The Great Unknown

by Peg Kingman

  This was too bewildering even to contemplate.

  Other voices rose, to muddy matters further: “Not only are we hard-pressed to determine exactly what happened—but also to state precisely when it happened. But something certainly did happen; and it was approximately a victory, approximately hereabouts, approximately one hundred years ago.”

  “Surely we may be quite certain as to where it happened!”

  “Approximately so; probably very near the place we laid our wreaths today.”

  “Do you claim, sir, that all facts are only approximate?”

  “No sir; some are exact, and precise. The men who died at Prestonpans did not merely approximately die; they completely—entirely—exactly—and precisely died, each one of them.”

  Constantia heard Mrs Chambers’s voice, happy and excited, passing into the house by the doorway below her window. “Oh,” she was declaring to someone, “I cannot say what a good Jacobite may do—but as for myself, I shall gladly drink any number of toasts, today at least, to any number of rebel princes!”

  At dusk, Jeebon struck up his bagpipes at the bottom of the lawn. Constantia had just succeeded in getting both babies to sleep, and she promptly shut the window, for fear that the magnificent howl of the pipes would awaken them again. For a few minutes she watched over them, but they seemed only to withdraw into a deeper sleep; and presently she went downstairs, to listen from the open doorway of the library.

  “It is Dr Sing,” she overheard a man on the lowest step in front of her say, to the lady standing beside him. “The Piper nigrum!” He sounded like the same overbearing man who had been laying down the law—setting everyone straight, on all counts—throughout the afternoon. Perhaps he was slightly deaf? Though Constantia could see not much more than the shape of his head in the deepening dusk, she thought she recognised Mr Anstruther, of the prodigious side-whiskers, who had once sat across from her at dinner. “Piper nigrum,” he repeated to his companion. “That is the Linnaean name for pepper, you see; black pepper; ha! This particular piper—well, take a good look at him. I warrant you that even Black Donald of the Isles was never so black as this fellow! His mother was a black African slave, from America, and his father a Chinaman. Well, not a Chinaman, precisely; no, a Burmese prince, or rajah, or some such thing, as I understand it. But he is a doctor nevertheless, our Piper nigrum—fresh from the university at Glasgow.”

  Constantia knew the piper very well. Jeebon had been her friend and playmate since childhood; Jeebon had played the lament at the burial of her nameless baby boy. For some years Constantia’s mother had served as companion and court attendant to his mother, the Rani Anibaddh Lyngdoh, queen of a very small principality in the Khasiya hills between Assam and Burma. After Constantia’s mother died, it was the Rani (born an American black slave, true—but how did Mr Anstruther know that?) who took in Constantia and brought her up with her own children.

  Here in Scotland, where Jeebon had come to study medicine, he had adopted the name John, which saved a great deal of explanation. His brother Bajubon (now known as Benjamin, for the same reason) had been studying law in London—for, alas, that very small principality in the Khasiya hills had unfortunately fallen under the control of the East India Company; and Bajubon was now preparing a lawsuit by which to wrest it back.

  “Quite a pretty piper, too,” Mr Anstruther was saying. “He has been well taught. And I have heard Angus MacKay—the younger, of Raasay, of course; I am not old enough to have heard the first one, whatever you may think, madam! I have heard John Bain MacKenzie, too, in my day—and they are the cream of the family Piperaceae—ha! The typical; the best-developed of their circle, exhibiting the highest degree of perfection—as the author of Vestiges would have it! Have you read it? Indeed! Your husband permits it? I would not permit any wife of mine to read that book.”

  “If you had a wife, sir, you would never make so absurd a declaration,” said the lady who, by her speech, was English, not Scottish; and not so young as to feel intimidated by any Scotsman, be he ever so loud, assured, and bewhiskered. “Now let us hush, for he has begun.”

  “No, he is only tuning, still,” said Mr Anstruther. “Turned aside from us, as you see, and pretending that we are not here; while we, for our part, are politely pretending that he is not there; that we cannot hear him. They are the devil to tune, are bagpipes. Pipers spend thirty per centum of their time tuning, it is said . . . and the other seventy per centum—out of tune! Ha! Well, that’s as close as we are to come, I daresay. He has got a serious commencing look about him now, and turns his face to us at last. Well, doctor: what is it to be?”

