The Tobacco Lords Trilogy

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  Old Tam, who was pouring wine into her glass, laughed heartily and nodded.

  ‘Verra good, ma’am. Verra good.’

  Mrs Halyburton rapped him on the arm with her fan.

  ‘Watch and no’ spill the wine.’

  ‘Have I ever skailt the wine before?’

  ‘Are they no’ a worry, Murn?’ Ignoring him, Mrs Halyburton addressed Lady Glendinny, who sighed deeply in agreement.

  ‘Aye. Aye.’

  ‘I’ve warned Jessie Chisholm—you know, the washer-woman—“The next time you take my washing to The Woodside,” I told her, “you hurry straight back here—never mind hirpling away to your own place.” She’s always in far too big a hurry to go home, that one. But, I’ll stop her yet.’

  3

  ‘Hur skelpt about, hur leapt about,

  And flang amang them a’, man,

  The English blades got broken heads,

  Their crowns were cleaved in twa then.’

  JESSIE’S song kept time to the thump and heave of her crutch. Exhilaration lightened the load of herself. The washing had been cleaned in the sparkling water and first a wintry sun had bleached it and then a gusty wind had made a surprisingly good job of drying it. All she needed to do now was to scoop up the linen that was whitening on the grass like patches of snow and stuff it into her sack. There was no need to worry. She would be in time for Gav and Regina. Despite her grumbles about coming to Woodside, she enjoyed being alone in its peacefulness with only the whispering of the water and the lonely soughing of the wind.

  But dusk was creeping down and she would have to leave. Better to be early than late for the children. Yet it was because of them that she hesitated.

  There might be some nuts left in the woods. They seldom had the chance to taste anything except oatmeal in one form or another. A few nuts would be a real treat. For a minute, leaning on her crutch, she gazed uncertainly into the trees and bushes. She was nervous in case brownies or fairies or wood-kelpies might be lurking. Still, she was ready to brave anything for the sake of the pleasure on her children’s faces and making up her mind she plunged forward. It was past the nutting season and she could find very few and she had just decided to abandon her search when she spied a hazel shrub with some clusters of nuts on it. It was deep in a thicket but she struggled towards it. Then suddenly the world split open, sucked her down, whirled her round and spat her out. She landed with a bump that jarred every bone in her body and every tooth in her head. Then she floated through a long empty tunnel of time before gradually gathering her wits together and getting her bearings.

  On peering round, she discovered she was squatting at the foot of an old pit. It obviously had not been worked for several years and its subterranean passages were choked. Far above her head the bushes through which she had fallen had tangled together again, making a closely knit roof. The pit was about five feet in diameter and at the bottom of it all around and over her crawled great quantities of reptiles, frogs, toads, large black snails, slugs and beetles. Wild-eyed, she jerked back, flurrying at them with hand and crutch.

  Then suddenly a much greater horror felled her. She saw a vision of wee Gav and Regina racing along Tannery Wynd, reaching the house and finding the door locked and no one to admit them to safety.

  She clawed at the earth walls with her crutch in a fight to get up and once up she sent shouts for help spiralling towards the roof. Then she listened. There were no answering voices. Nothing but the hollow measure of water dripping, and the swishing, hissing and scuttling at her feet. She strained louder cries from a dry sandpaper throat until her voice, despite her tenacity of purpose, rasped hoarsely down to a whisper. Panic flurried through her mind, opening and shutting doors.

  She was a wee girl, alone in Glasgow. Everywhere there were enemies. She remembered the faces of the people who had watched her mother die in agony. Big-eyed, eager faces, faces enjoying a day’s entertainment at the Fair; solemn sanctimonious faces, gloating faces.

  She saw Adam Ramsay and his sister Prissie. They had been there.

  Half laughing, half weeping, Jessie gave a hop and a skip. And another and another. Round and round she went, but could find no solace, no escape.

  They were coming at her with the boot. They were holding her. She saw the hangman.

  ‘Jessie! Jessie!’ her mother called out.

