Sorley winced slightly, inwardly cursing his father and grandfather and all the rest of them for being so careless as to pass on their financial difficulties to him. He did not know whether to believe any of this nonsense or not. He would certainly look into it.
“I have my solicitors looking into the matter further to determine the exact amount that stands in arrears. Until the matter is resolved,” Sandy continued, “you are welcome to remain in residence. And be assured that you will be more than generously provided for, whatever the outcome. I will see to it.”
Sandy now handed him the paper, which Sorley took without looking at it.
“Now, finally, we would like you to know that we two were married two weeks ago in Inverness. We will be hosting a Christmas ball next month at Cliffrose for all the people of Baloggan and the community. It will be our first social event as husband and wife. And we would like you to attend as a special guest of honor.”
By now tears were flowing from Culodina’s eyes—tears of happiness to hear Sandy refer to her as his wife, tears of sadness to see her father so alone and sad. She gathered her courage, then stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek.
“I am very happy, Papa,” she said. “I want you to be happy too. If I can try to forgive you for what you have done, is it not time that you let forgiveness into your heart also?”
He gave no sign of response. Culodina gazed at him a moment, then stepped back to Sandy’s side. Sandy now extended his hand. But the offered gesture of farewell was not taken.
After a moment, Sandy and Culodina turned and left the house. As they walked to their waiting horses, Sandy stretched his arm around Culodina in loving reassurance. It had been a difficult interview. A few final tears glistened down the daughter’s cheek. But she had made her choice, had chosen her happiness. No fatherly bitterness could take that from her.
They rode back to Cliffrose quietly, thinking of many things.
The next morning, Murdoch Sorley was on his way from Tullibardglass Hall back to his English estate. He did not attend the Christmas ball at Cliffrose.
As Aileana Gordon’s hair continued to gray, her remaining years at Cliffrose were among her happiest. As those years went by, she found herself gradually surrounded by a joyous quiver of granddaughters and grandsons and by the most loving and attentive daughter-in-law every woman could hope to have, who now called her Mother Aileana.
Slowly the old clan life of the Highlands passed into history. But the memory of the Bonnie Prince who had given Caledonia a bright and shining moment of hope lived on in the hearts of those who remembered the days when Scotland was free. And the cause for which he had been willing to risk all, for which many Jacobites had given their lives, grew to symbolize far more than merely the rightful kingship of a nation. Over the years, it would come to represent the idea of liberty for all people and the hopes and dreams of future generations.
In afteryears, when Lady Aileana Gordon sat her grandchildren round about her and in her lap, with a voice full of mystery and with crooning lips that occasionally lapsed into the old Scots tongue or even the Gaelic of her youth, she told of the cause for which her husband and their father had fought, the cause the one had died for. Young ears listening and eyes wide, they took in the poignant tales and the plaintive melodies. Their favorite was the soft ballad of a Highland legacy now lost—remembering him who left his royal dynasty, and their hearts, on a lonely battlefield called Culloden Moor.
Bonnie Charlie’s noo awa;
safely o’er the friendly main.
Mony a hert will break in twa,
should he ne’er come back again.
Will ye no come back again?
Will ye no come back again?
Better lo’ed ye canna be.
Will ye no come back again?
4
Northward Toward the Past
One
What a moving story!” whispered Andrew to himself, closing the book and setting it on his lap. He was close to tears but wasn’t sure why.
How could human beings treat one another with such . . .
His thoughts trailed off indistinctly. There were no words to give definition to the feelings rising within him.
Was it any wonder many Scots resented what had happened? As if Glencoe weren’t enough! No wonder the Scots wanted their freedom back.
Andrew rose, left the library, and walked back down to the gallery. Again he sought the portrait, whose meaning he finally understood.
Kendrick Gordon, Earl of Cliffrose, 1688–1746.
Now the date of the man’s death contained such poignant significance.
Duncan’s words of a few hours earlier returned to Andrew’s mind.
“Gien it’s the Scot’s thirst fer freedom from England ye’re wantin’ t’ unnerstan,’ ’tis t’ Bannockburn an’ Culloden ye maun gae. . . . ’Tis what I call the ancient strife o’ Caledonia.”
Andrew realized it really was time to resume what he had begun earlier. He had to go to Culloden and Bannockburn, just as Duncan said. He had to walk the historic battlefields for himself. If he could not resolve the ancient strife of the past, he must at least ask what role he might play in its future.
And he wanted to see the rest of Scotland too!
Two
In early September, as he had three months before, Andrew Trentham set off for the north. His mother hugged him warmly as they said final good-byes at the door. He couldn’t help but remember the tension that had hung between them on the eve of his first departure. So much had changed since then.
“I know you’re planning to travel incognito and let the spirit lead, my boy,” said his father. “But do keep us posted on your whereabouts.”
“No problem, Dad,” replied Andrew. “I’ll call every night. But you might not recognize me when I come back—I didn’t pack my razor!”
“When you say incognito, you go all the way!”
“I can’t blend in and get to know the people if they recognize me.”
