She stopped to look up at him, gauging his mood. Would he welcome her news or think only of Leana in distant Twyneholm? Might it spur him toward love or drive him away forever? Och! ’Twas enough to carry his son in her arms and his seed in her womb without bearing the weight of fear as well. She would throw caution to the Galloway winds and tell him.
“Jamie, I do have a saicret.” Rose slid her hands inside his, reveling in their rough strength. “A canny lad like you has nae doubt jaloused what I’m about to tell you.” Though he did not pull her closer, she had his complete attention. “You’ll remember Dr. Gilchrist came in February and gave me some terrible news.”
Sympathy shone in his eyes. “About your being barren?”
“Aye.” She took a steadying breath, watching his face. “He was … wrong.”
Jamie gripped her hands. “Meaning you’re …”
Rose nodded, too overwhelmed to speak. Did the hope in his voice match her own?
He planted a fervent kiss on her forehead. “Rose, that is … wonderful news.”
“Aye, ’Tis.” She could barely see him through a shimmer of tears. “Oh, Jamie, I hoped you might be … glad.”
“Glad?” He pulled her into his arms. “I am more than that, lass. Whether son or daughter, ’Tis a blessing from God.”
She sank into his embrace, knowing he would not mind if her tears dampened his shirt. “ ’Twill be another week or two before we may know for certain,” she cautioned him, though her heart was as sure as if she already held the babe in her arms. A son. She was convinced of that as well. Jamie’s. And mine.
Jamie leaned back to gaze down at her. “Shall we keep this our saicret then?” When she nodded, he said nothing for a moment, though his brow creased. “Your father must be the first to know,” he finally said. “I’ll not inform him until after we’ve made our arrangements to leave for Glentrool. Then we’ll tell Neda, Duncan, and the others.” He held up a finger in mock warning. “Not a word until I say so.”
“Agreed.” Rose bit her tongue before she asked, “But what of Leana? When shall I tell her?” There would be time enough to write before they left Auchengray. Rose imagined Leana unfolding such a letter, standing by Burnside’s meager firelight to read it. Would her sister be happy for her? Or devastated at the news? Leana, forgive me. That’s how she would begin the letter. ‘Tis God’s faithfulness, not my own. I will cherish this child as I cherish your Ian. For I love him dearly, my sister. As I love you.
From behind them came the snap of a twig. “Ye’ll forgive an auld woman for visitin’ whaur she’s not invited.” They both turned to find Neda moving between the flowering trees, a fretful Ian in her arms and a look of chagrin on her face. “None of the lasses could make the boy happy. He’s wantin’ his mither and faither, is all.”
Jamie stepped back and winked at Rose, well out of Neda’s sight. “Here’s the mother of the hour.”
Her throat tightened. My sweet Ian. Was she truly his mother now? Ever since they’d tumbled down the hill, he seemed hesitant around her, and no wonder. Rose reached out her hands to him and her heart as well. “Will you trust me, Ian?” she said softly, brushing away the last of her tears. “Will you let me hold you if I promise never to let go?”
Please, God. Let him come to me. Let him forgive me.
Ian blinked at her with Leana’s blue gray eyes. Bright and clear. His dear mouth, so like Jamie’s, smiled at her. Smiled! And when she stretched out her arms, Ian stretched out his. “Ma-ma-ma-ma!” he squealed and fell into her embrace.
Author Notes
Give me but one hour of Scotland,
Let me see it ere I die.
WILLIAM EDMONDSTOUNE AYTOUN
An hour, a day, a week, a year—one can never get enough of Scotland. From Glasgow to Edinburgh, Skye to Aberdeen, Inverness to Dumfries, I have traversed my adopted country in every season, taken copious notes, and snapped endless photos, endeavoring to make Scotland come alive for my readers.
Alas, what I could not manage was a visit to the eighteenth century, so I depended on antiquarian books for my inspiration. A growing resource library of six hundred titles, including Andrew Edgar’s Old Church Life in Scotland (1885) and John Watson’s The Scot of the Eighteenth Century (1907), served as a valuable passport for traveling through time and place.
