Lady Magdalen

by Robin Jenkins

  At the risk of showing how dull she was she spoke what was in her mind. ‘You think then, Father, that women who wait at home and look after their children are the happiest?’

  ‘Indeed they are.’

  ‘But what if there is war and their husbands are killed or wounded?’

  He had no answer ready and doubted if there was one in all his books that would have satisfied her simple soul.

  ‘Will there be war, Father?’

  Yes, there would be, and the worst kind, Scotsmen killing Scotsmen for dubious principles. It had happened many times before. He could foresee a time when he and James Graham would be on opposite sides. That would make poor Magdalen’s waiting all the harder.

  ‘Not if we are sensible, my pet.’

  Which was the most futile of hopes. Small wonder she shook her head, representing not only the women of Scotland but of all the world, throughout history. He was struck by her expression of intense anguish. He had not realised she was capable of such deep feeling. If she was spared, if disease or accident or childbirth did not cause her to die early, she might well grow into a wife that even James Graham would be proud of.

  16

  IT WAS A sunny day in May when James set out. White doves fluttered about his head. He would be pleased, Magdalen knew, for he would see them as a good omen. If they had been black crows, he might have put off his departure to another day. Fate’s warnings must be heeded by Fate’s favourites.

  Gathered in the courtyard to cheer him and his companions off was the whole household, from Lord Carnegie to the small ragged boy whose task it was to dart out and scoop up the horse dung. A stranger would never have taken Montrose for a man about to leave his wife and infant sons for a year or so. In a long red cloak and with red feathers in his hat, he managed his big horse expertly as it curvetted and struck sparks from the cobbles, frightening Lord John, now aged three, into hiding behind his mother’s skirts. She held baby James in her arms.

  Lilias, James’s sister, now living in seclusion in the ancestral home, Kincardine Castle, had come with her two children to Kinnaird to see him off. At the last minute she ran forward and seized his leg, crying something that could not be made out because of the clattering of hooves and fluttering of wings, but that it was a final appeal her attitude of desperation and his of embarrassed concern made evident. Was the poor lady, they wondered, begging him not to kill her husband as he had publicly vowed to do but instead to bring him safely home to her despite his sentence of excommunication? And was she also asking him to tell their sister Katherine that she too was forgiven and would be welcomed home? Did she think, in her despair, that her brother, so young and so confident in his powers, could produce those miracles of reconciliation?

  Knowing him so well now, Magdalen saw that Jamie, though he loved and pitied Lilias, was displeased with her for spoiling his departure and indeed threatening his whole venture. A distraught hysterical woman was not auspicious.

  Suddenly, as she let go and sank to her knees, he turned his horse towards the gateway, followed by his kinsman Graham of Morphy, his personal attendant Mr John Lambie, and his clerk Mr Thomas Saintserf. With a last wave of their hats they cantered through the gateway and, within seconds, were out of sight.

  The boy dashed out with his bucket. He used his hands as a scoop.

  On her knees Lilias picked up handfuls of dung and spread it over her yellow hair.

  Handing Baby James to Janet, Magdalen went to console her sister-in-law. She helped her to her feet, removed the dung from her head, and embraced her.

  The women servants whispered what a shame it was that the two beautiful young ladies were separated from their husbands. Nothing in the world, they thought, neither beauty nor riches, could compensate for not having your man safe and loving by your side every night.

  Lord Carnegie came over, trying to look and sound cheerful. ‘Well, let us hope God looks after him and sends him back to us wiser and more content.’

  Then, mumbling some words of consolation to Lilias, he hurried with obvious relief back to his study, where he would resume his deep consideration of what was for the good of the country. Yet, thought Magdalen, in the people who made up the country he had little interest. Governing was like playing chess: the pieces were of flesh and blood but they were to be moved about as if made of wood or ivory, without emotions, hopes, joys, and sorrows of their own. She loved her father but, like all statesmen, he was not to be trusted. Had he not admitted himself that the best were corrupted most?

