The Proud Servant

by Margaret Irwin

  Red Rowan champed at the bit, and tossed his head, and was in a fever to be off, no less than the boy who sat him, looking down on his mother, with the sunlight and a smiling eagerness on his rainbow-lidded eyes, that only saw her in flashes here and there as he blinked them against the sun, for behind her upturned face that yearned towards him he was seeing a picture of his father on horseback, magnificent, terrible, in the midst of a battlefield strewn with his dead enemies; and of himself riding up to him, and being given the command of half his army.

  ‘Yes, Minnie,’ and ‘Indeed I will,’ and ‘My dear Minnie, I am not a baby now,’ and he was gone.

  A clatter of hoofs, a cloud of dust, and then the hot sunlight lay as still upon the plain as though those two had not just ridden across it, and vanished.

  ‘Old Forrett will take good care of them,’ said Beatrix, ‘he said he would bring them in on the north side of the town, for they say that on the other side you can walk to it from Tipper-muir on the dead, and they might engender plague in this heat.’

  ‘I wonder why any of us are alive,’ said Magdalen, looking round the courtyard that had grown so empty.

  ‘To carry on the world,’ said her sister-in-law, putting her arm round her shoulder and leading her into the house.

  She had heard how nearly her husband had met a felon’s death through joining this mad adventure of her brother’s; yet she was as calmly cheerful and practical as ever.

  ‘She is the woman men need in wars – and women too,’ thought Magdalen, as Beatrix said to her, ‘Look, here is poor old Rob left behind, and the boys promised to make him a toy coracle hours ago, and it has never been finished. Have you found some more hazel twigs for it, Rob? Good, then I will get the canvas – we need not oil it till afterwards.’

  ‘No, they cannot take Rob yet,’ thought Magdalen, ‘but how soon will it be?’

  A year, a day, an hour – time folded in on her, making her its prisoner. She longed to beat against its bars, to bewail her fate, to cry that women should not stand it, that women must rise and refuse to obey their lords ever again, until their lords should obey them in all that really mattered.

  ‘Why, Magdalen, what a long face,’ said her old father, meeting her in the hall, ‘the lads have only gone for a couple of days.’

  Chapter Nine

  Their father was not in the battlefield; they did not even come through the battlefield, and bitterly they complained of Master Forrett’s old-womanly fussing; they rode into the town, with their cousins of Braco and Orchill in charge of them, and it was all quite tidy, with no sign of the fighting anywhere; the only difference from the Perth they knew so well was in the number of Highlanders that stood about and stared into the shops, some in their worn-out tartan, and some in the oddest variety of dress, snatched from the dead soldiers and citizens that lay outside the gates of the town.

  One gaunt fellow wore a bailie’s chain across his hairy chest, which his ragged shirt barely covered – and the flat black velvet cap of magistracy on his floating yellow elf-locks. Another swaggered in a dark-green velvet coat, ‘very neat and respectable’, as he was saying himself in the Gaelic, but his scrawny knees stuck out beneath it, very surprisingly, from under a tattered saffron kilt. A groan, a shriek, a blood-curdling yell made the boys leap in their saddles in hopeful anticipation – but it was only a piper tuning up at a street corner.

  All these lounging strangers stared with a hungry, angry, baffled gaze upon the two boys, their fine horses and silver-mounted harness and rich cloaks.

  ‘The Lord Graham and the Lord James, sons of my lord Marquis of Montrose, the King’s Lieutenant,’ announced Master Forrett hastily and loudly to everyone of whom he asked the way. He was directed to the house of Margaret Donaldson where the Marquis lodged; and there, everyone in the town seemed to be going at once, some at furious speed, captains, and messengers, and burgesses with ledgers under their arms. They went into the high hall of a fine house; it was filled with men coming in and out, and the sound of subdued, respectful voices. They saw their uncle Madertie talking cheerfully to a town councillor; he did not look at all like a man who had just escaped hanging.

