The Crown Agent E-Book

Stephen O'Rourke

• Herausgeber: Sandstone Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: The Crown Agent Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 363

Beschreibung

'An assured debut that unashamedly harks back to classic thrillers... reads like a knowing blend of John Buchan's The 39 Steps and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.' -The Irish Times A ship adrift, all hands dead. A lighthouse keeper murdered in the night. The Crown needs a man to find the truth. Doctor Mungo Lyon, his reputation tarnished by the Burke & Hare scandal, and forbidden to practise as a surgeon, is the wrong man. That's exactly why the Crown chose him.

Leseprobe

THECROWNAGENT

THECROWNAGENT

STEPHEN O’ROURKE

First published in Great Britain by

Sandstone Press Ltd

Willow House

Stoneyfield Business Park

Inverness

IV2 7PA

Scotland

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright © Stephen O’Rourke 2019

Editor: Moira Forsyth

The moral right of Stephen O’Rourke to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

ISBNe: 978-1-912240-77-7

Jacket design by Ryder Design, Sheffield

Maps by Camilla Seddon Illustration

Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh

For my mother Patricia and my father James

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Inferno, Canto 1, Dante Alighieri

The mind is everything: what we think, we become.

Buddha

PROLOGUE

Cumbrae Island. Midnight, 2 January 1829.

Astorm was gathering over the Firth of Clyde. Flecks of sleet slid across the glass. Above Sandy’s head the lamp launched yet another beam over the seething water.

The kettle whistled and he slid it from the hotplate. Then with a well-practised flick he opened the stove and shovelled in some coal. He wiped his hands, stretched, and frowned at the storm glass. The liquid inside, clear all day, was frosting quickly now, and as if in answer the wind rose with a wolf’s howl, licking round the tower. It was going to be a long shift, but he’d see it through till noon then hand over to Tom, presently sound in his bunk.

Sandy lifted the Greenock Advertiser and tried to concentrate on the shipping notices. An inky little three-masted schooner accompanied every entry on the yellowing paper. Hunter, sailing for Madeira on the third. Cormorant, bound for Bermuda the same day. Minerva, voyaging to Cape Town the day after. He patted a few pockets in search of his pipe and tobacco.

A bell clanged in the distance.

He stopped. Yes. There it was again. And again. But not regular, he thought, his stomach tightening. Haphazard. Like something unhinged.

He leapt to the window. Beam after beam swept the water. The clanging continued. Round came the beam again, and suddenly there it was. A stricken ship, her sails in rags.

Sandy’s whole life was the lighthouse, and he knew the King’s Regulations like the words of a song. Grabbing a hurricane lamp he clattered down the spiral stairs to light the beacon.

‘Tam, wake up man! There’s a ship foonderin’ oot in the firth! A schooner, must be a trader!’

The wind whipped the grass at his ankles as he trudged uphill, the lighthouse beam raking the sky. For a moment he stopped, turned and raised a rain-lashed hand to his brow. The clanging drifted in the wind. ‘It can only be a mile out at most,’ he thought.

Breathing hard, Sandy reached the beacon. A wall of rain drenched him as he set the lamp down and fumbled for a rag. But just as he turned to light it, he heard footsteps.

‘Tam here, quick man. Gie me a hand wi’ this lamp, will ye?’

If Sandy had managed to light the beacon on Cumbrae that night, Dan Porter at the Cloch Lighthouse ten miles to the north would have relayed the signal along the coast to the Custom House at Greenock. There, the officer on watch would have noted the incident in the log and dispatched a team of marines to investigate. At first light a rescue mission would have been mounted.

But as it was, the stricken ship was not reported until late the following morning and Sandy never did light the beacon, because those words proved to be the last he ever spoke before he was struck dead with a single blow of the lighthouse axe.

1

Some stories can never be told. Some mysteries are so rooted in darkness they can never be set down, even now, here in my study, where a cheerful fire crackles in the hearth. But truth is as truth does and in these, my winter days, it’s time to reveal the secrets of my life.

I begin more than fifty years ago, with the mission that led me far beyond the compass of my youth. Those memories, despite the warmth of this fire, plunge a cold blade of fear through to my very bones.

I was sick at heart with Edinburgh. My father, a senior officer in the East India Company, had shipped me home aged seven. Since then I’d measured out my life first at the Morningside School under the strict eye of the Dominie, then as a student at the College, and finally as a surgeon in the city’s Infirmary. My path had been steady, my future assured. But each evening as I turned for home I’d think of the empire beyond Britain’s shores. ‘Mungo Lyon,’ I’d sigh, ‘there surely must be more to life than this.’

