Mathew's Tale (2 page)

Chapter Two

B
APTISMS, MARRIAGES AND FUNERALS
were all in a week’s work for John Barclay, but it was a rare occasion for the affairs of his rural congregation to fit all three into a single day, even rarer for that day to be a Friday.

He had just buried old Sarah Mackay, gone to her long home after seventy-two years of constant complaints about her lot, yet unwilling to leave it when the time came. In an hour he would baptise baby Jane Fisher, three days old, but unlikely to live for a week, the doctor said. Later that afternoon, he would join together in holy matrimony James Stuart and Elma McGruther, before the result of their conjoining a few months earlier became too obvious.

The simple arithmetic of his day underlined a concern that had been with him for a few years. His community was in decline; slow, but undoubted. The wars had taken some, yes, but they had gone on throughout history, and still places like his had survived and even thrived. But the new era was different: the young men were leaving the village, many drawn east to Edinburgh or west to the upstart Glasgow whose docks were sucking labour to offload imports of cotton, sugar and most of all tobacco. Others were moving within the county, to work in the filthy, dangerous hellholes they called coal mines that were booming since the opening of those damned canals, and in the new factories that were part of what people were calling the Industrial Revolution.

Yes, the place needed new blood, but it was hard to see how it would come, or from where.

The minister was fretting over the future as he climbed up into the steeple tower. Carluke’s parish kirk was in want of a beadle since old Jimmy Peebles had gone to live with his son in Monklands, in the same county but as distant as the moon to most of his former neighbours, and so the church officer’s essential workload had fallen upon him. These included ensuring that the clock, a gift to the church by Sir George Cleland’s grandfather, also George, was always wound, oiled and keeping time.

He reached the platform and inserted the long heavy winding lever into its slot, then turned it, laboriously, straining with the effort.

‘Never force it,’ old Jimmy had instructed him before he left. ‘Otherwise ye’ll bugger the works. Then ye’ll hae tae get the clockmaker frae Hamilton and he will no’ be cheap.’

Barclay was in his middle years and had never been a strong man, so forcing it was not an issue. As soon as he felt that the resistance was reaching his limit he stopped and withdrew the winder, pausing for breath before reaching for the oil can.

He had barely finished the lubrication when the loud click of a turning cog sounded in the tower, as the clock reached the top of the hour, the top of the morning. It had its own bell, separate from the one that sounded twice on Sunday to summon the faithful . . . and those who were not, but kept up appearances . . . and when it rang, it was best to be some distance away.

The minister had no time to escape. All he could do was press his hands over his ears to muffle the twelve chimes and to lean as far as he could out of the slatted stone light vents that were set on either side of the face.

As he looked out, grimacing occasionally, he saw a figure, a man in a blue three-quarter coat of uncommon design, a grey shift and breeches. He could not see his face, not properly, but even at that distance he was struck by the quality of his black boots, so well polished that they seemed to shine in the sun.

The newcomer might have drawn a greater audience, for he was exceptionally tall, at least six feet high, but Carluke was at work and there was nobody else to be seen. He was leading a pony as he crossed the green space in front of the kirk. Its brown saddle gleamed as brightly as its master’s footwear, and it was laden with two leather bags, one on either side, and two cloth-wrapped bundles. The pair paused to take water, the man cranking the village pump handle and drinking straight from the spout, his horse from the trough beside it.

Refreshed, they approached the church. The bell had finished its tolling, but Barclay realised that he still had his hands over his ears. He withdrew them, self-conscious even though he could not have been observed, and continued to watch as the stranger tied his companion to the post beside the gate, then gave it an apple taken from one of his pockets.

He glanced behind him, in a slightly furtive way that alarmed the minister, then stepped on to consecrated ground, heading up the pathway.

‘Who can he be?’ John Barclay muttered as he made his way down the stone steps. The newcomer bore himself with confidence and authority yet his dress, while odd by village standards, was not that of a person of importance.

The kirk was always open when the minister was there. Just as he emerged from the steeple tower, so his visitor stepped inside.

