The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [50]
There was a twinkle of amusement in Macdonald’s eye.
“And that John’s brother—a certain Patrick, Lord Ruthven no less—was reputedly an even more active dabbler in the black arts. Curses and charms, that sort of thing.”
“Ruthven lives in some comfort,” Quire observed. “He must come from money of some sort.”
“If you say so. I’ve not had the privilege of calling on him at home, and I am certainly not privy to his financial dealings. He did display some generosity towards the Society in happier times, mind, so he undoubtedly had funds at his disposal. I have a vague recollection that he has some modest landholdings. Farms or some such. Perhaps there are rents…”
The suggestion faded away with a rising, questioning tone and another flutter of his hand.
Quire regarded the shelves of boxes and crates glumly. This talk of the black arts put a sour twist into his gut. His fingers, of their own accord, tapped at the sack laid on the table. He turned his head, and looked down at them, as if they belonged to someone else entirely.
“I did wonder…” he murmured. “Another matter I thought someone here might be…”
He was hesitant, straying into areas that he neither understood nor gave any credence to. Ever since he had been called to look upon Carlyle’s body, though, he had felt himself moving slowly but surely on to unfamiliar ground of one sort or another. It was too late to turn about now.
He pushed the sack across the table. Macdonald regarded it with surprise.
“Perhaps you could take a look at that, sir?” Quire asked. “Tell me what you make of it.”
Macdonald reached in, his brow alive with curiosity. He withdrew the fragile, crude star of twigs that had been left affixed to Quire’s door. The curator held it on his spread hands and frowned at it. With the delicate precision appropriate to his vocation, he turned it over. The little black feathers brushed softly over the twigs. Tiny fragments of bark came loose.
“I thought it might be old, at first, but it’s not, is it?” Macdonald said.
He sounded neither alarmed, nor overly interested. That went some small way towards easing the tension that had crept into Quire’s arms. He thought himself foolish, to be so unnerved by a silly decoration some child might have put together, but it was one thing too many amongst several he could not quite explain. And he had, when he first held it, felt something strange. Still, Macdonald evidently felt nothing untoward.
“If it had some age to it, it might have been interesting. From an antiquarian point of view, I mean. It does bear a passing resemblance to one or two illustrations I have seen. In books relating to witchcraft, I believe. Not something one would think to see in our times, now that our path is illuminated by the power of rational intellect, eh? Might I ask how you came by it?”
“Not important,” grunted Quire. “You’ve no thought on its purpose, then?”
“I really could not speak to its significance or intent. Not my field, you know: the intricacies of these particular extinct beliefs. I’m afraid there are no practising witches in these parts nowadays, to the best of my knowledge, otherwise I might have referred you to an expert.”
Macdonald said that last with a twinkle of humour, in which Quire could not share.
“Does look a little ill-omened, though, wouldn’t you say?” the curator observed. “Even to the untrained eye. One suspects that it might be a warning, or threat, or curse, or fell invocation. Back when people took such things seriously, of course.”
“Of course. You keep it, sir. I’ve no further need for the thing.”
Macdonald frowned down at the object.
“Not something we would particularly wish to add to our collections, I think.”
“Dispose of it, then,” Quire said, a little too sharply.
He wanted to be rid of it now. He was not a superstitious man, but he hated and mistrusted the way his eyes were drawn to that frail construction of sticks and feathers, and the way it made him feel. It was not fear precisely that pinched at him; sharp unease, perhaps. Or trepidation.