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‘Twa mile yonder, abune the toun,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘He was asleep when we took him.’
‘I fund him,’ said the boy. He could not bear to think that his part in it might not be mentioned.
The minister bent towards him. He had a grey beard and grey hair which fell to his shoulders from beneath a tight black cap. ‘Did ye?’ he said. ‘And how did ye come tae be there?’
The boy hesitated. He still clutched the pouch with its dubious contents. Some of the soldiers might be his uncle’s next customers.
The minister crooked a finger. ‘Come here, lad. Ye needna be feart frae me. Whit is yer name?’
‘James. James Mitchel.’
‘Are ye feart frae me, James Mitchel?’
‘Na, sir. Only … I am feart frae God, and he is wi ye.’
Somebody among the riders laughed, but the laugh was cut short by the minister’s swift glare. Even the horses stood quietly, heads bowed, in his presence.
‘The laddie’s richt,’ he said. ‘He is richt tae be feart frae God. See how God punishes them that resists him. Blessed is everyone that feareth the Lord. Tell me, James, were ye feart frae the Irish when ye fund him?’
‘Na, sir. I kent God wasna wi him. I ran, but I ran for help, no for I was feart.’
‘This is an uncommon bairn,’ said the minister. ‘Whase bairn is he?’
‘His faither’s deid,’ somebody said. ‘His uncle is Mitchel the packman.’
‘Mitchel the pauchler,’ said another. There was laughter, and the boy’s face burned with shame. He wanted to change the subject.
‘Whit will happen tae him?’ he said, pointing at the Irish, who was watching the exchange with a blank and bewildered face.
‘He will be punished,’ the minister said. ‘Gie me yer hand, James.’ They stepped out of the road, and the minister waved the soldiers on. The prisoner was jerked forward on the rope. As he went he turned his head and fixed his eyes on the boy until the horses behind him obscured his view.
The minister clapped James’s head. ‘He thinks you are the cause o his punishment. But ye’re no. You are only God’s instrument, delivering his enemies up tae him. Noo, let’s see if we canna find yer uncle.’
James pulled away from him, in the direction the soldiers had taken. ‘I want tae see whit happens,’ he cried.
‘It’s no for your een. Come awa noo.’
But the boy struggled harder, echoing back the minister’s own words. ‘I delivered him up tae God. Let me see where they’re takin him.’
The minister seized him by both shoulders and lowered himself to his level. The blue eyes above the grey hairs on his cheeks seemed like pools of ice in deep caverns. The boy saw himself reflected in them.
‘Ye want tae witness God’s fury? Very weill then. But mind you are jist a bairn. Ye dinna ken yet whit God has in store for ye. He micht hae Heaven or Hell laid up for ye. Ye’re ower young tae ken. Sae think hard on whit ye see, James. I think ye are a guid laddie, a Christian laddie, but only God can look intae yer hert and ken the truth o it.’
Then they were striding after the soldiers, towards yet more folk coming in the other direction. There was a silence on these ones like a heavy load. A man was staring at the ground as he walked, shaking his head.
The minister began to call out as they went through them. ‘If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,’ he shouted, ‘if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, saith Israel, when men rose up against us, then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us.’
A woman was weeping. ‘They were bairns,’ she said. It seemed that she was ashamed even to speak such a thought before him. ‘They were jist bairns like oor ain, even if they were savages.’
‘Then the waters had overwhelmed us,’ the minister thundered back, ‘then the proud waters had gone over our soul. Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.’
His strides were now so long that the boy James had to trot to stop himself being dragged. His hand was gripped in the iron hand of the minister. They were approaching the high bridge over the river. The soldiers had dismounted and left their horses tethered at one end. As the minister and the boy drew close they saw that the Irish was up on the parapet, his knees bent as he tried to maintain his balance. Swords were jagging against the backs of his thighs. They saw him stumble in the air, half-turn, heard his scream as he fell into the gorge below.
By the time the pair reached the middle of the bridge, the soldiers were leaving. One of them, wiping sweat from his brow, nodded a greeting to the minister. ‘Warm work the day, sir.’
The minister hoisted James up above the parapet so that he could see into the slow-moving river below. The Irish was face down, his body spinning like a graceful dancer in the current.
‘Is he deid?’ the boy asked.