  Her mother always kept the cottage clean and neat. There was always a fire in the hearth. Her mother sat peacefully at the window with the Bible on her knee. She wore a white apron and a white mutch. Tiny round spectacles perched comfortably on her nose. Often she gazed out of the window. Then she said calmly but with ill-concealed pleasure, ‘Aye, Jessie. Here’s the gudeman.’ Then she got up and stirred the pot hanging ready over the fire.

  The gudeman wore the belted plaid and was big and bearded with rough-gentle hands and voice.

  ‘My bonny Jessie.’ Proudly he hoisted her in the air. ‘My bonnie wee bird.’

  The house was gone. Burnt too. By men with fiery torches. Her mother, hiding among the heather, had wrapped her plaid around them both so that she could not see. But she had smelled the smoke and the burning. She remembered the smell of the burning.

  The pit was dark yet not black. Grey ghosts swayed about. Sickly moonbeams seeping through the tangled roof ebbed and flowed. She called again desperately but hopelessly. No one would come through the woods at night. It would be dark in Tannery Wynd. Gav and Regina would think she had deserted them. She skittered and splashed about whimpering to herself between curses. Regina would panic. Gav would struggle to put on an act of bravado. He would try to take charge. But he would not know what to do.

  Somewhere, deep in the woods, an owl hooted. Was it the witching hour? Were they creeping out from the shadows to have a coven with the devil by the moon’s eerie light? Could she hear them chanting?

  ‘In the pingle or the pan,

  Or the haurnpan o’ man,

  Boil the heart’s blood o’ a toad.’

  She shrank against the wall, eyes bulging.

  ‘… Hawker kail and hen dirt,

  Chow’d cheese and chicken-wort,

  Yellow puddocks champit sma’ Spiders ten and gellochs twa …’

  ‘Jessie! Jessie!’ her mother called out.

  ‘Half a puddock, half a toad,

  Half a yellow-yeldrin’,

  Gets a drop of the devil’s blood,

  Ilka a May morning.’

  ‘As the good Lord’s my witness, Jessie, I’m not a witch and never have been!’

  Her father had a red beard and long red hair. He wore a blue bonnet that was round and flat like a giant griddle and had the white cockade on top that proudly proclaimed his Jacobite loyalties.

  ‘I am going away to fight for my “King across the water”, Jessie. King James, God bless him. You be a good wee lass and help your mother look after the cottage until I get back.’

  The cottage was a white bird nestling on the side of a purple mountain. The wind soughed and sighed and moaned around it, like the wind was moaning now.

  ‘The gudeman’s no coming home any more, Jessie.’ Her mother took her down the mountain, far away, to the city of Glasgow and a cellar room in a tenement building.

  ‘There’s the tree that never grew,

  There’s the bird that never flew,

  There’s the bell that never rang,

  There’s the fish that never swam.’

  Her crutch thumped among the frogs and toads and beetles, swirling them into a crazy dance. She jigged along with them, screeching with laughter.

  ‘Prissie Ramsay had a vision,

  Witches she can see

  Not me.

  Not me.

  Prissie Ramsay she accuses,

  Her finger points to whom she chooses,

  Not me.

  Not me.’

  Suddenly she stopped. She listened. She thought she heard a snapping of twigs like feet approaching the thicket. But no. It was only the wooden web
high above creaking and cracking.

  She was alone. Her mother was gone. Someone else lived in the cellar room. She was alone in the streets of Glasgow, not knowing where to find food. Not knowing where to sleep. Not knowing what to do. ‘Gavie?’ she cried out. ‘Regina?’

  ‘Give us a gentleman, Letitia,’ William Halyburton called across the table. Dutifully his wife raised her glass.

  ‘The old Earl of Locheid.’

  Everyone raised their glasses.

  ‘The old Earl of Locheid.’

  Halyburton gestured to the manservant Tam to refill his glass.

  ‘The Lady Locheid.’

  Everyone called in unison after him before draining their glasses again, ‘The Lady Locheid.’

  ‘Lady Sukie,’ Andrew Halyburton burst out excitedly before anyone had time to have their glasses topped up. Everyone laughed while Tam shuffled round the table as fast as he could, muttering:

  ‘Him and his Sukie. And her no’ caring a sheep’s heid about him.’

