THE CELEBRATION day began with an early-morning thanksgiving service.
Ramsay went to church on horseback and commanded Big John and Gav to accompany him, also on horseback.
‘You may as well get used to a bit o’ riding, Gav,’ he said. ‘There’s long distances to cover in Virginia and to be a good horse rider is verra important.’
He strode from the house in front of Gav and knocked aside all the vagrants on the stairs, including Quin. Quin dodged about after them in great agitation. Gav felt irritated both at Quin and the pity he felt for him. He wished he would just go away and leave him in peace. Yet mixed with these feelings was the fear that he might still be glad of him.
‘I can’t see you just now,’ he hissed in passing. ‘I’ve got to go to church. You’d better be careful the bailies don’t catch you. You’re supposed to be banished.’
While they were saddling up the horses, he caught glimpses of Quin’s grotesque face bobbing up from behind walls, jerking out from the sides of closes and screwing round corners.
Riding past on a horse that was too big for him and needed all his attention, he impatiently signalled for Quin to get out of the way. But he knew that he was still following all along the road to the church.
During the service Gav kept seeing Quin’s gargoyle face in his mind’s eye and could not properly concentrate on what the minister was saying. Only snatches reached him like unexpected waves of sound surging in, then receding.
‘O Lord, Lord!’ cried the Reverend Blackadder. ‘We thank Thee for safe deliverance from manifold perils … Tammas McKay, what have you got yer hat on for in the kirk? If yer bare pow’s cauld, just get a good grey worset wig. They’re no’ so dear and there’s plenty o’ them at Bob Gordon’s for tenpence … Aye, Lord, we thank Ye for demolishing oor enemies. Aye, and we’ll be ready to demolish the deevil.’ Blackadder suddenly assumed the position of one aiming a pistol and made a loud noise like a shot. ‘We’ll shoot him wi’ the gun o’ the gospel and doon he’ll come like a dead crow. But, freends,’ he leaned forward over the pulpit. ‘Unless ye a’ repent yer sins, ye’ll a’ perish.’ At that moment a fly alighted on the open Bible in front of him and Blackadder’s eyes gleamed. ‘Aye, freends, ye’ll a’ perish just as surely as I’m going to ding the guts oot o’ that big blue fly that’s landed on my Bible.’ His clenched fist crashed down with all his might, but the fly got away and he roared. ‘Would ye believe it? There’s a chance for ye yet!’
After the service everyone went for a leisurely stroll or a ride on Glasgow Green. Recently there had been a warning notice about gentlemen who sent their servants to exercise their horses on the Green. The notice said that gentlemen should not allow their servants to ride in such crowds and at such speed as the quantities of dust dispersed by the horses were ruining the bleachfields. Also the lives of the inhabitants from the number and fury of the rides had often been in danger.
But on this pleasant sunny day no one was in any hurry. Ladies paraded in their long waisted gowns and hooped skirts, arching round the Green like a shimmering rainbow. Some young women wore silken plaids. Many older ladies still clung to the fashion of wearing lace ‘screens’ or mantillas gracefully draped over their heads. Others favoured wig decorations of long curling feathers or beads or bows or brooches or a mixture of all of these things. Their male companions vied with them in peacock splendour in their different patterns and colours of silk and satin and velvet.
Ramsay cantered past his son Douglas and noticed he was dressed with even more style than usual. He sported bright pink satin damask embroidered in green and gold. He carried a muff and had long ribbons fluttering from each wrist. His wife swept along by his side with her head in the air and their maid walked behind them carrying the new baby. Both Douglas and Griselle seemed very stiff-faced and anything but happy. Ramsay wondered if they had been quarrelling. However, he did not stop to find out. In fact, after favouring them with only a curt sign of recognition, he encouraged his horse into a trot and soon left them far behind. He was impatient to get back to the house. He regretted having brought both servants with him. It was only right and proper that they should have had the spiritual benefits of the Reverend Blackadder’s sermon but afterwards somebody should have stayed in the house in case Annabella came.
But when they all returned she was still not there.
The celebrations were getting under way. Fiddlers were beginning to play in the streets. The atmosphere was quickening. Bells were being rung.
‘Aye, lads,’ Ramsay addressed Big John and Gav, ‘ye’ll be wanting to go out and join in a’ the excitement, I suppose.’
Gav agreed but without much enthusiasm. It was not the celebrations he was thinking about. Decisions had to be made and the future settled once and for all. He needed to talk to both Regina and Quin.
Big John gloomily shook his head. ‘I’ll wait here for Nancy.’
