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- Margaret Thomson-Davis
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Read online
CONTENTS
Title
The Prince and the Tobacco Lords
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Roots of Bondage
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Scorpion in the Fire
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
By the Same Author
Copyright
THE PRINCE
and the
TOBACCO LORDS
This book is dedicated to the following good friends,
in appreciation of their kind and generous help with my
research: Mima Walker, Highlander Allan Walker,
and Margaret and Mairead McKerracher.
1
REGINA wondered if it could be morning. The house was black and still. The harlots were quiet upstairs. Not even Blind Jinky’s stick scraped the wall. Only the excited squeaking of the rats penetrated the wooden doors of the hole-in-the-wall bed. She eased her arm from under the plaid, stretched it over wee Gav and stroked her mother to make sure she was still there.
Jessie Chisholm snapped into wakefulness at the feather touch.
‘Gav? Regina?’ Her hands groped for them.
‘Mammy,’ Regina said, ‘I thought I heard the bellman.’
Gav punched her. ‘I was sound asleep. You’re always wakening me.’
‘Wheesht!’ his mother whispered hoarsely.
After a while Gav exploded, ‘Och, she’s just blethering again!’
‘Will ye wheesht!’
The sporadic ringing scratched the air from far off and obliterated the bellman’s words. But gradually as he approached Tannery Wynd they were able to make out what he was shouting.
‘The Pretender and his rebels
Are surrounding the toon.
If the redcoats don’t stop them
They’ll be in Glesca soon.’
With hardly a pause Moothy McMurdo roared on and a vivid picture of him took colourful shape in Regina’s mind: the tattered green frockcoat, the orange breeches, the buckled shoes and the cocked hat jammed on a head thrown back and only a huge open mouth showing.
‘Auld Jock Currie deid last night.
They poored in potions. They bled him tae.
But auld Jock Currie jist spluttered away.’
‘I’m going to join the Highlanders.’ Gav bounced up excitedly. ‘I’m going to be a Highland rebel like my grandfather.’
‘No, you will not,’ Jessie said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because there will be fighting.’
‘I can fight. I fight every day. The other boys are all for the Glasgow Volunteers and the English King Geordie.’
Regina sighed. ‘You’re only ten. The Highlanders don’t want wee boys. Anyway, the redcoats won’t let them come into the town.’
‘I’m big as you and you’re twelve.’
‘Be quiet, the pair of you, or I’ll open the door and let Blind Jinky and Spider in.’
This immediately silenced the children, who feared nothing more than the twisted skeleton of a man who lived in the adjoining house with his long-legged and ragged-toothed dog. Many a painful bite they had suffered from the animal.
Their mother jerked into a crouching position.
‘There’s the college bell now. Five o’clock. Time I was up.’
She flung back the tartan that covered the three of them, punched open the doors of the bed and groped for her crutch.
The smell of peat smoke became more pungent and mixed with the stench of the dunghill outside. Regina began coughing and shivering, despite being fully clad in her striped woollen dress and apron. She tried to cuddle into Gav for warmth, but he pushed her aside.
‘I’m getting up. I’m hungry.’
‘You too, Regina. You’ve not to be late for school,’ Jessie said.
It always puzzled Regina why her mother was so set on her going to school. It was different with Gav. He found his lessons a challenge and despite the fights he got into with the other boys he seemed to enjoy attending school. She hated it. She hated the dominie and the constant floggings he meted out, not only to her but to all the children. She abhorred the violence, the pain, the cries of distress that had become part of the dismal room in the hovel where the dominie lived and taught. Her whole being shrank away from ugliness or cruelty of any kind.
‘I don’t want to go to school.’
‘Think yourself lucky you’ve the chance, lass. With schooling you can have a better life than me.’
‘How?’
‘Never mind how. Do as you’re told. I’ll poke the fire and light a candle.’
Gav scrambled over the edge of the bed and dropped on to the earthen floor, but Regina remained propped on one elbow watching her mother’s bent figure in the flickering gloom.
Jessie’s skirt hid the fact that she had only one leg, but everyone knew the reason she hopped about with the help of a crutch.
Many’s the time Regina and Gav had listened in horror to the story of how Jessie’s mother had been burned for witchcraft and how Jessie, as a wee girl, had been tortured with the boot to make Granny Chisholm confess. Her leg from foot to knee had been put in the iron cylinder while the hangman drove in wedges with a mallet till the flesh and bones were crushed to pulp. Granny Chisholm had confessed to try and stop the torture, but later when the flames were crackling up she screamed out: ‘As the Good Lord’s my witness, Jessie, I’m not a witch and never have been.’
