The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance

by Abigail Clements

  Either way she said good-bye to him forever. And he would not hear, laughing and singing in honour of the red-headed boy.

  For a moment, the music stopped, and far away across the sun-bright water, the silkie-folk barked again and again. Antoine twisted around on the pony’s back and looked sadly away, with the lonely look of his, to the black rocks and the kelp-strewn shore. He covered her hands then with one of his own and said solemnly, ‘We must away, lassie, a long way now, to the land of flowers.’

  Then the piper again began to play, and they rode off in a long line, with Duncan leading on foot. Like a wedding party, in the spring morning, ragged and barefooted, a highland wedding following the sound of the pipes.

  Marsali turned, once, as Antoine had done, not looking for some enchanted sea-thing, but for her father. He stood, his hand upraised, at the door of the low thatched house, the grey dog proud at his side. He looked defiant and shaggy in his plaid, and grand. But as she watched, he seemed to grow smaller, and thinner, and dwindle away before her eyes, faster than ever the climbing of the hill would afford. It was as if she looked upon him as a boy, the ghost of his own childhood.

  She shut her eyes and opened them quickly and saw through a wet fringe of lashes that he was once more as he always had been.

  The line of ponies wound up the moorland road and round the rocky bend where she had fought with the English soldier, and the music stopped once more, as the piper changed tunes. In the silence between, she heard the grey dog howl.

  That then was how Marsali left home, barefooted, her arms about the sea man, Antoine, in the spring of 1752, and that too how she rode into Glasgow. A pretty enough place it was, Glasgow in its early, innocent days. And a rare sight they made, wild as beggars on their shaggy highland ponies.

  The roads about, on the way south, had not been so humiliating; poor roads they were anyhow, and filled with a traffic not unlike themselves. For some way they had followed the great droving trail, empty now of the black herds that darkened it in autumn on their way to the great Tryst at Stirling.

  After that they were on lesser roads, roads so poor and broken and rock-ridden that not a cart was to be seen. The way to Glasgow was a way on foot, the feet of men and the feet of ponies, like their own, creel-laden with country produce, cabbages and turnips and live clucking hens. Among these folk Marsali felt easy, and among too the country gentry with whom they passed their nights. She had not forgotten Glentarvie and found its echo in every country mansion.

  But Glasgow rang to a new song, and the song was commerce.

  It was late in the day when they reached the town, a darkening wet day in March. The few straggling country farmers and traders became a crowd, and here and there the broadening road was set in tumult by the passing of some gentleman’s coach, struggling gamely against the thick, clinging mud.

  Glasgow announced itself by the smoke of its fires, first, and then by the glister of its wet slate rooftops and many church spires, sharp against the clouds. They rode into the city from the west, across the steep old eight-arched bridge, with Murdoch looking about him warily like some hill beast driven into the dwelling places of men. The houses were tall, many-storeyed, and darkened the streets.

  They rode down the Back Cow Loan, but a muddy country path graced with trodden cow dung, and up the Candleriggs to the Trongait Cross amid the crowds and great stone buildings, Marsali with her arms about Antoine’s waist and her bare feet dangling; Ishbel with her ragged plaid pulled warily close about her face. Folk in the streets pointed them out to friends and smiled and laughed, and an old lady in a sedan chair had her bearers stop still in the street so she could watch, secure in her silk cloak, their entertaining procession.

  Two young men, students in the red gowns of the College, caught each other by the elbow and took to laughing and shouted out, ‘Away, ’tis Charlie’s rebels among us again!’

  Murdoch cursed them in Gaelic, and Marsali shrank from them, she who had once been a lady herself, daughter of a highland chief. Who could call them one nation, she thought, these prosperous, fashionable burghers, and the wild, mountain folk of her home?

  Antoine rode on through the crowds, slim and straight, with her arms about him yet, calm as a king among them, down through the muddy streets. It was the Tontine he rode for, the great business Exchange of the city, where upon their exclusive plain-stones at the New Cross the tobacco lords held court. Before King William’s statue he stopped. Murdoch eyed it, strutting in stone above them, and made a quick rude gesture. Antoine grinned and reached a sharp quick hand to grasp Murdoch’s wrist. He brought it down sharply, so Murdoch winced, but Antoine yet smiled and said only, ‘One thing at a time, lad, and we have business to do here.’

