The Tobacco Lords Trilogy

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  He couldn’t believe that he would never see George again. The thought sent his heart fluttering up to his throat in panic. He couldn’t believe how George had died. He couldn’t bear to imagine how the child must have suffered.

  He couldn’t, he couldn’t believe that he had been the cause of his son’s death. The boy had loved and trusted him. He’d actually told him once. They had been talking and planning about what George would be when he grew up and George had said,

  ‘I just want to be like you, Papa. I love you. I love you much better than Mama.’

  ‘Now, now, Geordie,’ he’d tried to chastise him, ‘Mama is very kind and good to you and she loves you most dearly.’

  ‘I know, Papa,’ the child had insisted. ‘But I still love you much, much better than her.’

  He hadn’t wanted to fail Geordie. Had he failed him? Had he actually caused Geordie to die a horrible death?

  He felt sick. He rose shakily from the seat and groped back down the street again. Down past the Cross, down past the Saltmarket, round the Briggait. But he couldn’t bring himself to go into the counting-house. He was not fit to touch a ledger. He was fit for nothing. He felt as if he was going insane. He was in a panic to escape from himself. He could not cope with the knowledge of what he had done.

  He was at the river without knowing how he got there.

  He kept thinking, ‘My son, my son.’

  Everyone at the table rose when Phemy burst into the room hysterically sobbing.

  ‘For God’s sake, mistress,’ Ramsay shouted. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘It’s Douglas. Oh, poor man. Oh, Annabella.’

  ‘Stop blubbering,’ Annabella snapped. ‘Tell us.’

  ‘He’s drowned himself. He flung himself in the river. They’ve just pulled his body out and brought it home. I must fly back to Griselle. Oh, Annabella, I’m so sorry. Your poor brother. I know you loved him. I know how you must feel, and your poor Papa. That’s why I came and told you myself instead of sending a servant. But now I must go back to Griselle. I’ve sent a servant to fetch Mama.’

  With a stricken look at Annabella and Ramsay, she turned and fled from the room.

  The front door banged and there was silence again except for Betsy haunting the kitchen with her wailing and sobbing.

  ‘Papa,’ Annabella said, brokenly. He put out his arms. Never since she was a young child had she clung to him like this and been held by him in a comforting embrace. ‘Oh, Papa.’

  He lowered his head against hers and as soon as she felt his tears against her face she struggled to contain her own grief so that she could comfort him. But before she could find any words, he said in a bewildered voice,

  ‘Where did I fail the lad? Was I too harsh, think ye?’

  ‘No, Papa. You were always kind. Only this afternoon he was telling me of your kindness in allowing him to go home because he was suffering from head-pains. He loved and admired you, Papa. Truly he did.’

  Cunningham came over and put one arm round Ramsay’s shoulders and the other round Annabella’s.

  ‘I wish there was something I could say or do, dear friends, to help or comfort you.’

  They had forgotten his existence but now Annabella looked up at him gratefully.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Cunningham. Perhaps you would be kind enough to pour three large whiskies. A dram might help steady us.’

  ‘Certainly.’ He hastened to do as she suggested.

  Ramsay had begun to tremble. She felt his body shrink and shiver inside his clothes.

  ‘Have courage, Papa,’ she whispered. ‘You will be all right.’

  ‘But what about the lad? What about our Dougie? He took his own life. There’ll be no rest for him. He’ll never reach the other side. He’ll be cast down in the pit of eternal damnation.’

  It was terrible to see her father like this; not roaring out God’s words with relish and authority, with flashing eyes and straight back, but bent and querulous like an old man.

  ‘Drink this, Mr Ramsay,’ Cunningham urged. But Ramsay’s hands were trembling so much, the younger man had to help the glass to his lips.

  ‘I’d better go down the road,’ Ramsay said in between sips. ‘I’d better go and see the lad. Och, Dougie, Dougie, why did you commit such a terrible sin?’

  ‘He was ill, Papa. You remember. He took these monstrous headaches. Sometimes he could hardly see, the pain was so frightful.’

