He had utterly destroyed the Ogilvys’ house at Airlie, though no one was there but Lady Ogilvy, who was great with child, and her household. These he had turned out of doors, then plundered and burned the house to the ground.
Montrose had written to him, telling him it had already surrendered, and was to be spared. That was more than half the reason for its destruction. Argyll was not going to take his orders from Montrose.
Now the countryside were singing a new song, the odd verses springing up here and there, no one knew by whom:
It fell on a day, and a bonny summer day,
When green grew oats and barley,
That there fell out a great dispute
Between Argyll and Airlie.
Lady Ogilvy looks o’er her bower-window,
And oh but she looks warely!
And there she spied the great Argyll
Come to plunder the bonny house of Airlie.
The old evil times were on them again, when laments for Border and blood feud gave rise to some of the loveliest poetry that ever sprang from unknown poets, sprang also from the bloodstained and blackened ruins of homes. The wild, lilting note was coming back to the ballad – a danger signal that the days of security were over.
To Magdalen that note carried no echo of romance, but of grim reality, as recent as ‘a bonny summer day’ last July – to be feared again, when, and by whom? She had as good reason herself to ‘look warely’ as had that lady, great with child, wife to the young nobleman that she herself had so nearly married.
Other words, more sinister than any in the song, linked themselves with that haunting little tune – a sentence in a letter from Argyll to one of his clansmen, which had somehow got abroad; ‘But ye need not let know that ye have directions from me to fire it.’
Did Jamie know that? Not if she could help it.
‘Oh, what will happen next?’ she cried in so forlorn a voice that at last he perceived her distress, ran to her, begged her not to be unhappy, to fear nothing, for the truth must triumph – ‘truth is not hid in corners,’ he told her, kissing the tears that his tenderness brought to her eyes.
And so much his old self did he seem again, so certain that all men must prefer the truth, that she began to believe it too, to believe anyway that all men must prefer this ‘valorous and happy gentleman’ to Argyll.
Chapter Nineteen
BY NEXT SUMMER, the one man in England who could help the King had been beheaded.
The Scottish Commissioners, with their prayers and preaching, had led the London mob’s howls for Strafford’s blood. Parliament could not prove him guilty of any single act of treason, but it was thought that several minor acts, added together, would make a whole treason.
Finally he was condemned to death for having written that his army from Ireland would subdue ‘that country’. He said that he meant Scotland by that phrase, but Parliament said he meant England.
He was led out of the Tower to his execution, and passed beneath the window of his fellow prisoner, Archbishop Laud. ‘Poor Canterbury, now grown so contemptible,’ stretched his thin hands through his prison bars to bless him as he passed, then fell back, fainting.
This then was what happened to the men who could help the King.
Charles had promised him his safeguard to London. Strafford went; and Parliament imprisoned him. Charles had sworn he would never sign his death warrant; and he had signed it.
Once again it was talk about plots that had done it. The Queen had raised money from the English Catholics against the Scottish invaders of England; that was the Papist Plot. Then she tried to raise Strafford’s army to come and rescue him. That was the Army Plot. The people, terrified of a military tyranny, such as had been suffered for years in Germany, clamoured for Strafford’s blood, or else the Queen’s.
That was the formula that finally drove Charles to sign Strafford’s death warrant – after the agonizing hours when the long-drawn howl of the mob never ceased outside Whitehall; and all night the courtiers clustered together on the stairs with their swords drawn, marking the places where they might make a stand, should that human sea outside break through the guards, and come surging up into the palace itself.
Strafford’s death, or the Queen’s? Charles chose Strafford’s. Strafford had released his conscience, had told him he was free to do it. But had he believed that Charles would do it?
Then the King turned to Scotland. The Earl of Montrose had written to him, asking him to come there, and Charles had written back that he agreed ‘nothing could conduce more to a firm and solid peace’ than his presence at the next Scottish Parliament. His spirits rose at the prospect of his visit. God knows, the Scots had been the prime cause of all his present troubles. Yet with that fatal facility, that evasive hold on facts, that always made him hopeful of any change, he thought that merely by going to another country he would escape the difficulties inherent in the times and in himself.
He had, however, one good cause for new hope. Montrose had been the Commander General of the Covenanters, he had shown brilliant military powers, and – more important than his reputation or his great position (there were nobles enough in his party) – there was that about him which made the sturdiest, as-good-as-you Scot among them proud to have him on their side.
Now at last he had shown the King that he would be his friend. Charles felt that he could trust him to steer him through this tangle of apparently well-meaning men, who did their best to deprive him of every prerogative of the Crown, while promising earnest loyalty to his person.
But by August, when he got to Scotland, Montrose could do nothing for him, for he, the one man in Scotland who could help the King, had been thrown with Lord Napier into prison in the Castle of Edinburgh.
The Cumbernauld Bond, that Montrose had drawn up with his companions at Lord Wigton’s house against ‘the indirect practising of the few’, had naturally caused trouble. Argyll had got wind of it, and the Committee of Estates summoned all those who had signed it to appear before them. They did, owned to the Bond, and justified it. All knew that it was aimed at Argyll, the leader and support of the extreme party of the Kirk, who now clamoured for the execution of the leaders. But that was too dangerous a measure; only the Bond itself was burned, and those who had signed it were released.