Regina screwed her eyes shut to blot out the awful picture, but it became worse. It switched characters and revealed a vision of her own mother tied to the stake. Flames leapt up to redden the huge frizz of hair, the pocked face, the wild dark eyes. And in terror beyond all terrors Regina saw herself being tortured. Her leg was forced into the boot and the
hangman’s mallet donged like all the bells in Glasgow in her head.
No amount of schooling could stop that.
‘Regina, will you get up? You lazy wee devil,’ Jessie scolded. ‘The porridge is nearly ready. There’s no milk. Do you want a wee drop ale in it?’
‘I’m cold, Mammy.’
‘Enough of your whispering and whining. Get up and speak up.’
‘She’s the same at school,’ Gav said. ‘The dominie’s always flogging her.’
Regina slithered to the floor.
‘He flogs you too.’
‘I’ll flog the pair of you if you don’t find your bowls and spoons and start supping your porridge.’
The icy clay knifed between Regina’s toes as she raced across to where her bowl was kept on the shelf beside the ingle-nook fire. She was not afraid of her mother, although there were other children in the town and even grown-ups who gave Jessie a wide berth. The children were nervous of her harsh gravel croak and a swipe from her crutch. Grown-ups thought she was mad because sometimes she could not remember things and became confused.
When Gav asked her to tell the story about Prissie Ramsay and Granny Chisholm, she shook her head and said, ‘Who are they? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Away with you.’
It was Prissie Ramsay who told the ministers and the baillies that she had visions and knew who the witches in the town were. It was she who pointed the finger at Granny Chisholm.
Or when they asked Jessie to repeat the story about Grandfather Chisholm, who had fought for the Pretender’s father and the Jacobite Cause in 1715, she knocked them impatiently aside with: ‘I know nothing about that.’
Even questions about how Granny Chisholm lost her house and all she possessed, and had to tramp from the Highlands to Glasgow in order to make a living for herself and wee Jessie, were shouted down at times.
‘I’m not a Jacobite. I’ve never set foot in the Highlands. Glasgow born and bred like everyone else. That’s Jessie Chisholm.’
Yet she was in no way like everybody else. For one thing she did not speak with a Glaswegian accent. Through the hoarse voice, another remnant of the torture she had suffered, came the strange lilt of the north. Sometimes in her maddest moments the Gaelic took complete possession of her and no one could understand a word she was raving about.
But nothing could make Gav or Regina afraid of her. They recognised that underneath the wild exterior their mother loved and cared for them.
They were afraid of the harlots and the soldiers in Blind Jinky’s house or in one of the two houses upstairs. Afraid of the bawling and cursing and fighting and the stamping of Jinky’s feet and his fiddle scraping and Spider snarling like all the fiends in hell. The harlots and Blind Jinky were always trying to persuade Regina upstairs into what her mother called their ‘dens of evil’. Once one of the drunken soldiers pounced on her and roaring with laughter held her prisoner while Blind Jinky, equally drunk, fumbled his hands up her skirt. Despite Spider snapping at his heels, Gav had rushed to her rescue, his fists flying, and Jessie came stumping rapidly after him, cursing and cracking Blind Jinky’s and the soldier’s heads open with a sharp rock in one hand.
Every night, returning from school or from playing on the Green after school, they took their time going up Saltmarket Street and along the Gallowgate. They only began to run when they turned into the Tannery Wynd, in case one of the soldiers or the harlots or Blind Jinky and Spider would be hiding there. Choking for breath, they raced towards the tenement building with its crow-stepped gables and windows sunk deep into the walls. Jutting out on either side was a wooden staircase leading to the upstairs flats and on the front were two doors for the downstairs houses. They hurled themselves against the door on the left and it never failed to open and tumble them into the safety of their mother’s arms.
Some nights their mother had to shout her stories to drown out the terrible sounds from upstairs. Sometimes she sang songs to them or she questioned them on their catechism.
But now the rest of the building was quiet and Jessie muttered to herself as she doubled over the pot hanging on a chain over the fire and peered into it and jerked a wooden spoon round and round.
Soon, the three of them would slip silently from the house, the children cowering close to their mother until she secured the door. Then they skittered nervously along in front of her in the dark, all the time listening backwards for the rhythmic splash of her crutch on the quagmire of Tannery Wynd.
* * *
The Old Coffee House Land was the name of the tenement building situated at the corner of Saltmarket Street and Trongate Street. It commanded an excellent view of the business centre and the market place where four main streets intersected. Gallowgate Street cut across from the east, where the Glasgow Tannery was situated. High Street ran down from the north from the Cathedral. Saltmarket Street came up from the south and the River Clyde. Trongate Street came from the west. It was on Trongate that some of the most handsome buildings in Glasgow—indeed in Scotland—could be seen.
