by Peg Kingman
The room and the man had the look of having just been put to rights. The windows were open wide, and a fine breeze off the water was doing its best to remove an unpleasant fuggy miasma made up of alcohol, sweat, smoke, and perhaps vomit. The man was newly but badly shaved, and miserably pale, his skin dull and chalky. He turned toward her eagerly as she entered; then disappointment spread over his face.
“I beg your pardon, Captain Buchanan, for intruding at a time of misfortune,” said Catherine, having prepared these opening words. “I am Mrs MacDonald, Mrs Catherine MacDonald. My daughter and I were to have sailed with you to Inverness—by arrangement of Captain Mainwaring,” she added, for his expression was vague and distant, as though he did not understand her. She waited, but he said nothing; he only swayed a little on his feet, and she wondered whether he were still very drunk.
“Ochone, ochone,” he moaned, and collapsed onto a wooden chair, his face in his hands.
“Are you quite alright?” she said after a moment. There was no reply. She poured a glass of water from a pitcher and put it into his hands. After a moment he drank down the entire glass, and with another heavy sigh he said, “I had supposed—hoped—for a moment that you were someone else. Another person.” There was something like a groan. Then he made an effort at self-command, and continued, “I fear I have no choice but to disappoint you and your daughter.”
“Pray do not concern yourself with us, for we have arranged another passage. I am only here, Captain Buchanan, to ask you for the return of the passage money I had advanced. I find it is a matter of some consequence to me, or I would never think of dunning you at so unfortunate a time.”
He composed himself with a noble effort. “Here is my purse,” he said with a tragic air. “It is all that remains to me. You shall have it.” He pressed the slack thing into her hand, and she felt that it contained very little—certainly not enough to relieve her difficulties. She would have to rely on Hector after all.
“No, no,” she said, instantly giving it back. “Only when you have managed to settle with your underwriters, and received your insurance settlement—when it is convenient to you, you understand, I should be glad for the return of the sum I advanced, and I wished only to let you know where to send it.”
“Insurance!” he said, running his hands through his hair and disarranging it comically. “Underwriters! Oh, I am ruined!”
A rap sounded at the door, and without waiting for a reply the innkeeper’s wife opened it wide. “Mrs Colquhoun calling for Captain Buchanan,” she announced, more loudly than necessary, and stepped aside to make way for the lady herself. The lady herself was well dressed and remarkably buxom; indeed, she had a snugly upholstered appearance. Composed on her face was a soft expression of feminine compassion; but this dissolved as she caught sight of Catherine.
“My angel!” cried the captain.
“Who is that?” said Mrs Colquhoun, scowling at Catherine.
“Who? Oh, this good lady? This is Mrs—Mrs…”
“MacDonald,” said Catherine. “I have come to let Captain Buchanan know where he might send me the passage money I had advanced to him for myself and my daughter. As soon as he should find it convenient.”
“Oh! How much was it?” said Mrs Colquhoun in a sharp businesslike tone.
Catherine named the sum.
“I believe I happen to have so much as that about me,” said the widow, and extricated her own purse, much fatter than Captain Buchanan’s.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” said Catherine.
“But of course you could, Mrs MacDonald,” said Mrs Colquhoun, and pressed the money into Catherine’s hand. “It is why you came here, or so you have just told me. Unless there is something else here that you wanted?”
“No, indeed, nothing of any interest to me, Mrs Colquhoun,” said Catherine as meaningfully as she knew how.
“Angel of compassion, angel of generosity!” cried Captain Buchanan.
“Good-bye, then, and good luck to you, sir,” said Catherine to the captain. And nodding courteously to the newcomer, she got herself out of the room. As she turned the corner at the top of the stairs, she heard Mrs Colquhoun say, “What in the world have you done to your hair, Charles?”
Not until she was down the stairs, out the front door, and into the street did Catherine laugh. The captain was probably not quite ruined after all, in the monetary sense—but there were other forms of ruin. And her own financial state was somewhat improved.
