Lady Magdalen

by Robin Jenkins

  Until word came that Lady Magdalen, whose courage had saved the castle, was seriously ill and might not last out the day. They crept off then to fulfil their various duties.

  14

  FOUR DAYS AFTER the departure of the Covenant troops from Kincardine, George Graham of Braco came at a gallop to the castle, mud-splattered and exhausted, and was greatly surprised not to find it a smoking ruin. He had supposed that Sir Archie Hutcheon’s punitive mission had been carried out. In still greater surprise, he listened as he was told by several excited voices speaking all at once how Lady Magdalen, by her courage and steadfastness, had shamed the Covenanters and sent them away dragging their big silly gun behind them. Unhappily, the effort had been too much for her and she was now very ill. Her man, one woman rashly cried, ought to be there, looking after her, instead of killing and robbing the folk of Aberdeen. For the Covenant soldiers had informed the villagers of that atrocity.

  Braco had with him his two nephews, Tom and Gavin Maitland, the sons of his sister, Meg. Tom was 20, Gavin 18. Since Meg was a widow, her man having died ten years ago, her boys were her life. If anything happened to them, she would not want to live. For that reason she had forbidden them to go and fight for Montrose, though he was their chieftain, or for the Covenant, though she was a devout Presbyterian. They had had to beg her to let them accompany Uncle George to find out what had happened to Lady Magdalen, who was a far-out relation by marriage.

  Before going to see Lady Magdalen on her sickbed, Braco asked his nephews to remain in the great hall in the meantime. Disease, he reminded them, killed more people than guns or swords. All the bravery in the world was no defence against it.

  Mrs Witherspoon remarked drily that what ailed Lady Magdalen could hardly be smittal or she would have caught it long ago.

  So his nephews were with him when he went quietly into the small room that smelled of fumigatory herbs.

  Lady Magdalen recognised him at once and smiled. He was wondering if she was as delirious as he had been led to believe when she asked what, in the circumstances, was hardly a sensible question: ‘Have you brought news of James?’

  No, he had not, he did not even know in what part of the country James was with his army. He could have lied but it was in his nature to be truthful. ‘I’m sorry, Lady Magdalen. I know nothing of James.’

  He could not help contrasting her thinness and paleness with his own Jean’s rosy-cheeked plumpness. Into his mind then came a memory of Jean feeding her hens by the back door, where the lilacs grew. As always, it gave him courage and hope.

  ‘Somebody will hae to gang and tell the Marquis,’ whispered Mrs Witherspoon. ‘She’ll hae gone before he gets here, but he’s got a right to be told.’

  Aye, but who was to be the messenger? It would be a dangerous and arduous journey and Braco had promised Jean, and Meg too, to come straight home.

  Besides, to be candid, what was the point of risking one’s life – the danger wasn’t of falling off a cliff or drowning in a torrent, it was of meeting desperate armed men, deserters or stragglers, who would cut a man’s throat or a woman’s, for that matter, for a handful of merks or a chicken – when the message one brought would hardly be heeded, not because Montrose did not care whether his wife lived or died, but because he would not be able to leave his army lest it disintegrated, as armies composed of Highlanders so frequently did.

  Opening her eyes, Lady Magdalen whispered: ‘Please bring back my sons to me, George.’

  So she remembered that it had been he who had taken them to join their father. He had thought at the time that they were too young to be campaigning in the Highlands, especially when winter was approaching. Braco himself had no children.

  He was trying to think of an answer when, thank God, she fell asleep again.

  In private, Braco put it to his nephews. He exaggerated the dangers and difficulties of the journey: mountains to cross, burns in spate to ford, moors and bogs to traverse, storms of wind and rain and maybe snow to endure, and, worst of all, renegade soldiers to avoid. He pointed out that, if they did safely deliver their message, Montrose might not be grateful. It would give him still another worry. Perhaps he would rather not know about his wife.

  Tom and Gavin were not discouraged. On the contrary, they saw it as a challenge and an adventure. They had often gone hunting over rough country, they had slept out of doors, and they would like very much to visit Montrose’s camp. Maybe they would stay and fight for him. No, they would not, replied their uncle, sternly. Had they not promised their mother, on the family Bible?

