As the man thrust it into his hands, he knew that he had held like this in his childhood again and again, and had opened it hopefully, only to discover each time a broken seal ring and a coin with a hole in it. It was the casket that used to stand in Queen Mary’s room at Merchiston, the casket that had been given long ago by the Doge of Venice to young Archie Napier’s grandfather, ‘the logarithms ruffian, confound him!’ his irre-verent descendants were now saying over their mathematical lessons.
‘Open it, my Lord, open it,’ said the man in gruff impatience – ‘it now holds your father’s heart.’
There was a steel egg-shaped case inside; it had been made out of his father’s sword, the man was now saying. James heard ais voice surging through a loud singing noise in his ears. He said to himself, ‘This cannot be happening. I shall wake up.’ His father’s sword, his father’s heart, in the hands of this gross stranger! But the stranger was looking at him; James had the painful feeling that he had spoken aloud without knowing it.
‘It was in the hands of his enemies,’ said the man. – ‘They hacked his body to bits, to show them in all the chief towns of Scotland. What did he care for that?
“Let them bestow on every airth a limb”—
‘That poem he wrote in prison the last night of his life – he was free then, as he has always been. They could do nothing to him.’
‘Who are you?’ said James.
The man did not seem to hear.
He said, ‘A little dust in a gold box – what has that to do with him? Women cannot see that. They cling to anything that will link the loved one to earth. Your cousin, the Lady Elizabeth, Lord Napier’s wife, she is weeping over the stockings he wore at his execution, and will not have the bloodstains washed out. Another niece is making a little shrine of coloured marble plaques for his portrait in miniature. Bits of stone and silk, a little dead dust, these are the things they make live for ever – they will hand them down through their families to show – what do they show? – the devotion of his womenkind. The Lady Elizabeth risked her life to steal his heart from his enemies and send it to you.’
‘Are you one of her servants? I do not remember your face but it is long since I have been in Scotland.’
‘No, no, no,’ said the man vaguely, pushing away these questions with fat hands on which the red hairs glistened in the clear light of the room. He began perfunctorily to tell his story the servant sent with the heart had been attacked and robbed; the gold case carried off, passed from hand to hand, but he himself had at last tracked it down, stolen it in his turn, and now brought it here.
‘Why did you?’ asked James.
The man shrugged.
‘A little dead dust,’ pursued James, his interest in this odd character suddenly awakening, and his sense of logic outraged by his conclusions – ‘in a precious box which you might have sold – and I imagine you are not rich.’
‘No, no,’ said the man, ‘I thought of it, of course, but what is the use? One does these things again and again, and nothing comes of them.’
So bleak and blue a look had stolen up behind the crimson of his cheeks that James suddenly saw that the slightly swaying movement he had made from time to time, shuffling a little on his heavy feet to meet it, was not drink, as he had half suspected, but faintness.
He made him sit down, sent for food and wine, then, since he was an unconventional young man, and it was nearing his dinner time, decided he would dine with him. Food revived his guest. He was greedy but discriminating, prompt to discern the best dishes, and drank copiously, but all the time he ate and drank, though at first faint with hunger and then engrossed in his satisfaction, he talked amusingly, discursively, with the practised ease of a man who had long recognized that this is the payment he must give for his meal.
James, who had at first felt only repulsion, was moved to wonder and even envy – this man had been everywhere, done everything, seen everyone.
Again he wondered if he had spoken aloud. The man was nodding his great head at him across the table.
‘What does it all amount to?’ he said. ‘I have satisfied every lust that itched me, I have gratified every prick of curiosity, I have juggled with the fates of great men as though they were a pack of cards – and what does it all come to? Curiosity and pride, you get knowledge by the one and power by the other, out what else do you get? A vision of the whole world, yourself included, as a mass of wasps struggling in a honey jar, pressing each other down into the sticky sweetness, so as to stand on their sinking bodies and suck their own advantage, until they too sink, on those sinking bodies, to their death.’
James said, ‘I have thought that too. These men’s very greed for success prevents it. They rush from one side to the other of the boat until they sink it and are all drowned together. There was a man called Sir John Hurry who took me prisoner when I was a boy – he had already turned his coat twice over – then he joined my father after his last victory at Kilsyth, and in the end was executed with him.’
‘I know, I saw him,’ said the man gruffly, and fell into his first long silence since the meal began. James too was silent, and wished he had not spoken so unguardedly. Had this man then seen Montrose himself die? He could think of nothing to say that would pull them away from the subject that he dreaded, yet wanted to approach. But his guest did not notice his embarrassment; his own silence was the deeper one of absorption. At last his words came.
