“Let me tell you what I’ve learnt of Matthew Browne. My friend the stabler nearly did not speak of him, because he says it’s one of the most tragic tales he knows.”

I felt the old house settle round us, all the beams and floorboards creaking with the weight of years as if it were a burden to be borne.

Gilroy went on, “The stabler holds it bad enough the foundling lads were brought to Riddell’s Close by Archie Browne not from compassion, but to be raised there as criminals. But this”—he handed me a two-paged document—“the stabler calls an even greater crime.”

It was the copy of a transcript from a trial, from autumn, 1685, for house-breaking and common theft.

“Matthew,” Gilroy told me, “would have been but twelve years old when he was put on trial for that. The two men tried with him were known and hardened thieves. The stabler could not say why Archie Browne had trusted Matthew to them in the first place, but there was some talk that Barbara Malcolm had been giving thought to taking all the boys and leaving Archie, and that Archie might have wanted Matthew to be caught and punished to show Barbara there would be a price to pay if she tried to break free.”

I read the pages through in silence. It was a grim record of the testimony, and the evidence was plain.

“He must have been afraid,” said Gilroy. “He was all alone. He’d been held in the Tolbooth, in the vilest of cells, with rogues and murderers. And at his trial, he saw the other men condemned to death before him. He must have been terrified.” He handed me a third page and said, “But he was reprieved, because there had been private testimony given to his character. A soldier of the town guard, by the name of Corporal Morison, did swear by this testificate that Matthew Browne, on entering the kitchen of a house within the Canongate, climbed through the window and refused to then unbar the kitchen door for his confederates, because there were two maids there and he sought to keep them safe from harm.”

That paper, with the words and copied signature of Lily’s Corporal Morison, did shake a little in my hand, I freely do admit it, but I gripped it tightly and regained control.

I said, “I’m not sure that a lad of twelve would think it a reprieve to be condemned to transportation to the colonies.”

He granted that. “No, likely not. Nor would his mother think much of the man who’d organized that transport. And I’d go so far as to suggest that, if his mother were a…shall we say, a working woman, and the man were fool enough to try to come and use her services, he’d well deserve it if she threw a bottle at his head.”

I met his eyes. “You speak of Mr. Fearne.” The same man Simon nearly beat to death, that day at Riddell’s Close.