KATHERINE

RENFREWSHIRE, SCOTLAND, 1696

‘The great comet predicted this dire turn of events,’ John told me. ‘It was an omen sent by God in warning for this decade of warring and moral disintegration.’

I sat on the grass, toying with a thistle, with the sun overhead angling above the stream. The sound of barges bleating their horns wafted on the breeze from across town and down the river. I glanced at the dirty-brown and golden-curled water and I listened to John’s earnest words until I grew dizzy in the heat. I wondered if the deep cadence of his voice was not partly to blame for my light-headedness.

Since I’d followed the man, I’d discovered his name was John Campbell. He was a leaf from a far-removed branch from the tree of a Campbell clan of my own. Campbells came in many forms and guises and, while we most likely all went back to a common source, we were none too friendly with each other after the Reformation. While most Campbells of the Highlands had been loyal to the King, my parents were secretly loyal to the exiled James the Second, who had fled to France after being dethroned. They also remained loyal to the Pope and resented the strict Presbyterian King, who had outlawed Catholicism. Their loyalty had cost them their lives and it was true that I bore more than a jot of deep resentment toward the King.

John and I now met once a week on the hill overlooking the city and talked. We spoke, without the least embarrassment, of the King and Kirk. It had been a marvel to find that my new friend, John, was also a sympathiser to the cause. Until this time I had not been able to share my thoughts with anyone other than my sister, who was already becoming more acclimatised to the Presbyterian rule now that she was free of the Highlands. She hushed me, warning me to lock such heretical and treasonous thoughts away.

‘I am rallying a group of true defenders,’ he told me. ‘We mean to recruit others who may be hiding silently in the shadows to help bring about a rising. I have connections in France, too.’

‘I want to help you, John,’ I said, leaning toward him. ‘My parents lost their lives because of the Whigs and if I can help then I feel I’ll have avenged them.’ I lowered my eyes, feeling the warmth of his skin and the blood pulsing beneath.

‘My friend.’ John smiled at me as I looked up, our eyes drawn together. ‘The clergy in these parts, especially one known as Brisbane, are becoming desperate and dangerous, and mean to strike at us before we can strike at them.’

I had heard the name Brisbane float like a feather through conversations at Bargarran. I was beginning to feel the pinch of sun against my skin and my skirts were up, showing my stockings held fast with green ribbons. I knew it was a tad wanton, but I cared not. I liked John and if I was being flirtatious then that was that and I was not one bit apologetic for it. My months in service for the Shaws had seen a change in me physically. I was lighter, less fed than at home and my infamous flamboyant tempers and wild fits of glee had faded to something more austere and narrow, sombre. Finding myself furtively plotting a revolution had put colour back in my cheeks. I burned with the thrill of John’s words. I wondered if he felt at all the same way that I did. He continued to speak in his fired-up manner and I could not tell if it was the flame of politics or my presence that had him so heated.

‘It is imperative that we get others to join with us as Jacobites. Then we might see the tight bind of the recusancy lifted so that people such as you and I, Kat, and those of our faith, can worship without fear of persecution.’

He took my two hands in his and held them as one might clasp a bird. Our eyes locked once more. I liked that he had called me Kat. My da had been the only other man to do so.

‘Farmer Lindsay is one of us,’ he told me in a whisper. I startled and thrilled a little to think that one of my own laird’s tenant famers was also a member of the secret society. ‘We are meeting tonight in the orchard behind Bargarran. At midnight. See that you are not followed.’

I went home that day with a skip in my step and salt in my blood. I walked along the river, watching midges flickering over the dark water like flashes of silver. Beyond the gables of the houses that I passed, the lazy afternoon sun fell golden and warm on my face. I felt the prickle of the sun making new freckles on my skin. After the ferry ride across the Clyde, I was tramping over a rickety bridge when I stopped and caught my breath. John throbbed in my pulse and I wondered if it might be love. I did want to see my parent’s deaths avenged but I knew, to be honest, that I would go to the midnight meeting and pledge my support, not so much to the cause, but to John Campbell. He was a man who spoke with the lilt of a nobleman and the passion of a revolutionary. He read and wrote and dressed in handsome threads. I decided, then, that I would secretly light a candle in my room and give thanks to the Lord for having given me a purpose and a sliver of joy back in my life. After the bloodshed at home I had been uncertain that I would ever know happiness again.

That early evening, just as I was finishing some milk in the larder after a slice of thick bread and honey, Christian, the eldest child of the manor, came upon me and frowned.

