‘What would be the charge?’

  ‘Murder, by perjury. That should get their attention, and loosen their tongues. Now,’ he continued, ‘back to your office. I want to send a letter to London, by the swiftest means possible, and I need a place to write.’

  ‘I can arrange that. To whom do you want to send it?’

  Mathew’s good eye was ablaze with the rage that he had contained, mostly, until that point. ‘To Sir Victor Feather, Member of Parliament and confidant of the Duke of Wellington, lately Prime Minister, and likely to be again. I have been patronised by these bastards long enough, gentlemen. I will show them what influence really is.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  MATHEW HAD RUN OUT of hope for his friend’s life, but he kept that truth within himself as he strode along the High Street, in search of the office of the Register newspaper. His letter to Feather was written and in the hands of the post office, with the promise that it would be delivered by the weekend.

  He found the newspaper’s office almost opposite St Giles, near the mouth of Advocates’ Close. He strode into the musty place; it smelled of oil, ink and metal and he pitied those who had to work there.

  ‘I would like to speak with the editor,’ he told a shirtsleeved man who greeted him.

  ‘Mr McCulloch is not here, sir,’ the other replied. ‘He is on his annual holiday in Dunbar and will not be back for another week. Can I help? I am his deputy; my name is Jonathan Mackay.’

  ‘I have a story to tell you,’ Mathew began. ‘It concerns a trial, or rather a travesty, that took place yesterday in yon place across the street. It has left a man facing the gallows, even though he is innocent.’

  ‘You say he is innocent,’ Mackay retorted, ‘but if it is the affair I anticipate, that of the murderer McGill, our court reporter said that the verdict was unanimous. He told me that the hearing was brief and that he offered no defence. Like as no’, our report of his execution will be longer than that of his trial.’

  ‘Did your reporter also tell you of Lord Bellhouse’s performance?’

  Mackay’s eyes narrowed. ‘He said that the Lord Justice Clerk was unusually tetchy, even by his standards, and that he had precious little patience . . . as in, none at all . . . with the prisoner’s advocate.’

  ‘There is more to it than that, much more. There was collusion between him and the Lord Advocate to convict my friend.’

  ‘Then why do you no’ take it back to the court?’ the journalist asked.

  ‘We would, but there is little time, and little point now that Lord Cooper is dead, and Bellhouse sits temporarily in his place.’

  Mackay seemed to turn rigid. ‘Cooper is dead?’

  ‘Yes, he died this morning. I am not long from his house in Moray Place.’

  ‘Then take your story back there, sir. Or take it to the Scotsman or the Glasgow Herald. Take it anywhere, but away from here. I do not want to hear it. I do not even want to ken your name.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ He was astonished. ‘Is this not the newspaper set up to fight the obsequious nature of the Scottish press, as its founders proclaimed? And yet you turn away a true tale. When did you join the ranks or the arse-kissers?’

  ‘So they did say, sir, and so we have been. But with Cooper gone, Douglas will preside over the court with old Bellhouse by his side. Now you come in here hinting of a plot between them. We have to live in the real world, Mr Fleming . . . yes, I do know who you are . . . if we are to survive at all. Please go away, and take your scandal with you.’

  ‘Very well,’ Mathew replied, ‘but know that I think you a cowardly wretch, and that you have lost a reader and made an enemy in a single sentence.’

  His anger dissipated as he made his way back to the Waterloo Hotel; he did his best to drive the looming prospect of Friday morning from his mind, and to focus on the day ahead, but it proved impossible and as he walked his imagination was full of terrible images.

  Matt was waiting for him when he reached the hotel. ‘When can I see my father?’ he asked.

  ‘I had faint hopes that you would have seen him today, at liberty, but those are gone. We will visit him tomorrow in the afternoon, for as long as the governor will allow. If you have to say goodbye, and I can no longer deny that is likely, you must appear as brave as you can before him.’

  ‘Will my mother not know by now? I heard a vendor calling out the story not long ago.’

