Colonel Sibbald murmured something polite about the famous Highland respect for hospitality; but Black Pate hastily interrupted his irony.
Well might his three companions tell their young commander that he had undertaken a task as impossible as one set by the fairies, in leading this savage horde in ‘a proper and civilized campaign.’
They would never follow one who was not of themselves. Their notion of warfare was no more than a slaughter and a cattle raid. If they won a victory, they would be off the next day – ‘all of ‘em legging it home across the heather, with their booty slung over their shoulder.’
No campaign of Highlanders could ever therefore last more than a week – and what in the name of God did the King’s Lieutenant hope to accomplish in that time?
‘A good deal,’ replied Montrose, and whistled a marching tune, for he was happy. He liked these people and was at home with them, easy and friendly with the wildest of the Irish kerns, who were eager to show him the honour he never claimed for himself. Nobody here could have accused him of stateliness, as in England. His companions noticed how he scorned ‘the keeping of state, and therefore quickly made a conquest of the hearts of all his followers, so that he could lead them in a chain to follow him with cheerfulness in all his enterprises.’
Chapter Four
Now, if ever, he must move like the wind. The Macdonald’s march inland had roused all the country; north of the Grampians, all the clans were banding together against him; in the south, the Covenanters were drawing new levies every day. Perth was occupied by a large army under Lord Elcho; Aberdeen by another under Lord Burleigh, with Huntly’s sons, well tutored by their uncle, Argyll, serving under him. Argyll himself was marching towards Perth at the head of his huge clan.
Montrose and his Highlanders at Atholl were in the centre of a ring of enemy forces, each of them at least three times as large. Safety might be found in the Highlands where the Lowlanders could not follow, but of what use was safety at this juncture? He must strike at his enemies before they had time to join forces.
He must provide his men with war material, for they had no money, no supplies, no food, horses, nor munitions, very few weapons and very ragged clothes. And most of all, he must do something at once to impress on them that he was born to be their leader.
‘There is a fine newly-run salmon in that pool,’ their great chieftain, Somerled, had said to them five centuries ago – ‘if I catch it, it will show that Heaven intends me to be your leader.’
‘There is the rich city of Perth near by,’ said Montrose, ‘we will first capture that and replenish our stores.’
He was taking a far more unlikely chance than did the half-mythical Somerled.
But a drunken soldier had wished him luck, and luck came to him with crazy unlikelihood.
On the Hill of Buchanty, on their way towards Perth, they met a body of five hundred bowmen, raised in the name of the Covenant to resist Alasdair’s invasion. But one of their leaders was young Lord Kilpont, who had been at Saint Salvator’s with Montrose; and the other was David Drummond, the Master of Madertie, who had married Montrose’s sister Beatrix just over a couple of years ago.
They had come out to fight the Highlanders, not Montrose – that was inconceivable. So instead of fighting they all dined together out on the heather, and agreed over their wine that the Covenant had done well to draw itself up all over again and give itself the new name of ‘Solemn League and Covenant’, for it was nothing like the old National Covenant that Montrose had signed and fought for – ‘it had ceased to be national, and is a damned sight too solemn,’ Kilpont declared hilariously.
Inevitably, he and David Drummond decided to leave the side of Lord Elcho’s army of seven thousand infantry, between seven and eight hundred horse, and nine pieces of heavy artillery; since it was better to follow Jamie Graham to war under any conditions.
‘But first you must hear those conditions,’ he protested.
‘Why, what artillery have you?’ asked Madertie.
‘None.’
‘What cavalry?’ asked Kilpont.
Three tired horses, one lame.’
‘How much ammunition?’
‘Enough for one round, by the front line only, if I divide the men into three lines deep.’
‘What weapons?’
‘Some old-fashioned matchlocks, a few good claymores and Lochaber axes, some bows and arrows. And plenty of stones on the hillside.’
They stared at him. Black Pate’s cheerful nod convinced them that their old friend spoke the truth and was not mad.
