We might well be at our prayers. Appin paid dearly for its merriment in
the land of Cailein Mor, and the MacDonalds were mulct most generously
for our every hoof and horn. For when we crossed Loch Etive there came
behind us from the ruined glens of Lower Lorn hordes of shepherds,
hunters, small men of small families, who left their famished dens and
holes, hunger sharping them at the nose, the dead bracken of concealment
in their hair, to join in the vengeance on the cause of their distress.
Without chieftains or authority, they came in savage bands, affronting
the sea with their shouts as they swam or ferried; they made up with the
wildest of our troops, and ho, ro! for the plaids far and wide on the
errands of Hell. In that clear, cold, white weather--the weather of
the badger’s dream, as our proverb calls it--we brought these glens
unfriendly, death in the black draught and the red wine of fire. A
madness of hate seized on us; we glutted our appetites to the very
gorge. I must give Argile the credit of giving no licence to
our on-goings. He rode after us with his Lowlanders, protesting,
threatening, cajoling in vain. Many a remonstrance, too, made Gordon,
many an opening fire he stamped out in cot and bam. But the black smoke
of the granary belching against the white hills, or the kyloe, houghed
and maimed, roaring in its agony, or the fugitive brought bloody on his
knees among the rocks--God’s mercy!
Do you know why those unco spectacles were sometimes almost sweet to me,
though I was more often a looker-on than a sharer in their horror? It
was because I never saw a barn blaze in Appin or Glencoe but I minded on
our own black barns in Shira Glen; nor a beast slashed at the sinew with
a wanton knife, but I thought of Moira, the dappled one that was the
pride of my mother’s byre, made into hasty collops for a Stewart meal.
Through this remoter Lorn I went, less conscious of cruelty than when I
plied fire and sword with legitimate men of war, for ever in my mind
was the picture of real Argile, scorched to the vitals with the invading
flame, and a burgh town I cherished reft of its people, and a girl with
a child at her neck flying and sobbing among the hills.
Montrose and MacColkitto were far before us, marching up the Great Glen.
They had with them the pick of the clans, so we lived, as it were, at
free quarters, and made up for weeks of short fare by a time of high
feeding.
Over Etive and through the Benderloch, and through Appin and even up
to Glencoe, by some strange spasm of physique--for she was frail and
famished--the barefooted old _cailleach_ of Carnus came after us, a bird
of battle, croaking in a horrible merriment over our operations. The
Dark Dame we called her. She would dance round the butchery of the
fold, chanting her venomous Gaelic exultation in uncouth rhymes that
she strung together as easily as most old people of her kind can do
such things in times of passion or trance. She must have lived like a
vulture, for no share would she have in our pots, though sometimes she
added a relish to them by fetching dainties from houses by the way,
whose larders in our masculine ignorance we had overlooked.
“I would give thee the choicest of the world,” she would say. “What is
too good for my heroes, O heroes of the myrtle-badge?”
“Sit down and pick,” John Splendid bade her once, putting a roysterer’s
playful arm round her waist, and drawing her to the fire where a dinner
stewed.
Up she threw her claws, and her teeth were at his neck with a weasel’s
instinct But she drew back at a gleam of reason.
“Oh, darling, darling,” she cried, patting him with her foul hands,
“did I not fancy for the moment thou wert of the spoilers of my home and
honour--thou, the fleet foot, the avenger, the gentleman with an account
to pay--on thee this mother’s blessing, for thee this widow’s prayers!”
M’Iver was more put about at her friendliness than at her ferocity, as
he shook his plaiding to order and fell back from her worship.
“I’ve seldom seen a more wicked cat,” said he; “go home, grandam,
and leave us to our business. If they find you in Lochaber they will
gralloch you like a Yule hind.”
She leered, witch-like, at him, clutched suddenly at his sword-hilt, and
kissed it with a frenzy of words, then sped off, singing madly as she
flew.
We left the Dark Dame on Levenside as we ferried over to Lochaber,
and the last we saw of her, she stood knee-deep in the water, calling,
calling, calling, through the grey dun morning, a curse on Clan Donald
and a blessing on Argile.
