Why should you care about either? Charles thought, puzzled.
‘Maybe – no, actually, I doubt it. There is a Senate meeting this afternoon in the college, and I expect they are both going there.’
‘Good, good ...’ George watched Keith and Mungo Dalzell pass, half-hiding behind Tam. Charles tried not to laugh: George looked like a hero from one of the more ridiculous Gothic novels.
‘So, is it to do with a girl?’ asked Charles as they started off again, crossing the rest of Market Street and heading down an even narrower wynd. Tam, even lowering his well-mannered head, took up all the space and several people had to stand waiting until they had led him to a wider part. Charles tipped his hat to them and they smiled forgivingly.
‘What?’
‘Your visit. Is it to do with a girl?’
George drew himself up, transferring his width to his shoulders.
‘It is to do with a lady,’ he corrected his brother.
‘I beg your pardon. Might I be allowed to discover which lady it is for the purpose of a visit to whom I have the honour of placing my humble bunk at Mr. George Murray’s disposal for the cleansing of his boots?’
George scowled.
‘Don’t try to be funny. And I have a clean pair of boots in the saddlebags, anyway – do you think I would appear before her in these old things?’
The riding boots he wore were, indeed, three months old at least, Charles knew. Charles was not sure that he himself had anything less than three months old – except, perhaps, books. They passed the town kirk and turned right, out on to South Street. George walked with authority: Charles might have been his groom, he thought, bringing Tam along behind. Certainly his dark hair and brown eyes were nothing like George’s. Nearly opposite the Grammar School and the tatty old apse of Blackfriars there was a well, not busy at this time of day as all the water would have been drawn for the laundry that morning. George led the way down a close beside it, and came out in a rig-garden with a stable yard at the end of it. He unbuckled the heavy leather saddlebags and stood clutching them, waiting impatiently when Charles handed Tam over to the stable boy, then led him back to the front of the house on the street. Charles stepped ahead to open the door and wave him in. He was just about to follow George inside, when he heard from nearby,
‘Murray! Wait.’
He looked back into the street, and saw after a moment a solidly-built young man of middle height, wearing his red woollen gown in awkward tatters. He had hair the colour of last year’s straw, a face unevenly shaved, and a complexion that spoke of airless rooms and unnourishing food.
‘Thomas! What are you doing here?’ Charles asked in some concern. ‘You do remember you’re supposed to be at the Senate meeting.’
‘Remember? Of course I remember,’ Thomas said belligerently. ‘I’ve just been turned away at the door.’
‘What?’
Thomas looked around, suddenly cautious.
‘Maybe we should go up to your rooms,’ he said in a lower voice, though his hands twitched as if he could control his voice but his emotions had to show themselves somehow.
‘George is here,’ Charles warned him.
‘That’s all right: he’s not University. He’ll not say anything.’
Charles was less certain of his brother’s discretion, but allowed Thomas to lead him into the house and up the narrow staircase to the first floor. There was no particular sign of Charles’ bunkwife or her daughter, but the thick smell of Monday washday from the kitchen quarters indicated their whereabouts and he left them to their own devices.
On the first floor Charles had a sitting room and a bedchamber, with a ceiling so low he and George had to walk hunched, or with their knees bent. Thomas could just fit under the beams except in one corner, where the whole building had sagged slightly and the gap between floor and ceiling was even smaller. George looked round in surprise when Thomas followed him up the stairs, and gave an awkward little bow, which Thomas returned even less elegantly. Charles waved them to the available seating: George secured the small upholstered armchair Charles had brought from Letho, and Thomas took one end of the hard bench by the front window, while Charles unlocked a cupboard and brought out cheap student claret and glasses.
‘Thomas wants to tell us about the Senate,’ he explained briefly to George as he poured. George nodded, without encouragement. Thomas did not look at him, but began even before Charles had taken the other end of the bench.
‘You know the Senate was meeting with Lord Scoggie today and Professor Keith had asked me to come along as his amanuensis?’ Charles nodded: George, at the mention of Professor Keith, blinked and sat up. Charles glanced at him and expounded.
‘Lord Scoggie has – how many? – about half a dozen parishes in his gift, and someone told Thomas he might have a chance at one of them that’s coming up soon.’