  She thought of Jamie, who had gone off so joyfully, having left behind the burdens and boredoms of home. When she had timidly told him that she too would like one day to visit far-off lands, he had laughed. Would she ever find the courage to tell him that it was she and all the women like her who brought up their children and took on the responsibilities of home-making, who were the true sustainers of their country, and that men like Jamie, who squabbled in Assemblies and Parliaments or killed each other in battles did not matter in the end?

  17

  WHEN JAMIE WAS having his portrait painted in Aberdeen as a wedding gift from the city which had just made him a freeman, he had commissioned the same artist, Mr Jameson, to come to Kinnaird and do a companion portrait of his countess. He had stipulated that it should not be done soon but in two or three years’ time, when, though he did not say so, she would no longer be a child and might have some character in her face worth painting.

  About two years after Jamie’s departure for the Continent, the artist, accompanied by two assistants, on a journey to Edinburgh, stopped off at Kinnaird to carry out his commission. He made it plain, being a brusque little man, that he regarded it as a duty from which he expected little satisfaction. He had heard that Lady Magdalen was a dull girl who would make a dull subject and the result would inevitably be a dull picture, however conscientiously executed. His attitude swiftly changed, for, being a shrewd judge of character, he saw at once that here was a young woman whose beauty was not so much physical as spiritual, a much rarer kind and well-nigh impossible to portray in paint, but a great challenge nonetheless. Often, when painting a portrait of a lady, or indeed of a gentleman, of distressing plainness or downright ugliness, he had had to depend on ostentatious dress or striking backgrounds. The opposite would be required here, where nothing else should matter except the subject’s face, into which would have to be put sweetness, intelligence, deep feeling, sadness, and by no means least a sense of fun. For Mr Jameson, after only one or two conversations with her, discovered that the young Countess of Montrose was the gentlest of ironists who saw through pretensions, his own included. With other aristocratic ladies he had had to use flattery and obsequiousness but with her he could be as free and natural as with his own daughters. The result was he had never painted a portrait with more zest and excitement, even though he knew from the start that it could not be as good as it should: her smile, humorous and yet tragic, was beyond his powers to delineate. He did not think there was a painter alive who could have done it, not even the great Sir Anthony Van Dyck. But he did his best, worked very hard, and was inspired more than usual. During the three weeks that it took, he often went to the hall to study the portrait of her husband, the earl, for he well knew the folly of making the wife outshine the husband – this had got him into trouble before – but he was determined to capture what the young lady had in abundance but what her husband hadn’t a trace of, that was to say, true humility, in Mr Jameson’s experience, the rarest of qualities, especially among aristocrats.

  Her father came to look at the portrait when it was finished. After gazing at it for quite a while he shook his head and murmured ‘Poor Magdalen.’ He then went off without explaining what he had meant, but Mr Jameson, on reflection, decided that it had nothing to do with the quality of the painting, indeed it could be taken as a compliment, for surely it had to do with the capacity for suffering which gave the young lady her sad distinction and which had been so fortunately – in an artisti
c sense – caught by the painter.

  The whole household, in twos and threes, crept into the great hall to look at it. Some were moved to tears. Afterwards in the kitchen it was agreed that the picture had reminded them of old Jessie Gilmour’s prophecy – it had been one of the counts against her – that Lady Magdalen would never ‘scart a grey heid’. How would that early and lamentable death come about? Would she just fall sick and die? Would it be the result of too difficult a birth? Would it be an accident, like an overturned coach or a fall downstairs? They foresaw a time when the young earl would greatly regret having gone off to foreign parts instead of staying at home and enjoying his wife’s company while she was still young and well. No one he met on his travels, whether princess or queen, would, they felt sure, be as worth getting to know as his own Lady Magdalen.

  18

  ONE SUNNY AFTERNOON Francis Gowrie rode over to Kinnaird to give his verdict on Mr Jameson’s portrait of Magdalen. He had another purpose: to invite her to Mintlaw Castle, where the embellishments were at last completed. His wife Nancy did not accompany him. Not even that intrepid horsewoman dared risk the journey, for she was eight months pregnant.

