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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
Zinnie and her sisters live in the murky tunnels beneath Edinburgh's Old Town. They keep out of the way of the authorities and remain undetected. Until, that is, rumours of a ghost bring unwanted visitors into the caverns they call home. Among them, a young Arthur Conan Doyle, keen to investigate, and MacDuff, the shady owner of Edinburgh's newest attraction, the House of Wonders. Caught up in a world of intrigue and adventure, Zinnie seeks answers. But how can she discover what secrets lie in the House of Wonders while also protecting the sisters she holds so dear? A thrilling historical adventure featuring mystery in the tunnels beneath Victorian Edinburgh, for fans of Robin Stevens, Katherine Woodfine and Jennifer Bell. Praise for THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY: "Touching on issues of class and gender, its main purpose is to bewitch and enthral" – Financial Times "A perfectly paced and wonderfully written tale of mystery and magic" – Sinéad O'Hart, author of THE EYE OF THE NORTH and THE STAR-SPUN WEB
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Seitenzahl: 305
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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For my cousin Sarah
Contents
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Prologue
The ghost and her demon move in silence, hidden by shadows, cloaked in night. Down the long columns of darkness they drift: unseen, unheard. The rain does not touch them, neither does the chill wind. Despite the hour, the streets are busy, but no one notices them. No one calls after them or points them out. They are as invisible as the silver moon once hidden behind a storm cloud.
The ghost keeps moving. This place is not dark enough for her, nor the one after, nor even the next or the next. She has no home, nowhere to rest. She wanders, seeking; a restless spirit. There is no place where she belongs.
Somewhere behind her a great clock strikes twelve, its bell clanging into the gloom. It is midnight. The witching hour. The time when spirits rise. Her demon chatters, then quiets. A crack appears in the darkness beside her: a passageway 2to the underworld. The ghost and her demon float in, and on, on, on.
Way down deep they go, then deeper still, into the midnight dark.
Chapter 1
“Run!” Zinnie shouted over her shoulder.
“He’ll never catch us!” Nell shouted back, as she dithered after Zinnie. “He ain’t got a chance!”
“Stop messing about, Nell!” Zinnie ordered her little sister. “Just run! Sadie, you too!”
She could hear their footsteps thundering behind her as they fled through the twilight. High above their heads the castle loomed, the yellow sandstone of its slabs turning black in the setting sun. She jinked a sharp left and there ahead were the steps of Castle Wynd. Zinnie glanced behind her. Sadie still looked fresh but Nell was puffing hard, beads of sweat gleaming on her forehead. Zinnie frowned. It wasn’t like Nell to be slow – usually, her feet were as quick as her tongue. Further behind she could see the lawman gaining on them.4
We won’t make it, Zinnie thought, trying to catch her breath. Not like this.
She paused, letting Sadie and Nell pass her. As they did, Zinnie hooked the silver watch out of her pocket and slipped it into the fold of Nell’s grubby pinafore.
“Keep going,” she told them. “Don’t look back. Split up in the market and hide. Don’t go straight home – he might follow.”
“What about you?” Sadie cried.
“I’ll be right behind you – go!”
Sadie grabbed Nell’s hand and pulled her up the steps, taking them two at a time. Zinnie followed, but slowly, making sure the constable had her in his sights. When he came puffing on to the steps, she faked a stumble, as if she’d slipped and fallen. She tugged her cap down lower over her eyes, stayed down for a beat, two, waiting until he was almost level with her…
“You, boy,” the policeman called weakly, wheezing his way up the steps, his cheeks red with the effort of the chase. “Stop in the name of the law. I—”
Zinnie kicked out with her foot, catching his ankle just hard enough that he buckled to his knees with an ‘oof!’ Then she was away, streaking up the worn stone steps, dodging in and out of the shadows and around curious onlookers until she’d reached the top.
“You!” the copper cried, still trying to regain his footing. “I’ll get you yet, you little scoundrel! I’ll—”5
Zinnie made a show of turning left, but once she knew she was hidden among the knots of people that still crowded the thoroughfare she dashed right, down Castlehill towards the High Street. The sun had dropped below the horizon now, but there was still a faint glow in the air, even with the heavy blur of rain clouds gathering overhead. The late stalls were out, selling the leftover scraps that only the desperate would buy. This was Old Edinburgh. There were a lot of desperate people here.
“Zinnie!”
