Now, moving away from the light of the dominie’s candle, he was swallowed into the shadows of the houses. High above, the moon slipped slowly in and out of clouds. Blackness stealthily lifted from the city and left a grey shroud drifting across the church steeple, the crow-stepped gables, the thatched roofs. Blackness again, closing smoothly over like a velvet curtain. From the river and the water came the noise of the lepers, the bridge lending it an eerie echo.
‘Don’t go away without me, Gav.’
‘Och, stop your whining. I’m here.’
‘We’d better go straight home.’
‘I wonder what time it is?’
‘I don’t know. Where are you, Gav?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Keep in to the side of the houses in case a horse comes galloping along and knocks you down.’
His heart quailed at the thought of huge horses bursting suddenly from the blackness with wild eyes and foaming mouths, their iron hooves flattening him into the ground.
‘Don’t be daft. There’s no horses here.’
‘When we get to the Trongate then.’
‘What’s there except a few silly sedan-chairs?’
‘Sometimes there’s horses.’
‘I don’t care. I’m not frightened of horses.’
‘Gav. Give me your hand.’
‘No.’
‘I’m frightened I might lose you.’
‘Hold on to my jacket if you must.’
She clutched immediately at the material flapping out behind him.
‘Don’t chug at me,’ he growled. ‘You’re always chugging at me.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Yes, you are. You are so!’ Despite his aggressive irritable tone, he was grateful for the contact with his sister and comforted by the familiar sound of her voice.
Trongate Street was aflicker with lanterns and shadowy figures. Somewhere two dogs barked excitedly. As they passed the Tolbooth they heard someone groaning and moaning like one of the doomed that the minister spoke of, who went down to hell wailing and weeping, roaring and yelling in everlasting despair.
‘Oh, Gav, hurry,’ Regina whispered, and it took him all his will-power to be thrawn enough to slow his pace instead of quickening it.
Past the Cross, along the Gallowgate. The difficult journey took a long time to negotiate and played havoc with their bare feet, while a wind like a knife hacked and flapped at their clothes.
‘We’ll run,’ Gav conceded, ‘when we come to Tannery Wynd, all right?’
‘All right.’
His heart began to beat faster when he approached the narrow winding lane that led off Gallowgate Street. He could hear mad sounds from the houses. Again he was reminded of the minister’s words, drummed into horrified ears for long hours twice and three times every Sunday and often during weekdays as well. ‘And there shall be the roaring and screeching and yelling of devils in such hideous manner that thou wilt be ready to run stark mad for anguish and torment.’
‘Run,’ Regina said. ‘Run.’
Eyes popping, mouths gasping in the putrid stench, they flew along the lane and battered themselves thankfully against the door of their house.
It did not open.
Shivering they waited. Still it did not open. They were too shocked to break their private pool of silence, and in silence they waited again.
4
‘SHE’S not in,’ Gav said incredulously. ‘Mammy’s not there!’
‘Wheesht, they might hear us. Oh, Gav, what are we going to do?’
‘She must still be at the Ramsays’.’
‘Or the Halyburtons’.’
‘Does she work for other folk as well?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I suppose …’ Gav’s voice faltered, ‘I suppose we’ll have to wait for her.’
‘Maybe if I helped you up, you could climb in the window, Gav.’
‘I’m too fat. I’d get stuck.’
‘Try. Oh, please try. Quickly, before anyone hears us. Before anyone comes.’
Sounds multiplied and mushroomed all around them. From across the lane and down the lane and from round each corner it mixed towards them in different shapes and sizes. Wails of babies, tired threads trailing in the air. A drunken song, a merry bouncing ball deflating and dribbling sadly away. Quarrelling, sharp daggers recklessly flung. The dog Spider growling and becoming aware.
The window was unsashed and covered with a stretch of rabbit’s skin instead of glass. Gav punched and pulled it aside while Regina clung grimly to his legs and staggered under the weight of him. He heaved himself up and jerked his head and shoulders forward. Then he began breathlessly wriggling and kicking.