  There, high above them in a gallery at the end of the hall, sat their father at a table, writing. Men in Highland dress stood about him; people came up to him and bowed and murmured questions, and went hastily away again. It gave Johnnie a little shock to see him sitting there so still amongst all the bustle, his head bent over the papers. He looked just the same as when he had read Virgil with them a year ago, and not at all as though he had been wading through blood for three miles.

  He saw them and waved a hand to them, and Major William Rollock, whom they had often met at home, came up to them and led them up the wooden stair into the gallery. Their father was before them, they kneeled, and he gave them his blessing, then raised them and kissed them on the cheek and asked how they had left their mother, and was pleased to hear their aunt Beatrix was with her, and wanted to know a crowd of silly little things, even that they had begun to make a toy coracle – ‘for Rob’ – interposed Johnnie hastily, ‘but we left it to the women to finish.’

  He was not at all anxious for young James to drag out these childish irrelevances, just when he wanted to impress his father with the obvious fact that he was now a man. It was a pity really that young James had had to come too, it made people class them together, when of course James was ridiculously babyish even for his years. There he was gaping up in the most unabashed manner at a gigantic Highlander who had just come into the gallery with a dog as high as an ass beside him – and, in a flush of excitement, Johnnie suddenly realized that he was in the presence of that terror to his countryside, already half legendary as hero and villain, Alasdair Macdonald himself.

  The Major-General was introduced to the Lord Graham, and won his heart by at once commiserating with him for not having arrived in time for the battle; he asked how many dead he had counted on the way here.

  Alas, Johnnie had not had the chance to count any, owing to Master Forrett’s ‘nursemaid care’; and was for once thankful when James piped up, asking if it were true that Alasdair had killed as many as eight hundred with his right hand alone, and if so, how many had he killed with his left – ‘for you are left-handed, are you not, my lord?’ asked the literal James.

  To which Alasdair replied gravely that he let not his left hand know what his right hand doeth.

  With a formality that much flattered James, Alasdair introduced him to all the hereditary officers of his household – the MacBeth, his physician, who knew the properties of every herb in the world; the MacKinnon, his marshal; the Macduffie, his recorder; the MacLaverty, his speaker; the Mac Arthur, his piper; the MacSporran, his purse-bearer; the MacVurich, his poet; the MacRury, his smith and armourer.

  James wanted to know what happened if the hereditary poet of the day were no good at poetry – or the purse-bearer no good at accounts – or the harpist had no ear for music. Could they change over?

  But the Macdonald had never known of such a case. Driven into a corner by James’ relentless logic, he protested that one might just as well ask what happened if a hereditary king were no good at kingship.

  James thought for a moment, then answered, ‘War.’

  He was an argumentative and persistent youngster. But in any serious matter the Irishman’s reasons were such as to appeal to him. When Alasdair in his good nature escorted them to their rooms across the road, they heard a fluttering and banging against the rafters, and found that a robin had flown in at the open window. Alasdair put up his huge hand and caught it, then placed it very gently between James’ hands; and the boy, feeling the soft, warm creature, its heart beating so fast against his fingers, demanded a cage, that he might keep it always.

  But Alasdair told him he must never imprison nor harm a robin, who has borne the blood of Christ on his breast ever since he sat on the Cross and sang to comfort the dying Christ – ‘and if we had but the understanding of birds�
�� language, we should hear that it is the Mass he is singing to this day.’

  ‘Are you a Papist?’ asked James in a shocked voice, putting Johnnie on tenterhooks. He felt it was his mother’s fault for encouraging James; he hoped that Alasdair would make excuses for his youth, as he could not guess that the boy though so small, was nearly eleven – far too old to be hoisted up on to Alasdair’s shoulder, even though it were done in compensation when James confided to him his fear that he would never be as tall as Johnnie.

  ‘You are tall enough now, then,’ said the Irishman, and told him of a giant in his own country, who was so tall that he had to go up a ladder to brush his own hair.

  At the banquet that evening, the boys sat on either side of him, and heard, as the giant drank deeper, how the first Donald of his race had cut off his own hand, and flung it from his boat on to the island shore, that he might be the first to touch and own it, and that was why they had the Bleeding Hand on their coat of arms; as well as the galley that the three princes had sailed in from Ireland to Scotland – but the Campbells stole that for the galley of Lome in their coat of arms – ‘as they steal everything.’

