Lady Magdalen

by Robin Jenkins

  Magdalen insisted on seeing Mrs Gillies. How could she turn away a woman three of whose children had died in infancy?

  She received her in bed. Janet was present, as restrictive as a jailer. Mrs Gillies was to stay no longer than five minutes. She was to keep a certain distance from the bed. She had to cover her mouth whenever she coughed or sneezed.

  Mrs Gillies was a sad watery-eyed woman with a red nose and a bad complexion. She had sackcloth wrapped round her feet to protect them from the frost which had turned the roads hard as iron. She had walked two miles to the castle. She had a hoarse cough and a whining voice. She was very pregnant too, for, as Janet had whispered, the eleventh time.

  ‘I’m sorry tae disturb you at sich a time, my lady,’ she whined.

  God forgive me, thought Magdalen, I am having to struggle against being disgusted by this unfortunate woman. ‘How can I help you, Mrs Gillies?’

  ‘I thocht maybe you could speak tae his lordship. You see my Rab’s name’s doon on the list o’ them that’s tae gang to the war. It’s no’ fair, my lady. Rab’s forty-five, which is too auld for fechting, and forby he’s needed at hame.’

  I feel closer to this poor soul than ever I did to any of my sisters, thought Magdalen, and yet I cannot help her.

  ‘What does your husband do, Mrs Gillies?’

  ‘Rab’s a blacksmith. They tell me they need blacksmiths tae mend their swords and shoe their horses, but shairly they can find younger men.’

  ‘Does your husband want to go, Mrs Gillies? Has he volunteered?’

  ‘Aye, the gowk. He thinks it’ll be jist a holiday. He’s been telt they’re going tae Aiberdeen. He’s got cousins there he hasna seen for years.’

  ‘The war won’t last long, Mrs Gillies. Your husband will soon be back with you again.’

  ‘But he could be killed, couldn’t he? He could lose an airm or a leg. Whit wad we dae then if he couldna work? Sterve, that’s whit.’

  ‘Did your husband sign the Covenant, Mrs Gillies?’

  ‘He put his mark on a bit o’ paper. I don’t ken onything aboot a Covenant. They a’ say they’re for the King but it’s the King they’re going tae fecht. I dinna understaun’.’

  Nor I, thought Magdalen. ‘They say the King wishes to impose bishops on us.’

  ‘Bishops!’ Mrs Gillies said it as she would have said ‘Pigeons!’ The one mattered as much to her as the other.

  Magdalen felt very tired and depressed. It made her speak curtly. ‘There’s nothing we women can do but pray that our husbands come back to us safe and well.’

  ‘Can you no’ put in a word tae his lordship, my lady?’

  ‘I never interfere in my husband’s affairs.’

  Was she making Mrs Gillies pay for her own disappointment in not having been given a daughter?

  Janet then grabbed hold of Mrs Gillies and pushed her out of the room.

  Later that day, when James looked in to ask how she felt, she mentioned Gillies the blacksmith.

  ‘Is it fair to take him? He’s forty-five, with seven children and another expected.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be safe enough. Blacksmiths are too useful to be risked. They mend weapons, they don’t use them. In any case I believe the fellow’s keen to go.’

  Yes, because he thought it would be a chance to see his cousins.

  10

  DISCONSOLATE NOW THAT their father had gone off to the war with his blue-bonneted band of recruits, leaving the castle a much less exciting place, John and James weren’t at first interested when their mother told them that she was expecting visitors from the village. People were always coming to ask her for something, mostly women, some with sick babies in their arms; one, a daftie, had brought a dead baby, wanting Mama to bring it back to life. Usually the boys kept well out of the way but this time it was different, for the supplicants were to be Mary Ranald and her father; the dominie was bringing them. John and James had attended the village school a few times and knew of Mary as the dominie’s star pupil, who could read Greek. They asked permission to be present and, adding to their mother’s amazement, put on their best doublets, red and white in John’s case and yellow and black in James’s. This, it seemed, was to impress Mary though, when she teased them about it, they indignantly denied it.

  They sat on stools on either side of their mother in the great hall, waiting for the visitors to be shown in. Outside it was a sunny afternoon, very suitable for practising archery or galloping on their ponies.

  Magdalen’s own curiosity to see this remarkable girl was increased. She herself had dressed as if to receive persons of quality. Really she was emulating her husband. In his bright red uniform he was in command of 6000 well-armed soldiers. Her troops consisted mainly of the poor and the sick but she felt the same responsibility for them as he did for his.

  The dominie led them in, but it wasn’t he or the small stout man in Sunday clothes with him that she gave her attention to: it was the girl with them. Her heart beat faster, she breathed with difficulty, for she had often wondered what her own daughter, if she ever had one, would be like, and here was a girl to compare her with.

  Her first reaction, strangely enough, was relief. Her daughter would never have to wear a dress like that, long and shapeless, made of rough hodden grey, or such clumsy clogs. But this girl wore them as if the dress was of taffeta and the shoes of silk. The dominie’s praise had not been extravagant after all. Mary Ranald, in spite of a complexion reddened by exposure to wind, rain, and sun, in spite of a slight stoop from bending in the fields, and in spite of hands coarsened by much hard work, was indeed beautiful: long fair hair flowing down her back and bright blue eyes that, without a trace of furtiveness, gazed round at all the splendours, the paintings, the tapestries, the suits of armour, the carved ceiling, and the great armorial shield above the mantelpiece.