‘I can’t. I can’t. Regina, let me down. I told you it was too wee.’
The scraping and tapping of Blind Jinky’s stick quickened their panic. His door creaked open, Spider catapulted out, eyes like burning coals in the dark.
Gav and Regina flew back along Tannery Wynd, oblivious of the icy earth and stones slashing their feet. They reached the comparative safety of Gallowgate Street, sobbing in distress.
‘Don’t cry, Gav,’ Regina managed eventually. ‘We can wait in one of the closes or up one of the stairs.’
‘I’m not greetin’,’ Gav said brokenly. ‘I’m not a stupid bubbly, greetin’ face like you.’
‘If we walk along to the Trongate we’ll maybe meet her.’
‘All right.’ He wiped his nose and eyes with the back of his sleeve. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘So am I. But we’ll get our supper when Mammy comes.’
Moonlight picked out the high crowned spire of the Tolbooth and its wall topped with ornamental battlements. A horse, tethered to one of the posts in front of the plainstanes, pawed the ground and snorted out clouds of steam. Men in voluminous cloaks spilled from the Exchange Tavern and Coffee House.
Awestruck, Gav and Regina watched them, but soon their attention was pulled round to a sedan-chair rocking on its two poles, lantern swinging and sending waves of yellow light splashing up the darkness. It was carried by two frockcoated men, one in front and one at the back. As it passed, the children cowered away from its light, but not before they caught a glimpse of the blue silk curtains draped at its windows and the fine lady with the powdered wig and golden gown who sat inside.
Somewhere from above their heads a servant girl’s voice bawled out: ‘Caddie! Caddie!’
Then a shadowy man wearing a Kilmarnock bonnet, shoulders hunched in tattered coat, came jogging along with his hand cupping his ear and his face anxiously upturned.
‘Whaur are ye?’
‘Two up, on the right.’
‘What do you want?’
‘A sedan-chair for my lady.’
‘Hang on then, I’ll no’ be a meenit.’
He scuttled away to find a chair and bearers, sweeping the children aside as he passed. They stumbled on their sore feet and thumped to the ground, bruising legs, elbows and hands. Then a terrifying sound assailed their ears. Bearing down on them rattled a carriage drawn by six prancing horses. They scrambled up and out of its path just in time.
‘We’d be safer in one of the closes or up one of the stairs,’ Regina said. ‘We’ll wait for a while and then we’ll go back and Mammy’ll be in.’
‘All right.’ Gav tried to sound nonchalant but failed. He even allowed Regina to grasp his hand and hold it tightly as they edged along.
‘What close will we wait in?’
Regina rubbed a fist hard against her eye. She had never in her twelve years been out so late before. It was as if she and Gav had wandered alone into a different world, a world in which they knew no one, where no place was familiar and where no one knew them.
‘In here. She slid round the wall of the first close they came to. The entrance gave way to a small yard like a cul-de-sac crowded on every side by the backs of high buildings. The moon’s pale lig
ht revealed that some of the buildings were entered by outside wooden stairs. Others by stairs made of broken stone slabs jutting out at different lengths from underneath a wooden banister. Others had brick towers with turnpike stairs inside. Rubbish littered the ground and every now and then they noticed the brown humped bodies and long tails of rats.
Trongate Street was still visible through the close-mouth. Lanterns bobbed past. Voices ebbed and flowed.
Regina hesitated in bewilderment. A nerve began to twitch in her face. She rubbed at it.
‘We’ll see Mammy coming from here.’
She tried to comfort Gav, who was shivering despite his too big jacket and hat. He made no answer and they hung together in silence until the Tolbooth clock struck ten. Then suddenly they were startled by a great noise of windows opening and voices chanting:
‘Mind yer heid!’
Before they could run and take shelter an avalanche of fulzie rained down on their heads from the skies; the stinking contents of chamber-pots, rotten food, vomit, putrid water and rubbish of every kind.
‘Och, my good clothes.’ Regina began to weep. ‘And Mammy washed them not that long ago.’