No matter which book I turned to, one truth resounded: From the Reformation to the early nineteenth century, the kirk held sway in Scottish society. No law was higher, and no voice spoke with more authority. The kirk sessions did indeed require the reading of banns to announce a pending marriage and the subscribing of bands to hold a sinner to his or her promise never to commit certain offenses again. I adapted Leana’s band from one recorded in Mauchline parish in 1749 by a shoemaker who had insulted the minister and cursed his mother—grave offenses in his day. His pledge was signed simply A.B.
The Scottish Paraphrases is a collection of the earliest hymns of the Church of Scotland, though many congregations would have insisted on singing only the metrical psalms. Two hymns featured in Fair Is the Rose are from the 1745 edition. According to Douglas Maclagan’s The Scottish Paraphrases (1889), the author of the hymn in chapter 7 is unknown, and the hymn in chapter 48 was written by the beloved hymnist Isaac Watts (1674–1748).
The descriptions of Lillias Brown and her eerie cottage were based on several accounts in J. Maxwell Wood’s Witchcraft and Superstitious Record in the South-Western Districts of Scotland (1911). Despite their healthy fear of witches, rural Scottish folk celebrated Hallowmas Eve with wild abandon. Robert Burns’s poem “Halloween,” featured in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), details various customs of that unholy night, including some of the divination rites that Rose puts to use.
Sweetheart Abbey, where Neil and Rose meet for their autumn tryst, still dominates the landscape of modern New Abbey, even as its ruins grace the back cover of this novel. Founded in 1273 by Lady Devorgilla in memory of her late husband, John Balliol, the Cistercian monastery was wholly devoted to the worship of God. The Reformation of the sixteenth century brought about the demise of Dulce Cor. In 1779 the roofless abbey was acquired by a group of local gentlemen who made certain Sweetheart would no longer be treated as a stone quarry.
The farms, towns, and geographic features in Fair Is the Rose appear on detailed maps of Galloway from the last two centuries. The spellings used here are based on Sir John Sinclair’s The Statistical Account of Scotland (1799). Seldom did I write a page without turning to the volumes for Kirkcudbrightshire and Dumfriesshire. Truly an amazing resource.
Carlyle School for Young Ladies was patterned after similar establishments in Dumfries. Reverend William Burnside’s 1792 entry in the Statistical Account notes that “two or three boarding schools for the education of young ladies” existed during Rose’s time. As to the sort of instruction one might have expected from Mistress Carlyle, J. Burton’s Lectures on Female Education and Manners (1799) and The Mirror of Graces (1811), penned by “a Lady of Distinction,” were both useful and highly entertaining.
The Dumfries Weekly Journal, which Rose found so fascinating, was initially published in 1777 as the town’s first political broadsheet. Conservative, provincial, and always in good taste, the Journal remained in print until 1833. Though Queensberry School is fictitious, Queensberry Square is indeed real. Laid out in 1770 as a public marketplace, the square later served as a ceremonial parade ground for the Royal Dumfries Volunteers during the French Revolutionary Wars.
The “auld alliance” between Scotland and France, to which Jamie alludes, dates to the 1295 treaty between John Balliol and Philip IV. Over the centuries the loosely defined alliance waxed and waned amid a steady exchange of soldiers, brides, bottles of claret, and culinary arts. The French language traveled north as well; many a Scot would have been conversant in the language of diplomacy.
The names chosen for the characters in Fair Is the Rose should ring true to reside
nts of Galloway. First and last names collected from tombstones and census records of the time period were combined to create our fictional folk. In chapter 23, however, a well-known historical figure makes an appearance: Robert Burns (1759–1796) was very much a part of Dumfriesshire in 1790. Living as a tenant farmer at Ellisland Farm in Dunscore parish north of Dumfries, Burns was a ploughman, a poet, and an exciseman. The Globe Inn was his favorite howff, or public house, and the snuggery his usual haunt. In the brief scene included here, Burns is celebrating a birthday—his own—since the date in our story is 25 January. Rabbie Burns would have been thirty-one the night he met a nervous Rose McBride at the Globe, which was indeed owned by a Mr. William Hyslop of Lochend in Newabbey parish.
Sir Robert Grierson of Lag (1655–1733), Steward of Kirkcudbright, was dead and buried long before Rose met Jane Grierson in Dumfries. John Mactaggart, in his Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia (1824), declares Sir Robert “one of the most infernal villains Scotland ever gave birth to.” A persecutor of the Covenanters, Grierson presided over the trial and execution of the Wigtown martyrs, was excommunicated as an adulterer, and later imprisoned as a Jacobite.
