The overseer’s house came next. Then a low stone-lined ‘spring-house’ in which icy water curled round crocks filled with dairy produce and perishable goods. Across the path at right angles to the storehouse and overseer’s house and facing the back of the mansion were the stables and the barns in which the tobacco leaves were stored and cured. Even further away from the mansion and hidden by a clump of trees stood the rows of rough shacks which housed the slaves. There was also a blacksmith’s forge.
More woods opened out onto tobacco fields and miles of black fencing made of upturned stumps, their roots writhing as if in some macabre dance.
It was dark by the time they strolled back along the path towards the house and fireflies were rapidly winking all around. The moon made mist of the trees and through the mist tree-frogs croaked.
Regina said,
‘My kinsman, Gav, tells me that after he serves his indenture he could receive fifty acres of land.’
‘That is so. And some clothing, an ox, a gun and a few farming tools.’
‘I wonder,’ Regina murmured, ‘if I can wait until he is ready.’
‘You will be entitled to land at the same time as Gav. You came across together, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but I’m not indentured. I paid my own passage and I’m free to choose what I do with my life and when.’
‘Indeed? Well, I told you I admired your spirit, young sir. There will always be employment for you here if you want it.’
Walking along beside him, their silence broken only by the chirping of crickets somewhere in the darkness, she wondered if working for Harding might be her opportunity to learn how to run a plantation until she was old enough to buy one for herself.
Eventually she murmured in a cautious tone.
‘I am in no hurry, Mr Harding. But I will give the matter serious and careful thought.’
He chuckled.
‘You do that, Master Chisholm. You do that.’
15
‘DID you ever see such a sturdy laddie?’ Mr Blackadder asked proudly as he poked a long bony finger into the baby’s cradle. ‘How does the name Mungo sound to you, Ramsay?’ he asked Annabella’s father. ‘That was St Kentigern’s other name. He was a bishop of Glasgow away back in the sixth century.’
Ramsay stood gazing down at the cradle. He was an imposing figure in his large curly wig and rich clothing, and a handsome man too in his own dour-faced way. As he admired his new grandson, however, his eyes softened.
‘Aye, Mungo will do verra well, minister. The Lord has blessed you with a grand lad.’
‘Uh-huh, aye, he has indeed. Uh-huh.’ He could hardly take his eyes off the child and Annabella laughed when she came into the room.
‘Are you two still there? Gracious heavens, the pair of you will be taking root beside that cradle.’
‘You’re still as perjink as ever I see, mistress,’ her father remarked drily. ‘It would take more than a birth to take the wind oot o’ your sails.’
She planted a quick kiss on his cheek as she passed.
‘Don’t pretend you aren’t pleased with me, Papa. I’m prodigiously clever to have produced a lusty child like Mungo with such ease.’
‘Careful noo, Annabella.’ Mr Blackadder’s face tried to compose itself into a stern expression. ‘Pride’s a terrible sin.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ Annabella said.
She hadn’t thought she’d even like the child, imagining during her pregnancy that it would be a constant source of shame to her, and a painful reminder of the humiliation she had suffered. But she couldn’t find any hatred in her heart when she looked at it. Indeed, she enjoyed sweet pangs of pleasure every time she saw the little pink face and plump legs and arms. It was a beautiful child with her perfect skin and bright blue eyes. There was nothing of Harding about it. She still hated the man but the child she loved with unashamed delight.
‘If you’re staying, Papa, for pity’s sake take off your cloak and sit yourself down. I’ll pour out some whisky.’
‘No.’ He held up a hand. ‘I must away. I’ve business to attend to. I just happened to be passing and thought I’d call in and see how you were.’
‘Losh and lovenendie, Papa, what a liar you’ve become.’
‘God forgive you, Annabella!’ Mr Blackadder cried out in alarm. ‘Will ye haud yer wicked tongue. Have some respect for yer faither.’
Annabella laughed.
‘You did come to see your wondrously beautiful grandson, didn’t you, Papa? Be honest now.’