Sadie was peeking out from the shadows of St Giles. Zinnie looked around but there was no sign of the policeman. He’d not find them now, not in this crowd.
“Are you all right?” Sadie asked, as Zinnie reached her.
“Fine,” Zinnie said. “Where’s Nell?”
Sadie shook her head. “Don’t know. She’ll hide somewhere for a bit. You did say…”
Zinnie nodded. “All right. She’s got the watch, though. If I take it to him now, we might be able to afford some supper.”
Just the thought of food made her stomach rumble. There hadn’t been enough bread for them all to eat that morning, so Zinnie had given Nell her own share. Now though, hunger gnawed at Zinnie’s empty insides like a sharp-toothed rat.
“Come on,” said Sadie. “He’s long given up. Let’s go home.”6
They’d only got as far as the entrance of Writers’ Court when they spotted Nell further down the whip-thin street. She had her back against the wall, staring up at the man looming over her.
“That’s Bartholomew Talbot!” Sadie hissed.
Despite herself, Zinnie’s heart turned over. Bartholomew Talbot. A terrible, cruel man. She usually tried to stay as far away from him as possible. But she couldn’t let him hurt Nell.
“Talbot,” Zinnie said, running up to step between him and Nell. “What do you want?”
“What’s it to you?”
“You don’t mess with my sisters. You should know that by now.”
Talbot’s face twisted into a sneer as his gaze flicked between Nell and Zinnie. “Sister?” he said. “I don’t think so.”
Zinnie lifted her chin so she could look him in the eye. She slipped her fingers into her pocket and pulled out her knife, flicking it open without looking away. “Let her go.”
Talbot narrowed his eyes. “I think you’ve got a death wish, girlie, threatening me with that little trinket. I was just asking your sister a polite question, is all. About that wee glint of silver I can see in her pocket there. Got a notion it ain’t hers, see.”
“It’s not,” Zinnie agreed. “But it isn’t yours, either, and I’m about to make sure it gets back to its rightful owner. Bet 7that’s not something you’d do, is it? In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were you that nicked it from the gent who’s missing it in the first place.”
Talbot smiled again, but his eyes were as cruel as ever. “You’d best be careful, my wee lambs. Watch yourselves, all right?”
He turned and jerked his head. One by one, four big men slid out of the shadows to flank him. Talbot gave Nell a rot-toothed grin. Then he and his cronies were gone, barging their way through the bustle on the Royal Mile.
“Oh!” said Nell, throwing her arms round Zinnie’s waist and almost knocking her over. “I’ll never be as brave as you, Zinnie! I’ll never be able to stand up to Talbot like you do!”
Zinnie snapped her knife closed and put it back in her pocket before hugging Nell.
“I’d rather you never saw him again,” she said. “But if you do, there’s no shame in running away, pippin. I’d rather you do that than ever face the likes of Bartholomew Talbot alone. You see him coming, you run. All right?”
“All right,” said Nell, and then began to cough.
“Nell?” Sadie asked with a frown.
“It’s just the running, that’s all.”
Sadie pressed a hand to Nell’s forehead. “You’re hot.”
Nell huffed. “Course I am! You pulled me up those steps so quickly I thought I was flying!”
Zinnie retrieved the watch from Nell’s pocket. “Take her home,” she told Sadie. “I’ll get rid of this and be back with 8something for us all to eat before you know it.”
Sadie nodded and took Nell’s hand. Zinnie watched them go, then turned down the Mile, making for the curving turn of Cockburn Street and the elegant squares of the New Town beyond.
Chapter 2
“Miss Zinnie!” exclaimed Arthur Conan Doyle, standing in the centre of his study with the silver watch she’d just given him dangling from his hand like a pendulum.
“Just Zinnie is fine,” Zinnie told him.
“It would be impolite for me to be so familiar,” the young man declared. “Now tell me – how? From where did you retrieve it?”
Zinnie shrugged. She was hardly going to tell him that they’d had to steal it from the window of a pawnbroker’s shop. “It doesn’t matter.”
Conan Doyle shook his head. “Well, thank you. This will mean a great deal to the friend from whom it was stolen. He thought never to see it again. I confess, I feared that this time I must surely have given you a task that would confound even your skills. I am glad to have been mistaken.”10
Every now and then, Arthur Conan Doyle asked Zinnie to find something for him, usually something that had been lost or stolen. The watch had been his latest request – although he’d actually referred to it as ‘the Pursuit of the Purloined Pocket Watch’.
