The Tobacco Lords Trilogy

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  Hurrah, boys, hurrah; we’ll sing this Jubilee;

  You can keep the Navy, boys, a Merchant Ship for me.

  Gazing at the bobbing vessels in the bay she thought that here was the gateway to real adventure and a great longing came over her to dash aboard one of the ships and set sail for faraway, fantastic lands and a new and wondrously exciting life.

  Once such a thought came into her mind there could be no denying it. She wanted to journey across the sea. She wanted to go to Virginia. She itched to put the thought immediately into action, but it was such a revolutionary idea that even she realised it would never come to pass unless she acquired patience and used all the womanly wiles at her disposal.

  Her mind busied itself with plans. Instinctively she knew that this was one whim in which her father would not indulge her. But what if her husband decided to go to Virginia? Her father would not go against the minister. The more she thought about this, the more she was certain that her only chance lay through Mr Blackadder. But how to persuade Mr Blackadder to take such a giant step, that was the problem. Mr Blackadder did not even like going to Edinburgh and only stirred himself to face the journey because he felt it was his Christian duty to attend the Kirk Assembly.

  Suddenly Annabella had the clue. If she could persuade the minister that it was his Christian duty to go to the New World …

  Her heart raced with joy. Surely it was not beyond her intelligence to accomplish such a feat? She could hardly wait to get back to Glasgow and her husband. On the return journey, in fact, she whipped her horse into a lather until her father, barely able to keep up with her, lost his temper and bawled,

  ‘Damn it, Annabella, if you’re no’ at one extreme, you’re at the other. Compose yourself, woman, or I’ll take the whip to you.’

  Never before had Mr Blackadder come home to such a good dinner or such a beautiful and charming wife.

  The narrow lobby and the stairs had been washed and the bedroom floor was shining as well. A crisp white cloth graced the table and on top of it sparkled the best rice grain china and silver tea-service. The royal blue bedcurtains were looped back to reveal the bed resplendent with white satin bedcover.

  A log fire blazed merrily and enclosed the room in a rosy hue. Annabella, magnificent in powdered wig and patches, tightly laced bodice and voluminous golden skirts, billowed into the room carrying a steaming dish of sheep’s head broth.

  Mr Blackadder hardly noticed. He had been out late doing his rounds of visiting, catechising and questioning and he was fatigued and out of humour with his flock.

  ‘They’re an impudent, ungrateful bunch,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed they are, sir,’ Annabella agreed, depositing the dish on the table and making dash at Mr Blackadder to stuff another cushion behind his back. ‘They do not appreciate your prodigious talents.’

  He slid her a look of surprise tinged with suspicion.

  ‘Uh-huh, aye, that’s true enough. Auld Mistress Logie was showing me the new horse on the farm and I heard her calling the beast Blackadder. When I questioned her about this, she had the temerity to say it was because it bore a distinct resemblance to me.’

  With an almost superhuman effort, Annabella suppressed her hilarity and instead creased her face into what she hoped had an appearance of sympathy.

  ‘The woman’s in her dotage. Her farmer son should keep her locked in the house. She is a madwoman, sir, to talk in such a ridiculous way.’

  ‘Uh-huh, aye, weel. Mind you, it was a fine-looking beast.’

  ‘I do not know how you can thole them. You have the patience of a saint, Mr Blackadder.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Aye.’

  ‘They do not deserve you.’

  ‘Have you by any chance been having a wee tipple, Annabella?’

  ‘Why no, sir. I have been the whole day with my Papa.’

  ‘Oh aye. At Port Glasgow. And how did ye get on there?’

  Annabella wiggled to the edge of her seat with enthusiasm, her golden dress shimmering in the firelight.

  ‘I was much intrigued with it, sir.’

  ‘Indeed. Uh-huh.’

  She suddenly swooped up and across to the table.

  ‘Look what I have for you. Come do, sit in and enjoy it, Mr Blackadder. You will feel better after supping such a delicious broth.’ Then, no sooner had he taken the first sup, she burst once more into eager speech. ‘It is a wondrously beautiful place nestling at the foot of a green hill with sparkling water in front and purple and blue hills across the water and all around.’

