Bonnie Dundee

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Claverhouse said very quietly, ‘Poor William, poor old lad,’ and then, ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Still in the town, wi’ orders to bide there to keep the peace in these lawless times. And being there, Colonel Livingstone sent up one of his lieutenants – Crichton, by name – to tell your leddy that the Dragoons are yours to a man if you do but whistle for them.’

  There was a silence, then, and Dundee was looking at Captain Faa with that odd intent look that went right through into a man’s inmost places. I’d not have cared to face it, if I were lying to him. ‘And my lady sent you to tell me this? You seem, if I may say so without giving offence, an unlikely choice. I would have thought maybe one of my own grooms…’

  ‘One of your own grooms would mebbe not ken the Highlands so well as one of the Tinkler kind,’ said Captain Faa, his yellow eyes bright and unblinking. ‘The Rawni – Mistress Ruthven – would vouch for me, were she here.’ He glanced aside for a moment and met my gaze. ‘And so, I think, will yon soldier laddie in the corner, clasping your lordship’s left boot to his whame.’

  I had not realised that I was still clutching the boot that I had just pulled off when he entered. I gave him back his look, and set down the boot with care. I did not feel called upon to vouch for Captain Faa. Claverhouse made his own judgements in such matters.

  Captain Faa was speaking again, softly, on a faintly sing-song note; clearly he had the words off by heart. ‘My leddy showed me the letter. It ran this way: “Tell Lord Dundee we are unfailingly at his lordship’s service.” And then at the foot of the page, it was written, in a hurry as it looked, “Please tell John I am no traitor, and neither torture nor death shall ever make me so.”’

  And hearing the words, I seemed to hear Colonel Livingstone’s own voice, grave and always a little anxious, sounding through the lilting Tinkler tones. It seemed that Dundee heard it, too. ‘Aye, that sounds like William Livingstone,’ he said. A moment longer he sat looking at the man before him; and then I saw him gather himself for action as a horse gathers itself to take a ditch.

  ‘Food and sleep for you now, my friend,’ he said, ‘for you must be away again at first light, carrying word to my lady. Nothing written, I think, this time either. Tell her that you have seen me, and bid her get word to Colonel Livingstone to hold his men ready for my whistle, biding in Dundee according to their orders until I can come for them myself.’ He smiled. ‘And, Captain Faa, my deepest thanks to you in this matter.’

  Later, when Captain Faa had departed to be fed and bedded down for what remained of the night, Claverhouse said, ‘One thing is sure; if the Scots Dragoons are ordered to bide in Dundee, there will be others ordered up from the South on our trail; and I am thinking our road back to Dundee is like to be less peaceful than our road up here. Ask Lord Dunfermline and Major Crawford to join me here at their earliest convenience.’

  ‘Will it no’ do in the morning, sir?’ said I, greatly daring. ‘Gin ye had a few hours sleep—’

  ‘We march in the morning,’ he said. ‘Tonight is the time for making plans. May I remind you that you are not old Leezie, my galloper and not my dry nurse, Hugh?’

  But as I was making for the door, he checked me a moment, and when I looked back he was half smiling. ‘We know now why Colonel Livingstone chose to remain with an Orange brigade.’

  So Inverness must wait; and with courteous messages to Lochiel, back we started next day over the long road that we had come, on the chance that we might be able to pick up the Scots Dragoons before other troops from the South could come up with them or us.

  Those troops were coming, sure enough; word of them reached us about Cairn-o’-Mount, between Northesk and the Dee. General MacKay, him that had served with Claverhouse in the Low Countries in their young days, was out from Edinburgh with two hundred of the Scots Dragoons and the whole of Colchester’s Horse (and four companies of the very Scots Dragoons from Dundee, that we were on the march to pick up – but that was a piece of ill news we did not learn until later). He was at Fettercairn only a few miles off when our scouts picked him up. And, said Claverhouse when they brought in their report, ‘At the moment I have more pressing matters on hand than a tangle with MacKay.’ So we took to the hills and left the Government troops to pound around looking for us on an empty road. And that evening – eh, but we were weary – we rode into Huntly, fifty miles away.

