Gordon shrugged. “Peace rarely lasts, and treaties are but words on paper. King William is not well liked and has no children, so I’ll wager before long the throne will pass to Princess Anne,” he said. “And she’s a Stewart.”
Maggie was not interested in politics. “You did forget the two new ships at Burntisland.” She’d been obsessed with those ships since the first of them, the Caledonia, had slipped in upon the tide last week, resplendent in her show of red and gold and blue, the wind filling the sails on her three tall masts as she fired the forward-mounted cannon in her bow to hail the townspeople. When she had first been spotted in the firth, the word had spread, so there’d been time enough for Lily to bring Maggie to the pier to watch the great ship gliding past, and to hear that cannon, and to hear it answered by the booming guns of Edinburgh’s great castle, high atop its rock.
The second of the ships, arriving yesterday, might well have been the first one’s twin.
“Why are they both so big?” asked Maggie.
“Well,” said Captain Gordon, “those belong to our own African Company.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, in full it’s called ‘the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies,’ but that’s far too long to say in conversation, would you not agree? Aye, so would I. So then, our African Company is a brave new venture with an aim to raise our country to the level of the English and the Dutch—both of those countries have rich companies that trade to the East Indies and to even farther shores where there are markets for their goods. And,” he told Maggie, “they have colonies.”
She asked him, “What’s a colony?”
He had to think about the definition. “It’s a small piece of your own country that you plant in a far-off land” was what he finally settled on. “You build up towns, and farms, and roads, and people go to live there.”
“What if someone’s living there already?”
“If you have enough men, you could always take the land by force. That’s what the Dutch did at Batavia and their other colonies in the East Indies.”
Maggie disapproved. “That is not nice.”
“No, you’re right, it’s not.” The captain half smiled in the way men do when a child’s simple honesty reminds them of their conscience. “And our African Company agrees with you, which is why they plan to found a colony for Scotland on land that no other European nation has yet claimed, and if our settlers do find natives there, we must get their consent before we build.”
That suited Maggie better. “Where is the new colony to be?”
“Nobody knows. It is a secret.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “the English and the Dutch do have their companies that sail to the East Indies, as I said, and they are jealous of our own, and do not wish to share the seas, and if they knew where we did mean to plant our colony, they might make trouble.”
Lily knew King William had been making trouble, too. Although he’d given his consent to the formation of the African Company and its aims, he’d since done all he could to prevent its success. It was by King William’s order that no English or Dutch investors had subscribed to the company, and the English merchants who had at first been so enthusiastically involved in the venture had withdrawn their support for fear of losing the king’s favor, leaving Scotland alone to carry the financial burden of raising enough capital.
But the people of Scotland, across all social ranks and religions, had risen to the challenge and subscribed their names into the company’s book, and the beautiful ships now anchored in the firth were a testament to what could be achieved when Scots looked past the things that did divide them and pursued a common dream.
Captain Gordon said to Maggie, “That is why those ships are larger. Because they must travel very far. They need more sail, and must be big enough to carry all the things they’ll need to trade, and build the towns, and transport the first people who will live there. And because they’re going to an unknown place, with unknown dangers, they must have more guns. I have not counted yet how many these ships have, but—”
“Fifty-six,” said Maggie. “I did count them when the Instauration came in yesterday.”
“Did you indeed?” The captain grinned. “I think, when you are grown, my first mate will need to be careful, lest I hire you instead. That is a big word for a small lass—Instauration. Do you know its meaning? No? It means the restoration of a thing that has been cast aside to fall into a state of disrepair, like our poor country, or our pride, which both do need to be renewed.”