The Betrayal of Maggie Blair

Chapter 24

Of all the people at Ladymuir, I think I was best able to cope with the sudden, total poverty in which we had been plunged. Before I'd come to Kilmacolm, I'd lived on the edge of hunger all my life. On the many, many days when there had been no food in the cottage at Scalpsie Bay, I'd scavenged for limpets on the rocks by the sea, gathered berries or nuts in the autumn, and picked edible leaves and flowers wherever I could find them. But the spring, I knew, was the worst time for famine. Everyone's winter supplies were low, there were no wild fruits to gather, and the crops were a long way from harvest.

I did what I could, stinging my hands raw and red with nettles to make soup and hunting for birds' eggs on the moss. Aunt Blair wrinkled her nose at my offerings but used them all the same. She was more grateful for the stream of gifts of oatmeal and barley and even valuable cheeses from those kind neighbors whose stores had not been raided, and I saw more than ever how greatly Granny had caused us to suffer by her endless quarreling with our neighbors.

The officers from Paisley came a few days after Uncle Blair had been arrested in order to collect the fine for nonattendance at the kirk. Although we'd been expecting them, we'd hoped somehow that my uncle's arrest would have spared us, and the shock of the sum they demanded was a final blow.

They were decent men, I suppose, not like Lieutenant Dundas's dragoons. They counted out the silver pieces so carefully put by in the strongbox, piled them neatly on the table, and gave my aunt a written receipt.

"There's another two pounds owing," the older man said, almost regretfully. "Do you not have it, Mistress Blair?"

My aunt's eyes filled with tears. She shook her head.

"You've taken every penny we have. It's all there, in front of you. How am I to feed my children?"

"You should have thought of that before you broke the law," the other man said. "What harm would it have done, to sit through a sermon or two? You needn't have listened, after all." The older one frowned him to silence.

"There's nothing I can do. I'm just carrying out my orders. I'm sorry for your trouble. These are bad times for everyone. There's not a household hereabouts that isn't suffering. The jails in Paisley and Glasgow are so full of Covenant men—and women, come to that—that they've had to send some of them on to the tolbooth in Edinburgh."

"What?" Aunt Blair cried. "What about my husband? I was told he was in Glasgow. Is he one of them? Why would they send him all the way to Edinburgh? Oh, they're going to hang him! There'll be a trial and the next thing we know ... Lord, have mercy on us!"

"Hold on, mistress. I don't know if your husband's one of them. It's no use asking me. I'm just telling you what I heard. Some have been hanged already, but you'd have heard if your husband was one of them. Some are to be kept in Glasgow, and some are sent on to Edinburgh."

Aunt Blair collapsed onto her stool and looked so dreadful that I thought she would faint. The officers clearly thought so too. They exchanged quick, embarrassed nods, slipped the silver pieces into leather pouches, and almost tiptoed to the door.

"We'll not bother you for the rest of the money now," the older one said, as if conferring a great concession. "But we'll have to come back for it, mistress. The fine must be paid in full, as you well know."

At that point Ritchie, who had been out since dawn doing the work of two men on the farm, came into the yard, and the officers scuttled away.

***

I have always been amazed by how fast news travels from one end of Scotland to the other, reaching remote farms and hamlets, spreading out from towns, and drifting across the mountains and firths and lochs like thistledown blowing in the wind. By the evening of that day, we were reeling from the news that my uncle had indeed been among the group of prisoners taken to Edinburgh.

"It's because he was with Mr. Renwick," said Dandy Fleming, who had come all the way over from Whinnerston carrying an offering of a meal, with the kind compliments of his mother. "Anyone connected with such a great preacher is given special treatment. All the important ones have been taken off to Edinburgh."

He spoke as if this ought to be a matter of pride.

"Edinburgh!" Aunt Blair repeated faintly.

I'd heard of Edinburgh, of course. I knew that it was a place of power, where lairds and kings and great men of all kinds sat in state, sending out cruel decrees to tax and persecute the poor people of Scotland. Tam had been there once, playing his pipes for money. He'd told me stories that I hardly believed about buildings so tall they reached to the sky, and nobles wearing velvet and silk. He'd managed to stay for a month or more, his earnings keeping him fed and constantly drunk, and then he'd been taken up as a vagabond and thrown out of the city.

I shivered at the thought of Uncle Blair being imprisoned in such a dreadful place. I felt again the kindness of his hand gripping mine as he'd sat so calmly on the top of Windyhill, waiting for the dragoons to come up and take him away. A lump came into my throat as I remembered the affection in his voice.

"What's the news of Mr. Renwick?" asked Ritchie. "He got away all right, didn't he?"

"Aye." Dandy grinned. "He skipped across to Dunoon. What a man! There's no danger that stops him. It was a good job you did that day, Maggie. Ritchie's been boasting of you right and left, how you sent the dragoons off on the wrong track."

I was unused to praise, and it warmed me through.

It was only later, as I went down to the stream with buckets to fill, that I let rise to the surface a kind of resentment that had begun to grow in my head.

It's all very well for Mr. Renwick. He doesn't have a family or a farm to lose. It must be a kind of adventure for him.

