Lady Magdalen

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘No one can prevail in Scotland if he has the Kirk against him. Your James has been excommunicated. He is doomed, therefore. You are still a young woman. You can marry again, this time a man of your own choice. Father has already agreed to it. He is sorry now that he married you off to Montrose. I said at the time it was a mistake but no one listened to me.’

  James had brought with him Mr Stevenson, the Dundee lawyer, who was to make arrangements for the management of the Kincardine estate while she was away. He had done it before while she and James were living at Kinnaird in the early days of their marriage but this time there were additional matters for him to attend to. Lady Magdalen set out certain conditions which he had to agree to but, inwardly, he thought that, since her illness was responsible, it would be easy for him to obtain a dispensation to break any promise he had to make. She did not seem to understand that the estate and various other Graham properties were heavily mortgaged, to help pay for her husband’s expensive war. Otherwise, surely she would not have insisted that all servants paid off should be given generous compensation or that pensions paid to various tenants must be honourably maintained. When he said he did not know where the money would come from, she said that she had put together a number of her belongings which she wanted him to sell on her behalf. Among them was the painting of herself by Mr Jameson of Aberdeen. Sir Francis Gowrie of Mintlaw had once offered to buy it. He would give a good price. The transaction, though, must be kept confidential.

  Mr Stevenson felt obliged to ask if her husband would sanction such a sale. Her husband, she replied, had never liked the painting: he thought she looked much too doleful in it. So she did, thought the lawyer but, as he was to tell his wife when he got back to Dundee, not half as doleful as she looked now, when the ravages of disease were turning her skin yellow and causing dark shadows under her eyes. He could not help being amazed that this small fragile young woman, if her husband took over the country on the King’s behalf, as he seemed very capable of doing, could become the foremost lady in the land, after the Queen.

  21

  ANXIOUS TO TAKE advantage of the dry weather and firm roads, James lost no time in organising the journey to Kinnaird. There were three carriages, one for Magdalen and Mrs Witherspoon, one for Robert and little David and their two nurses, and the third for valuables, including paintings of past Grahams and a kist containing documents relating to the Graham family. James merely shrugged his shoulders when told that Magdalen’s own portrait was not included among the other paintings. Mr Stevenson was taking this to Dundee to be sold: she needed the money. It seemed a sensible idea to James. The money would come in useful and he had never cared for the painting anyway. Mr Jameson had been a bit too clever and given little Magdalen qualities she had never really possessed.

  The cavalcade set out early, in sunshine, though the air was icy. Everyone’s breath was visible. It might have been a funeral, so quiet and tearful were all those, servants and tenants, gathered in the courtyard. They knew they would never see Lady Magdalen again. She had to be cleeked to her carriage and helped up into it but, even so, she paused to look round at them all and wave. They saw that she was in tears and they marvelled, as they had often done before, how, though so young, she could have the dignity of a great lady and at the same time a shared humanity. If she had also at times a peculiar remoteness, it could have been caused by pain or by the strain of having for her husband the most hated man in Scotland. The story was that she had been strange when a little girl, so much so that her family had been afraid for some time that she wasn’t quite right in the head. But, if she was abnormal, then it would be a better world if everyone was abnormal like her.

  She kept the window open, in spite of the cold. These fields and trees, she would never see them again, and these people beside their miserable dwellings.

  So am I seeing them for the last time, thought Mrs Witherspoon, and thank God for it. It was no grief to her, she had no tears in her eyes, she did not let herself suffer for the sake of clowns hardly any more intelligent than their own pigs. Though as staunch a Presbyterian as any woman, Mrs Witherspoon, in her mistress’s place, would have been wearing crimson satin instead of plain grey cloth, and her fingers would have sparkled with rings, and her neck with necklaces, unlike Lady Magdalen’s, which were unadorned. As she gazed at her mistress, Mrs Witherspoon felt comfortable and safe. In every respect, from plump fingers to plump neck to plump bosom, she was much more womanly. Any stranger glancing in would have taken her for the marquis’s wife and Lady Magdalen for the parson’s widow. But really Mrs Witherspoon did not envy her mistress her high station. It was safer and more comfortable to be one of the people: not a peasant like those grinning dolts, but a citizen of good standing, with money saved up and the freedom to spend it as she pleased.

