The Tobacco Lords Trilogy

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  ‘Oh! Send down Sal

  Oh! Send down Sal

  Oh! Send down Sal

  va-tion to us.

  And we shall bow-wow-wow

  Bow-wow-wow

  Before the throne.’

  It was not quite as hilarious as the occasion when the female voices in a choir had to repeat by themselves:

  ‘Oh! For a man

  Oh! For a man

  Oh! For a man-sion in the skies.’

  But it was enough to relieve some of the gloom and boredom and take away the keenness of her humiliation. As long as she could keep her sense of humour she would keep her sanity, she kept telling herself. But it was no easy task at times.

  The tirling of the door-pin rasped through her thoughts and she whisked from the room and pattered downstairs, deftly manoeuvring her skirts as she went to welcome her two sisters-in-law.

  There had been a time when she had considered them a monumental bore, but now with the restricting influence of the minister and her pregnant condition, they were a very welcome diversion.

  Phemy’s scraggy face peeked out from beneath a dark green tartan plaid. Griselle’s prettier features and highly coloured cheeks were accentuated by the scarlet of her hooded cape.

  ‘Mistress Griselle, Mistress Phemy.’ Annabella greeted them with a graceful curtsy and they curtsied prettily in reply. Then they all crushed upstairs. ‘How is my brother Douglas today, Griselle?’ Annabella inquired after they had divested themselves of their wraps and seated themselves in her bedroom. Douglas had been suffering from a feverish chill and was confined to bed.

  ‘He’ll survive,’ Griselle remarked dryly. ‘Although you would not think so with the fuss he’s making.’

  Annabella laughed.

  ‘Gracious heavens! Are men all the same! My husband had the toothache the other day and, upon my word, the howling and yowling of him might have been heard in Edinburgh.’

  Phemy giggled a little behind her hand but she said:

  ‘Poor Mr Blackadder. What did you do to ease him, Annabella?’

  ‘I passed him the whisky bottle and he eased himself.’

  ‘The Earl of Glendinny,’ said Phemy, referring to her own husband, an elderly widower who lived upstairs from her father, ‘has been coughing more of late.’

  Her father had chosen the Earl to be her husband and she had sensibly agreed when her father had pointed out that she was lucky to get anybody, far less a tobacco merchant with three stout sailing ships. She knew that with her small stature, pocked beaky face and straggling hair, she was no beauty. But she had a sweet singing voice and a kindly nature and she and the old Earl rubbed along easily enough.

  ‘He is quite amenable to my ministrations, however. He supped the honey and herb mixture I gave him with very little coaxing.’

  ‘Pray let me offer you some tea,’ said Annabella, as Nancy entered the room and placed the silver engraved teapot on the table.

  Griselle said:

  ‘I am surprised at the minister allowing you to indulge in tea, Annabella. There is a great deal of agitation against it among the clergy.’

  ‘I know, but I made such a prodigious fuss he was glad to agree. You knew my father gave me this handsome silver service?’

  Phemy sighed.

  ‘It is lovely, Annabella. Oh, and I do enjoy a cup of tea, don’t you?’

  ‘Indeed I do, Phemy. Let us be monstrously indulgent and wicked and have several cups.’

  Both Griselle and Phemy giggled as they accepted their tea, Phemy with hunched up shoulders like a bird, Griselle straight-backed and prim-lipped.

  After a few sips, Griselle said:

  ‘We visited Mistress Netty yesterday and as usual she entertained us on the spinet.’

  Annabella rolled her eyes.

  ‘That girl makes a perfect toil of music. I swear one day she’ll bore me to sleep.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Griselle. ‘At least she won’t be able to make you stand up and be chastised for it.’

  Annabella flushed and Phemy hastened to say,

  ‘It was there I heard about this serving woman, Annabella. Her name’s Betsy and she has a very decent character.’

  ‘Damn her decency,’ Annabella said. ‘Can she make good collops?’

  ‘Her cooking,’ Griselle said, ‘leaves a lot to be expected but she’s young enough to train.’

  ‘What age is she, pray?’

