The Tobacco Lords Trilogy

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  At long last the Reverend Blackadder was hoisted to his feet by Big John and escorted home. Her father swayed away to his own room, head dropping forward, wig askew, mouth struggling to form the words of the psalm and sing them into his chest. Only when he had safely disappeared and she could hear him groping about and muttering in his own bedroom through the wall did she dare to relax. She flung herself into the darkness of the hole-in-the-wall bed in a puff of hair powder and a rustling of skirts.

  But as Nancy loosened her hoops and tugged off her gown and petticoats, all she allowed herself was one muffled—

  ‘Hell and damnation!’

  The horse fair had been proclaimed by the magistrates at the Cross in front of the Tolbooth and before an eager, jostling crowd. A moist sun sparkled over scarlet capes, snowy shirts, cravats and frilly mob caps. It picked out coats the colour of sky and grass and earth. It flashed against shoe buckles. It made shimmering rainbows of gowns, petticoats and plaids.

  ‘It’s going to be a lively day,’ Nancy remarked as she and Annabella emerged from the close. She was hugging her tartan plaid around her. Annabella, flushed like a rose with excitement, was wrapped in a royal blue cloak.

  Excitement sizzled in the early morning air. People milled about from Saltmarket Street up to the Cross, along Trongate Street past the Tolbooth and the Exchange, past the Guard House and down Stockwell Street to the Briggait.

  Between the houses on the south side of the Briggait and the river was the slaughterhouse, the stench of which spread far and wide. Beside the slaughterhouse stretched a spare piece of ground. It was here that the pavilions or ‘shows’ were set up.

  The freakish, beak-nosed Punch and Judy squawked and screeched and fought to be heard above the bedlam of the crowd. Proprietors of booths added to the shoutings and clangour in their efforts to attract customers to come and see their displays. Jugglers, giants, dwarfs, fat men and women frolicked about, and creatures in the last stages of consumption were exhibited as living skeletons.

  Big drums boom-boomed, small drums beat a fast tattoo. Fiddles scraped and trumpets brayed. Shameless pimple-skinned hizzies displayed themselves half-nude and capered about on raised stages, kicking up their legs and running on their toes and spinning round and round on one leg.

  A brutish man skinned live rats with his teeth, quick as a flash, one after the other.

  Annabella gave a squeal of distress and hurried past, pushing and gesticulating at people to remove themselves from her path.

  ‘Let’s go back to Trongate Street and watch the races,’ she told Nancy.

  The horses were on show from the old bridge right up Stockwell Street, but it was along Trongate Street that they were tested for pace and wind. Although the rain had stopped and sunshine added colour to the spectacle, the ground was spongy and the horses’ restless hooves were turning it into quagmire.

  Nancy was having difficulty in stumbling along in her bare feet. Annabella, in her wooden pattens supported on iron rings, could scarcely keep her balance.

  ‘Losh sakes, Nancy, hold my arm to steady me. Already my stockings and skirts are spotted with this monstrous mud.’

  ‘Here’s the minister. He’ll support you.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Mr Blackadder came hurrying to greet her. ‘Can I give you an arm, Mistress Annabella?’

  Stifling a sigh at the sight of his scarecrow figure she managed to reply pertly.

  ‘That I will allow, sir.’

  She linked arms with him and somehow the touch of his flesh reminded her of Lavelle. The memory brought a stab of need as well as pain. Desperately struggling to ignore her feelings she said,

  ‘Nancy was just remarking on how early the proceedings have started. Already the recruiting parties are marching round the streets banging on their drums.’ She favoured him with a sparkling sideways glance. ‘Are you not tempted, sir?’

  ‘No,’ the Rev Blackadder replied dryly. ‘No’ by recruiting parties.’

  ‘Why, sir,’ Annabella laughed. ‘Do I detect that you have a sense of humour? Even perhaps a tiny spark of gallantry?’

  ‘I’m just as God made me, Annabella.’

  Crowds were pressing in on either side of Trongate Street as the first horses appeared from Stockwell Street and reared and snorted and pawed the ground. Their riders, mostly the local aristocracy and merchants or sons of the same, fought for control of the animals, before suddenly cracking their whips and sending them racing along the street with mud spurting up from either side.

