‘Oh yes, not so far away. I could take you there later if you like.’
Tom nodded. ‘It’s worth a try,’ he said.
Cat was now looking at Tom’s filthy clothing. She frowned, wrinkling her nose. ‘Don’t they have a bath at the lodging house?’ she asked.
‘Margaret’s too mean with the water,’ said Tom. ‘But Mary is going to let me have a bath here.’ He looked at Fraser. ‘She said I could wear some of your old clothes, if that’s ok?’
Fraser grunted. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. He was intent on whatever he was doing, the tip of his tongue protruding from his lips as he worked on something delicate with his sharp, hooked knife.
Tom moved closer. ‘What are you making?’
Fraser leaned back a little. ‘It was your idea, really.’
Tom stared. ‘Oh,’ he said. Fraser was making a little coffin.
‘I admit, it seemed like a daft idea when you first mentioned it,’ he said. ‘But the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t get it out of my head.’ He picked up one of the little dressed dolls and placed it into the open coffin where it fitted snugly. He showed Tom the lid of the coffin which was decorated with pieces of crudely cut tin. ‘I made these decorations from some old shoe buckles,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s . . . fantastic,’ he said. ‘How . . . how many are you going to make?’
Fraser shrugged. ‘I’ve made three, so far,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking of it as a symbolic burial for the dead soldiers of Culloden.’
‘You’d need to make an awful lot of coffins to accommodate them all,’ said Cat. She pointed to the pile of fabric. ‘I’m making wee suits for them. Fraser still won’t let me put dresses on any of them.’
‘I should think not,’ said Fraser sternly. ‘Soldiers in dresses! What an idea.’
Cat made a face at her brother, but he didn’t notice. He went back to his carving, moving the hooked knife with great care.
Tom stood there, trying to get his head around what had just happened. He’d seen the mysterious coffins in the National Museum and he’d read how scholars had been speculating for years about the possible meaning of them. Now he’d come back in time and it seemed he’d given the idea of making them to Fraser. Which meant . . . if he’d got it right in his mind, that without him coming back, the coffins would never have existed in the first place. Which was mind-boggling.
‘Weird,’ he muttered.
‘What’s weird?’ asked Cat.
‘I can’t . . . it’s too . . .’ He shook his head, dismissed the idea. He looked at Cat. ‘You remember what I told you that day at the Grassmarket? About where I came from and everything?’
She nodded warily. ‘I remember,’ she said.
‘Have you had a chance to think about it?’ He glanced uncertainly at Fraser. ‘Does he . . .?’
‘I told him what you said.’
‘And?’
‘I told her you were a lunatic,’ said Fraser matter-of-factly. ‘And that you should probably be locked up for your own safety and the safety of others.’ He smiled. ‘No offence,’ he added.
‘None taken,’ Tom assured him. ‘Cat?’
She sighed. ‘I thought about it very hard,’ she told him. ‘I weighed up the evidence. You arrived here and you weren’t like anybody else I’d ever met. You dressed differently, you talked differently. Then I remembered when we were asking you questions about how long it took you to get here. You kept changing your story, almost as though you were saying what we expected to hear. First it was hours then it was one day, two days, three days . . .’
Tom looked straight into her eyes.
‘Cat, I swear to you, this is the God’s honest truth. I came from Manchester to Edinburgh on a modern train. Not like the old steam trains you’ve seen, its faster and quieter. It took me three hours to get from Manchester to Edinburgh.’
There was a deep silence while they considered this. Even Fraser was moved to stop working for a moment. ‘Three hours?’ he echoed.
‘Well, three hours and fifteen minutes, if you must know.’
Fraser laughed dismissively. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You can’t expect us to believe that.’
‘Ok.’ Tom reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone. ‘See this? It’s called a mobile phone. It’s not working at the moment because it’s out of power. But if it was working I could use this to talk to people all over the world, instantly. I could take your photograph with it . . . that’s like a perfect likeness of you? I could send emails, text messages, I could play music on it . . .’
Fraser reached out a hand and took the phone from him. ‘This is a black box,’ he said, tapping the glass with his finger.