  ‘How’s your courting doing, Andrew?’ Glendinny’s blue eyes beamed mildly from over his huge twisted nose. ‘Is there no news of you getting wed yet? It’s time there was a wedding about the place.’

  Andrew scratched at himself in confusion while Tam filled up his glass and repeated, ‘No’ a sheep’s heid!’

  ‘Hold your tongue, man,’ Andrew muttered.

  ‘For a’ the clamjamphrey you give her.’

  ‘Hold your tongue!’

  Annabella glanced roguishly in Glendinny’s direction.

  ‘There’s quite a bevy of unmarried ladies here, sir. We would deem it a prodigious favour if you’d wish the next wedding on us.’

  ‘Weel, I declare! It’s time a sonsy lass like yoursel’ was married, right enough. Ramsay, have ye no’ some man in mind for your bonny lassie?’

  Griselle and Phemy bent over their glasses but stole looks at each other and giggled. Griselle primly with pursed lips like her mother. Phemy like a beaky little bird. Annabella fluttered her handkerchief and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Losh, Papa’s too busy with his money-making Virginia to think of his poor Annabella.’

  Ramsay eyed her sternly.

  ‘I agree with Glendinny. It’s time you were wed. I’ve already had a word with the Reverend Blackadder.’

  ‘That’s uncommon kind of you, Papa. But I really do feel one ought to have a husband in mind before speaking to the minister.’

  ‘The minister’s the husband I have in mind.’

  Griselle and Phemy nearly choked with suppressed hilarity. Annabella grabbed her fan and flicked it into rapid motion. She kept her chin tipped high and her back straight.

  ‘Indeed, sir? Well, such a husband has never entered my head.’ Pox on them all, she thought, and flung herself wholeheartedly into hiding her extreme agitation.

  The Reverend Blackadder was worse than her father. At least Adam Ramsay was a tolerably good-looking man. But the minister, with his long cadaverous face, was like some monster disgorged from the hell he was always roaring on about. ‘The everlasting fire is waiting for you. No friends, but furies; no ease, but fetters; no daylight, but darkness; no clock to pass away the time, but endless eternity; fire eternal is always burning and never dying away. That is the horror that is waiting for you.’

  It would be hell indeed to be married to such a man. In her mind she suffered the torment of his face pushing nearer and his long skeleton fingers stretching out to fumble with her clothes. Pox on him. She would see him damned in his hell before she would entertain the preposterous idea of such a creature defiling her.

  Letitia Halyburton addressed Ramsay: ‘You, sir, should have an older woman relation living in your house to chaperon and keep an eye on Mistress Annabella.’

  ‘Oh, aye, aye. You’ve said that before. And I’ve told you before I’ve no old female relations.’

  ‘An old servant, then?’

  ‘I’ve enough servants.’

  ‘A respectable woman?’

  ‘And enough mouths to feed. I’m no’ made of money and this is no time to be taking on extra expense.’

  Annabella tossed back her head in a gay trill of laughter.

  ‘Madam, a respectable widow might ensnare Papa into marriage and what a to-do that would be.’

  ‘Mistress Annabella!’ Letitia’s words were icicles cutting across the table. ‘You are too perjink and disrespectful. You need someone to discipline you. The minister should do very well!’

  ‘The minister might do better to discipline himself, madam. The monstrous way he rants and roars and splutters and spits in the pulpit—it’s a miracle the man does not choke.’

  ‘No, it’s no’ a time to be taking on any extra expense,’ Halyburton boomed out. ‘You’re right, Ramsay. It’s no’ a time to be doing anything except wait until we see what this rascal of a Pretender is going to get up to next.’

  ‘He’s going to rob us. You can be sure of that, Willie.’ Annabella mimicked wide-eyed distress. She fluttered up her hands.

  ‘Losh and lovenendie! They might even rape the women!’

  ‘Let’s hope and pray, Mistress Annabella, that respectable women are always treated with respect. Let’s hope, too, that the rebel upstarts will never have the impertinence to put foot in our town.’

