Joseph Knight

by James Robertson

‘Nannie, ye’re a cheatin hure,’ Jamieson said, feeling the need to reassert himself in front of MacRoy. ‘It’s the exact same stuff, whichever vessel ye tak it frae.’

  Nannie stared at him. ‘Oh, it’s yoursel. I didna ken ye at first.’ Names seemed beyond her. ‘And wha’s this wi ye? Weel, sir, I’ve no seen you for a while either. I didna ken ye kent each ither.’

  ‘We dinna,’ said MacRoy. ‘We’ll sit ower there.’

  They went to a table by the single, dirt-encrusted window, through which was cast a scabby, useless portion of the daylight. Nannie tottered across with a jug of whisky and a couple of tumblers no cleaner than the window. Jamieson produced a handkerchief and dichted one of them out. MacRoy poured into both glasses and set the jug down on the table with a crack, watching the other man coldly without releasing the handle. The landlady was still hotching unsteadily beside them.

  ‘Noo, Nannie,’ MacRoy said, without taking his eye off Jamieson, ‘get back tae your fuckin midden and lea us alane.’ She scuttled off. Into himself, Jamieson admitted to being impressed by the schoolmaster’s language. The enforced bottling up of curse words, which life at Ballindean must require, doubtless improved their flavour when finally uncorked.

  MacRoy pulled a clay pipe and a tobacco pouch from his jacket, studiously packed the pipe, got up to catch a light from one of the candles, cowped his first dram, nodded at Jamieson to do the same, refilled both glasses, sat back and puffed at the pipe. ‘So whit’s your business wi Miss Wedderburn?’ he said.

  ‘Nane o your concern.’

  MacRoy laughed, leant forward. ‘Listen tae me, man. I didna like ye when I saw ye at the hoose, an I dinna like ye noo. I like ye even less when I see ye whisperin secrets doun a close tae a lassie that I’m lookin efter. No my concern? That’s a Wedderburn lassie. She sits in my schoolroom. Ye’re no fit tae be in the same hoose.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why we bade in the close ootby.’ Jamieson was feeling better with every minute that passed. He took off the second dram. He was getting the measure of auld Aeneas now, beginning to understand what drove him.

  ‘I could hae broke your neck back there,’ MacRoy said.

  ‘How did ye no?’

  ‘I want tae ken whit your business is wi her.’

  ‘And I’ve tellt ye, nae business o yours.’

  ‘I’ll find oot. She’ll tell me.’

  ‘Whit’ll ye dae, threaten her? Thrapple her in the stables like ye did me? I dinna think so, Maister MacRoy.’

  ‘If Sir John hears o this, he’ll hae ye locked up. Or beaten up, ane or tither.’

  ‘Noo ye’re cleekin at straes, Aeneas. This is a free country, awmaist. Ye michtna like folk haein a conversation but ye canna prevent it. And I dinna think ye’ll be tellin Sir John either. He’d be wantin tae ken hoo ye let the thing happen at aw. And onywey, whit has happened? A few words exchanged in passing? Nae crime there.’

  MacRoy took another drink. His brow furrowed deeper still. He stared at Jamieson with pure hatred. Or was it something else? Jealousy? And suddenly Jamieson knew who MacRoy was really staring at.

  ‘This is aboot the neger. I ken it is.’

  Jamieson smiled. Ye could hae taen the words oot ma mooth, he thought. He said, ‘Whit neger? I dinna see a neger. Does Miss Wedderburn ken ony negers? We can ask Nannie if she’s had ony coming in aff the ships lately.’ He half rose to call her over. MacRoy’s hand shot across the table and gripped his wrist. Jamieson sat down. The hand released him, slid back again.

  ‘Joseph Knight,’ said MacRoy. ‘It’s aboot him.’

  ‘Are ye tellin me or speirin?’

  ‘Fine I ken that’s whit ye cam tae see Sir John aboot. Tae seek him oot. Weel, ye’ll no succeed. He’s deid. Deid and gane tae hell.’

  ‘Ye’re sure o that?’

  ‘That’s whaur he should be. And it’s whaur ye’ll be if ye dinna keep awa frae Miss Susan.’

  ‘Man, man, calm yoursel. Tell me aboot this. Ye’re jealous. Noo, ye canna be jealous o me. Naething to be jealous aboot – look at me. It was a pure accident meetin Miss Wedderburn. Ye ken that. But Joseph Knight, that’s a different story. Wha was it ye wantit him tae keep awa frae?’