Then, on a bitter morning in January 1829, everything changed because of a pair of Irish navvies named William Burke and William Hare.

I was twenty-seven and alone amid the hanging mob on the High Street. I remember snowflakes and silence, the minister closing his eyes, the Bible under his chin. Someone pulled a handle and Burke dropped like a sack. His neck snapped like a dry twig leaving the rope quivering. His last breath fogged the air, then disappeared with the mob’s cheer. That was the end of Burke, but not of an affair which had shaken the city’s medical Establishment to its core.

Just a few weeks earlier Burke and Hare had stood trial for mass murder, but Hare turned King’s Evidence against his accomplice and walked from the court a free man. They’d sold their victims’ bodies to my friend and mentor Doctor Robert Knox, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the city’s most celebrated anatomist.

Knox was ruined, and shortly after the trial was expelled from the city. I admit it, of course. He, together with other surgeons (whom I won’t name, even all these years later), paid handsomely for bodies from the Resurrectionists. Nobody approved of grave robbing, but the medical students needed to practise dissection. How else could they learn?

The arrest of Burke and Hare for mass murder, however, and the Lord Advocate’s investigation which followed, made villains of us all. Folk spat at my feet as I entered the Infirmary, and my noble art became a thing of shame. Then came the Procurator Fiscal’s questions, but time and again I denied everything. I was of no use, he eventually reported, and I thus avoided any part in the trial.

My connection with Knox marked me, however, and the Infirmary’s Trustees lost no time in restricting my right to practice surgery. Then I lost a patient in difficult circumstances and was banned altogether. After that I hardly knew what to do with myself so, after lingering round the patients each evening making notes, I’d trudge home to bed. My sister Margaret, always writing at her desk in the drawing room, sensed much but said little.

One morning in Spring, as I sat reading a journal and smoking my pipe, a runner came with a note.

Be at my club at noon.

It was signed by the Lord Advocate.

What could Scotland’s most senior government minister possibly want with me? Naturally I prepared myself for yet more unpleasant questions.

‘His Lordship is expecting you,’ said the doorman when I arrived. ‘You’ll find him upstairs in the Day Room.’

A long clock chimed twelve. A fire crackled and pipe smoke drifted over the back of a chair. Hearing my footsteps he turned and I immediately recognised his mutton-chopped face.

‘Doctor Lyon! Do take a seat. Delighted you could make it. Henderson, some sherry if you please.’

He offered his tobacco pouch and I caught the aroma of Turkish Blend. I lit my briar. The sherry arrived.

He asked about my work and even sympathised with the cares of my profession.

‘It’s been a trying time, Lyon. But I’ve spoken to the Prime Minister and have his assurance there will soon be legislation to, shall we say, regularise things.’

Thereafter we chatted like old friends, but all the while he was sizing me up like a Bengal tiger. He nudged things round to family, and so I told him how my parents met at a Company ball in Calcutta, then settled in Bombay where I was raised by my ayah, Ranjita. I told of how my mother had died giving birth to Margaret, and how we were sent home to live with my maternal grandfather, the General. I was a little surprised to discover he knew my father, but then Scotland is a small place. When my father finally returned we had lived together until his disappearance, and presumed death, three years ago. With that, other than mentioning Margaret’s debility which kept her home, there was little else to say.

The clock chimed the half hour, followed by more footsteps. Just as I thought my interview had ended, the Lord Advocate give a satisfied nod.

‘Take lunch with me, Doctor Lyon. There’s someone I want you to meet.’

At the top of the stairs was a ruddy faced gentleman, catching his breath.

‘Doctor Lyon, allow me to introduce Sir John Foster. Sir John is the Collector of His Majesty’s Customs at Leith.’

Sir John proved excellent company, and I observed that the reputation of His Majesty’s Customs men for enjoying fine wine and good food was well-founded. He spoke of Leith (which is the port of Edinburgh) and Scotland’s blossoming trade routes, all swelling the funds of the Exchequer. Wine from France, tea and jute from India, sugar from the Indies and tobacco from the Americas.

‘The consumption of our nation is unrelenting,’ he said, ‘and Britain the shopkeeper of the world. But we must jealously guard our trade routes, because they’re at the heart of all our success.’ As he said this, he shared a wry smile with the Lord Advocate. ‘Your father understood that, Doctor Lyon, being of our number.’

