The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance

by Abigail Clements

  Forward of the cabin, when they emerged, they found four great oil lamps had been lit and were hanging from the mast and bulwarks. By their light a line of men were unloading bales of cloth into the hold, working at night so that they might sail in the morning with the tide.

  ‘Come,’ Antoine said, ‘I will show you from what the fortunes of men and cities are made.’ And he led her down the narrow companionway into the black hold of the ship, lit here too by swaying black oil lamps. He carried his own lamp before him, and she walked uneasily into the darkness of the place in which sweating men worked at the stacking and securing of the great bales and barrels, like spirits in the flickering light.

  The smell of the hold was strong and complex, as one odour and another lay, like memories, drawn across each other. Tobacco-smell was everywhere, and the sharp, sour smell of baled cloth, and behind that another sourness, a rottenness, ancient and lingering. Marsali turned around in her small leather shoes in a neat circle. On the bulkhead behind her was a heavy black chain, looped in an iron ring. At her feet was another. To her side was another.

  ‘Antoine,’ she said in a small voice, but firm, ‘will you be telling me now, which of your crops is it that needs chaining to the walls? Is it tobacco that chooses to get up and run about? Or do the bales of linen make a fight? What is it, Antoine, that you chain to the wood of your bonnie ship?’

  ‘Och lassie,’ he said coldly, ‘do not play games with me. You know as well as I what cargo she carries. Was it not long enough ago, in your own father’s house that I was telling you? And was it not settled long since?’

  ‘Long ago, Antoine, and not long enough,’ she said bitterly. He turned away, so that she was in darkness, the lamp hidden from her, and she felt the eerie fear of the place and saw it through the frightened eyes of chained children, and women and men.

  ‘I should not have brought you here then,’ he said. ‘But still, it is well you know where it comes from, the fortunes of cities and men.’

  ‘Your fortunes,’ she said.

  ‘And the pretty frock you are wearing, little cat.’

  ‘Then I would rip it off me.’

  ‘Aye, do that then. But do you not mind if I walk on ahead? I am thinking the naked sight of you will cause that little bit of stir in the streets, and I am a quiet-loving man.’

  ‘Antoine, I hate you and hell is not hard enough for you.’

  ‘Well enough, I doubt I am going there. Pretty cat, remember, I am not responsible for the ways of men.’

  ‘You must be, Antoine, responsible for something; you cannot escape so easy.’

  ‘Aye, indeed,’ he said, leading the way from the darkness up the companionway once more. He gestured to the bow of the ship, dark now, and wrapped in rain, the moon gone away. ‘I am responsible for my unicorn I have set to wandering the lonely seas. That may have been a mistake, and if so, I will pay dearly. But to more than that, you cannot hold me. Now,’ he turned to face her, ‘will you sail on my bonnie ship, whatever her cargo and whatever her fortunes? Or do I leave you now, stubborn, on Glasgow shore?’

  Marsali walked slowly, alone, down the wooden plank. She shrugged away from the help of his hand and held the precarious swaying rope alone. Below her the water was black and laden with swirling white foam. She looked up into the pathetic black eyes of the unicorn and down at the sea and said, ‘I will sail.’

  And so she did sail, on a morning in March, on the slave ship Sea-Harrower, having found, as her father had forecast, that need holds a strong sword to conscience.

  In the morning, Antoine came into the room she shared with Ishbel. He was dressed in a black coat, and black knee-britches, silver-buckled over his stockings at the knee, and a grey waistcoat embroidered with flowers over his white ruffled shirt. He had plaited his black hair solemnly and looked older and more foreign than before. Marsali said, nervous of him, ‘Aye well, we will find you a powdered wig, and we will all be thinking you a learned judge or the like.’

  He smiled to himself and stood before the grey mirror and adjusted the brim of his hat, cocking it up and pinning a white rosette there.

  ‘That is bold of you,’ she said, ‘the wearing of that.’ And it was, too, the symbol of the Stuart rebels in this unfriendly place.

  ‘That’s for MacKinnon of Glentarvie,’ Antoine said with another quiet satisfied smile.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Mind you carry your hat in your hands until we are safely aboard your bonnie ship. Or maybe we’ll not get there at all.’