Even though the place was lit only from the outside, Barclay’s gaze fell at once upon the scar. It ran from the centre of his forehead, downward, diagonally across his left eye, which its opacity showed to be sightless beyond doubt, and then his cheek, not quite reaching his ear. He was transfixed and might have looked at nothing else had the other eye not been so vivid and compelling as it fixed on him.

‘So you’re still here, Minister,’ the man said, and then he smiled.

‘Aye, that I am, by God’s will,’ Barclay agreed. ‘And so are you, by the same divine agency from the look of you. Let’s go over by the window so I can see you better, then you can tell me how I can help you. Not that I’ve got much time, mind; I’ve a bairn to christen at one.’

He moved into an elongated diamond of multi-coloured light cast by the stained glass.

‘Whose bairn would that be?’ the stranger asked.

‘The father’s name is Joel,’ he replied, wondering why he should be asked. ‘They’re calling her Jane, after his mother.’

‘That’s a recipe for confusion, is it not . . . no’ that big Joel was ever too clear-headed.’

‘That’s not likely,’ the clergyman replied. ‘The child is weak, and shilpit, no’ likely to live. She’s one of twins; the other was stillborn, poor wee mite.’

‘Ah, what a shame. Big Joel the smith deserves better. He’s a good soul. Still, miracles do happen, and I’m sure you’ll be praying for one as you christen her, Mr Barclay.’

An eyebrow rose as he peered at the visitor; for all the light, he had his back to it and it was still difficult to discern his features beyond that great blemish.

‘You would seem to know Carluke,’ he murmured. ‘How would that be and how would you know my name?’

‘As for the latter, I can read. It’s printed on the sign outside, in letters of gold. But apart from that I’ve known you for almost twenty years, Mr Barclay, since you came here to follow that grim old fellow Howitt, who put the fear o’ God into all us weans. Am I that badly marked, sir, that you do not recognise me, after standing beside me as we buried my faither?’

As he spoke, a cold hand seemed to grab the minister’s innards, and he began to fear a strange irrational fear. ‘Turn around,’ he said sharply, ‘turn to the side, to your left so your face gets all the light and I can see it better, and no’ just that scar.’

‘I will,’ the man laughed, ‘but let me make it easy for you. I’m Mathew, Mathew Fleming. Has it taken you only six years to forget me?’

John Barclay felt his legs go weak; indeed he might have fallen had he not been able to lean on the christening font. ‘Mathew?’ he repeated. ‘Mathew my boy, I’ll never forget you . . . but son, you’re dead.’

He saw that face, finally familiar, turn sombre in an instant and saw that one compelling eye turn cold. ‘If that’s the case, John,’ Mathew replied, quietly, ‘did I not just tell you that miracles happen?’

The minister pondered the question for many seconds before he countered. ‘They may indeed,’ he said, solemnly, ‘but the raising of the dead is much more likely to be down to human error than the hand of the Almighty.’

‘Whatever,’ the resurrected exclaimed, ‘why did you write me off as dead in the first place? Are you telling me that my mother thinks I’m gone?’

‘Aye, and it near broke her heart.’

‘Near but not entirely? She’s still alive?’

‘Of course. I think sometimes that whenever Armageddon comes, Hannah Fleming will be there, daring it to do its worst. Mathew, there was a letter, three years ago, from the Highlanders. It came to your mother; she brought it to me to read for her, and I have it still, in the parish records.’

‘Where is it? Can I see it?’

‘I think ye’d better. Come across to the manse with me . . . and bring your cuddy as well,’ Barclay added. ‘I asked Jessie to have a meal ready before the christening. It will stretch to two, and I always have some oats for travellers’ animals.’

The minister’s residence was set on the right of the church, built of the same hard grey stone and accessible from within its grounds, but Mathew led the untethered Gracie the long way round rather than take her across the graves that filled them.

There was a post and a trough at the side of the manse. He tied her there, then followed his host in through the kitchen entrance.

Jessie was the minister’s housekeeper, not his wife. She was ancient and had come to the parish with him. There were rumours, generated by a stranger in the inn several years before, that Barclay had been born on the wrong side of the blanket and that she was, in fact, his mother, but he was too respected in the community for that tale ever to be put to him.