This was a great advantage to Argyll, since it showed in him the leniency of a leader too strong to resent the attacks of his detractors. And his party could report whatever they liked of the contents of the Cumbernauld Bond, since they had destroyed all copies of it.
Montrose realized that his folly had played straight into Argyll’s hands; furious with it, he at once committed worse, for he went back to the army in so hot a rage that he said openly in the mess, before Leslie himself, that he could prove that certain leaders in Scotland were scheming to depose the King.
Once again they all knew that the unspoken name was Argyll’s, and were exceedingly uncomfortable. Montrose was an excellent soldier. It was a pity he would try to meddle with politics – could not somebody say so to him?
Old Sandy Leslie did say so, and the young man told him one must know what one was fighting for. The former mercenary had never heard such nonsense.
Then came the blow of the discovery that Montrose had written to the King and asked him to come and attend his Parliament in Scotland. Argyll was now seriously alarmed. Just as he was getting all the reins of the Government into his hands, Montrose was contriving this against him. He could not prevent the King from coming. But he could prevent him from getting into touch with Montrose. The Committee of Estates had Montrose arrested and put in prison. The charge was treason; the only reason for it that the King could discover lay in the fact that Montrose had written to him, and he to Montrose.
He protested to Argyll that his letter was a fit and proper one, and Montrose a proper person for him to write to. He was only coming to Scotland to settle the affairs of his kingdom, as had been agreed in the articles of the last treaty.
&
nbsp; That did no good.
On the very day that Charles arrived at Holyrood, Montrose was led out of the Castle and down to the new Parliament House, by Saint Giles’, where only a year ago he had been consulting with his peers under the hugely carved roof that was then raw from the tools of the workmen. Now he had to stand at the ‘delinquents’ bar’; but he was glad of it, for now, after two months of prison, there was a hope that he might begin to clear himself in time to be set at liberty before the King left the country again.
But he was not even told of what exactly he was charged. The one definite statement against him was that of ‘having intelligence with the enemy’.
To which he replied disconcertingly that ‘the King could not be the enemy’.
With the King entering Edinburgh that very day, it was politer to drop this hastily and fall back on vague and retrogressive accusations.
He had disobeyed the Committee of Estates. He had spared Aberdeen after the battle of the Bridge of Dee. He had given quarter. He had shown no zeal, once the fight was over, in tearing out the accursed thing root and branch. He had neglected to burn the Ogilvys’ house of Airlie, and Argyll had had to do his work for him. His pride had long been intolerable, and now his intentions were very doubtful.
He was led back to prison, knowing that Charles, with Hamilton in his train, would be passing through these very streets in an hour or so, and that he would not be allowed to see him; that Charles would be told of plots, against himself, against everybody, in all of which Montrose would be made to appear as the villain.
The Kirk had been the oppressed party, but now they had grown so confident that they could throw two great nobles into prison and not even bring them to trial. They were marking time, waiting ‘to see what the Lord will do in England’. The Lord had already executed Strafford; doubtless He would soon realize He should do the same by Laud.
Charles was in a bad case; if he retraced his steps in Scotland he would lose ground inevitably in England, which had already become like a quagmire beneath his feet. The Covenanters cancelled all his suggestions for the appointment of the Ministers of the Crown. It had become an axiom that the King could do no right. He dared not try and grasp power at this juncture, and so tried to win favour. He agreed to all that he was asked, hoping that he might get it back again later.
Mr Henderson had been made the King’s chaplain, and preached a very sound and statesmanlike sermon to His Majesty on his first Sunday morning, but reproved him for not coming to hear another in the afternoon. Charles promised not to be so remiss again, and attended prayers twice a day after that.
He was shown a medal of himself, struck on his accession to the throne – a young man with a high-cut nostril, and lovelocks flowing back from the superb sweep of the brow. What had this arrogant young man to do with him as he was now, bewildered, solitary, badgered by the ministers, bereft of his friends?
Not all he could do could procure Montrose the open trial before his peers that he was demanding. Argyll and his colleagues did not want to be harsh – except to an insignificant relation of Traquair’s, who was hanged, drawn and quartered under an old statute against ‘leasing-making’, which had never been put in force before. It meant, apparently, speaking against Argyll – and even Argyll thought the punishment a shade too severe, but Sir Thomas Hope, the Lord Advocate (who had ominously lost a tooth in the night) did not agree. And Traquair himself indignantly refused to exert any influence on behalf of his fatuously imprudent cousin – ‘not a cousin at all, a mere collateral’.
But the Committee could not despatch Montrose and Napier without an open trial; and they could not have a trial and yet prevent the prisoners from speaking what they knew against Argyll. Therefore the less said the better.
They tried to get Napier to leave prison without anything said at all. They pleaded with him for two hours, begging him to go quietly, but he insisted that he must first be declared innocent – and in that case, Montrose also. He was not allowed any communication with his kinsman, or Montrose might have begged him to seize this opportunity, not to bear dignified testimony to their innocence, but to warn the King.
