‘What did Mr Aiken say?’ asked his wife, anxiously.
James frowned. ‘It is a marriage document after a fashion, but only after a fashion. He told me, when pressed – for he counts himself a friend to Mossgiel – that Rab Burns could go to any court in the land and they would send him away with his tail between his legs like the worthless cur he is.’
Jean flinched again before his obvious hatred of Rab.
‘Why do you dislike him so much?’ she was moved to ask, but she already knew the answer. Jean was James’s ewe lamb, and Rab was the wolf that had enticed her from the fold. James disapproved of everything about Rab, not least this attempt to force his hand, to force his agreement to the match.
‘But, Jimmie…’ Mary laid a hand on his arm. ‘What about the wean? I mean you cannae deny the wean, can you? And neither can she! What are we to dae about that?’
‘There’s many a slip,’ he muttered.
‘I don’t ken what you mean,’ said Jean.
‘And we cannae keep her locked in here, can we?’ added Mary.
‘Indeed we cannae. I need to go out again. You, Jeany, you’ll not stray from this fireside, do you hear me? Not even if the good Lord himself came calling and told you it was the day of judgment. Mary, I hold you responsible.’
He drank a dram or two, ate sparingly and was gone again. Jean wept and pleaded with her mother to let her go out, to let her at least get some kind of message to Rab, but Mary was adamant. Her husband was right and Jean must do as she was told.
It was late in the evening before James came back, slightly the worse for drink, which was unusual for him. Jean was already in bed, but she could hear him stumbling about and Mary’s soft tones as she tried to calm him. Nelly had pestered her to know what was going on, but she would say nothing to her younger sister, not while wee Mary was all ears.
She could not sleep and lay there listening to the owls calling in the old trees beside the kirk and the quiet breathing of her sisters, trying to think of some way in which she could get a message to Rab, terrified of what he might do, of what her father would do if they met. She got up and paced quietly to the window, gazing across at the inn opposite, at their window, but all was in darkness. What had she expected? That he would be there with a candle burning for her? No, she had told him to go back to Mossgiel and that was where he would be. At last, chilled to the bone, she crept back under the blankets, warming her feet against Nelly who squirmed away from her cold toes. She fell asleep, dreaming about her lover and waking up disappointed with tears on her face. She had slept late and they had let her lie, but when she went downstairs, they were waiting for her. Her father had, it seemed, already been up and doing very early that morning, making arrangements for her.
‘Jean – you’d best mak yourself ready. Mary, you can help her pack up some of her things.’
‘What for?’ Jean had a sudden hope that he was sending her to Mossgiel, to Rab, but it was immediately dashed.
‘You’re off to Paisley, to the Sneddon. I’ve arranged for a place for you with the mail coach to Kilmarnock and thence to Paisley. You’re to stay with the Purdies. I’ve already sent messages. I’m sure Elizabeth will come out to meet you on the way.’
Elizabeth was her aunt, her mother’s sister, married to Andrew Purdie who worked as a carpenter. They lived in the Sneddon district of Paisley, and although they occasionally visited Mauchline, Jean didn’t know them very well. They were sending her among strangers.
‘You mean I’m to go alone?’ said Jean, aghast.
‘One of the Wilson lads is going to stay with his brother for a while, and he’ll look out for ye along the way. I’ll have no arguments about this, Jean. You’re going and that’s that. Maybe you’ll come to your senses if you’re away from this place, from the malignant influence of that man.’
‘But he’s a good man!’
She had been going to repeat that she loved him, but James interrupted her, holding up his hand as though to physically block her words from reaching him.
‘And meanwhile, I’ve sent a message to Rab Wilson, asking if he will be pleased to call on you when you’re there, telling him you’re on a family visit, just. And that’s what we’ll tell the folk here as well, if there are enquiries as to your whereabouts, as there are bound to be. Nothing the folk here like more than a good gossip!’
‘Are you mad?’ The words burst out of her. ‘You may keep quiet about it all, and mother may do whatever you tell her. You may even force Addie to keep his mouth shut, but you have no power over Rab.’
‘We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?’
Chapter Fourteen
At the Sneddon
From ev’ry joy and pleasure torn,
Life’s weary vale I’ll wander thro’;
And hopeless, comfortless, I’ll mourn
A faithless woman’s broken vow!
They sent her to Paisley to stay with the disapproving aunt and uncle she didn’t know very well, in a town she neither knew nor liked very much when she got there. It seemed a bleak enough place in March, with its grim stone houses and the smoke of many small chimneys: weaving shops and sheds, and a few new manufactories as well. The town was clearly on the rise. The Purdies lived in a district called the Sneddon, in a chilly, stone-built two storey house that was as full of children as Jean’s house in the Cowgate, fuller perhaps, with Andrew Purdie’s single storey workshop next door. They were not far from the huge poorhouse, with its adjacent asylum, built some thirty years earlier, so her aunt told her, with a meaningful look. This was where you might end up, she seemed to be saying, if you became destitute. Especially if you became destitute with a bastard child to care for. When Jean tried to tell her Aunt Eliza that the coming child would not be a bastard (how she hated that word) because she was legally married to the father, her aunt simply pursed her lips and said, ‘What proof do you have of that, Jeany?’