His lordship sat at the helm of a barge, his face pallid and drawn with
cold, and he sighed heavily as the beldame’s cries came after us.
“There’s little of God’s grace in such an omen,” said he, in English,
looking at the dim figure on the shore, and addressing Gordon.
“It could happen nowhere else,” said the cleric, “but in such a
ferocious land. I confess it, my lord--I confess it with the bitter
shame of surrender, that I behold generations of superstition and
savagery still to beat down ere your people are so amenable to the
Gospel as the folks of the Lowland shires. To them such a shrieking
harridan would be an object of pity and stern measure; they would
call her mad as an etter-cap, and keep her in bounds: here she is made
something of a prophetess------”
“How?” asked Argile, shortly, and he was looking wistfully at the hills
we were leaving--the hills that lay between him and his books.
“There’s not a Highlander in your corps but has bowed his head to her
blessing; there’s not one but looks upon her curse of the MacDonalds as
so much of a gain in this enterprise.”
“Oh,” said his lordship, “you are a little extravagant We have our
foolish ways, Gordon, but we are not altogether heathen; and do you
think that after all there might not be something in the portents of a
witch like yon in her exaltation?”
“No more than’s in the howling of the wind in the chimney,” said Gordon,
quickly.
“Perhaps not,” said Argile, after a little, “perhaps not; but even the
piping of the vent has something of prophecy in it, though the wind
bloweth where it listeth. I have only a scholar’s interest in these
things, I give you my word, and----”
He laughed with a little restraint before he went on.
“Do you know, John,” he called out to M’Iver--“do you know what our
_cailleach_ friend says of our jaunt? She put a head in at my tent last
night, and ‘Listen, MacCailein,’ said she, ‘and keep on high roads,’
said she, ‘and Inverlochy’s a perilous place,’ said she, ‘and I’d be wae
to see the heather above the gall.’”
John Splendid’s back was to him as he sat at the prow of a boat coming
close on our stern, but I saw the skin of his neck flame. He never
turned: he made no answer for a moment, and when he spoke it was with a
laughing allusion in English to the folly of portents.
This was so odd an attitude for a man usually superstitious to take up,
that I engaged him on the point whenever we landed.
“You seem to have no great respect for the Dark Dame’s wizardy,” said I.
He took me aside from some of the clansmen who could overhear.
“Never let these lads think that you either lightly Dame Dubh or make
overmuch of her talk about the heather and gall, for they prize her
blessing, strangely enough, and they might lay too great stress on its
failure. You catch me?”
I nodded to keep him going, and turned the thing over in my mind.
“What do you think of the prophecy yourself?” he asked; “is it not
familiar?”
In a flash it came to my mind that I had half-hinted to him at what the
Macaulay woman had said in the fold of Elrigmore.
“I think,” said I, “the less the brooding on these things the better.”
If we had our own misgivings about the end of this jaunt, our companions
had none. They plunged with hearts almost jocular into the woods on
Lochaber’s edge, in a bright sunshine that glinted on the boss of the
target and on the hilt of the knife or sword, and we came by the middle
of the day to the plain on which lay the castle of Inverlochy--a staunch
quadrangular edifice with round towers at the angles, and surrounded by
a moat that smelled anything but freshly. And there we lay for a base,
and thence we sent out round Keppoch and Locheil some dashing companies
that carried on the work we began in Athole.
Auchinbreac’s notion, for he was more than my lord the guide of this
enterprise, was to rest a day or two in the castle and then follow on
the heels of Montrose, who, going up Loch Ness-side, as we knew he was,
would find himself checked in front by Seaforth, and so hemmed between
two fires.
It was about three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon when Argile sent for
M’Iver and myself to suggest a reconnoitring excursion up the Great Glen
by the side of the lochs, to see how far the enemy might have reached
before us.
“I’m sorry to lose your company, gentlemen,” said he, “even for a day;
but this is a delicate embassy, and I can fancy no one better able to
carry it through successfully than the two gentlemen who have done more
delicate and dangerous work in the ranks of the honourable Scots
Brigade.”
