The Betrayal of Maggie Blair

Chapter 18

The birth of my little cousin Andrew was quite different from that of Ebenezer Macbean. There were no wild clouds racing across the moonlit sky, no drunken Granny to curse and stumble, no furious rages, on the one hand, or plaintive, weak cries, on the other. And, of course, there were no mumbled charms around the fire. My aunt, so particular in all her ways, had everything ready.

Ritchie must have run all the way to fetch Mistress Barbour from Barnaigh, because she was back almost at once. She was a round-faced woman, sober and clean. I took the little girls into the rarely used best room, wrapped them in a plaid, and sang them to sleep. Grizel, unconcerned, was already snoring in a corner. Then I opened the shutter at the window and leaned out.

It was a calm evening. The sun had set, but a late glow of red blushed across the sky, casting glory on the land. From the barn nearby, I could hear the cows chewing their cud and a snuffling sound as my uncle's horse blew the dust out of his nostrils. From the next room came Mistress Barbour's quiet, encouraging voice and the occasional groan from my aunt.

Why am I not happy ? I thought. Why am I so restless? Why do I still feel like a stranger here?

Baby Andrew's first cry was more like a bellow than the mewing that was all Ebenezer had managed. I heard the outer door squeak open as Uncle Blair, who must have been waiting outside, hurried in to see his new son. I wanted to go myself, but I thought, They won't want me in there. I'm not really one of them.

Uncle Blair was praying now. I could hear the familiar rise and fall of his special worship voice. Then there was a splashing of water, Mistress Barbour's voice crooning, and the baby's shocked scream.

For the first time since I'd been at Ladymuir, I felt a pang of regret for Granny. But the very thought of her brought a prickling to my scalp at the memory of her cruelty and her violent rages.

It's better here. I'm better here, I thought, pulling in the shutter to close off the starlit darkness that had blotted out the splendor of the evening sky.

I lay down on the floor beside the little girls, tired out. I didn't miss the closed-in bed, the loose nightgown, the springy heather, the smooth linen sheet, and the soft pillow. It was almost a relief to lie as I always had done, on the hard floor in my day clothes with my head resting on my arm. I slept better that night, I think, than I had for a long time.

When I woke, I was alone. Voices and the clatter of pots came from the next room. I jumped up, smoothed my dress and hair, and opened the door.

"Maggie!" cried Martha, running forward to take my hand. "I've a wee brother! He's all red. Come and see!"

She began to drag me across the room. Uncle Blair was bending over the fire in the chimney place, coaxing heat from the peat. Ritchie was coming in from the yard outside, pink with effort, two heavy pails of water in his hands. Grizel was measuring meal ready for baking oatcakes. Nanny was curled up beside Aunt Blair in the opened cupboard bed, sucking her thumb and stroking her mother's arm. I felt a rush of love for them and a painful longing to be loved in turn, but they seemed far away from me and out of reach, even though the room was so small.

I stood beside the bed and looked down at my new baby cousin's crumpled face. He was already neatly dressed in a little gown with tucks along the front. His eyes were shut, but his mouth worked in and out as if he wanted to suck.

"He's beautiful," I said politely. "A lovely baby."

But I was thinking of Ebenezer, whom I'd only glimpsed a couple of times, but who had tugged at my heart and filled me with pity. This sturdy, noisy baby would never take his place.

Aunt Blair was plucking fretfully at the sheet.

"Maggie, be a good girl and bring a fresh sheet for my bed. And my new cap, dear, and knitted shawl. There'll be visitors coming and going all day." She looked over my shoulder at Grizel. "Fetch in the special cheese, and mind you sweep the floor well. Off you go now, Nanny, and let Martha tidy you up. I'll not have the good folks see us all in a mess."

She shut her eyes and let her head fall back, and I saw how pale she was and how tired.

***

Visitors did indeed come throughout the long day: other farmers from the lands nearby, my uncle's own few tenants from the cottages near the lane, and even some townsfolk from Kilmacolm. Aunt Blair's orders became shrill as she grew ever more weary.

Grizel had been right. There was too much work for one girl at Ladymuir, and with Aunt Blair slow to recover from the birth, Grizel and I were busy now from morning till night. Aunt lay in her cupboard bed, the doors thrown open, and issued her commands, while Grizel and I ran about, trying to satisfy her.

Martha had become attached to me, and she followed me like a shadow, towing Nanny in her wake. I didn't mind.

"Listen to me reading, Maggie," Martha would say. "I'm really good at it now."

