Agnes had delivered more babies than she could count, many safely, some disastrously, but then childbirth was a dangerous business and sometimes there was nothing you could do but pray for a good outcome. Jean looked like a strong young woman who would have little trouble in pushing an infant into the world, but you could never be sure.
She looked shrewdly at Jean, frowning. ‘When d’you think you’re due, lass?’
‘Late in August, maybe September. I cannae be certain.’
‘As late as that? Your mammy’s right. You’re gey big.’
‘I’ve been big all along.’ Jean shifted uncomfortably. Agnes and her mother had made her perch on the box bed where Mary and James slept. She could smell the sour scent of her father’s working clothes on the blankets.
‘I would have thought late July, early August from the look of you.’
Jean was alarmed. ‘So soon?’
‘Maybe. Weans come when they’re good and ready, and there’s nothing we can do to help or hinder them. Well, no so very much anyway. There are ane or twa things to bring a baby on more quickly, but some are very inadvisable.’
She cast a quick glance at Mary. Mary’s babies were sometimes late, and certain measures had been taken in the past: castor oil, one or two herbal preparations. Vigorous lovemaking also worked, if the husband and wife could be persuaded to it without too much embarrassment. But it looked to her as though Jean wouldn’t need any such assistance, even though the father might have been willing, knowing his reputation in the town. She gazed at Jean’s belly, drawing her brows together as though something had just occurred to her.
‘Lie down, lass,’ she said. ‘Lie back and loosen your clothes.’ She had brought a battered leather bag with her, the one she carried about the town whenever she was called to attend a birth, and now she drew a narrow wooden trumpet out of it, very neatly turned in beech wood. ‘Does the wean move much?’
‘Aye it does. Especially at night, but all the time, really. It only quietens when I’m walking, but my fingers and my ankles are swelling up that much and I cannae walk very far. The heat is driving me half daft, Mistress Sloan and that’s the truth.’
The elderly woman placed the wider end of the trumpet on Jean’s belly and bent down to put her ear over the narrower end, an expression of intense concentration on her face. Mary hovered anxiously in the background. Agnes moved the trumpet, listened again, and then again.
‘Can you hear the heart beating?’ asked Jean, afraid that something might be wrong. Agnes was still frowning. ‘Wheesht,’ she said. ‘Let me listen.’
There was a moment’s silence. Then her face cleared. She raised her head, put the trumpet away. She was smiling.
‘Well,’ she said, thoroughly enjoying her moment of triumph. ‘Well, well, Jean Armour.’
‘What?’ asked Mary, alarmed.
‘There’s twa!’
‘Twa?’ Jean echoed her. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Twa heartbeats, and twa weans. That’s why you’re so big, lass. Your dates are likely right enough. And you’ll get bigger yet. Twins. They say they run in families. But you’ve had nae twins, Mary, have ye?’
‘No. I havenae.’
‘Maybe the father then.’ She turned to Jean with a wicked grin.
Jean blushed. ‘I don’t ken.’
‘Maybe you should ask him, eh?’
‘Agnes Sloan, you ken fine well she cannae ask him,’ Mary spoke, severely.
The midwife chuckled. ‘I thought he might be happy about it. It’s weel kent Rab Mossgiel is fond of his weans. He might appreciate twa at the one go. Mary, I’ll tak a wee drappie of whatever you have in the house before I go.’
Jean wanted to see the back of the woman, but they had to keep her sweet. Otherwise the news that Jean Armour was expecting Rab Mossgiel’s twins would soon be all over the town, and Rab would be among the first to be told. But there was small hope of buying the woman’s silence with whisky or even the excellent cheese and bannocks that Mary set before her. Agnes ate and drank her fill and only went away when it was clear that no more whisky would be forthcoming.
‘Your dates are probably right enough, Jean,’ she said as her parting shot. ‘I’ll come in again and see you afore your time. Make sure you lie down in the day if you can, put your feet up when your ankles swell, if your mammy will let you. And try not to excite yourself. You have twa weans to think about now!’
Jean could have cried, but there seemed no point in weeping. A certain excitement was warring with the panic inside her, and again there came that unholy desire to laugh. What next, she wondered. In the name of God, what next?
They had been right not to trust to Agnes’s silence. The news was soon all over the town.
‘Jeany Armour’s carrying twins. Have ye heard? Jeany Armour’s carrying Rab Mossgiel’s twins.’
It was far too good a tale not to be told again and again, in change houses and shops. Within half a day, it had spread to the four corners of the town and out as far as Mossgiel with Catherine Govan’s nephew, Willie. His aunt had grown very fond of Jean, felt guilty about her own role in the affair, and was genuinely concerned that the father of the babies should be made aware of what was in store for him as soon as possible.
Even Rab was shocked into uncharacteristic silence, while his family crept about him, not knowing how to respond. Jean had her penitence before her, and he knew that the kirk session minutes would soon be amended to ‘children’ rather than child. Robert Burns’s children. And then even the few people who might have remained in ignorance would be sure to know all about it.
