TheScotandI






Five



The professor spoke slowly and without inflection, a sure sign that he was adding things up in that razor-sharp mind of his, calculating, making connections. “I’m missing something,” he said, “something important. Take me through it again, Ramsey, from the moment you were shot to the point where you stabbed the queen’s chief of security and made your escape.”
He turned from the window that overlooked the approach to the house and took the chair facing Ramsey’s. He was a tall man, loose-limbed, with fair hair turning to silver and intelligent gray eyes in a remarkably handsome face. He’d had a varied career, first as a soldier in the Crimean War, then as a professor at Edinburgh University. He looked like a typical professor—relaxed, thoughtful, prone to long silences—but as Ramsey knew well, he was a soldier for all that.
The professor smiled. “Relax. Murray wouldn’t go to bed if he were worried. Besides, if you’d been followed, the soldiers would be here already.”
Ramsey made a visible effort to relax. Murray was the third member of their team, not a member of Demos but an associate whose services came at a price. It was Murray who had put him on a horse and seen him safely home.
“Go on,” the professor said. “Tell me what happened tonight.”
Ramsey nodded and huddled into the comfortable wing chair, careful not to jog the arm that was in a sling. He wasn’t deceived by the professor’s easygoing manner. He knew that he was reporting to his commanding officer. Their headquarters was this large Jacobean mansion on the north side of the river, near Gairnshiel. It had been a long ride home from the castle, or so it seemed to him in his weakened condition.
That was many hours ago. He was ready for his bed but knew that there would be no rest for him until the professor was satisfied that he’d been told every small, inconsequential detail of the debacle at Balmoral.
It weighed heavily on him. He’d made a muck of things and deserved a dressing-down, but that was not the professor’s way. A word, a look, a change of inflection in his voice was enough to make a man squirm. He’d used the same tactics at the University of Edinburgh. That was where their paths had first crossed. Ramsey was a student then, and out of sheer curiosity, he’d taken a class with the charismatic professor who stood history on its head and questioned every cherished myth that the Establishment held dear. Military history was his subject. Every commander, every general, every battle had to be dissected until the truth was laid bare. His students used to joke among themselves that after one of the professor’s lectures, they felt as though he’d taken their brains out, rearranged them in their proper order, and shoved them back into their heads.
The professor added gently, “Things may occur to me that may not occur to you. That’s why we’re going through this again.”
Ramsey nodded and started over. “I had a clear shot at the queen and was bringing up my revolver when out of the blue, a woman shot me. I wasn’t expecting it, wasn’t prepared for it.”
“What did the woman look like?”
Ramsey shook his head. “I told you, I didn’t see her. My eyes were on the queen, but one of the men who helped me said that she was a blond. There’s something else I should mention. There were more guards than you said there would be. I was beginning to suspect even then . . .”
“Yes?”
“That they were expecting trouble.”
“You see? You’ve told me something new. It may mean something, or it may mean nothing at all. Then what happened?”
“Right after that, another shot went off, and everyone panicked.” Ramsey shifted his position and grimaced in pain. “Two very helpful gentlemen came to my assistance. One went after the woman with blond hair, and the other stayed by my side.”
“You said before that these men were brothers?”
“Hepburn was their name. Gavin Hepburn was the younger of the two, and he took me to see the doctor. There was nothing I could do. Streams of people were running in every direction, and guards were going after them.”
There was a silence as the professor digested this. “Could the woman have been one of the agents assigned to guard the queen?”
“I don’t think so. If she had been one of them, she wouldn’t have run away.”
“What about the Hepburn brothers?”
Ramsey thought for a moment. “Yes. That’s more likely. They didn’t panic, and they didn’t run.”
“You’re beginning to tire. Let’s move on. Tell me again about your revolver.”
Ramsey hesitated. Finally, he said, “In the confusion, I managed to retrieve it and slip it into my pocket. I thought I might have to use it to shoot my way out. I didn’t expect to be searched.”
“You didn’t expect to be searched?” There was a trace of amusement in the professor’s voice. “A gun went off at the queen’s reception. You were shot, and you didn’t think you’d come under suspicion?”
Faint color ran under Ramsey’s skin. “No, sir. I was the victim. It never occurred to me that I would be searched. It was a stupid blunder on my part.”
“You’re too hard on yourself. It’s too bad you fell into Dickens’s hands, though. He is . . . was . . . as thorough as they come. You won’t have been the only one they searched tonight. So, he searched you and found the gun. Then what?”
“I told him that the person who shot me dropped it and, in the panic, I picked it up to defend myself.”
“And when Dickens examined the gun, he found you out in a lie.”
“Yes, sir. It hadn’t been fired, so the person who shot me could not have dropped it. Dickens knew it must be my gun.”
“Don’t look so stricken. It can happen to the best of us. And you redeemed yourself at the end.”
The professor got up and paced to the sideboard against the wall. After a moment or two, he returned with a glass of whiskey. “You’ve earned this,” he said, handing the glass to Ramsey. “Drink it slowly.”
Ramsey appreciated the gesture. It reminded him of the good old days, when the professor would invite a few select students to his rooms, and they would argue politics well into the night. He’d been a boy then. His father had already had a career mapped out for him, so when he graduated, against the professor’s persuasions, he’d accepted a commission in the British Army.
