Authors: Rosemary Sutcliff
There were around two thousand of them now, and their passing was a sight for sore eyes! The chiefs on horseback, in fine gold-laced coats and plumed helmets, and plaids flung on over their breastplates; their men following on foot, each man with his plaid loosely belted about him, his broadsword and round brass-studded targe; and the banners flying and the great
war-pipes crying to battle… Only a few days before, some of the young callants must have been sitting demurely in St Andrews’ lecture halls, getting a gentleman’s education; others came from the forge or the fisher boats or the hunting; but you could see the fierce joy that was on all of them, to be out with their clans. Alisdair Gordon had told me who the chiefs were, as they came in over the past few days, and a good deal of what he told me I had forgotten, for there was too much to hold in my head, but not all; and so I knew the who and the where-from of some of those swinging by. Sir Alexander MacLean, leading four hundred men of the Isles; Glengarry with three hundred MacDonalds at his back; Clanranald, who was but sixteen, with two hundred more from the Isles and Moidart; young Stewart of Appin at the head of his father’s clan. Then there was Lochiel himself with his tail of six hundred Cameron men, and old Alistair MacDonald of Glencoe with a hundred. There were the MacMartins, yellow-haired giants in plaids that glowed royally crimson and purple. Aye, and there was Coll of Keppoch and his MacDonalds in their green and scarlet, each with a sprig of heather in his bonnet, and their piper playing ‘MacDonald’s Salute’, shameless as ever, and seeing no reason why Claverhouse should not greet them gladly.
Philip of Amryclose was fair drunk on it all. If ever you get to read his
Graemiad
(your Latin will have to be a deal better than it is now) you will know that for yourselves! I will not say that I was stone cold sober myself; but few of us were, that were young and had the hearts hot within us…
For close on three weeks we played hare and hounds with MacKay and the Government troops all across the
southern Highlands, neither managing to bring the other to battle. MacKay with his reinforcements outnumbered us more than two to one, so that we could not afford to take him on in country of his own choosing. And he too had Highlanders with him by that time; followers of Argyll for the most part, with the knowledge of hill country in their bones, even though these were not their own hills. And indeed the game might have gone hard with us, even harder than it did, had it not been for messages, aye, and a few deserters returning to old loyalties, that reached us from the Scots Dragoons.
As it was, the game ended after a four-day hunt down Strathspey, when they reached the open lowlands of Strathbogie ahead of us, and were joined by yet more reinforcements; and there was nought to be done but to retreat in our turn, with failure sitting sour in our bellies, all the weary way back to Glen Roy, to pick up reinforcements ourselves, and wait for the long-promised men and supplies from the King of Ireland.
Lochiel greeted us warmly again, saying that while there was a stirk in Lochaber we were welcome to supper. And some of the chiefs and their tails that we had not been able to wait for in May had come trickling in. But with the waiting, they had begun to trickle away once more. You cannot hold the clansmen as you can regular troops. When there is fighting to be done, they are heroes; but when the fighting is over, their only thought, as I have said before, is to carry home their booty; and kept waiting, they grow bored and drift away home anyway, even with no booty to carry. That, or fall to raiding the country round, or start a wee bloody war between themselves. That had happened, too. And what with one thing and another, Claverhouse must have been sick at heart.
That I can only guess at, for he showed nothing; but I did once hear him say to Major Crawford that he would sooner carry a musket in a decent regiment than command such a rabble of rievers and cut-throats.
I do know that he was sick in body, whatever he was in heart and soul. Hard campaigning and bad food – and not enough of it, for often the best we had was a bannock or a handful of oatmeal in the day, and Claverhouse ate what his men ate – lack of sleep, for his nights were still spent on those everlasting letters that sought to win chieftain after chieftain for the King’s cause; hardship and maybe a touch of dysentery had all taken their toll of him; and above all, now, the bitter loss of a victory over the King’s enemies when it had been almost in his hands; and the waiting, the long-drawn waiting, for the help from Ireland that did not come.
And then at last it came; and that was the worst of all.