“And now,” he said, “let me find you and those sisters of yours something for your trouble.”
Conan Doyle turned away to his desk, which gave Zinnie a chance to look round the room. She’d never been inside his house on Picardy Place before, much less into his study. Usually, he came to find her on the Mile, or talked to her briefly out in the hallway. But it seemed that by returning the purloined pocket watch Zinnie had proven something to Conan Doyle. That she was trustworthy perhaps. Zinnie didn’t really care as long as he kept finding work for her to do.
The study looked out over the street via a large bow window. There was a desk and a fireplace, a chair, tables and … books. Books everywhere, on shelves and in stacks on the tables, the chairs, even on the floor. Several were open on the desk, along with a folded newspaper, a notebook and an ink pen, as if he’d just been sitting there, taking notes.
Conan Doyle opened one of the desk drawers, pulling out a little leather money pouch and upending it into his palm. From the pile of coins he took a half-crown and held it out to her. It was the most money Zinnie had seen in a long time and she took it quickly, clenching it in her fist 11as if it might vanish. Forget just supper – this would keep them fed for days without even having to beg. Zinnie was careful not to show Conan Doyle just how much the money meant to her, though. She had no intention of being sent to the poorhouse and she’d move heaven and earth to make sure Sadie and Nell didn’t end up in an orphanage. She had no good memories of her own time there and some were so bad that they still haunted the worst of her dreams.
“Obliged,” she said with a nod, slipping the coin into her pocket. “Got any more jobs for us?”
Conan Doyle flashed her a smile. “Well, now – perhaps I do. Do you happen to have heard of anyone with an unhealthy interest in the human ear?”
Zinnie blinked. “Sorry?”
Conan Doyle sank into his desk chair. “You know that I am a medical student at the Royal Infirmary, yes?”
Zinnie nodded.
“Something’s been happening to some of the cadavers delivered for use in our learning,” he said. “In the past ten days, two of them have arrived without their ears.”
Zinnie shifted from one foot to the other. “Haven’t you never had a corpse with bits missing before?”
“Well – yes, of course. Sometimes we get ones with a limb cut off, or some other injury. But to have two that have both lost their ears – severed cleanly, as if with a knife or some other precision instrument – that seems strange, does it not? Even to you?”12
Zinnie wasn’t sure what he meant by the ‘even’ in that question and narrowed her eyes.
Conan Doyle raised both hands in silent apology. “All I mean is that it seems obvious to me that something is amiss. Don’t you agree?”
Zinnie shrugged again. “Don’t seem like a very usual occurrence, no.”
Conan Doyle nodded. “Yet the chief physician of the Royal Infirmary has dismissed it as a prank, perhaps by my fellow students. Why he feels they would bother with such a charade, I don’t know. I’ve been trying to work out what might have been important enough about those men’s ears that would warrant their removal.”
Zinnie thought for a moment. “A punishment maybe?”
Conan Doyle grimaced. “I don’t think so. As far as I can make out, the ears were removed post mortem – after death, not before. Not much of a punishment, eh?”
“Maybe they had something on them or in them? A tattoo? Earrings?”
“Hmm. Perhaps, but it is impossible to tell.” He peered at her from his desk, as if a little surprised. “Good questions, though, Miss Zinnie. What else have you got?”
“I’ve got to get back…” She trailed off as Conan Doyle tipped out another half-crown into his hand and held it up.
“I’ll pay for your time,” he said. “I should be glad of another perspective and, forgive me for saying so, but perhaps one from the underbelly of this great city is exactly 13what I have been missing when it comes to ‘the Mystery of the Severed Ears’. I intend to take any theories to the police, of course, especially if it seems there is risk of more, but it would be sensible to have something solid to suggest to them before I do.”
Zinnie took the coin and added it to the one already in her pocket, pleased by the chink and jingle they made. A whole crown! That could feed the girls well for a week, and might even get them a night or two in a hostel on Grassmarket as well.
“What sort of men were they?” Zinnie asked. “The ones missing their ears, I mean.”
Conan Doyle shook his head. “Their names are lost. They each had tattoos, however. I had it in mind that they could be sailors but, if that’s the case, they could have come from anywhere, and their ship – or ships – have probably already left Leith.”
“How did they die?”
