7. Phoebe

P HOEBE Port of Leith, Scotland, 3rd May 1613

I' D NEVER BEEN SO grateful to step down to solid ground.

When Logan had said I could come on this journey, I'd grudgingly thought he was generous. When he'd delayed his ride north till he found a ship able to carry my father and me up the coast into Scotland, sparing us the need to keep pace with him on the road and letting my father conserve his strength, I'd even thought him helpful.

But my thoughts towards him since had been less kind.

Our voyage had taken nine days and I'd enjoyed none of them, my head and stomach clearly not designed for travel on the seas, especially not in high gales of wind chased by a violent storm.

Now, when I let go the ladder's ropes with my two feet firmly planted on the wharf, my back turned to the looming, great hull of the ship that creaked and bobbed still at its moorings, the sick sensation vanished with a suddenness that left me feeling slightly weak, but thankful.

Our ship had come into the harbour on the high tide, early in the dark hours before sunrise, and now that it was fully light I saw the town more clearly. It was not what I'd expected.

Valentine had been here once. The evening of St George's Day, as I'd prepared to start this journey, Valentine had sought me out, in private.

He'd said nothing till he'd led me by the hand into a shadowed corner of the cloistered courtyard of his house. There, with my back pressed to the ancient wall, and his turned so it shielded us from prying eyes, he'd asked me, ‘Were you going to leave me without bidding me farewell?'

How Valentine had known that I was leaving was a mystery, since my father and my aunt and I had closely held the secret. My confusion must have shown, because he smiled.

‘You do forget I have the trust of those who write your father's orders,' he said. ‘I am well aware you're bound for Scotland, and with whom, and why.'

I warned him, ‘No one is to know.'

‘I'm fully capable of keeping things in confidence.' He placed a hand against the stone wall near my head and leaned in closer. ‘I might wish you had a better guide than Logan, and that you were going to a better place than Edinburgh.'

For the first I could not argue with him, but, ‘What's wrong,' I asked, ‘with Edinburgh?'

‘I've been there.'Tis a filthy place, with houses built of wood, and rude inhabitants who are unmannered and unclean. You'll smell the town before you see it.'

‘Oh.' I touched the little pomander that always hung from its fine chain suspended at my waist and hoped that it would counter any stench. It was but small – a nutmeg bound by filigree of silver with a knot of seed pearls at the bottom – but it had long protected me from plague.

Valentine had seen my gesture. From the bag at his own belt he drew a handkerchief of fine, white lawn all edged in ivory silk, with his initials at one corner worked in thread of silver gilt. It was scented with a perfume unfamiliar to me, no doubt something rare and, knowing Valentine, expensive.

He said, ‘This will serve you better than your pomander.'

‘You know I can't accept it.'

‘Why? What other man would you accept a token from?'

He'd pressed the handkerchief into my fingers, and closed his around mine firmly. ‘Take it. Mayhap when you come home, I'll have a gift for you of greater worth. And in return, I'll take your pledge that, whenever you're able to along the road, you'll write to send me word that you are safe.'

I held that handkerchief within my hand this morning, ready to be used if needed, but nothing – apart from a freshening sea breeze – assaulted my senses. In fact, all I'd imagined of Edinburgh seemed to be wrong.

This was a smaller town than I had pictured in my mind, but all the houses here were built of stone, not wood as Valentine had claimed. They hugged the long curve of the stone wharf that stretched into the sea, while on the far side of the narrow harbour there were more stone buildings and long wooden piers, providing space for ships to seek their berths.

Despite the early hour, the harbour was alive with men and motion. Sea-birds cried and called and sailed with wings spread wide upon the wind, in search of any opportunity for theft as decks were cleaned and smaller boats brought cargoes in to shore.

The shore, too, was a busy place, but those who bustled past us did not seem unmannered, merely unfamiliar, and I put that down in large part to the manner of their dress.

While many of the women were in petticoats and waistcoats just like me, others wore long mantles drawn up over their heads like hoods and wrapped around their bodies, just as Logan's mother often did on wet or wintry days. Like hers, these mantles had been woven of light wool in different colours, their variation of pattern matched only by the diverse fashions worn by the Scottish men, which ranged from austerely severe to flamboyantly French in appearance.

But the most remarkable costume of all was that worn by the boy who'd been watching us since we arrived.

He was young, perhaps ten, with a shock of bright, copper-red hair, and a freckled face, neither of which was set off to their best advantage by his shirt, that looked to be made of the same stuff as my own red petticoat. He wore this red shirt long and belted over narrow breeks that left him barefoot, with a dagger hanging at his waist. And over all he wore a cloak in the style of the men at court, tied on a diagonal across the chest and slung over the left shoulder only. The cloak would have reached past the waist of a grown man. It just brushed the pavement when worn by this boy, and it gave him the air of a stage actor playing a part.

