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| Photography by Simon Berger, Unsplash |
An Agent of the Crown
by
Kathleen Buckley
©2020 Kathleen Gail Buckley
The Scottish Lowlands, late May,
1746
Swithin Fowler leaned against his tired horse as it drank
from the stream, feeling the reassuring weight of gold in the flat canvas belt
inside his shirt. Money for travel, bribes, whatever he needed. It had
purchased the tough little galloway mare, now worn thin from eight months with
too little rest. He himself was less exhausted than sickened. All he wanted was
to reach the refuge of Andrew Cunningham’s house.
“That rabble of bare-legged Highlanders and damned Papists
poses no threat. We’ll watch them, nevertheless,” the man at Somerset House had
told him in August. “You will pose as a factor for a merchant in Newcastle upon
Tyne. You’ll meet certain men and carry what they give you to Carlisle,
Berwick-upon-Tweed, or to a schooner captain at a village on the east coast. Courier
work.” He shrugged dismissively.
His third day in
Scotland, the intelligencer Fowler was to meet in Dundee did not come, the town
having gone over to the Jacobites the previous day. He departed, sheltering in
a spinney to avoid a Jacobite detachment; he did not want Brown Bess
confiscated for the Young Pretender’s army. When he emerged, something white under
a clump of brush caught his eye.
When he crouched to pull out the ribbon-bound sheaf of
documents, he discovered the leather document box. Whoever had forced the lock
in search of money had left the papers and a flat oil-cloth packet. The reports
were useless now. The carefully wrapped package might be worth something. He
dropped the memoranda back in the box and shoved it into thicker undergrowth.
The oil-cloth held a folded sheet of heavy, expensive paper,
its red seal broken. He read it twice before he took in its meaning. There were
a few lines of jibber-jabber, then:
The bearer, Alexander
Gordon, is acting by my Order, and you are Instructed to give him Any aid he
may request. He acts in the
King’s name in support of the Crown and for the good of the Realm.
It was signed by the First Lord of the Treasury and
countersigned—
Strike me dead. A
license to do anything at all with the cooperation of the authorities would be
worth a fortune to the right man. It had to be a forgery. But if it were not? A
chill like the onset of an ague seeped through him. Fowler re-wrapped the
folded sheet with care. The matter bore thinking on.
Instead he’d put it out of mind. The document was so
dangerous, his second-best suit was more valuable. He should have turned it in the
first time he crossed into England. Too late now. He could not destroy
something so potentially useful, though he did wonder if the mere possession of
it might be a capital crime.
With Andrew Cunningham’s home and conversation to look
forward to, he could forget for a time. Cunningham was educated, something the
Scots seemed to value, and modestly prosperous by local standards. He possessed
a shelf of books as well as the Bible, and could discuss them as intelligently
as the tenets of his religion. Better, Fowler could enjoy the man’s company
without any niggling feeling of guilt. A staunch Presbyterian should have no
sympathy for the Jacobites. The same might be true of much of the Lowlands but
the only Lowlander Swithin knew well was Andrew.
Fowler had met him soon after arriving in what was often
called North Britain though any fool knew it was Scotland. You could tell it
was still a different country because they had their own laws and money, and in
parts, their own language. Even Cunningham’s Lowlands dialect, full of English
words if only you could hear them through the accent, was hard to understand at
first.
He made a point of stopping in when he was in the area,
claiming to be on his way to or from arranging the purchase of linen and other
Scottish goods for his employer. A thin story but his host accepted it. Swithin
felt no guilt about lying until his fourth visit.
He arrived in snow blowing sideways, already fetlock deep on
the galloway, and worried. Carlisle had fallen to the rebel army. They sat up
late that night, drinking the fiery distilled spirit called whisky and talking.
He found himself telling Cunningham about the smallpox that took all his family
but his father, and left a scatter of pock marks on his own face. After Tom
Fowler, sunk in misery and gin, lost his position as the viscount’s bailiff,
Swithin was left to make his own way. It must have been the unaccustomed drink
that called forth those confidences. With his father for an example, Fowler seldom
took strong liquor.
Andrew sighed and stared into the lumps of peat glowing red
in the hearth. Its familiar scent was near as soothing as the drink. “We never had but the one bairn, and she has been lost to me
this fifteen year.”