  MacRoy took more whisky. His gaze shifted, first to the window, then to the sleeping sailors, finally back to Jamieson. ‘I mind aince,’ he said, ‘gaun intae Dundee wi him on the cairt. Wull Wicks – no the laddie, his faither, that’s deid noo – Wull and I were awa tae fetch some plenishin for the hoose, and we were tae tak the slave in tae a barber at the Cross, that was tae gie him trainin in dressin hair or some such. And there wasna muckle talk on the road, but Wull says tae him, “Look at ye in your finery. Look at your hauns. The loofs o them are saft as a lady’s. They cry ye a slave but it’s clear enough tae me wha the slaves is aboot here. No you wi your work-shy hauns an hoose-bred ways, Joseph Knight. I would be a slave in a minute if I could get leevin like you, man.” I mind that, aye, every word o it. And the neger never said a word back, jist sat there wi a sneer on his mooth. He was a slave but he thocht he was better nor the rest o us, that’s certain.’

  It was as if a tightly wound spring was being gradually released inside MacRoy. ‘He had nae richt. Whit was he? A neger. Sir John’s neger brocht back frae the plantations. He was lucky tae be here. Sir John treated him mair like a son than a slave. Better than a servant. He should hae been grateful for that, brocht oot o savagery and made a Christian in a daicent Christian country. But that wasna enough for him, na. He had tae hae mair. And mair and mair. He had tae hae awthing. He had tae hae her. But she was mine. She should hae been mine.’

  ‘Wha’s that?’

  ‘Annie. Ann Thomson. The neger turned her heid, and broke Sir John’s hert. That’s whit he did.’

  ‘Sir John’s hert? His hert’s no broken. That’s jist an auld man wantin tae redd up his affairs. And Joseph Knight’s ane o them. Whit happened tae him and Ann Thomson?’

  ‘Happen tae them?’ MacRoy said. ‘Ye ken whit happened.’

  ‘Na,’ Jamieson said. ‘I dinna.’

  ‘Fuck you, then.’

  ‘Why dae ye say Knight broke Wedderburn’s hert? Whit was there atween them?’

  But Aeneas MacRoy had had enough. He drained the whisky in his glass, stood up, put his face down two inches from Jamieson’s. His eyes were furious and watery. ‘He broke his hert,’ he repeated. ‘He and Ann Thomson betrayed him. They’re deid and rotting in hell. Or they should be. Stay awa frae her,’ he said, stepping back, his voice rising. ‘I’ll kill ye if ye dinna stay awa frae her.’ Then he was stumbling across the dark room, back through the miserable door out into the close, gone.

  Jamieson swirled the last of his whisky, contemplating the snoring sailors. They looked so peaceful, so untrauchled by life. A shame they should be in such a hole. But it was, he suspected, heaven compared with their ship.

  He pondered MacRoy’s confused messages, decided there was more sound than substance in the threat. Who had he meant by ‘her’ anyway? Susan Wedderburn? Ann Thomson? Maybe MacRoy did not really know himself. Just as he seemed confused about whose heart had been broken by Joseph and Annie. The poor auld miserable bastard.

  Jamieson stared at the table. ‘Damn him!’ he said out loud. MacRoy had not left a penny for the whisky.

  After a while he got up and went over to the counter. ‘How much, ye auld thief?’ But Nannie, like the sailors, was fast asleep. Jamieson put a few coins on the counter and stepped, a little unsteadily, outside.

  Aeneas MacRoy felt the spirit racing through his blood. He did not feel disabled by it – on the contrary, he felt liberated. He walked briskly back up to the Nethergait, stormed eastward along it and only came to a halt at the Cross, when his bad leg almost gave way beneath him and he realised he had been putting far too much weight on it. The New Inn was in front of him. He would have to go in and find the lassies. He took a moment to compose himself, straighten his clothes, wipe the sweat from his face.

  Sometimes he al
most brought himself to thank God that he was now, probably, too old actually to kill anyone. The violence had always been in him, but he had always contained, controlled it. When it boiled in him, it came up against the iron-hard shell he showed to the world, and had to subside. Or it came out in the whisky, a flame like a fire-eater’s breath. Or it was diffused in memories.

