Joseph Knight

Joseph Knight

James Robertson

Dedication

For Marianne

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

I: Wedderburn

Ballindean, 15 April 1802

II: Darkness

Drummossie Moor, 16 April 1746

Edinburgh, May 1746

London, June – November 1746

Kingston, January – March 1747

Glen Isla, 1760

Dundee, May 1802

Ballindean, May 1802 / Jamaica, 1760

Dundee, May 1802

Jamaica, 1762

Dundee, May 1802 / Jamaica, 1763

Ballindean, June 1802

III: Enlightenment

Edinburgh, 17 August 1773

Ballindean, August 1773

Dundee, 16 November 1773

Edinburgh, December 1773

Dundee, June 1802

Edinburgh, 30 August 1776

Dundee and Ballindean, October 1802

Ballindean, 28 November 1802

Dundee, 15 January 1803 / Edinburgh, 15 January 1778

From Mr Peter Burnet of Paisley

IV: Knight

Dundee, 24 June 1803

Wemyss, 26 June 1803

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

I Wedderburn

TO BE SOLD

A BLACK BOY, about 16 years of age, healthy, strong, and well made, has had the Measles and small pox, can shave and dress a little, and has been for these several years accustomed to serve a single Gentleman, both abroad and at home.

For further particulars inquire at Mr Gordon bookseller in the Parliament-close, Edinburgh, who has full powers to conclude a bargain.

This advertisement not to be repeated.

EDINBURGH EVENING COURANT, 28 JANUARY 1769

FOR KINGSTON IN JAMAICA

The ship MARY, JOHN MURRAY Master, now in Leith Harbour, will be ready to take in goods by the 20th September, and clear to sail by the fifth October.

For freight or passage apply to Alexander Scott Merchant in Edinburgh, or to the Master at Mrs Ritchie’s on the Shore of Leith.

EDINBURGH EVENING COURANT, 2 SEPTEMBER 1769

Ballindean, 15 April 1802

Sir John Wedderburn, tall but somewhat stooped with age, stood at the windows of his library, enjoying – as he felt he should every morning he was given grace to do so – the view to the Carse of Gowrie and the Firth of Tay. Ballindean’s policies stretched out before him: the lawn in front of the house, the little loch, then the parkland dotted with black cattle, sun-haloed sheep and their impossibly white lambs. Thick ranks of sycamore, birch and pine enclosed the house and its immediate grounds. Beyond the trees, smoke rose from the lums of estate cottages and the village of Inchture and was immediately scattered by a breeze from the east.

Had he ventured outside, Sir John could have looked behind the house, to the north, where the woods thinned out and the land rose to the sheltering Braes of the Carse. But on this morning John Wedderburn was not going anywhere – not while that wind was blowing. The view from the library was, for the time being, all he required. There might have been more majestic landscapes in Scotland, but none that could have pleased him more.

He was seventy-three, thin and angular but with rounded shoulders and a nodding, lantern-jawed face that gave him the appearance of a disgruntled horse leaning over a dyke. Strands of grey hair swept back from his forehead and curled thinly behind his ears. His brow was tanned and his cheeks weathered and taut, as if he had lived most of his life outdoors, but his hands – slender-fingered and soft – belonged more in a room such as the library.

Sunlight shafted in through the window from a watery sky. A huge fire roared and cracked in the grate at one end of the room. There were two armchairs, one on either side of the fire, and a few feet further away – close enough to get the benefit, not so close as to hurt the wood – a heavy writing-table of finest Jamaican mahogany. Near the door a wag-at-the-wa, which had just clanged out ten o’clock, ticked heavily. But it was the rows of books that dominated the room.

