Bookshelves ran along two-thirds of the length of the wall behind the table, and reached almost to the ceiling. The volumes were well bound, neatly arranged, and free of dust: biography, history, philosophy, verse, those often rather too delicate creations novelles … So many books, and so little inclination left to read them. Sir John thought this without turning from the window. He felt them massing behind his back, picked them off in his mind: The Works of Ossian, heroic and Highland, whatever Dr Johnson might have said of their authenticity; Edward Long’s History of Jamaica; Lord Monboddo’s six volumes on The Origin and Progress of Language (tedious, eccentric – Sir John had given up after half a volume); Smollett’s novels – he remembered heavy, sweltering West Indian Sundays much relieved by Peregrine Pickle and Roderick Random; the poetical works of the ploughman poet Burns and ‘the Scotch Milkmaid’, Janet Little – little doubt already which of those would last the pace; collections of sermons, treatises on agriculture, political economy, science … And two copies of Henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling, because the lassies liked it so much. Sir John had once tried this book and had thrown it down in disgust – grown men bursting into tears over nothing on every third page. ‘That is not the point, Papa,’ his daughter Maria had insisted, ‘you are too matter-of-fact!’ But that was the point. There wasn’t a hard bit of fact in the entire book.
The fact was, Sir John no longer read much himself, but he subscribed to many publications, and took the lists of the Edinburgh booksellers, mainly for the benefit of his wife Alicia and his daughters. They were all there in the room too, around the fireplace, a series of silhouettes done five or six years before: Alicia, fair and delicate at forty-three; Margaret (child of his first wife – after whom she was named – now nearly thirty and so long neglected by suitors that Sir John had almost given up worrying about it); Maria, Susan, Louisa and Anne (all in their teens). Great readers, every one of them, especially of novelles and poetry. Sir John was quietly pleased that his four sons – represented in various individual and group portraits on the opposite wall, and all but the youngest sent out into the world to work – showed little inclination for reading, and none at all for novelles.
The library’s most recent acquisition, delivered the previous week, was a collection of Border ballads in two volumes, compiled by Walter Scott, Sheriff Depute of Selkirkshire. How appropriate, Sir John had thought as he cut the pages, that so many thieves and ruffians should be rounded up by a sheriff. But there was nothing really wicked in the ballads – nothing that was not safely in the rusted, misty half-dream that was Scotland’s past, nothing dangerous to the minds of his daughters. Susan was the one most easily swayed by history, romance and poor taste. But then she was female and seventeen, it was to be expected. She would grow out of it. Books might have some bad in them, but there were, after all, worse things in the world.
The last fifteen years in France had demonstrated that, but Sir John had known it much longer – since, in fact, he was Susan’s age. The French had gone quite mad, and now the world was paying for the madness. Two men born of the Revolution strode across the Wedderburn imagination, the one threatening to become a monster, the other already monstrous. Napoleon Bonaparte was the first, a brilliant Corsican soldier, who had temporarily made peace with Britain at Amiens but whose ambitions clearly pointed to further and more devastating campaigns. But worse, far worse, was the second man, the black Bonaparte, Toussaint L’Ouverture, the barbarous savage who had turned the French island colony of San Domingo – once the sugar jewel, the sparkling diadem of the West Indies – into a ten-year bloodbath. Toussaint L’Ouverture: the name passed like a cloud over the ruffled, sparkling Tay, and Sir John shuddered.
From the Paris Jacobins this slave had learned the slogans liberté, egalité and fraternité, and had the outrageous idea of applying them to Negroes. He had massacred or expelled the French planters, devastated their plantations, defeated the armies of France, Spain and Britain – forty thousand dead British troops in three years! – and left San Domingo like a weeping scab in the middle of the Caribbean, barely a hundred miles from Jamaica, with Toussaint himself, drunk on power, emperor of the wreckage. Yet in Jamaica, it seemed, his exploits had made him a hero to the blacks. God help them all then, Sir John thought, white and black alike, if they should follow his example.
There was a tap at the door of the library and it opened just wide enough to admit a dark-suited, dark-jowled bullet of a man, whose lined face suggested that he was almost as old as Sir John himself – this despite a thick crop of hair so black that it looked suspiciously like a wig. But these days wigs, even among elderly men, were something of a rarity.
‘There’s a man Jamieson here frae Dundee, Sir John. He says he has business wi ye.’
Sir John frowned, did not turn. ‘What day is it, Aeneas?’
‘Thursday.’
‘Is it? Well, show him in, then.’ He remained at the window.
He had forgotten about Jamieson. These last few weeks his head had been full of other business. First, there had been correspondence with his brother James, whom he had appointed guardian to his children. Although James was only a year and a half younger, he was in better health – fatter, sleeker – and likely to last a few more winters, whereas Sir John had found this last one sorely trying. The cold had scored deep into his flesh, seized up his knee and finger joints, and had him longing for the Caribbean. The thought of more snow and ice was not just depressing, it made him fearful. James might have had his faults in the past, but he surely would not misuse his nephews and nieces.
Then there had been fine-tuning his will. His eldest surviving son, David, who lived in London and managed much of the family’s West Indian business from there, would inherit Ballindean, but, steady though David was, Sir John was not willing to let the future hang on the whim of one individual. It had taken too much trouble restoring the family to Perthshire, after the difficulties of more than half a century ago, to permit the work to be undone in a moment. So he had made an entail of all his property, establishing a complex chain of succession tying Ballindean to future generations of the family, and the family to Ballindean. And not just Ballindean, but also Sir John’s portions of the estates in Jamaica. David could enjoy his own, and after him so could his children, but neither he nor they would be at liberty to sell off the Wedderburn property: it would, barring financial disaster, stay in the family now and for ever. If Sir John wanted to be sure of one thing before he died, it was this: the Wedderburns were back in Scotland for good.
The matter Jamieson had come about had slipped his mind. No – it had been sitting in the dark of his mind, a locked kist in the attic. Perhaps Jamieson had brought the key to it from Dundee?
‘Good morning, Sir John.’
Still facing the window, Sir John tried to assess the man from his voice. It was not a deep voice – it almost squeaked. Jamieson had been recommended by the family lawyer – indeed, Mr Duncan had appointed him, and this would be the first time Sir John had clapped eyes on him. What was he? A kind of drudge, a solicitor’s devil, a sniffer in middens and other dank places, howking out missing persons and persons one might wish to know about but not be known by. A ferret. Yes, his voice was the squeaking, bitter voice of a ferret.
Sir John turned from the outside light. He was surprised by what he saw. Jamieson was a small, balding man in his forties, wearing ill-fitting black clothes that were so crumpled it was a fair wager he had slept in them. Then again, he had just travelled nine miles on horseback, and although the new turnpike between Dundee and Perth was a vast improvement on what had passed for a road before, this might have been cause enough for his dishevelment. He seemed rather portly and careworn, more like a mole than a ferret. Sir John noted that he was carrying nothing – no leather case, no sheaf of papers, no casket of evidence. This was not encouraging. But then, what had he expected him to bring?
‘Good morning, sir. Is it cold out?’
‘A wee thing chilly, Sir John. That east wind is aye blawin.’
‘Very