Gav pulled off his hat and shook it angrily. ‘Bubblin’ and greetin’s not going to make them any cleaner.’ He squashed his hat back on again. ‘And we’ll freeze to death standing here. We’ll have to go and wait in a stairway.’
‘All right,’ she agreed, delicately drying her eyes with a clean corner of her cape as she followed his sturdy figure across to one of the towers. It was pitch black inside.
‘Shall we go further up?’
‘If you want.’
But they only found the courage to penetrate the darkness a few steps before sliding down the wall into a squatting position.
‘I’m hungry,’ Gav said.
‘So am I.’
‘I’m tired too.’
‘So am I.’
They tried to keep their eyes open, but the darkness weighed heavy on them and gradually they relaxed against one another and sleep crept over them.
It seemed that she had been asleep for only a few minutes, yet when Regina awoke everything felt different. She knew that she and her brother were no longer alone. All around them breathing sounds were building into a crescendo, funnelling and echoing upwards. Long smooth breaths, light tripping breaths, uneven stumbling breaths, puttering, snorting, snoring breaths were sawing the air and jostling for space.
‘Gav,’ she whispered.
‘Eh?’
‘Are you awake?’
‘I think so.’
‘Listen.’
Carefully they felt for each other’s hands. Then, trembling with apprehension, they rose and made their first tentative step. But their feet came into contact with curled-up bodies and one jerked awake and pounced on Gav. He struggled to free himself.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Leave him alone,’ Regina echoed. ‘We’re going home to our mammy.’
‘You’re a bloody lee-ar.’
‘Don’t you call my sister a liar.’
‘A bloody lee-ar.’ The man’s other hand clutched at Regina. ‘Why are you sleeping here if you’ve got a mammy?’
Before she could answer he had dragged them both over the tops of the other sleepers and outside.
‘Are you hired to anyone for begging?’
Gav punched and kicked as viciously as he was able. ‘Our mammy works and we go to school. We’ve never been beggars.’
The man hoisted both of them up by the throat, pushed his face close, then in a low menacing voice said, ‘Well, ye are noo!’
Ramsay was glad that his two ships the Mary Heron, named after his late wife, and The Glasgow Lass were somewhere between Glasgow and Virginia. They might now be in danger from the perils of the sea and from Spanish privateers and pirates operating from the Caribbean, but at least they escaped the plundering hands of the Highland rebels. In their holds, as well as all the produce of Glasgow, were serges from Stirling, stuffs from Musselburgh, stockings from Aberdeen, shalloons and blankets from Edinburgh.
He was proud of his three-masted ‘snows’ with their fore and main masts square-rigged, and with boom and gaff of the fore-and-aft trysail attached to the stout mizzen mast. This reduced the strain on the main mast and made for a less leaky boat. Snows were grand boats for standing up to rough Atlantic weather and they could travel at a goodly pace. They certainly carried his cargoes with more speed, safety and success to and from Virginia than any vessel owned by a London or Bristol merchant. Admittedly there was the more direct north-west route from Glasgow and the English ships had to brace the Channel which was often packed with foreign privateers. Then, of course England was always fighting the French, whereas Glasgow had won contracts to supply with tobacco the monopoly group called the United General Farms of France.
Business had been steadily prospering for some time and would have continued in its healthy state had it not been for the damned Pretender. On his way down to England he had sent a messenger to Glasgow to demand a huge sum of money on pain of execution, threatening too that if Glasgow did not pay, the Highland army would invade the city. They had avoided that calamity by paying up and nearly bankrupting themselves. Now only God knew what would happen.
He was on his way with his family to a special church service to ask His help and protection against the enemy. With one hand he thumped his heavy gold-topped cane on the ground as he walked, the other he cupped at his back, fingers stretching and bunching. His head and chin thrust forward and the curls of his long black wig trailed down over the front of his shoulders. Beside him strolled his son Douglas, resplendent in white tie wig, frothy lace cravat and shimmering pink cape. One of his hands was hidden in a fur muff, the other fluttered a lacy hanky. It would be good thing if Griselle Halyburton accepted Douglas. Griselle would maybe make a man of him. The Halyburtons were good merchant stock. They knew how to make a sovereign and how to hang on to it. Douglas was a weakling. He was absolutely besotted with the girl for a start.
