Bonnie Dundee Read online

  ‘You are taking your drawing gear with you, then?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘One thing at a time; an’ it’s no’ the time for making pictures. I was going to ask you, would you be taking care of the things for me, while I am away?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ she said, with her face still turned away; and then she turned and looked full at me in the lantern light, and I saw that she did care about my going, after all.

  ‘Oh, Hugh,’ she said, ‘and you so grand and tall in that red coat, wi’ your chin cocked up and the fine cruel sword at your side. But I’m thinking, ye’ll make a better painter than ever ye will a sojer, when all’s said an’ done.’

  ‘I’m thinking the same, mebbe,’ I told her, ‘But I’ll just have to be the best sojer I can. For I must be following Claverhouse.’

  ‘Aye, you’re good followers, both of you,’ she said. ‘Caspar, too.’

  And at the sound of his name Caspar, who was sitting beside me, looked up and thumped his disreputable plume of a tail behind him.

  ‘Caspar was the other thing,’ I said. ‘I was coming to find ye if ye hadna come to find me. Will ye be keeping Caspar for me too?’

  ‘Will ye no’ be taking him, either?’ she said – for often the troops marched with a rag-tag of dogs among the baggage train, that came in handy for poaching.

  ‘No,’ I said, reaching down to fondle the soft places behind his ears. ‘He’s no’ the sort, not wi’ his little legs an’ all. An’ I couldna bear it if – if harm came to him.’

  Darklis squatted down in the midst of her flouncy petticoats, and held out her hands to him. They had been good friends since the night I bought him back from Lady Mary Fair. ‘Caspar,’ she said softly, ‘will ye bide wi’ me, and we’ll wait together till the bonnie lad comes back from his bonnie war?’

  And Caspar put out his long frilled tongue and licked her hand.

  So I knew that I need have no fears for Caspar.

  ‘I’ll leave him to guard my bed.’

  Somewhere in Caspar’s fantastically mingled ancestry there must have been a cattle dog. We always had to keep him tied up when the drovers came by, or he would be off to lend a hand to their dogs, which might not be over well received. Failing cattle, he would round up anything that came his way, ducklings, maybe, or even a bed of tulips, and the best way of keeping him from following me when I had to leave him behind was to set him to guard my bed. There he would lie nose on paws, putting the power of his eye on the piled straw and the rough folded rug, as the best sheep and cattle dogs do, to make sure that it did not scatter but stayed where I had left it.

  She shook her head. ‘No; if you do that he’ll maybe no’ come away for me. I’ll come for him tomorrow, before you ride away.’

  She got up and shook out her skirts, and it seemed as though she was going. But then she checked, and her eyes had a shadowy look to them in the lantern light. ’Twill be hard for you, among your own hills,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ I told her. ‘That is why I have to go now, an’ not wait for an easier time.’

  ‘I said you were a good follower.’ She reached up and took my face between her hands and drew it down and kissed me. The first time ever.

  ‘God be with ye, Hugh Herriot,’ she said. And she turned and gathered her skirts and went much too fast down the steep loft stair.

  12

  The Killing Time

  SO I RODE down into Ayrshire, with King James’s red coat on my back; into the rolling hills and the boggy moors of my mother’s country, in the stormy sun-shot April weather. And I learned my soldiering on the hoof, as Claverhouse had said. I had always been able to ride anything on four legs, and I knew the bugle calls by heart and the pattern of camp and quarters life that I had picked up in the time since Colonel Graham and his troops came to Paisley. Also I knew something of the country; so though I had never until that time handled sword or pistol, I am thinking that I pulled my weight in the troop none so ill. Also the horse I rode, a raw-boned Galloway gelding with a streak of Spanish blood in him – Jock, his name was – was a trained cavalry mount and knew the job even when I did not. So between us we managed well enough. I was a raw enough recruit when we rose south westward, but I learned; aye, I learned…