  Braco seldom prayed, but that night he did. Not on his knees, or with his hands clasped or his eyes closed, but lying in bed, in the dark. He did not ask for miracles but simply that Lady Magdalen would recover and he would be able to return Meg’s sons safely to her. He thought of Jean but did not include her in his prayer. His love for her was too private for that.

  15

  BRACO WOULD HAVE liked to by-pass Perth. It was now in the hands of the Covenanters again and there was a risk that he might be recognised, for – God help him! – he had been one of the victors at Tippermuir, who had marched triumphantly into the town, to be stared at with fear and hatred by most of its citizens. Then, when he had brought John and James Graham to join their father, there had been cheers from Montrose’s troops but, from many others, sullen, watchful silence. If he was recognised, he would be arrested as a spy, and his nephews with him. They would be lucky not to be hanged forthwith. Like the ladies in the ballad, Jean and Meg would wait a long time before they returned.

  Still, they had to venture into the city. They needed to dry their clothes, soaked in a heavy downpour, and dry beds to rest in. They had also to find a doctor willing to travel to Kincardine, and they had to do some speiring as to the Royalist army’s present whereabouts.

  Tom and Gavin were amused by their uncle’s cautiousness. He was getting old, they said. Hadn’t he told them the city would be thronged with men on the loose? Why should anyone notice them in particular?

  Just in case, they entered the narrow ill-lit streets after dark, and almost at once were challenged by an officer in command of a street patrol. He was suspicious of three armed men who had evidently ridden far and fast. They were ordered to halt. Their horses’ bridles were seized. They were asked their names and business.

  Among the many smells in the old town, the most prominent was that of fear. No wonder, for the blood of the many wounded at Tippermuir still stained the cobbles and out of the night might rush, at any moment, those Irish fiends.

  Braco had his answers ready. He and his sons were visiting their kinsman, Mr Blair, not long ago appointed schoolmaster in the town. After the recent occupation by the Irish savages, they were anxious as to how he and his family had fared.

  It was a plausible pretext and the officer seemed satisfied. He could not himself direct them to the schoolhouse but one of his soldiers could. It was by the river, he said. Braco thanked them and then he and his nephews headed their horses in that direction, at a walking pace.

  Tom and Gavin weren’t quite so defiant now.

  Braco had not intended to call on the dominie, whom he had never met, but it occurred to him now that the schoolhouse would be a safer place to spend the night than an inn. The dominie owed his promotion to Lady Magdalen, who had persuaded her father to find him his present post. For his patroness’s sake, surely he would give them shelter.

  Usually dominies’ houses were small in comparison with ministers’ manses but this one, built of stone, was of a generous size. Indeed, it was as big as Braco’s own, though he was called ‘laird’. The school was attached and there was a play area with trees. Not far off, the river could be heard.

  It seemed the burghers of Perth considered their children’s education worth spending money on.

  Tom and Gavin waited with the horses under the trees while Braco found his way up the path to the front door.

  There was a knocker in the shape of a man’
s head. (He learned later it was supposed to be John Knox’s.) He banged it but not too loudly. Enemies were all around. He shivered with cold, but also with apprehension. He thought of Montrose’s army camped in some remote windswept glen where the sun seldom shone. Was Montrose at that very moment looking up at those stars and wondering, for he was an imaginative man who wrote poetry, if, against the background of eternity, it really mattered who prevailed, the King or the Covenant?

  The door opened but not wide. ‘Wha is it?’ asked a young girl’s voice. ‘Whit d’you want?’

  ‘Will you please tell your master that a messenger has come from Lady Magdalen?’

  ‘Leddy wha?’ She giggled.

  Another young woman’s voice was heard. ‘Who is it, Maggie?’ She was trying to speak in an educated fashion, as a schoolmaster’s wife should. Braco grinned. This must be the famous Cissie who had slept with Lord Rothes: he had heard the story from Montrose himself. A humble maidservant, she had enticed the foolish dominie into marriage. But she seemed to be making an effort to be a credit to him.

  Maggie replied: ‘It’s somebody saying he’s got a message frae some leddy ca’d Magdalen.’

