Chapter 22

 

Agnes Moncur was on her morning rounds, checking everything and everywhere was clean and tidy and the patients comfortable. It was a routine daily task but today being Hogmanay gave an added impetus to her inspection. Edinburgh Royal Infirmary would sail into the New Year as the well-organized place it was.

She always worked from the top down. The operating theatre was on the uppermost floor, where skylights allowed as much natural illumination as possible. This morning it was empty and quiet. There were no operations planned for today.

On the floor below were two wards, one for male patients, the other for female. The cavernous central stone stairs of the Infirmary with their draughty landings formed the dividing line. Nurses and orderlies on both sides of the stairwell assured her all was well. She had a walk round each ward herself to make sure.

Satisfied, she went on down to the ground floor. The necessary houses at either end of the building were clean and the two kitchens, also at opposite ends of the ground floor, were already busy with preparations for the midday meal for patients and staff. After a check of the pantries, the apothecary’s shop, the library and the laboratory, Agnes walked across the main entrance hall and unlocked the solid oak door which gave access to the cells at the back of the building.

There was very little natural light in the corridor here, the only windows small and set high up in each of the cells. A shelf inside the main door held a brass lantern, a box of candles, stone and flint. Lit lantern in hand, Agnes walked along the corridor. She’d cleared away the evidence of Mr Fox’s stay in these cells after Daft Friday, annoyed with herself for having done so too late to stop the Town Guard captain from having seen it. It wouldn’t hurt to make doubly sure she hadn’t left anything behind.

Back in her own room ten minutes later, she sat down at her desk and started on her mail. According to the orderly who had brought her letters this morning, the one on top of the small pile had been delivered directly to the hospital by a caddie. Nothing odd about that. People often used them to send letters and small parcels. She frequently did so herself, suspicious of the Post Office. Everyone knew they intercepted mail to and from suspected Jacobites: of whom she was one. As were the Rankeillors.

She supposed it wasn’t odd either that Kirsty had sent a letter rather than walking the short distance to the hospital. If her father had caught a bad chill on the journey home from Glasgow and she was caring for him.

If Patrick Rankeillor really had caught a bad chill.

Sitting there in the quiet of her room, Agnes looked up from the letter. Suspicion. Once it slid into your mind, it didn’t easily leave. This letter compounded what she had felt when Kirsty had left the last batch of physic at a time when she knew full well everyone would be busy on the ward round.

The man who delivered the carrots and turnips for the soup which formed a large part of the patients’ diet had already discreetly told Agnes what the coffee house keeper at Leith had told him. James Nicholson, a loyal friend to the Cause, had given shelter to John Roy Stuart and Jamie Buchan of Balnamoon on the snowy night when they had escaped from Edinburgh after the Daft Friday ball.

Robert Catto had called past a few days later, after the snow had cleared. He had asked if ‘our guests’ had got away all right. James Nicholson had denied any knowledge of any guests, telling the Town Guard captain he had no letting rooms. Whereupon Catto had amicably wished a firm ‘Godspeed’ to any travelers obliged to make their journeys at this time of year. The implication that he had Jacobite sympathies had been clear.

Another friend to the Cause had reported a visit paid by Robert Catto to Charles Paterson a few days before. The lawyer’s Jacobite sympathies were well known, especially to those who shared them. Agnes trusted those who had given her these reports but she needed to be sure. People could dissemble, pretend to be what they were not.

She had learnt this lesson the hard way. She’d been twenty years old when her jovial, jesting father and her handsome and gentle new husband – her childhood sweetheart – had marched off in support of James Stuart and the Jacobite Cause.

Both men died at Sheriffmuir, the battle both sides claimed as a victory. Devastated, Agnes and her mother were struck another blow. The tavern the family had run at the harbour in Montrose was seized by a platoon of redcoats, mother and daughter turned out onto the street with barely more than the clothes they stood up in. Too many men who’d long been regulars at the tavern did nothing to help, standing silently watching as the two women were evicted.

Only the kindness of the Coutts family caught them when they fell. Prosperous local merchants, they took the women in, gave them a roof over their heads and food to eat. They were grateful beyond words. Despite that, Agnes’ mother was left a broken woman. A pale ghost of her former self, she died less than a year later.

Agnes grieved bitterly for all she had lost but at some point steel slid into her soul. Her devotion to the Cause which had taken her father and husband had grown stronger with each passing year. Now it was unshakeable. Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and the restoration of the House of Stuart were the two central pillars of her life: and she was determined those she had loved so much would not have died in vain.

Which was why she had to be sure about the Rankeillors and Captain Robert Catto. Folding Kirsty Rankeillor’s letter, she put it to one side, to be filed when she next stood up. Which would not be until she had written two letters of her own. She would certainly not send them via the Post Office. The hands of those all-important trusted friends would make the deliveries.