Lady Magdalen

by Robin Jenkins

  She told these lies with bold assurance. ‘Didn’t I see him once taking your hand?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sir John, an old man of 60, had held Magdalen’s hand timidly and said, with tears in his eyes, that she reminded him of his Mirren. Small and stout, he could never have been mistaken for Sir John Colquhoun, not even in an ill-lit passage-way. No one ever called him Johnny.

  ‘We young women have got to be kind to these old men who have lost their wives. Don’t you agree, Magdalen?’

  Yes, but Katherine was noted for her repulsing of elderly widowers. Because she was single and beautiful, they came courting. They were lucky not to have their faces scarted.

  ‘They take advantage of it,’ said Katherine, with an evil smile, ‘as you saw.’

  Magdalen still said nothing. She felt sorry for Katherine but she was also afraid. Katherine was like a cat in pain, not to be trusted and dangerous. One would have to be a cunning theologian like Mr Henderson to be able to tell if failing to reject lies or accepting them as if they were true was as great a sin as telling them. But one person Magdalen would never consult was Mr Henderson. He would have no mercy on Katherine. There was really no one. If it had been Francis Gowrie she was going to marry tomorrow, she could have confided in him. She saw then more clearly than ever before that marrying Jamie was a terrible mistake. This was not the only secret she would keep from him.

  ‘Well, we’d better go and join the others,’ said Katherine. Her voice was more friendly now. The mouse was either deceived or intimidated: it didn’t matter which, so long as it kept her quiet. ‘No need to tell them about old Sir John and me.’

  Magdalen said: ‘I’ll pray for you, Katherine.’

  Katherine had been going towards the door. She turned, in fury. Her hands with the long nails went rigid: they were indeed like claws. She came closer. ‘What do you mean? Why do you think you have to pray for me?’ She seized Magdalen by the breasts. Her face was as fierce as murder. ‘Don’t dare pray for me. Pray for yourself, you silly little cunt.’

  Magdalen had heard that ugly word before. Boys, peasants, and female servants used it, but never a lady of quality.

  ‘Whose God do you pray to, Magdalen? Mr Henderson’s? Do you think I could ever believe in the same God as that stinking hypocrite? And what other God is there?’

  Those were even more terrible impieties than the obscene word. And surely there was another God, He who had sent His son Jesus Christ to teach people to love one another?

  Katherine was now weeping, in anger mainly but also in distress. She said no more but rushed out of the room.

  After some hesitation, and trembling all over, Magdalen went down on her knees, by the side of the bed, where she prayed every night, and humbly asked forgiveness for Katherine, who was only 16 and whose soul was in danger of hell-fire. For even gentle Jesus had flyted the unrighteous and threatened them with hell.

  5

  THE WEDDING WAS held in Kinnaird Parish Church, with Mr Alexander Henderson, Lord Carnegie’s personal chaplain, officiating. As was not unusual for a day in November, it was cold and wet and the road from the castle to the church had become a quagmire in places. Someone sensibly suggested that the ceremony might be carried out in the castle itself for the convenience of the guests. Neither the bridegroom nor the bride’s father was prepared to object but Mr Henderson was affronted: it must be done in God’s house, otherwise it would not have His blessing. Faces were made behind the minister’s back at his ridiculous and inconsiderate zealotry but none dared protest to his face. Consequently they all had to be conveyed in a relay of coaches, which took some time for they kept getting stuck in the mud. Unfortunately, too, in spite of the minister’s prayers for sunshine, the rain came down heavier than ever.

  The long delays vexed everyone but they were particularly hard on the common folk whose attendance at the kirk was obligatory for they were Lord Carnegie’s tenants or servants and could not afford to displease him, but they would have wanted to be present in any case, in honour of Lady Magdalen. They could not, of course, be admitted to the kirk for it was too small and it wouldn’t have been seemly for them to sit in the same congregation as all those gentry. Therefore they stood outside in the pouring rain, doffing their hats as the coaches arrived.

