Chapter Five
Davina bumped her way through the crowded, narrow street. Goods poured out the shop doors and tradesmen could be seen working their crafts behind some of the windows. People stopped to browse or buy, and others hurried along on their way home for dinner.
She kept to the side, watching the signs dangling overhead, looking for one of a cobbler. Mr. Hume had sent her here, to talk to an old man named Mr. Jacobson, who occasionally attended the political meetings he frequented. Mr. Hume thought this man had lived his youthful years in Northumberland in the region where she had been born. Possibly he would know something of use to her.
That Mr. Hume had not accompanied her implied this would probably not be a successful outing. She suspected he had given her this man’s name and direction in order to appear helpful.
She spied a sign with a boot up ahead. Perhaps this Mr. Jacobson was not a cobbler but a bootmaker. She squeezed past a cart, suffered its donkey’s strong odor, and ducked through the doorway.
Boots in various stages of creation lined one wall, and leather hung from another one. An old man, big and pink-faced and with cropped gray hair, straddled a bench near the window, nailing the bottom of a boot. He squinted as if he could use spectacles. He did not appear to hear her enter.
“Good day, sir. Are you Mr. Jacobson?”
He looked up, still squinting. “I am. I don’t do women’s boots, though.”
“I am not here for boots, although yours appear quite fine. Mr. Hume met you and thought you might be able to help me.”
“Hume? That troublemaker? What’s he doing, sending a woman to me? All talk, he is, and let someone else take the lead ball, that’s all that one is.” He returned to his work. “Nearly came to blows over all his talk causing trouble but him never being the one to risk his neck.”
“This has nothing to do with politics. I came to ask you if you knew my family in Northumberland. He said you came from there, near Newcastle.”
“’Tis a big county, lass.”
“Yes, very big. Yet there are long and wide family connections in it, and it is always possible you knew them if you lived near the village of Caxledge. It is near Kenton.”
He nodded grudgingly. “Possible, as you say. I didn’t live far from that town when I was a lad. What’s the name?”
“MacCallum.”
“Scot. Well, that narrows it a bit. I knew MacCallums. Went to church school with one. He wasn’t Catholic, or a Scot to hear him, but his father wanted him to get some learning, and that was one way to do it.”
“That could have been my father. He was educated at the St. Ambrose School in Newcastle but started at a local parish school.”
“Could have been him, then. He was younger than me, and I didn’t stay long, what with taking an apprenticeship, so we did not know each other well. I can’t tell you much about him.”
“It was my grandfather I was hoping to learn about. His father, James.”
Mr. Jacobson set down his tool. His brow hooded his squint. “Seems to me my father knew him, at least in passing. Fostered nearby, I think. An old couple. Forget their name.”
“Mitchell. Harold and Katherine.”
“I wouldn’t know. There was some bad feelings when he left the church as a young man. Haven’t thought about that in years. Odd how old memories come easier these days than new ones. I only remember because my father thought it wrong for him to then send his son to the school if he left the church. That’s probably the only reason I recall your family at all.” He paused over his own words, then shrugged. “One reason at least.”
“There is another?”
He sat in thought, as if pawing through old parchments in his head, looking for the right document. “A strange thing to say, I thought,” he spoke to himself.
“For whom to say?”
His profound distraction lifted. “My father. When MacCallum died, he told my mother. It was odd enough it stuck in my head. MacCallum caught fever and died, he said.”
“Not so odd to tell her if they had attended the same church when younger.”
“MacCallum caught fever and died, he said. The baron is gone.” He grinned. “Carried himself like one, I suppose. Made you take notice, now that I picture him. It was a name they must have given him to goad him about that.”
“Probably so.” Her astonishment made it hard to get the words out.
“Proud, I suppose. A common enough sin. There are worse. Although he weren’t the best family man either, now that I poke my brain about him. Put his son in that school, but he’d leave his family from time to time and wander off for a spell. Kept needing new situations for clerking because of it. Seems to me my mother had something to say about that. She didn’t approve, of course.” He chuckled. “Never saw my father dare to take a holiday from us or his work, I’ll tell you that much. She wouldn’t a had it.”