  ‘You’d see the ships.’

  ‘Oh, I did, I did and it was a truly wondrous sight, Mr Blackadder. There was a prodigious number of seamen there too and they told of many fantastic adventures.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Aye, they can spin a yarn all right.’

  ‘They spoke much of Virginia and told of what a prodigiously beautiful place it was. Only I was disconcerted to hear that there are savages there.’

  ‘Aye, I’ve heard about them.’

  ‘Does that mean they do not know about The Word?’ she enquired, using his own phrase.

  ‘Aye, it does indeed.’

  ‘But that is terrible.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He supped his broth and smacked his lips over it in obvious enjoyment.

  ‘They say the settlers are little better. They perambulate on the Sabbath and comb their hair and cook their food and sing bawdy songs …’

  ‘Annabella!’ He banged down his spoon. ‘Control yourself! Don’t even think such wickedness.’

  ‘But they said …’

  ‘Wickedness! Wickedness!’ His voice rose, pulling him up from his seat.

  She leapt to comfort him and push him back down.

  ‘I agree, sir. I agree, Oh, it is indeed too terrible to contemplate. They have not enough good men like yourself. That is the trouble with Virginia. God’s work is being monstrously neglected.’

  Mr Blackadder was boiling with indignation on God’s behalf.

  ‘The wicked rascals. The sword of God’s wrath will smite them down. Come the terrible day of judgement they will be cast into the eternal fire.’

  ‘Ah, many’s the time I’ve heard you preach long and heavy on that very subject, Mr Blackadder. If only these terrible Virginians could have heard you. It might have been the saving of them. Let me help you to another bowl of broth.’

  She did not press the subject of Virginia and the terrible sins committed there any further that evening but it kept cropping up on other occasions when they were in company or when they were on their own, until one day Mr Blackadder unthinkingly remarked,

  ‘I’ve a good mind to go over there and tell the sinners what I think of them.’

  And Annabella immediately flung her arms round his neck and cried out,

  ‘Oh, Mr Blackadder, you’ve had the call. Rest assured, sir, that I will not shirk my duty. When you go to save the souls of the sinners in Virginia, I will be there by your side.’

  ‘Haud on a minute, Annabella,’ he cautioned, somewhat taken aback. ‘These things can’t be rushed into.’

  ‘I trust you to know your duty, sir, and have the courage to carry it out. You’ve never lacked a sense of duty or courage before.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Aye. But there’s other things to consider, Annabella. And other folk.’

  ‘I am not afraid to journey to the New World.’

  ‘But there’s wee Mungo.’

  ‘It will be a splendid new life for him. And when he gets older he can supervise Papa’s stores or whatever business Papa needs him to attend to in Virginia. What is there for him here?’

  ‘Och!’ Mr Blackadder had never looked more worried and uncertain. ‘But hang on a minute … hang on …’

  ‘And I know you have always had a prodigious concern for Mungo,’ Annabella said and gave him as passionate a kiss as she could muster.

  Eventually he had been not so much persuaded as harassed into agreeing, and Annabella rushed around telling everyone the news that the
y were emigrating to Virginia. He had no sooner nodded his head when he was caught up in all the arrangements for leaving. There was so much to do he hardly had time to realise what he was doing.

  Annabella flung herself into the business of packing and preparing for the journey with great zeal and energy. Sometimes, when Mr Blackadder was not there, she swirled around the room singing,

  ‘I’m going to Virginia! I’m going to Virginia!’

  Nancy, who felt secretly disturbed by wild tales of cannibals and giant beasts, muttered dourly,

  ‘Maybe you’ll find more over there than you bargained for!’

  20

  MR BLACKADDER made them all kneel down, Annabella, Nancy, Betsy, and little Mungo. The deck creaked and groaned beneath them and above sails bellied and cracked.

