Joseph Knight

Dundee, May 1802

The weather had finally turned, it was warm and sunny, and the four younger Wedderburn girls were in town. They were in high spirits at the prospect of a day in Dundee. Their half-sister Margaret had avoided having to chaperone them by pointing out that there was not room inside the carriage for them all, and that she had no desire to go. So Aeneas MacRoy was accompanying them, sitting up with the stableman, William Wicks, who was at the reins. At the old West Port the girls decanted, and MacRoy, after telling Wicks to drive to the shore where the horses could feed and rest before the return journey, got down stiff-legged from his seat and followed them at a discreet distance. He had been instructed by Lady Wedderburn, who was in bed with a cold, to keep an eye on her girls: Dundee could be rough, even in daylight, and MacRoy’s task was to make sure the lassies did not wander away from the main streets and into trouble.

MacRoy reckoned they were safe enough, with or without his assistance. Generally speaking, the poor and desperate robbed and bludgeoned one another, not their social betters. There was less risk involved. The fact that it was he – a man of sixty-eight, and hirpling somewhat these days – who had been entrusted with the girls’ protection, suggested that not even their mother anticipated any difficulty. What could she be expecting? A band of brigands to carry them off to Araby? And what, in such an eventuality, could an aged dominie do to stop them? Then again, it would be a bold brigand who would cross Aeneas MacRoy. Small and ancient he might be, but he was still a force to be reckoned with when roused. Tough as knotted wood and fierce as a wildcat, especially if the Wedderburn honour was at stake. Lady Alicia had known him twenty years. She did not really understand him, but because her husband trusted him, so did she.

The sisters intended to visit Madame Bouchonne’s in the Overgait, as she had recently advertised a large consignment of materials and designs newly arrived from London and the Continent. They wanted – or at least three of them wanted – to promenade up and down the Nethergait and High Street, to see what else might be new, and of course to be seen: the Wedderburn name was embedded in Dundee history – merchants, ministers, landowners, lawyers, burgesses, soldiers – and everybody knew who they were. Perhaps they would run into other ladies in from the country. They would almost certainly meet a cousin or two. They would, take tea at the New Inn, where who knew what interesting persons might also be passing the afternoon? A gallant young captain from the Forfar Militia perhaps, or better still a major in the Perthshire Regiment. And after all else, there would be the elephant. Fourteen-year-old Annie very badly wanted to see the elephant.

Aeneas MacRoy planned to watch them for a few minutes, then slip off to one of a number of dram shops he knew, and while away an hour before meeting them at the inn.

Susan, lingering in the wake of her sisters, had come to town in a mood of ambivalence. It was not that she did not want to be here – there was, after all, so much to see compared with the fine but too peaceful surroundings of Ballindean. Dundee was thriving, noisy, its narrow central area a constant mêlée of vehicles and hurrying people. It had a population approaching twenty-five thousand, which made it bigger than Perth and almost as big as Paisley. Dundee’s spinners and weavers had something of a reputation for radicalism, which appealed to Susan as much as it appalled her mother. There were, apparently, some truly dreadful backstreets and wynds, inhabited by characters who would, according to Aeneas MacRoy, stab you with a look. The thought of these dangerous places and people sent a thrill through her.

The huge new steam-driven flax mills built on the burns running down from Lochee might seem monstrous, but she could not help but be impressed by their power. Likewise the bustling harbour – with its intoxicating mix of foreign-looking sailors and merchants, and its hubbub of strange tongues; its ships carrying grain and linen to England and Holland; barrels of salted herring to the Indies (herring, she’d read, was a staple of the slaves’ diet), to Danzig and Riga, and bringing in iron, copper, tar and pine boards from Sweden and Norway – the harbour both intimidated and exhilarated her. And Dundee’s main streets and fine location below the Law, overlooking the gleaming firth, were gracious and charming. All this Susan saw and understood – much more so, she felt certain, than her sisters; and that was the source of her ambivalence. She would rather be here on her own, in disguise perhaps, able to walk the streets unnoticed and in her own time, not as part of a Wedderburn parade.

She was looking forward to fussy Madame Bouchonne only for the opportunity to laugh secretly at her and her claims of aristocratic blood and narrow escape from Madame Guillotine. Her outrageous accent could not possibly be Parisian, as she maintained, but was surely grafted on to something closer to home – Ayrshire, perhaps, or Dumfries – and her name bore an uncanny resemblance to Buchan or Buchanan. Madame Bouchonne might be a rare and exotic flower which her sisters would be loath to see wither, but Susan would rather have browsed for hours in the booksellers’ at the Cross, without Annie tugging at her sleeve. She wanted to go into the mills, see the men and women working there in their strange new crowded way, like a nest of ants. She wanted to talk to the weavers at their looms. She wanted to wander without sisters or chaperone, to sit by the harbour and drink in its sights and smells. But she could not do these things: she was hemmed in by her skirts and stays and family name. She wanted to be – for a day, or a week, or a year – a boy of seventeen.

She was beginning to feel that she had put enough yards between herself and her sisters almost to be not counted as one of them, when a man suddenly stepped from a close in front of her. She put out her hand in fright, but disappointingly he did not try to stab her with a look or any other implement. He stopped abruptly to avoid bumping into her, and made a short bow of apology.

‘Mr Jamieson!’ she said.

The plumpish man in his crumpled black clothes looked startled, then broke into a smile, friendly yet slightly awkward, even humble. It was enough to renew in Susan the confidence that came with being a Wedderburn. What she most disliked about herself was also one of her strongest attributes.

‘Miss Wedderburn. Ye’ve come tae shed licht on oor dark toun.’

She looked up at the blue sky, then at the busy street. ‘That’s hardly necessary.’ Then, peering into the close from which he had emerged: ‘Although down there, perhaps … Is that where you stay?’

‘Na, na,’ he said. ‘I was, em, looking for someone.’

‘Not Joseph Knight still?’ she asked. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh. Glancing ahead she saw her sisters slowing, becoming aware of her absence. She stepped quickly into the close mouth, cleeking Jamieson by the elbow and taking him with her.

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