* * *
She had to see him, to speak to him. But for a little while, she was at a loss as to how she could contrive a meeting. Then, one afternoon, Nelly and Betty Miller, daughters of the proprietor of the Sun Inn, came visiting. She remembered Rab’s song about the Mauchline belles, in which he had described her as the jewel of them all. She doubted if she could be described as a jewel now. More like a ship in full sail. She noticed that both young women had that self-satisfied and faintly smug look of having escaped Jean’s fate and done rather better for themselves. But their sympathy for her was genuine enough. James was away from home and Mary Armour saw no harm in allowing Jean some visitors, especially respectable young women like the Miller sisters. Somewhere at the back of her mind was the unsettling knowledge that Nelly had begun walking out with Dr John Mackenzie, and he was a friend of Rab Mossgiel. But if you couldn’t trust a doctor, who else could you trust? And Jean needed some kind of diversion from the uncomfortable prospect of giving birth to twins without any husband to support her or any establishment of her own.
Of the two sisters, Betty was naturally more sympathetic, and perhaps more well disposed towards Rab too. Nelly had found him a handsome lad to be sure, but she could not stand what she thought of as his idleness, his bookishness and love of poetry. Give her a man of science like Dr Mackenzie any day of the week, aye, and a good provider too. Nelly had the uneasy feeling that if you were married to Rab Burns, books would come before anything else in the house, even food on the table. Books and lassies. Who would want to be married to a lad like that?
When her mother had occasion to go to the house next door, leaving them alone for a few minutes, Jean seized her chance, took hold of their hands and said, ‘Nelly, Betty, will you do something for me?’
‘What?’
‘Can you see Rab for me?’
‘We see him most days in the town.’
‘No. I mean, will you speak to him for me? Tell him I must see him. Privately. Tonight, it must be tonight. The sooner the better. You must say that I beg him to speak to me. To find a way.’
‘But why? We thought that was all by, Jeany.’
‘It is all by, but there’s something I must tell him. It’s about my parents. It’s for his own good, not mine. Not on my behalf
at all. You can tell him that, if it helps you to persuade him.’
Betty shook her head. ‘But how is he to speak to you, Jeany? You are never out alone these days, and your mother would not let him near you. She would bar the door to him again. Besides, he’s making plans to go to the Indies.’
Nelly nudged her sister.
‘It’s all right,’ said Jean. ‘I ken all about it. You mean that he’s planning to go off with May Campbell.’
‘Well, to be fair, nobody is very certain about Rab Mossgiel and May Campbell. We all ken fine it’s Jamie Montgomerie she loves. They say Rab has been writing to her, but that’s all they say.’ Nelly looked from her sister to Jean. ‘But Betty’s right. How is he to speak to you?’
‘Can you not give him a message from me?’
‘A letter?’
‘No. Not a letter. They keep all the paper in my father’s desk in the house next door. It would be too dangerous. Just tell him … tell him the usual place. He’ll ken fine what you mean. The place I might be able to get to. Tell him to wait for me. Tell him I’ll be there if I can. And if I cannae, then he must find some other way himself. Tell him that he must. For his ain good. Tell him that it’s for his ain sake, not mine.’
Jean was still clutching at Betty when they heard Mary Armour coming back in. She sat back, composed her features and began to talk about the latest fashion in bonnets. Taking their cue from her, Nelly and Betty joined in, until it was time to leave.
The sisters walked homewards through the sunny afternoon, nudging one another, giggling a little, enjoying the drama of it all, to be sure, but glad that they were on the outside looking in. They had caught something of Jeany’s fervour, nevertheless, and they agreed that they must give Rab the message. They decided that Mossgiel itself might be the best place for seeing Rab alone. It was not late, and so they kilted up their skirts to keep them out of the mud, and walked out to the farmhouse. There they found Rab chopping wood, all by himself, looking sullen and handsome, so they were able to pass on the message in comparative privacy and with not a little excitement at the sight of him. He gazed at them for a moment, thanked them, asked them to say nothing of this to anyone else, and went back to his chopping with renewed vigour. They took a good deal of pleasure from the whole enterprise. The intrigue was exciting and they were caught up in it. It was like something from one of their novels. How could life ever be dull when Mauchline held Rab Burns and his affairs of the heart?
Chapter Seventeen
A Foolish Hankering Fondness
Wha will crack to me my lane?
Wha will mak me fidgin’ fain?
Wha will kiss me o’er again? –
The rantin’ dog, the daddie o’t!
She didn’t know how or even if she was going to manage it. Not at her already massive size. But manage it she must. She didn’t know if he would relent so far as to come to the Whitefoord Arms again, but she thought he might, if she knew him at all. And she didn’t believe she could have been quite so mistaken in him. The truth was that she wasn’t mistaken. He needed almost no persuasion, for the simple reason that he still had what he thought of as a ‘foolish hankering fondness’ for her, still loved her hopelessly and helplessly.
‘Never man loved or rather adored a woman more than I did her,’ he wrote plaintively and passionately to one of his friends.
