The Fanatic
James Robertson

Dedication

for Ange

Epigraph

In that same year 1670 was that monster of men and reproach of mankind (for otherwayes I cannot stile him), Major Weir, for most horrible witchcraft, Incest, Bestiality, and other enorme crymes, at first contest by himselfe (his conscience being awakned by the terrors of the Almightie), but afterwards faintly denied by him, brunt. So sad a spectacle he was of humane frailty that I think no history can parallell the like. We saw him the fornoon before he died, but he could be drawen to no sense of a mercifull God, so horribly was he lost to himselfe. The thing that aggravated his guilt most was the pretext and show of godlinesse wt which he had even to that tyme deceived the world. His sister also was but a very lamentable object … She was hanged.

—Journals of Sir John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, with his observations on public affairs and other memoranda 1665–1676

This is the world’s old age; it is declining; albeit it seems a fine and beautiful thing in the eyes of them that know no better, and unto those who are of yesterday and know nothing it looks as if it had been created yesterday, yet the truth is, and a believer knows, it is near the grave.

—From a sermon by Hugh Binning (1627–53), minister of Govan

The wild heads of the tyme do dream,

There’s a world in the moon,

O, to deceive if I were trier,

For heir will trust me none.

—Lines from a satirical poem on Archbishop James Sharp, c.1667, Analecta Scotica

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue (Bass Rock, March 1677)

Edinburgh, April 1997

Linlithgow, September 1645

Edinburgh, April 1997

Edinburgh, September 1656

Edinburgh, April 1997

Edinburgh, April 1677

Edinburgh, April 1997/October 1987

Bass Rock, April 1677/Edinburgh, December 1666

Edinburgh, April 1997

Rotterdam, January 1667

Edinburgh, April 1997/July 1668

Edinburgh, February 1670

Edinburgh, April 1997

Bass Rock, April 1677/Kippen, November 1673

Edinburgh, April 1997

Bass Rock, June 1677/Edinburgh, April 1670

Edinburgh, April 1997

Edinburgh, January 1676

Bass Rock, July 1677

Edinburgh, April 1997

Edinburgh, September 1677

Edinburgh, 12 April 1670

Edinburgh, 1 May 1997

Edinburgh, 1 May 1997/January 1678

Edinburgh, 10, 11 January 1678

Edinburgh, 1 May 1997

Edinburgh, May 1997

Edinburgh, 2 May 1997

Portobello, 2 May 1997

A Historical Note and Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue
(Bass Rock, March 1677)

James Mitchel was dreaming. The kind of dream that mocks, constantly slipping in doubts: this is real, this is not real.

In the dream he was awake and lying in bed. The room was heavy and warm with the smell of woman. A great sadness was welling up in him. He lay there in the growing light and felt the sadness rise from the pit of his belly, a physical thing, spreading through his chest and to his throat till he thought he would have to cry out. But he didn’t; he didn’t want to wake her. Elizabeth. Aye, it was her right enough, he could hear her regular breathing. He heard his own breath, the air passing against the hair of his nostrils, a sound that was of him and yet not of him. Like the sound of your voice when you put your fingers in your lugs. Like the sound of the sea in a shell.

The dawn squeezed into the room. He reached out for Lizzie, and felt cold stone. Suddenly he felt fully, really awake. He turned his head and she wasn’t there. He knew then that they would never touch again. My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him. He wanted to scream or just to greet quietly but the constriction in his throat prevented it, would only allow a whimper.

He was lying in a tiny, damp cell that smelt of salt and urine. Daylight inched its dwaiblie way in and gave up. His bed was a wooden shelf hard up against the stone. He was alone. His right leg oozed pain.

He fell away again. Now he dreamt a face staring at him, evil, a bishop’s face sneering and cold beneath its black skull-cap. Mitchel stared back, refusing to flinch. But then there was another figure, darker and larger, wearing a hood with holes cut for the eyes. The figure reached for him, almost tenderly; lifted his right leg at the ankle, and laid it out straight as if streeking a corpse. Mitchel clamped his teeth together. He was seated in a chair, his arms bound behind him, his leg boxed like a planted sapling. The hooded man turned away, then back again. He was holding an iron-headed mallet in one hand, and a wooden wedge in the other.

The leg convulsed and Mitchel woke again. He sat upright. Through the wall he could hear a man reading from the Psalms: O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan. Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. Yet the Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life …

Mitchel minded where he was.

He was Maister James Mitchel, MA, preacher, tutor, soldier and sword of Christ, prisoner of the King. His enemies called him by a different set of names: fanatic, enthusiastical villain, disaffected rebel, assassin. He had been tortured to extract a confession for a crime he did not consider a crime, an act committed in the service of Christ. His wife Elizabeth was fifteen miles away in Edinburgh. He was incarcerated in the stinking prison of the Bass Rock off the east coast of Scotland, and he did not expect ever to be free again.

He shared the Rock with half a dozen others, also of the godly party, but they would hardly speak to him. Some thought him foolish, wrong-headed, ignorant; and some among them blamed him for having enraged the government and brought its wrath upon their heads. He had been in the Bass nearly two months and if he did not remain till he died it would only be because he had been fetched back to Edinburgh for execution.

His leg was a thrawn limb, in more ways than one. Under the torture of the ‘boots’ it had been so mangled and crushed that it was now not much more than an encumbrance. Even more than a year later he could put little weight upon it. The external injuries had healed, after a fashion, but it remained mere pulp within. It might as well have been missing altogether for all the use it was, and yet it refused to let him be. The pulsing and throbbing might start at any time in the day or night, and cease just as suddenly. It was like having a dog gripped onto him, a sleeping dog that woke hungry from time to time and gnawed at him as if meat and marrow were all he was.

Nine strokes of the mallet he had suffered. The number was hammered into his brain like iron studs in an oak door. He would wake sweating in the night from a dream of himself crushed into a coffin, unable to move, while some demonic servitor, having transported him thus like a living dead man, chapped nine dirling blows at the gates of Hell. Even though Mitchel knew that he was destined not for that place but for Heaven, the memory drove spikes of fire through his ruined leg.

It was ironic that the man who had caused his suffering, the man in the black skull-cap, had not even been present at the torture. James Sharp, Archbishop of St Andrews, had been in London at the time, but Mitchel did not absolve him on that score. Nobody was loathed by an entire people as Sharp was. The minister of Crail who had been so strong, apparently, in defence of Scotland’s Covenant with God; who had been sent by the Kirk to negotiate with King Charles in the year of his Restoration to the throne, and ensure the maintenance of Presbyterianism; who had gone to London to put down bishops and come back an archbishop … Judas Sharp, traitor of traitors. At Mitchel’s torture, some of those on the committee of counsellors and judges appointed to interrogate him had hidden their faces from him when he was brought before them in the vaulted room below the Parliament house in Edinburgh. They feared reprisals if his sympathisers got word of who they were, or they were conscious of their own guilt, or both. To Mitchel, Sharp was no more absent from the laich chamber than those other men were made invisible by covering their eyes. It might just as well have been St Andrews himself, and not the public executioner, hammering the wedges home.

Sharp should have been dead and Mitchel free. Mitchel had had his chance to kill him nine years before, but something had taken it from him, either his own hesitation or God’s finger spoiling his aim. And part of the rage that Mitchel felt was that he still did not know which.

Through the wall of the cell the voice read on from the next Psalm: Judge me, o God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man. Mitchel would have said Amen loudly to that but it was the minister James Fraser of Brea reading in his distinctive northern accent, and Fraser, though they had been brought together under the same guard from Edinburgh, had remained cool and disdainful of Mitchel because he thought his grasp of Holy Scripture suspect. Fraser was gentry, the son of a bankrupt Highland laird. A pox on him, Mitchel thought.

He concentrated on his leg instead, seizing the knee with both hands and pressing as hard as he could with his long, bony fingers. Sometimes he could drive the hurt downwards in this manner. He did not understand why this worked, since the damage was concentrated at the knee and below, nor could he recall how he had learnt it as a method of controlling the leg’s contumacy. He had tried everything, though, and by trial and error his hands had refined their haphazard skills. Sometimes he spoke aloud, mockingly, like a preacher excommunicating a malignant royalist: Thou art a girning apostate dog of a leg. He had a fantasy in which he imagined his leg being cast into eternal hellfire come the day of Christ’s judgment, while he ascended, hopping, to Heaven. A less than perfect saint among the saints.

He thought it was not blasphemous to contemplate this scenario in an effort to stem the floods of pain that the leg brought upon him. In fact, the idea of being unique in Heaven appealed to him. They would honour him there for his suffering. Christ Jesus knew him to be true: Jesus knew that he believed his Word, that legless or not he would be remade whole and glorious in the everlasting kingdom.

All Christ’s good bairns go to heaven with a broken brow, and with a crooked leg. He minded that. It was a line from a book he had once possessed, the letters of Samuel Rutherford, a book that had been loathed by the government and burnt by the hangman for its righteousness and truth. Mitchel’s copy was long since lost, but he had loved and treasured it, and still had whole passages by heart. Rutherford was like a second Bible to him. He took dry comfort from that sentence. The crooked leg he had already, and the brow would be broken soon enough.

He clutched his arms around himself and tried to squeeze out the cold. It felt like the sea itself had got into his bones. Outside he could hear the solan geese screaming. The Bass was home to thousands of the birds. They had arrived from wherever they spent the winter – Africa, some said – about the same time as Mitchel. The air was filled with their wheeling and pitching and screaming as they built their nests and pierced the sea for fish. He minded the approach to the Rock by boat, seeing the great streaks of shit down its hulk, its cliffs smoored white and green with the droppings of centuries. The swell of the sea sucked and belched against the foot of it, where steps had been cut leading up to the prison buildings. He had come there from Edinburgh a year after the torture, having lain in chains for most of that time in the city Tolbooth. Twelve horse and thirty foot soldiers had brought him, together with James Fraser, on a bitter day at the end of January. Soldiers had helped him from the boat and oxtered him up the steps and dumped him in this icy chamber, wrapped in a blanket, feverish and shuddering.

In the first week of his being there his fellow-prisoners had tried to mend his leg and restore his physical strength, but the best they could offer was their prayers. They were ragged, slate-faced men, scrunted and thin, and bent, like the handful of wizened cherry trees that grew at the top of the Bass, by the constant buffeting of the wind. Then these men withdrew from him by degrees, because they could not reconcile themselves to the vehemence of his will. Mitchel knew that they thought him embittered, even deranged. But he saw through their weakness: he had only carried the principles that they all upheld – the right of God’s people to resist unholy rule, the duty of God’s Scotland to defend the Covenant against prelatic blasphemy – to their logical conclusion. What they shied away from was their own fear: they were afraid to strike the righteous blow, to be the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.

Because of his leg, he had spent nearly all of the two months lying helpless in his cell. There was no possibility of escape from the Bass, which was sheer and devoid of landing-places on three sides and heavily fortified at the one spot on the fourth where a boat, in calm weather and with a favouring tide, could come in; and so the prisoners were allowed, one or two at a time, to walk everywhere upon it. But this was no advantage to him, crippled as he was. In any case, he was subject to special, more restrictive orders.

Some of the others, in fine weather, or even in wet, cold-blasting storms, spent more time out stravaiging among the solans than in the company of each other. Alexander Peden, the prophet of Galloway, had been there nearly four years, and Alexander Forrester and William Bell, arrested for field-preaching in Fife and in the Pentland Hills, almost as long; James Fraser had arrived on the same boat with Mitchel, and shortly after had come another minister from the north, Thomas Hog of Kiltearn, and a man called George Scot, committed for harbouring fugitive ministers; and there was one Robert Dick, a merchant, who had organised and attended the Pentland conventicle at which William Bell had preached. Together or alone, standing among the pecking solans that moved like a crop of bleached barley in the stiff wind, these men could look across the narrow, impossible sea and dream of re-crossing it. The soldiers of the garrison used to joke that the ministers took lessons from the birds in whining and preaching, so that if they ever got back to Scotland they could deave the whole country with their piousness.

The solans’ screaming never ceased. It sometimes sounded to Mitchel, who could only get to his door and back again, as though the cell must be the only place in the world not filled with birds. A madman would think the constant racket was inside his head. Several times a day Mitchel made a conscious effort to separate the white bird noise from his thoughts; to reclaim his mind from it.

For in his dreams, behind the skull-capped bishop and the hooded torturer, there lurked a third figure, an old man, also a prisoner. Mitchel laboured at his prayers and his Bible because when his mind grew slack this old man approached. He had long white hair damp with seaspray and the skin of his face looked like it had been eaten away by years of salt. More years than Mitchel could bear to think of. He feared the old man; the doubt and self-loathing in his milky eyes. He knew who it was, and it was not himself; but he feared becoming him.

Sometimes in rough weather supplies of food could not be got across from North Berwick for a week or more. In February the prisoners – and the soldiers who guarded them – had been reduced to mixing snow with oatmeal, and chewing on dried fish. The soldiers would sometimes catch fish from the sea, nail them to wooden boards and then float the boards on ropes under the cliffs. A diving solan, spotting the herring, would impale the wood with its beak and be hauled in to be roasted, but these adult birds, some of them twenty years old or more, were tough and oily meat. It was better to eat the fish.

In late summer, men would come to catch the solan chicks, when they were fat and tender but not yet able to fly. Hundreds were taken every year, and sent to London as a delicacy, and yet the colony showed no signs of decreasing in numbers. When the catchers were at work with their nets on the upper part of the Rock, or descending on ropes to knock the flightless chicks on the heads and fling them into the sea, where other men waited to pick them up from a boat, it was like watching Satan’s helpers harvesting souls.

The captain of the garrison administered this business on behalf of the governor, in return for an annual salary and a percentage of the profits. The governor was the Secretary of State for Scotland, John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale. The solan crop was worth around eighty pounds annually. But, this aside, neither he nor anybody else cared much how the captain exercised his power. If he chose, the captain could shut the prisoners in their cells and deny them access to the meagre criss-cross of paths that usually they could share with the birds and the two dozen scabby sheep that grazed the upper slopes of the Rock. He could put a stop to mutual prayers, or prevent visits from friends or family, some of whom travelled for days to reach North Berwick. There was no set of rules, no higher arbitrator to whom the prisoners could apply: the Bass fortress lay off Scotland as impregnable and cold to human comfort as a castle in the moon.

Edinburgh, April 1997

Hugh Hardie needed a ghost: one that would appear down a half-lit close at ten o’clock at night, and have people jumping out of their skins. He also needed a drink. He was seated at a table in Dawson’s, while Jackie Halkit was up at the bar getting it for him. The drink, he thought, might be business or it might be pleasure. He hoped both.

Dawson’s was a large overbright bar in Edinburgh’s Southside, that lurched between douceness and debauchery depending on the time of day. At four o’clock on a Monday afternoon in early spring it was quiet. Office workers were still at their desks; students from the university, with few exceptions, were attending lectures or dozing in the library. The juke-box was silent: the most noise in the place came from three old men settled in one corner, supping halfs-and-halfs and murmuring smug discontents at one another. One student, barely rebellious, was reading the Sun, and nursing his pint like a hospice patient, till all life had gone out of it. A woman, possibly a tourist, since she had a small rucksack beside her, was writing postcards at another table. She was drinking mineral water and to Hugh Hardie looked like she had been disapprovingly sober since the day she was born. The old men, he decided, were at that moment the liveliest patrons Dawson’s had. Himself and Jackie excepted, of course.

They were in Dawson’s because it was handy for them both. Hugh’s flat was a few streets away in Newington, and Jackie’s workplace, a small publishing house, was not far in the other direction, off the Canongate. Hugh had an idea for a book that he thought Jackie might be interested in publishing. Jackie was pretty certain already that she wouldn’t be but she hadn’t seen him for a while and she seemed to recall that she’d found his eager boyishness irritatingly attractive. Plus it gave her a good excuse to leave work early: the office was too cluttered and cramped to receive potential authors in any privacy. When she had suggested meeting in a pub on the phone, Hugh had named Dawson’s. Now she was returning from the bar with a pint for him and a gin and tonic for herself. She had insisted, in her role as interested publisher, on buying the first round.