‘My father was an East Indiaman, Sir John, not a Customs Officer.’

They exchanged a glance.

‘Doctor Lyon,’ said the Lord Advocate, ‘Sir John isn’t referring to the Customs.’

‘Then to what?’

Sir John drained his wineglass and lit a cigar. As the smoke filled the room, I had the sense I was on the verge of something extraordinary.

2

‘Britain has enemies, Doctor Lyon,’ began Sir John, ‘and maintaining our advantage depends on some remarkable men . . .’

‘. . . and women,’ murmured the Lord Advocate.

‘Apologies, my Lord – and women – who serve this country in secret.’

My father? A secret agent?

‘But what has this to do with me, gentlemen? I’m a surgeon, not a spy!’

I looked to the Lord Advocate, but he met my eyes serenely.

‘Doctor Lyon,’ continued Sir John, ‘you’re educated. You understand the world. And you’ve few ties to bind you. Now if we consider that recent business with Knox . . .’

‘Oh not this again!’ I rose to my feet. ‘My Lord, I told the Fiscal everything. If you’ve brought me here to charm out secrets I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.’

‘Sit down Doctor Lyon,’ retorted the Lord Advocate, and he spoke with such authority that I complied at once.

‘Now listen to me. We know the account you gave of yourself in that matter. It’s what first brought you to my attention. Do you think my aim in the resurrection business was to discredit Edinburgh’s surgeons? Hardly. I’d no interest in bringing a prosecution against Knox. But not through lack of evidence. For it may interest you to know, Doctor Lyon, that of all the surgeons whom we questioned, you were the only one who didn’t point the finger of blame at Knox.’

I swallowed hard. I was green as grass, stubborn and full of anger. What’s more, I was afraid. But could he see something in me that I couldn’t?

The clock chimed two and the Lord Advocate rose to leave.

‘Well, Doctor Lyon, it’s been a pleasure but I’m afraid I have some rather pressing business. So I shall leave you in the capable hands of Sir John.’

‘But, my Lord,’ I protested. ‘My work at the Infirmary?’

‘Will be taken care of.’

And he left.

3

‘Well Lyon,’ began Sir John, pouring two brandies. ‘Tell me this. Are you familiar with the town of Greenock, on the west coast?’

I’d seen mention of it in the shipping pages, but it might have been China for all I knew of the place. The railways were still a decade away, and even Glasgow was a city I’d visited only once. I had taken a carriage that time, but thanks to navvies like Burke and Hare the city could also now be reached in a couple of days by canal.

‘Greenock’s on the River Clyde, twenty miles west of Glasgow,’ he continued, ‘and it’s Scotland’s largest port. Every day its Custom House regulates more shipping than anywhere outside London. Last year its receipts exceeded half a million pounds.’

I turned that figure over. If half a million pounds was the duty paid, say at five percent, then the annual value of goods going through the port ran to more than ten million. A huge sum.

‘Now think of this. Customs receipts rely on trade routes, and that means safe passage in and out of Britain’s ports. That means lighthouses, Lyon, and His Majesty’s government has committed a fortune to building them. The keepers of these lighthouses are the guardians of our trade routes, so any irregularity is a serious matter.

‘Now then, Lyon,’ he said, edging closer, ‘let me tell you about a ship. At the beginning of the year the Julietta was spotted in the Firth of Clyde, her sails torn and listing to her starboard side. She was a triple-masted schooner, sailing from Jamaica with a cargo of sugar. But viewed through the telescope there was no sign of life.

‘Now drifting like that she posed a danger to navigation, so the steamboat Comet, under the command of an officer of Customs and twelve marines, was dispatched from Greenock to investigate. When they boarded the Julietta they found the entire crew dead. It was fever had killed them, Doctor Lyon. Yellow fever.’

‘What did they do?’ I asked, wide-eyed.

‘They hurried her dead ashore and buried them in lime. Then she was towed to quarantine and her hatches left open. And so she remained, for forty days.’

‘But surely none of that is unusual?’

He swirled his brandy and frowned.

‘Of itself, Lyon, no. Yellow fever is rife in the Indies. But there were certain other . . . irregularities. Three things.’

He gave me a sharp look, but I held his eye.

‘What three things?’

‘First, the Julietta has sailed between Greenock and Jamaica for many years, and its voyages are well recorded. After the incident Gabriel Birkmyre, my brother Controller at Greenock, inspected the records and discovered that the Julietta returned to Greenock every three months, averaging just over six weeks to cross the ocean.

