The Three Kings Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1907

  Part One

  Chapter One

  1922

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  1923

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  1924

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  1926

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  1927

  Chapter Twenty-one

  1928

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  1930

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  1931

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The Three Kings

  Also available by Doris Davidson

  The Brow of the Gallowgate

  Cousins at War

  A Gift from the Gallowgate

  The House of Lyall

  Jam and Jeopardy

  Monday Girl

  The Nickum

  Time Shall Reap

  Waters of the Heart

  The Three Kings

  by

  Doris Davidson

  BIRLINN

  This eBook edition published in 2012 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  This edition first published in 2009 by Birlinn Ltd

  First published in 1996 by HarperCollins Publishers

  Copyright © Doris Davidson 2006

  The moral right of Doris Davidson to be identified as the 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 publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-556-7

  ISBN 13: 978-1-84158-825-4

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  For Lillias and Ted,

  who brought the Three Kings back to my memory

  and sparked off the idea for this book.

  My thanks to Alex Thomson and his aunt

  for their help.

  1907

  She was thankful that the moon was obscured by clouds. She had waited until well after midnight before setting off on the most agonizing errand she had ever undertaken in all her seventeen years, but there was little more than an hour between sunset and sunrise on the Moray Firth at this time of year.

  Her furtive glances behind would have made any observer think that she was up to no good – no decent lassie would be abroad at ten to one in the morning – but he or she would have been very much mistaken. Although she was anxious not to be seen, she had no evil purpose in mind. Coming to the end of her mile-long journey, she set her burden on the step of the house she had vowed never to enter again, but at the stopping of the motion, a weedy mew issued from the basket.

  ‘Hush, my bairnie,’ she whispered, alarmed that someone might hear, but she could not stop the soft moan that was wrung out of her. ‘Oh, littl’un, I hope you’ll forgi’e your mother some day.’

  First making sure that the note was still pinned to the shawl, she whipped round and ran back up the hill, her heart tight with grief, her eyes stinging with unshed tears.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  1922

  ’I could kill her for this!’

  Having said the words fairly loudly, Katie Mair took a guilty glance around her, and was thankful that no one else was in sight. It was only April, of course; too early for the summer visitors who came to Cullen every year. Though she would be fifteen years old in two months, she was so used to talking aloud to the Three Kings that she sometimes forgot they were only rocks. ‘But not ordinary rocks,’ she assured them, hastily, to avoid giving offence.

  Nobody could argue with that, she thought, sitting down on the ground to admire them: two rearing out of the shingle but below the high-tide mark and the third surrounded by grass. Granda had once told her that their name had evolved from the legendary three kings of Cologne, and that long, long ago, some local wit had referred to them as the Three Kings of Cullen and the name had stuck. But she had always thought of them as the three kings from the Bible – the wise men – which was why she had come to them with her troubles ever since she was very young.

  They towered over her now, yet when she saw them from the harbour wall, they reminded her of three hunched men who had run out of the sea shedding small pieces of themselves in their hurry to reach dry land before being surrounded by the incoming tide. When the water was swirling gently, she could imagine that they had emerged from a peaceful bathe and left a trail of rocky footprints in their wake. She knew it was silly, but when the waves were churning and frothing in a frenzy, she believed that her ‘friends’ were foaming at the mouth, that they were as angry as she was at something her grandmother had said. The best time of all was when the sea was mirror-still and she could feel a calmness stealing over her, too, as if they were soothing away her troubles.

  Only an occasional ripple stirred the water tonight, and the three outlines stood out starkly against the last feeble rays of the sun, fast disappearing beneath the horizon, so she felt that they shared her sorrow.

  ‘I didn’t really mean I’d kill Grandma.’ She spoke softly, apologetically, now, ‘but I get so mad at her. She’s never wanted me, and she only took me in because there was nobody else to have me. You’d think she’d be sorry for me being an orphan from birth, but she doesn’t care tuppence. She could hardly wait till I was fourteen and she could put me into service.’

  A small sob escaped her, and it was a few moments before she could carry on. ‘It wasn’t so bad when I was with the doctor’s wife. Mrs Fleming’s always been very nice to me, and I could get home every night, but now I’m being sent miles and miles away, and I’ll maybe never see you again.’

  Dashing a tear away with her fingers, Katie got to her feet and stood with head bowed as the darkness closed in on her, and when she looked up all she could see were three uneven shadows. With a shiver, she turned to walk home.

  She was hardly inside the house when her grandmother said, ‘I suppose you’ve been along the shore again?’ Her voice was so sharp it sounded as if she were accusing the girl of some wicked sin, and William John winked sympathetically at his young grand-daughter. ‘It’s her last night,’ he reminded his wife, ‘so she’s likely been saying goodbye to the sea.’

