagine, murdering a coffin-maker! It’s like trying to murder Death himself!’

As was wont to happen, the Monthly Club shifted to another howff to partake of a prix fixe di

The chest in question had been found when the Castle’s crown room was opened during a search for some documents. The crown room had been opened, according to the advocate, by special warrant under the royal sign manual. No one had authority to break open the chest. The crown room was locked again, and the chest still inside. At the time of the union with England the royal regalia of Scotland had disappeared. It was Scott’s contention that this regalia – crown, sceptre and sword – lay in the chest.

Gisborne listened in fascination. Somewhere along the route he had misplaced his sense of economy. He would pay for the champagne. He would pay for di

I sat apart, conversing with the exiled Comte d’Artois, who had fled France at the outset of revolution. He retained the habit of stroking his neck for luck, his good fortune being that it still co

We were discussing Deacon Brodie, hanged six years before for a series of housebreakings. Brodie, a cabinet-maker and locksmith, had robbed the very premises to which he’d fitted locks. Respectable by day, he’d been nefarious by night. To the Comte (who knew about such matters) this was merely ‘the human condition’.

I noticed suddenly that I was seated in shadow. A man stood over me. He had full thick lips, a meaty stew of a nose, and eyebrows which met at the central divide the way warring forces sometimes will.

‘Cullender?’

I shook my head and turned away.

‘You’re Cullender,’ he said. ‘This is for you.’ He slapped his paw on to the table, then turned and pushed back through the throng. A piece of paper, neatly folded, sat on the wood where his hand had been. I unfolded it and read.

Outside the Tolbooth, quarter before midnight.

The note was unsigned. I handed it to the Comte.

‘You will go?’

It was already past eleven. ‘I’ll let one more drink decide.’

The Tolbooth was the city jail where Brodie himself had spent his final days, singing airs from The Beggar’s Opera. The night was like pitch, nobody having bothered to light their lamps, and a haar rolled through from the direction of Leith.

In the darkness, I had trodden in something I did not care to study, and was scraping my shoe clean on the Tolbooth’s cornerstone when I heard a voice close by.

‘Cullender?’

A woman’s voice; even held to a whisper I knew it for that. The lady herself was dressed top to toe in black, her face deep inside the hood of a cloak.

‘I’m Cullender.’

‘I’m told you perform services.’

‘I’m no minister, lady.’

Maybe she smiled. A small bag appeared and I took it, weighing the coins inside.

‘There’s a book circulating in the town,’ said my new mistress. ‘I am keen to obtain it.’

‘We have several fine booksellers in the Luckenbooths…’

‘You are glib, sir.’

‘And you are mysterious.’

‘Then I’ll be plain. I know of only one copy of this book, a private printing. It is called Ranger’s Second Impartial List…’

‘ Of the Ladies of Pleasure in Edinburgh.’

‘You know it. Have you seen it?’

‘It’s not meant for the likes of me.’

‘I would like to see this book.’

‘You want me to find it?’

‘It’s said you know everyone in the city.’

‘Everyone that matters.’

‘Then you can locate it?’

‘It’s possible.’ I examined my shoes. ‘But first I’d need to know a little more…’

When I looked up again, she was gone.

At The Cross, the caddies were speaking quietly with the chairmen. We caddies had organised ourselves into a company, boasting written standards and a Magistrate of Caddies in charge of all. We regarded ourselves superior to the chairmen, mere brawny Highland migrants.

But my best friend and most trusted ally, Mr Mack, was a chairman. He was not, however, at The Cross. Work was nearly over for the night. The last taverns were throwing out the last soused customers. Only the brothels and cockpits were still active. Not able to locate Mr Mack, I turned instead to a fellow caddie, an old hand called Dryden.

‘Mr Dryden,’ I said, all businesslike, ‘I require your services, the fee to be agreed between us.’

Dryden, as ever, was willing. I knew he would work through the night. He was known to the various brothel-keepers, and could ask his questions discreetly, as I might have done myself had the lady’s fee not been sufficient to turn me employer.

Me, I headed home, climbing the lonely stairs to my attic quarters and a cold mattress. I found sleep the way a pickpocket finds his gull.

Which is to say, easily.

Next morning, Dryden was dead.

A young caddie called Colin came to tell me. We repaired to the Nor’ Loch where the body still lay, face down in the slime. The Town Guard – ‘Town Rats’ behind their backs – fingered their Lochaber axes, straightened their tall cocked hats, and tried to look important. One of their number, a red-faced individual named Fairlie, asked if we knew the victim.

‘Dryden,’ I said. ‘He was a caddie.’

‘He’s been run through with a dagger,’ Fairlie delighted in telling me. ‘Just like those other three.’

But I wasn’t so sure about that…

I went to a quiet howff, a drink steadying my humour. Dryden, I surmised, had been killed in such a way as to make him appear another victim of the city’s stabber. I knew though that in all likelihood he had been killed because of the questions he’d been asking… questions I’d sent him to ask. Was I safe myself? Had Dryden revealed anything to his killer? And what was it about my mistress’s mission that made it so deadly dangerous?

As I was thus musing, young Gisborne entered the bar on fragile legs.

‘Did I have anything to drink last evening?’ he asked, holding his head.

‘Master, you drank like it was your last day alive.’

Our hostess was already replenishing my wine jug. ‘Kill or cure,’ I said, pouring two glasses.

Gisborne could see I was worried, and asked the nature of the problem. I was grateful to tell him. Any listener would have sufficed. Mind, I held back some. This knowledge was proving dangerous, so I made no mention of the lady and her book. I jumped from the messenger to my words with Dryden.

‘The thing to do then,’ my young master said, ‘is to track backwards. Locate the messenger.’

I thought back to the previous evening. About the time the messenger had been arriving, the lawyer Urquhart had been taking his leave of the Monthly Club.