By this time Harding and Regina had entered the house and Joseph had taken charge of the horses they had been riding.
Halfway up the stairs on the way to her bedroom Regina stopped and called back to Old Abe:
‘Westminster’s at the quarters. Send someone to tell him to bring the new slaves, Lunesta and Little Sam, up to the house.’
‘Yes, Miss Chisholm, ma’am.’
The stairway curved gracefully into an open landing on either side. She turned left until she came to the room at the end. Then she stopped. Automatically she had made straight for Mistress Kitty’s room and for a moment, standing there gripping the door handle, she really believed that if she opened the door she would see Mistress Kitty propped up in bed, eager to welcome her with the monstrous smile that screwed up one side of her face and bulged one eye.
‘Oh, Regina, Regina, my dear,’ she’d say, clasping her hands underneath her chin in delight. ‘Poor little me’s so pleased to see you, so pleased to see you. Tell me all about Williamsburg, do.’
And she’d reply:
‘We had a very successful time. We bought fine horses and several slaves. And amber beads for you and a pretty fan and some silks and velvets … But wait, I’ll send Jenny for a hot drink for both of us and after I go to my room and take off my coat and wash my face and hands I’ll come back and we will have a long talk …’
It seemed incredible that Mistress Kitty’s room, when she slowly creaked open the door, lay neat and clean and empty.
Regina took a deep breath and turned away. She tried to tell herself that she was being ridiculous. She had never felt that she needed anyone before. And anyway there were still Gav and Abigail and now their twin children Bette and Jethro. But she only saw them very occasionally. The journey to the settlement was a long and arduous one and could not be taken during the winter, for the tobacco road could be a dangerous quagmire. In the spring also, when the freshets came rushing down from the hills, overflowing the rivers and flooding the lands, it was sometimes impossible to travel. She remembered in Glasgow the River Clyde sometimes overflowed its banks and flooded the lower parts of the city around the Briggait, the foot of Stockwell Street, Saltmarket Street and the Green. On these occasions she and Gav could not go to school. But that was nothing to the devastating Virginian freshets.
The autumn was usually the best time for the journey to the settlement and she had gone with Harding when he went to the store on business. She had stayed at the tavern overnight, however. She had no desire to pig it with Gav and his family in their tiny two-roomed cabin. But she had drunk tea with them and Abigail had treated her civilly, although she suspected that Gav’s wife had no great liking for her. The children were much too young as yet to appreciate the presents she brought. Not only did she take fancy sweetmeats which she had cooked herself, but expensive toys she made a point of purchasing for them when she visited Williamsburg.
This time she had bought Jethro a drum and a soldier’s hat and Bette a beautiful little silk gown. The gown had been a mistake, she realised now. By the time she saw the child again, she might have outgrown it.
In her own room she went over to the pier glass and stared at the ashen face in its fiery frame. It was all Gav’s fault. They should have been together on their own plantation. He should have kept his promise. If they had been together in their own home, on their own plantation, she would not be here in Forest Hall now. She would not have Harding’s child inside her. She would not be having nightmares about Mistress Kitty.
4
IT had rained so constantly in the past few days that living in Glasgow had become like living at the bottom of a pond. Not a heavy downpour battering and shaking windows and roofs, but a steady drizzle like a cloud of fog enshrouded the Tolbooth and the surrounding tenements, blurring outlines, blackening windows, making the roads a bog of mud and giving a dismal appearance to the city.
Hardly a soul ventured out. Not even a caddie could be seen to run an errand or fetch a sedan chair. Annabella had to send Betsy to the well for drinking water and the girl returned miserably shivering with her towsy hair like cobwebs sticking across her face. Her large eyes overflowed with rain that dribbled down her face and neck.
‘Don’t stand there looking so sorry for yourself,’ Annabella scolded. ‘Go and get dry at the kitchen fire.’
Later she’d gone through to the kitchen to find Betsy crouched beside the fire in a cloud of steam.