  Mrs Blair then opened the door boldly though, when revealed, she had an infant in her arms. ‘Are you from Kincardine, sir?’

  A pleasant warmth and smell exuded from the house.

  ‘That’s right. My name’s George Graham of Braco.’

  She was wearing a white apron that did not conceal the swelling of her belly. She and the dominie would have a schoolful of bairns before they were finished. Childless Braco felt envious but wished them well.

  ‘Have you brocht a message frae her ladyship?’

  ‘Not exactly that, Mrs Blair. We are on our way – my two nephews are with me – to find the Marquis and tell him that she is at death’s door.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ She burst into tears. ‘We always said she’d never scart a grey heid.’

  ‘Is your husband at home?’

  ‘Aye. He’ll be very sorry to hear this news. Come awa’ in, Mr Graham.’

  Braco followed her in.

  There was a fire burning in the small pleasant parlour. A kettle sang. A black cat washed its face. Hippings were hung up to dry.

  ‘We werena’ expecting company,’ said Mrs Blair, removing the hippings with her free hand. ‘John!’ she shrieked, and then remembered she was the dominie’s lady. ‘Maggie, would you tell maister there’s a visitor frae Kincardine.’

  There were still tears in her eyes. ‘John and I owe a loat to her ladyship. John says she’s the maist genuine person he’s ever met.’

  Genuine? What did it mean? Braco, a gentleman, called ‘laird’ in his own small domain, appreciated her and her husband’s feelings but he could not help thinking that their speaking so familiarly of Lady Magdalen was an impertinence. The distance in rank between her and them was immense, as far as the earth from the stars.

  She proceeded to be more impertinent still. ‘We a’ thocht the Earl should hae stayed at hame and ta’en care o’ her.’

  How insolent of servants to think such a thing! But all Braco could find to say was: ‘He’s a marquis now.’

  ‘He wasna gieing her a single thocht a week or twa back when he cam into the toon after the battle. He sat on his big black horse, looking like a king. They were a’ taking aff their caps and bending their knees.’

  Braco had seen it himself.

  Blair came in as she was speaking. ‘Now, Cissie, how could you tell what the great man was thinking?’

  ‘The great man’. Was that sarcastic? thought Braco. If it was, it was worse than impertinent, it was damned impudent.

  ‘Those terrible Irish brutes of his,’ cried Cissie.

  ‘They behaved themselves reasonably well.’

  ‘But no’ in Aiberdeen.’

  ‘No, not in Aberdeen.’

  ‘That poor young lady, shut up in that dreary cauld castle, in pain maist o’ the time, while he that should hae been comforting her was instead letting his savages molest ither women. Nae wonder it’s broken her heart.’

  ‘She wouldn’t know about Aberdeen, Cissie. Perhaps she still doesn’t know.’

  ‘She knows,’ said Braco, grimly.

  ‘And it’s killed her. John, Mr Graham’s on his way to tell the Earl that her ladyship’s deeing.’

  The dominie was silent. He shut his eyes. Braco did not think, though, that he was praying.

  ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘Mr Graham, my house is at your disposal while you are in Perth.’

  ‘He’s got twa nephews with him,’ said Cissie.

  ‘They’re outside, with the horses,’ said Braco.

  ‘Then we must go and bring them in.’

  Blair led Braco outside to where the stars were brighter and the wind colder.

  From what Montrose had told him, Braco had expected the dominie to be a thin, weedy, round-shouldered, gullible young man, and indeed he was young and thin and round-shouldered, but he was by no means gullible. He had a confidence in himself that reminded Braco of Montrose himself, though the Marquis, of course, acted in great matters and the dominie in small.

  Quietly Blair welcomed Tom and Gavin and showed them where to stable their horses at the back of the house. Braco could tell from their shame-faced silence that they had been amusing themselves with the usual jokes about dominies: how these, spending their lives scolding bairns, became themselves peevish and small-minded. It certainly did not apply to Mr Blair.

  In the parlour, Mrs Blair had a meal set out on the table: hot broth and cheese and bread of her own baking. Her hospitality was admirable but it was also part of her ridiculous and reprehensible assumption of equality. Braco found the food choking him a little, tasty though it was.

