The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Read online

  ‘O Lord,’ he prayed, ‘let it be fatherly chastisement flowing from fatherly Mercy and Grace. Grant, O Lord, for the Redeemer’s sake that these afflictions both spiritual and temporal with which Thou are visiting me, may, by Thy Blessing, be the means of strength and grace. May they purge me of all corruption and make the consolations of the Gospel more precious. May they wean my heart from a present world. May they produce in me the peaceable fruits of righteousness to the Praise of the Glory of Thy Grace.’

  The six o’clock gun exploded his thoughts. The post-horse had arrived from Edinburgh. He forced himself to finish the reading in the same solemn measured tone as he had begun: ‘ “But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn.”

  ‘I’m away for the mail, Annabella. See that my breakfast’s on the table before I come back.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’ She flounced round on Nancy. ‘Well, away you go and get it ready. Don’t just stand there.’

  Nancy was absently playing with a lock of her hair, twisting it round and round her finger. She slid Annabella a look from under a raised brow before slowly sauntering from the room. Big John followed her with guffaws of laughter and lustful eyes for the sway of her hips and the flash of white ankle and foot.

  Ramsay’s jaw muscle jammed forward. He would have to lecture these two in the ways of righteousness. A terrible responsibility had weighed on his shoulders since his wife’s death. There was no use trusting the moral or spiritual welfare of the servants to either Annabella or Douglas. Annabella needed the most careful watching herself and Douglas was too busy trying to be a fashionable fop, and wooing Griselle Halyburton.

  He swung on his cloak and strode from the house. The landing and the spiral stair in the round tower attached to the back of the building was dark and crammed with sleeping people, tramps and beggars and orphan children. He kicked them aside to make a passage for himself.

  ‘Out o’ the way, you lazy devils!’

  The air outside frosted his skin and breath. Quickening his pace, he bumped into another hurrying figure.

  ‘Och, it’s you, Provost.’

  ‘A good morning to you, Ramsay.’

  Andrew Cochrane smoothed his cloak closer as if he was comforting himself. ‘My mind’s not on where I’m going.’

  Ramsay measured his step to that of the Provost.

  ‘No better news then?’

  ‘They keep telling me that troops are coming but they’ve not come yet. And as I said in my letter to the Lord Justice Clerk—we in Glasgow can expect no favour from the rebels.’

  ‘If they’d even let us have our own men. It’s a disgrace. This town has always been the most loyal in Scotland.’

  ‘Most loyal,’ the Provost agreed. ‘Quick to raise two volunteer regiments the last time and as quick again.’

  ‘And this is what we get in return.’

  ‘They just refused to believe me. I’ve read Mr Crosse’s letters over and over again until I’ve got them off by heart. “I received your Lordship’s communication”, he wrote, “and I cannot imagine that the Highlanders can be so far advanced as Carlisle on Tuesday last.” And as usual he gave me the same assurances: “You may depend on it that the protection of the town will be first looked”, and “You may be sure that everything will be done toward the preservation of the town”, and “Lord Glencairn will be with you tomorrow!” ‘

  ‘Aye, and now where is he, and Lord Home, and General Blakeney and all their battalions? A damned disgrace, Provost.’

  Cochrane’s skin was as fair and as delicate as a woman’s and he had fine dark eyes, but now his face was grey and his eyes looked haunted.

  ‘Ramsay, I still can’t get over it. After all their promises—to announce they were going to march to Edinburgh! “We heartily compassionate your case,” they said, “but cannot make it better and therefore we commit you to the protection of God Almighty.” ’

  ‘Commit us into the hands of Highland savages. That’s the damned truth of it,’ Ramsay grunted, ‘and may the Lord God have mercy on us all.’

  ‘Fresh herrings at the Broomielaw!’ Moothy McMurdo roared with all his might to make himself heard above the noise of the bell he was energetically thrashing about.

  ‘The bonniest fish you ever saw.

  Fresh herrings at the Broomielaw!’

  His head well back and his hat jammed down, he surrendered himself completely to his job.