‘You stupid girl.’ Annabella snatched a wooden spoon from the table and flung it, scoring a direct hit on Betsy’s back. The girl howled out in pain.
‘I couldn’t help it, Mistress Annabella. I didn’t mean it.’
Annabella rolled her eyes.
‘What are you bleating on about now?’
‘Whatever it is I’ve done wrong, Mistress Annabella. Oh, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to do wrong! May the Good Lord Jesus be my judge.’
‘Never mind bringing the Good Lord Jesus into it. Haven’t you enough sense of your own to take your gown off to dry it and give yourself a rub down with a towel? No wonder you’re forever sniffling and streaming with colds. And don’t clasp your hands like that as if you’re down on your knees praying.’
Betsy crumpled forward in a spate of sobs, burying her face in her lap, rolling backwards and forwards like a ball with a wet tangle of hair sticking out in front. It was as much as Annabella could do to prevent herself from giving the ball a good kick. What controlled the impulse more than anything was the idea that Betsy, in her own infuriating way, would be pleased to get a kicking. Betsy liked any excuse for a broken-hearted howl and weep.
Annabella stamped her foot instead.
‘Stop that infernal blubbering. You’ll drown in your own self-pity one of these days. Big John’s down at the stables. Go and tell him to saddle up my horse.’
‘Oh, Mistress Annabella!’ Betsy unrolled and clasped her hands again. ‘You’re surely not going out in all this wet? The roads are thick with mud. I’m all black and sticky with it right up past my ankles.’
‘I am not in the least surprised to hear it, Betsy. Your filthy footprints are all over the floor. And I am mightily glad that Mistress Griselle has invited Mungo and me for tea today. What with the wretched rain and your long-visaged melancholy appearance, I feel quite cast down. Hurry now. Go and do as you’re told. Mungo can share my saddle.’
‘What about me?’
‘Oh, you can stay moping by the fire, if you wish. But don’t fall asleep and let it go out, do you hear?’
‘Oh, God save us, you’ll catch your death, and poor wee Mungo. Oh, the poor wee soul.’
She started rocking and weeping again.
‘Gracious heavens,’ Annabella cried out. ‘Must I kick you down the stairs before you will go and do as you’re bid? I am away to put on my cloak.’
Mungo was waiting in his double-caped coat and three-cornered hat. He looked quite grown-up for his eight years. His cousin, George, was a year older but looked much more delicate and immature. The boys got on well together, however, and Mungo was glad of his company. He missed his friends in Williamsburg and as he had not yet started school in Glasgow the opportunity had not arisen to make new friends.
‘I have made some sweetmeats,’ Annabella told him. ‘You can take them as a present to your cousin.’
‘Thank you, Mother.’ He lifted the box from the table, tucked it under his arm and stood watching Annabella fasten her cape and pull the hood well forward over her hair.
On an impulse, she dropped a kiss on his brow. Sometimes she felt so proud of the sturdy little figure with the brown eyes and dark straight hair, she could not resist indulging in a quick kiss or hug. She struggled not to pet the child too much and spoil him, though. Griselle had coddled and ruined poor George. Apparently she even insisted on a sedan chair to carry George to and from the grammar school. There would be none of that nonsense for Mungo. Mungo would have to fend for himself outside and inside of school, and scho
ol could be tough. She remembered only too well her own struggles to survive the torments of a bullying dominie whose tawse seemed an appendage of himself. She did not recall ever seeing the man without this instrument of torture in his hand.
Childhood was the proving ground for adult life and only the sturdiest in body and spirit survived.
‘Come away, then,’ she said. ‘I’m ready and willing to brace the infernal weather if you are, sir.’
He preceded her down the tower stair, clearing a path for her through the beggars and orphans who huddled together for shelter on every step. He took pleasure in shouting and kicking at them as he had seen his grandfather doing.
‘Out of the way, you filthy dogs. Make a path for Mistress Blackadder.’
‘Wait!’ she commanded when they reached the foot of the stairs. ‘There’s no point in wading through all that monstrous mud if we can avoid it. Betsy!’ Shading her eyes with a gloved hand she shouted to the blur beginning to take shape through the Scotch mist. ‘Tell Big John to bring the horse across here.’