‘Bit early for this,’ she said. ‘What the hell. Slàinte.’

He raised his glass, souked an inch or more out of it. ‘Slàinte.’ It was only recently that he’d learnt that this was Gaelic for ‘health’. For years he’d said ‘slange’ thinking it was an obsure Scots term signifying ‘slam your drink down your throat and let’s get another in’. It was watching Machair the Gaelic soap opera that had enlightened him.

‘Well, good to see you,’ he said.

‘Yeah, you too. I can’t remember when I last saw you,’ she lied.

‘That Chamber of Commerce day conference on tourism and small businesses,’ he said with precision. ‘Last autumn, remember?’

‘Oh aye,’ she said. ‘That was a long time ago. And now it’s spring, and the tourists are almost upon us again.’

Simultaneously they said, ‘And how is your small business?’, and laughed. It sounded like a line from a Carry On film.

Carry on Kidding Yourself, Jackie thought. Not for the first time, she found herself entering a conversation that somehow, for her, wasn’t … well, it wasn’t authentic. It had been the same at the conference. So-called experts and consultants delivered talks on resource management strategy, maximising customer/product interface potential, tactical merchandise-redeployment awareness – it all meant nothing and had her nodding off almost immediately.

Later she and Hugh shared a joke or two at the consultants’ expense, but it was apparent that he had taken in about ten times more of what they had said. And yet he derided them, agreed with her when she dismissed them as bullshitters. She wasn’t naive: he was two-faced in a perfectly harmless way; but then, so was she; and all night maybe he was trying to get up her skirt, but she didn’t mind that. It showed initiative.

He was transparently shallow but she wasn’t sure she wanted profundity in a man. She wasn’t sure she wanted a man. She was, however, interested in the idea that Hugh might be interested.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you tell us about your book and then I’ll tell you about my small business. Cause that’s the order they’re going to have to come in.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Is that how it is?’

‘Aye. That’s exactly how.’

‘Okay.’ He didn’t protest, didn’t even hesitate. ‘Well, you know about my ghost tours, don’t you?’

‘Of course. How are they going?’

‘Put it this way, we’re through the winter. That’s always kind of tough. The problem is, quite a lot of locals want to come on the tours but – and I can’t say I blame them – they’re not keen to wander round the Cowgate in the dark in a freezing January wind. We do a limited programme, depending on the weather and the demand. But it gets better from now on in. In July and August we could run tours every other hour if the Council would wear it. So, to answer your question, things are going all right. A healthy little number, but seasonally dependent.

‘That’s where this idea of mine comes in. I need to spread the potential income across the year. So I’ve been thinking, you know, spin-offs. The mugs and T-shirts option isn’t really an option, don’t you agree? But a book is a different proposition.’

‘The book of the tour?’ said Jackie doubtfully.

‘Exactly. Well, not exactly, no. I mean, you could just make a kind of pamphlet out of the tour script, but it wouldn’t be very long and it would need a lot of rewriting for it to work on the page. You know, you can’t have a rat running across someone’s feet every time they turn over page thirteen.’

‘You’ve got a rat that runs over people’s feet? Did you train it or something?’

‘Not a real one. A rubber rat on a string. You’ll have to come and get the full rat experience one night. It’s very atmospheric’ He paused, and Jackie wondered if he was going to offer her a free pass, but he only drew breath before breenging on with the sales-pitch.

‘Anyway, I had in mind something a bit more substantial than just a twenty-page pamphlet. A proper paperback stuffed full of Edinburgh’s haunted and macabre past. There’s tons of stuff, Jackie, as I’m sure you know, and a big market of people who want to learn about it. Or get scared silly, in an unthreatening kind of way. It’s not as if I’m the only person operating ghost tours after all.’

‘You certainly are not. You can’t move around St Giles in the summer for folk like you trying to flog their wares to the tourists: what with all the ghoulies and ghosties and body-snatchers and stranglers, you’d think Edinburgh history was one long overflowing bloodbath.’

Hugh shrugged. ‘I can’t help history. Give the people what they want, that’s my motto. I don’t see many of them signing up for the Edinburgh Social and Economic History Perambulating Lecture, do you?’

‘All right, point taken. What about the book?’

‘The blurb would relate it to the tour, so that hopefully people who picked up the book somewhere would come along to do the real thing, and vice versa. But it would stand on its own too, and sell as a good read to visitors and locals alike. Now, I don’t have time myself to mug up all the stories that would be in it, but we could commission someone to do the research and write it all up. Then all we need is a spooky, eye-catching cover design and a snappy title. I had in mind Major Weir’s Weird Tales of Old Edinburgh for that, by the way.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Jackie. ‘Commission someone to write it? Who’s going to do that, you? And who’s Major Weir when he’s at home?’

‘A very good question. He’s one of the characters on the tour. I thought he could maybe do an intro to the book – from beyond the grave kind of thing. We don’t want it too po-faced after all. Which reminds me, you wouldn’t happen to know of anybody who might want a bit of casual evening work, would you?’

‘Don’t dodge out of it, Mr Hardie. If you’re not going to write this book, I hope you’re not expecting us to pay someone else to.’

‘You’re a publisher, Jackie. Surely that’s your job. No gain without pain. And let’s face it, you’d get the bulk of the profits. I mean, I’d only be looking for a fifteen or twenty per cent royalty depending on the print-run and the cover-price.’

‘Hugh, in a moment you’re going to get up and buy us another drink, but before you do, listen to me a second. One, I – the company – wouldn’t pay a fee up front for a book that hasn’t been written. All we can afford to take on are finished manuscripts that we think are going to sell, and publish on the basis of the author getting paid a royalty. Two, in the unlikely event that we did pay a writing fee, we certainly wouldn’t be paying a royalty on top of that. Three, the absolute maximum royalty you can expect is ten per cent – if you write the book. You know all the publishing jargon, Hugh, but you’re short on the realities.’

‘But don’t you think it’s a great idea for a book? We’re talking about three or four different overlapping markets: local history, ghosts, tourists –’

‘Sure. If you had a finished or even a half-finished manuscript, I’d read it. I’d consider it. But I couldn’t commit to anything on the basis of what you’ve told me. To be honest, Hugh, you should think about publishing it yourself.’

‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

‘Well, go back to the pocket guide to publishing you’ve obviously been reading and look in there. It’s really not that difficult these days. All you need is a computer and a DTP package. The technology’s sitting waiting for you, and once you’ve paid the printers, so is all the profit.’

Hugh gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Listen to you, you’re talking yourself out of business.’

She laughed back. ‘Publishing isn’t like any other business. Scottish publishing isn’t like any other publishing.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘It’s true. It may not be how it should be but it is. Scottish publishing is about avoiding anything that might drag you into a swamp of debt and drown you in it.’

‘No wonder it’s the country cousin of London then.’

‘Quite. Now get us another drink.’

Hardie went up to the bar and ordered in his loud, boolie voice. It wasn’t offensive to Jackie, it went with his friendly, disarming smile, but she saw the old men glower at him suspiciously. Dawson’s was used to students but not to entrepreneurs. Jackie could still make out the Edinburgh merchant’s school accent underlying the mid-Atlantic drawl, but only because she knew it was there. The auld yins probably thought he was English.

Waiting at the bar, Hardie thought about his chances with Jackie. She might have knocked him back on the book proposal, but she’d asked for another drink. She was nice enough looking – but not so she could afford to be choosy. She had thick dark hair and brown eyes, and cheeks that must have been podgy ten years before and would be again in another ten. The same went for her figure – short and tending to dumpiness. But warm and inviting for all that. He imagined her in a white fluffy bathrobe, pink from the bath. It was a heart-stirring thought.

He also thought about his ghost. The old ghost had quit on him that morning, complaining of poor wages and conditions. He’d handed over the cape, staff, wig and rat, demanded the twenty pounds lie wage held back against the return of these ghostly accoutrements, and walked off, never to be seen again. You’d have thought he might have treated the twenty pounds as a kind of bonus, but no. His last words had been to the effect that Hardie was a miserable tight-arsed capitalist bastard and he hoped his trade would drop off. Hardie wasn’t unduly upset. The guy hadn’t done a convincing haunt for months.

‘This is probably a stupid question,’ said Jackie, when he told her his problem, ‘but why do you have to have a ghost anyway? Surely you can do the tour without one.’

‘Sure I can, Jackie, but a ghost tour without a ghost …? Come on. Look, in the main season we do three tours a day. The one in the afternoon doesn’t need a ghost, it’s broad daylight and it tends to be more, how can I put it, historical. Mary Queen of Scots, John Knox, Bonnie Prince Charlie, that kind of stuff. The six o’clock tour doesn’t need a ghost either: it’s still daylight, and it caters for the fat Yanks who are about to hurry back to their hotels for the usual haggis and bagpipes tartan extravaganza that’s laid on for them there. The tour is just an hors d’oeuvre. BPC features heavily again. But the nine o’ clock tour – that’s different. That’s the cream of ghost tours. It starts’ – his voice dropped and assumed an exaggerated tremor – ‘as the night draws in, and ends in darkness. The people who come on this tour expect a ghost. Some of them have been drinking all evening. They’re in high spirits. They’re Swedish inter-railers and rowdy English students and gobsmacked Australian backpackers. I charge extra for this tour. There are little tricks and hidden delights in store for the people who come on it. One of them is a ghost. I must have a ghost.’

‘You must have a ghost,’ Jackie repeated. She was looking past his shoulder towards the door. ‘How about him over there, then?’

Hugh half-turned to look. A tall, slightly stooping man had just come in. He reached the bar in three long strides that seemed almost liquid in their execution, or as if he were treading through shallow water and the splashes of each step were left for a moment in the space where his foot had just been. He was over six feet, skinny and gaunt, his face so white you’d think he’d just walked through a storm of flour. He was almost bald apart from a few wild bursts of hair above the ears. He ordered a pint and while it was being poured stared grimly into space, seeming to aim his gaze along the length of his nose. Hugh Hardie was transfixed.

‘He’s perfect. My God, he’s perfect. You’re absolutely right, Jackie.’

‘He’s not the ghost to solve your problems. He’s out of my past.’

‘You mean to say you actually know this person?’

‘Sure. Haven’t seen him for years, right enough. We were at the uni together.’

‘This is uncanny. Quick, call him over.’

‘Now just hold on a minute. Like I said, I’ve not seen him for ages. I’m not sure that I want to renew the acquaintance.’

‘Don’t be sulky, Jackie. Get him over and we’ll toast your alma mater. Why ever not?’

‘Well, to be honest, he’s a bit weird. He was a postgraduate when I was doing final year Honours. He sat in on a course I was doing – First World War or something. The guy running the course was supervising his PhD. But he dropped out – never finished it as far as I know.’

‘Shame,’ said Hugh. ‘Get him over, won’t you?’

‘Wait, I said. He was weird. Gave me the creeps.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re just writing him a great CV. He has got something, hasn’t he? To look at, I mean. That woman over there can’t stop checking him out. He’s disturbing her. Don’t you see?’

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ said Jackie. ‘All the women in the class felt the same. You tried to avoid his eye. Not that he actually ever did anything, you understand.’

‘Some people have that, don’t they? That amazing ability to upset other people just by being themselves. They don’t have to do anything.’

The old men, who had glanced at the man when he came in, had not paid him any attention since. Hugh, who made his living by exploiting how different people reacted to what they saw, noticed this and liked it. The old men were never going to be his customers. Jackie and the tourist were the ones who mattered, and they had the right responses. The barman, who probably saw the guy regularly, wasn’t bothered by him. The student seemed to have fallen asleep.

‘What’s his name?’ Hugh asked.

Jackie shook her head.

‘It’s all right, I won’t shout it out or anything. I won’t embarrass you.’

‘Carlin,’ she said. ‘Alan, I think. No, Andrew. Andrew Carlin.’

‘Andrew!’ shouted Hugh. The others in the bar stared at him, and the student woke with a jerk. ‘Andrew Carlin! Over here!’

‘You bastard,’ said Jackie.

‘Sorry,’ said Hugh. ‘No gain without pain.’

Carlin sat with a quarter-pint in front of him, and said nothing. Hardie had jumped up to buy him a drink as soon as the one he had was less than half full. ‘Less than half full, rather than more than half empty, that’s the kind of guy I am,’ said Hardie jovially and without a trace of irony. ‘What is that, eighty shilling?’ Carlin looked at him without expression, and nodded once. When Hardie went to the bar, there was an awkward silence between the other two. Jackie had been badgered earlier by Hugh into reminiscing about the class she and Carlin had both attended. The responses from Carlin had been monosyllabic. Now she tried a different tack.

‘So what have you been up to since I saw you last? It must be, what, six years? I mind you gave up on the PhD. Can’t say I blame you, I was scunnered of History after one degree. Well, maybe not scunnered, just tired.’

‘Aye,’ said Carlin. He gazed at her. She wasn’t sure if he was merely acknowledging what she’d said or agreeing with it. She was aware again of the piercing stare that had been so oppressive in the class, and lowered her eyes. Even as she did so she felt she’d conceded a small victory to him. She made herself look back up, and found him off guard, and saw something she hadn’t expected. A woundedness? Damage? Fear? She couldn’t tell.

‘Six years, I’d say,’ said Carlin. ‘Mair or less. Whit I’ve been up tae: this and that.’

Jackie thought, Christ, is he on something? She wished Hugh would hurry up.

‘Are you working?’ she asked.

‘In whit sense?’

‘You know, in a working sense. In a job sense.’ She felt herself growing angry at him. She wasn’t a wee undergraduate any more, she ought not to be intimidated by his weirdness.

‘Na,’ he said, ‘no in that sense.’

Hardie returned. ‘There you go, mate, get that down you,’ he said chummily. Jackie cringed. Carlin shifted the new pint behind the unfinished one but otherwise said nothing.

‘Have you got a job at the moment, Andrew?’ Hardie asked.

‘She jist asked me that.’

‘Oh, has she been filling you in then?’

‘Has she been filling me in? I don’t think so.’

‘I’ve got a job for someone who needs a bit of extra cash,’ said Hardie. ‘The pay’s not great but the work’s steady and there’s not much to it. I think it would really suit you.’

More than you might bargain for, Jackie thought, you’ll end up with corpses all over the Old Town.

‘I run these ghost tours, okay? Three a day, seven days a week. The last one of the day, that’s a bit special. I charge the punters more for it and it always sells out. Well, it does in the summer anyway. It’s a bit of fun, but a bit scary too, right? Plus we do some special effects in the half-light. That’s where you come in. If you’re interested.’

Carlin inclined his head. He might have been encouraging Hugh Hardie to continue or he might have been falling asleep.

‘I need someone to play the part of a ghost. As soon as you came through that door, before Jackie even said she knew you, isn’t that right Jackie, I said you were perfect. You see, you look like someone. A guy called Major Weir, the Wizard of the West Bow. Have you heard of him?’

Carlin shook his head. When he spoke his voice was slow and toneless. ‘Is he like, real? A real person?’

‘Oh, definitely. Was real, yeah, for sure. Basically he and his sister Grizel, well, they were kind of Puritans, you know, the tall black hat brigade, Bible-thumping Calvinists.’

‘I ken whit Puritans are,’ said Carlin.

‘Good. Great. Well, anyway, one day they got found out. They were complete hypocrites. Satanists, I guess. They used to meet up with the Devil and stuff. And they were shagging each other. Grizel – isn’t that a brilliant name? – was kind of out of it, she was just a crazy old woman, but Major Weir, he was a baad guy. Not only did he shag his sister, he shagged cows and anything else that moved.’ Hardie broke off. ‘Of course, I’m paraphrasing. We don’t put it quite like this on the tour.’