“The police have concluded the deaths were accidental and are planning no further investigation. They had both suffered knocks to the head. The inspector I spoke to offered the opinion that the men were probably drunk at the time and suffered some form of misadventure.” Conan Doyle shrugged. “It is possible, I suppose, but it seems an inadequate explanation to me, especially given the fact that they arrived in the morgue without their ears.”
“I suppose,” Zinnie said slowly, “that when they had 14their ears cut off is significant. If it was when they died, it probably means they were murdered by whoever took their ears. If it was afterwards, maybe not.”
Conan Doyle snapped his fingers. “Yes! Exactly, Miss Zinnie, exactly! I was really hoping the constabulary would investigate properly but, between you and me, I have more faith in the detective powers of a day-old trout. The police have written it off. It seems as if only I am interested in this little problem.”
“Not sure what anyone can do without knowing who the men are,” Zinnie pointed out. “Got to have somewhere to start.”
“Then perhaps that’s what you can help me with?”
Zinnie thought for a moment or two. Even if they had been dock workers or sailors, Leith wasn’t her patch and getting anyone down there to talk to her would be difficult. There must be some other way.
“What about the tattoos?” she said. “Were any of them shared between the men?”
“I think so, actually, but I can’t tell for sure – some had been burned off.”
“Burned off?” Zinnie repeated. “What do you mean?”
Conan Doyle indicated his own chest with a swipe of his forefinger. “They both had old marks across their chests, which suggested to me that they were trying to remove the tattoos by means of scorching. They were roughly in the same place and of the same shape, though. It would make 15sense that the tattoos which had once been there matched.”
Zinnie frowned. “Have the bodies been done away with yet?”
“No. They’re still in the mortuary, awaiting dissection. Perhaps tomorrow I should go and examine them again. I could produce some sketches for you to look at.”
“Good idea,” Zinnie said, turning to the door with the coins jangling in her pocket. “Might give us something to go on, at least.”
“Wait!” Conan Doyle snapped his fingers. “By God, why didn’t I think of it before? Lady Sarah’s seance!”
Zinnie blinked. “What?”
“It’s tomorrow night, at Montague House on Queen Street,” Conan Doyle said. “I can gather items of each man’s clothing from the mortuary and ask the medium to summon their spirits. We can get the answers directly from the dead men themselves!”
“Really?” Zinnie said doubtfully. “And what do you mean ‘we’?” She didn’t believe in an afterlife. As far as she was concerned, there was enough trouble to deal with in this world without worrying about the next one. Yet Conan Doyle’s enthusiasm seemed genuine.
“I’ll need you there, Miss Zinnie, listening to whatever they say. I think the answer lies on your side of Edinburgh rather than mine. You may find significance in something I do not.”
“I can’t go to a seance on Queen Street!” Zinnie almost 16laughed. “Your Lady Sarah would kick me out as soon as look at me!”
“She won’t. When I tell her I need you there, she’ll go along with it. Lady Sarah Montague is game for anything, the more daring the better. Six months ago, she was fording rivers in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. A child from Old Town Edinburgh isn’t going to scare her off.” He raised his eyebrows. “You can be a maid for the evening.”
Zinnie looked down at herself. She was dressed in the only clothes she owned – a threadbare pair of rough brown trousers with a grubby shirt over the top. “Will I have to wear a skirt?”
Conan Doyle grinned. “Afraid so. A clean cap too, to hide that short hair of yours. But don’t worry about all that. Subterfuge will suit you, I know it already. Be at thirty-three Queen Street at six o’clock tomorrow and Lady Sarah will arrange the rest. I’ll make sure of it.”
Zinnie still wasn’t keen. Her doubt must have shown on her face.
“I’ll pay you, of course,” Conan Doyle said.
“All right,” said Zinnie. “Six o’clock it is.”
Chapter 3
Zinnie made her way back towards the Old Town, the cold night wind turning her fingers and toes to ice. Above her the rain clouds had tattered into thin scraps, lit a smudged grey by the moon. A scatter of stars pricked the darkness beyond and she realized she had taken far longer with Conan Doyle than she’d intended. Sadie and Nell would be famished.
The market was dwindling by the time she got to the High Street, but she found a loaf, a chunk of drying cheese and a little milk that hadn’t yet turned. The bread and cheese she shoved under one arm, then dug in her pocket for her candle stub and matches, sticking the stoppered milk bottle in there instead.