  He still had his black beard and, what suited him less, his cynical smile. Though, from all reports, his Nancy was a jolly young woman – out of the corner of her mouth Janet had whispered ‘common’ – she had not so far, it seemed, cured him of his disgust with humanity. Perhaps, thought Magdalen, his child would.

  He stood beside her in the great hall, looking up at the portrait and sneering.

  She wondered what was disgusting him this time: was it the painter’s lack of skill or the dolefulness of the subject?

  ‘Well, well,’ he said at last, ‘who would have thought a Scotsman of our day and age could have done it?’

  ‘Done what, Francis?’

  ‘Recognised true spirituality and put it on canvas. Da Vinci could not have done it better. A wee loon frae Aiberdeen tae. Maybe there’s hope for us yet.’

  ‘You like it, then?’

  ‘It’s magnificent. He has given you immortality. In a hundred years, in three hundred, when the rest of us are all forgotten, people will look at it and wonder who that ethereal creature was.’

  ‘That doleful creature, you mean.’

  ‘Only the obtuse will think that.’

  ‘Will there be obtuse people in three hundred years, Francis?’

  ‘In three thousand. They will be in command then too. Choice spirits then as now will have to seek refuge in beautiful artefacts. You must come and see Mintlaw. Nancy is eager to meet you.’

  ‘I would like to meet her.’

  ‘Will your father allow it?’

  But did she need her father’s permission? She was no longer his responsibility, being a married woman. Did she need her husband’s? But Jamie was far away and, judging by his rare letters, not thinking of her very much.

  ‘The day after tomorrow,’ she said.

  He was delighted. ‘I’ll send a carriage.’

  ‘My father has three carriages.’

  ‘Stay for a few days.’

  She shook her head. ‘For one night only. You see, I am feeding Baby James myself.’

  It was he who blushed, not she. ‘You really are a choice spirit, Magdalen. You shame us all.’

  Her father did object to the visit, not on his own account, he assured her, but on her husband’s. James, he reminded her, did not approve of Gowrie or of Gowrie’s choice of a wife. In James’s eyes, Gowrie was a traitor to his country, in that he would refuse to fight for it, and to his class, in that he had married a shopkeeper’s daughter for the sake of her large dowry.

  ‘Francis is my friend,’ she said. ‘I knew him before I knew Jamie.’

  Her father could have pointed out the ingenuousness of her remark. In the war that loomed on the horizon friendship would not deter men from killing one another. What would count most was self-interest. Poor Magdalen seemed unable to see that: she was still too child-like. He did not want to be the one to disillusion her. Let events do it. It was to be hoped, though, that she had hardened her heart by then, otherwise it would surely be broken. Perhaps visiting Mintlaw would be a step towards that necessary obduracy.

  19

  AFTER THE SPELL of dry weather the roads were firm but still rough and stony. Janet was fearful. She did not trust coaches, which were always breaking down or overturning. Before getting in beside her mistress, she ordered Harry Meldrum to drive slowly and carefully.

  Not for crabbed Janet’s sake but for his young mistress’s, Harry was as careful as he could but, even so, the ten-mile journey was exhausting and bruising. At one point, a steep brae, Janet had to get out and push, with black cattle gazing at her over a drystone dyke. She was confirmed in her opinion that contraptions like coaches were against the Lord’s will. He had given us legs and, if we didn’t use them as He had intended, then we were showing disobedience and disrespect. It would serve us right if we lost the power of them altogether and were reduced to crawling on hands and knees like monkeys. Laughing, Harry shouted down that in England there were roads so smooth and coaches so well sprung that their occupants could drink wine without spilling a drop, while travelling at ten miles an hour.

  ‘I always kent the English were an ungodly lot,’ she shrieked. ‘Dae they no’ ken the Lord meant us to stay in the place where we were born and no’ to go gallivanting aboot?’

