Crow Boy Read online

  ‘What the . . . what is this?’

  Tom turned to speak to the girl again and saw that she was moving off the main road and along a crowded narrow side street, as though she had dismissed him completely. He felt a sense of panic rising within him so he hurried after her into the Close, where tenement buildings reared up on either side of him, seven or eight storeys high. He didn’t have the first idea what was happening and he hoped she might be able to explain it to him.

  ‘Annie!’ he shouted. ‘Hold on a bit, wait for me.’

  She paused and directed a baffled look at him. ‘Annie?’ she echoed. ‘I think you have the wrong girl. I’m Morag.’

  ‘Oh, uh . . . OK. She said your name was Annie.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘The woman from Mary King’s Close. Agnes. Agnes Chambers?’

  ‘I don’t know anybody on the Close by that name.’ Morag started to move away again. ‘I have to get going,’ she said. ‘You’ll make me late and then there’ll be trouble.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. He fell into step beside her and they walked on along the crowded street, having to push their way through the heaving mass of human traffic, while he tried to put everything together in his mind, so he could make some kind of sense of it. OK, so he’d had a fall. That much he was sure of. Chances were he was lying unconscious somewhere and all this . . . he stared in wide-eyed amazement at his surroundings in all their incredible complexity – all this was probably some kind of dream he was having while they fixed him up. He couldn’t help thinking about Kane, the hero of Timeslyp, bursting through a doorway to find himself in an unfamiliar world. Maybe that idea had somehow wormed its way into his mind.

  Either that or he’d time-travelled back to the seventeenth century. And there was no way that could have happened. Was there?

  Meanwhile, it was hard to concentrate, because at every few steps there was some amazing new thing to grab his attention. Here, in the entrance to what must have been a butcher’s shop, a pig was strung up by its back legs and a couple of men were removing its guts and heaping them into a series of metal buckets. Blood slopped over the edges and ran down the centre of the already filthy street. There, out on the cobbles, a man with a soaped-up face was sitting in a barber’s chair while another man wearing a white wig shaved him with a cut-throat razor.

  ‘Gardez Loo!’ shouted a voice from up above and an instant later a bucket of foul-smelling slops hurtled down from a balcony and struck the cobbled street, splashing in all directions. An old man who had failed to step back in time shook his fist at the woman who had emptied the bucket, an odd-looking creature with a white painted face and rouged cheeks. She was leaning over the balcony and laughing openly at his predicament, displaying quite a bit of cleavage as she did so. Tom tried not to stare. He moved on, taking more notice of where he was walking and he saw that, though the sewage was mostly dry and baked by the sun, a sluggish trickle of wet stuff still coursed its way along the middle of the street and his shoes were already plastered with evil-smelling muck. Mum was going to be delighted when he got home. If he got home . . .

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked Morag and she shot him a funny look.

  ‘I’m going to Missie Grierson’s,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where you’re going.’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m going there too,’ he told her, quickly.

  ‘Why? Are you an orphan?’ she asked him.

  He thought for a moment. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sure. Sort of.’

  ‘How can you be ‘sort of’ an orphan?’ she asked him. She didn’t get an answer so she went on. ‘You talk funny,’ she observed. ‘You dress funny too. What’s that red coat you’re wearing?’

  ‘It’s just a school uniform,’ said Tom defensively.

  ‘You go to school?’ Morag seemed impressed at this.

  ‘Sure. Doesn’t everyone?’

  Morag laughed, as though he’d made a joke, but he couldn’t see anything remotely funny about what he’d said. ‘And the voice?’ she prompted him.

  ‘Oh, I’m from Manchester.’ She looked at him blankly as though he’d said he was from Mars. ‘You’ve heard of Manchester, right?’ He tried to think of something that might be familiar to her. ‘Manchester United?’ he ventured. ‘You know, the football team?’

  He might as well have been talking in a foreign language.

  ‘Are you a Sassenach?’ she asked him and he frowned, nodded. He was pretty sure he knew what that word meant. A blow-in. An outsider. The kids at his school didn’t use the word, but it was how they saw him.