  Tutting testily, the elderly woman snapped, ‘Goodbye to the sea! You’re as bad as her wi’ your nonsense! Drink that milk, Katie, as long as it’s hot, and then get through to your bed, for you’ve to be up early in the morning.’

  As she lifted the cup, Katie watched Mary Ann taking the teapot off the hob at the fireside and going to empty it down the drain in the back yard, her black skirt showing less
than an inch of her gun-metal lisle stockings. Her hair, a yellowing white, was dragged into a knot behind her head, her back was as straight as the pole the leary used for lighting the street lamps in the town, her bosom seemed to run in a great curve from her neck right to the top of her legs, with no waistline to break it up. She could have been a model for Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen, except that the effect was spoiled by the loud squeak that accompanied each step she took.

  ‘Her stays are creaking better,’ William John whispered, and, as he had hoped, Katie’s mouth broke into an unwilling smile. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he went on, ‘dinna worry. She …’ here he inclined his head to the door through which his wife had vanished, ‘… was in service when I ken’t her first, and if you turn out as good a housewife as her, you’ll do fine.’ His eyes twinkled again. ‘As long as you dinna end up with her tongue.’

  Katie was forced to giggle at this. ‘And I hope I don’t end up with a mouthful of gums like her, either.’

  About to say something about his wife’s toothlessness, William John heard her coming back and changed his mind. ‘Come on, then, Katie lass, off to bed wi’ you. Tomorrow’ll be here afore we ken where we are.’

  Katie wished them both goodnight and went into her own room. The box containing her clothes was on the floor behind the door – in the morning, her grandfather would lift it on to the cart he was hiring from Rennie, the carrier, to take her to the Howe of Fenty – and the sight of it reminded her that there would be nothing of her left here. Grandma would throw out the old clothes she was wearing today – after they had been washed, of course.

  Surprisingly, she slept well, and woke resigned to her fate. She was not the only one who had to work away from home. Only a few of the girls she had known at school had found employment locally; some had taken to following the herring fleet, but some, like herself, had been sent into service in another place, and they seemed happy enough any time she saw them. It was just … from what she had gathered, the Howe of Fenty was an awful long way away.

  Lifting her spoon, she stole a glance at her grandfather. His hair, silver-white, was curling over the tips of his ears and Grandma would likely be nagging at him soon to have it cut. Katie, however, preferred it the way it was now, for it suited him better. His cheeks were ruddy from working out in the yard in all weathers, and when he turned suddenly and caught her looking at him, the compassion in his fading blue eyes made her heart swell with love for him.

  Her last spoonful of porridge was hardly into her mouth when William John said, ‘Are you ready, then, Katie lass?’

  Being only six o’clock on an April morning, it was still quite dark when she climbed up on the cart and waited for him to load her ‘kist’ of clothes. There was no sorrow in her as she bade goodbye to her grandmother, who grunted, caustically, ‘Mind and do everything you’re told, now.’

  It was not a fond farewell, but Katie was too intent on storing the familiar features of the house in her memory to notice. A one-storeyed building with an attic, like most of those in Seatown – the part of Cullen where the fisherfolk lived – its gable end was towards the sea, raised pointing picking out the shapes of the stones with which it was built, and white-painted cement blocks ornamenting the edges of the door and the two front windows. She would keep it all in her mind and take it out if she felt homesick, which would be every day, more than likely. She heaved a shivery sigh as her grandfather sat down beside her.

  ‘I’ll be back some time the morrow,’ he told his wife, then clicked his tongue to the horse.

  Katie turned back to look at the gaping arches of the long railway viaduct spanning the Burn of Cullen. They didn’t look so friendly in the early morning as they did when the sun was shining, so she let her eyes move to the right, but she caught only a glimpse of her three beloved rocks before they were hidden from her view.

  The horse plodded up the narrow alley between the houses, and they turned left when they reached the main road, on up the steep hill of Seafield Street, passing under one of the arches of the other viaduct, which separated the huddle of small cottages from the rest of Cullen. It was a long haul for the poor mare, but William John let her take it easy, and it did not take long to reach the open countryside, with the sea on their left, though she could only see it when the moon broke through the clouds. They had not gone far before they turned right into a side road and were leaving Cullen Bay and the Moray Firth behind. She was glad that her grandfather kept silent, for her heart was too full for her to hold a conversation. She did not know exactly where their destination lay, but they were going farther and farther inland, and she would never be able to walk to the sea on her times off. She would never smell the tangle on the shore again, never sit on the harbour wall with her feet dangling over the water splashing against it.

