Secrets of the Fearless

by Elizabeth Laird

  ‘Give me the chest, John. Good lad. Look, there’s one more paper, there, under the bed. Now bring the bundle and the satchel. Quick. Into my room.’

  Before he knew what was happening, John had been swept out on to the landing and in through the door of Mrs Armstrong’s own tiny apartment. He was just in time to see one of his father’s long legs disappear into a cupboard in the wall before Mrs Armstrong lifted the heavy plush cloth that covered the table in the middle of her parlour and pushed him underneath. A moment later, the cloth was raised again and the chest was hurled in after him.

  ‘Not a word,’ she hissed at him. ‘Whatever you hear, stay silent until I tell you to come out.’

  The next sound was so surprising that it made John breathe in sharply. With a rustle of her heavy petticoats, Mrs Armstrong had settled herself at her little spinet by the chimney piece, and had begun to rattle out a tune on the small ivory keys. The rhythm was ragged and there were more wrong notes than right ones, but it was a brave sound nevertheless.

  She had started on a second air when there was a hammering at the door. John jumped in fright, buried his face in the rough cloth of his bundle of clothes and hugged it to his chest as tightly as if he was a drowning man clutching a spar.

  The music stopped. He heard the scrape of Mrs Armstrong’s chair on the wooden floor, and then the creak of the hinge as she opened the door. The clamour of voices and tramping of feet on the landing pierced him with terror. He squeezed his eyes tight shut.

  ‘Well, goodness me,’ he heard Mrs Armstrong say lightly. ‘Whatever’s the matter? Is there a fire? Have the French invaded at last?’

  A confused jumble of voices answered her.

  ‘Mr Barr?’ Mrs Armstrong answered calmly. ‘Yes, he was here – but he’s left. He set off on the Glasgow road an hour since. He murdered a man, did you say? I’d never have believed it.’

  The raucous, cracked voice of the washerwoman came out from over the heads in front.

  ‘You’re hiding him in there, Janet Armstrong! I know you are! I heard them roaring up the stairs a quarter of an hour ago. We’re coming in to search!’

  Mrs Armstrong managed a trill of laughter.

  ‘Is that you, Maggie? What’s the good of being a washerwoman if you don’t scrub your ears out? You’re as deaf as a post, you know you are, and if you heard anyone running anywhere it’ll be the first time in ten years!’

  ‘What? What’s that she said?’ came Maggie’s voice again, and everyone round her laughed.

  A man’s voice said, ‘We’re sorry to disturb you, Mrs Armstrong. We didn’t want you to be bothered by any murdering villains, that was all. Goodnight to you, now.’

  ‘And to you,’ Mrs Armstrong answered politely, and John’s grip on his bundle began to loosen as the door closed with a click.

  The music tailed away to nothing. For a long moment, Mrs Armstrong didn’t move, then he heard her skirt sweep across the floor, and the cloth was suddenly raised.

  ‘Come out now, John,’ she said unsteadily.

  Patrick had already burst out of the narrow cupboard in which he’d been wedged among the neatly folded clothes of the landlady’s late husband.

  ‘Mrs Armstrong,’ he was saying, ‘you have saved both our lives, and we owe you everything. Everything! If there’s anything Johnny or I can do for you . . .’

  ‘You can leave at once and get as far away as you can from my house,’ Mrs Armstrong said frankly. ‘They’ll be back, and I’ll not be able to divert them a second time. Take your things. Here’s the pie and the ham. I’ll tie them in this cloth. Creep down the stairs now while everyone’s away.’

  ‘Mrs Armstrong, dear ma’am . . .’ Patrick began again.

  ‘Oh come on, Father,’ said John, tugging at his arm.

  ‘Go on with you.’ Mrs Armstrong was hustling them towards the door. ‘And don’t tell me where you’re going. It’s better for me not to know.’

  Patrick smiled wryly.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you anyway, because I don’t know myself, but if you keep insisting that we’ve taken the Glasgow road, you’ll put them off our track.’ He looped the strap of the satchel over one shoulder and hoisted the little chest on to the other. John picked up his bundle of clothes in his left hand, and Mrs Armstrong placed the cloth filled with food in the right.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Armstrong,’ John stammered. ‘I don’t know what to say. Just thank you!’