  Now Tom and Morag were pushing their way through some kind of outdoor market, grubby little wooden buildings with thatched roofs, where men and women stood shouting at the passers-by to come and taste their produce. ‘Mutton pie!’ one man was shouting. ‘Finest in Edinburgh, who’ll try my wares?’ But nobody seemed interested in pies today. ‘Fresh fruit!’ shouted an odd-looking woman with a painted face and very few teeth. Like her, the apples and pears piled up on her stall looked well past their best.

  ‘Missie Grierson says you should never trust a Sassenach,’ said Morag, brightly. ‘She says as how they’re all thieves and rascals.’

  ‘Not me,’ Tom assured her. ‘And what does this Missie Grierson know about it anyway?’

  ‘Plenty,’ Morag assured him. ‘She’s the wisest person on the Close. When a woman’s due to have a bairn, she’s the first one they come looking for. Missie Grierson says if she’d been around when I was born, then maybe my mother would still be here to look after me.’

  ‘Your mother?’ Tom didn’t quite understand what she was saying. ‘Why, where is your mother?’ he asked.

  ‘In heaven, with the angels, silly. When I came into the world, she had to leave. Missie Grierson says the angels wanted her because she was so pretty.’ Her pale face grew very serious. ‘I spoke to an old woman who was there that night. She said there was a lot of blood.’ She seemed to dismiss the idea. ‘But Missie Grierson took me in and looked after me and now I work at the orphanage.’ She made a smile that was a little too forced. ‘She’s been very kind.’

  ‘You work?’ Tom stared at her. ‘But . . . you can’t be more than, what? Ten or twelve? Shouldn’t you be in school?’

  ‘Oh aye, and I should be the Queen of Scotland, while I’m at it.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘So what happened to your parents?’ she asked unexpectedly.

  ‘Er . . . they split up,’ said Tom. ‘Dad stayed back in Manchester and Mum . . . well, she moved up here to Edinburgh.’

  ‘So you’re not really an orphan at all!’ cried Morag, sounding outraged.

  ‘I kind of am,’ he insisted. ‘And anyway, I’m . . . lost.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ Morag warned him. ‘Missie Grierson is not one to be . . . oh!’

  Morag had suddenly spotted something up ahead and instinctively she stepped to the side of the street, grabbing Tom’s sleeve and pulling him with her. He glanced down at her and saw that she was averting her eyes from whatever she had seen. He looked along the street and felt a shock go through him. A figure was striding towards them, a man dressed in an outlandish but strangely familiar costume. His leather cloak billowed out behind him and his weird goggle eyes, set either side of the long, curved beak, stared at the world like those of some alien being. In one gloved hand he carried a long stick and Tom saw that he was using it to prod and push people out of his way, as though they were no more than cattle. His heavy boots rang out on the cobbles.

  As the man moved past, his head turned to look in Tom’s direction and Tom felt his blood run cold as those hideous goggle-eyes came to rest on him. It was only for an instant, but Tom imagined that he could feel their gaze burning into him, looking deep within him as if to capture his innermost secrets. Then the boots rang on stone again and the cloaked figure swept past and continued on his way.

  Morag seemed to remember to breathe. She stepped back to the middle of the path and continued
walking. Tom had to run a couple of steps to catch her up.

  ‘That was Doctor Rae, wasn’t it?’ he said.

  She nodded but seemed reluctant to speak.

  ‘The Plague Doctor?’ insisted Tom.

  Again she nodded but kept her gaze on the way ahead as though she didn’t want to encourage him.

  ‘Amazing,’ he murmured.

  Morag glanced up at him. ‘What is?’ she asked.

  ‘I saw him before. Well, not him, really, but a waxwork that was meant to be him. You know, a waxwork?’ Again, that blank look. ‘It’s kind of like a pretend person,’ he explained. ‘Anyway, he looked just the same . . .’ He thought for a moment. Whether this was a dream or a hallucination, he might as well play along with it. ‘What year is this?’ he asked.

