Magda was amazed at how easily they could enter the Tolbooth with a few coins to grease the way. They’d sacrificed the last of their coin to the turnkey, insisting they give a condemned man his last rites.
“We’ve come to administer the viaticum, sir,” Tom informed him in his most austere voice. “The last Holy Communion,” he added when faced with the guard’s dumb stare, “for a man on the brink of his death.”
“Ach,” the turnkey spat, “he was too long with the papists. And good riddance, says I.”
“You too shall be forgiven,” Tom intoned ominously as he glided into the cell, and James was forced to turn his back to hide the look on his face.
“Nomini spiritus sanctu . . .” Tom knelt at the door to the cell and began to pray in a loud, atonal voice, and the turnkey quickly cleared from the cellblock as if exposed to a contagion. Magda had a strong suspicion that Tom wasn’t getting the words right, but she had to assume that the only people nearby who’d recognize the Latin mass would likely be behind bars.
“James,” she gasped his name, instantly at his side.
“You’re a sight, hen.” A smile warmed his face, but she noticed the lines etched at the corners of his eyes and the tightness around his mouth, visible even through the week-long growth of his beard, many shades darker than the light brown of his hair.
“We don’t have much time,” she whispered, frantic. She dug clumsily in the pouch tied at her waist and pulled out a small stoppered vial. “Take this.” She shoved it into his hand. “A witch, Gormshuil, gave it to me. It’s henbane. It’ll act like a poison. She said three sips will make a person appear dead. Sort of likeRomeo and Juliet, right?”
“I think not, love.” James gingerly placed the bottle back in her hands. “You forget, poison is what got me here, and I fear one poisoning is enough in this lifetime.”
“Dammit, James,” she hissed. “Thislifetime is about to come to an end. Now take it,” she commanded, slapping the vial back into his hand. “I don’t know what you’ll do when you wake up, or where you’ll wake up, but . . . I can’t think of anything else to do.”
“I see it’s unwise to cross you,” he said, smiling at her verve. “Henbane, aye?” He rolled the vial in his palm. “I knew I’d gotten to the heart of it with my name for you.”
The scrape of wood on stone rumbled down the passageway as a guard opened the door to their wing.
James leaned down to take her mouth with his, and she clawed at the front of his coat, pulling him wildly to her. She poured her whole self, her whole focus into the knowing of him. The stubble of his beard, just long enough to be soft on her face. His lips dry on her mouth. The long press of his body, solid against her. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she thought that, if he couldn’t escape, this would be their last kiss, the one most seared into her, the one she’d be left with to kiss over and over again in her memory.
The dull clack of boot heels sounded on stone, and James pulled away. “You’ve not seen the last of me,” he whispered, and he dashed the tears from her cheeks.
After the guard escorted Tom and Magda away, Ainslie’s voice came from across the darkened corridor. “If ever I find my way free of this place, it seems I must convert.”
James’s response was uncharacteristically grave. “Faith is a powerful thing,” he said, feeling the cool of the glass vial in his palm.
“Guard!” Other prisoners joined Ainslie’s chant. Many men in the Tolbooth may have longed for their own deaths, but it didn’t mean they felt comfortable living among it. Having a dead body in the cellblock aroused feelings ranging from mild superstition to all-out hysteria.
“Bloody hell,” the guard muttered, realizing his poor luck at being the one to discover a body. Clapping a hand over his mouth and nose, he kicked at James, who lay cold and motionless on the slab floor of his cell. The henbane brought with it a terrible stench, a foulness easily mistaken for the stink of death.
“How is he?” Ainslie asked. He’d grown increasingly agitated since James’s collapse. They’d been chatting amiably when his speech began to slur heavily, and James lost consciousness soon thereafter.
“How is he?” the guard mimicked. “He’s dead as a rail.” Cursing, he laid James out flat, arms at his sides. “And that Campbell will be angrier than a wet cat too. Dead as a rail,” he muttered, quickly rifling through James’s pockets.
“What will you do with him then?” Ainslie spoke rapidly, his voice holding a note of alarm. He rubbed the near-empty vial where it hid in his coat pocket. James had tossed it to him, with a warning not to drink it. Ainslie fretted, not knowing if it was a soporific, or worse, he had in his possession.
“What we do with all you corpses. Aye,” he said with a wink, “that’s what you are to me. A corpse, or about to be one. Some get sold to the barber surgeons at Dickson’s Close, for cutting.” The guard grinned at this last bit, seeing Ainslie’s obvious chagrin. “But first,” he said with one last kick to James’s side, “it’s down to the vaults.”
Chapter 39
James opened his eyes to utter blackness, and for a horrified moment thought he’d been buried alive. Shifting, he felt the crunch and slip of dry bones underneath him and, bolting up, slammed his head on the low ceiling. His stomach came to life roiling, and a wave of nausea stole his breath. Spinning onto his hands and knees, he vomited into the darkness. Mysterious hard edges cut into his hands, and knobs of bone dug into his shins and the tops of his feet, now stripped bare of his boots. Wiping the corner of his tartan along his mouth, James sent up a silent apology to the restless souls whose remains he’d just defiled.
The full memory of what he’d done came to him. Realizing he had no other choice, he’d choked down Magda’s potion. It had been foul and sickly sweet, and he was now finding it to be all the more odious on the way back up. He spat into the blackness. His gut was completely empty, but he still couldn’t eradicate the lingering taste of henbane from his mouth and nose.
They would have put him in the vaults underneath the Tolbooth. James knew it to be a nest of coffin-sized crypts, except this mausoleum housed no refined sarcophagi. It was merely a repository for corpses to rot into bone and dust. Looking from side to side, he opened his eyes wide. In the back of his mind, he’d hoped they would adjust, but not a shred of light made it to the cellars below the Tolbooth.
The sound of a small creature scurrying reverberated through the vault, sending bones to topple and settle loudly behind him. James instinctively patted his hand to his side for his small blade before he remembered he had no weapon, and, he thought, the guards would have stripped his pockets clean as well.
He sensed other creatures, almost definitely rats, making their approach. The smell of his own vomit came to him, and his stomach gave a belated lurch as he realized rodents would soon bear down on him, come to feed.
Hoping the vault wasn’t any longer than a coffin, he edged back slowly until his feet hit open air. James eased backward, and when the lip of the cell was at his waist, his feet finally touched ground.
The scream of rusted metal rang through the chamber as someone opened a little-used door in the distance. His deprived senses quickly became aware of voices and the hint of a torch approaching. His surroundings emerged limned in faint gray light, gradually growing clearer as the torch drew closer.
