Island of the Swans (7 page)

“Look!” cried Eglantine excitedly, pointing to a knot of men gathered near the spot where the finishing process was completed. “Ooh—there’s going to be a
dunking
?”

Jane and Catherine stared down at the throng, which was growing larger by the minute as workers from other parts of the tannery circled round a man and woman arguing.

“Doesn’t that look like the Sinclairs?” Catherine asked in an alarmed voice.

Jane confirmed that the man jerking a rope around the woman’s waist was, indeed, Jock Sinclair. Their surly neighbor from the High Street was renowned for his unpredictable temper as well as his ability to pound rough hides into soft leather by vigorously rubbing them with oils, a process known as currying. Jane had always believed he’d have tanned
her
hide for running into him with her pig so long ago if he’d ever had the chance.

“He’s
not
going to throw Matilda into the
loch
!” Catherine cried, revolted by the thought of this ancient Edinburgh ritual for punishing disobedient wives.

Jock was yanking on the rope around his wife’s waist in an effort to get her closer to the excrementitious pool. They could hear her screams all the way up the hill.

“You’ve given me the pox, you bastard! Your own true wife!” shouted Matilda as she fought like a wildcat against the rope.

“Shut up, wench!” Jock grunted, pulling on the rope with arms whose enormous muscles bulged beneath his tanner’s blouse.

The woman dug her heels into the slimy bog that skirted the waters at the end of the loch. Her face was flushed a vibrant hue, and tears coursed down her cheeks, now prematurely lined from the strain of producing four bairns in five years. If Jane was not mistaken, her belly was swollen beneath the thick band of hemp that held it fast. Not only had the twenty-five-year-old matron contracted syphilis from the philandering Jock, but she was also apparently with child, yet again.

Jane suddenly recalled a vision of Matilda Sinclair as the young, cheerful bride she had seen on the fateful day the apple cart had overturned. It had been Matilda who, with Thomas, had carried her home after her accident with the apple cart.

“We have to help Matilda!” Jane cried, suddenly raging with fury that Jock’s fellow tanners could condone such shocking abuse of a woman.

All three sisters were well acquainted with the tales of Edinburgh housewives who, deemed undutiful by their husbands, were dunked six or seven times in the noxious waters as punishment. Women were simply property, like tin cups or cows, to be used or dispensed with as men saw fit.

Matilda’s screams were reaching a crescendo.

“Murder me—gang on, murder me! You’ve murdered the bairn I’m carryin’, you skelly-eyed son-of-a-whore!”

With a growl, Jock picked up his wife. Raising her over his head with powerful arms built from years of stripping gristle off cattlehide, he pitched her, head first, into the loch’s fetid waters.

Except for the three Maxwell bystanders, a cheer went up from the multitude and Jock, preening at the mob’s approval, began to run along the bank of the loch, dragging his wife through its filthy eddies.

“That’ll teach the wench to fash you, laddie!” cried a tanner clad in an apron, his face nearly purple with Jock’s contagious rage. “She shouldna brought such unwelcome news t’you so
public like
!”

“Drag the bitch to the slaughter house and back, Jock!” shouted another who ran beside the barrel-chested Sinclair. “Show ’em
all
a lesson they wanna forget!”

Jane felt the bile rise to her throat. Eglantine began to weep. Catherine tried to shield and comfort their younger sister. Then something in the marshes caught Jane’s eye.

“Oh, God
… no
! Jane, come back!” screamed Catherine as she observed her sister racing down the steep incline toward a small dinghy moored in a patch of reeds.

The crowd was now moving as one along the bank, following Jock. He had dragged Matilda some hundred yards, and Jane spied only the top of the woman’s feet in the water. As Jane approached the shore she could see that the cheeks of the red-faced tanner were covered with ugly, running sores. He was panting from exertion and his eyes were bulging, but he continued to run along the bankside, clutching the rope as if determined to win this tug-of-war. His wife’s water-logged clothing served as an anchor beneath the surface of the loch.

