Araminta nods. ‘I did. Everything.’
‘Quite the tale,’ Johnathan adds cheerfully. ‘I’m all for Minty having her freedom. I mean, why shouldn’t a lady manage her own money? Minty’s twice as bright as I am, that’s for sure. Education as well! She’d be an asset to a university department. I can’t see what kind of fellow wouldn’t be in favour.’
The women lock eyes. They know exactly the kind of fellow.
Winifred lets a sip of warm wine slip down her throat. ‘We’ll need to manage this carefully,’ she says. The truth, like the world of women, lies between the lines. Bringing it into the world will be dangerous. The bishop has evaded talking about whathe’s done, Mother said. A whiff of the backroom deal already pervades the business.
Araminta nods. Over the last two days she has researched the matter. ‘I don’t believe an edict such as this can simply be added to the law. That was a foolish hope.’
‘No,’ Winifred confirms. ‘The monarch can’t do that anymore. It’ll have to pass parliament. And that will require power behind it.’
‘The Whigs,’ Johnathan says. ‘Melbourne seems a decent chap. It’s only a matter of time,’ he adds wistfully, as if the velum in his wife’s possession is not more than three hundred years old.
‘A worthy queen would be a start,’ Winifred continues with a sigh. ‘I wonder if she will be.’
‘Who?’ Johnathan isn’t following their train of thought.
The women pause. ‘King William’s niece,’ Araminta says. ‘She’s the next in line.’
‘But she can’t be more than a child...’ Johnathan objects.
‘Seventeen,’ Winifred says stoutly. She’s checked. The princess will gain her majority in May, in only a few weeks. The old king is ill; if rumours are to be believed, dying. ‘Several kings have been crowned as far younger children,’ Winifred posits.
Johnathan searches his memory. Medieval kings, perhaps.
‘Can you help, darling?’ Araminta chimes. ‘I’ll need an audience.’
‘An audience?’
‘With the princess,’ she spells it out. ‘Victoria. Of Kent.’
Johnathan squirms. ‘I know a few chaps at Buckingham House through the Geological Society,’ he manages.
‘We can’t tell more men,’ Winifred says definitely.
‘No, we can’t, Johnathan,’ Araminta agrees.
‘Perhaps if you wrote to the princess, I might see that she gets the letter,’ he offers.
The women take this in.
Winifred says, ‘That may work. Araminta, you must tell her that in Scotland you uncovered a royal treasure and explain the service our foremothers performed for the Stuart queens. Let’s hope she’s intrigued. I would be.’
When Johnathan leaves the room Winifred turns to her niece. ‘I may be able to see to it through the bishop but there will be trades and more secrets.’
‘Let’s give Johnathan a chance,’ Araminta replies, and Winifred squeezes her great niece’s hand.
‘When I die—’ Winifred starts.
‘We’ll take a plot on the other side of them,’ Araminta says and realises that it’s a sign of her having a family now, that she need not be told her great aunt’s wishes.
*
The same day Cillian Brodie is interred, Thom makes it to London. He elected not to sail but to ride. At Carlisle he forwent his disguise and clothed himself once more as a gentleman. The roads are not bad now the weather is brightening and on the third day he rides into town through Essex, past the market gardens and into the east of the city, the oldest part of the capital. He feels he is truly at home when at last he passes the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street. The smell of woodsmoke is on the air, the sound of passersby talking, a mist of rain as he trots past the Mansion House; all the comforts of England. He’s grubby from the journey, but he doesn’t want to wait so he dismounts at the inn at Blackfriars and pays a boy to see to his horse. Then, with the crown in a leather bag which he procured just outside Edinburgh, he walks north through Covent Garden to the Grand Order, rapping on the door the requisite number of times and giving the password to a sallow-faced servant.
In the inner sanctum, the Grand Master waits. He rises as Thom enters.
‘I have it,’ Thom announces showily, and places the leather bag on the desk, drawing out the crown and unwrapping it from its linens. That it is an extraordinary, intricate treasure is immediately apparent, even here in a room where not one square inch of space survives without ornamentation; a collection of golden clocks on one wall, another skirted with strange, stuffed animals and a mural overhead depicting the signs of the Zodiac in the night sky. Thom holds up the crown which catches the light, glowing gold and green, the creamy pearls reflecting the flickering candles.