Writers’ Court passageway was a pitch-black mouth as she approached. Zinnie struck a match and walked into the darkness of the narrow street, her candle casting an 18indistinct circle of yellow against the damp walls. Noises shivered from the tenements that reared high above her head: children crying, muffled conversations, drunken laughter. An echo rattled behind her, a stone skittering from underfoot. Zinnie glanced back towards the dim light of the Royal Mile, but she could see no one there.
On her left was the entrance to the tall tenement buildings of Writers’ Court itself, but Zinnie carried on, ever deeper into the darkness, beside the wall of the Royal Exchange. Further down her candle picked out rickety steps to a broken door that stood below the level of the newer wall. The authorities had boarded up this entrance to Mary King’s Close more than once, but it was always torn open again. Zinnie slipped down the steps and between the jagged slivers of wood. Beyond were more steps, leading to what might once have been a cellar for the building that used to sit above it.
Mary King’s Close had once been just like Writers’ Court, with tall buildings slouching towards each other either side of a narrow street. It and several other closes had all been built beside one another on the steep hill that led away from the Royal Mile. Even then, the buildings had been overcrowded and unsanitary, with families crammed in side by side. Buckets served as toilets and, when full, their contents would be flung out of the windows on to the cracked flagstones of the closes below – as well as on to any poor person who happened to be passing by at the 19time. The filth gathered on the ground and seeped into the lower levels, where it was dark even at noon. There was nowhere else for the people who lived there to go – Edinburgh was crowded and those that had rooms paid dearly for them, whatever state they were in. Sickness spread easily, and when the plague came to Edinburgh in the 1600s it had raged in the closes as wildly as an unchecked fire.
After that, the closes were thought to be haunted and were left to the ghosts. Eventually, the new Royal Exchange was built over the top of the abandoned streets. Below, though, the closes were still there, and so too were the lower levels of the houses, their rooms left in darkness, empty and crumbling. If one knew how to get down there, however, there was space to sleep – to live, in fact, for people like Zinnie who had nowhere else to go.
The air thickened as she descended. It was fetid with damp, with the filth of both people and vermin, growing worse and worse with each step she took. At the bottom was a room, its curved stone ceiling almost too low to stand up straight in. Her own candle was beginning to die, but there were others dotted here and there. They flickered uncertainly in the darkness, illuminating the dirty, hungry faces of the people crouched around them. In one corner an old woman was lighting a makeshift hearth on a flat stone set in the dirt floor. The smoke belched in acrid clouds, clogging the throats of those nearby, making 20them cough. There were no windows through which it could escape. Eventually, most of it would seep into the cracks, but the air would never properly clear.
Zinnie passed through two connected rooms like this, weaving between knots of people as she made for the spot where Sadie and Nell would be. It wasn’t much, the place they called home, but Zinnie was proud of it. She’d found an old drape large enough to close off a little nook between a wall and what would have once been a fireplace. Beyond the curtain was a space just big enough for the three of them to fit.
She blew out her candle and pushed the curtain aside, clutching the girls’ supper.
“Zinnie!” Nell cried, sitting up from beneath the tattered blanket Sadie had wrapped her in. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“Ach, now, don’t be silly, pippin,” Zinnie said, passing Sadie the milk and food before dropping to a crouch beside her sister. She ran her fingers over Nell’s forehead, worried by the unnatural heat in her skin. “You know that whatever happens I’ll always come back. I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant to be so long.”
Nell threw her arms round Zinnie and held on tight. Zinnie could feel her littlest sister trembling and felt guilty. It wasn’t so long ago that Nell had been left on her own in the street like a stray when both her parents had died of sickness. She clearly had still not forgotten that fear.21
“Here,” Sadie said, holding out their one battered tin bowl for Nell to take. Into it she had poured some of the milk and added a hunk of the bread to soak. “Eat.”
Nell let go of Zinnie and took the bowl, coughing harshly. Zinnie looked over at Sadie, who was busy tending the small fire she’d lit. They’d made a hole in the side of the fireplace by chipping away at two of the crumbling stones so that most of the smoke went up the old chimney. It probably still came out somewhere not far overhead, but at least it wasn’t right in their faces. Over the flames, water was heating in their tin mug. Criss-crossing the nook above their heads was a branch that Sadie had found in Princes Street Gardens. From it hung bunches of plants, filling the place with their herbal scent as they dried. As Zinnie watched, Sadie chose a single sprig, crumbling the leaves into the water.