Bookshelves ran along two-thirds of the length of the wall behind the table, and reached almost to the ceiling. The volumes were well bound, neatly arranged, and free of dust: biography, history, philosophy, verse, those often rather too delicate creations novelles … So many books, and so little inclination left to read them. Sir John thought this without turning from the window. He felt them massing behind his back, picked them off in his mind: The Works of Ossian, heroic and Highland, whatever Dr Johnson might have said of their authenticity; Edward Long’s History of Jamaica; Lord Monboddo’s six volumes on The Origin and Progress of Language (tedious, eccentric – Sir John had given up after half a volume); Smollett’s novels – he remembered heavy, sweltering West Indian Sundays much relieved by Peregrine Pickle and Roderick Random; the poetical works of the ploughman poet Burns and ‘the Scotch Milkmaid’, Janet Little – little doubt already which of those would last the pace; collections of sermons, treatises on agriculture, political economy, science … And two copies of Henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling, because the lassies liked it so much. Sir John had once tried this book and had thrown it down in disgust – grown men bursting into tears over nothing on every third page. ‘That is not the point, Papa,’ his daughter Maria had insisted, ‘you are too matter-of-fact!’ But that was the point. There wasn’t a hard bit of fact in the entire book.

The fact was, Sir John no longer read much himself, but he subscribed to many publications, and took the lists of the Edinburgh booksellers, mainly for the benefit of his wife Alicia and his daughters. They were all there in the room too, around the fireplace, a series of silhouettes done five or six years before: Alicia, fair and delicate at forty-three; Margaret (child of his first wife – after whom she was named – now nearly thirty and so long neglected by suitors that Sir John had almost given up worrying about it); Maria, Susan, Louisa and Anne (all in their teens). Great readers, every one of them, especially of novelles and poetry. Sir John was quietly pleased that his four sons – represented in various individual and group portraits on the opposite wall, and all but the youngest sent out into the world to work – showed little inclination for reading, and none at all for novelles.

The library’s most recent acquisition, delivered the previous week, was a collection of Border ballads in two volumes, compiled by Walter Scott, Sheriff Depute of Selkirkshire. How appropriate, Sir John had thought as he cut the pages, that so many thieves and ruffians should be rounded up by a sheriff. But there was nothing really wicked in the ballads – nothing that was not safely in the rusted, misty half-dream that was Scotland’s past, nothing dangerous to the minds of his daughters. Susan was the one most easily swayed by history, romance and poor taste. But then she was female and seventeen, it was to be expected. She would grow out of it. Books might have some bad in them, but there were, after all, worse things in the world.

The last fifteen years in France had demonstrated that, but Sir John had known it much longer – since, in fact, he was Susan’s age. The French had gone quite mad, and now the world was paying for the madness. Two men born of the Revolution strode across the Wedderburn imagination, the one threatening to become a monster, the other already monstrous. Napoleon Bonaparte was the first, a brilliant Corsican soldier, who had temporarily made peace with Britain at Amiens but whose ambitions clearly pointed to further and more devastating campaigns. But worse, far worse, was the second man, the black Bonaparte, Toussaint L’Ouverture, the barbarous savage who had turned the French island colony of San Domingo – once the sugar jewel, the sparkling diadem of the West Indies – into a ten-year bloodbath. Toussaint L’Ouverture: the name passed like a cloud over the ruffled, sparkling Tay, and Sir John shuddered.

From the Paris Jacobins this slave had learned the slogans liberté, egalité and fraternité, and had the outrageous idea of applying them to Negroes. He had massacred or expelled the French planters, devastated their plantations, defeated the armies of France, Spain and Britain – forty thousand dead British troops in three years! – and left San Domingo like a weeping scab in the middle of the Caribbean, barely a hundred miles from Jamaica, with Toussaint himself, drunk on power, emperor of the wreckage. Yet in Jamaica, it seemed, his exploits had made him a hero to the blacks. God help them all then, Sir John thought, white and black alike, if they should follow his example.

There was a tap at the door of the library and it opened just wide enough to admit a dark-suited, dark-jowled bullet of a man, whose lined face suggested that he was almost as old as Sir John himself – this despite a thick crop of hair so black that it looked suspiciously like a wig. But these days wigs, even among elderly men, were something of a rarity.

‘There’s a man Jamieson here frae Dundee, Sir John. He says he has business wi ye.’

Sir John frowned, did not turn. ‘What day is it, Aeneas?’

‘Thursday.’

‘Is it? Well, show him in, then.’ He remained at the window.