  From merchants and Scottish sea captains I have heard over the past few years that in Scotland the time that followed is now often enough called ‘The Killing Time’, and Claverhouse named ‘Bloody Claver’se’ for his part in it. But raw recruit though I was, I rode with the man through those weeks, and I will set it down here and now, that maybe two score of men were killed in a couple of skirmishes we had, and half of those were our own fellows or the dragoons that worked with us, killed in those same skirmishes or picked off by snipers’ musket balls from behind a peat stack or a bush of broom; and over and above there, one of the ‘Saints’ was executed by firing squad at Claverhouse’s orders. And I will tell you the way of it:

  As soon as he was King in his brother’s place, James offered a pardon to all rebels and fugitives, if they would take an oath of allegiance to himself and disown the bits of paper that I was telling you of – Renwick’s bits of paper declaring war on the King and Parliament – or failing that, promise to leave the kingdom within two months. If a man refused, he was a traitor and liable to be executed as such, then and there, by a commissioned officer and before two witnesses. That was the law. And you will mind that the whole South West was under martial law by that time. (Most of the prisoners I saw, took the oath or promised to get out. But how many of them kept their promise is of course another question; another question altogether.)

  Well, so we followed Claverhouse down into Ayrshire and Galloway, to deal with them that would neither swear to their loyalty nor take their disloyalty elsewhere. If he had known that he was taking his life in his hands the first time he rode that way, five years before, I’m thinking he must have known it with uncommon clearness this last time of all.

  We had scarce got there when several prisoners at New Mills, waiting to be sent to Edinburgh for trial, were broken out of gaol by a bunch of their own kind, and we were up and away on the hunt for prisoners and rescuers who had all of them melted into the heather, leaving the New Mills dragoons mostly dead behind them. So when, among the hills Douglas way, we came upon two chiels that ran like hares at sight of us, Claverhouse, having learned as you might say to have a suspicious mind, gave orders to be after them. (Innocent men seldom run at sight of a buff coat.) They took to the mosses, being clearly men well used to those parts, where horses would be hard put to follow them; so the best runners amongst us dragged off our boots and went after them on foot, and after a hard chase contrived to run them down.

  And when we got them back, Corporal Paterson who had ridden those hills before, looked at the elder of the two, a big powerful man with eyes like hot coals in his head, and said he, ‘That’s John Brown, him they call “The Christian Carrier”.’

  Now carrying is a trade that makes good cover for the passing of secret letters and the like; and a good few of the Lowland carriers were in Dutch William’s pay by then, what with Monmouth and Argyll in the Low Countries waiting for the tide. And when we had searched them and found no arms, we took them back to John Brown’s house, the Corporal knowing where he lived, no more than a mile further down the dale.

  And there, while some of us stood guard at the doors and windows and the rest of us searched the place, the goodwife standing by to watch with her knuckles crushed against her shaking mouth, Claverhouse asked the older man would he take the oath of allegiance to the King. The man refused, saying that he owned no king, and gave allegiance to God alone. Nor would he deny that he had been among those who freed the prisoners at New Mills. Aye, he was a brave man, and I will not forget his face; for it was the face of a man who will kill, and face death himself, for the thing he believes in, sure in either case that his God is bidding him to it.

  And while Claverhouse was yet seeking to reason with him, one of the
troopers from the search party came in, and reported that they had found an underground room, the entrance hidden under the stored hay in the barn, well stocked with weapons, and with stores and space to shelter a dozen men.

  Claverhouse bade Major Crawford to take over from him in the house, and strode out back with the trooper. I mind the stillness after his going, and the sound of the carrier’s horses shifting in the stable across the yard. Even the woman, who had kept up a kind of low muffled keening all the while, fell silent. In a while, Claverhouse came back; he had papers in his hand, and a cold face the like of which I had not seen on him before.

  ‘John Brown,’ said he, ‘you will scarcely plead ignorance of a hideout under your stable, well stocked with fire-arms, powder and ball and, above all – these.’ And he flicked the papers in his hand. ‘Treasonable letters from Holland, enough to bring a man to the death penalty five times over. Have you any defence to make?’

  ‘None that I will make to you, who have slaughtered so many of my brethren for the following of God’s word and the Covenant,’ said the man.