‘Now that’s slower than you’d expect for a sleek keel like hers, even allowing for a sluggish turnaround at Jamaica. What’s more though, whenever she arrived at Greenock her cargo of sugar was always below capacity. It was the same with her return trips to Jamaica, carrying manufactured goods. Always below capacity.’

I agreed that for a cargo ship this seemed unusual.

‘Second,’ he continued, ‘three days after the Julietta was quarantined, Birkmyre learned that one of his Customs officers had disappeared.’

‘From Greenock?’

He shook his head. ‘From Campbeltown. Further west on the Kintyre peninsula.’

Again, I agreed that while this was unusual it could also be just a coincidence.

‘But then there’s the third point,’ he said, and leaning in I caught the brandy on his breath. ‘After the Julietta was rescued the keeper of a nearby lighthouse was found dead. He’d been murdered. Almost certainly by his assistant, who’s also missing.’

I stared at him for what felt like an age.

‘Smuggling?’ I suggested. I glanced out over the ordered little world that was Edinburgh. Such a word, smuggling, seemed out of place in this dawning industrial age. It seemed to come up from a darker world.

Sir John tapped his ash. ‘It’s possible. Perhaps that’s why Birkmyre notified the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s office in London.’

‘A significant step.’

‘But the right one. Commander Birkmyre knows his business.’ He sighed. ‘The wheels of state grind slow, however, and it was weeks before I received my orders. I’m to open an investigation and report back by the end of the month.’

‘By the end of the month?’ It was already the tenth of April.

Sir John gave an impatient wave of his hand and leaned closer.

‘There’s not a moment to lose. I need someone resourceful, someone able to go west immediately. More importantly, however, it has to be someone unconnected with the Customs or any branch of government. Whatever the devilry behind all this may be, Lyon, I’m convinced an outsider is best.

‘When I raised the matter yesterday with the Lord Advocate he suggested you. Naturally, I was sceptical. But now that we’ve spoken, I think you’ll suit very well.’

There was a pause while he leaned back, gazing at me. It was time to decide, but in truth I already knew what my answer would be.

‘I’ll need more information,’ I said.

Sir John handed me some papers. ‘Read these before you leave. Then cast them on the fire. But not the money, of course.’

There were half a dozen pages followed by three more pages of some foreign code. There were also five hundred guineas in five guinea notes.

Sir John was speaking again, but I was only half listening.

‘I suggest you write to the Trustees at the Infirmary and tell them you’re heading west for a short while to pursue an interest. Let’s say . . .’

‘Marine science?’ I suggested.

From boyhood swims against purple sunsets on the Malabar Coast and the return voyage from India, breathtaking and terrifying, the sea fascinated me.

‘Perfect,’ replied Sir John rubbing his hands. ‘That’ll give you the cover you’ll need. Well time marches on, but two more things before I go. The first is this. You’ll have two points of contact when you arrive in Greenock. Agents whose expertise is local information. Their knowledge of your mission is on a need to know basis, but they’ll contact you when the time comes.’

I frowned. ‘How will I know I can trust them?’

He smiled like a schoolmaster. ‘All my agents have been issued with this codeword.’ He scribbled it on a scrap of paper and showed it to me. Then he rolled it up and flicked it into the fire.

‘Remember it.’

I nodded. ‘And the second thing?’

‘Is this. Greenock is dangerous, Lyon, so I hope you know how to look after yourself. Be on your guard. Trust no-one.’

He drained his brandy and ground out his cigar.

‘Good luck,’ he said, then shook my hand and left.

I sat in a daze staring from the fireplace to the table strewn with cups, glasses and ashtrays, to the papers in my left hand and the banknotes in my right.

I’d never seen so much money.

4

I strode onto Princes Street in the fading afternoon light, waved down a cabby and directed him to Morningside. All I could think about was Sir John’s parting words, and I asked myself how I’d react if I had to fight or turn tail, kill or be killed. I could ride well enough, was a reasonable hand at fencing and could shoot straight and true. But I’d never had to fight for my life at close quarters.

The motion of the carriage jolted my mind back to the pages I’d memorised then burned. The Member of Parliament for Greenock was Sir Guy Stewart, and I was to lodge with him on the recommendation of the Lord Advocate. I was also to present myself to Commander Birkmyre.