  He stopped talking long enough to hear the first phrase of the tune—and then whispered loudly, “‘Rout of the Lowland Captain’—of course! The rout of Johnny Cope himself! A very suitable tune, for this day. Now, madam, let us listen very well to this urlar. That is the ground—the ground floor of the building, the foundation upon which all is built. Piobaireachd, you see, is a theme-and-variations business. Not that the underlying theme itself is ever actually played—never so bald, so naked as that. No, even the urlar, the ground, is decently clothed; well-wrapped in its plaid. But it is slow, as you hear; stately, and entirely free from the indignity of conforming to any particular beat or meter. Not a march; never a dance tune! No, quite free from any particular rhythm. Unconstrained by time; we have all the time in the world, for something so important as this. Ah! did you hear that? That phrase, that little question mark, that inversion? I call that the hinge; it is the place where we turn around and look back at the statements, the assertions we have heard thus far. We turn; look back; and from this side, with the light shining through, we can see where the thin places are: translucencies. Then we roll it up again, from this end, so to speak. Here we come, down to the finish, a sense of completion, even of reconciliation—but without any hint of grandness or pedantry. Ah! Ah! Well done, piper! Go it, doctor!

  “Now we shall take this musical idea, to which we have been so patiently, so thoughtfully introduced—and we shall elaborate upon it, in a series of set variations. We shall now construct the upper storeys of our building, so to speak.” For some moments during the first variation and its doubling, he fell silent, but was unable to suppress for long his helpful commentary. “Ah! the taorluath variation,” he whispered loudly. “What a difference a change in the rhythm of the ornaments makes! But still one hears the underlying theme; still those notes shine through the carven-stone screen of the taorluaths . . . oh! Exquisite, the doubling, now!

  “Are you ready, madam? You are; and here it is: the crunluath, the crown of ornament upon it all, the most extended and drawn-out of the quick rhythms, the lift of the music now elongated—extended—and sustained—almost beyond—bearing; beyond what anyone would have thought possible! Ah! The hinge; the reconciliation! The shuddering panting, melting, slowing . . . finish! Ah! Silence, now, for the doubling . . . Oh! Oh!

  “And will our good piper give us a crunluath a mach? Oh, good doctor! He does! We are airborne; flying; freed from everything which had weighed upon us . . .

  “Then soberly, at last, we return to the urlar—the ground. It is always necessary to return to ground, sooner or later, is it not? No matter how lofty the flights we may have achieved, we always are compelled at last to return to ground. A relief, too. How different this urlar feels to us, now! What once was strange is now familiar. What once seemed arbitrary, made-up on the spot, random, improvised—is now revealed as utterly necessary, a fixed reference point. Now we know what it means.”

  The piper reached the end; and stopped.

  No flourishes; no crashing chords or crescendos or arpeggios of conclusion. Just stopped. Thick silence struck, sudden as a thunderclap.

  There are no rests, no breaks, no drawing of breath in pipe music. The music is a single long breath, an unbroken exhalation, a sustained sigh. To exhale forever is immortality; is divine.

  After a stunned moment, there was applause, and cheering;
and someone shouted a request: Can you play “Johnny Cope”?

  Mr Anstruther was summing up for the English lady: “Beginning with our solid rusticated ground,” he was saying, “we constructed our sober and dignified Doric; topped that with our interesting and intricate Ionic—and then we attained at last to the exquisitely elaborated Corinthian capital, the baroque crown atop our architectural orders!”

  She asked him some question, which Constantia could not quite hear.

  “Improvised!” cried he. “Oh no, indeed, none of it is improvised; not a single note, not a single ornament of it! What in the world gave you such an idea? No, madam, I assure you: every piece of the great music, the ceol mhor, is a fixed and time-honored composition, handed down to us from the great pipers of old. To change a single note of it—a single phrase or spring of it—would be nothing but error. Indeed, the thought is horrible; only decay, destruction, the overthrow of civilisation. The piper does not read it, no—because he has perfectly memorised it. Perfectly.”