“There,” Sadie said, setting the mug down in front of Nell. “Yarrow tea. We’ll let it cool a little and then you must drink it all down – it will stop you coughing and help you sleep. Tomorrow I’ll go and gather some more,” she told Zinnie. “That’s the last of it in my stores. I need coltsfoot too. I hadn’t realized I’d run out.”
Sadie’s mother and grandmother had brought her from Ireland to escape poverty and starvation, but here in Edinburgh they had both died of consumption, leaving Sadie alone with the knowledge of which plants could heal and how. It had been a family tradition – all of the women 22in Sadie’s family learned plant lore from their mothers as they grew up, and it was as natural to her as breathing. Some of the older folk in Mary King’s Close muttered about Sadie. Witch, they called her. However, when they were desperate and sick, with no money for a doctor, they seemed to forget all about their suspicions and came to Sadie for her cures.
By the time Nell had finished her supper and drunk her tea, she was struggling to keep her eyes open. Sadie sang a quiet little lullaby as Zinnie tucked Nell in again, watching until she was sure she was asleep.
The two older girls were sharing out the last of the bread and cheese between themselves when the noise of a commotion gusted in beneath the curtain.
“Is that a fight?” Sadie asked, her face anxious. Fights in Mary King’s Close were dangerous – one knocked candle and the cramped space could be alight in seconds.
Zinnie listened, frowning. “I don’t think so. I—”
“A ghost!” came an indistinct cry, and then the distant sound of running feet. “A spirit! We’re haunted! Haunted!”
The footsteps died away as the room beyond the curtain came alive with chatter.
“Stay here,” Zinnie whispered to Sadie. She got up and slipped out into the main room, pushing her way between bodies until she reached the empty doorway that led out on to the old close. Beyond there was no sign of anything untoward. Whoever had been shouting was long gone. 23She turned back.
“Too much whisky,” she said to her neighbours. “That’s all. The only demon is in the drink.”
Chapter 4
The next morning, Zinnie woke to the sound of Nell moving restlessly beneath her blanket, wheezing and coughing in her sleep. She fumbled for a candle and lit it, setting it in their makeshift hearth. There was no sign of Sadie. Zinnie felt Nell’s forehead and found it was as hot as a furnace. She was just reaching for the bucket in which they kept their water when the curtain shifted and Sadie reappeared, worry pinching at her face.
“There you are,” Zinnie said. “Where have you been?”
“I went to get yarrow but there’s none left,” Sadie told her, sinking to her knees on the blankets. “It’s been pulled up. The coltsfoot too. I asked the park keeper and he said they were making way for new borders with prettier plants. ‘No one wants to look at weeds, lassie.’ That’s what he said.”
Nell coughed again, turning on her side in her sleep, 25muttering under her breath as if she were dreaming.
“What are we going to do?” Zinnie asked. “Is there another plant you can use?”
Sadie shook her head. “Maybe there’s somewhere else I can find it. The Meadows or Arthur’s Seat…”
Zinnie shook her head. “It’ll take too long to search on your own. And you might know what you’re looking for but I don’t.” She put her hand in her pocket and felt the second of Arthur Conan Doyle’s two half-crowns. “I’ll go to Constance McQuirter. She was always talking about how she had cures for everything, wasn’t she, when she lived down here? Perhaps she’ll have something for Nell.”
Sadie nodded. “Maybe she’ll have yarrow or coltsfoot herself. Ask her first, before you let her give you anything else.”
“Do you want to go?” Zinnie asked, holding out the coin. “You’d know better than anyone if she’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”
Sadie looked down at her hands. “She calls me a witch.”
“Ach, that’s just blather and nonsense. She wants people to go to her instead of you, that’s all. Everyone knows you’re better with the herbs than she is. She’s just jealous and greedy.”
Sadie nodded but the shadow on her face didn’t lessen.
“It’s all right,” Zinnie said, getting to her feet. “I’ll go. You look after Nell – I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Wait,” Sadie said. “There’s something else. The police 26have put posters up. Wanted posters. Zinnie – there’s a picture on them. It looks just like you!”
Zinnie dropped back to her knees. “What?”
“It’s true. They’re calling you a boy, but it’s about us taking that watch from Bread Street.”