The information turned to the murdered lighthouse keeper Sandy McLeod, his runaway assistant Tom Hamilton, and the missing Campbeltown Customs Officer, whose name was Crawford McCunn. Sandy’s whole life had been the lighthouse on Cumbrae. He was from the nearby island of Bute, where his father had been gamekeeper to the Marquess. He left a sister and an aunt, both in Rothesay.

Tom Hamilton was a native of Greenock. He’d been a fisherman, and part owner of a ketch plying the route between Scotland and Ireland. When Tom was bought out by his partner, an Ulsterman by the name of Hugh O’Neill, he decided to enter the lighthouse service and took up his first posting at Oban. From Oban he was transferred to Cumbrae, and he’d been there less than a year when Sandy was killed. Tom was ‘five feet eight inches, broad and swarthy with black hair and green eyes.’

Crawford McCunn had followed in his father’s steps and joined the Customs in Campbeltown, where he’d risen to the rank of Officer. He was ‘tall, of slender build with sandy hair and light blue eyes.’

There was more on the Julietta. An examination of the crew had been conducted before their burial. They were only eight in number and were described as either black or Hispanic. Every one of them bore a curious symbol tattooed on their upper left arm in the form of a Double Eagle.

Around the base of the symbol ran the legend sine unitate nihil sumus which my College Latin allowed me to translate as ‘without unity we are nothing’. It wasn’t a device I’d come across. I decided when I reached Glasgow I’d visit its university and find out more.

One of the dead was described as ‘a gentleman, dressed elegantly and found in his own furnished room aft, below deck’. He was ‘about six feet, forty or forty-five years, short black hair and beard,’ while his clothes, which had been burned, were ‘colourful, of good cloth.’ A solid gold signet ring the size of a walnut was on the little finger of his left hand. The ring bore the hallmark of Achille Pontellier, a renowned Parisian jeweller, and carried a seal in the same curious form of the Double Eagle, together with the initial ‘M’.

Why was he on board a schooner carrying a simple cargo of sugar?

The pages of foreign code were copied from a journal found in his possession. The original was with Commander Birkmyre. I’d squinted at the pages, turning them this way and that, and had a notion that the words were French or Italian – but it might as well have been Persian for all the sense I could glean. I didn’t burn them, however, because I’d had an idea of my own about what to do with them.

Margaret had been an invalid since she was five years old. That had been a hot summer, filled with days exploring rockpools by the sea and lazing on the banks of streams. There was a deep pool in the Braid Burn close by our grandfather’s house where we swam at every opportunity, daring one another in dives and launching ourselves out over its smooth surface from a rope swing. One evening, however, returning late from our pool, Margaret complained of a head cold and a dull pain in her neck. By morning she had a fever and was unable to raise herself from the bed. For weeks she suffered excruciating spasms in her legs. At times her mind wandered.

Slowly Margaret improved but she lost the use of her legs, and the doctor engaged by my grandfather diagnosed a ‘debility of the lower extremities’. Throughout her childhood Margaret was carried from room to room, invariably accompanied by a pile of books until, on her twelfth birthday, I presented her with her first rolling chair which I’d constructed at College. Margaret was now twenty and on to her third chair, each one built by me. She had never surrendered to her infirmity, however, and after years of effort she sometimes managed a few paces with a stick.

Among her many accomplishments, Margaret was highly adept at languages.

My thoughts were interrupted as the carriage jolted to a halt at the corner of Morningside Place and, calling on the cabbie to wait, I hurried into my father’s square villa, as solid and dependable as he’d been in life.

I found Margaret as ever in the drawing room, but first rushed upstairs to retrieve my doctor’s bag stocked with the elementary medicines and equipment of the day. How much the practice of surgery has changed in my lifetime through antiseptic, sterilisation and steel! In the days of my youth, however, that battered case contained all the tools of my antique trade.

There was a leather pouch which unrolled to reveal a platoon of scalpels. There was a saw and tourniquet, bandages packed into wads, rolls of catgut for stitching, a dozen iron needles drawn out in the shape of the crescent moon, coloured bottles of laudanum, rum, iodine, mercury and talcum powder. Added to that was a tin of liniment, followed by the ranks of lances, pincers, scissors and forceps to complete my regiment of arms.

I could smell gangrene at twenty paces and amputate a limb in forty-eight seconds with the patient unconscious – slightly longer if not – so long as two or three orderlies were on hand with a set of straps. Though many of my colleagues considered it beneath their dignity, by the time I was twenty-five I’d delivered more babies than I care to remember, some in the bedrooms of the rich, but most on wooden slabs in the poor house.