“Dead?”
“Nay. Or mayhap she is. She went off wi’ a man I swore I
could never approve, even had he joined our kirk. My wife greeted—wept, you would
say—for months and I was little comfort to her. And yon loons in kirk praising
me for turning my back on my wee Jean.”
He uttered a rusty laugh. “Not so wee, at that, for she was a well-grown
lass.”
He did not say much more, leaving Swithin to guess his wife
had died less of illness than of sorrow, and that Andrew had heard no word of
his girl in all the years since she went off with her suitor. From a word or
two, Swithin thought Cunningham had not uttered her name since his wife’s
death. He held himself aloof from most of the members of his kirk. “They think
it is shame for my dochter’s error, when it is anger they encouraged my sinful
pride and rebuked my poor wife in her grieving. Now I would not condemn even a
Mohammedan. Or a Catholic, either,” he added after a long pause. Small wonder
the pair of them got on well, with neither having family or even friends. In
London Fowler had had accomplices and a few acquaintances. In Scotland, he had
Andrew.
In the morning he was relieved to remember that despite
their cup-shot admissions, he had not spoken of his real employment in
Scotland. Not because he feared Cunningham might reveal his secret but because
Swithin would have been ashamed for Andrew to know him for what he really was. At
Berwick-upon-Tweed, concealing his work became still more imperative.
A sleek, be-wigged gentry-cove was waiting for him. Previous
meetings had been with men much like himself or with tradesmen or clerks, or
who passed as such. But he knew the recognition signs and casually let Fowler
see his signet ring with a tiny design engraved around the band. The same one
was on the bottom of Fowler’s tinderbox, as if it might be the maker’s mark. He
handed over the message: an old copy of the Book of Common Prayer with certain
passages marked, apparently by different hands at different times.
“Stay a moment,” the gentleman murmured. “You’re promoted to
intelligencer.” Fowler reckoned he did not need to ask why. He was given a new list
of dates, places and signals, and his wages were increased because of the
greater responsibility. Danger, rather. Well, he’d turned his hand to worse
things. The money, with a pardon thrown in, was worth it.
Until the English broke the Young Pretender’s army at the
battle of Culloden, up by Inverness.
After Culloden, he was seconded to the army to spy out any
who had supported the Young Pretender and survived the battle. His masters no
longer needed intelligence gathered; now they were hunting down Jacobites. His
task was to find them out and report to the nearest British detachment.
Carrying messages or spying was one thing. This was different. He understood
the thinking that required the ringleaders to be captured and tried for
treason; he simply did not care to help them to the gallows. A man he knew and
respected had hanged at Tyburn. Fowler had pulled on his legs so he died
quickly of a broken neck rather than strangling slowly; the experience had
given him a distaste for executions. Women and children and wounded men,
bayoneted or worse, was nothing but murder.
With no schedule, it was easy to slack his work, reporting
places Jacobites might have been but were no longer, or informing the army but
also giving the Scots the office when he could do it without being found out.
On Scotland’s bad roads, travel could be amazing slow. He knew one thing:
taking a moral stand with his employers was not a possibility.
Uneasy about his cheat, he could no longer avoid thinking
about what he had carried since September. A day or two in Cunningham’s
thoroughly Protestant and Whig district would bring him some peace.
#
Andrew set out early to deliver a lamb to a neighbor. Apart
from a woman who came once a week to clean and wash clothes and bedding,
Cunningham kept house for himself so Swithin
fetched water for cooking and washing, and added turves of peat to those still
smoldering from the night before. Those tasks done, he went out to feed and
water Brown Bess. She needed to regain her weight: he should buy more oats.
Maybe add bran mash. He was near the outbuilding that housed the cow and sheep
in bad weather, and his and Andrew’s mounts, before he noticed the open door. Altering
his course, he went more stealthily. Anywhere but here, he would have been on
the watch for trouble.
A man’s voice snapped an order.
“I am Jean Melluish, Andrew Cunningham’s daughter.” A
woman’s voice rang out, a child’s whimpering and faint shiftings beneath it.
“You’re a stinking Jacobite whore and when Cunningham’s
back—”
It was a soldier, young, nervous, and no officer by his voice.