For the long-promised help was three hundred new-raised Irishmen, half-naked and all but unarmed, commanded by a Colonel Cannon in not much better state than themselves; and thirty-five barrels of powder and ball – Lady Jean had managed better than that by selling her jewels.
I saw the Irishmen march in. No, that is the wrong word; I saw them come stravaigling down into the glen, and they made even MacLean’s wild islanders look like disciplined troops by comparison. I saw Dundee’s face as he watched them in; that quiet, alert look of his that told nothing of what was going on behind it. Aye, and I saw his face later that evening, in the shieling where he had made his lodging-place; and him sitting at the rough table with his supper plate pushed aside – it was
meat that night, too. He had taken to eating, or more often not eating, his evening meal by himself those past few nights, in order to have time for his letter-writing. Eh, those letters! I am thinking there cannot have been a chieftain in the Highlands with more than twenty men to his tail who did not receive a letter from the general of King James’s forces in Scotland, before all was done!
I was busy at the small fire in the corner, brewing up an oatmeal brose with a dash of the raw heady Water of Life mixed into it, for sometimes when he could or would eat nothing else, I could get a few spoonfuls of that down him, which was better than nothing at all.
I mind the silence in the bothie; just the slow plop-plop-plop of the bubbles rising in the brose, and Caspar’s soft contented breathing beside me – the wee dog was free of Claverhouse’s quarters in Glen Roy as he had always been free of Dudhope – and the scratch of Claverhouse’s quill moving steadily over the page.
The scratching fell silent. Sometimes sleep would come upon him in the midst of his writing, and he would let his head fall on to his left arm; only for a moment, and then wake again and go on writing through the night. I looked round, wondering if I could catch him between waking and taking up his pen again to give him the brose; but he was not asleep, just sitting staring into the shadows beyond the candle flame. It was still a luminous twilight outside, as it would be all through the short northern summer night until the sun rose again. But in the bothie with its small low-set windows, even with the door open, it was cave-dark, and I saw his face only by the light of the candle.
Old, it looked, and weary to the bone, and sick with a sickness that was of more than the body; and the eyes of him seemed to be looking out of it into shadows that
were more than the crowding night-time dark in the corners.
Then footsteps came along the dirt track between the cottages of the clachan, and his face changed as life and resolution came back into it, and all that was not for other men’s eyes was shut away.
Lochiel came stooping his tall head in through the doorway.
‘More letters,
Iain Dhub
?’ said he, sitting himself down on the creepy stool at the other side of the table. The Highlanders had begun to call him
Iain Dhub Nan Cath,
Black John of the Battles, though indeed they had shared little fighting with him as yet, only a few raids and those long desperate marches.
‘More letters, for there is still the need for more,’ Claverhouse said. ‘But indeed I do not know how I should write them at all but for your help. At least, thanks to your gossiping tongue, I know how to write to each man, touching Glengarry in his pride and MacLoughlan in his ambition – aye, and his greed – and Glen Moidart in his loyalty…’
‘And who, this time?’ Lochiel glanced at the piece of paper half-covered with close writing. I saw the movement out of the tail of my eye, for I had turned my attention back to the brose, drawing it to the side of the fire, for Heaven alone knew, now, when I should have the chance to get it down him.
‘Murray again,’ Claverhouse said, ‘there must be some way of getting through to Atholl’s son, if I could but find it. The clan’s sympathies are with our cause, and even Atholl himself, though he abandoned us after the Edinburgh Convention, remains carefully sitting on the fence, taking the waters at Bath for his unknown illness, until the time for decision-making is safely over.
So why in God’s name should his son go over to Orange William, lock, stock and barrel?’ He pulled himself back from the quick rush of words. ‘No, I am being unjust to Murray. To sit on the fence is the worst thing of all. At least he has his convictions – if I could but find some way to break them down…’
‘John,’ Lochiel said, ‘you have had a wasted evening. One of my scouts has just come in – Murray is besieging Blair.’
‘Blair? His own castle?’ Claverhouse said, and I could hear the frown in his tone. For the moment, with sheer weariness, it seemed that his wits were not working.
‘His own castle, his own folk who follow our cause as its garrison, and that staunch King’s man, Patrick Stewart of Ballachin whom you put in to command them,’ Lochiel said gently, filling in the blank in his tired mind. ‘That was what I came to be telling you.’