  ‘God the Father Almighty.’ He clasped his hands and rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘For the love of Jesus Christ, His Son, by the comfort of the Holy Ghost, the one God Who miraculously brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea, and brought Jonah to land out of the belly of the whale, and the apostle St Paul and his ship to safety, from the troubled raging sea and from the violence of a tempestuous storm, deliver, sanctify, bless and conduct us peaceably, calmly and comfortably, through the sea to our harbour, according to His divine will, which we beg; saying, Our Father …’

  ‘Our Father …’ the others trailed after him with small mutters compared with Mr Blackadder’s ringing funereal tones.

  Immediately afterwards the women scrambled up to catch a last glance of Port Glasgow. As they sailed along, the white houses of Port Glasgow and then of its neighbour Greenock glittered on the edge of the river. Behind them groves of trees rose over each other against a background of hills.

  Towards the mouth of the Clyde, other vessels were billowing along, their sails sparkling white against the blue of the water and the purple and green of the hills. It was a beautiful sight and the little cluster of women at the bulwarks now joined by Mr Blackadder gazed at it in silence. Then Betsy began to wail.

  ‘For any sake! If you don’t stop that infernal yowling,’ Annabella snapped, ‘I’ll throw you overboard. And don’t you dare start either,’ she rounded on Nancy who glared back in an effort to hide her real feelings behind a front of anger.

  In truth, Nancy had never felt so harrowed since that awful day in the Highlands after the Battle of Culloden when the dragoons had caught up with her and Calum, her Highland lover. She had shot him rather than allow the redcoats to have him. She had seen what had happened to Annabella’s lover, Jean-Paul Lavelle. Regina Chisholm had betrayed where Lavelle was hiding and the redcoats had dragged the wounded man out and put him through the most dreadful tortures. She would never forget the sight of the dying Lavelle in Annabella’s arms afterwards, his face and head burned unrecognisable, a mass of black flesh.

  She had shot Calum rather than have him suffer as Lavelle had suffered, but it was a terrible thing to have to do.

  And this was a terrible thing to have to do, to leave the shores of one’s own country, to tear out one’s own heart.

  It was like saying goodbye to Calum all over again.

  ‘I never made a damned sound,’ she said to Annabella.

  ‘No, but your face is as long as a fiddle. You’d think we were going to our death instead of to a new life.’

  ‘For all I know we are going to our death.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks! How many times have I to explain to you? We are not going to live in the middle of a forest or anywhere isolated or uncivilised. We are going to a wondrously gay metropolis. We are going to the capital city of Williamsburg.’

  ‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’

  ‘Ignorant strumpet! There’s no telling you anything.’

  ‘Now, now, Annabella,’ Mr Blackadder intervened. ‘Haud yer wheesht. We’re all a wee bit upset at leaving our native land. I dare say you are yourself.’

  It was true. Despite her eagerness to be away on the great adventure, strange pangs contracted her chest and throat. The beautiful coastline of Scotland now pulling away seemed to be tearing something from her as it went. She kept blinking with pain but she said,

  ‘It never does any good to mope and wail, sir. And I’ll not allow anyone to agitate the child.’

  ‘Uh-huh, aye. You’re no’ to upset wee Mungo, Betsy. So do what your mistress bids ye.’

  ‘I’m going to promenade the deck, Mr Blackadder,’ Annabella announced. Would you care to join me?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Aye.’

  ‘Then give me your arm, sir.’

  Not that there was far to go. The ship was small and cramped. Everywhere there was rope strewn about. Pigs grunted around and geese and ducks waddled past. Somewhere a cow mooed.

  Then an exciting scene caught her attention. A warship lay at the tail of the Bank and men from it were boarding a merchant vessel that had been making its way up river. The merchantmen were fighting to prevent their ship being invaded by the Navy and there was much shouting and clashing of swords.

  ‘Gracious heavens!’ Annabella said. ‘What is happening, Mr Blackadder?’

  ‘It’s the press gang,’ her husband explained. ‘Your father’s lost many a good able-bodied man that way. The navy ships lie in wait for the merchantmen returning from long voyages and set upon them and capture most of the crew for service in His Majesty’s ships.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything Papa or anyone can do?’

