Lady Magdalen Read online

  LADY MAGDALEN

  ROBIN JENKINS has been hailed as ‘the greatest living fiction-writer in Scotland’ (The Scotsman, 2000). Born in 1912, his first novel was published in 1951; more than thirty works of fiction have followed, many of which have been graced with literary awards and remained in print for decades. Several of his novels have been published in North America and Europe, including Childish Things (2001) and the classics, Fergus Lamont (1979) and The Cone-Gatherers (1955) which are both currently optioned for feature films. In 2002 he received the Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun Award for making an outstanding contribution to Scottish life.

  By the Same Author

  So Gaily Sings the Lark (Glasgow, Maclellan, 1951)

  Happy for the Child (London, Lehmann, 1953)

  The Thistle and the Grail (London, Macdonald, 1954; Polygon, 1994)

  The Cone-Gatherers

  (London, Macdonald, 1955; New York, Taplinger, 1981)

  Guests of War (London, Macdonald, 1956)

  The Missionaries (London, Macdonald, 1957)

  The Changeling

  (London, Macdonald, 1958; Edinburgh, Canongate Classic, 1989)

  Love is a Fervent Fire (London, Macdonald, 1959)

  Some Kind of Grace (London, Macdonald, 1960)

  Dust on the Paw

  (London, Macdonald, and New York, Putnam, 1961)

  The Tiger of Gold (London, Macdonald, 1962)

  A Love of Innocence (London, Cape, 1963)

  The Sardana Dancers (London, Cape, 1964)

  A Very Scotch Affair (London, Gollancz, 1968)

  The Holy Tree (London, Gollancz, 1969)

  The Expatriates (London, Gollancz, 1971)

  A Toast to the Lord (London, Gollancz, 1972)

  A Far Cry from Bowmore and Other Stories (London, Gollancz, 1973)

  A Figure of Fun (London, Gollancz, 1974)

  A Would-Be Saint

  (London, Gollancz, 1978; New York, Taplinger, 1980)

  Fergus Lamont

  (Edinburgh, Canongate, and New York, Taplinger, 1979;

  Canongate Classic, 1990)

  The Awakening of George Darroch (Edinburgh, Harris, 1985)

  Just Duffy (Edinburgh, Canongate, 1988; Canongate Classic, 1995)

  Poverty Castle (Nairn, Balnain, 1991)

  Willie Hogg (Edinburgh, Polygon, 1993)

  Leila (Edinburgh, Polygon, 1995)

  Lunderston Tales (Edinburgh, Polygon, 1996)

  Matthew and Sheila (Edinburgh, Polygon, 1998)

  Poor Things (Canongate, 1999)

  Childish Things (Canongate, 2001)

  First published in Great Britain in 2003

  by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 ITE.

  This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2011

  Copyright © Robin Jenkins 2003

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is

  available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 1 84195 400 4

  eISBN 978 0 85786 366 9

  www.canongate.tv

  To Helen and Ann

  In the opinion of many Scots the most charismatic character in their history was James Graham, Marquess of Montrose.

  Lady Magdalen Carnegie was his wife.

  Contents

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  PART TWO

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  PART THREE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  PART ONE

  1

  ONE COLD JANUARY morning in the year 1627 the congregation of Kinnaird Parish Church was startled when young Francis Gowrie of Mintlaw stood up in their midst just as the minister, having announced the text, taken from Jeremiah, was about to launch into his two-hour-long sermon. Surprise slowly turned to puzzlement and then to horror and then to anger when Mintlaw began to speak, not with the frenzy of one possessed by the Lord – that was excusable if not always opportune – but in a determined voice, though what he was saying was abominable heresy. The collies tethered at the back of the kirk growled uneasily. Mintlaw was gentry and so could not be promptly seized and thrown out, as idiots and drunks were.

  ‘I would like here, in God’s house, to protest against the burning alive of old Jessie Gilmour of Allander, which is to take place next Saturday in Dundee. She is simply an old woman whose wits have gone awry owing to age, illness, and pain. I ask you to consider this: if she were a witch, with powers given her by Satan, would she not have used them against her accusers? She deserves pity, not this terrible death. A just God will never forgive us if we allow this to happen.’

  His voice had grown more hesitant, as if he had become aware of the enormity of what he was saying. He stopped abruptly and hurried out of the church, barked at by the dogs.

  Though their mood was perforce godly, the members of the congregation were nonetheless not inclined to be tolerant. They were suffering from sore noses, icy feet, frozen ears, itchy chilblains, and their eyes watered from the smoke from the two braziers that vainly attempted to heat the kirk. Therefore they were not only scandalised by Mintlaw, they felt revengeful towards him too. There were mutterings. He should be burned along with old Jessie. Wasn’t his family suspected of still favouring the old religion? Hadn’t his father, Sir Robert, spent years in the Pope’s Italy, collecting books and pictures, it was said, but also no doubt Papist notions?