  He stalked away in his borrowed rags, across the forbidden plain-stones, with shocked faces turning towards him. Marsali saw gentlefolk stop in their chattering and turn amazed, and a hand was raised in protest, but Antoine strode on through the open stone archways of the ground floor and disappeared, not caring one whit.

  ‘They will have him out, like a beggar,’ Murdoch said morosely.

  ‘No,’ Marsali said. ‘He is saying there are friends of his father’s there; now surely, that will be.’ But she could not believe it herself, and felt that their journey was nonsense, from the moment they left Portree and Duncan MacLeod and his piper behind. Surely there was none in this proud, strong city with time to spare for highland beggars and their dream of a foreign papist king. She had heard from many that they’d taken Tearlach far from kindly here, and now she could well see why. They’d as well turn their backs, she thought, and be away home to their haughty glens as to try to find a bed here.

  But that was when Antoine appeared again, before the Tontine, with his arm about the neck of Douglas Annandale.

  Ishbel poked her head out of her plaid like some creature from a nest and gasped, ‘Wheesht now, what our gentleman has found for us.’ It was half-scornful, for she could not resist scorn when she spoke of Antoine, but also a good half in awe. For Douglas Annandale was something of an awesome sight. A handsome enough man, big and heavy with the heaviness of strength gone to seed, big-faced with much bushy, sandy hair struggling to emerge from beneath his heavy pale wig. But it was his clothing; the black satin suit, and elaborate scarlet cloak, the black tri-cornered hat and French lace cravat and the silver-buckled shoes; that made Ishbel cry out. It was that moment, and that moment only, that she at last believed Antoine was precisely what he had claimed to be and not just some sly-tongued sailor playing at airs.

  Marsali had always believed it, and quite apparently Douglas Annandale believed it too. Precisely what he thought of them all she never would know, but the truth was he was a very wealthy man, a tobacco merchant of great standing who had played his politics most carefully and sat a neat Jacobite fence, and his major supplier and the backbone of his trade was the Comte de Sainte Marie.

  So for king or for Fortune perhaps, he stood there in the street like a pretty fool, bowing to a barefoot, half-drenched highland lass on a grey highland garron and asking her, humble and genteel, to his home. Marsali took in the bow, and the doffed hat, and the powdered wig and splendid red cloak, and drew in her breath and said calmly, yes, in the name of her father, MacKinnon of Glentarvie, she would accept. She was neither too humble nor too grateful, highland pride arose in her from nowhere, and she would not go crawling to any Glasgow merchant, rich or no. She would sleep in the rain first. But no, he was insistent and gracious and did nothing to ruffle their ragged dignity, and the arrangement was made. Douglas Annandale summoned a boy to see to their ponies and led them away on foot through the crowded, muddy streets. The tenements of the High Gait looked like palaces to Marsali’s eyes, rising up five, six and even more storeys of stone faces, with crow-stepped gables, and steep, teetering dormers high above the street. Ishbel said they smelled like an ill-kept byre, and along each street edge debris and filth ran in little rivers.

  They turned into Bell’
s Wynd, and at the base of one tenement they passed into a narrow, dark arched entrance way and came into the shadowed, sour-smelling close beyond, cold with the breath of wet stone. Marsali set her naked feet unwillingly on the stained wet floor. It was a long way from the clean sands of Trotternish.

  A stair opened off the close, circling endlessly, difficult, uneven and narrow, lit greyly with the failing daylight filtering through slitted deep windows. The smell of cooking cabbage and onions drifted from above, and the shouting and crying of bairns echoed down the stone chasm of the stairwell. On the first landing a man and a woman in rags were fighting hand to hand and screaming at one another in the Lowland tongue.

  Ishbel said, in Gaelic, ‘’Tis among the heathens we have come now, to be sure,’ and Marsali raised her plaid over her hair, as if to hide herself away, staring half-haughty and half-terrified at the brawling, red-cheeked pair. The byre-smell melled richly with the reek of brandy. But Douglas Annandale took no notice and led blithely onward as they trooped behind him past the melee on the landing.