‘I should think not,’ said Jackie. ‘Is this the man you want Andrew to impersonate? I take it he doesn’t have to be too realistic’ She didn’t understand herself: one minute she was disturbed by Carlin, the next she felt he needed protecting. She noticed how he sat: hunched, or coiled. When Hugh’s expansive gestures got too close, he seemed to shrink back. And yet this was less like a timid reaction than like, say, the natural movement of a reed in the wind.

‘No,’ Hugh said, ‘for the purposes of the tour, our ghost just does a bit of straightforward spookery. Appears suddenly at the ends of closes, that kind of thing. The Major got burnt for witchcraft and for years after that people were supposed to see him in the Old Town, round where Victoria Street now is and down the Cowgate, so that’s what we’ve got him doing – revisiting his old haunts, ha ha! I supply all the props – cloak, staff and wig. Oh, and a rat, but I’ll tell you about that later. If you’re interested I’ll walk you through the part. On location, as it were. So, waddya think?’

‘Every night?’ said Carlin.

‘Yeah, but if you can’t manage the occasional night that’s okay, as long as I know in advance. It’s only an hour and a half. How about it?’

‘Whit’s the pay?’

‘Fiver a night. I know it’s not much, but for an hour or so, hey, that’s not a bad rate these days. Well above the minimum wage, if there was one. Oh, and nothing to come off it either. Cash in hand, thirty-five quid every week, no questions asked. Are you on benefit? Forget I said that. Waddya think?’

Carlin finally drained his first pint and started on the second. ‘It’s a commitment,’ he said after a while. ‘Every night, like.’

‘Well, as I said, if you can’t make it sometimes, we can negotiate. Get a stand-in. But I need someone to start straight away, and believe me, you’d be great for the part. Look, I’ll tell you what. Here’s an incentive: if you do it seven nights a week without missing one, I’ll round the cash up to forty quid. If you miss a night, you only get paid for the nights you work. That’s pretty fair, isn’t it?’

Jackie snorted and Hugh Hardie gave her what she assumed was supposed to be a withering glance. Some long and complicated process seemed to be going on in Carlin’s brain. Eventually he said, ‘I’m no sure.’

‘What aren’t you sure about? Talk to me, Andrew.’

‘The haill idea. It’s no the money. It’s the idea.’

Hardie made a shrugging gesture. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

‘Well, that’s whit I’m no sure aboot. This guy Major Weir. You jist packaged him up in ten seconds and haund it him ower. Life’s no like that. I mean, d’ye ken whit ye’re daein wi him?’

‘He’s just a character, that’s all.’

‘You said he was real.’

‘Well, yeah, but he’s been dead three hundred years. Now he’s just a character. A “real character”, you might say.’ Hardie laughed a little nervously. ‘Anyway, we take the people round the places he lived in, tell them about the past. Not just him, Burke and Hare, Deacon Brodie, all that stuff. I’ll take you on the route and you can see for yourself what we do with him, as you put it.’

‘That’d be guid,’ said Carlin. ‘I would need tae know, ken.’

‘Look,’ said Hugh, ‘I haven’t got time to show you the ropes if you’re not going to take the job. I need you to start this week. Tonight if possible. Tomorrow definitely. So, come on, how about it? Meet at the Heart of Midlothian at, say, eleven tomorrow morning and take it from there, eh?’

Carlin drank more of his pint. ‘And I’m like him, am I?’ he said.

‘The spitting image,’ said Hugh Hardie.

‘Show me the ropes then,’ Carlin said. ‘When I’m sure, I might no dae it. But I’ll dae it while I’m no sure aboot it.’

Although this was delivered in the same flat monotone, Hardie interpreted it as a joke of some sort and laughed loudly. Maybe it was relief. ‘Brilliant!’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Slàinte.’

Carlin didn’t respond. Jackie Halkit, raising her own drink instinctively, noticed that his glass, which only a couple of minutes ago had been almost full, was now down to the dregs. She hadn’t been aware of him drinking in the interim.

‘So what about the book, Jackie?’ Hardie turned and asked. ‘Is it a project?’

‘If you make it one,’ she said. She was aware of Carlin swivelling on his stool, standing up. Maybe he’s going to buy a round, she thought, and laughed into herself. She dragged her mind back to answering Hugh’s question. ‘As far as I’m concerned, at this point in space and time, no, it isn’t,’ she said.

‘Great,’ said Hardie. ‘It’s inspiring to work with you too.’ For a moment she thought he was angry at her, but then he gave her that winning smile. She had a sudden image of herself, seated in a pub late one afternoon, her consciousness being worked over by two men, both of whom intrigued her though she found them, for different reasons, slightly repellent. She felt she needed to get out in the sunlight.

‘Hey,’ Hugh said, ‘maybe I could get him to write it. Being a historian and everything.’

She brought herself back. ‘Where is he?’ she asked Hugh. Carlin had disappeared.

‘Gone for a slash, I assume,’ said Hugh. But at the end of five minutes, and after Hugh had been on a scouting expedition to the toilet, it became clear that Carlin had left the pub.

‘Fucking marvellous!’ said Hugh. ‘I mean, what’s that all about? Is he going to do it? Did we make arrangements? I don’t even know where the guy lives. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, Jackie.’

‘Perfect for the part, I think you said. Don’t expect any sympathy from me, you rat. I did try to warn you.’

‘But he is perfect. I really want him scaring the shit out of my tourists. Do you not know where he lives?’

‘No. And I don’t want to either. But you did make arrangements, even if they didn’t seem very definite to you. That’s one of the things I mind about him, you only needed to say something once and it lodged, it stuck there in his head and he never forgot it.

‘One time when I was a student, someone sort of half-suggested we all go for a drink after the last class before we went home for Christmas, in Sandy Bell’s it was supposed to be, but it never came to anything, people just sloped off in different directions muttering cheerios. But then a couple of the girls caught up with me and said, Come on, let’s get pissed, so we did, just the three of us, we hit the Royal Mile and had a right laugh.

‘We all stayed in different flats over in Marchmont, so we were heading that way at the end of the evening and one of them says, Right, in here quick, one for the road before we get raped across the Meadows, and it was Sandy Bell’s, and would you believe it, the bastard was in there, cool as you like, propping up the bar listening to the folkies, and he turns to us and says. Well, I thought yous were never going to show. And we had a round but the fun had gone out of us like balloons, we just all stood around in a circle watching each other drink, him with his eyes on us all the time, and then he walked with us home across the Meadows cause he stayed up in Bruntsfield somewhere. I tell you, we were all that freaked we had to lie we all stayed in the same street cause none of us wanted to be the last one alone with him.’

‘Now that’s scary,’ said Hugh Hardie. ‘Creeps that hang around all night on the basis of a throwaway suggestion. I hate that kind of no-hoper stuff. But you can’t get away from it, he’s an ideal match for Major Weir. They might have been made for each other. So, Heart of Midlothian at eleven, was that what we agreed? Do you think he’ll show?’

‘Unless he’s changed in six years,’ said Jackie. ‘Which I don’t think. Seems to me he just got weirder than he was already. You turn up there on time, I’ll bet he’s waiting on you.’

Their glasses were empty. ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got stuff to do tonight.’

‘What stuff?’

‘Lassies’ stuff. You know, cleaning the bath, reducing the ironing pile, that kind of everyday homely stuff.’

‘God. Glad I’m not a lassie. Sure you don’t want another?’

‘No thanks, Hugh. But – and I know this is going to sound pathetically girlie too – what I would appreciate is if you’d just get me down the street a wee bit. I’ve got this feeling about Andrew Carlin. I don’t want him following me home or anything.’

‘Come on,’ said Hardie, looking at his watch. ‘Six o’ clock. It’s kind of early for stalking.’ Then he saw that she wasn’t joking. ‘Yeah, sure, no problem. Where do you stay again?’

‘New Town,’ she said. ‘Just chum me a block or two, if you don’t mind.’

‘I’d chum you all the way,’ he said, ‘but I’m going to have to do some haunting tonight, I guess, so I’d better go home too, get myself organised. The traffic’ll have died down a bit by now, though, I’ll flag you a taxi.’

‘I’ll walk,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s just – seeing him again.’

Out on the street they had to negotiate past a drunk man coming towards them. He lurched at Hugh, who put a hand out defensively to prevent him falling into his arms. The raincoat slid greasily under his palm.

‘Dae I no ken ye fae somewhere?’ said the drunk man. He looked old; his jaw bristled with sharp white hairs and was shiny wet with slavers.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Hardie, easing him back. He sidestepped to the left but the drunk man miraculously matched his footwork with a neat shuffle and blocked his path again.

‘Let me pit it anither wey. Dae you no ken me fae somewhere?’

Jackie burst out laughing.

‘Whit’s she findin sae bluidy funny?’

‘Nothing,’ said Hugh. ‘Look, I definitely don’t know you.’ The man looked intently up into his face. ‘Why do you think I would know you?’

‘Christ, I don’t know,’ said the drunk man. ‘Thought I’d seen ye before. Thing is, I was kinna hopin ye’d ken me. Cause I don’t have a fuckin clue whae I am.’

This time he moved first, gliding around Hardie’s static figure like a winger of the old school of Scottish football, a wee ugly knot of accidental perfection. He hauled off into the gathering evening, swearing profusely.

Jackie was still smiling when they reached Nicolson Street. ‘It’s okay,’ she told Hugh, ‘I don’t know what got into me. I’ll be fine from here. But thanks anyway’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well, see you around. Come on the tour some time.’

I’ll do that,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you.’ Then she was away, across at the lights, still wondering if he’d expect her to pay for a ticket.

Andrew Carlin was the kind of man that might slip between worlds, if such a thing were possible. He inhabited his days like a man in a dream, or like a man in other people’s dreams.

There were three mirrors in Carlin’s place: one in the bathroom, one on the door of an old wardrobe that stood against the wall of the lobby, and one over the fireplace in the front room, which doubled as his bedroom. This was an old, ornately gilt-framed mirror, mottled at the edges, and with a buckle in it that produced a slightly distorting wave in the glass. It was like a mirror that hadn’t had the courage to go the whole bit and join a travelling show, where it could turn those who looked in it into fully-fledged grotesques.

This was the mirror Carlin talked with, mostly. It had once been his mother’s. It was flanked by two heavy brass candlesticks, which he had also inherited from her. In his parents’ house the mirror and the candlesticks had been crammed onto a shelf among the bric-a-brac and debris that his mother couldn’t stop snapping up in charity shops. She would come home laden with bargains and they’d have to eat beans for the rest of the week. When his father died it got worse. From the age of fourteen Carlin missed the dogged, watchful presence that had balanced the magpie frenzy of his mother. The only time he benefited from her obsession was when he first got the flat in Edinburgh, a tiny conversion on the top floor of a tenement in a street that was too near the canal to be really Bruntsfield. It was cheap enough to rent on his own, but came with a minimum of furnishings. She sorted out a few items for him – dishes and jugs and ornamental vases, most of which he sold on to junk shops or returned to charity. His mother never came to see him, so would never miss what he got rid of.

The mirror was one of the things he liked and held onto. When she died some years later and he cleared the house, he put most of what remained to the cowp. The candlesticks, however, he brought back with him and set on either side of the mirror. The three objects seemed to feed off each other, acquiring a new dignity of their own. Now Carlin felt that where they were was where they had always belonged.

He lit the gas fire, warmed his legs against it for a few minutes, then turned the fire down and faced the mirror. He thought of Hardie saying he was like this Major Weir. How the fuck did he know that? He looked and looked to see Weir in the mirror, but he didn’t know what he expected to see. And he thought of Jackie Halkit.

Edinburgh was a village, if you walked around it you saw the same faces all the time. He’d seen her once or twice in the last year, and each time it had been by chance. He’d recognised her, but he’d never made an attempt to speak to her. You didn’t do that. You didn’t go up to folk. If something was going to happen, they would come to you. That was how it worked.

That was how it had worked till now. He’d broken in on her. He tried to imagine her with himself live in her head again. What would she be thinking? But he couldn’t touch how she might be, just couldn’t feel it.

He saw himself standing outside Dawson’s in the late afternoon. It had been light outside and lighter still in there, because the place was full of bright electric bulbs at the bar and over the tables. Carlin preferred the gloom. He liked candlelight and shadows. Between the street and the inside of the pub there hadn’t been much to choose.

Then suddenly, as he stood there, he had been invaded by a sensation so strong that he had had to put out his hand and steady himself with the tips of his fingers on the varnished wooden beading of the pub door. Just a touch to get his balance back. It was as if he had been right on the edge of something. It was like the other feeling he sometimes got, an overwhelming sense of being elsewhere, or that he could reach out and touch things that were long gone.

The past. He could stretch his fingers and feel it, the shape of it. It was like having second sight in reverse. It was like holding an invisible object, both fascinating and disturbing. Or like feeling your way in the dark.

He’d read that seers didn’t like their gift of seeing the future because there was nothing they could do about it. They had visions of horrible accidents, injuries, deaths, and they couldn’t stop them. There was a guy up north, the Black Isle or somewhere, who took the money from people who came to see him and then was rude and abrupt with them. He had no wish to see their future trials and losses, their rotten endings and stupid tragedies. But he could not turn them away. People came to his door every day, desperate to be warned of things that could not be avoided.

The past was like that for Carlin: a hole at the back of his mind through which anything might come.

‘I’ve a bit o work if I want it,’ he said to the mirror.

‘Guid. Aboot fuckin time. Get ye aff yer fuckin erse.’

‘Dinna start.’

‘Dinna talk tae me then. Think I care aboot yer fuckin work?’

‘It’s no a job but. It’s jist play-actin. Part-time.’

‘Aw ye’re bluidy fit for. Gaun tae tell us aboot it?’

Carlin stared until the mirror had the gen. Sometimes that was enough.

‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘I want tae check this guy oot.’

‘Who, Hardie? Forget it. A right wanker.’

‘No, Weir. Somethin aboot him. Mebbe he had a bad press.’

‘Aye. On ye go, son. Bleed yer sapsy liberal hert dry, why don’t ye. Listen, if ye find oot he was a nice Christian buddy eftir aw, keep yer geggie shut or ye’ll be oot o work again.’

‘I’m no sayin he wasna an evil bastart. But it seems everybody has him marked doon as a hypocrite. Jist because ye lead a double life disna make ye a hypocrite.’

‘Well, you would ken, wouldn’t ye? Sounds tae me like ye might be buildin yer argument on shiftin sand though, friend. I mean, pillar o society by day, shagger o sheep by night – how much mair hypofuckincritical can ye get?’

‘Aye, aye. I jist don’t like pigeon-holin folk. Ken, an early version o Jekyll and Hyde, earlier than Deacon Brodie even – it’s too pat.’

‘Well, jist brush him under the carpet then. Lea him alane. The last thing we need’s anither split fuckin personality. We’ve got mair than enough o them. Fuckin Scottish history and Scottish fuckin literature, that’s all there fuckin is, split fuckin personalities. We don’t need mair doubles, oor haill fuckin culture’s littered wi them. If it’s no guid versus evil it’s kirk elders versus longhairs, heid versus hert, Hieland and Lowland, Glasgow and Edinburgh, drunk men and auld wifies, Protestants and Catholics, engineers and cavaliers, hard men and panto dames, Holy Willies and holy terrors, you name it Scotland’s fuckin had it. I mean how long is this gaun tae go on, for God’s sake? Are we never gaun tae fuckin sort oorsels oot? I am talkin tae you, by the way.’

‘I ken. Hardie would say that’s fine. He would say it’s guid for business. Gies us somethin tae sell tae the tourists.’

‘Don’t come the bag wi that fuckin shite. Since when was that pricktugger a fuckin culture expert? And onywey, whit kinna basis is that for an economy? Whit gets sellt tae the tourists is an unreal picture o an unreal country that’s never gaun tae get tae fuckin grips wi itsel until it runs its ain affairs.’

