The Fanatic (19 page)

Tammas’s bulk filled the doorway of the cell, blocking out what little light might have got in.

‘Ye hae a visitor,’ he whispered. ‘I’m shuttin yese in till jist afore the boat leaves. They think she’s ower wi a servant o Maister Fraser’s.’

Mitchel sat up, confused. He thought Tammas was talking about the boat. But a smaller figure came in past the soldier, who shut and locked the door. The figure moved through the mirk towards him. There was a familiarity about its shape.

‘Ah, James, James,’ it said, ‘whit sair place is this tae find ye in.’

‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘Elizabeth.’

She came into his arms. He breathed in the smell of her, so fresh when all he had breathed for months was salt and smoke and the staleness of his body. Their faces were wet with each other’s tears. They hushed each other’s sobs like bairns fearful of being discovered.

‘The sodger wi the poxed face, he is an angel,’ Elizabeth said breathlessly. ‘I had peyed the minister’s man tae let me come ower wi him, tae say I was his sister, but I hadna thocht how I would get tae ye yince we landed. I had decided tae beg the captain’s mercy tae let me see ye, since the boat winna return for us till the forenicht, but I was feart he wouldna like ma deceit. And when I saw the horror o the place, I kent I would hae nae mercy frae ony man that could rule here, and I jist sclimmed up the steps, thinkin somehow I would find ye. But the sodger speired did I no ken where I was gaun, and I thocht I would hae mair chance wi him, and sae I said I didna ken, but I was lookin for ma husband, and he speired wha was that, and I tellt him James Mitchel, and he looked aboot himsel and pushed me on afore him and said, dinna say that name again, he has nae freens, and syne he led
me tae ye. I hae mair siller, James, and ye must gie some tae him, for it’s through him we are brocht thegither.’

She had a basket, in which she had packed bread and cheese, some salted meat, tobacco and brandy. And there was a small amount of money, which she had gathered over the months since he had been brought there. The last time she had seen him had been nearly a year and a half ago, not long before he had been put to the boots.

While he tore at the bread and bit off chunks of cheese, Elizabeth removed his stocking to look at the injury. She was not hungry; she had eaten that morning at North Berwick. She did not say that she had been two days in the fishing port, waiting; not for calm weather, but for the moment when she herself was ready for crossing.

She stared in horror at his leg. There was nothing to be done for it. It was, at least, not infected, but it was wrecked. The shinbone had been splintered and had reset itself crooked; the muscles were torn and mashed beyond repair. She touched it with her fingers, which were calloused and yellow from working in the stall. As he ate, he watched her hand stroking the patchy, discoloured leg, and a different kind of pain rolled through him.

‘I am sorry, Lizzie Sommervile,’ he heard himself say. ‘I am sorry that God’s work is sae sair on us.’

They had met in 1673, at a conventicle in a house in Edinburgh, and had been married later that year by the outed minister John Welsh, in a ceremony that was illegal in the eyes of the state. Four months later Mitchel had been seized and incarcerated in the Tolbooth. In the last three years he had seen Elizabeth no more than half a dozen times. Even at Edinburgh access had frequently been denied her, and, since December 1675, when he had made an abortive attempt to escape by breaking through the roof, all visits had been refused.

‘His will be done,’ she said. He had never spoken to her about the shooting of Sharp, and she understood that he never would. She knew he had done it. It was a long time ago. She hoped that it was a buried thing now, that he, even if he could never admit it, was as glad as she was that he had missed.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘his will be done.’ The Bass was a world beyond the world. It was agony for him even to think on the possibilities of her life on the mainland. She was kissing the leg now, laying her cheek against it, her breath hot over the blotched skin. It was unbearable to him to receive that tenderness.

‘Lizzie,’ he said, ‘hae ye been faithfu tae me?’

She stopped. Her eyes filled. ‘Dinna speir that unworthy question, James,’ she said. ‘Aw that I sell on the streets, I sell for you. Aw that I hae saved in the world, is saved for you. Dinna question ma faith.’