  ‘Och. Dougie, Dougie …’

  ‘He would not know what he was doing. I think you would be better to go to bed, Papa. No good purpose can be served by you going down to Gibson’s Land tonight.’

  ‘We can’t just stay here as if nothing’s happened.’

  ‘Mr Ramsay, Annabella is right,’ Cunningham said. ‘You do not look at all well. Get your servant to help you to bed. I will escort your daughter to Gibson’s Land and I will offer to assist in any way I can while I am there.’

  ‘I’m obliged to you, sir.’

  ‘Big John,’ Annabella called.

  ‘Yes, mistress,’ he answered, lumbering into the room, his face screwed up in distress.

  ‘Help the master to his bed.’

  ‘Yes, mistress. Come away, maister,’ he said, linking arms with Ramsay and leading him from the room. ‘Ye’ll be all right with Big John.’

  As soon as her father had gone, Annabella flung herself against Cunningham’s chest and wept unashamedly.

  10

  THE CHURCH was a seething mass of humanity. It buzzed, chattered, shuffled, wriggled, pushed and threatened to burst at the seams. Ladies and gentlemen, lairds and merchants packed into the seats, peacock tails of colour in their fine clothes. Tradespeople and servants, men, women and children, and barking dogs trampled the earth and bones of the long dead deeper into the floor. The beadle roared commands for the dogs to be removed before the minister climbed the high pulpit. Some of the dogs were chased and kicked between a forest of legs. Others were heaved up and passed over heads.

  Ramsay sat leaning forward, both hands resting heavily on his cane. Next to him Annabella kept her back straight and her head tipped high. Her mittened hands grasped her fan on her lap. Her face, normally pink-cheeked with the glow of health, had an unusual pallor. She had not slept well the night before, partly for thinking about her brother and the anguish he must have been suffering to have committed such a terrible act; partly because her father kept calling out and, although Big John was with him, she felt she had to dash through to his bedroom on each occasion to try and soothe away his nightmares. She had tried to persuade him not to come to church this morning but he had said,

  ‘I’ve never missed a Sunday in God’s house in my life, Annabella. Never missed a Sunday.’

  He sounded bewildered and confused and possessed none of his normal fire or aggressiveness and the change in her father shocked her almost as much as her brother’s death.

  The Reverend Gowrie climbed the pulpit, his presence freezing the rabble into a silent shiver of expectancy. He was a giant of a man with coarse pocked skin, a huge beak of a nose and lips like lumps of steak. Glittering eyes stabbed this way and that and he reached forward and gripped the edge of the pulpit with such vehemence, his fists bunched up the green cloth with the gold fringes that covered it.

  ‘A crime of the deepest dye has been committed in this town,’ he thundered. ‘And it becomes those who would declare the whole counsel of the Lord to bear public and solemn testimony.

  ‘A sin has been perpetrated against God. A man of this parish has taken into his hands the decision to abandon without leave the station in which he was placed. This is an unequivocal rebellion against God, a direct opposition to His Providence, an attempt to escape from His control, an ignoble breach of fidelity to a rightful sovereign.’ The black eyes narrowed, the lumps of steak under the eagle beak writhed and twisted.

  ‘Coward! Poltroon! Deserter! That is what I say of such a man. He has put an end to every opportunity of repentance and reformation. />
  ‘Child of perdition! Death will land thee in still greater misery …’

  Annabella struggled to control the panic of grief and distress that was threatening to engulf her. If only the tirade had been aimed at herself, she could have coped in her normal pert and self-assured manner. To hell with the Reverend Gowrie, she would have thought, and a pox on the whole town. But she did not know how to cope with such an attack on her brother. She felt shattered by the tragic occurrence of his death and was experiencing a terrifying vulnerability. She tried not to listen to the minister’s diatribe but it continued to slash through her defences.

  ‘Oh, guilty man, did you not know that “No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him”?

  ‘The just judgement of God will increase your agonies and horrors, will banish you forever from His presence, will doom you to suffer eternal penalties without mercy and without hope …’

  Hearing a sound at her side, Annabella glanced round and was horrified to discover her father sobbing. His shoulders were heaving and tears were spurting down his lowered face.

