Wicked Company (3 page)

“I say you are blinded, bigoted fools,” Daniel replied without rancor, “and ignorant ones as well, if you don’t delight in Shakespeare,” he added, staring sorrowfully at the books that Meeker’s henchmen would probably burn to cinders.

Reverend Meeker glared at Daniel McGann with speechless indignation. At last he turned and strode toward the front door, followed by the others. Upon reaching the threshold, he turned to impart a final threat, his bulbous nose crimson with fury.

“If you persist in leading the public down such paths of wickedness, McGann, you shall find yourself brought up on charges of libel and blasphemy!”

***

Sophie was scarcely aware of the cobbles digging into the bottoms of her leather brogues as she sped down the dank passageway behind her father’s shop. With her mind on the drama taking place there, she nearly collided with Duncan McClellan. The fishmonger was just emerging from the back door of his tiny establishment, one of the numerous Luckenbooths—or “locked booths”—built adjacent to St. Giles Cathedral where the public purchased everything from meat to ribbons to first editions at McGann’s.

“Whoa, there, lassie,” the grizzled old man exclaimed. “And where might you be headed in such a tear? Not making mischief with those pig-riding Maxwell sisters?” he teased, referring to a pair of hoydenish neighbors who had a penchant for racing sows down the center of the High Street during the city’s busiest hours.

“N-no,” Sophie said, panting, anxious to be on her way without undue explanations. “I’ve placards for the new
Macbeth
to deliver to the playhouse. The manager’s been skirlin’ for them day and night. Pardon, but I must be off!”

“Aye, there’s a good lass,” Duncan said fondly, stepping aside and saluting with his basket of plaice, salmon, and sole in a mock bow. He was about to set out on the second of his morning rounds, treading up and down the Royal Mile calling out enticing names of the day’s bounty pulled from nearby Leith Harbor. “Your da’s a lucky man to have such a fine assistant, and that’s a fact—even if you be a mere girl,” he said with a wink.

A
mere
girl!
Sophie thought with some annoyance, but she didn’t have time to engage in a battle of wits with her good-hearted neighbor. Instead, to prove she bore him no ill will, she tossed her auburn curls in a show of mild reproof, grinned at him saucily, and continued swiftly on her way.

Sophie’s breathing became labored as she veered away from the last of the Luckenbooths and entered Parliament Square. A crowd was milling in front of the old Mercat Cross where royal proclamations had been read to the populace for centuries. As Sophie pushed through the knot of people clogging the square, she heard a strange, rhythmic melody nearby and caught a glimpse of an old man whose gnarled fingers plucked gamely at a small harp. Seated on a low stool, surrounded by spectators, the ancient musician strummed a wild, compelling sound on the Celtic instrument’s strings. His hunched shoulders were swathed in moth-eaten red and navy tartan wool. A buxom woman of indeterminate age, clad in a ragged skirt and blouse with a square of similar plaid tossed over one arm, clapped in time with the hypnotic music, encouraging someone or something moving within the circle of bystanders.

Suddenly, a slender wooden cylinder soared above the heads of the crowd, accompanied by a chorus of oohs and aahs. An instant later, another wooden pin flashed overhead, and then a third and a fourth. The gaily colored shapes danced in a blur against the clear May sky. Despite her eagerness to do her father’s bidding, Sophie paused to stare as quite the handsomest young man she’d ever seen flung oblong wooden pins into the air with an agility that took her breath away.

The street juggler stood a head and a half taller than anyone in the admiring throng, a fact that only served to emphasize his startling height and broad shoulders. Every few seconds, he tilted his dark blond head skyward to trace the route of the juggling pins, displaying a profile enhanced by a straight nose and high cheekbones. It was a visage that betrayed in his ancestry some strapping Viking in search of plunder who had no doubt landed on a mist-shrouded Scottish coast a thousand years before this sun-splashed spring morning,

Grinning broadly at his appreciative audience like some Highland incarnation of Tom Jones himself, the juggler jauntily threw the pins into the air in time to the throbbing Scottish tune played by the old harpist. Sophie gazed open-mouthed at the strolling player’s rakish smile, the appealing cleft in his chin, physical attributes that would have earned him notice even if his juggling talent had not.