He had stood for all this time within a shadowed lane across from where our ship had docked, content to wait while others passed between us on the wharf. When he stepped forward to address my father, I expected an appeal for money, but instead he made an expertly respectful bow and asked, ‘Beg pardon, sir, are ye the scrivener?'

If that surprised my father half as much as it did me, he did not let it show, but he did drop his guard enough to smile. My father had a tender place within his heart for children. I scarcely could recall my eldest brother, who'd been near this boy's age when he died, but I knew from the wistful light within my father's eyes that he was chasing memories.

‘Yes,' he told the boy, ‘I am.'

‘Then ye're tae come wi' me.' He turned, and started up the curving wharf that was part shoreline and part street, the ships docked all along the one side and the tall stone buildings rising at the other, with the sea now at our backs.

My father took our portmanteau in hand and followed him, unquestioning.

I kept my place beside him, but I touched my father's sleeve and asked him, low, ‘How do you know he can be trusted?'

In surprise, my father answered it was obvious. ‘Cannot you see it?'

‘No.'

‘My dear, his clothes.'

I might have asked my father to elaborate, but he'd already taken out his almanac and turned to Mr Parker's calculations of the tides. At any rate, I had become distracted, too, by the square, ancient tower looming now in front of us. It rose above its neighbours, being several storeys tall and built of stone and buttressed at its upper corners, with a high, peaked roof.

It seemed to have been built to be a citadel or watchtower, commanding a clear view of all who might approach the shore. But I could see no soldiers, and when the boy pushed open the nail-studded oaken door and led us through the shadowed entry, I soon found myself within the sunlight of a courtyard, where I saw only four people: to my right, two masons deep in some discussion over several piles of dressed stone that was evidently stacked there for their use; ahead, a woman in a broidered waistcoat and red petticoat, both finer than my own. And Andrew Logan.

Truth be told, I saw him first, but not wishing to stare, I forced my mind to notice all the others in their turn before I gave him my attention. Having done so, it became clear why my father had been quick to trust the boy who'd led us, from his clothes alone. There could be no mistaking the intentional resemblance of the costume, now that I was faced with Logan in his livery – the scarlet tunic of his office, and the cloak he wore when he was travelling, tied across his broad chest on a diagonal and slung over his left shoulder, leaving his right arm free to draw his sword for fighting.

Plainly the boy idolized him. Standing before him now, the boy drew himself up sharply and announced, ‘I found them for ye, sir. The scrivener and your lady.'

It was almost worth the irritation of being called Logan's lady to see his own discomfort at the thought. But he did not correct the boy.

Instead he gave a nod such as he might have given any colleague, and said, ‘Well done, lad. I'm in your debt.' And then he smiled, and turned that smile on my father, and it so transformed his face that for a moment I could only blink.

He said, ‘'Tis good to see ye. I'd expected ye afore this. Were the winds not fair?'

‘Not very,' said my father. Holding up his almanac, he said, ‘But Mr Parker did predict the storms, so I was well prepared for rough seas.'

I was glad my father did not look at me, and gladder still that Logan let it pass, for I would not have wished to have him know my weakness. No doubt he could weather any gale, and do it standing on the ship's deck in defiance of the rain and rolling water, like a rock.

The woman next to him was looking at me quizzically, but when our glances met, hers softened. She was in her middle years, still lovely, with blue eyes set off by hair nearly as dark as mine, though streaked with ivory strands that almost matched the fine, starched linen of her cap.

Aunt Agnes always said that you could tell a lady from her posture, and this woman stood so very perfectly that I was not surprised by Logan's introduction.

He said, ‘Lady Lindsay, pray allow me to present my neighbour, Master Laurence Westaway, and Mistress Phoebe Westaway, his daughter.'

Lady Lindsay offered her hand to my father in a graceful gesture and he bowed low over it as I paid my honours, too, with my best curtsey.

Her accent, when she spoke, was more refined than Logan's. ‘I do greet you well, and bid you welcome to the King's Wark. I'm sorry my husband is not here, but his lands in the king's Irish plantation needed his attention. Is this all your baggage?' she asked, looking at my father's portmanteau.

He said, ‘Our orders were to travel lightly.'

We had done exactly that. My father's clothes and mine, together with our tools for writing, had been somehow stuffed into the single leather bag, shaped like a cylinder that could be strapped across a horse's hindquarters, behind the saddle.

Lady Lindsay was impressed, and told us so. Then, turning to the red-haired boy, who all this time had stood beside us, she said, ‘Hector, will you carry up their things, please?'

