‘YOU may call me Erchie, noo,’ the Reverend Blackadder informed Annabella but she greeted the news with neither interest nor enthusiasm.
‘I am entertaining cummers today, sir. Must you sit in this room?’
‘I’ve my sermon to prepare. God’s word can’t be neglected, Annabella.’
‘His word would be none the worse off being attended to upstairs in the attic. Or in the tavern, for that matter. Other men do their business there.’
She tweaked at the new bed drapes then smoothed a hand down their velvety richness.
‘You’ve an unfortunate way of putting things, lassie. A verra unfortunate …’
‘In the church, then,’ Annabella interrupted impatiently. ‘Do not ruffle me, Mr Blackadder. Griselle and Phemy are coming and we’ve servant and household problems to discuss. You will be a prodigious nuisance.’
Mr Blackadder reared up as if to take offence but, remembering Annabella’s splendid condition, he eased himself back down again. The thought of having a son or daughter with Annabella’s comely appearance and his own excellent character secretly delighted him. In this connection he was forever sending prayers of gratitude winging upwards.
‘You’re premature in your thanks, Mr Blackadder,’ Annabella told him. ‘The child could have my character and your looks.’
But the minister remained undaunted.
‘Uh-huh, there’s nothing wrong with the attic, I dare say. I’ll just go up there for a wee while.’
‘You’ll be nearer the source of your inspiration,’ Annabella flung at him as he passed clutching his big Bible, his quill pen and some papers.
He turned at the door to eye her sternly.
‘Uh-huh, many a true word is spoken in jest, mistress.’
She rolled her eyes at his retreating back before plumping up the embroidered cushions on each chair. Then she tenderly unpacked her china teacups and saucers from the kist under the bed. As delicate as eggshells, they were painted with a few little strokes from which hung pink cherry blossom. She had other even finer china which had rice grains and flower patterns inset round the cups and if you held one up the light could easily be seen to shine through. But on this occasion she decided to use the painted cherry blossom set. Hesitating between the table in the middle of the floor and the smaller side table over in the corner, she eventually spread a snowy linen cloth on the large table. Each corner of the cloth had an embroidered cluster of pink roses and a festoon of ribbon a similar blue to the velvet curtains. She had stitched the embroidery herself and felt a glow of pride when she gazed at it. Even Letitia had grudgingly admitted that she was good with a needle. Carefully she arranged the cups and saucers and plates on the table. Then from the lowboy she fetched a cake and placed it in the centre of the table. It glistened black as coal with fruit and filled the nostrils with its spicy aroma. Next came a plate of sugar biscuits with the crunchy crystals quivering and winking in the light of the fire. The firelight also danced in the silver of the teapot and sugar and cream dishes her father had given her as a wedding present.
Annabella sighed with satisfaction as she surveyed the scene. The burning logs gave a cosy red glow to the room, accentuating the blue sheen of the curtains, the sparkling white of the table cloth and the lustre of the dishes.
Overcome with delight, she clapped her hands in admiration of the scene. Then she sang out,
‘Nancy! Nancy!’
‘I’m not deaf,’ Nancy grumbled when she arrived upstairs from the kitchen. ‘There’s no need to raise the roof.’
‘There’s no need for you to be in such a monstrous black mood. Haven’t I told you I’m arranging for more help in the house. Griselle and Phemy have word of someone. They are coming this afternoon. So you’d better hurry and get the tea made. They’ll be here any minute. Nancy!’ She summoned the maid back again and swirled round and round making her white muslin dress flutter out like butterfly wings. ‘Do I still look prodigiously beautiful? My hateful condition is not in any way apparent, is it?’
‘With these hoops how could your swollen belly be seen? Anyway, why do you worry? Everyone knows your condition and the minister for one is as pleased as punch.’
‘Pox on the minister. I do not care what he thinks.’
She was wearing a satin petticoat of sky-blue under her gown and a blue ribbon to match was fastened round her throat with a neat bow in front. Her hair was drawn back in curls and there was a glow to her face that made her look even more beautiful than usual.
‘So many women,’ she said, ‘let themselves go to wreck and ruin until they look like monstrous frumps when they are enceinte. I refuse to allow any man to reduce me to such a pitiable state.’
‘You look all right. I’m away to make the tea.’
