The Tobacco Lords Trilogy

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  A dirk in a sheath and a pair of pistols also adorned the belts. Some men were bearded. Some wore the kilt. But all were bigger men than Annabella was used to seeing in Glasgow and they had a ruggedness yet a magnificent dignity about them.

  The Prince had the same sturdy dignity, with straight back and head held high. He had a long-shaped face and nose with flaring nostrils and piercing blue eyes. Resplendent in an English court coat of gold silk brocade with silver embroidery, he wore the ribbon star and other insignia of the Order of the Garter.

  When Lavelle presented her she dropped into a low curtsy with much graceful undulating of arms and the Prince raised her up and kissed her hand. Then he drew nearer and pressed a kiss on her forehead. He bestowed the same honour on Clementine Walkinshaw and Margaret Oswald and it was said afterwards that Margaret never recovered from the royal kiss.

  A meal was served and the ladies allowed to sit on either side of the Prince at the top of the table. The room was lit by many candelabra and although there was such a dearth of gowns, the tartans and jewellery of the chiefs made up a vivid colourful scene. The table was heavy with pigs that had been spit-roasted and the heads cut off and served on a dish with the jaws, and ears round the dish. A sauce had been made of the brains chopped small and put in melted butter with gravy and chopped boiled eggs and poured round the meat. There was also poultry, fish, oysters, geese, woodcocks, partridges and ducks. There were even adventurous dishes like cows’ palates and udders and cocks’ combs. Tongues and udders had been boiled together with almonds, currants and raisins, seasoned with grated lemon-peel, cinnamon and nutmeg and garnished with fried parsley, and sliced lemons. Ragout of ox palates and eyes were cooked with butter, herbs and lemon juice and served with forcemeat balls, oysters and white wine. There were also boiled sheep’s heads which Lavelle thought were disgusting.

  ‘I cannot understand why this is one of the favourite dishes of Scotland, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘All I associate it with is mouthfuls of partially singed wool. Ugh, quite revolting!’

  ‘Then the heads you have tasted have not been properly prepared,’ she told him. ‘The proper way is to hold it over the fire and scrape off the wool as it is singed and then finish off by scrubbing it with a hot iron until no trace of wool is left.’

  ‘It still revolts me!’

  ‘I hear, sir,’ she eyed him pertly, ‘that you are very partial to a puddock?’

  ‘A puddock?’

  ‘A frog. La grenouille.’

  ‘Ah, oui! Délicieuse!’

  All during the meal the Prince spoke little and he looked downcast, but Annabella managed at one point to make him smile. They had been talking about language differences and Annabella had remarked that surely the Prince could not be expected to fully understand the Scottish tongue when he had been absent so long from it. The Prince answered her that there was nothing she could say that he would not understand.

  ‘Then, sir, would you rax me a spaul o’ that bubbly jock?’ She allowed only a moment’s hesitation before adding, ‘Forgive me, I see by the intelligence in your face that you are perfectly aware that I have asked you to reach me a leg of that turkey.’

  The Prince smiled and touched her hand. ‘You are as charming as you are beautiful.’

  After the meal and much drinking of wine the usual rounds of toasts began, but they were proposed in the Highland fashion, which Annabella found terrifically exciting. The other ladies, however, were not a little alarmed when the chiefs suddenly leapt up on to the chairs and with one foot on a chair and one on the table they drank the toasts with Gaelic shrieks which were awful to hear. Even Annabella’s heart fluttered at the noise and wildness of the scene as one roar followed another.

  ‘Se!’

  ‘Nish! Nish!’

  ‘Sud ris! Sud ris!’

  ‘Nish! Nish!’

  ‘Thig ris! Thig ris!’

  ‘A on nair eile!’

  Eventually it was announced that although the ball regretfully could not continue as planned, there would be some dancing to the minuet. None of the chiefs took part, but stood or sat in morose or disdainful groups. Only the Prince and the French officers rose to the occasion and joined the slow, stately dance with the ladies to the tune of the fiddle and the spinet. As Annabella floated gracefully along, arms outstretched and head held high, it seemed to her that she was in a beautiful dream. Never before in her life had she experienced such perfect happiness and she refused to countenance a world in which she would never know such joy again.