‘Independence? The likes o Hardie would run a mile. We’d be like Switzerland. Dead borin, only withoot the money.’

‘Noo I ken ye’re playin the Devil’s advocate. Don’t fuckin mock the Swiss. You’ve been there. It’s a clean country, everybody’s got jobs, everybody uses the trains and they don’t fuckin go tae war wi onybody. The Swiss fuckin ken where it’s at, if ye ask me.’

Carlin turned the backs of his legs to the fire again. ‘Your language,’ he said. ‘Away and wash yer mooth oot wi soap.’

Carlin twitched the nylon fishing-line to make sure that the rat was free to run. He knew it would be but he couldn’t stop himself. He felt the weight of the rat shift slightly at the far end of the line, just a fraction of an inch, and let his fingers go slack again. Then he waited for the people to come.

He was huckered against a wall halfway down a steep close between Victoria Street and the Cowgatehead. There was a dog-leg at this point, so that anyone descending could not see him until they turned the corner, and could not see the second half of the close until they turned again at the place where he was standing.

He was wearing a long black cloak, fastened at the neck, over his ordinary clothes. When he walked the cloak billowed and swirled around him, but now, as he stood still, it hung limp and heavy like a shroud. Leaning next to him against the wall was a black wooden staff, as tall as himself, and surmounted by a misshapen knucklebone head. A straggly wig of wispy auld man’s grey hair fell about his neck, framing the ghastly whiteness of his face. The previous ghost, Hugh Hardie had said on the run-through that morning, had used clown make-up, but he didn’t think Carlin needed it.

The close was little frequented by locals. It was not on an obvious route to a pub or other destination, and its length and dinginess gave it an unhealthy reputation. It was used by drunks and destitutes as a urinal more than as a throughway. Tourists were seen in it only if they had got lost. Or were on a ghost tour.

The nylon line ran from his hand along the ground to a hole in the wall a few yards up the close, just before the dog-leg was reached. When the tour party reached this spot, the guide would bring everybody to a halt, and describe the living conditions of this part of Edinburgh in the seventeenth century. Hardie had rehearsed this with Carlin earlier. The guide would talk about the lack of sanitation and ask his listeners to step carefully. ‘This close was once called the Stinking Close,’ he’d say, ‘and it still in some respects is deserving of the name.’ ‘That,’ said Hardie, ‘is your cue, your amber light.’

Carlin’s first task was to pull the large rubber rat, which was secured to the fishing-line through a hole in its mouth, across the ground and round the corner, causing alarms and excursions among the tourists as it skited over their feet.

As soon as he’d reeled in the rat, he had to move on. The guide would usher the people on round the dog-leg. They were supposed to get a glimpse of swirling cloak and a shadowy figure carrying a long staff disappearing down the lower part of the close. ‘At the entrance onto the Cowgatehead,’ Hardie stressed, ‘stop and wait for a few seconds. You’ll be silhouetted in the archway. Turn and glare back up at them. It’ll look brilliant.’

Meanwhile the guide would tell them the tale of Major Weir, pointing out that he had lodged just off this very close with his sister Grizel. He would describe how he had confessed his terrible crimes before a shocked assemblage of fellow Puritans; how he had been tried and convicted of incest, bestiality and witchcraft, and burnt at the stake on the road to Leith; and how poor, mad Grizel had tried to take off all her clothes on the Grassmarket scaffold before she was hanged, just a few yards from where they were now standing. Ever after, the Major and she would be collected at night in a black coach drawn by six flame-eyed black horses, and driven out of the town to Dalkeith, there to meet with their master the Devil. At other times the Major’s stick, with the satyr-heads carved on it which seemed to change shape and expression, would float through the dark wynds and closes, going like a servant before him and rapping on the doors of the terrified inhabitants.

‘As you have seen,’ the guide would say, ‘Major Weir lives on. Perhaps, as we journey through these old dark corners of Edinburgh, you may catch another glimpse of him …’

And so they would. They’d turn into the Cowgate and see a tall, cloaked man moving silently along the wall ahead of them. They would follow him as the guide told more stories of ghosts and murders and other half-hidden horrors. They would be brought, by and by, back towards the High Street, where their tour had started, by a series of narrow stairs and closes. And at the last turn, those at the front of the party would find themselves staring up at the looming, gash-faced Major Weir, glowering disdainfully down his nose at them – just for a second or two, and then he’d be gone, and the adventure would be over. Tell your friends,’ the guide would conclude, ‘but – don’t tell them everything. Leave them to be unpleasantly surprised.’

Hardie had handed Carlin the props – the wig, the cloak, the staff and the rat. ‘You hang onto them in the meantime,’ he’d said. ‘But don’t lose them. The other guy used to carry a plastic bag with him, to put the stuff in when he’d finished. He said he felt a bit of a prat walking home otherwise. But there’s not much you can do about the stick. Still, should stand you in good stead if anybody gives you any hassle, eh? Now, the tour kicks off at nine o’clock. It usually gets here at about half-past, but you’ll need to be in position ten minutes before that. And sometimes there’s a bit of rubbish lying about, you know, some broken glass or a few old cans. If you can kick anything like that to one side I’d appreciate it. I’m all for realism but we don’t want people stepping in anything too nasty.’

Now Carlin waited. This was playing at history. He should chuck it. But it had kind of happened upon him, the whole thing. Because that was the way of it, he’d let it go on. In any case, he wanted to find out why he was like Major Weir. If he was like him.

Linlithgow, September 1645

The moor was a place of refuge. The boy saw that. In its endless browns and greens you could become nothing, be hidden from the eyes that sought you. You could coorie under a peat bank, in the oxter of a rock, or beneath the grass overhang of a burn. In winter, when the ground was a bog and the mist clung to it like a dripping blanket, men on horses could not follow you among the black pools and moss hags. You could be yards away and they’d never ken you were there. You’d be invisible. The only one you could never hide from, even out here in the worst of weather, was God.

But this was September. The ground was as dry as it would ever be. The boy, hunkered in the sun on a grassy hummock pockmarked with burrows, picked up yellow-brown pellets from the dirt and cut open a couple with his thumbnail. ‘Tabacca’s low,’ his uncle had said. ‘Awa up on the hill, James, and fetch us mair rabbit purls. Mind that they’re no full dried oot, but crotlie – like this, see.’ He handed him a twist of brown leaf, breaking it up with his fingers. ‘On yer wey then. Whit the sodgers dinna ken’ll no hurt them.’

The boy fished the sample out of his pouch and compared it with the compacted shite in his palm. Slivers of grass, like colourless veins, were pressed into the tiny balls. He tore off some tobacco and stuck it in his mouth, began chewing on it. After a minute, when the first bitter shock had diminished and his mouth was filling with juice, he selected a rabbit pellet and pushed it in too, crushing it with his teeth. He couldn’t taste it under the flow of tobacco.

He began to gather the purls, dozens of them, into the pouch. The town was a mile or two away, out of sight, a thin straggle of houses stretched beside a loch, dominated by the old royal palace which had lain empty and unused for years and was beginning to fall into disrepair. The army was encamped in and around the town, and under the walls of the palace. The boy was only eight, and might have been fearful alone on the moor, but he was not. He was used to being alone. Nothing much made him anxious.

His uncle had come to Linlithgow because of the army, and when the army moved on so would he. He might take James with him but more likely he would return him to his mother in Falkirk. He sold goods to the soldiers: wee eating-irons, needles, cured and salted meat, eggs (if he could get them), anything not too bulky which a soldier might need or in his boredom might believe he wanted. But his main sales were of tobacco. The war had involved the movement of great numbers of troops throughout the country – not least when the Covenant had sent an army into England against the King the previous year – and demand for the weed had exploded. Some people in distant parts had never even seen tobacco, but they were quick to acquire a taste or a craving for it. Very few had much idea about the quality of what they were buying.

A whaup flew overhead making its plaintive cry and the boy looked up at the long thin curve of its beak. He stood with his pouch of shite and walked to the top of the hummock, to see where it landed.

On the other side, not twenty feet away, a man lay sleeping. The boy dropped onto his front and all the juice in his mouth burst out onto the grass with what seemed to him a horribly loud gurgle. For a minute he did not dare raise his head to take another look. When he did the man had not moved.

The boy saw the chest rise and fall. A dark-faced man, in ragged, filthy clothing; his hair and beard thick, black and matted. The boy breathed in, deep but silent, and caught a stench like that of a fox. The man’s hands lay half-clenched at his sides. The boy could not see a weapon of any kind lying nearby.

He was looking at an Irish. He had never seen one before but he kent that was what it was. One of the terrible Irishes from Montrose’s army, who had burned and murdered their way from Aberdeen to Dundee to Kilsyth. They ate bairns. If they couldn’t get enough Scots bairns to eat they boiled their own up in big pots and ate them. But the days of their terror were over. The Covenant had destroyed them a week past near a town called Selkirk, fifty miles away. Scotland was safe again and Montrose had fled back to the mountains of the north. Most of his men had been slaughtered in the battle; others had been caught and killed on the high ground between the border country and the Forth, the ground that stretched away south under the boy’s gaze.

He thought of the rabble of women and boys, the camp followers, wives and sons of the Irishes, who had been captured and brought to Linlithgow. They had spent the night huddled up against the old walls of the great palace, seventy or eighty of them, staring glumly at their guards and the curious townsfolk, or breaking into the strange mutterings of their incomprehensible language. Their clothes were rags, their bodies were smoored in dirt, reddened with cuts and sores. Most of them had no shoes. The boy had watched them for a long while. Some of the lads looked about the same age as himself. In the shadow of the crumbling palace, the light cast by the fires they were permitted seemed to make them more like small demons than real people.

That morning his uncle had warned him to keep away from the army camp and from the Irish prisoners. He was told he was too young to be among soldiers and see the things that they were sometimes obliged to do. Then he was packed off to the moor. But something special was happening in the camp, he could tell. The Irishes were being moved from the palace to the west port of the town, towards the river, where they were hidden from sight. The boy was desperate to go to the river but his uncle would have had him cutting and mixing wads of tobacco and rabbit shite all afternoon. Not now though. Not now that he had discovered the stray Irish.

He kent what he had to do. He slid back down the slope on his belly, then got to his feet and crept away. Only when he was well out of earshot did he start to run.

The Irish was a stranger in a strange land. He was weak, hungry and weaponless. He did not stand a chance.

They brought him in to the town around noon, his wrists tied by a rope to the saddle of a trooper’s horse, like a stirk that had wandered. His eyes were wide and panicky, dangerous too; he looked as though he would break and run if he got the chance. Somebody asked the soldiers why they had bothered to bring him back. Why had they not struck him down on the moor as they had any others they’d found in the last week? One of the soldiers laughed and said they were taking him to be with his own kind.

The boy ran beside them as they rode along the thick brown streak that was the town’s thoroughfare. The prisoner stumbled and the boy’s heart leapt. The Irish was his. His uncle would be proud of him.

Folk from the town were hurrying back from whatever had been going on at the river. Some were laughing and shouting; others looked grim and tight-faced, shocked, even. They seemed hardly to notice the group of riders and their prisoner.

The little procession went straight through the town, through the west port, towards the high bridge over the river. There were more people on the road, and many soldiers, armed with long pikes and swords. And here was a minister too, black among the buff leather and steel, holding out his hand to stop them. If anything made the boy anxious it was ministers. He knew they could be fierce as well as kindly; they were eloquent and decisive and when they spoke people listened. And he saw that they had something which other men, even if they carried swords and guns, did not necessarily have. They had power.

‘Where did ye find this ane?’ the minister asked.

‘Twa mile yonder, abune the toun,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘He was asleep when we took him.’

‘I fund him,’ said the boy. He could not bear to think that his part in it might not be mentioned.

The minister bent towards him. He had a grey beard and grey hair which fell to his shoulders from beneath a tight black cap. ‘Did ye?’ he said. ‘And how did ye come tae be there?’

The boy hesitated. He still clutched the pouch with its dubious contents. Some of the soldiers might be his uncle’s next customers.

The minister crooked a finger. ‘Come here, lad. Ye needna be feart frae me. Whit is yer name?’

‘James. James Mitchel.’

‘Are ye feart frae me, James Mitchel?’

‘Na, sir. Only … I am feart frae God, and he is wi ye.’

Somebody among the riders laughed, but the laugh was cut short by the minister’s swift glare. Even the horses stood quietly, heads bowed, in his presence.

‘The laddie’s richt,’ he said. ‘He is richt tae be feart frae God. See how God punishes them that resists him. Blessed is everyone that feareth the Lord. Tell me, James, were ye feart frae the Irish when ye fund him?’

‘Na, sir. I kent God wasna wi him. I ran, but I ran for help, no for I was feart.’

‘This is an uncommon bairn,’ said the minister. ‘Whase bairn is he?’

‘His faither’s deid,’ somebody said. ‘His uncle is Mitchel the packman.’

‘Mitchel the pauchler,’ said another. There was laughter, and the boy’s face burned with shame. He wanted to change the subject.

‘Whit will happen tae him?’ he said, pointing at the Irish, who was watching the exchange with a blank and bewildered face.

‘He will be punished,’ the minister said. ‘Gie me yer hand, James.’ They stepped out of the road, and the minister waved the soldiers on. The prisoner was jerked forward on the rope. As he went he turned his head and fixed his eyes on the boy until the horses behind him obscured his view.

The minister clapped James’s head. ‘He thinks you are the cause o his punishment. But ye’re no. You are only God’s instrument, delivering his enemies up tae him. Noo, let’s see if we canna find yer uncle.’

James pulled away from him, in the direction the soldiers had taken. ‘I want tae see whit happens,’ he cried.

‘It’s no for your een. Come awa noo.’

But the boy struggled harder, echoing back the minister’s own words. ‘I delivered him up tae God. Let me see where they’re takin him.’

The minister seized him by both shoulders and lowered himself to his level. The blue eyes above the grey hairs on his cheeks seemed like pools of ice in deep caverns. The boy saw himself reflected in them.

‘Ye want tae witness God’s fury? Very weill then. But mind you are jist a bairn. Ye dinna ken yet whit God has in store for ye. He micht hae Heaven or Hell laid up for ye. Ye’re ower young tae ken. Sae think hard on whit ye see, James. I think ye are a guid laddie, a Christian laddie, but only God can look intae yer hert and ken the truth o it.’

Then they were striding after the soldiers, towards yet more folk coming in the other direction. There was a silence on these ones like a heavy load. A man was staring at the ground as he walked, shaking his head.

The minister began to call out as they went through them. ‘If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,’ he shouted, ‘if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, saith Israel, when men rose up against us, then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us.’

A woman was weeping. ‘They were bairns,’ she said. It seemed that she was ashamed even to speak such a thought before him. ‘They were jist bairns like oor ain, even if they were savages.’

‘Then the waters had overwhelmed us,’ the minister thundered back, ‘then the proud waters had gone over our soul. Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.’

His strides were now so long that the boy James had to trot to stop himself being dragged. His hand was gripped in the iron hand of the minister. They were approaching the high bridge over the river. The soldiers had dismounted and left their horses tethered at one end. As the minister and the boy drew close they saw that the Irish was up on the parapet, his knees bent as he tried to maintain his balance. Swords were jagging against the backs of his thighs. They saw him stumble in the air, half-turn, heard his scream as he fell into the gorge below.

By the time the pair reached the middle of the bridge, the soldiers were leaving. One of them, wiping sweat from his brow, nodded a greeting to the minister. ‘Warm work the day, sir.’

The minister hoisted James up above the parapet so that he could see into the slow-moving river below. The Irish was face down, his body spinning like a graceful dancer in the current.

‘Is he deid?’ the boy asked.

‘Aye,’ said the minister. ‘I doot the faw has killt him.’

