The Price of the King's Peace bt-3

by Nigel Tranter

  For these galleys had very low free boards and moreover were already well filled with their own double crews, with two men to each oar and the spare team required to maintain high speeds and act as boarding crews. The largest were already carrying 250 Islesmen, without passengers-although none of Bruce’s dozen craft were of that size.

  It was not long, however, before all concerned perceived the reason for

  this crowding. Off the south tip of Arran, with a freshening breeze

  and the long Atlantic swell already beginning to make the overloaded

  craft pitch and roll alarmingly, the fleet split up, and into very

  unequal squadrons. Angus Og himself, with about thirty ships,

  continued on course for the open sea, south westwards now. While the King’s galley, with its tail of heavily-laden followers, swung off to starboard in a fully ninety-degree turn, to proceed due northwards up the narrow Kilbrandon Sound, between Arran and the eastern coast of long Kintyre.

  Quickly the breakwater effect of Kintyre became apparent, and the ships gained speed and comfort both. The southwest breeze, funnelling round the Mull, now much aided them, bellying out the great single square sails, which each bore the proud un differenced device of the Black Galley of the Isles. With the long oars sweeping rhythmically, to the squeal of row locks and the gasping, unending chant of the crews, they thrashed up-Sound at a speed fast horses would have been unable to maintain, exhilarating, scarcely believable.

  The smell of sweat was almost overpowering, as strong men purged their bodies with vast exertions after the over-indulgences in the taverns, alehouses and brothels of Ayr.

  By evening they had left Arran behind and were into the lower reaches of Loch Fyne, one of the longest sea-lochs in all Scotland.

  It probed for forty miles deep into the mountainous heart of Argyll. But the King’s squadron was not going so far; not halfway in fact, to where, a mere dozen miles up, a small side-loch opened off to the west East Loch Tarbert.

  In June it is never really dark in Scotland, and the galleys drove on through the half-light confidently, even in these narrow, skerry strewn waters. Before dawn they turned into the side loch.

  It was only a mile long, and at its head was a settlement where a new stone castle was being built-Brace’s own, the result of an understanding with Angus of the Isles, who was also Lord of Kintyre.

  Below these unfinished walls the galleys moored.

  But there was no rest for the crews or passengers. Immediately all were set to felling trees, in which the area was rich, choosing straight pines. Oatmeal and water, laced with strong Highland spirits, served for breakfast, eaten as men laboured.

  By early forenoon all was ready. The logs, trimmed and smoothed, were in position on the shingle beach. Long ropes were run out from the first two ships, and hundreds of men attached themselves thereto, like trace-horses. Crews waded chest-deep into the water to push. Then the King’s trumpets blew a long blast that set the echoes resounding through the enclosing hills.

  As more than a thousand men took up the strain, and heaved mightily, the two vessels began to move forward, up out of the water like leviathans. Under the tall thrusting prows teams pushed the round logs to act as rollers, a team to each log, positioning them, guiding them beneath the keels, catching them as they came out below the sterns, and then picking them up and hurrying to the bows again, The galleys moved up the slope, heavily, but went on moving. Bruce led the way, encouraging the long lines of haulers, taking a hand frequently at the ropes himself.

  He had remembered what the chief of MacGregor had told him, long ago when he was a hunted fugitive, how from time immemorial the proud Clan Alpine had been wont to drag their chiefly galleys across that other tairbeart, the narrow isthmus of land between Loch Long and Loch Lomond, from sea-water to fresh; and how King Hakon’s son-in-law Magnus, King of Man, had heard of the device over fifty years ago, before the Battle of Largs, and had surprised the Scots by appearing without warning in the Clyde estuary, from the Hebridean Sea, by crossing this more westerly tar bert For here also was only a mile-wide isthmus. Just over the intervening low ridge, West Loch Tarbert struck inland for ten miles from the Sound of Jura and the Western Sea.