And he had eventually found himself fighting the Zulus in Southern Africa. That was when he learned that the professor knew what he was talking about. The army was commanded by a pack of blue-blooded buffoons who owed their seniority to family connections or friends in high places.
He learned something else. The professor’s only son had served there, too, but had lost his life in his first engagement. The professor never talked about his loss, but there was a hard edge to him that had been absent before his son died. Now he was in deadly earnest. By fair means or foul, Scottish patriots would break free of the shackles that bound them to England.
To be a part of such an enterprise made his own heart swell with pride.
“So,” said the professor, “you were found out in a lie. What happened then?”
“Dickens suddenly got up and told me that he didn’t believe a word I’d said, that he believed I was part of the plot to assassinate the queen. He went to the door. I could see what he meant to do. He’d call for soldiers, and I’d be arrested.”
He stopped to take a sip of whiskey, then another. “I didn’t panic. It was his reference to a plot to assassinate the queen that shocked me. How could he have known about the plot, unless someone had betrayed us?”
“He may have been fishing, you know, trying to trick you.”
Ramsey edged forward in his chair. “He knew something, sir. I’m sure of it. If someone had betrayed us, it would explain why there were so many men guarding the queen.”
“You may have something there. Tell me what happened next.”
“I couldn’t allow him to leave that room alive. I’d told him a pack of lies that he could easily disprove.”
The professor cut in, “Who else did you talk to before Dickens questioned you?”
“The doctor and Gavin Hepburn, but I told them nothing of any use.”
“Did you lie to them?”
“No. For the most part, I pretended to be in too much pain to answer their questions.”
“Well-done. Go on.”
Ramsey continued, “I didn’t have time to debate the point, so I picked up a letter opener that was on the desk and drove it into his neck. Then I slipped through the window and made for the rendezvous. Murray was waiting for me.”
“What happened to the letter opener?”
“I left it where it had fallen on the floor. But I took my revolver with me.”
After a long, reflective silence, the professor got up and began to pace. “This is what we are going to do,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’re going to return to the castle.” He held up his hand when Ramsey tried to interrupt him. “We’ll ask to speak to Dickens. We’ll be shocked when we hear that he has been murdered. You’ll say that he let you go last night because you were in shock and unable to answer his questions coherently but promised to return the next day. Someone will ask you the same questions Dickens asked, and you’ll tell them the truth, that you’re a former student of mine and we’re making up a party to explore the historic sites in the area.”
“But won’t they know that I was the last person to be with Dickens?”
“Who would suspect a veteran of the Zulu campaign? It’s not as though you were an interloper. You had a gilt-edged invitation card.”
“A forgery,” replied Ramsey dryly.
“An excellent forgery,” the professor asserted. He got up. “I think that’s enough for one night. You look all in. Up with you and off to bed.”
At the door, he put his hand on Ramsey’s shoulder. “I need hardly tell you that you’ve acquitted yourself well. We always knew that getting to the queen would be a hazardous business. Need I add that I’m very proud of you, very proud, indeed?”
At these words, Ramsey straightened and squared his shoulders. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
After Ramsey left, the professor returned to his chair and considered, point by point, what Ramsey had told him. He was particularly disturbed by the presence of the woman. He didn’t like killing women, but if it became necessary, he would do it. Demos was too important for squeamishness in its leader.
The newspapers called them fanatics, but that was not how they saw themselves. They were patriots, soldiers who were passionate about their cause. They wanted an end to senseless wars waged in far-flung places by power-hungry men. These were English wars, and Scotland paid for them with the lives of thousands of her young men. It was time England learned to fend for itself.
He stared into space as he considered his own experience. At twenty-five, he’d been inspired by the rhetoric of British generals to give his all for queen and country. The Crimea was where they had sent him. If these generals had only known what they were doing, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but they did not know how to conduct a battle, much less a war. They were more suited to riding to hounds than to organizing an army. To them, ordinary soldiers were expendable, like pawns in a game of chess.
He had survived, but he’d come home a changed man. He married and went back to the university to teach history. And that was where he joined a group of like-minded individuals who formed a secret society. Demos talked a lot about Scotland’s shame and distributed seditious pamphlets, but that was about all they did. It helped, but it was his son that gave his life purpose. Six years had passed since his son died, but the anger and anguish were as fresh as if he’d died yesterday.
His hands fisted and opened as he thought of his son. He had done everything in his power to dissuade Bruce from making the same mistake that he had made. But Bruce wouldn’t listen. War was in the air, and he was caught up in the glamour and glory of a soldier’s life. It was like a fever. It had to run its course.
This fever ended in tragedy. To die in battle was one thing, but to die for following an order from a commanding officer whom every soldier knew was incompetent was worse than a tragedy. It was a crime punishable by death, or it should be.
He wasn’t, by nature, a bloodthirsty man. However, he could say that nothing had brought him as much satisfaction as killing the man who had killed his boy.
As he climbed the stairs to his own bed, his thoughts shifted to his daughter, Mahri. She was their courier. She should have been on the train from Aberdeen two days ago. There were important documents she was supposed to pass on to him. There was another train tomorrow. If she was not on it, he’d send someone to find out what was causing the delay.
Something moved at the back of his mind. What was it Ramsey said? Dickens had known about the plot to assassinate the queen? And how did the woman with blond hair fit in? The thought turned in his mind as he got ready for bed.