"Lift not your soul up unto vanity," Uncle Blair would say reproachfully if he heard her, but his fond proud look would belie his words and Martha took no notice of him. She laid the great Bible on the table and began to read wherever the pages fell open.

"And—it—came—to—pass—in—those—days..."she would intone, underlining the words with her little finger. I would frown down at the page too, trying to make sense of the black marks that scrawled like insects across the page.

"Look, Maggie. That's a p, and that's a b."

Her blue eyes stared earnestly up at me.

She was a good teacher, that little Martha. I was soon picking out the letters myself, and then the words, and my reading wasn't far behind hers.

It was well into December before Aunt Blair was able to drag herself out of bed, and plowing was under way in the long strip fields below the house. Grizel and I worked till our fingers were red and raw, and when Sundays came, I reveled in the rest, finding it hard to stay awake during my uncle's hourlong prayers. He and Ritchie went twice more out onto the moors for secret meetings with the old minister, Mr. Alexander, but there were no more skirmishes with the king's troops.

"When will Andrew be christened, Aunt?" I said one morning, watching Aunt Blair listlessly put the baby to her breast.

I wished I hadn't spoken then, because a frown of worry creased her forehead.

"Oh, I don't know! Don't ask me, please!"

Luckily, her eye fell on my apron, soiled from carrying peat in for the fire.

"Look at you, Maggie! What if someone should come to call?"

That very afternoon, a visitor did come. He announced himself with a loud rapping on the door and opened the latch without being invited in. I'd never seen Mr. Irving, the minister of Kilmacolm before, but I knew who it was from the style of his black coat, his tall hat, and the two white bands that fell from his collar.

"Good day, mistress," he said frostily to Aunt Blair. "Rumor has spoken right, I see. There's a new child born to this house. And why have you not brought him to the kirk to be christened?"

Aunt Blair, unprepared for this assault, lifted Andrew up to her shoulder and began to pat his back.

"Because, Mr. Irving," said Uncle Blair, who had come into the house behind the minister, making him jump at the sound of his voice, "my wife is still not yet recovered from the birth, and the walk to Kilmacolm is too far for her."

"You have a horse, man!" said Mr. Irving. "Take her on your horse!"

Uncle Blair didn't deign to answer but moved to the fireplace and stood in front of it, his arms crossed. Ritchie had appeared too. He took up his place in front of his mother, as if he was protecting her.

There was tense silence.

"You are in breach of the law, Mr. Blair!" Mr. Irving burst out. "You have not attended the kirk for many weeks past, as you are duty bound to do."

"My duty, sir, is to the Lord my God, and him only do I serve," Uncle Blair said magnificently. He was the second member of my family whom I had witnessed seeing off a minister, and I must admit he was more effective than Granny had been.

Mr. Irving paused, but then with a wave of his arm he swept my uncle's words aside.

"You consort with traitors!" Color was rising in his pale cheeks. "You and the other renegades in this benighted parish. You have been seen out on the moss! Taking part in unlawful worship! With the criminal Alexander!"

"Mr. Alexander isn't a criminal!" Ritchie said hotly. "He's our real minister. You're just a..."

Uncle Blair silenced him with a look while Mr. Irving wagged a furious finger at him.

"You are leading your own children, your son, into the ways of wickedness! I'm warning you, Hugh Blair, that if you do not bring this child to be christened according to the rites laid down by our lawful bishops..."

It was too much for Uncle Blair.

"Bishops?" he thundered. "Rascals set over us by a treacherous king! How dare you, Mr. Irving? How dare you threaten me with your bishops! I am a Presbyterian, do you hear? I'll have nothing to do with bishops!"

"Hugh, please, Hugh, don't!" Aunt Blair's voice was no more than a bleat, but it pulled my uncle up short. Mr. Irving smiled with horrid satisfaction.

"Ha! Aha! You have spoken treason, Hugh Blair. You leave me with no choice. No choice! If this child is not in the kirk next Sabbath day, I myself shall ride to Paisley and report you to the captain of the king's troops. The fine will make you change your mind. I assure you, you are not going to like the fine. One whole year's income from a farm such as this. I would think. We'll see then what you have to say. We'll hear you talk so rudely then about our gracious King Charles and his chosen bishops."

***

Grizel and I heard voices from my uncle and aunt's bed until late that night. She was pleading with him, I could tell. He was urging her to be defiant. It was hard to know the next morning which of them had won the argument. Uncle Blair went out to his work on the farm with his normal calm demeanor, but Aunt Blair sang the morning psalm with more than her usual warmth. "Thy loving kindness to show forth, When shines the morning light..." she caroled, while Grizel and I exchanged puzzled looks.