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘Hardly more than a child really,’ Phemy said.

  ‘About the same age as that monstrous Regina Chisholm was when she was supposed to be serving me. What an odious child she turned out to be.’

  Griselle looked smug.

  ‘Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you, Annabella. I did warn you but in your usual headstrong fashion you paid no heed.’

  ‘Betsy seems a nice girl,’ Phemy said. ‘I’m sure you’ll be all right with her, Annabella.’

  They were just enjoying their second cup of tea and sugar biscuit when Mr Blackadder’s long face appeared round the door. Then the rest of his lanky body eased itself into the room.

  ‘Uh-huh. Aye.’ Once in he leaned over in a low bow. ‘There you are, ladies. Aye, it’s yourselves. And verra welcome, as usual. Where did you put the whisky, Annabella?’

  ‘There is a bottle on top of the lowboy. There in front of your eyes, sir.’

  ‘Och, aye. So it is.’

  ‘Why don’t you join us and give us your chat, Mr Blackadder?’ Phemy said kindly.

  Annabella said,

  ‘Mr Blackadder is busy preparing his sermon.’

  ‘Aye. There’s a lot of sin going aboot and it needs a lot of talking to.’

  ‘What good does talking do, I wonder,’ Annabella said.

  ‘Uh-huh, och, well, I think I can hold my own with the stocks, the pillory and the hangman’s noose.’

  ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’ Griselle tutted and shook her head. ‘Wickedness gets treated in much too soft a fashion, that’s the trouble. There should be more offences punished by hanging. It’s the only way. If we allow a child to steal a crust of bread today, nothing in our larders will be safe tomorrow.’

  Phemy looked worried.

  ‘I think hanging children is going a bit too far though, Grizzie.’

  ‘Tuts!’ Grizzie said impatiently. ‘Stealing is stealing. They hang children all the time in London. With my own eyes I’ve seen whole cartloads of children, some no more than six or seven years of age, being taken through the streets to the gallows. I remember the bright coloured dresses of the girls.’

  ‘Poor wee things,’ murmured Phemy.

  ‘If it were left to people like Phemy,’ Griselle addressed Annabella and the minister, ‘nothing or nobody would be safe.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Aye. There’s a lot of wickedness in the world. There’s no fewer than six adulterers, twelve fornicators and fifteen breakers of the sabbath coming up before the Kirk Session this week.’

  Griselle tutted again.

  ‘The devil’s busy, Mr Blackadder.’

  ‘Aye,’ the minister agreed. ‘Verra busy.’

  Annabella’s thoughts were still on Regina. At last she said:

  ‘I’d like to see that monstrous red-haired devil hanged all right. And maybe I’ll see it yet.’

  12

  REGINA’S job was to serve in the store. Gav was set to work on the ledgers in the counting house. Mr Speckles halved his time between upstairs and downstairs. The store was a long windowless room with double doors that lay open all day in the summer months. It had three counters, one at each end and one facing the doors in the middle. The light from the doors served most of the room but a lantern hung at each end to illuminate the shadowy corners. The floor, the walls, the counters were all cluttered with a great variety of articles. Even the ceiling was used as storage space and hens nested in the beams.

  A box of nails was heaped on top with spades and hoes. Gloves, hooks and eyes, and buttons
crammed other boxes. Ribbons like rainbows streamed from yet another. Prayer books and Bibles soared high on shelves like black mountains. Bales of serge, canvas, silk and taffeta made a wall on the counter behind which Regina could disappear from view. Stays and hoops for ladies dangled on the wall, the hoops bouncing and rolling about like giant balls when anyone brushed against them. On the floor sacks of coffee and wig powder squashed against barrels of whisky and chests of tea. Above them, strings of pumpkins festooned the wall. The air hung heavy and still, pungent with smells of coffee and tobacco and the carrion pelts that were spread over one of the counters.

  The comparative darkness inside the shop made it look cool, but it was not. Regina wore only breeches, shirt and waistcoat. Long ago she had discarded her shoes, stockings and wig and she had her auburn hair tied back in a bow as most of the men did. But many gentlemen and ladies wore wigs, especially when visiting the store from one of the neighbouring plantations or when joining a ship to take them further down river to one of the bigger plantations which had their own wharfs.