“I can say for myself,” said John, “that there’s not a man in Keppoch
could guess my nativity or my politics if I had on another tartan than
that of the Diarmaid.”
“Ah! you have the tongue, no doubt of it,” said Argile, smiling; “and if
a change of colour would make your task less hazardous, why not effect
it? I’m sure we could accommodate you with some neutral fabric for kilt
and plaid.”
“For the humour of the thing,” said John, “I would like to try it; but
I have no notion of getting hanged for a spy. James Grahame of Montrose
has enough knowledge of the polite arts of war to know the difference
between a spy in his camp in a false uniform and a scout taking all the
risks of the road by wearing his own colours. In the one case he would
hang us offhand, in the other there’s a hair’s-breadth of chance that he
might keep us as hostages.”
“But in any tartan, cousin, you’re not going to let yourself be caught,”
said Argile. “We have too much need for you here. Indeed, if I thought
you were not certain to get through all right, I would send cheaper men
in your place.”
John laughed.
“There’s no more cure,” said he, “for death in a common herd than for
the same murrain in an ensign of foot.”
“A scholar’s sentiment!” cried Argile. “Are you taking to the
philosophies?”
“It’s the sentiment, or something like it, of your chaplain, Master
Gordon,” said John; “he reproved me with it on Dunchuach. But to do
myself justice, I was never one who would run another into any danger I
was unwilling to face myself.”
The Marquis said no more, so we set about preparing for the journey.
“Well, Elrigmore, here we are running the loupegarthe with MacDonalds
on the one side of us and Camerons on the other,” said my comrade, as we
set out at the mouth of the evening, after parting from a number of the
clan who went up to the right at Spean to do some harrying in Glen Roy.
No gavilliger or provost-marshal ever gave a more hazardous gauntlet
to run, thought I, and I said as much; but my musings brought only a
good-humoured banter from my friend.
All night we walked on a deserted rocky roadway under moon and star.
By the side of Loch Lochy there was not a light to be seen; even the
solitary dwellings we crept bye in the early part of our journey were
without smoke at the chimney or glimmer at the chink. And on that
loch-side, towards the head of it, there were many groups of mean little
hovels, black with smoke and rain, with ragged sloven thatch, the midden
at the very door and the cattle routing within, but no light, no sign of
human occupation.
It was the dawning of the day, a fine day as it proved and propitious to
its close, that we ventured to enter one such hut or bothy at the foot
of another loch that lay before us. Auchinbreac’s last order to us had
been to turn wherever we had indication of the enemy’s whereabouts, and
to turn in any case by morning. Before we could go back, however, we
must have some sleep and food, so we went into this hut to rest us. It
stood alone in a hollow by a burn at the foot of a very high hill,
and was tenanted by a buxom, well-featured woman with a herd of duddy
children. There was no man about the place; we had the delicacy not to
ask the reason, and she had the caution not to offer any. As we rapped
at her door we put our arms well out of sight below our neutral plaids,
but I daresay our trade was plain enough to the woman when she came out
and gave us the Gael’s welcome somewhat grudgingly, with an eye on our
apparel to look for the tartan.
“Housewife,” said John M’Iver, blandly, “we’re a bit off our way here
by no fault of our own, and we have been on the hillside all night,
and----”
“Come in,” she said, shortly, still scrutinising us very closely, till
I felt myself flushing wildly. She gave us the only two stools in her
dwelling, and broke the peats that smouldered on the middle of her
floor. The chamber--a mean and contracted interior--was lit mainly
from the door and the smoke-vent, that gave a narrow glimpse of heaven
through the black _cabar_ and thatch. Round about the woman gathered her
children, clinging at her gown, and their eyes stared large and round in
the gloom at the two of us who came so appallingly into their nest.
We sat for a little with our plaids about us, revelling in the solace of
the hearty fire that sent wafts of odorous reek round the dwelling;
and to our dry rations the woman added whey, that we drank from birch
cogies.
“I am sorry I have no milk just now,” she said. “I had a cow till the
day before yesterday; now she’s a cow no more, but pith in Colkitto’s
heroes.”
“They lifted her?” asked John.