There was a long thin moment of silence. And then I heard the sound of paper being torn across and across. And Claverhouse’s voice said, ‘What an upside down world we live in, that a man must needs lay siege to his own four walls.’ And then I heard the scrape of his stool being thrust back and overturned as he crashed to his feet. And when I looked round, he was standing there, a man ready for action, with the sickness and weariness fallen from his shoulders, and his eyes bright and hard as sword-steel. ‘Then it seems we march tomorrow.’
Lochiel had risen also, and they were facing each other across the table. ‘What of Colonel Cannon and his kerns? We could be sparing a day or so to get them sorted out? And some of the chieftains who have promised have still not come in.’
‘It would take more than one day to sort that lot out,’ Claverhouse said with a snort of bitter laughter, ‘and we cannot spare more than one. Lochiel, you know it. If MacKay should choose to march from Stirling now, he could be there before we could relieve the place; and standing as it does for a gateway between the Highlands and the Lowlands, Blair Castle must be still in our hands when the King comes.’
‘
If
the King comes,’ Lochiel said in that silken voice of his that seemed to come from the back of his throat; and they looked at each other across the candle. And I saw as though it hung between them, the thought of the pathetic rabble that had come in that day as the King’s promised reinforcements.
‘
If
the King comes,’ Claverhouse almost whispered.
‘This for your comfort,’ Lochiel said at last. ‘The prospect of fighting will do more than three regiments of well-trained reinforcements to unite the clans and make them forget old feuds.’
‘That I know!’ Claverhouse returned. ‘That I know for my comfort, Lochiel.’ He reached for his sword lying on the box bed, and then looked at me. ‘Hugh, my compliments to Lieutenant Barclay, and ask him to find the rest of my officers and the chiefs, and request their presence at Glen House’ (that was the house that Lochiel had lent him, and that he used for councils and the like) ‘within half an hour.’
He was buckling on his sword as he spoke.
And I abandoned the brose I had been keeping with such care; I knew I could not get a sup of it into him that night; and I went to carry out the order, Caspar padding at my heels.
NEXT MORNING – IT
was the morning of Midsummer’s Day – we marched out; still not much more than two thousand of us, for the desertions had more than cancelled out the Irish reinforcements; but with the promise of more clans that would gather to us at Blair. Our first day’s march was to Badenoch to pick up a band of the MacPhersons, and there we bided one day, while two of our officers carried a last appeal to Murray. But they returned at evening on all but foundered horses, with news that ran through the camp like heath fire. Murray had refused to see them, and MacKay was at Perth with his army and pushing on to seize Blair Castle.
So – there was an end to waiting; and next day at first light we broke camp and marched from Cluny Castle with the handful of grey-tartaned MacPhersons that we had gained; over the pass of Druimuchdair and down the way that we had ridden on that swift raid on Perth two months ago.
Even at Midsummer Druimuchdair has no friendly air to it, and its gullies of grey granite are barren of life; but the hills beyond had woken from their winter bleakness, and the first flowerbuds were beading the heather, spilling here and there a faint shadow of smoky amethyst down some sheltered slope, and all down the south side of the pass, after we were over the saddle, the brown pools of the Garry shone through the hazels on their banks, beside the track we followed.
As we came down towards the foot of the pass, the land grew less wild, and here and there an outlying farmstead would come into view, sitting small and solitary, its peatstack beside the door, in some fold of the braeside, with the great cloud shadows drifting over.
Once we came to the place where a cattle-track dipped down from the north, to cross the river by a made ford. And on the far side, tucked in among the roots of overshadowing hazel and alder trees, looking as twisted and as rooted into the bank as themselves, an old woman in an earth-coloured gown knelt washing a pile of household clothes and linen.
I mind thinking it was late in the year for that; mostly the crofter women fling everything out-of-doors and deal with the bed-bugs and wash all things washable in May. I mind also noticing that there was something of a dark brownish-red colour among the grey pallor of the unbleached linen; a shawl, maybe; you could not see, in the cave of shadows under the alder branches.