Bonnie Dundee (8 page)

I watched the painting grow from the rough sketches, and its first outline in the warm black-brown ingres, while form and colour took shape. And if not the Lady Jean I knew, then at least this new lady in the fine stiff gown and the ‘Confidantes’ ringlets bound with silver ribbons over her ears, began to grow out of the canvas. It was all like returning to a familiar but long-forgotten world to me; and I began to itch in my fingers and in some place deep inside myself to an odd bit of board and a brush and a dap of ingres of my own, such as my father had whiles and whiles allowed me.

Then one evening Mynheer, going off for his supper, left me to grind some more ultramarine before I went off to mine, for he would be needing it to put the finishing touches to my lady’s slashed and ruffled sleeves in the morning.

When the door shut behind him, I set to work, first with the pestle and mortar, and then when the rough grinding was done, adding the oil drop by drop and working the pigment up on the marble grinding slab until it came smooth as curd and deeply blue as fresh-opened cornflowers. Finally I scraped off with the palette knife and put it into its wee pot, making sure that not one speck was wasted. I had been in a hurry at first, wanting my own supper. But when it was finished – och, I don’t know; it was the first time I had ever been left alone in the Little Dining-room, and there was the canvas standing up on its easel, with its veil of fine linen flung over it to keep off the dust while the paint was damp, and plenty of daylight left, for the room faced westward and we were almost into June. And the wish was on me to take a good look while I was on my own with no one by to call me to this task or that. I lifted back the cloth, and there it was, the bonniest thing, even though the Lady Jean looking back at me was not just the Lady Jean I knew. And I thought it was a sad thing that it was just her on her lone, and not a proper wedding portrait with Claverhouse in it, too. But then I wondered how would the man look, dressed up and stiff as she was, with fine new point-lace at his throat and wrists, and maybe his own hair cut off close, and a fine fashionable peruke the like of Mynheer’s? And I thought of him as I’d come to know him, riding into the stable-yard with his uniform often enough wet and mired with the moorland ways, and sometimes that
quick quiet smile of his, and sometimes his eyes red-rimmed and weary in his head…

There were a couple of bits of board on the deep windowsill, all ready sized; the kind that Mynheer used for making sketches, and the window was very near. I had only to reach out my hand…

I’ll never know what possessed me. I reached out, not really knowing what I did. And I found a small brush and the crock of ingres; and I was settled on the windowsill with the board on my knee.

I began to paint.

And having begun, I went on. I was scarcely aware of finishing with the ingres and calmly helping myself to the colours I wanted and setting out my palette as I had set it out so often for my father and now for Mynheer. I worked at top speed, seeking to catch all that was left of the daylight, utterly absorbed in what I did.

I have become a skilled and, as I think, a bonnie painter in the years since then, though alas, never the great one, the master that every painter dreams of becoming when he sets out. I have had joy of my painting, aye, as well as the hard work and the times when I would have liked fine to throw the whole thing at some fat sitter’s head. But I do not think that I have ever had such joy of it again as I had in that hour. I am thinking that as with many other things, love, aye, and friendship among them, so it is with painting and the making of songs and the like, we have a first time, a virginity to lose, and the hour that we lose it is not just like any other hour in all our lives.

But I am wandering from my story. When I came back to myself the painting light was almost gone, and there were footsteps and voices outside the door; and the door opened and in came Mynheer himself, carrying a great three-branched silver candlestick, and
behind him Lord Dundonel and her old ladyship and two – three more that must have been supping with them, and my lady Jean – and Colonel Graham.

I sat where I was, frozen, not so much with any sense of guilt or fear that I would be getting into trouble, but because I had not had time to come fully back from one world to another, and was somewhat dazed.

Mynheer van Meere saw the portrait on its easel, uncovered, and then myself in the window embrasure, and he let out something startled in Dutch sounding like a small explosion, and came quickly across the room, the candle flames trailing in the draught of his coming, and next instant he was standing over me, peering down at the bit of board on my knee.

I looked, too, seeing what I had done spring out at me in the new light of the candles. Claverhouse’s head and shoulders in his shabby buff coat as I had so often seen him in the stable-yard; and under the slim black brows his eyes looking so directly into mine that for the moment it came almost as a shock.

