The Tobacco Lords Trilogy

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  Before she could object, he had swept her off her feet and was carrying her along Bridge Street towards the Low Green and the river.

  Kicking furiously and with a fine display of silk stockings, she punched his chest and cried out:

  ‘It does not make me happy, sir. Put me down, this instant. I wish a sedan chair.’

  ‘Why have two men carry you when one man can do the job?’

  ‘Because the one man is an impertinent scoundrel and he is carrying me in the wrong direction. My Papa shall be told of this, I am warning you.’

  ‘I am not afraid of your father.’

  Reaching the Green he passed a clump of trees and put her down. Moonlight snuffed out for a few minutes and they stood close together in the pitch blackness. She thought she heard in the distance the lapping of the river. A veil of light wafted back and, as if waking from a dream Annabella said,

  ‘This is preposterous. Why have you brought me here?’

  ‘Because I wanted you.’

  ‘Wanted me?’ Her voice betrayed an edge of concern. ‘You surely do not mean …’

  ‘I mean what I say.’

  ‘Mr Harding, you spoke earlier about imagining me as your wife. This is no way to persuade me, sir.’

  He moved towards her and she pushed out her hands to ward him off.

  ‘Here? Now?’ She tried to laugh. ‘Anywhere with you would be monstrous and inconceivable, Mr Harding. But … but …’

  Words failed her. She could not believe what was happening.

  His arms encircled her waist and jerked her towards him, making her punch his chest and kick his shins.

  ‘Mr Harding, I do not want you. If you are a gentleman, you cannot force me.’

  ‘I am not a gentleman, Annabella.’

  She felt breathless and in pain as his mouth fastened over hers. She wept and kicked and struggled but could do nothing to prevent him pulling her down onto the grass. She screamed and sobbed in humiliation as his hands tugged at her clothes. Then, pinned helplessly under the bulk and weight of him, she moaned as he forced himself again and again into her body.

  Afterwards he rolled onto his back and allowed her to struggle up, but when she took flight and disappeared away through the trees, he scrambled to his feet calling after her.

  ‘Come back you little fool.’

  Annabella paid no heed. In a panic of distress, she bumped into trees and tore her dress on bushes and lost her slippers in her frantic efforts to escape and reach home.

  She could still hear the echo of his deep harsh voice as, clutching her mud-stained skirts about her, she raced up Saltmarket Street. Stones and lumpy earth cut into her feet and horse dung splattered her stockings. Sobbing with relief, she reached her close and stumbled through to the back yard. The narrow stone stairway in the tower projection at the back of the building was packed with sleeping beggars and orphans. She fought to get past, trampling over them in the darkness until she reached the first landing and the door to her father’s house. Not caring if she awakened her father, she loudly tirled the door-pin. But it was Nancy who opened the door, holding up a guttering candle. Seeing her mistress’s gown, once a smooth satiny blue, now crushed and stained with grass and mud, she gasped.

  ‘Laud’s sake, what’s happened?’

  She lit the way into Annabella’s bedroom. For a minute or two Annabella fought for dignity. Her chin tipped up and she began in a voice straining to be light and bright:

  ‘A most astounding incident occurred …’

  Then suddenly the strain was too much and she buried her face in her hands.

  7

  ‘THE LESS you have to do with the likes of him the better,’ Nancy insisted.

  ‘He cannot be allowed to get away with his outrageous behaviour towards me last night. I refuse to countenance such a preposterous idea. I’ll make him pay.’ Annabella’s voice was bitter. ‘Oh, I’ll make him pay, Nancy. I’ll lead him a merry dance, I can tell you. First, I’ll disarm him by doing him the honour of allowing him to marry me. Then I’ll set about making sure that he’ll regret the match. Oh, how he’ll regret it. Already he imagines me as his wife. Already he imagines me admirably suited for life with him in Virginia. But he could never imagine the subtle miseries that I am capable of inflicting. There’s a lot more in life than brute strength, Nancy. A lady has many other weapons.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that, and I can understand you lusting for revenge, but surely to marry the man is going too far. You’ll be punishing yourself as well as him.’