Fowler stepped into the doorway, roaring, “In the King’s name!” Four privates
and a corporal, bayonets fixed, jerked to attention, used to shouted orders. After
a moment’s hesitation, the corporal wheeled to face him, whipping off his
tricorne in the gesture of respect he would use before an officer.
In the silence while the corporal tried to decide what to
say to a man who sounded like an English officer and dressed like a gentleman,
Fowler spoke. Thank God he was wearing the breeches and waistcoat to his better
suit. Fortunate as well he had not forgotten the speech of his parents’ gentry
origins.
“You are meddling in matters you do not understand and
should not know of, Corporal.” He did
not raise his voice but the chill, knife-edge tone did its work.
“Sir! I was dispatched to investigate a reported Jacobite,
the man Andrew Cunningham. Sir.”
“By whom?”
“By Captain Carr, sir.”
“I mean, who made such a foolish, malicious report?” A tall,
thin woman stood stern and proud before the aisle between the animal pens. One
arm extended to the side to restrain a lad of fourteen or fifteen who was
glaring at the corporal. A small child clung to her petticoat skirt, and a girl
of about eight years hovered half out of sight behind her. He did not take his
attention from the corporal.
“An elder of the parish church. Kirk, as they call it, sir.”
“His name?” If someone had informed against Andrew, the
woman and children being here was sheer coincidence, for they had not been
present the previous evening.
“Jock Stenhouse, sir.
He owns the ale house and the shop.”
“Ah, Stenhouse, the fellow that covets Cunningham’s
property.” Swithin forced a derisive laugh. Andrew and Stenhouse loathed each
other, as he knew from certain of Cunningham’s comments.
“Sir. We found these Highlanders here so it must be true
about Cunningham being a supporter of the Pretender. Sir.”
“Appearances can be deceiving, Corporal. Does she sound like
a Highlander? She is in fact Cunningham’s daughter, and Cunningham is a strict Presbyterian. The greater part of the Lowlands Scots are
Presbyterians and no fonder of Papists than we are. Less so, in my
experience.”
“Stenhouse said she
ran away with a Highlander, and she’s wearing one of them plaid things. Sir.”
“I dare say she regretted eloping. She’s come from the north
on the king’s business as I am here on His Majesty’s business.” He met her eyes
briefly, giving her a small, tight smile, hoping she read the message in his
own and was not so proud she would gainsay him.
To give him his due credit, the corporal was not easily
cowed. “Begging your pardon but if she’s Cunningham’s kin, why’s she hiding in
the barn?”
Fowler raised his eyebrows. “I have been staying with
Cunningham, awaiting Mistress Melluish. Clearly she has only recently arrived. As
Cunningham is away this morning, she could not immediately report to me. She
would not wish to leave her children unattended while she made her report, nor
yet to have them present to hear what she had to say. Nor do I want the Crown’s
business overheard by a pack of brats,” he added.
“But—”
“This affair is closed and must not be spoken of again. You
and your men found nothing here to indicate Jacobite sympathies. You did not
see me. To speak of it would be a hanging offense.”
The soldier’s eyes narrowed. “Sir, what right have you to
give any order to His Majesty’s forces?”
“By right of the warrant I was issued.” He unbuttoned the
top several buttons of his waistcoat and reached inside without taking his gaze
from the corporal. Drawing the wrapped document from the inside pocket, he held
it out. “Read this.”
The corporal unfolded the oil-cloth and opened the sheet
cautiously, fingering the remainder of the thick seal. His lips moved slightly
as he studied the lines.
“Mr.—”
“Do not speak my name.”
“Yes, sir. But the information the elder laid, what shall I
do about it?”
“ ’Tis no secret Stenhouse has tried to buy Andrew
Cunningham’s land several times. You searched, you found nothing here, and you
concluded it was a shift by Stenhouse to gain his wish and eliminate an old
rival. You know what they say of Scots: they’re a grasping folk with a keen
self-interest. As for Mistress Melluish, she’s come home to take care of her
father. Do not mention she has served the Crown. If there is a Jacobite in this
neighborhood, she might be in danger even here.” The private soldiers were
younger than the corporal and even greener, suggesting the authorities did not
put much faith in Stenhouse’s claim. Or else all the hardened troops were
slaughtering in the Highlands. Either way, it worked in his favor.
“Jeannie!” The cry from the entrance startled them all.