On the long walk back to Leith, Catherine came to regret her shoes, and to envy the children, workmen, and fishwives, all so comfortably barefoot. She longed to remove the smart little slippers which pinched her toes fiercely and had already raised a blister on one heel, but she could not bring herself to do it now, in town, and dressed as she was. Instead she walked quickly, so as to get back before her fortitude broke down. She consoled herself with the thought that by tomorrow she would be at her ease, aboard Increase. Now, with the sun quite low at her back, the water on her left hand and the town at her right, the scene was even more picturesque than before. As she drew near again to the town of Leith proper, she could make out the royal flotilla at anchor some distance out. A great deal of activity surrounded it, with supply boats pulled up in its lee, and the usual sightseeing craft circling at an interval that was more curious than respectful because His Majesty was known to be ashore.
Somewhere ahead of her were shouts, a rumbling crash, then the clatter of hoofbeats, the hoofbeats of iron-shod horses at a gallop over uneven stone pavement. There was another crash, but she could hear the galloping horses coming nearer, nearer and faster. Quickly she looked about, then jumped up to the top step of the stairs she was just passing and pressed herself against the padlocked wooden door of the stone building behind her. Just then a hack chaise with its blinds closed came careening around the corner, skidding wildly on its high narrow wheels from one curb to the opposite one. Then the chaise was away, with the wide leather straps that should have been holding on the luggage behind snapping and flapping loose like the lashes of whips. She watched the carriage fling wildly around the next turn, the iron-faced wheel rims screeching against the granite curbstones, and then it was gone. The people in the street raised their eyebrows and shook their heads at one another in a disapproving way; reckless! someone could have been killed!
Catherine had gone only a little further when she came to a knot of people in the street surrounding something, their backs blocking her view. She made her way through a gap, and craned on tiptoe to see what it was: a trunk, a traveler’s trunk much like her own. It had burst open, and all the clothes and parcels inside had exploded across the width of the street. It was a lady’s trunk; there were dresses, gowns, skirts, little jackets and shawls, bonnets and shoes, most in hues of ivory, and cream, with some in lavender and black. A bonnet with its own gray veil sewn on. A little lilac-sprigged muslin jacket with a pressed ruffle at the neck. There was a Spanish shawl with brilliant embroidered flowers and foliage on black silk edged by a deep fringe, now irrevocably tangled. A handsome jolly young fisherwife picked up the shawl and draped it across her own broad shoulders; her friends laughed in appreciation. She gave them a deep and affected curtsy, then danced a few steps, gypsy style. A boy snatched up the veiled bonnet and jammed it onto the red head of his little brother, who seized it, wrenching it off as a pollution and an insult, and threw it into a nearby barrel of mackerel.
A chilly heat prickled up Catherine’s spine and settled at the back of her neck. She extricated herself from the rowdy, still-gathering crowd and set off, much faster now, toward the heart of Leith. She stopped a moment, took off her elegant little shoes, and, clutching them in one hand, set off again at a round barefoot trot.
From the town center someone was running, running in her direction, coming on very fast. A black-haired woman, young, light, fleet: the Indian maidservant Sharada, her long black plait flying behind her. Panting, gasping, she seized Catherine’s two hands. “It was
Miss Johnstone, Miss Johnstone, the American woman. She has taken your little girl in a carriage; it is going out this road. I could not stop them. I succeeded in slashing the straps, the straps of the carriage, but they were the wrong straps, and they were driving away so very fast, I could not stop them.”
Staggering! The maid steadied her, still holding her hands, holding her up as the sickening truth impaled Catherine’s heart. Grace, my Grace! My dearest Grace! It is all my own fault. I ought never to have left you, not for a moment. I knew I ought not to leave you alone, not for a purseful of money; not for a king’s ransom.