  Claverhouse went a wee thing white under the wind-tan of his face. ‘Very well, then, I shall now slaughter yet another,’ he said; and to Pate Paterson, ‘Corporal, make ready a four-man firing squad.’

  Pate began picking out his men. I was sweating lest I be one of them, but I need have had no fear of that, having too little skill with a carbine as yet for such sorry service. Claverhouse said quickly to the Lieutenant, who had come in after us, ‘Keep the woman inside, Barclay.’ And two of our troopers who had been holding John Brown between them turned him to the door.

  He walked between them as steady as a rock, and the firing squad followed after. Claverhouse went out last of all, Major Crawford with him. The woman shrieked and made to rush after them, but I grabbed a hold of her, and Rob Rutherford, the biggest man in the troop, strode in front of the door and slammed it shut.

  ‘No, mistress, better not,’ Lieutenant Barclay said. I let go of her, now that the door was safely shut, and glad enough to do so; and she backed into a corner and began to rave at us, pulling down her hair and clawing at her own face.

  I tried to listen to her raving, because that would be better than listening to what went on outside. But I heard what went on outside, all the same. The ordered tramp of feet, and then the clatter of carbines being unslung, and the hoarse fervent sound that was John Brown praying to his God. My mouth felt very dry. Then the praying stopped. I heard a snapped-out order, and then the sharp rattle of the carbines. Four shots almost together, but not quite.

  In a little, Claverhouse came back, and the Major with him. The woman rushed past them through the open door, none offering her let or hindrance, now; and we heard her wailing and sobbing and cursing us over her man’s body outside.

  ‘Leave her be,’ Dundonel said, ‘she is like enough as guilty as he, but it is her right to be alone with him now.’

  Then he turned to the younger man, who all this while had been slumped on a creepy-stool, staring at the ground and sweating. You could smell the sweat on him, the rank smell of fear. The troopers on either side of him hauled him to his feet, and he stood there, his mouth slack and trembling, and his eyes wide and dull with terror.

  Claverhouse demanded his name, and he replied, so well as he could for the fear in his throat, that he also was John Brown, and the other was his uncle. When the oath of allegiance was read to him, he took it eagerly, but when he was asked if he too had been at New Mills, he fell over his words, and contradicted himself, and at last said that he had, but only because his uncle had bidden him.

  Claverhouse stood and watched him the while, with more a kind of contemptuous pity than aught else in his face. He said, ‘I am divided in my mind whether or not to deal with you as I have dealt with your uncle. But indeed I think that you are scarce worth the powder and ball. Therefore I will give you a chance to save your skin. Tell me the names of the men who were at New Mills, and I will delay your execution, and send you instead to General Drummond for trial, as though there were indeed some doubt of your guilt; and I will make the plea for you that you are young and were under your uncle’s hand in what you did.’

  My, but his mouth looked as though there were a sick taste in it, as he spoke the words.

  And indeed young John Brown was not the man that old John Brown had been, for he yelped it all out like a beaten puppy; names and names and names, as many as he could remember; there were close on sixty, he said, in all. Then, all unasked, he began on an account of a great conventicle held by Renwick himself, beyond Cairntable, where there had been upward of three hundred mustered and exercising with their weapons. And again he gave names and yet more names. Man, it was pitiful. Indecent.

  Well, Claverhouse kept his promise. I know, because later that day, in the sanded parlour of the inn at Douglas where he had made his quarters, when young John Brown had already been sent off under escort to General Drummond, I stood by while he wrote the letter. And when it was written and sanded and sealed, Major Crawford, standing beside the empty fireplace, asked, ‘Do you think that will save him? If, of course, he’s worth saving.’

  And Claverhouse said, ‘Every man is worth saving if it can be done. As to whether this will save him or not, God knows. I’ve done my best, David.’

  And he gave the letter to me for carrying to His Grace of Queensberry, in Edinburgh.