After Nancy disappeared Annabella glanced around the room again. The colour of the curtains was picked out in the paintings of fruit and other designs on the ceiling beams. The walls were panelled with oak wood, a shade darker than the lowboy, and the gold lettered books in the bookcase added a special richness to the place. She was tolerably well satisfied with the house, except that it needed more servants in it to cook and clean. Nancy insisted that she was supposed to be her personal maid and should not be wasting time with so much cooking and house cleaning. This was true enough, but efficient servants were not so easily come by. Nor were they over anxious to be employed in a minister’s household. Their lives were joyless enough on a Sunday without living under the eagle eye of the minister every day of the week. This Annabella could understand. Sunday had always been bad enough in her father’s house but since she had been married it was purgatory.
She had done everything to try and escape from it without success. Only last week she had tried to escape in sleep during her husband’s long, long sermon, but although the minister had not noticed her, he had spied another sleepy member of the congregation and wakened the offender by calling to him,
‘Andy McKay, you are sleepin’. I insist on your waking when God’s word is preached to ye!’
Andy McKay had called back,
‘Look at your ain seat, minister, and you’ll see a sleeper forby me.’
And he’d pointed to the minister’s pew where she was dozing wrapped snugly in her cape with its hood pulled well forward over her face.
‘Mistress Blackadder,’ the minister had called out loudly, making her jerk. ‘Stand up!’
She felt furious. It was quite a common occurrence, she knew, for members of the congregation to be commanded to stand up in public and receive censure for some offence or other, but how dare he humiliate her. For a long minute she struggled between remaining seated and indulging in a public battle of wits or standing and being done with the situation as quickly as possible. One was as bad as the other. Eventually she stood up, trying to convey to him by furious meaningful looks that she would wreak her revenge on him later.
He leaned forward on the high pulpit, arms across the Bible, face stern.
‘Mistress Blackadder, everybody kens you’re nae angel. But even angels would have mair sense than to shut their eyes and lugs to God’s word. We’ll have a hymn noo and we’ll a’ sing with a’ oor might and see if that’ll help ye to wake up and pay attention.’ He strained over the edge of the pulpit to where the precentor sat at a desk underneath. ‘Dauvit, stop your snuffin’ and sneezing. Put away that snuffbox and attend to your business.’
The snuffbox snapped shut. There was the dirl of the ‘pitchfork’ on the book-board and old Dauvit began bellowing out lines for the congregation to repeat after him.
Normally this was the only diversion of the long dreary imprisonment in the church because Dauvit made many mistakes, both in words and tune, and many a surreptitious giggle he had provided for her. On this occasion, however, she was still scarlet-faced and fuming at the minister and hardly noticed Dauvit and the congregation’s unfortunate rendering of the line ‘And for His sheep He doth us take’ as:
‘And for His sheep He’d
And for His sheep He’d
And for His sheep He’d
-oth us take.’
But later, despite anger still fizzling inside her, she could not control a twitching of the lips when the precentor, faithfully followed by the multitude, exclaimed:
‘Oh! Send down Sal
Oh! Send down Sal
Oh! Send down Sal
va-tion to us.
And we shall bow-wow-wow
Bow-wow-wow
Before the throne.’
It was not quite as hilarious as the occasion when the female voices in a choir had to repeat by themselves:
‘Oh! For a man
Oh! For a man
Oh! For a man-sion in the skies.’
But it was enough to relieve some of the gloom and boredom and take away the keenness of her humiliation. As long as she could keep her sense of humour she would keep her sanity, she kept telling herself. But it was no easy task at times.
The tirling of the door-pin rasped through her thoughts and she whisked from the room and pattered downstairs, deftly manoeuvring her skirts as she went to welcome her two sisters-in-law.
There had been a time when she had considered them a monumental bore, but now with the restricting influence of the minister and her pregnant condition, they were a very welcome diversion.
Phemy’s scraggy face peeked out from beneath a dark green tartan plaid. Griselle’s prettier features and highly coloured cheeks were accentuated by the scarlet of her hooded cape.
‘Mistress Griselle, Mistress Phemy.’ Annabella greeted them with a graceful curtsy and they curtsied prettily in reply. Then they all crushed upstairs. ‘How is my brother Douglas today, Griselle?’ Annabella inquired after they had divested themselves of their wraps and seated themselves in her bedroom. Douglas had been suffering from a feverish chill and was confined to bed.
‘He’ll survive,’ Griselle remarked dryly. ‘Although you would not think so with the fuss he’s making.’
Annabella laughed.
‘Gracious heavens! Are men all the same! My husband had the toothache the other day and, upon my word, the howling and yowling of him might have been heard in Edinburgh.’
Phemy giggled a little behind her hand but she said:
‘Poor Mr Blackadder. What did you do to ease him, Annabella?’
‘I passed him the whisky bottle and he eased himself.’