  ‘Can you think of any other or better way to get at him? No doubt he will be returning to his plantation in Virginia soon. As for punishing myself—I am between the devil and the deep blue sea, am I not? It is either marry the minister and stay in Glasgow, or marry the planter and go to the New World. At least there will be the excitement of the voyage over and finding out about life in Virginia. Life there will be a challenge, Nancy. It will be a challenge too to get the better of that obnoxious oaf of a man.’

  Nancy smoothed at her long black hair as if she was lazily stretching.

  ‘I suppose you’ve never really seen yourself in the minister’s house in Briggait.’

  ‘No indeed.’ Sitting at the small tea-table, she lit up that corner of the room with her frilly mob cap perched on top of her golden hair, and her yellow and green sprigged cotton gown. She sipped the hot chocolate Nancy had made for her and tried to draw comfort from it.

  Her experience of the previous night had harrowed her more than she cared to admit. It wasn’t just the unexpected and brutal attack on her person. It was the dreadful humiliation of the whole occurrence. Had the outrage been perpetrated in her bedroom, or even in his bedroom, it would have been bad enough. But to abduct her to the Green and defile her on the filthy earth as if she were no more than a common serving wench was too terrible to contemplate. The wounds to her dignity and pride were by far the most painful and deep-seated.

  The only way she felt she could burn away the scars of these wounds was by seeking revenge of them. Yet she trembled inside with confusion and uncertainty. She refused to acknowledge her secret confusions as fear or any other kind of weakness. She had always been a woman of prodigious spirit and daring. Now was her chance to put these qualities to the test. Deciding not to waste another moment, she pushed aside her cup and flicked off her mob cap. It lay on the floor like a patch of snow on rich earth.

  She went over to the closet at the other side of the door and Nancy lit candles because it was a black box of a place and too far from the room windows to get any light. Annabella settled herself on the chair in front of the looking-glass and peered close at it as she stuck on a couple of face patches. Then Nancy helped to cover her up with a powdering gown before putting on her wig and starting to powder it. This made a terrible mess as the powder was sprayed upwards so that in falling it could settle evenly on the hair. Both women coughed and spluttered and sneezed and eventually Nancy protested.

  ‘I don’t know why you have to have your hair dressed or go to any bother at all for him.’

  Annabella spluttered into a hanky, then waved it about in front of her face so that she could breathe more easily.

  ‘I must look my most dignified and ladylike. I’m going to teach that brutish creature a lesson, I tell you.’ Slipping out of the powdering gown she thankfully escaped from the cupboard back into the bedroom accompanied by a puff of powder dust. ‘Hurry up and shut that door,’ she called to Nancy who emerged behind her irritably shaking her own hair and clothes. ‘Do you think I should change my dress?’ she added to the maid, unable to prevent anxiety tightening her voice.

  Nancy rolled her eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong with the dress you’ve on?’

  ‘Damn it, printed cotton isn’t very impressive, is it? Bring my white and mauve striped silk and my white quilted petticoat and my straw hat with the mauve ribbons.’

  Nancy shrugged. She couldn’t make up her mind if Annabella was angry and
in love or humiliated and afraid. Perhaps a mixture of all four? But because she was not sure of her mistress’s mood she did not know how to react. The idea of Annabella being afraid was unnerving. Any man who could upset Annabella like this was someone worth fearing.

  ‘Let Big John and me come with you,’ Nancy said after Annabella had donned the gown with its low décolleté and long narrow waist. ‘This man sounds evil. He’s a danger to you.’

  ‘I refuse to have any show of fear. You may accompany me if you wish but there will be no need for anyone else. The brute would not dare harm me under Mistress Aberdour’s roof.’

  Nancy had already discovered that Harding had lodgings with the Widow Aberdour who lived along the Gallowgate.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Nancy reluctantly agreed and after fetching Annabella’s cloak and her own coarser plaid, both girls left the house.

  From the close at the top of the Saltmarket it was only a short distance round by the Gross into the Gallowgate. Crow-stepped gable tenements with arches, or piazzas as they were called, under which tradesmen had shops or booths, lined either side of the street. One such shop had been a great favourite of Annabella’s when she was a child. There she had been able to purchase delights such as sugarallie, liquory-stick and deil’s dung.

