The claret, too, had done its work, for I could not have said how many minutes had gone by since I had parted ways with Gilroy at the Cross Keys, but the walk from there back up to Caldow’s Land took me past Forrester’s Wynd and I found myself standing now near to the wall at the head of the close, looking up at that one window.

The lanterns that hung in the High Street had all been put out now so they were as dark as the shadows that blanketed everything there in the close and concealed me. The only light I could see came from her candle.

Shining out into the darkness, it assured me I was not the only one awake at that hour, lonely with my thoughts. Had I the right, I would have climbed the stair and knocked upon her door. Instead I forced myself to turn my steps again toward the Landmarket.

And as I did so, something else came with me—a tall figure that detached itself in silence from the deeper shadows of the close, and kept a steady pace with me along the street behind.

I did not turn. It was enough that, from the corner of my eye, I’d glimpsed the outline of the man as he’d passed underneath her window, and his footsteps let me know I had him at my back.

But quietly I stripped the wrapping from the whinger I had bought and felt my fist, from instinct, tighten round the weapon’s handle, as with even steps I strode the final distance up to Caldow’s Land and climbed the curving forestair.

He did not attack me then.

He crossed the street as though that had been his intent the whole time, and passed by without a word, and melted once again into the darkness of the night. But it was some time before I relaxed my hold upon the hilt of my new blade.

Chapter 14

Thursday, 25 September, 1707

I wore the whinger in its scabbard at my side when I went down to Leith with Gilroy in the morning, riding one of the two horses we had hired to make the journey quicker. Gilroy rode well. I was not surprised, since by his own account he’d spent his life around the beasts. I kept behind him, and when we had reached Leith’s Kirkgate, being not inclined to linger in the stables, I dismounted and stood waiting for him just outside the door, my hat pulled low against the rising wind.

Leith had a different character to Edinburgh, although their histories were long intertwined and each depended on the other for its commerce. There was no equality between the towns, since Edinburgh held all the rights and used Leith as its warehouse and its gateway to the sea. The craftsmen of the Leith guilds paid outlandish dues to Edinburgh to keep their right to work, being considered “unfree men,” and that same lack of freedom showed when every year a magistrate from Edinburgh was sent to serve as judge and baron bailiff of the town, denying them a choice of government.