An Ancient Strife

by Michael Phillips

  She must know!

  With trembling hand she reached for the latch, then rose from her seat. Slowly she stepped out and down to the ground.

  On the box, the coachman had been about to shout a new command to his team. All at once he detected movement in the corner of his eye. He eased back on the reins.

  “We’re aboot to be on oor way, lass,” he said, “gien ye wouldna mind stepping back inside.”

  She did not reply or even glance up. She gave no sign that she had heard a word. She just stood, pale and gazing after the retreating form of the rider who had caused the delay.

  At last she opened her mouth and half raised a hand to beckon him. But no words would come. She remained mute as a statue.

  Halfway to the stand of trees in which he had waited for the coach to arrive, some inner impulse caused the rider to glance back.

  Why was the coach still sitting where he had left it? And why was that woman—

  A chill swept through his frame.

  The same instant he yanked on the reins, still looking back over his shoulder. The great horse reared, then felt the leather pulling it around. The gray mare wheeled, and within seconds was pounding back down the hill.

  Still fifty yards away, the rider reined in, then leapt from his saddle and ran toward the coach. The figure beside it had found her legs and was now running toward him.

  Ten yards from each other, as of one mind, both began to slow . . . then stopped.

  For long seconds they stood . . . staring . . . hearts pounding . . . a hundred thoughts of doubt and eagerness fighting for supremacy . . . uncertain, surveying faces that were the same, yet which were so changed.

  All the Highlands fell still and silent in waiting expectation.

  At length the man’s mouth slowly opened. “Culodina . . .” he said in tone of lingering hesitation, “is . . . is it really you?”

  The spell was broken. Culodina rushed forward and fell into his waiting arms.

  “Sandy!” she breathed, eleven years of pain and sadness swept away in an instant.

  How long they stood embracing, neither knew. Nor were they conscious of the stares and whispered comments behind them from the coach.

  “How . . . but what are you doing here?” said Culodina at length. “I cannot believe it!”

  “I hardly recognized you,” laughed Sandy.

  “Nor I you. You have grown, Sandy.”

  “No more than you. You are a woman now . . . a lady.”

  “And you a man. Is what the man said true—is there going to be another Jacobite rising?”

  Sandy pressed a finger to her lips.

  “If I still mean anything to you, Culodina, you must promise not to breathe a word of what you have seen or heard to your father.”

  “Of course, Sandy. I would never dream of it. He is still in England for a few more days.”

  “For that I am glad. It means I shall be able to see you. I must go, Culodina,” said Sandy, backing toward his horse. “But I will call soon at Tullibardglass.”

  “Let me come to Cliffrose, Sandy. Most of my father’s servants are very loyal. I would rather you not be seen.”

  “At Cliffrose, then! My mother will die of joy to see you!”

  Twenty-One

  JUNE 1745

  The French invasion never came. But King Louis XV of France continued to assure Charles Stuart, not many years younger than himself, that he would have France’s full backing—both money and soldiers—for a Stuart restoration.

  Growing impatient, and encouraged by continued promises of French help, Charles finally decided to sail for Scotland. With or without the French fleet, he would launch his rebellion. Fate had destined him, he believed, to precipitate events. Once he began to move, support throughout England, Scotland, and France was certain to rally to his cause. There were reportedly thousands of eager Jacobites not only in Scotland, but also in Wales, Ireland, and England. After the movement was under way, he had no doubt that an army of ten or fifteen thousand would swell behind him. Then would follow an invasion by the French army, and before long the throne would be his.

  Kendrick Gordon knew it was probably no use. But he had to see his old friend one more time before events began moving too fast. He had received word just the night before that the prince had sailed. This would be his last opportunity.

  When he called at Tullibardglass Hall, the whole place seemed run down and lifeless. Culodina opened the door. She looked sad and tired, Kendrick thought—not at all herself. Her face immediately brightened at sight of him.

  “Cousin Kendrick!” she exclaimed.

