An Ancient Strife

by Michael Phillips

  “You have twenty-four hours to vacate the premises, Lady Gordon,” said Tullibardglass. “I will return with troops at this same hour tomorrow. At that time, I will take possession.”

  He spun around and led the contingent away. In desperation Culodina managed one final glance over her shoulders. There stood the tall figure of Aileana Gordon, forlorn and alone in front of the castle. With her hands bound, Culodina could not even manage a tiny wave of good-bye.

  She had still not told her the terrible truth of what had happened on Culloden Moor.

  Thirty-Seven

  SPRING 1746

  From Inverness, Sandy Gordon fled south by the shores of Loch Ness. He found an abandoned horse, which made travel easier, and met here and there a few companions who, like him, were trying to keep one step ahead of the duke of Cumberland and his pursuing hoards. He skirted around Fort Augustus at the head of the loch, where government troops were already prowling about, and made his way to Invergarry Castle, hoping there to find a friendly welcome. The place, however, was deserted, and night was falling. Sandy took refuge in one of the stables for the night.

  At two in the morning, he was awakened by the sounds of horses outside. Thinking it must be government soldiers, he jumped to his feet, crept stealthily to the ledge of an open window, and peered out. Four or five horsemen with lanterns were dismounting. They apparently had access to the castle.

  Suddenly his eyes focused on the familiar form on one of the mounts. It was the prince!

  Immediately Sandy ran outside from his hiding place and toward them. Drawn swords from the prince’s comrades nearly ended his life before he could identify himself.

  “Hold, Burke!” cried Prince Charles. “I recognize this man.—Identify yourself,” he added toward Sandy.

  “Sandy Gordon, my lord,” replied Sandy, bowing. “Sandy Gordon of Cliffrose.”

  “Yes . . . yes, of course. In the darkness, I could not see your face. Put away your weapons—this man is our friend, Earl Gordon’s son.”

  The prince now dismounted himself, and welcomed Sandy with a shake of the hand. He had all but forgotten the bitter arguments of his war counsel, during which Sandy’s father had persistently taken the side of Lord George. Perhaps he was inclined more favorably toward him in that he now realized how right Murray and Sandy’s father had been.

  “Come inside with us, Gordon. Mr. Burke here has promised to cook salmon for me. I have not seen your father since the battle. Is he with—”

  “No, my lord,” replied Sandy as they walked toward the castle, the door of which now stood open. “My father is dead.”

  “I am very sorry to hear it,” said the prince. He stopped and turned toward the young man, a dignified sorrow evident on his handsome face. “We lost so many brave men today . . . yesterday, that is. Your father was a fine man, and his death is a great loss. But we will rally the army again. I intend to gather the clans at Fort Augustus at the soonest opportunity and make full amends for Cumberland’s recent butchery.”

  The next day the prince’s small band, Sandy Gordon now with them, rode on southwest to Glen Pean at the western end of Loch Arkaig, hoping from there to make plans for a counteroffensive.

  What remained of the Jacobite army, meanwhile, some fifteen hundred men, had managed to gather itself south of Inverness near Ruthven. More than two thousand others had been taken prisoner in and around Inverness, a number that would grow in coming months as Cumberland’s parties widened their search throughout all of northern and western Scotland.

  From Ruthven, Lord George Murray wrote an angry letter to the prince, resigning his post. He laid blame once again on Charles for coming to Scotland in the first place without French help and for stubbornly relying on the counsel of John O’Sullivan, who, he said, was hardly fit to look after luggage, much less an army. As for the Jacobite cause, he was through with it and was going home.

  The letter was dispatched by horse to Charles’s small group at Glen Pean. O’Sullivan’s Irish face turned red with fury upon hearing its contents, but the prince stood grimly frozen, his boyish features pale. If such was the state of his command, he realized, there was nothing for it but to escape.

  He wrote a terse reply back to the army, signed and sealed it, then handed it to the rider to take back to Ruthven and be read aloud by Lord George or whoever might be in charge. The message from the prince was simple: “Let every man,” he wrote, “seek his safety in the best way he can.”