  Tom and Gavin ate hungrily and did not refuse second helpings.

  Braco had decided not to tell about Lady Magdalen’s heroism but Tom and Gavin related it eagerly.

  ‘That’s war for you,’ cried Mrs Blair, ‘firing a cannon at a castle fu’ o’ women and children.’

  ‘Be fair, Cissie,’ said her husband. ‘They did not fire it after all.’

  ‘Because her ladyship shamed them oot o’ it. But they’ll fire it next time.’

  She was right but Braco wished she would go and attend to her housewifely duties elsewhere. She showed no sign of leaving; indeed, she did most of the talking. Braco noticed that the dominie let her speak on so long as she was talking sense and, to be fair, most of what she said was sensible enough. She reminded Braco of his Jean.

  ‘Dr Muirkirk’s her ladyship’s usual doctor,’ she said, ‘but she’s never liked him. In ony case, he’s gone oot o’ toon. They’re saying he made himself scarce before the wounded were brought in. Curing a lady’s headache’s mair in his line than cutting aff a sodger’s leg.’

  ‘Who would blame him?’ murmured the dominie. ‘A lot less messy and a great deal more profitable.’

  Braco frowned. There it was again, that peculiar insolence. Dr Muirkirk might well be a mountebank but he was a gentleman, practising a respectable profession. This pair ought not to be mocking him. Braco did not read much but he had listened to clever men in Edinburgh talking about wicked and dangerous ideas spreading up from England. Was Blair one of those madmen who wanted equality for everyone?

  ‘There’s Dr Pettigrew,’ said Mrs Blair.

  ‘I doubt if he would cross the street to wait on Montrose’s wife,’ said her husband. ‘He boasts of having signed the Covenant three times.’

  ‘Weel, that leaves Dr Sloan but he’s very young.’

  ‘And honest enough to admit that his knowledge is very limited. Nature cures, he says, not his medicines.’

  ‘Old Dr Allen used to say the same,’ said Mrs Blair.

  So, as a matter of fact, did George Graham, Laird of Braco, who had lost faith in doctors ever since one had so badly set the broken leg of a tenant’s son that the lad was left a cripple for the rest of his life. />
  He changed the subject for one that would, thank God, have no interest for Mrs Blair. ‘Tell me, Mr Blair, is there any talk in the town as to the whereabouts of the Royalist army?’

  It was Mrs Blair who answered. ‘Everybody kens that. I was in the market this morning buying eggs and they were saying that they’re at the Blair of Atholl, whit’s left o’ them.’

  ‘It seems,’ said Blair, while Braco gaped, ‘that Macdonald has gone with most of his Irish on some expedition of their own into Argyll, while most of the Lowland gentlemen are going home for the winter, to look after their own personal interests.’

  Braco was surprised neither at this information being common knowledge, for spies and scouts were busy all the time, nor at the information itself. That was the curse of a crusade like Montrose’s: men joined it as it pleased them and left it in the same way. On the other hand, Leslie, the Covenanters’ leading general, then in England with the regular Scottish army, commanded men who had sworn their oaths and drawn their pay and therefore could be shot if they deserted.

  16

  AS THE RAVEN flew, it was less than 30 miles to Blair Atholl and the first half, to Dunkeld, lay through the pleasant fertile vale of Strathmore, along the banks of the Tay. Here horses could be used, for the road was tolerable. Thereafter, it became a steep mountain pass frequently broken by burns: horses would be more of a hindrance than a help.

  In the cosy parlour, with the dominie’s ink-stained finger tracing the route on the map, it looked straightforward enough, but Braco listened with a gloomy face. It was not the dangers of the journey but the fear that their mission would be regarded by Montrose as unnecessary and even unwelcome. If he had ministers with him, and nothing was more likely for if he prevailed there would be bishoprics to be handed out, he would have them say a prayer for his wife and that would have to be that in the meantime. If Braco’s Jean had died, nothing in the world would matter after that. But then, he had not been chosen by the King and by God to save the kingdom. Montrose would think that there would be time, after the final victory, to mourn his wife and re-bury her with appropriate pomp but, until then, she had to be a sad irrelevancy.