‘It’s a terrible worry and problem,’ he confessed to Annabella, ‘to know what to do for the best.’
Child murder continued with terrible frequency, however, and long ago the Scots Parliament had passed laws of great rigour to suppress so prevalent a form of murder. The General Assembly ordered Mr Blackadder and all the ministers to read from their pulpits the Act against concealment of pregnancy in solemn warning. Yet, so many women continued to be executed for the crime that sometimes they had to be hanged in batches at one time.
‘It’s a sad world,’ said Mr Blackadder.
Often he said that. Just suddenly, in the middle of what he was doing or saying or writing.
‘Uh-huh, aye, it’s a sad, sad world.’
And more and more often she was agreeing with him.
16
ANNABELLA dreamed of donning her most beautiful dress and powdering her hair and being carried in a sedan to some elegant ball. Often she remembered the ball given by Prince Charles Edward Stuart during his stay in Glasgow and how she had danced the minuet with Jean-Paul Lavelle and with the handsome Prince. She remembered the many-candled chandeliers and the brilliant colours of tartans worn by the Highland Chiefs.
Oh, such gaiety, such elegance, such light, witty bantering conversation—how she longed for it now. How she sighed too for a lover’s courteous and flattering attentions. Often, out taking the air in her fur-trimmed cloak and hood and matching muff, or shopping at the booths wearing a mask to protect her face and pattens to protect her satin slippers, she pertly eyed the men who passed either on foot or clopping along on horseback. She played guessing games with herself as to the potential as gallant paramours of this young buck royal with blue cloak and gold trimmed cocked hat, or that soldier in the scarlet coat. But the young bucks were too young and the soldiers very coarse fellows.
The long dark nights of winter dragged on like a prison sentence until she knew every splinter, every rough patch, every pattern of dark stain on floor or wood-panelled walls. She knew off by heart every title (and often large parts of the text) of every book behind the leaded glass doors of the bookcase. Titles like Revelation and Sermons by That Eminent Servant of the Lord, Mr Andrew Gray, and Rules of Good Deportment and Sanctifiction of the Lord’s Day and Glimpse of Glory and Case of Conscience.
She knew how many purple pears were painted on the ceiling-beams, and russet apples and bunches of black grapes. She knew the way the curtains rippled in the draught and the delicate dance of the candle flame. She knew the regular rhythm of Mr Blackadder’s quill pen and the way his hair straggled forward as he crouched, high shouldered, over the table.
Not that she just sat idly gazing around all the time. She kept herself as busy as she could with her embroidery and the mending of table linen and bed linen and the sewing of shirts, because Mr Blackadder could not afford a sewing maid. The training and supervising of Betsy and her cooking efforts in the kitchen took up a considerable portion of every day. Betsy was now fairly proficient in making dishes like barley broth, or cockie-leekie soup, haggis or oatmeal farles, minced collops or boiled goose. But when it came to preparing a sheep’s head for sheep’s head broth, or partan-pie made with dressed crab, or Naple’s biscuits, or ratafia cream or tanzie custard, she was reduced to blubbering into her petticoats. Over and over again Annabella had to patter downstairs and into the kitchen to attend to some culinary crisis when Betsy had given it up as hopeless and burst into loudening wails of panic.
Nancy refused to have anything to do with her.
‘She’s the cook. Let her get on with it,’ Nancy always said and Annabella felt like wringing her neck.
‘Losh and lovenendie, a lot of help you are. The pair of you are driving me to distraction.’
‘I do my own work,’ Nancy insisted. ‘I don’t ask her to help me.’
‘Pox on you, you lazy strumpet. You do as little as possible. You’ve always been the same.’
Then she would have to show Betsy yet again how to make Mr Blackadder’s favourite sheep’s head broth. She would scrape and brush the head herself and take out the glassy part of the eyes. Then she would split the head with the cleaver and lay aside the brains and clean the nostrils and gristly parts before putting the head into the pot to boil with mutton, barley, peas, carrots, turnips, onions and parsley.
