Lady Magdalen

by Robin Jenkins

  Magdalen had asked them to come and say goodbye before they left Auchterarder for good.

  The dominie was nervous and deferential, though evidently proud and fond of the child on his lap. Cissie was wearing her best dress, she explained cheerfully, and didn’t want it soiled.

  Magdalen reflected that she had never seen her James nurse any of their children. There was an enviable intimacy about the family life of the lower orders. She could not help smiling, though, indeed had to repress laughter, as she paid the usual compliments to the baby. Whether it was her imagination or coincidence, she could not help seeing a resemblance between the tiny face with its long chin – the Leslies were famous for their long chins – and Lord Rothes. She was sure that the child was not Rothes’s but it certainly looked like him. She was not absolutely sure that it was the dominie’s: it certainly didn’t look like him.

  Cissie pretended to be indignant at the way the soldiers outside had whistled at her but she was obviously pleased and flattered. She liked her husband to know that he hadn’t got the worse of the bargain. She was not in the least interested in the soldiers as men about to engage in bloody battles. They were simply admirers of the female form, especially when it was as shapely as hers. The looseness of her red dress concealed the swelling of her stomach.

  ‘Did you hear, my lady,’ she whispered, leaning towards Magdalen, ‘that Mr Alexander, the new meenister, came upon twa o’ them in the kirkyaird, wi’ twa lassies o’ the neighbourhood. It was bricht moonlicht tae, so he saw clearly whit they were up tae.’

  ‘Now, Cissie,’ said her husband, ‘her ladyship’s not interested in village tittle-tattle of that sort.’

  ‘That’s whaur you’re wrang, Mr Blair,’ she retorted. ‘Her ladyship’s always been interested in everything that went on. Yin o’ them’s getting mairried, my lady: her faither and Mr Alexander hae seen to that. The ither yin cannae, though, because the sodger’s already got a wife in Pittenweem. Mr Alexander says he and poor Maggie will gang straight tae hell, but isnae the Bible fu’ o’ fornicators and adulterers, as auld Mr Graham used tae ca’ them?’

  Old Mr Graham, himself a would-be adulterer, had since died. Was he now in hell offering excuses?

  ‘Is not the soldier more likely to go to hell for killing his fellow men?’ Though, as she spoke, Magdalen was remembering that in the Bible there were more deaths in battle than fornications or adulteries. ‘What do you say, Mr Blair?’

  Cissie was aware of an understanding between her husband and her ladyship that excluded her. Mr Blair was educated, her ladyship was gentry. Cissie herself was common as daisies. She did not mind. She might not yet be able to read and write, though she was learning, but she had confidence in herself. If the whole country fell into ruin because of war or anything else, she and her family would survive and prosper. She would give the Lord His share of the credit but the biggest share would be her own . . .

  As they were leaving, with the baby in its father’s arms bawling her little head off, Magdalen wished them well. To her husband, the famous earl and now the King’s Lieutenant, the dominie was the traditional figure of fun, the godly gumption-less scholar inveigled into marriage by a loose young woman with breasts ‘like pomegranates’, but it seemed to her that Mr Blair’s role, that of teacher, was of greater value to the country than James’s. She felt envious of Cissie, not because of her robust health that would enable her to live until she was past 70 or because of her exuberant femininity that caused men to whistle, but because, in her schoolhouse in Perth, she would be free to love her children and cherish her husband without feelings of guilt or shame.

  6

  MAJOR STRANG TOOK pleasure in informing her from time to time how badly things were going for James. Her father, more sorrowfully, sent similar news and again urged her to come to Kinnaird. He was trying to find out which of her sisters was prepared to go to Kincardine to keep her company, but she should bear in mind that these were perilous times and her sisters might wish to stay at home with their own families: their husbands might well insist on it.

  She replied proudly that there was no need for anyone to come and keep her company. She had her sons. Besides, she was James Graham’s wife. Let no one forget that.

  None of her sisters came.

  One day Strang rushed into the castle with a company of soldiers and ordered them to search it from turrets to dungeons. The rest of his men, he told her, were ransacking every hut, shed, byre, and privy in the neighbourhood. Into every pile of straw pikes would be thrust. People would be questioned with swords at their throats. Would she like to know why? Because there were reports that her husband had been seen. Shunned as an upstart by many whom he had arrogantly assumed would rally to his standard, he had left the Borders with one or two companions and come north, stealthy as thieves, hoping to raise an army among the Highlanders; which showed how deluded and desperate he was. The Highlanders might be as thick-headed as stots but they had enough sense not to join in a venture bound to fail, with no lucrative booty. Someone somewhere, he said, taunting her, would betray Montrose, either out of loyalty to the Covenant or for money, what did it matter? He would be hauled off to Edinburgh, on a donkey with his hands tied behind his back so that the populace could show their contempt and anger by pelting him with stones and offal. He would not be so high and mighty then. In Edinburgh he would be hanged forthwith. If she wanted to go and see it, said Strang, whether out of cruelty or crass consideration, it could be arranged.