  The uprising was over. It was every man for himself.

  That same afternoon, the prince and his small band of five companions set out on foot across the boggy ground toward the Sound of Sleat. It took them several days to reach the coast and make arrangements. Finally, nine days after the battle, they were on their way in an eight-oared boat piloted by sixty-nine-year-old Donald MacLeod from Skye, tossing across seventy miles of treacherous water toward the town of Rossinesh on the island of Benbecula.

  They had been spotted, however. Almost immediately the King’s ships were after them. For the next five months, Prince Charles Edward Stuart would wander as a fugitive in the western Highlands and the coastal islands, a bounty of thirty thousand pounds still on his head.

  Sandy Gordon remained with him for two of those months, on what was called “the Long Island”—that tight chain of more than five hundred islands, most tiny and uninhabited, stretching from Barra Head in the south to the Butt of Lewis in the north and now known as the Outer Hebrides. That Cumberland’s soldiers could track the furtive prince so far offshore and managed to dog his footsteps every step of the way revealed how quickly allegiances could change. With the Jacobite cause now failed, spies and treachery were everywhere. But in cottages and caves, constantly moving, with many friends still loyal to his father and dedicated to the Highland code of hospitality, the prince managed to elude capture.

  And Charles also had his faithful spies, who learned in June of a government scheme to land men on Lewis and South Uist. While ships patrolled the waters of the Minch, the government troops planned to march and sail north and south the entire length of the Long Island—eventually, it was hoped, capturing the prince and returning him to the mainland for hanging.

  The prince and his friends now hatched a daring scheme of escape. They would sail the prince through the government net right under the noses of the redcoats who were closing in on him. To be successful, however, the prince would need to don the dress and appearance of an Irish servant girl and leave his faithful companions behind.

  Sandy Gordon was ready, at any rate, to give the prince his farewell. He was tired of being on the run. And for months he had been haunted by two images in his brain: Tullibardglass killing his father and his outburst at Culodina. Would he ever be able to see her face-to-face, to take her into his arms and beg forgiveness?

  He also must return to his mother. She was alone now and without a husband. In his concern for the welfare of the prince, he had waited far too long already. He had discharged his debt as a soldier, but the prince’s fate now rested in other hands. His duty from henceforth lay at Cliffrose.

  On June 28, Sandy left the man whom posterity would call Bonnie Prince Charlie—in quilted petticoat, blue-and-white dress, and hooded cloak—on the shores of the isle of North Uist. For good or ill, the prince’s future was now up to a brave young woman of the MacDonald clan by the name of Flora. An eighteen-foot boat with four oarsmen splashed from side to side behind them, in readiness to brave the turbulent waters of the Minch and, if they could stay out of sight of government ships, carry the prince across to the island of Skye.

  “If fortune should bring you back to Speyside,” said Sandy, “you will always have a friend at Cliffrose, my lord.”

  “I will not forget all you have done for me, Gordon,” replied the prince. “You are the earl of Cliffrose now. I wish you all the best.”

  “Godspeed, Prince Charles.”

  They shook hands and parted, the prince to become Flora MacDonald’s ser
vant girl, Betty Burke, and Sandy Gordon to find his own way back through Cullin Sound and thence to Mallaig on the mainland of Scotland.

  Thirty-Eight

  SUMMER 1746

  Sandy Gordon arrived in the village of Baloggan in the third week of July.

  On his way to the castle, he spotted old Robert MacGregor, the midwife’s husband and his father’s longtime friend, in the fields near his cottage. Now over seventy years of age and stooped with the years, the man was still out with his dog and a few sheep. Sandy paused for a brief visit to tell him he had returned and inform him about his father.

  “We aye heard, laddie,” said MacGregor, “an’ many were the tears shed roun’ aboot fer the puir man.”

  “Have you seen my mother, Robert?” asked Sandy.