  Morag managed a smile. ‘How would I know?’ she asked him.

  ‘You don’t know what year it is?’ He stared at her in disbelief.

  Morag shrugged. ‘It’s sixteen forty-something, I think.’

  ‘Sixteen forty-five,’ he said. He glanced up at the clear blue sky overhead. ‘Summer. And . . . I’ll bet there’s plague here, right?’

  Morag nodded. ‘Every day it gets worse,’ she said. ‘Doctor Rae is new, only been around a week or so. We had Doctor Paulitious before him and everyone said he was a good man; he just wanted to help the sick people. But he got sick himself and died a horrible death. And this Rae fellow . . .’ She shook her head. ‘There are many who say he is just out to line his own nest.’

  Tom looked at her. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He’s being paid a lot of money.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I heard about that.’

  ‘People say that he’ll die soon, anyway.’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Tom, and Morag gave him an inquiring look.

  ‘How would you know that?’ she asked him.

  ‘It’s just a . . . hunch.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, anyway, here we are.’

  ‘Huh?’

  Morag had come to a halt in front of a dark timber doorway, above which a crudely painted wooden sign hung. On it was scrawled one word:

  ORFENAGE

  Tom gazed up at it and shook his head. ‘Somebody can’t spell,’ he observed, pointing at the sign.

  Morag looked up at it blankly.

  ‘It should be spelt with a P-H,’ he explained and, once again, she gave him an odd look.

  ‘How would you know that?’ she asked him.

  ‘It’s easy,’ he said. O-R-P-H . . .’

  ‘I don’t have the book-learning,’ she interrupted him flatly. She gestured to the door. ‘Anyway, I’m going in now. If you want to talk to Missie Grierson, I can take you to her. But I warn you, she doesn’t suffer fools for long. It’s up to you.’

  Tom considered for a moment. He was completely lost here, out of his element, and Morag was the one person who connected him to the world he had just left. It seemed to him that, as long as he was stuck here, he had little choice but to go with the flow and see what happened.

  ‘I’ll come in with you,’ he said.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Morag. She opened the door and led him inside.

  Four

  They were in a long, badly-lit corridor that smelled of cabbage and something much worse that Tom couldn’t identify. A rickety-looking staircase rose up on their right, but Morag led the way straight ahead, clearly knowing exactly where she was going. Tom stumbled along behind her, hoping that, in a moment or two, something would happen, there’d be a sudden flash or a puff of smoke and he’d find himself back in more familiar territory. But, annoyingly, everything stayed just the way it was – dark, smelly and forbidding.

  Morag pushed through a wooden doorway and led Tom into a big kitchen where two ragged children were at work. A lanky ginger-haired boy was peeling a mountain of vegetables stacked on a surface beside him and a skinny dark-haired girl was pushing a filthy-looking mop across an equally filthy floor, rearranging the dirt. They both looked as though they wouldn’t dare to pause for breath.

  Standing in front of a huge black cooking range was a middle-aged woman that Tom instantly knew had to be Missie Grierson. She was big and heavyset, her ample curves encased in a grubby black dress that seemed to be quite literally coming apart at the seams. It wasn’t that she was fat but rather, very muscular for a woman. She had shoulders and arms that would not have disgraced a champion weightlifter and, as a result, her head looked somehow too small for her body. It was covered by an odd little frilly hat and from her mouth jutted a white clay pipe that was puffing out great clouds of fragrant smoke. Her steely grey eyes were flicking restlessly around the kitchen while she uttered terse instructions to the children all around her.

  ‘Come along, Cameron, it would be nice to have the soup on the boil some time this century! Alison, put more effort into that mopping; I want to see ma face in it when you’ve finished. Ach, girl, you’ll no’ get anywhere like that; use a bit of elbow grease, for goodness sake!’ She noticed Morag’s approach and gave her a long-suffering look. ‘Oh, you’re back at last; I thought perhaps you’d left the country.’ She pulled the pipe from her mouth and poked the stem of it amongst the sorry collection of vegetables in the girl’s basket. ‘Is this the best you could get?’ she muttered. ‘It all looks worm-eaten. It’s barely fit for the pigs.’

