‘Your Frenchman’s not coming back, Jane. He’s been gone ten years. Marry me now and I’ll give you and the bairn a good home. I’ve been offered the tenancy of a farm down there beside Merton’ – he pointed to the east – ‘and I’m going to take it. You know I’ve always said I’d have my own place one day. It has a nice wee house and forty acres of good land. There’s a lot of hard work to be done and I’m needing a good woman to help me. It’s a new start for both of us.’
She looked with affection at his resolute face and sturdy frame. He would succeed, she could see that now. She had immense respect for Jock – but she still did not love him.
‘Oh, I’m so glad for you. It’s what you wanted. But I can’t marry you. I wouldn’t ten years ago and I can’t now. I’m still not sure that I won’t hear from Blaize again. I’m certain he meant to come back, nothing anyone says ever makes me doubt him. There must be a very good reason why he hasn’t come back and I’m sure that one day I’ll find out what it was.’
Jock shrugged. He’d expected that, really. ‘Well, I’m needing a wife and I won’t ask you again. If you won’t marry me, I’m going to ask somebody else. But I’ll always be your friend. If there’s ever any time you need help, Jane, you’ve only got to ask me.’
She kissed his cheek and sent him back home with a heavy heart, for he felt as sorry for Jane and Aylie as for himself. They deserved more than the life of a bondager and her bairn.
A month later he married Flora, a shy, sweet-faced girl, the daughter of the head groom in Charterhall stables. Jane went to the wedding and in spite of herself, felt a twinge of envy when she saw the joy on the face of the bride as she danced with her sturdy and respectable new husband.
Big Agnes, growing wrinkled and grey now, put her arm round Jane’s shoulders and whispered, ‘Cheer up, lass. I’d have liked you as a daughter but it wasn’t to be. Take care you don’t waste your life waiting for something that doesn’t happen.’
* * *
There was a strong and loving bond between Jane and Aylie – they were more like friends than mother and child, for Jane treated her daughter as a confidante, telling her the secret things that occupied her mind and hiding nothing from her. Every Sunday, instead of going to church like the other farm workers, they walked the three miles back to Charterhall and wandered through the abbey grounds. Though it was only a few years since the place had been lived in, trees and bushes had taken it over, climbing over the ruins, pushing their way up between tumbled stones. In the burying ground the gravestones leaned at even more perilous angles and the old pear trees along the cloister wall had sprouted in all directions for want of pruning.
Old Glendinning had been stricken with apoplexy and lived on in his gloomy house, attended by unfeeling servants. His plans to clear the abbey ruins were totally abandoned for he no longer cared what happened to the place and did not have the power of speech to issue any more orders.
So they were unmolested on their visits back to Jane’s old home. With her daughter she always went up to the first floor of the chapter house but Glendinning’s workmen had removed the roof and the stone floor now shone like wet silk after rain, was covered with snow in winter, or felt hot underfoot during the summer months.
The carved bosses of sunflower, rose and holly on the tops of the columns were still there however and she would cup her hands lovingly round them as she showed them to the little girl and told her stories about the men who had carved them hundreds of years before. She told Aylie about the ghostly singing that she had heard in the choir and about the secret cell beneath the gatehouse tower. The cell frightened the child because it was so cold and damp, but once they were inside and her mother lit a taper, she was entranced at the display of Jane’s treasures which were still safe in their brass-bound trunk. She would stand beside a little window shaped like a cannon ball and show the child the illuminated manuscript and sheafs of notes and recipes that had belonged to her grandmother, the healer. But the bit of the afternoon Aylie loved best was when her mother told her about Blaize, about how she first saw him among the snowdrops and how he hid in the cloister, all dressed up like a shepherd in a plaid and bonnet.
If anyone ever saw them there, they were never interrupted. Old Glendinning was in a wicker chair in his sitting room, fed by maids who hated his slobbering and put to bed at night by an uncaring man servant who systematically stole from him. The business of the farm was run by the steward, who believed that Jane Cannon had put a curse on the Glendinning family. Even when he knew she was wandering around the abbey grounds, he was afraid to stop her for fear she put the evil eye on him too.
