My heart showed signs of returning to normal, and I leaned back against the wagon bed, my hood farther forward against the drizzle.
“Where on earth did he get a name like Willoughby?” I asked. While I was curious about the Chinese, I was even more curious about what a respectable Edinburgh printer was doing with one, but I felt a certain hesitance in prying into Jamie’s life. Freshly returned from the supposed dead—or its equivalent—I could hardly demand to know all the details of his life on the spot.
Jamie rubbed a hand across his nose. “Aye, well. It’s only that his real name’s Yi Tien Cho. He says it means ‘Leans against heaven.’”
“Too hard for the local Scots to pronounce?” Knowing the insular nature of most Scots, I wasn’t surprised that they were disinclined to venture into strange linguistic waters. Jamie, with his gift for tongues, was a genetic anomaly.
He smiled, teeth a white gleam in the gathering darkness. “Well, it’s no that, so much. It’s only, if ye say his name just a wee bit off, like, it sounds verra much like a coarse word in Gaelic. I thought Willoughby would maybe do better.”
“I see.” I thought perhaps under the circumstances, I shouldn’t ask just what the indelicate Gaelic word was. I glanced over my shoulder, but the coast seemed clear.
Jamie caught the gesture and rose, nodding. “Aye, we can go now; the lads will ha’ gone back to the tavern by now.”
“Won’t we have to pass by The World’s End on the way back to the printshop?” I asked dubiously. “Or is there a back way?” It was full dark by now, and the thought of stumbling through the middens and muddy back passages of Edinburgh was unappealing.
“Ah…no. We willna be going to the printshop.” I couldn’t see his face, but there seemed a certain reserve in his manner. Perhaps he had a residence somewhere else in the city? I felt a certain hollowness at the prospect; the room above the printshop was very clearly a monk’s cell; but perhaps he had an entire house somewhere else—with a family in it? There had been no time for any but the most essential exchange of information at the printshop. I had no way of knowing what he had done over the last twenty years, or what he might now be doing.
Still, he had plainly been glad—to say the least—to see me, and the air of frowning consideration he now bore might well have to do with his inebriated associate, rather than with me.
He bent over the barrel, saying something in Scots-accented Chinese. This was one of the odder sounds I had ever heard; rather like the squeaks of a bagpipe tuning up, I thought, vastly entertained by the performance.
Whatever he’d said, Mr. Willoughby replied to it volubly, interrupting himself with giggles and snorts. At last, the little Chinese climbed out of the barrel, his diminutive figure silhouetted by the light of a distant lantern in the alleyway. He sprang down with fair agility and promptly prostrated himself on the ground before me.
Bearing in mind what Jamie had told me about the feet, I took a quick step back, but Jamie laid a reassuring hand on my arm.
“Nay, it’s all right, Sassenach,” he said. “He’s only makin’ amends for his disrespect to ye earlier.”
“Oh. Well.” I looked dubiously at Mr. Willoughby, who was gabbling something to the ground under his face. At a loss for the proper etiquette, I stooped down and patted him on the head. Evidently that was all right, for he leapt to his feet and bowed to me several times, until Jamie told him impatiently to stop, and we made our way back to the Royal Mile.
The building Jamie led us to was discreetly hidden down a small close just above the Kirk of the Canongate, perhaps a quarter-mile above Holyrood Palace. I saw the lanterns mounted by the gates of the palace below, and shivered slightly at the sight. We had lived with Charles Stuart in the palace for nearly five weeks, in the early, victorious phase of his short career. Jamie’s uncle, Colum MacKenzie, had died there.
The door opened to Jamie’s knock, and all thoughts of the past vanished. The woman who stood peering out at us, candle in hand, was petite, dark-haired and elegant. Seeing Jamie, she drew him in with a glad cry, and kissed his cheek in greeting. My insides squeezed tight as a fist, but then relaxed again, as I heard him greet her as “Madame Jeanne.” Not what one would call a wife—nor yet, I hoped, a mistress.
Still, there was something about the woman that made me uneasy. She was clearly French, though she spoke English well—not so odd; Edinburgh was a seaport, and a fairly cosmopolitan city. She was dressed soberly, but richly, in heavy silk cut with a flair, but she wore a good deal more rouge and powder than the average Scotswoman. What disturbed me was the way she was looking at me—frowning, with a palpable air of distaste.
“Monsieur Fraser,” she said, touching Jamie on the shoulder with a possessive air that I didn’t like at all, “if I might have a word in private with you?”