“I would not say they lifted her,” said the woman, readily, “for who
would be more welcome to my all than the gentlemen of Keppoch and
Seumais Grahame of Montrose?” And again she looked narrowly at our
close-drawn plaids.
I stood up, pulled out my plaid-pin, and let the folds off my shoulder,
and stood revealed to her in a Diarmaid tartan.
“You see we make no pretence at being other than what we are,” I said,
softly; “are we welcome to your whey and to your fire-end?”
She showed no sign of astonishment or alarm, and she answered with
great deliberation, choosing her Gaelic, and uttering it with an air to
impress us.
“I dare grudge no one at my door,” said she, “the warmth of a peat and
what refreshment my poor dwelling can give; but I’ve seen more welcome
guests than the spoilers of Appin and Glencoe. I knew you for Campbells
when you knocked.”
“Well, mistress,” said M’Iver, briskly, “you might know us for
Campbells, and might think the worse of us for that same fact (which we
cannot help), but it is to be hoped you will know us for gentlemen too.
If you rue the letting of us in, we can just go out again. But we are
weary and cold and sleepy, for we have been on foot since yesterday, and
an hour among bracken or white hay would be welcome.”
“And when you were sleeping,” said the woman; “what if I went out and
fetched in some men of a clan who would be glad to mar your slumber?”
John studied her face for a moment It was a sonsy and simple face, and
her eyes were not unkindly.
“Well,” he said, “you might have some excuse for a deed so unhospitable,
and a deed so different from the spirit of the Highlands as I know them.
Your clan would be little the better for the deaths of two gentlemen
whose fighting has been in other lands than this, and a wife with a
child at her breast would miss me, and a girl with her wedding-gown at
the making would miss my friend here. These are wild times, good
wife, wild and cruel times, and a widow more or less is scarcely worth
troubling over. I think we’ll just risk you calling in your men, for,
God knows, I’m wearied enough to sleep on the verge of the Pit itself.”
The woman manifestly surrendered her last scruple at his deliverance.
She prepared to lay out a rough bedding of the bleached bog-grass our
people gather in the dry days of spring.
“You may rest you a while, then,” said she. “I have a husband with
Keppoch, and he might be needing a bed among strangers himself.”
“We are much in your reverence, housewife,” said John, nudging me so
that I felt ashamed of his double-dealing. “That’s a bonny bairn,” he
continued, lifting one of the children in his arms; “the rogue has your
own good looks in every lineament.”
“Aye, aye,” said the woman, drily, spreading her blankets; “I would need
no sight of tartan to guess your clan, master. Your flattery goes wrong
this time, for by ill-luck you have the only bairn that does not belong
to me of all the brood.”
“Now that I look closer,” he laughed, “I see a difference; but I’ll take
back no jot of my compliment to yourself.”
“I was caught yonder,” said he to me a little later in a whisper in
English, as we lay down in our corner. “A man of my ordinary acuteness
should have seen that the brat was the only unspoiled member of all the
flock.”
We slept, it might be a couple of hours, and wakened together at the
sound of a man’s voice speaking with the woman outside the door. Up we
sat, and John damned the woman for her treachery.
“Wait a bit,” I said. “I would charge her with no treachery till I had
good proofs for it I’m mistaken if your lie about your wife and weans
has not left her a more honest spirit towards us.”
The man outside was talking in a shrill, high voice, and the woman in a
softer voice was making excuses for not asking him to go in. One of her
little ones was ill of a fever, she said, and sleeping, and her house,
too, was in confusion, and could she hand him out something to eat?
“A poor place Badenoch nowadays!” said the man, petulantly. “I’ve seen
the day a bard would be free of the best and an honour to have by any
one’s fire. But out with the bannocks and I’ll be going. I must be at
Kilcumin with as much speed as my legs will lend me.”
He got his bannocks and he went, and we lay back a while on our bedding
and pretended to have heard none of the incident It was a pleasant
feature of the good woman’s character that she said never a word of her
tactics in our interest.
“So you did not bring in your gentlemen?” said John, as we were
preparing to go. “I was half afraid some one might find his way
unbidden, and then it was all bye with two poor soldiers of fortune.”