The old woman eyed Mathew silently as he came in. No introduction was offered, and if she recognised him she kept it to herself. Jessie had two facial expressions, severe and less severe. There were people in Carluke who claimed to have seen her smile slightly, once, at a hanging in Lanark.

The two men ate at a table in a small room next to the kitchen; it faced south, across the green and down into the village and thus it was sunlit. The minister was in a rush to be ready for the baptism, and so there was no conversation for they both knew that Mathew’s tale would be long in the telling. The stovies that had been their main course were followed by steamed pudding, and then, astonishingly to the newcomer, coffee, something he had never seen in his home village. He remarked upon the fact.

‘Glasgow,’ Barclay replied. ‘There’s all sorts of stuff coming in through that city that we’ve never seen before. Half the tobacco in the United Kingdoms is imported through there, so they say. Scotland is being split in two; there’s the aristocracy and the lawyers in the east and the merchants in the west. Edinburgh might be our capital, but I doubt that it’s our largest city, no’ any longer. Our country’s changing, young man, and places like this are under siege. If it wasna’ for Sir George Cleland, Carluke would be full of nothing but the old and the useless.’

‘I had a conversation with his sons just outside the village,’ Mathew remarked, quietly.

Mention of the twins made the minister frown. ‘I know those brats,’ he said. ‘I should; I baptised them. And I look down at them every Sunday beside their father in the Cleland pew, whispering through the sermon. Hopefully Sir George will correct the pair of them out before they’re grown men.’ He glanced across the table and smiled. ‘Your tone suggests they enjoyed the conversation rather less than you did.’

‘That might have been the case; had it been a year or so ago, in another country, they wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all. Indeed their father might tell them to be careful who they cheek at the roadside. There’ll be a few of Wellington’s veterans making their way. If they cross the wrong one, at the wrong time and place, they could wind up in a hole in the ground and their fine horses gone for sale in some town along the way.’

‘I’ll pass that message on, Mathew, tho’ I doubt it’ll do much good. Those boys are Sir George’s only weakness. Another laird might have sent them off to school, in England maybe, but he won’t be parted from them, not since Lady Cleland died seven years ago. Instead he has tutors for them who teach them a’thing but manners.’

He rose from the table, suddenly. ‘Excuse me,’ he said then strode from the room. Mathew waited, growing impatient. Now that his fear for his mother had been lifted he was anxious to see her, and not just her either. He could almost see her house, just round the bend beyond the tavern, with Lizzie Marshall’s family home a little further down the same street.

Lizzie. How would she take to the man who was returning to her, much different from the impulsive boy who had left to serve King George, for money rather than patriotism? What would she think of the scar? Would it repel her, as it repelled him every time he had to look at himself in a glass?

Barclay’s return broke into his thoughts. He held in his hand a letter, in its envelope, which he laid on the table before his guest. Mathew recognised the regimental crest on the outside, above the words, ‘Mrs Hannah Fleming, Carluke, Lanarkshire, Scotland’.

‘I’m going to christen the Fisher bairn,’ the minister told him, ‘and say an extra prayer for her. Who knows? Maybe your return’s a sign from God that a’ things are possible. While I’m gone, son, read that. We’ll talk when I get back and then I’ll take you to see your mother. We don’t want you turning a corner and her falling over wi’ shock.’

‘True enough,’ he conceded.

He waited until the door had closed before drawing out the letter, and unfolding it.

It, too, bore the regimental badge and was written in the same clear copperplate as the address, but it was smudged in a few places, as if its author had been careless with the blotting paper, or had been rushed. It was dated the twenty-second of June, eighteen fifteen, four days after the Battle of Waterloo.

Dear Mrs Fleming,

I am writing to you in great sorrow, to advise you of the sad news that your son, Corporal Mathew Fleming, was a casualty in the great and decisive battle that was fought against the French here in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Corporal Fleming led his company of men bravely into the fiercest of the fighting, where he sustained a severe wound, while himself killing one of a group of French attackers who were attempting to break though the line. That they were unsuccessful was due to the heroism of Corporal Fleming and his company, who played an important part in a great victory. It is now clear that the power of the French is broken and that Napoleon can no longer continue as Emperor.