  But whatever reason they came to the settlement, once there the gentlemen sauntered about discussing the state of their tobacco crop, grumbling about the store prices, the laziness of their servants, or the problems of catching runaway slaves. There were no proper paths or roads, only earth scuffed bald of grass except for fringes of green around cabins and tree stumps, and as the planters strolled in the blazing heat dust whitened their top boots and breeches. The brassy sun made the back of their throats taste metallic, and sweat dribbled down their eyebrows to hang glimmering like a spider’s web with droplets of dew.

  The windows of the houses flashed like diamonds and all the doors lay wide in the hope of sucking in a breeze from the river. But down by the sheds and warehouses it was no cooler. Steam rose from the water and shimmered wooden hulls and delicate giant masts. Only in the forest where the sun could not penetrate, along the tobacco road, in the slave quarters, or further along in Widow Shoozie’s tavern was it tolerably cool.

  But despite the heat men enjoyed walking around or gathering in the clearing in the centre of the settlement in front of the jailhouse to bet on cock fights.

  Ladies put their heads together, happy at the chance of a gossip in one or other of the houses and sipped home-made peach brandy. They chattered about the latest fashions or their last trip to Williamsburg, or the news the ships had brought from Scotland or England. Or they exchanged recipes for puddings and potions or dramatic tales of confinements.

  Regina was kept busy in the store, although there were quiet times too. Then she was able to escape and be on her own. Sometimes she went down by the creek and fished with rod and line. But it was a favourite place for the young lads of the settlement and if any of them appeared she slipped quietly away. There was a tree with a hollowed-out trunk on the way to the creek and often she would crouch in there and stay hidden for hours. Since she had been forced by the heat to discard her coat, the lack of the cover it had afforded worried her. But her waistcoat was long and not too tight and so did not reveal the true contours of her body. Even so, she found herself receiving unwelcome attention, not because of her shape but because of her hair and smooth complexion. And most of all, people remarked on the vivid green of her eyes.

  One woman had laughed and said to Mr Speckles,

  ‘Never did I dream, sir, that I would be envious of a lad’s appearance. But I swear he is the most handsome I have ever seen. Such skin, Mr Speckles. Such skin and those eyes, sir. Never has an emerald been so green. If it were not for a certain hardness of expression both of the eyes and the mouth, he could pass for a young girl.’

  People watched her and she hated the intrusion of their attentions. She especially hated Mr Speckles who stank of stale sweat and whisky and who sniffed a lot and had shifty eyes that often followed her. They quickly slithered away when she turned on him or suddenly stared up. But they kept ferreting back again to annoy her. She didn’t like the man. She didn’t like his flaky face and moth-eaten wig and filthy handkerchief forever trailing and fluttering from his back pocket. She didn’t like his sunken eyes and consumptive appearance. She hoped he might die of the consumption or the fever or the flux so that she and Gav would be left on their own. They could run the place, she was sure. In no time they had picked up how things were done.

  They dealt mostly with small planters and offered credit and paid for the planters’ tobacco crop mostly in goods. There was an acute shortage of coin in the colony and everyone, even the ministers, got paid in tobacco. This shortage of coin meant that the planters could not do their shopping anywhere else but the Company’s store. There they were allowed to buy goods up to the limit of the tobacco they produced. In the store all the goods on display were marked with two prices, a ‘cash’ price and a much higher ‘goods’ price. Those who paid in money or tobacco were allowed the lower cash price. Those who wanted credit, however, had to pay the higher goods price. Already it was obvious to Regina that once a man got into debt, it was difficult for him to pay it off. His debts just kept increasing and most of the planters’ next year’s crops were already mortgaged to the store.