  The Widow Aberdour’s tenement was next to the white-washed thatched-roofed Avondale Arms Inn and she often accommodated the overflow from that place. Above the Inn there hung a board on which was written:

  ‘All ye that pass through Gallow Moor,

  Stop in Helen Whitehead’s door,

  She’s what will cheer man in due course,

  And entertainment for his horse.

  But you that stand before the fire,

  Maun just sit down by good desire,

  That other folk, as well as you,

  May see the glow and feel it too.

  Your pipes lay by when stables you request,

  Or flame from you to me may prove severe.’

  Nancy and Annabella entered Mistress Aberdour’s close and climbed the stairs to the first flat where she lived. The widow opened the door and flung her hands high at seeing them. A frilled cap of flowered lawn covered her head and her ample figure sported a sacque, a pleated gown falling in graceful folds from the shoulders and a full, flounced skirt.

  ‘Why, Mistress Ramsay! Come away in, do.’

  Annabella bobbed into a curtsy.

  ‘Madam. I have business with Mr Harding.’

  ‘Mr Harding? Mr Harding?’ the widow cried heavenwards. ‘That gentleman is far, far from here.’

  ‘What do you mean, Madam?’

  ‘Why, he galloped away for Port Glasgow at the crack of dawn. His ship sailed for Virginia this morning.’ She swooped up her hands again. ‘Mr Harding will be far, far away now. But do come in, do.’

  ‘No, I cannot.’ Somehow she managed another curtsy. ‘But I thank you for your kind offer of hospitality. Good day to you.’

  ‘And a good day to you, Mistress Ramsay.’ The Widow Aberdour’s voice sang merrily after Annabella and Nancy as they escaped back down the stairs.

  Outside on Gallowgate Street, Annabella stopped and gripped the corner of the building for support. Never, in the lifetime that Nancy had known her, had she seen Annabella look so distraught. Her face had turned as white as her hair powder and a patch on her cheek stood out vivid black. Mauve and white silk ballooning unheeded in the breeze revealed high heeled slippers and indecent amounts of white silk stockings. Nancy made a clumsy effort to hold down Annabella’s skirts and mumble words of comfort.

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t fash yourself.’

  Annabella struggled for composure. On top of everything else, to be so humiliated in front of her maid was unendurable. Inwardly she cursed herself for babbling out her foolish plans of revenge and of marriage to Harding. At last she managed to brush Nancy away and take charge of her own skirts.

  ‘Of course it is all right. Pox on the monstrous man. I am well rid of him.’

  A beggar in a long blue coat crushed close to her as she stepped briskly along the street.

  ‘Will ye help a poor cripple, mistress?’

  She knocked him aside shouting,

  ‘Out of my way, you filthy dog!’

  And the old woman who approached crying. ‘Gingerbread, gingerbread, buy my hot gingerbread,’ received equally rough treatment.

  ‘There are far too many beggars and peddlers and such prodigious nuisances cluttering the streets,’ she railed at Nancy. ‘It is time Papa did something about it. He is on the Town Council, is he not? It is monstrous and damnable that a lady cannot walk the streets without being pestered and agitated like this.’

  The tune of the Tolbooth clock added to the street noises and everywhere people were calling, ‘Caddie! Caddie!’ Horses were whinnying and clip-clopping, carriage wheels were squeaking and groaning and rattling over bumpy earth, and children were singing.

  Annabella hastened her pace until she was almost running. The sun was dappling buildings and making people’s clothes look fresh and new and jewel-coloured, but she felt like winter inside. It was a relief to reach her house, march into her room and shut the door. She leaned her back against it for a minute or two, head high, nostrils flaring. She would not weep. She would not. She kept commanding herself. But as she tore off her cloak and flung it to the floor, a giant wave of tears overcame her and she sobbed out loud to the empty room.

  ‘I have been cruelly used. I hate him. I hate him. May he be damned and rot in hell!’

  Later, although more composed in her person, she could not eat any dinner. Her father peered at her.

