Over the Seas

by Josephine Bell

  Alec did not attempt to stop this clearly prepared statement. In sorrow he heard it, but also in relief. Francis, the gentle sensitive youth who had given him so great relief from the rigours of his childhood’s home at Pittenweem, was now dead and gone, but Francis the poet, the user of words, still lived, confident, skilled in learning, rewarded for his services in making the Divine Word open to all in the new Bible.

  Following this thought when Francis stopped speaking Alec said, ‘We are both much changed. I never had any expectation of return. Indeed of life itself. I cannot yet see clearly how I may now proceed. But with thy permission, if our former friendship is to be in any way renewed, I would dearly like to see my son.’

  ‘He is no longer with us here,’ Francis answered at once. ‘For which I thank God in His goodness.’

  Alec was amazed, horrified.

  ‘He is dead!’ he cried, in despair at this cruel renewal of punishment.

  ‘Nay, nay!’

  Francis, seeing his friend so stricken, opened his heart to him again in a great cry of compunction. He took him by both arms, tears flooding his eyes.

  ‘Nay, Sandy, he lives! But with my parents at Kilessie! He is a strong, self-willed child, very like his father. Mistress Ogilvy would have none of him. Kate—’

  He broke off when Alec put a great arm about his neck and thanked him again and again with emotion for his goodness to the child. After that they went to join the others, each knowing that a new friendship lay between them, firm and unshakeable, though their lives lay so far apart now that the old intimacy could never be renewed.

  But the next day Francis explained further how it came about that he had taken the boy to live in Scotland.

  ‘Kate never loved him, never forgave the poor atom for his likeness to thee at his birth. After she bore me my own son and later my daughter her enmity against poor Francis grew. She punished him for faults that should have been overlooked. He is big and strong. He began to resent her way with him and turned to Lucy Butters, for our nursemaid at that time took my lady’s part. This caused more injustice to the lad, with jealousy of Lucy a part of it. So in the end, the laird pressing me all the time to show him his grandson, I took him north.’

  ‘So they know nothing? They take him for thy elder son?’

  ‘They know nothing and will never know. But I think my old nurse who still lives, but grows very old, doth suspect, though I would never listen to her questions, but feigned not to hear them.’

  After a pause Alec said, ‘How fares he since parting with thee? Mistress Celia speaks of a great love between ye. She knows the truth, I believe, though she says nothing.’

  ‘All the Ogilvys know the truth except the learned doctor, good old man, who came nigh to beating his wife when she tried to tell him. Since when all have been careful to keep silence.’

  ‘Not to me,’ Alec said ruefully, recounting his experience at the house in Paternoster Row.

  Francis laughed but grew serious again.

  ‘Ye will leave the boy at Kilessie altogether?’ Alec asked. ‘There be no young folks now in that house unless thy brother—’

  ‘Marry? Aye, but he hath and bred an heir to Kilessie as well. My life is in Oxford. Already since my preferment I have a house building I’ll show thee. But young Francis, I dare not have return till he hath more command of himself.’

  ‘Dare not?’

  Francis at last told the final reason for the boy’s exile. Provoked by Katharine as she sat with her embroidery he had snatched up her cutting shears and ran to stab her, but she beat down his little arm so fiercely that not only did the shears fly across the room but the bone of the arm was bent sideways.

  ‘Not broken across on acount of his youth,’ Francis explained. ‘He was scarcely three at the time. The surgeon straightened it and bound it to a stiffened strip of leather, so it mended without trace.’

  Alec nodded. His son was better off at Kilesse. Perhaps only for a time, perhaps for good. From what he had seen and heard Lady Leslie would in future spend less and less time in scholastic circles than at the Court. Perhaps in the end this marriage that had begun so ill would break openly, since in private it had never truly joined.

  Alec spent three days more at Oxford and then rode off north, bearing a letter from Francis to his father explaining about the King’s pardon of his friend. Alec Nimmo would call to pay his respects to the laird and his wife, to reestablish himself with them. Also to see young Francis Leslie as he had already met the younger children in Oxford.

  ‘I must also see my own parents,’ Alec explained. ‘And the Macllroys. I must show my pardon to all at St Andrews.’

  ‘I have no news of Master Nimmo,’ Francis said. ‘But I think poor Janet hath lost her husband of a fever, though not her son.’

  ‘There were no other children?’

  ‘None that I heard speak of.’

  Though Alec found himself more at home in Oxford than in London and though he rejoiced at his reconciliation with his friend he was no nearer coming to any decision about his future course. Indeed as he crossed the Border, passed over the Lammermuirs and took ferry from Musselborough across the Forth to Fife, his love of his native land came back to him renewed. In safety, in honour, he rode past Loch Leven to Falkland below the Lomonds; to Kilessie, where a cordial and dignified welcome greeted him after the laird had read his son’s letter.