Betsy would dry away her tears and curtsy her thanks and promise, with wide-eyed earnestness, that she understood everything perfectly now and that she would certainly be able to do it all herself the next time. But the next time she would be howling into her petticoats again.
In a way, Annabella was glad of these sorties into the kitchen. At least they made a daily diversion and the kitchen was a pleasant enough place with its inglenook fireplace with stools at either side close into the fire and further out a rocking chair and across the other side a dresser with gleaming pewter plates. It was always cosy in the kitchen with mouth-watering smells of roasting meat, lemons, oatmeal, herbs and spices of all kinds. The flurry of kitchen activity required enough concentration to banish Annabella’s other more distressing and depressing thoughts.
She was also much relieved by the brief celebrations for Hallowe’en and Yule and New Year when there was feasting and the men indulged in shooting matches, football and other diversions.
On Shrove Tuesday there was a bit of excitement in the town when all the schoolboys took a fighting-cock to school and on payment of twelve pennies to the master, the cocks were pitted against each other in the schoolroom in the presence of the gentry of the neighbourhood. It was amusing how afterwards the schoolmaster eagerly gathered up the dead cocks. They were apparently regarded as a sumptuous feast by his family who ate nothing but oatmeal for the rest of the year.
But cockfighting was a man’s sport and of no great interest to her.
On the first of May the Beltane Festival was fun for everyone when bonfires were lit and everyone danced round the flames. It was about this time that she saw the chance of a really exciting reprieve.
The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was held in Edinburgh every year. It had never been of any interest to her before her marriage and in the first year Mungo had been too young to travel any great distance. Anyway it had never appealed to her. In fact, she had been glad to get rid of Mr Blackadder for a few weeks. But now it assumed obsessive importance, not for the Assembly itself but for the chance to visit the capital city. She had never been to Edinburgh and could imagine there must be all sorts of pleasures and excitement there, things to see, places to visit, people to meet. She became quite feverish with anxiety when Mr Blackadder showed little if any enthusiasm to take her.
‘But you must allow me to accompany you, sir. I insist. It is inconceivable that I should be left here to languish on my own. I refuse to do such a thing.’
‘Aye, weel, ye can’t go, mistress, and that’s all there is aboot it.’
‘Why can’t I go?’ She stamped her foot. ‘Why, I say? Why, sir?’
‘You know verra weel. Ye can’t leave wee Mungo. Nor can you take the bairn along.’
‘Of course I can take him.’
‘Annabella, lassie, you obviously don’t know the long and dangerous journey it is to Edinburgh. The roads are that bad it’s aye a miracle when anybody gets there. But it’s no’ just the roads. There’s Egyptian sorners and all sorts of dangers to contend with.’
‘Oh, pooh to the sorners. I’ll soon send them packing with a flea in their ear. As for the roads, I’ll get Papa to borrow a lumbering coach and six fine horses from one of the gentry who are his customers. If necessary, he would pay for the use of it when it is to secure the comfort and safety of his daughter and grandson. And we can take Nancy and Betsy along to see to our needs.’
‘Uh-huh, aye. Even if you persuaded your father into such an extravagant and foolish action it would neither guarantee your safety nor your comfort. That road’s enough to bump the guts oot o’ anybody and we’d be verra fortunate if we got ther
e in a day and a half.’
‘I don’t care about the time. Time I have prodigiously plenty of, Mr Blackadder. Time lies uncommon heavy on me here. I shall pine away and die if you do not take me.’
‘Wheest, Annabella, ye’ve no’ to talk like that.’
‘I’ll talk in whatever way I wish, sir, and if I say I’ll die, I’ll die. I swear this past winter has been the most monstrously, tedious in my whole life. I feel a spiritual indisposition and a decay of the soul. I am deeply dejected, sir.’
‘Uh-huh, weel, you aye seem cheery enough to me.’
‘I do not go about with a long, melancholy face, that is true. I try to keep your home a happy place, Mr Blackadder. I try to be a good wife. Surely I deserve to be indulged in this. How can you even think to go without me. I am mightily distressed, sir.’
