Eleanor obliges. The job of putting the earth back is easier than taking it out and she’s glad the bone will once more be covered. She presses down the infill, but at the end there remains a small mound protruding above the grass, on which she lays the sod Sister Winifred cut out, like a tiny picnic rug. When she turns, the nun’s cheeks are wet.
‘Are you all right, Sister?’
‘I’ve never found one,’ Winifred sniffs. ‘A clue. My sisters... that is, my McKenzie sisters, Eilidh and Aoife were always the ones to succeed.’ She steps onto the grass-topped hillock to tamp it down. ‘It’ll level in time,’ she says.
‘Are you going to open it?’ Eleanor asks, her gaze falling to the box still in Winifred’s hand.
The old nun’s eyes are like pistons. ‘In time,’ she says.
‘It’s gold, though,’ the girl persists.
‘Gold doesn’t rot, that’s why it was chosen. Its treasure is its practicality.’
‘What do you think is inside?’
Winifred secretes the box in her pocket. ‘You can’t know, Eleanor. The fewer of us, the better.’
Eleanor feels a flush of anger. Her mistress has put her in terrible danger and she isn’t even allowed to know why. She’s admitted her guilt to the McKenzie women and still, it seems, they don’t trust her.
‘We should get back. I’ll show you the sewing room,’ Winifred continues. ‘Everyone has to earn their keep,’ she adds. ‘You’re a ladies’ maid. You can stitch, can’t you?’
Eleanor nods. She doesn’t mind sewing. ‘Thank you,’ she manages, but she finds her eyes drawn to the pocket of Sister Winifred’s robe where the box is now hidden.
‘You’re too curious a cat. You know what happens to them,’ Winifred warns.
The nun leads the way and Eleanor starts to follow, but out of the corner of her eye she catches sight of something in the distance. She squints. Far off, on the other side of the park, a gentleman on a horse is riding towards them at a gallop. She recognises him; his greatcoat a plummy shade of wool so dark it’s almost black.
‘Oh God,’ she gets out. She grabs Sister Winifred’s arm. ‘It’s Mr Thom,’ she squeals.
Winifred peers. Her eyesight is not as good as it once was. She can make out the chestnut horse but not the figure.
‘You’re sure it’s him?’
Eleanor doesn’t answer, just starts to run up the hill back towards the convent. The nun catches her arm. There’s no way they’ll make it to safety in that direction. ‘Come with me,’ she says, and quickly discounting the nearby houses as possible hiding places, she pulls the girl towards the tavern. Eleanor trips as they scramble across the wet grass and clatter past two clucking hens, pecking the hard ground in the courtyard. The women burst through the door into an almost empty public room where a hefty-looking barmaid is rolling a keg into place. It’s early for there to be drinkers but a man by the ember-strewn grate sighs in his sleep, his dishevelled appearance indicating he’s been there all night. The air smells stale though somewhere there’s a pot of barley broth bubbling, its scent overlaying the hoppy remnants of last night.
‘Sister!’ the woman declares, clearly surprised for nuns do not normally frequent the hostelry.
‘We need to hide,’ Winifred gets out. ‘This girl,’ she pushes the maid ahead. Thom, after all, can identify Eleanor but as far as she knows, he has no idea who she is. In fact, now she thinks on it, she’d like to get a look at him. ‘I can pay,’ she adds, pulling three shillings from her pocket.
Businesslike, the woman takes the money and thankfully asks no questions. Someone in her position, Winifred is sure, has seen many women fleeing menfolk. She puts out a hand to manoeuvre Eleanor away, her chunky arm as pink as pork.
‘Right,’ she says.
Winifred peers out of the small window beside the door. It’s dark in here, the daylight illuminating the scene like a light box. Thom is almost at the place they dug up Berenice’s clue, but he shows no sign of halting.
‘Stop,’ she calls, and Eleanor, not yet through the door, turns. She throws the golden box and Eleanor catches it cleanly. ‘Hide that,’ she instructs.
Eleanor lifts her skirt and sticks the box down her stocking, then disappears with the woman.
When Harry Thom bursts in, Winifred is next to the sleeping man by the half-dead fire. She’s taken up the fellow’s pipe, though the tobacco is only rough shag. At Glenfinlas Street in her youth Winifred used to smoke smooth Equatorial Mac Baron, imported at Leith. Now, despite the inferior flavour, she realises she’s missed the ritual of lighting up.
‘You harpy!’ Harry Thom explodes, his blood high from the chase. He’s been up all night, working his way through the clue he found at the castle. He’s written to the Grand Master already this morning, his excitement telling on the page.I am on the point of finding what they have hidden. What they seek,he said.But it’s an ominous kind of sisterhood. All these women.
Thom’s shouting prompts the man at the fireplace to wake and take in, with some surprise, the nun smoking next to him and, at the other side of the room, this furious gentleman.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Winifred addresses the fellow, lifting his pipe in the air.
‘Naw, Sister,’ he says. ‘You go ahead.’