He appeared to hesitate, and sent a pleading look to Logan, who was on the brink of saying something when my father took a firmer hold on the strap of the portmanteau.

‘No need of that,' my father said, ‘I'd rather carry it myself.' And, ‘Hector, is it?' to the boy, who faced him.

‘Aye, sir. Hector Reid.'

‘Well, Hector Reid, I don't doubt you have more important things to do than carrying my bag.'

‘Aye, sir. I'm meant to watch the harbour.'

‘Important work indeed,' my father agreed. ‘And very fitting for a Messenger. Do not let us detain you.'

‘Aye, sir. No, sir.' Hector swelled with pride, and gave a short bow. ‘Thank ye, sir.' And wheeling, raced off back towards the wharf.

The look on Logan's face was half-indulgence, half-appreciation as he reached to take the portmanteau's strap from my father's hand and lift the bag to his own shoulder. ‘That was kind of ye. I thank ye. He's a good lad, Hector, and he's fairly made himself my deputy since I arrived.'

My father smiled. ‘I knew him by his livery.'

That brought a laugh from Lady Lindsay. ‘Och, the trouble we had finding him a red shirt! You would scarce believe it. And my groom has been beside himself these past days, without Hector helping in the stables. But Andrew needed him, so how could I refuse?'

The easy familiarity between her and Logan baffled me until we sat to dinner in the hall – a grand, square room on the ground floor – and she began to speak first of her husband, Sir Bernard Lindsay, one of the gentlemen of the chamber to the king, who had granted him the keeping of this tower house.

‘Oh yes,' she said, in answer to my father's question about the building's age, ‘very ancient. The King's Wark was built two centuries ago by our first King James, for a warehouse and arsenal, and when my husband was put in charge, it showed the wear of all those years of storing cannon within while being battered by them from without. But he soon put things right. When our own king first fetched Queen Anna home to Scotland as his new bride, they stayed here, in the chambers just below your own.'

‘Imagine,' said my father, who loved all things that touched royalty.

‘Indeed.' Lady Lindsay dipped salt with the tip of her knife to season the stewed beef on her trencher. ‘Of course, Andrew, you'd not remember that, for you'd have been but a wean.'

‘I was three.' Logan calmly spoke over the rim of his wine cup. ‘And I recall it plainly, for the crowds were thick and I was small and had no view of anything. My father lifted me onto his shoulders, so that I could see the king.'

I tried to picture Logan being small, and failed. He drank, and as though he could sense my gaze he met my eyes above the wine cup, and I looked away.

But from the talk that followed, I learned to my surprise that Lady Lindsay had been born a Logan, and that Andrew Logan was her kinsman, and that this town was his birthplace.

My father's frowns across the table let me know me my silence was becoming something noticeable, so I searched for something I could say. Into the next brief lull, I said to Logan, ‘I was unaware you came from Edinburgh.'

‘I don't,' he told me, bluntly. ‘This is Leith.'

Lady Lindsay's eyebrows lifted slightly as she smoothly said, ‘It is a common misconception, for those new to Scotland. Edinburgh does rule our town,'tis true, and we serve as its harbour, but we Leithers have a character and pride that's all our own.'

‘Lady Lindsay, I assure you, if your kinsman is the model of a Leither,' I replied, ‘then I'm already well acquainted with their character.' My tone was sweet, deliberately. I should have known that Logan would not let me have the final word.

He said, ‘She means we're faithful, honest and reliable.'

‘I wouldn't choose those words.'

His grey eyes were a challenge. ‘Pray, what would your own words be, then?'

I could feel my father's futile efforts to attract my gaze, but I ignored him and instead met Logan's eyes. ‘The foremost, surely,' I said, ‘would be stubborn?'

I liked the sound of Lady Lindsay's laugh. ‘You know us well indeed! What else?'

It was a careful line to walk, to needle Logan and not give offence to Lady Lindsay. ‘Proud,' I said. ‘You mentioned pride yourself, my lady, and I've seen it.'

Logan waited. ‘And the last? I offered three words. Ye've returned but two. Ye owe me one.'

I was determined not to be the first to look away. He would not win this time. ‘I have not yet discovered it.'

He shrugged, and said, ‘Then ye are in my debt until ye do.'

Then he did something most unfair. He grinned.

I had not ever felt the force of Andrew Logan's smile. One autumn I'd been walking in the street when unexpectedly a gust of wind had struck me hard, and robbed my lungs of breath. This felt like that. It stole my concentration for the moment that I might have used to frame an answer.

It was most unwise, I knew, to be in debt to such a man as Logan.

Stubborn, proud, and…

Doggedly, I chased that third word through my mind, and let the conversation pass me by. But at each turning, it escaped me, and would not be caught.