  Young Francis was presented to him. The boy had Alec’s clear blue eyes, equally defiant, equally ready to blaze with anger. But his hair had lost the reddish tinge or rather this was hidden now in the bright gold mop that covered his head.

  ‘He takes after his mother’s colouring,’ Alec said, steadily. ‘The younger boy is dark like Francis.’

  This remark was received calmly, without comment. Alec was invited to spend the night at Kilessie. The old people retired to bed very early. Francis’s brother and his young wife, a pleasant country girl, daughter of a neighbouring laird, entertained the visitor.

  They discussed Francis, his wife, whom they had never seen but heard much gossip about, and the boy. Not a likely scholar, all agreed, though he was only just four years old; not a farmer either. Perhaps a soldier or an officer in the King’s navy. He had a ready sense of command, Master Leslie said, smiling. But time would show.

  Time would show many things, Alec decided, riding on the next morning to St Andrews. After all his imaginings, all his hopes and fears, the encounter with his son had left him with a feeling of flatness, even disillusion. A child, very like other children. A healthy child, scarcely at all overawed by the formality of his introduction to his supposed father’s great friend. No emotion, no real contact. Which Alec, musing again over the future, was honest enough to give thanks for.

  So be it, then. A very ordinary, a very frequent situation going back into all human history, no doubt going forward into times to come. So long as the real victim, the child, did not suffer. He comforted himself, as Francis, far more learned, had done, with tales of noble, successful bastards of the past. Then cursed himself for a hypocrite and rode through St Andrews without stopping, out to the East Neuk to find his God-fearing, Devil-ridden parents at Pittenweem.

  But they were gone. A strange face came to the door of his childhood’s home to explain that the house had been empty these two years and they newly come to it from Anstruther. Upon searching the quays of the harbour he found men he knew, and learned about their going. Both, dead, he from an apoplexy six months after Alec’s outlawry, she from a wasting disease a year later.

  So they had never learned of his ultimate escape, his success and now his pardon. As he rode back towards St Andrews he wondered if in the cold, strict, severe heaven his father had looked forward to, a fairer-minded God Almighty, a gentle Christ, a gracious Lady Mother, had explained to them his present condition.

  He went first to the University to re-establish himself, receiving praise and congratulation from the head of St Leonard’s, his old college.


  Next he went to the Town Kirk to pray for his parents’ souls, to ask again for mercy for himself and for guidance in his present confusion of mind.

  After that, not understanding his reluctance, he made his way to Doctor MacBroy’s house near Gregory Place.

  The manservant who before had betrayed him, was no longer there. A little maid opened the door, who stood gawping at him for so long that Alec asked for a message to be taken to her master to say that an old friend wished to see him.

  ‘Maister canna come to ’ee,’ the girl said. ‘He’s no able to leave’s bed these many months.’

  ‘Then is Mistress Galbraith here the noo?’ Alec’s Scottish speech, revived immediately he found himself in his native land, relapsed still further.

  But there was no need to wait for an answer. Janet was sweeping towards him, the little maid exclaimed and fled and her voice, commanding but not aggressive, asked, ‘What is your business with my father, sir? He is not able to receive strangers.’

  ‘Janet!’ Alec said, stepping forward into the house, ‘Dost not know me?’

  She gasped, stepped back, for a moment overcome by surprise, shock, plunging emotion.

  ‘Sandy! Dear God, not still a fugitive?’

  ‘Nay, Janet. With a free pardon from the King. No man may touch me now. Not even a revengeful Scots lord.’

  She took him to the little parlour he had never forgotten, where eight years ago, in the week of the King’s accession, he had taken painful leave of her, his first true love.

  There she told him of her husband’s death and her father’s incapacity.

  ‘He is paralysed,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘His speech too is affected, though his mind is there, struggling to express—’ she could not go on.

  ‘May I speak to him?’ Alec asked gently. ‘Wilt prepare him, tell of my survival and my return and my pardon?’

  ‘Aye. Wait thou here. I’ll no’ promise anything. But wait.’

  So after a while she came back and took him to Doctor Macllroy’s bedside. The old man knew him, pressed his hand with a stiff clutch of fingers, mumbled incoherent words, tears flowed freely down his lined cheeks. Alec thought he understood but could not be sure.

  Back in the parlour he found wine and sweetmeats on the table. Janet seated herself and invited him to take a chair opposite. Again he was reminded of his last real interview with her. The brief encounter during his flight four years before did not seem to matter.

  He gave her a full account of his adventures, both in Scotland and the New World. He saw her eyes brighten as her imagination followed his words.

  ‘Wonderful!’ she breathed several times. And then said, ‘So now thou art home again, Sandy? To settle—where?’

  It was too crudely put, too eagerly. He had told her his parents were dead, implying there was, now no barrier between them. Besides, as a widow she had a free choice. Her purpose in that question, was sadly plain.

