An Ancient Strife

by Michael Phillips

  Sandy Gordon, meanwhile, returned to Baloggan.

  The moment he walked into the cottage, his mother greeted him excitedly.

  “I have heard from Duncan!” she said.

  Sandy glanced around. He saw no sign of Culodina.

  “I took her to Sally’s two nights ago,” said Aileana in answer to his unspoken question. “There was a rumor her father may be about. But, Sandy!—the Lord President has agreed to rescind the forfeiture . . . if we can produce the deed that proves our ownership.”

  “I thought the property was seized because Father was a Jacobite.”

  “The actual wording of the forfeiture was based on Murdoch’s claim that Cliffrose rightfully belonged to him, not treason to the Crown. In his haste to grab Cliffrose, Murdoch created a loophole that may come back to strangle him. Duncan also apparently very much dislikes Murdoch, and that helps our cause as well. But we must have proof. If we supply it, Duncan said, he will void Argyll’s order.”

  “But you have no papers, do you, Mother?”

  “I thought nothing of such things when I left.”

  “Where are they, then?”

  “I don’t know, Sandy. I’ve never seen a deed to the land or the castle.”

  “There must be one somewhere.”

  “Your father kept his important documents in his study on the third floor. But I am afraid I don’t know where. I was never curious about legalities and records.”

  “Even if a deed had existed, Tullibardglass has no doubt destroyed it by now.”

  “It is our only chance.”

  “What about the charges against me?” asked Sandy.

  “That may be more difficult,” replied Aileana. “But for my sake, and since Kendrick is dead, Duncan has promised to consider a pardon, if only to get back at Culodina’s father.”

  Forty-Three

  As Sandy approached Cliffrose Castle, where he had spent the happy days of his boyhood and youth, a host of emotions flooded his heart and brain . . . images of his father’s smiling face, memories of so many things they had done together, the sound of his father’s low voice, the ring of his laughter.

  He looked up at the beloved stone walls and towers. Even if what he had come here to do succeeded, could this place ever be a home again?

  The place was so desolate, so quiet. The grounds had not been kept up and were overgrown. How quickly, he mused, a place could run down when love was taken away.

  But he could not tarry with such reflections. He must be about his business. He had spent the early evening finalizing the arrangements and making sure all was in readiness. Now he must do his part to prevent unforeseen danger to the others.

  He ran toward the castle, skirting the entry wide by staying under the row of large beech trees, then crept toward the front door.

  He saw nothing of Fearchar as he approached, or no one else, for that matter. If the factor indeed had men about, they must have all retired early.

  The key that had lain hidden as long as he could remember still lay buried in its place . . . the lock was also unchanged. In less than a minute, he was inside.

  How strangely familiar everything appeared. He had been gone only a year, yet it seemed a lifetime ago. How strange, too, that the interior had hardly been altered. Chairs and sideboards and carpets all sat exactly as he remembered them. The walls looked identical . . . the same portraits and tapestries . . . the faint smells so powerfully nostalgic. Did anyone actually live here? The place felt lifeless.

  He approached the stairs and tiptoed gently up. He reached the first floor safely, pausing at the top to gaze at the year-old portrait of his father. The poignant sight of Kendrick Gordon in full Highland regalia brought a lump to Sandy’s throat. His father looked again so vibrant, his eyes bright and alive, just as Sandy had always known him.

  The other two portraits his mother told him they had planned were never even begun. They hardly seemed to matter, Sandy thought, now that his father and Cliffrose had been taken from them. Why would Tullibardglass have kept the image of his father hanging here? Why had he not destroyed it? Or had he even taken notice?

  As he gazed up at the image, a voice sounded behind him. He spun around. There was Tullibardglass standing in the darkness, again with sword in hand. The man seemed to anticipate his every move!

  “He could have been a great man,” he commented, “had he not turned traitor in the end.”

  “He was a great man,” stated Sandy. “Certainly greater than his traitorous cousin.”

  Tullibardglass received the pointed rebuke without further reply, and now took a step or two forward out of the shadows.

