Free The Devil's Recruit by S. G. MacLean

was watching me.
    I should have made for home then, quickly, but there was something I had to satisfy myself of first. I made my way once more down the vennel by way of the old place of the Blackfriars, through the rusted gates into the garden.
    The hut in which Charpentier and St Clair worked must have been somewhere on the other side of the garden, for no light or sounds reached me here from there. I walked along the moonlit pathways towards the place I sought. The grass was white and crisp beneath my boots, and I saw that I left a trail of light prints in the frost as I went. I tried to recall the sketches the artist had shown to me earlier in the day, and the one that came most clearly to my mind was that of the garden as he planned it; I had to search further back, to one that had been of less interest to us both, that of the long-neglected garden as it was now.
    My progress slowed as I had to pass beneath overhanging branches of beech and ash that blocked out much of the moonlight. The darting of a fox across my path startled me, but after a few minutes I had found it, beyond a screenof willows and knotted brambles – the pond. I approached it tentatively, grateful that the cold had turned the mud at the edges as hard as iron. I stooped down and saw that bootprints from before the freeze had now been sculpted into the earth. It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but it did not seem to me that the markings showed signs of a struggle of any sort. I put out a foot and carefully tested the edge of the water – it had already begun to ice over and by the morning would be frozen through. I picked up a long, broken branch and started slowly pushing it through the iced water to probe whatever was beneath. I worked it through tangles of weeds, fallen branches and other debris until it reached the sludge below. I made my way around the edges of the pond in this manner for some time, until my fingers were in an agony of cold. At last, I came to where I had started and, in all, there was a relief of sorts, for I had not found the dead body of Seoras MacKay.
    I was almost back at the gateway when a sound, somewhere behind and to the left of me, took my attention. I turned around quickly, but not quickly enough, for all I saw of the man was the edge of his cloak and the back of his boot as it disappeared into an opening in the thicket towards the eastern gateway of the garden.
    Left standing with her back to me, at the entrance to what I recalled from Jamesone’s map as ‘the bower’, was Isabella Irvine. Her hood was down and her hair loosed. She seemed to watch the man long after he was gone. I stepped quickly behind an old rose as I saw her lift thehood to cover her head. Then she turned around and walked past me and out of the garden. I waited a moment and followed her, keeping as far back as I could without losing sight of her. I watched her until she was safely admitted to Baillie Lumsden’s house, then I turned at last towards Flourmill Lane and the cottage that would be my family’s home for only a few weeks more. I glanced in every doorway that I passed, turned at every movement, but I saw no more of the recruiting sergeant that night.

6
Lord Reay
    If I had hoped for a night’s sleep after my late wanderings I was to be sorely disappointed. At some point in the early morning, a little before five, the whole household was woken by a commotion out on the streets. Doors were being banged upon and all able-bodied men being called from their beds by night watchmen bearing torches.
    ‘The Wappinschaw!’ I said, struggling into my clothing as Sarah went to calm the frightened children.
    Outside, I joined my neighbours as they ran to the appointed station where Baillie Lumsden was directing the men of our quarter to our positions. Each month, though at a more godly and fore-ordained hour, we practised our muster for defence of the burgh from attack by sea. We had been well drilled, and I soon found my way through the