Jane frantically reached through a clump of razor-sharp reeds to grip the bow of the small boat, and her thin leather slipper touched the back of a dead eel. Stifling a scream, she bolted into the craft and grabbed the single paddle, attempting to find a comfortable grip as her arms arched over the stiff hoops supporting her skirt.

“God’s wounds!” she hissed under her breath.

Her progress toward the spot where Jock’s rope disappeared into the water was painfully slow. She could hear the murmur of the tanners as they caught sight of her and guessed her intentions. She glanced up the hill behind the mob and saw Catherine and Eglantine huddled together, their arms clasped tightly around one another. She hardly noticed a tall rider whose roan-colored horse had paused on Ramsay Lane, not fifty yards from her agitated siblings.

Blotting out her surroundings, she concentrated on each stroke of the oar, pulling the little skiff closer to the faint splashes several yards away from her.

Jock stepped up his pace, enraged to see Jane Maxwell, of all people, attempting to rescue his wife. A man of fifty, his sides were heaving and his eyes were virtually popping out of his head.

“Stay back… stay back, bitch!” he screamed at Jane.

Jock yanked even harder on the rope, but then, he suddenly gave a strangled cry. He dropped the line and violently clutched at his left arm.

Jane ignored the sight of the stricken man suddenly writhing on the ground, screeching in pain. She kept her eyes on the brackish surface of the loch and the spot where bubbles had now ceased to percolate. Matilda was floating close to the surface. Her hair drifted loosely around her head like auburn seaweed. Jane raised the young woman’s mouth out of the water, but Matilda appeared unconscious. Desperately, she pulled Matilda’s body partway into the dinghy, ripping at the closings of her heavy, water-logged skirt that made lifting her almost impossible. Finally, Jane was able to heave the lifeless form to the bottom of the craft, gasping at her brief glimpse of the crimson bloodstains streaking down Matilda’s inner thighs. She quickly turned her head away from the angry boils blistering the woman’s neck.

Jane glanced up to see Jock’s bulky form, still and gray on a low rise sloping up from the bank. A balding man leaned down to press his ear to Jock’s chest.

“’E’s dead,” he announced to several tanners standing nearby. “’Tis his heart, I’ll wager, from the looks o’ ’im.”

“Who’s that tarted-up wench what’s interfered with Jock’s business?” growled one of Sinclair’s cronies. “We’ll do the same to her, soon’s we get our hands on the saucebox!”

Hearing this, Jane began paddling frantically toward the far shore. She had no time to wonder what she would do, once she arrived there, but simply put her head down and pulled on the oar with every ounce of strength she had remaining.

“Stay where you
are
!” shouted a deep voice from the opposite shore. “Don’t come closer to the bank, Jenny lass!”

Jane raised her eyes and gazed toward the rim of the narrow loch. In the distance she thought she could discern the hulking form of Simon Fraser. Closer-by, a tall figure with hair the shade of his own roan gelding was poised on horseback at the water’s edge. He was unarmed, and the mob was advancing around to the north side of the loch toward him.

“
Thomas
!” she screamed, her suppressed terror surfacing in her cry.

“Keep to the center, love,” he shouted. “Catherine’s gone for the constable.”

“
Go
, Thomas! Ride away!” she cried, noticing for the first time that the tanners were heading toward her old friend, brandishing scraping knives and cudgels.

“I will… I will… but turn the wee craft back toward Castle Hill, Jenny lass, and keep your eyes on me. When the mob gets t’where I’m standin’, give ’em the slip by rowing back to where you came. I’ll be there. Now
turn
!”

Jane’s upper arms began to cramp, but she forced herself quietly to reverse her craft’s direction.

Thomas waited on the shore until the last possible moment. Then he dug his heels into his horse’s flank and galloped beyond the reach of three or four dozen men who were howling for revenge.

Gasping for breath, she charted the progress of a brigade of town watchmen proceeding down Ramsay Lane from behind Castle Rock toward the loch. She watched the tiny specks that she knew were Thomas Fraser and his godfather, Simon, gallop at top speed the long way around North Loch, a distance of about half a mile. She was only a score of yards from the shore when the constable and his men arrived at the bank.