They waited until the animal, led by Big John, came whinnying and sidling about in protest at being dragged from the warm stable into the cold. Steam rose from its silver and grey flanks and spouted from its nostrils and the smell of the stables still clung.
Annabella patted it.
‘Steady, boy.’
After she had mounted with a swirl and puff of cloak and skirts, she ordered Big John to lift Mungo up beside her. They set off at a trot with mud spattering high all around. Vagrants sheltering in other back stairs off the courtyard peered out to see what was happening but shrank hastily back from the fountain of mud as the horse splashed past.
Annabella was glad of the warmth and protection of Mungo’s body against hers but she did not lower her head to hide her face from the wet. Rain, she had heard, was good for the complexion and it certainly gave the skin a tingling sensation that was most exhilarating. Once through the close and out onto Saltmarket Street, she jerked and kicked the horse to the right and they went galloping down towards the river.
‘Whee!’ she squealed and Mungo laughed along with her. George would have not only been frightened at the reckless speed but horrified by the filth spraying up and spoiling their clothes. George was a nervous and fastidious boy.
Annabella reined in the horse when they came to Gibson’s Land, the tenement in which her brother Douglas and Griselle lived. It was a stately building standing on pillars and entry was through arches into a courtyard and stairways at the back. At Douglas’s stair she tied the horse to the hitching post, then bunching up her skirts, she called,
‘Race you upstairs.’
Griselle’s flat was on the first floor, but even so Annabella was breathless when she reached it and it took her a moment or two before she could regain her composure.
Griselle looked affronted.
‘What a way for a lady to behave. And in front of the child too. Will you never learn, Annabella? Look at you, soaking wet and covered in mud. And look at the child. He’ll catch his death.’
‘We both will,’ Annabella managed to gasp, ‘if you keep us standing out here in the draughty landing.’
‘Tuts. You’ve got me so fluttered. Come away in.’
A fire was merrily dancing in the bedroom. It tossed yellow light about the ceiling and walls making the candlesticks, the four-poster bed, the long pier glass, the table and chairs all appear to jig about too.
Annabella made straight for the fire, swinging off her cloak and throwing it to Griselle’s servant.
‘I always think this is a prodigiously lovely room, Griselle. The ceiling is as low as ours but it is so much bigger and better proportioned in every other way. And I do admire your paintings. It is damnable of Papa not to allow me to have paintings in our house. He insists they are frivolous and works of the devil. The devil choke him!’
‘Annabella!’ Griselle’s purple cheeks paled. ‘You’ll be punished for speaking in so wicked a manner.’
Douglas rose from his seat at the table and came to greet his sister, one hand daintily outstretched and the other patting his high-fronted wig. At the same time, he said to his wife,
‘No need to get into such a tither, Grizzie. My dear saucebox of a sister will be perfectly all right. I dare swear she’s in league with the devil.’
Annabella raised her hand for his kiss.
‘What keeps you indoors today, brother? Should you not be with Papa in the counting house?’
He sighed and plucked a lace-edged handkerchief from his frilly cuff. Dabbing it to his nose, he said,
‘Alas, I had the makings of a cold this morning and did not think it wise to venture out.’
‘Fiddlesticks and poppycock! You just did not want the rain to wash off your monstrous face paint.’
Flicking his handkerchief at her, he turned away.
‘Pshaw! You imagine yourself a woman of fashion. Yet you do not know that it is all the rage in England for men to wear powder and paint. Ladies too. So what do you think of that?’
‘I don’t care a fig what they do in England. I do what I like, and I do not like face paint. I think it looks clownish.’
‘All right, all right, my cockie. But I’m not the only one in Scotland to paint my face, you know.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Annabella. ‘You mean some of your gamester friends. I don’t admire their painted faces either, but I have always thought it cruelly unfair of Papa never to allow me to attend the gaming tables. I have missed much excitement in life by being so confined.’