The child was growing up to be a slim and elegant girl, very lady-like looking, wide-shouldered like her father and with his intelligent, searching face. Her hair was almost as blonde as Jane’s and gently curling. To her mother’s relief she had no freckles, not even over the bridge of her nose in summertime.
One autumn Sunday in 1825 they went to the abbey as usual and were walking through the burying ground on their way to the ruined house when Jane stopped in her tracks like a startled animal.
‘There’s someone over there, in the aisle beside the big graves,’ she whispered to Aylie.
The child’s eyes looked where her mother pointed and saw the bulky figure of a man in a black suit and a tall hat standing before an imposing-looking headstone. He was wiping his eyes with a large handkerchief.
‘Poor thing, he’s crying,’ she whispered back.
‘He’s at Christian’s grave, he must be crying for her,’ said Jane. Christian’s brother was buried there too but she did not imagine that anyone could be crying for him.
Mother and daughter advanced towards the stranger, and when they grew close Jane gestured to Aylie to hide herself behind a pillar while she spied on the weeping man more closely.
After a few seconds, without speaking to a wondering Aylie, she stepped out into full view to ask in a strangely trembling voice, ‘Oh, is it you Jacques? Is it really you come back after all this time?’
The stranger lifted his head and stared at her. The golden beard had gone and so had the dashing earrings. Now he was a soberly dressed, respectable, middle-aged man in a broadcloth coat and expensive-looking boots. A tall hat was held under his arm and he had laid a bunch of flowers on the stone slab at his feet.
He stared in surprise and then, after a few seconds, he threw out both arms with a cry. ‘It’s Blaize’s Jane. What a miracle, it’s you Jane! I’ve been looking everywhere for you but in the big house they said you’d gone away long ago.’
They rushed together and he hugged her to him, like the friendly bear he once had seemed to be. While they embraced he wept openly and she cried too, so rackingly that she barely heard him as he explained.
‘I came back to see my Christian’s grave. I’ve never forgotten her, you know. Life is so cruel. You and I have both suffered loss, my dear.’
At this she stiffened and stepped slightly away from him. ‘Loss? What do you mean?’
‘But you must know about Blaize. Surely you know… You must have heard about Waterloo.’
She shook her head, fear on her face. ‘I heard there was a battle. I hoped he wasn’t in it.’
Jacques took her hands. ‘Oh, my dear, he was killed there, fighting for Napoleon. I wasn’t with him when he fell but a friend of mine was. It was very swift, a soldier’s death, my dear.’
Jane reeled and put her hands up to her face, gasping, ‘Oh, Jacques, that’s what I’ve been afraid of ever since I heard about the battle. I knew he’d go back to fight – he would go if Bonaparte needed him. Oh my God, he was going to be the next to die. I knew that when I saw him at Christian’s funeral!’
Frightened, Aylie rushed up to comfort her weeping mother and glared at the man who was bringing such devastating news. She had not heard everything that was said but she could tell from her mother’s face and voice that it was very important and very sad.
‘Blaize died a soldier�
��s death,’ Jacques repeated very slowly to the child, ‘at Waterloo.’
Jane said, ‘I knew something terrible had happened to him but I never really let myself believe it. I kept thinking he’d come back one day… I kept on hoping.’
She was not fully aware of what she was saying and, sensing this, Jacques took her arm and led her across to the old stairs where they had sat so often in the past. ‘You must have known that he would come back if he were still alive. He loved you, Jane. He longed to come back to you but when the Emperor landed from Elba, Blaize was nearby and he felt he had to join him again. Napoleon had that effect on the men who knew him. Blaize thought they’d win and it would all be over in a few weeks… I felt the same. I left my home in Brittany to fight as well. We never thought any of us would die in the attempt. When Blaize and I met again he told me about his dreams of the day he’d come back for you, how he’d see you in the hayfield and run across to you…. He talked about it all the time.’
