Chapter Fourteen
Christmastide at Inveraray was not merry, but it was comfortable. French wines from the Port of Saint Malo, figs and raisins from Corsica, cane sugar and tobacco from America, were all to be got more easily and cheaply in those little shops than in Edinburgh. Lady Argyll herself could look in at their windows and wish someone would give her a Christmas present from them – a dozen yards of real Spanish taffeta for a new dress, or that pair of scented leather gloves.
Her eldest son bought a green parroquet on his own account, and swore he would teach it sentences out of the Practice of Piety with blasphemous words attached; the only drawback was that the parroquet turned out to be of a kind that did not speak.
Long meals, longer sermons, an oppressed liver and general sense of dissatisfaction, was young Lord Lorne’s impression of Christmas.
‘If only anything would happen,’ he said to himself as he kicked his toes together during the fourth sermon that day, to prevent his cold feet going to sleep, as he only wished he himself could do, but if he even blinked, his father was certain to notice it – and prod him awake? Not he. Young Lorne would welcome the diversion, but his father would be afraid lest the congregation should observe it. He would lecture his son afterwards instead and for as long as another sermon; he might even insist on his praying with him.
He glanced sideways at his father’s now heavily pendulous nose, his compressed mouth and narrow eyes – would he himself look like that when he was his age? He was tortured by a longing to yawn, he began to yawn, he must yawn if something did not happen to prevent him.
Something happened – a shout in the street outside – the church door was flung open – a shaggy red-bearded man in a sheepskin coat stood there aghast, staring at the congregation – so young Lorne saw him for one instant as he was getting his breath – then there was a mighty scraping of stools as the congregation surged upwards to their feet, a volley of questions, a woman’s shriek, a child’s frightened whine, and above it all the man’s high shout in Gaelic (and for the first time Lorne was thankful that his father had insisted on his learning the Gaelic as a child) – ‘They are on us! They are over the mountains! They are burning and killing as they come!’
In the midst of the hubbub one old man, who was stone deaf and very nearly blind, imagined that the congregation had risen because the sermon was at an end, and burst forth with a toneless shout into the psalm he knew to be appointed—
‘Behold, how good a thing it is,
And how becoming well,
Together such as brethren are
In unity to dwell!’
‘The Macdonalds are upon us!’ shrieked the congregation.
‘Montrose and his men are on the hill!’
‘They are not two miles off.’
‘They will shut us into this church and burn us all alive.’
But very soon there was nobody left in the church except the old deaf man, who did not know why they were all in such a hurry. He would not be hustled, and continued the service in his own voice, that he could not hear.
A few minutes later, a handful of men who had outstripped the advance guard of Montrose’s army looked in at the open door, and saw a tall old man in his shepherd’s coat and plaid, with his sheep-dog by his side, standing alone in the middle of the church, proclaiming a metrical version of one of the psalms in a wandering, oceanic voice, like the rumblings and echoes in some deep sea-cave.
Awed, rather frightened, they crept out again.
Argyll had been improving the defences of his castle of Inveraray in case the impossible should happen, and he had begun to gather his clansmen together to provide reinforcements, should they be needed later against Montrose inland.
They were needed here and now.
But not at this instant’s notice, not with the enemy in sight – how could one do anything in a few minutes? It was useless to resist – it was all hopeless – hopeless – but alas it was not hopeless, that was the agony of it; it was possible, even easy to escape; a fishing boat lay all ready manned in the loch, and the wind was in the right quarter; he and his family could be aboard in two minutes and speeding down before the wind to Roseneath.
Oh the torture of decision, when every flying minute meant that those savages were nearer to him, nearer and nearer – Within two miles,’ they had said, and surely that was now a quarter of an hour ago – or no, was it really only three minutes? Why could he not think? His brains were rattling in his head – or was it his teeth chattering? Something must be done at once, and he had done nothing.
