Yes, she would hear soon, she knew, as she stood on the terrace playing bowls with the visitors, turning the heavy ebony ball in her hands, and watched the sun setting over the wide earth among huge flame-flushed clouds. On their further edge, high in the sky at the edge of the world, she saw a knight in armour, a dark figure mounted on a horse with wings of flame. A faint breeze played over the terrace but there was no wind, no movement in the further sky; the knight sat unchanged, challenging that final gulf that yawned below him.
‘He has reached the end of the world,’ she said to herself – but the world went on.
‘Your turn to play, Louey,’ her mother was calling.
When she turned to look again, the knight and his charger had disappeared into flaming space, and only a wraith of grey cloud showed where he had been.
IX
Space could make no odds between them; both had proved it now. Should time have more power? Love was free of that, as of all the odd intermingled facts of life. He had loved before, and lived many years with his wife; she had borne him children, and he had now to see them.
The line of march, chosen by Leslie for safety, was through the eastern counties and went past Montrose’s birthplace at Old Montrose, and, four miles off it, Kinnaird Castle, the home of David Carnegie, first Earl of Southesk, whose younger daughter Magdalen had been Montrose’s wife from the age of sixteen until she had died five years ago.
They came through those familiar flat uplands of grass and water and waving rushes where he had hunted from childhood, up over the path that had been built up through the bog, past that rise in the ground, covered with scrubby bushes and a few firs and thorn trees, twisted into wild shapes by the wind that roves unchecked over the surrounding marsh. ‘The Marquis’ hill,’ the country people had begun to call it when he was last here, for they remembered how in his boyhood when he rode out from Old Montrose with his hawks or hounds, he used there to check his impatient horse and wave a red scarf in signal to any of that enormous family at Kinnaird who might care to ride out and go a-hunting with him.
And once, when he was riding in disguise with only two companions up through the armies of his enemies to begin the enterprise of that Year of Marvels in Scotland, once on a still summer night, white with moonlight, he had met his wife Magdalen in secret upon that hill.
They went through the deer park and the iron gates where he used to throw Lame Tom shillings for holding his horse. The grey jagged shape of the castle rose before him, the massive stone walls of the policies and orchards and the new garden that his father-in-law, Lord Southesk, had banked up out of the bog, the trees he had planted in his confidence in a peaceful and prosperous future for his family that had been so rudely denied.
There were the three young ash trees they used to call Adam and Eve and Samuel, and the fruit trees tossing and blowing in this wind, a thin cloud of their petals whirling upwards against the sky where the great clouds, white and blue-black, were riding like tall galleons. The wind was blowing from the west, carrying a scurry of soft raindrops among the blown petals of cherry blossom. It came from the mountains, from the Grampians that run across Scotland, where Montrose used to ride when he came from his houses in the western hills to his wife’s home at Kinnaird. He belonged to the hills and she to the peaceful plains, Magdalen had always told him.
They went into the castle. He stood in that hall again, and saw his father-in-law, now grown very old, coming towards him, saw those eyes, that he remembered as so keen and imperious, now dimmed with age and tears, raised to his.
And Lord Southesk saw this hot-headed young fellow whom he had scolded and tried to guide in accordance with his own canny wisdom; he had always feared he might come to grief, and now in the saddest moment of his long life he was finding himself proved in the right. Young James of Montrose had always been head and shoulders above his fellows, above even Southesk’s own four stalwart sons, but – ‘James,’ his bluff friend Lord Rothes had once said, ‘You will never rest till you are lifted up above us all in three fathoms of rope.’
And in that grim jest Rothes too would be proved in the right.
Yet this strange, haggard, ragged prisoner could smile as he met his eyes and say, ‘I would have spared you this if I could. But it was Leslie’s command. And I would be glad of a word with my eldest boy.’
‘Your boy James is abroad – we have sent him there to get him into safety.’
‘Where is he?’