“Well, every man has to grow a beard at least once in his life, I always say,” laughed Harland Trentham. “We’ll do our best not to let the sight of yours shock us.”
Andrew left Derwenthwaite in high spirits, especially buoyed by the changes in his mother’s countenance. Though she walked with a limp and had not regained complete command of either speech or arm, he thought she was happier and more at peace than he had ever seen her. Who could have imagined a stroke to be a blessing in disguise? She smiled warmly as he got in the car and kept her right hand raised, waving in gentle poignant farewell, until he was out of sight along the drive.
Andrew followed the same route as before through Scotland’s southern uplands, skirting Glasgow and again making his way northward to the plain of Rannoch, then down the narrow pass into the valley of Glencoe. In his mind, as he traveled, the stories he had learned from Duncan unreeled themselves once more. There on the plain he saw Foltlaig and his son Maelchon laying their plans to counter the northward expansion of the Roman legions. And then, as he descended toward Glencoe, the dreadful events for which the tiny valley had become known to the world came back to him as if he had heard from Duncan’s lips only yesterday the tale of the doomed village and the strange maiden with the second sight who managed to save the young man she loved from the carnage. The high slopes of the mountains stretching high on both sides as he drove added a sense of awe, even quiet terror, to the place.
The day was a warm one. He parked his car and hiked along one of the several streams tumbling down off the slopes of Bidean Nam Bian. Before he knew it, several hours had passed, and he had climbed to a height where the wild, desolate, uninhabited glen spread out below him.
Was the place of Ginevra and Brochan’s meeting somewhere on these slopes near where he walked?
For long minutes he stood, no sounds entering his ear but the silence of height and isolation and the gentle whisperings of the Highland winds. All looked so peaceful now, so different from that terribl
e night more than three hundred years before.
For the first time he understood how intrinsically the two tragedies of Glencoe and Culloden were linked, providing the foundation for present Scottish passion to regain what had then been lost.
An impulse toward prayer stole over him.
“God,” he whispered, his voice tentative to address the Almighty aloud, though he was miles from any other human creature, “help me know what to do. Show me what is the right thing to do in the matter of Scotland’s future. Give me courage to see the truth and to be bold to act upon it. Show me what is right to do for the people of this land and for our whole nation.”
The walk back the side of the tallest of the Three Sisters was a quiet one. Three-quarters of the way back to his car, he began to chuckle as the thought came of a photographer from one of the tabloids positioned somewhere on a hilltop out of sight with a 500mm telephoto lens.
Wouldn’t The Sun love that! Or Ludington of the BBC? Rumors had begun to fly about him the previous spring. A picture of him praying on a mountain would cap it off—he could see the headlines now!
“MP Seeks Scottish Mountaintop to Find Peace with Soul.”
In a light mood, he drove on to Fort William, where he spent the rest of the day browsing in shops, walking the streets and waterfront, observing, listening, thinking, and finally locating a bed-and-breakfast for the night.
The following morning, outfitted with a dozen cassette tapes of Scottish folk music and historical ballads, he drove west to Mallaig and ferried across the Sound of Sleat to the island of Skye, to which Bonnie Prince Charlie had escaped following Culloden. What remained of the afternoon and that night was taken up at the Clan Donald Study Centre and hotel at Armadale, though he had little time for more than a quick stroll to make initial acquaintance with the gardens and ruins of Armadale Castle before dinner.
Rising early the following morning, he walked up the narrow roadway behind the castle, then bore off left up the slope, exploring for a high vantage point from which he could look down upon the ruins with the blue waters of Sleat behind them. A brief walk through the sheep farm of the estate followed, and then a return down the hill and slowly through the gardens, with their varied collections of pine, fir, and rhododendron contributed by MacDonald clan members from all over the world.
A sudden rain shower erupted, nearly drenching him as he sprinted for the cover of the gift shop in the former castle stables. But it was over almost as soon as it began, and he continued his explorations.
As a sense of the history of the place grew upon him, his curiosity mounted to delve into that portion of his ancestry hinting at connections with that ancient and most powerful clan MacDonald, whose chief had originally been known as Lord of the Isles.
As a result of his readings—from the ancient days of the Wanderer and Cruithne up to medieval times—and his genealogical research, he had discovered, he thought, a link by marriage between Fintenn, boy-convert of St. Columba, and the MacDonald line—through Domhnall, the man who became Fintenn’s sister’s husband.
“I am all but certain,” said Andrew later that morning to the director of the Study Centre, “that Fintenn’s brother-in-law was connected with the line that would eventually become the Clan Donald.”
“You may well be right,” nodded the kindly young woman, intrigued by the connections Andrew had discovered, but without the remotest idea that she was speaking with one of the most important leaders in the House of Commons.
“If so,” Andrew went on, “then Domhnall would be ancestor to Somerled and his grandson, Lords of the Isles—”
“Now you’re touching on my roots,” she said excitedly. “Somerled’s sons and grandsons walked this very ground—and from them the MacDonald name sprang in the thirteenth century.”
“Right,” agreed Andrew. “But is it truly possible to establish verifiable bonds between the present and such ancient times?”