  The bridegroom’s red-and-black carriage was given a rather lame cheer for the general opinion among the commoners was that he was too haughty and conceited for his own good.

  The bride on the other hand was heartily welcomed. Anyone who went to the castle with a request or complaint was well advised to try and see Lady Magdalen first. Young though she was, she was sympathetic and fair-minded. She would go out of her way to remedy an injustice. Young Montrose, they thought, was getting the better of the bargain, even if his family was of higher rank than hers.

  It didn’t go unnoticed that while none of the other ladies and gentlemen, including the laird himself, seemed troubled that the villagers were getting soaked, Lady Magdalen, as soon as she stepped from her coach, called to Martha Baird, who was 73, to go home at once before she caught her death of cold. Martha thanked her, hoarsely, but stayed. She wanted to hear the proceedings in the kirk. Though somewhat deaf, she would have no difficulty. As befitted a man high up in the Kirk’s councils, Mr Henderson had a voice that would scare a bull.

  Magdalen wore the same white silk dress that her mother had been married in. It had lain in a kist for many years and had turned yellowish and musty; it had had to be repaired too where moths or mice had nibbled at it. She had insisted on wearing it, against her sisters’ advice. In the kirk she looked so young and virginal that most of the women present shed tears as they remembered their own wedding day. Katherine Graham was not among them. She had complained of a headache. Sir John Colquhoun was there, very pleased with himself, it seemed, seated beside his wife Lilias. Was it, Magdalen wondered, the misfortune of women to love more whole-heartedly and less guardedly than men, so that they suffered more if things went wrong? In Jamie’s love poems the feelings of women were never taken into account: women were merely objects to be admired or discarded.

  As she stood by Jamie’s side in front of the minister, though she smiled shyly as a bride should, she was thinking: why was the kirk so bleak? Why was it not bedecked, if not with flowers at this time of year, then with green leaves and berries? And should there not have been solemn but inspiring music, instead of the shuffling of frozen feet, the sniffing and the coughing? Would not Mr Henderson have looked more impressive and priest-like in scarlet-and-gold robes? As it was, clad in black, he looked as forbidding as he sounded, with grey hairs sprouting from his ears and nostrils, and his breath smelling of greasy mutton. Why did he think it necessary and appropriate to portray God as grim, unforgiving, and revengeful? No wonder Katherine Graham had renounced such a God.

  Magdalen found herself thinking affectionately, not of Jamie glowering beside her, but of Francis Gowrie. This was a sin as heinous as Katherine’s last night.

  When she turned to look at her father behind her she saw anxiety and remorse on his face. Now that the irrevocable words were about to be spoken, he was acknowledging that, out of obedience to him, she had agreed to this marriage which she did not want and which therefore might bring her much unhappiness. Because she loved him, she smiled to reassure and absolve him.

  In that glance behind she had seen old Sir John Birse’s woebegone face. He was still mourning his wife. The people about him, she saw with gratitude, were being kind to him.

  In the congregation were several of Jamie’s kinsmen and hunting cronies, as young as himself, whose thoughts, she had discovered, did not dwell on the spiritual aspects of marriage, at that moment being so tediously and lengthily expounded by Mr Henderson, but on the carnal. She had overheard them gleefully jesting among themselves. Jamie had not been present. They would not have dared tease him about his forthcoming role as virginity-taker. They would have been too afraid of his quick temper and fierce pride. Now in the church, seein
g their lewd and genial grins, she felt more grateful to them than she did to the minister who was making marriage sound full of duties and empty of joys.

  One surly face stood out: her brother James’s. He did not like Jamie Graham and resented this marriage. Yet in one respect they were very much alike: they both lacked humour. In James’s case it was because he had been born without it, and in Jamie’s because his pride inhibited it. Fools, he had once told her, laughed too readily. Perhaps when he was older and wiser and expected less of humanity, he might himself laugh more often.

