The maiden, p.15
The Maiden, page 15
It was definitely all for the best.
Finding James with his maid was a lucky escape.
Mother was late, but the first course of scrambled eggs with anchovies would spoil if we did not get on with it, so we had to begin without her. The couples were of Andrew’s trade, much older than me, with the exception of Robert and the heavily pregnant Johanna, attending her last social outing before her confinement. I smiled and nodded at Mr James Keith, an esteemed tailor on my left, as he confessed that his favourite midday pastime was a wander through Edinburgh to see whether any mischief-maker had been caught lately and was having his ear nailed to the Mercat Cross by way of punishment.
‘A sight to behold. Makes you grimace, but you’re rooted to the spot as you’re wondering how long the poor fellow will last before he faints,’ Mr Keith observed, waving his knife in the air. ‘Some of the fellows run wagers on it. And then I usually take luncheon in a decent wee tavern called Nell’s on the corner. Has Andrew been there? Tell him they do a fine mutton stew. But not half as tasty as these eggs, of course.’
I thought he was a nasty little man, and I was cross with Andrew for making me sit next to him whilst his wife painstakingly picked out all her anchovies, leaving a trail of them at the side of her plate. I was tempted to do the same, for anchovies are the best way to spoil a dish of scrambled egg, but I had better manners.
Where was Mother? She was three-quarters of an hour late. I hoped she had not come to some mishap in that old carriage of hers. Johanna caught my eye and frowned, shrugging her shoulders. It was not like Mother to miss a minute of something fancy.
But she arrived just before the peacock, in the same shade of blue and quite as showy in an elaborate ruffled gown that could only have come from my generous husband.
‘How incredibly brave,’ said Mr Keith under his breath, as we all stood and let her make her way up to me.
‘My utmost apologies, my dear,’ Mother rattled, as we all sat down again and the hubbub of chatter around the table resumed, ‘but we have had a shock at Roseburn this afternoon.’
‘Be calm, Mother, and catch your breath.’ She was entirely blue from collar to shoe. I waved the servant over to get Mother served her wine and her eggs.
‘A terrible afternoon,’ she went on, ‘and I shouldn’t even have come, but decided it best, as I could not be on my own.’
Then we were interrupted by the arrival of the peacock in all its baked glory. A golden pie-crust covered the creature, and I knew that underneath the bird was baked in butter and bacon, with an onion studded with cloves. But at one end was its head – beak and all – and at the other a great plume of feathers from its tail. They would talk of this for weeks!
‘What do you think?’ I asked, knowing she would be proud of me for producing such a fine dinner table.
‘Oh, splendid, but I can hardly think,’ she said. She had not touched her first course. ‘A letter came this afternoon from Corstorphine Castle. From James.’
The sound of his name out loud at my dinner table was like a pinch in my shoulder blades. It chilled my back, tingling all the way down my spine.
‘What did he say?’
Down at the bottom of the table there was an explosion of laughter. The crockery rattled. The lute soared to a crescendo.
‘He said that Lillias had returned from taking the waters and seemed in good spirits. But last night she took a turn for the worse and despite a physician being called out to attend her, there was nothing he could do, God rest her soul.’
I felt that I was going to faint. I had to breathe slowly.
‘It was the drinking, I fear,’ Mother said, weeping now. ‘But we will not speak of that further and will ask God to forgive her weaknesses.’
The servants filled my plate with peacock meat, potatoes and cabbage. I had envisaged it looking far more appetizing than this. It looked like nothing more than a plain chicken dinner. Mr Keith asked the servant if there was any sauce. I wondered if James was grieving or relieved. I wondered if I might vomit, and I gripped the cool wooden tabletop for comfort.
‘The pity is, she was such a promising bride,’ Mother went on. ‘A beauty on her wedding day. And he was the most eligible bachelor in the south-east of Scotland. Well, now he is its most eligible widower, for he comes with that castle and that title. If the family ties had been different, I might have fancied him as a husband for you, Christian, but of course there would never have been a way of making that work.’
I finally got to Johanna after the almond cream, when the men retired to smoke and the ladies were seated in the glasshouse with coffee, warning my sister of the perils of childbirth and chewing over the news of Lillias’s passing. Johanna radiated in a pink gown beside the hothoused French roses.
‘I feel hideous about Lillias,’ I said. Johanna nibbled on a marzipan.
‘I am sure there will be a stampede of ladies offering a shoulder for James to weep on,’ she said. ‘And you are to stay out of it. You have a husband, and that matter is settled.’
The thought of James with another wife chilled my blood. A young bride.
I realized then just how deep my feelings for him ran.
What if I was free of Andrew? If James and I were free to wed and I was always at his side, he would have no need for dalliances with his serving girls.
‘Men have divorced their wives,’ I told Johanna. ‘For adultery. And desertion. It was in the marriage book.’
‘You are scandalous,’ Johanna said. ‘What has become of you? We know of no one who is divorced. Imagine the shame! And does James love you? I doubt it. I have heard he has women all over the place.’