They looked back to Montrose again, and saw him laughing – and that silent laughter stirred through them like a wind.
‘How many men in all?’ gasped out Madertie.
‘Two thousand two hundred,’ he replied.
‘No!’ shouted Kilpont, springing to his feet. ‘Two thousand seven hundred – with our bowmen.’
And so, in the spirit of one of their mad escapades at college, Montrose won his latest recruits.
Kilpont pulled forward and introduced to him a boy of about twelve years old, who had been standing just behind him and staring open-mouthed at the King’s Lieutenant during those amazing answers.
Kilpont’s own wife had as yet borne him no sons; this eager child, who spoke not at all, even when encouraged by his father, but was taut and quivering like a newly-placed bowstring with the excitement of this adventure, was the result of the passion Kilpont had indulged during his last year at Saint Andrews for the plumply pretty wife of an excellent French pastrycook. Montrose had always sworn that his pies had served as pander to his wife, and they proved in the end the more lasting attraction, for Kilpont had tired of her in a couple of months.
Yet here was this boy to give permanence and beauty to the commonplace affair that Kilpont would have forgotten as completely as Montrose had done, had he not been so struck with the lad that he had acknowledged him, sent him to college at Saint Andrews, and now taken him with him on this campaign.
‘He’s been trained a drummer boy as good as any you could find, and will rattle you into battle as fast as your pipers here can skirl you. Up now, you lazy young dog, and get your drum and squat there on the heather and show what you can do to be kept in this worshipful company, or back you’ll go to school tomorrow.’
With a shy grin, the boy did as he was told, sat cross-legged on the heath, and beat his tattoo.
Very light and soft it came at first, a whisper running over the ground – then a rustle, like the wind rising in the forest trees – then a rattle like the antlers of stags fighting in the rutting season – then of dead bones, of skeletons dancing, faster and faster – a dance without a tune, rhythm without melody, ticking out the march of time, throbbing through the blood in one’s veins – a pulse beating through the heart of the world – the urge of life itself, that will drive men madly towards death.
From away on the hillside, one of the Macdonald pipers answered that irresistible summons, shrilled up and called on his fellows. The pipes cried now on every side, the wide moor was whirling with battle music, and the curlews, wheeling above it, cried desolately back.
Up sprang the hereditary harpist of Macdonald and struck on his harp, his face working in passion as he sang – ‘I will give praise to Macdonald, for tomorrow his foes shall feed the ravens, and red shall run his path where the dead lie under his feet.’
Still the boy drummed on, staring before him. The heather pricked his legs, it burned blood-red round him in the light of the setting sun, and purple away in the distance where the hills met the pale-green sky.
The bare hairy legs of men strode between him and that sky, the huge bare knees of Alasdair, like boulders of red rock. This giant (an ogre perhaps, but none the less a hero) he, Wat, would be drumming into battle tomorrow. He would be going into his first battle, while his friends, older than he, were still at school – he would march to war at the head of this army of uncouth and terrible warriors.
But it was not they he would follow, no, not even the mighty Alasdair, who now stooped over him, blotting out the hillside, and thrust his cup between his lips as he drummed, telling him to drink of his cup and be of his board henceforward, for he was the boy for them – ‘a noble boy – you’d be travelling the world over before you met the like of that boy – he would drum the dead out of their graves to fight for them – there was not a corpse so cold but would rise and dance at his bidding to a merrier dance of death.’
Having given the boy a sup of his raw rye whiskey, he drained the flagon to its dregs. His laughter went reeling up into the clear mountain air; behind the blue of his eyes there burned the white flame that lit them in battle.
But no, not Alasdair would Wat follow, but the King’s Lieutenant, for whom his father had at first sight flung away his commission from the Covenant; had told his men that they would be fighting by the side of the Highlanders tomorrow, instead of against them. And if he had not, then Wat would have gone over on his own account to this man, the Marquis of Montrose, of whom he had always been proud to remember at Saint Andrews that he was his father’s friend.