  They all looked towards the minister Mr Henderson, petrified with outrage in his pulpit. He had been a member of the Kirk Commission that had sat in judgment on Jessie and pronounced her guilty.

  Then they looked towards the laird, Lord Carnegie, Privy Councillor, Lord Lieutenant of the County, and principal landowner, whose tenants they all were. Though often in Edinburgh on government business, he happened to be present that Sabbath, in his private enclosure with members of his family, among them his youngest daughter, 14-year-old Lady Magdalen.

  Carnegie remained calm and dignified. Having endured the screams of men being judicially tortured to make them confess to treason, he was hardly going to let himself be upset by the bleatings of a young fool who hadn’t the gumption to keep his opinions to himself. With an impatient gesture he bade the preacher proceed.

  No one noticed that Lady Magdalen had gazed at Mintlaw not with horror but with admiration and anxiety.

  That evening, in Kinnaird Castle, after family prayers in her father’s study, Magdalen asked shyly if she could stay for a little whil
e as she had something to say to him. Always indulgent to her because she was his favourite, reminding him daily of his wife, who had died 14 years ago soon after Magdalen’s birth, he smiled and replied that she was very welcome for he had something to say to her too.

  Though there was a big coal fire, the air in the room was so chilly that they could see their breath. Carnegie’s nose was red and sore with much dighting and Magdalen’s hands were numb inside her sheepskin gloves. Happed in thick woollen coats, they sat on either side of the fire, their eyes smarting from the smoke. The candles kept flickering because of the many draughts.

  ‘Well, my pet, what was it you wanted to say to me?’ asked Carnegie, smiling.

  ‘Even if old Jessie is a witch, Father, is it right that she should be burned to death?’

  A frown replaced his smile. Nervously he plucked at his beard. With her meek emphasis she had called into question, unwittingly no doubt, not only the justice of Gilmour’s sentence but also the whole authority of the Kirk. That was dangerous.

  Among his fellow Privy Councillors Carnegie was reputed to be shrewd and cautious, not easily taken in with false protestations. He got more out of suspects with patient interrogation than others did with thumbscrews. Yet, despite all his experience, he had never been able to fathom this young girl, his daughter. It wasn’t that she set out to be deep, sly, or mysterious; on the contrary, she had a sweet open nature and had never been heard to utter a doubting or rebellious word. Yet her father, and others less percipient, were often left with the feeling that there was a part of Magdalen difficult to convince. Only the absolute truth could do it, and that was as rare as swallows in winter. From infancy she had tried to speak it herself, often amusing her brothers and sisters with her muddles and frustrations but at the same time making them ashamed of not being truthful to her.

  Small wonder then that her father felt ill-at-ease as he considered how to answer her. He glanced at the books on his shelves, mostly Latin and Greek, but among them was one, signed by the author, which was in English: the late King James’s treatise on witchcraft. In that very room the King, in his eager stumbling voice, had spoken about witches, how pernicious they were and how they had to be purged by fire. Carnegie had listened respectfully, taking care not to show by so much as a wrinkle on his brow that, like his friend and colleague Lord Napier, he had doubts as to whether doited old hen-wives could possibly be in league with so mighty a potentate as the Prince of Darkness, who certainly existed, not perhaps as a slippery black creature with long tail and pointed ears, but as an evil influence in men’s minds.

  It had been easier to temporise with the credulous King, who after all had been an author seeking praise for his book, than with this earnest trustful child. Speaking to the King was an art in which Carnegie had become expert but speaking to Magdalen was somehow like speaking to himself or, put more pretentiously, to God.

  ‘She was properly examined,’ he said, curtly, ‘and found guilty. Burning is the punishment for crimes like hers.’

  ‘It must be very painful.’

  ‘It is soon over.’

  Ten minutes or so of hellish agony, if the strangling beforehand was negligently done. As a man with varied responsibilities he had had to attend burnings, with a handkerchief soaked in scent at his nose to keep out the stench of roasting flesh.

  ‘When I burned my fingers with the handle of the kettle they were sore for weeks.’

  Was it possible that she was being ironical? No, that pale anxious face under the white cap and those eyes of speedwell blue were child-like in their candour and simplicity.

  ‘I assure you in her case it will soon be over.’

  Shock rendered the victim immune to pain. Or so physicians claimed. But Carnegie had heard screams that had echoed in his mind for days afterwards.

  ‘She gave me flowers once. I was passing her cottage.’

  ‘She should not have done. What kind of flowers?’

  ‘Dandelions.’

  Piss-a-beds. Used by apothecaries to promote the flow of urine. But were not their golden heads infested with tiny black insects, said to be the familiars of Satan? Did they not say, the learned ministers of the Kirk, that it was by seemingly benign acts like the giving of flowers that witches diseased your body or, worse still, corrupted your soul?

  Was that mere superstitious nonsense, as scholars in other countries were now boldly saying, and as Carnegie himself was tempted to believe? Though he should have kept his mouth shut, it was possible that young Mintlaw represented the future which would look back on those burnings as acts not of Christian justice but of barbarous cruelty.