He had forgotten about Jamieson. These last few weeks his head had been full of other business. First, there had been correspondence with his brother James, whom he had appointed guardian to his children. Although James was only a year and a half younger, he was in better health – fatter, sleeker – and likely to last a few more winters, whereas Sir John had found this last one sorely trying. The cold had scored deep into his flesh, seized up his knee and finger joints, and had him longing for the Caribbean. The thought of more snow and ice was not just depressing, it made him fearful. James might have had his faults in the past, but he surely would not misuse his nephews and nieces.

Then there had been fine-tuning his will. His eldest surviving son, David, who lived in London and managed much of the family’s West Indian business from there, would inherit Ballindean, but, steady though David was, Sir John was not willing to let the future hang on the whim of one individual. It had taken too much trouble restoring the family to Perthshire, after the difficulties of more than half a century ago, to permit the work to be undone in a moment. So he had made an entail of all his property, establishing a complex chain of succession tying Ballindean to future generations of the family, and the family to Ballindean. And not just Ballindean, but also Sir John’s portions of the estates in Jamaica. David could enjoy his own, and after him so could his children, but neither he nor they would be at liberty to sell off the Wedderburn property: it would, barring financial disaster, stay in the family now and for ever. If Sir John wanted to be sure of one thing before he died, it was this: the Wedderburns were back in Scotland for good.

The matter Jamieson had come about had slipped his mind. No – it had been sitting in the dark of his mind, a locked kist in the attic. Perhaps Jamieson had brought the key to it from Dundee?

‘Good morning, Sir John.’

Still facing the window, Sir John tried to assess the man from his voice. It was not a deep voice – it almost squeaked. Jamieson had been recommended by the family lawyer – indeed, Mr Duncan had appointed him, and this would be the first time Sir John had clapped eyes on him. What was he? A kind of drudge, a solicitor’s devil, a sniffer in middens and other dank places, howking out missing persons and persons one might wish to know about but not be known by. A ferret. Yes, his voice was the squeaking, bitter voice of a ferret.

Sir John turned from the outside light. He was surprised by what he saw. Jamieson was a small, balding man in his forties, wearing ill-fitting black clothes that were so crumpled it was a fair wager he had slept in them. Then again, he had just travelled nine miles on horseback, and although the new turnpike between Dundee and Perth was a vast improvement on what had passed for a road before, this might have been cause enough for his dishevelment. He seemed rather portly and careworn, more like a mole than a ferret. Sir John noted that he was carrying nothing – no leather case, no sheaf of papers, no casket of evidence. This was not encouraging. But then, what had he expected him to bring?

‘Good morning, sir. Is it cold out?’

‘A wee thing chilly, Sir John. That east wind is aye blawin.’

‘Very well. There is the fire if you wish to warm yourself.’

Jamieson hotched awkwardly near the door. Sir John kept up his sour face, but inwardly he smiled. Perhaps the man thought it would be impertinent to come between a laird and his hearth just to warm one’s backside. Perhaps he suspected that the laird was toying with him. Well, he was entitled to his suspicions. It was his job.

When it became clear that Wedderburn was not going to speak, Jamieson coughed and filled the silence himself.

‘Aboot the, eh, maitter I was instructed tae inquire intae, Sir John. I received the commission at the end o January and I hae been workin awa diligently ever since. I hae sent oot numerous letters, checked parish records, questioned shipping agents, mill overseers, members o the criminal classes … I regret tae say that I am unable tae gie ye ony satisfactory report.’

‘Is that so? Why then are you here?’

‘It was intimated tae me that the maitter was of some … was tae be conducted wi the ootmaist discretion. I felt it only richt I should bring ye this disappointin news mysel.’

Wedderburn sucked in his cheeks till it seemed his whole face was about to collapse. ‘It is disappointing, sir. Can you report nothing at all?’

‘Extensive inquiry has been made, and no jist in Dundee. I had hoped for information frae the agent in Perth that first worked on the person’s behalf, a Mr Davidson …’

Wedderburn glowered. ‘Ah, yes, I mind that name.’

‘… but he has been very ill and unable tae see me. I hae been in Edinburgh, Kinross, Fife, Angus – but withoot ony success. In short, nae trace o the person has been uncovered.’

‘Let us not be shy, sir. His name is Knight. Joseph Knight.’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘He cannot simply have disappeared.’

‘Wi respect, Sir John, there’s ony number o things micht hae happened. He micht be deid.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Wedderburn said sharply.