  The ascent was stiff for such heavy loads, and taxed all the muscle and

  determination. Then Bruce realised that, as so often of a summer

  morning, there was an onshore wind. This, sweeping down Loch Fync’s

  cold-water surface, blew on to the wanner land here from an easterly direction. Hurrying back to the leading galley, he yelled to the few men still on board to raise the great sail.

  It was worth trying, and could do no harm.

  The moment that the sail began to open, the effect was felt by every man pulling and pushing. The wind seemed to take half the weight off the vessel. Speed increased dramatically. Quickly the other craft hoisted sail likewise. Everywhere men laughed and cheered, however breathlessly. Here would be a tale to tell, a great song to sing, something to twit Angus Og with-how the Lowland king sailed from Loch Fyne to Jura Sound!

  They did not in fact sail all the way; for once the crest of the ridge was passed, the east wind died away, and any breeze there was came from the west. However, it was now downhill and easier going. In little more than two hours after leaving the East Loch, the first two vessels were dipping their forefeet into the West.

  There was no triumphant pause in the men’s Herculean exertions.

  Without delay, all but a few turned back, to repeat their

  performance.

  They improved on their methods, their route and their expertise, but it was early evening nevertheless before all the galleys were safely into the West Loch, with men exhausted and tempers frayed.

  The King himself had been seeking to hide his fretfulness for hours. It had all taken longer than he had anticipated, and he was working within narrow time limits.

  Whenever the last keel was in the water, and despite the grousing of tired and hungry men, he gave the order to sail. Down the long narrow loch they sped, in line astern, through the low Knapdale hills, into the eye of the westering sun.

  In ten miles the wide waters of the Sound of Jura opened before them, ablaze with the sunset. Only a few miles ahead, to port, lay the small isle of Gigha, with beyond it all the long unbroken line made by the great islands of Jura and Islay, purple against the evening light.

  Walter Stewart, who did not know the Hebrides well, standing beside the King on the high poop of the foremost galley, stared.

  “A

  goodly sight, Sire,” he said.

  “Fair. But … where is John of Lorn?”

  Bruce pointed southwards.

  “Between us and Angus Og, I think!”

  he said.

  “It is my prayer that he will learn the fact before long.

  And too late!”

  MacDougall was, in fact, using the narrow seas of the Sound of Jura as a fortress area, guarding his own territory of Nether Lorn. It was ideally suited for this purpose, skilfully used. A great funnel fifty miles long, a dozen miles wide at its base between Kintyre and Islay, it narrowed in to a mere couple of miles between the Craignish peninsula and the northern tip of Jura. By massing his fleet at the southern end, and stretching a boom across the narrows at Craignish, with guard ships, the rebel Lord of Lorn, whose mother was a Comyn, could turn this whole great area into an inland sea; and even though the islands to the west were Angus’s, his ships of war could dominate all therein. Only the one alternative water access was available, the narrow gap lying between the north end of Jura and the next island of Scarbia. And this was the famous Sound of Corryvrechan, with its menacing whirlpools and tidal cauldrons, better guard than any boom of logs and chains.

  Angus Og’s information had been that MacDougall was using the Isle of Gigha as headquarters and base. On Gigha, therefore, the King’s flotilla bore down.

  As they approached the green, rock-bound and fairly lowlying isle, a mere fiv
e miles long and a quarter of that wide, all aboard the royal squadron, who were not working the sweeps, stood to arms. There was only the one effective landing-place of Gigha, the small shallow bay of Ardminish two-thirds of the way down the east side, and it could be seen that it was packed with shipping. But experienced eyes quickly discerned in the level beams of the setting sun, that these were not fighting ships, galleys, galleasses, car racks sloops, but rather supply vessels, transports, shallops, and the like.

  As might be expected, the fighting force would be at sea, somewhere to the south, facing the threat of Angus Og’s fleet.

  “We leave this for later, Sire?” Gilbert Hay asked.

  “Go seek Lame John, while there is yet light?”

  “I think not, Gibbie. It will be a clear night, never truly dark.