‘I came to visit both Mungo and yourself, mistress, and now I must away.’
‘Uh-huh, ye’ll be back again soon, Maister Ramsay. You know ye’re aye welcome,’ said Mr Blackadder, seeing him out of the room and downstairs to the front door. On his return to the bedroom he stared uncertainly at the cradle. ‘Do you no’ think it’ll disturb Mungo if I have the catechism examinations and questioning in here, Annabella? I could verra easily talk to the folk in the attic.’
Annabella rolled her eyes.
‘Sit down and stop fussing and spoiling the child. He’ll have to get used to noise and people going about. Later when he’s older, the attic can be his room. But must they come so often? You’re always visiting them. You question them here, you question them there. Why can’t you just mind your own business?’
‘It is my business, mistress. God has instructed me to chide the careless, reprove the thoughtless, rebuke the erring, denounce the hardened and obdurate and question everybody about all things.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ she said impatiently.
‘One of these days,’ Mr Blackadder warned solemnly, ‘you’ll be struck down dead for your impudence. Oh, and another thing,’ he added, ‘there’s the visiting preacher, a young man new to the call. I said he could come and break an egg with us later.’
He drew in a chair at the table, set some paper in front of him and a candle near his elbow, then picked up a quill.
Annabella groaned to herself. One minister in the house was bad enough, two was very hard to bear.
‘Gracious, heavens, Nancy,’ she shouted, grabbing her fan and flapping it in annoyance. ‘We haven’t got all night. Send the first one up and let us get on with the doleful business.’
‘Will ye haud yer tongue,’ the minister chided sharply. ‘You’re the one that’s needing examined more than anybody. You’re a disgrace.’
Annabella rolled her eyes but said no more. She wondered if she should light an extra candle. Already the room looked half asleep. The grandfather clock in the corner gave a wheezy sigh then donged with melancholia. Mr Blackadder’s quill scraped across a yellow pool of light. She gazed at his lowered head and high-hunched shoulders and felt no rancour against him. She just wished he was married to someone else, that was all. Occasionally the full impact of her position would hit her but it was panic she felt, not hatred or malice against Mr Blackadder. More often than not she just did not believe that she was truly condemned to spend the rest of her days and nights tied to the minister in this oppressive house with the quill forever sleepily scraping and the clock’s brass heart mercilessly beating her life away.
It was almost a relief when the first person to be questioned appeared, a little girl who shuffled in wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. The minister interrogated her long and sternly, his face straining forward into the candlelight, shadows scooping deep hollows in his cheeks and eyes. The droning of his voice and the heat from the fire and the steady ticking of the clock had a soporific effect, and Annabella had to keep straining her eyes wide and giving sudden flutters of her fan to keep herself awake.
The little girl, however, was concentrating as much on Mr Blackadder as he was concentrating on her. At last he came to the final query.
‘Uh-huh, aye, Mary, and why did the Israelites make a golden calf?’
Mary thought for a minute and then, determined not to be beaten at the last gasp, answered,
‘They hadn’t enough silver to make a cow.’<
br />
Annabella giggled behind her fan and the minister eyed her reprovingly before correcting then dismissing the child. Afterwards he scratched conscientiously at the paper in front of him again. There was little entertainment to be had from the others who came trudging up the stairs, however, and she became so bored with it all she was glad when the young minister arrived and put a stop to the proceedings.
He was introduced as Mr Adair and he reminded her of her brother Douglas. He was not so foppish in dress, of course, but there was a fussy, almost feminine, affectation about him. As the evening progressed she could see that his affected and priggish manner was even beginning to irritate Mr Blackadder.
‘You’ll have a glass o’ whisky, Mr Adair?’ he invited, but Mr Adair flung up his hands and cried out in his high pitched voice.
‘I really do not drink, sir. Nor do I approve of drinking.’
‘Uh-huh, well, well, that’s a gey queer way to be. But you’ll have a pipe with me then.’
‘No, no, Mr Blackadder. I really do not smoke.’
