Bonnie Dundee (6 page)

‘My bonnie love,’ said Claverhouse, ‘are you sure? Sure beyond all doubting? I am almost twice your age.’

‘Thirty-five,’ said my lady Jean, with a soft bubble of laughter, ‘How very shocking!’

And right beside the broken tomb they halted. I froze like a wild thing. There was naught else that I could do.

When she spoke again, the laughter had gone and
left her grave. ‘I am sure past all doubting, John, and there is only one fear in me, that our marriage will harm your career.’

‘Harm my career?’ Claverhouse echoed her words as though he did not understand them; but I’m thinking he did.

‘And you a soldier before you’re aught else,’ said she. ‘Oh, John, John. Colonel John Graham of His Majesty’s Regiment of Horse, to be carrying off a bride from the rebel house of Cochrane!’

He laughed, softly. ‘I’m thinking my career is firm enough set to stand steady under a little musket fire of
that
kind. Truth to tell, I am more concerned that I have done things amiss by speaking to you as I have done, before asking leave of your grandfather.’

‘Why, as to that,’ said my lady, ‘when a marriage is made for the joining of two great estates, or the combining of birth with silver – a business contract—’

‘As the custom most often is.’

‘As the custom most often is – then it is maybe a sensible arrangement that the lassie’s father or grandfather or whatever should be asked first. But when ’tis between two people as it is between you and me, John, then I’m thinking ’tis another matter. If you’re such a timid sojer, my Johnnie, when you go to Grandfather tomorrow, where’s the need to tell him that you asked me first?’

‘How if he refuses his consent?’

‘He’ll not,’ said my lady. ‘Or if he does at first, he’ll soon come round when I’ve worked on him a little.’

‘And your mother?’

There was a little silence and then my lady said, ‘Not my mother. No.’

‘Oh, my Jenny, Jean,’ said he, the words muffled a
little as though maybe he was speaking into her hair. ‘And that will hurt you, and because of me.’

‘Aye – though not so sore as ’twould hurt me if ye didna ask me to go with you.’

‘You’ll not let her make you change your mind?’ he asked in quick anxiety.

‘No,’ she said, ‘never that,’ and then suddenly between weeping and laughter, ‘All my life ye’ll have but to whistle, and I’ll kilt my petticoats to the knee and follow you the length and breadth of Scotland, wi’ the heart in me singing like a lintie in a hawthorn bush.’

He had her in his arms by then. Oh, I could not see, and I’d not yet had a lassie of my own, but there were them in the stable-yard that had, and ’twas not the first time I’d heard a girl whispering into a man’s shoulder, with the breath half crushed out of her.

‘There’ll be so many times you cannot follow,’ he said. ‘So many times ye’ll need to bide home and wait, maybe for news that doesn’t come.’

Aye, and I’d heard a man whispering into the top of a lassie’s head, too; but never with the kind of aching tenderness that Claverhouse’s voice had in it that evening.

‘Are you sure, heart of my heart?’

‘How many times will you ask that?’ said she. ‘I am more sure than ever I have been of anything in all my life.’

‘So be it then. Tomorrow I will go to your grandfather.’

She laughed softly, and I heard her pulling away from him. ‘And then we shall not be our own people any more; we shall belong to our families and the churchmen and the lawyers, and there will be documents to be signed and new fine clothes to be bought,
and maybe a wedding portrait to be painted, and we shall scarce be alone together again until after we are wed. Are you not glad that you asked me first, and we have had this one quiet twilight to ourselves?’

They had begun to move on again, their whispering voices growing fainter. Once I heard his quiet laugh; and then all sound of them was gone into the evening sounds of the place; and the white owl that lived in the ruins of the side-chapel swept on velvet-silent wings down the length of the roofless nave. I lay where I was a little longer, until I was sure that it was safe to move, and then slithered out of my hiding-place and slipped away after the white owl, heading for the old cloister, which was the way back to the house and the stable-yard.

At the far end of it, as I passed, a shadow shook itself free of the other crowding shadows, and my heart jumped into my throat as it swirled across my path. But the hands that gripped my arm were small and hard and urgent, and above all, human; and ’twas only a lassie in a dark cloak, after all; and her face, gleaming pale in the darkness of her hood, was the face of Mistress Mary Ruthven.