  But he did not, not being a one to carry hat in hands anywhere. And when they found Ishbel at the door seeing to the cart driver and the chest, she said, taking his arm, ‘Mind, but he looks the fine gentleman, does he not?’ as if that went a long way to making up for being in the devil’s pay. Then Marsali took his other arm, and they set off, following the cart, to the harbour.

  Midway there they were forced to stop, for the street was filled with a great throng of people, laughing and singing. In the lead were two fiddlers, old men, grey-haired and in coarse country clothes. They played, dancing as they did so, and spinning about, wild and raucous and more than a little drunk. Yet they lost neither their footing, nor their tune, in the roughness of the street. Directly behind them, marching almost in the step of a reel, were a young man and woman. The woman wore a plain blue dress, extravagantly adorned with a splendid shawl of white and colours draped over her head and shoulders. She made her way with the hirpling step of one unused to shoes.

  The man was handsome, fair-haired with a fine red beard, and dressed in a good black coat and blue bonnet. But his knee-britches were patched and his stockings grey and worn. They were country folk on their way to their kirk for their wedding.

  Ishbel cried out, ‘Oh, good fortune for our journey, to pass a wedding.’ But they could not pass, indeed, but must stop and wait there, on the crowded street, for the procession itself to move on. And so they watched, and Marsali felt herself two persons; one, the lady in the capuchin cloak, about whom those farm folk scurried warily; and the other, her own true self of Trotternish, so like the poor bride uneasy in her wedding shoes. The girl turned her head and Marsali saw her face, a pretty face, pale with pale hair, but already thin with the touch of hardship. And oddly familiar.

  ‘Look now,’ Marsali cried then, ‘is she not like Mistress Annandale,’ and at once she was saddened to think thus, on one lass’s wedding day, of another’s sad marriage. She saw her once more, as they had seen her last, going stiff in a heavy rich gown away to the Episcopal church. For they had left on the Sabbath, with the streets of Glasgow full of the tolling of bells and the solemn, grey covenanting folk off to their many cold kirks. There was but one of the Annandale’s faith, the Jacobite church some thought it. And none at all of her own. Poor Mistress Annandale, alone in her faith and alone in her marriage. Marsali could have wept for her at the side of her stiff merchant husband. Antoine had left her without even a kiss.

  ‘Aye,’ he said now, ‘she is like. But bonnier.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Marsali said sharply. ‘You’re not as bonnie as he.’ And she flung a scornful hand at the bridegroom in the street.

  ‘Never you mind,’ Antoine said softly. ‘She will grow older too, like Mistress Annandale. And like will he; scratching away at some poor patch of turf. In ten years they’ll be stolid, and in twenty, hags.’

  ‘For shame,’ Ishbel said. ‘A sour blessing on a bride.’

  ‘Och, do you not like it?’ Antoine said. ‘Then I’ll give you another. She will grow old and learn to nag, and one day he will be wiser; and then he will run off to the sea on a bonnie ship of mine and leave her to weep.’

  ‘Like you’ve done yourself to Mistress Annandale,’ Marsali said, suddenly wise.

  ‘She has made her bed. Now she may lie in it.’

  ‘’Tis not high on Christian charity you are today,’ said Ishbel with a sniff.

  Antoine laughed delightedly at that and then replied, ‘She would have had
me a merchant, like Annandale, spending my days among bales and barrels. She married for gold and solid roof-timbers, and now she has them both.’ Then he softened and said, ‘But you would not do that to me, pretty cat. You would not tie me so.’

  ‘No,’ Marsali said honestly. ‘Nor would I marry you, to be left to grow old alone.’

  And suddenly then, the street was clear, the wedding moved on, leaving the muddy earth still and wet and grey. On the far side, walking quickly away, their backs to Marsali, was a group of sailors. They had passed, while the wedding filled the street. Antoine said, ‘Another ship in, I am thinking.’

  Marsali nodded, but looked over her shoulder as they walked on. They were just sailors. One was tall and slender, with a black plait of hair. She found herself staring at that distant plait and the line of the man’s shoulders beneath his foreign-cut jacket. It was familiar, as the bride had been familiar. Was it Antoine he brought to mind, Antoine in Murdoch’s borrowed clothes?