Charles could know nothing yet of Argyll’s treachery; only Montrose could fully tell him of it; and that was why he was here. He had lost his chance to serve his King – but had he not lost it at the beginning, by helping to start this revolt? His side had now surged beyond him; ‘sides’, he discovered, are human, like the people who compose them, and subject to change. And the liberty he had fought for would soon leave liberty to no one, least of all to the King.
‘The tyranny of the one,’ he wrote, ‘is preferable to that of the multitude – the tyranny of subjects is the most insatiable and insupportable in the world.’
He had writing paper and pen and ink in prison, though he was not allowed to send any letters. He had to write to himself, though he put ‘Noble Sir’ at the top of the page, so as to feel that he was sharing his thoughts with a friend. His random jottings became more and more a considered treatise on Sovereign Power, and what was needed to make it succeed. Firmness, rather than patience – ‘Patience in the prince is so far from being a remedy, that it forms and increases the disease.’
But in the middle of his sentence, there came a pleasant surprise. A visitor from the Court was allowed to call on him, an agreeable, perky, talkative little Groom of the Bedchamber, called Will Murray, or ‘Little Will’, whom Montrose had met once at Hampton Court. As this brightly coloured little man bowed and flourished his plumed hat, blowing a cloud of hyacinthine scent before him into that dark cell, the stone walls melted round Montrose, and there again were the sunlit lawns and fountains, made for a king’s pleasure, the courtiers strolling back from the tennis courts, the music from the river – a whole pleasant world that had even at the time seemed drifting, evanescent, doomed to disappear.
For an instant the vision lasted – then the chilly place he was in echoed to the unaccustomed clatter and bustle of polite words.
Will Murray told him all the news. On the surface the King’s visit was being a succès fou. Oh yes, they had bullied him a bit, and the length of those sermons was preposterous, but the King was winning them all over by his patience.
He agreed to everything. He was beginning to be known as the King who couldn’t say no. (‘My little joke – not to be taken seriously.’) And so everybody liked him, thinking that he liked them, and a result of all this friendliness was that he had at last been allowed to send one of his servants to visit Montrose.
He had taken it greatly to heart that his friend should have been treated in this scandalous manner – he talked of nothing else when alone – ‘“Will,” he has said to me a dozen times a day, “I’ll not leave Scotland till my lord of Montrose is out of prison.”’
But all this popularity did not mean any increase of power, and Argyll was showing himself very ill-pleased with it. There was no one Charles could trust. As for his friend Hamilton – ‘A man of straw can show the way the wind blows.’
Montrose replied, ‘He has chosen this moment to take the Covenant. I heard that from my jailor.’
‘And that is not all’ – Little Will’s eyes were goggling – ‘Hamilton is now hand in glove with Argyll. Bosom friends, always in consultation.’
So Hamilton and Argyll had joined forces. Montrose had foreseen the danger when he asked Charles to come to Scotland, but had thought he could watch, and warn the King.
And now he could do nothing – except through this glib fellow, whose rattling conversation did not inspire him with confidence.
He could write by him to the King, however – it was Will who suggested it. Was Will to be trusted? Whether he were or not, it was worth seizing on the only chance he had got.
He wrote.
Will came again with an answer from Charles, and Montrose wrote again. He pressed for even five minutes in which to tell the King of the danger that threatened his throne.
If he were powerless to secure that, th
en let him insist on Montrose being brought to trial, and he would make his charges against the King’s secret enemies before all the world.
‘We have them in a cleft stick, and you will be out of this in a week, playing golf with His Majesty on the links of Leith,’ cried Will, flourishing Montrose’s second letter to his King as he pranced out through the prison door.
He did not come again. There was no answer to the letter. The days dropped one after the other, silted into weeks, brought no change.
Summer had passed into autumn and it grew bitter cold. The jailor’s face had grown very glum, and he carried in front of him his determination to say nothing whenever he entered the room. Had some fresh plot been invented or discovered, and was Little Will the victim or the agent? Had Montrose been a fool once again to use him? Was it true what Magdalen had said to him, that he would never know one end of a plot from another?
Then without any warning one afternoon in late October, he was summoned to the King’s presence at Holyrood Palace.
Chapter Twenty
In a low, panelled room, about twenty men stood silent and expectant. At the further end sat the King in the white and rose-coloured chair that had been presented at his Coronation, his dark form as still as if it had been painted there in its gay frame.
A fire burned in the grate beside him, and in front of it stood a fire-screen, vaguely familiar to Montrose, who years ago had seen his wife and mother-in-law working for weeks on end at that crown in its centre. He walked up to the King, knelt and kissed his hand, then rose and looked into his eyes.
There he had a shock. Something cold, despairing, and certain went through him like the thrust of steel. He knew something final about Charles in that instant, something that was to determine both Charles’ fate and his own.
He heard the King’s slow voice greeting him, a weight of anxiety behind the formal courtesy of the words. Then he heard Argyll’s lilting Highland intonation, rocking ambiguous phrases that might have come out of a lawyer’s text book.
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