  ‘Papa, don’t. Please don’t.’ She put a hand on his arm.

  ‘Poor Dougie. The lad never meant any harm.’

  ‘I know, Papa.’

  ‘He was always a harmless kind o’ lad.’

  ‘I know.’

  She prised one of his hands off the cane, squeezed it between her own, then held it and patted it on her lap.

  ‘But we must try and have courage, Papa. Douglas would not have wanted us to be unhappy and upset like this.’

  Ramsay just kept sobbing and shaking his head. And the minister roared on and on and on until Annabella was nearly fainting with desperation to be free of his voice; away from the mob, away from the gloomy coffin of a building with its black stone walls and sickening stench of unwashed bodies.

  At long last the conclusion of the sermon released her. The Reverend Gowrie raised his eyes and clasped hands heavenwards.

  ‘May God in His infinite mercy preserve us from an infatuation so deplorable, from a crime of such complicated malignity! Let me die the death of the righteous and let my end be like His!’

  For a minute or two Annabella thought she was not going to be able to stand up. Her legs were so weak they did not seem able to take her weight. Only by summoning every last vestige of will-power did she manage to rise and also to assist her father to his feet.

  ‘We’ll soon be home, Papa, and we’ll have a hot toddy and we’ll be all right. Come now, take my arm. Lean on me.’

  Keeping her head high, she pushed a path towards the door. Outside on Trongate Street she thankfully took a big breath of fresh air. It was then she saw Letitia and Phemy and Griselle. Griselle looked dishevelled; her eyes were wide and staring and her tight mouth hung loose and out of control.

  ‘Annabella,’ she called, hurrying nearer.

  As she watched her approach, Annabella thought, ‘You monstrous murdering pig of a woman. You are the one who is to blame for all this. You and your cruel tongue. You and your selfish stupidity. You killed your son, your own flesh and blood. Now you’ve killed my brother!’

  ‘Annabella,’ Griselle repeated on reaching her. ‘I have been so agitated. Indeed my agitation is all but overwhelming me.’ The eyes stretched enormous and the mouth, like a smudge of jelly, could barely shiver out words. ‘Oh, Annabella, I was … I was … nice to him, wasn’t I?’

  Without hesitation Annabella said,

  ‘Of course you were, Grizzie. Of course you were. And Douglas loved you dearly. You know he did.’

  Tears tumbled down Griselle’s face.

  ‘Yes, he often used to say … he used to say …’

  ‘Tuts,’ said Letitia, ‘this is a fine kettle of fish! Folk are gawping at you, mistress. Pull yourself together and come away home. The dinner will be getting ruined. Food costs money and if there’s one thing I canna thole it’s good sillar being wasted.’

  After they had gone, Annabella made slow progress along Trongate Street. Her father leaned heavily on her, sometimes stopping to stand looking down at the ground with an absent-minded faraway expression on his face. She felt sick with worry. It was so unlike him to behave like this.

  The sun dappled the buildings on either side, sparkled window panes into diamonds, gave a golden glisten to battlements and played hide and seek among the arches of the piazzas, bathed the street in a warm amber glow that did not seem to touch Annabella and her father. It was as if they were no longer part of the scene but struggling along in a terrible no-man’s-land. She felt cold.

  Thankfully she turned into the close at Saltmarket Street, then climbed the tower stair. Once in the house, she helped her father off with his coat.

  ‘Sit down now, Papa. I will go and make a hot toddy.’

  When she returned he was sitting staring at the floor but after a few sips of the hot, sweet whisky he said,

  ‘It’ll have to be a private funeral. No one else will come. We’ll have to bury him ourselves, too. The church won’t allow him in consecrated ground.’

  ‘Well, we shall have a private funeral. And we will bury him ourselves. Mr Cunningham will help us, Papa. He is calling again this evening. And there is Griselle’s manservant. And there is Big John.’

  ‘Where will we … where can we … ?’

  ‘There is a field at the back of the house in Westergate. We will put him to rest under one of the trees there.’