Stories were still told at College of Montrose. He had ridden his horse up into Saint Salvator’s Hall and given it wine to drink out of the ancient silver flagon, until it caracoled like a dancer; he had given a supper party, after winning the silver medal for archery, which had lasted until morning, and had shot his arrows over Saint Salvator’s tower up against the moon, so that a new college rule had had to be made, forbidding this dangerous practice. That showed the permanence of fame to young Wat.
Now the hero of it was before him, as large as life, and not nearly as large as Alasdair. Montrose did not stir from where he sat, but his cool gaze, resting on Wat as he drummed, appraising, commending, sent a high song of triumph through the boy’s heart in accompaniment to the ceaseless throbbing of his drum. For this man, who had but just spoken to him, would he drum the army into battle tomorrow; and for this man would he die tomorrow, if need be, very gladly.
His head nodded forward as he drummed; he no longer saw the fading scene around him, but still he heard the throb of the rhythm that presently he ceased to play; the sticks fell from his hands, and he knew nothing more, not even that he was happier than any boy had ever been.
Chapter Five
Music and voices fell silent. The late summer light had died over the mountains; only over their rim there shone a silver edge. Above, the sky had deepened to mauve, and the faint stars shone in it here and there. The men rolled themselves in their plaids, and slept on the heather. Montrose walked over it with Kilpont, looking down on the fertile fields round Perth. Their hill was on the very edge of the Highland line, whose crags and bogs, inaccessible to any ordinary army, would have to serve Montrose as his base through the coming campaign. Tomorrow he would launch his new troops on to the plain below. Now he and Kilpont discussed their disposition.
Against so large a force as their enemy’s, they must stretch their battle line as wide as they could without weakening it, and must charge quickly, before the enemy had time to fire their heavy guns. Would the Highlanders stand that dreaded novelty to them, ‘the mother of the musket’? These very same Gordons now in Alasdair’s army had fled from it fast enough when Montrose had first encountered them under Huntly’s son, Aboyne, at the Bridge of Dee.
‘But then,’ said Kilpont simply, ‘you were fighting against them, and now you are leading them.’
It was the kind of remark that made Montrose feel shy and grateful and afraid. He felt that he had as yet done nothing to make men trust him like this; he himself believed that they could – but why should they believe it?
They went past Wat, fallen asleep over his drum.
‘If I should be killed tomorrow,’ said his friend, ‘look after that boy. He’s too good to go back to the pie crusts.’
They looked down on him, at the grave and childish ecstasy that showed on his sleeping face. Montrose remembered how long it was since he had seen Johnnie and young James. If all were well by this time tomorrow, he would send for them, and old Forrett too, to bring them to Perth, that he might get a glimpse of them.
A little wind came stirring up through the heather. It had a nip of autumn in it, for this was the last day of August. Kilpont stooped and pulled the boy’s plaid over him; then they passed on.
Madertie joined them with the suggestion that he should be chosen as envoy to the Covenant, for Montrose meant to carry out the rules of civilized warfare as far as possible. But he was not so sure of the honour of the Covenanters, and mentioned Beatrix and ‘unnecessary risks’. Madertie was not to be dissuaded. Was he to be done out of every enterprise merely because he had had the bad luck to marry Montrose’s sister? He would have no reminders of the studious life he had hoped to lead with her. He had not come out with five hundred bowmen to lead a quiet life.
There lay Alasdair, deep in his drunken dreams of some Valhalla where men may fight to the death and rise to fight again. Under this exquisite sky of a northern summer, among all these sleeping, half-savage men, Montrose remembered the blue nights in Venice, and the bodies, lithe and beautiful, of men and women dancing. But the grave rapture of this night of expectation thrilled his blood with an excitement deeper than any that youth and pleasure had given.