The splendid-looking street performer slung his pins higher and higher until it seemed to Sophie that they soared above the hammer beam roof of Parliament Hall. Without warning, he snatched the pins from the air in rapid succession and held them at arm’s length like a bouquet. Then he proffered the throng a deep bow and quickly exchanged the pins for a tambourine held by the woman with dirty blond hair who stood next to the harpist.

“And now, lads and lassies…” the juggler called to the crowd, “I’ll sing for you a joyful tune taught me by the Highland fairies and guaranteed to bring the listener the best o’ Scottish luck, if only you’ll favor us with a wee bit o’ siller…” He spied several people edging away from the crowd. “Aye…
you
there! Dinna slink away like that or the fairies will do ye mischief,” he warned mockingly, his distinctive Highland burr rolling richly off his clever tongue. “And that’s as sure as I am that m’name’s Hunter Robertson and this here’s m’mother, Jean, and m’blind grandfather, Rory Robertson—the proud harpist to the chief of the Clan Robertson, faithful to the end to Bonnie Charlie!”

A murmur of sympathy rose from certain members of the crowd and the pair attempting to escape remained frozen with embarrassment. Hunter Robertson spoke quickly to his grandfather, who commenced playing the song. Despite Sophie’s conscience prompting her to be on her way, she watched admiringly as the good-looking juggler-musician boldly approached the pair who had tried to make their escape. He began singing in a warm, full baritone to the spirited, staccato tune his grandfather played:

’Tis time, my dears, with all good cheer

To Pay the Piper well…

You’ve had your show, and you should know

The Highland Fairies tell

On those who play at thrift and say

They cannot spare a pence

’Tis good to see you’ll pay our fee

So, show us your good sense!

One of the men reluctantly dug into his pocket and placed a small coin in the tambourine Hunter held out to him. The crowd applauded. Hunter swiftly pocketed the coin as his deep blue eyes scanned the assembly with a mischievous twinkle. He brazenly swung his tambourine in a slow wide arc, shaking the little metal disks attached to its circumference in a not-so-subtle reminder to the crowd that he sought more donations.

“’Tis time, my dear, with all good cheer to Pay the Piper well…” he repeated in a soft, caressing voice, and Sophie found herself taking the measure of his enormous height, broad shoulders, tapering waist, and well-shaped thighs clad in tight red and navy tartan trews buckled at the knee. The performer’s raw charm and boldness were impressive, as was his ability to wheedle a farthing out of the onlookers without the slightest chagrin that what he was doing was one notch above simple begging. He executed a little jig for each person kind enough to put a penny in his tambourine and, for good measure, intoned with exaggerated politeness, “A thousand Highland thank yous, m’lord. May the blessings of St. Ninian be yours, m’lady.”

When the charmer stopped in front of Sophie, their eyes locked and she found herself unable to pull away from his riveting gaze. He surveyed her slender frame and gave his tambourine a sharp, demanding thump. Shyly, she shook her head, indicating she had no penny to donate to his cause. She feared he might embarrass her with some bit of tomfoolery. Instead, he glanced at her worn indigo skirt and threadbare linen stomacher and an endearingly sweet smile spread slowly across his handsome face. With a faint nod of understanding—accompanied by a roguish wink—he moved on to his next victim.

Sophie felt oddly bereft as the dashing young man bestowed his winning grin on the spectator standing next to her. She glanced down at the packets destined for Lord Lemore and the playhouse that she held tightly against her chest. Guiltily, she thought of the clerics pestering her poor father and bolted through the juggler’s admirers, heading toward the Old Tolbooth. The loathsome stone prison shared a common granite wall with the wigmaker’s emporium, the last in the line of Luckenbooths situated at the far end of the square.