  Halfway along Tannery Wynd Jessie realised that if she were caught and either hanged or deported it would be of no help at all to Gav or Regina. Care had to be taken. Great care. She had to have time to think, to clear her mind, to gather her wits, to pull together her scattered nerves, to seek physical as well as mental strength. She stopped in her tracks, not knowing how to do any of these things, yet knowing that do them she must. Turning eventually, she made her way back down the lane, but this time she passed the house and went round by the back of the Tann Yard. Then she followed the course of the Molendinar Burn until she reached the College Garden. Leaving the burn there, she turned left past the weavers’ factory and along the Old Vennell until she came out at the middle of the High Street just down from the College Church. Opposite the church was the Grammar School and the School Wynd. Hurriedly she crossed the street and along the School Wynd which at last brought her to the Back Cow Loan and the Cracklin House Brae. She climbed the Brae and now she could see in the distance beyond the acres of gorse, the Woodside fields and Burn, and beside them the dark huddle of trees. She did not want to go back there on her own. Yet she was known to too many people in the town, the hangman included. She gazed back down at the city. Somewhere in one of those narrow back streets, somewhere in one of those tall tenements or thatched hovels, were her children. She began to moan and wail and weep and thump her crutch around until suddenly she heard a man’s voice. It was the town’s cowherd.

  ‘What’s wrong, woman?’ he called out. ‘Something paining you? Have you gone demented?’

  Her head violently wobbling, she scuttled away towards Woodside. And as she made a northerly direction, Gav and Regina and Quin reached their easterly destination. It was a lonely crossroads between the High Gallow Moor and the Low Gallow Moor. But where a narrow road crossed the main one there was a toll house.

  ‘Quin can tell you the name of this other road,’ he said, indicating the narrow track with his thumb.

  Gav asked: ‘What’s it called, then?’

  Quin nodded knowingly.

  ‘Witch Loan.’

  Regina’s face pinched in with anxiety. ‘Are there witches here?’

  ‘Does a witch live in that house?’ Gav said.

  ‘At the dead of night,’ Quin said, ‘all the witches gather here to have a coven and cast spells and get orders from Auld Nick.’

  ‘I don’t like witches,’ Gav said.

  ‘Wheesht!’ Quin waggled a finger in front of his swollen face. ‘Auld Nick might hear you.’ Then suddenly he danced from one foot to another and cocked his head this way and that, making his hair and his coat-tails frisk about.

  ‘Mither, Faither, Quin’s brought wee childers to see you. You liked childers, remember? You were awfi fond o’ wee Quin.’

  ‘You’re not wee now,’ Regina said.

  ‘Och, Quin’s mither and faither will still like Quin. They said Quin wasn’t to worry. They’d always be with him, they said. Quin’s mither and faither liked songs.’ He capered round and round and ding-donged.

  ‘I had a wee cock, and I loved it well. Come on, childers—dance and sing with Quin.’

  Giggling, the children began to jump and skip and dance clumsily around with him.

  ‘I had a wee cock, and I loved it well.

  I fed my cock on yonder hill;

  My cock, lily-cock, lily-cock, coo;

  Everyone loves their cock, why should I not love

  my cock too?

>   I had a wee hen, and I loved it well;

  I fed my hen on yonder hill;

  My hen, chuckie-chuckie,

  My cock, lily-cock, lily-cock, coo …’

  Gav and Regina had to stop because they were breathless with trying to dance and sing and laugh all at the same time.

  But Quin went on, his song in cumulative fashion including other beasts:

  ‘… My duck, wheetie, wheetie.

  … My dog, bouffie, bouffie.

  … My pig, squeakie, squeakie …’

  By the time his singing and skittering about had stopped, the children were red-faced and weak with hilarity. They wiped their eyes with their sleeves.

  ‘Oh-ho!’ said Quin. ‘Quin’s mither and faither enjoy that!’

  ‘So did we,’ Gav managed. ‘Do you know any more?’

  Quin bowed low.

