Читать книгу Joseph Knight - James Robertson - Страница 10

In London young John, now neither Thomson nor Wedderburn, was given safe lodging and subsistence by a relative, a Mr Paterson, through whom he was also reunited with his brother. James, just fifteen years old, as one who had not been out, was at liberty to travel where he wanted throughout the kingdom. As soon as he had heard of his father’s capture he had mounted his favourite pony and headed south, putting up in byres and stables on the way. Anger and the snorting of cattle had kept him awake most nights: anger at not having been at Culloden, anger at his father’s capture, at his father for having been captured, at John for not having been; this burning rage had driven him all the way to London. There he had found that his father was in the new jail at Southwark along with a number of other Jacobite gentlemen. They were being treated, all things considered, with the courtesy their social status demanded. In the Highlands, meanwhile, poor men were being shot on sight, their wives and daugters raped, their cottages burnt and their cattle slaughtered. Large numbers of destitute peasants, brought out on pain of death by their chiefs, were being condemned to transportation. Now, with John’s arrival, James’s anger began to settle like the bed of a fire, his character to harden into something new and purposeful.

James looked like a Wedderburn but he was darker-haired, softer-skinned, more lightly built than his brother. He had been making women fall for him since before he was conscious of his own charms. As a bairn he had had a smile and an eye that could melt most female hearts, and in London it was no different, except that now he was aware of his power. John used to watch him, and was envious of the ease with which he attracted women, the way he toyed with them, the disdain with which he dismissed them.

James seemed also to take a certain satisfaction from being the only connection between his older brother and their father. He was allowed regular access to the prison, bringing Sir John fresh linen, soap, books, tobacco and a few other luxuries. James and young John spent much time together, and too much money, in coffee houses and taverns. This earned a rebuke or two from the father, which James took almost as a mark of appreciation. In August he turned sixteen. He bought himself an interesting present: a whore in Covent Garden.

In Southwark jail Sir John Wedderburn kept good heart: he was glad to have one son near him; glad, too, to hear that John was, for the moment, out of harm’s way. He wrote to his wife, and heard back from her how, with his other children, she now lived in straitened circumstances in Dundee, having been ejected from the farm at Newtyle. This was a sore blow, but they had never had much money anyway. He would find a way to make amends.

He was confident that the longer he was held at Southwark, the more the Government’s attitude to minor players like himself would soften. After all, he had not actually killed anybody. He would be tried, no doubt; found guilty, certainly; but the bloodletting that had lasted all summer would surely satisfy even the Duke of Cumberland’s desire for vengeance. Banishment, for a spell, that surely was the most likely outcome. They would go to France. Life would begin again.

He was, however, anxious about John, whose name was on the lists of wanted rebels, with the designation ‘Where Now. Not Known’ next to it. The lad could not stay in London indefinitely. The Wedderburns were a far-flung family, with enterprising cousins scattered across the globe. Mr Paterson, for example, had considerable interests in the West Indies. Arrangements were made to spirit John out of the country. John was reluctant to fall in with them but his father, via James, insisted. By the end of September, he was gone.

When the trial came on in November, the Crown presented its evidence with ferocity. Receipts from Dundee and Perth, bearing the Baronet’s signature, showing how those towns had been forcibly relieved of duties and other monies for the Prince’s service, were thrust under the jurors’ noses. Witnesses swore to his presence in arms at Culloden, Prestonpans and Derby (a place he had never been, never having left Scotland). None of this was unexpected, but the prosecutors’ outraged zeal was, and the jurors were infected by it.

They did not even leave the courtroom to find him guilty of high treason, whereupon the court, having asked Sir John if he had anything to say for himself, and receiving no reply, proceeded to pronounce judgment and award execution against him: ‘that the said Sir John do return to the Jail from whence he came and from thence be drawn to the place of Execution and when he cometh there that he be hanged by the Neck but not till he be dead and that he be therefore cut down alive and that his Bowels be then taken out and burnt before his Face and that his Head be then severed from his Body and that his Body be divided into four Quarters and that those be at the Disposal of our said present Sovereign Lord the King’.

This was on 15 November. The sentence was shared by several other gentlemen who now, perhaps, wished that they had been peasants after all. Various appeals and entreaties were made, but to no avail. Cumberland himself insisted on the sentences being carried out in full: ‘Good God,’ he spluttered, juice cascading over his chins as he worked his way through a bucket of oysters, ‘did we gather all these miscreants up in order to let them go again? No, no. Examples must be made.’

But of all this the 5th Baronet of Blackness’s eldest son and heir was quite ignorant. Before the end of summer John had left London, and had crossed the ocean: another stage on the dream-like flight that had begun on Drummossie Moor, and from which he did not know when he would come to rest.