  He minded the stir caused in the town by John Wedderburn’s coming home in ’68, to stay with his mother and sisters in their house in the Nethergait. How he had styled himself Sir John from the first, although the title had been forfeited by his father, and how folk either did not care or dared not challenge him. Dundee had buzzed with tales of the immense riches he had amassed in the Indies; and there was the young black man, too – handsome, got up in a fine blue suit with gold braid and a profusion of lace at neck and cuffs – who followed his master everywhere. Genteel citizens made sure their calling cards reached Sir John in the Nethergait. Many in the town were still romantically, if not politically, Jacobite, and those who were not saw no harm in welcoming one who had been ‘out’ but was now back and had the potential to spend so much money. And this sentiment grew stronger, as it became known that Sir John was looking about for two things to make his homecoming complete: a large property, and a young wife.

  Aeneas MacRoy bided his time. After more than twenty years, to wait another few months was no trial. He kept a school for the sons of small merchants and farmers and took an unsteady income from it, constantly in thrall to the vicissitudes of harvests and markets. At that time the roll had fallen to a mere half dozen. Sir John’s return was timeous. It was not that MacRoy had nursed a plan over the years; it was simply that he had always believed that the Wedderburns would come back, and that when they did he might be able, in some small way, to profit by it.

  In the summer of 1769 it became known that Sir John had an eye on the Ballindean property, and was negotiating its purchase with the owner, Carnegy of Craigie. He had his other eye on Margaret Ogilvy, twenty-year-old daughter of his former commander Lord David Ogilvy. His lordship was still exiled in France, but she, having been born and spent her earliest years there, was now living at Cortachy Castle, the family’s ancestral home. Before the year was out, a marriage had taken place, the couple had moved into the ancient, somewhat decrepit house at Ballindean, and were accumulating servants. Naturally, the slave went with them.

  Early on the first morning of the new year, Aeneas MacRoy happed himself against the cold and made the long walk out to Ballindean. He might have sent a letter in advance, to introduce himself, but he knew that the Wedderburns were at home, and he had the means to get an audience. Day had come by the time he turned in at Ballindean’s gates. There was a light frost on the ground, and the loch was dark against the sparkling grass. Aeneas strode up to the front door. The place was silent. He battered at the door. Eventually a maid came to open it.

  ‘Is the laird aboot?’ said Aeneas MacRoy.

  She looked him up and down suspiciously. A bonnie, black-haired thing with a proud look about her. She said, ‘Wha is it wants him?’

  ‘Tell him Aeneas MacRoy.’

  ‘Whit?’

  ‘Aeneas MacRoy.’

  ‘He’ll no see ye.’

  ‘Aye he will.’

  ‘Lord, man,’ said the maid, ‘it’s Ne’erday. What ails ye? Ye’re ower late for a hogmanay.’

  ‘I’d hae come yestreen if it was for that. Here, tak this yoursel, and gie him this. He’ll see me.’

  He handed her a penny and a folded piece of cloth tied up with string. She slipped the coin away but stood looking doubtfully at the cloth.

  ‘On ye go, lass,’ he said. ‘Ye’re lettin aw the heat oot the hoose.’

  ‘Ye’ll need tae wait ootby,’ she said.

  ‘Fine. I’ll be in soon enough.’

  She shut the door on him and disappeared. She was gone fully ten minutes. Aeneas waited, stamping his feet on the stone step.

  The door opened again. ‘Ye’re tae come in,’ she said, wide-eyed.

  ‘Didna I say I would?’

  The library was in a state of chaos. Chests full of books were piled against one wall, paintings in heavy frames against another. Chairs and other bits of furniture were stacked in the middle of the room. It was chilly, but a fire was catching in the grate. John Wedderburn, wearing slippers and breeches and a loose shirt, and a smoking jacket over all, was clearly not long out of his bed. He was standing to one side of the fire, running a faded but still colourful cloth between his hands. ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  ‘Sir, my name is Aeneas MacRoy.’

  Wedderburn stared hard at him. The name meant something, but he could not place it. MacRoy could see him struggling, trying to remember.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Ye ken whaur, sir.’

  ‘Is that some kind of a threat?’

  ‘Oh no, sir.’

  ‘I’ll not be trifled with,’ said Wedderburn. ‘As you can see, I am just arrived in this house. State your business so I can decide if I need to waste my time on it.’

  ‘Ye’ll maybe no mind, sir, efter Culloden, hoo the reidcoats gaithered up aw the colours they had captured. They took them tae Edinburgh, and there the public hangman burnt them at the Cross. But they didna burn this ane. The Glen Prosen company’s. Oors.’

  John Wedderburn was looking down a tunnel of years. His clenched hands gripped the colours as if to tear the cloth apart. ‘Who are you?’ he said again.

