Arcadia [antikvár]

Chapter One Edinburgh, mo The pale slanting sun of a February afternoon threw long shadows down the grey Edinburgh street, but did not warm the small hunched figure of a woman, who pulled her black shawl tightly round her neck to ward off the bitter east wind as she limped furiously along the frost-rimed pavement of Princes Street. 'Wait till I tell him, wait till he hears about this, Fanny Heriot. You'll be sorry you laughed at me, so you will,' the woman muttered to herself as her plain brown boots tapped unevenly along the flagstones. The baker's lad, humping a load of oatmeal on the corner, heard her talking to herself and laughed aloud. 'Did you hear that, Wullie?' he called out to the grocer's caddy across the street. 'Yon Aggie Heriot's gone daft at last!' Taking not the slightest notice, Aggie hurried on, one hand on her painful hip as she struggled up the slope of Frederick Street, turned into George Street and knocked out her characteristic sharp rap on the door of her father's house. It was opened at once by old Jeanie. 'Now whatever has happened to overset you. Mistress Aggie?' she said, peering at Aggie with eyes misted over with a blue film of cataract. 'You look like a thundercloud, so you do.' A scowl had indeed settled upon Aggie Heriot's forehead. It deepened lines that marked her strong-boned face, from which the dark hair, parted in the middle, was rigorously scraped back into a hard knot at the back of her head. It was the face of a woman of fifty, but Aggie Heriot was no more than thirty years old. A lifetime's battle with the nagging pain of a diseased hip had drawn marked lines of character around her eyes and mouth