  ‘Thomasina Galbreath

  Makes dead clothes

  And everybody knows

  She’s the town’s best mantua-maker.

  Thomasina Galbreath wants me to say

  This verra day

  She’s got an ell of new satin

  Tae make dress and pattern

  For anyone willing to pay.’

  Jessie stopped for a minute to rest on her crutch and listen to the bellman. Despite the crisp air that made clouds of each breath, she was hot and sweating. It took a desperate energy and concentration to do her job, hindered as she was by the lack of most of one leg and her dependence on a crutch for balance. But she managed to hump the washing down to the river in a sack slung over her shoulder. Then instead of hitching up her skirts and tramping on the washing as the other women did, she crawled around rubbing and scrubbing and squeezing at it before spreading it out on the grass to bleach and dry. Only it never dried so easily and quickly in the winter.

  Then, of course, there was not just the Ramsays’ washing to fight with. She worked for the Halyburtons as well. She was on her way there now along Trongate Street to the tenement in which they lived across the other side from the Ramsays, near the Guard House and opposite the Tron Church.

  The musical bells of the Tron burst into lively competition with the bellman and heralded 11.30 and time for the merchants and tradesmen to adjourn to their favourite taverns for their ‘meridian’ of ale or brandy. They began pouring into the street, the tobacco lords swaggering along in their large wigs and three-cornered hats and satin and velvet knee-breeches and coats and silk stockings and shoes decorated with glittering stones. The tradesmen all kept at a respectful distance in their short cloth coats and blue bonnets or tam-o’-shanters.

  In the middle of the street a fat woman in a filthy cloak and mutch crushed past Jessie singing lustily.

  ‘Fine Lunnon candy! Good for the cough and the cold and the shortness of breath—come, buy my Lunnon candy!’

  Ignoring her, Jessie hurried towards Locheid’s Land, the tenement building owned by the Earl of Locheid where the Halyburtons lived. They had a bigger household than the Ramsays and Mrs Halyburton was a bit of a targe.

  Glasgow Green was not good enough for her washing. It had to be taken all the way to Woodside Fields and the burn outside the city where she insisted both water and air was sweeter and cleaner.

  The tobacco lords were pacing the plainstanes, the only piece of pavement in the whole of Glasgow. Flagstones were laid along the front of the Town Hall, the Tolbooth and the Exchange Coffee House next to it and no one except the Lords of the Plainstanes dared put a foot on them.

  Jessie spied young Douglas Ramsay greeting another young tobacco lord with kisses on both cheeks. The other scarlet-cloaked, silver-wigged gentlemen were greeting each other with bows and kisses too. Only Douglas’s father did not seem to enjoy the custom. Each time he received a kiss he irritably swiped at his face with cuff or handkerchief.

  The sight of Adam Ramsay never failed to disturb Jessie. One minute she could be hustling about her business. The next minute she was thinking about how she was going to get all the washing attended to before it was dark, or planning to make sure she would be home in time for wee Gav and Regina. Then she would look at Adam Ramsay and something about him would scatter her wits. Secret doors in her mind creaked open. Weird shapes danced out. She twittered hysterically at them, wild for them to go away. Then only a desperate burst of energy would chase them back behind their secret door again. She would hop madly about laughing and sho
uting and swearing or she would rub and scrub at the washing until it tore to shreds in her hands.

  But now she hurried safely past with only a sideways malevolent glance in Ramsay’s direction.

  She climbed the narrow turnpike stair at Locheid’s Land with difficulty. The crutch jabbed deep into her at every hop and step. The Halyburtons had a four-roomed and kitchen flat above the warehouses where they stored their tobacco. The young maid Nell opened the door, but showed no interest in helping to shift the mountain of washing into Jessie’s sack.

  Out again, breathless and with Mrs Halyburton’s warning ringing in her ears: ‘Now make sure you take good care of my precious linen, Jessie, or I’ll get Hangy Spittal to lock you away in the Tolbooth.’

  Hopping and skipping and tittering and cursing, the stone-heavy sack thumping her shoulders, Jessie left Trongate Street, passed the Shawfield Mansion and made for the wooded place outside the town.