‘Och, dearie me, you’re an awful lassie, Annabella. Och, I suppose if you must come, you must come.’
Immediately she brightened. Her eyes shone. Clapping her hands with excitement, she kissed him on the cheek.
‘I’m obliged to you, Mr Blackadder. I shall speak to Papa right away.’
Her father did not readily agree but she persuaded him in the end and he arranged for the use of not only my Lord Knox’s lumbering coach and six fine horses but three footmen as well. Two of the footmen were to stand behind armed with long poles to prise the coach out of the ruts and one was to run in front to give warning of any obstruction.
Mr Blackadder made his will and they set all their affairs in order before they began the journey. The young maid Betsy wept copiously with fear and distress at going so far from her family who all turned out, howling and lamenting, to see her off. Others came too to share the excitement of the departure and to gaze in admiration at the coach. Gudewives and maids strained from tenement windows all around. Children skipped about or stood gazing in open-mouthed wonder. Gentlemen cantered up on horseback to wish the travellers well. Ruffians leered and nudged about. Ladies crowded close, skirts swaying in a riot of colour, handkerchiefs waving, to call,
‘Safe journey. God be with you.’
And in the same breath they gossiped to each other about how it was a disgrace to be travelling with a child on such a dangerous journey and how Annabella’s gown was far too fashionable to be proper for a minister’s wife.
Such was the clamour and crush and excitement around the carriage, it was only with the utmost difficulty and roaring and cursing that Big John managed to get the horses and the crowd moving.
Mr Blackadder screwed his head out of the carriage window and yelled up protests to Big John at his shocking language, but his voice was drowned by the noise of the crowd until eventually with a mighty crack of Big John’s whip they were away.
Annabella’s cheeks burned scarlet with joy as the coach thundered along Gallowgate Street and out the deserted country road to Edinburgh.
‘Oh, what an adventure,’ she cried out. ‘Nancy, Betsy, it is a wondrous adventure, is it not?’
Betsy wailed and Nancy glowered.
‘If anything happens to this bairn, mistress …’ She could have murdered Annabella. There she was, not giving the slightest thought for anyone but herself, completely oblivious of the danger and discomfort they were all in. There she was, radiant in her froth of a gown the colour of apple-blossom and a milkmaid straw hat perched on her curls and tied under her chin with bright blue ribbons to match her eyes.
‘Oh fiddlesticks, Nancy, nothing is going to happen to Mungo. Look how he bounces up and down and laughs and enjoys himself already. He is his mother’s son.’
She hugged and kissed the little boy who was being held, not without some difficulty, on Nancy’s knee. Then she peered with interest from the window. At first she caught glimpses of moorland and then gently rolling countryside and trees and broom. But there was nothing gentle about the rough and pitted road on which they travelled. Soon it was impossible to concentrate on scenery as they pitched about from boulder to boulder.
‘What is that devilish footman about?’ Annabella shouted. ‘Is he not supposed to run in front and warn us about such things so that we may go round them?’
Grimly Mr Blackadder hung onto his hat.
‘Aye, I warned ye, mistress. It’s no’ so pleasant noo, is it?’
‘You have not answered my question, sir. Why are we bumping and swaying down into pits and crashing and leaping over boulders like this? Why do we not avoid these hazards?’
‘There’s no way of avoiding them, that’s why. Unless you want us to get stuck in a ditch.’
‘Command him to remove the boulders.’
‘Haud yer wheest! He’s removing as many as he’s able.’
By the time they reached Linlithgow and the Change House where they were to stay the night, they were so jarred and tossed about they were barely fit to stagger from the coach. And had it not been for their weary and painful condition, they would not for a moment have remained there.
The inn was a mean thatched hovel, with dirty rooms, dirty food and dirty attendants. The table at which the footmen, Big John, Nancy, Betsy, Mungo, Mr Blackadder and Annabella ate was greasy and without a cover. The butter was thick with cow-hairs. The coarse meal was served without a knife and fork and they were forced to use their fingers. When one tin can was placed on the table to be handed round from mouth to mouth, Annabella objected in no uncertain manner.