The boy raised his head and looked further downstream. There was a bend in the river there, and a rocky bank where a number of men were standing. Some were dragging things like swollen sacks from the water. Others had pikes fifteen feet long, and were using them to impale the floating sacks and bring them into the bank. The Irishes. There were piles of them lying wet and motionless in the sun. The river churned in little eddies as it swept round the bend, bringing the bodies in to where the men waited for them. If any of the Irishes still moved, if they tried to swim past or clamber out, men with pikes and clubs swarmed over them, and when they dispersed again the Irishes were still. The boy saw wee bundles the size of himself spread out among the skirts and plaids of the dead women. They were like dolls.

‘This river flows tae Hell,’ said the minister. ‘All God’s enemies sail on her.’ His voice had become gentle again. ‘James, we are a chosen people. We must dae God’s work. Dae ye ken yer Bible?’

‘Aye, sir. I read it tae ma mither when I’m wi her.’

‘And when ye’re wi yer uncle?’

James shook his head. ‘He disna hae a Bible.’

‘Ye shall hae a Bible o yer ain. And perhaps, if ye study hard at it, ye could learn mair than readin. Ye could be a college lad, wi the richt assistance. Would ye like that?’

He lowered James from the parapet. The boy’s last sight was of the body of the Irish he had found asleep on the moor, still spinning slowly as it approached the crowded bend of the river that flowed to Hell.

Edinburgh, April 1997

‘Would ye say I was weird?’

‘Fuck aye, I would certainly say ye was weird.’

‘Whit wey am I weird?’

‘Whit wey?’

‘Awright. In what ways would ye say I was weird?’

‘Well, there’s this talkin tae yersel for a start. That isna normal.’

‘Who says it isna? Whit dae you ken?’

‘It isna considered normal. It’s considered a sign o insanity.’

‘Baws tae that. Ye’ll need tae define normality first, and then insanity. Name anither instance o ma supposed weirdness.’

‘Ye seem very defensive. Truth gettin tae ye?’

‘Answer the question.’

‘It wasna a question.’

‘Answer!’

‘Shut up. I’m thinkin.’

After a long pause the mirror said, ‘Whit aboot the wey ye talk tae ither people?’

‘Whit dae you ken aboot that? Ye’ve niver seen me.’

‘I hae an informer.’

‘Aye, I ken whae that is. Weill, onywey, whit aboot it?’

‘That’s weird tae. Aw that monosyllabic stuff, starin intae space, repeatin back whit folk say tae ye. Dinna kid on ye’re no aware o it yersel. Dinna pretend ye huvna noticed.’

‘That’s how I am.’

‘It’s no how ye are here. Listen, we’re haein a normal conversation, awmaist.’

‘Listen?’

‘Ye ken whit I mean. You answer ma question. Whit aboot that, how ye talk tae people?’

‘That’s how I am, oot there.’

‘Ah. An interestin qualification. Whit are ye, some kinna agoraphobic?’

‘You ken I’m no.’

‘I only ken whit ye tell me.’

‘I ayewis lie tae ye.’

‘That sounds like the start o wan o thae undergraduate pub philosophy discussions. Ken, a statement that contains its ain internal contradiction.’

‘Right. An organism that contains the seed o its ain destruction. So can ye no deal wi that, eh? Whit’s up? Am I makin ye feel uncomfortable?’

‘If I could,’ said the mirror, ‘I would turn ma face tae the wa.’

Wednesday. Carlin stood patiently in the Scottish department in the basement of the Central Library on George IV Bridge, while an old guy in a mouldy raincoat produced a dozen books from an enormous briefcase and asked if he could renew them all again.

‘All of them?’ asked the librarian.

‘Yes please. I’m doing research. I need them all.’

‘Well, so long as nobody else has requested them. Could I have your card, please?’ She began to bring up the different titles on screen, checking them in and checking them back out again. The old fellow wiped his brow with his raincoat sleeve.

‘You could save yourself carrying them back and forth if you phoned us,’ the librarian said while she worked. ‘We can renew them over the phone.’

‘I’m not on the phone,’ he said.

She reached the last book. ‘This one’s been requested, I’m afraid. I can’t let you have this one again.’

‘But I need that one. That’s the most important. In fact, it’s essential.’

‘I’m sorry. You could request it back again, for when the reader who’s requested it returns it, but you can’t have it just now.’

‘Don’t you have any other copies? I mean, who else is wanting to look at that particular book?’

The librarian checked on the computer. ‘No, that’s the only copy. I’m sorry, but it has definitely been requested.’

The old man tutted. ‘Well, who is it that wants it? It’s very obscure. Nobody else would be interested.’

‘Somebody obviously is,’ said the librarian.

‘Give me a name then,’ said the auld yin.

‘I can’t do that.’

‘The other ones are no use without that one. If I can’t have that one I don’t want any of them.’

‘But I’ve just renewed them all for you.’

‘I didn’t know you weren’t going to let me keep that one. If I’d known that I wouldn’t have bothered asking for these ones.’ He turned and stumped out through the door.

The librarian sighed and began to cancel all the entries she had just made. A queue had formed. There was a cough from behind Carlin and a man’s voice asked quietly who was next.

I am,’ said Carlin.

‘How can I help you?’

He had very thick-lensed black-framed glasses and what was left of his reddish hair was stretched across his freckled pate like an abandoned cat’s-cradle. Something about his appearance appealed to Carlin; he looked like he might lead the same kind of isolated life. Together, they took a few steps away from the desk, a move that seemed to be spontaneous, shared by both of them.

‘I’m lookin for as much information as ye have aboot someone called Major Weir. D’ye ken him?’

The man smiled. Carlin noted from a badge on his lapel that he was addressing Mr MacDonald.

‘You’ve come to the right place. The infamous Major. Yes, I think we’ve a few bits and pieces on him.’

For the next ten minutes MacDonald darted among the stacks, producing books of varying size and antiquity. He got Carlin to fill in some request slips for the more obscure ones. Most of the material was incorporated in secondary sources, and much of it had clearly been recycled from one book to another over the years. There was a good chunk in Robert Chambers’ Traditions of Edinburgh. Weir was mentioned delicately in Hugo Arnot’s Celebrated Criminal Trials. The supernatural elements of his tale were detailed in George Sinclair’s Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, and in a strange document called ‘A Collection of Providential Passages Antient and Modern Forreign and Domestick’ written by James Fraser, who claimed to have known the Major. There was a modern collection of Scottish Ghost Stories which had conflated the most salacious details from these and other sources. There was a book of Justiciary Proceedings containing the seventeenth-century equivalent of transcripts of the Weirs’ trial. Their names cropped up in most books on Edinburgh’s past, usually with the true nature of their crimes glossed over or summarised as ‘too horrible to dwell upon’.

By careful cross-reading, Carlin began to deconstruct Hardie’s potted account: Weir’s sister was called Jean, not Grizel (the latter name, that of a former landlady of the Major’s, having somehow attached itself to her at some stage). Jean, not her brother, was accused of witchcraft, and she was found not guilty of it, but was convicted of incest. Weir was accused of fornication, adultery, bestiality and incest, and convicted on the latter two charges. The lurid tales of witchcraft and satanism, it seemed, had been spread like a coverlet over the truth. But if reality was hidden, there was barely disguised glee in many of the accounts that a man so grimly good on the surface should have been found so exotically bad underneath: a witness enthusiastically reported that Major Weir and his staff, which was burnt at the stake with him, ‘gave rare turnings’ in the fire at the Gallowlee.

MacDonald seemed to have an extraordinary knowledge of where to locate even passing mentions of the case. He sat Carlin at a desk with a pile of books and periodically appeared at his side with another old clothbound volume. ‘This is interesting,’ he’d say. ‘There’s a record of the court proceedings in this one.’ Or his finger would point at a column of dense print: ‘Just here. Another devilish trick our dear Major was supposed to have performed.’ Carlin nodded his thanks and read on.

MacDonald came back after a while with a small cardboard box in his hand. ‘Have you used a microfilm projector before?’ he asked. They went over to the big-screened machine and MacDonald took a roll of film out of the box and fed it onto the spools. He flicked a switch and the machine whirred into life.

‘You turn this spool to go forward, this one to go back,’ he explained. ‘This is your focus control. Sit down, please. Now wind it forward.’

A grainy image of antique-looking print appeared.

This is a copy of a pamphlet called Ravillac Redivivus,’ said MacDonald. ‘It was written in 1678 by an Englishman called George Hickes, chaplain to the then Scottish Secretary of State, the Duke of Lauderdale. Francois Ravaillac was a French Catholic who in 1610 stabbed King Henri IV to death for supposedly betraying the faith. The pamphlet goes into some detail about this crime.’

‘Whit’s it got tae dae wi Weir?’

‘Well, Hickes was a propagandist. The pamphlet’s title was supposed to show that Ravaillac’s fanatical spirit was alive and, ah, kicking in Scotland, but at the opposite end of the religious spectrum, in the person of one James Mitchel. Mitchel was a Covenanter who’d tried to assassinate the Archbishop of St Andrews. Hickes’s pamphlet is a hatchet job, basically, linking Mitchel to the bestial Major Weir. That’s your connection. The two of them had once shared lodgings in the Cowgate, at the house of Grizel Whitford, and Royalists like Hickes were keen to rake up as much muck as possible about poor old Mitchel. Being associated with Weir would be like getting a reference for a teaching post from the Marquis de Sade.’

Carlin said, ‘It says Mitchel got a degree fae Edinburgh University. Like masel. Canna hae been aw bad then, eh?’

‘Well,’ said MacDonald, ‘it might not have meant quite the same thing in those days.’

Carlin went back to the shelves to try to find out more about the period. He felt ignorant and cheated because he had only a sketchy idea of what had happened in Scotland in the reign of Charles II. Or any of the Stewarts for that matter. He had gone through a four-year history degree at university without once having had to open a book about the history of his own country. He had studied American, Russian, British (meaning English, a gorgeous tapestry with a few Celtic fringes tacked on to stop it fraying), medieval and modern European, but Scottish history had not been considered a necessary ingredient to a well-rounded higher education. And then, when he unexpectedly got good results in his finals and the possibility of staying on as a postgraduate arose, he found he needed some distance, physical distance, from what he had been doing. And from Edinburgh too. He got out.

Years later, thought became important again. His mother had died after more than a decade fading away among her ever-growing collection of curios, and he was astonished to find that, in spite of her habit of accumulation, she had not spent all his father’s savings. The money that came to him meant that he had some freedom. He applied to go back to the university to do research. It seemed natural to go into more depth in one of the areas he had studied for Honours. He ended up with a vague proposal to study military strategy in the German spring offensive of 1918. After seven months he admitted defeat: history, which he had hoped would welcome him back, was tired of him and spat him out.

In retrospect he was glad, or at least not disappointed, that he had not finished his PhD. It would have taken him back into the past again, and that was not what he needed. The trouble was, between the present and himself there was virtually no rapport. He rolled around in it like a discarded coke bottle on the top deck of a bus. History had kicked him out, maybe for his own good, but it had left him stranded. And now he felt it pulling at him again, like a needy, wilful parent.

By the end of the afternoon Carlin had worked his way through all the sources supplied by Mr MacDonald, and a few others that these had led onto. He felt like a door had been opened for him. He certainly knew a lot more about Major Weir and the society he lived in than Hugh fucking Hardie did. In fact he reckoned he now knew as much about Weir as anyone, with the possible exception of MacDonald. Maybe he could compete on the last ever series of Mastermind, with The Life, Times and Sexual Deviations of Major Weir as a specialist subject. Carlin took the pile of books back to the desk.

MacDonald approached him from the lending stacks.

‘How did you get on, Mr Carlin?’

‘Awright. Ony chance I could keep a couple o these aside till tomorrow?’

‘Of course. You can keep them on reserve for up to six days. After that, if you’ve not been in, they just get reshelved.’

‘Thanks,’ said Carlin.

I was thinking about your request a little while ago. I’m sure there’s another reference to the Weirs somewhere – quite a detailed thing – but I can’t recall it. If I think of it before you’re in again I’ll put it aside as well.’

‘Ye’ve a guid memory,’ said Carlin. ‘It’ll come back tae ye.’

‘Yes, it will,’ said MacDonald. ‘I’ve been here forty years. You get a pretty good knowledge of the stock over that length of time. Especially the older items, the stuff that’s been here since before you arrived. It becomes like your own furniture.’

Carlin said nothing. He thought MacDonald had finished. He was turning to leave when the librarian rushed on unexpectedly.

‘Furniture’s to be used, that’s what I think. If not, chop it up for firewood – why not? Something like this happens – you coming in here – it starts a ball rolling, doesn’t it? A mechanism – cogs turn, balances shift. I’m always interested that other people are interested.’

‘Interested?’ Carlin said. ‘Whit in?’

‘That’s the thing – anything, anything at all. You never know what significance will be found in the utterly trivial. Otherwise’ – he made a sweeping gesture that seemed to incorporate not just the Scottish department but the entire library on all its floors – ‘what would be the point of all this? What would be the point?’

Carlin smiled. It was as if the man was justifying his existence.

‘I’ll be in again the morn,’ said Carlin.

‘Good,’ said MacDonald. ‘Ask for me if you need anything, won’t you?’

He had to go back to his flat in off-Bruntsfield to collect the wig and cloak for that evening’s performance. He left the library and walked along George IV Bridge, passing the bronze statue of Greyfriars’ Bobby beside which, even this early in the year, a couple of tourists were photographing each other. But the past – Carlin’s past – was there with them too; he could never go by that dog without seeing it coated in yellow paint – some unsentimental person had once cowped a tin of the stuff over the statue and now he always saw it like that.

There had been a jeweller’s shop right beside it called Abbotts of Greyfriars, then it became a fruit-machine arcade, now it was a grocer’s. The arcade owners had economically removed the A and two Ts from the old fascia and rearranged the remaining letters to read BOBS OF GREYFRIARS: every time Carlin saw the shop-front now, with its fruit and veg stacked out onto the pavement from the windows, he glanced up and remembered that earlier transformation, and saw the flashing lights that had beckoned folk in to chance the coins in their pockets.

To his left, down Chambers Street, was the Museum, where, if he looked, he would catch the echo of someone he had once seen, a tiny lost lassie in a blue coat crouched on the steps. He kept going. Further along, in Forrest Road, was Sandy Bell’s pub, where he had once watched an old man share his pint with his dog and then order the beast outside when it failed to buy the next one: there was a thin, skeerie-looking mongrel hotching anxiously outside the door now as he passed.

On Middle Meadow Walk he observed to his left the backs of some of the few original buildings of George Square, including one once lived in by a young Walter Scott. The university had destroyed most of three sides of the square in the sixties and seventies and replaced the Georgian houses with concrete-slabbed office-blocks. Later, when he was a student, it was widely circulated that these buildings were themselves threatened with demolition owing to a fault in the concrete. ‘A result of material weakness in a false construction placed on the original premises,’ Carlin had once said to himself. And now that laboured witticism looped round in his head again: he couldn’t erase it. He would never get free of those wee lumps and craters of time.

Crossing the Meadows now was like watching a film of himself crossing the Meadows. He was nearly forty years old. It was twenty years since he’d first walked there. The light wind blew pink cherry blossom from the trees lining the path, as though a corridor of wedding guests were throwing confetti at him. He laughed out loud at the thought. He was aware of himself, saw the steps he took between the trees, shoes scuffing at the bits of browned blossom that had been crushed on the tarmac. He saw himself pass through the whale bones that arched at the end of the path and gave it its name. Jawbone Walk. He minded the time somebody had spray-painted the L on the sign into an N.

Sometimes he crossed the road anywhere, angling a gap in the traffic. Sometimes, like now, he deferred to the walking-man at the lights. He was alone. He pressed the button and waited for the lights to turn through amber to red and to hear the bleeping of the signal and to watch himself cross.