It was a crude enough bit of work, mind you; I was not yet fifteen, and I had had no teaching save the little that my father had given me when I was too young to profit much by it. But I have always had the knack of catching a likeness from memory.

Mynheer was silent so long that I grew afraid that he was angry after all. But then he said, ‘It seems we have another portrait painter here among us.’

And he was not mocking; not mocking at all.

And then everyone came crowding round exclaiming, my lady’s portrait that they had come to see all unnoticed for the moment, while I had not even the presence of mind to get up but just went on perching in the windowsill with the bit of board tipped sideways on
my knee to show them since it seemed that they wanted to see. Old Lady Dundonel was clucking like a hen just off the nest; and Lord Dundonel said suddenly, as though in surprise, ‘John, I never knew you had a look of your famous kinsman!’

‘What kinsman would that be?’ Claverhouse said.

‘Montrose.’

‘Montrose,’ Claverhouse echoed the name quiet-like, but with something in his voice that made me look round at him. ‘I was but two years old when he – died, and I never saw him, but I should be glad to think that I had a look of him.’

He was looking at the little sketch, and I was looking at him, and in that moment I learned something about Claverhouse. I learned that despite his thirty-five years and his hardness with the Covenanters, he had a laddie’s gift for hero-worship in him still; and I knew who the hero was.

As though he felt my gaze on him, he looked from the picture to my face, and our eyes met. As before in the stable-yard I had the feeling that he was seeing me, directly and clearly and consciously, as few men see the people they look at. Maybe he, too, was learning something – that he had a follower for life, though at that time just a follower the like of many others…

‘It is strange, I have found it before,’ said Mynheer, ‘how family likenesses will appear in a painting that lie concealed in life; and of a certainty the boy has caught the likeness of Colonel Graham. The work is crude, of course – untaught—’

‘But it’s bonnie for all that,’ Lady Jean put in softly. ‘And it
is
like.’ And ah, but she was bonnie herself, with the candles making the bright hair shine round her head. ‘And for a soldier’s wife who must often go
lonely with her man not beside her, it would be a fine thing to have such a likeness.’ She fell silent a moment, and then speaking still more softly, said to me, ‘Hugh, may I have your picture?’

That was the first time I knew the sorrow of a painter, that when he has painted something and set a bit of his own heart in it, folks want to take it from him – oh, maybe they give him gold and silver in its place, but never his painting with the bit of his own heart in it, back again. But it was not for that reason that I hesitated.

‘The paint and the board are no’ mine,’ I said, doubtfully.

‘It is not the paint nor yet the board that makes the picture,’ said Mynheer, ‘it is yours to do as you will with.’

‘Then when ’tis dry, my lady, ’tis yours for a wedding gift.’

And that was the first time I knew the joy of the painter, in having such a great thing to give.

‘Thank you for my wedding gift, Hugh,’ said my lady.

I got up, remembering at last that I should not be sitting in the presence of my betters, and propped the little picture carefully in the window recess.

Mynheer was still looking at it, and rubbing his nose in the way that he had when he was thinking hard. ‘Boy,’ he said suddenly, as one making up his mind, ‘you are a bad painter, but with teaching you could be a goot one, which is more than can be said for Johannes, who vill never be goot for aught but to stretch canvases and grind pigments. If you come with me as my second apprentice – I have room for two at home in Utrecht – I will make of you one day a better painter than I am myself.’

For the moment, as I stood silent, temptations tugged at me sore. But something else pulled more strongly the other way.

‘I am thinking Johannes would knife me,’ I said, ‘and beside then, when my lady is wed, I go with – ‘I almost said ‘with Claverhouse’, but I turned the words in time – ‘with her to her new home.’

‘And so you will be a groom all your life?’ said Mynheer. He said other things, too, but I did not hear them, for Colonel Graham had turned that clear hard gaze of his on to me again,and meeting it, I knew – I scarce know how to put it – it was as though he had heard what I had not said, and understood, and accepted, gravely, like a liege lord accepting the fealty of his newest knight. Och, it sounds daft, I know, but for that moment even my lady Jean was not there. Just the two of us. And I was no longer a lost dog without a heel to follow.