  He said, to divert her thoughts, ‘And thou, Janet. Tell me thy story. A sad one, I fear, but thou hast thy son.’

  He did not tell her of his own; that would be too dangerous. It must never be known by any in Fife that young Francis was base-born.

  She described her marriage and its outcome, very briefly, with bitterness. She had not been happy. She now looked for much less in life. Unless …’

  ‘Unless thou marry again,’ he told her, firmly.

  She hung her head, waiting.

  Alec was appalled at his clumsiness. He saw no way of escape that would not now hurt her.

  ‘I must not stay,’ he said, preparing to rise. ‘I have to be in London before the month be out to settle my business with Master Leslie and find ship for my return.’

  He knew, quite finally, that he could settle nowhere in England or Scotland, but that he must go back to Virginia and the new life he had begun to make there. Janet’s face was hidden from him but she put up her hands to cover it and he knew she was crying.

  He went down on his knees beside her, putting his arms round her as he had done on that other occasion.

  ‘I must go, Janet. I must. There is nought for me here. My father is gone and his business with him. My life is in no way fitted to scholarship.’

  ‘I would I were a man and could go with thee,’ she said. ‘But I’ll no’ leave my father while he lives.’

  She had said this, too, before. The whole scene had become strange, unreal a repetition of an old song, outdated, outrageous. He got to his feet.

  ‘I must go,’ he repeated. ‘I love and honour thee for thy wish, Janet, but I must go back to my home, to my wife and the little maid, my daughter.’

  He bent and kissed her. Not in the way he had formerly, a boy in a love idyll but as a man who had seldom tried to suppress the passion he felt for any personable woman.

  She pushed him away, her cheeks flaming.

  ‘Go then,’ she said, panting, ‘and God defend thy poor wife from such as thee! Men have aye used women ill and will do so for aye, I’m thinking. I thought better of thee, Alexander Nimmo, but I was sair mistaken!’

  He rode away from St Andrews with a heart much lightented by the revelation that had come to him in Doctor Macllroy’s house. He looked about him at the beloved scene of Fife and the Ochil mountains beyond, but his thoughts turned away to the greater, mysterious, tree-clad mountains of Virginia, the amazing forests, the mighty rivers. And to Polly, his wife, his true love, whose devotion was unending, whose earth-born knowledge kept her close to earth and its ways, accepting reality; whose strength in her own sphere equalled his own. As he rode on he longed to be with her, he was amazed that he had thought so little about her since his return.

  On the way south he went aside from near Ripon to visit Witton. The Cow and Calf was totally unchanged. Meg Sugden’s brother-in-law was polite, pleased to have news of the Sugdens’ success in their venture, pleased to hear he had married Poll pleased to get rid of him as soon as possible.

  In London the Virginia Company was in ferment. Lord de la Warr, unable to throw off his illness, was on his way home. Sir Thomas Dale had left in March, while Alec was in Oxford, to take his place. Captain Sam Argall had visited Sagadahoc, being blown off course from Bermuda, and had found it reestablished.

  ‘A better climate, more friendly natives and a direct seaboard,’ Master Angus Leslie said. ‘Consider it, Sandy lad. The captain saith the great cod are so succulent he could live off them for ever.’

  ‘The captain is in town, sir?’

  ‘Aye and asking for thee.’

  Alec took ship with Argall late in May, 1611. They arrived in the James River in July. Plantations covered the whole peninsula. Fruit trees were covered with young fruit. Mistress Sugden and her brother met Alec as he came ashore.

  ‘And Polly?’ he asked as soon as he had greeted them.

  ‘I told her to wait at home,’ his mother-in-law answered. ‘Seeing we had no news of thy coming. Nor any news of thee at all for best part o’t year.’

  ‘You thought I’d not return?’ Alec was astonished, forgetting his own great confusion on this subject.

  He did not wait for her answer but ran in through the palisade leaving the others to deal with his baggage. He found Polly standing in the doorway of their house, the little maid Anne beside her and in her arms, held upright now to see his father, a big handsome boy, red curls covering his head, a wide grin on his toothless mouth.

  ‘My son! And I never knew! I never thought!’

  ‘Thou never asked,’ she said laughing. ‘My mother said! thee’d come back if told. I would have thee return unknowing.’

  ‘As I have come, wanting thee only,’ he said, kissing her for the third time at which the baby, alarmed, began to wail.

  ‘This is where I belong,’ Alec said, pushing them all before him gently into the house. ‘This great new land. Farther to the north, maybe, for the cod-fishing. But together, my dearest love, always together.’

  ‘Thou fraud!’ she cried happily
. ‘Cod-fishing! Farther north! ‘Tis adventure is thy dearest love, not Polly!’

  They laughed and kissed and embraced again; for the great love and true understanding between them.

  Copyright

  First published in 1970 by Geoffrey Bles

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-2154-8 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-2153-1 POD

  Copyright © Josephine Bell, 1970

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