‘The Earl of Glendinny,’ said Phemy, referring to her own husband, an elderly widower who lived upstairs from her father, ‘has been coughing more of late.’
Her father had chosen the Earl to be her husband and she had sensibly agreed when her father had pointed out that she was lucky to get anybody, far less a tobacco merchant with three stout sailing ships. She knew that with her small stature, pocked beaky face and straggling hair, she was no beauty. But she had a sweet singing voice and a kindly nature and she and the old Earl rubbed along easily enough.
‘He is quite amenable to my ministrations, however. He supped the honey and herb mixture I gave him with very little coaxing.’
‘Pray let me offer you some tea,’ said Annabella, as Nancy entered the room and placed the silver engraved teapot on the table.
Griselle said:
‘I am surprised at the minister allowing you to indulge in tea, Annabella. There is a great deal of agitation against it among the clergy.’
‘I know, but I made such a prodigious fuss he was glad to agree. You knew my father gave me this handsome silver service?’
Phemy sighed.
‘It is lovely, Annabella. Oh, and I do enjoy a cup of tea, don’t you?’
‘Indeed I do, Phemy. Let us be monstrously indulgent and wicked and have several cups.’
Both Griselle and Phemy giggled as they accepted their tea, Phemy with hunched up shoulders like a bird, Griselle straight-backed and prim-lipped.
After a few sips, Griselle said:
‘We visited Mistress Netty yesterday and as usual she entertained us on the spinet.’
Annabella rolled her eyes.
‘That girl makes a perfect toil of music. I swear one day she’ll bore me to sleep.’
‘Well, well,’ said Griselle. ‘At least she won’t be able to make you stand up and be chastised for it.’
Annabella flushed and Phemy hastened to say,
‘It was there I heard about this serving woman, Annabella. Her name’s Betsy and she has a very decent character.’
‘Damn her decency,’ Annabella said. ‘Can she make good collops?’
‘Her cooking,’ Griselle said, ‘leaves a lot to be expected but she’s young enough to train.’
‘What age is she, pray?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Hardly more than a child really,’ Phemy said.
‘About the same age as that monstrous Regina Chisholm was when she was supposed to be serving me. What an odious child she turned out to be.’
Griselle looked smug.
‘Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you, Annabella. I did warn you but in your usual headstrong fashion you paid no heed.’
‘Betsy seems a nice girl,’ Phemy said. ‘I’m sure you’ll be all right with her, Annabella.’
They were just enjoying their second cup of tea and sugar biscuit when Mr Blackadder’s long face appeared round the door. Then the rest of his lanky body eased itself into the room.
‘Uh-huh. Aye.’ Once in he leaned over in a low bow. ‘There you are, ladies. Aye, it’s yourselves. And verra welcome, as usual. Where did you put the whisky, Annabella?’
‘There is a bottle on top of the lowboy. There in front of your eyes, sir.’
‘Och, aye. So it is.’
‘Why don’t you join us and give us your chat, Mr Blackadder?’ Phemy said kindly.
Annabella said,
‘Mr Blackadder is busy preparing his sermon.’
‘Aye. There’s a lot of sin going aboot and it needs a lot of talking to.’
‘What good does talking do, I wonder,’ Annabella said.
‘Uh-huh, och, well, I think I can hold my own with the stocks, the pillory and the hangman’s noose.’
‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’ Griselle tutted and shook her head. ‘Wickedness gets treated in much too soft a fashion, that’s the trouble. There should be more offences punished by hanging. It’s the only way. If we allow a child to steal a crust of bread today, nothing in our larders will be safe tomorrow.’
Phemy looked worried.
‘I think hanging children is going a bit too far though, Grizzie.’
‘Tuts!’ Grizzie said impatiently. ‘Stealing is stealing. They hang children all the time in London. With my own eyes I’ve seen whole cartloads of children, some no more than six or seven years of age, being taken through the streets to the gallows. I remember the bright coloured dresses of the girls.’
‘Poor wee things,’ murmured Phemy.
‘If it were left to people like Phemy,’ Griselle addressed Annabella and the minister, ‘nothing or nobody would be safe.’
‘Uh-huh. Aye. There’s a lot of wickedness in the world. There’s no fewer than six adulterers, twelve fornicators and fifteen breakers of the sabbath coming up before the Kirk Session this week.’
Griselle tutted again.
‘The devil’s busy, Mr Blackadder.’
‘Aye,’ the minister agreed. ‘Verra busy.’
Annabella’s thoughts were still on Regina. At last she said:
‘I’d like to see that monstrous red-haired devil hanged all right. And maybe I’ll see it yet.’