‘For poor boys, as I understand it. Do they go on?’
‘Some to university,’ the man says proudly. ‘At present, we have two alumni studying to become doctors.’
Araminta raises an eyebrow. This is an achievement for a working-class boy.
‘It’s less unusual in Scotland,’ the master adds, noticing her surprise.
‘Less unusual?’
‘My father was a gardener,’ he admits. ‘On an estate. Scottish education is progressive, madam. If a lad has ability, then funds will be found.’
They round the corner and the teacher indicates the sash-and-case window ahead, halfway down the corridor. She can just make out the statue’s sleeve, a patch of mossy ochre lichen upon it, like velvet. Araminta smartly undoes the latch and leans out. The teacher doesn’t object. George Heriot is to her left. He’s holding a thick stone book, slightly open. The bible she supposes. ‘The carving is fascinating,’ she lets out, glancing behind. ‘Such a testament. This building has seen so much.’
‘Indeed,’ the teacher enthuses. ‘Heriot’s has seen kings come and go. Wounded men from the Battle of Dunbar were brought here to recover, when Cromwell invaded.’
‘You’re an antiquarian?’
‘I teach history and classics.’
‘So this building was in use in Cromwell’s day?’ Araminta confirms, coming in from the window.
‘Oh yes,’ the young man says. ‘This floor housed the hospital ward. The view of the castle was said to inspire the soldiers’ recovery. The purser still has the records.’
Araminta is certain now that this is the place Berenice would have left her mark. She puts her head back out of the window. Above the statue, the indented stone is scalloped like a shell, not a crown, though it has the effect of a sandstone halo. She leans out further.
‘Madam.’ The teacher steps forward, concerned.
And then she sees it. Scratched into the open book in Heriot’s hand. Perhaps Berenice was taller than she is. The mark is mathematical. She blinks. It is, she realises, the diagram of an equilateral triangle, each line at sixty degrees to the others. She drew the same thing a hundred times at school. ‘Good heavens,’ she says.
Dodging inside, she thanks the teacher and walks out to her carriage. The triangle must point to somewhere on that map – the third point a triangulation from the castle to the school and beyond. She considers Berenice’s thirteen clues. She’s had the impression they must have been difficult for it’s taken almost a century to get this far. Perhaps now things will be easier.
‘Home!’ she instructs the driver. ‘As fast as you can.’
The man does as she asks, the horses pulling away, if not at a gallop, at least at a spirited trot. Araminta doesn’t care for comfort and holds the worn leather strap above the door as the carriage bounces along the uneven road.
At Glenfinlas Street, she sweeps inside, past Hester who is cleaning the gilded mirror in the hallway with vinegar. In the drawing room she throws her cape onto the sopha and pulls off her gloves. Then she checks the door is closed. She will share nothing she doesn’t have to now with Eleanor Thrale. Pulling the map from Aunt Eilidh’s desk, she bisects the line between the chapel and the school at ninety degrees and creates an even-sided triangle, the apex of which points to garden ground behind a private house on the Lawnmarket, on the far side of the road from St Giles’. She squints. She had expected this new clue tolead to an institutional building. Something unlikely to change. The house seems undistinguished; behind it the old fleshmarket where meat was sold and on the other side of the road the Tron Kirk, with a poultry market behind.
She slumps into the chair at her desk. The triangle is the tenth clue so there will be three more by Winifred’s reckoning. Araminta scrabbles to find the notebook Johnathan gave her when she left London. She recalls what Sister Winifred said about covering her tracks but she has always needed to write things down to puzzle them out. At school her diary was peppered with algebraic calculations and Latin phrases. This is becoming complicated and she requires clarity. She opens the first page, the silver pencil poised, and writes:
Aunt Eilidh left me a tartan kerchief.
Clue 8 led to the castle.
Clue 9 from the castle to Heriot’s: a third point on the triangle.
Clue 10the triangle led to a house on the High Street.
She sits back to consider this, then jumps at a smart knock on the drawing room door. She hurriedly shoves the map and the notebook into the desk as Eleanor enters. The maid cried most of last night and her eyes are still pink.
‘I wondered what you want me to say, ma’am? When I go to Mr McGhie’s later? He’ll be expecting me.’ Eleanor is fully resigned to the fact that she’s lost the trust of her mistress and has not got out of this onerous duty either.
Araminta removes to the sopha. She sets her mind to the task. The lie must take up the men’s time.
‘They’ll know you took the carriage,’ Eleanor adds. ‘At least they knew before.’
‘You must say I was summoned,’ Araminta ponders, wondering what Sir Walter Scott would make up in thissituation. Not that Sir Walter would find himself in a quandary such as this. Perhaps from what her aunt says, Robert Burns would be a more likely co-conspirator. ‘You must say I’ve been summoned by a lord and you don’t know his name, but that I wore my best dress and spent an hour on my toilette.’
Eleanor’s wide eyes betray her confusion. ‘A lord, ma’am?’