  ‘Your mother will not know, for she will see no newspapers. I gave that order before we left, in case things went wrong.’

  ‘Mathew,’ the young man moaned, ‘is there no more to be done?’

  ‘Only one thing: people must know the truth. I have tried one way but found it blocked by cowardice, now I will turn to the other. Go to your room now, please, and wait. I am expecting a visitor.’

  The printer Blackwood arrived an hour later; Mathew received him privately, in his own room, and wasted no time on niceties. ‘I wish to publish a pamphlet,’ he said, ‘and to have it distributed to as many people as you can print copies. It will be anonymous and its source should not be obvious. It will tell the true story of an act of shame by the highest court in our land and of a man unjustly condemned to death.’

  ‘Is it defamatory?’ his visitor asked. ‘I have principles, sir.’

  ‘No, because every word is true. It will be anonymous, but those against whom it is directed will know the source.’

  ‘Will they act against you? If its printing is traced to me and I am questioned, I must answer honestly. By that I mean I canna protect you.’

  ‘I will not need your protection. No one will move against me; they wish this affair to end with the scapegoat, and to be forgotten as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Do you have a text?’

  ‘Yes. Here it is.’ He handed over a document that he had drafted in Johnston’s office, with the solicitor’s guidance. ‘How soon can it be on the streets?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning, if I work overnight.’

  ‘The afternoon will do, then more at the Lawnmarket, on Friday morning. I am told that hangings draw a great crowd in Edinburgh, and I want them all to have something to read while they are waiting for the drop.’

  ‘Consider it done, sir,’ Blackwood declared, confidently. ‘It will no’ be cheap though. Should we no’ discuss cost?’

  Mathew took a roll of five-pound notes from his pocket and peeled one off, then another. ‘Tell me when to stop,’ he said.

  He had reached four, when the printer called out, ‘Enough. That’ll be fine, sir.’ He smiled. ‘If I’m asked how I came by these, I’ll say I won them at the cards.’

  ‘You are a gamer?’

  ‘Oh aye. I love the card tables. No’ that I’m very good at it. I cover my stake usually but no’ much more. I have friends tho’, that mak’ their living from it, and a good one at that. The club where I play is full o’ rich folk whose common sense vanishes as soon as they step over the door. After a glass of brandy and some time upstairs with a hoor, they’re easy pickings, and they never know when to stop.’

  ‘Where do you play?’

  ‘In a club in St Bernard’s Crescent. You’d be welcome there, sir, I’m sure, although I suspect you’d no’ be as easy parted from your money as most.’

  ‘That might be the case; or it might not. I played in the army, to pass the time, but I have not lifted a card since then. The tables cause too much trouble, even between comrades in arms.’ He paused. ‘However, I would be interested in meeting your friends. How many of them are there?’

  ‘Three. Jimmy, Pilmar and Kenneth: they dinna go in for surnames.’

  ‘Can you contact them easily?’

  ‘Pilmar, I can; he can pass on any message.’

  ‘Then ask them to call on me here at three o’clock tomorrow, if they would be so kind.’

  ‘Will you be providing the cards? They might not like that.’

  Mathew shook his head. ‘That is not quite the game that I have in mind.’

  Chapter Thirty

  BLACKWOOD’S FRIENDS WERE PUNCTUAL, and the meeting with them was productive. When Mathew showed them out, he found copies of his pamphlet on the table in the salon. He picked one up, casually, and when they were gone, sat down to read it.

  The printer had excelled himself. There was a headline that seemed to shout from the page: ‘Innocent yet Doomed!’ and below it an illustration showing the scene as young Matt had described it, a pistol being fired at two brawling men with two women watching from a carriage. The key parts of the text were highlighted in bold type, for maximum effect.

  Mathew had stopped short of accusing Gavin Cleland of perjury; instead the text said that he had suffered an ‘imperfection of memory’ as a result of the shock of ‘mistakenly’ shooting his brother. As for the women, it noted that they both seemed to have suffered ‘remarkably’ from the same ‘imperfection’, but that they had been unable to describe it to the High Court in person as they had been mysteriously spirited away.