  “Hello, Culodina,” he said, embracing her warmly. “Is your father home?”

  “He is up in his study.”

  Gordon thanked her and walked toward the stairs.

  The familiar door stood open. He knocked lightly, then entered. His cousin stood at the far end of the room with his back turned, shoulders drooped, drink in hand, gazing out a tall window.

  He turned at the sound. “Ah . . .” he nodded in greetingless acknowledgment. “What brings you so far from Cliffrose?”

  “To see an old friend,” replied the earl. “And it is not really so far. We used to ride it twice a day.”

  “Times were different. We were younger then.”

  “Do you remember when you rode to tell me of Mar’s invitation, the day Sandy was born? Those were the days, eh, my friend!”

  Resentment surged through Murdoch Sorley at the supposed gloating mention of his son. But he kept his thoughts to himself and merely nodded without returning his cousin’s smile of enthusiasm. The glint of bitter envy in his eye was barely discernable, though it had grown to consume him in recent years. Kendrick’s very sense of courtesy and goodness angered him.

  “I recall that we spoke of our sons’ riding together . . .” he said after a moment, then paused.

  “Ironic, isn’t it,” he continued, “you have your son, but I . . .”

  Again he stopped, looked away, and drained his glass.

  “And you have a lovely daughter,” added the earl.

  Sorley made no reply. He moved to the sideboard to pour himself another whiskey, then lifted the bottle toward the earl in silent inquiry. Gordon nodded. Sorley poured out a second glass and handed it to him.

  “Times of change are coming again, Murdoch,” said the earl after taking a sip. His voice grew serious.

  “What change?”

  “You must have heard the rumors as well as I.”

  “About the boy prince, the Young Pretender they call him?” rejoined Sorley. “Bah—I don’t believe a word of it!” In truth, he had been apprised of stirring within the Jacobite ranks in recent weeks, though had been unable to learn any details. He hoped feigning ignorance would loosen his cousin’s tongue.

  “There may be more truth in it than you think, Murdoch.”

  “Such as?” said the viscount, one eyebrow arching slightly upward.

  “I only say that perhaps the reports are reliable. It may be time for you to reconsider your wavering from the cause that so stirred our blood thirty years ago.”

  “As I said before, times change. Scotland has changed.”

  “And perhaps will change again. It is not too late to rekindle your passion for the legacy of our Highland heritage.”

  Tullibardglass eyed him as if reflecting seriously upon his words.

  “If only I could be sure,” he said slowly, “that such a rekindling, as you call it, would reap the rewards of a wise choice. I must know more.”

  The earl thought for a moment, then replied. “Murdoch,” he said seriously, “Prince Charles has sailed from France.”

  Sorley took in the words with affected astonishment.

  “He is actually bound for Scotland!”

  “The Stuart restoration is coming, my friend,” Gordon continued. “I do not want to see you dispossessed along with those who sided with Argyll and the Hanoverians. It is not too late.”

  “Wher
e is he set to land?”

  “There is no word yet. Probably somewhere in the Hebrides.”

  “And when?”

  “That I do not know either.”

  Tullibardglass nodded with interest. “Hmm . . . perhaps you are right,” he said. “I would not want the new King Charles to hear I had not toasted his success at the critical moment.”

  “Shall we then toast the cause together,” suggested the earl, “as we did of old?”

  Sorley nodded, raising his glass toward his cousin. “To the King over the water,” he said.

  “To the prince on the water,” added the earl.

  The next morning Murdoch Sorley was on his way to Inveraray—vowing during the entire ride that he would get the best of his condescending cousin in the end—to tell the duke of Argyll what he had learned.

  Twenty-Two

  Sandy will be thirty later this summer,” said Aileana Gordon to her husband a week or two after his return from Tullibardglass. “I would like to have a portrait painted.”

  “Of Sandy?” asked the earl. He began to laugh as Aileana nodded.

  “Envisioning him sitting for a portrait,” said Kendrick, “stretches my brain beyond what it can bear! How will the thing ever be done? He could never sit still long enough.”