I could stitch wounds quicker than a Leith seamstress and sew a man up neat as a bird for the oven, for all the good it often did. We were trained to know our instruments as a redcoat knows his rifle, to sharpen and repair blades, mix and weigh medicines to form pastilles or potions, and look a terrified child in the eye with the calm at the centre of the storm. I’d known many a jittering surgeon, drunk on his own rum, grow still when it counted, and work away with the precision of a watchmaker before tumbling out of the Infirmary at dusk and back into the comfort of a bottle.

Margaret laid down her pen and turned the wheels of her chair as I bustled downstairs.

‘Whatever’s your hurry Mungo? And what are you doing back at this time?’

She beckoned me over, tutting at my appearance and smoothing my jacket. Lyon by name, lion by nature she used to say, with a ruffle of my fair hair. Her own hair was light too, blonde like our mother’s, arranged in pretty ringlets round her face, pale as ivory.

‘There’s no time to explain,’ I replied breathlessly, ‘I’m headed for Greenock. I’ll write as soon as I can.’

She stared into my eyes with real concern. ‘Mungo,’ she began, but I had to cut her off.

‘It’s all right Margaret, really, I’m fine. It’s just that something important has come up and I’ve been given orders to leave. I’m sorry to startle you – truly sorry – but I’ll explain later.’ I took her hand. ‘Really, I’m all right.’

There was a pause, then her face set firm and I saw iron in her eyes. ‘Take your overcoat,’ she said. ‘It’s damp in the west.’

As she turned back to her writing I bent and kissed her cheek but she waved me away.

‘Just come back safe, Mungo.’

The cabbie was waiting and I’d less than twenty minutes to make the barge. But just before leaving I turned and ran back up the stairs, past our startled housemaid Lizzy to my father’s bedroom where, concealed in his closet, was his flintlock service pistol, powder and shot. I buried it in my bag and had just dashed back down again when I suddenly remembered what it was that I’d meant to ask Margaret. Swiftly I returned to her side.

‘Margaret, there’s something I need you to do for me.’

I drew out the pages of code which had been copied from the journal onboard the Julietta and handed them to her. She turned them gently in her hands.

‘I can’t say why, Margaret, but could you—’

‘It’s Spanish,’ she murmured, scanning the text. ‘Written in code. Rather challenging I’d say.’

I hesitated. ‘Do you think you could—’

She cut me off with a smile. ‘I’ll do what I can, Mungo. Now go.’

I scribbled the address in Greenock and left. It was typical of Margaret, God bless her, that she didn’t so much as blink at my request and I often wonder how much she guessed that day. She had an unfailing sense for things even then, and later I discovered she’d known something of my father’s work.

The ding of the blacksmith’s hammer faded behind me as the carriage bumped onto Morningside Road. Children played hopscotch in the gloaming. Across the road a man admired the church steeple. His face was pitted like a smallpox victim. Had I seen him earlier on Princes Street?

As night fell my carriage arrived at the canal terminus, where I quickly bought a ticket and boarded a barge. Soon I was laid out in a cramped cabin with a lantern swaying above. Over my shoulder was an open porthole, and I drifted asleep to the clop of the Clydesdales hauling me west toward Glasgow.

5

I woke in the dead of night and drew my watch to my eye. Its pale face showed just after two. Why did I have the uneasy sense someone was listening?

I crept to the porthole and peered out. The barge was tethered, rising and falling gently in the water. I’d just laid my head back on the pillow when a floorboard creaked outside my cabin.

Now there are different creaks. There’s the creak of timber as a ship idles at anchor, for example, or the first twist of decking under a relentless sun. But this creak was the careful tread of a man.

The door handle began to turn.

‘Who’s there?’ I cried. I scrabbled for my pistol.

A clatter of footsteps answered, followed by silence.

With a trembling hand I opened the door. The cabin opposite was closed, the stairs to the upper deck empty. I heard shouting above and then a face appeared. It was the captain.

‘Is everything all right?’ he called. ‘I’ve just chased some fella off the side.’

I told him what had happened.

‘Ach, just some chancer nae doot,’ he grumbled. ‘Just be sure and lock your door, sir. We’ll be moving off again shortly.’ He eyed my pistol disapprovingly. ‘Goodnight, sir.’

Somehow I managed a few hours’ sleep before waking to the dawn chorus at six. We’d reached a stage post, and fresh horses were being harnessed for the next leg.