  ‘And what, pray, are you gawping at, lassie?’ said Antoine.

  ‘A stranger. A stranger like another stranger.’

  ‘Indeed. If you needs must gawp at a pair of britches, lass, you may well gawp at mine. If you mean to travel by my side, you can do me the honour of appreciating the company you’re in.’

  ‘You are jealous,’ she said, delighted.

  ‘No,’ he said calmly. ‘Not in the slightest. But I am uncanny vain.’ Marsali drew back from that and said she knew not what to make of him and forgot the sailor with the black plait of hair. And Antoine forgot them all for they were at the foot of the staired close and at the harbour, where the Sea-Harrower was running white canvas out on the booms of her staying sails. He broke free of them to run on ahead and up the slippery gangplank with the gaiety of a child.

  ‘Look there,’ Marsali said to Ishbel. ‘That will be the new ship in that the sailors came from. For it was not here in the night.’ Another bark had been tied up down the quay from the Sea-Harrower, not dissimilar, but smaller.

  ‘Aye, ’tis a puny thing,’ Ishbel said, reserving her admiration for Antoine’s ship as if it were her own.

  Disgusted, Marsali said, ‘Well run away up and tell himself he has the bonniest ship on the sea, and I am sure he will agree; ’tis not just about his pretty self that he is vain.’

  But when the reached the top of the gangplank, which Ishbel climbed canny as a suspicious goat, she turned her mind from celebrating at once. She cried like a mourning-woman, ‘For the love of the Holy Mother, will you look? It is a warship we are upon. A frigate. They will be fighting all about us, for look now, she is nothing but guns.’ She grasped at Marsali s arm as if she would drag her away and flee.

  ‘Wheesht, wheesht, old woman,’ Marsali cried annoyed, ‘she is not.’ But she had not, last night, herself seen the guns. In the black shadows of oil lamps, they had been but black shapes, like bulwarks and bollards and masts. Today in the morning light, they were clear enough, the long black row of nine-pounder cannon down each entire length of the main deck, lurking snugly behind their closed gun ports.

  Antoine returned from jesting with the French sailors loading their chests aboard, and she cried out to him, ’Ishbel is wanting to know now, why so many guns, when the world is at peace?’

  ‘The world of men turns from peace to war as the seasons turn their backs,’ Antoine said. ‘If you would have me strip her of her guns whenever Geordie and Louie make friends, I would do nothing else. Besides there are other needs, from time to time.’

  ‘Pirates?’ Ishbel said, her old eyes glittering.

  ‘White slavers,’ he cried gleefully. ‘We will be selling you now to an Arabian prince for a thousand guineas. He will do all manner of things to you, no doubt … he might even kiss you.’ He wrapped his long arms about the old woman as if he might do the same, and then stopped suddenly in his teasing and froze still.

  Marsali had felt it too, a jolt and a swaying and the flap of the wind in the jib and the staysail. A rope was cast free at the bow, and the sailors below in the long boat in the water took it, and another, and set their backs to the task of rowing. A second rope was flung up, midships, and a last from the stern. The bow turned to the straining oarsmen, slowly and with grace. Antoine ran to the rail to watch. Then he leaned against it, face turned up to the rigging. The wind was blowing loose tails of black hair about his face. The staysail fluttered and went taut and the sailors high above dropped a square from the mizzen, and another, and each filled, white and strong.

  ‘We are free,’ Antoine said, to himself, and leaned back on the rail and closed his eyes. With the oarsmen and the wind working for them now, they brushed past the anchored ship beside them, like the Lady Smollett passing them all on the tenement stair. Marsali read the name in black print on her bow, Sweet Eloise.

  Then they gathered their long boat to them, like a swan gathering its small ungainly young, and men and boat were hoisted aboard. The white unicorn at the bow bent its princely head to the sea, and the Sea-Harrower turned and slipped away down the Clyde.

  When Marsali thought to look back upon Port Glasgow, it was but a grey smudge on the green hills of Scotland.