‘Yeah, it is, but you need to see it working! Only I can’t charge it because I’ve no power lead and even if I had one, there’s no such thing as electricity yet. See, in the future there won’t be gas lamps and stuff. You just flick a switch and the lights come on . . .’ Fraser was looking at him blankly.
‘It just . . . wait.’ Tom reached into his pocket and pulled out the two ten pound notes he’d carried since he first arrived. ‘Look at this money,’ he said. He handed them a note each. ‘See that woman, that’s the Queen of England. Not now, but in the future. And look, on the other side? This bearded guy. That’s Charles Darwin. Look at the dates . . .’
‘1809 to 1882,’ said Fraser, flatly. ‘I know of a Charles Darwin. Our University professor told me about him. He reckons he’s an idiot. He was studying medicine under Dr Munro, here in Edinburgh, but he threw it all up in the second year and moved to England to study natural history, of all things.’ Fraser laughed dismissively. ‘Ruined a promising career. But he’s only young, he didn’t have a big beard like this fellow.’
‘Yes, that’s because it’s a picture of him when he’s an old man. 1882 is when he’s going to die. How . . . how could I know that if I wasn’t from the future?’
Fraser smiled. ‘Come back in fifty-two years and we’ll see if you’re right,’ he suggested. ‘This isn’t proof of anything, Tom. It’s just two dates on a scrap of paper.’
‘I believe him,’ said Cat and Tom could have hugged her.
‘Och, if he told you he was from the moon, you’d believe him,’ said Fraser, dismissively. ‘He’ll be telling us next that people have travelled there.’
‘They have,’ Tom assured him. ‘But that’s old news to me. That happened back in the sixties.’
‘Men went to the moon?’ muttered Fraser and now he looked really worried.
‘That’s not important right now. See, when this thing happens to me . . . when I travel through time, it’s like I’ve got no control over it. And the thing is, I could just go back to my own time without any warning.’
Cat looked desolate. ‘What do you mean, ‘just go back?’’
‘Exactly what I say. One minute I’d be here and the next . . .’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Gone.’
‘But you’d come back again?’
‘Probably not. I wouldn’t have any control over it. I mean, I keep going back anyway, just for a short while, but when I do, everything’s different and there’s this guy from the seventeenth century, William McSweeny, and he’s chasing me. I mean, I don’t how he’s doing it, but he’s there. And just yesterday, Cat, I went back for a while and you were there, only you weren’t you exactly and I . . . I was some guy called Michael.’
‘Oh, well, we’ve all done that from time to time,’ said Fraser, and Cat shot a scathing look at him.
‘Wheesht,’ she said.
‘No, I understand,’ said Tom, ‘I know it sounds crazy.’ He frowned, but went on with what he needed to say. ‘I just wanted to tell you . . . both of you, that if it does happen . . . if I suddenly go back to my own time, it won’t be because I want to, ok?’
‘Maybe that’s what’s happened to Jamie,’ said Fraser. ‘Perhaps he’s gone back in time or forward in time, or whatever it is you do.’
‘What kind of dream?’ asked Cat.
‘I don’t remember much about it. Just that he was scared and he kept shouting something to me . . . but it doesn’t make any sense. I think he was saying ‘bird’ And . . . ‘hay’?’
Cat and Fraser glanced at each other as though they recognised something.
‘What?’ asked Tom.
‘It probably doesn’t mean anything,’ said Cat.
‘It’s a song,’ said Fraser. ‘A daft wee song we used to sing every morning at the sessional school.’
‘How does it go?’
Cat thought for a moment and then sang, in a quavering little voice.
‘The bird in the hay, one bright summer’s day
He sang as he flew o’er the meadow.
Oh can’t you all see, that I’m healthy and free
And I’m such a handsome young fellow.’
Fraser took up the refrain in his deeper tone.
‘My feathers are green, with a beautiful sheen
and my beak is a splendid bright yellow.
I look down on the world, with my feathers unfurled
And I sing in a voice deep and mellow.’
Now they sang the chorus together.
‘Hey diddly dee, hey diddly dum, hey diddly diddly dorum . . .’
They broke off, looking slightly embarrassed.