Edinburgh, September 1656

James Mitchel, recently graduated from the Toun’s College, stood on the High Street of Edinburgh and contemplated the skull mounted high up on the north face of the Tolbooth. Years of wind, rain and the attentions of gulls had removed the flesh and hair from it, and the stripped bone looked now more like a part of the stonework, a defective gargoyle, than something human.

The street was narrow at the point where he stood, between the jutting Tolbooth and the tall lands behind him. It was evening, and chilly, and the light was almost gone. Not many folk were about, but those that did hurry past had to step around him, giving him dark looks. Whit’s the daft laddie daein goavin up at the jail there? Dis he ken some puir body locked up inside? Or is he – aye, he’s lookin at the skull.—Weill, that isna worth a spit. Nae need tae look up there eftir sax year.—Awbody kens whae that was, though he isna sae bonnie noo as yince he was.—Daft loon. Get oot o folk’s road, would ye.

A shadow fell across Mitchel’s gaze. A hand lighted like a trained bird on his shoulder. His nose twitched at the familiar smell of cheap, stale tobacco.

The tall man beside him said, ‘That is the empty head of a vain and prideful villain.’

Mitchel turned. ‘I ken,’ he said. Then he added, ‘But he yince held Scotland in his hand.’

‘For a few months only,’ the tall man said. ‘A moment – less than a moment – in God’s scale of time.’

Major Weir was no stranger to Mitchel: they were neighbours in their Cowgate lodgings, and Weir had often spoken to him, coolly but not unkindly, in his deliberate, Englished tones. Still, Mitchel found it hard not to be in awe of the older man, who was recognised and deferred to everywhere he went, either as a preacher or as an officer of the City Guard.

Although he ought not to have been surprised at Weir’s appearance, since the Major’s duties took him all over the town, day and night, sometimes he wondered at the frequency with which they met away from Mistress Whitford’s house. It was ridiculous to imagine that Weir followed him; and yet Weir’s eye always seemed to be taking note of his appearance or behaviour. There was something both flattering and unnerving in this assessment.

‘Why do you look upon that head?’ Weir asked. ‘Not with regret, nor in adulation, I can see that. What does the dead mouth of James Graham tell you?’

‘Naethin,’ Mitchel said. ‘It is silent. I never saw him in life, but when I was a bairn he had Scotland chitterin on its knees, and folk fleggin ye wi tales o his army. But when I look noo I’m no feart. And he disna say ocht.’

Weir tapped the ground with his staff. ‘Or ye dinna hear ocht,’ he said. He shifted his hand from Mitchel’s shoulder to his elbow, turned him with the slightest pressure.

‘Walk with me, James,’ he said, once more in his clipped, careful voice. ‘I was at the Netherbow Port, inspecting the guard, and now I am on my way to a prayer-meeting. I would be obliged if ye’d convoy me to the Grassmarket.’

They began to walk up the street, past the hulk of St Giles, Weir’s left hand cleiking Mitchel’s arm, while his right leaned heavily on the staff. His grip was tight, but he seemed to be labouring on the hill, like a man well beyond his mid-fifties. When he stumbled, Mitchel asked hesitantly if he felt unwell.

‘I am fine, I am fine,’ he said. ‘Just weary. It’s a hard path that we have trod since Graham was dealt with. Scotland was delivered out of his hands, it seems, only to be given over to Cromwell and his vile English army. And now they say when Cromwell and the English go, we’ll hae a Stewart back again. All this suffering, all this long dark nicht, and for what? You say you heard nothing, but when I look up at Graham’s head, I sometimes fancy I hear him laughing at us.’

He stopped as they reached the top of the West Bow, and they stood looking down the long street, across which a few well-wrapped figures were flitting. Weir coughed and spat on the ground.

‘I had him in my charge the night before he was executed, did ye know that? In that very prison which his head now adorns. He laughed at us then, the savage. Combing his locks and preening himself, and brushing out his finery as if God would care a docken what he looked like when He cast him into the furnace. And he spurned the services of the ministers sent to attend him by the General Assembly – good men, strong in the Covenant that he himself had signed and then betrayed, Davie Dickson and James Durham and James Guthrie and Robert Traill. He said he, the Marquis of Montrose, would make his own peace with God. Doubtless he’d have corrected God if God didna address him by that false title. He was a proud and foolish man, James. There was a huge scaffold biggit for him, thirty feet high, and the street was tight with folk come to see him die. But when I took him out there in the forenoon, he still would not show remorse for his crimes. He climbed that thirty feet as if he were going to his bed.’

He broke off and drew himself up to his full height, and rapped the staff hard on the stones. ‘But we are stronger,’ he said sharply. ‘We are stronger because we have God with us. The godly will prevail.’

‘I believe that,’ said Mitchel, as they started to walk again. ‘It is oor destiny. Principal Leighton at the college, afore oor laureation, tendered tae us the Covenant, and I subscribed tae it. Ye canna tak some and no the haill o that document. It is signing away your life tae Christ.’

‘The life of the haill nation, James, but you see how many who have signed it have fallen away from its principles. Beware of Robert Leighton even. His tongue speaks the right words, but he is ower tolerant. The land is full of holy wobblers like him, and they are a great danger. At least a man like Montrose, you could mark him for an enemy.’

At the foot of the Bow, where their ways parted, Weir stopped again, but did not release his grip.

‘Will you not come to the meeting, Maister Mitchel? You a graduate and a man of the right party. Why do we not see you at our meetings? Do you not like my company, or the sound of my voice?’

‘Na, na, I hae often heard ye preach,’ said Mitchel. ‘And admired ye, tae.’

‘You should hear me pray,’ said Weir. ‘A sermon is a text with a wind at its back. But prayer, prayer is wind and fire together. Why do you not come?’

Mitchel shook his head, and looked away to the bottom of the Grassmarket, behind which the last of the light was now a deepening red in the sky. ‘I am uncertain,’ he said, then added in an embarrassed mumble, ‘if I hae grace.’

He felt Weir shift his position, heard him sigh heavily.

‘You are very young, James. Ye needna be ashamed. You have grace. Look at me when I tell ye this. You have grace. You are of the elect. I can feel it.’

‘I must be sure, though,’ Mitchel said. He looked at the blaze in the older man’s eyes, and longed for such conviction.

‘There’s no harm in prayer, even if you are in a state of doubt,’ Weir told him. ‘Prayer can lead to assurance. You should come.’

But Mitchel stepped back. ‘I am indebted tae ye, sir. And I will come. But no this nicht. This nicht I must pray alane.’

Weir nodded. ‘Very well. But this will not last. The Lord will find you work, James, and you will receive assurance. Believe me, it will happen.’

Edinburgh, April 1997

Jackie Halkit left a message on Hugh Hardie’s answer-machine: ‘Thought I might go on your tour tonight. Maybe see you there?’ He didn’t return the call, but she decided to go anyway. It didn’t matter about paying three or four pounds or whatever the fee was. She was more interested in seeing Carlin playing the ghost. Since the meeting at Dawson’s it was as if he had set up camp in her mind.

It was still early spring, and cold at night. Only seven other people turned up: three Japanese visitors – two men and a woman – and a slightly drunk office party – three women and a man. The man kept going ‘Whooooh!’ and running his fingers over his companions’ necks. It was amazing to Jackie that they seemed to get almost as much of a kick out of this as he did. When the guide started to talk the man settled down, and tried instead to impress the women with the seriousness with which he paid attention. ‘That’s very interesting. God, I never knew that, did you know that?’ he would say periodically, and chuckle knowingly at the guide’s jokes. The Japanese said nothing, but smiled politely when the others laughed.

Jackie had to admit, the tour was quite well done. The script was informative and not too patronising, though it spared little in the way of gore and the macabre. The guide was dressed in black, and introduced himself, removing a hood with rough-cut eyeholes, as a former public executioner who had made it his life’s work to gather all the sins of the city together. He started with a dramatic gob on the heart-shaped setts in Parliament Square which marked the site of the entrance to the old Tolbooth: it was an act, he explained, originally performed by prisoners when they were released from the jail, but since these unfortunates were all long dead he felt an obligation, as the man who had despatched so many of their fellows on the scaffold, to uphold the tradition on their behalf. ‘Oh,’ said the office party man, ‘I thought you were a Hibs fan.’ The guide shook his head. ‘I make it a rule never to discuss football, there’s been too much blood in these streets already,’ he said. The office man was delighted to get such a lad-conscious response. The guide led his party up the High Street to the Lawnmarket, telling stories all the way, then, via the surviving upper section of the West Bow, down some steps onto Victoria Street, towards the site of his former work in the Grassmarket, thus retracing the old route of those condemned to die.

At the top of Anderson’s Close he paused, raising his arm ominously.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I must warn you before we enter the next stage of our journey, that you are about to learn of one of the wickedest and foulest personages who ever stalked the streets of Auld Reikie. And I must warn you too, that some say he still roams the wynds and closes hereabouts. I refer to the so-called Wizard of the West Bow, the notorious Major Thomas Weir.’

He brought the party down into the narrow close, and invited them to gather in around him. There wasn’t much room. The man from the office party took the opportunity to put his arms around the shoulders of two of his colleagues. Jackie moved away from them down the slope, just behind the guide.

‘In the late 1600s,’ the guide said, ‘this part of Edinburgh was packed with dwellings. Some of the buildings here were the skyscrapers of their day, rising ten, eleven or even more storeys. Sanitation was at a minimum and disease was rife. Beware! If you hear the cry Gardy-loo!, it means somebody is about to throw the contents of a chamberpot or bucket out of a window. Mind where you step – this close was once called the Stinking Close and it still has a certain je ne sais quoi about it. None of you are afraid of rats, I hope? You won’t be too upset if we disturb any as we continue on our way?’

There was a scuffling sound at the foot of the wall next to Jackie, and something shot across the close and hit her shoe. She let out a short scream and jumped. The thing skeltered on and collided with the unattached office-girl, who also screamed and threw herself into her friends. The Japanese visitors yelped and grabbed at one another. The rat careered off the wall, flipped over and then disappeared on its back round the corner.

The guide gave them only a few seconds to recover. Everybody was suddenly laughing and gasping with relief as he ushered them on round the dog-leg. ‘Was it us?’ he was saying breathlessly. ‘Was it us or something else that disturbed it?’ Jackie found herself being pushed forward. Ahead of her she saw him, Major Weir, filling the close like a wind, moving silently and smoothly away. At the Cowgatehead end he turned, and for a moment was illuminated from behind, white-faced, with a long staff swaying beside him. Then he was gone.

The office man was speechless. Everybody else was gibbering away in their own language. The guide let them get the excitement out of their systems before filling them in on whose ghost it was they had just seen.

It was very effective, Jackie conceded that. She only half-took in what the guide was saying, but realised that, in terms of the tour experience, his words were not too important anyway. They were history babble. The effect was everything. And Carlin had played his part well. He had looked threatening, ghostly, ancient, yes, all these things. But something else … she couldn’t figure it.

‘If you go down Leith Walk,’ the guide concluded, ‘very nice down at the waterfront these days – nice wine-bars, bistros et cetera – well, if you go down Leith Walk you pass the spot where Major Weir was burnt to death. It’s no longer there, of course, but it was just beside where the Lothian Transport bus depot now is. So we can conclude that the place of public execution has become the place of public transportation.’

The office man laughed. ‘Well, there you go,’ he said. ‘I never knew that.’

The group made its way along the Cowgate. Jackie kept looking for the cloaked figure. She knew from Hugh Hardie that Carlin was supposed to appear again. A few people, in twos and threes, were strolling in each direction. None of them was like a ghost.

‘Would ye say I was depressed?’

‘Dae ye want ma opinion?’

‘Aye. Ye were that guid on weirdness. Would ye say I’m showin any o the symptoms o depression?’

‘Don’t get fuckin smart wi me, son. How would I ken? You’re the one that was gaun tae be a doctor.’

‘No that kinna doctor. Look, I’m no lookin for a cure. I jist would like yer views on the subject.’

‘Tell us yer symptoms then.’

‘It’s like there’s a fire in the small o ma back. I start sweatin aw ower ma body. I canna work up enthusiasm for onythin. I’ve got a shitey wee job and I canna even finish the shift. I feel physically run doon aw the time. Seik. Knackert.’

‘There’s a lot of flu aboot.’

‘And I keep gaun intae dwams. Real stuff disna feel real and the dwammy stuff does. Does that sound like the behaviour of an emotionally balanced person?’

‘Na, but we ken ye’re no that. We ken ye’re a fucked up, awol, fairychummin moonlowper. In yer ain terms yer behaviour is entirely normal. Dodgy terms of coorse, but we’ll jouk an let that jaw gang by. Mebbe there’s nuthin much wrang wi ye. Ye jist canna face the tedium o everyday life. Ye’re bored by it because everythin seems pointless and cruel. So yer mind switches aff and yer body follows. How am I daein?’

‘No bad. But it’s no so much like ma mind switches aff, mair like it switches on. It’s like the past isna past, it’s right there happenin in front o me. Tae me.’

‘The past? Yer ain past?’

‘Ither folk’s past. Frae way back, fuckin yonks. I’m supposed tae be playin Weir’s ghost but it feels mair solid than that. Real.’

‘Let’s talk aboot yer ain past.’

‘Na, let’s no. This is mair important.’

‘That’s a matter o opinion.’

‘It’s important that I’m seein aw these auld images. But they’re no mine.’

‘Ye’re tellin me ye’re dreamin stuff frae somebody else’s life?’

‘No dreamin exactly. I could unnerstaun that. I’ve been daein aw this readin so it wouldna surprise me if that was comin intae ma heid, when I was asleep ken. But this is different. It’s like I’ve got a front row seat at the pictures.’

‘So, if it’s botherin ye that much, ye ken whit tae dae. Naebody’s forcin ye tae stey. Staun up an walk oot the bluidy picture-hoose.’

‘Aye.’

‘Weill?’

‘I canna.’

Mr MacDonald beamed at him. ‘I have something for you,’ he said.

‘Guid,’ said Carlin. ‘Cause I feel like I need somethin. A way in. It’s like I’m no close enough.’

‘Do you really want to get close to Major Weir?’ said MacDonald.

‘It’s no a question o wantin. You ken whit I mean. Aw these ministers were gaun intae him in prison, tryin tae get him tae repent, but they werena gettin close at all. Was there naebody else? Was he totally friendless? Somebody must have gone tae see him.’

MacDonald was holding a manilla folder. They moved out of the way of the other readers and librarians.

‘You would think so,’ said MacDonald. ‘It’s not often you get the chance to view the incarnation of pure evil. But maybe that was the trouble. He was too dangerous. His former Covenanting comrades couldn’t put enough distance between him and them, once his crimes were made known. And the nature of the crimes – he was dangerous in a much deeper sense than just political. His sister was accused of witchcraft but claimed that the real sorcerer was him, not her. People took that very seriously in 1670 – they believed in the immortality of the soul, that life on earth was just a prelude, an overture to eternity. Major Weir was up to his oxters in stuff that would send you straight to Hell.

‘The only folk that wanted to visit him in prison were his enemies – Royalists going to gloat at the fallen Presbyterian, or Presbyterian ministers going to look on the face of Satan. And then, he was convicted on a Saturday and executed on the Monday. He was probably in the Tolbooth for less than a week before the trial, while they prepared the evidence against him, so there wasn’t a lot of time for sympathetic visitors.’

‘How do you ken aw this?’ Carlin said. ‘Is this a pet subject of yours or somethin?’

‘Your interest revived mine,’ said MacDonald. ‘I had the opportunity to turn over a few pages this morning. As I said before, when you’ve been here as long as I have, everything becomes familiar. The Weirs have a certain morbid appeal, but you have to see them in the context of the times. Religious terrorism, political repression, economic uncertainty … it’s not surprising some individuals went off the rails, is it?’

‘I was thinkin aboot this guy Mitchel,’ said Carlin. ‘The man that tried to shoot the archbishop. Him and Weir used tae ken each ither. Where was he when Weir was in trouble?’