‘At school in Holland.’
‘I am glad of that. Tell him to go and see the Princess Louise, who has been betrothed to me this last year. She and her mother will be kind to him.’
‘Her mother’ – the Queen of Bohemia, and of the hearts of all true Scots and Englishmen, – the mention of her could take back Lord Southesk’s memories further than most people’s; it was he who had been appointed by her father, King James VI of Scotland, when he became James I of England, to escort her and her brothers down from Scotland to London – and she the prettiest, liveliest, most troublesome brat of seven years old that Southesk had ever had the bad luck to encounter.
For two generations these two countries had looked to her and her children as their best hope for the English crown; and now one of them was to have married his son-in-law, whom he had seen as the Viceroy of Scotland and now saw condemned to a criminal’s death. In all his steadily upward progress since he had been plain David Carnegie the laird of Kinnaird, the first Earl of Southesk had never met with so great advance and retreat of fortunes as now when he looked on the son-in-law who had been nearer to him than any of his sons.
Montrose had made his chief home at Kinnaird, for the pair had married so young that he had had to continue his education afterwards; his children had been brought up here; his portrait as a lad of seventeen in his bridegroom suit of brown velvet, the wide sleeves slashed with oyster satin, hung in the great dining-hall. That boy’s face, gravely smiling, the wide mouth turning upwards at the corners, the long irregular hooked nose, the frank, considering eyes beneath their peaked brows, eyes so hopeful yet so secure, now looked out of the carved frame at the man that that boy had become.
‘If there were anything I could do—’ old Southesk began in a low broken voice as soon as they were out of hearing of the guards – ‘but I am a disgraced man, my estates under heavy fines for my Royalist sympathies, there is nothing I can do with this Government, nor can any man, I think, for they have lost all sense and reason as well as humanity—’ and he glanced round him in terror as he spoke, though it was in all but a whisper.
The sight of his father-in-law’s fear in his own house, where he had seemed like a king, showed plainly the tyranny that now beset Scotland.
‘If the King were to get here in time,’ he muttered on, ‘they could not carry it out then.’
‘If the King gets here with Lauderdale,’ his son-in-law answered, ‘he will be Argyll’s prisoner as I am, with only this difference, that he is not condemned to death.’
His two younger children, Rob and Jean, a tall boy of eleven and a girl of six, were brought in to see their father, both very grave, the girl holding tight to her brother’s hand, looking up with large frightened blue eyes. She was small and very slight and had long straight brown hair; he could just remember her mother when she had looked very like that.
He had not seen them since Jean was a baby in the cradle and Rob a sturdy six-year-old. It was bad luck on them to have this moment as their only real memory of their father; he wished they had not been sent for. He asked about their riding – what ponies had they? Dapple and Drake had been the favourites of his two elder sons, Johnnie who had died on that bitter winter campaign of his in the mountains, five years ago, and James, now in Holland.
‘James left me his horse Blackamoor when he went to Holland,’ said Rob, ‘but I am not quite big enough for him yet.’
‘Has James grown into a big lad, then? He was small when he was your age, Rob. My friend Alasdair Macdonald, who was a
giant, would swing him on to his shoulder and say he was tall enough then. Did James ever tell you that?’
‘No, sir, but he has told us that Alasdair was a great friend of his. And he has told us of Sir John Hurry, who took him prisoner when he was buying fishing-tackle in the town and sent him to be shut up in Edinburgh Castle.’
‘Where he refused to be exchanged for another prisoner, since he was not then quite twelve years old and it was a pity for me to lose “a more valuable officer than himself”. Did he also tell you that?’
‘No, sir, at least not like that. He said prison was the only place where he had time for all he wanted to do.’
So James had not changed, however tall he had grown. ‘Does he still write verses and hide them in his shoes for safety along with his marbles and other treasures? I used to write mine in the margins of my school-books – a very bad habit, I hope you two don’t do it.’