In daylight, from his bedroom window, Adam Ramsay could view the Tolbooth across the road with its crown-like spire, grated windows and outside stair. Next to it the Town Hall and the Exchange were resplendent with Doric columns and arches opening into shops below. These covered arcades, or piazzas as they were called in Scotland, skirted both sides of each of the four streets whose centre formed the Cross. But it was Trongate Street that boasted the equestrian statue of King William, the hero of the Boyne, the Inn Steeple and the Old Guard House with its colonnaded front projecting into the road. At the far end, past the tenements in which lived many of his friends, was the short square steeple of Hutcheson Hospital. Then on the very western verge of the city there stood the last building. The Shawfield Mansion was separated from the street by a high stone parapet with iron railings on the top. Beyond this stretched wild country and only the occasional cottage or inn like the Black Bull, until the village of Anderson or across to the other side and the village of Gorbals was reached.
Ramsay felt irritated every time he thought of the Shawfield Mansion. It had recently been acquired by John Glassford, a fellow tobacco merchant. Glassford was a reckless extravagant fellow and no good would come of squandering so much money. What was wrong with the tenements? If a tenement was good enough for the Earl and Lady Glencairn and the Earl and Lady of Locheid and the Earl and Lady Glendinny, his other tobacco colleagues, why should it not be good enough for John Glassford?
He was riding high at the moment with his twenty-five ships and his shares in about as many companies, but the man was a gambler and a sinner and would come to a bad end.
Trongate Street was dark now, but the watery glimmerings of day had begun to etch against the black cloth of the sky the huddle of houses that was Glasgow.
Ramsay swung away from the window and peered from under bushy brows at the figure of his son who was still dressing. Douglas’s long lean figure melted and swayed and wibble-wobbled in the light of the candles.
‘Are you no’ ready for the reading yet?’ Ramsay flung his arms behind his buttocks and slapped the palm of one hand down on the palm of the other. ‘You’re worse than your sister. Vanity. Vanity.’
Douglas gave his red shoes with their outsize silver buckles a final pat of pleasure before straightening up.
‘Will you be going for the mail, Papa, or shall I?’
‘You ken fine I like to collect my ain mail.’
‘Ah, well, I’ll just slip into my dressing-gown until after breakfast. To save you waiting any longer,’ he added hastily.
‘It’s wicked to have candles burning in every room. Do you think I’m made of money?’
Douglas tidied his eyebrows with a wet pinky. Then he flipped the pigtail of his wig outside the collar of his damask dressing-gown and plucked at the cuffs of his shirt until they frilled out of each sleeve before bowing and making a sweeping gesture towards the door.
‘After you, Papa.’
; Ramsay’s head, enormous with long curly black wig and three-cornered hat, thrust forward as he walked and he continued to thump his hands behind his back.
A candle guttering in the lobby panicked into life as he swept past and into his daughter’s bedroom.
Annabella was in a state of undress, having no hoops under her gown and no wig covering her hair. Not even padded, it smoothed close to her face, then back over her shoulders in ringlet curls. Beside Annabella’s perky blonde head was the lowered one of Nancy the maid.
Ramsay called: ‘Where’s Big John?’
‘Comin’ comin’, maister.’ Big John Binney came lumbering noisily, cheerfully, into the room and stood with his head screwed as low as possible into his shoulders so that he would not bump it against the ceiling.
‘And Jessie?’ Ramsay lifted a candlestick from the table and held it up.
‘Right in front of your eyes, Merchant.’ The washerwoman’s crutch thumped and scraped nearer.
‘Stand still and listen to the word o’ the Lord. Job, chapter 14.’ He replaced the candle and settled himself at Annabella’s table with the Bible open in front of him.
‘ “Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble …” ’ Trouble indeed, he thought gloomily, with the Pretender and his rebel army poised outside the town and the Glasgow Volunteer Regiment away helping the redcoats to defend Edinburgh. Glasgow had no walls, no arms, no army, nothing to protect it. If the Highlanders did not murder them all in their beds, they would rob and plunder the town. One way or another they surely meant ruination.
‘ “For now Thou rememberest my steps; dost Thou not watch over my sin?”…’ He wondered if this present trouble was being heaped upon his head as a punishment for his sins. As if he had not enough reminders. His eyes skulked round the room. The washerwoman’s pocked face hung low with shadows and the faint beginnings of light from the window silvered her tangle of hair. She could only be about thirty-four but she looked seventy. She had been eleven years of age when her mother was burned and he had been twenty. He remembered his twentieth year very well. That was when the devil had come and taken away his sister Prissie.
Prissie had the same round perky face as Annabella, the same blue eyes, the same mischievous love of practical jokes, the same fiendish temper. His eyes closed.