  ‘How many miles to Babylon?

  —Three score and ten.

  Will we be there by candlelight?

  Yes and back again.

  Open your gates and let us through!

  Not without a beck and a boo.

  There’s your beck, and there’s your boo;

  Open the gates and let us go through.’

  ‘Did your mother and father teach them to you?’ Regina asked.

  ‘Quin’s mither and faither were always singing.’

  Gav sighed. ‘Our mammy used to sing songs to us too but they were mostly in the Gaelic. I couldn’t understand them, but I liked them just the same. Our mammy was a good singer.’ He sniffed and rubbed at his nose. ‘I wonder why she went away and left us?’

  ‘Mither and Faither!’ Quin pealed out. ‘This wee childer would be obliged if you’d find oot aboot his mither. He hasn’t got a faither.’

  Gav said: ‘They don’t even know her name.’

  ‘Oh-ho, that’s true. Weel, what is her name, eh?’

  ‘Jessie Chisholm. And she has frizzy grey hair and walks with a crutch because she’s only one leg.’

  ‘Mither and Faither, did you hear that, eh? Gav’s lost a one-legged mither called Jessie Chisholm,’ Bouncing back to Gav again, he said: ‘Weel, they know noo!’ Just then his attention riveted on something over and beyond Gav’s head. ‘Oh-ho! What does Quin see?’

  Nervously Gav and Regina followed the direction of his gaze. Along Witch Lane approached an ugly-looking group of men and women in rags and with dark weatherbeaten skins and matted hair.

  ‘Egyptian sorners,’ Quin said. ‘Quin’s no’ keen on them.’

  ‘What’s sorners?’ Gav queried nervously.

  ‘Beggars.’

  ‘Like us?’

  ‘Quin’s no’ terrored folk or killed folk to get bread. Quin’s no’ kidnapped childers.’

  ‘I’m frightened,’ Regina whispered.

  ‘Mind,’ said Quin, ‘Quin’s yer faither.’

  The group drew near. They were filthy and coarsened by years of having to survive in the open. Banished from one town, in most cases for some trifling offence but having no church references as a result, they were denied work and hounded from every other community. Some banded themselves together in large groups, armed themselves with stolen dirks and muskets and plundered people on their lonely paths homeward from fairs or markets with their purchases. They pilfered fowls from isolated farm and moorland cottages and often kidnapped young people and children. It was sorners who kidnapped the eminent grammarian Thomas Ruddiman when he was trudging as a lad to Aberdeen University and stole from the student the little money he had saved for his ‘upkeep’ in the college and even the hard-worked-for clothes off his back. It was sorners who kidnapped Adam Smith when he was a child and nearly deprived the country of one of its most brilliant citizens and the world of its most original political economist. But the group approaching Gav and Regina only consisted of three men and two women.

  ‘Oh-ho, oh-ho there!’ Quin called out before the sorners reached the crossroads. ‘Quin and his childers bids a verra good-day to you. And so does his brithers in the toll house. Are you bound for Glasgow? Quin’s for there with his brithers. Quin’s brithers have pistols. But Quin’s got a rare knife.’ He jerked a knife from inside his coat and did a little dance, slashing the air all around with it. ‘Oh-ho! Quin’s a dab hand with a knife, eh?’

  The sorners glowered and muttered to one another as they turned along the road towards Edinburgh.

  Quin and the children peered after them in silence until they had shrunk to doll’s size on the wide moorland horizon. Then suddenly Quin grabbed the children and whirled them around in a circle.

  ‘Here we go round the mulberry-bush,

  The mulberry-bush, the mulberry-bush,

  Here we go round the mulberry-bush,

  And round the merry-ma-tanzie!’

  Then, still gripping them by the hand, he trotted away towards the Gallowgate, calling out:

  ‘Quin’ll be back to see his mither and faither. Quin’ll be back to cheer them up some other time, eh?’