‘That’s as much as I can remember,’ said Fraser. ‘I used to hate that song.’
‘Hmm.’ Tom thought about it. ‘I can’t see why Jamie would want me to tell me about that,’ he said. ‘A song.’
‘And not a very good one at that,’ said Fraser. ‘Och, perhaps it doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps it was just a dream. Some dreams are just nonsense.’
Just then Mary called from downstairs. ‘Tom. Your bath’s ready.’
He looked from Cat to Fraser and back again. ‘Mary,’ he said. ‘What does she think about the time travel business?’
There was a brief silence. Then Cat said, ‘She thinks you’re . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘She thinks you’re gone in the head,’ said Fraser, helpfully. ‘She thinks you’re as crazy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.’
‘Oh . . . right. Well, I don’t suppose I can blame her.’ Tom shrugged. ‘I’ll go and have that bath,’ he said. As he started to turn away Cat stepped forward and put her arms around him.
‘I believe you,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I hope that helps.’
‘It does,’ he assured her. ‘Lots.’
He felt a sudden impulse to kiss her, but he was uncomfortably aware that Fraser was studying him frostily, so he pulled away from her, gave her a last smile and went down the stairs to the kitchen, where, once Mary had left him in privacy, he removed his reeking clothes and had what must have been the most enjoyable bath of his entire life.
Seventeen
Tom and Cat made their way through the maze of narrow streets that branched off from Tanner’s close. Tom felt vaguely ridiculous, dressed in Fraser’s ill-fitting cast-offs; a pair of tweedy trousers, a collarless shirt and a moleskin jacket, but at least he was clean and smelled better than he had in ages. He wasn’t sure if Jamie’s mother would be able to tell him anything useful, but he knew he had to speak to her just the same. They walked for some time in silence. Then:
‘This is the place,’ said Cat.
Tom gazed at the ramshackle little house doubtfully. It made the other dwellings on the close look luxurious by comparison. It was badly dilapidated, the walls green with mould, the single window coated in a thick layer of grime. Tom stepped up to knock on the rotten wooden doorway and it swung open under his touch. He looked at Cat.
‘Why isn’t it locked?’ he asked her.
‘Mrs Wilson always leaves the door open,’ she told him. ‘She’s bad on her feet, so she prefers to let people come and go as they please.’
‘That’s not very safe,’ said Tom.
‘Well, who would want to harm an old lady?’ asked Cat and Tom looked at her disbelievingly. He couldn’t imagine anybody from his day and age who would dream of taking a risk like that. He remembered something that Nell had said to him − Don’t be too trusting. People aren’t always what they seem.
He stepped into a gloomy, damp-smelling hallway and called out.
‘Hello? Anyone at home?’
‘In here,’ croaked a voice and he and Cat walked along the hall to another door and pushed it open. It was dark in there, only a thin wash of daylight seeping in through the filthy windowpane and it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. Then he was able to make out the hunched figure of an old woman sitting in a chair in the corner of a bare and cheerless little room. A pathetic fire smouldered in a cast iron grate but it seemed no warmer in the room than it had been outside.
‘Mrs Wilson?’ asked Tom, walking forward. ‘Is that you?’
‘Who wants to know?’ asked the woman and now Tom could make out her face. It was pale and wizened with age and the tiny eyes that gazed steadfastly back at him were grey and watery. She was wrapped in a thick blanket which came up over her head and shoulders. A white clay pipe jutted from her mouth, emitting clouds of aromatic smoke, and her veined hands rested on the handle of a stout black stick. She looked impossibly old, Tom thought, but realised that living in a place like this would age a person prematurely. In reality, she might be no older than sixty or seventy years.
He moved closer still and Cat went with him, taking hold of his hand as she did so, as though being in the presence of the woman was making her nervous. ‘My name’s Tom Afflick and this is Cat . . . er, Catriona McCallum.’
‘Ah, the McCallum girl.’ Mrs Wilson nodded and seemed to relax a little. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘I know your mother. She’s a good enough woman, by all accounts.’ Her gaze flicked across to Tom. ‘You, I don’t know.’
‘We’re friends of Jamie,’ said Tom.
