At sundry points en route they checked that four fast-riding travellers had passed this way not long before.
Three hours’ hard going brought them to the vicinity of Falkirk. Here was the Livingstones’ main seat, Callendar House, where it behoved them to go warily. Already the eastern sky was lightening. Cautiously they circled to the south of the demesne, making for higher ground where, from the cover of trees, they could watch the house.
Will fretted as they waited. But the horses could well do with a rest — as indeed could some of the riders, who had been out of their beds for too long, during current festivities, and were unlikely to be in them again for longer.
An hour’s wait, and the Douglases were rewarded. With the sunrise, a fairly large party, perhaps a hundred strong, rode out from Callendar House, westwards, on the road for Castlecary and Kilsyth. No banners or pennons fluttered over it, but the level beams of early sunlight gleamed on much steel and armour.
Johnnie was allotted his accustomed role of scout. With all the serving men they had with them, he was to shadow this Livingstone company and send back what word he could. Only allowing time for the others to get out of sight, Will and his reduced party turned north now, and set off at speed for Stirling by the low plain of Forth, ten miles further.
On the Burghmuir there they found the main Douglas host’s encampment just stirring into morning activity, with breakfast fires sending up their smoke columns by the hundred. Their lord’s unexpected arrival altered the scale and tempo of activity drastically. Soon trumpets were sounding everywhere, and men were buckling on armour and saddling horses.
Will, impatient as ever, was concerned to get away from Stirling just as quickly as possible. James Livingstone was still Keeper of the castle, and although it was almost certain that he was with the group of his people riding westwards, some of his minions could be replied upon to send him word of any large-scale Douglas movement. Fortunately Rob Fleming turned up, with the bulk of the lairds and officers of the great array, in little over an hour. Now there was no further delay. Each leader went to his own allotted place, and dividing the entire force into three, under the commands of Jamie, Archie and Hugh, with Fleming at his side Will led the way out of Stirling, south-westwards.
They headed directly into the Touch Hills, close at hand. This was the east end of a long range of medium-sized heights which, under the names of the Gargunnock, Kilsyth, and Fintry Hills, and the Campsie Fells, stretched all the way to the Clyde, separating the Forth valley from that of the Clyde’s northern tributaries, the Kelvin, the Calder and other waters. In the empty recesses of these green hills, the Douglas host could move westwards hidden save from a few shepherds and moormen. Fleming himself acted as guide here, for this was his country, his paternal property of Cumbernauld lying on the southern slopes.
The trouble was that, though they were well hidden, they were also blind. Their present route and destination was vague in the extreme. Will’s information, received from his spies over the last weeks, was that the Livingstones, recognising that their time was now short with the King almost of age and likely to take the rule into his own hands at any time — especially now that he was married and with potent foreign in-laws — had decided on a coup d’etat. They would marshal all their not inconsiderable strength, and strike while the rest of the realm was preoccupied with the royal wedding festivities at Edinburgh. They already controlled many of the most strategically-placed royal strongholds, as keepers thereof. Lennox, chiefest of the non-royal Stewarts, and ever resentful at alleged indifference to his importance, was known to be in this plot. And Lennox and Hamilton, between them, controlled the entire lower Clyde basin, Glasgow, and therefore the West — as distinct from the Douglas South-West. The attempt, therefore, was almost certain to be made, in the first instance, in the West. Where, was Will’s problem.
It need not have come to this, of course. Undoubtedly Will Douglas could have nipped the whole project in the bud, had he so decided — for he had known of it for more than a month. But any precautionary moves would have swiftly got back to the Livingstones, and they would have postponed all until another occasion. There would have been no proof against them, no means of bringing them to book, and they were too powerful to pull down other than by being caught red-handed. So Will had informed neither King, Chancellor nor Council. He had a personal stake in this, of course, as Margaret and others never failed to remind him. He had taken his own precautions, gathered his people under pretext of making a typical ostentatious Douglas show at the wedding, swearing his leaders to secrecy, so that even his own host had no idea that they were in fact mobilised on a war footing. He might officially be moving against the Livingstones in the realm’s interest, as Lieutenant-General thereof; it was, in fact, as Black Douglas that he led his thousands through the Stirlingshire hills.