  “That is where you come in, my dear husband,” answered Aileana with a smile. “I thought you and I would sit first, then present him with our portraits on his birthday. He will not be able to deny my request then.”

  “You are a shrewd one. And your scheme also puts me in front of the painter’s eye, a position I will relish no more than Sandy.”

  “But you will do it for me, will you not, Kendrick?”

  “For you, my dear—of course. But is not one portrait of me enough?”

  “The one in the hall downstairs is twenty years old. You are much more handsome and distinguished now, with your head half gray and your wise eyes gazing out from under it.”

  Kendrick roared. “You have a most cunning tongue!”

  “And the previous one is but from the waist up. I would like to see a full portrait in the kilt.”

  “Ah, I see it now—you would make a thorough Highlander of me for all posterity to see! Well, my dear, to make you happy, and if by it we might contrive also to get our son’s face on canvas, I will don the kilt, sporran, and dirk and consent to your plan. When do you propose this project to begin?”

  “I have a painter coming to Cliffrose tomorrow,” answered Aileana.

  He roared again. “How did you know I would consent?”

  She only smiled in reply.

  “And he will begin with you, no doubt?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “You are head of this family—he will begin with you.”

  Twenty-Three

  AUGUST 1745

  As Kendrick Gordon, earl of Cliffrose, rode away from the castle with his son, Sandy, tears filled the eyes of their wife and mother. Were her worst fears about to be realized? wondered Aileana as she watched them disappear northward through the glen toward Newtonmore.

  How well she remembered that season exactly thirty years ago when she had carried Sandy in her womb. The spring of the dream, the summer of Mar’s failed uprising.

  Now the men of the Highlands were at it again. Her husband was too old to fight, and her son was in the prime of his youthful manhood. What did it matter who was King? Women needed their sons alive!

  Hardly thinking, she fingered the smooth beads of the rosary at her waist, breathing a prayer for protection.

  She did not think she could bear it if she lost him!

  She turned and walked slowly back inside, the weight of a woman’s worst fears bearing heavily upon her. She was less than three years away from sixty. Age had stolen upon her gracefully, as it did not to many of this region. The lines around her mouth and eyes had deepened, and her full head of hair showed but a few strands of fading light brown among the gray. But her eyes shone with even more luminescence than before for what the years had taught her.

  The beauty of Aileana Gordon was that of inner character made strong by life, not bitter by it. Her peasant roots made her heart soft, but her noble marriage brought out character fashioned into grace by her faith in God. In spite of the secret anxieties she had never even shared with her husband, she was a woman at peace with herself and her place in the world. Could she script the remaining years of her life, the story she would write would be one of growing old with husband and son, and enjoying grandsons and granddaughters in abundance at her knee, singing lullabies to them as she had for her own Sandy.

  But if such things were not to be, she would bear it. Well she knew that it is not given to mortals to write the stories of their own lives. Life had to be borne.

  The next day, as if in response to the sudden loneliness within the castle’s desolate walls, Culodina appeared at Cliffrose. No angel’s visitation could have been more timely. At sight of her, Aileana broke into tears.

  “Aunt Aileana . . . what is it?” said Culodina.

  “Oh, Culodina . . . they’re gone!”

  “Gone . . . gone where?”

  “There is word that Prince Charles Edward has arrived from France.”

  “He has really come?”

  “Kendrick received word that he had landed in the Hebrides and was on his way to the mainland. He and Sandy left almost immediately.”

  “For where?”

  “They have gone to Glenfinnan, where the MacDonalds are awaiting the prince. Word has been sent out to the rest of the Gordons too, and Kendrick and Sandy will meet them there to muster.”

  “When will they be back?”

  “I don’t know. Oh, Culodina . . . I am afraid!”

  It did not occur to Aileana that the portrait of her husband was still unfinished until Monsieur Beauvelais arrived the next day for a session with the earl.

  “Oh no!” she gasped, drawing in a breath when she saw him at the door. “I’d completely forgotten.”