‘Uh-huh, do you eat grass, Mr Adair?’
‘Eat grass, sir?’ Mr Adair raised his brows in surprise. ‘Eat grass? No, I do not eat grass. What makes you ask that?’
‘Weel, weel,’ said Mr Blackadder dryly, ‘ye can go yer own way, for if ye neither smoke, nor drink, nor eat grass, you’re neither fit company for man nor beast.’
Annabella laughed.
‘Pay no heed to Mr Blackadder, Mr Adair. He is in one of his moods. Tell me, what is the subject of your sermon on Sunday?’
Mr Adair fluttered his hands again.
‘Oh, Mistress Blackadder, Mistress Blackadder, that is what I keep asking myself, for it is really a most terrible problem. What will I preach about? What will I preach about? I really do not know what to preach about.’
‘Just preach aboot a quarter of an hour,’ Mr Blackadder said.
Afterwards in disgust he told Annabella:
That man’s no’ going to be any use as a preacher. I’ll have dug the guts oot o’ five Bibles before he ever gets started.’
Annabella could not deny this. Mr Blackadder was never stuck for something to say when he mounted the high pulpit.
The following Sunday, for her benefit she was sure, he spoke for nearly six hours on the proud, unjust and vindictive man and he added, eyeing her meaningfully,
‘Woman! Uh-huh! Aye, even although many’s the time the proud, the unjust and the vindictive escape from the hand of man, as they too often do, aye, but in the dread day of vengeance they’ll no’ escape from the Lord. The lofty looks of man.’ Another beady stare. ‘And woman shall be humbled. The haughtiness of men and women shall be bowed down. Aye, the Lord shall bring them low. They shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God. They shall be cast into the lake of fire. They shall die the second death.’
Not that she allowed any of his gloomy and terrifying forecasts to frighten her. Though after so many long weary hours every Sunday and often when he preached during the week as well, it was easy to become depressed. But her depression never lasted long and by the next day her jaunty spirits would have bounced back again. Along Trongate she would parade or along by the Green, ablaze with colour in her wide hooped skirts and swirling cape, with fan aflicking and head held high.
But often stepping back into the tiny dark lobby of the house in the Briggait and climbing the narrow stairs to face another long evening with Mr Blackadder hunched over his Bible, it was a sore struggle to keep her spirits up.
For hours she would sit trying to concentrate on a piece of embroidery, listening to the scraping of Mr Blackadder’s quill or his muttering to himself as he composed his sermon, or his lengthy readings, or melancholy prayers and she would long to scream.
If it had not been for Mungo she would have run away, either on her own or with any gallant gentleman willing to take her. But she could not leave the child. Mungo was the only true pleasure of her life and she loved to dandle him and play with him and bring a smile to his rosy-cheeked face or hear him chuckle.
She tried to keep alive her passionate hatred for Harding but it faded with time, as did her vengeful feelings against Regina. She did not forgive them for what they had done to her. For longer and longer periods of time she just forgot them. Hatred and vengeance could find no permanent darkness in her from which to draw nourishment and grow.
But as she said herself:
‘Gracious heavens, I feel sorely tried and cruelly confined. It is making me prodigiously restless. If something, anything, doesn’t happen soon I shall be obliged to fly the country!’
Griselle and Phemy tutted at her and Phemy said:
‘I beg of you, Annabella, do not talk in such a wild and wayward manner. You have us all in a flutter.’
Griselle tightened the drawstrings of her mouth.
‘We remember the last time you flew off, even if you don’t, mistress. It nearly killed your poor father with worry.’
‘Fiddlesticks. Papa is made of sterner stuff than that. Anyway, just think of the adventure, the fantastic experience I had.’
‘Traipsing about the Highlands with an army of barbarians is not an experience we have any taste for, Annabella,’ Griselle said. ‘I would have thought it ought to have been a lesson to you.’
‘Oh, indeed it was, Grizzie. It taught me how to survive, amidst monstrous suffering and hardship. I’m not so easily fluttered.’