  “I always knew it would come to this in the end,” he said as he came. “This fight was destined to be decided between you and me, young Gordon, no one else.”

  Sandy glanced about, took several steps to his left, then carefully removed a sword from the wall mount where his father’s collection of weapons still hung. Tullibardglass chuckled. But if he thought that his young adversary was still a boy he was badly mistaken. The son of his cousin was no mere youth now, but a man who was more than his own equal.

  “I urge you to reconsider, Tullibardglass,” said Sandy, adjusting the sword in his hand. “I do not want to have to kill you, if for no other reason than for Culodina’s sake.”

  “You are being extremely foolish,” replied Sorley with a condescending laugh.

  “Don’t underestimate me,” Sandy said evenly. “I know how to use this. So I will ask you once very calmly—will you reinstate Cliffrose to my mother?”

  Tullibardglass did not laugh this time. Instead, the fire of hatred flashed in his eyes.

  “Never!” he said. “Cliffrose is mine. It should always have been mine!”

  He lunged forward and suddenly aimed a wicked circular slice toward Sandy with his blade. Sandy leapt back and at the same instant raised his own weapon. As he met the oncoming blow, a great clank echoed of steel upon steel. Both men’s hands jarred them in pain, and each realized they were in a fight to the death.

  Outside the castle, Culodina stooped behind Aileana through a low cellar door. Both felt their way toward the stairs in the blackness. It was the only entrance through which Aileana was sure she could gain access to the house without being seen, now that her son had gone in through the front.

  A few minutes later they stood in the darkened kitchen. A flood of emotional memories surged through her at sight of the homely room, its working surfaces far less grand than the rest of the house. But Aileana could not pause to let the memories distract her just now. Instead she hurried across the familiar floor and unbolted the locked rear door. Two men entered hastily from the night and carefully closed the door behind them. Both clutched large claymore swords dug recently out of the peat where they had hidden them three months earlier rather than relinquish them to government soldiers.

  The unlikely trio now quietly followed the former mistress of the house through a black corridor to a narrow, little-used staircase at the northeast corner of the place, then ascended slowly up the circular stairs. Above them they could already hear shouts and sounds of combat.

  On the darkened landing, the only light being that from the moon through the windows, the young man who had grown up within these walls and the older man who had taken them from him continued to swing and jab their blades at one another in a more dangerous contest than either had seen since Culloden. Though the quiet man whose silent eyes now overlooked the battle from his portrait on the wall had never himself taken a human life, the blood of either his cousin or his son seemed likely to be spilled upon the oak slabs of floor before many more minutes had passed.

  Suddenly a vicious thrust came straight at Sandy’s chest. He leapt to the right as he parried to avoid it, momentarily losing his balance. A clanging horizontal whack from Sorley’s weapon followed before he could right himself and ripped the sword from his hand. It clinked over the floor in two or three bounces, coming to rest four feet from his enemy, w
ho stepped over and secured it with his foot.

  Seeing his dilemma, Sandy darted across the floor in the opposite direction.

  “Not running away like a coward this time, Gordon?” taunted Tullibardglass.

  “The only coward, Sorley,” rejoined Sandy, inching along the wall, “is he who betrays his country and his friends . . . and his own kin.”

  At the words, emboldened at what he considered his imminent victory, Culodina’s father now rushed forward, sword outstretched. But the gesture was unwisely considered. He had not apprehended Sandy’s objective.

  Before Tullibardglass could prevent it, Sandy had caught up another sword from the wall. Seeing Sorley’s hand outstretched, he grabbed the weapon’s hilt in both hands, as if the lighter-weight saber were a claymore. Before his adversary could correct his foolish lunge, a great blow crashed against the extended blade and knocked it from Sorley’s hand. It clattered noisily to the floor with the other. Tullibardglass stumbled sideways from the unexpected power of the jolt and fell. The next instant Sandy’s foot was on his chest, the tip of the saber poised against the skin of his Sorley neck.

  “Go ahead, Gordon,” spat Sorley, “run me through—unless you are a coward. You bested me. Now kill me as you said you would.”

