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29

The
sleet-laden wind screamed and sobbed through
the
pine-wood where
1500
men
lay or crouched, wrapped in their plaids, asleep. When the wind
abated for a moment, the noise of the waves on the near-by loch-shore
filled the night, in its place. It was the
29th
of
January,
1645,
a
month after that celebratory feasting at Inveraray - and dramatic was
the change in the circumstances of the royalist army.

Montrose
himself was not asleep, nor most of his remaining leaders - for
this was only half the company that had taken Inveraray, the rest
having gone home with their booty after the age-old fashion of
Highland armies. He paced the wet pine-needle floor now, head bent,
brows knitted, a man in the throes. Around him his officers watched
and waited, huddled shoulders hunched against the storm. None
ventured to interrupt the Lieutenant-General now, none were
over-ready with advice. It was past midnight, and all save the
sentries had been asleep for hours.

Montrose
halted his pacing in front of an elderly man who sat, eating cold
meat ravenously, on a fallen pine trunk.

'You
say that Argyll has
3000
Campbells,'
he
put to him 'Before we left Inveraray we had word, from the South,
that the Estates had sent sixteen companies of infantry, Lowland
militia, under General Baillie, to
MacCailean
Mor.
Are
these with him now also? At this Inverlochy? Are they included in the
3000.'

'I
know not, lord,' the older man said, his mouth full. He was soaked,
dead-weary, but tough, lean, despite his grey hairs, a notable man if
an odd choice as courier to send over the winter mountains, Ian Lom
MacDonald, the Bard of Keppoch. 'Myself I have not seen them. Keppoch
sent me, just, with the word. He said
3000
Campbells.'

'But
...
a mercy, man - it makes a mighty difference! If it is
3000
Campbells
and
sixteen
companies of trained militia, sec you, it makes a force twice as
strong. How may I decide what I should do lacking this knowledge?'

'Your
pardon, lord. I am but a messenger from my chief.' That was said with
quiet dignity and reproof.

Quickly
Montrose relented. 'Aye - forgive me, friend. I must seem both
graceless and ungrateful.
Your
pardon,
it should be. You have come far and fast, in evil weather, to bring
me this news, and I thank you from my heart.
And
MacDonald
of Keppoch. But - my problem is heavy, my choice hard. To press
forward, as before? Or to turn back?'

'It
is not for such as my own self to advise you, lord. But . . . you
might save much of Lochaber, and Keppoch too, from the Campbell's
wrath.'

'Aye
- there is that also. You do well to remind me.' He did not rebuke
the man that his chief, Keppoch, was no longer with the army, but had
dropped off at his own country, with his men. 'See you - I am between
two fires. Seaforth lies ahead, with
5000,
at
Inverness. Not more than thirty miles away. And now Argyll, you say,
is on my tail, at similar distance, at Inverlochy. If I have to
fight, I'd liefer fight the strongest first, while I am fresh. If
Argyll has but
3000
of
his own Campbells, he is less strong than Seaforth. And in hostile
country, where Seaforth is not. But if he is joined by those sixteen
companies
...
!'

Pate
Graham spoke. 'Strike Seaforth, and you still have Argyll to deal
with. Defeat Argyll, and Seaforth and his Mackenzies will melt back
into their Kintail.'

'True.
Or likely so. It depends on what Huntly said to him. But, if Baillie
is now with Argyll we are up against an experienced general. I know
him.' He turned back to Ian Lorn, the poet. "You heard no word
of this General Baillie, from Keppoch? Or other leaders of Argyll's
force?'

'None.
Save only that Sir Donald Campbell of Auchinbreck leads, under
MacCailean
Mor.
Who
fell off a horse to hurt his knee, they do say.'

'More
like running away!' O'Cahan commented briefly.

'Auchinbreck?
He that was soldiering in Ireland? A hard man, they say. But a
trained soldier. If he has Baillie also
...
!'

Then
there will be no doubt which army will be the stronger. To deal with
first,' Airlie put in. 'I say, Seaforth can wait. Even if he has
Huntly in his pocket. And is reinforced by that fool Balfour of
Burleigh, from Moray and Speyside.'

This
was what had brought Montrose hurrying northeastwards from
Inveraray five days before, in vile weather - the information that
George Mackenzie, second Earl of Seaforth, had raised his great
northern clan for the Covenant at last, and marched on Inverness with
the declared object of linking with Balfour's force skulking north of
Aberdeenshire. Worse, it was rumoured that he had come to terms
with the disgruntled Huntly, who was still in the far North
somewhere, and that it was his intention to enroll much of the Clan
Gordon against Montrose. The Graham could not sit at Inveraray,
whatever the weather, with such a threat building up behind him. He
had decided to dash north and deal with Seaforth, before the
slow-moving Argyll could organise the retaking of his kingdom, from
Roseneath. But it seemed that Argyll, for once, spurred on by
humiliation, had moved fast; and instead of merely setting things to
right in his own territories, had pushed swiftly on to bring fire and
sword into Lochaber of the Camerons and MacDonalds of Keppoch, at
Montrose's back.