  Women squealed and giggled hysterically and flurried about as their skirts and capes were splashed. Men drew them further back for protection, glad of the excuse for putting an arm round a lady’s waist or shoulders and holding her close, which only made her squeal and giggle all the more.

  Blackadder elbowed a path for Annabella through the crowd. Rubbing shoulders with elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen were ragged beggars and orphan children, soldiers in red coats, country women in homespun plaids, country men in blue tam-o’-shanters and girls in striped petticoats.

  ‘Oot o’ the way. Behave yoursels. Let a lady pass when you’re telt.’ Then to Annabella with a shake of his head: ‘I shudder to think o’ the mortal sins that’ll be committed before nightfall. As sure as God’s my witness, Annabella, the devil will be rampaging about Glasgow this day.’

  Reaching Stockwell Street, they turned the corner and tried to get a good view of all the horses.

  ‘Down there!’ Annabella pointed as best she could between bobbing heads and bonnets. ‘The one being held by the red-faced farmer in the grey waistcoat. See what a proud beauty that one is.’

  Blackadder’s long face strained with worry as they struggled towards it.

  ‘Haud on, Annabella. Haud on. It seems gey frisky to me. That beast would kick you to kingdom come as quick as look at you the way its loupin’ about.’

  ‘I like anything with spirit. You haggle about price while I test the animal.’

  She snatched the reins from the farmer-owner, ignoring Blackadder’s cries of protest.

  ‘Annabella, you’re surely no’ going to race the beast. Mistress Annabella, come down off that at once. Let one of the farm-lads or …’ he added in wretched agitation, ‘… me if you must.’

  She laughed.

  ‘That’s mightily obliging of you, minister, but I must not. Now, unless you want trampled into the mud, I suggest you step out of my way.’

  The horse went nudging, prancing, snorting, bucking through the crush of other animals and people until it reached the top of the Stockwell and joined the tumultuous assembly of horses on Trongate Street.

  The riders, all men, greeted Annabella’s arrival with bantering shouts and guffaws of laughter, but she shouted back at them.

  ‘Pox on you all. Let the race begin. I swear I’ll beat the lot of you.’

  Then suddenly a pistol was fired and with great gusty yells and cracking of whips, they were off.

  The wind tore at Annabella’s hooded cloak, wrenched it high behind her, slashed her chest and face, snatched her breath away. She felt delirious with joy for the few minutes of the flight. When she reached the Cross at the other end and dismounted in a swirl of skirts, she was flushed and bright-eyed and trembling with excitement. At first she thought she had won, but then noticed that another rider had made it before her by a few seconds. He was a big man in a black coat and knee length boots. He had a coarse face with a broken nose and a wide yet cruel mouth.

  Annabella’s flush deepened as she became aware of him staring at her. She tipped up her chin.

  ‘The thrill is in the game, sir,’ she said, ‘not the winning of it.’ He gave a small bow at the same time as patting and stroking his horse. Then he remounted and galloped back to the Stockwell.

  5

  AT first Gav could see nothing for hail and sleet racing through the air. Blindly he struggled from the foc’stle scuttle, then grabbed on to some rigging to prevent himself from being washed overboard. T
he tiny ship was plunging madly into a giant sea that kept burying the forward part of the vessel. Within seconds he was soaked to the skin and gasping for breath.

  Lightning sizzled and flared and flashed on the water all around making the ship appear to be in the centre of an inferno, and thunder rolled over the decks like a broadside of cannon. Gav remained pinned to the rigging, too terrified to move one way or the other. Despite the noise of the storm he could hear Mr Gudgeon’s voice roaring orders and the bosun bawling out so quickly after him that their voices fought together with the raging wind.

  Then suddenly there was only Mr Gudgeon’s voice and his hand grabbing Gav’s jacket and jerking him along. Gav screamed and struggled but failed to free himself and hardly knew what was happening until he landed with a painful thud in the steerage and the hatch was battened down. The pain of his fall took his breath away but he was relieved that he hadn’t been tossed overboard. All around him women were screaming and children were sobbing and everyone was fighting to hang on to something, anything to prevent themselves from being flung from one side of the ship to the other. Gav kept a grip of the hatch ladder and clung on grimly until the storm quietened. The ship still heaved and sent his stomach leaping and plunging but at least it seemed to have escaped the wildest patch of weather.

