The Highwayman's Curse Page 22

  A single rider. Approaching from the west, along the road that we had travelled.

  Bess! I knew with certainty. I knew from her shape, from the way she and Merlin moved, from the way my heart sang at the sight of her.

  She came closer. Her hair flowed behind her as she crouched low along Merlin’s neck, moving as one with him. Apart from the loosened hair, she wore her man’s clothing once more, I saw, breeches as clean as ever they had been, white lace at her throat, her rapier swinging beside her, as she rode along the twisting road, over the rolling moor.

  She came to a clattering halt a few paces from where I sat.

  She had ridden hard and fast. Merlin’s chest was sodden and foamed with sweat, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring, his sides heaving as he danced there. It was not like her to use a horse so harshly.

  What news had she brought? Good or bad?

  Did I wish to know it? I was not part of that world now and if something had happened to any of them – Iona, perhaps – I did not wish to hear. And after hearing it, I would have to say goodbye to Bess once more.

  “I wish to come with you,” she said now.

  This was some game. This could not be. “But you did not wish to before.”

  “You did not ask,” she replied, with a mischievous grin, her eyes dancing.

  “I thought you had made up your mind. I thought you would not like to be persuaded.”

  “I would not. And if you had tried to persuade me, to make me come against my wishes, I would not be here now.”

  “So, because I did not ask you, you come?”

  She just smiled more. Bess, unpredictable as ever. Free as an eagle.

  “But Calum, what of him?”

  “If I ever thought I could spend my life with Calum, I was not thinking aright. I like him. I like him more than you would understand. But it is not enough. What is enough is that the times when I have felt most alive I have been riding with you, after a prize, or escaping from redcoats, or telling stories into the night. Or trying to save young soldier boys or whatever we thought was right. So,” and she paused, smiling at me, her chin jutting a little, “may I come with you? And where are we going?”

  We.

  But no, it could not be. “There is much for you to do here, Bess. What of Iona, and Old Maggie? And Calum must need you too – and if you like him as you say, you could be happy. And does Jeannie not need your help? Do you not want to stay with them, as they wish you to?”

  “No, you were right. It is not our world. And besides, do not fear for them: you did not hear how Calum spoke to Red and Thomas after you had gone. He berated them for how they treated Iona. He said that with Jock gone they must all start afresh. And you should have seen Jeannie’s eyes light up! And Iona – you saw her: she will recover. There was a difference in the way they all talked, after Calum spoke like that. And now, I want to come with you. Are you going to make me plead with you?”

  I could not look at her. My heart was pounding, my thoughts a whirlwind. And then I did look at her, black-eyed Bess, with her red lips and tumbling hair. And her grandmother’s locket, with her father’s ring, proudly round her neck, for all to see. Bess was as she was and some things might never change. But I could take that chance.

  I knew then that I wanted nothing better than to be with her and that there was no one else on earth whose thoughts met mine as hers did.

  I grinned. I could do nothing else, could not say the words.

  She smiled. “Where are we going?”

  “I know not. Perhaps home. One day. Perhaps nowhere. But first, adventure! And you may come with me – if you can catch me!” And I swung Blackfoot’s head round and kicked him to a gallop, not looking to see whether she followed. And as we rode, Bess, Merlin, Blackfoot, and I, along the ribboning road, I knew that whatever happened, whomsoever we met, and wherever we found ourselves, we were truly alive. And that feeling alive, and grasping life with excitement and hope and honour, were what mattered.

  Love and friendship against hatred. Forgiveness against anger.

  There could be no contest at all.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Wigtown Martyrs and the Killing Times

  All my historical novels are sparked by true events which grab me so strongly that they demand to be told. In The Highwayman’s Curse, the real events are from one of Scotland’s most brutal periods, the Killing Times, when men, women and children were killed for their religion. One of the final and most cruel episodes was the execution of the Wigtown Martyrs, in 1685. But The Highwayman’s Curse is the sequel to The Highwayman’s Footsteps, which was set in 1761, seventy-six years too late. How could the Killing Times be relevant?

  The problem with hatred, especially religious hatred, is that it goes on and on. It passes through generations, fanned in the hearts of vengeful people. Look at the religious conflict in the Middle East, and other wars, both past and present, between Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims, Protestants and Catholics. Even, in the case of the Killing Times, between Protestants and Protestants.

  This is the true story of the Wigtown Martyrs: on 11 May 1685, two women were executed by drowning in Wigtown Bay in Galloway, south-west Scotland. Margaret McLaughlan was sixty-three; Margaret Wilson was eighteen. Their crime? They worshipped the “right” God in the “wrong” way. In Scotland, the Protestant church was divided mainly into two groups: Presbyterians believed that ordinary people should choose their ministers, who would help them understand the word of God; there were no bishops. Episcopalians believed that God chose the king and the bishops, who in turn chose the clergy, and that these powerful people interpreted God’s word to the worshippers. There were other differences too, but this was the main disagreement that sparked the Killing Times.

  Although The Highwayman’s Curse is partly about smuggling, it’s about much more: it’s about hatred carried through generations, especially by an old woman, Old Maggie, a woman teetering between dementia and obsession, traumatized by having seen her mother drowned in the rising tide by soldiers. (Old Maggie’s mother was not, by the way, one of the real Wigtown Martyrs – neither the eighteen-year-old nor the sixty-three-year-old would have had a seven-year-old child; Old Maggie’s mother is a fictional character, from an imaginary identical execution.)

  What exactly was the crime these women committed? They were Covenanters, Presbyterians who had signed the National Covenant of 1638, refusing to accept the king’s authority above God’s, or to use a prayer book forced on them by the Government.