The words were ominous. A couple of weeks later, in the middle of April, her father came to Paisley, riding through the night, lingering only a few hours to rest the horse. She thought at first that he might be coming to bring her home. But a glance at his grim face let her see that he had other, less congenial business in hand.
He drew a battered paper out of the breast of his long coat and threw it down on the table in front of Jean and her aunt. ‘There!’ he said. ‘There’s your marriage paper, Jean. You may do what you like with it now and much good may it do you – or him for that matter.’
She unfolded it, not understanding at first. Then she saw that the names had been cut out of it. It was a document that confirmed the marriage between nobody at all.
‘Who did this?’ she asked.
‘Mr Aiken, the lawyer. Who else?’
She faltered. ‘But Mr Aiken is a friend of Rab’s. He’s helping him with his book.’
‘His book! There’ll be nae book, lass. It’s all nonsense, just. Dreams and daydreams. Aiken may be a friend to any number of blaggards. He’s a lawyer, and they must frequently sup with the devil. But he is also a business acquaintance of mine, and I told him in no uncertain terms that he must find a solution to your predicament. To my predicament. He hemmed and hawed as lawyers aye do, but my will prevailed and he followed my instructions and cut the names out. So there is nae proof of any marriage, however much you might wish there were, miss. And Robert Burns may burn in hell for all I care.’
‘Does he know that you have done this?’
‘Aye he does. I saw him in the town, on his way to visit that reprobate Gavin Hamilton, nae doubt, and I told him myself.’
‘What did he say? What must he think of me?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care, Jean. He seemed somewhat taken aback, I declare.’ He grinned, wolfishly. She hardly recognised him for the solemn but kindly father who had first taught her to read. Given her silver sixpences to buy
ribbons for her hair. Where had that man gone? What had become of him? Was this all her fault?
‘And I’ll tell you something else. I took the greatest pleasure in telling him that you had denied him. I told him you had changed your mind, you were ready to do your family’s bidding, as befitted a good Christian lass, and that since the names were all cut out of his foolish, unlucky document, and with your agreement, he could take himself off to Mossgiel and hang himself from the oak at his road end there for all I cared.’
James Armour went back to Mauchline the next day, taking the paper with him. She was glad of it. The holes there were like a blank space in her heart. Who could prove anything now? She missed Mauchline, she missed her friends, but most of all, she missed Rab. What would he be doing? He must be very angry with the whole family but with her most of all – and with Aiken too. Surely, Mr Aiken had professed to be his friend and supporter. He had always spoken well of the man in the past, told her that the lawyer was encouraging him to publish his poems, was seeking subscribers for him.
Had he found out where she had gone? Would he come and find her? It was a long journey, and his days were heavily circumscribed by farm work and family commitments, but she still found herself wondering, now that she was away from James Armour’s house, why Rab would not come to her. Did he think her faithless? But then, perhaps he had believed her father. James could be very forceful when he chose. Perhaps he thought that she had rejected him because she had allowed herself to be spirited away to Paisley. But what other option did she have? Could she have escaped from the house in the Cowgate by night, tramped through the dark to Mossgiel and thrown herself on his and his family’s mercy? Well, she supposed she might have done it, but it had seemed quite impossible at the time. They had even locked the back door and taken away the key. Now that she was in Paisley, she couldn’t even think of making such a journey alone and unprotected, certainly not in her condition.
She had no resources, no money of her own, and she was watched, day and night. If she had thought she might be able to write to him from here, she was very much mistaken. This was a house where writing paper was a scarce commodity, apart from the few bills of sale that Andrew Purdie used. There was no sympathetic servant to help her. She thought of the novels she and the other Mauchline belles had read, and how in those, some faithful servant had always been happy to carry messages between the lovers. The only servants in this house were a sour faced and unapproachable maid who helped out with the children and the cooking, and a silent old man who hauled wood about in the workshop, staggering beneath the weight of the rough planks, on spindly legs. She had even asked her aunt if she might write to her friend Catherine Govan, but was told that she was not allowed any correspondence at all. Her father was a canny man, and presumably he had already realised that a black fit must have been involved. He would not make the same mistake twice.
* * *
To her extreme embarrassment, Rab Wilson came to visit her a few weeks after her arrival. Surprisingly – or perhaps not surprisingly at all in view of her family’s plans for her – the Purdies left her alone with him for a while. He was a tall young man: grave, godly and diffident. He seemed to be trying hard to keep his eyes off her swelling belly, and not quite succeeding. It was little wonder, because it seemed to be growing bigger by the day, bigger than it should have been, she thought, worriedly.
He took her hand.
‘Are you quite well, Miss Armour?’
‘I am quite well, thank you.’ She was smitten with a sudden terrible desire to laugh. Here was her old suitor paying court to her, while she was carrying another man’s child. It seemed very strange. How had she ever found herself in this predicament?