  He tried to settle down to sleep for what remained of the night but there was such a weeping and wailing going on that sleep proved impossible. One woman in particular was creating a frightful racket. Every few minutes she let out a piercing scream that tailed off into an animal-like groan, only to work up to a crescendo of ear-splitting noise again.

  Unable to stand it any more, Gav struggled across to where she was lying.

  ‘The storm’s over now, mistress.’ He tried to give comfort. ‘You’re in no danger. Don’t be afraid. Everything’s going to be all right.’

  The woman’s large dark eyes gazed at him through the gloom. Perspiration was running down her face and her long hair was plastered wetly against it. She managed to gasp something and, although he did not understand what she said, he immediately recognised the language as the Gaelic. His mother had originated from the Highlands and had often sung to Regina and himself in that language. He turned to a woman nearby who, like most of the others, was being wretchedly seasick in whatever space or corner she could find.

  ‘What is she saying? Do you understand the Gaelic?’

  Supporting herself against the bulkhead, the other woman shook her head.

  ‘We’re all from Glasgow. She’s the only Skye woman. She’s in labour with child and God help her and the bairn when it comes.’

  The Skye woman gave another scream of agony. Gav felt unnerved by her suffering. He had to do something. Wondering if there was a chirurgeon on board, he groped his way back to the hatch ladder and waited for what seemed a hell of endless time until the hatch was opened. Indeed, the shaft of daylight spilling down and trickling faintly to every side revealed what looked like hell. Bodies were helplessly strewn about and sobbing children clung to mothers who were too ill to bother with them or even protect them against the army of rats splashing and noisily quarrelling about the floor.

  Thankfully he scrambled up the ladder and once on the deck went straight to the longboat and Jemmy Ducks.

  ‘There you are, shipmate.’ Jemmy greeted him. ‘When you weren’t in the foc’stle, I says to Andra Mr Gudgeon’s had him. He’s had him, I says.’

  ‘He caught me on deck during the storm last night and flung me down into steerage.’

  Jemmy scratched his pigtail.

  ‘Not that I blames him for that. The deck’s no place for a lad in a storm. There’s no denying it, Gav. You were a danger to yourself and to Mr Gudgeon’s men. Verra busy them men are in a storm and they don’t like folks getting in their way.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t minds admitting it, Gav, I have a terrible struggle with them animals at times like that. They panics, y’see, and flutters and squacks and squeals and batters about something cruel.’

  Suddenly Gav remembered about the Skye woman.

  ‘There’s a woman in steerage needing help. She’s having a baby. Is there a doctor or a chirurgeon on board?’

  ‘I always says there should be. I had a cow once and she pined away and died long before we reached Virginia. I never did find out what ailed that cow.’

  ‘Surely somebody could help.’

  ‘Chips tried his best. Yes, yes, I admits that. Chips tried his best for Henrietta but it was no use.’

  ‘I mean for the Skye woman.’

  ‘It’s Chips for her too, Gav. It’s Chips for everybody. He pulled them teeth.’ He stretched his lips into a grotesque grin and indicated several black spaces. Then suddenly he pointed his fingers upwards. ‘No, no, I tells a lie. The Captain sees to some things, Gav. He’s got his responsibilities but they’re not to steerage folks and that’s a fact. No, no, it’s Chips for them.’

  ‘I’d better go and tell him,’ Gav said and then added wistfully, ‘I wish I could get something to eat. My biscuits have got all wet down there and the rats have been at them.’

  Jemmy’s eyes, protruding from a brown, leathery face, strained cautiously around.

  ‘I knows some friends who can maybe help.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the hen coops. ‘Them hens has helped me out many’s the time. I’m hungry, I tells them, and out they comes with an egg. Them hens are great friends to me, Gav, and I don’t minds admitting it.’