  John MacDougall can wait a little yet. I told Angus to give me until dawn tomorrow. Then to do as he would, lacking us. We will take this island, behind MacDougall. Give our force a taste of fight, to rouse and inspirit them. And these ships anchored there-we might put some of them to use. Aye-we will assault Gigha.”

  It was eloquent of the sense of complete security of whoever commanded on the island that no alarm was taken at their approach, no postures of defence made. Bruce had ordered his own galleys’ sails to be furled, so that the black device painted thereon would not be visible from land, and they drove on under oars only.

  No doubt they would seem to be no more than a detachment of

  MacDougall’s fleet returning to port for some reason. At any rate, as

  they beat round the little headland of Arminish Point, wary of the skerries, the twelve galleys encountered no sort of opposition.

  The newcomers were drawing in alongside the craft already ranked there, and armed men in their hundreds pouring over the side, before anybody on Gigha realised that there was an emergency.

  As an armed assault the occupation of Gigha was laughable; but as a strategic exercise it could hardly have been more successful, or more speedy. There was a little fighting, but of so sporadic and minor a nature as scarcely to be worth the title. A few men were slain and some seriously injured, admittedly-but such casualties were mainly the work of angry islanders themselves, MacDonalds -for this was of course one more of Angus’s many territories-who had suffered much at the hands of the invaders and were not slow to take this opportunity for revenge. Bruce had to clamp down swift and stern discipline, to prevent a general massacre.

  Nearly all the prisoners were English sailors and their Irish women camp-followers. He left a small garrison under Sir Donald Campbell, Sir Neil’s brother, and sailed away before the islanders or his own people could organise the inevitable celebration. As it was, a lot of strong liquor came aboard the squadron with the returning warriors.

  They were not quite so cramped for space now, for Bruce ordered the

  addition of a number of the captured ships to their strength

  temporarily. There were murmurs at this, for these were slow

  non-fighting vessels, which could only be a weakening influence. But the King was adamant.

  It was nearly midnight, and they drove southwards over a smooth, quiet translucent sea which looked like beaten pewter.

  Visibility was good for that hour, but provided little definition

  beyond a mile or so.

  Bruce had few doubts as to where to look for John MacDougall.

  Just a few miles ahead, beyond the islet of Cara, the coast of Islay, to the west, became much littered with a host of outlying reefs, rocks and skerries, south of Ardmore Point; and thereafter swung away westwards towards the Oa, vastly widening the mouth of the funnel-shaped inland sea. The line for MacDougall’s fleet to hold was obviously one stretched between these Islay skerries and Glencardoch Point on Kintyre. Patrolling a ten-mile belt, his vessels could act as an almost impassable barrier, giving each other mutual cover and support. Angus Og was bold, and probably had slightly the larger fleet; but he would be rash indeed to try to break through such a barrier head-on. He might succeed, but hardly without heavy losses; and even so would be apt to find not a few of his craft trapped thereafter in the Sounds of Gigha and Jura, facing unknown odds. Hence Bruce’s manoeuvre.

  Sure enough, look-outs from two or three leading vessels shouted almost simultaneously their sighting of ships ahead. The long low craft did not stand out very clearly against an uncertain horizon, and they were probably not more than two miles off.

  “Many of them, Sir King,” the MacDonald shipmaster of Bruce’s galley reported, from some way up the mast-stay.

  “A great host of ships. Sails furled, mostly. Beating to and fro.

  But, if we can see them, they can see us better. The light is behind us.”

  That was true. Sunset in these latitudes is almost due north at midsummer, and it is the northern sky which remains lightest until sunrise. Bruce’s squadron would probably have been visible to MacDougall for some time, and would inevitably be causing major astonishment and speculation.

  “Aye. Then let us give them something to fret over. Trumpets to sound the signals for line abreast. And for the torches to be lit.”

  And so the trumpets neighed shrilly out over the summer sea, and their martial notes could not fail to be heard by the patrolling fleet. As the King’s vessels moved up into a long line, red flame blossomed aboard each, as the pine-branch torches, contrived from selected material from the tree-trimming operations at East Loch Tarbert, were set alight.