‘I’m no sayin I dae. But it micht be possible. For aw that, he micht be in London. Or America. Africa even.’

‘I hardly think so.’ Now Wedderburn was beginning to suspect Jamieson of toying with him. ‘Mr Jamieson, I do not doubt that you cannot find the man, but no trace of him? Not a word? Nobody with a memory? A man like that surely does not just disappear.’

‘That’s whit he seems tae hae done, sir. Disappeared.’ Jamieson coughed. ‘And his wife wi him.’

‘You mean his wife as well?’

‘Aye, sir, of course. As we’ve no found either o them, we dinna ken if she’s yet wi him.’

Sir John thought of the wife. The Thomson woman. She would long since have lost any charms she once had. He had a sudden, startling image of her, a twisted, witch-like hag, clinging to the back of Joseph Knight like a curse. He gave his head a shake, moved towards the fire.’ ‘It’s odd. It is not as if he is inconspicuous.’

‘Which is why I say,’ Jamieson said, following. ‘were he yet in Dundee, I would hae discovered it. A black man in Dundee is a kenspeckle body. But as soon as ye reach tae Edinburgh, or the west, it’s a different proposition.’

‘He’s still a black man. He must stand out.’

‘There’s mair o them in Scotland than ye micht imagine. Maistly in Glasgow and roond aboot. Wi the trade tae the Indies, ye ken. It’s no like Bristol or Liverpool, sir, whaur I’m tellt they are very numerous, but there’s mair here than ye’d think.’

‘Is that so?’ Sir John was irritated by the suggestion that this man knew more about Negroes than he.

‘In the west, aye. There’s a line or twa I pit oot in that airt that I’ve no reeled in yet. No that I’m ower hopeful, but …’

Wedderburn tilted a furrowed brow at him: explain further what you mean.

Jamieson coughed again. ‘Ye’ll be aware o the present revolutionary spirit that’s rife amang certain trades, sir? Weavers and spinners and the like. There’s a secret society brewin up discontent, ye’ll maybe hae heard o it? The United Scotsmen, as they cry themsels.’

Wedderburn found himself getting annoyed. Jamieson seemed incapable of coming at a point directly. He always wheedled and sneaked his way up to it. ‘Why should they interest me? I am not a political man.’

‘Nor I, sir.’

‘But they interest you?’

‘It’s my work.’

‘You are a spy.’

Jamieson blinked, mole-like. ‘Weel …’

‘You are a spy. You turn men’s coats. You buy men and their secrets. Am I right?’

‘It’s why ye employed me,’ Jamieson said flatly.

‘Mr Duncan employed you. Never mind. Go on with your United Scotsmen.’

Jamieson paused, as if recollecting something he had memorised earlier. ‘In pursuin a certain line o inquiry intae the activities o this combination,’ he said, ‘on behalf o some gentlemen wi considerable interests in the linen manufactories in Dundee and Fife, I had occasion tae make contact wi some o the weavers o Paisley. There is a black man in that toun – no oor black man – a respectable and loyal subject – and as it appears there is a web o contacts no jist amang the weavers but amang the Negroes o the west, I thocht something micht come back by way o him. But there’s been naething thus far.’

‘This loyal Negro,’ Wedderburn said, stretching out the phrase as if to test if it would snap, ‘what is his name?’

‘Peter Burnet. A weaver.’

‘You met him?’

‘No. I wrote tae him.’

‘And you expect a reply?’

‘I dinna ken.’

Sir John snorted. ‘Well, well, if that is all, that is all. Knight may be furth of Scotland altogether, as you say.’

‘I could appoint agents in London, sir. Time would be a factor, but if ye were willin …’

Something in Wedderburn’s eyes brought Jamieson to a halt. There was a deep thought turning in there, an assessment. Then Wedderburn shook his head, as if ridding himself of the thought. Later, Jamieson would curse himself for not paying more attention, for not seeing it as a warning signal. He had seen the same head-shaking gesture earlier, when Knight’s wife had been mentioned. As if there were something in Wedderburn’s mind that he couldn’t get out.

Wedderburn said, ‘No. It’s not important.’

