A Game of Sorrows Read Free Page B

his eyes. ‘What in the Devil’s name has been going on, Alexander? What were you thinking of? This house has been as the eye of the storm all day, and I dare hardly mention your name without my dear wife bringing down all the imprecations of Hell upon both our heads.’
    ‘William,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
    He strode across the room and sat down heavily behind his desk, evidently angered. I had seldom seen William angry in the fourteen years I had known him. ‘What I am talking about,’ he said, enunciating each word clearly, ‘is you taking leave of your senses. It is all around the town, and not only amongst the women, that you were in not one but two drunken brawls last night, and that there was not a drinking house in the town where the serving girls were safe from you. I had it on authority that you kept low company the whole night, and that only the quick thinking of the ill-favoured Highlander you were with kept you from the sight of the baillies. I was half astonished not to find you in the tolbooth.’
    I sat down, though unbidden, and tried to disentangle his words from what I knew to be true. ‘William,’ I said, screwing shut my eyes for hope of greater clarity, ‘I still have no idea what you are talking about. I spent last night in my room in the college, burning the candle low and deep into the night, alone, with a Hebrew version of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. I have not been drunk since you and I sat up half the night with Jaffray and his
uisge bheatha
when he was here in March, and the only Highlander I know is Ishbel, the wife of our friend the Music Master in Banff, and I believe were you to call her ill-favoured, he would run you through, he and Jaffray both.’
    William’s face began to lighten a little. ‘So you were not at Jennie Grant’s place near the Brig O’Dee last night, gambling and getting into fights with the packmen?’
    ‘I have never gambled, as you know. And why on earth would I go to the Hardgate for food, drink or company?’ I asked.
    ‘And you were not at the Browns’ place, nor Maisie Johnston’s either?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head, perplexed.
    ‘And there were no brawls, no bridling of serving girls, no Highlander?’ he persisted.
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘I have your word?’
    ‘You have my word, although I am not a little astonished you should need it.’
    He sank back in his chair, convinced at last and visibly relieved. I myself now felt convinced of little, and a good deal unsettled. ‘William, what is all this talk?’
    My friend took a bottle of good Madeira wine and two glasses from a press behind his desk that he thought Elizabeth was unaware of and poured us each a generous measure. He handed me my drink and smiled ruefully.
    ‘Alexander, I should not have doubted you, but this house has been in such an uproar of female fury all day that I had no peace even in my own head to think. Sarah returned from the morning market on the verge of tears and stayed there a good hour, apparently, before Elizabeth was able to draw from her what was upsetting her. The girl had been told by not one but half a dozen of the burgh’s finest scolds that you had been drinking and pestering women through the town half the night. She would not have countenanced their scandalmongering had she not had it from some respectable matrons too.’
    He looked up at me, a little uneasy, and half looked away.
    ‘You know, Alexander, there are many in the town, and that number growing, who suspect you have a partiality for the girl. Och, Heavens, Alexander, I know it well enough myself; I see it in your face every time she walks into the room. But there are petty minds aplenty who would take little pleasure in seeing a servant girl, a fallen woman at that as they see her, being raised above her degree by a marriage to you. They would have been tripping over each other this morning to reach her first with