The woman gasped and seemed to lean toward Cunningham. Instead
of rushing to him, she stood rooted in place by the child clutching her skirt.
Mayhap because of the lad, too. His expression was not as well schooled as
hers, though it could pass as the anger of a boy old enough to want to defend
his mother from insult.
Cunningham pushed past the redcoats to throw his arms around
her. “My wee lass, what have they done to you?”
“Naething, faither.”
“I’ve been sair afeared for ye. Ye’ll not be going back to
that dangersome wark ye have done for my guest.”
Andrew had overheard some of what passed before he made
himself known. Swithin suppressed a grim smile.
“These are the childer, then,” he was saying. “Ye’ll be
making them known to me. And yon fine callant?” He jerked his head at the lad
behind her left shoulder.
“Aidan, my firstborn.”
“Yes, yes, very touching,” Fowler drawled. “However, I fear
your family gathering must wait until I have received Mistress Melluish’s final
report. Then I shall remove to the inn.”
The corporal stirred uneasily. Swithin took his time about
turning back to him. He would be thinking the army’s rules did not apply to
dealing with civilians, so he would fall back on what he had been taught as a
child. Defer to your betters; do not speak unless spoken to; keep a humble
bearing.
“Corporal, I commend your zeal. You have investigated
pursuant to your duty, and discovered an agent of the Crown. Your instructions
in that warrant are clear.” He held out his hand, and the corporal returned it
to him with an awkward little bow. Lucky for them all, the way a child’s
training held long after childhood.
“You are dismissed.”
The soldiers gone, they walked slowly back to the cottage,
Andrew and his Jeannie in the lead. The young ones followed their mother like
ducklings. The stripling—Aidan, had the woman called him?—hung back, watchful
of Fowler.
“It was the only way to save you, lad. Here in the Lowlands
they might not have fired the barn and the four of you in it, but ’twas best to
be safe.”
Like Swithin, the boy kept his voice low. “Why did you do
it?”
“I count your grandfather a friend.” The only one he had,
God help him. “I don’t much care for the killing of women and children,
either.” Death came too easy by accident and disease.
Aidan made a sound in his throat and stared at the ground.
“Your father?”
“Dead. He got away from the fight up by Inverness but he was
wounded, and…”
He shrugged.
“I’m sorry.”
In the cottage, Swithin sat apart from the others while they
talked and ate the porridge left over from yesterday, oatcakes and cheese. The woman
and children were half famished. Fowler ate little and soon slipped away to
pack his valise. When he came down, Andrew rose from his seat with a quiet word
to his daughter, and came to the door.
“Ye’ll be going?”
“To the inn for a day or two, as I told the redcoat.”
“But you’ll come again?”
“If I can. I’d like to be sure your family is safe and
well.”
“You would be welcome.” The old man grinned. Fowler had seen
Jean Melluish give that same rakehelly grin a time or two that morning. “My
dochter’s a widow now. The childer need a father and she’ll need a husband. I
saw the way you looked at her and she looked at you as if you was Robert the
Bruce and William Wallace in one. It will take a bit of time, but when you pass
this way again in a month or two, we will be glad to see you.”
Saddling Brown Bess with an unexpectedly light heart, he
calculated. How many months until the army would no longer require his
services? Then he could go to Berwick-upon-Tweed to report and turn in the
remaining expense money. He’d cap downright his superior would be surprised to
see it! But he’d a tidy sum saved. No need to embezzle the government’s coin.
He rode toward the village whistling “The World Turned Upside Down”.
THE
END
©2020 Kathleen Gail
Buckley
For anyone who wonders how this
story came to be, it all started with my second book, Most Secret. One of the plot twists involved a document giving the
male protagonist carte blanche while on a mission to Scotland during the early
days of the rebellion. Think of it as being similar to those “letters of
transit” in the movie Casablanca. The
document was lost. Afterwards, I kept thinking, somebody should find it. There’s
a story there someplace. I didn’t think I could make a novel of it, however, and so it
simply rattled around in my brain.
In Captain
Easterday’s Bargain, a minor character on the fringes of the criminal
underworld seemed to need another story, but again, not a novel.
This spring I saw a short story contest advertised and took
a look at one of my unpublished short stories. It was too long and there was no
way of shortening it, drat.