  Johnnie leaned forward with a provocative gleam in his eye. ‘I heard,’ he said, ‘that the Campbells sailed in that galley in the Flood, because they were too proud to go with Noah in his Ark.’

  ‘They were not,’ shouted Alasdair – ‘they were too mean to pay the ferry fee. And what did they get by it in the end? for their galley was rotten for lack of a ha’porth of tar, the way they were all sunk.’

  ‘Then how is it there are Campbells to this day?’ inquired James.

  ‘Because the sea spewed ‘em up again, knowing they were born to be hanged.’

  And his laughter engulfed all the other voices round the table.

  Madertie, always a considerate man, saw to it that the two boys got enough of the sweetmeats and not too much of the wine.

  Montrose watched with pride and amusement while James echoed his mother’s deliberate little air, and Johnnie, like an adventurous but well-mannered pup, enjoyed tackling Alasdair. The boy was shaping well – a fine head and carriage of his shoulders, and taller than he himself had been at his age.

  As he looked at his son’s shining and sleepy eyes, he felt as though he were living his life over again – a life just such as he had wished when, at the same age as Johnnie was now, he had sat nodding at his father’s funeral feast. Round him then had been all his relatives, and here were many of them again – the old familiar names, though in scarcely any instance the same faces as had borne them then – the Grahams of Fintry and of Orchill, the Grahams of Braco, of Balgowan, of Nether-Cairnie, of Inchbrakie. In the past, they or their fathers had prosed to him their good advice on agriculture, while he had wished that the days of adventure were not over.

  They were not over, they were here again, and himself directing them. A few months ago he had been a hanger-on at the English Court, unable to get an audience. Now he was a Highland chieftain; his second-in-command and Major-General, that ogre in war, who was solemnly telling his small boy how he had once seen the black soul of Judas look out of the eyes of a seal on the Irish shore.

  The two worlds that made his life were strangely mingled at that moment. Magdalen’s letter lay inside his shirt, and now and again he touched the plaid she had woven for him, ‘since you are a Highlander now, Jamie, and when shall I see you again?’

  He could stroke her handiwork, into which had gone so many waiting thoughts, and not the softness of her hair.

  Like a stone thrown into a hive, setting the enemy all astir, came the news of Tippermuir. One of them wrote, ‘Lothian and his regiment are to guard Stirling Bridge. Argyll is marching. Calender, Lindsay, Montgomerie, Dalhousie, Lawers are posting from Newcastle with their regiments of horse and foot.’

  It was exactly what Montrose had wanted. He was taking the weight off the siege of Newcastle, and relieving the King’s forces in England. But he must deal another lightning blow before any more of his new troops drifted away. The Atholl men all found it worth while to take their plunder home, and so did most of the rest of the Scots Highlanders, little as they said they had got.

  After a couple of days, practically only the Irish remained – ‘and I,’ said Johnnie, ‘for you need every man and horse you can keep with you now, and if old Forrett stays, why should I not stay too?’

  Old Forrett had said he was not so old but that he could still be my lord’s secretary and purse-master; and well he had proved it within a few hours of his arrival at Perth, in counting out the contributions levied on the town, and showing where they fell short.

  ‘I followed your lordship’s journeyings,’ he said, ‘when you were less than the age of Lord Graham here.’

  ‘And did you not then say that I used to play spillikins with your bones, jolting you backwards and forwards over the Grampians?’

  ‘If I did, it’s no consolation to sit on a cushion, and know that nobody takes count every time the roughness of the road costs your lordship’s nags another shoe.’

  His former pupil smiled down on the crumpled old face, eager as a schoolboy’s. ‘So you too will be a Highlander?’ he said.