  Now she understood why Glasgow merchants like Ramsay were wealthy. Even if they sold tobacco at a loss, the tobacco lords would still be rich on the profit from their retail stores. It was obvious too that the planters did not like the tobacco lords or their store managers, although sometimes Mr Speckles entertained one or two of them in the counting house to a bottle of whisky or wine and a game of cards. In letters from Ramsay he was told to do this to encourage good feeling and good business, and cases of wine and whisky were shipped over from Glasgow for this very purpose. Mr Speckles was also advised to allow the planters to win at cards. But even though he did this conscientiously, he was not a popular man with them. More often than not he gambled and drank with the tradesmen on the settlement, or the ships’ captains when there were ships at the wharf. Often he went to the tavern, and when he wasn’t furtively watching Widow Shoozie he caroused and gambled with back-woodsmen or trappers or whoever might be there.

  Gav said he was sorry for him and took upon himself the task of getting Mr Speckles safely to bed every night. Sometimes he had to go out looking for him and half drag the drunken man back to the store before divesting him of his filthy garments and helping him into bed.

  ‘Let him rot,’ she told Gav. ‘Or get one of the slaves to see to him. Why should you worry?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Gav replied. ‘He’s kind to me and I like him.’

  Gav was easily pleased and there had always been a softness about him despite his efforts to appear tough. He had even liked the beggar, Quin, and had wept when they had parted in Glasgow. Quin had been ugly and deformed and had made them beg for him.

  After she had got money of her own and she and Gav were ready to leave Glasgow, she had soon told the ugly Quin that he was no longer wanted. But Gav had actually seemed worried.

  ‘What’ll you do?’ he’d asked the beggar.

  ‘Who cares?’ she’d said.

  And Gav had cried out,

  ‘I care! So you shut your cruel, wicked mouth.’

  Gav would never get anywhere in the world. But she would. Her golden pieces were still safely locked in her sea-chest. Meantime, she was learning fast about everything and everybody and gaining much invaluable experience.

  She still was not sure of course what she could do. There might be the possibility of buying some land from one of the planters. Land was one commodity there was plenty of. Perhaps she could grow tobacco and become wealthy on that, but she would have to be careful that she did not get into debt like most of the others.

  All this meant remaining as a young man. She did not know of any laws in Virginia preventing a female owning land or property. (Most taverns were apparently owned by women and the Widow Shoozie had a good sized plot at the back of her place.) But it might be easier as a man. She kept telling herself that her disguise was only for b
usiness reasons but in her heart she knew she was far too afraid of being a woman.

  She still had nightmares about that terrible day when she went to the house in Tannery Wynd to look for Gav but found instead that it was crowded with French and Irish soldiers. They had been part of the army of the Stuart Pretender who had invaded Glasgow. One of the Frenchmen had grabbed her, whimpering with terror, into the hole-in-the-wall bed. Soon her whimpers had panicked into screams and she had gone on screaming as one man after the other had climbed into the bed on top of her. Eventually she was left dumb with shock, with blood pouring from between her legs.

  She shrank from going to sleep at night in case the nightmare would return to terrify her. Over and over again she tried to convince herself that all men were not like those drunken animals of soldiers. Here in Virginia, for instance, men seemed to regard females very highly. A girl had barely reached her teens before she was snapped up in marriage. Only the other day the thirteen-year-old daughter of the carpenter had made a very good marriage. Regina knew she would have no problem finding a husband—perhaps even a rich husband—but the thought of a man, any man, defiling her again sickened her beyond measure. She could not bear to contemplate such horror. No, much better and safer to conceal the fact that she was a woman and increase her wealth and position by other means.

  She was so deep in thought about her ambitions that she had not heard a customer come into the store. Suddenly he came into focus. He was peering closely at her across the counter.

  ‘Ah! So you are not dead,’ he said. ‘You looked like a corpse standing there.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she assured him. ‘I’m very much alive, sir.’

  It was Mr Harding from one of the biggest of the plantations in the interior. A huge, ugly man, he wore his hair tied back in a black ribbon notched into swallow tails. His dark moody eyes had a disconcerting habit of sharpening and riveting someone with unexpected attention, as he was doing now with Regina. She willed herself not to flush or flinch under his scrutiny. His wife trilled out.