And then I remembered how the young preacher had sent me reeling with the glow of his smile, and how his presence had seemed to light the room, and his words had penetrated my heart and quivered there. What was it he'd said? "His banner over me was love, and he fed me with apples, and comforted me with wine."

Yes, I thought, leaning down to scoop water into my bucket, oh yes, yes. And I repeated to myself, I give. I give.

Something in the stream caught my eye. A shoe, washed down by the current, was wedged between two stones. I fished it out. It was a woman's shoe, solid and heavy. Its owner must have run out of it in her desperate haste to flee from the dragoons after Mr. Renwick's preaching.

The horror of the attack came back to me, and with a spurt of anger I flung the shoe into a clump of gorse on the far side of the stream.

"Why?" I said out loud. "How can it be against the law to meet out in the hills and sing psalms and read the Word of God and preach sermons? What ever is wrong with that?"

I heard Uncle Blair's voice in my ear.

"The king and the great men around him desire in their wickedness to remove God from his throne as head of the kirk and put themselves in his place. And we must resist them, Maggie, or be traitors to him, and to Scotland, and to ourselves."

Could I ever care for the cause as much as Uncle Blair did? Would I give up everything and even risk death?

I knew the answer.

"No," I whispered, ashamed of myself. "No."

The knowledge frightened me. On the Day of Judgment, when I stood before almighty God, he would curse me, like Mr. Renwick said, and cast me into everlasting fire for failing to keep the faith.

But I would suffer anything for a person I loved, I told myself. Perhaps that would be enough. I'd be ready to die for someone who really loved me.

I picked up the two full buckets and began the long trudge back up the slope toward the farm. I saw Ritchie ahead. He was talking to Davie Barbour, and his hand was on Davie's shoulder, as if to comfort him.

Something's happened, I thought, my heart sinking, and I hurried up to the farm.

My aunt's raised voice came out of the kitchen door as I hurried in.

"Dorcas, the poor soul! And the children! Ritchie, if they've done such a thing to Mr. Barbour, whatever will they do to your father?"

"They've executed Mr. Barbour," Ritchie told me quietly. "Hanged him. For being a rebel and a traitor because he refused to take the Test."

"What Test? What's the Test?"

"Don't you know? The oath of allegiance. They make you swear that the king is the head and ruler of the church, and you have to say 'God save the king.' You used to have to pay a fine if you wouldn't say it, but now the penalty is death."

"You mean they hanged Mr. Barbour just because he wouldn't say all that?"

I could hardly believe it.

"And they'll hang your uncle too, you'll see," Aunt Blair said bitterly.

"Mother, you don't know that." Ritchie touched her gently on the shoulder. "Mr. Barbour was executed in Glasgow, where they've all gone mad with rage against us. They might not be so severe in Edinburgh."

She stared at him, misery in her face, and said at last, "It's not knowing that's the worst. It's the dread of waiting for news."

***

Things had been bad at Ladymuir before we'd heard of the death of Mr. Barbour, but a grimmer depression descended afterward. I missed the company of Grizel, who had been sent back to her family to save on wages and food. Her absence meant more work for me, but even though I did my best and never rested from morning till night, I couldn't please my aunt. She found fault constantly, and her eyes seemed to follow each mouthful that I took at our meager mealtimes as if she resented the food that her children might have had.

Ritchie rode out early one morning and came back looking pleased with himself. He strode into the kitchen and put a clinking pouch of coins on the table in front of his mother.

"From the Laird of Duchal," he said proudly. "I asked him to lend us the money for the rest of the fine, and he gave me a bit more too for Father. You need money when you're a prisoner, he said, if you want to eat enough to keep body and soul together."

"You borrowed this money from the laird?" Aunt Blair said anxiously. "Ritchie, how are we ever to pay him back?"

"We will. After the harvest. It's what Father said to do." I heard a new note of authority in Ritchie's voice. He was the man of the house now and was taking charge. "Anyway, the laird's in no hurry. He's a good man of the Covenant himself. He spoke so admiringly of Father. You'd have been proud to hear him. The real question is, if Father needs this money, how are we to get it to him?"

Aunt Blair shook her head so vigorously that Andrew, who was in her arms, set up a wail.

"No, Ritchie," she snapped. "You're not to go to Edinburgh. You'd be arrested before you were well on the road out of Kilmacolm."

Ritchie nodded.

"I know. But we'll have to do something, Mother. We have to get this money to him somehow."

I knew at that instant what I had to do, and the thought was so frightening that it made me shiver.

I would go to Edinburgh. I would take the laird's money, find my uncle, and give it to him. I'd discover if there had been a trial and if he was in prison or awaiting execution. I'd use any trick to free him. And I'd bring him safely home to Kilmacolm.

I went out into the yard, thinking furiously.

I could be a boy again, like on the drove. No, that wouldn't do. I was too noticeably a young woman now, and, anyway, a boy was more likely to be stopped and questioned. I could pretend to be a servant girl, like Grizel, making her way home after losing her position.

I was still furiously thinking when I went to bed that night, and I lay for a long time, trying out one fantastic plan after another, while the little girls slept snuggled close up beside me, snuffling in their dreams.