  Though she held her head high, she could not help imagining the scene, the mob yelling and the ministers grinning with hideous satisfaction, as they did at a witch’s burning. In private she wept, not only at so ignominious a fate befalling one so proud and brave but also because James would have died without their love for each other having been given a chance to flower. He had put what he saw as his duty to his King and country before his love for her and their children. He had not seen it like that, but it was the only way she could see it. In her heart, therefore, was a small irreducible element of resentment. She could not help it: it was her woman’s nature, just as he would have claimed that putting honour first was his nature as a man.

  That hunt and others were unsuccessful. James was not found or betrayed. Likely, said Strang sourly, he had managed to slip out of Scotland and was now in France, enjoying the favours of the beautiful ladies there.

  Then, one day not long afterwards, Strang came to her with a very different face: terror, not gloating, this time suffused his pudgy cheeks. He could not keep it out of his voice. Did she know what her scoundrel of a husband had done? He had allied himself to the Devil. Thousands of Irish savages had landed in the west and Montrose had gone to join them, intending to lead them against his countrymen and his countrywomen too, for everyone knew what these Irish were like, they raped women, they bit off fingers to get rings, they impaled babies on spears, they cut off prisoners’ private parts and fed them to dogs. These were the fiends that her husband was about to turn loose on decent Scots people.

  She gave him the answer that James had once given her. ‘They are the King’s subjects. Why should they not fight for him?’

  But she felt sick with shame and foreboding. ‘If he uses the Irish,’ her father had written, ‘he will be execrated for centuries to come.’

  She heard Lord Rothes’s mocking voice: ‘Only, dear lady, if he is defeated. If he is victorious, he will be acclaimed the saviour of Scotland.’

  Next day Strang and his soldiers left Kincardine in a panic, leaving equipment scattered over the field.

  Charles Ratho came to say goodbye and thank her for her hospitality. He was despondent.

  ‘It seems James and his damned Irish are making for Perth, destroying everyone and everything in their path.’

  She shook her head. James would never allow it. Had he not saved Aberdeen from pillage?

  ‘Will there be a battle?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye, there will be, and not very far off either. If the
wind’s in the right direction, you might hear the guns.’

  ‘Who will win, do you think?’

  ‘We should, for we’ll have more horsemen and guns, and Lord Elcho is a competent enough commander, I suppose.’

  Did he include her in that ‘we’? What side did he, or Strang, or her father, or even James, think she was on? None. She was to stay at home and attend to her sewing.

  ‘Why should you not win then?’ she asked.

  ‘Our regulars are in England, under Leslie. What we have are mostly the sort you saw here. They’re soft. They hate soldiering. For God’s sake, who likes it?’

  She could have named one.

  ‘All they want is to get back to their wives and bairns.’

  ‘Is that not natural?’

  ‘I suppose it is, but it’s not the right attitude to take into battle, especially when they’re going to be faced by the Irish. They love slaughtering people. They’re never happier than when drenched in blood.’

  ‘Have they not got wives and bairns too?’

  ‘I’ve heard their women are fiercer than the men.’

  A trumpet sounded. The trumpeter seemed agitated.

  ‘Well, Lady Magdalen, I must be going. Stay indoors for the next day or two and keep all doors locked.’ He tried to smile. ‘Pray for me.’

  He took his leave then, sadly, as if going to his death; whereas James, she thought, would go off to war like a bridegroom going to his wedding.

  7

  THE BOYS WERE up on the ramparts early, before the doves who slept there were properly awake. Through an old field glass of their father’s, they took turns in scanning the countryside, particularly eastwards, in the direction of Perth. On distant hills they saw wreaths of mist, which they pretended were puffs of smoke from cannons. Once they heard a noise that had them staring at each other, their eyes wide. Was it the scream of a soldier pierced by a bullet or slashed by a sword? They knew what it was, a rabbit in the teeth of a weasel; but they went on pretending. They had no sympathy for the terrified doomed creature: their sympathies were with its killer. For the weasel represented Father’s Irish and its victim the Covenanters. They had overheard Captain Radio telling their mother how timorous the latter were and how fierce and bold the Irish, and they had themselves listened to the men from Fife talking dismally about their prospects. In the battle that might be taking place at that very moment, Father was bound to win. The more of the enemy who were killed the better, because it would mean they would be all the weaker if a second battle was fought, so that Father would win that one too and so be free to march on Edinburgh. Like their mother, they imagined Father in the capital but they saw him on a high throne in Holyrood House, like a king, for he was there in place of the King. He would send for them and they would take part in the triumphal ceremonies. Mama, though, would have to stay at home because she wasn’t well; but, even if she had been fit to travel, she wouldn’t have gone. Was it because she was a woman that she hated war and talk of war? It couldn’t be because she was religious for, in the Bible, weren’t there many wars? And Presbyterian ministers had come every week to preach to the Covenant troops, urging them to be ready to smite the foe. It had struck the boys as comic, the ministers so keen for battle, the soldiers so sweirt.

  They stayed on the ramparts all day, having food sent up to them. If they did not keep a constant look-out, they would be letting Father down.

  They saw eagles, antlered stags, men scything, a woman lifting her skirts to her waist to ford a burn, herons being mobbed by hoodie-crows, and other usual sights. If they had been older, they would have become discouraged but, at gloaming, they were still as expectant as in the morning.

