The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [131]
“They decided it was a gas explosion,” Quire told Wilson Dunbar. “I read it in the Evening Courant, a few days after. Tragic loss of one of Melville Street’s finest houses, and the three poor dead souls found inside. Burned beyond recognition. The gas works was having none of it, of course, but what else would they say?”
“Christ.” Dunbar puffed out his cheeks. “You’re a lucky bastard, I’ll give you that. It was me they called Impervious, but the name’s not fitting me any more, so I’m thinking you’d best have it.”
Dunbar indeed seemed anything but impervious now. He had been reduced, for a time at least, by his suffering. He was thinner than Quire had ever known him, and his shoulders stooped a little. He walked with the aid of a stick.
He would surely have died, there in the hospital, but for the water the nurses and his wife had trickled into his mouth, and the food paste they fed him as if tending to a babe. Perhaps he would have died but for the ministrations of Agnes McLaine. Quire did not know. All he knew was that Dunbar lived, and grew stronger every day, and for that he was intensely, unquestioningly grateful.
They walked on the flat ground by the palace, where children flew kites in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat. Flat ground was the kind Dunbar liked best, for the moment, since he tired quickly. There was low cloud down, hiding the top of the hill in mists, and a fine drizzle on the air.
“Is it done, then?” Dunbar asked. “The whole business, I mean. You’ve burned the man’s house down, and he’s cooked to a cinder. Not much more to concern yourself with, at a guess.”
Quire regarded his feet as they trudged along through the damp grass. He had shared nothing more than the barest outline of all that had happened, for he knew that was all Dunbar really wanted. He remembered nothing of the night in the Princes Street gardens beyond rushing away from Quire and Durand, and hearing Blegg coming up behind him. Quire had seen in his eyes, when he talked of it, the haunted look, quickly dismissed but there, quite plain. He would do nothing to add to the man’s burdens.
“It’s done,” he said, as lightly as he could. “Let’s leave it to rest, should we?”
“Aye, if you like.”
Quire was walking slowly, to match his pace to Dunbar’s. The subtle rain was soaking into his coat and his hair.
“I know you’re liking your fresh air these days,” he said, “but maybe we’d best be getting back. It’s a bit dreich out here.”
Dunbar grunted and looked up at the cloud-cloaked heights of Arthur’s Seat, as if noticing for the first time the inclemency of the day.
“If you like. Ellen’ll have porridge she wants to get down my neck, anyway. She’s of the belief that there’s no better fodder for the healing body. Spoons it down me every hour of the day or night.”
“Can she speak of me yet without cursing?” Quire asked.
“Let’s just say she’d as soon not be seeing you.”
“Can’t fault her for that. If I was her, I’d probably come after me with a kitchen knife.”
“Aye, well, the thought maybe crossed her mind, but I dissuaded her, so that’s one more thing you owe me.”
“Fair enough.”
They walked in silence for a little way, then Dunbar gave a chuckle as if at some funny thought.
“How’s your own woman?” he asked Quire.
“Cath? She’s fine. There’s a discussion to be had whether she’s to come out of the Holy Land and take up lodgings with me, but for now, it’s fine.”
Quire had removed himself from the Holy Land, with a whole medley of conflicting feelings about doing so, and taken up residence once again in his own quarters. He did not feel entirely safe or restful there, and might never again, but nor was the Holy Land a place he would ever be inclined to call home. Cath would follow after him, he thought, if he asked; he had not done so, but was thinking it might be the wisest thing to do. Perhaps the wisest thing he had ever done.
“And work? What about that?”
“Oh, I’ve not thought of it. Had other things on my mind of late.”