‘No, I shall keep this one,’ said Magdalen.
She twisted the dark-green thread round her needle for the fidgety new French knots she was working inside the sprawling leaves of her pattern. Beatrix bent a head as round and shining as a chestnut over a light-green leaf in another corner – in darning stitch, for she had not Magdalen’s patience, and her French knots always got tangled.
The curtain spread over their knees and away over the floor; on its furthest folds sat little Rob, and pulled the long black velvet ears of a solemn hound puppy. Rob was a splendid six-year-old, his father and Johnnie over again, said the unobservant, for he lacked the wild, disturbing flame that had leaped up again and again in their father, rendering him incalculable to any ordinary mind – a flame that had begun to show, as Magdalen had watched, in Johnnie’s blue eyes, at any song or tale of danger. He had been wild to go and find his father when they heard of his disappearance, and it had been necessary to keep a strict watch on him and young James, after they had ridden off early one morning on their quest, and been discovered only after hours of anxious search. James was not quite eleven, while Johnnie was just on fourteen, a great gulf at that age, and James’ small fragile stature made it greater. For that very reason, he would never willingly be left out of any escapade of Johnnie’s, and his brother respected his spirit.
No leaping flame in James, but a quiet and rather strange little fire, that might break out in odd ways, as only Magdalen knew, for everyone else in her family had firmly decided that James was the studious one, who should take up law, and left it at that.
But it was Rob, with the steady brown gaze and the gentle, clumsy movements, rather like a hound puppy himself, who, said Beatrix, would pull the house of Graham together again in the future, when all these silly wars were over; and she would feel her small daughter perfectly safe if only Magdalen would consent to marry them – or did she not approve of the marriage of first cousins?
The two women laughed and chattered over their work; it did not strike them as either odd or courageous to do so, when even now the ravens might be feasting on their husbands’ bodies.
Chapter Seven
Montrose and his men slept only for a few hours on the moor on that last night of August. As next morning dawned, they marched down the Sma’ Glen away from the line of the Highlands, and on to Tippermuir, about three miles out of Perth. There they saw Lord Elcho’s army drawn up in battle array to meet them – seven thousand foot, extended to a width that seemed certain to outflank the small force opposed to them, and at either end of it a body of between three and four hundred horse; the right wing under Elcho, the left under Sir James Scott, their best professional soldier. The nine pieces of artillery were in front of the army.
With such odds on their side, a fair proportion of the citizens and ministers of Perth had thought it a good Sabbatical exercise to turn out and see their foes cut down on a Sunday morning. For ‘the better the day the better the deed,’ they said, when Montrose courteously sent Madertie as envoy under a flag of truce, to ask, first, if they would not respect the King’s commission and lay down their arms; second, if they would prefer postponing the battle to a more suitable and less sacred day.
Their better deed was to imprison the envoy and send him on to Perth, to be hanged as soon as his friends were slaughtered.
‘Jesus and no quarter,’ they chose as an appropriate battle-cry, for God had spoken through His ministers – ‘and if ever God spoke truth out of my mouth,’ said one of them, ‘I promise you in His name a certain victory this day.’ His promise was backed by numbers, horse, guns and ammunition; who were all to meet nothing but ‘a pack of naked runagates, not three horse among them, few either swords or muskets.’
But they were also, for the first time in history, to meet a Highland charge, led by a man who was not a Highlander.
Montrose saw his flag of truce abused, and Madertie taken prisoner. There was nothing for it now but instant battle. He could not draw up his men in the usual six-line formation, or they would instantly be outflanked. So he placed them three deep, with the Irish in the centre under Macdonald; Kilpont and his bowmen on the left; and himself on foot in trews and plaid, together with Black Pate, at the head of the Atholl men, to confront the trained soldier, Sir James Scott. Montrose wore a helmet, carried a targe on his left arm, and in his right hand a light pike, ‘the queen of weapons’. He ordered his front rank to kneel, his second to stoop, his third to stand, and use their pikes or throw their stones over the shoulders of their comrades. The little ammunition they had, he advised keeping till they were in the thick of the enemy.