  In Kinnaird, and even in Holyrood if her husband was victorious, Lady Magdalen would be like a prisoner, partly because of her poor health but also because she would be allowed to meet only persons of equal rank to her own; and, from what little Mrs Witherspoon had seen of those grand personages, they were not worth meeting. And if the Marquis was defeated and hanged, Lady Magdalen would be despised and disgraced. So Mrs Witherspoon, wearing her most solicitous expression, hugged herself in self-congratulation. She smiled as she reflected that, at a large and busy house like Kinnaird, there would be on the staff gentlemen of substance, who would look with admiration on so handsome a woman as herself. If she found the right man and he made the right offer, she would marry again: not that she pined for a marriage bed – look what it had done to the poor soul opposite her – but she did feel that she had missed something, poor Mr Witherspoon never having been able, owing to too much piety and too little pith, as her mother, now deceased, had once described him.

  In Perth, an incident confirmed Mrs Witherspoon in her belief that she was more fortunate than her mistrsss. It was necessary to stop in the town at an inn so that the ladies, and the two nurses, could use the privies. They could hardly, like men, relieve themselves behind dykes or in woods. At any rate, Mrs Witherspoon could not or rather would not. Lady Magdalen said she wouldn’t mind, thus showing an indelicacy that Mrs Witherspoon had noticed before in high-born ladies.

  Three coaches, attended by a dozen horsemen, attracted attention. A crowd gathered outside the inn. The Graham crest was noticed. Rumours were tossed about. Montrose had been seized and was being taken to Edinburgh. Then, when Lady Magdalen and Mrs Witherspoon came out and climbed into the carriage, someone hit on the truth. ‘It’s Montrose’s wife!’

  Other cries were heard, angry and threatening. ‘What’s the bitch daeing here?’ ‘Drag her oot and dae tae her whit her man did to mine at Tippermuir!’ Faces, twisted with anger, appeared at the window. Mrs Witherspoon was terrified that they would think she was Lady Magdalen. She got ready to scream that she was Mrs Witherspoon, a supporter of the Covenant.

  The danger lasted less than a minute. The mob was swept out of the way by Lord Carnegie and his horsemen, who used as little force as they could, for, after all, the crowd was made up of loyal Presbyterians; most of the men there had signed the Covenant. Mrs Witherspoon had noticed that the women were more vicious than the men. She wasn’t surprised. She had once got her hand badly scarted trying to separate two drunken trollops fighting over a worthless man.

  Lord Carnegie bent down and looked into the carriage. ‘Sorry about that, Magdalen,’ he said, with a chuckle. ‘No harm done?’

  ‘Are the children all right?’

  He laughed. He was remarkably jolly, considering that his sister had almost been mobbed. ‘I don’t think they noticed the children. It’s your husband they’d like to get their hands on.’

  Lady Magdalen lay back on the cushions with her eyes shut. She looked calm but surely did not feel calm.

  Mrs Witherspoon herself was still shaking. She deserved, she thought, extra payment. Having to act as nurse as well as companion was onerous enough, without running the risk of being assaulted.


  ‘Poor creatures,’ whispered Lady Magdalen.

  Mrs Witherspoon had to ask who.

  ‘Those unhappy women.’

  ‘Those wild beasts, if you ask me.’

  ‘No.’

  Mrs Witherspoon waited for more but that one word was all Lady Magdalen said until they reached Kinnaird about two hours later. Night was falling, but Mrs Witherspoon could see that it was indeed a more pleasant place than Kincardine, with spacious grounds, and the house itself, as they approached it up a drive half a mile long, looked really like a house and not a grim fortress like Kincardine. Yes, she could be content here for a year or two. Eligible gentlemen would pay visits, on business and for pleasure. As Lady Magdalen’s companion, she would be able to meet them, she would dine at the same table and sit in the same drawing room. At 35, she was in her prime, still able to bear children, with a body that would entice any virile man. Every night for years she had admired it in its nudity.