  “Forgotten what, Madame?” he asked, puzzled.

  “About the portrait. I am afraid the earl is gone.”

  “For how long, madame?”

  “I don’t know when I will see him again. Oh, and I had so wanted one of Sandy!”

  She began to cry at the horrid realization that the opportunity now might never come.

  “As for Monsieur Sandy,” said the painter, “I am afraid I must await his return. But have no fear regarding your husband’s portrait, Madame Gordon. The face is nearly done. If you will allow me the liberty of continuing to work in his absence, I shall be able to complete it most satisfactorily.”

  Twenty-Four

  FALL 1745–WINTER 1746

  With a mere seven companions, Prince Charles Edward Stuart landed on mainland Scotland on July 26, 1745. They came ashore at Moidart, directly west of Fort William.

  Initial enthusiasm for the prince’s cause, even in the Highlands where Jacobite support had always been strongest, proved now almost nonexistent. Assuming the country would welcome its rightful King, the twenty-five-year-old prince found to his astonishment that not only had French support all but vanished, so too, to a great extent, had that of Highland Scotland. The Act of Union was by now thirty years old. Scotland on the whole had accustomed itself to the new regime of a Great Britain ruled by the Hanoverian dynasty. And after a difficult decade or two, by now the Union’s economic benefits to Scotland had begun to trickle northward. No one in the Lowlands, and few in the Highlands, was eager to wage war for a cause whose purpose had faded with the years.

  None realized, however, the power of the young prince’s charm to capture the imaginations and stir the hearts of a nation.

  Weeks before, Prince Charles had first landed in the western isles. As he was in Clanranald territory, he had sent for the highest MacDonald in the region, who promptly told the prince to go home.

  “I am come home, sir,” Charles replied. “My faithful Highlanders will stand by me.”

 
Now on the mainland, Prince Charles sought the backing of the powerful head of Clan Cameron, Donald of Lochiel.

  Lochiel, like Clanranald, was against an uprising.

  “Put your objections in writing,” warned his brother, who knew of the young man’s dynamic magnetism. “If this prince once sets his eyes upon you, he will make you do whatever he pleases.”

  Lochiel, however, set up a private meeting with Prince Charles. He voiced his objections sternly, criticizing Charles for sailing without actual French support, and suggesting that he return to France to arrange a properly funded, supported, and armed invasion.

  “In a few days,” replied the prince, “with the few friends I have, I will erect the royal standard and proclaim to the people of Britain that Charles Stuart is come over to claim the crown of his ancestors, to win it or perish in the attempt. I have been brought up since the day of my birth to believe that our cause is right, indeed divinely ordained. He who calls himself the King in London is a usurper. I must pursue the Stuart cause. My father has often told me that Lochiel was our staunchest friend in the Highlands. However, he may stay at home and learn from the papers the fate of his prince.”

  Charles’s persuasive gifts won the day. Cameron of Lochiel sighed and shook his head.

  “No,” he said after a moment, “I shall share the fate of my prince, and so shall every man of my clan over whom nature or fortune has given me power.”

  Quickly word of Lochiel’s promise of support spread to other clans throughout the Highlands. Within weeks the handsome young Stuart heir was well on his way to the stature of legend which would thereafter follow his name.

  On August 19, at Glenfinnan on Loch Shiel, fourteen miles west of Fort William, in front of nine hundred assembled Camerons and MacDonalds, Prince Charles Edward Stuart raised the red-and-white silk flag of the House of Stuart and proclaimed his father, James Edward, King of Scotland and himself regent in his father’s place.

  The Jacobite uprising that would become known as the “Forty-Five” had begun.

  Word of the event quickly reached Edinburgh and London. In London, King George II immediately offered a reward of thirty thousand pounds to anyone who would “seize and secure the said son of the said Pretender, so that he may be brought to justice.” In Edinburgh, the commander in chief for Scotland, Sir John Cope, roused his army and marched north out of the city toward the Highlands, prepared for battle.