  He would, he won his point, and then Lord Graham began on his. He would not go home again, nor to school with young James at Old Montrose. Wherever he was sent, he would not stay, and if he did, ten to one their enemies would swoop on him, and carry him off, so what would be the odds? It was his strongest argument. Magdalen was still unmolested, but then she was with her father and he too old now to fight, and still not too much on one side or the other – ‘but with me there, of fighting age, the balance would just topple over,’ cried Johnnie, flushed with this urgent exercise of his wits, pressing against his father’s shoulder as he sat in his chair, as he wondered, considered, longed to do as the boy suggested, and take him with him on his mad career.

  It was true that of all people his just-grown son, the young Lord Graham, would not now be safe away from him. So said his logic and reason, trying to sound unbiassed; but behind them his longing heart urged that since he had left and must leave his home behind, he should take this much of it with him, should see his boy grow into manhood, in a wild, mountaineering campaign that was more like a boy’s dream of soldiering than the prosaic reality of modern mechanical warfare.

  So he consented, and wrote many reasons for it to Magdalen; but the thought of her left without either of them would catch him suddenly as he slept, tired out as he was, so that he would start awake, crying, ‘We will come back to you! Do not be so afraid!’

  ‘A soldier should not marry, still less than a monk,’ he told Forrett, who seemed to doubt the advisability of any man following such a practice. He sent young James, who was very sorrowful, back to Kinnaird, while Johnnie rode gaily on with him and Alasdair and Madertie and Kilpont and young Wat, with whom he made great friends, in spite of his own seniority, and tried to play his drum, but could never learn to manage the sticks properly, and asked him if he had really walked to Perth on the bodies of slain foes.

  Wat was disappointingly uncertain. He thought he had seen a dead man, but could not be sure, there had been no time to notice anything. His fingers were still cramped from drumming, and that was all he could really tell about the fight. Anyone who had had a glimpse of him marching sturdily through that devil’s throng, hands whirring his frenzied tattoo, head up, seeing nothing, hearing nothing but the rhythm of his drum, could have told Johnnie that what the boy had walked on then had been air.

  Chapter Ten

  It was a much smaller force Montrose now led to the attack of Lord Burleigh’s army at Aberdeen, which he must smash in a few days, or get caught between it and Argyll’s. He hoped, too, to recruit cavalry in the north, and was joined by old Lord Airlie and his two sons, Sir David and Sir Thomas Ogilvy, with forty-five horsemen. An adventurous kinsman of Huntly’s, Nathaniel Gordon, ex-pirate and ex-brigand, who had lately fought in that abortive rising of the
head of his house, also joined him with thirty horse.

  But he had no more luck than Alasdair had had in wooing Huntly himself, who stayed sulking at the Bog of Gight – ‘And well is it named,’ cried Alasdair bitterly, ‘since all who place their hopes on the Gay Gordons walk on uncertain and marshy ground.’

  Huntly had sworn that if the King should fall, he cared not if himself and his house were buried beneath the rubbish. He seemed now to prefer that condition, to serving beside the young man who years ago had forestalled all his lumbering movements with his lightning marches, and made him, the Cock o’ the North, look a fool before his men, as they rode past the churchyard wall of Turriff. That sour reflection – ‘it is your own doing’ – was all Montrose had for comfort, as he looked in vain for help from the Gordons.

  His first, almost inexplicable success shook him as it will shake a man who has been forced to wait too long in inactivity before trying his luck. That first success might so easily prove the only one. All round him he heard news of his lands being confiscated and his friends imprisoned. His need to hurry urged him day and night. He would lie awake, wondering what he must do the moment he got up, and then found he had barely slept an hour.

  Early one morning, little Wat, who had been sleeping out on the heather, came crying to him with the terrible news that he had found his father lying murdered in his tent.

  Kilpont had shared his tent with his lieutenant, a Highlander, James Stewart, who had stabbed him in the night, and escaped to Argyll. There, as they soon heard, he was welcomed with a free pardon, and, it was supposed, a reward. For Argyll now offered a reward of £1,600 sterling to whomsoever would murder Montrose. The murderer of Kilpont then may have been an agent in a plot against higher game, had been discovered by Kilpont, and so stabbed him. Only one thing was certain from this crime, that the Covenant had decided to observe none of the rules of war. Assassination, and the hanging of envoys, were encouraged as praiseworthy weapons in God’s work.