There’s an awkward pause before Araminta speaks again. ‘Are you a Jacobite?’ she lets out. She can’t keep it in any longer for it’s been on her mind. This old woman who talks in riddles might not be entirely harmless. She wonders if she’s being lured into some terrible plot. If Colonel Fraser might clap her irons.
‘There’s no such cause any longer,’ Sister Winifred replies calmly. ‘Jacobites, indeed.’
‘But were you one?’
‘My dear, I wasn’t even born at the time of the last uprising. Neither were my sisters.’
‘But the McKenzie women. Our legacy. We’re Jacobites. Aren’t we?’
‘All that is only a story now. Though we served the Stuart queens.’
Araminta thinks that if Aunt Eilidh was a plain speaker, she wishes she could have had another few hours with her. Sister Winifred is a different beast. She changes tack. ‘What about your grandmother? The woman who caused the trouble? Is that what you said?’
‘Berenice McKenzie and her sister, Mhairi. You cannot serve two masters, Araminta. Two causes. That’s the lesson of their lives.’
‘They took the side of the Young Pretender then?’
Winifred relents. ‘They did,’ she admits. ‘They were highly educated women. Mhairi had been schooled in France. The Auld Alliance. She was a beauty too, by all accounts. Berenice was my grandmother – a classics scholar. Their children thought they might get away to America after Culloden for many whosupported Bonnie Prince Charlie managed to flee across the Atlantic. But the pair of them died for what they’d done in the end. Berenice immediately and Mhairi after.’
‘They were executed?’
‘After a fashion.’
‘What do you mean?’
Araminta crosses her arms. She’s sick of Winifred not giving a civil reply to a civil question. Everything the old nun says feels like an evasion. Sister Winifred pauses, then senses she’ll have to give something away.
‘It’s hard to imagine what it was like in 1746. After the Battle of Culloden. Some people still had hope, I imagine. The great iron gates of Traquair House had been closed with an oath they’d only reopen when a Stuart monarch took the throne. The house was a royal hunting lodge before the earl and his family had it. They didn’t think it would take long, I expect, when they swore the gates shut. Perhaps they’ll never open. They’ve been locked for almost a century.’
Araminta doesn’t care about Traquair House. ‘I’ll not be made a traitor to the Crown,’ she says baldly. This is a sentence she never thought would cross her lips. In Richmond, stating such a position had always been entirely unnecessary.
‘Oh, quite the reverse,’ Sister Winifred says. ‘The McKenzie women will never betray the Crown, my dear. How could we?’
‘Berenice and Mhairi did.’
‘In more ways than one,’ Winifred confirms. ‘They made an error of judgement.’
Araminta thinks back to the family bible. The little diamonds. ‘Their names are marked in the bible. Yours and mine too,’ she recalls.
‘Many of our female relations, all the way back another century before that too. Did Mrs Archer, not teach you anyhistory? Really, it’s too bad. She said you were talented at mathematics. At classics. We thought you were prepared.’
‘I’m not sure anything could have prepared me for this,’ Araminta bursts out. ‘You and Aunt Eilidh supervising my education but never showing your faces. I’ve been an orphan most of my life. Do you know what that means? I’ve had nobody. I’ve been an object of pity. If Johnathan hadn’t loved me...’ Her voice trails. ‘I’m so grateful to him... now I find this... and you won’t even tell me. Everything is a riddle.’
Sister Winifred sighs. ‘We did what we thought was best. Will you go to the castle? Find out what this building is and look for the clue.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’ll know it when you see it. Keep your eyes open.’
Araminta sniffs. ‘If I find this clue, you’ll tell me everything? Promise you’ll answer my questions. Directly?’ She holds out her hand.
Sister Winifred stares at it before shaking. ‘I’ll try,’ she says.
Araminta lays her finger on the map. ‘This is the garrison chapel. The castle was used as a prison after the defeat at Culloden. They held Charles Edward Stuart’s mistress there.’
‘You mustn’t believe everything you read, my dear,’ Winifred gets up. ‘Jean Cameron was not the Bonnie Prince’s mistress. The Hanoverian press merely said that to discredit her. Why they’d have had that poor man exhausted, the number of mistresses he was supposed to have. Mind you, the chapel as the location for a clue would make sense. Churches endure. Berenice set clues that would last: thirteen of them. Though I scarcely expect that she thought her breadcrumbs would linger unsolved this long. She was clever. She quite outwitted us. These I believe are clues eight and nine. As I said, Eilidh did well in unravelling the mystery. You’re over halfway.’
‘Clues number eight and nine of thirteen?’ Araminta surmises.