  And as for the Lord Advocate, usually so meticulous in his pursuit of the truth, it concluded that he too must have been overcome by the shock of the incident, as a result of his personal connection to Gavin Cleland, who was ‘linked romantically’ with his own dear daughter.

  There was only a single mention of Bellhouse, screaming at the innocent man as he stood before him, ‘I would hang you twice!’

  Mathew stepped outside and walked slowly down Waterloo Place, pausing at Register House and looking around. Several pedestrians had stopped their progress, standing transfixed by the pamphlet as they read it. He smiled with satisfaction, then returned to the hotel.

  Shortly afterwards, he and Matt left for the prison. Mathew had wondered whether he might have a visit from the Lord Advocate’s officers, but none came. However, when they arrived at the gate he found that Douglas had acted there.

  Governor Stevens came to greet him. ‘I cannot admit you, Mr Fleming. The boy yes, but you, no. The Lord Provost has forbidden your entrance, on the ground that he does not want Mr McGill coached in what he called “inflammatory speeches”. The Lord Provost is a figurehead, and as we both know, his order has come straight from the Lord Advocate, but he wears the chain of office and I must obey him.’

  ‘I understand. Thank you for the care you are taking of my poor friend. Please give his son as much time with him as you can allow.’

  Matt looked back in anguish as he was led inside the jail, back at his guardian, catching his face in an unguarded moment and realising that for the first time it was bereft of any sign of hope.

  He was allowed to see his father alone, unescorted, but the officers refused to remove his shackles.

  ‘Worry not, son,’ David told him. ‘Chains canna bind your conscience and mine is clear.’

  ‘Faither, this is my fault,’ Matt moaned. ‘If I had seen those horses, and not startled them . . .’

  ‘And if I had never met your mother, you would never have been born, and I would not be here. If you had succumbed to the fever you had when you were two, I would not be here. “If” is something that never happened or may not happen, and has no reality. You’re my precious son and I am grateful for the fifteen years I’ve had you. You are faultless in this, the villains are the Clelands, and most of all Gavin, but fate has a way of rewarding sinners.’

  ‘I will reward him, in time.’

  ‘No. You will reward me, by looking after your mother and your sister; Mathew will stand by you. He will be your father from now on, and although he would deny it, you could not have one better. You should look after him too, and keep him safe from himself. He is, after all, a man that was made by war. He should have died, but he lived, and is all the more formidable for it. He is the best friend a man could have, but the worst enemy, as Gavin Cleland will find out. Stop him from going too far, though, for if you lost him too, then you and your mother really would be alone.’

  David looked at his son, holding his hands as he sat next to him. ‘Would you like to pray with me?’

  ‘I have prayed for you, Faither,’ Matt replied, ‘but look, you’re still here. I put no trust in prayer, not any more.’

  ‘Then you should; faith is important to a man. Faith is absolute belief, in the want of any supporting evidence. Without it we might be entirely alone. Mine is with me now, and it will be with me tomorrow, leading me through to the other side.’

  He leaned forward and kissed his son on the forehead. ‘Go on, now, while we are both strong. Give that kiss to your mother and your wee sister, and tell them I will always love them.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  THE MORNING WAS COLD and it was wet, as Mathew Fleming rose to face the hardest and most painful duty he would ever have to perform. Sleep had eluded him all night.

  ‘Be there for me,’ David had asked him. ‘Let me find my strength in yours. But keep my son away from the Lawnmarket if you can . . . though that task may be beyond even you.’

  He had no wish for breakfast and in any event time was short. The execution was scheduled for ten o’clock, but Mathew wondered whether it would be brought forward. He had gone wandering in the evening before to try to judge the effectiveness of his pamphlet; in the taverns and houses he had visited, the talk was of nothing else.

  He dressed in black, and in a long coat made of waxed cotton sailcloth, that he had found in a shop in Glasgow, then went next door, to the room Matt shared with Ewan Beattie.