‘Beauty was there,’ he said, ‘and a pleasant way of living, and what has happened to it all? I may have helped to destroy it – I don’t know. It was long ago, in your father’s youth. If he had made friends with his King early enough, so that Charles had trusted him instead of Hamilton, who always hoped to be king himself – well then, it might all have been prevented. Who knows? Who knows? Anyway, Montrose lost his chance to do so. And now he is dead, and I go on living, crawling betwixt heaven and earth.’
James watched him pulling at his thick underlip, and looked away, then said rather awkwardly,
‘Argyll and Warriston brought my father to death. Now they are under Cromwell’s heel. They say Warriston skulks through the streets in terror, because he hears Montrose’s Highlanders have sworn vengeance. And the people shout “Traitor” at Argyll. If the young King ever comes into his own, the first thing he will do is to cut his head off.’
He leaned forward to fill up his guest’s slender wineglass yet again, and saw the sunk head staring up at him.
‘I saw Montrose,’ he said.
Again there fell silence, this time deep and heavy on them both, so that James could hear his companion’s thoughts. Slowly there began to form in his unwilling mind the picture that he had tried to drive out as he played on the spinet that very afternoon – the picture of the houses of the Canongate in Edinburgh, and all the souls in them craning out to see his father go by to die.
He could avoid that picture no longer.
‘You saw him – then?’
‘I was in the crowd. I was back in Scotland – some matter of pounds and pence – maybe my instinct to be in at the death. I was one of those whom they paid to throw stones and filth at Montrose as he was led to his death. There were women who had been brought from all over the country, women whose men had been killed by his Highlanders. No need to pay them to take vengeance. The streets were buzzing with fury.
‘Then he came. He was wounded, feverish – he had been led for days through the country on a horse with no saddle, his feet fastened under its belly – now he was in the hangman’s cart, his arms bound behind his back, that he might not defend his face. He was wasted with loss of blood, ragged, unshaved. And on his face there shone a look of peace – no, of happiness.
‘There was a grand wedding party going on at Moray House, just opposite where I stood: Argyll’s son, young Lorne, was being married, and some of the guests came out on the balcony to stare at the sight below. Now the shouting would begin, they thought, and stones and dirt flying. Not a sound or stir. All those crow
ds struck still as the dead, except where some fell on their knees, praying. The only noise was the tramp of men and horses, and the hangman’s cart rattling over the cobbles. I saw a shadow behind the window, Argyll himself – behind him, Warriston. For one instant I saw Argyll’s yellow face looking down on his enemy, then it hid itself.’
James felt his hands shaking. His mouth had gone very dry; when he began to speak, there was no sound. He poured himself more wine, and after a moment was relieved to hear his voice say in its most dispassionate tones:
‘I heard that Huntly’s daughter, the Lady Jean, was one of the party on the balcony, that of all those crowds she was the only one who shouted an insult at my father.’
‘We’ll all be under the sod in a few years,’ replied his companion, ‘and what difference will it make then which goes first? Lady Jean can spit her venom – her brother Aboyne died abroad, of a broken heart they say – Lewis is Huntly now, and busy making his peace with his uncle Argyll. They speak more of Gordon now than of those still alive.’
‘He was the only one who did not fail him.’ cried James in sudden passion – ‘and the King he fought for, failed him.’
‘He fought for more than that. He fought for all men. They will try to hide themselves from it – to throw mud at him for centuries after his hands are bound in death. They will cloud his name, let the sour droppings of their minds fall upon him. But these die, and he will live.’
The resonant voice had ceased. James had leisure to consider a practical minor point. He could not have this man the poorer for bringing him the gold case that held his father’s heart. If he gave him all that he now had, it would mean that he must part with another and more valuable possession than the Persian rug. Reluctantly, when the stranger rose to leave him, James looked at his spinet.
As he pocketed the money his host gave him, the old man’s little light eye flicked out at the young man in a sudden gleam of curiosity and pride. He said – ‘You won’t know my name, I expect. And yet I once had a considerable effect on your father’s career. You were not born then – My name is Carlippis.’
James shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I have never heard it.’
‘I did not think you would,’ said Carlippis, with an attempt at jauntiness, but he looked disappointed. He shambled out, and James stood looking after his bent back.
To
CHEVITHORNE
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © Margaret Irwin
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