She had stayed awake long into the night, afraid of falling asleep and missing him. It was not long after midsummer and the nights were very short. She found herself thinking back to that first outdoor tryst, this time last year, the meeting beside the old thorn tree and the walk towards Barskimming, the wild roses and bishop weed alongside the path, the intense love she had felt for him, still did feel for him, if the truth be told.
The light fading in the west would, within a couple of hours, be replaced by the gleam of light in the east. People kept late hours and woke often at this time of year. It had been a rainy evening after a fine day, but, as so often at night here, the weather faired away again from the west and the sky cleared to a deep, satisfying blue as the sun set. She was on pins all evening, anxiously waiting for her siblings to fall asleep. Of her grown-up brothers, John was already living next door and James was away from home, but she hoped against hope that Addie, with all his malicious curiosity, would not take it into his head to stay up late. As it happened, he had been working with his father all day and came in exhausted. He ate his supper, went through to the cottage next door and fell into bed without even bothering to wash the stone dust from his hands and face. Robbie, the youngest, had been fretful at bedtime. He had been bitten by something while he was playing in the garden, midges in all likelihood, or possibly clegs, the big horseflies that sucked your blood before you were aware of it, and raised painful weals in the process. He was complaining of sore, itchy skin. Mary wiped the little lad down with cool water and, because her husband had fallen asleep early, she took the child into their bed and he soon settled down. He still liked to sleep in between his parents when he could, and Mary liked the sensation of his warm body next to her, her last baby, although she knew that James would send him back to his own bed if he woke up and found him there. Janet, a placid child, slept soundly every night.
Nelly and Mary were used to their sister’s restlessness by now and simply turned over as she shifted in the bed, glad to be relieved of the size of her belly that seemed to take up most of the mattress. She got up and went over to the window. She had deliberately left it open before climbing into bed, saying that the room was hot, which it invariably was at this time of year. Now she sat up in the arm chair, shifting her weight occasionally to ease the discomfort of her belly, the pressure that kept making her want to piss, even when she had nothing much to piss with. Once, she got up and relieved herself in the earthenware chamber pot, balancing with difficulty. The small noise sounded like a waterfall to her frightened ears, and she hoped it wouldn’t wake the girls, but as she slid the pot back under the bed, they didn’t stir. Then she resumed her vigil, sliding her feet into her shoes, staring across at the upper window of the Whitefoord Arms.
Time passed.
She dozed, never quite falling asleep. At the very darkest part of the night, the sudden springing up of lamplight and a little hail of pebbles against the window roused her. She got to her feet, peering through the window, and saw the light in the room opposite, could just make him out across the deserted alleyway. He was standing at the bottom of the stone stair, his face a white patch framed by black hair, ghostly against the darkness. He raised a tentative hand in greeting, and her heart thumped in her breast. Clutching her shawl around her shoulders, still in her nightdress, she opened the back door. At least they had given off locking it and taking away the key, but then they had never known about her night-time assignations at the Whitefoord Arms, thinking that all her meetings with Rab had been in the open air at Coilsfield or Netherplace, perhaps in a barn or in the depths of a haystack, in a fause-house somewhere or other.
She crept down the outside stair, her heart in her mouth. She was so ungainly, so very big. How could she go on like this for another month or more? She sidled out into the yard, slipping along the flagstones, still damp from the day’s rain, out the back gate and into the alleyway where the mud was slippery, glad that she had thought to put on her shoes. It struck her that if she were to tumble over, she would be like a beetle on its back, one of the big May beetles that sometimes bumbled into the house to singe themselves against the flames, her legs in the air, unable to right herself. Again came that awful desire to laugh, to carry on laughing until she cried. She saw that his plaid was wrapped around him, although it wasn’t a cold night. Perhaps he thought it gave him a certain anonymity. He stood aside and she laboured up the back-stairs with him behind her, quelling the desire to run. She couldn’t have done it. Wordlessly, he held the door for her and she slid inside, turning slightly to accommodate the ungainly bulk of
her belly. The inn was silent.
Inside the room, she sat on the bed, slipped off her shawl. A chill seeped through from her damp shoes to her feet. He pulled the curtains. The bed had not been made up this time. There was just the mattress and a thin blanket covering it. No fire, but a few cold ashes in the grate. A lamp that smelled faintly of fish oil. Nobody had been in here for some time. The room was seldom used. He closed the door and stood with his back to it, glaring at her. Then his gaze softened. He couldn’t keep it up, this anger. It was much easier to resent her in her absence than in her much loved presence.
‘What is this about, Jeany? The Miller lassies seemed to think it was urgent. I thought you never wanted to see me or speak to me again.’
‘I never said that.’
‘Well, that’s what your mother told me, isn’t it? And you sent me away. If you’re missed over there, there’ll be hell to pay. So maybe you should say what you came to say and go home as soon as may be.’
She felt tears starting in her eyes and rubbed at them with the sleeve of her nightdress. The gesture seemed to upset him. He half moved in her direction, and then controlled himself, planted himself firmly against the door again, folding his arms against his feelings.
‘What?’ he said. ‘What is it?’
‘My father. He has got a warrant to throw you in the jail.’
The Jewel Page 16