Some of Elcho’s horse made a skirmish, hoping to draw the impetuous Highlanders from their order. But Montrose held them in restraint, and detached only a small force to meet the horse, which they drove back with their pikes on to their own ranks in confusion.
Then was the moment to attack the centre; the Highlanders swept forward, smashing through the infantry and the cannon fire as though they had never feared its roar – while the shrieking of their battle-cries rose high above it. ‘Lamh dearg aboo!’ (‘The Red Hand to Victory!’), yelled the Macdonalds.
They made their stones far more effective weapons than the gunners, clumsy with terror, could make their guns; and now, getting at close grips with the enemy, those who had muskets discharged them in their faces, then used them as clubs. The centre broke, and fled back to Perth.
Sir James Scott and his left wing made a rush for higher ground on a ridge that would give him a point of vantage, but Montrose outstripped him with his Atholl men. His mountain training stood him in good stead now, for still he was at the head of his Highlanders as they surged up on to the ridge, where the bees buzzed unconcernedly in the heat of the morning sunshine, and the larks sang overhead.
Soon they brushed the dew from that hillside. With a fierce shout of triumph, he swung them round on to the slower Low-landers below, and had an instant’s vision of their red, gasping faces, as he led the charge down on them. In a few minutes Sir James and his picked levies from Fife had been driven from the ridge, and into the general rout.
The battle had turned to a spate of screaming men and horses, blind with panic; behind them, so that the blood burst their veins with terror, came a red trail of carnage, the yells and terrible laughter of the Highlanders, wilder even than the skirling of their pipes – closer and closer behind them came those naked red legs, leaping in great strides that no man and not even the horses could outrun. Above the heads of his Highlanders the long red hair of Alasdair blazed in the wind of his own speed, like a flaming banner to lead them to victory. His eyes gleamed white with the lust of killing; men were mowed down round him; like a wolf he leaped up and with one hand snatched a man from his horse, and scarcely paused to kill him as he thrust on.
The city flung open her gates in surrender; the torrent rushed through; but now came the check.
Their commander would have no sack, no looting even. He had prevented the enemies’ guns from being turned on their late owners in pursuit; and the Highlanders in their hurry had not much objected.
But to take a town, and then not to be allowed to sack it; it was against all common sense, all fairness; what in God’s name were they fighting for? and they half-starved, and the rags falling off their backs, so that for very decency their first duty should be to strip every over-dressed citizen they met, and burn them out of their cellars where they hid – and yet there the cowards were allowed to stay, snug as rabbits in their burrows – while this quiet young man who had walked so casually over the hills to them and told them the King had sent him to be their leader, as if indeed that King had been God Himself, and he but just dropped down from the sky – this elegant young man, who mixed his wine with water instead of drinking himself mad and shouting drunk, like their great leader Alasdair – this slight young man, whom their Alasdair could have crushed to death between his huge arms as a bear might crush a stag, yet whose commands he followed with
quick obedience and delight, and indeed they were never given as commands, but as the common fruit of their two inspirations – this unaccountable young man in fact was everywhere at once among them, ordering them off the justly earned fruits of their victory – and for some reason that no one could understand, nor even remember to question till afterwards, no one thought of disobeying.
He even ordered the town’s sheriff-clerk to write ‘a general protection for the inhabitants of the town of Perth’. Compensation was to be given to his soldiers; the citizens were to pay fifty pounds to Alasdair, and large contributions of cloth to make new clothes for them all.
Poor fun that. And tonight no doubt there would be feasting and rolling in drink among the leaders, and Alasdair would sway and stagger like a falling tree as he bragged of the numbers he had slain that day, with his cup held high, and the torchlight glinting on his rolling eyes – and who knew what ungodly cause for mirth and pleasure they would find to finish the feast?
But – ‘What shall we do with those dirty scoundrels, the ministers, who did their best to call down God’s wrath upon us?’ said Alasdair.