‘What about his wife?’ Jane asked, dry-mouthed. ‘Did he mention his wife?’
‘He’d told her about you. They’d organized things. She kept his house and he was to pay her an income. She wasn’t happy to see him go but Blaize was not a man to argue with, she realized that he meant what he said. No man ever loved anyone more than he loved you. Didn’t you get a letter? His wife promised me she’d write to tell you what had happened.’
She shook her head. ‘No letter. I wrote to his address in Arles once or twice. I was so sure he wouldn’t just forget about us.’
‘That’s true, he didn’t. He loved you and he longed to see his baby. Is this the child?’
They both regarded Aylie, who stood looking anxious, clinging to her mother’s arm. Jane nodded.
‘That’s our daughter. I called her Alouette but no one here can say it so we call her Aylie.’
She put an arm round the girl and introduced her to Jacques. ‘This gentleman was a friend of your father’s.’
Aylie started to weep; the highly charged emotion of the meeting had touched her tender heart. Since she was tiny she had been told by her mother of the day her handsome dashing father, in another scarlet jacket like the one they treasured, would march into the cottage and take them both in his arms. She knew how much her mother longed for this to happen and now she was weeping in pity for her.
Seeing her sorrow, the big man knelt down beside her and said gently, ‘Don’t cry. Your father was a very fine man. He was my friend. When I look at you I see him again, for you look very like him. He’d be so very proud of you.’
Aylie, 1826
When she was twelve years old Aylie looked like a long-legged filly with an alert, startled head and wide eyes which gave her an animal elegance. She was a kind child with a great love of animals which had shown itself early, for even when she was very young Jane had found it impossible to restrain her from cuddling snarling puppies, picking up spitting kittens or bringing hedgehogs into the house from the cottage garden. None of these animals, even the most savage that would have attacked anyone else who handled them, ever turned on Aylie. She even won the confidence of wild birds so that they would flutter down and take crumbs from her hand.
Children loved her too and as soon as she was old enough to be given responsibility, she walked over to the Hepburns’ farmhouse to help Jock’s wife Flora with their baby son, Sandy. She became his unofficial nursemaid and looked after him for Flora who was delicate, and after Sandy’s birth suffered frequent miscarriages. Sandy was to be their only surviving child and he was doted on not only by his parents but by Aylie and Jane as well, for he was a sweet-natured little boy with an enchanting wide grin and loving ways.
When she was well enough to go out, Flora often took Sandy and Aylie to the stables at Charterhall, which were ruled with a rod of iron by her father, the head groom. There Aylie fell under the enchantment of the horse. The carriage and riding horses that fidgeted and fretted in the palatial boxes of the rebuilt stableyard fascinated her. Because of old Glendinning’s disability they were worked very little, so when they were taken out for exercise they cavorted, kicked and bucked all over the paddocks like dervishes. She thought she had never seen anything more lovely or more exciting than those prancing horses.
Sometimes Flora’s father would find the girl standing on tiptoe to peer through the bars of one of the boxes, whispering to the horse inside till even the most suspicious and ill-tempered of them turned and came over to snuffle with open nostrils at her face.
One morning as she watched the horses being rubbed down with twists of straw, she told Flora’s father, ‘Oh, I’d love to ride a horse. I wouldn’t be frightened.’
He looked at her skinny little body and said, ‘I’ve no doubt you could, lass. Come on, I’ll put you up on old Tusker. He’s the quietest of the lot and he won’t hurt you.’
She felt like a queen when she was perched on Tusker’s soft bare back, her hands twisted among the coarse hair of his mane while one of the boys led her round the stable paddock. After the short ride was over she laid her face down on Tusker’s neck and breathed in the smell of him. ‘Oh, doesn’t he smell wonderful,’ she sighed in delight.