‘And what might you be doing back there?’ demanded she.

‘I’ve secrets of my own, and the need to be by myself, whiles and whiles,’ said I. ‘Did they leave you on watch here?’

‘Aye, and it’s the bad sentry I’ve been, so it seems.’

‘None so bad,’ I told her. ‘I was in-by already, a long while before they came.’

Her hands were still on my arm, and her face turned up to mine, beseeching, the eyes in the whiteness of it wide and shadowy like holes with the dusk shining
through. ‘Ye’ll not tell?’ said she. ‘Hugh Herriot, ye’ll not tell on my lady?’

‘Is it likely?’ said I. ‘Ach away, lassie, do ye think I’m the telling kind?’

And I never have told, not until this day, when it is an old, old story, and will not be mattering to either of them any more.

I CARRIED A
sore heart with me to my sleeping place in the loft that night, for it seemed that I was soon to be losing all that made Paisley a bonnie place to me. My lady, and like enough Laverock and the old mare, for I made no doubt that if my lady went to her man she would take those two with her. And with his wife somewhere the other side of Scotland (for I knew that his home was somewhere Dundee way) it was not likely that Claverhouse would be much at Paisley, save in time of dealing with the ‘Saints’. And it would be another year at least, maybe two, before I could be going for a soldier. Oh, I could have ‘listed as a drummer boy if I had had the skill, but I had not, and in any case that would not have got me where I would be, since it was the cavalry I had set my heart on, and they do not take laddies for the kettle-drums.

Lying awake that night, staring into the dark, I knew for the first time that it was not so much the soldiering my heart was set on, as that I would be following Claverhouse.

There is no knowing how much pleading my lady Jean had to do with her grandfather, but I think not much (Claverhouse’s superiors set their faces dead against it for a while, but that was another matter), for before long it was known throughout the household, and among the troops and over all the country round, that she and Colonel Graham were betrothed. And after
that I saw what she had meant when she said that once it was out, they would never be alone to each other again until after they were wed.

The coming and the going that there was! The notaries and the silk-merchants and seamstresses, and the great folk visiting from all around! There was a painter coming, too; a Dutch painter who was in Edinburgh at the time, coming to paint a wedding portrait. And that made me prick up my ears, for I had not seen brush laid to canvas since my father died; though indeed it was not much of the painting I’d be seeing, it going up in the great house, and me down in the stable-yard.

And meanwhile Claverhouse came and went about his business of peacekeeping all across Ayrshire and the South West; and many’s the time I saw him walking to and fro, waiting until my lady should be free of her dressmakers and her grandmother, until often he could wait no more but must call for his horse and be off back to his headquarters at Stranraer without ever seeing her at all.

She never had time to come down to the stable-yard, either, nor to go riding in the early mornings as she had been used to do; so he was not the only one that missed her.

And then there came a day – the swallows had arrived and the cuckoo was calling in the woods across the river – when three things happened all within a few hours of each other. It was one of those days when a little wind rises and changes the life one woke to in the morning, so that by nightfall one is travelling by a different way.

The first of the three things came with the carrier, who brought me word that my grandfather was dead.
Not word from Aunt Margaret, you will understand. The carrier, who was always the bearer of news, as well as goods and gear, picked up the word at Wauprigg and dropped it again in the stable-yard at Place of Paisley, knowing that I was there.

I had heard from the old man two-three times since I had left, but that was all; and I had no thought ever to see him again; but the news fetched me a buffet under the heart, all the same.

‘How did he come to die?’ I asked.

The carrier shook his head. ‘Seems like he just grew old an’ weary an’ his heart stopping beating. He was in the byre seeing to a sick cow, an’ ’twas there they found him in the morning.’

So my last link with Wauprigg was cut behind me. All the life I had now was here in Place of Paisley stable-yard. But before that day was over, I had something else to think about; for a while later, when I was currying Dundonel’s big grey, a shadow darkened the doorway of the loose-box, and when I looked up, it was Willie Sempill himself. ‘Ye can leave that,’ said he, ‘my lady Jean wants ye in the privy garden.’