‘A parish?’ said George in disgust. ‘What do you want one of those for? More trouble than it’s worth, I’d have said. You should see our minister at Letho –‘
‘George,’ said Charles with emphasis, and George shut his mouth.
‘It was my only chance to meet Lord Scoggie. I have no family connexions and my father has no powerful friends, you know. All I can hope for is a bit of help from my tutors. Well, now I know where I stand with them. Apparently Peter Keith expressed some passing interest in the Church, and the Professor whisked him off to the meeting instead,’ he said bitterly. ‘When I turned up, the janitors at the door said they had no directions to admit me, and wouldn’t let me in.’
‘Well, you can’t blame him for favouring his own son,’ said George, not unreasonably.
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Thomas, ‘but Peter Keith wants to be something different every week. Last week he was going to take a midshipman’s place in the navy, and next week he’ll probably want to be an architect or a pig farmer or a pantomime dancer. I’ve been aiming for a parish since I sat my bursary exam at school, and I can’t go back home without one. Everyone at school would say I had wasted the bursary, and my father would never apprentice me now. He’d say I had airs. It’s not fair.’
‘You’re right, it’s not,’ agreed Charles, ‘but it was almost inevitable something would go wrong. What made you ask Professor Keith in the first place? Urquhart or Shaw would have been much better.’
‘But Keith asked me. And I thought, well, he’s the man that will be able to approach someone as great as Lord Scoggie and have the nerve to introduce someone as low as me. Shaw would bumble away in the crowd and Urquhart would catch sight of some painting in the senate room and forget all about me.’
‘If I were you,’ said Charles, slowly, ‘I should go back to the Senate room at the end of the meeting and see if Keith will introduce you then. If he thinks his son is likely to take the parish, he will think you no threat and not grudge it. He has a high opinion of his own children, when they are not listening, anyway.’
Thomas looked unsure.
‘Yes, do it,’ said George, with enthusiasm. ‘Only get rid of that awful old gown. Here, borrow Charles’.’ He snatched Charles’ gown off the back of the chair he was sitting in and flung it across at Thomas, where it knocked his wine glass and spilled the contents over Thomas’ old gown. ‘The deciding factor,’ George declared with a laugh as Thomas looked down, dismayed. ‘You must wear Charles’ gown. It won’t be much too long for you.’
‘Very well, I’ll do it,’ said Thomas, standing up as if he was going to challenge George. ‘I’ll damn’ well do it.’
‘Sit down and have some more wine, first,’ said Charles, cross with George and his insensitivity. Thomas barely survived on his bursary, and could not afford a new gown.
‘No, I’ve had enough,’ Thomas declared. ‘Thank you, Charles. And if Professor Keith refuses … well, bad cess to the breed of him!’
‘Do take my gown, though,’ Charles said hurriedly. Thomas would have to learn to control his temper a little more if he was to become a minister:
the anger in his eyes was alarming. ‘And leave yours here: I’ll ask Mrs. Walker if she can get the stain out.’
Thomas quickly changed gowns and left, clattering down the stairs. George stretched his legs out with a happy sigh.
‘What a ridiculous man!’ he exclaimed. ‘A parish, and a run-down manse, and sermons to write every week, and having to set an example … oh, it’s horrible!’
‘Leave him alone, George,’ said Charles. ‘He has to earn a living, after all, and that is something you don’t have to contemplate.’
‘No, but maybe you do,’ said George, then stopped abruptly. Charles turned to stare at him, as his brother turned slowly crimson.
Chapter Two
‘Is that something you’d care to elaborate on?’ Charles asked, sitting carefully on the bench. It was so low that his legs bent up at the knee like a spider’s, but though he was uncomfortable he sat very still. George was useless at secrets.
‘I daresay you were expecting me to be bringing up your allowance,’ he said, not meeting Charles’ eye.
‘It had crossed my mind Father might send it with you.’ He stopped, and stared at George. ‘What – you mean he hasn’t?’
‘I mean he says he’s not going to, either.’