  Chapter Three

  Flitting like black shadows, one tall spindly one and a shorter, stockier one, John and his father stole down the wynd. They ran, stumbling over loose stones, splashing through mud and puddles, the still stormy wind plucking at their clothes, and came up at last into the new part of the city, where wide streets and squares marched away north towards the sea.

  ‘Wait, Father!’ panted John. ‘Stop a minute. Where are we going, anyway?’

  Patrick had been plunging on down the road, the wooden chest bumping against his back, but he came back, set it down on the ground and straightened himself, flexing his cramped shoulders.

  ‘Leith. The port of Leith. By sea to London. On the Leith smack.’

  ‘London?’ John’s mouth fell open. He had never imagined he would ever, in his whole life, go anywhere so far away. ‘Why, Father? Why London?’

  ‘You . . . we . . . have an aunt in London,’ panted Patrick, his chest heaving. ‘Only surviving relative. Difficult woman, but who knows – probably has a heart of gold. A house in Shoreditch. Blood thicker than water. She’ll see what trouble we’re in. Bound to take us in.’

  ‘London,’ repeated John, turning the idea over in his mind. The awful, blind panic in his head was subsiding. It was good to have a plan, however wild it sounded.

  ‘How far is it to Leith?’ he said, trying not to sound complaining. ‘Only my feet are sore and I’m awfully hungry.’

  ‘The pork pie!’ exclaimed Patrick cheerfully, though he looked nervously over his shoulder as he spoke. ‘Brace up, Johnny. It’s only a mile and a half to Leith, no more, and with the pie inside us we’ll fly.’

  They ate fast, cramming the succulent pie into their mouths.

  ‘We’ll keep the ham for later,’ Patrick said indistinctly, licking his fingers and picking up the chest again. ‘We must hurry on now. Creech is a clever man. He’ll be sending men out in all directions.’

  They set off again at a fast pace, filled with new energy.

  ‘Why does Mr Nasmyth hate us so much?’ asked John, trotting to keep up. ‘Why has he treated us so badly?’

  ‘I’ve thought and thought about it,’ replied Patrick. ‘It puzzles me, John, more than I can say.’

  They paused for a moment to look back up the long straight road. It was reassuringly empty. ‘It can’t be only for the house itself. I know we love Luckstone, but it’s small – only a few rooms piled on top of each other up the old tower. It’s strong, of course. Fortified. You know how thick the walls are – six feet at least – and the door’s so massive it’s a struggle even to open. It could withstand anyone coming upon it to cause trouble. And then there’s the wee bay sheltered from the sea. A boat can come up there and be well hidden. At the same time there’s a great view from Luckstone. A man can stand on the headland and count all the ships coming and going, in and out of the port of Leith. I can only imagine that there’s some strange business the man’s engaged in, something murderous and secret, but what it is I just don’t know.’

  The road to Leith, which was crowded with carriages, carts and pedestrians during the day, was deserted at this late hour, but John’s ears caught the unwelcome sound of a horse’s hoofs approaching from behind them. Patrick had heard it too. He grasped John’s arm and pulled him down behind a flight of steps that led up to the front door of one of the houses fronting the road. They crouched, motionless, in the shadow.

  As the rider passed, they could make out in the dark only a rough shape, a figure wrapped in a heavy coat with a hat pulled down over his eyes
. They waited until the faint outline had been swallowed up by the night before they dared to come out of their hiding place, and then they set off again at their former rapid pace.

  John had been thinking furiously as he’d huddled against his father behind the steps.

  ‘Surely it would be better, Father, if we just went back and told everyone it wasn’t you who killed that man. That it was Mr Nasmyth?’

  ‘It would, Johnny, but unfortunately they might not believe us. Mr Creech would swear that I was the murderer, and Herriott has the money to pay for the most expensive lawyers.’

  ‘The girl, though. She’d speak up for us.’

  ‘Maybe, but it would be her word against Creech’s, and he’s a man of influence.’

  ‘It’s wicked! It’s wrong! It’s so unfair!’ John burst out.