The ceiling was so low I had to stoop while washing with a pitcher and bowl. Then I ventured out in search of breakfast. I emerged on deck to birdsong from the branches crowding the banks as the barge glided through the Lothians. The sky was moving from pink to blue, and my breath curled before me like tea from the pot, swirling and condensing on the tip of my nose.

Spying the captain at the far end of the deck I strolled down and greeted him.

‘Morning sir,’ he replied, ‘fine day.’

He called his wife to fetch me up some tea. She emerged moments later wiping her hands on a greasy apron and handed me a pair of fried eggs and bread on a china plate; furnished with the tea I enjoyed a meal in the open air fit for the King himself. Then lighting my pipe and just to pass the time, I inquired of the captain whether there were other passengers.

‘There’s six berths and they’re aw’ full,’ he replied, carefully negotiating the contours of the waterway, ‘and with this weather and nae wind I reckon we’ll make Falkirk in guid time the night.’ He lit his pipe. ‘Well, there’ll be a bit dinner for ye aboot twelve if you fancy it,’ he added, then reverted to his contemplation of the water, with the occasional languid call to his mate leading the horses. The old barge went along through field and heath with such serenity that morning that my heart soared, and the vision sits like a picture in my mind to this day – the last of old Scotland before the coming of the railways.

Making way for my fellow passengers as they emerged I returned to my cabin and began a letter to Margaret.

We were always close, and I dare say the loss of our mother was the reason. As an infant she would ask me over and over to describe mama just once more, how she would talk, dress, laugh and walk. Her favourite was my candlelit memory of our mother in a ball gown, kissing me goodnight then descending the stairs toward father in his uniform. Margaret would ask about her dress, her hair, the dances, who else was there and what the carriages looked like. Rather than disappoint her I’d enlarge the story to include every detail down to the marble floors of the Maharajah’s palace, until even I was no longer sure what was true and what I’d imagined.

We played together constantly as children, and I remember one summer spent writing secret messages. Our code word was ‘Falconer’, our mother’s maiden name. For the first eight words of the message, an A would be replaced by an F (being the first letter of the code word), a B by a G and so forth. We would then do the same for each subsequent set of eight words, replacing A with the next letter in the code word each time (except for A itself in the code word, which became B). Thus the sentence:

‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.’

became:

‘YMJ VZNHP GWTBS KTC OZRUJI TAJW YMJ QFED EPH’

Then the whole message would be turned backwards and run together thus:

HPEDEFQJMYWJATIJURZOCTKSBTWGPHNZVJMY’

It was a rudimentary but effective system – suggested in a letter from my father now that I think back – and so for the rest of the morning I wrote to Margaret explaining everything I knew. By noon I’d the entire thing encrypted and written on the back of a rather dull letter describing my journey and plans for marine observations. If the pages were intercepted the series of letters would attract suspicion, but it was the best I could do. Sealing it up I returned on deck and when the next barge passed heading toward Edinburgh I passed it over together with the postage money.

Afterwards I ate pickled ham and barley bread in the sunshine and talked with my fellow passengers. There was a young woman and her bawling infant travelling to Glasgow, then onward to Ireland.

‘It’s nae right,’ she muttered, dandling the baby, ‘me left wi the wean and nae money, while he’s ower in Belfast, drinking nae doot.’

I noticed the child had a rash at his neck, and it occurred to me some liniment might ease the pain.

An old man travelling alone nodded at her words, cooing at the child all the while. I imagined him travelling for family or professional reasons. Two sailors with canvas bags ate heartily and swigged from their bottles of porter, but there was no sign of the sixth of our party. The captain’s wife returned on deck with tea, and as the cups were passed round I remarked to the captain what a shame it was their remaining guest was missing out.

‘Och him, he’s one of our regulars. He sells gear all over the country, or so he says, but he’s no feeling too grand the now. Probably the drink if ye ask me,’ he added with a wink.

‘I wonder if I know him,’ I said, feigning interest. ‘What does he look like?’

‘Who? Himsel?’ replied the captain. ‘Och, you’ll see him soon enough. He’s in the for’ard cabin opposite your own. He’s full of stories and has a limp in his leg he says he got at Waterloo, but mair likely he got it falling over a chair.’

Smiling at the captain’s description and feeling the benefit of the meal, I stayed on deck to smoke a pipe.

‘How do you find your cabin?’ I asked the old man.

‘Oh, fine,’ he replied. ‘I slept like a bairn in a cot.’ He frowned. ‘I couldnae see myself whit the problem was.’

‘Problem?’