  ‘My auld faither,’ sighed Lady Glendinny, ‘fought them at the ‘15 rebellion. He said the Highlanders acted like savages. They flung off their clothes and came louping and screeching and waving their swords over their heads. Stark naked they were. The English just turned and fled at the sight of them.’

  ‘That was in battle, Murn,’ Letitia corrected primly. ‘They’re no’ likely to come loupin’ naked in here.’

  ‘A pity, madam.’ Annabella fluttered a mischievous glance around. ‘It might have been uncommonly diverting.’

  Anything would have been better than sitting in such boring company. She longed for the great sights and adventures of far-off places like Edinburgh or even London. But there were no coaches from Glasgow to London and very few from Glasgow to Edinburgh and even that was a long and dangerous undertaking. Before setting off for either city everyone had to make their last wills and testaments and put all their affairs in order, and say earnest prayers for their safe deliverance from the perils of the journey.

  But some brave men had made such adventures on horseback. Mr John Glassford, her father’s merchant colleague who lived in the elegant Shawfield Mansion, had ridden to London.

  He said there were not even any turnpike roads until he and his companion came within one hundred and ten miles of the city. It sounded fearfully exciting because there was only a narrow causeway and sometimes they met a string of pack horses, from thirty to forty in a gang with huge packs on their backs, the leading horse wearing a bell to give warning to travellers coming in an opposite direction. Mr Glassford and his companion did not have space to pass these beasts. They were forced to plunge into the rough pot-holed earth at the side and often found it extremely difficult to get back on to the causeway again. Then there was the danger of highwaymen, masked gentlemen of the road who stole money and jewellery and even kisses from lady travellers.

  It was said that Prince Charles and his Highlanders had marched that same incredible journey, to Edinburgh and far beyond it to England and back again. They must surely be magnificently strong and daring men. She frisked out her fan. Hell and damnation, she would rather take a savage Highlander than the Reverend boring Blackadder!

  The school was a room in the dominie’s cottage at the foot of Stockwell Street and Bridgegate Street. Both streets ran from the river. Stockwell went straight up to Trongate, but Bridgegate or Briggait looped off to join Saltmarket Street. The schoolroom had only one table with two stools and a window so tiny that even when the pupils crowded close against the wall it was difficult to catch enough light to help them puzzle through their Catechism. Most of the time they lay on their bellies on the muddy floor or, taking advantage of the domini
e’s temporary absence, fought viciously with fists and feet. Often the fights were caused by the other boys tormenting Gav for his Jacobite sympathies. They pulled his curls and called him a traitor because his hair was red like the Highlanders’. He in turn punched their faces and called them Lowland Whig pigs. He had never seen the Highlands, but its wild grandeur had been described often enough by his mother and he felt proud of her origins, proud of his giant grandfather with his bushy red beard, huge double-edged sword and round targe with spike sticking out from its centre.

  ‘A fine figure of a man,’ his mother always said. ‘One day, Gav, you’ll be big and strong and brave like that.’

  He was brave now, he kept telling her. He had thrashed every boy in the school and was only bloodied and beaten himself when set upon by all the other boys together. Even then he went down sturdily fighting and he had never been known to cry. Of course he did have a few secret fears, but these he never admitted not even to himself. There was Blind Jinky and Spider and there were the debauched and blaspheming harlots. He never felt happy about seeing the lepers either. The leper hospital was near the village of Gorbals across the other side of the bridge. At certain times the lepers could be seen like grey ghosts in their long hooded cloaks in which their lowered faces and their hands were partly hidden. The noise of the clappers that they were forced by law to carry to give warning of their approach struck terror into Gav’s heart.

  He heard their mournful repetitive sound now as he made to leave the school, and hesitated in the doorway, fighting to keep a grip of his fast-disappearing courage.

  ‘Gav, take my hand and let’s run as quick as we can,’ Regina said. ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘Och, I’m not frightened,’ Gav scoffed, and instead of accepting the comfort of her proffered hand he stuffed his fists into the pockets of his jacket and swaggered out.