  ‘Don’t waste your energy on anger,’ Patrick said, his voice unusually harsh. ‘I’ve spent night after night consumed with it. We’re in a pickle, Johnny. We need to concentrate now on how we can get out of it.’

  John swallowed hard.

  ‘What’ll happen if they catch us, Father?’ He resisted the temptation to move closer into his father’s long shadow. ‘What’ll they do to us?’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be the Tolbooth prison, no less,’ Patrick’s voice had suddenly lightened. His spirits, always mercurial, seemed to have risen again. ‘For me, mind, not for you.’

  ‘And then what, Father?’

  ‘I’ll escape, of course.’

  ‘You won’t. You won’t be able to.’ He thought, but he didn’t say, ‘And I’ll be alone.’

  They had passed the forbidding old prison that loured over Edinburgh’s High Street only yesterday. No one, John knew, could ever get out of it once they were locked away inside its heavy stone towers, behind its iron-bound doors and high, barred windows.

  ‘No, it’ll be easy, Johnny, you’ll see, with a little help from yourself, but there’s no need to worry about the Tolbooth. No one will catch us. We’ll get safe down to London and live the life of princes in Shoreditch, with your Auntie Sarah, who’ll take one look at us and love us, like the long-lost relations we are.’

  Chapter Four

  Half an hour later, John and his father were trudging down the quay in the port of Leith. The wind, which had fallen now, had whipped the clouds away, and a half-moon shone. It lit up the ripples on the water in the harbour and glanced off the wet cobblestones.

  A couple of men, no more than dark shapes against the indigo sky, were lounging against a bollard. They murmured a polite ‘Good evening to you’, but John was aware of their eyes on his back as he hurried after his father.

  ‘No one could be looking for us here yet, could they?’ he whispered to Patrick. He was thinking uneasily of the horseman who had passed them on the road.

  Patrick didn’t answer. He was scanning the ships moored alongside the quay.

  ‘Is it that one, the boat to London?’ asked John.

  ‘I don’t know, son. No, it’s surely too small.’

  Someone cleared his throat behind John, making him jump. He turned to see that the two men had come right up to his father and were standing uncomfortably close to him.

  ‘The smack to London?’ one of them said. ‘It’s been gone a day now, sir. Went out on last night’s tide. The next one could be docking here tomorrow morning, if the wind doesn’t veer round to the north.’

  John had been so sure that the boat would be there, tied up at the quay, ready and waiting to carry him and his father out of this nightmare towards a new adventure in London, that the disappointment made him rock on his feet.

  ‘What are we going to do now, Father?’ he cried out sharply.

  In the dim night he could see that Patrick was biting his lower lip.

  ‘Well now, well,’ Patrick said, setting the chest down on the cobbles. ‘So there’s no chance of leaving until tomorrow, at the earliest, eh?’

  ‘None at all,’ the shorter man said, with strange eagerness.

  ‘And it’s a bed you’re needing, and a drink inside you,’ the other said.

  His heartiness sounded a little forced, but his words made so much sense that Patrick couldn’t help nodding.

  ‘The King’s Wark tavern,’ the larger man went on. He pointed towards a set of windows in the row of houses behind the quay from which a warm yellow light was streaming.

  Patrick picked up his chest.

  ‘We can’t go there, Father,’ John whispered, tugging at his sleeve. ‘It’s the first place anyone would look if they came after us.’

  The two men were already walking ahead of them, towards the lighted windows.

  ‘Don’t you see, Johnny,’ said Patrick in a low voice, ‘it’ll look a lot more suspicious if we don’t take a bed in an inn. Lurking in the street all night like criminals – we’d be as noticeable as flies on butter. If anyone comes looking for us we’ll offer them false names and put them off the scent.’

  They had reached the inn, and Patrick was already following the two men into the smoke-filled warmth inside.

  It was so delightful to be indoors, in the warm and out of the cutting wind, that John stumbled gratefully to a bench by the fire and sank down on it, letting his tiredness overwhelm him.

  He was dimly aware of Patrick talking to someone – the landlord, he assumed – on the far side of the room, but his eyes were on the blaze, on the red glowing coals, and he stretched out his hands towards it to warm them.

  Patrick came back a moment later with a bowl of hot soup for him.