‘In Holland probably,’ said MacDonald. ‘Although now that you mention it we don’t really know where he was in 1670. Wandering about trying not to get arrested, doubtless. No, I don’t see how he could have got near Weir. But I have somebody here for you who did.’

He handed Carlin the folder. ‘Sir John Lauder,’ he said. The folder was about an inch thick between stiff cardboard covers. It had a label on the front bearing a catalogue number, and down the spine another label which read ANE SECRET BOOK. It felt ponderous and dense.

‘He became Lord Fountainhall, a judge in the Court of Session,’ MacDonald explained. ‘When he wrote this – if he wrote it – he was just plain Maister John Lauder, an advocate. I told you yesterday that I thought there was more on Major Weir somewhere. I knew it was in an unusual source but I couldn’t remember where until I was up in the Edinburgh Room this morning and I overheard someone checking their council ward. They gave their address as Fountainhall Road and it suddenly clicked.’

Carlin flipped open the front cover. There was a typescript, a blue carbon copy on foolscap sheets:

Ane Secret Book of John Lauderlater Lord Fountainhallbeing his account of sundry matters of public interestmany not revealed in his Historical Observes and Historical Notices

transcribed and preserved by D. Crosbie and presented toEdinburgh Public Library 1912

‘Lauder kept records about everything,’ said MacDonald. ‘He kept journals and notes about both his private affairs and public life from the time he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates – just a few weeks before Mitchel tried to kill Archbishop Sharp – right through to the Union and beyond. He didn’t approve of the Union. A lot of what he wrote was published in the nineteenth century by historical societies like the Bannatyne Club. He’s regarded as an important source for the whole period.

‘Now he mentions in one of the published journals that he did visit Weir in prison on the day he died, but he doesn’t say much about him – except that he was a monster of depravity and deserved all he got. Standard sort of response which wouldn’t really help you much, but the document you have in your hands, that’s another story. You see, many of Lauder’s manuscripts were lost. There’s a story that most of what was preserved was discovered in a tobacconist’s by a lawyer named Crosbie in the later eighteenth century. You’ll note the name D. Crosbie appears on the title-page of that document. One is tempted to presume it was a descendant. The earlier Crosbie is supposed to have been half the model for Sir Walter Scott’s lawyer Mr Pleydell in Guy Mannering by the way – I’m sorry, this is hardly relevant, is it?’

Carlin shook his head. ‘No, but it’s awright,’ he said. ‘Tell me aboot this thing I’m haudin.’

‘To be honest,’ said MacDonald, ‘I’m a wee bit embarrassed by it. I mean, it has no historical credentials, there is no proof of its authenticity at all. There’s a note at the front which says it was typed from a handwritten copy, made by this D. Crosbie person’s grandfather, of an original manuscript. The original was crumbling to dust and the copy was virtually illegible, so it’s claimed. But we have no idea who D. Crosbie was – no address, no autobiographical details – nothing. The library has no record of where the document came from, or why it was accepted. There’s no corresponding copy in the National Library, or anywhere else that I know of, although there must have been a top copy. Nor is there any guarantee that John Lauder even wrote it, although the internal evidence is reasonably strong: the characteristically erratic spellings, the references to individuals Lauder knew and so on. On the other hand, it’s not altogether in his style. Not as lawyerish as you’d expect. I don’t think professional historians have ever taken it seriously – most of them probably don’t know it exists. Possibly it’s a great missing chunk of our history, but – and this is why I suggest you should be cautious and regard it with the utmost suspicion – it’s more likely to be an elaborate fake.

‘However, there’s no obvious reason why anyone would perpetrate such a hoax, unless the library paid money for the thing, but that would be unlikely and certainly then I’d expect much better documentation. The title-page text would suggest it was a donation. So why go to all the bother of inventing all this? If, by some chance, it is by Lauder – and I don’t see how we’ll ever know that now – it certainly fills a gap. Among the manuscripts of his that went missing were twenty years’ worth of his Historical Observes, which would have included all of the 1670s.’

MacDonald looked flustered, as if his statement had taken a lot out of him. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he finished. ‘Have a look at it, by all means, but … well, I’d be interested to know what you think.’

There were little beads of sweat on his brow, under the latticework of thin red hair. He took off his glasses and wiped his head with a large faded blue handkerchief. ‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘Must get on. That really belongs upstairs, but as you’re consulting books from this department too, it’ll be all right to look at it here.’

He turned away and seemed almost to dart back behind the counter, which was unoccupied. Still mopping his head, he pushed through a door beyond which Carlin could see stacks of leatherbound books. He watched MacDonald’s round-shouldered figure until it turned left and disappeared among the shelves. He found a vacant desk and sat down at it with the typescript. He opened it, read the note by D. Crosbie that MacDonald had mentioned, and turned to the next page.

10th day of Januar 1678 – I am just now returned from the tryal of James Mitchel at the Criminall Court. He was pannelled for attempting the life of the Archbischop of St Androis. This tryal is the sum and end of many bad things, that I have sein and heard thir last ten years, whilk I maun putt doune tho I fear to doe it. Unsemely and stinking are the wayes emploied to sicker this man’s doom, but soe is al thats gane befoir. I am sweert to write anent this afair in my other journal. This is ane new and secret book.

It is ane yeir since Mitchel was putt to the Bass, and but nine month since I socht leave to see him there from my father in law Lord Abbotshall …

Edinburgh, April 1677

Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall, till lately Lord Provost of Edinburgh, considered leaving his long, luxurious wig on the stand where he had placed it earlier, while looking over his accounts. It was a very fine wig, thick and lavishly curled, but it made his head hot and got in the way when he was trying to read. Still, he did not really like to be seen without it; he was approaching sixty, and the wig gave his large face a dignity it otherwise lacked. Without his expensive clothes and headpiece he might have been taken for a publican or a shopkeeper. Not that Sir Andrew had anything against publicans and shopkeepers; on the contrary, he was their prince. Or, at least, he once had been.

He was expecting his son-in-law and although John Lauder was family, Sir Andrew still liked to impress his formidable personality upon the younger man. He stood up, took the wig and, in front of a mirror, carefully lowered it onto his head. He laid the ends of it over his ample shoulders and briefly admired himself, large, sedate and solemn in the glass. That was his style in these times of wild ranters and gaunt rebels. Some might think him fat and graceless, but he saw himself as a dancing-master; nobody could jouk and birl like Sir Andrew Ramsay when it came to politics. He was the great survivor. ‘Andra, ye’re a richt continuum,’ a friend had recently told him. And there was no better evidence of his political brilliance than the fact that, over three decades of war, religious upheaval and governments of utterly different complexions, he had become progressively and irresistibly more and more rich.

He cleared his throat with a grumble of self-approval, and sat back down to his books, his dreams of political intrigue, and his decanter of brandy. He was a merchant, the godfather of the city’s trade, and a laird with extensive properties in Fife and Haddingtonshire. He had served as provost under two regimes, first during the Commonwealth and then after the Restoration, when it suited the new government to install someone with a proven record, rather than trust to the vagaries of council elections. Once he had consolidated a power base on the council, elections were reintroduced and proceeded without alarm. Sir Andrew managed to remain Lord Provost year after year as if, like some portly extension of the royal prerogative, he had been restored to a throne of his own.

Being a man with his own interests at heart he was as amenable to receiving bribes as he was adept at making them. He’d had a knighthood from King Charles, which discreetly obscured the one he’d received from the usurper Oliver Cromwell. Other honours accrued like interest. He was a Member of Parliament, Privy Counsellor and Commissioner of Exchequer. In 1671 he had achieved a further triumph: he was made a judge, an appointment for which he had no merit and only one qualification. His patron Lauderdale, the Secretary of State for Scotland, had raised him to the bench as Lord Abbotshall, although they both despised the law’s proclaimed adherence to that kittle principle, justice. That was the qualification.

It was not a bad record of worldly achievement but there was no doubt about it: what Sir Andrew called management and his enemies called corruption was an exhausting business, and he was no longer young. For years he’d stayed one step ahead of the pack, cajoling here, wheedling there, showing a palm of gold one minute and a fist of iron the next. Sometimes he could be charm itself in the council chambers; other times he would blow in like a gale, driving all opposition before him. Once he’d even had to organise a riot in the street outside the council windows to emphasise his opinion. After twelve successful elections to the provostship, Sir Andrew had had just about enough of Edinburgh.

And then, too, there had been the strained relationship with the Duke of Lauderdale, who’d been breathing down his neck on account of complaints about the competence, even the legality, of some of his decisions in the Court of Session. Finally, three years ago, Lauderdale had suggested that it was time to pull his finger from the fat pie of provostry, that his short stay on the bench must also come to an end, and that he should spend more time with his family at Kirkcaldy. The provost demurred. Lauderdale insisted, and Sir Andrew reluctantly resigned.

But as his glory days were fading, he liked nothing better than to recount them, to anybody who would listen. His son-in-law, John Lauder, who owed him much in terms of placement and preferment, usually had no option but to lend an ear. It was a source of satisfaction to Sir Andrew to have a lawyer on the receiving end of his reminiscences: as a judge he had been deaved with lawyers’ arguments long enough in court, and their contempt for his ignorance was only matched by his hatred of their souple-tongued smugness.

Not that John was by any means the worst. That prize would have to go to his cousins the John Eleises, father and son. The father was in his sixties now, and not so active, but the son was even more offensive, a subversive do-gooder who seemed to show no fear of his betters in arguing against them in favour of outed ministers, rebels and witches. It was Eleis who, with his mentor Sir George Lockhart, had been a ringleader of the advocates in 1674, when forty-nine of them had been debarred from practising because they dared to insist that they could appeal to parliament against decisions made by the Lords of Session, in spite of a royal edict forbidding it. Sir Andrew, though he had by then resigned from the bench, had been outraged by the presumption of these meddling pleaders.

He could not abide the younger Eleis, who had even dragged John Lauder into the advocates’ dispute. John had foolishly stood on a principle as one of the forty-nine, and had been banished out of town to Haddington for more than a year until a compromise was reached: without sufficient advocates, the procedures of the courts ground almost to a halt, and the forty-nine were grudgingly readmitted.

It was a great misfortune that John Lauder was infatuated with Eleis’s devotion to the principles and process of law: it had got him into trouble and would do so again. Nevertheless, Sir Andrew was fond of his daughter’s husband. He and Janet had been married nine years and provided him with five grandchildren to date. Lauder was only thirty, an open-minded, modest man who could yet be moulded.

The Lauders stayed in the Lawnmarket, a stone’s throw from the courts. Sir Andrew’s residence in town was also at the upper end of the hill, but it was not the power-house it had once been. He still made huge amounts of money from various bits of business, and his accounts showed that the Toun itself owed him nearly two thousand pounds in rents and other debts, but he was no longer the driving-force of municipal commerce and enterprise, and folk no longer queued for an audience with him. More and more, he was taking Lauderdale’s advice and spending time at Abbotshall, across the Firth and away from the scenes of his past triumphs. A visit from his son-in-law, then, was not unwelcome, although it was fairly unusual. Their relationship was easy enough but there would always lie between them the shoogling-bog of their differences regarding the law. It was something they stepped around as a rule, to avoid an embarrassing slip on either side; especially on Sir Andrew’s, since he had been so very bad at law and John was very good.

Today however it was John who was on the uncertain ground. He had come with a set of questions anent the Bass Rock and the black dogs that lay in it. He had been down in East Lothian often, sometimes visiting the Ramsay policies at Wauchton, and of course all the while he was in exile at Haddington the coast had been just a short ride away. He had seen the Bass stark in the great grey sea, but had not ventured across to it. The tide or the winds had always conspired against him. Now he was wondering about a trip to view the prison: ‘Would my lord Lauderdale object tae my gaein ower, dae ye think? I wouldna want tae gie offence by speirin if it was only tae be refusit.’

‘Whit for are ye wantin tae gang tae the Bass, John?’ said Sir Andrew. ‘The place is a midden o zealots. Ye’re no seekin business frae ony o them, are ye?’

‘Their business wi the coorts is by wi, I think,’ said Lauder. ‘But I would like tae see the place. It’s a curiosity.’

‘It certainly is. But ye micht no be wise tae disembark there, John. There’s a touch o the rebel aboot ye, as I mind. Yince they had ye in the Bass, they micht no want tae let ye back hame again.’

It was a kind of joke, but he neither laughed nor smiled as he made it. He noted that his son-in-law was at least sensible enough to show some humility in response.

‘I hae learned a lesson frae the advocates’ affair, my lord. I canna pretend that we dinna differ on that maitter, but I am mair inclined tae compromise these days. I’d hae thocht that would be enough tae distinguish me frae the recusants and guarantee my return tae North Berwick.’

It was an even drier joke than Sir Andrew’s. The older man grumphed.

‘Weill, ye’re probably richt. But it’s a grievous dull place, John. There’s naethin there but solans and sneevillers.’ He reached for the decanter of brandy, refilled his own glass and poured one for Lauder.

‘I’m tellt the birds are in such numbers that they’re a marvel o nature, my lord. I would like tae see that, tae step amang them.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And mebbe, if I was there, I would tak anither keek at this fellow Mitchel, that’s been the cause o such grief tae the Privy Cooncil. He’s the only yin that still has a chairge hingin ower his heid, I think. Aw the rest has been convictit.’

‘Mitchel,’ said Sir Andrew, his brow lowering. ‘A vile and dangerous fanatic if iver there was yin.’

‘Aye,’ said Lauder. ‘That’s whit I would like tae see – the worst kind o fanatic. There was hardly onybody got tae see him aw the years he lay in the Tolbooth, as ye ken. But I would like tae see him noo, him and Prophet Peden and the ithers. They hae a kind of philosophic interest tae me.’

‘Ye philosophise ower much for yer ain guid, John. Ye may gang tae study Mitchel, but be assured he will study you harder. He will mark yer face in his een and yer words in his lugs and if ye dinna come up tae his impossible mark – which ye’ll no, no bein a Gallowa Whig or an Ayrshire rebel – and he should iver win free o that place – which he’ll no, if guid coonsels prevail, unless it’s tae mak a journey tae the end o a short tow – he’ll seek ye oot wi his pistols jist as sune as he’s fired a better shot at his grace the Archbishop. Stay awa frae him, and ye’ll no run that danger. Ye can dae nae guid there, and he can dae ye hairm.’

‘His leg is destroyed by the boots, my lord, and his brain is hauf gane as weill, by whit I hear. He’s no fit tae hairm onybody but himsel.’

‘A wild beast is maist dangerous when it’s caged,’ said Sir Andrew. He had picked up his glass, and now, staring hard at Lauder, he brought it to his lips. He took a long, slow mouthful of brandy, the stare never shifting as the stem of the glass rose. With his round drink-bludgeoned face it might have been the blank look of a soft-brained bully, but the eyes were cold and hard like a bird’s, and the large hooked nose was a bird’s beak. He looked as though he had spotted something shiny in the dirt.

‘Speakin o beasts,’ he said, after swallowing noisily, ‘wasna Mitchel an associate o that auld hypocrite Thomas Weir? Perhaps it would be interestin, eftir aw, tae see if he shared ony o his, eh, recreational tastes.’

‘I imagine that connection’s been explored,’ Lauder said, ‘by His Majesty’s law officers. Onywey, Weir’s been deid seiven year noo. There’ll be naethin tae discover there, I doot.’

Sir Andrew regarded his son-in-law gravely. ‘Ye had a terrible affection for Weir’s sister, gin I mind richt. That’s whit vexes me aboot ye whiles, John. Ye will get ower close tae bad company. Fanatics, witches …’

‘I was hardly close tae Jean Weir,’ Lauder said, his face reddening. ‘I didna ken her at aw. I felt sorry for her. It was a bad business awthegither.’

‘Major Weir the yaudswyver,’ Sir Andrew mused. ‘Dae ye mind we visited him in the Tolbooth? No a bonnie sicht … Even you wi yer odd sympathies, John, I think would find it no possible tae imagine hoo onybody could get pleisure oot o carnal relations wi a horse.’