  Constantia withdrew through the library. The thought of improvisation was not horrible to her, whose ears from earliest infancy had received the classical music of India: raga, an exquisite music (structured strikingly like the ceol mhor)—but always to some degree improvised. Some of the greatest musicians of Hindustan had achieved in her hearing undreamt-of, unplanned, uncomposed flights of beauty, never to be exactly duplicated. Never. Was that fact unbearable? Or was it exquisite?

  Was music not meant to be played? Surely that was the proper use of music, to be played—not performed; studied; memorised. Music is play, surely?

  Played. Plaid. Plaited. Pleated. Woven, twisted, knotted. Patterned, yes; not a lawless tangle; but how not? Planned, designed? Or produced by its own operation? Her eye fell across a miscellaneous assortment of curiosities—various grimy scraps of cloth—displayed with pasteboard labels, amid a wealth of books on the library table. The largest and most impressive of the books thus laid out was Vestiarium Scoticum, a handsomely-bound and lavishly-illustrated volume of authoritative heft, purporting to be the ancient text by which certain tartans were, from time immemorial, associated with particular clans; setting forth the ancient, true, and authentic model for each tartan. It lay open to show, for the benefit of guests, a flattering inscription on the title page from its “editors” to Mr Chambers. Alas, this extremely dubious book, of spurious antiquity, “discovered” and “edited” by those Sobieski Stuarts, was known to be as fraudulent as themselves; her old friends Jeebon and Bajubon were far better princes. Vestiarium Scoticum was no more authentic than the Ossian—“discovered” and “edited” by the nobody James MacPherson, a generation ago—which had played upon the same vanities, with the same near-success. Played; plaid; plaited; pleated. They were pretenders twice over, those Sobieski Stuarts. To pretend that one’s own book was the work of someone else was very different from presenting a book—Vestiges, for example—unsigned, unattributed. There was nothing dishonest, at least, in publishing a book without its author’s name. An author might be entitled to conceal; but not to deceive. Not to deposit her egg in the nest of another. Constantia made her way upstairs again.

  When the fiddlers launched into an irresistible reel, the chairs emptied; who can sit out a reel? From her window Constantia, with Charlie in her arms once more, overlooked the pairs, foursomes, and eightsomes forming and reforming their patterns on the grass below. Even these patterns seemed to pose again that all-important question: Is this universe, and all that is in it, a fixed composition, the work of a Composer, a Designer, an Author—a Creator? Or is it an improvisation which spins itself into existence in accordance with certain parameters of the possible (aye, they are certain, these parameters, despite the difficulty of discerning them; let us remain within this scale, this mode); an improvisation which might, at any juncture, at any of an unimaginably vast number of points, have played out differently? And may do so yet?

  The fiddlers played at a spanking tempo, and the dancers, though not quite up to the pace, were undoubtedly exhilarated by the effort. There are rich pleasures to be gleaned from the familiar, from recognising a known tune; discerning pattern; feeling rhythm. There is delight and even comfort in ease of recognition; in expectations precisely met; in certitude satisfied. In the unchanging; the reliable; the same, in each and every iteration; where like begets like; what always was, and always will be. All is fixed, world without end, forever and ever, amen.

  Still, the familiar is not devoid of tedium. There is ennui, boredom, doomedness, sameness; the fore-ordained failure of everything, in precisely the same fore-ordained, forseen, and unforestalled manner. There is no hope.

  Meanwhile, delights beckon from around the bend of the unfamiliar: the charm of surprise! of novelty! of a joke! Here resides the wondrous notion of Infinity; of infinitely rich possibility. The joy of change; of promise; of advent. The chance, even, of improvement; minute, perhaps, and only incremental; seldom vast or astonishing. Still, where change is possible, progress is possible. Matters might play out differently—and better—this time.

  But the horrors of the unfamiliar surpass all for dread and revulsion. Matters might play out far worse. Deformities and monstrosities might engulf us all. And then, eradication of everything we knew and loved; even—especially—our selves, and our descendants, and everyone resembling us. Extinction. All might come to an end.