A red-coated town guardsman glanced suspiciously at Sophie’s swift pace as she trotted past the rear of the massive turreted structure. The western end of the forbidding fortress—home to debtors, thieves, and murderers—supported a porch-like two-story extension that had been added a century earlier. The flat roof of the second story was ringed by a wooden railing that framed an area on which a permanent scaffold stood: the very spot where convicted criminals were hung by the neck until dead.

Sophie shuddered, recalling how, on execution days, she would retreat to the deserted book shop and block out the noise and barbarity by escaping in an engrossing novel like Richardson’s
Pamela
or Mary Davys’
The Reformed Coquette.
Having learned her alphabet at the age of seven from an unsold primer published for young masters at the Edinburgh High School, Sophie had found the world of books a refuge from life’s tribulations.

Sophie gave a nod of greeting to a second hard-faced guardsman posted at another entrance to the gloomy prison. She received no response. Most town guardsmen were aging remnants of disbanded government regiments who had fought for the king against the troops of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The year Sophie was born, the “Prince from O’er the Water” had landed in the Highlands to launch a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Hanovarian Georges and restore the Stuart dynasty to the British throne. He had failed, of course, as the previous autumn’s coronation of the twenty-two-year-old George III had attested. As a result, these battle-scarred veterans serving as prison guards were unpopular among those Scots who had lingering sympathy for the Stuarts.

With a growing sense of foreboding, Sophie picked up speed as she entered the chaotic stream of High Street traffic that stretched from Castle Hill at one end of what was called the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace at the other. She threaded her way past the sedan chairs transporting their single passengers. These small carriages without wheels were attached to long poles and their passengers were conveyed all over the city by pairs of burly men.

At a propitious moment she darted between two coaches that were rolling down the cobbled pavement of Edinburgh’s grandest thoroughfare. The aptly named High Street bisected the four-hundred-foot mound of volcanic rock that served for centuries as the foundation of the ancient walled city. It was this mammoth chunk of granite, with its labyrinth of alleyways, narrow lanes and wynds, that had protected Scotland’s capital from marauding enemies for a thousand years. Today within its stone confines, the momentary gaiety spawned by the self-assured street juggler faded and Sophie felt vulnerable and afraid.

“The most dangerous enemies are the ones who pose as friends,” her father once told her solemnly during a reading of the saga of the famous Trojan Horse one quiet rainy afternoon. ’
Twas true,
thought Sophie glumly, considering the marauding clerics from next door. She scanned the entrances to the four- and five-story buildings lining both sides of the road and ducked into a gloomy passageway that led to Chessel’s Court.

Despite the increasing warmth of the May morning, Sophie shivered slightly as she crossed the small sun-dappled courtyard of the secluded square. Pausing to confirm which town house was Lord Lemore’s, Sophie wondered how her retiring bookworm-of-a-father would defend himself if the men in black tried to have him evicted, as well they might.

At length she identified the heavy oak door belonging to the home of her father’s aristocratic patron, praying the nobleman would somehow intervene with the authorities. If many of Daniel McGann’s books had been confiscated this morning, their future would be bleak indeed. Soon, there would be no new books for her to read, nothing to sell, and no way to pay the rent.

Hoping for the best, she raised Lemore’s heavy brass knocker and rapped sharply. She heard footsteps approaching. If only her father’s best client would double his order of the special editions of engravings regularly procured for him from London, Sophie thought anxiously, McGann’s Printers and Booksellers might survive this latest assault from the clergy.

“I’m Sophie McGann,” she explained to the liveried servant who opened the front door. “I’ve come with the engravings m’lord has ordered from my father’s book agent in London.”

A window curtain stirred to her left, and Sophie spied a gold signet ring winking on the smallest finger of a well-manicured hand whose wrist was wreathed in lace and a bottle green velvet cuff.