  Into Magdalen’s own eyes came tears. They seemed the only way to salute this girl, so unfortunate in one way, that she had been born into poverty and hardship, and so fortunate in another, in that she had been given beauty, intelligence, and courage. But perhaps those rare gifts would turn out to be misfortunes too.

  ‘This is Mary, my lady,’ said the dominie proudly, ‘and this is her father, Thomas Ranald.’

  ‘You must be very proud of your daughter, Mr Ranald.’

  He crushed his cap in his big hard hands, scowled at his boots, and spoke in a sullen voice that suited his dour face. ‘She’s needed at hame, my lady. Her mither’s a sickly body and there are five ither bairns. That’s a’ I’ve come tae say and noo I’ve said it.’

  ‘I have explained to Mr Ranald,’ said the dominie, ‘that if Mary was found work in keeping with her talents she would be paid for it. With the money he could pay for help on his farm.’

  ‘It’s no’ jist the money, my lady. It’s the ideas it micht gie her. She’d come tae think she was better than her ain folk. She’s a poor man’s dochter, and that’s whit she maun remain.’

  Of course he was right. Though as a child, Magdalen had been puzzled by it, she had come to accept that it was God’s will for some people to be born into privileged noble families, and for others, much more numerous, to be born commoners. Everyone accepted it: here was Mr Ranald proclaiming it now. James, her husband, so courteous to those beneath him in rank, nevertheless took it for granted that their proper place was beneath him. Had not Francis Gowrie to apply for special permission to marry his Nancy, though her father was the richest man in the country? Magdalen’s father, the wisest man she knew, had said that the arrangement was necessary if civilisation was to be preserved.

  Still, if this girl Mary Ranald kept in mind that she was of lowly birth and always would be, surely there could be no harm in finding her a place as minder of small girls in some noblewoman’s household. Her charges, however young, would be far above her in rank. She would know that and so would they and so proper order would be maintained.

  But was she not now holding her head a little too high and smiling at th
e boys in a way that annoyed John and embarrassed James? She seemed to be regarding them as her equals.

  Meanwhile the dominie was arguing her case but neither her father, who had heard it all before, nor Magdalen, who was too intent on studying the girl, paid any heed.

  ‘What does Mary herself want?’ asked Magdalen. She wanted to hear the girl speak; what she said scarcely mattered.

  Mary’s voice was quiet and pleasant, though she spoke with exaggerated correctness. ‘I want to stay and help my mother but I would like it if I could have books to read.’

  But would she have the leisure or the energy left after all her tasks, to read them? In any case, what was the use of reading more and learning more if her fate was to become a drudge in the house and in the fields, first for her parents and then for her husband one day?

  The dominie looked with appeal at Magdalen. She had to shake her head. There was nothing she could do.

  It was a defeat, but then the odds against were too great.

  James’s battles would be fought against forces not so well armed as his own, not so dedicated, and not so well led, so that his victories, brilliant though they might be, were always achievable. Hers, on the other hand, would have to be won against such invincible foes as mankind’s age-old customs and prejudices, and God’s ordinance.

  She asked the dominie to wait behind. The boys she sent away.

  As the girl crossed the hall, she paused to look up at Magdalen’s portrait and then turned to look at Magdalen herself. Her father pulled her away.

  ‘Mr Blair,’ said Magdalen, ‘I have been intending to let you know what my husband said regarding your other pupil, John Reid.’

  The dominie waited, pessimistically.

  ‘If the University authorities are prepared to accept the lad as a student, my husband will pay his expenses, provided he makes progress and wins good reports.’

  The dominie’s gloom lightened. ‘That is very kind of his lordship.’

  And very typical too. Not many young men, in the throes of preparing to lead an army to war, would have spared the time to help a pigherd’s son.

  ‘What of yourself, Mr Blair? Are you and Cissie still betrothed?’

  It had not been regularised and given the blessing of the Kirk. It still remained pagan promises exchanged over a running stream: absurd, but somehow romantic. Certainly it had seemed so to James, who had jested that, when he had time, he would write a poem about it.

  Magdalen herself still believed that the marriage would be a mistake and bring misery to them both. ‘I should tell you my husband would not object to your marrying Cissie.’

  The dominie looked grateful.

  ‘Has Cissie been to Dundee to see your mother?’

  ‘Not yet, my lady.’

  According to Janet, Cissie had been behaving herself recently: no flirtations, no saucy language, no flaunting of her person. It appeared she was trying to make herself fit to be the dominie’s wife. To Magdalen’s surprise, Janet, suspicious and jealous old maid, was on the girl’s side.

  ‘Would you marry without your mother’s blessing, Mr Blair?’

  ‘I would, but Cissie is not sure.’

  ‘Well, that is to her credit. If there is to be a wedding, Mr Blair, we shall celebrate it here in the castle.’