  Sandy clutched the hilt of his sword tightly. His hand was trembling.

  “Stay your hand, Gordon,” commanded a voice behind him from the top of the stairs. “I have a pistol pointed at the back of your head.”

  Light gradually lit the room as two more men clambered up the stairway behind the factor, one of them carrying a lantern.

  “Fearchar, you fool!” gasped Sorley from the floor. “What took you so long to get here?”

  “You told us to follow him in after he arrived,” replied the factor, inching his way in a semicircle away from the landing until he came directly into Sandy’s sight. His two accomplices followed. “But we never saw him,” he went on. “It wasn’t until I heard your swords that I realized he had slipped past us into the house.”

  Still Sandy’s hand clutched the sword, whose tip remained tingling Sorley’s neck.

  “You are a greater pack of idiots than I thought!” cried Tullibardglass. “What are you waiting for? Shoot the—”

  Suddenly behind them sounded the crash of a door. Footsteps pounded across the floor, then burst out a great cry of pain and an explosion of gunfire. The blunt end of Robert MacGregor’s claymore had come down on Fearchar’s wrist, sending the pistol flying and discharging its shot into the nearest wall.

  Even as its echo was dying out, Aileana, Baillidh, and Culodina had rushed in behind him.

  Before either of the factor’s two lackeys could draw their swords, they found themselves backing against the wall behind them, on either side of the portrait of Kendrick Gordon, unexpectedly staring at the points of two smaller sword blades whose opposite ends were held by two trembling yet very determined women. MacGregor followed his blow to the wrist by turning the tip of his giant weapon against Fearchar’s unwieldy stomach.

  In the middle of the room, Murdoch Sorley’s groom prowled the floor with his own claymore clutched in both hands and lifted as high in the air as his strength could maintain it, ready to bring it down on the head of any of the three who dared make a move.

  Sandy’s eyes now met Sorley’s. The entire room fell silent. Softly his mother’s words came back into his mind: There is no profit in revenge, Sandy. . . . You mustn’t become a murderer yourself.

  Slowly he pulled away, then removed his foot from Sorley’s chest.

  “Where are the others?” Sandy asked, glancing toward Robert MacGregor.

  “Munro, MacPherson, and Murison are outside the front door, claymores in hand,” answered MacGregor.

  “You are through here, Tullibardglass,” said Sandy. He reached down, grabbed him by the shirt, and yanked him to his feet.

  “Don’t forget, Gordon,” replied Culodina’s father, in no way humbled by his recent brush with death, or grateful to Sandy for sparing his life, “this little game of yours means nothing. Cliffrose is still mine,” he added spitefully. “You have not heard the last of this.”

  “We shall see, Tullibardglass. For now, I am ordering you to get out. As for you, Fearchar—you and your men are no longer welcome on my mother’s property.”

  Culodina’s father straightened himself as best he could under the circumstances. He nodded to the three fools, as he judged them, who had allowed themselves to be overpowered by two women, an old groom, and an even older shepherd, and strode toward the door.

  “Culodina,” he said turning, “I will give you one final chance to save yourself. If you come with me, no harm will come to you. Otherwise, I cannot help you.”

  “I’m sorry, Father, but my life is with Sandy and Aunt Aileana now.”

  “Even if it means going to jail with them?”

  “Sandy Gordon has asked me to be his wife.”

  Tullibardglass burst into a laugh of scorn. “I might have expected it!” he said. “I suppose you two young fools deserve one another. But even if he manages to elude the law, he will be a pauper at best. You will be throwing away everything to marry him, Culodina. And you may well be a widow before the year is out.”

  “I would rather be the wife of a pauper in Scotland, or even the widow of a hero, than the bride of the richest man in all England. I am sorry, Father, but I intend to marry Sandy, and nothing you can do will stop me.”

  Seething, Culodina’s father clattered down the stairs and out the heavy door. Carefully Aileana, Culodina, and MacGregor eased their swords away from his three henchmen, while Baillidh’s claymore remained poised above his shoulder in the event any of them made a sudden move. But without incident the others followed Tullibardglass from the house.