When Leana and Jamie visit Glensone, they are treated to fiddle tunes chosen from those described in George Emmerson’s Scotland through Her Country Dances (1967). The jig “Johnny McGill” was named for an itinerant dancing master from Ayrshire who composed the tune. Burns would later add lyrics and call it “Tibbie Dunbar.” An even older tune is “Green Grow the Rashes,” first identified as “Cou thou me the raschyes green” in a book of Scottish music from 1549. Burns added lyrics to this tune as well, and his verses were amusingly autobiographical: “The sweetest hours that e’er I spend, are spent among the lasses, O.”
“Croup” was an old Scottish name for a disease frequently found in rural Fife, Ayrshire, and Galloway, as noted in John Comrie’s History of Scottish Medicine to 1860 (1927) and as experienced by our poor Rose. Dr. Francis Home (1719–1813) was the first to describe croup in 1765 and to recommend a tracheotomy as the solution. The disease would be properly diagnosed and named a half-century later by Pierre Bretonneau, who called it La Diphthérite—diphtheria.
Leana had good cause for concern when Rose fell ill, for medicine was a primitive art in the eighteenth century, and bloodletting—phlebotomy—was a common practice. The few instruments described in Dr. Gilchrist’s etui were often the only tools at a physician’s disposal. No wonder Scottish folk turned to the old ways when illness struck! Saint Queran’s Well—one of some six hundred Scottish healing wells—still exists near the hamlet of Islesteps. When the well was cleaned out in 1870, coins were discovered from the reign of Elizabeth I. Today rags left by more recent visitors can be found tied to the nearby bushes.
Rose’s recipe for marmalade was adapted from my favorite book of Scottish recipes, F. Marian McNeill’s The Scots Kitchen with Old Time Recipes (1932). A tourist soon learns that no “full Scottish breakfast” is complete without a rack of toast served with a huge slab of butter and a pot of marmalade, as well as a bowl of porridge doused in rich cream. Of marmalade and porridge McNeill writes, “These two dishes are Scotland’s chief culinary gifts to the world.” Scottish porridge is smoother and paler in color than the hearty, lumpy oatmeal served in America. Raisins, however, are not served on the side; quite a few eyebrows rose round the breakfast table when I requested currants and dumped them into my porridge!
The herbs in Leana’s physic garden and stillroom were chosen with care from two recent books: Tess Darwin’s The Scots Herbal: The Plant Lore of Scotland (1996) and Scottish Plants for Scottish Gardens (1996) by Jill, Duchess of Hamilton. Mrs. M. Grieve’s recently reprinted two-volume set, A Modern Herbal (1931), is a grand resource for those of us who want to learn about wild arum, cowslip, shepherd’s-purse, comfrey, and valerian. The list of medicinal herbs is endless and ever fascinating.
I am grateful to be surrounded by editors and friends who cherish such details, as I do. Heartfelt thanks to my editorial team at WaterBrook Press—Laura Barker, Dudley Delffs, Carol Bartley, and Paul Hawley—and to Benny Gillies, my favorite Scottish bookseller, cartographer, and proofreader. His well-tended bookshop near Castle Douglas in the village of Kirkpatrick Durham is brimming with Scottish books, maps, and prints. Do visit him online at www.bennygillies.co.uk. I am also indebted to several “specialist readers”: Blessings to Madame Susan Thompson for her command of French, Barbara Wiedenbeck for her shepherding skills, Verna McClellan for her expertise in spinning and carding, Leesa Gagel for her eagle eye, and Ginia Hairston for her exceptional horse sense. Finally, I can never thank enough my agent and friend, Sara Fortenberry, who read the manuscript more times than I can count and offered ongoing encouragement and wise direction. Bless you, dearie.
Kindly join me on a virtual tour of the Scottish countryside featured in Fair Is the Rose and Thorn in My Heart via my Web site: www.LizCurtisHiggs.com. You’ll also find there my complete Scottish bibliography, additional historical notes, diaries from my trips to Scotland, readers’ comments, links to my favorite Scottish sites, a discography of Celtic music and soundtracks that inspire me as I write, and some uniquely Scottish recipes.
