We got him settled in at Lucky Seaton’s. Lucky had been a hoor herself at one time, then had been turned to the Moderate movement and now ran a Christian rooming house.
‘We know all about medical students, don’t we, Cully?’ she said, while Gisborne took the measure of his room. ‘The worst sinners in Christendom.’
She patted Master Gisborne on his plump cheek, and I led him back down the treacherous stairwell.
‘What did she mean?’ he asked me.
‘Visit a few howffs, and you’ll find out,’ I told him. ‘The medical students are the most notorious group of topers in the city, if you discount the lawyers, judges, poets, boatmen, and Lords this-and-that.’
‘What’s a howff?’
I led him directly into one.
There was a general fug in what passed for the air. Pipes were being smoked furiously, and there were no windows to open, so the stale fumes lay heavy at eye level. I could hear laughter and swearing and the shrieks of women, but it was like peering through a haar. I saw one-legged Jack, balancing a wench on his good knee. Two lawyers sat at the next table along, heads close together. A poet of minor repute scribbled away as he sat slumped on the floor. And all around there was wine, wine in jugs and bumpers and bottles, its sour smell vying with that of tobacco.
But the most noise came from a big round table in the furthest corner, where beneath flickering lamplight a meeting of the Monthly Club was underway. I led Gisborne to the table, having promised him that Edinburgh would acquaint itself with him. Five gentlemen sat round the table. One recognised me immediately.
‘Dear old Cully! What news from the world above?’
‘No news, sir.’
‘None better than that!’
‘What’s the meeting this month, sirs?’
‘The Hot Air Club, Cully.’ The speaker made a toast of the words. ‘We are celebrating the tenth anniversary of Mr Tytler’s fight by montgolfier over this very city.’
This had to be toasted again, while I explained to Master Gisborne that the Monthly Club changed its name regularly in order to have something to celebrate.
‘I see you’ve brought fresh blood, Cully.’
‘Mr Gisborne,’ I said, ‘is newly arrived from London and hopes to study medicine.’
‘I hope he will, too, if he intends to practise.’
There was laughter, and replenishing of glasses.
‘This gentleman,’ I informed my master, ‘is Mr Walter Scott. Mr Scott is an advocate.’
‘Not today,’ said another of the group. ‘Today he’s Colonel Grogg!’
More laughter. Gisborne was asked what he would drink.
‘A glass of port,’ my hapless charge replied.
The table went quiet. Scott was smiling with half his mouth only.
‘Port is not much drunk in these parts. It reminds some people of the Union. Some people would rather drink whisky and toast their Jacobite “King O’er the Water”.’ Someone at the table actually did this, not heeding the tone of Scott’s voice. ‘But we’re one nation now,’ Scott continued. That man did like to make a speech. ‘And if you’ll drink some claret with us, we may yet be reconciled.’
The drinker who’d toasted Bonnie Prince Charlie, another lawyer whose name was Urquhart, now turned to Gisborne with his usual complaint to Englishmen. ‘“Rule Britannia”,’ he said, ‘was written by a Scot. John Bull was invented by a Scot!’
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 dinner, and thence to another where Scott would drink champagne and lead a discussion of ‘the chest’.
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 dinner. A brothel was being discussed as the next destination… Luckily, Scott was taking an interest in him, so that Gisborne’s pockets were still fairly full, though his wits be empty.
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 connected his head to his trunk. He had reason to feel nervous. Prompted by events in France, sedition was in the air. There had been riots, and now the ringleaders were being tried.
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.’