The figure of Thomas loomed larger and larger as Jane struggled with the oar to pole her way in. He was now over six feet tall, and his broad shoulders and slim waist erased forever her memory of the pathetically thin figure of her childhood. Only his face, with its slightly gaunt features, was familiar. That most-cherished face, its tanned, unfreckled skin barely camouflaging the high Celtic color of his cheeks and his hair. As the dinghy’s prow nosed into the muck clinging to the bank, Jane’s hands reached out toward his dark, garnet mane. Thomas roughly clasped her to his chest.

As soon as he had lifted her out of the boat, Jane started to tremble uncontrollably.

“Matilda?” she cried, shuddering despite the warmth of the afternoon sun.

“Drowned,” said Simon Fraser, matter-of-factly. He reined in his horse and surveyed the scene. “Your interference didn’t make a bit o’ difference, now, did it, lass?” he added. “Mayhap there’s a lesson to be learned in that, missy.”

Jane was too numb to take much notice of his critical tone. Unable to stifle her tears, she wept out of anguish for what fate had befallen her friend, as well as sheer relief at being rescued and seeing Thomas again.

Mercifully, a neutral bystander had already placed a cloak over Matilda’s body. A few yards away, her late husband, Jock, lay stiff and gray on a small rise where his friends had dragged him after the heart seizure struck.

“The bairn…” Jane whispered in tears. “The babe’s died too,” she choked, taking refuge in Thomas’s sheltering arms.

“I’m taking Mistress Maxwell home, Godfather,” Thomas said quietly to Simon.

The older man looked as if he were about to raise an objection, but held his peace. Jane’s eyes, brimming with tears, drifted back to the boat and the lifeless form beneath the cloak. She felt herself lifted up and placed sidesaddle on Thomas’s mount.

“Looks like that gang went back to work, once they spied us comin’,” she heard Constable Munro say.

“They’ve had their bit of amusement for the day,” Simon commented dryly. “Always did think ’ol Jock’s temper would do him in one day. Done his wife in too, it appears.”

“Pity ’bout her four bairns,” replied the constable.

“Her mother’ll look after the brats, I expect,” answered Simon.

“Thomas?” Jane murmured, relieved to feel the horse begin walking up the slope of Ramsay Lane. Now she wouldn’t have to listen to the sound of Simon’s harsh voice.

“Yes, Jenny?” Thomas replied softly, nuzzling his chin in her matted hair, which was moist from sweat and the foul waters of the loch.

“I hope my Aunt Elizabeth had her bairn today,” she said, tightening her arms around his waist and patting the solid expanse of his back. “She moaned just like a sheep. That’s
good
, ’tisn’t it?”

“Aye… ’tis a good sign the wee one’s on its way.”

The horse plodded uphill in silence.

A few minutes elapsed before Jane asked another question. Her eyes were still closed and her body remained relaxed as she sank into the slow rhythm of the gelding’s even pace.

“Thomas, do you think Constable Munro ever guessed ’twas the two of us who ripped down those coronation proclamations five years ago?”

“No, I believe our secret’s safe, pet.”

His voice told her he was smiling.

The roan carefully picked its way up the path to Castle Hill and Jane felt Thomas’s arms tighten around her body as the incline grew steeper. Suddenly she spoke again.

“I’m so glad you’re back, Thomas.”

“I’m glad to see you haven’t changed. Mistress Maxwell… your spirit, that is—”

“
You’ve
changed… a lot.”

“Aye… on the outside. So have you, Jenny, lass.”

She sighed and clutched the arm encircling her tightly as she heard the horse’s hooves move from turf to cobblestones.

“Don’t kiss my head, Thomas. ’Tis foul smelling,” she said softly.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, lass,” Thomas replied, his nose twitching slightly from the rank odors that gave proof of her recent ordeal. “At least, not at the moment.”

Four

N
OVEMBER
1765