Bonnie Dundee Page 5

  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.

  5

  The Dutch Painter

  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.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’d not have been like to see him again in any case; and as for leaving these parts – ’twas in my mind to be ’listing for a sojer anyways, in a year or two.’

  She smiled, ‘Then come with me for the year or two.’

  ‘I’d like that fine,’ I said, ‘just fine, my lady.’

  She kept me there a while longer, asking about my grandfather and the like; and all the while I could hear the bustle of an arrival in the stable-yard. I did wonder if it was Claverhouse himself, but he came more quietly as a rule. And then just as I was going, Mistress Ruthven came into the garden on flying feet, that pretty soft hair of hers bursting out from under her cap – her caps always seemed too big for her, like huge white cambric columbine flowers half quenching her small brown face. But this time the brownness of her face was flushed with foxglove pink, and her eyes dancing.

  ‘The painter-chiel who is to make your wedding portrait is come,’ said she. ‘He looks like a wee yellow toad perched up on top of the post-horse, and him with a great curled red peruke on the top, fine enough for a six-foot gentleman! Do you suppose he’s a prince in disguise?’

  And I heard their laughter skirling behind me as I went out and back to the stable-yard.

  And though I did not know it at the time, that, the coming of the Dutch painter, was the third of the three things that were to play a part in the shaping of my life.

  Mynheer Cornelius van Meere, that was his name, did indeed look somewhat like a toad under the monstrous curled red peruke; and as long and lean as he was short and squat, was Johannes his apprentice, a wey-faced sulky-seeming callant, with the red rash on his cheeks and chin that plagues some of us when our beards first begin to sprout; aye, an odd looking couple. They were both still in the stable-yard when I got back to it, the apprentice unloading the bundles and cases of painting gear from the pack pony that carried it, while the master stood by to see it done, for clearly he would trust none of the grooms to touch it.

  The two post-horses were already being rubbed down, and the pack pony fell to my lot when the weary little brute was finally unloaded. And meanwhile both the newcomers were swept away by the steward, and that was the last we saw of them for a while.

  But we heard. As I have said, we heard most things in the stable-yard.

  Cornelius van Meere had taken over the Little Dining-room for his workshop. I had never seen it, of course, but I had heard it was a bonnie room, with walls covered in tooled and gilded leather; and I could see in my mind’s eye how that would cast warm reflected lights on to my lady’s face, whether from the sun or from the candles. And I could see in my mind’s eye also how that long spotty apprentice would be tacking the primed canvas over the four stretcher bars, and driving in the corner wedges until the tightened canvas sounded like a drum under the flat of his hand, and how he would be setting out the boiled oil and working up the rough-ground pigments. And all the old memories of my years with my father woke in me, and I fair itched to be in that little chamber and setting a hand to the work.

  And then the painting started, and of course my lady Jean had less time than ever for the stables or the garden. At first, seemingly, it had been intended that it should be a great wedding portrait, with the groom in it as well as the bride, and him in his fine new scarlet coat – for the Government had lately ordered red coats to replace the old hodden grey for the Scottish regiments, all save the Dragoons. But the countryside was still not at its quietest, and Claverhouse had no time for the sittings, and so it was just my lady Jean.

  So it went on for two—three days; and then Mynheer had the need for a fresh supply of black oil. As you know well enough, the black oil does not keep for long, whether it be oil of poppy-seed such as I myself use now, along with most painters here in the Low Countries, or linseed and walnut boiled together; and so a travelling painter will carry with him only enough to start the work, and bid his monkey – his apprentice – to boil up more for him as it is needed. And as you will know also, for I have warned you often enough, the boiling is a dangerous process, and never if possible to be undertaken within doors.

  Between the kitchen quarters and a postern door to the stable-yard was a small well-court which seemed finely suited to the purpose; and there the small charcoal fire was made and the iron pot set over it, and Johannes got to work with the raw linseed and walnut oil.

  I contrived to have some horse gear to polish, so that I could wander out to the door of the tack-room
as I worked, and catch a glimpse of the doings in the well-court; for I was fair fascinated; drawn to what was going forward as by a kind of homesickness.

  Johannes was feeding the little charcoal fire with care, piece by piece, peering the while into the fire-darkened pot; but it seemed to me, even so, that he had too much attention to spare also for the world about him. The black oil when it passes the boil and draws on towards flaming point is kittle stuff, and not to be left unwatched for a single whisper of time. My father had taught me that before I was ten years old.

  Well, I never did see just what happened, for I had my own work to do as well; but kind of out of the top of my head I was aware that one of the kitchen lassies had come out to draw water from the well, and there was a chit-chat of voices; and I am thinking that Johannes (did I not say his beard was sprouting?) took his attention from the black oil at just the wrong moment, to give it to the lassie.

  Next instant there was a terrified yell, and the lassie screeching and the clatter of the pot lid, and the black oil going up in a belch of flame, and Johannes staggering back from it, crying out like a lassie himself and with his hands clapped to his face.

  I flung aside the headstall I was polishing, and ran. Folks were running from all over. Someone had Johannes on the ground and was beating out his hair that was on fire; and someone else – I never saw who – had snatched up the full bucket of water and was making to throw it over the blazing oil. I shouted ‘Leave be! I ken what to do!’ and fended him off with the flat of my hand in his face as one fends off an opponent at hurley, and caught up the pot lid from where Johannes had dropped it. I mind the savage blast of heat, and the oil-smoke choking me, and then I had the lid slammed on, and the flame and stink cut off; and I swung the pot aside from the charcoal fire.