  Quickly the entire scene was transformed. The night, from being one of quiet luminous peace, became angry with the crimson murky flame of smoking pitch-pine. Hundreds of the torches flared, and stained sea and sky.

  Bruce’s reason for bringing along nearly a score of the anchored vessels from Ardminish Bay was now clear. He had almost trebled the size of his fleet, and this would be all too evident from the enemy’s standpoint. Yet the half-light would prevent it from being apparent that these were not righting ships. John MacDougall could not be other than a very alarmed man.

  Bruce kept the trumpets blaring, a martial challenging din, as they drove down upon the patrolling squadrons on a two-mile wide front.

  Then the pinpoints of red light began to break out far to the south. One or two, wide-scattered, quickly multiplied into scores, winking, flickering, growing. Cheers rose from the King’s ships.

  Angus Og was there, and responding.

  MacDougall of Lorn was no craven; but nor had he the rash, headlong

  gallantry of, say, Edward Bruce. And his role here, anyway, was to

  harry the Scots’ flanks, to seek to prevent major operations against

  England, not to fight pitched battles against odds. He could not know whose was this northern fleet; but clearly it was in league with Angus of the Isles. He had to accept that his present position was untenable, and took steps to alter it.

  He had not much room for manoeuvre. The very strength of his former situation, in the narrows, was now its weakness. He had three choices. Either he sought to break through to the south, or to the north; or else tried to escape to the west, into the open Hebridean Sea.

  That he chose the third was hardly to be wondered at. Angus’s power he knew, and feared. What threatened from the north was a mystery-and therefore the more alarming. An escape round the west of Islay would give him the freedom of wide waters, and the possibility of communicating with his base of Gigha,from the north.

  Bruce was far from blind to these alternatives. He himself would

  probably have chosen as did MacDougall, in similar circumstances

  * especially as the loom of the great island of Islay would provide a dark background against which shipping would not be readily visible.

  The King was ready, therefore, for the first signs of a sustained westerly movement amongst the ships ahead. Swiftly he sent orders to his fast galleys to swing out of line to starboard at fullest speed, west by south, torches doused.

  It became a race, a race which the King could not re
ally win, clearly, since many of MacDougall’s ships were already to the west of his own. Some inevitably would escape; but he might trap much of the centre and east of the enemy line.

  The breeze was south-westerly, and of no use to either side. It was now a case of sheer muscle and determination, the oars lashing the water in a disciplined frenzy of urgent rhythm, the panting refrain abandoned now for the clanging beat of broadsword on metal-studded targe, faster and faster. Each galley surged ahead in a cloud of spray raised by its scores of oars.

  Soon it was evident that at least some of Angus Og’s ships were on the same mission, on an intercepting course. The three groups, or rather lines, of galleys, approximated to an arrowhead formation with an extra long point.

  Inevitably, it was a short race, of only three or four miles, and for the last of them the leading ships were within hailing distance of each other-near enough for Bruce to try to pick out flags and banners, the sail devices being meantime hidden. There seemed to be two or three of the fleeing line wearing flags of various shapes and sizes.

  “Which will be MacDougal’s own?” the King demanded of his

  shipmaster.

  “Who knows? Angus Og flies always a long whip-pennant at his masthead.

  But Ian Bacach …?”.

  “He will be proud to be the English king’s Admiral of the West,”

  Gilbert Hay suggested.

  “He will likely fly a large flag of that traitorous office, as well as

  his own banner of Lorn.”

  “Aye, you are right. Two large flags…”

  The trouble was that there seemed to be two vessels wearing two large flags each, sailing close together. Perhaps King Edward appointed a deputy admiral to keep an eye on MacDougall? It would be typical English practice.

  There was not much time for any decision. Ardmore Point of Islay looked very close, half-right, and the profusion of skerries and reefs would be closer still. Details were hard to distinguish in the half-light. Any action would have to be taken quickly now.