The Betrayal of Maggie Blair (41 page)

The government in London decided to crush these rebellious people. As the years passed, and the Covenanters continued to reject the King's bishops, Charles's soldiers hunted them down with increasing cruelty. The Covenanters resisted, slipping out into the hills to worship in the open air in their own way. Those who were caught were imprisoned, fined, and sometimes even executed. This tragic period in Scottish history is known as the Killing Times.

Several of my own ancestors were Covenanters, and three of them feature as characters in this novel. Their names were John Laird, Stephen Barbour, and Hugh Blair. Of them all, most is known about Hugh Blair, who lived on a farm called Ladymuir near Kilmacolm in Renfrewshire. Most of what I've written about Hugh Blair happened to the real Hugh Blair.

When I visited the Riis family, who now live at Ladymuir farm, they showed me round their land and took me to see a hollow by the stream. It was here that the famous Covenanter preacher, James Renwick, came to speak one day in 1684 to a crowd of brave people who risked everything to hear him, even as the dragoons scoured the hills all around, their muskets primed to shoot.

The religion of both Catholics and Protestants in those days was harsh rather than consoling. Being in the right and doing one's duty were seen as more important than showing love and mercy to others. Religious men and women believed that the Devil was a real presence, stalking the world, seeking to tempt people away from the truth, and that those who sinned in thought or deed would be sure to go to Hell and burn in everlasting fire.

At the same time that the King was pursuing the Presbyterian rebels with merciless violence, there was a fever of witch hunting in Scotland. Scared by the violent forces at work in society, people turned on each other. Those most commonly accused of being witches were elderly women. Many were arrested, tried for the crime of witchcraft, and strangled, after which their bodies were burned at the stake.

In my family there was a woman called Margaret Laird who was accused of being a witch in 1698. The records of the parish of Kilmacolm describe the fits and fainting spells she suffered. In those excitable times, that was probably enough to make people suspicious of her. Though the accusations came to nothing, it was the thought of her, and what she had suffered, that helped me to create my own Maggie in this book.