Saturday evening brought a positive frenzy of clothes brushing and linen smoothing.

"So we are going to the kirk tomorrow morning?" I asked Ritchie, who seemed to spend all his time out on the farm with the men and was making a rare appearance in the kitchen. He was usually shy with me, blushing when our eyes met, but this time he nodded eagerly and his smile was mischievous.

"Yes. So is everyone in the parish. You'll see how it will be."

He wouldn't say more but relapsed into his usual bashful silence.

It was a long walk into Kilmacolm, but I didn't mind. I liked seeing new views and new faces. The morning was cold, with ice crackling on the puddles and frost riming every blade of grass. Many families were streaming into the village from the small farms all around. I noticed how few men there were, and how many women, each of whom seemed to have a baby in her arms. Older children staggered along with their toddler brothers and sisters in their arms.

The bell was ringing as the kirk tower came into view. There was already a crowd around the door, and though no one would have been indecent enough to call out noisily or laugh out loud on the Sabbath day, there was an atmosphere of mirth, with nods and winks between the women.

Everyone was wearing shoes and looked fine in their Sunday best. I had carried my shoes until we were almost at the church and only remembered to put them on when Nanny whined for me to pick her up and I needed both my hands. The shoes pinched my feet, but I was pleased to be seen in them. I even enjoyed the clatter they made on the kirk's stone floor.

Uncle Blair had brought folding stools for him and my aunt, and he set them up right in front of the pulpit. Ritchie stayed standing by the door with the other young men. Glancing back at them, I had the oddest feeling that they were forming some kind of guard, though none of them seemed to be armed. Grizel and I sat down on the floor, and Martha climbed into my lap at once, annoying Nanny, who tried to push her away. I could see a storm was brewing between them, and I looked to my aunt for help, but she was rocking Andrew, who was wanting to be fed and grizzling fretfully.

A bustle at the door made everyone look around. Mr. Irving, the minister, was clearly used to his church being empty on a Sunday, and he had halted in astonishment at the sight of people jammed in from wall to wall. A smile of triumph split his gaunt face, and he stalked up to the pulpit.

"You have repented of your sins!" he boomed. "Repented, I say! Your necks, stiffened in treason, have come at last to bow beneath the..." He seemed to lose the thread of what he was saying, as Nanny, infuriated by Martha, swiped at her, unluckily hitting her in the eye, so that Martha howled with pain and rage.

Mr. Irving glared at me, making me tremble with embarrassment.

"Control these children of Beelzebub, or remove them from this place," he snapped. I scrambled to my feet, but Uncle Blair shook his head at me.

"Stay where you are, Maggie. Never mind the children," and to my astonishment he winked at me, his face alight with amusement, before turning to look up innocently again at the minister, who was now struggling to pull a long roll of paper from the pocket of his coat. In his haste, he tore it, and as he tried to hold the pieces together, I could see that he was becoming nervous.

Martha and Nanny were brawling now in an all-out, hair-pulling, nail-scratching fight, and baby Andrew, hungry and upset by the noise, was drawing in a shuddering breath as he built up to a full scream. I was red-faced with shame for them all, but then I realized that the same little scenes were going on all around the church. Small children, unrestrained for once by their parents and inspired by the rowdiness of Martha and Nanny, were quarreling and crying and running about. Not a single baby appeared to have been fed that morning, and they were all screaming in protest. Mr. Irving succeeded at last in holding up his paper. He stood, a stiff black pillar of a man, and began to read.

"For non-attendance at the kirk, Barbour of Barnaigh is fined twenty pounds. Fleming of Whinnerstone..."

The noise was now so terrible that I couldn't hear him, close as I was, and I only knew that he was still speaking by the way his lips were moving. A poppy-red flush of rage was spreading up his neck into his cheeks, and his eyes looked as if they would pop out.

Suddenly, he threw down his paper and slammed his fists down on the edge of the pulpit, making a bang so loud that even the hungriest babies were startled into a moment's silence.

"Quiet, I say! I will have quiet! I will have silence in the house of the Lord!"

But the babies were already screaming again, as if the moment's pause had increased their strength. Mr. Irving took out a large handkerchief and mopped his forehead.

"Mr. Blair," he said, leaning right down from the pulpit and shouting in my uncle's face, "for decency's sake, sir, these people all respect you. Do something! This riot is blasphemous. The Devil is among us!"

"Of course, Mr. Irving, for decency's sake," said my uncle, nodding enthusiastically. He stood up, turned his back to the minister, and put up his hands to call for silence.