We were interrupted by Mrs Keith, who wanted the recipe for the peacock pie and insisted on sitting beside us, for she had trouble with her hip and needed a firm chair. She was soon engaged in chatter with Johanna about her aches and clicking bones. Mother was in the corner being comforted by the other ladies. I had already said she should remain here overnight.
I felt such emptiness in my own glasshouse at that moment, with the bold July moon luminating my polished silver coffee pots, as I have ever felt.
Chapter Thirty-Two
CHRISTIAN
Corstorphine Castle
July 1679
Lady Lillias was buried to the peals of the dead bell, ringing away the evil spirits that gather at the bodies of the dying. The Forresters had their own corner of Corstorphine Kirkyard with views up to Corstorphine Hill. Grey rain hammered down in cold nails, despite the fact it was summer, sealing her into the ground along with the secrets she kept about her husband.
Her funeral was like her life: stiff and black and reeking of alcoholic fumes. The ladies attended Corstorphine Kirk for the sermon. I prayed for Lillias’s soul, trying to push away the memories of her husband’s hands on my skin. His intimate touches. I ached for him, despite Oriana. Despite the fading bruises on my shoulders from where he had gripped me in temper. Without him, my life was empty.
But we ladies were spared the graveyard and the raw elements, for a burial site was not the place for us. Instead we sipped wine in the castle dining room – conspiratorial ravens picking at the flesh of Lady Lillias’s life. The beauty she once was. The fall into ruin. Lord James bravely enduring her moods.
I was elated to be at my own aunt’s funeral.
What kind of woman did that make me?
The men returned from the burial soaked to the bone and we ate platters of mutton, and the men drank whiskies and toasted all their dead, whilst the bell-man continued with his unearthly cries in the courtyard.
James looked as sombre as I had ever seen him. But not distressed. He was as handsomely groomed as ever, and head to toe in black. But as I scoured the room I realized there were far more young ladies at this funeral than was seemly. They had sprung from all corners of Edinburgh and beyond, with the tightest of corsets and the loosest of connections to the deceased. Lady this and Lady that. A Miss Mariota Blair from Fife, weeping behind an ornate black fan, and a Lady Jane Stewart peeping at James from behind her mourning veil. Cousins-once-removed and families-once-visited. Bosoms heaving with black opal necklaces. He kissed hands and performed deep bows and I slipped invisibly to the back of the room and watched the bell-ringer from the window. I did not want to watch James eyeing his next bride.
Even in the thump of the summer rain, which made its walls all the more desolate, this place had more draw than my own home because it was where I had felt beautiful, and in those moments I had even desired my own self, so captivated had I become with the softness of my flesh.
It was true, the thing I said to Johanna. The marriage manual said there were circumstances in which a man may annul his marriage. What would Andrew do if he knew of my secret life? I put my fingers on the windowpane, its chill numbing my skin. The bell-ringer was soaked. He threw his last swings and wiped his face with his free hand. A servant scurried out and passed him his payment and then he slipped away.
I felt James’s breath on the back of my neck before he even spoke.
‘You were good to come,’ he murmured. ‘My behaviour with Oriana was wicked.’
I did not move my body, but tilted my head sideways to him, and that forced him to lean in closer.
‘You have many distractions today. Every unwed woman in Scotland has arrived.’
He laughed, low and hoarse. ‘Now you see how popular I am! But look at them, for God’s sake, Christian. Fools and idiots. I need a real woman. One I truly desire. Not one of these simpering bitches. No more serving girls. When is Andrew next away?’
The words I had longed to hear. I gripped the windowsill.
‘He has two trips planned in August,’ I said.
‘Then visit the day he is gone. I can’t stand another moment without you. Lillias’s death changes everything, Christian.’
In that moment, I knew I had him. But he needed to understand that I was willing to assert myself as his wife.
‘I will not return to this castle unless Oriana is gone,’ I said.
The rain streamed down the windowpane.
‘I will dismiss her,’ he said. ‘I have my suspicions about her anyway, as I cannot locate a diamond cape pin I am sure was in my bedside drawer, and she is the only servant with access to my chamber.’
‘Then dismiss her immediately,’ I said. ‘We cannot have untrustworthy staff.’
I only knew he was gone when I heard him greeting a group of mourners at the edge of the room.
I put my forehead to the windowpane, feeling my pulse cooling against the cold glass. Everything could change. James had said so himself. I grasped the thought like a slippery fish. The rain was easing. Something caught my eye in the window of the south turret. Pale as a face, fleeting away just as I tried to focus on it. Perhaps it was the reflection of the clouds in the glass. Perhaps it was the ghost of Lady Lillias. I shivered. It would not serve me well to be afraid of ghosts in this castle if I was to be its queen.
Chapter Thirty-Three
VIOLET
Corstorphine Castle
July 1679
Time for another whisky! And if anyone is peckish there’s a grand spread about to be laid out. A Parmesan cheese all the way from Italy, stinking to high heaven. Anchovies, capers and pastries. As you pick over the quelquechoses I’ll tell you one of my philosophies on whoring. Pay heed – a brain as well as a pretty face. And if someone fancies bringing me a plate, I’ll try a little of everything. Oh, don’t all rush at once; we don’t need a stampede, gentlemen.