“That’s why we are here,” rejoined the woman, pulling several thick volumes of ancient genealogies down from a shelf. Her detective’s nose was already after the scent.
But as yet the name Gordon had made no appearance in Andrew’s research to link those first millennium Celts to the family of Kendrick Gordon of the eighteenth century and thence to him. When the name Gordon first came to Scotland, he had not yet discovered.
From the Clan Donald Centre, Andrew’s travels took him from Kyle of Lochalsh and the magnificent Eilean Donan Castle eastward to Loch Ness. Instead of turning north toward Inverness, however, first he made his way south along the lake’s bottommost tip toward Fort Augustus. As he drove beside the narrow, enigmatic body of water, Andrew thought back to Columba’s first approach along this same route to the land of the northern Picts, recalling the story he had read about the saint’s encounter with the legendary sea monster Nessie. He wondered how much truth existed in the tale. Was it but one more embellished myth which had gathered around the old saint?
Andrew pulled over at the next parking turnout and retrieved the Life of Saint Columba from his briefcase. Again he read the fascinating passage.
On another occasion, when the blessed man was journeying in the province of the Picts, he was obliged to travel up the River Nesa. When he reached the bank of the river, he saw some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate man, who, according to the account, was a short time before seized, as he was swimming, and bitten most severely by a monster that lived in the water; and his wretched body was, though too late, taken out with a hook, by those who came to his assistance in a boat. The blessed man, on hearing this, was so far from being dismayed, that he directed one of his companions to swim to the farther bank. Hearing the command of the excellent man, Lugne Mocumin obeyed without the least delay, taking off all his clothes, except his tunic, and leaping into the water. But the monster, which, so far from being satiated, was only roused for more prey, was lying at the bottom of the loch, and when it felt the water disturbed above by the man’s swimming, suddenly rushed out, and, giving an awful roar, darted after him, with its mouth wide open, as the man swam in the middle of the stream. Then the blessed man observing this, raised his holy hand, while all the rest, brethren as well as strangers, were stupefied with terror, and, invoking the name of God, formed the saving sign of the cross in the air, and commanded the ferocious monster, saying, “Thou shalt go no further, nor touch the man; go back with all speed.” Then at the voice of the saint, the monster was terrified, and fled more quickly than if it had been pulled back with ropes, though it had just got so near to Lugne, as he swam, that there was not more than the length of a spear-shaft between the man and the beast.
One fact could not be denied, he thought as he gazed out over the icy depths: the legend of the mysterious Loch Ness monster was as ancient as the mysterious Picts themselves.
Three
From Fort Augustus, Andrew drove south through Glen Albyn, then turned northwest at the town of Spean Bridge. Though his route had been circuitous in order to visit all the places he wanted to see, at last Andrew came into that region he had been most eager to visit. Through Glen Spean he now approached Glen Truim and the valley of the River Spey, where his ancestors Kendrick and Aileana and later Sandy and Culodina Gordon of Cliffrose had dwelt.
He visited Cliffrose Castle, now in ruins. Was this his own ancestral home, he wondered. Did some of his familial roots originate here? Was he not only of Gordon blood, but also, through Aileana, of Forbes and MacPherson? Who owned this land now—some distant relative perhaps? He would have to find out later.
After a stroll through the village of Baloggan, he continued on his way, feeling more a Scot than ever in his life.
From Glen Truim he drove north, along the route of Prince Charlie’s army and following Culodina’s footsteps as she followed Sandy that fateful April in 1746.
After a quick detour to Inverness, where he made lodging arrangements, he drove out of the city west and to Culloden’s historic battlefield.
Could
a more fitting place exist, thought Andrew as he stood gazing across the moor of massacre, to contemplate the future of Scotland. Here had the long feud between the Scottish Highlanders and the English Crown been finally decided. Caledonia had lost its independence in that century so long ago. Now here he stood, three centuries later, contemplating whether the Parliament of King Charles III should give it back.
He was still so full of the story he had read in the library back home that he almost imagined he could hear the ominous roll of Cumberland’s drummers from the east, answered by the shrill cry of Prince Charlie’s pipers from Drummossie Moor to the west.
For an hour he walked alone across the desolate open spaces, gazing pensively down at the stones marking the mass clan graves scattered across the countryside, reliving the tale of Sandy and his father. What must have been the horror for Culodina to find the body of the man who was to be her father-in-law! Was his own Jacobite ancestor buried somewhere under this ground, Andrew wondered, beneath the stone upon which were carved the simple words Clan Gordon.
He moved on the following day. Andrew’s travels then took him to Ullapool, around the desolate far north to Thurso, John O’Groats, Wick, and Dunbeath. All the stories he had read now mingled together, tumbling back in time from Culloden to Glencoe all the way back to Cruithne and the Wanderer. From what he could sketchily make out from the place names and the geography of the legend, he felt sure that Cruithne and Fidach had grown up in the vicinity of the Highlands of Easter Ross. Somewhere in the triangle represented by Lairg, Ullapool, and Dingwall, he was convinced had once existed the hill-fort of Laoigh.
An Ancient Strife Page 18