‘Have you sought permission for that milk?’ she demanded.

I quickly wiped my top lip with my sleeve, startled.

The girl’s eyes narrowed and she examined me with great interest. Her gaze unnerved me in the dim candlelight.

‘Nay, M’Lady.’

‘Hmmpf,’ the child huffed and went to sit by the window, idly looking across the moonlit fields outside.

The child was often praised for her sweet nature and her golden looks; she had grown to believe that the world wanted her to be happy. Thus any pain, such as a bee sting or any delay in attention or frustration, seemed to her an outrage. And if she was out of temper it was always blamed upon the servants.

I apologised and went to my bed, smiling at my sister as she nodded from her own narrow doorway.

I lay awake and waited until the moon had dipped south. Then I covered myself in a heavy dark cloak and quietly slipped from the servants’ quarters without candlelight. The long-case clock in the parlour showed that it was just before midnight. Outside, the high moon threw a dim light over the still fields and thickets. I skirted the sheep enclosure and headed straight toward yonder orchard. I knew the way and barely needed the moon’s guidance. I was intoxicated by the air of excitement, the thrill of the forbidden, and it tugged impatiently at me. Night was my favourite time. It was a world moulded with many shades of lead and slate as the moonlight had no colours to throw, only shadows and highlights; a world where nothing lived but whispers and the sigh of sleeping beasts and the scurry and scratching of night creatures. That evening, I was one of them. A night creature.

Farmer Lindsay was there and the old beggar woman Agnes Naismith from across the river. One or two faces familiar from the region and some new. But in the dim gloom I only had eyes for John Campbell, who had earlier informed me that Campbell was the clan name of his maternal grandmother. His birth name, being that of his father, he would not reveal. This had only intrigued me more. I was drawn to the mystery of him, the danger of his zealotry. He wore a dark beret with a small, white-ribboned rosette pinned upon it, which dazzled in the darkness. The smell of decaying fruit composting underfoot was sweet but acrid: apples, pears, plums. The branches had been stripped almost bare in the weeks past and the fruit that was spoiled, dropped or missed, lay fermenting on the warm yard for the squirrels.

John linked arms with me and I felt the warmth of his body against mine. The blood pulsed hard in my temples and my mouth went dry.

‘Well may we be, well may we see, here’s to this good company,’ he said by way of welcome to his shadowy crew before introducing me by my first name only.

One by one we were asked to affirm our pledge to the one true royal bloodline of the Stuarts and soft songs were sung, the words of which were lost on me, the newest recruit.

They spoke in hushed tones of the death of a local minister, Reverend Hardie, who had threatened to reveal them after one traitor had made a confession to him. The little huddle muttered low, drawn into a tight circle. Much of their discussions were in code and I had little success in understanding much of anything they said through the hour-long convention.

‘James the Second’s return to the Crown and our religious freedom are bought with regrettable bloodshed,’ John told us all. ‘There are some who suspect our plots. And we must pledge again, now, at the close of this meeting to go to our deaths without revealing our fellow conspirators.’

Murmurs of ayes rippled through the night air, hushed and sincere.

As the group dispersed, John Campbell took me in his arms and kissed me firmly.

‘My Highland wild one,’ he whispered as he gently pulled away, the words lingering on my lips. ‘Speak of this to no one. And perhaps one night we may meet here again, just the two of us.’

And then he was gone and my breath had frozen in my chest. I wanted to sing into the night air but bounced on my feet, a foolish grin spread clear across my face, before stealing back to the house, the scent of the orchard again pressing down around me and the contours of my beau’s lips dancing in my memory as precise and clear as the colours of a rainbow. Of all the people that I had met since rolling in from the Highlands, one now mattered above all else. But the heat of my passion was tempered with the cold ice of fear when I walked into Christian Shaw. Blood rushed to my head as if I was a little child caught red-handed and I could do nothing to stop it. The girl had come upon me so suddenly, I felt dizzy. I tottered a little and had to support myself against the doorframe.

‘Go to bed, child,’ I hissed sharply. ‘Away with you. You’ve had a bad dream is all.’

‘Where have you been?’ the child demanded. ‘Stealing more milk?’

I sighed with the relief of the words and nodded briskly.

‘Aye, that’s it,’ I snapped. ‘I was thirsty dry. You tell no one and I’ll find you some sweets on the morrow.’

The girl thought for a moment and then nodded and slipped back into the house. I turned and padded softly back to my own small cell in the servants’ quarters and prayed to God that the child knew no more.