  She could not help feeling pity, with a touch of contempt, for the small, emaciated, yellow-faced, worn-out woman opposite her.

  22

  IN SOME OBSCURE way, her father seemed to blame her for all her husband’s misdeeds. He never said so but it was in his face and voice as he told her how many men were killed at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, and Inverlochy, and how many houses of Covenanters had been wantonly burned to the ground, for Montrose, ‘that chivalrous cavalier’, was now waging war as his Irish did, ferociously and without mercy. He took particular pleasure in telling her that one of the houses destroyed had been Mintlaw, Francis Gowrie’s shrine to beauty. A band of Irish, inflamed with bloodlust and usquebaugh, had made no distinction between paintings of the Madonna and Child and paintings of classical gods and goddesses like Apollo and Diana. He did not try to conceal his exultation. Mintlaw, the sceptic, worshipper of beautiful objects, had got what he deserved. Did he think he could stand up in the kirk and accuse godly men of cruelty, and get away with it? Did he think he could fill his house with paintings and sculptures by Papist and atheistic artists and not be punished? The Irish were savages, though, in their own way, Christians. Was it not clever of the Lord to use them to chastise the arrogant unbeliever?

  She asked what had happened to Francis himself and his wife and child.

  Expert in speaking in Parliament and General Assembly, in such a way as to hide his true feelings, her father could not keep from showing a triumphant glee that, in spite of his white beard and senatorial gravity, was childish. ‘I believe Lady Gowrie and the child were safe in Edinburgh when it happened. They had not been living at Mintlaw for some time. Mintlaw himself, I understand, perished in trying to save his toys.’

  The word revealed the poverty of her father’s mind. Yet he was reputed to be one of the wisest men of his generation.

  ‘He was right then,’ she said, ‘in calling us all barbarians.’

  Though possessed of one of the readiest tongues in Scotland, her father could not, in the few seconds before she turned away to weep, find an answer.

  23

  AT KINNAIRD, SOUTHESK was king. Every messenger was brought before him even if the message was not for him personally. So the lone horseman who arrived in March, with a provocative blue ribbon in his cap, was hauled forcibly to the Earl, though he cried that it was the Earl’s daughter, Lady Magdalen, he had come to see. His reward for that was to have the bonnet struck off his head with force enough to make his nose bleed. Unsubdued, he said that he came from the Marquis and earned a few more buffets for his impudence.

  Southesk sat at his desk, stroking his beard and staring at the bloody-nosed envoy from his son-in-law. Though Kinnaird was a house famed for its hospitality, there was a dungeon where thumbscrews were ready if necessary. This insolent rebel looked as if he would benefit from their acquaintance.

  ‘What is your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Thomas Kinkell of Kinkell House.’

  A man of quality therefore. Southesk knew Kinkell: a small but prosperous property on the shores of the Forth. Here was no common agent. It must be an important message.

  Southesk instructed one of the guards to give a cloth to the prisoner – for such he was – to wipe the blood off his face.

  ‘And what has brought you to Kinnaird, Mr Kinkell?’

  ‘I have a message for Lady Magdalen.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘From the Marquis.’

  ‘The Marquis?’

  ‘The lady’s husband, my lord.’

  ‘Ah, you mean my daughter.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Well, what is your message?’

  ‘I have to give it to her personally.’

  Was it worth crushing the fellow’s thumbs to teach him humility? Hardly. ‘My daughter is not well. She is confined to her chamber.’

  ‘I am very sorry to hear that.’

  ‘So, if you tell me what your message is, I shall see that she receives it.’

  Kinkell hesitated. ‘I was charged to give it to her in person.’

  ‘But she is not well, Mr Kinkell.’

  Kinkell shook his head. He was more angry than afraid when one of the guards struck him in the back.

  ‘Well, Mr Kinkell, since that is your attitude, I shall send to find out if my daughter is able to come and hear your message from your own lips.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord.’

  At a signal from Southesk, one of the guards went out.

  As they waited, Southesk made conversation. ‘Have you come far, Mr Kinkell?’