If you would enjoy receiving my free newsletter, The Graceful Heart, printed and mailed just once a year, please contact me directly:
Liz Curtis Higgs
P.O. Box 43577
Louisville, KY 40253-0577
Or visit my Web site:
www.LizCurtisHiggs.com
Do join Jamie, Leana, and Rose once more for Whence Came a Prince, which brings their story to a rousing conclusion. Until then, dear reader, you are a blissin!
Fair Is the Rose
READER’S GUIDE
In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time.
THOMAS CARLYLE
1. Fair Is the Rose begins with the very scene where Thorn in My Heart ends … but this time we see things from Rose’s viewpoint. She soon tells Jamie, “What is right and what is fair are not necessarily the same.” Is that a true statement? Does Rose have a rightful claim to Jamie’s heart? Does he treat Rose fairly in this difficult situation? If you could advise Rose at this turning point in her life, what would you say to her?
2. Lachlan McBride cautions Rose, “Your bonny face may open doors better left closed.” How do Rose’s fair face and figure work for her, and how do they work against her? Does charming Rose elicit sympathy from you … or jealousy? Do you find yourself rooting for her or against her? Which of the following quotes best describes Rose McBride: “A rosebud set with willful little thorns” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson) or “That crimson rose how sweet and fair!” (Robert Burns)?
3. In Thorn in My Heart, Jamie’s behavior is often less than honorable. In Fair Is the Rose, we find him becoming more trustworthy. Describe the positive attributes you find in Jamie McKie. And in what ways might he disappoint you? What are Jamie’s weaknesses, and how do they affect his relationships with Rose and with Leana?
4. Is Leana “too good to be true,” or can you relate to her struggles and flaws? What incidents have most influenced Leana’s life to date? In particular, how has motherhood changed Leana? When she stands up to the kirk session, what thoughts and feelings run through your mind and heart? And when she flees to Twyneholm, are you proud of Leana or disappointed in her? Could she remain at Auchengray in such circumstances? Could you?
5. What do you make of the disciplinary actions of the early Scottish kirk—the session meetings, the repentance stool, the jougs, the subscribing of bands, the testimonial letters? How might conventions like these create a better society? And what are the dangers inherent in such practices? How would you compare the role of religion in today’s culture with its role in eighteenth-century Scotland?
6. Each of the three main characters—Jamie, Leana, Rose—would be justified in echoing Rose’s oft-stated claim, “ ’Tis not fair!” In what ways have they been wronged and by whom? Which one of the thr
ee has the most cause for complaint? Describe how each person handles unfair treatment and what that says about his or her character. How else does the concept of fairness play out in this story?
7. The epigraphs that introduce each chapter are meant to foreshadow the action that follows or to capture the essence of a character’s struggles. Chapter 55 opens: “For every rose a thorn doth bear.” What thorns press into Rose’s tender heart in this chapter? Choose another epigraph from the novel that strikes you as particularly appropriate, and explain its significance to the story.
8. Rose tries everything to heal her barren womb—from cantrips and herbs to a predawn pilgrimage to Saint Queran’s Well. Think of the various reasons she is so desperate for a child of her own. Which ones ring the most true to you? In what ways might modern women define themselves by their childbearing abilities?
9. In his poem “Halloween,” Robert Burns describes “the principal charms and spells of that night, so big with prophecy to the peasantry in the west of Scotland”:
Some merry, friendly, country-folks
Together did convene,
To burn their nits, an’ pou their stocks,
An’ haud their Halloween
Fu’ blythe that night.
Do the Scottish traditions of dunking for apples, building bonfires, and carving faces in turnips conjure up fond memories of your own childhood autumns? How has your view of Halloween changed over the years? What do you make of Rose’s many divining rites? Are they harmless diversions or risky forays into a darker world?
10. Do you consider Jane Grierson the “bad girl” of Fair Is the Rose? Or might that title belong to Lillias Brown? How and why do these women make a mark on young, impressionable Rose? Perhaps you’ve found yourself drawn to such risktakers at one time or another. What is their appeal? Might they serve some divine purpose in our lives? in Rose’s life?
11. When they share their testimonies before the kirk session, Rose, then Jamie, and finally Leana strive to “speak the truth in love.” Review their statements in chapters 40, 41, and 42. What truths do you find there? And what untruths do you discover? What one word might you choose to describe Rose’s testimony? and Jamie’s? and Leana’s? Was the outcome of the session meeting what you expected? Why or why not?
Fair Is the Rose Page 47