‘Are you now?’ Mrs Wilson took the pipe out of her mouth. ‘Well, then, perhaps you might be able to tell me what’s happened to him and why he hasn’t been to see his poor widowed mother in two whole days.’
‘Umm. Well, that’s just the thing,’ said Tom. ‘We haven’t seen him either. We’re looking for him.’
‘Does he owe you money?’ asked Mrs Wilson. ‘Because if that’s what this is about, you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m just an old woman without so much as a farthing to my name.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing like that,’ Cat assured her. ‘We’re worried about him, that’s all.’
‘I see him every morning,’ explained Tom. ‘Without fail. We eat breakfast together. Only he didn’t turn up today and I talked to a friend of his called Bobby Awl, who said he was expecting to see Jamie last night, but he didn’t show up there, either.’
Mrs Wilson’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’ll be the English boy Jamie was telling me about,’ she said. ‘The one he has such a high opinion of.’
‘Oh . . . I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Tom. ‘We’re just mates, you know? But we look out for each other. When did you last see him?’
‘The day before yesterday.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s not like him, this. He calls to see me every day of the week, to make sure I’m all right.’
Tom was surprised to hear this. Jamie rarely said much about his mother and when he did, it was generally a complaint about her brutal treatment of him. Hadn’t he said something about being beaten for eating a loaf of bread?
‘I didn’t know he came so often,’ admitted Tom.
‘Of course he does. And who do you think washes his clothes for him? That boy would be like a destitute if I didn’t take care of it.’
‘He told Bobby Awl that he had some kind of job to do last night. He didn’t mention that to you, when you last saw him?’
Mrs Wilson gave a wry smile. ‘Ah,
he wouldn’t be telling me about a thing like that. Not if there was money involved. He knows I’d soon be after him for a share of it.’ She sucked on her pipe for a moment, blowing out more smoke. ‘It’s not easy surviving at my time of life. I only have Jamie. Oh, I’ve a daughter, but I don’t see much of her. She’s far too busy with her fancy friends to spend time on the likes of me.’
‘Umm . . . what about your relatives in Leith?’ asked Tom.
Mrs Wilson stared at him. ‘I don’t know anyone in Leith,’ she told him. ‘If we’ve got relatives there, it’s news to me.’
‘Oh but, I thought . . .’
‘You thought wrong boy. I don’t know why Jamie would tell you that.’
‘It wasn’t Jamie,’ said Tom. He frowned. So Billy had been lying about that. But why, what possible reason could he have? Unless he knew something about Jamie’s disappearance. Unless he was somehow involved . . . He decided that he was going to have a long talk with Billy just as soon as he got back to Laird’s.
‘Can you think of any other reason why Jamie might want to leave Edinburgh?’ he asked.
Mrs Wilson laughed. ‘Jamie could no more leave this city than he could dance a Highland fling,’ she said. ‘He’s born and bred here and never stepped out of the place his entire life.’ Her expression changed to a look of misery. ‘Something’s happened to him,’ she said with total conviction. ‘I know it! Haven’t I always told him his curiosity would get him into trouble one day? He’s probably been robbed, murdered, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘We don’t know that,’ said Cat. She let go of Tom’s hand and moved forward to crouch down in front of the old woman. ‘I’m sure there’s some explanation,’ she said. ‘Everybody loves Jamie, nobody would want to harm him.’
Mrs Wilson scoffed at that. ‘You’re a naïve girl if you believe that,’ she said bluntly. ‘Edinburgh’s changed. It used to be kinder to the old than it is now. People like myself were given respect. But bad things are happening lately. I’ve heard rumours . . .’
‘What kind of rumours?’ asked Tom, intrigued.
‘About people going missing. There was Effie who used to sell scraps of leather around the close. She vanished overnight. And then the Haldane’s. First the mother and then the daughter. Just up and disappeared they did and nobody seems to have the least idea what might have happened to them.’ She leaned over and spat onto the floor. ‘You mark my words, something’s going on around Tanner’s Close and it’s the devil’s work. It’ll be me next. There’ll be nobody to miss me if Jamie’s gone.’
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