  They were well over half an hour into their journey before William John spoke, having obviously given her time to get over her sadness at leaving home. ‘I’m sure the Gunns’ll be decent folk, Katie lass, if Mrs Gunn’s anything like her sister. There’s nae a finer woman in the whole parish than Mrs Taylor.’

  Katie was not inclined to be charitable at that moment. ‘Sisters aren’t always the same, and Mrs Taylor’s got to be nice when she’s married to a minister. Do you know what Mr Gunn does for a living?’

  ‘He’s got his own shop and it must be doing well if he can afford to pay for a maidservant for his wife. I think you’re the first she’s had, so she’ll likely feel a bit strange wi’ you, but as long as you do what she tells you, she’ll have nae reason to get angry at you.’

  ‘Grandma gets angry at me for nothing,’ Katie pouted.

  ‘It’s just the way she’s made. She’s nae the kind to show affection, but it’s there.’

  ‘No it’s not. She doesn’t like me.’

  ‘Nay, lass, you’re wrong there.’

  ‘She’s sending me away, isn’t she? Why couldn’t she have left me at the doctor’s? I was happy there.’

  ‘She thought it would do you good to get away from Cullen, and she didna want you having anything to do with the fish.’

  ‘I didn’t fancy going to the fish myself. I wanted to stay with Mrs Fleming.’

  ‘Your Grandma wanted you to meet different folk, nae just the fisher folk, and she thought you’d be better wi’ a lady like Mrs Gunn.’

  Leaning back and letting the mare go ahead in her own time, William John laid his rough hand over the small smooth one. ‘I ken it’s hard for you to leave us, Katie lass, but we’ll aye be thinking on you, and wondering how you’re going on. Never forget that.’

  ‘Maybe you will, but Grandma …’

  ‘So’ll she, I’m telling you. Now, just cheer up so we can enjoy the scenery. I havena been so far from hame since I was a young laddie.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Me and some other lads went to Aberdeen, but I wouldna like to bide there, it’s ower big for me, and the lassies … well, they looked doon their noses at us rough lads.’

  ‘Did you ever have another lass besides Grandma?’

  ‘Not a one. The minute I saw her, I ken’t she was the one for me, she was that bonnie.’

  This came as a surprise to Katie. It was difficult for her to visualize Mary Ann as a pretty young girl. ‘Why did she not get false teeth when she lost her own ones?’

  ‘She wouldna go and see about it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t look so bad if she’d teeth.’

  William John gave a sheepish laugh. ‘I can still picture her like she was …’

  ‘Did you love her, Granda?’

  ‘Aye, I did that, and you’ll maybe nae believe this, but I still feel something for her.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘That’s when she’s nae going on at me for messing up the place.’

  Katie smiled in sympathy. Her grandmother was very house proud, and made sure that no dirt was brought in on feet or on hands. ‘When I’ve got a house of my own, I won’t go mad if anybody messes it up.’

  ‘You’ll
feel different when it’s your own place. It’ll be a good while yet before you’re old enough to get wed, but I hope you’ll pick a good man when the time comes.’

  ‘I’ll look for somebody like you, Granda.’

  ‘When love strikes you, you’ll nae care what he’s like – buck teeth, hook nose, cross eyes …’

  ‘Oh, I could never love anybody like that.’

  ‘I was only joking, but I’ll tell you what I mean. I aye hankered after a wife wi’ fair hair and your Grandma had brown hair like you, but her eyes were dark brown; that dark that I fell in love wi’ her straight away. You canna plan that kind o’ thing, you see, nae when Cupid fires his dart at you, and I’ve never been sorry I wedded her.’

  When William John fell silent, Katie pondered over what she would expect in a future husband. He would have to be tall and handsome like Granda, that was one thing, but she wouldn’t care what colour his hair or eyes were as long as she loved him and he loved her. She tried to think if any of the boys who had been at school with her would fit the bill, but the only one she had ever liked was George Buchan, and he hadn’t been any taller than she was, and not all that handsome, though he’d had something about him … Still, she might meet the right person once she was away from Cullen. Maybe that was what Grandma wanted for her. The Gunns might have sons who took their friends home …

  Katie brought her conjectures to an abrupt stop. If there did happen to be any young Gunns, they certainly wouldn’t take any notice of a servant girl like her. ‘How far have we to go now?’ she asked.

  ‘A fair bit still.’

  When he judged it appropriate, William John said, ‘We’ll stop here and gi’e the mare a wee rest, and we can stretch our legs a bit.’

  She jumped nimbly on to the stony road and waited until he made his stiff descent, then she slipped her hand into his as if she were still a little girl and they strolled along together, while the horse nibbled at the grass verge. After about ten minutes, William John let out a long gusty breath. ‘We’d best get on, lass.’