boys spent a week getting drunk together, which would not have pleased Mr Paterson if he had got to hear, but he did not, since Mr Paterson’s representatives were often to be found joining in the sessions. When they were on their own, the brothers tried to make sense of what had happened, where and who they now were.
‘Are you the sixth Baronet of Blackness, then?’ James wanted to know. ‘Now that Papa is dead.’
‘I don’t see how I can be. We lost Blackness years ago. We’ve even lost the farm at Newtyle.’
‘But Papa kept the title, did he not?’
‘I think it will be taken anyway, James, on account of our being out. At the moment I don’t care, I don’t feel like a baronet.’
James looked angry. ‘Well, if you don’t want the title I’ll have it. You dishonour Papa talking like that. He was strong right to the end.’
Then James told John of their father’s last night alive. To pre-empt last-minute applications for mercy it had been intended to keep the date of execution a secret from those about to die. On the evening of 27 November, James had been allowed in to see him. Sir John had been in the middle of a game of backgammon, and James had sat down beside him to watch. A few minutes later, a jailer had approached and whispered something in the father’s ear. Sir John had paused, his finger resting on one of the stones, as if contemplating what move to make. ‘Friend,’ he had said to the jailer, ‘would you kindly stand out of the light till I finish this game?’ Then, having played it out, he had put his arm around James and called for wine. When the men around him all had glasses, he told them the news: ‘I regret to tell you that I am to be executed tomorrow. There is no time for an appeal. I therefore ask you to join me in a farewell toast and then to indulge me with some solitude. My son is here, and I have letters to write.’
After the wine was drunk, he and James were given space alone. Sir John wrote half a dozen brief letters: one to his wife; one to John in Jamaica; three to relatives in Scotland entreating them to look after his family; and one to His Royal Highness, Prince Charles Edward Stewart.
‘He showed me that one,’ James said. ‘He wanted me to see that he remained loyal even after what had happened. He said we were all poor and he hoped the Prince would protect us. He sealed it up and gave it to me with the others, to give to Mr Paterson.’
‘Will the Prince protect us?’ John asked.
‘Of course he won’t. How can he? He’s away to France and he’ll not be back. I doubt Papa expected much from that quarter. The point is, though, he never wavered. And we must never waver. If we do, we will vanish.’
As Papa had vanished, John thought, but he said nothing. Perhaps James also felt the irony of his own remark. In the prison, even at that late stage, he had tried to persuade their father to do something to save himself. Ever since the sentence there had been a steady flow of visitors at night, including assorted vendors of ale and port, barbers, tailors and whores, all of whom anticipated doing some kind of business. Men condemned to death, after all, might as well spend what money they had left, either to look their best before the gallows crowd, catch the pox or drink themselves into oblivion. James had proposed that they pay one of the whores to lose some of her clothes – on a permanent basis – and get his father out in them. Sir John had dismissed this scheme: ‘Do you know how many hairy big-boned women are stopped leaving prisons on occasions like this, James? I do not wish to be discovered in such circumstances and ill-used on my last night on earth. I’m as well dying now as twenty years hence.’ Then he had blessed the boy, embraced him and sent him away. ‘Do not come here tomorrow. There will be nothing more to say. You will only make it harder for me to die.’
‘And did you obey him?’ John asked.
‘Aye. I did not see him at the prison again.’ James closed his eyes. He was shaking. John put his hand on his brother’s arm. James opened his eyes again. ‘I saw him later,’ he said. ‘At Kennington.’
But it would be a long time before he would say what he had seen there.
John had finally adjusted to the climate. James appeared to need no seasoning. His energy and curiosity were astonishing. Kingston veterans marvelled at him. He had a hundred schemes to make the best of their situation: to make money, lots of it; to work hard and live hard; and one day, to go back to Scotland.
John concurred with all of these propositions, especially the last one. He was more cautious, less certain that they would succeed, but he would put his back to the wheel and make it turn. His father’s reproach about the money rankled: it would rankle for twenty years. The last thing he had thought to say to him: you parted too easily from your money which will not do. Very well then: he would amass wealth. He would not squander it. He would not be the prodigal son. He would be the 6th Baronet. He would go home to enjoy his own again.
He was not the only one thinking along these lines. The island was something of a Jacobite refuge. Every boat, from America or Europe, disgorged another young or middle-aged man who found it expedient to sojourn in the sun for a few years. Some only lasted a few weeks: the sun was no friendlier than Butcher Cumberland. Those who ignored the dire warnings of old hands about the wrong food and drink, yellow fever and mosquitoes, the importance of clean water and the dangers of dirty cuts and grazes, dropped by the dozen. But the Wedderburns survived, working for one or other of Mr Paterson’s enterprises – he had stores in Kingston, and his agents acted on behalf of a number of plantations across the island. Another Jacobite exile and one of their old Perthshire friends, George Kinloch, had been made overseer of a small plantation in the west, near the port of Savanna-la-Mar. They were pleased for George, and when they went to visit him they liked what they saw of that end of the island. ‘There are opportunities here,’ James said. ‘There are great opportunities.’
One afternoon, John found his brother downing rum in a Kingston grog shop with two men of very different physical appearance. One was yet another Scot, not much older, black-haired, clean-shaven, neatly dressed. In his white linen shirt and light, black short coat he seemed to be coping well with the heat. His whole air was one of self-assurance. This was David Fyfe, a medical graduate of Edinburgh who had been in Jamaica eight months. The other man was huge, sixtyish, bulb-nosed and florid. A once white, now tobacco-yellow peruke, in a style that might have been fashionable under Queen Anne, was crammed on his wrinkled forehead, and this, together with the combined weight of a thick brown coat and ornately brocaded waistcoat, was causing him to sweat like a fountain.
James shouted John over and called for another chair, another glass and another bottle of rum. It was both hard and easy to believe he was still only sixteen.
‘Davie, James,’ John greeted them, taking the seat.
‘This,’ said James to the fat man, ‘is my esteemed elder brother John Wedderburn, late of Scotland, now a colonist like the rest of us. John, it is my pleasure and so forth to introduce Mr Thomas Underwood of – where did you say again?’
‘Amity Plantation, sir, in the parish of Westmoreland, county of Cornwall. My pleasure, sir, and an honour. Always an honour to meet another Scotchman. Not that it’s difficult here. You’re almost as numerous as the negers. No offence, naturally.’
He spoke with a mild Yorkshire accent, the words interspersed with heavy rasping breaths and much wiping of the brow. His unsuitable dress, clearly the chief source of his discomfort, seemed to indicate a newcomer. In fact Mr Underwood had been on the island nearly thirty years, but would never get used to the heat. He had small eyes made smaller by the encroaching folds of his cheeks. He tipped his fleshy head at John.
‘Now, sir, it’s all one to me, I assure you, but were you out?’
John had an idea that Mr Underwood, through James, already knew the answer. He drew himself up proudly: ‘That, sir, is not a question one gentleman expects to be asked by another.’
Underwood shrugged. ‘I’ll take that as an aye. No, no, don’t be offended, Mr Wedderburn, I don’t care a bit, and you’ll find very few folk as do. We’re an island