A P P E A R A N C E
Maergarethe could be someone's gentle fairy godmother. Perhaps it is her smiling, wrinkled face or the twinkle in her eye. Or maybe it is the elaborate gowns she wears, with embroidered Celtic knotwork and a cut that hearkens to Arthurian myth rather than the day's fashion.
On certain days and times of the year, she can be seen in simple white robes and headdress embroidered with Druid symbols and spirals reminiscent of those found on ancient standing stones, presiding over Druid ceremonies with staff in hand.
Cross her though, and she can take on a rather imposing sternness, revealing an iron will that would not be broken over her long life, so don't bother trying now.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Maergarethe is one of the last of a dying breed: a Scottish clan matriarch who still adheres to the belief that she has an obligation to the people who work her modest land holdings, rather than viewing them as mere tenants to be removed from the land of their ancestors in the interest of increasing profits. Thus she has taken a firm stand against the Clearances and seeks to do all in her power to adapt the old ways to the challenges of the new modern world.
She is a stubborn non-conformist, proud of her Pagan Gaelic heritage, who refuses to bow to any notion of Anglo-Saxon superiority. She is mystical and intuitive, a lover of wild nature.
Maergarethe utterly
despises conventional aristocratic garden culture. To her, it is an unconscionable waste, a way for the wealthy to say 'Look! I own so much land that I can plant vast tracts of it in useless trimmed grass, topiaries, and flower-beds while children starve in the streets!' Furthermore, she sees it as a vain project of demonstrating human control over nature, by pampered fools who do not have to do any of the work themselves. "The gardens of Versailles pale before the beauty of a meadow or a forest, and a forest does not need groundskeepers."
She loves children and animals, and will play with them shamelessly, within the limits imposed by her aging body.
H I S T O R Y
Maergarethe was the youngest daughter of Laird Connor Kirkpatrick. She was a tomboy wild-child who loved to run with the hounds, climb trees, and roughhouse with the children of the family's servants and tenants. When she was a little girl, her father went to war in support of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and returned from the Battle of Culloden missing a leg.
He became a naturalist, living a subdued life that kept him beneath the notice of the victorious English. Maergarethe adopted a similar fascination, but she was less interested in pinned butterfly collections and stuffed animal specimens from around the world than in butterflies and animals living in their natural state.
In her early teens, Maergarethe learned of
the Druid Revival and became an enthusiastic convert. Her father was able to arrange beneficial marriages for her older brothers and sisters, so he could indulge her eccentricities even though they made her un-marriageable for all practical intents and purposes.
She reached the age of 25, no closer to finding a match than she had ever been, and seemed destined for spinsterhood. Then she had her first encounter with a newly-minted Fellow of the Royal Society named William Dalrymple at a fete her father held. Asked how she met the man who became her husband, Maergarethe will often reply, "We met in battle." It was not an exchange of cannonballs and grapeshot, but of argument and emotion, re-assembled and embellished remnants of ancient Druidry versus the emerging scientific materialism of the day.
Over time, fierce debate transmuted into love, and the pair were wed. They stayed at Oxford during the teaching season, then returned to the Dalrymple estate in Midlothian during the off season, though on occasion they made other travels. In pursuit of lost Druid knowledge, Maergarethe would seek out ancient megalithic structures; standing stones, temple-tombs, and dolmens. Taking on board some of her husband's scientific rigor, she made precise measurements and surveys of these monuments, while talking with the locals about their folklore and legends.
When her husband ventured to the Continent to attend scientific conferences, she went along, but sought out megaliths and cathedrals, knowing that the latter were often built atop ancient Pagan sacred sites. She found what she considered to be alignments that linked these ancient structures into a network, and claimed that this was evidence of a unified culture deep in pre-Classical antiquity.