‘But … why not?’ Charles was bewildered. He knew his father was not exactly a supporter of what he termed ‘excessive education’, but he had thought that he would be allowed at least to finish his fourth year and try for his Master of Arts. He knew, too, that when he came to inherit Letho and the Edinburgh house and all his father’s other concerns that there would be little call for Hebrew or natural philosophy, but like other young men sowing their wild oats or, like George, flinging money around on new boots and coats for visiting young ladies, he wanted to enjoy himself a little while he could, and he had thought that his father understood that much, at least.
‘He says we have a perfectly good house at Letho, where you could at least hunt and shoot – not at this time of the year, I’m not sure why he said that – and another in Edinburgh, where you could be taking your place in society and meeting the right people, and he could see no good reason why you would choose to live in a hovel in St. Andrews just to read books, it wasn’t natural.’
George was no mimic, but Charles could hear their father’s voice behind his words even as George’s voice grew more and more reluctant. Charles tried to take it in.
‘But I have to pay my rent here: I have promised Mrs. Walker.’
‘Father wants you to pack up and come home, at least for a while.’
‘Won’t he at least let me finish the term?’ If he could finish the term, Charles might be able to give his father time to come round, and then persuade him to let him complete the year and his examinations.
‘Oh, look, I don’t know,’ said George, crossly, but his tone was belied by the anxious look on his face. ‘Lord knows, I don’t want you to leave St. Andrews. I like visiting you up here, and you seem to be enjoying it – can’t say it would appeal to me, but if it’s your kind of thing … Anyway, I think you should come back to Letho with me and talk to him.’
‘I might not be able to get leave of absence,’ Charles objected.
‘But if you’re leaving anyway …’
‘I’m not. I can’t see why … What set him off? Why was he so cross?’
‘I think it was the bill from the bookbinders.’
‘But that should have come here. I pay that out of my allowance. I don’t ask him for anything more.’ Charles was less angry than desperate. His father could be very stubborn when the mood took him: it could be impossible to persuade him out of this humour. He sat for a long moment, wondering what he could do before his mind had really recovered fully from the shock of the news enough to reason clearly.
George took out his watch, and cleared his throat apologetically.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I should wash and change. So should you, if you’re coming with me.’
‘Coming with you where?’ asked Charles, draining his glass and trying to shake his mind on to other things.
‘To Professor Keith’s. I want to visit his daughter, Alison.’
‘Alison Keith? Why on earth?’
‘Because she’s an extremely fine young woman, and it is normally considered a pleasure for any man to sit with an extremely fine young woman on a bright spring afternoon and talk with her of this and that.’
Charles looked at his brother in amazement.
‘You know what her father’s like?’
‘Oh, yes: but I also know he’s at a Senate meeting, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, but – oh, well, I suppose I’ll come, if only to keep an eye on you. George, you really have a taste for difficult women, you know that?’
George assumed a look intended to convey hurt dignity, and Charles gave an exasperated laugh as he headed back downstairs to ask Mrs. Walker for hot water.
The kitchens at the back of the house had a cold northern aspect not helped by the traditional duck-egg green walls, but as usual they were hot and busy. They were full to choking of the smell of soap and soda, and in the midst of the steam Mrs. Walker, a woman of the middle height and a red face, was exercising her not inconsiderable arm muscles in plunging sheets into hot water. She was helped by her daughter, both of them with their sleeves rolled up and their hair flat with sweat and steam, while their maid who did general work about the place scraped at a washboard in a small tub beside the blessedly open back door. The breeze, fresh outside, seemed however unusually reluctant to enter this netherworld of terrible industry, and the hot air surged from fire and laundry vats unmolested.
‘Oh, Mr. Murray!’ cried Mrs. Walker, seeing him at last. ‘One moment, my dear: you have caught us just at a bad time. We’ll just get this last one in to soak – steady now, Patience dear, and back a wee bit to the fire – that’s lovely, and now a quick stir and make sure it’s all under the water, my love.’
Patience Walker rolled her eyes a little, being of an age when she knew more about laundry and the life in which it occurred than her mother could ever teach her, but she set to willingly enough to stir up the sheets with an enormous paddle. Mrs. Walker, unaware of the eye-rolling, wiped her hands on a cloth and brushed at her apron before crossing the kitchen to Charles. Motherless from an early age, Charles was never entirely sure what the rules were in kitchens, and had instead imposed two on himself – if possible avoid, and if impossible, touch nothing. So far it had served him well.