Zinnie’s stomach turned over. “But no pictures of you and Nell?”
“No, but it mentions us. It … they know what we look like.”
“All right,” said Zinnie, thinking. “Well, don’t worry. No one in here will give us up, no matter what they think of us.”
She went to leave again but Sadie caught her arm. “Be careful. We can’t do without you, Zin.”
Zinnie patted her hand. “Don’t you worry,” she said. “There’ll never be a copper quick enough to catch me.”
She went out, making her way through the crowded underground rooms and towards the steep steps that delivered her into a grey, wet morning. She didn’t have to go far once she’d stepped back out on to Writers’ Court. She crossed the narrow street and went to the door in the opposite wall, beyond which was a flight of stairs leading up. Inside, noises echoed round the cracked and crumbling walls: babies crying, drunken shouts and scuffles, an old woman’s blunt, hacking cough. The air smelled of burnt porridge, old beer and worse, much worse. Zinnie made her way up, heading for the third floor.27
Constance McQuirter had somehow raised enough money to move out of Mary King’s Close and rent a room in this tenement instead. It wouldn’t be much to most folk but to Zinnie it seemed like a palace. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a room of your own, a space that belonged to only you.
Zinnie found the door she was looking for and knocked loudly enough to be heard amid the rest of the Court’s racket.
“Come,” said a haughty voice. Zinnie rolled her eyes. Clearly, Constance thought that living in Writers’ Court meant she could put on airs and graces. She pushed open the door with a grin on her face.
Constance’s home was a small space that looked out over the passageway outside. The room wasn’t much grander than any in Mary King’s Close, despite the window. A pallet in one corner did for a bed, piled with blankets that had been smoothed out in a strange gesture of tidiness. There was a bucket of water that must have been pumped from the same well on the Mile that Zinnie and her sisters used. Zinnie’s eyes were drawn to a wooden crate, which had two or three old but fine dresses draped across it. Since when did McQuirter ever have need of good clothes? Moreover, how had she been able to afford them?
Constance was standing by the window. She was a tall, thin woman with creases round her eyes and mouth and dark hair that she had twisted into a coil against the back of her 28head. She wore a plum-coloured dress, frayed at the edges, and had draped an old lace scarf around her shoulders.
“Zinnie!” Constance said in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting you. I’m waiting for a client.”
“A client?”
Constance gestured to the corner and Zinnie saw a small table on which was spread a pack of tarot cards.
“You … read fortunes now?”
Constance gave a thin smile. “Among other things. I’ve always had an aptitude for the spiritual.”
It was the first Zinnie had heard of it. “We need medicine for Nell. She’s getting sick.”
“Nell… She’s the newest sister, isn’t she?”
Zinnie was not in the mood for Constance’s games. “Can you help me or not?”
Constance tipped her head to one side and a small strand of hair uncurled itself to hang against her shoulder. “Your little Irish witchling kin doesn’t have a spell to cast over her for a cure?”
“You’re a fine one to call anyone a witch,” Zinnie said. “You do exactly the same thing as Sadie – you just don’t do it nearly as well.”
Constance’s eyes flashed with anger. “Watch your tongue. There’s a difference between an apothecary and a witch, and if you can’t tell that you’re more of a fool than I thought. Dabbling like your sister does – that’s witchy. What I do – that’s proper doctoring.”29
Zinnie tried to keep calm. There was no sense in letting McQuirter rile her. “She’s run out of yarrow and coltsfoot. Do you have any?”
Constance raised one hand, palm up, and waved it in a careless circle. “Do I look as if I have a garden?”
“Well then, what do you have?”
“It depends on what you have to offer in exchange.”
Zinnie held out one of the half-crowns Conan Doyle had given her. Constance regarded the money in a way that made Zinnie’s hackles rise. “It’s all I’ve got and you know it,” she said. “You’d let a bairn suffer for greed?”
Constance narrowed her eyes. “I forget you’ve never had a mother to beat a civil tongue into your head. No matter. I do have something for you. It’s precious but I’m moved by your sister’s predicament.”
She went to a wooden box that stood in one corner and lifted the lid to reveal a store of bottles within. Constance took one out and handed it to Zinnie. It held a clear liquid in which a few sprigs of greenery were floating.
“What is it?” Zinnie asked.
“It’s made from an ancient recipe passed down to me by my ancestors,” Constance said. “It will help the girl’s upset stomach.”