  The boy was ready for the day; his eyes were red from the sobbing that Mathew had heard through the wall for much of the night. ‘Matt,’ he said, ‘you are to stay here, until I return.’

  ‘No! I must be there!’

  ‘It is your father’s wish that you should not see him die.’

  ‘But I want to be there. I want to see his courage, and I want to see exactly what Cleland has done to him, so that I can keep it in my heart as I make the rest of that man’s short life a misery.’

  ‘That is a task you can leave to me,’ Mathew retorted. ‘I repeat what you have been told, and told, and told again. Your duty is to your mother and your sister; today you become a man, a little before your time, and you will show that by acting sensibly.’

  ‘I want to be there,’ Matt muttered.

  ‘I know,’ Mathew sighed, ‘but would you have me break my word to your father?’ He looked at the coachman. ‘Ewan, lock the door after me and keep him here.’

  Outside, he found himself in a crowd of people all heading in the same direction. As he crossed the North Bridge and strode up the High Street, more and more joined, and hundreds became thousands.

  The scaffold was a massive structure; it had been set up overnight and was guarded not by constables, as Mathew understood to be the usual practice, but by soldiers. He had passed by a public execution in Newbury and it had been a gala occasion, but the mood of the Lawnmarket crowd was in no way festive. The pamphlet was to be seen everywhere, and its effect was clear. It would be a poor day for the souvenir sellers, that much was certain.

  The executioner was waiting on the raised platform, and he was not alone. The Lord Provost, in his chain, and the baillies in their robes stood in line. Legally, the execution was their responsibility, and the court always kept well clear.

  The first apple came from the middle of the crowd, and barely missed the Provost, but the next caught one of the baillies full in the face. Within seconds the onslaught had become serious and a fusillade of fruit was flying. A mounted officer shouted an order and the troops pressed forward, but at that moment the confrontation was halted by the arrival of the black prison wagon.

  Quickly, Mathew moved forward through the crowd, taking up position directly in front of the hangman. He looked all around, but saw no familiar faces, until his eye fell on a bulky figure, in sodden clothing: the jury foreman. His expression was solemn and he clutched a copy of the pamphlet.

  The execution was under way and the men who supervised it were practised. They could read the public mood, and they knew without telling to be quick. David was hustled from his transport and up the steps, as fast as his shackles would allow, then positioned beneath the beam alongside the waiting rope. As it was placed around his neck, his eyes found Mathew, and he smiled.

  A moment after the grey hood was placed over his head, covering his face, blocking out the last daylight David McGill would ever see, Mathew felt someone bump into him. He looked down and saw young Matt, with his appointed keeper.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Beattie gasped, out of breath. ‘He’d have broken the door down and me with it.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘His father said the task would be beyond us.’

  On the scaffold the Lord Provost stepped forward. He began to read but a roar erupted from the crowd, and nothing could be heard.

  Duty done, the civic leader retreated. The crowd fell absolutely silent as the hangman moved in, and words could be heard from the scaffold.

  ’Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy . . .’

  Before the trap opened, Mathew seized his charge with both hands and spun him around, away from the scene, and looked away himself. But both heard the crack, and then the crowd’s collective moan.

  Then the sound of applause came from their right. Mathew looked round and found himself staring at Sir Gavin Cleland, whose smile was a mix of triumph and mockery.

  ‘Hold him,’ he said to Beattie, thrusting Matt into his grasp, although restraint was unnecessary, for the lad had collapsed.

  Only a few spectators stood between the two, and Mathew brushed them aside to reach Cleland. He towered over him, consumed with a rage that was far beyond the heat of battle, and seized him by the lapel. ‘You have become my life’s work,’ he snarled. ‘I will finish you, whatever it takes, however long it takes.’

  ‘It need not take that long,’ the baronet laughed, and Mathew realised that he was slightly drunk. ‘We are both countrymen; I offer you a duel on my estate.’