He was mortified. She had come to him here, at great risk. If she had taken herself off and he had never seen her again, he could not have blamed her. But the fear was still there.

‘Lie wi me,’ he said. ‘Let me ken ye again, here in the darkness.’

She hesitated. It was the moment she had prepared herself for, the reason she had waited the extra day at North Berwick, but it had come sooner than she had expected. But then, what had she expected? His question had hurt her, but shamed her too. She had come here not for him, but for herself.

She knew her own body and its monthly changes so well that ordinarily she hardly had to think about them. But she’d been thinking hard over the last year, as it grew upon her that James might never be released. They were husband and wife, but she felt in some way she was about to betray him.

‘Lizzie,’ he said again. ‘D’ye mind thon time at Kippen?’

He untied his breeks, feeling himself swell the way he did in dreams. She stretched out on the hard bed beside him, fumbling against him as she gathered her skirts towards her waist.

‘Thon time,’ she said. ‘Mair than three year syne, James. There’s been little else tae mind on atween us.’

After their marriage, at the suggestion of Mr Welsh, they had journeyed together north to Stirling, and from there to the west, to Cardross House by the village of Kippen. ‘Come and share in the spirit of Christ’s people,’ Welsh told them, ‘in the very heart of God’s covenanted nation.’ Lord Cardross was a fervent Presbyterian, who had been supporting and
attending illegal gatherings in the vicinity for years. The country that lay between the Fintry hills and the Trossachs, and between Strathblane and Stirling, was a hive of conventicling, where large crowds would come to out of the way places in the hills and among the bogs for the preaching.

Lizzie had never been more than a few miles from Edinburgh. To travel so far when the winter was closing in, was a revelation in itself. As far as Stirling the going was relatively easy and the towns and villages, though new to her, were not frightening for one who had grown up on the streets of the capital. But once they left Stirling behind, and she saw the great desolate mountains of the north ahead of her, and the long bleak shoulder of the Gargunnock hills closing on her left, she began to shrink and cling to Mitchel. It was not new land to him, yet even now he found something momentous about the mountains. He saw why John Welsh had encouraged them to come, why he called it the heart of Scotland, out of which both Highlands and Lowlands flowed. In such a place, where the land gathered like solid waves about them, a man and a woman would understand their place in the cosmos.

When they arrived at Kippen, news of Welsh’s arrival was carried from house to house, and from farm to village. The meeting was to be held up beyond Flanders Moss, in rough wet country below the Menteith hills where the dragoons, if they appeared, could not easily ride, and from where folk could scatter and hide if necessary. It was November, and the weather was threatening rain and hail. Early on Sunday morning, before dawn, groups of men and women began to appear in the wastes, drawing together as the light slowly filled the sky. James and Elizabeth walked together along the wet paths, hand in hand, and Lizzie was smiling and James Mitchel was delirious with happiness. It was seven years since Pentland and the hanging of Hew McKail; five since he had shot at James Sharp; now he was being reborn again, with a wife to care for, a covenant to renew, and perhaps, when they returned to Edinburgh, a chance properly to fulfil the purpose God had set for him.

The people were quiet and serious but friendly. Some of the men, like James, carried swords and other weapons, but
the atmosphere was peaceful. They had come from miles around. They came out from Kippen itself, from Arnprior and Balfron and Buchlyvie and Gargunnock. They came north across the hills from as far as Lennoxtown, east from Aberfoyle, south and west from Drummond and Thornhill. The country was filled with the folk of Boquhan, Kipdarroch, Cauldhame, Poldar, Arngomery Menteith, Tamavoid, Brucehill, Ruskie, Cassafuir, Ladylands, Carden, Gartrenich, Arnfechlach, Knockinshannock, Gartentruach, Ballabeg, Gartbawn, Gartinstarry, Jennywoodston, Arngibbon, Blaircessnock, Arnbeg, Inch, Dub, Drum, Myme, Pendicles of Collymoon, Nether Easter Offerance, Claylands, Borland, Dykehead, Merkland, Shirgarton, Kepdowrie, Gartmore, Gartfarran, Offrins of Gartur. The names of their places filled the air like the numbering of Israel.