But Catherine mastered herself after a moment. “Will you go to my brother?” she choked out, hoarse. “You will? Bless you. Tell him they have gone out westward toward Queensferry. I must try to follow them, try to catch up with them—at least I must not lose their trail. My brother Hector MacDonald! It is number twelve East Thistle Street. Of course you know that. Thank you! Bless you!” she called after Sharada, who was already away, dashing toward the center of the city.
Catherine looked wildly about; how was she to pursue them? To run after them on foot was out of the question. She might easily hire a hack chaise, or perhaps even a saddle horse if she ran back to her inn; but she could not bear to lose so much time in going the wrong direction. Was there a nearer inn? Could Captain Buchanan’s inn provide her a horse or a conveyance? She remembered there was a small yard behind, but she had not noticed any horses or carriages. There must have been; surely there must. She set off again at a run, retracing her steps. If not there, then somewhere; somewhere she would find a conveyance.
She had already repassed the split trunk—now dragged to one side of the narrow street, and most of the finery already vanished—when she was overtaken by a poulterer’s wagon moving along at a smart clip. “Whither away so quick?” called out the poulterer, courteously enough considering that she was barefoot and running, nothing ladylike or dignified about her except her shawl. And just now everyone in the vicinity was wearing incongruous finery, regardless of degree. Catherine was so winded that she could not answer. “Leap up then!” he said cheerfully, and, leaning back, sawing on the reins, he brought his horse to a momentary standstill. He reached down, seized her up-reaching hand, and heaved her onto the rough board that served as a seat.
The wagon was stacked three high with poultry crates of woven withies, all streaked with white and gray dung, and garnished with dingy feathers, and each containing its anxious beady-eyed turkey. Catherine sat down with a heavy bump as the horse plunged forward again. “Running fit to burst, weren’t you?” remarked the friendly poulterer as he touched up the horse with his whip. In Catherine’s opinion the horse really did not need any touching up; he was already nervous and Catherine, noting his twitching flattened ears and the irritable toss of his head, thought he appeared to be upon the point of bolting. The poultry crates behind made an unholy clatter and rattle, and there was something in the front axle crying out for a good dose of grease. “The extra weight’s a good thing,” said the poulterer. “It should settle him down a bit, especially when we come to the hill. He’s new at this. And then, that collar might be galling him. My last horse was not so high in the withers.”
I will fetch you back from the ends of the earth, my darling; I never will give you up, Catherine silently promised Grace, wherever she was. But to the poulterer she said aloud, “What happened to the last horse?” Her breath was coming back now, and she slipped her red throbbing feet back into her shoes.
“Foundered at last, poor creature,” replied the poulterer. “Foundered, and the bone inside the hoof piercing down through the sole of it. But you needn’t founder yourself, luckie. They will not be coming back to reclaim their gear, not they. You may be sure of keeping your prize. That is a handsome shawl, and hardly worn at all, is it? I picked up quite a new-looking bonnet for my wife, but I’m no judge of the fashions. There it is behind us; are you any judge of a bonnet yourself?”
“Oh, I think it is a smart one, quite the newest and best thing,” said Catherine, peering back over her shoulder (and thinking of Grace’s bonnet and jacket, put away by mistake too soon, inside a trunk now aboard Increase). This bonnet, however, was tucked down between two dung-streaked crates, and its gauzy gray veils fluttered behind like kite tails.
“I plucked it from a barrel of mackerel, and it might have just a bit of that smell. A good airing should render it fresh enough. My good wife has a taste for finery, which I did not know when I married her. And where are you bound? Where am I to drop you?”