Men, I do declare, turn to whores for all sorts of reasons. Some come for the deed itself, in which case it is over in a heartbeat. Some for the desperate ripping of clothes before, others for the velvet stillness afterwards, when they can lay their heads upon a breast and feel like bairns again. Some come because they love women. Others come because they hate women.
I think Lord James Forrester takes mistresses and whores and maids because he likes to think of himself as always having a choice of women to fuck, whatever the hour of the day.
He thinks each brings out a different side in him. Laird James the Lover. The Rescuer. The Conqueror. He sees himself more handsome in his mirror because of it. If he had seven turrets, he’d have seven whores and even more ladies in his bedrooms. He thinks nothing of their reasons for spreading their legs to him, be it money or fear or, in that grey-gowned lady’s case, the desperate yearning to be loved. I heard her loneliness in the ache of her moans and quivers that night I listened at his chamber door.
She sounded as though she’d never been touched before. But all he would have heard was James, James – the echo of his name.
And Oriana, who he took, from time to time, from the age of fourteen, so she says. She did not want his paws on her, but how could she ever say no? He was paying her a wage. A castle servant. One of the best positions in Corstorphine for a girl like her. She was his to fuck. Was that why she became so meek and pious? Was she trying to dampen his lust? What was she like, under that cap and shapeless sack of a gown? Did she despise her natural beauty for what it had brought upon her?
What betrayal must she feel when her own God never answers her prayers? Without the fear of hell and black marks on the soul, how vengeful might she become?
I am not surprised when Oriana comes, shocked, and says Lady Lillias has died in the night, for apart from the death-rattle there had been a parade of physician-looking men in spectacles with black leather cases shaking their heads in the courtyard. But I am surprised when James comes to me the day after that miserable-looking funeral party, for I thought he would be in mourning and would leave me be, not striding in the door fresh as a daisy.
‘I am sorry about your wife,’ I say.
‘It was not unexpected, but it is still a shock,’ he says, sitting down on the bed and not taking off his coat.
‘Are you not staying?’ He looks fit to leave at any minute, his eyes wandering the room.
‘I am preparing for Lady Christian. She may come for an hour or so, here and there, when her husband is away. I must organize a chamber for her, and the servants are not making a decent job of things.’
And his wife’s deathbed not yet cold.
‘Which brings me to the reason for my visit.’ He puts his hand on my leg, giving it a measured squeeze as if it were a sausage on a stall. ‘Business, not pleasure, this afternoon, I am sorry to say. It may be a little unseemly to have you in this turret whilst Lady Christian is visiting. There is a risk she will find out that I have put you here. She is far more inquisitive than Lillias was. I have a vacancy.’
‘A vacancy?’ I do not like the sound of this.
‘A vacancy for a maid,’ he says. ‘You shall fill it, and with extra pay on top of the wages I have already put aside for you. You will come into the main house and live in the maids’ quarters and help Cook in the kitchen, and assist Lady Christian with anything she needs. You are my maid, but at her disposal. She cannot bring her maid from Carrick House. Servants gossip, and our private business is none of theirs. Now don’t gawp, Violet, it gives you the air of a fishwife.’
I have never heard the like. What is he thinking? Does this mean I am to work? This feels like a most terrible idea.
‘But what about Oriana? Should she not assist, rather than me?’
James frowns.
‘Oriana is leaving in the morning. She has not been the best of maids. She has got herself into somewhat of a fix and we cannot have her in the castle any longer.’
Something – a deep instinct – tells me not to ask any more questions. Not to appear interested. Play stupid. So I ask nothing. I will see Oriana at dinner time and get her to tell me everything.
‘A lady’s maid,’ I say.
‘There is nothing to it; just flatter and assist,’ he says. ‘And you will move to the servants’ quarters where the company is better, but we will both retire back to this turret for an hour or so when it is convenient.’
He squeezes my leg again and then he strides off, flicking his curls behind him and giving himself a nod of approval in the mirror on his way out.
Risen up from the slums to powder cheeks and lace corsets and brush hair. I should be pleased. But I am not. I am Mistress Violetta now. I have no inclination to bow and scrape to the laird’s other whores.
Or to live in the servants’ quarters.
How dare he do this to me?
Oriana tells me she is dismissed, whimpering and quivering, her face red and bloated with tears.
First caught acting the harlot, now suspected of stealing his jewellery.
‘The shame of it,’ she whispers. ‘I did nothing wrong. It was the beast himself making me, and that whore of a lady getting rid of me.’ I do not think I have seen anyone look so distraught. ‘One rule for them, and another for the rest of us. It’s not right, Violet, is it?’
I know this girl is neither a whore nor a thief, but what can I say? I cannot say anything about the sword pin. I have hidden it under the bed for now and I dare not look in its direction. The laird has given her the full month’s wages to keep her mouth shut, but what of her then? Who will employ a dismissed maid?
I know what happens to girls like that.
I do the only thing I can. Give her Mrs Fiddes’s address and say she’ll find lodgings there, should it ever come to it. It is the least I can do for Oriana.