John Welsh preached with the forests and hills at his back, and sentries posted to warn of approaching soldiers. His text was from Revelation, chapter 6:
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

He spoke for two hours, discoursing on the wrath of temporal kings and the wrath of God, on those who hid among the rocks as they did now and those mighty men who would hide when it was their turn to be hunted; and how in that day there would be no hiding-place and no deliverance for them, and only those who had kept their tryst with God in the present times would be upheld in his terrible judgment. ‘Remember,’ said John Welsh, ‘the dying words of Samuel Rutherford, who was summoned at the Restoration to compear before Parliament on a charge of treason:
I have got summons already before a superior Judge
, saith his servant Samuel,
and I must answer my first summons, and ere your day is at hand, I will be where few kings and great folks come.
’

There were prayers and psalms, and the grey looming sky that had seemed so heavy with rain cleared, and the sun broke on the hills and made the boggy ground gleam with
many colours. Lizzie Sommervile found herself stirred with feelings that she neither recognised nor understood. She looked at James Mitchel beside her, and felt his hand clutching hers. She believed she loved him, but she did not know why. She believed he loved her but in a different way, a way through God that would always be closed to her. But she would never say this. If it was necessary to him, then she would pretend that this also was the way she loved. On a day such as this she could almost believe it.

The weather was so fine by the time the meeting broke up that, as people were leaving on the long walks back to their homes, James turned to Lizzie and said, ‘Let’s awa intae the hills, tae see the place frae on high.’ And although she was nervous to be going in the opposite direction from everybody else, and was surprised that he should suggest a Sabbath journey that was not to worship, it was maybe like going a dauner in the company of God, so she consented. They climbed rapidly, and looked back on the brown land shining with water, and the tiny figures of the people departing, and they came to a cleft in some rocks which was thick with pine needles, and almost dry, and they spread her shawl out there and lay and watched the last worshippers disperse, and the country below become empty again.

James Mitchel undid the ties of Lizzie’s dress, and put his hand to her breasts, and his lips to them. She felt the weakening warmth of the sun on her shoulders. ‘I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys,’ said James. He pulled up her skirts and pushed down his own clothes and entered her, and she felt him going deep into her. He put down his head and began to thrust. Past his shoulders she saw the thick ranks of trees and the looming hills, and a tremor of fear went through her as he came. What were they doing in this desolate place, on the Sabbath, after having heard the dire warnings of the minister? This was not a walk with God but a nakedness in his garden that they should hide. But in her fear was something else, deeper, an utter
lack
of shame. And James did not feel her fear or her shamelessness; she wondered if he felt anything of her at all. He lay on top of her, breathing heavily, his face in at her shoulder.

She fell into a dwam. She came half out of it, aware that
the sun was getting low. A cold wind was rising. She was about to shake him awake, when something moved up yonder, in the trees. A deer? A wolf, maybe? Could there be wolves here? And then the movement came again, and a figure stepped from the forest.

It was a boy. He might have been twelve, or fifteen, or maybe even older. It was hard to tell because she had never seen anyone like him. No, that was not quite true. She had seen them on the streets of Edinburgh, Highlanders, great beasts of men, cattle drovers, and others of their race who came to barter and sell and, according to most folk, to steal whatever they could. They spoke a quick, liquid language and stared at you with great curiosity and insolence. That was how the boy looked at her. He was thin and lithe, wearing a ragged peat-coloured plaid, loosely held around him by a belt and a clasp of some kind. His legs and feet were bare, which she could hardly believe out here on the hillside in this wintry season. His skin was brown as a nut, and his shaggy hair black like night. His face and arms and legs were streaked with mud and grainy with dirt. He held a long stick in one hand. There was a knife stuck in his belt.

He took a step towards her. She was about to scream, but he held a finger to his mouth and smiled. The smile stopped her. It filled his face from eyes to mouth and it was beautiful. It made her certain that he did not intend to hurt her. She almost forgot that she was lying with her skirts around her waist and a buttock-naked man on top of her. The boy took another step. He was maybe twenty feet away.