“I had hoped to hire a horse or a chaise at the Red Bull…”
“A vain hope, luckie, they have no such thing. We are just for passing them, you see, and not a horse have they had these two years. I am bound for Hopetoun House myself, two miles past Queensferry. These turkeys behind you have a high and worthy destiny; they are meant for the king’s breakfast at Hopetoun House. Yes, indeed! Did you not know? I wonder that anyone in Edinburgh cannot have heard. The king’s last meal on Scottish soil will be at the Earl of Hopetoun’s mansion tomorrow morning, and His Majesty’s yacht is to be brought up overnight, for His Majesty will embark from there. Wait till you see how they’ve repaired the road, these last four days! Two thousand guests for breakfast! And my turkeys just ordered now, at the last possible minute, in case there should not be enough food else. That’s a night’s worth of cleaning and plucking. Shall I put you down at Queensferry? You should have a pretty choice of horses and chaises there…. Not at all; it is quite in my way, and I am glad to have the weight. The iron-jawed brute!”
ROWED IN TO the pier by Increase’s sailors finally at six o’clock in the evening, Hector noticed that the wind had changed again. Out of the east now, it promised rain, and soon. He was glad that the difficulties of the day were over. His trunk was now in his cabin; and by faithfully promising to come aboard at four the next morning, at first light and before the ebb would begin, he had persuaded Captain Mainwaring to let him sleep at home this very last night. One last night to spend in his own house, eating supper at his own table, sleeping in his own bed with his own dear wife.
But as he stepped neatly from boat to pier, cherishing these warm domestic ambitions, he was unpleasantly startled—accosted!—by this gypsy, this mysterious foreigner—this uncanny Indian woman—again! She related his sister’s message—and his fond plan lay in ruins. “The Queensferry road?” said Hector. “How long ago? So long as that? We’ll never catch them on land. A launch is the only thing, a crack steam launch. How the devil did my sister come to leave her alone? So careless! Here, lad; find me Captain Keith, tell him I need his Dram Shell directly, instantly, or I shall go aboard myself in two minutes and cast off without him! Thank providence for a tailwind when we need it, for once.”
The hybrid sail-and-steam launch Dram Shell was moored just a few hundred yards out. Captain Keith and his crew of two, in their usual public house at the end of the pier, came immediately.
“Certainly not,” Hector said to the foreign woman as one of the men untied the skiff that would take them out to where Dram Shell was moored in the deep water. “There is not the slightest reason for you to come any further. Here is something for your trouble and your great effort. I am grateful to you beyond words, but you certainly must not come any further.”
But she pushed away the money. Though he tried again to press it into her palm, she would not take it. “It is all I have just now,” he said, supposing that she objected to the smallness of the amount.
“I do not want money. I will not take it. I will come on the steamboat. I will, indeed, Mr MacDonald. Your sister will need me when we are overtaking them, your sister and the mute child also. I am coming with you.” Without waiting for an answer or any assistance, she jumped into the skiff and seated herself on the thwart. Hector and Captain Keith exchanged looks, then Hector shrugged. Her manner was certainly very assured; she had remarkable self-assurance for a servant; but foreigners were so often u
naccountable. “Suit yourself,” he said. “I have no time to argue with you.”
So the foreign woman came too.
Dram Shell’s coal hopper was full and her boiler was still hot, for she had just come in. Within a quarter of an hour, the little steamboat was under way again, fueled by coal, a large jug of ale, a small bottle of whisky, and the promise of a generous tip if they should catch their quarry. Captain Keith was happy to undertake a chase.
They were running nearly straight downwind, so the crewmen raised a lateen and a genoa, and set them out wing and wing for all possible speed. The shore darkened, and lights twinkled in the dusk. A crewman lit a lantern and hung it on a spreader. They passed near several boats laboriously beating their way up against the wind and, to the delight of Hector and Captain Keith, easily overtook three fishermen running downwind like themselves. The two men stood in the cockpit, feet braced wide apart, and admired the frothy wake streaming out behind them in the black water. The foreign woman huddled in the lee of the hot boiler, for her thin cotton shawl was no hindrance to a wind sweeping across a hundred miles of cold northern sea.
“You must be very cold, miss. Pray let me offer you this jacket,” said Hector, coming up through the dusk after a while. “Though it is old, it is quite clean, and it will keep you warm.”