  13

  Encounter Beyond Douglasdale

  WHEN I GOT back to the troop some five evenings later, news had come in of another of James Renwick’s conventicles, called for next day on the high moors north of Douglasdale – aye, we had our friends in that countryside, too. And next morning the bugles sounding the ‘Stand to Horse’ gathered us from the houses where we were quartered, almost before daylight. The horses were fed and made ready, and with our breakfast bannock still in our throats, and the sun scarce clear of the hills eastward, we were off and away up Douglasdale, the Brigadier’s troop of Claverhouse’s Horse, and a company of dragoons, heading for James Renwick’s latest gathering.

  It was a bonnie morning, with the pools among the moorland heather and bilberry reflecting back a blue sky and high-sailing clouds, and the whaups skirling fit to break a man’s heart with the sweetness of it, and just enough wind in our faces, together with the wind of our own going, to lift the troop standard back from its lance and let the silver Graham phoenix spread wing on its blue silken folds. I could hear the soft heavy wing-flap of it, for I rode close up behind the cornet and his colour escort, my job being, as usual, to keep as close as might be to Claverhouse himself.

  It must have been close on noon when we came to the foot of the last long moorland ridge, and knew that the chosen village of the conventicle lay beyond it. We set the horses’ heads to the rough track that snaked upward. We rode two by two, the track being not wide enough for more, dropping gradually from a trot to a foot-pace as the slope grew steeper towards the crest; for whatever was waiting for us over the skyline, it would be as well not to meet it on blown horses.

  Just on the crest, somewhat to the right of the track, a spinney of wind-frayed fir trees broke the skyline; and following Claverhouse and the blue-and-silver glint of the colours, we turned aside into the shelter of the trees. Most of us were old hands at this game, and even I, who had been at it only a few weeks, knew about the dangers of getting skylined. So we came down through the trees, and broke into the open again well below the crest on the far side.

  From our feet the hillside dropped away gently through rough pasture and little plots of ploughland where the young barley was silken green, to a narrow burn looping its way between hawthorn bushes milky-flecked with their first blossom. And where the track came down to cross the burn, a sizeable clachan huddled close under its roof of heather thatch.

  Across the burn was open pasture, coarse grazing dotted with more may trees and green broom, and then the hills rising again to heather beyond. And on the open pasture land was gather
ed a great crowd of people, a dark multitude spreading up even over the lower slopes of the hillside beyond. And now that we were over our crest, the little wind through the rough grass brought up to us the sound of singing:

  ‘I to the hills lift mine eyes,

  From whence doth come mine aid.

  My safety cometh from the Lord,

  Who Heaven and earth hath made…’

  Next instant a shot cracked the Sabbath quiet of the hills, and away on our right, well out of range, a dark figure sprang out of the scrub, and went hurtling down the hill towards the burn and the congregation beyond it.

  ‘They have kept their eyes on the hills, all right, but ’tis no’ exactly their aid that’s coming this way,’ said the trooper beside me out of the corner of his mouth.

  Then Claverhouse’s arm rose and swept forward in the signal to advance, and we were heading downhill ourselves on the heels of his raking sorrel, fanning out as we went.

  We passed by the cottages of the clachan, empty save for a few scratching hens and a cow, and came down to the burn. On the far side the conventicle folk were still at their psalm-singing, but a faint movement had begun on the outer fringes of the great crowd, men rising from their knees, and here and there the spring sunlight glinting on a musket barrel or the slim new-moon curve of a billhook.

  On the near bank, we drew rein. The burn was only a few feet wide and maybe a foot deep, lost altogether in places where the elders and hawthorn bushes leaned together over it, but none the less it seemed to form a frontier of some kind, a barricade with the Covenanters massing to defend it on one side, and ourselves tensed for the attack on the other.

  The chanting came to an end, and the ripple of movement was spreading in from the fringes to the heart of the crowd; the solid mass of country folk’s hodden grey hackled with the black streaks of the preachers’ gowns, the glint of weapons that seemed to spring up in hand after hand, as though kindling one from another like torch flames; the faces all turned towards us. That was when I first noticed that there were no women among them, no bairns, no old men.