And as I looked doubtfully at the curry-comb in my hand, he took it from me. ‘Off wi’ ye now, my mannie, would ye keep herself waiting all day?’

And he fell to, hissing away between his teeth, on the grey’s coat.

I spared a moment for my face and hands at the horse-trough, and went, just as I was, for the day was warm and I had left my jacket in the loft, pulling down my shirtsleeves as I went, and raking wet fingers through my hair.

The privy garden was the bonniest place, with knot-beds full of pinks and heartsease, and tall clipped
hedges to keep out the rest of the world; and that day the tall flamed and feathered Low Countries’ tulips were coming into flower, and the first buds swelling on the little white briar roses against the old sun-warmed house walls, and a thrush was singing in the mulberry tree that was the heart of the place. And on the turf seat under the mulberry tree my lady Jean was sitting; and she half lost in the billows of some wonderful embroidered stuff that she was working at; one edge of it drawn over her knees, and white sheets spread all about her on the grass to save the wonderful thing, whatever it was, from getting stained or muddied. There was a creepy stool with no one sitting on it now, and a gay tangle of silks and wools beside it, facing her as it were, across the beautiful stuff spread between them like a peacock’s train; from which I guessed that whatever she was at, Mistress Ruthven had been sharing the labour with her but a little while before.

She did not look up, but went on stitching carefully, frowning at the stitches as she drew the long rose-coloured thread in and out. I walked nearer, until I came right beside the creepy stool; and then I saw that the great piece of green velvet was worked with the figure of a naked man and woman standing hand in hand beneath an apple tree, and wee bright birds fluttering among the branches, and all about them leafy bushes and flowering plants, and beasties – a silent running of beasties; a deer under the leaves, and rabbits and a little lap-dog and a lion. And twisted about the trunk, with its head coming out from among the apple branches, a wicked jewel-bright serpent.

And then I understood. I had never seen such a thing before, but I knew that Adam and Eve in the Garden was the proper pattern for the coverlid of a wedding
bed. This one was old, old and faded; my, but it was bonnie; and in places the stitching of the fine embroidery was gone, and in places there showed the brighter colours of new silks where the damage had been made good. It was one such place, the breast of a chaffinch, that my lady was stitching at that moment, the stitches, truth to tell, somewhat larger than those round about it. She pulled through a last stitch, and looked with a sigh, and smiled at me, somewhat ruefully.

‘Oh, Hugh,’ said she, ‘I shall never be the needlewoman my grandmother was in her day.’

‘It’s bonnie,’ I said. ‘Did my lady your grandmother make it, then?’

‘Och, no. It was old even when she was young; but she mended it when she brought it with her, and again for every wedding that has been among us since, and ye cannot see where her mending is. I do not think you can see so well where Mistress Mary has been helping me, either – but ye can see where I have been at it, all too plain.’

‘Where would be the use,’ said I staunchly, ‘taking all that trouble, and no one to see where the work was done?’

She laughed, ‘Oh, Hugh Herriot, you’re the leal friend! But ’twas not to be discussing my stitchery that I sent for you this afternoon, it was to ask you something. After the wedding, when I go with my man to his own place – will ye come with me?’

‘Come wi’ ye?’ said I, and for the moment I could think of nothing more to say. I felt stupid with the surprise of it.

And in the silence there came the sound of horses’ hooves from beyond the house. Three horses, I thought, my mind being shaped to such things of long
habit. And then the distant sounds of bustle from the stable-yard.

My lady noticed my check, and took it for uncertainty or maybe even unwillingness, and she said, ‘Mistress Mary comes with me, and old Linnet and Laverock, and it seems to me they’ll be wanting someone of their own with them, too. Come with me, Hugh – or will ye be sair to go so far from your own folks?’

I shook my head. ‘My grandfather’s dead, and there’s no one else I’d care to see again.’

‘Your grandfather?’ she said. ‘Ye’ve spoken of him now and again. I did not know that he was dead.’

‘No more did I, until the carrier brought me word, the morn.’

‘Oh, Hugh, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘and here I am asking you to make your mind up about this, when it’s the sore heart ye’ll have; and thinking’s none so easy with a sore heart. Bide a few days.’