  After a great deal of stealth and precautions to ensure that he would not be found out, Jemmy slipped Gav an egg and stood in front of him to hide him from view while Gav sucked hungrily at it.

  Feeling considerably cheered, he went to tell Chips the carpenter about the Skye woman and then, when returning, his attention was caught and riveted with delight by a school of porpoises leaping and tumbling and bobbing all round the ship. But he was exhausted with lack of sleep and after a while he decided to go down to the foc’stle for a doze.

  He found some of the crew sitting making and patching clothes by the light of the scuttle. They greeted him in a friendly enough manner and did not object when he made a bed for himself on top of some sails. He fell immediately into a deep sleep and dreamt that he was in the hole-in-the-wall bed in his old home in Tannery Wynd. He was cuddled between Regina and his mammy and his mammy’s tartan plaid covered the three of them. The bed-doors were tight shut and everything was safe and cosy. Even when mammy got up and opened the bed-doors and went over to poke up the fire and put on the porridge pot, he still felt a warm, happy glow inside.

  Soon they would have their porridge and milk, maybe bannocks and ale as well. As usual, at night after they came home from school, mammy sang to them. It was then he wakened and realised that the singing was not mammy’s. Mammy was dead. He sat up rubbing at his eyes.

  Echoing down from the deck came sailors’ lusty voices:

  ‘Oh, it’s pipe up, Dan, when yer feelin’ kind o’ blue,

  With a half-drowned ship, an’ a half-dead crew,

  When yer heart’s in yer sea-boots ‘n the cold is in yer bones,

  An’ ye don’t give a damn how soon she goes to Davy Jones,

  When it’s dark as the devil an’ it’s blowin’ all it can,

  Oh, he’s worth ten men on a rope is Dan!’

  He didn’t know what to do. The dream, or rather the wakening to the realisation that it was only a dream, weighed him down with sadness. It took all his courage to keep tears at bay as he struggled into his big jacket and jammed his hat over his mass of curls. When he returned on deck, the first thing he saw was Jemmy Ducks excitedly chasing a gay coloured rooster round the decks. He couldn’t help giggling at the sight and then, after glancing towards the poop to make sure that it was Mr Jubb’s watch and not Mr Gudgeon’s, he joined his friend in the chase. Suddenly, just when the rooster was within the eager grasp of both Jemmy and himself, it leapt up flapping and squacking in indignation and escaped overboard.

  ‘Da
mn his eyes!’ Jemmy wailed as they watched the animal fluttering helplessly down among the rolling waves. Its glowing plumage looked strangely out of harmony with the dull slate colour of the water as it sat drifting away astern. ‘Damn his eyes,’ Jemmy repeated brokenly as he turned and limped away.

  Respecting his need to be alone with his distress, Gav didn’t follow him and it was while he was still standing gazing overboard that Regina approached.

  ‘You’d better watch that pig of a mate doesn’t catch you again. You know what he said about keeping to steerage.’

  ‘It’s Mr Jubb on duty just now.’

  ‘I know that,’ Regina said impatiently. ‘But Gudgeon’s still on the ship, isn’t he?’

  ‘He keeps picking on me.’

  ‘I know that as well. The men call him bully Gudgeon. He’s just a pig.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘He looks like one as well.’

  ‘I’m down in the foc’stle now.’

  ‘Does he know?’

  Gav shook his head.

  ‘Not that it’s much better.’

  ‘There isn’t much room in my cabin and there’s only one berth but we’d be able to squeeze in together …’

  ‘Oh, Regina!’

  Immediately her hand stung across his face.

  ‘Reggie,’ she hissed at him.

  Swallowing as best he could, he nodded his head before dutifully repeating, ‘Reggie.’

  ‘It means asking him.’

  ‘He doesn’t like me.’

  ‘He likes money, I’ll wager.’

  ‘Jemmy says he’s always got to have somebody to pick on.’

  ‘He can find somebody else. He can pick on your precious Jemmy.’

  Gav was silent. Eventually he managed:

  ‘When are you going to ask him?’

  Regina shrugged.

  ‘First chance I get. It isn’t easy to talk sense with him when he’s always so drunk. Did you see him falling off the poop?’