  Halfway up the next flight of stairs, a man in a flat, blue cap was urinating calmly against the wall. Ishbel made a hushed highland sound of despair. Antoine and the gentleman, Annandale, brushed by all, like lords, scant seeing, and laughing and talking in French, which was commoner to them than either Gaelic or the Lowlands of the town. Marsali picked her barefooted way behind them, wondering what kind of gentry this could be who lived in such unholy squalor. But on the third landing there was a transformation, as if a quite miraculous wind blew through from the greying windows.

  The squalling of weans and shrieking of women faded below, and behind a door could be heard the sound of gentle music and soft voices, and the sour, reeking air was laden with a sweet smell, almost sickly, of perfume. At the curving stair foot, a lady appeared in a blue silk dress rich with lace and a straw hat tipped over ribboned curls. The gown was piled so broadly over fashionable panniers that the lady had to turn sideways to edge past them on the stair landing. She nodded to Annandale, and he bowed dramatically, virtually barring her way by doing so. Then he straightened and she slid sideways by Marsali with scarce a glance as would befit the passing of a dog in the street.

  ‘The Lady Smollett,’ Master Annandale said in tones of appropriate reverence.

  ‘And are you saying now that the lady will be curtseying to yon fool peeing in the hallway?’ said Murdoch, amazement breaking a silence of highland disdain.

  Antoine only laughed and said Murdoch had much to learn of the ways of the civilized world. Much had they all, thought Marsali, in that extraordinary place where the rich and poor were jammed in under one roof, sharing one door, heaped on top of one another in tiers, like heaven and purgatory and hell. As it was, geography had been rearranged, and though the hell of scrabbling penury was at the bottom, it was only a moderate purgatory at the very top. Heaven, the abodes of the Lady Smollett and the prosperous tobacco lord, Annandale, was in the middle.

  On the fourth landing, Douglas Annandale stopped before a door and took hold of a black, iron ring suspended on an iron loop and rattled it vigorously. It made a prolonged and ugly clatter, to which the door was opened by a serving maid in a plain white linen cap. She wore a simple dark bodice with modest muslin kerchief and a soot-stained, linsey-woolsey skirt. Beneath it, her feet were as bare as Marsali’s own.

  She said, ‘Sir, mam,’ and curtsied, and they all followed, in file, through the door and down the dim hallway within.

  She led them into the parlour, a pretty room with low ceilings, ornately plastered, and white walls with delicately painted landscapes worked into the plasterwork, and gleaming oak floors. There were tables and chairs of walnut wood and, surprisingly, a bed, all English style, fine and delicate. On a long cushioned bench, a woman sat sewing. She was very pretty, and very young, too young surely to be wife to the well-matured Douglas Annandale, and yet, surely too old to be daughter. She wore a simple indigo woollen dress with a white saxony wool shawl, and a white cap, delicately set with lace, releasing just enough of her yellow hair to be a temptation. She smiled prettily as they entered, and then, seeing them, her face froze with shock.

  ‘Mistress Annandale,’ Douglas said, ‘you’ll ken the laddie from France that we all thought so sadly lost?’

  She did not listen, or even let him finish, but leapt up past her husband standing so formal there and flung herself at Antoine, ignoring his strange companions. She grasped him about the neck, and kissed him, and then clung to him, crying and saying again and again, ‘Och Antoine, Antoine. We thought you dead. We thought you dead.’

  He laughed and held her, willingly enough, and stroked her yellow hair as she spoke on and on how the White Rose was lost, and surely he, and how they had all mourned him. He said only, ‘Lassie, lassie, did I not tell you, surely, that I’d come to no harm from the sea?’

  She smiled and stepped back and nodded and said, ‘I couldn’t believe, for all you’d told me.’

  Then he stepped aside from her, with her husband looking on curiously enough, and introduced her to Murdoch and Marsali and Ishbel, and never once told anyone that it was them, and no magic of his own, that had saved him. He said to them all, ‘This is Jean Annandale, who I knew well when she was but wee Jeannie Patterson at the convent school in Antibes. But she has grown to be a lady now, and a married wife.’ He smiled very slowly, and the dreamy grey eyes drifted over her pretty face and then glanced quite boldly at Marsali.