‘We’re gettin waunert, my lord,’ Lauder said.

But Sir Andrew was enjoying himself. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘hoo exactly dae ye manage it wi a muckle craitur like a horse? Ye could mebbe ask Mitchel if he kens. Dae ye get it tae lie doon, or whit? And when it’s doon, hoo dae ye persuade it no tae get up again when it sees ye approachin wi yer dreid weapon furth o its scawbart? Or mebbe ye let the beast staun, and approach it wi a ladder. It’s a mystery, is it no, John?’

Lauder smiled, to show that he was not too strait-laced to appreciate his father-in-law’s humour. ‘Aboot the Bass …’

‘The Bass is nae langer mine tae say ye can or ye canna gang ower,’ said Sir Andrew. ‘That’s Lauderdale’s domain noo. Ma advice tae ye’s this: bide in Edinburgh. Leavin it’s nae guid for ye unless there’s plague.’

‘I thocht,’ said John Lauder, ‘that wi yer auld interest in the Bass ye micht hae speired o his lordship for me.’

‘He’s the Secretary o State, laddie. He’s mair important maitters tae occupy him than issuin warrands tae would-be philosophers. Onywey, we’re no sae chief as yince we were.’

‘That may be true, my lord,’ Lauder said, ‘but surely it was by yer ain guid offices that the Bass fell intae his hauns? Athoot yersel, he wouldna hae it noo as a prison for the rebels.’

Sir Andrew sat back, wiping his mouth. ‘Ye dinna want tae hear that auld tale again, surely?’ But Lauder sat back too, nodding, while Sir Andrew, who could never resist reliving one of his greatest coups, stroked the tresses of his wig and got into his stride.

‘Lauderdale owed me a favour. It’s peyed noo, that’s the difficulty. The Bass Rock was yin hauf o the bargain atween us, and the tither … weill, the tither was the port o Leith.

‘Ye would only hae been nine or ten, John, so ye’ll no mind this, but when Cromwell occupied us in the fifties, he fullt the port o Leith wi English and had a muckle fortress biggit there, a citadel they cried it, the object being baith tae hae English sodgers watchin ower us and tae set the place up as a tradin rival tae oor ain guid burgh.’

‘Ye can still see bits o the stanework doon there,’ Lauder said encouragingly.

‘Aye, but they’re scant, for it was maistly made o turf. Onywey, the English settlers wantit the port freed frae Edinburgh’s grup, a thing that would hae had the maist grievous repercussions on oor finances. I hadna been a twalmonth in ma first term as provost, but I could see the only wey tae retain oor superiority ower Leith was tae invest in it. Cromwell’s commander in Scotland was General Monk. I had the Cooncil gie five thoosan pund tae the construction o the citadel, and that satisfied Monk – I think he could see Cromwell wasna lang for the warld, and that mebbe it would be silly tae lose aw favour wi us for the sake o a wheen English brewers and glessblawers. Sae naethin changed, and of coorse as sune as the young King wan hame at the Restoration the citadel was ordered tae be dismolished.

‘But noo comes Lauderdale, His Majesty’s new Secretary o State, upon the scene. He’d managed tae get the site o the citadel gien intae his chairge. He was fain o the auld plan and got a charter o regality tae raise Leith intae a burgh. It was a ludicrous notion – hoo could sic a clarty boorach be a burgh? – but Lauderdale had set his mind on it, sae it behooved me tae find a wey roon his plans, jist as I had afore wi Monk, or he would hae broke the trade o Edinburgh. Aw the duties on wines and ale that the Toun levied frae Leith my lord would hae acquired for himsel, and in my capacity as a public servant I couldna let him deprive us o oor richtfu taxes.

‘Sae I says tae him, where’s the sense in fallin oot ower a puckle bawbees? Ye want tae mak a profit oot o Leith – I’ll spare ye the bother o administerin the levies, suppressin corruption amang yer officials and the like. I’ll buy the citadel back frae ye for Edinburgh. And tae compensate ye for the loss o income, I’ll gie ye a lump sum in lieu o the wine imposition. Ye’ll walk awa wi yer pooches fou, my lord, I said, and Edinburgh will keep control o her ain destiny. There’s no mony men that can speak sae free wi Lauderdale nooadays.’

John Lauder acknowledged this with a half-smile. ‘How much was it again,’ he asked, ‘that Lauderdale wanted for being deprived o his livelihood?’

Sir Andrew laughed. ‘Ay, he’s such a puir man! Him wi a hoose in Lunnon and the estate at Thirlestane and land aw ower Scotland. He drave a reasonable bargain, John. Rich men can aye be civil wi each ither. I offered him sax thoosan pund for the citadel, and five thoosan pund for the levies, which was a generous sum, but worth it tae keep my lord sweet – sae he got eleiven thoosan pund aw tellt, no a bad income for nae labour.’

‘The Toun wouldna been happy at peyin oot sic an amount?’

‘The Toun didna hae ony choice,’ said Sir Andrew. ‘I was the Toun in thae days, John. Onywey, haudin the duties in oor grup was my priority. Wi the citizens’ drouth and capacity for liquor, it didna tak lang for the Cooncil tae realise I’d made them a guid niffer.

‘That was awa back in 1662, when the King was newly hame and there were debts and favours fleein aboot the country like a flock o stirlins. Aye, an plenty o scores tae be settled tae, eftir twenty years fechtin an sufferin under the kirk elders. I kept ma heid abune it aw when I couldna keep it ablow the dyke, John, an I advise ye tae dae the same in these troubled days – especially since ye hae Janet an the bairns tae think on tae, an no jist yersel wi yer high notions o the sanctity o law.

‘I held ontae that favour eicht years, and there were times, I confess, when Lauderdale’s position at coort wobbled a wee, when I thocht I michtna get the chance tae redeem it. But then the miscreant tendency began tae stir themsels again, and the government was lookin aboot for a siccar place tae lodge the rebel ministers and keep them awa frae the lugs o the ignorant. That’s when the idea o the Bass insinuated itsel intae ma heid, and I went tae Lauderdale and offered him it. There it was, a muckle lump in the middle o the sea, wi an auld fort upon it – needin some repairs, of coorse – inaccessible but handy enough for Edinburgh, and wha should happen tae be in possession o it? Why, Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Provost o Edinburgh, that had gotten it as pairt o the lands o Wauchton frae a puir laird fawn on hard times. I niver would hae thocht the brichtest jewel o that inheritance would be an auld tooth stickin oot in the Firth, but there ye are.

‘I reckoned ma income frae the Rock was nae mair than fifty pund per annum, and that was frae sendin lads ower tae lift the solans’ chicks, but I tellt Lauderdale it could be doubled if there was a permanent garrison pit there, the birds managed on a proper basis, and sundry charges levied on whaiver micht be pit tae live in the place. Hoo muckle would ye want for it, says my lord? Oh, says I, no as muckle as I peyed ye for Leith, it’s only a Rock eftir aw. But, I says, it’s mebbe gotten a hidden value if it keeps the kingdom free o rebels. Oot o Scotland, oot o mind, as it were. Weill, Lauderdale took the hint. I’d been votin his wey in Parliament aw thae eicht years, and takkin maist o the ither burghs wi me forby. Weill, he says, suppose ye live tae be an auld man o ninety, that’s nigh on forty years’ income ye’d be losin. At a hunner pund a year, by your accoont? I’ll ask the King tae gie ye fower thoosan pund for it. And he did, John, he did. Fower thoosan pund,’ he finished hoarsely, pouring himself a fresh brandy, ‘for a lump o rock, a flock o geese and a rickle o stanes that ye wouldna keep pigs in. At that price I didna even fetch back ma sheep – it would hae been ower pernickety, d’ye no think?’

John Lauder could not help admiring his father-in-law’s grotesque self-confidence. He himself was always questioning – his own nature and motives, the accepted norms of daily life, the habits of individuals and of society. But Sir Andrew was like the Bass, a solid relentless rock in a swirling sea of change. He was beholden to him in many ways, certainly he could not afford to offend him, but there were times when he wanted to wring his fat neck. Just now though, he wanted his influence to clear him a passage to the Bass. And there was no motive that Sir Andrew needed to know of, other than the one he had given out loud: he wanted to see James Mitchel, the fanatic to beat all fanatics. He wanted to see what made him what he was.

‘Will ye speak wi the Secretary o State then?’ he asked. ‘He kens me. He kens ma loyalty to the King. I would like to see the prison and cast an objective eye ower prejudice.’

It was a nice touch. Sir Andrew shrugged. ‘John, ye’re a guid lad, though ye whiles keep company I dinna care for. Yer cousin Eleis hasna pit ye up tae this, has he?’

‘This is my concern alane, my lord,’ said John Lauder. ‘John Eleis has naethin tae dae wi it. It’s mair than a week since I last spak wi him.’

‘Then I’ll hae a word,’ said Sir Andrew. Then he seemed to change his mind. ‘In truth, I hardly think it necessary tae fash Lauderdale wi sic a triviality. I can arrange it masel. They are ower lax wi the rebels and permit them parcels o food, letters and visits frae freens and faimly when the boat is sailin. There’ll be nae restrictions, I would think, on an honest leal fellow like yersel.’

Lauder had not told his father-in-law the whole truth. It was correct that he had not seen his cousin John for a week: Eleis had been through in the west, where there was an ongoing outbreak of witchcraft, which had already led to a trial and some executions, and would probably be the excuse for more; he had gone to try to establish who or what was fanning the fire of accusation. But Lauder and he had discussed Mitchel in the past, and they had already arranged to meet later that day. Eleis was due back from Glasgow in the evening, and would meet Lauder at Painton’s shop for some food and drink.

Painton’s shop was half-full, but there was a table in a back-room where they could talk undisturbed over their ale. In fact, Lauder noted with some relief, there was enough noise in the place that they would not be overheard, if their conversation should turn on anything requiring discretion. With his cousin that was always a possibility.

Eleis was full of the witch alarm, which had been dragging on since before the winter. In October Sir George Maxwell of Nether Pollok, a noted anti-government man who had been fined and imprisoned several times for promoting conventicles, had fallen ill, complaining of pains in his side and shoulder, and suffering from terrible night-sweats. Around that time a lassie of thirteen or so, named Jonet Douglas, recently arrived in the area from the north, began to linger around the big house at Pollok. She was deaf and dumb, but managed to attract the attention of Sir George’s three daughters, and told them by means of signs and drawing pictures that she knew what was causing his illness. She persuaded them to send two men with her to a nearby cottage. This was the home of a woman called Jean Mathie, whose son had been locked up some time before for stealing fruit from the Pollok orchard. They entered the cottage, and when the woman’s back was turned, Jonet stuck her hand in at the lum and pulled out a little waxen image wrapped in a linen clout. She gave it to the men who carried it back to the laird’s daughters. The wax figure had two pins stuck in the right side, and another down through the shoulder. They removed these, without saying a word to the patient, their father. That night he slept well again for the first time, without the sweating sickness, and the pains in his body slowly receded.

After a couple of days, when it seemed clear that his recovery would be complete, his daughters told him what had happened. Jean Mathie was arrested and sent, protesting her innocence, to the Paisley tolbooth, where she was pricked for witchmarks, which were found in several places.

‘I am scunnert o the hail] affair,’ said John Eleis. ‘Sir George grew no weill again, as ye mebbe ken, at the start o the year, and you or I would hae pit it doon tae the rheumatics, or creepin age or some such thing. But this Jonet Douglas lass – who, mark this by the way, aw this while canna speak a word but seems tae ken Scots, English, French, Latin and a wheen ither leids when they’re spoken tae her – discovers the auld wife’s son John tae hae made a second doll oot o clay, and when they gang tae the cottage they find it where she tellt them tae look, ablow the bolster in his bed, wi three preens intil it. Noo they had kept the lass back at the door, sae she couldna be said tae hae laid the effigy there hersel, though it seems tae me she could easy hae been there in secret afore, she’s that flittery and daunerin. Sae they cairry John and his wee sister Annabel tae Sir George’s hoose, and tell him whit has occurred. And Sir George begins tae mend again.’

‘Why the sister?’ Lauder asked. ‘Whit was her pairt in it?’

‘Och, the usual thing, ye ken, when ye mix young lassies wi witchcraft. She’s jist aboot ages wi Jonet Douglas, and had a fit o the hysterics, sae they thocht she was possessed. And eftir they had worked on her for a while, of coorse, they discovered that she was possessed.’

‘By Satan?’

‘By a muckle black man wi cloven feet cried Maister Jewel, if ye please. Satan by anither name. Her mither made her lie wi him for the promise o a new coat. And this Maister Jewel had been comin intae see John at nicht tae, throu the windae, wi a rabble o witches at his back, and John kent the witches for his mither and three neibour wifes. He confessed under examination and then aw the weemun were taen and examined and they confessed. Weill, except Jean Mathie, she said she was innocent tae the last. They were aw burnt at Paisley, John and the fower weemun, but the assize spared Annabel, in their mercy and wisdom.’

‘Is it finished then?’ Lauder asked. ‘Or is there mair tae come?’

‘Mair,’ said Eleis. ‘I’ll no deave ye wi the details, but if there’s a witch in aw the west country, it’s the lassie Jonet Douglas. Sir George is seik again, and she’s castin aboot for anither effigy tae find, and I doot she’ll be successfu, for there’s a tide amang the folk that’s cawin her on. Oh, and here’s a thing: she has her voice back. Suddenly she’s able tae speak, and awbody’s bumbazed. She disna ken how she gets the information aboot aw thae witches, she says it jist comes intae her. But no frae the Deil, mind – she has nae correspondence frae him. I wish the doctors would examine her insteid o the folk she accuses – the limmer’s a richt wee miracle o intuition.’

‘She’s a gift tae the folk that want tae hunt witchcraft tae extinction,’ said Lauder. ‘That’s the trouble wi it – ye canna cry the dugs aff yince their bluid’s up.’

‘Oor freen John Prestoun is slaverin at the bit tae be involved,’ said Eleis. ‘If it comes tae a commission, which I doot it must, Prestoun will be hankerin for a place on it.’

‘He aye hankers,’ said Lauder dryly. ‘There’s no an advocate like him for pleadin for himsel. He fell in fast enough wi the royal edict against appeals, and he has the same enthusiasm for findin lanely auld weemun and licht-heidit lassies tae be witches.’

‘I hate these trials,’ said Eleis. ‘I wish I could keep awa frae them. But if I didna plead for the puir craiturs, there’s gey few ithers would – no wi ony conviction, leastweys, for ye canna get a less popular panel than a witch – and the likes o Prestoun would hae a clear road tae drive them tae slauchter. There’s an unpleasant mochness in the air this spring, cousin. That thick feelin afore the thunder breaks. I fear there may be a storm o witchery aboot tae burst upon us.’

‘It may be a fierce summer then,’ said Lauder. ‘Ye’ll ken better than I, but I hear the west is awash wi fanatics forby witches, that they haud their conventicles weekly on the moors, wi thoosans in attendance. Lauderdale’s patience must be near whummelt. He claps the recusant ministers in the jyle, but there aye seems tae be mair tae rise and tak their places.’

‘Like hoodie-craws amang the corn,’ said Eleis. ‘It’s the Archbishop that’s forcin that issue, though. Lauderdale, in himsel, disna care a docken where folk gaither tae worship, if they dinna threaten the stability o the land – that’s ma opinion, though of coorse he could niver say as muckle. But St Andrews sees the field-preachins as a slight tae his ain authority, and has pushed and pushed Lauderdale tae act agin them. Sae the conventiclers cairry weapons tae their prayers noo, and there’s some o them jist ettlin for a chance tae defend their cause frae the dragoons. Noo that’s whit Lauderdale canna thole, for it threatens him, and sae ye’re richt, John, skailt bluid will follow.’

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