‘Aye, weel, on you go, Gav. But be careful and no’ be getting drunk or into any trouble. My ships will be sailing verra soon and I’m expecting you to be ready to leave on one of them.’
Regina was lodging in a tavern in Saltmarket Street, the same one in which Cameron of Lochiel had stayed in while the Highland army had been in Glasgow. Gav determined to make for there first and discuss with her what ought to be done. But again Quin accosted him on the stairs.
Gav sighed.
‘I wish you’d leave me alone just now. I’m worried about what’s going to happen to Regina—or Reggie, as she says we’ve to call her now. She’s in terrible trouble.’
‘Oh-ho—Reggie looked in fine fettle to Quin.’
‘She’s afraid of Mistress Annabella finding her. That’s why she’s pretending she’s a lad. She says she’s stolen all those clothes and things, but worse,’ he hesitated and could hardly lift his gaze to meet Quin, ‘she had the mistress’s Frenchie killed.’
‘Oh-ho, now there’ll be fun, eh?’
‘What would Mistress Annabella do to her, Quin?’
‘March her over to the Tolbooth to be hangit. Or kill her herself. Aye, Quin thinks that Mistress Annabella would kill Reggie herself and no’ be very dainty aboot it either.’
‘I’m going to talk to Regin … Reggie now.’
‘Quin’s coming.’
‘It’s too dangerous for you. You’ll be hanged too if you’re seen.’
‘Quin’ll dodge aboot.’
In exasperation Gav stamped away.
In the tavern Regina was sitting near the door with a stoup of ale and when she saw Quin hovering behind Gav she said:
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘Look, Reg … Reggie, we’ll have to decide what’s to be done.
Regina finished up her ale and swaggered out. ‘With him?’
‘With us all. The maister’s ships are due to sail any day and I’m supposed to be on one of them.’
Quin’s head cocked to one side and his face screwed up as he followed them along Saltmarket Street and round by the Cross.
‘Quin’s no’ verra pleased.’
Ignoring him, Gav continued to address Regina: ‘Could you not come with me? You don’t need to go as an indentured servant. If you’ve plenty of money as you say, you could pay for your own passage to Virginia. Then at least we’d be together.’
‘What would I do in Virginia?’
‘I don’t know, but surely there would be something. Maister Ramsay’s got stores.’
‘Quin’s no’ verra pleased.’
Regina turned on him. ‘Go away! We don’t want you any more.’
‘But Quin’s yer faither!’
Gav put a hand on Quin’s arm and was distressed to discover it was violently trembling.
‘We’re just worried in case the bailies see you, Quin. Away you go outside the town until it’s dark. Tonight or tomorrow morning, whenever I can, I’ll come down the stairs with something for you to eat and maybe some money.’
‘Quin’s no’ verra pleased.’
‘Go on. I don’t want you to get hanged.’
He trotted away rubbing his ear and his hair spiking out.
Gav said: ‘You didn’t need to be nasty to him.’
‘Oh, who cares about that freak?’
‘I do.’
She shrugged and turned her attention to the noisy crowds now thronging round the Cross and along Trongate Street. On the landing of the outside stairs some of the magistrates were raising their glasses in a toast to the victors, but so great was the noise of revelry all around that no one could hear a word they shouted. Bells pealed, fiddles scraped, pipes skirled, people screeched and danced and laughed and drank and skittered delightedly about. Then to add to the hullabaloo there came a deafening discharge of muskets from a detachment of the town’s regiment.
Approaching the town from the western side, Annabella and Nancy heard the uproar and could not imagine what the cause might be. Nancy had dismounted and was walking alongside Annabella, who sat astride the horse. As they plodded along the country lane nearer and nearer the Shawfield Mansion and the beginnings of the Trongate, they could not believe their eyes and ears.
‘Gracious heavens!’ Annabella gasped. ‘Have they all gone stark raving mad?’
Noise filled the air, deafened, stunned them. Every person in Glasgow it seemed had completely abandoned restraint and decorum. Even Letitia Halyburton was out dancing in the streets. Then Annabella’s attention was caught by a figure sitting alone on the road close to the wall of the Shawfield Mansion. He was hugging his knees and hiding his face down in his lap.
‘Quin?’ Annabella shouted. ‘Is that Quin?’
Immediately he scrambled to his feet and, seeing who called, jogged towards her.
‘Aye, mistress, it’s Quin.’
She stared curiously at him for a minute. His face was wet as if he had been weeping. Eventually with a flap of her hand she said:
‘What is the meaning of this noise and commotion?’
Quin scratched his head. ‘They tell Quin they’ve killed thoosands o’ Heelanders. But Quin hasn’t seen them getting hangit for it.’