Her twelfth birthday was due just after Christmas and she knew that when it came she would have to start working. On her last day at school she looked around the little schoolroom with sorrow in her heart, for though it was only a poky, mud-floored room in a tumbledown cottage, stifling hot in summer and damp and chill as an igloo in winter, she had been happy there. Now it was time to leave the old pedagogue who taught the children from the farms round about – at least those children whose parents could find a penny a week to pay for them to learn the basic rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic. Most of the pupils left when they reached the age of twelve but it was the old schoolmaster’s proud and justified boast that none of his pupils went into the world without basic learning, and their careful copperplate handwriting bore testimony to his teaching methods. When Aylie told the teacher that her schooling must finish and she was going out to work, he looked sadly at her and shook his head. Her quickness and eagerness to learn had made her satisfying to teach and, because he knew the story of her parentage, he could not help wondering what her life would have been like if she had been fathered by Blaize in France.
But this child, who could have been a good scholar, was the daughter of a bondager, destined to labour in the fields like her mother. As he bade her farewell he said something of this and she stared at him with a disturbing look in her eyes.
‘But no matter where I was born, I’m still me! I have to go out to work but I have my own thoughts, don’t I? I’m as good as anybody else.’
He had to agree for he was a poor man’s son himself, though like many of his class he was over-reverent to the upper classes and convinced of their total superiority. ‘But, Aylie,’ he told her, ‘there’s not going to be the chances for you. You’ll have to accept your place in society, that’s what I mean.’
She bent her head and did not reply, leaving the schoolmaster with the disturbing thought that he had said something very wrong to her.
* * *
Colonel Arthur Pelham Scroggie was not a native-born Borderer but an Englishman who had gone out to India as a young ensign before the turn of the century and served in the army of the East India Company. He was one of the few who survived to come home again with a modest fortune which allowed him to retire to a part of Britain as unlike Madras as possible. He chose the Borders with its northern climate of short summers and long winters, its landscape full of trees and slowly meandering rivers because there he could pursue his passion for horses and hunting the fox without necessarily expending vast sums like huntin’ gentlemen who aspired to their own packs of hounds in sporting counties farther south.
The Colonel was a widower. His wife, the daughter of a fellow officer, had succumbed to the Indian climate when she was only twenty-five, leaving him with one daughter named Madeleine – a large, noisy, bounci
ng girl who tried hard to live up to her father’s expectations.
And these were considerable – at least from Madeleine’s point of view. First of all he expected that she capture a suitable husband ‘with wool on his back’ – which meant he should be possessed of a fortune greater than the Colonel’s. Madeleine was no beauty but she was the Colonel’s only daughter, a minor heiress with land to her name and, as such, highly sought after by the sons of dynastic-minded gentlemen farmers.
She might have to take her choice from the sons of Johnny-Come-Latelys but she would not be left on the shelf.
Her father’s other requirement however – and the one that was nearest to his heart – was more difficult to fulfil. He wanted Madeleine to ride out beside him, stirrup to stirrup, a dashing lady after hounds. He wanted Madeleine to lead the field on the fine, but high-mettled, horses he bought for her. He wanted her to outride all the other followers of his hounds – except himself of course.
He forgot that he had learned his rough riding by going pell mell after jackal through the dry-bedded nullahs and stony plains of southern India. He expected his daughter to match him fence for fence when her only schooling ground had been the soft paddocks that enclosed their house at Maryfield. He never took into account the notion that Madeleine might be less bloodthirsty and more careful of her own neck than he was. For poor Madeleine, in spite of all her cheerful bluster, was timid in her heart and the thing she hated most in the world was fox hunting. The thing she hated second most was the horse.
In her expensive habit with its full black skirt worn over gleaming top boots and a shiny top hat tied round with a flowing band of crepe, she looked the daughter the Colonel craved, but her heart was not in it.
When she went to bed at night she folded her hands and prayed that soon some kind man would marry her and take her away from Maryfield. She longed for the day when she would walk up the aisle to become the bride of some indolent gentleman, and she fully intended to dedicate the rest of her life to lying on chaise longues eating sweetmeats. If she lived long enough to get married, that was.
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