He was waiting now, of course, for a lead from Johnnie. But even so, he believed that he was on the right track, here in these green heights. No faction could intend to take and hold the West without first being sure of Dumbarton Castle, one of the strongest holds in the kingdom, dominating the Clyde estuary. The Livingstones already did that, with one of the sons captain thereof. But in theory at least it was a royal castle. In the event of revolt, it would be one of the first objectives of the loyalist forces. For Livingstone success in the West, it must be shown to all, from the first, as unassailably in their hands; and that would be best achieved by raising the standard of revolt conveniently near by. Dumbarton lay just where the western end of these hills reached the Firth of Clyde. If a secret assembly was visualised, it could hardly be better placed than somewhere in this area.
Johnnie’s first courier reached them in mid-afternoon, with the word that the Livingstones from Callendar were on the Kilsyth road still, and past Haggs. They had been joined by a large body of Hamiltons from the Slamannan and Torphichen area. Kilsyth was still west by south of the Douglas’s present position in the central Carron valley of the hills. They continued on their way up that river.
The next messenger found them, in the afternoon, near the March Burn in the Kilsyth Hills, vastly spread out now amongst winding narrow valleys. He brought the information that the Callendar party was now past Kilsyth and making towards Kirkintilloch. But it was hard to keep them in view, for so many other groups, large and small, were making in the same direction. By the concentration, Johnnie reckoned that the assembly point must be near.
Kirkintilloch lay on the direct road to Dumbarton, and about seventeen miles east of it.
Will slowed his host’s pace to a walk, amongst the sheep-dotted braes.
In the early evening, Johnnie himself arrived, weary but excited. He had discovered the actual rendezvous. North of the burgh of Kirkintilloch the shallow strath of the Kelvin was largely flooded and waterlogged. In this boggy desolation were a number of islands of higher ground. The largest of these, seventy acres or so in extent, according to Rob Fleming, was called Inchbelly. Today it was an armed camp, a stronghold without walls but surrounded by mire and swamp.
Fleming knew it and its neighbours well. Livingstone had chosen shrewdly, he admitted. These islands in the moss were approachable only by causeways through the mire. Guard these, and vast numbers could rest secure. A natural fortress.
Will looked at him grimly. “Or a death-trap!” he suggested briefly.
They pressed on through the valleys until they were due north of Kirkintilloch and the Kelvin — only, with a 1500-foot escarpment of hill in between. There, by the head-waters of the Birken Burn they halted, to wait and rest.
Or most of them did. Will himself, with his brothers and some of his captains, continued to ride, due southwards now, up the long green hill, making for a summit viewpoint in the ridge which Fleming called Cort-ma-law. They dismounted well before they reached the skyline, and moved up to it cautiously.
A great spread of country lay below them, south and west, in the evening light, to the far Lanarkshire hills where Clyde was born. In
the foreground, patched black and emerald-green with bog, and gleaming with standing water, was the shallow strath of the Kelvin, not so much a valley as a flood plain. The islands in its prolonged morass were very evident from this height, cattle-dotted, for they made good pasture. The largest of them all, that furthest to the west, was now supporting more than cattle, however. Even at this three or four miles range it could be seen to be black with men and horses, a great armed camp, from which the blue smokes of cooking-fires rose into the evening air to rival those of the grey town of Kirkintilloch, which lay on the south shores of the moss a mile or so further off.
For long the Douglases lay and watched it all, eyes busy not so much with the camp area itself as with the approaches thereto, and covered routes through the foothill slopes. Rob Fleming pointed out various features, accesses, advantages to use, problems to avoid. At length, reasonably well satisfied, they turned downhill again.