Annabella stared round at Nancy.
‘Pox on them! They’re celebrating Culloden.’
They moved into the joyful, riotous throng and were immediately jostled and pushed and manhandled. Men struggled to pull Nancy away and she clung to the side of the horse and for the first time began to weep. Stumbling along with her face buried against Annabella’s leg, her wailing became louder and louder.
‘Be quiet, you stupid bitch!’ Annabella shouted. ‘Get up here beside me.’ She gave her a hand and hauled her on to the horse. Then she smashed her foot into the face of one of the men who had been pawing at Nancy before kicking the horse’s flanks and yelling it on.
In the path of Annabella’s horse people’s laughter rapidly changed to screams of panic as they were knocked down and kicked and trampled. From one of the lantern windows Ramsay caught sight of the wild approach of his daughter with a mixture of absolute joy and utter horror. Men and women, most of them too drunk to leap out of the way, were being hurt.
He kept watching, hypnotised by the shocking sight, not only of the injured but of the skirts hitched up to reveal bare legs and thighs, the torn bodice showing flashes of shoulder and bosom, the streaming yellow hair, the beautiful untamed face. He was still standing at the window when his daughter strode into the room. It radiated to life the moment she entered it. Ramsay was so overcome with emotion he could have sobbed out loud. She was his torment, his pride, his shame, his sorrow, his overwhelming, delirious delight.
She tossed her head and looked him straight in the eye.
‘Well, Papa, aren’t you mightily glad to see me?’
‘You’ve ruined that horse,’ he said.
‘Fiddlesticks! Big John will see to him. I’m devilish hungry. I haven’t eaten for a prodigiously long time.’
‘Eat then. I’m away to meet my freends at the tavern. I’ll be back in time for the reading. Do you hear me, mistress?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
Glowering, his head thrust forward and his hands thumping behind his back, he strode past her and out of the house.
He was too early for his other merchant colleagues but the captains of his ships were waiting in the tavern and soon they had decided that the next day the Mary Heron and The Glasgow Lass would set sail for Virginia. Shortly afterwards, when through the tavern window Ramsay noticed Gav among the crowd, he sent the tavern-keeper to tell him so that he could be prepared. Then later when Captains Daidles and Kilfuddy were leaving he noticed Gav and a well-dressed young fellow accosting the captains and addressing them very earnestly. He wondered who the well-dressed young fellow was, but the arrival of his friends put Gav and the stranger out of his head.
The Earl of Glendinny, the Reverend Blackadder, the Earl of Locheid, Andrew Cochrane and Willie Halyburton were all out to celebrate and were in a suitably happy and expansive frame of mind. Ramsay felt that now he too had something to be happy about and entered the evening’s festivities with unusual gusto. Before a few drinks had passed he was thumping the table and shouting.
‘Drink up, gentlemen. I give you good King Geordie!’
‘God bless him!’ The Reverend Blackadder’s eyes rolled back with the whisky.
Willie Halyburton thumped the table and stamped his feet.
‘The Duke of Cumberland!’
‘Sweet William, God bless him.’ The Reverend Blackadder’s elbow heaved up and down again.
At the cue of ‘Sweet William’ they at once burst into the Whig ditty in praise of Cumberland and loudly and lustily they sang it.
‘From scourging rebellion and baffling proud France,
Crowned with laurels, behold British William advance,
His triumphs to grace and distinguish the day,
The sun brighter shines and all nature looks gay.
Your glasses charge high, ‘tis in brave William’s praise,
To his glory your voices, to his glory your voices,
To his glory your voices and instruments raise.
In his train see sweet peace, fairest child of the sky,
Every bliss in her smile, every charm in her eye,
While the worst foe to man, that dire fiend Civil War,
Gnashing horrid his teeth, comes fast bound to her care.
Your glasses charge high, ‘tis in brave William’s praise,
To his glory your voices, to his glory your voices,
To his glory your voices and instruments raise.’
Even the Earl of Locheid joined in the singing, but in a canny way, chewing at the words with his eyes closed and when he laughed, and he laughed a lot as the evening’s carousal proceeded, it was carefully contained, with arms pressing against the sides of his chest and his lips primly closed. All his life he had been a neat and canny man and no matter how drunk, he had never been known either to splutter or to spill one drop of whisky.
Ramsay, by this time very drunk indeed, began to roar out another song.
There’s nowhere a land so fair,
As in Virginia,
So full of song, so free from care,
As in Virginia,
And I believe that happy land,
The Lord’s prepared for mortal man,
Is built exactly on the plan,
Of old Virginia.’