  “Ay, I see her noo an’ then. She’s weel, ye can count on that.”

  “I’m happy to hear it,” replied Sandy. “I’m on my way to Cliffrose now to see her.” He turned and began to walk in the direction of the castle.

  “But ye canna go home, lad,” Robert called after him. “’Tis all changed noo.”

  Sandy paused in his step and turned.

  “What are you saying, Robert?”

  “Yer mither’s not at Cliffrose.”

  “What!—where is she, then?”

  “In Baloggan,” replied the shepherd.

  “She is in the village for the day? You’ve seen her?”

  “Lad, ye’re not graspin’ my meanin.’ She’s livin’ in Baloggan noo.”

  “Living there! Why? Where is she . . . tell me where, Robert.”

  “In one o’ the wee cottages in a row behind the kirk—ken ye the place, lad?”

  “I know the kirk well enough. But I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying.”

  “She’s in the third cottage, Sandy lad. She’ll be wantin’ t’ explain the thing to ye hersel.’”

  “Old Dughall MacPherson’s place?”

  “He was killed in the battle, lad. His Effie left t’ her sister’s in Aberdeen. ’Tis yer mither’s cottage noo.”

  Sandy turned again and hurried away across the grass.

  “But, laddie,” MacGregor called out behind him, “watch yersel.’ There’s soldiers everywhere, an’ they’re luikin’ fer ye, lad. There be a price on yer head. Ye’re wanted by the croon, so ye mauna let yer face be seen. The village is changed, lad. Ye dinna ken wha be yer enemies, an’ wha be yer frien’s.”

  Still bewildered by the man’s cryptic words about his mother’s plight but sobered by his warning, Sandy made his way toward the village. Because the day was already advanced, and knowing he must do nothing to endanger his mother, he waited until the gloaming had brought its summer’s dusk down over the land, then sneaked behind the village from the north and crept toward the cottage Robert had described. He did not knock, for fear of neighbors, but gently tried the latch. It was open. He walked inside.

  The lone occupant heard the sound and turned her face toward it.

  “Sandy!” gasped Aileana. She was out of her chair and flying toward him the next instant.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “Sandy . . . oh, let my arms hold you, my son!”

  She fairly attacked him with arms that had ached for this moment for months.

  “I am sorry for not returning sooner, but—”

  “Say nothing about it, Sandy. You are here now, and safe, and that is all that matters. Oh, it is so good to have you back!”

  “You . . . do you know about Father?”

  “Yes,” answered Aileana. “Culodina was here.”

  Sandy winced at mention of her name. They fell apart. Sandy glanced about the cottage. Now for the first time he became aware of his surroundings. Had he not known otherwise, he would have thought this the hovel of the poorest peasant woman for miles. The cottage had but two rooms, its furnishings sparse. On the hearth boiled a few potatoes which, as far as he could tell, might be the only food his mother had. He saw not a single recognizable possession of her former life save a handful of books, her treasured prayer book on a shelf set into one of the walls, her rosary beads beside it, and a curious old worn basket made of local grasses, badly frayed at the edges, that had once belonged to her mother-in-law.

  He began to walk slowly about, shocked at what he saw.

  “But . . . but, Mother,” he began, sweeping his hand about the cottage, a look of bewilderment on his face, “what is all this? Why are you here? What has—”

  “Don’t you know, Sandy?” she said. “I thought, but . . . then, how did you find me?”

  “Know . . . know what? Robert MacGregor told me you were here.”

  “The rising changed everything,” replied Aileana seriously. “Government troops were here less than a week after the battle. They took everything, just as they have done throughout Scotland.”

  “What do you mean, they took everything?”

  “Cliffrose has been forfeited, Sandy. It is no longer ours.”

  “What! And the servants . . . the animals . . . our possessions?”

  “The servants were turned out. The animals, our possessions—I assume they all remain and are—”

  She faltered momentarily.

  “—in the hands of the new owner,” she added. “There was nothing I could do.”