  2

  GAV and Regina stretched up on the balls of their feet, their bare toes digging into the icy earth. They peered close to the window, every now and again rubbing at the glass so that they could see what was going on inside the room. Jock Currie’s dead body lay in his coffin in the centre and on seats around the walls some of his friends who had been watching the body all night sat silently drinking.

  Gav and Regina should have been at school, but the dominie had been called away and they had been sent home for a few hours. Nothing would induce them, however, to return to the notorious Tannery Wynd until they were certain that their mother would be home from work and at the house to see them safely in. Their mother was employed as washerwoman by two of the tobacco families in the town, and no doubt these same families would be here at the funeral service because Jock Currie had also been a tobacco merchant.

  It was then that Regina caught sight of Mistress Annabella, daughter of one of the families her mother worked for.

  ‘Gav, look! Isn’t she beautiful?’

  Both children gazed in awe at the young woman who flounced from a sedan-chair outside the house and posed, straight-backed, chin held high and fan flicking, while a maid arranged the skirts of her wide hooped dress. The gown glowed like an orange sun but could not compete in radiance and vivacity with the face above it. An air of expectancy sizzled around the woman and Regina felt that just by looking at her life had become more exciting.

  But Gav’s attention had returned to the inside of the house. The room looked warm and a table near the window was crowded with bottles of port wine and sherry wine and whisky and bread and cheese and cake. Gav’s mouth watered and he felt so hungry he could not bear to look. Turning away, he shivered and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket. His mother had bought the jacket from a rag woman and it was several sizes too big. His hat had originated from the same source. It had once belonged to a farmworker and was the colour of a newly ploughed field. The bashed crown and wavy brim were man-sized and dwarfed Gav’s face. The hat would in fact have fallen down and completely covered his features had it not been held up by his hair, which was thicker and curlier than most cauliflower wigs.

  ‘Come on, Regina,’ he said.

  ‘You know we can’t go home before Mammy. Do you want the harlots or Blind Jinky to get us?’

  ‘Not home. Back to school.’

  ‘We won’t be able to get back in yet. Anyway, I want to stay and see all the lovely clothes. Look, there’s more people coming.’

  Gav scowled. It was not so much that he wasn’t interested in the fineries of the funeral guests but that he secretly feared the tobacco merchants, with their lordly ways and their gold-topped canes which didn’t hesitate to smash you out of their way if you dared set foot too near them. Many a painful blow had he received from old Jock Currie when he had been alive and strutting along this very street with his scarlet cape billowing out behind him.

  Now Jock Currie was dead and the funeral guests arriving at his house in Saltmarket Street were being received in absolute silence. Eventually the minister said Grace, then a series of services began, services of food and drink, mainly drink. The first service consisted of bread and cheese with ale and porter. Next came a glass of rum with ‘burial bread’. Pipes of tobacco were passed round as the third service. The fourth was a glass of port wine with cake, next a glass of sherry with cake, and a glass of whisky. The seventh service was a glass of whisky. Then when another guest arrived another Grace was said and the services started all over again. The deceased had been one of the first men to trade in tobacco after the Union of Scotland with England in 1707. Before that, English laws had prohibited Scotland from trading with the Colonies. The powerful tobacco merchants of England had cause to bitterly regret Glasgow’s freedom to trade as their competitors. No one had dreamed that a small and remote town in Scotland would within two generations completely capture more than half the tobacco trade in Europe. They had wrenched it from the powerful rivalry of London, Bristol and Liverpool merchants in whose hands it had been for over a century. It was a tremendous achievement and had launched Glasgow as a merchant city with fast-growing trade and industries. To transport the tobacco Glasgow began building ships. Then, rather than see the ships sail empty to Virginia, Glasgow manufactured goods and filled the holds with every kind of article the colonists needed. They became linen manufacturers. They had manufactories of woollen cloth, stockings, shalloons and cottons. They started sugar houses and distilleries. They made nails and spades, earthenware and shoes and boots and saddles and an ever-growing number and variety of other products. The goods were bartered for tobacco and the merchants dealt with the planters direct, they or their agents sailing up the rivers to the plantation landings and exchanging the goods for tobacco on the spot.