‘Aye,’ said the minister. ‘I doot the faw has killt him.’
The boy raised his head and looked further downstream. There was a bend in the river there, and a rocky bank where a number of men were standing. Some were dragging things like swollen sacks from the water. Others had pikes fifteen feet long, and were using them to impale the floating sacks and bring them into the bank. The Irishes. There were piles of them lying wet and motionless in the sun. The river churned in little eddies as it swept round the bend, bringing the bodies in to where the men waited for them. If any of the Irishes still moved, if they tried to swim past or clamber out, men with pikes and clubs swarmed over them, and when they dispersed again the Irishes were still. The boy saw wee bundles the size of himself spread out among the skirts and plaids of the dead women. They were like dolls.
‘This river flows tae Hell,’ said the minister. ‘All God’s enemies sail on her.’ His voice had become gentle again. ‘James, we are a chosen people. We must dae God’s work. Dae ye ken yer Bible?’
‘Aye, sir. I read it tae ma mither when I’m wi her.’
‘And when ye’re wi yer uncle?’
James shook his head. ‘He disna hae a Bible.’
‘Ye shall hae a Bible o yer ain. And perhaps, if ye study hard at it, ye could learn mair than readin. Ye could be a college lad, wi the richt assistance. Would ye like that?’
He lowered James from the parapet. The boy’s last sight was of the body of the Irish he had found asleep on the moor, still spinning slowly as it approached the crowded bend of the river that flowed to Hell.
Edinburgh, April 1997 (#ulink_6e965ab4-3edf-5631-8e4a-3a4f93a4d7fc)
‘Would ye say I was weird?’
‘Fuck aye, I would certainly say ye was weird.’
‘Whit wey am I weird?’
‘Whit wey?’
‘Awright. In what ways would ye say I was weird?’
‘Well, there’s this talkin tae yersel for a start. That isna normal.’
‘Who says it isna? Whit dae you ken?’
‘It isna considered normal. It’s considered a sign o insanity.’
‘Baws tae that. Ye’ll need tae define normality first, and then insanity. Name anither instance o ma supposed weirdness.’
‘Ye seem very defensive. Truth gettin tae ye?’
‘Answer the question.’
‘It wasna a question.’
‘Answer!’
‘Shut up. I’m thinkin.’
After a long pause the mirror said, ‘Whit aboot the wey ye talk tae ither people?’
‘Whit dae you ken aboot that? Ye’ve niver seen me.’
‘I hae an informer.’
‘Aye, I ken whae that is. Weill, onywey, whit aboot it?’
‘That’s weird tae. Aw that monosyllabic stuff, starin intae space, repeatin back whit folk say tae ye. Dinna kid on ye’re no aware o it yersel. Dinna pretend ye huvna noticed.’
‘That’s how I am.’
‘It’s no how ye are here. Listen, we’re haein a normal conversation, awmaist.’
‘Listen?’
‘Ye ken whit I mean. You answer ma question. Whit aboot that, how ye talk tae people?’
‘That’s how I am, oot there.’
‘Ah. An interestin qualification. Whit are ye, some kinna agoraphobic?’
‘You ken I’m no.’
‘I only ken whit ye tell me.’
‘I ayewis lie tae ye.’
‘That sounds like the start o wan o thae undergraduate pub philosophy discussions. Ken, a statement that contains its ain internal contradiction.’
‘Right. An organism that contains the seed o its ain destruction. So can ye no deal wi that, eh? Whit’s up? Am I makin ye feel uncomfortable?’
‘If I could,’ said the mirror, ‘I would turn ma face tae the wa.’
Wednesday. Carlin stood patiently in the Scottish department in the basement of the Central Library on George IV Bridge, while an old guy in a mouldy raincoat produced a dozen books from an enormous briefcase and asked if he could renew them all again.
‘All of them?’ asked the librarian.
‘Yes please. I’m doing research. I need them all.’
‘Well, so long as nobody else has requested them. Could I have your card, please?’ She began to bring up the different titles on screen, checking them in and checking them back out again. The old fellow wiped his brow with his raincoat sleeve.
‘You could save yourself carrying them back and forth if you phoned us,’ the librarian said while she worked. ‘We can renew them over the phone.’
‘I’m not on the phone,’ he said.
She reached the last book. ‘This one’s been requested, I’m afraid. I can’t let you have this one again.’