‘They won’t let us,’ said Rob in justifiable indignation, ‘though Master Forrett is always showing us yours, sir, and says those books you’ve marked are the most precious of any we have.’
‘Little Forrett! What, is he here still? Where is he then in God’s name?’
There was a second’s awkward pause, and then Jean’s voice piped up for the first time: ‘He said he couldn’t bear it.’
‘That’s nonsense. I must see the old man – tell him I want it, Jean.’
She ran off, and soon Master Forrett, who had been tutor to him and to his two elder sons, came to meet him with the tears running down his puckered cheeks.
‘Oh my young lord!’ he broke out in a hurried rambling rush of words almost incoherent with grief. ‘You – I used to take you back to school, and your father’s books and silver cups and the red embroidered cushions and golf-clubs and little gilded rapier your father gave you – I have them all, and all the prizes you won, all for sport alas, – I have them all safe and sound – but you, I knew you would never be safe—’
‘No man is that, Forrett. And all the account books you kept so carefully – have you got those too? You must show them to these young rascals, not as an example but a warning not to be as extravagant as their father. All those sums I lost at billiards and the Cupar races, – “And golf-balls at three pounds Scots a dozen!” Do you remember scolding me for the new lot I got the day before my wedding?’
‘Do I not? And the time of the house-warming at Kincardine when Your Lordship rode all the way to Edinburgh and back without telling anyone why, and all to get presents of necklaces and embroidered gloves for every one of your sisters – all five of ‘em no less!’
‘Don’t forget the rest of the girls in the party, Forrett, since I did not. Silver buttons I got ‘em, and Italian boxes and plaited ribbons hung with bells.’
‘Oh,’ cried little Jean, smiling at last as he had wanted to see her, ‘why wasn’t I there?’
‘Because you were not born, my bairn. Someone else will bring you silver bells. – You don’t let ‘em play spillikens with your old bones, I hope, Forrett, the way I used to do, riding you over the hills?’
‘You went always at the rate of a mountain torrent, my lord.’
‘There were so many visits to fit in – a couple of days’ hunting here and fishing there and dancing every evening. That was a grand night of it when I was Lord of Misrule in the Christmas play at Balcarres!’
‘No chance of that now,’ said Lord Southesk. ‘The country’s too much changed. Even the nobility daren’t dance now, and as for acting plays or keeping Christmas, there are State penalties for both these crimes.’
‘Let’s hope it will change again then by the time Jean is grown up – as it should when we have a young and merry monarch on the throne. King Charles will pull down King Campbell in time, you’ll see.’
Rob’s face had flushed furiously at the name of Campbell. ‘May he die a dog’s death!’ he muttered under his breath.
‘He will do that,’ said a very old, slow, peasant’s voice from the doorway just behind them.
Montrose turned quickly to see Daniel Muschet, who had been gardener at Kinnaird all his life, standing there, straight and tall in spite of his great age, with a tight round knob of sweet herbs and spring flowers in his hand.
‘He’ll do that howsomever he died,’ he said, ‘for it’s as a dog he would die. They told me you were come, my young lord, and I made bold to come to you here lest the soldiery prevented me outside – and here’s a nosegay to pin in your cloak. It’s many a one you’ve told me to pick for you as you rode out of these gates, and you’ll not go out of them now without some of my flowers to keep the smell of your guards off you.’
He held his fine old head as high as Lord Southesk’s, who might have been his brother, and possibly was, for Daniel had the big Carnegie nose, lean and strong. His keen, screwed-up, triangular blue eyes looked straight at Montrose, who was glad of it, for all the others had been shy of meeting his eyes.
Jean ran to Daniel and caught at his hand.
‘What do you see round him, Daniel? You have the second sight. Won’t he escape and come back here to us?’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Tell us, tell us,’ the child urged, ‘won’t you tell us what you see?’