She sat down and gestured to him to sit as well, which he did, shuffling uncomfortably in his seat, the chair too low for his long legs. They were in the closest thing the Purdies had to a parlour: a best room, with furniture made by her uncle, rag rugs on the floor and nice drapes at the windows, one of the benefits of living in a weaving town, no doubt. It was a chilly day in April and the grim maid had even come in and lit a fire for them, tut-tutting at the inconvenience. But the room had a cheerless air and the chimney smoked, suggesting that it was seldom used.
At last he plucked up the courage to speak.
‘Miss Armour,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say to you. They told me you were come to Paisley, and that I would be most welcome to visit you, but it seems to me that you were all unaware of this.’
She thought it was daft that they were being so very formal when they had known each other all their lives, more or less, or at least since she was toddling about the town and he was four years older, looking after her. She could remember him from the bleach green when their respective mothers would take them there and let them run about, playing chase and catch, while the women got on with spreading the linens.
‘Oh Rab,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry they’ve got you embroiled in all this. It’s none of your fault and none of your doing, but to tell you the truth, I’m happy to see a friendly face.’
He seemed relieved. ‘Well, I’m aye happy to see you, Jean. You ken that fine.’
‘I do.’
‘And whatever I can do for you, I will. But why don’t you tell me about it? The whole sorry tale. I’ll always be a good friend to you, and you can confide in me.’
She told him then, told him all about the other Rab, her Rab, and about the wean and the marriage lines and how her father had responded.
He was silent for a few moments, shaking his head, more in sorrow than in anger.
‘But I think this means that you’re legally married, Jean, whatever they may say or do.’
‘I’m sure that’s the case. Or I hoped so. And now you think so too. But what can I do? They’ve taken away my proof, and unless Rab comes and takes me back to Mossgiel…’
‘I’m not sure he could do that, Jeany. It would be such an extreme measure. The kirk would never forgive him for it.’
‘You’re right. Nobody would forgive him. Least of all my parents.’
‘Perhaps you should just bide here, bide your time. I’ve heard from my family in Mauchline.’
‘What do they say? What are they saying about me?’
He shook his head, frowned, sighed.
‘Och, Rab. I thought you were my friend.’
‘I am your friend. Your good friend. It’s just … I don’t know what to advise you for the best.’
‘Just tell me what’s happening in Mauchline.’
‘They’re saying that James Lamie went to see your mother last week, on behalf of the session. There had been gossip, talk, you ken what it’s like there. If you’re sick, they’ll have you dead and buried.’
‘They will.’
‘Well, Lamie wanted to know if you were with child. But your mother said, no you weren’t. You had gone to Paisley to stay with friends, and weren’t you allowed to make a family visit without the kirk wanting to have a hand in the matter?’
‘She’ll be doing as she’s told. Saying what my father told her to say.’
‘Aye well, I don’t know about the sense of it. When the wean comes, there’ll be no gainsaying it.’
‘Perhaps she thought I would be married to you by then, and that would be the end of the matter.’
‘I would marry you if I thought it would do any good, if I thought it was what you wanted. You must know that, Jean. But you’re married to somebody else, in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the law, and I think your husband might have something to say about it. Justifiably. Whatever your father hopes or fears.’
‘You’re right. But what about Rab Mossgiel. What’s he saying? What’s he doing?’
He fidgeted in his chair again, screwed up his face in embarrassment.
‘Come on, Rab. Just tell me.’
‘Well, mind now, this is hearsay.’
<
br /> ‘Aye.’
‘He went to your house in the Cowgate and banged on the door and made a terrible fuss, once he knew that you had gone. They thought he would break it down.’
‘That won’t make my father like him any better.’
‘No, it won’t.’
‘Gilbert had to come and drag him away, take him home again. Much the worse for drink, they’re saying. It was all round the town. And he’s been raving about your faithlessness ever since.’
‘My faithlessness? Mine? What did he expect me to do?’
‘He’s not being reasonable. But then, neither is your father. And I don’t know what the answer is, Jeany. Rab’s no a…’ He stopped. ‘He’s no what you would call a…’
‘A steady man. Or like to be a good provider. No. He isn’t. But I love him all the same.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m that sorry, Jeany.’
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’
‘Well it’s all a guddle, to be sure. Your father is threatening him with the kirk and the law, for fornication and for enticing his daughter away. He wants money your Rab doesn’t have. And Rab’s beginning to talk about going away to the Indies to seek his fortune.’
‘Aye well, he was talking about going to the Indies before this.’
‘But there’s more.’
‘What more?’
She felt a cold clutching at her heart. The child moved. It had moved before, but this time she felt a distinct ripple across her belly, one side to the other.
‘What more?’
‘He’s been seen going about with May Campbell.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. It couldn’t be.
‘I don’t ken if there’s anything in it, really. He was trying to get her to meet with him in the old castle by Mr Hamilton’s house, but she wouldn’t have it.’
‘How do you ken this?’
‘He was complaining to Blane, his ploughman, that the lassie wouldnae meet him. But it might all be hearsay and gossip.’
‘No. I’m sure she wouldnae meet him there, at any rate.’
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