‘I’ll do something desperate if Griselle refuses me, I’ll be so cast down,’ he kept repeating.
‘As long as you don’t do anything desperate with my money, Douglas,’ he told him.
His daughter walked beside him too, looking as perjink as ever with her yellow hair swept high over its padding and bobbing with bunches of curls on top and fluttering with feathers. She was wearing a long-waisted blue satin dress with what seemed miles of frills going down and across and all around it. She took up half the road with the width of her hoops. Her whole appearance was far too frivolous to be going on her way to church, and especially on such a solemn occasion.
‘Can you no’ even dress yourself right?’
‘Don’t I look splendidly beautiful, Papa?’ Her eyes sparkled up at him. ‘Come now, be honest. You know you’re mightily proud of me.’
‘I know that pride is a mortal sin.’
‘Fiddlesticks! You’re such an old misery. Even the sun’s managing to shine and it’s the middle of winter. Be happy.’
‘Be happy?’ her father echoed. ‘Oh, aye, we’ve plenty to be happy about. There’s a whole army of thieving Highlandmen outside the town for a start.’
‘Irishmen as well, I’ve heard. Wild Geese, they call them. Soldiers of fortune.’ Handsome gentlemen too no doubt, she thought with a flutter.
‘Oh, aye! That’s sure to be a great help. It’s a great source of joy and jubilation to us a’ to know there’s hordes of Irish mercenaries oot there.’
Her laughter cascaded all around. ‘Papa, Papa!’
‘Enough of your wicked levity! We’re entering God’s house.’
The Tron Church stood west from the Cross and behind the dwellings which immediately fronted the street. Entry to it was under a wide arch. It had been founded in 1484, fell into ruin and then repaired in 1592, and its spire, 126 feet in height, stood between it and the street. It had a clock, two bells, a battlement and windows in t
he pointed-arch style.
Inside was dark and cold and stank of old bones dug up and left to make room for new burials. Most people had to stand crowded together in the middle of the church, kicking the stinking bones aside while complaining about the disgrace of it. The aristocracy and the lairds and the Virginia merchants were spared the annoyance. They and their families had seats raised on platforms round each side. High above everyone loomed the pulpit and the long face of the Reverend Blackadder. His hands grasped the edge like eagle’s claws and he pushed his shoulders high and bent forward.
‘… and our enemies shall be damned. And as to the curse under which they shall be shut up in hell, a black cloud will open upon them and a terrible thunderbolt strike them and God’s voice will cry from the throne: “Depart from me, ye cursed!” There are no offers of Christ for you, no pardon, no peace, no wells of salvation in the pit of your destruction …’
Ramsay had never heard him preach so well. The man worked up such righteous zeal that at times he was howling and weeping and most of the congregation were moaning and wringing their hands along with him. There were always some sinners that he could not reach, of course, and he never failed to notice them. He could suddenly stop in the middle of an impassioned piece of oratory, point a bony finger in the culprit’s direction and accuse.
‘Jeems Burke, I’ll no’ countenance sleeping in the presence o’ the word o’ the Lord.’ Or, in a more sarcastic tone, ‘Bailie Tamson, will you stop your snoring. You’ll waken the Provost!’
The Reverend Blackadder walked in the way of the Lord, he had a good Scotch tongue in his head and he feared no man. What better husband for Annabella could be found anywhere in Glasgow? Who else was better fitted to keep her on the straight and narrow path of righteousness? One day she would thank him for saving her from a life of sin. That was what she was heading for if something was not done, and soon. He prayed for God to forgive him for being too lax with her in the past. ‘Lord God, forgive me for abandoning Annabella in her tender youth into the hands of my servant Chrissie Kinkaid, knowing that although she was a good servant, and saw to me after my wife died, knowing also that she was a wicked and immoral woman. Oh, in Thy Infinite Mercy, save our Annabella from the pit.’
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Page 5