  Jean Annandale chattered on to him, joyously, half in Scots and half in French, and the barefoot serving girl brought brandy, as they seated themselves by the coal fire in the elaborate brass-trimmed grate. After the brandy, tea was served to show the wealth of the household. Ishbel slurped hers with delight and said, in Gaelic, secretive and sardonic to Marsali, ‘You will not be telling me those two have not seen a day or two together.’

  ‘Wheesht,’ Marsali said, ‘she is married.’

  ‘Aye, well. She has not been married forever. A new bride, I am sure, so young and pretty. And restless.’

  Marsali said wheesht again, but she was troubled and longed sadly for secure Trotternish where all was simple and Antoine’s eyes had been always on herself alone, though she scorned him. Foolish proud thing she was, to think herself so prized, when in truth she was but the only lass about. But now, over a man she’d sworn to despise, she grew as jealous as a hen with a single chick.

  They sat to dinner about a beautiful Chippendale table, set with silver and china; a table like Marsali had not seen since Glentarvie. Nor had she, or any of them, for long seen such food. The barefoot maid served them with barley broth, boiled fish with eggs and bannocks of oatmeal, with claret to drink with it. In the Scots manner yet, with all courses set at once on the table, and only turnips to finish with as a dessert.

  They had long been without good food, and although Ishbel ate with the shameless vigour of the wise old, Marsali could barely manage to eat at all. She was not used to such luxury; nor was she used to the odd pain caused absurdly by the sight of Jean Annandale’s pretty white hand on the sleeve of Antoine’s shirt, the sleeve she herself had painstakingly sewn.

  Still she kept her peace about that, and kept her manners, until Antoine asked Jean Annandale for the name of a tailor and a dressmaker, for it was, he announced, his intention to have them all decently clad.

  ‘Mind they be quick, laddie,’ said Douglas Annandale. ‘The Sea-Harrower lies today in Clyde waters.’

  Marsali said sharply, ‘Aye well, a tailor for your handsome self, I am sure. But I will not be squandering my father’s money on bits of lace.’ She looked coolly upon the frills of Mistress Annandale, as if she thought such things mere trash, and calmly smoothed her own loose, uncombed hair.

  Antoine laughed, a little maliciously, and said lightly, ‘If you are to travel with me, I think I will see to the dressing of you. ’Tis my father’s money I am thinking of, and he, like me, is most fond of these … bits of lace.’ He
played then with his long fingers with Jean Annandale’s pretty cuff, as once he had played with Marsali’s hair.

  ‘I will not be begging finery like a common whore,’ Marsali cried angrily.

  Jean Annandale turned her cool white neck and said, ‘An’ will you go barefoot to Avignon, with but your highland pride for the clothing of you?’

  ‘I will if I must, but I will not beg,’ Marsali said angrily, not to her at all, but to Antoine.

  As Ishbel hushed her, Murdoch suddenly spoke up and said loudly, to make the peace, ‘Antoine has accepted your hospitality. It will be churlish, girl, for you to refuse his.’

  Put that way, she could not argue and fell silent while Antoine and Douglas Annandale talked on into the night of shipping, and tobacco, and politics.

  ‘… the Sea-Harrower will make your fortune, laddie … the Africans have brought your father plenty silver in Carolina …’

  ‘I am thinking that ship timbers from Sweden might well be better.’

  ‘Och never. Rum and slaves, laddie. Rum and slaves.’

  Antoine shrugged. ‘Were you hearing now of the prince? Did he come then to England again in disguise as all were saying he would?’

  Douglas Annandale stiffened slightly, almost as if he listened for a footstep at the door, or the tirl of the pin. Then he said, his voice dropping low, ‘I don’t know … but there is talk of the Swedes …’

  ‘The Swedes will back him?’ Murdoch asked quietly.

  ‘So they are saying.’

  Antoine only laughed and said, ‘Far more interesting now, can you tell, is it true that Mistress Walkinshaw is away from her convent in the Low Countries, with her skirts hiked over her knees, dashing to St. Germain to keep the Tryst?’

  Jean Annandale laughed prettily and said, ‘Pity the lass if she is; ’tis well known she’ll but find Charlie with the Princess de Talmond on his bonnie knee.’

  They both laughed then, Antoine and she and their hands brushed as they reached for their claret glasses and for a moment their fingers entangled.