  Morag nodded. ‘Mr Hamilton said he’ll no’ give us anything better until you’ve settled his account in full,’ she explained.

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Missie Grierson looked annoyed. ‘The brass neck of that man! He knows I’m good for it; why must he vex me like this? You gave him the two shillings towards what we owe him?’

  ‘Aye. He made me drop it into a cup of vinegar and he counted to ten before he took it out again. He said it was protection against the contagion.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Missie Grierson grunted. ‘Where do they get these notions?’ she muttered. She noticed Tom for the first time and returned her pipe to her mouth while she studied him in detail. She didn’t seem to care much for what she was looking at. ‘What’ve we got here?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Oh, this is . . .’ Morag stared at Tom blankly. ‘I don’t believe you told me your name,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Tom. Tom Afflick.’ Tom held out his hand to shake, as he’d been taught to do when first meeting somebody, but Missie Grierson just looked at the hand, as though it wasn’t clean enough for her liking. ‘What’ve I told you about bringing home waifs and strays?’ she snarled at Morag. ‘Even ones dressed in fancy red jackets.’

  ‘I didn’t bring him,’ protested Morag. ‘He followed me.’

  ‘Did he indeed?’ Missie Grierson returned her attention to Tom. ‘If you’re selling something, I’m not interested – unless, of course, it’s tobacco. I can always use tobacco.’

  ‘I’m not selling anything,’ Tom assured her.

  ‘In that case, I’ll not detain ye a moment longer. Kindly close the door on your way out.’

  There was a silence then, while Tom stood there unsure of what to do. He looked at Morag, seeking support and, after a pause she spoke up on his behalf.

  ‘But, Missie Grierson, Tom tells me he’s a sort of orphan.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Missie Grierson studied Tom with a ‘seen it all before’ expression on her ruddy face. ‘What’s a ‘sort-of’ orphan exactly?’

  Tom frowned. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said.

  ‘Try me,’ suggested Missie Grierson. ‘Would that be you’ve ‘sort of’ got parents and you’ve ‘sort of’ got a home? That kind of thing?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Tom racked his brains to try and think of something he might say that didn’t sound crazy but in the end, decided he had no option but to tell the truth. ‘See, I was on this school trip to Mary King’s Close . . .’

  ‘You go to school?’ interrupted Missie Grierson. She seemed suddenly a lot more interested.

  ‘Er . . . yes, of course,’ said Tom.

  ‘Does that mean you can r
ead?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘Wait right there!’ Missie Grierson turned away and hurried over to a wooden dresser, the shelves of which were literally stuffed with heaps of paper. She poked frantically through them until she found what she was looking for, then pulled out a single sheet and brought it back over to Tom. She shoved it into his hands. ‘Read that,’ she demanded. ‘Aloud.’

  Tom uncrumpled the thick, roughly textured paper. He saw that it was covered with fancy old-fashioned handwriting, the kind that would have been written with a quill pen. He studied it for a moment. Some of the spelling was distinctly odd and the hand was very ornate but he thought he could just about make sense of it.

  ‘Well, go on,’ said Missie Grierson impatiently. ‘I thought you said you could read.’

  ‘I can. It’s just the handwriting is a bit funny. Hasn’t this guy ever heard of a compu . . .’ He tailed off as he realised what he had been about to say. ‘Anyway, it goes something like this.’ He began to read haltingly and was aware as he did so, that everybody in the room had stopped work and was gazing at him with what could only be described as utter amazement.

  Dear Mistress Grierson,

  The Trust has . . . considered your recent request for financial help with the . . . running of your orphanage and, after some . . . discussion, I regret to inform you that we cannot undertake to offer you our help in this matter. We trust you will . . . understand and respect our decision and, of course, we . . . wish you every success with your future enterprise.

  Yours sincerely,