‘And now,’ Mynheer was saying, ‘allow me to show you vat ve came to see – how it goes with my portrait of Lady Jean.’

A few days later, when the portrait was finished, and dry enough to be safely set in its frame, Mynheer Cornelius van Meere rode away, Johannes with him. The apprentice’s hands were not yet fully healed, and so I helped him to load up the pack beast. And when all was done, and the fat little man already perched aloft on his horse, he bent down and set a hand on my shoulder. ‘If ever you change your mind,’ he said, ‘ask for me at the third house beyond the kirk in Silver Spur Street – Silveren Spoor Straat – in Utrecht. Look for the two swans carved on the gable. My wife will take you in if I am on my travels.’

ON THE NINTH
day of June in the year of Our Lord 1684, Colonel John Graham and my lady Jean Cochrane signed their marriage contract. There was a fine gathering to see it done; Lord Cochrane that was my lady’s brother and Lord Ross and many more; and Captain Livingstone quiet in the background as usual. But my lady’s mother bided in her own house, hard black Covenanting woman that she was. And later I heard that old Lady Dundonel had signed the contract in her place.

Ach well, it is all long ago.

Next day, the Tuesday that would be, was the wedding. A soft day of skim-milk skies and hazy sunshine, and the scent of the first elder-blossom drifting from the bushes in the Abbey ruins to mingle with the faint smell of thunder brewing. All morning the great folks that were not already there were arriving from all the country round; and we were kept busy in the stable-yard with the horses and coaches to be seen to, until all the Place was awash with eager voices and the bright colours sweeping to and fro. The men of Claverhouse’s own troop were there, spruced up in their new red coats that had been hurried through for the occasion, the white ribbons fluttering on each man’s left arm as they made their own horse lines in the park. Towards noon, Claverhouse arrived, very fine in dark blue velvet and point-lace – almost the first time ever I had seen him out of uniform – and with him Lord Ross and Captain Livingstone, each with the white and silver
wedding ribbons flittering from his left sleeves. We all had wedding favours, guests and household alike; I kept mine for years.

I went to take the bridle of Claverhouse’s horse; and he smiled at me as he swung down from the saddle. ‘All packed and ready?’

My few belongings had been bundled in a cloak for days. I nodded. ‘All ready, sir.’

‘Wish me happiness, Painter Hugh,’ said he. And then he was gone with the others towards the house.

The Episcopalian minister arrived. It must have gone hard with some in that house to see him come. I had been watching all the while for the Auchans carriage to arrive; hoping against hope; for it seemed a sorry thing that my lady Jean should be wed with no kindness nor support from her mother. But after the minister came, I knew that it was too late to be watching any more.

And then it was noon, and we knew that in the Great Hall of the house, my lady would have come down from her chamber on Dundonel’s arm, and Claverhouse would be waiting for her… I would have liked fine to be within doors to see it done. But our turn would come later. The long trestle tables had been set up under the linden trees below the terrace, and the grass scythed close for dancing clear down to the river, for my lady was set upon having not just the gentry but all her people close about her on that day that she was wed. And even while we knew that the wedding was still going forward in the house, we began to drift away.

The troopers were there already, ranged up on either side of the terrace steps under command of their lieutenant. Waiting, as we were all waiting, but motionless save for white ribbons stirring on their sleeves.

Then at last they came, the wedding party; the grand
folk, and the bride’s lassies like a flock of bright birds, and old Dundonel and his lady stepping stately in the lead, and behind them Claverhouse and my lady Jean. The troopers were tossing up their hats and cheering, we were all cheering. I had managed to push my way through to the forefront of the crowd, and they came right by me from the foot of the terrace steps. And eh, but my lady was the bonniest thing, in a gown of silky stuff the colour of new milk and worked all over with little golden roses, and the white briar roses in her hair, and old Lady Dundonel’s diamonds in her ears; but her eyes were brighter than the diamonds, and her cheeks flushed to the colour of hedge-side rose-campions. And Claverhouse beside her looking the proud and happy man. There was a kind of shine to them, a kind of bloom of light that gave a shimmer to the air around them; and I mind thinking that two people should not look just like that, for there was a danger in it…