‘Now, Mr. Murray, dear, what is it?’
‘I was looking for some hot water to wash with, Mrs. Walker, but I think I have chosen my time badly.’
‘Och, no, not at all, dear. Katie’s just put some fresh on to boil for the lace and we won’t need it just yet, will we?’ She looked round at her helpers, and Katie jumped up to fetch the water – less eager to please, Charles thought, than to be away from the finger-bruising washboard. She began to scoop water from a broad copper basin into a jug, and vanished briefly into clouds of thicker steam. Charles looked back at Mrs. Walker and noticed for the first time that her eyes were as red as her face. In addition, there was something a little different about her. She was wearing one of her two comfortable winter day dresses of dark grey wool with a little pattern of white in it, but the collar with its white starched inset looked somehow different. He could not put his finger on it: perhaps it was simply that the steam had taken out the starch.
‘Are you going out, then, dear, that you’re wanting a wash? Somewhere nice?’
‘Oh,’ said Charles, ‘my brother George is come up from Letho unexpectedly, and we are to – meet a friend of his for tea.’ He was not sure why he had chosen not to name Alison Keith: Patience had already glanced round at him and away again, and he felt oddly watched.
‘That’s lovely, dear.’ Mrs. Walker looked across to where Katie, who was only about twelve, was still spooning hot water with slow concentration. ‘Did you say your brother George was up?’ She turned back su
ddenly with a strangely embarrassed expression on her face. ‘From Letho? Perhaps –‘ she reddened, if anything, even more than she already had. ‘Perhaps your father will have sent you something,’ she finished, the words coming out in a lump like sweets all stuck together in a bag. She did not meet his eye, but then, in a second as Charles realised what she meant, it was his turn to blush.
‘Oh, I am so sorry, Mrs. Walker – he has not yet sent me my allowance for the rent! Oh, dear,’ he went on, fumbling for the words that would neither disgrace his father nor offend Mrs. Walker, and would at the same time not sound heartless. ‘I hope to receive it any day ...’ It was not quite a lie. ‘Is – is there a difficulty? I mean, has someone been ... only you look – upset.’
Patience Walker gave her mother a ferocious look, which Mrs. Walker ignored or did not see.
‘Upset? No, no, dear, not at all. Oh, you mean my eyes? Well, that’s the soda, my dear. See, Patience’s and Katie’s eyes are just as red!’
They were, too, he could see: it was quite true. Still, he thought, as he took the jug from little Katie with a smile, there was something about Mrs. Walker’s manner, and something, in particular, about the way she fingered her strangely unfamiliar collar, that made Charles wonder if they were all only affected by the soda.
The cloth that Katie had given him with the jug was a thin one, and he hurried upstairs with it to where George had removed his coat and cravat and was waiting, passing the time by fingering the stunning boots he had pulled reverently out of his saddlebags on the floor. They were like horse chestnuts, leather burnished till it shone, buckles silver and bright without being too ornamental, and a soft white kid lining that simply cried out to be touched. No Fife cordiner had made these: George must have been down in Edinburgh, taking his place in society – wasn’t that what their father had said? – and meeting the right people. An ungracious little though crept into Charles’ mind: what was his bookbinding bill, compared with these glorious boots?
It was not something he wanted to raise at the moment, and as he set the jug of water down beside its basin he cast about for something else to talk about. George set the boots gently down on the chair he was vacating, and rolled up his shirt sleeves as he followed Charles into the bedchamber. With the two of them in it, it seemed even smaller than usual, with its heavy, dark furnishings and ornately-curtained bed. The little casement window looked out over the garden to the stable. George crossed to the washstand and poured the water out, and Charles, moving out of his way, caught sight of the book he had wanted to spend his peaceful afternoon reading. Bound in a smooth brown calf like the rest of his books, just as pleasing to him as the chestnut glow of George’s boots, was his copy of the book they were reading in class with Professor Urquhart. He caught it up and turned back to George, who had just swept half the soapy contents of the basin up over his head, soaking the thin carpet.
Death in a Scarlet Gown (Murray of Letho Book 1) Page 2