In any case, get her Ladyship on board at once, and Lord Lorne, no matter how he resisted – if the boy struggled, pinion his arms, commanded his father, his teeth shutting down on his lower lip – and was it his fault that he had been caught like a rat in a trap?
He saw his family go or be dragged on board; his wife was flustering him by her tears and cries to him to come too; before he knew what he had decided, he was following them up the plank.
The sails were hauled up, rattling; they flapped and filled with the wind as the boat was pushed off from the shore across the little slapping waves that gleamed pale in the wintry sunshine. It was done now, they could not turn back, they were scudding before the wind. And borne on the wind, now faint, now unmistakable, mocking, pursuing, horribly merry, came the first wild dance of the Macdonald pipes.
‘We must fall back on Roseneath,’ said Argyll, seeking, he knew in vain, to propitiate with that military word the huddled heap of shame and misery that was his son.
‘I wish I were dead – dead,’ the boy sobbed in answer.
Suddenly his father snarled back on him – ‘Do I not wish it?’ He knew it to be true – it would be easy for him to die – if only there were no choice, no hope of escape, nothing to be decided in a hurry. ‘But of what use would my death be? – there is no other man who can guide the state. At Roseneath I can plan my campaign, I can consult with Baillie how to smash our enemies. To stay now would be to acknowledge defeat.’
The seagulls screamed in answer. His son gave none. Again came those pealing, triumphant notes of the Macdonald march, now descending on the little city. And the words that he himself had written fitted themselves to that gay music of death and destruction – ‘It is better to trust to valour than to policy.’
Chapter Fifteen
General William Baillie was sent for to Roseneath to consult with Argyll as to the next move against Montrose. He found that ‘to consult’ meant ‘to be commanded’. Not because Argyll was the leader of the Government and the pillar of the Kirk, but because he was MacCaillan Mhor, and none but he should command the vengeance of his clan. Baillie’s shrewd eyes flicked open in an ironic glance at this warlike attitude in the chieftain who had fled before he even saw his enemy’s claymores.
What he saw made him wish he had not betrayed his amusement. The Marquis wore his skull-cap and long black furred cloak as usual indoors; his arm had been injured in a fall from his horse since his arrival at Roseneath, so that he wore it in a sling. A peaceable, inactive man, with a stoop and a probably rheumatic arm, was the first impression of his appearance. But behind those little red angry eyes there lurked the misery of the animal that knows itself wounded to death, whose only hope is that it too may destroy.
He was insisting on his sole right to avenge his clan, because he had deserted it. Not the most loyal Campbell of them all but must curse him in his heart as the Chieftain who thought first of saving his own skin, while now through the length and breadth of his kingdom rose the smoking fires of his people’s homes.
The Macdonalds, the Camerons and the Stewarts were harrying the Campbells, as so lately the Campbells had been harrying them. They had left their mark on the impregnable walls of Inveraray, they were feasting on Argyll’s cattle, laying waste his lands, destroying his strongholds. And only their utter annihilation by the Clan Campbell, led by its chief, could wipe out their shame and his.
So he took a high
hand, told Baillie that he was to make over his picked troops of Scottish militia to himself, and then retire to Perth and keep in touch with Seaforth’s army of Covenanters at Inverness.
And Baillie told him that he had served under Gustavus Adolphus; that he had done the best part of the Covenanters’ job at Marston Moor, while old Sandy Leslie, my noble Lord of Leven, was riding hell for leather from the field, asking the quickest way back to the Tweed – that he had been begged and persuaded and all but forced to accept the supreme military command in Scotland, and that he was – well, surprised – if he had now to take his orders from the man who had voluntarily surrendered that command.
‘For, damn it, am I in command or not, that is what I want to know?’
‘The Committee of Estates is of the opinion—’
The General interrupted with his own opinion that it was impossible to control a military campaign by a God-damned debating society.
‘If I live,’ said a low, a very gentle voice, ‘you shall have cause to remember this day.’
After that, Baillie thought it wiser to choke his profanity, agree to whatever was proposed, and approve of whatever had been done.
Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, an excellent general ‘though sadly given to vice and deboshry,’ complained his chief, had been summoned from Ireland to lead the clan in battle, as Argyll’s injured arm might prevent his taking an active part in the fighting (he insisted on explaining this in full, where Baillie was anxious to slur it over in his embarrassment).
The Campbells, with Baillie’s reinforcements, would advance from the south, driving Montrose’s army up towards Seaforth’s in the north; Baillie’s at Perth would guard any retreat to the east; on the west was the sea coast. Montrose’s little force would certainly be caught in a trap between the three great armies.
‘If we get not the life of these worms chirted out of them,’ said Baillie, rubbing his hands, ‘the reproach will stick on us for ever.’
He glanced hopefully at Argyll, but his genial encouragement had shed no warmth on the atmosphere. A chill, dead eye looked back at him. Perhaps the word ‘reproach’ had been a mistake.
Montrose’s men were full-fed now on the best of red butcher-meat, cattle to kill and cattle to drive off and keep; they had white wheat bread and French wines to feast on.
Alasdair rescued a father and two brothers called Angus and Archibald – all three nearly as large as himself – from the dungeons of one of the Campbell castles. There was a great family reunion. The father was hailed by his clan as Colkitto, the famous Coll Macdonald of Colonsay, who could fight as well with his left hand as with his right – an old man whose beard was snow-white, and his face too, as were the faces of his sons, from their long imprisonment in the dark.
‘The winter foxes,’ those three were called by all the other ruddy, weather-beaten men. They showed no other traces of their imprisonment, were as hale and hearty as Alasdair himself, and able to drink as deep after their fare of bread and water, and by no means always that.
Once after a long fast, they had been served with some very salt meat, and thought their enemies intended to drive them mad with thirst as long ago they had done to Hugh Macdonald, who gnawed his pewter dish into strips before he died, raving. This they told now as a merry tale of the fate that they had escaped.
Their eyes gleamed ice-blue in their white faces; Lord Graham who had been feeling so stern and full-grown a man, was pulled back into the tales of his childhood, of trolls who drive the Snow Queen’s sledge down from her glittering home in the north. Here he was carousing with these strange giants, hearing their stories, singing their songs; and now, as the campaign began again, marching by their side.
For two days they marched in a sou’wester gale that threatened to blow them off the sides of the mountains. Sometimes the whole army had to file through a pass so steep and narrow half a dozen men could have held it at bay.
One old woman did hold it at bay for a few minutes, a gaunt figure with grey hair streeling through the blinding sleet, and a great scythe that she swung in circles round her, so that the first of the invaders fell to the ground, and there lay dying.
‘Kill the witch!’ they shouted, and quickly overmastered her, but Montrose would not have her killed.
‘Is that because I am a woman?’ she flung at him in scorn through her bared teeth. No kindness had she known on that score, driven out by the herd to live alone on the mountains, because she was a woman, old, lonely, with a red-lidded, quivering eye – and who knew but she might be a witch?
‘It is because you are a brave enemy,’ he answered; and they left her at the door of her hovel of stones and turf, still grumbling defiance at them, the mountain looming up over her indomitable old head.
They came down on to Loch Etive; the gale had died down, the sun shone on calm waters, but there were no boats to cross in.
Old Colkitto marched round the end of the loch with his three sons to call on the Campbell of Ardchattan, who owned those lands, and came back to say that it had all been arranged satisfactorily – they were not to touch Ardchattan’s cattle, and he would provide them with ferry boats. Great wonder was expressed at this easy bargain, and many compliments on the address of the ambassadors, until Colkitto admitted with a little smile that showed his yellow teeth in the depths of his white beard – ‘the man may be prejudiced. His mother was a Macdonald.’
