Bonnie Dundee (21 page)

Then she sprang down, and as her feet touched the ground, the trumpets were sounding for the march.

WE RODE NORTH,
the Grampians lifting on our left fiercely dark against a cold harshness of blue sky; and the wind was from the east, laying the moorland grasses over all one way. We crossed the Dee at Kincardine and headed for Huntly country, descending that first night on a wee dour-faced clachan where the welcome was as chill as the wind, and the folk grudged us even the shelter of byres and linhays till they saw the colour of Dundee’s silver.

Presently, bearing westward, we came down into the broad vale of the Moray Firth. And after each hard day in the saddle, Dundee would sit far into the night in whatever quarters he had, writing letters to the lairds along the way, to summon them to the King’s standard. Quite a few came, amongst them an old friend, Lord Dunfermline, out from Gordon Castle to join us where we crossed the Spey; and with him sixty men of the Atholl country; long-legged Highlanders who could cover the hills on foot at night on the speed of cavalry. And so we were upward of two hundred strong when we came to Elgin.

Aye, and by that time the great Lochiel, Chief of the Camerons, had sent offering his allegiance and that of his clan, and his man MacDonald of Keppoch with a strong force to meet us at Inverness and escort us in to Lochaber.

At Elgin, Dundee made his headquarters for the night in an inn close behind the half-ruined cathedral –
the Lantern of Moray, it used to be called, so I’ve heard, but that was in the days before most of it stood open to the sky. Eh well, its kirkyard made a good enough place to pen the horses. The private chamber they had given him was over the taproom, and I heard the clatter of the tankards and the high-pitched gaelic voices that broke now and again into song, as I put out his gear and saw about getting him some supper. The man generally forgot to eat when he was on campaign, unless somebody saw to all that for him; and as I have said before, I had come by then to be to him much what a squire was to his knight in olden times.

So I had badgered the surly landlord who wanted nothing to do with Redcoats arriving late at night when Godfearing folk should be a’bed, into providing a rough meal and a bottle of decent wine and a sea-coal fire, for the nights were still cold though it was coming up towards the end of April; ale and a flask of the stuff the Highlanders call the Water of Life, a foul and fiery brew, but better than any wine for warming the heart and belly of a man dead-weary.

And I was helping himself off with his mired boots while he sat on the edge of the box bed, when there came a rapping on the door, and on being told to come in, Amryclose opened and stood with his tall head ducked under the lintel. ‘There’s a Tinkler chiel would be speaking with ye, Dundee. Says he brings word from Jean – though why my lady should have entrusted such a tattybogle —’

Dundee was on his feet, with one boot off and one still on.

‘Send him in, Philip.’

Amryclose sighed, and ducked his head back from under the lintel; and into the room, with the light prowling step of a mountain cat, came Captain Faa.
The splendid wreckage of the mulberry velvet coat was gone; the coat he wore now was the wreckage of mere homespun; there was a filthy rag tied round his neck, and his bonnet sported a knot of wild cherry blossom that hung rakishly over one eye; but having once seen that sly brown face with its glinting humour, and looked into those strange yellow eyes, there could be no mistaking the man.

He pulled off his greasy bonnet and bowed; one great gentleman greeting another. ‘Travel-stained I may be, with the speed that I have made to come to your honour,’ he said in that odd tongue that was Lowland Scots with a little of something else. ‘But as to being a tattybogle, I am a gentleman like yourself, and a chief among my own kind.’

‘I would apologise for my friend’s mistake, if there was time,’ said Dundee with a hint of a smile, holding out his hand. ‘You have a letter for me?’

‘No letter,’ said Captain Faa. ‘It seemed best that there should be no letter to be found on me if I were searched. All that I bring you is safe in my head.’

‘Then sit you down and tell me the news that you bring.’ Dundee sat down again on the edge of the bed, while Captain Faa seated himself on the room’s one chair.

‘A drop of the Water of Life would not be coming amiss,’ he said.

Claverhouse pushed the stone flask across the table to him. ‘I apologise on my own behalf. Now your news.’

I would have left the room, but Dundee gestured me to bide, so I bided, and became part of the furniture. One does not spend months and years as a general’s galloper without learning how to do that.

Captain Faa took a long pull at the flask, and set it down, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘In the first place, the Earl of Balcarres has been arrested and is held under guard in his own house. They say he made no trouble; no trouble at all, the douce mannie.’

I saw the frown deepen between Dundee’s black brows, but that was all.

‘In the second place, your lordship has been proclaimed rebel and fugitive at Dundee market cross.’

‘That was to be expected. Your news, man!’

‘In the third place – six companies of the Scots Dragoons under Colonel Livingstone arrived at Dundee eight days since, sent to arrest yourself.’ He took another pull at the flask. ‘Och, that warms a man’s bones.’

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 of 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.