‘Yes, I’ll tell you what I see round him,’ he said in that slow and ancient voice, ‘as I told your own mother these fourteen years gone – and that is a great glory and gladness, and stories and songs springing up round him like flowers under his feet. And whatever death he may die, it would be better to be himself than any man in the length and breadth of Scotland.’
X
There had been an attempt to rescue him at Pitcaple Castle, where the wife of their host for the night, the laird of Pitcaple, told him of a concealed hole in the wall through which he might pass into a subterranean passage and so escape. But Pitcaple was already under suspicion of the Government, having lately refused to subscribe to its last declaration, as his family ‘could not take upon them the guiltiness contained therein’. Bad as that was for him, it was even worse that his wife was own cousin to Montrose.
For years past, Argyll had been venting his revenge on Montrose’s relatives, even on his young nieces, whom he had had imprisoned at different times. If he should escape from the house of his kinswoman, she would certainly suffer for it, and perhaps all his own family also, even his children. Montrose refused.
Now they came to Grange Castle, not far from Dundee, where old William Durhame was laird, and his wife, Jean Octerlonie, was master. She was a remarkable woman, in late middle age, but with the step and carriage of a young stag, and an aloof, far-seeing look in her wide blue eyes. She was abrupt in speech, her manner casual and unaware of other people; she seemed borne onward by the wind of her own swift resolution, and on this occasion she showed to the full how swift and resolute she could be.
First she settled all the quarters in the castle with David Leslie, going round with him herself and demanding the names of who should be appointed where, so imperiously yet abstractedly, as though it were merely her right to know, and not in any way of interest to her, that it never occurred to the General not to answer her. She then entertained them all royally, both with very old strong ale and very new raw brandy. At supper she herself plied the officers of the main guard again and again, her fair pale face remaining smooth and unflushed as she drank repeated small doses of the heady stuff in compliment and encouragement to them.
Not that they needed much encouragement. The main guard, who were in the hall, were mostly of Lawers’ regiment of Campbell Highlanders, notable hard drinkers. But so well and constantly did the butlers at the Grange do their job that before midnight all those practised topers were stark drunk.
It was a little after midnight that Montrose was woken by his door being softly opened. The light of the moon, now just past the full, shone through the small panes of glass in the window, making a check-work pattern on the boards by the door. On those black-lined squares of greenish
-white there stood a tall form in a massive black cloak who came in a swift rush to the side of his bed and there dropped the cloak all in one movement, showing the straight grey figure of Jean Durhame.
‘This is your moment,’ she said in a voice more quiet than any whisper; ‘put on my cloak and go out past them. You’ll find all the doors unbarred, and the men will not notice even if you step on them – I’ve tried one or two to test them.’
He was lying on the bed, dressed, for he had no change of clothes; he got up and took the cloak from her hands and looked into the queer pale face that seemed impalpable in the moonlight.
‘And you?’ he asked. ‘And your husband? What of you, when they find me gone?’
‘My husband has been in bed since before your arrival, and Leslie knows it. They dare not touch me, I have proved that before now. I am not in your cousin’s position. – Yes, I know about Pitcaple. You had a reason there not to take your chance. You have none here, only an excuse. If you refuse this time, it would be a coward’s way out.’
He took the cloak from her and swung it round his shoulders, then knelt and kissed her hands.
She opened the door for him, softly, knowing the way of it. He went out after her into the dark passage, following her round the sentry, who lay in a heap on top of his musket. She stood at the top of the stair, watching while he went very quietly down it in the darkness by the wall. There was still a glow from the heaps of smouldering peat on the hearth, it showed the black huddled lumps of men lying in the hall, the red gleam here and there from the barrel of a musket, the point of a dirk.
They lay like swine on a midden; some had been sick, some were snoring in thick strangled grunts. He stepped through the stench, past the filth and the sunken sprawling bodies. The great outer door was unlocked, and he went through it, out into the cool air and the moonlight.
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