So owing to the family feeling of Colkitto’s eighth cousin once removed, they all crossed the loch; made short work of a sloop of Argyll’s that had been sent to attack them from the sea, and captured all its fine brass guns; welcomed a band of recruits from Appin, and were welcomed by the men of Glencoe; stayed a night at Inverlochy, where lay the mighty castle at the foot of Ben Nevis; and so reached the head of Loch Ness by the end of January.
By that time the army’s numbers were down to fifteen hundred again. A Highland victory always lessened the victorious as much as a defeat; the cattle of the Campbells had been more effective than their claymores in driving back half Montrose’s soldiers to their homes with them. The rest were tired out with their mountain march; and an army of five thousand lay ahead of them at Inverness under Seaforth.
It was at this moment that a messenger came over the mountains with bad news. This was one of the Macdonald’s hereditary bards, Ian Lom of Keppoch, and his message was that Argyll had mustered an army three thousand strong, under the command of the trained and valiant soldier, Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, that it was moving in pursuit of Montrose and had got as far as Inverlochy, where it had pitched its camp just about thirty miles south of his present position.
Montrose was therefore about halfway between the Campbells and Seaforth’s forces; further inland lay Baillie’s; on the west was the sea coast. Between three armies and the sea – it was as good a trap as Baillie had promised, and ‘if they had not the life chirted out of them,’ what was to prevent it?
Johnnie Graham stared at his father, who sat at his table, writing. It might have been a letter home, so fluently and readily did his pen move over the paper. What plan had he that could be helped by letter, what further allies to call on in this desert?
‘What is the date?’ asked Montrose.
He was told, Wednesday the twenty-ninth, and Johnnie saw him write – ‘the penult dayes of Januarie, the year of God one thousand, six hundredth, fourtie fyve years.’
Then he signed it in big letters and asked his son if he would come and sign now too, or wait till he had heard what it was. Without a word, Johnnie came forward and took the pen from his hand, and signed, close beneath his father’s name.
The paper was a bond, uniting all who signed it in an oath to fight to the death for their King against his enemies. It was a curious moment for Montrose to state his principles, why he was fighting, and for whom.
Johnnie, with a preternatural clarity of vision that came to him now and then in the excitement of this campaign in the ice-clear mountain air, wondered if i
t were his father’s provision against his death – to show that whoever were his allies or his opponents, he was not fighting in an obscure feud of Grahams and Macdonalds against the Campbells, but that he was the King’s Lieutenant in Scotland first and last.
Whatever the impulse of his action may have been, the effect was excellent. Men were calmed and made easy by the fact that on top of this news of enemies hemming them in on every side, their commander-general could devote the whole of that day and the next to the signing of this bond by all the names – or marks – of their chiefs – and there almost were as many chiefs as men-at-arms.
It had the mysterious significance to the simple and unlettered of all things written and signed. (Had not the Clan Campbell won even more power by their charters than by their claymores?) It lifted their campaign from the age-old familiarity of raid and feud between clans, to the strange and holy purpose of a crusade.
Chapter Sixteen
The ‘Penult dayes of Januarie’ had passed; very early on the morning of the ultimate, the army was on the move again. Said its leader, ‘We will smash the strongest first.’
Seaforth’s army in the north was the larger, but it was made up chiefly of townsmen and raw recruits. Argyll’s army was under Sir Duncan Campbell, a first-rate general, and it had Baillie’s picked troops added to the whole fighting power of the Campbell clan – a magnificent body of men, trained in war, well equipped, and burning to wipe out the shame that had been put on them by their hereditary foes, the Macdonalds. So that though they numbered three thousand, and Seaforth’s five thousand, they were by far the most formidable.
Montrose had led his army up the Great Glen of Albin by the shores of Loch Lochy to Loch Ness. Now they must go back on their tracks, but by another route, for their only chance lay in a surprise attack; and Argyll’s and Seaforth’s scouts would be scanning the Great Glen for a sight of them. No canal nor road ran there then, but it was held to be the only possible route between Inverlochy and the head of Loch Ness by which any army could travel, certainly any army with horses, and in midwinter.
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