Writing anonymously under the name 'Frater Ambrosius,' she published a book called
The Druids' Web. In it she argued that in addition to their function as sacred sites and astronomical temples, ancient megalithic structures also served as navigational aids, pointing those with the requisite knowledge toward the next structure on their desired course, making it possible to navigate throughout the British Isles and Western Europe. She also proposed the hypothesis that ancient Druids may have been able to enter mystic states of consciousness and communicate with their fellows at other sites along these lines, as well as use the 'earth energies' these sites focused to increase the fertility of crop seeds.
This book remained obscure, of interest to a relative handful of antiquarians and mystics, but was scoffed at by the scientific community to the extent that they noticed its existence at all.
Maergarethe found a new inspiration when she read a book called
Curious Dialogues with a Savage of Good Sense Who Has Travelled by Baron de la Hontan. This book purported to be a series of dialogues between a prominent Native American named Kandiaronk and the Baron, in which Kandiaronk issued harsh critiques of French, and by extension, European culture.
Coming to believe that the Native Americans might represent a living equivalent of the ancient megalith-builder culture of Europe, she began to ply her husband for a journey to the Colonies so she could meet them in person. Though William was less than enthusiastic about the prospects of such a hazardous sea voyage, he finally managed to get funding for a trip to assess the state of the sciences and education in the Colonies. The pair set off. While William busied himself in Philadelphia and Boston, Maergarethe finagled her way to visit the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Huron nations, and make measurements of Mound Builder sites.
Their expedition was cut short however, when the Colonies erupted in revolt against British rule. After a harrowing flight through a land at war, they managed to board a sloop bound for England, narrowly avoiding French naval patrols as they crossed the Atlantic. Maergarethe found their adventure delightfully thrilling...William, not so much.
While her learning was not much appreciated in mainstream society, it was welcomed within the more obscure circle of her Druid order, enabling her to rise through the initiatory ranks to become its Archdruidess.
Shortly after her return home, another event put an end to Maergarethe's wanderlust: the death of her father. She inherited a modest portion of his lands, enough to make her a Baronetess in her own right. Since her beliefs, and the teachings she'd learned from the Native Americans were rooted in connection to the land, she took this new responsibility with utmost seriousness.
By this time,
the Highland Clearances were driving people from the land their ancestors had lived on for generations. Maergarethe called on her inventor husband to help her find ways to make it possible for her people to stay on the land and maintain their status as farmers instead of being reduced to impoverished, landless laborers.
While he made improvements in windmill design, and developed a "compost reactor" that could be attached to a house, and the heat the compost produced used to warm the house via an arrangement of air conduits, reducing the need for firewood, peat, or coal, Maergarethe started searching for ways to improve the quality of soil. Using a microscope to compare fertile and infertile soils, she followed her father's footsteps as a naturalist, but of the microscopic and underfoot.
She developed a system of agriculture that mimicked a forest, with orchard and evergreen trees planted over shrubs, berries, and legumes, with compost used to build soil. In addition, truffles and mushrooms were grown as cash crops. She has been able to stay a step ahead of the debt trap that has forced other landlords to seek various ways to expel "redundant" families from their land.
However, Maergarethe and William faced two predicaments that would not yield to any amount of cleverness: the first, was that she could not produce an heir. The second arose as the couple entered old age: William began having lapses of memory and attention that worsened over time. He went to London to find an assistant, and returned with a brilliant young girl named Emilie Riebau.
Maergarethe loved Emilie at first sight. While she eagerly learned science and mechanics from William, Maergarethe taught her the skills she would need to navigate high society, and sought to share her love of nature. Though Emilie is not their child, in many respects she has grown to become a synthesis of the two, seeking to integrate their differing viewpoints into a harmonious whole.
Watching Emilie grow into young womanhood, Maergarethe hopes to "nudge" her toward finding a match as perfect as the one she found in William. With any luck, the right young man will make it possible for Emilie to continue as a scientist and inventor, and the new couple could take her place as protectors of her landholdings and people.
Life as a maid has hardened Sol's body in ways she wasn't proud of at first; the muscle definition in her biceps nearly gave her a panic attack and the callouses that refused to be scraped away nearly made her faint, but over the years she's come to appreciate all that she's accomplished, including each and every blemish.