‘We will ask them to dinner,’ said Montrose.
It was his favourite way of commemorating a victory with his enemies. So the ministers were ‘urged’ to come, and dared not refuse, and one of them, Mr George Halyburton, hastened to remind his host of his family connexion with him through William Halyburton of Pitcur, who had been first husband to Montrose’s wife’s sister, Lady Marjory Carnegie, now the Viscountess of Arbuthnott. And having established this, Mr George Halyburton said grace.
For that he was sternly reprimanded afterwards by the Covenant. Forced to eat with these rebels against God he may have been, but to have blasphemed by uttering God’s holy words over the meat that they had stolen from His children – but here Mr Halyburton lost his temper and his sense of decency combined, and with a red, angry face replied that he would like to have seen any of the dignitaries of the Kirk who in his place would have refused to do whatever the Marquis bade him – even if it were to kiss the Marquis’s— but before he could soil his lips with an image that might have proceeded from the mouth of the coarsest trooper rather than that of a minister of grace, the scandalized congregation of his judges hushed him down.
But no shadow of his future disgrace now fell upon Mr Halyburton as he sat, proud, though a trifle bewildered, at the board of this Marquis who turned out to be a surprisingly modest young man, and who capped Mr Halyburton’s Latin quotations with a witty ease that made the minister feel what a social success he was himself, and how much better fitted to be the chaplain of marquises (and possibly, whispered his secret heart, even of kings) than the unappreciated minister of a dull commercial city like Perth.
Beside the Marquis sat David Drummond of Madertie, who was to have been hanged that evening, if all had gone as Mr Halyburton had promised that God had promised, instead of the world turning topsy-turvy. He sat between his friends, Kilpont and Montrose; they clinked glasses with him, and laughed and looked long at each other in their incredulous relief; and, said Montrose to him, leaning across the corner of the table and singing:
‘Now, Davie, my billie, quoth a’ the three
The day is come thou wast to dee,
But thou’rt as well at thy dinner here
Sitting I think ‘twixt thee and me.’
Here they were back in the old great days, of sudden death suddenly reprieved, and the unexpected, unbelieved reunion of old friends.
But Alasdair was not so happy. Well he knew that ‘Wherever Macdonald is sitting, that will be the head of the table,’ as his ancestor had explained on his visit to Queen Elizabeth. And Montrose, while treating him with the same courteous freedom as his old friends, did him all honour. Yet these formal introductions of himself as ‘the Major General of His Majesty’s Irishes’ made him uncongenially aware of foreign standards; and all this polite talk with ministers, throwing in quotations and college stories, made him shy of drinking or even boasting too much, and exposing himself to the smiles of the Sassenach.
Mr Halyburton was discussing theology with Madertie, who had shown a very pretty taste in divinity at college. The Macdonald turned a lofty glance upon the white-faced whipper-snapper of a minister, who now inquired of him in a tentative voice as to the religious difficulties in Ireland.
‘There are no religious difficulties in my country,’ replied Alasdair majestically. ‘There would be no trouble there at all, if it were not for the bloody Protestants.’
So grand a retort at his disposal made him glad of his restraint in drink.
But he felt it grossly unfair, for why should a man let himself go in battle, and deal red death in hundreds with his own hand – and then forgo all the joys of carnage at his leisure and rape and loot; but sit up at table as good a scholar with his tutors, and be paid £50 in due course of time as though it were a lawyer’s fee?
He did not know how Montrose had got his Highlanders off their legitimate prey as he had done; it was some sheer power of devilry in the young man – it was magnificent, but it was not war.
‘You cannot keep it up, my lord,’ he told his commander.
‘You have put the comether on them, and they are all thronging each other to be eating out of your hand. But you will have to give them their heads next time. A rich fat city like this, and are we to get never a purse nor a woman out of it?’
‘Have you not women enough and too many in your train? We cannot feed the half of them.’