  At present, beside her he was looking glum and disdainful. He thought that his wedding ought to have been taking place in St Giles’s in Edinburgh, in the presence of all the nobles of Scotland; the King himself ought to have come up from London for the occasion. Also the minister was being too long-winded and presumptuous. The pride of place at this ceremony ought to have been his, yet here was this dreary-voiced fellow in the black clothes usurping it. He wasn’t pleased either that on his green shoes were blobs of mud.

  Mr Henderson, ignoring the bridegroom’s scowls, did not hesitate to introduce politics into his address. Not only was he binding this young couple in holy wedlock, he was also uniting, so he said, their families, the Grahams and the Carnegies, in friendship and loyalty, so that in the troubled times ahead they would be stalwart champions of Christ’s Reformed Kirk.

  6

  AS A CHILD Magdalen had often exasperated her sisters by seeming to have difficulty in understanding what to normal people was clear as daylight. For instance, she could never be made to see that it was fit and proper, in accordance with God’s will, that she should live in a castle with many hearths and chimneys while the children in the village lived in hovels with no chimneys at all; or that they should be dirty, lice-ridden, and sickly, while she was able to change her clothing every week or so and, if ill, have Dr Allen come from Dundee at a gallop to cure her. There had been one girl in particular, Chrissie Alexander, a gardener’s daughter, with whom Magdalen had played in the orchard and of whom she had become injudiciously fond. When Chrissie had died suddenly of a fever, Magdalen had wept for days, which was natural enough in a child of eight, but she had also asked questions which were not natural. Did poor girls like Chrissie go to heaven too? And why did some people have so little while others had so much? She had had to be told, rather impatiently, that things on earth, and of course in heaven too, were as God had arranged them. If the peasants were content in their smoky huts, why should she be sorry for them? As for heaven, was it not absurd, not to say sinful, to suppose that peasants with their coarse faces and vulgar souls would be put on the same level as people of quality?

  So, after the ceremony in the kirk, here was meek dim-witted little Magdalen become a countess and likely, considering how able and ambitious her husband was, to end up as one of the grandest ladies in the land, at least as far as rank was concerned. How, they wondered, could she possibly do justice to her exalted position?

  With that query in their minds, her two older married sisters Margaret and Agnes, and her Aunt Euphemia, went to the nuptial chamber in the evening. They had informed Magdalen that they would be coming. It was the custom, they had explained, for the bride to be made ready for the marriage bed by senior ladies of her family. They would bathe her in perfumed water, comb her hair, and dress her in a new white nightgown.

  She received them with one of her sweetest daftest smiles, and then, still smiling, said that if they did not mind she would prefer to make the preparations herself. If she needed help she would get it from her maid Janet.

  At first disconcerted, they soon decided that she was being shy and modest, for after all she was just 15. They pitied her, for she had in front of her an ordeal a great deal more embarrassing than their laving of her body. They hinted that she was in need of the kind of intimate advice that only mature women of her own class could give her, not a 40-year-old spinster whose father had been a stonemason. They even made insinuations about Janet’s ignorance not only of men’s propensities but also of their anatomy.

  Into Magdalen’s pale face, with the blueness of the eyes accentuated by the shadows under them, there entered an expression with which they were only too familiar: her nun’s look, they had called it, sarcastically, for they had always seen it as a sign that her wits had wandered off to God knew where. But there was a startling difference this time. In her voice there was, or so it absurdly seemed, a note of authority, even of haughtiness, as if her husband was already influencing her.

  They stared at one another and shook their heads. So this was how her marriage was going to affect her. The silly girl thought it had transformed her into a person of great consequence, like a queen, and therefore all other persons, including her sisters and aunt, were to do her bidding. They had often wondered if one day she would go off her head altogether and had conjectured what form her insanity would take, but they had never dreamt that she would imagine herself to be raised above them all, as if she was the bride not merely of an earl but of Jesus Christ Himself. Was not that how nuns regarded themselves?

  They had to humour her for the time being and so they withdrew, protesting. Her father would have to be told, and Mr Henderson. The latter would soon put an end to her peculiar arrogance, which, when they came to think about it, was quite papistical. One thing Presbyterian ladies never did was to think of themselves as brides of Christ.