  The rise and fall of the Covenanters is a complicated and tragic story. It is tangled with the “English” Civil War between Oliver Cromwell and Charles I – a war which very much involved the Scots – but the Killing Times took place under Charles II, after Cromwell’s death. And nowhere did the Covenanters suffer more terrible punishment than in Galloway.

  Covenanters could be executed for worshipping in their way – so they hid in the moors for open-air services called Conventicles. (Curlews are supposed to have betrayed their hiding places, and there are apparently still people in Galloway who would stamp on a curlew nest – though I never met one!) Torture, beatings and transportations were widespread. When hundreds of Covenanters were captured at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, they were imprisoned in tiny pens in Greyfriars churchyard in Edinburgh – you can see their prison there today, a haunting reminder of the Killing Times.

  By 1685, the Covenanters were nearly destroyed. Margaret Wilson, Margaret McLaughlan and three men who were hanged at the same time were almost the last to die.

  Since then and before then, in various parts of Britain, Catholics, Protestants, Presbyterians and Episcopalians have brutalized and degraded each other for the way they choose to worship their God – the same God. No one side is blameless, and measuring who suffered more simply fuels the hatred.

  In The Highwayman’s Curse, as in many true stories of our own times, hatred and anger breed only hatred and anger. In the end someone has to break the ci
rcle. Someone has to find a way to forgive. When you see what religious hatred and anger do, how suffering spirals pointlessly through the generations, what solution is there other than forgiveness? Hatred between two countries is bad enough, but when the hatred is within our own boundaries, where people are despised only for how they live their lives or worship their God, as happens in our country – in Scotland and in other parts of Britain – that is an outrage.

  In the parish churchyard in Wigtown, a short walk from the lonely, windswept martyrs’ stake, the Wigtown Martyrs are buried. There, one suitably cold and miserable day, I read these words of hurt, hate and anger roughly carved into a gravestone:

  LET EARTH AND STONE STILL WITNES BEARE

  THER LYES A VIRGIN MARTYRE HERE

  MURTHRD FOR OWNING CHRIST SUPREAME

  HEAD OF HIS CHURCH AND NO MORE CRIME

  BUT NOT ABJURING PRESBYTRY

  AND HER NOT OWNING PRELACY

  THEY HER CONDEMND BY UNJUST LAWS

  OF HEAVEN AND HELL THEY STOOD NO AW

  WITHIN THE SEA TYED TO A STAKE

  SHE SUFFERED FOR CHRIST JESUS SAKE.

  THE ACTORS OF THIS CRUEL CRIME—

  LAGG STRACHAN

  WINRAM AND GRAHM

  NOR YOUNG YEARS NOR YET OLD AGE

  COULD STOP THE FURY OF THEIR RAGE.

  Questions you often ask about The Highwayman’s Curse

  Q: Were people really killed because of how they worshipped God?

  A: Yes. Even people who worshipped the same God but in a different way. Catholics and Protestants hated each other but the Killing Times also had one type of Protestant killing another type. So much hatred, generation after generation. If you look around the world today, there is still a lot of religious hatred, and in some places the hatred is enough to make people kill.

  Q: How did you get the idea of using smugglers and religious hatred for the sequel to The Highwayman’s Footsteps?

  A: I knew I wanted smugglers because that would make it immediately different from The Highwayman’s Footsteps. I thought I’d set it in the south of England because I knew there used to be lots of smuggling there, but I happened to go on holiday to south-west Scotland and realized that there used to be smuggling AND terrible religious warfare. So, that would make an even more exciting story, I decided.

  Q: Why do some of the characters use more Scottish words than others?

  A: Mainly because if I’d had them all speaking in the Scots language most readers outside Scotland would not have understood! Or they would have been irritated. So I just gave flavours of Scots words to a few characters. Also, I’m telling the story through Will, and he isn’t Scottish.

  Q: Did you go into a cave to research what they are like?

  A: No way! I’d have been much too scared. Luckily, my imagination was enough.

  Q: Have you ever been bitten by a snake?

  A: No, but I did come across an adder on a walk in Scotland once. I nearly stepped on it.

  Q: Do you know quite a lot about horses?

  A: Well, I used to be horse-mad when I was a child. I was lucky enough to have my own pony, a very strong-willed creature called Merlin, who was white (or grey, as horsey people call white horses). I do still love them, though I have lost my riding ability – and muscles!

  Other interesting information about The Highwayman’s Curse

  Information about the Carlisle Curse, which was my inspiration for Old Maggie’s curse - bit.ly/ytMbkA. That story shows you that even today some people believe curses!

  A good site about the Killing Times and the Covenanters, bit.ly/FQU00u. Part of the history is set in Edinburgh, where I live. If you are ever in Edinburgh, do go to Greyfriars Kirk (Church) and see the Covenanters’ prison www.greyfriarskirk.com.

  I also wrote a short story about that, in a collection called Our City. It’s a collection by ten selected Scottish children’s authors.

  And you might like to read about the amazing launch for the book and see the pictures (bit.ly/FRCCZZ)! The event was televised and was a hugely exciting day.

  Have you read The Highwayman’s Footsteps, Will and Bess’s first adventures together? And here is my own website page for both books, where you will find lots of reviews and other information bit.ly/wCE46O.

  If you’d like me to visit your school to talk about the highwayman books or my other books for young people, do ask your school librarian or teacher to contact me. My email address is on the contact page of my website, www.nicolamorgan.com. I always love to hear from readers, schools or anyone else interested in my books!

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously.

  First published 2007 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2007 Nicola Morgan

  Cover illustration © 2007 Christian Birmingham

  The right of Nicola Morgan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-4063-4245-1 (ePub)

  www.walkerbooks.co.uk