  We had lost our chance, for that time, of picking up Colonel Livingstone and the Dragoons. But we had got rid of MacKay; and we turned back to the earlier plan, and headed for Inverness.

  We rode in four days later, on a fine clear evening with the cloud-feathered hills of Sutherland across the Moray Firth looking near enough to touch; and found Coll MacDonald of Keppoch waiting for us with seven hundred Highlanders to his tail. Leastwise, they were sitting there outside the tumbledown palisade which was all the place had by way of walls, demanding four thousand marks from the burgesses as their price for not sacking the town.

  Coll MacDonald of Keppoch! Half a head taller than the tallest of his clansmen, and like them wearing the philibeg under his plaid instead of the trews that any Highland gentleman would be wearing; looking out from a bush of hair and beard as red as fire, with eyes that were the pale pure blue of snow-shadows on a sunny day. More like something out of Amryclose’s ancient legends – Finn MacCool, maybe – than any man of the present day. And him filled with honest bewilderment when, the four thousand marks being paid, as seemingly they had to be, Claverhouse was not happy, but went surety for it himself that the money should be returned when the King came to his own again. Inverness was a MacIntosh town, the huge man pointed out, and there was blood feud between the MacIntoshes and the Keppoch MacDonalds; and himself happening to be there and with seven hundred men to his back, surely my lord Dundee could see that ’twas the only reasonable thing to do.

  I doubt Dundee saw it as clear as that. But there was no more that he could do about it, and he did see that with seven hundred well-armed clansmen to add to the rest of us, he could turn back on MacKay and finish him once and for all.

  It had been fixed with Lochiel that we should meet him in Glen Roy of Lochaber, on May 18, the day that he had appointed for the clan-gathering to begin; and so there was time, if the luck were with us, both for MacKay and for picking up Colonel Livingstone and his Dragoons.

  But it was the first time Claverhouse had had to deal with Highlanders; though I am thinking that he must have guessed what might happen, seeing that it had happened to his beloved Montrose, forty years before.

  It is quite simple: when a Highlander has his booty, he goes home; and Keppoch had his four thousand marks. He was not interested in marching against MacKay. I doubt he had the smallest interest in King James’s cause; or King William’s, for that matter. He had been sent to guide Dundee to Lochaber, and if Dundee would not return with him to Lochaber now, then he would return alone. And return he did, with a wee thing of pillaging and cattle-rieving on his way through Macintosh land. And we must follow him as far as the head of the Spey valley, that, now that we had come as far as Inverness, being the quickest way back to Dundee town and the Scots Dragoons.

  ‘Never did I think to march on the heels of a rabble of bog-trotting cattle thieves,’ said Pate Paterson to me as we rode.

  What Claverhouse thought, there’s no knowing, for he wore his most shuttered look and spoke no word, unless it were to his horse.

  Well, so we left the high hills with the snow still lying in their corries and turned down into the Spey valley. And there our scouts brought us word of an armed band in Dunkeld, collecting taxes – taxes for Orange William, which should by rights have gone to King James.

  So we changed direction somewhat, crossed the Grampians and came down more southerly through the hazel woods where the Garry was running green and swift with snow-water; through Blair and by the pass of Killecrankie which was nothing but a break in the hills without special meaning for us as yet; and into Dunkeld, under cover o
f a good loyalist mist, and took for King James what was rightly his. Weapons, too; we reckoned we had a better use for Dutch muskets than the tax gatherers had.

  It was a good morning’s work, and we off-saddled to let the horses roll, and ourselves rested in the long river-side grass for a few hours, for we had a busy night ahead of us.

  At dusk we took to the road again making for Perth, where a new regiment was being raised for the Orange Government; and in the darkest heel of the night, Claverhouse himself, with twenty of us behind him, got over the town wall – the burgesses having let it fall into disrepair according to their usual custom – and took the gate sentries in the rear. Och, they were a raw lot, and had not yet thought to grow eyes in the backs of their heads. And by noon we were on our way again, with forty fresh horses that had been meant for the new regiment, and a good supply of captured arms and money that had been collected for William of Orange and would now be put to more loyal use.