‘But I need that one. That’s the most important. In fact, it’s essential.’
‘I’m sorry. You could request it back again, for when the reader who’s requested it returns it, but you can’t have it just now.’
‘Don’t you have any other copies? I mean, who else is wanting to look at that particular book?’
The librarian checked on the computer. ‘No, that’s the only copy. I’m sorry, but it has definitely been requested.’
The old man tutted. ‘Well, who is it that wants it? It’s very obscure. Nobody else would be interested.’
‘Somebody obviously is,’ said the librarian.
‘Give me a name then,’ said the auld yin.
‘I can’t do that.’
‘The other ones are no use without that one. If I can’t have that one I don’t want any of them.’
‘But I’ve just renewed them all for you.’
‘I didn’t know you weren’t going to let me keep that one. If I’d known that I wouldn’t have bothered asking for these ones.’ He turned and stumped out through the door.
The librarian sighed and began to cancel all the entries she had just made. A queue had formed. There was a cough from behind Carlin and a man’s voice asked quietly who was next.
I am,’ said Carlin.
‘How can I help you?’
He had very thick-lensed black-framed glasses and what was left of his reddish hair was stretched across his freckled pate like an abandoned cat’s-cradle. Something about his appearance appealed to Carlin; he looked like he might lead the same kind of isolated life. Together, they took a few steps away from the desk, a move that seemed to be spontaneous, shared by both of them.
‘I’m lookin for as much information as ye have aboot someone called Major Weir. D’ye ken him?’
The man smiled. Carlin noted from a badge on his lapel that he was addressing Mr MacDonald.
‘You’ve come to the right place. The infamous Major. Yes, I think we’ve a few bits and pieces on him.’
For the next ten minutes MacDonald darted among the stacks, producing books of varying size and antiquity. He got Carlin to fill in some request slips for the more obscure ones. Most of the material was incorporated in secondary sources, and much of it had clearly been recycled from one book to another over the years. There was a good chunk in Robert Chambers’ Traditions of Edinburgh. Weir was mentioned delicately in Hugo Arnot’s Celebrated Criminal Trials. The supernatural elements of his tale were detailed in George Sinclair’s Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, and in a strange document called ‘A Collection of Providential Passages Antient and Modern Forreign and Domestick’ written by James Fraser, who claimed to have known the Major. There was a modern collection of Scottish Ghost Stories which had conflated the most salacious details from these and other sources. There was a book of Justiciary Proceedings containing the seventeenth-century equivalent of transcripts of the Weirs’ trial. Their names cropped up in most books on Edinburgh’s past, usually with the true nature of their crimes glossed over or summarised as ‘too horrible to dwell upon’.
By careful cross-reading, Carlin began to deconstruct Hardie’s potted account: Weir’s sister was called Jean, not Grizel (the latter name, that of a former landlady of the Major’s, having somehow attached itself to her at some stage). Jean, not her brother, was accused of witchcraft, and she was found not guilty of it, but was convicted of incest. Weir was accused of fornication, adultery, bestiality and incest, and convicted on the latter two charges. The lurid tales of witchcraft and satanism, it seemed, had been spread like a coverlet over the truth. But if reality was hidden, there was barely disguised glee in many of the accounts that a man so grimly good on the surface should have been found so exotically bad underneath: a witness enthusiastically reported that Major Weir and his staff, which was burnt at the stake with him, ‘gave rare turnings’ in the fire at the Gallowlee.
MacDonald seemed to have an extraordinary knowledge of where to locate even passing mentions of the case. He sat Carlin at a desk with a pile of books and periodically appeared at his side with another old clothbound volume. ‘This is interesting,’ he’d say. ‘There’s a record of the court proceedings in this one.’ Or his finger would point at a column of dense print: ‘Just here. Another devilish trick our dear Major was supposed to have performed.’ Carlin nodded his thanks and read on.
MacDonald came back after a while with a small cardboard box in his hand. ‘Have you used a microfilm projector before?’ he asked. They went over to the big-screened machine and MacDonald took a roll of film out of the box and fed it onto the spools. He flicked a switch and the machine whirred into life.
‘You turn this spool to go forward, this one to go back,’ he explained. ‘This is your focus control. Sit down, please. Now wind it forward.’