"Neighbors! Friends!" he bawled. "Jesus said, 'Let the little children come unto me,' and I say, teach them to do what's right, for decency's sake!"

Behind his back, Mr. Irving was nodding, but I could see what he could not. There was a broad, encouraging grin on my uncle's face, and he was winking again, at one grinning mother after another.

"Well, Mr. Irving, carry on with your duty," he said, turning back to face the minister, then settling himself down on his stool again. "But you'll never get far with that list of yours. Best to proceed to a psalm, don't you think? The singing will quiet the little ones."

Without waiting for the minister's permission he began to sing, in his rich bass voice:

"All people that on earth do dwell,

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice..."





The women began to sing with him, as loudly as they could, but they sang all in a different key, out of time and out of tune. Their voices cracked with the effort, and they kept their faces straight with difficulty as the noise in the little church, bouncing back off the stone walls, grew so terrible that I had to clap my hands over my ears.

Mr. Irving's face had gone from red to white.

"Enough, I say! You generation of vipers! Enough!"

"But the psalm, Mr. Irving, you cannot stop us from singing the psalm," bellowed my uncle.

For a long moment, Mr. Irving stared at him, scarcely able to control the shaking that convulsed him. Then he stumbled down from his pulpit and, pushing through the throng of women and children, fled to the door. Ritchie and the other young men, standing solidly together, bowed low as he approached, so low, in fact, that they blocked his way. He hit out at them with his hat and fists, and then he was through them and gone, his long black legs carrying him at a gallop back to the safety of his manse.

"Martha! Nanny! Stop that at once!" Aunt Blair shouted, glaring at the little girls as she jiggled the now-hysterical Andrew up and down against her shoulder. "I've never been so ashamed in my life!"

But Uncle Blair had picked up his daughters and, sitting with one on each broad knee, he kissed their tears and rage away.

"The Lord spoke out of the mouths of babes," he said. "Take the poor wee man outside and feed him, Isobel, before he cries himself into a fit."

The church was emptying fast. Outside, there was a most un-Sabbath-like atmosphere of festival as the excited children were allowed, for once, to run around the churchyard. The women, settling themselves on gravestones, unbuttoned their gowns to feed their squalling babies, and the men, their laughter now over, talked in small urgent groups.

"Did you see the minister's face, Father?" Ritchie said eagerly, as we set off down the long lane toward home. "Stop lurching about like that, Nanny."

He shifted Nanny, who was riding on his shoulders. Nanny had not forgotten her quarrel with her sister and was leaning sideways to pinch Martha, who was sitting behind her mother on the horse.

"Of course I did." Uncle Blair allowed himself a crack of laughter, but then his tender conscience made him say, "It was a terrible thing to see, though, a man so humiliated. I almost felt sorry for him, instrument of the Evil One though he is."

"Sorry!" retorted Aunt Blair. "You'll be sorry when the Black Cuffs come and force you to pay the fine. A year's income! It means ruin for us, Hugh."

"Where's your faith, woman?" Uncle Blair said peaceably. "The Lord will provide. Look, Ritchie! There! A hawk! It's going to dive!"

He caught Ritchie's arm, and they stood still to watch the great bird fold its wings and plunge to the earth, to rise a moment later with a baby hare in its talons.

But I was watching my uncle and my cousin, and not the bird.

My father and I would have loved each other like that, I thought.

"Did you hear any news there in the churchyard, Father?" Ritchie asked in a low voice as we plodded on.

"About what, son?"

"The man. The preacher. Mr. Renwick."

The name meant nothing to me, and knowing that I wasn't meant to hear, I hurried on.

The early morning had been bright, but a bank of black clouds was building in the west, promising a storm. We could see rain fall in drifting curtains across the hills, coming ever nearer to us. Aunt Blair dug into the pony with her heels, and it broke into a reluctant trot, while the rest of us quickened our pace.

The rain struck as we branched off the lane onto the track for Ladymuir, and Grizel and I began to run, holding our plaids over our heads so that we could hardly see where we were going.

Puddles had already formed in the farmyard, and I was splashing through them, shoes in hand, when a well-known voice behind me called out, "Maidie, Maidie, don't run past your old friends!"

I whipped around and saw two figures standing in the shelter of the barn. Tam was holding his blue bonnet in his hands, his weak mouth open in a toothless smile, his eyes wet and pleading like a dog who is afraid of being kicked. And beside him, her head tilted to one side and a sweetly innocent smile curving her pretty mouth, stood Annie.