They all cheered his rendering and his sentiments and joined with him in a second rousing chorus.
Bottle after bottle of whisky appeared on the table, was emptied and knocked aside. Wigs slipped askew, coats hung loosely from sagging shoulders and feet flopped and fumbled up on top of the table.
Only the Earl of Locheid remained neatly sitting upright, his bony fingers curled round his glass like a vulture’s claw.
Willie Halyburton swayed nearer to the Earl and peered close to his face.
‘Locheid’s looking verra pale.’
‘Och, that’s no’ surprising,’ said the Reverend Blackadder. ‘I noticed him passing ower to the other side to his Maker aboot an hour ago but I didn’t like to interrupt the proceedings.’
‘Aye, and would you look at that,’ Ramsay said in admiration. ‘He’s never spilled a drop.’
It was now dark outside and all round the Cross in Trongate Street and High Street and Gallowgate Street and Saltmarket Street bonfires blazed and people were carousing and singing and dancing and making love. Lanterns hung from public buildings and every window in the city was illuminated with candles. All through the night the celebrations went on until daylight came and with it hissing swishing rain to douse the fires and send people scattering home.
It was early morning when Gav saw Quin and gave him some bannocks and a lump of cheese and a silver coin he had persuaded from Regina.
‘Where were you last night?’ he asked. ‘I looked on the stairs for you. Were you out at the celebrations?’
Quin rubbed his ear.
‘Auld Nick says to Quin, says he, “It’s time you were visiting your mither and faither.” ’
‘You went out to the Gallow Moor in the dark?’
‘Quin knows the way.’
‘Regina and I are riding to Port Glasgow. I’m on my way to meet her now. She’s bought a passage to Virginia. After seeing Mistress Annabella ride into the town, she decided the further she was away from her the better.’
Quin cocked his head. ‘Gavie’s no’ going to Virginia.’
‘I don’t want to be a beggar all my life, Quin, and there’s work for me in Virginia.’
‘Gavie’s no going away.’
Gav squashed downstairs, with Quin jogging after him, rubbing his torn ear and scratching his head and agitating all over.
Big John had the horses saddled up in the back yard. Ramsay had instructed him to ride with Gav to the ship, then bring back his horse. By the time Big John and Gav had mounted, Regina came cantering in to join them.
They grouped together, the horses turning and snorting and restlessly pawing the ground.
Regina said: ‘What the hell are we waiting for?’
Gav looked down at Quin. He was sure he had never, and would never again see anyone so ugly in all his life.
‘What’ll you do?’ he asked in a small voice.
‘Who cares?’ Regina said.
‘You shut your mouth!’ Gav cried brokenly. ‘Shut your cruel wicked mouth.’
To his horror he could see tears spurting from Quin’s one eye and smearing down through the dirt of his face.
Regina said: ‘Good God, I didn’t know you could cry.’
‘Weel, you know noo,’ said Quin, and jogged away as fast as he could with his coat-tails and hair flying.
Gav turned on Regina.
‘I hate you.’
She shrugged.
‘The harder you hate, the better it’ll be for you. You’ll only get hurt if you’re soft. It’s a cruel world. Well? Are you going to Virginia or are you not?’
Without another word they guided their horses out of the close and as they passed the Gross to go along Trongate Street, Gav looked back towards the Gallowgate and saw Quin still flying away towards the Gallow Moor crossroads and his ‘mither and faither’. It reminded Gav, as his horse clip-clopped away in the opposite direction, that his mother also lay at that lonely crossroads and the pain and tightness in his chest grew unbearable. He spurred his horse on and the other two followed until soon they had left Glasgow far behind them. He wondered if he would ever see it again and now having left it perhaps for ever, it became dear to him for the very first time. The tall tenements, the arched piazzas, the plainstanes, the silver spires, even the back closes stinking with fulzie and the crowded turnpike stairs, etched a warm and urgent and never to be forgotten picture in his memory of home.
He thought of it, saw it in his mind’s eye when later he stood on the deck of The Glasgow Lass as its sails billowed out and the old ship groaned and creaked away.
Regina stood beside him in her three-cornered hat and smart cutaway coat, waistcoat and breeches. Her face was a stiff mask in which her green eyes smouldered. But the thumb of one hand was nonchalantly latched in her waistcoat pocket and the other hand rested easily on her sword.
Gav wore smart new clothes too. They looked like a couple of young bucks to be reckoned with. And despite his sadness Gav felt, as he was sure his sister felt too, the first stirrings of excitement as they set off for their strange adventure in a new land.