‘
Very
well,' he said, sighing. 'We turn back. Seaforth can wait. Let us
pray that he does not convince the young Lord Gordon, whatever
success he has had with his father. For the Gordon cavalry could cost
us all Scotland. We turn back, and at once, gentlemen. This hour we
march, storm or none. See you to it...'

And
so, thereafter, with even Ian Lom MacDonald saying that it was
impossible, Montrose led his force southwards, by the selfsame route
that the MacDonald had just come. The normal route, down the Great
Glen from this Kilchumin where they were encamped, by the side of the
River Oich, Loch Oich, and the long Loch Lochy, to where Spean joined
the Lochy, was difficult enough, in winter. Did they not know it, who
had just come that way? But thereon the Campbells would have their
scouts out, their advance parties probing. To avoid them Ian Lom had
come from Keppoch, in Glen Spean, by difficult and hidden ways to the
east of the accepted route, by Glen Roy and Glen Turret, crossing the
watershed of Teanga and so down into Glen Buck and the Calder Burn.
Then avoiding Abcrchalder and the gap into the Great Glen again, he
had climbed steeply over another small watershed, high above the
Oich's valley, and so down the Cullachy glen to Glen Tarff, the Tarff
leading him down to Kilchumin here at the head of Loch Ness. He all
but wept at Montrose's declaration that so he would lead them back to
Spean and the Lochy. The passes were blocked with man-high drifts, he
said; the rocks were glazed with wet ice; the burns were in raging
spate; the wind was a yelling demon, on the high ground
...

The
Graham patted his shoulder, and smiled. ‘You are an older man
than most here, my friend. You, guiding us, will cross it again —
and take us with you. We will find no Campbells thereon, I vow!
To give word of us. We have done the like before, see you. We will
not be put to shame by your grey hairs!'

Nevertheless,
as they soon discovered, they had
not
done
the like before. There was little comparison, in fact, between the
traverse of the hard-frozen heights, on the way to Inveraray,
and this storm-lashed hell of soft snow, roaring rivers and steep
rock-bound mountains. They could not hasten, with every mile a
challenge to muscle, wind and will, a trial, a torment and an
achievement. By the direct route they had some thirty miles to cover
to Inverlochy, where Lochy joined Loch Linnhe, and where Argyll
seemed to have made his base meantime. By Ian Lom's route it was
nearer forty. And averaged a thousand feet higher.

No
words are adequate to describe that march. None who made it would
ever forget a mile of it. Almost at the start they lost three men,
swept away in fording the icy thundering waters of the Tarff.
Then the fierce rock-climbing ascent of the steep hanging valley of
Cullachy, with its half-frozen waterfalls and deep drifts, only two
miles up to the watershed but two miles of sheer agony, rising almost
a thousand feet, with the south-west, snow-laden gale battering in
their faces. Across the bare peat-pitted high ground of Mcall a'
Chulu-main and Druim Laragan they staggered no more than four miles
from their starting-point and over four hours later, stumbling over
hidden hags and rocks, deafened by the wind, breathless with the
cold, weary already.

From
the heights they slipped and slithered down a desperately steep
burnside into Glen Buck, the valley of the Calder. It was wooded down
there, and more sheltered; but the snow lay deeper and the river was
in high spate. Daylight found them there. Montrose had been
determined that they should get over that intervening high ground
before dawn, however stormy a dawn; for though a thousand feet above
the Great Glen, they had been little more than a mile from it,
parallel, and would have been visible, crossing the open heights, to
keen eyes below on the other side of the Oich valley. That danger was
now past; and according to Ian Lorn there would be no more similar
hazards of discovery until they came to Keppoch and had to cross Glen
Spcan.

The
climb out of the head of Glen Buck and over the high tableland of
Teanga southwards to Glen Turret was the highest of all the route,
reaching
2250
feet,
an unrelenting inferno of screaming blizzard, of sleet now rather
than snow, for over four miles. It took them almost six hours, men
jerking forward with stiff, small steps, numb, almost blind,
falling, tripping. Most of this army was bare-legged, in short
kilts, with only worn rawhide brogans on their feet. Muscular
Highlanders took it in turn to carry the old Earl of Airlie on their
backs - to his own almost sobbing protests but the
Lieutenant-General's commands. Montrose himself went much of the way
his arm linked in his son's. It was mid-afternoon before they were
staggering down short Glen Turret.