  ‘Sir, I am the drummer laddie that fell a-greetin when the cannon shot cam ower us. But later I stopped greetin. I saved the colours when aw else was lost.’

  ‘Good God.’

  ‘And I thocht I would tak this opportunity tae return them tae ye, seein as hoo ye hae returned hame yoursel, and I’m richt glad tae see ye, sir.’

  ‘Good God,’ Wedderburn repeated. ‘The wee drummer. I mind you now. Aeneas. The wanderer. The Highland men called you Angus in their own tongue.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Now I see you as if it were yesterday.’

  ‘It is twenty-four years in April, sir.’

  ‘How old were you then, Aeneas?’

  ‘Jist chappin twal, sir.’

  Wedderburn put the colours down on a table, stepped forward and shook Aeneas MacRoy by the hand. ‘Well, this is a fine meeting. And you have kept this all that time? That was a dangerous thing to do in the first years.’

  ‘Ah, weel, there’s nae bulk tae it.’

  ‘You shame me, that it ever left my hand.’

  ‘I think there was little tae be shamed aboot that day, wi us being sae young, sir. The shame was in the men that chose tae fecht on that ground.’

  ‘Ah, now, Aeneas, we’ll not rake over all that – not now, at any rate. But you, well, you saved yourself?’

  ‘Aye. When I had left aff greetin I ran aw the way tae Inverness and a woman hid me in her roof for a month, and I was that wee they never kent I was there. And efter the month I walked back tae Dundee, whaur my mither bade.’

  ‘You had a father?’

  ‘He was deid lang afore. That’s why I ran aff tae join the Prince’s army, though my mither didna want me tae. When I got hame she begged a future for me frae the minister. I’d haen some schooling, sir, I could read and write, and the minister thocht I would prosper if I got mair. He pit me in for a mortification at the grammar school, and they gied me it. They taught me Latin, and mathematics, and logic, and a wheen ither things. I was there fower year, and when I cam oot, I wasna the drummer laddie that gaed in.’

  ‘You had more book-learning than I ever had,’ said Wedderburn. He found glasses and a bottle of whisky, and poured them drams. ‘Here’s to the auld cause, then,’ he said, and they both drank, but there was a little awkwardness in it. ‘It is finished now, of course,’ Wedderburn added, ‘but there’s no disgrace in toasting what’s past.’

  ‘And whit’s tae come,’ said Aeneas MacRoy, raising his glass, and they drank a
gain. Sir John asked how he now lived, and Aeneas told him about his tiny school in Dundee. As he talked, Wedderburn’s glance kept sliding to the colours lying on the table.

  ‘Ye’ll have acquired a good deal more knowledge, then, over the years?’

  ‘Oh, aye. I hae the French, leastwise I can read and write it though I dinna speak it aften or weel, and the Scriptures of course, and the algebra and geometry and suchlike. I can gie the lads as guid a grounding as they’ll get withoot gaun tae the college, if their faithers let them stay.’

  ‘They don’t always appreciate your efforts?’

  ‘If ye’re a fermer ye set mair store by your son’s muckle hauns than by his Latin. If ye’re a merchant ye carena hoo he spells, sae being’s he can coont. I canna blame them but it means the attendance is gey irregular.’

  ‘And the fees too?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Wedderburn was silent for a moment, contemplating. ‘I have a fellow here that’s anxious to get an education,’ he said at last, ‘and I am happy that he should get one. Nothing fancy, but to read and write and so forth. Would you come out to teach him?’

  ‘I would. But it’s a lang road for jist the ae student.’

  ‘I’d make it worth your while. And it wouldn’t need to be often – he only wants to read and write a little. I don’t want him getting ideas above his station. And in a few years there will be more students for you, God willing. Wedderburns. I would want them to get a good Scotch education – straight, honest, useful. You might be the man to provide that. Not that they may not need some other expertise. A music teacher if there’s lassies; a fencing master for the boys. But what was it you said, a good grounding …?’

  ‘I can dae that and mair.’

  ‘You’re direct. That’s a good Scotch trait. I may not speak much Scotch these days but I have not forgotten where I’m from.’

  ‘That’s why ye cam back. Ye dinna speak Scotch but ye soond it. And I ken there’s a fashion amang the gentles for riddin themsels o Scotch words – weel, I hae the English, and can teach it.’ He paused. ‘I have trained myself to stop and start my Scotch like a spigot.’ This last sentence was delivered with a deliberate, slow emphasis, its broad vowels and burred consonants much reduced.