  ‘Get this down inside you, Johnny,’ he said merrily, and John saw that his father’s spirits had bubbled up again. He was cheered, but a little alarmed at the same time. If Patrick had a drink or two, and an expansive mood came over him, he might start to entertain the company, forget the danger they were in, and let down his guard.

  The two men had followed Patrick and settled themselves beside him on the bench, mugs of ale in their hands. John could see them clearly now. The older man was heavily built, with a red bull-neck, and the buttons on his yellow waistcoat strained across his stomach. The younger was thin and nervous looking. He sat with only the ball of his right foot touching the floor and set his knee to jerk up and down. The movement sent a quiver along the whole bench.

  ‘So,’ the older man said jovially, ‘what brings you two travellers to Leith on a wild night like this?’

  Patrick took a deep drink from the mug the man had given him.

  ‘We’re on our way to London.’ Patrick took another gulp. ‘I have . . . matters of business to attend to. Matters of business – in Shoreditch. That’s a district of London, you know.’

  ‘I did know,’ the man said drily.

  ‘What sort of interests?’ asked the other. ‘In the shipping line, are you? Merchandise?’

  ‘Shipping . . . no.’ Patrick stared into his drink. ‘More like . . . business.’

  John had become aware of a quietness that had fallen over the other drinkers in the room. He looked at the landlord, who shook his head slightly as if conveying some mysterious warning. John swivelled round, and caught the eye of a broad-shouldered young man in fishermen’s boots, whose face was flushed with ale.

  ‘Hey, you over there! Take care!’ the man called out loudly to John, making every head turn towards him. ‘Those two villains are from the press gang! They’ll trick you. You’ll take the king’s bounty afore you know it and end up going out to sea, pressed into the navy.’

  The two men on the bench were smiling uneasily.

  ‘Hold your tongue, you drunken troublemaker,’ the older man said. ‘We’re no press gang. I’m His Majesty’s recruiting officer, and if an honest man wants to do his duty and go to sea, if he wants to fight the French for king and country, and safeguard his wife and children, then we’re here to help him fulfil a noble ambition.’

  ‘Help anyone? Noble ambitions? You?’ jeered the fisherman. ‘I tell you –’ he jabbed a scarred forefinger towards Patrick
– ‘if you don’t mind yourself, next thing you know you’ll be dancing a hornpipe on a man-o’-war, and having your head blown clean off by a French cannonball!’

  Patrick seemed unimpressed. He laughed and took another sip.

  ‘Recruiting officers, is it?’ He eyed the two men with interest. ‘I wondered why you were so kind as to buy me a drink. But you’ve found the wrong man in me. Gentlemen are exempt from being pressed into the service, as I’m sure you know.’

  ‘Is that so, sir?’ The recruiting officer smiled thinly. ‘But how is it that if you are a gentleman, which I don’t doubt, you come to be travelling so very light, with nothing for the long voyage to London but a small chest and a bundle tied up in a cloth?’

  ‘That,’ said Patrick, draining his mug, ‘is none of your business, my dear sir. I’m a gentleman, and a property owner . . .’

  As he said the word ‘owner’ he faltered, and shook his head as if trying to clear it of unpleasant thoughts.

  ‘A property owner, eh?’ John could tell that the officer was only pretending to be impressed, and his uneasiness grew. ‘And where might this property of yours be situated?’

  ‘Dundee,’ said Patrick, plucking the name at random out of the air. ‘My estate . . .’

  But John’s gasp of horror silenced him. Patrick looked down at John’s whitened face and followed his eyes across to the door.

  A tall thin man, followed by two others, was standing in the doorway, removing his hat to reveal a head of dark red hair.

  ‘It’s Mr Nasmyth’s friend, Father! It’s Mr Creech!’ John whispered faintly.

  Mr Creech had spotted Patrick at once.

  ‘Over there,’ he called out commandingly, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. ‘The man by the fire! Arrest him! He’s wanted for murder. He stabbed a man up in Edinburgh in cold blood, this very evening, and then he ran for it!’

  Patrick had started to his feet. He looked round wildly, but seeing no escape route put his arm round John’s shoulders and drew him close.