  And on the afternoon of Monday the thirteenth of May, with the first of the hawthorn coming into flower, we were on the high ground above Dundee. There we waited, as the long hours wore by, for Colonel Livingstone and the Dragoons to come out to us.

  ‘They’re no’ coming,’ said Robin Findlay to me, as we sat beside our horses chewing on grass stems to pass the time.

  And he was right.

  Presently there was a dust-cloud on the road up from Tayside, but it was only a knot of horsemen, only a few of Claverhouse’s friends who had not joined him when he raised the royal standard, and had second thoughts and come to join him now.

  Aye, and ill news they brought with them, for beside the loss of the Dragoons, Colonel Livingstone was taken, and in gaol in Edinburgh in peril of his life; and most of his officers with him. Who had betrayed him there was no knowing; and so far as I am concerned, there is no knowing to this day. There was a new man, an Orange man, Balfour by name, in command of the remaining Dragoons; and the Provost and bailies of Dundee had had the gates shut and barricaded, allowing no one in or out.

  ‘Do they think I am going to sack the town, with less than two hundred men?’ Claverhouse said.

  Nevertheless, we waited until dusk. Maybe he had a hope, even then, that the Dragoons would find a way to break out to him. But Colonel Balfour had done his work too well.

  18

  Meetings and Partings

  LATE INTO THAT night, having left the rest quartered in and around the village, Claverhouse and I, just the two of us, came riding into Glenogilvie. He had spoken not one word all the way, and we rode in silence save for our horses’ hoof-beats and the creak and jingle of saddle leather and accoutrements.

  I had wondered earlier that he had made no attempt before we had left to make for Dudhope and snatch a glimpse of Lady Jean and the bairn. But when we came riding up the burnside and saw the glimmer of light from the unshuttered window of the bower and the signs of life and movement about the place, the truth dawned upon me.

  When we rode into the narrow courtyard the house door stood ajar, late as it was, as though the old house was expecting us. One of the Dudhope grooms came to take the horses. I heard a sudden frenzied barking somewhere, and as I dropped from the saddle, Caspar came with flying ears and tail to meet me.

  I began to feel as though I were in some kind of dream, as I followed Dundee into the hall. There was a feeling of people nearby, and I caught the smell of cooking wafting out of the kitchen quarters, that brought the soft warm hunger-water to my mouth as I turned after Dundee towards the door of the bower which also stood open.

  In the bower, the tapers burned crocus-flamed on the mantel and on a table near the window, and there was a fragrant waft of burning wood from the low fire on the hearth. And in the great cushioned chair beside the hearth sat my lady Jean, her foot on the rocker of the heavy carved wooden cradle at her side. I mind she had a green gown on, like the sun on young beech leaves; and her hair had come out of its fashionable curls – maybe she had let it loose on purpose – and was caught back with a ribbon as she had used to wear it when I first knew her. She looked young, that way; only a lassie still, and like the lassie that had given her word to Colonel John Graham in the Abbey ruins at Paisley, more than five years ago.

  And on the rug before the hearth, Darklis sat among the tumble of outflung russet skirts, with her lute lying in her lap. But her hand had fallen away from the strings, as my lady’s foot had fallen still on the cradle-rocker, and both of them were looking towards the door, and for that moment not moving at all.

  There were no explainings or greetings; it was as though we had all four of us just come by old and sure arrangement to a moment that had been waiting for us for a long time.

  Claverhouse did not even speak my lady’s name, nor make any move towards her, not at first. He just stood within the doorway, leaning against the jamb as though he were very weary. ‘I should not have left the Dragoons to wait for me so long,’ he said, ‘but I had pressing need to be elsewhere in the King’s service. If William hangs, his death will be at my door.’

  And my lady said nothing but his name, with an aching tenderness. ‘Johnnie, my Johnnie,’ and held out her arms to him.

  He went to her then, and stumbled to his knees beside her, and put his head in her lap.

  And I had not even the sense to look away, until I found that Darklis had set aside her lute and was beside me with her hand in mine, turning me back towards the door. ‘Come away now,’ she said, “tis a fair night, and you must be saddle-cramped, a wee stretch to your legs before supper will do you good.’