He walked with his friends again after a long time, and knew it might well be the last time they would do so. Their lives, and his hopes for Scotland, hung on a hair’s-breadth. Now at last after all these years of waiting, he would put it to the touch, ‘to win or lose it all’.
His hour was upon him.
If the Fates came to any man and said, ‘Now for one year you shall add a cubit’s height unto your stature – you shall stretch mind and soul and body to an extent undreamed of – you shall plan like a god and live like a hero’ – then would not any man consent to any terms for such a prize?
‘It is not glory, it is not riches, neither is it honour, that we fight and contend for,’ wrote his Graham ancestor of three hundred years before. And it was a desire for something greater than all these that now filled Montrose, so that, like the sleeping boy and the drunken giant, he knew happiness the fullest that his heart could hold.
Chapter Six
Beatrix drummond of Madertie was staying with her baby daughter at Kinnaird; it was safer to be there than in her own home, since her husband had gone to fight these Irish invaders. Her brown hair and broad, delightful smile were a restful pleasure; and her sturdy confidence in Jamie did much to cheer Magdalen through these weeks of waiting for any news. She had dared not tell even Beatrix of that snatched hour of summer night in which she had met Jamie on the little hill in the marsh.
He was alive, and somewhere in these parts, Daniel told her for sure, for a cannon had been heard, fired in the west, where no army was, and the sun had shone bright at midnight – ‘his sun, as it once shone for him before, blood-red on a clear March morning, when he first fought in Scotland.’
Beatrix’s logic was more comforting than Daniel’s superstition. ‘If he were dead or wounded or imprisoned, his enemies would all be shouting their heads off. You may be sure this silence is golden, and that he has gone off into the blue to hatch some mad plan of his own. Often enough he did that in the old days at Rossdhu or Kincardine.’
Sir William Rollock was also missing; no doubt the two were together somewhere, and William was one of Jamie’s best and wisest friends.
‘Jamie’s friends have a way of forgetting to be wise when they are with him,’ said Magdalen.
Her words were quickly proved. They heard an astonishing piece of news – Beatrix’s husband and Lord Kilpont had gone out together to fight the Irishes; and instead had joined forces with them, for at the head of the Irish they had found the Lord Montrose himself. In some incredible fashion he had taken command of that half-foreign host as naturally as if he had been their native chieftain.
He had always been more than half a Highl
ander – ‘do you remember, Magdalen, how round Kincardine and Loch Lomond he would run barefoot over the heather and the whin prickles without even a pair of rawhide brogues – and that when he had just come back from abroad and wearing fine foreign shoes for three years on end?’ His bare feet could find by instinct the tussocks in a bog, and he could chase a stag up a hillside as fast as any wild hunter, and he could swim any torrent – look how he alone had crossed Tweed in flood three times to encourage his men.
Now came word from Montrose himself, that they were marching on Perth.
Old Lord Southesk said they were all stark staring mad together. What in God’s name were they thinking of? They could not even hope to surprise their enemy, the city was fully prepared yet there were the young fools marching straight into the pit. His hands shook as he spoke, his voice was miserably irascible. In all the times that Jamie had given him trouble, he had never given him such pain as this. Now at last he was going to be proved in the right.
Beatrix could comfort him better than Magdalen, for whom his anxiety hurt most. She had not been strong since her last baby and only daughter, Jean, had been born last spring.
Jean lay in the deep wooden cradle, where her father and all her brothers had lain before her; nothing could be seen of her but two crumpled pink fists which occasionally appeared above the walls of her citadel, waving in the air. Beatrix’s daughter, Dorothy, a sturdy eighteen-monther, would stand on the rocker of the cradle and peer down into its recesses, like a puppy into a rabbit hole.
‘When Jean is older,’ teased Beatrix, ‘she can help you finish those curtains. But no, you will be sending her to a fashionable new boarding-school in London like your sister Traquair’s girls, and she will get so clever with her shorthand and shell work and whatever useless stuff they teach now, that there will be no holding her to her needle.’
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