  On the North road, beyond the town, the tall sailor with the black plait stopped beside a farmer leading a new-bought heifer from market. He admired the heifer and intrigued its owner, for he dressed like a foreigner and spoke like a highlander and carried a scar on his face like a buccaneer. The farmer had celebrated the heifer’s purchase with considerable ale and was voluble and bold by consequence.

  ‘Yer not a lowland man.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Yer not a sailor, with so canny an eye fer the cattle-beasts.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘An’ yer not like to tell me who ye be, albeit I go with ye to John O’ Groats.’

  The sailor-man with the black plait laughed and his face was kind, for all its scarring. ‘I have forgotten the ways of the civilized world and lost the way of speaking with my own countrymen. Yes, I am a highland man and yes, I’ve an eye for the cattle, and many a day I spent on the droving trail. But I’ll not tell you who I am, if you are not minding.’

  ‘Aye well. Then I’ll not be the wiser. Where are ye going, then, with yer sailor’s gear, will ye say? There’s no more sea, this road.’

  ‘Well enough then. I am done with the sea. It is north I am going, to Glentarvie, on the side of Loch Arkaig.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Oh for the love of God, go away,’ Marsali cried, turning her face against the splintery wood of the deck, and shutting her eyes again. Antoine came in and sat down cross-legged beside her like a curious cat, or a bored child wanting a playmate.

  ‘Marsali, do you not like my ship?’

  ‘Like it?’ she moaned, half raising her head, and then thinking better of it, ‘You mindless fool. Would it were drowned at the bottom of the sea. And I with it.’

  The floor shifted again, slow and awkward with a great groaning of timbers and creaking of ropes. On the bunk across the room Ishbel moaned, ‘Oh Mother of God, mercy.’ The swell passed under the keel and the shift began again, ponderous, the other way. Ishbel raised her grey head, white mutch askew, and retched unashamedly into the tin chamber pot. Antoine watched, bemused.

  Marsali determined to pretend he was not there. She laid her cheek once more against the wood of the treacherous floor that would not keep still. She longed to sink through it and pass right through the timbers of the ship, down to the seabed and find again blessed unmoving earth. Her head spun wildly, and her stomach was exhausted with the pain of dry, useless retching. They had been a full day from port, and it was mid-morning, in the middle of the Irish Sea.

  ‘Another day, we will be in Ireland,’ Antoine said mildly, perhaps for comfort.

  ‘I shall die afore then,’ Marsali whispered. He touched her tangled hair with long curious fingers and she said, ‘Go away.’

  He remained, cross-legged on the floor, shifting his
balance easily with the shift and sway of the ship. From the corner of her eye she saw that he had discarded shoes and stockings and was barefoot, as the sailors were. She turned her head and looked up at him, lit by the shifting, white sea-light fluttering through the narrow ports of the cabin. He was studying her with heartless innocence, like a child playing cruelly with an insect. His eyes were as pale as the light, sea-coloured, wide, calm and merciless. Her own face swam in them, dizzily. She gagged and lay flat and prayed, ‘Dear Lord, save us.’

  ‘I do not think that is necessary,’ Antoine said unconcernedly. ‘The day is fine and the ship sound. I would save my prayers for a day we might need them, were I you.’ He stood up and stretched, bored with her misery, and made to go out.

  ‘And will you just leave me to suffer?’

  ‘You were saying I was to go.’ He idled by the door, a sleek brown animal, without feeling or expression.

  Desolate, she closed her eyes against wet tears and said nothing. But he saw that and came back suddenly and knelt down beside her and touched her wet lashes, as if not believing. ‘Marsali,’ he whispered, softly. He had never seen her cry, not in anger or sorrow. She looked up at him again and saw a surprising gentle thing, a look of caring.

  ‘Can I not help?’ he said, tentative, like one seeking balance on a new footing.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head and said, ‘Och I’ll not die of it, or so they say. Go away, Antoine, no one can help.’

  But he stayed, puzzled, for a while and then went quietly out, gentle on bare feet, and returned in minutes. ‘Look you. Eat this and then you will be better.’

  She covered her face and protested she would never eat anything again, but he pried her hands apart and showed her what he held, a dry hard biscuit of the kind the sailors ate. He said, ‘They tell me it is very good for what is wrong with you. For myself, I cannot say I have not had this sickness.’