  ‘Aye, you’re looking verra wishy-washy. I told you that prancing about at Assemblies would do you no good. The minister warned you against such wicked frivolities as well. You should have paid more heed to him, if not to me, mistress.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘What ails you, Annabella?’

  ‘Only some trifling head pains, Papa.’

  ‘It’s a verra strange thing for you to be ailing. Never have I known the day.’

  ‘Well, sir, you know it now.’

  ‘Aye. Maybe punishment for your sins is catching up with you. The Lord works in strange and mysterious ways.’

  ‘Indeed he does, Papa.’

  She wished he would retire so that she could go to bed. Yet she had no desire to be alone with her thoughts. Tomorrow, she resolved, she would gallop her new horse the whole day. She would travel for miles and enjoy the scenery and the good weather but when tomorrow came she had not the heart for it and lay listlessly abed. Nor could she be bothered getting up the day after.

  Nancy said:

  ‘The maister’s worried. He says to fetch the doctor.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks,’ Annabella said. ‘Can a lady not have a rest in bed without such a prodigious fuss being made? I refuse to see Doctor Scobie. He’s a fool of a man and he will only bleed me.’

  Talking of bleeding reminded her that she should have had her monthly bleeding by now. Surely this could not mean that she was pregnant.

  ‘Hell and damnation!’ she suddenly yelled.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ Nancy gasped.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, nothing, I tell you! Get out of my sight, you stupid fool of a girl. I refuse to allow anything to be wrong.’

  Nancy rolled her eyes and turned towards the door.

  ‘The maister says to fetch the doctor.’

  ‘No! No! No!’

  The muffled cry came from deep in Annabella’s pillow. But Nancy had already left the room, banging the door shut behind her.

  Within the hour, the doctor and her father were calling for permission to enter and she was shouting back at them telling them to go away. Her father made to open the door and finding it locked, battered on it in a fury.

  ‘Annabella, open this door at once, damn you!’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘How dare you disobey me. You’ll pay for this, mistress. I�
�m warning you.’

  The doctor took his turn of thumping and bawling.

  ‘Ye’re a wicked lassie, Annabella Ramsay. Do as ye’re faither bids ye. D’ye hear?’

  ‘Go away, I said.’

  At last they gave up and left her alone and in silence until morning, when she got up and dressed and opened the door and seemed as bright and pert as usual.

  Her father said,

  ‘Are you not ashamed?’

  ‘Ashamed, Papa?’

  ‘Aye, ashamed.’ He sat down at the oval table in the centre of her bedroom, a grim figure with scowling face under an enormous curled wig.

  ‘Papa, Papa, I am sorry if I displeased you. Truly I am. But I cannot abide Doctor Scobie or his little black worms. And see, I am fully recovered without them.’

  He glared at her, his stare raking over the neatly brushed-back hair and the small face with the fragile bluish tinge to the skin under the eyes.

  ‘You still look gey peely-wally to me.’

  ‘I swear I am recovered, Papa. I will prove it to you with how much breakfast I will eat.’

  ‘There’s cloth arrived from London and silk and lace from France. I’ll have some sent up for you to choose from. It’s high time you had everything ready for your wedding.’

  ‘The mantua maker is nearly finished a dress.’ She hesitated then added casually, ‘There was a man at the Assembly who said he did business with you. A Mr Harding, I think his name was. A coarse ugly fellow.’

  Her father glowered with anger.

  ‘Aye. An impertinent scoundrel as well. He had the gall to come over here to argue his right, his right mark you, to ship his produce directly to Europe. I soon put a stop to that. You need ships then, I said. Well, ye’ll get none here. And I had a wee word with all my freends and made sure that not one ship anywhere would convenience him. Aye, that soon put him in a rage. It was well seen the Glasgow merchants were all related by blood or marriage, he accused. I readily agreed. I told him it was good business that it should be so and it would fit him better to be attending to his own business of planting tobacco in Virginia instead of meddling with our affairs in Glasgow. It’s a damned conspiracy, he shouted, and I thought he was going to draw his pistol or his sword. He’s a dangerous and violent man. If I had known he was going to be at the Assembly, I would have forbidden you to attend, Annabella.’