‘Now that winter’s upon us again,’ Phemy said, ‘there’s nothing for it but to try and content your mind and settle yourself, dear. When the nights are so long and dark and the roads so bad, there’s very little even you can do. Just try and think yourself fortunate to have such a bonny son and a good husband and a nice little house.’
‘If somewhat cramped,’ added Griselle who had a much larger, roomier place.
Once, in exasperation, Annabella said to Mr Blackadder:
‘Do you never feel restless? Do you never have any curiosity, any desire to see what lies beyond the boundaries of Glasgow?’
‘No, indeed I have not,’ he answered firmly. ‘This is where God put me and this is where I stay. I trust in the Lord, Annabella. The Lord knows best.’
‘It may be best for you, sir, but it’s no damned good for me.’
‘Annabella! Haud your wicked tongue. You’ll be cursing and swearing in front of the bairn next.’
‘This endless boredom is enough to make a saint swear.’
‘You’re nae saint, mistress.’
‘It’s the same routine in Glasgow, day in, day out. At six o’clock in the morning the rider arrives with the post and newspapers. Then the gun’s fired at the Cross to summon the businessmen. Then you all gather in the taverns to collect and assimilate the news. Then at eight o’clock, back to breakfast you all come. After that it’s off to the counting house for father and the other merchants. You write your sermon or make your rounds until dinner. Then it’s work again until about eight. Supper at nine, family prayers and early bed. All I ever do is attend to Mungo. That is when I get the chance, for Nancy fair dotes on the child. Or I entertain a few cummers of an afternoon. That is all.’
‘Uh-huh. What else should there be?’
‘I’ve never even been to an Assembly for an age.’
‘Aye, weel, I’ve never held with such fripperies and you’re still feeding Mungo.’
‘He’s nearly a year old. I shall not be feeding him for much longer.’
‘No matter. I’m no’ having you going any place where ye might be led into sin and temptation.’
‘Oh, fiddlesticks! I shall go mad in this boring place if I don’t do something or go somewhere.’
She realised of course that it was not really Glasgow she was complaining of. She had always managed to find some sport and gaiety in the town before her marriage. It was Mr Blackadder that was really the thorn in her side and the depressing influence. Although, to be fair, there were worse ministers than him going about the town and she sometimes
breathed a sigh of relief that her father had not chosen one of the others. At least Mr Blackadder was capable of caustic wit now and again and he had a certain amount of kindliness in his nature.
There were others like the Reverend Gowrie who were more like disciples of the devil than men of God. At least they seemed so to her. To themselves they were holy men doing God’s work with great and zealous concentration. At the Reverend Gowrie’s church there were always several people being pilloried underneath his pulpit. There was always someone standing at the church door barelegged and clad only in a gown of sackcloth. A large notice hung round their necks to shame them and tell the congregation if they were adulterers or fornicators. The Reverend Gowrie never tired of seeking out sexual offenders and questioning and punishing them.
Of course, as well-known faces appeared in the place of ignominy, smiles and smirks and whispers passed from one to another in the congregation and even young lairds and members of the aristocracy came to enjoy the entertainment. They were quite safe from punishments because, apparently, God only wished to punish the poor. Such diversions, she had to admit, rendered the services less dreary. But his conscientious persecution of pregnant girls came a bit too near home to be felt amusing. Indeed, since she had had a baby herself, she felt nothing but pity and indignation for the poor creatures and the merciless way they were treated. Frequently, rather than face the trial of being pilloried and admonished by the minister, often for as much as twenty-six Sundays in succession, they fled the country. Some committed suicide, others in their terror destroyed their offspring in the hope of concealing their fault. Scores of women, condemned to death for child-murder, had confessed that the dread of the pillory was the cause of their crime.
Mr Blackadder, of course, had done his share of rebuking girls on the pillory. But he had grown wary of these forms of church discipline since it had become known that Scottish women were the greatest child-murderers in the world and many people were thinking that appearances in church for scandal actually caused these murders.
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Page 44