Griselle said,
‘The diversion of cards and dice, however engaging, Annabella, are more often provocations to avarice and loss of temper than mere recreation and innocent amusement. If it were not for the fact that we meet so many of the landed gentry at the tables, we wouldn’t attend. Did I tell you that we’ve been invited to stay for a few days at my Lord Knox’s estate?’
‘No!’ Annabella was suitably impressed. ‘I wonder if I dare risk the tables now that I am a widow. Papa has no right to stop me. I’m neither a child nor an innocent young girl any more.’
Douglas sighed.
‘Dear Annabella, I would not advise it in your case. I would be on Papa’s side in this. You are a person of such extremes, I fear the cards would be your ruination.’
‘Fiddlesticks! What possible harm could a game of cards do to me?’
‘Sister dear, there is nothing that wears out a fine face like too many indulgences at the card tables and the cutting passions which attend them.’
Annabella laughed. ‘Passions, indeed!’
‘It is true. People become worn out with the passions of the tables. So many female gamesters have hollow eyes, haggard looks and pale complexions and I have known women to be carried out half-dead. I have seen a woman of quality gliding by in her sedan-chair at two o’clock in the morning like a spectre in a flare of flambeaux.’
‘Gracious heavens!’
‘Overindulgence in anything is a sin,’ Griselle said. ‘You’ll take a drink of tea, Annabella?’
‘Indeed yes, I would enjoy a cup, Grizzie.’
As she poured tea into the delicate china cups, Griselle said to Mungo,
‘Strip off your wet shoes and stockings and breeches, Mungo. George, give him your dressing-gown before he gets his death of cold.’
‘I am perfectly fit, Mistress Ramsay,’ Mungo said, ‘and not in the least cold.’
Griselle bristled.
‘You watch your impertinent tongue, young sir. Go at once and do as you’re told.’ Then to Annabella, ‘Mr Blackadder would never have allowed him to speak like that.’
‘He was only telling the truth. Oh, Grizzie, you have made your delicious almond biscuits.’
Griselle’s mouth quivered with pleasure.
‘Yes, I do make a good biscuit.’ She arranged herself neatly on a chair and began pouring milk into cups and handing them around. ‘Douglas, stop fiddling with your cuffs and pass y
our sister the biscuit plate. And you’ll not taste a better gingerbread than that one anywhere in Glasgow, Annabella.’
Annabella munched at a crisp nutty confection, then after a sip or two of tea, helped herself to another one.
‘Phemy and her daughter did not come, then?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I seem fated not to meet that child.’
Douglas dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his froth of lace handkerchief.
‘She’s a fine girlie.’
‘I didn’t expect her to arrive when I saw what the weather was like,’ Griselle said. ‘Little Jemima’s a delicate child. Only the likes of you would behave in so rash a manner, Annabella. Not one with any sense would put a foot outside their doors on such a day. Oh, there you are, boys. That’s better, Mungo. It’s a little tight across the shoulders and somewhat short for you, but it’ll do. Wrap it over and tie it properly, then come over by the fire and have some tea.’ Then turning to Annabella, she added in an accusing tone, ‘That boy’s built like an ox.’
Annabella laughed.
‘Rather a small one, Grizzie.’
‘Mr Blackadder was such a thin, delicate-made man.’
‘Oh, good gracious alive, Mr Blackadder might have been thin but he was prodigiously tough all the same.’
‘Not tough enough to survive Virginia,’ Griselle observed acidly. ‘That poor man should never have been dragged out to that heathen place.’
‘That’s why he wanted to go. Because he believed there were so many souls to be saved. And he wasn’t dragged.’
‘Did Papa really venture out to the counting house?’ Douglas asked.
‘Of course! He is made of sterner stuff than you, brother. I’ve said it before and I say it again. Mungo takes after him.’
‘Tuts, on such a day it wasn’t wise, Annabella. The rain shows no sign of letting up and it’ll be dark by the time he returns and dreadful underfoot.’
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Page 64