Hidden in that deep valley the host waited, resting, sleeping, until dusk. Then they moved off, in their companies, not up the hill directly, but still westwards into the side-valley of a subsidiary burn which swung gradually southwards as it climbed towards a deep gap in the long ridge. They had to ride in single-file now, in this narrow, mounting corridor — and six thousand horsemen in single-file form a long, long column. Progress was very slow. But there was little hurry.
It was as dark as it would ever be, for a July night, when the leaders reached the high pass between the north-flowing burn and the south-flowing headstreams of the Antermony Water. Picking their difficult way down the latter’s deepening ravine, in the gloom, was a grievous progress; but at least, by following this burn down to its junction with the Kelvin marshes, they were assured of a covered and fool-proof route to their objective.
It was after midnight before they won out of the dark hills and into the pasturelands which slanted down to the great mosses, where shadowy cattle plunged away from them in stiff-legged alarm into the deeper gloom. Will was interested in those cattle. He sent men to round up as many as they might. Presently they moved on, their already difficult progress further complicated by a drove of a hundred or so protesting bullocks.
There could be no hiding their presence now — but Will was not greatly concerned at the lowing noise. Leaving Hugh and Archie in command, he rode ahead with Johnnie and Fleming. Rob, who hunted here as a youth, for roe and wildfowl, said that the causeway out to Inchbelly stretched from the south side, from the direction of Kirkintilloch. To reach this entailed a fairly wide circuit to the west, to avoid the head of the moss.
Most of the fires on the island itself had now died down, but just ahead one burned brightly, far from the others. Fleming believed this to be on the south shore of the morass — and if so, it probably represented a guard-post at the landward end of the causeway. Circumspectly the trio moved round to inspect. They dismounted, to creep close.
Now there was no question. About a dozen armed men stood or sat around a well-doing fire at a point just above the dark edge of the reed-sea. Every now and again one or a pair would stroll off northwards, into the marsh. Clearly this was a picket to watch the causeway-head. They did not appear to be in the least suspicious or over-watchful — why should they be? They were in the heart of their own country, the merely formal guard at an assembly-point of formidable natural strength.
Leaving Johnnie to watch them, Will and Fleming made their way back to the others, easily found in the darkness by the lowing of uneasy cattle. There Will called together the leaders of the host, to give them strictest instructions.
So when, presently, the long array moved forward again, it was led by a small dismounted group of rough men-at-arms who bore no Red Hearts on their breastplates, herding a drove of cattle-beasts, with much shouting, cursing and whacking. Silently behind came the serried ranks of Douglas. They made for the red pin-point of the watch-fire.
Johnnie joined them, to announce that all was as it had been. The guards were interested in the noise of the approaching cattle, but not evidently alarmed.
Redoubling the herding noises, the drovers pressed on. As they neared the fire and guard-point, two hurried forward into the glow of the flames. One, who was Will’s own Wattie Scott, waved and shouted to the guards.
“Hey! You, there. This is the Livingstone’s camp? Inchbelly, or siclike ungodly name? Guidsakes — we’ve been a’ place, seeking you! In every devil-damned bog! Whitna place! Is this it? A curse on a’ Livingstones!”
“Aye — Inchbelly,” somebody answered. “Who a God’s name are you? At this hour o’ night?”
“Hamiltons. Hamiltons frae Stra’blane. Wi’ beasts. Meat. Beef for the camp.”
All the time the herd was being pressed on from behind, snorting and protesting, frightened by the fire. And behind that, hidden, shielded, came the Douglases.
The guards were clearly at something of a loss. Little doubt but that they had no orders to deal with such an eventuality as this. “Where you going wi’ your beasts?” one of them called.
“Sakes, man,” Wattie returned, “we’re no’ going any place! We’ve come! Guid kens we’ve come plenty! Been in every accursed hole in the Kelvin! Let’s oot to this camp. The laird’s there, waiting on us.”
“Och, man — there’s ower many oot there, a’ready . . .”
But the cattle were now surging forward to the mouth of the causeway. If the guards made further protest, they were not heard in the snorting and puffing and shouting. One of their number, pacing the causeway-stones themselves, decided that he was in an unfortunate position, and turning, hurried away out to the island. After him the bullocks trundled in fine style.