  Nonetheless, when what they were on the look-out for did happen, they were taken by surprise, or at least James was. It was his turn with the field glass and, when he saw the three men come running out of the Cushat Wood, he took them to be shepherds or foresters, though they were seldom in such a hurry. Perhaps they were chasing a deer, though he could not see it.

  ‘What is it?’ cried John, grabbing the field glass.

  He soon picked out the three men running so desperately that they kept falling and jaloused at once who or what they were: soldiers with blue ribbons in their bonnets but with no weapons; these they must have thrown away so that they could run all the faster. Were they, therefore, being pursued? As yet, he could not see any pursuers.

  ‘They seem to be coming here,’ said James. ‘Who are they? What do they want?’

  ‘Don’t you know? They’re Covenanters and they’ve run away from the battle.’

  Then he saw who were chasing them. Here were Father’s Irish, one, two, three, four of them, all with shaggy hair and beards, bare legs and arms, and brandishing claymores red with sunset or could it be with blood?

  ‘Let me see,’ said James, taking the field glass.

  Often, when out in the fields or the wood, especially in the gloaming, they frightened each other by imagining that those rocks or those trees were monstrous men. Now here were such men.

  ‘They never take prisoners,’ cried John, exultantly. ‘They’re going to kill them.’ And he hoped they would, right there in the field below, where he could see it done.

  But James was horrified. ‘Shouldn’t we tell Mama?’

  ‘What could she do?’

  But James was off, down the narrow spiral stone stairway and along the several passage-ways to his mother’s room.

  She was working at her tapestry, alone. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Have you hurt yourself?’

  Only then did he realise that he was weeping. ‘Soldiers, Mama. Coming here. Running. Chased by Irish. They’re going to kill them.’

  Many years afterwards, when his mother was long since dead, he still remembered how she had put her needles and thread into their basket, got up, left the room, descended the stairs, and crossed the courtyard to the gate. She did not seem to hurry, yet she must have, for, keeping up with her, he found himself panting.

  Half asleep, for it was stuffy in the small gatehouse, John Galloway hurried out to do her bidding: which was to open the gate and be ready to close it again.

  The three fugitives appeared, stumbling, gasping, and clutching at air. One’s neck was bloody. James recognised their uniform as that of the Fife regiment. Perhaps they had been stationed here and had remembered it as a place where they might find sanctuary. They collapsed at Mama’s feet, babbling. So thick their Fife accents and so distorted their voices with terror, James could not make out what they were saying but it was easy to guess. There was a stink of shit off them. He hoped his mother did not notice it.

  Should she protect them? They were Father’s enemies. On the battlefield they would have killed him if they had got the chance. They would have been given a large reward.

  Before the gate could be shut again, in his astonishment, Galloway was slow, three of the Irish appeared. Mama confronted them, heedless of their big swords and savage cries. James had never thought of her as a heroine; now he did and always would.

  She had another surprise in store for him. He had not known she could speak Gaelic, well enough at any rate for the Irish to understand her. James himself had not learned it but he knew what she was saying, that this was their commander James Graham’s house and she was James Graham’s wife. How dared they come to it with blood on their swords.

  They stared at one another in bewilderment. One glanced up and saw the Graham crest carved in the stone above the gate. He pointed it out to the others. They mumbled apologies and crept away, like hounds ordered to leave a deer’s carcase that they had been about to devour.

  John was there now, gazing with disgust at the three soldiers on their knees at his mother’s feet and then at her with a strange expression. At 14, he was already taller than she. More than ever he resembled his father, not her. ‘Why did you let them in?’ he asked.

  She turned and looked at him as if she had never seen him before. ‘Do you not know why?
’

  ‘They are Father’s enemies.’

  ‘Would your father have let them in?’

  John was not willing to answer that but James cried: ‘Yes, he would, John. He said soldiers must be merciful.’

  ‘Not to cowards. They ran away. Cowards don’t deserve mercy.’

  James shuddered. He had often felt afraid that, on a battlefield, he would not be as brave as he should. Therefore, he felt great sympathy for these soldiers who had run away. At the same time he felt revulsion against the whole world, including John and, yes, Father too. Only his mother was exempt. Her he deeply loved, though he now realised he did not really know her. He had never tried; he had taken her for granted.

  Servants had gathered in the courtyard. Some recognised the three soldiers. James noticed one old woman crossing herself.

  Mama gave instructions for the soldiers to be taken away and cared for; she would talk to them later. Then, stared at by everyone, in awe, she walked across the courtyard into the house with great dignity. No one would have been surprised if she had suddenly sunk to the cobbles, dead or dying; but no one was surprised when it did not happen. Courage kept her on her feet, with her head held high. Some of the women were in tears.

  Somewhere, perhaps in captured Perth, Father was celebrating his victory. Here Mama was breaking her heart. Because of his own doubts and fears, James tasted a little of her despair.

  He could never have explained it to John, who saw things so differently. Mama, he thought, had let Father down, not because she was a traitress, but simply because she was a woman. So, at the first sign of violence and blood, she had given way to pity and softness.