If it was not important, Jamieson thought, why had he been traipsing around the countryside for two months? Not that he was going to complain, since the fee was substantial, but in his experience even wealthy gentlemen – especially them – did not hire him for trivialities.

He ventured an opinion. ‘Tae reach further afield, sir, we could try a discreet advertisement in ane o the newspapers. “Information regarding the whereaboots of the following individual … a small reward offered” – that kind o thing. If he disna read the papers, somebody that kens him micht.’

‘Oh, he reads the papers, Mr Jamieson, be assured of that. He is a very thorough reader.’

‘Weel, then …’ Again, Jamieson saw that struggle in Wedderburn’s eyes. Hot, then cold. Anger? Guilt? Something old but still raw. And behind Wedderburn, above the fire, he saw something else: flanked by several smaller silhouettes, a large painting in which three men posed on a kind of wooden porch. Their clothes were old-fashioned – from forty or fifty years back, perhaps – and the painting was no masterpiece, but they were unmistakably Wedderburns. All three had Sir John’s high brow and long jaw. The porch was attached to a house, and was partly in shadow. Bright green, foreign-looking shrubs and an absurdly blue sky provided a crude contrast to the shade and to the unsmiling faces of the men. The scene must be Jamaica. One of the men – probably the one in the middle, Jamieson thought – had to be Sir John.

‘No, I do not wish it,’ Wedderburn said. Jamieson dragged his attention back to the old laird. ‘I believe you are right when you say he is no longer here. And in any case, the nature of these Negroes … Put such a notice in the press, there would be dozens of them thigging and sorning at my gates. No, we’ll not pursue that line.’

‘I only thocht, if it’s a maitter o compensation …’

Sir John drew himself up, squaring his shoulders against their stoop. ‘Compensation? What do you mean by that, sir?’

Jamieson thought of a dog with its birse up, but the image did not quite fit. It was more as if the raw thing in Wedderburn had suddenly manifested itself on his skin, like a disease. Jamieson took a couple of steps back towards the door. ‘Jist that … weel … for Joseph Knight. The case is auld enough noo … Time saftens sair herts. I presumed …’

‘Well, don’t!’ The word shot from Wedderburn’s mouth like a dog after a cat. Jamieson retreated further. ‘Your presumption is not what I hired you for – nor your couthy proverbs. Your task was to find Joseph Knight, nothing more. And you have failed. You presumed that I seek him out to pay him some money? To make amends of some kind? I pay him compensation? Oh, you have read me very wrong, sir!’

‘I see that, I see that,’ Jamieson said, though what he was most clearly seeing was his fee floating down the Tay. ‘No whit I meant at all, Sir John. I beg your pardon – oomph!’

A further detonation from Wedderburn was forestalled by this minor one from Jamieson, triggered by the opening of the library door, the handle of which had dunted him sharply in the small of the back. A tall, dark-haired girl in a white muslin dress entered.

‘Oh, I am sorry.’ It was not clear if she was addressing Jamieson, now rubbing his kidneys and screwing up his face, or her father.

‘What is it, Susan?’ Sir John said. ‘It is not yet noon.’

‘I forgot, Papa. I came for a book.’ She had her father’s serious, thin face, and an adolescent awkwardness of posture.

‘You will have to come back for it, then.’ Wedderburn turned to Jamieson. He made a sudden stab at joviality. ‘My daughter, sir, reads books as a sheep eats grass, incessantly, and as you have discovered she lets nobody stand in her way. I make it a rule that this room is mine, and mine alone, every morning, or I’d have no peace. But I don’t have it anyway. My dear, you must find something else to occupy you for an hour and a half. Should you not be at your task?’

‘I’ve finished my task, and now I’ve to read a book while Maister MacRoy helps Anne with hers. Could I not …?’

Sir John held up a finger. ‘We are discussing business matters. Your book will have to wait. Do some sums. Now – away with you!’ He half shouted this, half laughed it. Jamieson could see the intention: Wedderburn assumed that the lassie had overheard him roaring at Jamieson, and wanted her to think that that had been all light-hearted too. Sounding ever more conciliatory for her benefit, he moved over to the writing-table, saying, ‘I thank you for your efforts, Mr Jamieson. I imagine it’s tedious work. Off you go, miss.’