  ‘Put him to rest?’ Ramsay’s face threatened to disintegrate. Muscles helplessly sagged and shook. ‘There’ll never be any rest for that poor lad. Why did he do such a terrible thing, Annabella? Why did he do it?’

  ‘It serves no useful purpose to talk like that, Papa. Drink your whisky and try to think and talk of other things.’

  ‘There was always a hard bit about you. Aye, you were always a hard lassie. You were my favourite, though. Oh, aye, you were my favourite. But, och, I was fond o’ Douglas as well.’

  ‘I know, Papa.’

  ‘But did Douglas, I wonder?’

  ‘Of course he did. You were always kind and generous to him.’

  Ramsay sighed.

  ‘Aye, so you said.’

  ‘This monstrous time will soon be over, Papa. You will be moving to the Westergate and the change of scene will do you good. You will feel better, I promise you.’

  He nodded but did not speak and soon his shoulders drooped and he drifted into remoteness again. She sat with him for a time, stitching a piece of linen, glancing up occasionally to see if there was any change in his appearance. But he remained hanging helplessly inside his clothes without moving a muscle.

  When supper time came he refused to eat anything and instead went early to bed. She was alone in her room trying to concentrate on her sewing when Carter Cunningham arrived. She rose to greet him with a welcoming smile and her hand gracefully outstretched for his kiss.

  He held it tenderly against his lips. Then he asked:

  ‘How are you, dear lady?’

  ‘As well as can be expected in the circumstances, sir. I am prodigiously concerned about Papa, though. He is deeply dejected. It was damnable what that scoundrel of a preacher made him suffer today. I confess, sir, I was mightily distressed myself.’

  ‘Annabella.’ He took her in his arms and she hid her face against his shoulder. ‘My dear, sweet girl, what can I say? Except I love you and want to look after you and make sure that you are never unhappy again.’

  ‘Every time I think of him lying in that house alone …’

  ‘Do you want to be with him?’

  Still with her face pressed close to his shoulder, she said,

  ‘Why should he be alone? Why should he not have a wake? I cannot bear to think of him lying alone in that house tonight. Griselle has gone to her mother’s.’

  ‘Then we shall go straight away and keep an all-night vigil beside your brother. Have you a key to the house?’

  She nodded against him and he dropped a kiss on the top of her
head.

  ‘Then put on your cape. We shall go now.’

  Words could not express her gratitude to Cunningham for his kindness and understanding, so she kept silent as they walked down Saltmarket Street to Gibson’s Land. But her silence was a warm, companionable thing. It could not be compared with the cold desolation that met them when they opened the door of her brother’s house. It was like stepping into the grave. The aloneness of death was so real, so cold, so silent around her, she felt horrified and oppressed by it.

  Douglas was lying in a coffin propped on top of two chairs in the middle of the bedroom. Wrapped in a dead-cloth, only his head and face showed, grey and small-looking without either wig or paint.

  Annabella said,

  ‘How could Grizzie be so cruel? How could she?’ Flinging off her cape, she swirled into sudden action. ‘The fire is set. Will you put a light to it, please? And light every candle you can see. I’m going to find Douglas’s wig and his face paint. My brother said face paint was the height of fashion and he set great store by it. I know he would not wish to go anywhere without it.’

  ‘Annabella,’ Cunningham said gently.

  ‘Light the fire and the candles, sir. I wish to paint my brother’s face.’

  Afterwards they sat beside the coffin drinking whisky and eating burial bread. Sometimes they talked, occasionally they dozed off to sleep, until the sun came up again and flickered over the paintings in their heavy gilt frames and the four-poster bed and the high-backed chairs, and the coffin, and Douglas with his powdered wig and white and strawberry-coloured face.

  Big John arrived, half-carrying her father who looked like a bent and feeble old man. Letitia and Phemy and Griselle arrived too, accompanied by their servants. Little attempt was made at conversation but Letitia briskly poured out drinks and passed round cake and said:

  ‘You’ll come round to my place after the burial. I’ve a good meal ready. You too, Mr Cunningham. You must give us all the gossip from Virginia. I don’t hear so much of it since my gudeman passed to the other side. Tuts, would you look at the corpse. I suppose that was your doing, mistress?’