  The moment they were gone, Culodina rushed into Sandy’s arms. Baillidh let down his heavy weapon. “No doobt after this,” he said, “I’ll be findin’ mysel’ turned oot o’ Tullibardglass Hall.”

  “You shall henceforth be our groom at Cliffrose,” laughed Aileana.

  “If Cliffrose becomes ours again, Mother,” now added Sandy. “We need to find those papers.” He stepped away from Culodina briefly in order to replace the swords on the wall. “The viscount may be back with a small army before morning. At present he is still the owner and could throw us out, not to mention arrest me and send me off to the duke of Argyll.”

  “We shall have to work quickly, then,” said Aileana. “I don’t know what we will be looking for, but we should see what there is in your father’s study.”

  They left the landing and hurried in the direction of the third floor. As she went, Aileana paused at the portrait. A few tears formed in her eyes as she returned her husband’s gaze. Then she nodded quietly, as if speaking to him the resolve in her own heart and echoing her son’s determination from weeks earlier. She, too, would not rest, for the sake of her husband’s memory, until Cliffrose was once more in Gordon hands.

  They succeeded in finding Kendrick Gordon’s cache of important documents, though without immediately being able to distinguish among them those of singular importance. Gathering every scrap of paper to take with them for safekeeping and further perusal, they left the place, this time together by the front door, where they met their three faithful guards—MacPherson, Munro, and Murison.

  Neither seeing nor hearing further signs of the enemy, the eight members of the brave if unorthodox Highland force that had retaken the castle without a drop of blood being shed returned in the darkness to their own homes.

  Four days later Sandy and Aileana Gordon, along with Culodina Sorley, left by coach for Inverness and an appointment with the Lord President for Scotland, Duncan Forbes.

  Forty-Four

  NOVEMBER 1746

  Winter was on the approach in the north when Sandy Gordon, now recognized as earl in his father’s stead, approached Tullibardglass Hall. The place was full of significance for him, though not so full of memories as it was f
or the woman who rode at his side.

  They reined in their mounts, dismounted, then walked hand in hand toward the front door. They had reason to be confident that Culodina’s father was in residence.

  The door opened to their knock.

  “Hello, Swayn,” said Culodina. “Is my father at home?”

  “Yes, my lady. I will tell him you are here.”

  Sandy and Culodina waited in the entry. What was going through Culodina’s pounding heart Sandy suspected well enough. Neither had seen her father since that fateful night. She was fearful, detached, relieved. Her daughter’s heart hoped he might yet learn to accept her as she was and for who she was, although she knew him too well to be optimistic. It was unlikely they would ever be close, but she had determined to try to learn to love him again.

  At length they heard the heavy familiar step of Murdoch Sorley descending the staircase. Culodina’s heart began to beat a little more rapidly.

  His form came into view. He seemed to have aged since they had seen him last.

  He approached without greeting, without even expression of recognition, came forward, and stood before them waiting.

  “Viscount Sorley,” said Sandy, addressing him soberly and formally, “I have here papers from the Lord President nullifying the forfeiture of Cliffrose and reinstating it into the hands of myself and my mother. Be assured that Mr. Forbes has had the deeds and documents pertinent to the case submitted to the scrutiny of the King’s solicitors. You will find all scrupulously in order, including the deed to the property legally transferred to my great grandfather.”

  As he spoke, Tullibardglass stood stoically, giving no sign that he heard so much as a word that was being said.

  “As you had long suspected, there were certain irregularities in the case, dating back to the year Cliffrose was purchased by my ancestors from your great-grandfather, who was at the time suffering financial setbacks. As it turns out, a sizeable loan was made to your great-grandfather, which was added to the proceeds from the sale. This apparently was never repaid by Mr. Sorley, nor by his son, or by your own father when the property, and its debt, came down to him. It would appear, therefore, though it grieves me to be the bearer of the news, that according to the original terms of the sale and loan it is actually Tullibardglass Hall that stands in forfeit to the earl of Cliffrose.”