  Carnegie shrugged and turned to a matter much more important than the incineration of a crazy old woman.

  While canny James had been on the throne of Scotland there had been peace in the country. As long as the English gave him his Divine Right and acknowledged him as Head of their Church, he had been content not to stir up what he himself had called the wasps’ byke of Scottish Kirk affairs. It might be very different now that his son Charles had succeeded him. Scottish by birth, it was true, but not Scottish in temperament, Charles, by all accounts, was a cold aloof stiff-necked young man, married to a scheming Catholic princess, to whose bad advice he listened too uxoriously. It was rumoured he intended to bring the Kirk to heel by imposing bishops on it. The country would then be split up into factions, those who were for the King and bishops, those who were for the King but not for bishops, those who were for the King and Presbyterianism (an untenable position but the one that Carnegie himself would wish to adopt), and those who were simply against the King’s autocracy. It could come to civil war. Prudent men were building up family alliances. Carnegie had already married his eldest daughter Margaret to Lord Dalhousie, his second daughter Agnes to Lord Abercrombie, and his third Katherine to the Earl of Traquair. Now had come the chance to marry Magdalen to young James Graham, Earl of Montrose. Lord Napier, James’s mentor, was all for it; indeed, he had suggested it.

  At present James was a student at St Salvator’s College in St Andrews. He had written letters to Magdalen. Dutifully she had let her father read them.

  They could hardly be called love letters, but then James, like most youths of 16, was still in love with himself. When he had described, wittily, an illness he had had – all his hair had to be shaved off! – it had been evident to the Privy Councillor, though not perhaps to the writer himself, that there was hidden in it a plea for reassurance. In spite of his juvenile bravado, young Graham had seen in Magdalen qualities of steadfastness, loyalty, and devotion that any sensible man would want in his wife.

  What she had written in reply her father did not know. He could have seen it, with or without her consent and knowledge, but he had chosen not to. In the interests of the State, he often had to intercept and read other men’s correspondence, but always with a sense of shame. Perhaps he had felt too soiled by that practice to want to read his innocent daughter’s. In any case, he could easily guess their contents.

  ‘James Graham is looking for a wife,’ he said.

  It would have been more accurate to say that Lord Napier had decided that young Montrose should have heirs as soon as possible. He was an only son. There was danger of the earldom being lost.

  Magdalen smiled. ‘Jamie’s always looking for something. A golf stick that will hit the ball straighter. A falcon that will fly higher than any other. A subject for a poem.’

  ‘That’s James Graham, true enough.’

  Lord Carnegie had reservations about young Montrose. James was a little too vain and a great deal too ambitious: the sort of young man who would relish troubled times as giving him greater scope. He ought perhaps to marry some strong-minded woman who would nip in the bud his wildest ventures. From that point of view Magdalen was hardly suitable and might suffer because of it but the marriage would be useful for her family, which mattered more than her personal happiness.

  ‘Will anything happen to Francis for what he said in ch
urch?’ she asked.

  Her father was disconcerted and not pleased. She should have been thinking of young Montrose and here she was talking about young Mintlaw. He had once considered a match between her and the latter for the Mintlaw estate was large and bordered on his own, but Francis’s father, Sir Robert, was a feeble aesthete, who would have been of little use as a political ally.

  ‘They were saying that he should be burned too.’

  ‘If he does not keep his mouth shut it could well happen.’

  ‘He’s going away to Italy soon.’

  ‘The sooner the better.’

  ‘He says we’re all uncivilised and backward in Scotland.’

  ‘Then he had better stay away for a long time. He is the kind of young man who could get himself into serious trouble and also anyone else foolish enough to associate with him.’

  She shivered. Her father thought it was the cold but it was really foreboding. She was remembering how Francis mocked the new religion, because of its superstitious fear of beautiful objects.

  ‘James is fond of you, Magdalen. I believe you’re fond of him too.’

  ‘I like Jamie fine. When he writes poetry; not when he kills deer.’

  ‘He wants you to be his wife.’

  She looked dismayed, not delighted. ‘I don’t want to get married, Father, not for a long time.’

  Carnegie smiled. Here was a virginal dread that did her credit; after all she was just 14; her breasts were scarcely formed. ‘It would not take place for another year or so.’

  She was shaking her head now in agitation.

  He had to speak sternly. ‘Most young women would feel greatly honoured by such an offer. The Montrose clan is one of the most distinguished in Scotland.’

  ‘I do feel honoured, Father, but I don’t want to get married till I’m twenty at least.’

  ‘He cannot wait that long. It is necessary that he should have heirs as soon as possible.’

  ‘But if I am married, Father, I can never be alone again.’

  Her father scowled. Was this immaturity talking or something more sinister? Not all that long ago there had been nuns in Scotland who had taken vows of silence and had lived in solitude. Her sisters had often, in jest, taunted Magdalen with having such an ambition.