Page 40 of The Secret Christmas Library
‘It was celestial latitude and longitude,’ said Jamie, suddenly.
‘We were EIGHT!’ said Esme.
‘Apparently Grandfather knew about celestial navigation whenhewas eight. Or ten, at least,’ said Jamie. ‘I was ten.’
‘I was trying to cuddle a horse,’ said Bonnie.
‘Then, if you figured that out and went to the telescope room . . . ’
‘You have a—’ started Mirren, but Theo gave her a warning look, so she shut up again.
‘ . . . and managed to figure out the really fiddly telescope which we weren’t supposed to touch anyway – it was completely ancient, so we didn’t know how to use it. But if we had figured it out, it would have shown us a constellation that we would have had to identify and that would have been . . . ’
‘Pegasus!’ said Mirren excitedly.
‘Pegasus and Andromeda; there were two,’ said Jamie. ‘You would have to figure out from there that Pegasus was a horse that had carried Andromeda. Then you had to find the horse that carried Andy – sorry, Andromeda. We had, like, thirty horses then.’
‘It was SO STUPID,’ said Esme.
‘He got so annoyed,’ agreed Jamie.
‘What was the treasure?’
‘It was rather lovely,’ mused Esme. ‘Do you remember? A little gold horse. Absolutely ancient – Egyptian or something.’
‘I’d rather have had chocolate,’ said Jamie.
‘I thought I might get to keep it,’ said Bonnie. ‘But then, after your grandfather got so annoyed, my grandma snuckme away to the kitchen and gave me a mince pie and three Quality Streets for bringing it back and handing it in. So it worked out alright.’
‘It did for you!’ said Jamie. ‘We just got a bollocking.’
‘What happened to the golden horse?’ asked Mirren.
‘God knows. You’re probably wearing it,’ said Esme. She heaved a sigh. ‘So that’s what this is? Another treasure hunt?’ She looked around the table, but nobody replied.
They sat down to the loveliest thing: fresh brown bread and butter, and home-smoked salmon; great thick slices that Bonnie reluctantly admitted she’d smoked herself, remarking that not many people had an outbuilding just for smoking fish, so she might as well make use of it. Her uncle had taken a couple of salmon from their loch, so they were eating produce off their own land, something Mirren had never conceived of, if you didn’t count her abortive attempts at tomato plants under her skylight. It was delicious.
Mirren would have asked Bonnie to stay and eat with them, but she had disappeared back into the kitchen already.
‘I don’t . . . does she work for you full time?’ she asked, and Jamie and Esme both nodded.
‘She nursed my grandfather, I suppose,’ said Jamie. ‘She’s the only one left. Her family worked in this house for generations.’
‘Her grandmother practically raised you,’ said Esme. ‘You were round there often enough, begging for scraps.’
‘She was a good cook,’ said Jamie crossly.
‘But if you don’t have any money, how do you pay Bonnie?’
‘There’s a trust,’ said Jamie. ‘Set up for her family. Her family were always in service here; her great-grandmother started at ten.’
‘Oh, goodness,’ said Mirren, stricken.
‘If you were from a poor family up here,’ said Jamie, ‘there were a lot worse places to be in those days.’
Mirren nodded. ‘I know. My great-gran was in service in London. My cousin did one of the genealogy things in the pandemic.’
‘Well, then, various Airdries worked for us down the generations – gardeners and ghillies; they always had a home here. All of that gradually died out and they were the last to go, but there was a trust to keep servants in their old age, and, well . . . ’ Here his smile grew rueful. ‘They managed it well.’