When the first Douglas swords suddenly gleamed red in the firelight, at the back of the herd, the guards were taken completely by surprise and overwhelmed without the least resistance. More important, no sort of warning was shouted islandwards. On after the cattle the horsemen streamed.
The causeway, built of great stones, was perhaps ten yards in width and thirty times that in length. Its course was fairly clear, for tall reeds grew out of the marshland on either side but none grew on the causeway itself. Some of the trotting cattle may possibly have stepped or been pushed off into the deep, quaking mire; but most, certainly, made the crossing. In a compact, jostling, streaming mass they streamed over and on to dry land again — and any surprised folk awake at the far end could do little more than stare and perhaps shout uncertain warning to nearby sleepers. Probably few indeed saw the ranked horsemen who came in tight-packed files behind.
As the bullocks scattered trampling off beyond, to the alarm of various sections of the slumbering camp, the first Douglases across consolidated a secure bridgehead while leaving ample space for their new ranks to pass through. There Will took up his position, directing his squadrons left and right as required. So far, not a drop of blood had been shed.
The awakening of the sleeping host to what had happened was strangely, almost comically, gradual. Will had given orders that there was to be no unprovoked attack. His quarrel was with the Livingstone leaders only; he had no desire for slaughter of the rank and file. These, after all, were not enemies, but fellow-countrymen. So there was no sudden and comprehensive alarm. Trampling beasts rudely awakened some. Others, roused by the noise, peered into the gloom. Some saw shadowy horsemen, some did not In the centre of the island, farthest from any commotion, tired men slept on. And here were the pavilions of the Livingstone leaders. No trumpets blew, no clash of arms sounded.
In time, of course, it penetrated to all that something was amiss. But by that time Inchbelly’s island was entirely ringed with stern steel-clad ranks, facing inwards and sitting their horses in ominous and threatening silence. Even then, many of the awakened force had no idea who these might be, and no certainty that they were in fact enemies. When Will was satisfied that the steel circle was complete, and that sufficient confusion reigned within it, he led a tight group of his knights, pacing through the thronged encampment, to the grassy k
noll where the tents of the foremost Livingstones were pitched.
An agitated young man, clothing awry, was slapping on the dew-drenched walls of a tent, shouting, and someone within was demanding what was to do, when Will tapped the shouter on the shoulder.
“Here’s what’s to do, Davie Livingstone!” he said, quietly, and jerked the other round.
It was the same individual, youngest son of Sir Alexander, who once, at Stirling, had interrupted the swording lesson with the boy King James and haughtily ordered Will to go to his father. He stared, now, in the gloom.
“Douglas!” he gasped.
“Aye, Douglas. Come to call a reckoning. Where is your father?”
“I . . . he is asleep. What . . . what is this? . . .”
‘For Livingstones, with ill consciences, you sleep too sound, I think!” Will paused, as a tall thin figure emerged from the tent, with an older man behind. “Ah, Sir James!” he went on. “We disturb your rest, after your long riding? I vow you would have been better to have bided in Edinburgh. Like my Lord Hamilton!”
“You! . . .” the Chamberlain whispered, starting back as though he had been struck. “God’s name — how came you here?”
“Say that I came smelling treason! The stink of it is strong enough, i’ faith! Take me to your father.”
“I’d counsel you to watch your words, Earl of Douglas . . .”
The older man spoke, William Livingstone of Kilsyth, younger brother of old Sir Alexander. “What do you here? On my land!”
“If this is Livingstone land, then it will not be for much longer!” Will told him, briefly. “Where is Sir Alexander?”
“Here’s a page says he is in this tent here, Will,” Jamie called.
They strode over to a square silken pavilion, more apt for a tournament than a campaign in the field. They heard the thin, high-pitched voice, querulous, angry, within. Without ceremony, Will threw open the flap, pushing aside the page, and entered, his brothers at his back. “Bring light, a torch,” he ordered.
Black Douglas (Coronet Books) Page 33