  We did not go down to the pool where the elder trees hung over the burn. Whether she remembered anything of that long-past Midsummer’s Eve I would not be knowing; she had never spoken of it since. But I remembered uncomfortably well, and we had never gone back there again. Instead we went up the glen to where the unkempt garden ran out into a few old apple trees, not enough to be called an orchard, where there was a little garden-house.

  Darklis was right; it was a fine night, with a young moon tangled in the apple branches; and the dew already falling. You could smell it on the long grass – too long, it should have been scythed, but in a place such as Glenogilvie, that is only woken from its sleep to be lived in now and then, such things get overlooked.

  Darklis went ahead, her long skirts trailing through it, and Caspar followed after me, so close that he must dodge from heel to heel behind me as a cattle dog does; and I mind the apple blossom that had lost its daytime coral tips was ghost-pale in the light of the moon.

  We came to the little garden-house and ducked in under its moss-cushioned roof. Inside, it smelled dark and earthy; a brown smell; and I could scarcely see Darklis as she sat down on the bench and drew her wide skirts close to make room for me. Caspar jumped up beside me, and lay down half across my thigh, and I felt his long belly-hair cold-wet with the dew when I put my hand round him to draw him close.

  I put my other hand out and Darklis’s came somehow to find it in the dark.

  We sat there talking a little, but mostly in silence a long time, while the young moon, slipping lower in the glimmering sky, began to silver the threshold of the garden-house and make a water paleness among the shadows so that we could see each other again.

  ‘I’m no’ just sure whether I’m waking or dreaming,’ I said.

  ‘And why would that be?’ said she, laughing at me a little.

  ‘Och – because yestere’en – even today the noon – I’d no’ thought that tonight I would be sitting here in the garden at Glenogilvie wi’ you and Caspar,’ I said. ‘I wondered why himself didna spare a wee while for Dudhope.’

  ‘When we heard about Colonel Livingstone, Jean got word to Mr Haliburton – he being set to join you —’

  ‘Aye, he joined us this afternoon, wi’ a few more.’

  ‘—that now there was nothing more to hold to Dudhope for, she would be here, the night, if he could come.’

  ‘And tomorrow? Will it be back to Dudhope?
’

  ‘I think we will be biding here a while,’ said Darklis. ‘This place has more the feeling of sanctuary about it than Dudhope has… And you? Where is it for himself and you, in the morning?’

  ‘Northward again,’ I told her. ‘In four days’ time we must be in Glen Roy, in Lochaber. Lochiel has offered Claverhouse himself and his clansmen, and Glen Roy for a gathering place; and the gathering of the chiefs is fixed for the eighteenth. The Fiery Cross is already going round.’ (I was quoting Amryclose, that bit, half Highlander that he was.)

  I heard her catch her breath. ‘Aye me, that has a brave sound and a fearsome sound to it.’

  There was a little shaken silence between us. Caspar turned his head and licked my wrist; and I began to fondle his ears, feeling how the silky dome of his head fitted into the hollow of my hand. And suddenly I was wondering, as I had not quite wondered at any parting-time before, whether I should ever feel the loving warmth of Caspar’s head pushing up into the hollow of my hand again.

  ‘Ye’ll take care of Caspar for me,’ I said.

  I had said it so often before, and I knew that there was no need to say it; but as usual the other things, the things that there was an ache in me to say, could not be said.

  Darklis slipped her hand out of mine. ‘If I am to look after Caspar for ye yet again, then ’tis but fair return that ye should look after something for me,’ she said; and when I looked round, she was taking something from the breast of her gown, holding it out to me.

  In the faint moon-water light, I saw what it was. Like a heather sprig made of haw-frost in her fingers.

  ‘Darklis, no,’ I said, ‘not your bonnie pin.’

  ‘Take it.’ It was a command, though a whispered one. ‘I would have given it ye before – the day ye followed the King’s standard from Dundee Law; but there were so many folk all around, and – I think ’twas in my mind that ye would be back before long, anyway.’