  Even the dancing, as night fell.

  At the bottom of the garden, a pillar of fire flared upward, and someone detonated a squib. The night breeze wafted the bonfire’s column of smoke away from the house, toward the fisherfolk’s huts at the shore.

  The bonfire had posed a difficulty: What was to fuel it? The gardener had protested that his garden was so well in trim that nothing—no boughs, no prunings—could be spared for immolation. But upon consideration, it was thought that boughs and prunings might be obtained from the adjacent estate belonging to long-absent Dalrymples, whose shrubberies and woodlands had been growing wild for years. It was not quite clear to Constantia whether permission had been sought, or given—but here, somehow, was a fine bonfire illuminating the ruddy faces of over-excited children and adults alike. A good fire was a thrilling thing, a little frightening and deeply fascinating; who could forbear to gaze into it? Who was immune to its bewitchment?

  Abruptly the fireworks commenced: a grand barrage of serpents, wheels, sky-rockets, Roman candles, Chinese fires, and tourbillons; each one dazzling, and strangely rousing; each detonation delivering a thump to be felt in the chest, like artillery fire. These were met with cries and shouts, and finally, when it was over, cheers. Someone started singing “Awa’ Whigs Awa’,” and all joined in, at uncertain tempo and pitch, but very loudly. And when that was concluded (to more cheers), it was time to go home. The tide of guests began its rapid ebb.

  Sunday passed in merciful quiet at Spring Gardens. There was left-over food to eat. No one came, or went; and not even Mrs Chambers went to kirk.

  Overnight, the weather changed, and Lady Janet returned on Monday morning through a drenching rain. The Monday morning post also brought a letter for Constantia, the first she had received at Spring Gardens. She did not know the handwriting and, what was more curious still, the letter was very closely sealed, three times over. She lifted the seals and, unfolding it, looked first for a signature. It was from her mother’s old friend Mrs Fleming.

  Edinburgh

  22nd Septr.

  Dearest Constantia,

  What matchless delight I had, from the sight of you and your darling baby, on Saturday! What pleasure, from talking over the old days with you!—and from remembering your dear mother, of whom you remind me so much, and of whom, alas, we know only too little.

  Yet there is one fact more I know of her, and of your father Mr Todd. I did not speak of it on Saturday, for I was not then certain whether it is a matter which ought to be spoken of. I rise this morning convinced—or nearly so—that I must tell what I can, before I re-emb
ark today with Mr Fleming; nearly convinced that Truth, be it ever so disagreeable, must be preferred over error and ignorance, by persons of sound principles and mature judgment, as I believe you to be.

  It is this, dear Constantia: Upon that dreadful occasion in Cape Town, under the most distressing circumstances imaginable—under the first shock and agony occasioned by Mr Todd’s death—your mother (then pregnant with you) told me that she and he—though he called her his wife, and she was known as Mrs Todd—had never in fact been married at all.

  I could not then be quite certain that she knew what she was saying, for she had been given a strong draught of laudanum and several glasses of fortified wine, for the sake of their sedative effect; and it was certainly the case that after this harrowing event, she again habitually referred to Mr Todd as her late “husband.”

  But on one subsequent occasion, when she and I were alone together once more, she again referred to the irregularity of her connexion with him. This was soon after your birth, when I met her by most surprising chance up at Goalpara in Assam. By then, poor Lt Babcock had already succumbed to fever—and you were a babe in her arms, not much older than your two nurslings are now. But on that occasion she just mentioned to me—almost in passing, it seemed—that she was, this time, in truth a widow. “A pukka widow this time” were her very words. They shewed, as I supposed then, that she remembered telling me that she and your father had never been properly married. Indeed, I do not know, even now, what else she could have meant by it. I never asked her anything about it, and she never again referred to the matter.

  I hope I am right, dear Constantia, to tell you this. What your mother—or your father—might have thought right for you to know, if they had been spared to us, we cannot guess; nor shall we ever know why they did not chuse to enter into matrimony.