‘The woman of the stranger,’ said Alasdair gravely, ‘is ever the one desired.’
And in disapproval he listened to his commander’s prosaic category of guns and horses and ammunition and clothes stripped off those slain in battle. These were but the winnings in fair fight, outside the city walls. The city itself should be the prize. And he could not answer for his own men much longer.
They were indeed grumbling furiously at these new-fangled notions of conducting war as though it were a bargain, and one in which the conquered came off best, for half the cloth meted out to them was moth-eaten, and Alasdair’s hereditary purse-bearer, MacSporran, complained that he never got his full fifty pounds.
Chapter Eight
Montrose had his share of the spoil. As he had promised himself, he sent for Master Forrett to bring him his two elder sons, that he might have a glimpse of them during the three days which were all that he could stay in Perth.
They hardly believed their ears when they heard the message. Kinnaird rang with their racing footsteps, their shouted scraps of news, as they rushed to tell everybody all about it.
‘Oh, Minnie, have you heard there was a drummer-boy there, younger than I?’ cried Johnnie, ‘and they say he’s Lord Kilpont’s bastard, and Kilpont means to take him all through the campaign.’
‘And have you heard,’ chimed in James, ‘that ten of the fat burghers who went out with the army burst from running back again to Perth? just burst – like bladder footballs – I wish I had seen it.’
‘Our uncle Madertie was envoy and they said they would string him up – but, Minnie dear, he’s out again now and none the worse, so don’t look troubled – and yes, he is younger, he is only twelve and I am fourteen – and oh where are my riding boots – not the new ones, they pinch, but the old pair that has just been mended?’
In half an hour they were to start and find everything they wanted to take or show to their father. James had written a poem and could not remember where he had put it – in a box with three marbles, an elf bolt, and some shells, he thought – on the other hand it might be in any drawer in any cabinet, or possibly in one of his shoes, which he persisted in regarding as a place of safety. His aunt Beatrix told him his father had always written his poems in the margins of his school books, to be sure of not losing them – an unfair reproach, for James had been rebuked when he did so.
Rob wanted to send the hound puppy to his father, a magnanimous instinct, for he had gone about crying dis
mally when he found that he was not to go with his brothers, and hugging the puppy for consolation, who had supplied it by licking the pleasantly salt-tasting tears from his cheeks.
Johnnie wanted to take so many things that Magdalen knew he hoped to stay on, and when, unwise in her anxiety, she asked him, he flared up and said, why should he not? when Kilpont’s bastard had drummed all those yelling Irish into battle, ‘while I was sitting here, swatting with old Forrett. I tell you, Minnie,’ (for he had never been able to give up their old baby name for her) ‘if my father sends me back, or to Saint Andrews, I shall run away from school as Lewis Gordon did when he was only thirteen – and I shall join him wherever he is, and so I shall tell him. None of you have any right to keep me as a child now, when the King needs men.’
Though he said the King, it was plain whose royalty and whose need were burning in his eyes. She would not be able to keep him from his father, Magdalen knew that.
And therefore for nae venison, Johnnie,
I pray ye, gang frae home.
Venison, or fighting with his father in the thick of it – no, she could not hope to keep this one.
She wrote an answer to Jamie’s note to her and sent it with Master Forrett, for Johnnie might forget it, and she sent a plaid that she had woven from goat’s hair as it kept out the damp better than wool, and would be useful when he was sleeping out on the heather again. And she looked out the couple of books he had asked for, and some boots; and ran down into the kitchens for some of her mother’s famous short paste and the old Burgundy, since he was entertaining the enemy ministers, and it was well to make friends with the mammon of righteousness; and sewed a button on to Johnnie’s coat as he sat already mounted on Red Rowan, for of course he had never noticed it was all but off – and now as she sewed, she wished she had not noticed it at all, for was it not unlucky to sew anything on a person? – but if so it was too late now, and she must think instead of all the things he was to be sure and remember to tell his father, which she had forgotten to put in her letter.
The Proud Servant Page 33