  ‘Far enough.’

  ‘How is my son-in-law?’

  ‘The Marquis is very well.’

  ‘Why do you keep on? You will all hang in the end, you know.’

  ‘In the end the King’s standard will fly from every castle in Scotland, including Kinnaird.’

  Well, thought Southesk, it wouldn’t take much effort, physical or moral, to put up a flag if that was all that was needed. He had taken care not to be too dogmatic. His attitude had been that it would hardly be the end of the world if bishops were appointed. He could disguise his boredom listening to a bishop just as well as when listening to a moderator.

  He went back to studying the State papers in front of him or, rather, made a pretence of doing so. He was really preparing himself for when Magdalen came in, if indeed she was able to come down the stairs. She did not say much these days but her eyes still looked for the truth as they had done when she was a child; not so guilelessly as then perhaps, but still with the power to make him feel dishonest and guilty.

  She came in, dressed, as always, in black, though it accentuated her pallor. He had suggested brighter clothes and had got out of the kist dresses of her mother’s, brilliant reds and greens and yellows. Unfortunately they had disintegrated on being handled: mould and moths had done for them.

  Mrs Witherspoon was with her, holding her by the arm.

  Southesk frowned. He had not taken to Mrs Witherspoon. She presumed too much. He had been warned that she was having an intrigue with his nephew Malcolm Carnegie, at present a guest in the house.

  ‘What is it, Father?’ asked Magdalen.

  She turned and looked at Kinkell. The guards, her father noticed, at once relaxed their grip.

  ‘Who is this gentleman?’ she asked.

  ‘Thomas Kinkell, my pet. He has brought a message for you.’

  ‘For me? Who is it from?’

  Southesk felt great unease. He loved her and did not want her hurt. ‘From your husband.’

  She breathed then with difficulty. A chair was brought forward for her. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

  ‘He has not said. His orders were to give it to you personally.’

  She looked at Kinkell. ‘What is your message, Mr Kinkell?’

  He had come prejudiced against her. Now he was looking at her with pity and respect. ‘I think, my lady, we should be alone when I tell you.’

  ‘No. Please tell me now.’

  He had turned as
pale as she; his voice faltered. ‘I regret, my lady, to have to inform you that your son, Lord John, died two days ago of a fever. He was buried in Bellie graveyard.’

  Bellie, thought Southesk. Near Gordon Castle. So Montrose was still trying to gain the support of the fickle Gordons. If he ever succeeded in that, his campaign would be greatly strengthened. But had not the boy been subject to sore throats and fevers? If he had taken part in the mad expedition into Argyll, no wonder he had caught a fatal cold. Convenient for Montrose, who had as good as killed his son, to be able to blame a fever.

  Magdalen was still dry-eyed. She sat very straight. Her hands were motionless on the arms of her chair. It was as if she was showing how a soldier’s wife should receive dreadful news.

  ‘Did he suffer?’ she asked.

  Kinkell hesitated. The boy had said strange wild things in his delirium. ‘Not very long, my lady.’

  ‘Was his father with him?’

  ‘Yes, my lady. The chaplain too. The whole camp mourned. He was a splendid lad.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Kinkell. Please tell my husband—’

  But what could she say to James? That she had warned him about their son’s proneness to colds? That it was his fault, therefore, that John was dead at fourteen? No. Better to say nothing. She thought of her other son, James, and was afraid for him.

  ‘Tell my husband I am very sorry for him.’

  ‘Yes, my lady, I’ll tell him.’ Kinkell knew what she was suffering. She was, he thought, a fit wife for his general.

  Magdalen rose. ‘Mr Kinkell, do you have any news of two young kinsmen of my husband’s who joined him recently? Gavin and Tom Maitland.’

  ‘They are both well, my lady.’

  ‘Thank God for that. Father, I would like Mr Kinkell to be treated well.’

  So she had noticed the swollen nose. Southesk could not very well rebuke her for hinting that the messenger might be ill treated, for he had been thinking of applying some forcible persuasion to find out something of Montrose’s present whereabouts and future intentions.