  ‘Och aye, most times they land the younger members of the crew at Fairlie and let them make their own way home over the hills to Greenock and Port Glasgow. But och, the press gangs still get them. Armed landing parties search all the inns and taverns.’

  ‘It’s a wonder to me how Papa manages with all these worries and difficulties. Yet he continues to prosper. He must be prodigiously good at his business.’

  ‘Uh-huh, aye. He’s been very good to us. Sending letters of introduction to all those important people in Williamsburg will make sure we get a bit of help to find our way around it and get settled. Although we’re going to a town instead of to the settlement on the river where his nearest store is. The settlement would have been handiest for us with his ships always calling with news and stores, and the settlers and savages there would have been more in need of a minister.’

  ‘Papa thought it would be more congenial for me in the town. Papa is very considerate. And we could hardly argue with him when he was giving us such a large sum of money. We should be able to purchase a commodious dwelling place with that. I hope you made sure, sir, that our furniture and possessions are safely stored in the ship. I do not want my fine china teacups or anything else broken or damaged.’

  ‘I have Captain Kilfuddy’s word on that.’

  ‘It can be monstrous stormy, I am told.’

  ‘I hope not, mistress. My stomach feels gey queasy already.’

  But the weather remained calm until they were well out in the Atlantic Ocean. Then a squall blew up and gradually increased until it blew a full gale. Mr Blackadder rocked and groaned as if in torment and was very sick into a bucket in between desperate roaring prayers. Fortunately Mungo slept through stormy nights and seemed to enjoy the pitching and tossing of the ship. At least he showed not the slightest sign of panic or fear. On one occasion he had actually laughed. Annabella and the others had been sitting at dinner in the cuddy when a heavy sea broke over the poop. It smashed the skylight and a lamp that was hanging in the cuddy was thrown through the air and broken to pieces. The ship lay almost over on its beam ends and everyone’s dinner landed in their laps.

  After the first shock, Annabella had joined Mungo in his fit of giggles but the others had reacted with a mixture of acute distress, exasperation and anger. Mr Blackadder had been furious and shouted abuse at her. But he made the mistake of struggling from his seat to do so and was hurled across the cabin by another lurch of the ship. He landed in such an undignified position on his bottom on the floor that Annabella only laughed all the louder
.

  ‘You cruel wicked hussy!’ he yelled at her. ‘The ship could be going to the bottom of the sea and everyone in it for all you care. You do not seem to realise the uncertainty of life, mistress.’

  ‘It is better to laugh in such circumstances than to moan, sir.’

  Staggering to his feet he had gripped the table and clung on, pushing his face close to her.

  ‘There is nothing to laugh at in drowning in cold water, mistress. Especially when below that cold water there awaits for you an eternity of fire and brimstone.’

  She tossed her curls.

  ‘I refuse to drown, sir. I have set my mind on seeing Virginia.’

  But even she became sorely tried as the storm continued unabated for several nights and days. The dreadful creaking of every part of the vessel, the screaming of the wind, the roaring of the sea and the hollering of the sailors made sleep impossible. At one point their cabin door flew open with the force of the waves that were pounding over the ship’s decks. A green swell of water burst in to swish back and forward on the floor. But calm returned eventually and the ship sailed sweetly, lazily shouldering through light seas. Then Annabella was able to wear her white muslin dress with the side panniers that kept it wide and showed her lilac-coloured petticoats.

  The only other stir of the voyage was when Captain Kilfuddy thought he had sighted a privateer. Being a merchant ship they did not carry many guns, but the few six-pounders they had were hastily made ready. Sailors bent to the tackles and raised the gun-ports. Powder and shot were rammed home and each sailor had his slow match alight even before the guns were run out through the open ports. But they drifted into a mist that soon thickened into fog and they were able to lose the privateer without a shot being fired.

  There certainly was a miraculous thunder and lightning storm as they entered Chesapeake Bay, but it soon passed and they glided up the James River on a mirror-like surface.

  Her father had arranged that they should stay overnight at the mansion of one of the riverside plantations and from there travel overland to Williamsburg which was situated between the James and York Rivers.