‘How many mouths has this repulsive object been to before it has reached us? Remove it from my sight at once, do you hear, and bring me a clean glass. Clean, I said! Shame on you, sir, for keeping such a monstrous filthy house. It is a dastardly outrage, that a lady and gentleman have to suffer such shocking indignities.’
But what they suffered at the meal was nothing to what they had to put up with later. The beds were stinking and crawling with bugs and fleas. Annabella refused to go near hers. She sat the whole night on a chair, her apple blossom skirts bunched up around her, her feet still in their blue satin slippers resting on a stool. She ordered the others to do the same or to lie on the floor if they preferred. As a result, in the morning when they set off again they were not much refreshed.
The road did not improve and several times when the footmen, no matter how hard they struggled with the poles, could not budge the carriage from a deep hollow, they had all to clamber out to lighten it. On one occasion Mr Blackadder had to help the other men in their struggle to budge the wheels. When his good black coat and breeches and white stockings became splashed with mud he shook his fist at Annabella and howled,
‘This is all your fault, mistress. You and your damn lumbering coaches. If I had been riding along by myself on my ain horse there would have been none of this bother.’
‘Don’t you dare raise your voice and fist at me, sir,’ Annabella fumed, and when Mungo began to cry with fright, ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ To make matters worse Betsy began to screech and Annabella whirled on her and soundly slapped her face. ‘You useless girl. Stop that monstrous caterwauling this instant.’
She began to think they were fated never to reach Edinburgh until at long last she caught her first glimpse of the place. Away in the distance, high on a hill of rock, towered Edinburgh Castle. The sight cheered her immediately. It seemed to put new energy into the footmen and Big John too and they urged the horses forward as hard as they could.
Soon they were approaching the West Port. Edinburgh was a walled city with various Ports or Gates. Once inside the West Port, Annabella was immediately struck by the height of the tenement buildings towering ten to twelve storeys in the air on either side of them. The long High Street was particularly impressive with wooden-faced gables turned to the streets, the projecting upper storey making piazzas below. Underneath these pillared piazzas were the open booths where merchants displayed their wares. Some had spread them on the pavement in front of their shops. In the middle of the street near the lofty St Giles Cathedral were stalls crammed with woollen stuffs, linen, pots and all sorts of articl
es. In the second or third flats of the Luckenbooths—a row of tall narrow houses standing in front of St Giles and blocking the High Street—the best tradesmen had their shops. Other shopkeepers carried on their businesses in cellars to which the customers descended by worn stone steps so narrow that it was hardly possible to turn and too dark to see.
In front of the houses were painted signs indicating the article in which each tradesman chiefly dealt. Over one window a periwig advertised the presence of a barber. A likeness of stays or a petticoat showed ladies where they could buy these articles.
The street was seething with a vast panorama of humanity. There were few coaches in the narrow steep streets but innumerable sedan-chairs swayed about in all directions carried by Highland porters yelling in Gaelic at anyone who got in their way.
Young ladies in gigantic hoops swept along on either side of the street, their heads and shoulders draped with gay silken plaids, scarlet and green. Faces adorned by patches were mostly concealed by black velvet masks held close by strings, the buttoned ends of which were held by the ladies’ teeth. In their hands they wielded huge green paper fans to cool themselves and by their sides hung little snuff bags. On their feet were red high-heeled shoes in which they tripped lightly along. Stately old ladies walked with precision and dignity with pattens on their feet and canes in their hands.
There were judges wearing large wigs and carrying their hats under their arms; advocates billowing along in their gowns on the way to the courts in Parliament House; and there were ministers by the dozen in their blue or grey coats, bands, wigs and three-cornered hats.
Ragged and dirty but swift and alert caddies were running with parcels and messages to different parts of the town.
Merchants assembled at the Cross, near St Giles, to transact business and to exchange news and snuffboxes. Other men about town met and gossiped.
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Page 45