‘Him. The feller ye were just askin’ aboot. I wis settled in the front berth opposite your own when he came chapping at the door.’

He shook his head.

‘Och, he’s an awful lookin soul, puir man, what wi his face aw pock marked. Well, he asked me if it wisnae too much trouble but could we swap berths. The barge rocks a bit at the back, so he reckoned. Anyway, that was that.’ He looked at me. ‘And you, son? Did ye sleep?’

‘Sorry?’

‘In your wee room, did ye sleep well enough?’

My mind had slipped out of focus.

‘What? Oh, yes, yes, I did thank you.’ The others stopped talking and turned.

‘Excuse me,’ I blurted, stumbling to my feet, ‘I’ve forgotten something.’ And followed by their wide eyes I hurried below.

The door opposite was still closed as I entered my cabin. Everything seemed just as before. My bag was still on my bed – or had I left it on the chair? The air was still. Once again, however, I’d the uneasy sense someone was listening. I went through my pockets quickly. All the money was still there.

After a while I sat down on the bed. The silence seemed to grow deeper until I heard the horses’ clop and the barge drifted onward. Now that we were underway again I began to think more lightly of things. Perhaps it had simply been a thief who’d tried my door in the night. Perhaps the man in the cabin opposite was simply a commercial traveller, as the captain had said. Many people bore the marks of smallpox.

For some time I didn’t move until, thinking of the child’s rash, I dug the liniment from my bag. I was about to return on deck when I hesitated, returned and reopened it. Hands trembling I rummaged through it again and again until finally I emptied it onto the floor. My father’s pistol was gone.

6

‘You’re a fool, Mungo,’ I muttered, chewing my lip. ‘Think, man.’

I was being watched. Watched and hunted by someone who now had my pistol. And I’d a sense that whoever this man was, he wasn’t alone. I thought of Sandy’s murder, and my cabin felt like a coffin.

My heart was dunt-dunting like a drum. A large part of me wanted to turn tail back to Edinburgh, find Sir John and return the money. Where was the shame in that? But whether from youthful pride or plain stubbornness, I was determined to go on. I sat down and I thought, and I kept right on thinking until I decided that, just as soon as darkness fell, I’d take my chances and escape.

This was my plan. We were due at Falkirk around eight o’clock. The captain had explained the barge would have to go through a series of locks to join the Forth and Clyde Canal. I would wait until the barge came to a halt at the first lock, then make my move.

That afternoon passed as slowly as any I’ve ever lived, and all the while my mind ran over every eventuality, fearful as a rabbit. To pass the time I kept myself occupied at the porthole gazing out on forests, fields and cottages and counting off the milestones as they glided by. It was a mild day, but around four the listless air grew heavier with the scent of daisies, docks and nettles, and sure enough it wasn’t long before dusty rain began to patter on the water. The rain became a downpour as the sky grew blacker and blacker, but with the change in the weather a calm descended, my spirits lightened and I felt a fresh resolve.

With a keener eye now, I surveyed the cabin and returned the scattered equipment to my bag. Then I looked in the small mirror above the water bowl. I hadn’t shaved in a while, but as yet the overall effect was merely scruffy. My tweeds were hardy enough, but I cursed my leather town shoes which were ill suited to the country.

Eventually as twilight fell the rain eased off. The captain called ‘whoa-there,’ then made his way to his mate on the towpath. A lantern glowed from the side of the barge, but otherwise all was gloom. This was it.

I tiptoed up the stairs and emerged on deck. The captain and his mate had moved towards the first lock and were busying themselves with the mechanism. They were soon joined from a hut by an employee of the canal company.

A gangplank stretched to shore and it was the work of a moment to cross it. I reached the towpath, crossed it and disappeared into the bushes. As far as I could tell no one had noticed and, while it would soon be discovered I was gone, I hoped that where and when might remain a mystery long enough to give me a start.

I emerged through the foliage into a barley field and following its edge downhill came to a path which led south a few miles. Then, spying another path, I struck out along that, my feet slipping in the mud from time to time but otherwise no different from the country lanes of my youth. It ran west along a stream for a couple of miles, then up through a wood. The light was all but gone now, the birds grew still and bats swooped. After a while I found myself following the perimeter of a substantial farmhouse and coming round through the gate made my way into a courtyard. A pack of dogs barked and growled as I crossed to the door and knocked. There were footsteps, a bolt was drawn back and the man of the house appeared with a lantern in his hand.

‘Quiet lads!’ The dogs grew still. ‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Where have ye come frae?’