  With all the villagers present, sharing in the young couple’s happiness, and with Magdalen herself presiding over it, it would represent a victory in her own war.

  11

  THE BRIGHT DRY days of spring and early summer that year suited alike the release of cattle from their winter prisons, with the big bulls gambolling for joy like lambs, the ploughing of fields, with attendant gulls screaming like men in pain, and the movement of troops. Reports, brought by passing travellers, peddlers, and beggars, came to Kincardine of the fighting in the North. The war was going well for the Covenanters. They had captured Aberdeen from the Royalists. Their commander, the young Earl of Montrose, was proving himself resourceful and resolute.

  Then, one wet warm day at the beginning of June, when the countryside was at its most verdant and peaceful, with roe deer, bolder now that their hunters had taken to hunting men, ventured up to the walls of the castle, half a dozen men of the parish came hobbling home from the war, honourably discharged.

  One was Gillies, the blacksmith. He lacked his right arm and had a fearsome, still raw, wound from brow to chin, so that it was difficult to make out what he was trying to say. Two had lost legs and were dependent on crude crutches. The remaining three had head wounds not yet healed and covered with grubby bloody bandages. Their clothes were ragged and filthy, as well as soaked. They had walked more than 100 miles. They brought a message from the Earl and delivered it before going on to their own homes.

  ‘Things have gone very well for us and we should all be able to return home soon. Our losses, thank God, have been light and those of our adversaries heavy. This, though regrettable, should be a discouragement to them about stirring up trouble again. These poor fellows bringing this message were unlucky in that a cannon ball fell where they were stationed. Even so, they held their ground heroically against an unexpected cavalry charge, especially Gillies, the blacksmith. I count on you, Magdalen, to comfort their wives and families and give what help you can. They are to be pitied because of their misfortunes and afflictions but do not forget they are also to be commended in that, without flinching, they did their duty to their God and King. My love to you and the boys.’

  There was what looked like dried blood on the paper but it wasn’t only that which made her shudder. It was James’s jubilation. How, she wondered, would he have written if he had been defeated. There was, too, that persistent hypocrisy, or moral blindness, of saying that the wounded men had done their duty to their King when they had been fighting against the King. Surely the King must look on them, and on James also, as traitors.

  Sick at heart, but smiling for their sakes, she received the six men in the great hall. Even those with crutches would not sit down in her presence. By their insisting on giving her her place as a great lady, she felt obliged to play the part, though she felt ashamed and wanted to weep for them. She sat on her throne-like chair while they stood bowing their heads before her. It would have made a painting for one of Francis Gowrie’s Italian artists: the wife of the commander-in-chief being gracious to common soldiers broken by war. With what loving meticulous skill their soiled bandages and her immaculate collar and cuffs would have been painted. He would have taken special pains with the handkerchief she held in her hand, ready to be put to her nose when the stink off them, of blood and sweat and human waste, got too offensive. He would not have missed the blue ribbons in the bonnets that they clutched in their hands.

  Servants, peeping in, thought how grand the young countess looked, and how gracious. They noticed how she had to put her handkerchief to her nose, and who could blame her? They could not help tittering nervously as they watched her listen intently to Rab Gillies, trying to understand what he was saying. A few minutes ago in the kitchen they hadn’t been able to make out a single word because of his maimed mouth. The mistress could not, like them, laugh and weep and hug the poor man. She had to remain dignified.

  In pain, and still liable to die from their wounds, and with beggary in front of them and their families if they were unable to work, it would have been only natural if they had been loud with complaints and self-pity, but no, on the contrary, they did not speak of themselves but of old Dr Allen who had saved many lives with timely amputations, and especially of James, her husband and their general. It had been a great honour to serve under him. Where the danger had been greatest, there he was, in his red jacket. His words of encouragement during an affray and of praise after it had been from the heart. No man in the army was too lowly to escape his notice and regard. And he had shown himself to be merciful: too much so for many people. Ministers with the army and some officers had not been pleased with him for not allowing the city of Aberdeen to be pillaged.


  She felt proud of her husband. If there was no more war and he was able to stay at home with her and the boys, she could learn to love him as Nancy loved Francis.

  She asked the men if they had any news of Mintlaw Castle. They had none. So far as they knew no harm had come to it.

  She sent them away with gifts of money and promises of help.

  As they were going out of the hall, they were confronted by the Earl’s two sons, who were fascinated by their wounds and mutilations. Lord John, now aged ten, went forward to look more closely at Gillies’s ravaged face, but his brother, Lord James, shrank back.

  Bowing and touching their foreheads, the wounded men went on their way, their sticks and crutches tapping on the stone floor.

  Lord John drew his toy sword and slashed at imaginary faces but James ran up to his mother and hid his face in her lap.

  Alone in her room, with the door snibbed, she wept and then sat staring at the painting of the Madonna and the infant Christ. It had lost its magic: it was no longer a comfort and assurance. This woman with the pale, pretty, characterless face and spotless garments did not, it now seemed to her, represent as truthfully or as movingly the agony and martyrdom of motherhood as the women of the village did, with their careworn faces and shabby clothes. She thought particularly of Mrs Gillies, whose latest child had recently died.