  By the time they had reached Glasgow Cross, Regina felt tired as well as hungry and the pain of her recently inflicted injuries gnawed and burned and dragged down inside her, adding to her fatigue. She longed for how life had been before. School then home to a seat by a warm fire and a bowl of porridge or sowans or kale. Then, after exchanging news of the day, their mother might tell them stories or sing songs. At last the three of them would climb into the hole-in-the-wall bed, shut the doors and cuddle close to one another under their mother’s plaid. But she nursed no hope of ever recapturing that life. A bitter fatalism had entered her soul. She felt bitter against her mother and still, in her heart, bitter against Gav. One day after another came as a desperate animal struggle for survival. And the worst animals were men. They fought each other, tortured each other, killed each other, stole from each other. And French soldiers were the worst animals of all. Often, especially when she was tired and depressed in spirits, her mind twisted into vengeful thoughts and plans of how one day she would kill them. Sometimes she imagined herself with a pistol shooting them and with a knife slashing them into pieces of butcher meat. Other times she saw them tied to the stake and burned and she lit the faggots herself and made sure they burned slowly. Or she visualised the hangman forcing their legs into the boot and she savoured the sound of his mallet dong-donging the flesh and bone into pulp. Hatred completely possessed her and nothing could give relief or exorcise the memory of the terror, the weight, the pain, the smell of the animal men.

  At the Cross, Moothy MacMurdo was heaving his bell about and crying:

  ‘In Glasgow Green tomorrow it’s said

  The Highlanders are giving a big parade,

  In the part of the Green called the Flesher’s Haugh,

  There will be such a sight as you never saw,

  With new kilts and bonnets and shoes from us a’,

  Will it be any wonder the sodgers look braw?’

  ‘Oh-ho!’ said Quin. ‘Now for some fun, eh?’

  13

  THE orders from the Prince to the Town Clerk read:

  Charles, Prince of Wales, and Regent of Scotland, England, France and Ireland and the dominions thereunto belonging, to Zacharias Murdoch:

  These are hereby ordering you to deliver into our Secretary’s office, within one hour after receipt hereof, the Impost Books of the Town of Glasgow and Suburbs thereof. This order you are to obey, under the pain of military execution to be used against your goods and effects. Given at Glasgow, the thirty-first day of December, 1745.

  By his Highness’s Command,

  Signed: J. Murray

  (Secretary)

  ‘They’re making sure they squeeze everything they can from us, Provost,’ Ramsay said.

  Cochrane replied: ‘I’ll not let the matter rest here, Ramsay. Even if I’ve to go to London and petition the King, I’ll see that the folk of Glasgow are compensated for this injustice.’

  ‘I hear they asked for a list of us who subscribed to the raising of t
he battalion and you refused, except to say that you were top of the list yourself. You’re a brave man, Cochrane.’

  ‘Och, you’ve a goodly share of spunk yourself.’

  ‘It’s no’ my person I worry about, Provost. It’s my business.’

  The Provost sighed.

  ‘I know how you feel. I can’t see how the town can survive all this.’

  They were sitting in the Exchange Tavern and they could hear the murmurings of the crowd outside. Ramsay jerked his head towards the door.

  ‘Folk have turned out to see our braw coats and kilts and bonnets and brogues.’

  ‘Squire Hay is threatening to take two of us as hostages until we supply the full order of goods they demanded.’

  Ramsay sighed. ‘What do they think we are, bloody magicians? We’ve managed most of what they asked.’

  The Provost shrugged and Ramsay went on:

  ‘What’s angering them, Provost, is the lack of Glasgow men to support them. I hear the only recruit they’ve managed to drum up is a drunken shoemaker who was due to be banished anyway.’

  ‘I suppose the Pretender’s hoping to impress us so much with this parade and review on the Green that we’ll all be running to join his banner.’

  ‘I’ll see him run first.’

  From the distance grew the sound of pipes and drums and outside in Trongate Street people jostled and jumped to see over each other’s heads. Frost had hardened the ground and sunshine sparkled the ashlar stone of the Tolbooth and the pillared arcades and tenement buildings above them.

  The pipers came into view first and the skirl of the bagpipes filled the air louder and louder, the excitement of them quickening with the stirring sound of the French drummers. Along the pipers marched, kilts swinging. The drummers followed, rattling smartly at every step.