The fact that she owns three identical gold pendants, each set with a circle of pearls, isn’t something Elizabeth normally announces to the world. She keeps them locked away in a chest under her bed. Once upon a time, there was a chain that allowed one of them to hang freely around their owner’s neck, bouncing up and down when the owner moved. She remembers standing on her toes to catch the shining circle while her mother danced for her in the Great Hall at Meldrum House. She was a playful dancer, Elizabeth’s mother, and she liked to make her hair, dress and jewellery move as she clapped her hands and spun around in circles. When she placed Elizabeth on her own feet and whirled her around the room, the only music the mother’s singing, the pendant swayed before Elizabeth’s eyes. The circle of pearls shone like a constellation of moons, a handmade sky that was hers to inherit.
But Elizabeth is no longer that dancing child. She refuses to wear jewellery that will tell of a painful past. All of it, her golden childhood, her merry mother, is stored in a room behind a bolted door.
Today, the pendants clink in protest from within Elizabeth’s pouch as she approaches the pawnbroker. The woman is aged, as tall as she’s wide, and her smile is well-meaning in the basest of ways. It’s the smile of someone who fancies herself a part-time saviour of people with problems she could not even begin to understand.
‘Here, ’ Elizabeth says, picking the first pendant from her pouch and putting it on the pawnbroker’s table. ‘Just as I told you. Solid gold, five pearls.’
With a small sigh of pleasure, the woman touches each pearl with the tip of her finger, then takes the pendant in her hand. The circle of gold covers her palm almost entirely. She lifts it up and down, weighing it, nodding to herself. Then she looks up, suspicion replacing the smile from before.
‘You’re the widow of that Leslie of Pitcaple man.’
‘The baron of Pitcaple, yes.’
‘Died penniless, I hear.’
‘A landed man. My son’s inherited all his properties.’
‘And you’re the boy’s guardian?’ The pawnbroker’s questions are rapid as she tries to understand Elizabeth’s need for money, a need that, as the woman knows full well, would not exist if Elizabeth were her son’s guardian and received his tenants’ rent until he came of age.
‘No, ’ Elizabeth says behind gritted teeth. ‘My husband gave the guardianship to his brother. But I have my younger son and daughters to provide for. So how much will you pay me for this precious heirloom?’
‘Heirloom?’ the pawnbroker repeats, and Elizabeth bites her tongue. ‘You mean to tell me Pitcaple, the baron, passed this on to you, while he was looking left and right for extra cash?’
‘I don’t mean to tell you that. I am saying, this is mine through inheritance and now I wish to pawn it.’
‘You know where this was made?’ The woman waves the bright slice of gold in front of her, testing Elizabeth’s knowledge.
‘Bruges, 1459.’
‘So then it was shipped to Aberdeen and bought by your family? A family of very wealthy merchants, I assume?’
‘It was bought in Bruges by my lady mother’s father. He was no merchant and my mother was no merchant’s daughter.’
‘Well, ’ the pawnbroker leans in to listen now, the pendant still sitting in her hand, ‘who was your mother then?’
Elizabeth takes a deep breath. ‘My mother was Elizabeth Meldrum, heiress to the Meldrum estates.’ Tears rise in her eyes. There’s too much in that name: the promise of eternal wealth, years of prosperity stretching out like the fields around Meldrum House. She remembers her father’s eyes shining each time he looked at her mother, the golden heiress that brought him the barony of his dreams. Then Elizabeth’s brother, the heir, takes a step forward in her memory, promising her to the first available suitor without the foresight that her by-then dead parents had had. She puts her palms against her face and presses the tears back behind her eyes.
With a small laugh, the pawnbroker shakes her head. ‘That great lady, you mean to tell me she’s your mother and she left you with nothing?’
‘She gave me some properties here in town upon my marriage, and the rents are what sustain me and my children.’
‘Aha. So what do you need money for?’
‘My tenants are refusing to pay me until I repair some of their ceilings and front gates. This is what I’ll do with the money you give me. So I ask you again, how much for this jewellery from Bruges?’
The pawnbroker puts the pendant down. Her fingerprints remain on the surface, like clouds on a golden sky.
‘Three pounds, ’ she offers.
Nodding, Elizabeth reaches into her pouch. She knows her jewellery is valued at three pounds apiece, but has hoped the woman would make an undereducated guess and offer at least five or six pounds.
‘So nine pounds altogether, ’ Elizabeth says, and watches the pawnbroker’s eyes widen at the sight of the two additional pendants.
‘Your mother did indeed provide for you, ’ she exclaims, and goes into the next room to fetch the money.
Elizabeth hugs herself, looking at the row of her mother’s jewellery on the table. If I can only make one thing come true, she thinks, it’ll be that my children will never know this room nor that woman – and that no pawnbroker will ever know them.
aberdeen registers 