  Magdalen thought of someone who during the past three years had been doing a great deal of gallivanting about. Would his travels have changed Jamie much? Now that he had had experience of the world and had met many important and interesting people, would he find her even duller than before?

  They passed through the gateway in the high thick wall that enclosed the Mintlaw policies and began to catch glimpses through the trees of the tall massive house with its five storeys, small windows, and several turrets. It had been built as a keep by Francis’s ancestors in turbulent times and had withstood many sieges. Safe in it, Francis himself hoped to keep at bay the forces of bigotry and barbarism.

  Janet had become uneasy. ‘They say he got a chapel built for the workmen. Maist o’ them were Papists.’

  ‘So were our forebears, Janet.’

  ‘But thanks to the Lord they saw the light in time.’

  ‘Were there no good things at all in the old religion?’

  ‘Whit a thing to ask, my lady! It was a’ idolatry.’

  Francis came running out to greet them and hand them down from the coach. He helped Janet down too, to her great embarrassment. Behind him, more slowly but just as eagerly hospitable, came his wife, hugely pregnant, though cheerful and red-cheeked.

  They would have struck Magdalen a pair as ill-suited as herself and Jamie if it hadn’t been so obvious that Nancy was very much in love with her husband. Do I, she wondered, give the same impression to visitors? She did not think so and felt a shiver of foreboding.

  Nancy showed her goodness of heart, and perhaps her commonness by the enthusiasm of her welcome. She hugged and kissed Magdalen and gave Janet the friendliest of greetings.

  Janet was not pleased. She knew her place and would have been more at ease if she had been treated like the servant she was. She did not like, either, the way Mintlaw kept looking at the mistress as if she was his wife and not this blatherskite with the loud laughter.

  She had been prepared to some degree by Bella Morton’s descriptions of the house but her imagination had not been able to cope with the glories she had been told about and, in any case, Bella was known to be a great exaggerator. ‘You ken, Janet, it’s jist whit you micht picture heaven to be, except maybe for ane or twa things.’ Two of those things stood right there in the entrance hall, a life-sized white marble figure of a man whose hair was curly and not just on his head either, and also the statue of a woman holding a harp in her hands and therefore making no effort to hide her bosom or private parts. Thank God there she was as bald as a new-born babe.

&nbs
p; Janet’s mind fell into confusion. She did not want to be fascinated by these figures, especially the one so majestically male, but she was: she could not keep her eyes off it. Bella had not exaggerated. This was what heaven must be like: black-and-white marble on the floor (instead of grimy stone and sawdust as in Kinnaird), pink-and-white plaster on the walls (instead of bare stone or scuffed wood panelling), and ceilings splendid with paintings of angels with wings blowing trumpets. And in heaven there could be no shame since everyone was sinless.

  All the same, remembering her duty as chaperone, she wanted to run forward and turn Lady Magdalen’s eyes away from these un-Presbyterian sights, but Lady Magdalen was looking not at all shocked, on the contrary she was delighted and entranced. What was the world coming to, when a young married noblewoman found pleasure in looking at statues and pictures of naked men and women? Mr Henderson would have been running about with a torch in one hand and a hammer in the other, burning and smashing. As a good Presbyterian, Janet would have had to urge him on, she would have had to help him burn and smash, and yet would she not have felt a twinge or two of regret and even of guilt? Could it really be true that all these beautiful things were the Devil’s, as Mr Henderson would claim?

  Suddenly she noticed another wonder: absent was the faint stink of human waste that pervaded Kinnaird (and other big houses) in spite of all the emptying and scrubbing. In its place was a pleasant perfume. It seemed that Mintlaw had transformed the privies too.

  She kept half-expecting to find, in the next room, God Himself seated on a throne of red and gold.

  As a small child she had been taught by her mother never to ask the price of things: it was rude, and all the more so if they were gifts, and somehow she realised that young Mintlaw had not collected all these grand and beautiful objects for his own selfish enjoyment but also for that of everyone who came to see them, not just now but for many years afterwards.