If we proved the marriage, Lily was in danger.
If we did not prove it, Maggie’s reputation was in danger.
My job was to buy us time, and see the scales did not tip steeply either way until I found the best path out of our dilemma.
Taking hold now of the conversation, I steered straight past all the intervening turmoil, over any hint of scandal, and came firmly back to shore with, “And when did you first learn that James Graeme was your cousin?”
“Lily told me on our journey west from Edinburgh,” said Maggie.
I knew Lily had said other things to Maggie then, as well. Among them, she had told the child that Archie was a bad man, and he meant to do them harm. But Maggie mentioned none of this. She only said, “I was fair pleased to learn that I had cousins, and to learn that I had cousins who did live in the same place where Lily once had been a child herself was wonderful. And better still to learn that we’d be going soon to live in the new colony with James, at Caledonia.”
“And that,” I said, “was when you first saw the certificate of marriage?”
“Yes.”
Lily was yet unaware of the great trap the Duke of Hamilton had set for her. I had not wished to burden her with any added worry. She still would think her greatest hope of getting clear of Archie would be to see the marriage proved, and since Maggie believed Lily had actually been married onto James Graeme, Lily would have advised Maggie to answer our questions with truth.
I tried now to gently counter the effects of that approach, so that the scales stayed balanced, for I did not want Gilroy to come to any firm decision yet.
I said to Maggie, “But you don’t recall a wedding ceremony.”
“No. But then I was child, and Lily said they married all in private.”
Gilroy asked, “And when you got the colony, what happened then?”
Maggie looked briefly from Gilroy to me. “Then you do not know?”
And so she told us.
Chapter 37
Monday, 14 August, 1699
Maggie had made a new friend over breakfast that morning.
The girl, Sophia, was her own age, her own height, and shared her own dislike of wearing hats. Her hair gleamed copper in the sunshine and made Maggie think of Barbara.
She and Lily had been waiting here now since the end of May, among the swelling groups of people thronging into Greenock for the preparation of the next ships that would sail to Caledonia. The people came and went. A lot of men, many in uniform, all milling round importantly. A steadily increasing flow of women—mostly young, like Lily, although some were middle-aged. But there had been few children.
Maggie had been very glad to find Sophia at the breakfast table.
She’d been gladder still to have her company outdoors.
The house they boarded in was not within the town of Greenock, but adjoining it along the south bank of the river Clyde in the small townlet known as Crawfurdsdyke.
It was not Leith, but Maggie had grown used to it.
The Clyde was not the Firth of Forth. The water would not be so wide to cross, and it looked calmer, and when the west wind blew the clouds, the hills that rose so gently on the river’s farther side were chased by sun and shadow in a different way from those at home.
There was only one true street to speak of in Crawfurdsdyke, running along parallel to the river and on into Greenock. Some houses, including the one they were boarding in, lay between that and the water’s edge. Some others had been built south of that road, fronting onto it. And beyond those lay the farms and the woods and behind all of that rose more hills, holding everything snugly enclosed.
But there was still a harbor, with a sea wall and a pier of rough-hewn, reddish stones, laid tightly without mortar. It was twice as tall as Maggie, twice her height across in breadth, and curved out into the bright water of the Clyde like a stone scythe.
She and Sophia walked along it, each of them holding one of Dolly’s hands, the way Lily and Henry once held Maggie’s hands when they walked her along the Shore at Leith when she was small.
Maggie was finishing her story. “But it was all right because Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rode out together at night all in secret on their first adventure, too. They gathered their money and left without saying goodbye, only we said goodbye first to Henry.”
They’d come to the curve of the pier, from where they had the best view—not only of the smaller fishing boats sheltered within the close curve of the pier, but of the larger ships lying at anchor now out in the Greenock Road, and the activity going on all round them.
There were four ships now, though Maggie had eyes for but one of them—the Rising Sun, which had been there to greet them in May when they’d first arrived, richly resplendent in all her red paint with her carved, gilded ornaments painting the Clyde’s current glittering gold with their scattered reflections. Most beautiful, in Maggie’s eyes, were the two rising suns, with their rays spreading out, fore and aft, so whichever direction one viewed the ship from, a new day was about to begin.