  Now many of them had started their own stores in Virginia where the planter could get credit and make his payments in the form of tobacco. The tobacco barons had always been astute. No payment was made to the manufacturer or shopkeeper in Glasgow until the ships safely returned with their valuable load of tobacco, most of which was destined to be shipped off to France and other parts of Europe.

  There had been none more astute than old Jock Currie, and his colleagues had turned out in force to pay their last respects to him. Some of their wives and families had come too. They filled the musty, seldom-used dining-room to capacity. The hooped skirts of the ladies vied with each other in width. Some women had skirts the width of the room and their padded hair touched the ceiling. Not an inch of floor space was visible. The room was a rustling satin sea that began to sway and undulate alarmingly as the services of wine and whisky were repeated again and again.

  ‘Where’s the body gone?’ Regina said. ‘I can’t see it any more.’

  Gav shrugged. ‘Probably they’re tramping on it. I don’t care.’

  Somewhere in the midst of the sea stretched the body of old Jock Currie, no longer watched, but jostled and jerked and squeezed with complete disregard. By the time the funeral procession was due to start the company was in spate with chatter and gusty with hilarity. A riot of noise exploded from the tenement building with the beadle leading the way cheerily ringing the ‘dead bell’. Regina and Gav followed, skipping along as best they could.

  The graveyard was up at the top of the High Street beside the Cathedral and the mourners ambled along Saltmarket Street, past the Cross and up High Street under the terrible stress of concentrating on keeping their balance.

  Some of the ladies were nearly lost to the procession when they swayed left at the Cross and along Trongate Street. They were rescued and pointed in the proper direction and duly rewarded their rescuers with deep tottering curtsies and eyes ogling over fans.

  At times gentlemen bumped into one another, bowed in formal and graceful apology, only to have their cocked hats fall off. Then heads clashed and bodies bounced about in efforts to retrieve the hats. People jostled and fell one against the other like packs of cards. Eventually the graveside was reached. Profuse apologies were made to the grav
e-digger, who had been hanging around in the cold, purple beak dripping icy water down to sour blue lips as he leaned in readiness over the shovel beside the waiting grave.

  ‘About time tae. I’m fair nippit! Where’s auld Jock?’

  ‘In his coffin to be sure,’ answered MacFuddy, the chief mourner. ‘Now get him into the earth as fast as you can.’

  ‘Where’s the coffin?’

  The mourners gazed around and staggered about in search of the deceased, but no coffin could be seen.

  ‘Damnation!’ roared MacFuddy at last. ‘The old devil’s still back at the hoose!’

  The grave-digger laid down his spade.

  ‘Is this no’ hellish!’

  ‘Now, now, ma man,’ the beadle hiccoughed. ‘We’ll have none o’ your foul language on this sacred occasion. We’ll no’ be long in hashin’ back for auld Jock.’

  Giggling now, Regina and Gav ran after the company as it tottered back down the High Street. Hoops bounced from side to side, showing flashes of yellow or white silk stocking and high-heeled shoes with pointed turned-up toes. Men’s cloaks puffed out and wigs went askew to reveal bald heads.

  Once in the house again, it was obviously felt that a few more services could be only right and proper. This routine being accomplished, the ladies sank gratefully on to the floor and the procession, now just a vague crush of men, returned with Jock Currie to the graveside and thankfully dropped him in. Then they came back to Jock’s house for shortbread and whisky and much talk and hilarity.

  By this time Regina and Gav were too exhausted to care what the guests were doing any more. When William Halyburton at last sailed towards Trongate Street accompanied by his fellow Virginia Merchant Adam Ramsay, the two children were huddled in the back close just concentrating on trying to keep warm. Halyburton and Ramsay had been suitably drunk in order to show their respect for their deceased friend, but now the effects were fast wearing off and they were able to journey home without too much difficulty.