  They were not so far from the truth. It seemed to Magdalen that the mystery of marriage, when she would be made a woman and a child might be conceived, ought to be very private, between her and her husband only, except, of course, for God, not Mr Henderson’s angry Jehovah, but gentle Christ, source of all love.

  Her maid Janet had listened to the conversation with mixed loyalties. She was a fanatical Presbyterian but she loved her young mistress, though it was a word she usually distrusted. In her experience, people loved only themselves. But she would have given her life for Lady Magdalen. She had once slapped the face of a scullery maid who had had the impertinence to remark that Lady Magdalen ‘wad never scart a grey heid’, meaning that she would die young. What had made Janet so angry was that she believed it too. Those shadows under the eyes betokened some fatal weakness, as did also the fits of paleness and the bouts of coughing.

  Janet disapproved of the marriage, not because she had anything against young Montrose, who, on the contrary, seemed to her a brave handsome youth with a bright future, but simply because in her opinion Lady Magdalen was too young to start child-bearing. It amazed her that Lord Carnegie who loved his daughter was willing to put her life to such risk.

  When the three ladies had departed in dudgeon, Janet helped her mistress get ready. She was thinking that if they had lived in Biblical times, she could have offered herself as a sacrifice in her mistress’s place. Had not Jacob taken his wife’s handmaiden Bilhah to bed? Aye, but Bilhah would have been young and bonny.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Janet,’ said her mistress, as Janet was brushing her hair.

  ‘Whit is there to say, my lady?’

  ‘Why did you never get married yourself? You must have been bonny when you were my age. You’re still a fine-looking woman.’

  So she was, with breasts like ripe fruit. There had been men enough eager to suck them.

  ‘You must have had many sweethearts, Janet?’

  ‘I had my share.’

  ‘Were you so particular that you refused them all?’

  ‘I had my brithers and sisters to look efter. My mither dee’d when I was ten. I had to tak her place.’

  Magdalen shivered. Her mother had died when she was a baby. ‘Do you ever feel sorry never having had any children?’

  Janet did not say, could not say, that she often regarded Lady Magdalen as her daughter. ‘Whit’s the use o’ being sorry, my lady? It’s too late noo.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t. You’re not all that old. Look what lovely hair you have.’

  Strong, shiny, and black as midni
ght. When loosened, it fell below her waist.

  ‘Mine’s so thin compared with yours.’

  ‘Yours is fine as silk, my lady.’

  The silver clock on the mantelshelf gave the time as quarter to eight. Montrose was expected at eight. It was time for Janet to go. That night, and every night afterwards, she was to sleep in a room with four other women servants.

  ‘I’ll hae to leave you, my lady,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Janet.’

  ‘Will you be a’ right?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be all right.’

  As she went out Janet couldn’t have felt more concerned if she had been Lady Magdalen’s mother. Still, young Montrose thought so highly of himself that he would never mistreat his wife. Because it belonged to him, a horse, a falcon, a gun, or a sword was deserving of special honour; so he thought; and so it would be with his wife. For his pride’s sake he would be kind to her.

  7

  AS SOON AS Magdalen was alone, she went down on her knees and prayed, asking God to bless her marriage and any child that she might have.

  At last, her legs stiff, she climbed into the big curtained bed and lay waiting. Her heart beat fast. She was afraid that she did not love Jamie as much as she should, nor he her, but surely God would make allowances since they were both so young.

  To her dismay and against her will, she thought of Francis Gowrie. With prayer and resolution she had built up a barrier to keep him out of her mind, as a farmer might a fence to keep cattle out of a field of crops; but, it seemed, in spite of constant repairing, there always remained gaps. She drove it out, that wicked thought, as the farmer did trespassing cattle, but not before the damage was done. Yes, she would have been happier if it had been Francis she was waiting for now in her marriage-bed. Yes, she would have looked forward more confidently to life with him at Mintlaw. Tears came into her eyes. To hide them, she covered her face with her hands. But they could not be hidden from God. Would He understand and forgive her? Or would He despise and condemn her?