  “The new owner!” exclaimed Sandy. “Who can that be? I will go there right now and—”

  “Sandy!” interrupted his mother, placing her hand on his shoulder as he made for the door. “Sandy, please listen to me. All through Scotland, property is being seized and Jacobite supporters arrested. Your being gone these few months is the best thing that could have happened. I was watched night and day for the first month. Please . . . do not add to my grief the moment I have you back. Going to Cliffrose will do no good. That would be just what he wants. You are in danger.”

  “What are you saying, Mother? Just what who wants?”

  “Murdoch Sorley . . . Culodina’s father.”

  “What has he to do with it?”

  “He is now the owner of Cliffrose,” replied Aileana with reluctance, knowing the disclosure would enrage her son. “He served me the forfeiture nearly three months ago.”

  “Tullibardglass—the scoundrel!” exclaimed Sandy, in a passion of wrath. He made for the door again.

  “Sandy!” cried Aileana, her voice filled with pleading. “Do not go!”

  Again he paused and looked at his mother.

  “It is no use, Sandy,” she said. “The viscount has risen high since the rebellion. He is a powerful man. And there are new laws now—the old Highland ways have been forbidden. Sandy, they’ve made it against the law to wear the tartan or to play the pipes or even to speak in the old tongue. Weapons have been confiscated all over. Sandy, the old way of life is gone.”

  At last the truth began to dawn on her son that foolhardiness would only get him killed. Shaking his head, he sank into one of the two chairs in the room.

  “But I have to avenge what he has done,” he said at length, “not only to you, but to Father.”

  “Your father?”

  Sandy glanced at his mother with eyes of question. “Culodina did not tell you?” he asked.

  “Tell me what? That he is dead?”

  “That it was Tullibardglass who killed Father at Culloden.”

  Aileana’s eyes filled with tears. It took several long seconds before she could reply.

  “I knew Culodina was trying to tell me something in those two days after her return,” she said softly. “She would look at me and start to cry, but then turn away and grow silent. Oh, the poor dear . . . the grief it must cause her.”

  “Where is she, Mother?” said Sandy. “I must see her. I was very cruel when we met after the battle. I had watched hundreds die, was wounded myself—I’d seen Father die in my arms. I was out of my mind with despair and hatred.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” replied Aileana. “I’ve heard nothing since that day her father served me
the paper and took her away. I have assumed that she is at Tullibardglass Hall.”

  It fell silent for several long minutes. At length Sandy spoke.

  “I will get Cliffrose back, Mother,” he said.

  “Then you must take care, Sandy. I fear Culodina’s father will expect you.”

  “Is he at Cliffrose now?”

  Aileana shook her head. “It is being maintained by a factor by the name of Fearchar. He has men on hand.”

  “I will get it back,” vowed Sandy a second time, “and I will avenge Father’s death.”

  “There is no profit in revenge, Sandy. We must go on with our lives. Nothing you do will bring your father back. You mustn’t become a murderer yourself.”

  “You don’t understand, Mother,” he said, growing heated again. “I have to redress what he has done!”

  Sandy rose and paced the small room, then went out into the dusk to be alone with his passion, while his mother prayed that in time reason would return to his tormented mind. When Sandy walked back in an hour later, subdued but obviously still agitated, Aileana had a supper of boiled potatoes, tea, and brown bread on the table waiting for him.

  Thirty-Nine

  The following night, under cover of darkness, Sandy stole out of his mother’s cottage in Baloggan and rode to Tullibardglass Hall.

  He knew every hill and stream, tree and rock, between his old home and Culodina’s. Heeding the warnings of both his mother and old Robert MacGregor, however, on this occasion he kept off the valley road and instead skirted the mountain around the edges of Loch Caoldair, thus approaching toward the Hall from behind, down the hill and through the trees, with the light of a half moon eerily shadowing the ground beneath him.

  The place seemed asleep. Flickers of light glowed in a few of the windows. If he could just find a way to get inside, or find Culodina’s window and tap on it to rouse her attention . . .