“John MacDonald the bard, John Lorn, as we call him, went bye a while
ago,” she answered simply, “on his way to the clan at Kilcumin.”
“I have never seen the bard yet that did not demand his bardic right to
kail-pot and spoon at every passing door.”
“This one was in a hurry,” said the woman, reddening a little in
confusion.
“Just so,” said M’Iver, fumbling in his hand some coin he had taken from
his sporran; “have you heard of the gold touch for fever? A child has
been brought from the edge of the grave by the virtue of a dollar rubbed
on its brow. I think I heard you say some neighbour’s child was ill? I’m
no physician, but if my coin could--what?”
The woman flushed deeper than ever, an angered pride this time in her
heat.
“There’s no child ill that I know of,” said she; “if there was, we have
gold of our own.”
She bustled about the house and put past her blankets, and out with a
spinning-wheel and into a whirr of it, with a hummed song of the country
at her lips--all in a mild temper, or to keep her confusion from showing
itself undignified.
“Come away,” I said to my comrade in English; “you’ll make her bitterly
angry if you persist in your purpose.”
He paid no heed to me, but addressed the woman again with a most
ingenious story, apparently contrived, with his usual wit, as he went on
with it.
“Your pardon, goodwife,” said he, “but I see you are too sharp for my
small deceit I daresay I might have guessed there was no child ill; but
for reasons of my own I’m anxious to leave a little money with you till
I come back this road again. We trusted you with our lives for a couple
of hours there, and surely, thinks I, we can trust you with a couple of
yellow pieces.”
The woman stopped her wheel and resumed her good-humour. “I thought,”
said she,--“I thought you meant payment for----”
“You’re a bit hard on my manners, goodwife,” said John. “Of course I
have been a soldier, and might have done the trick of paying forage
with a sergeant’s blunt-ness, but I think I know a Gaelic woman’s spirit
better.”
“But are you likely to be passing here again at any time?” cried the
woman, doubt again darkening her face, and by this time she had the
money in her hand. “I thought you were going back by the Glen?”
“That was our notion,” said my comrade, marvellously ready, “but to tell
the truth we are curious to see this Keppoch bard, whose songs we know
very well in real Argile, and we take a bit of the road to Kilcumin
after him.”
The weakness of this tale was not apparent to the woman, who I daresay
had no practice of such trickery as my friend was the master of, and she
put the money carefully in a napkin and in a recess beneath one of the
roof-joists. Our thanks she took carelessly, no doubt, because we were
Campbells.
I was starting on the way to Inverlochy when M’Iver protested we must
certainly go a bit of the way to Kilcumin.
“I’m far from sure,” said he, “that that very particular bit of
MacDonald woman is quite confident of the truth of my story. At any
rate, she’s no woman if she’s not turning it over in her mind by now,
and she’ll be out to look the road we take before very long or I’m
mistaken.”
We turned up the Kilcumin road, which soon led us out of sight of the
hut, and, as my friend said, a glance behind us showed us the woman in
our rear, looking after us.
“Well, there’s no turning so long as she’s there,” said I. “I wish your
generosity had shown itself in a manner more convenient for us. There’s
another example of the error of your polite and truthless tongue! When
you knew the woman was not wanting the money, you should have put it in
your sporran again, and----”
“Man, Elrigmore,” he cried, “you have surely studied me poorly if you
would think me the man to insult the woman--and show my own stupidity at
the same time--by exposing my strategy when a bit fancy tale and a short
daunder on a pleasant morning would save the feelings of both the lady
and myself.”
“You go through life on a zigzag,” I protested, “aiming for some goal
that another would cut straight across for, making deviations of an
hour to save you a second’s unpleasantness. I wish I could show you the
diplomacy of straightforwardness: the honest word, though hard to say
sometimes, is a man’s duty as much as the honest deed of hand.”
“Am I not as honest of my word as any in a matter of honour? I but gloze
sometimes for the sake of the affection I have for all God’s creatures.”
I was losing patience of his attitude and speaking perhaps with
bitterness, for here were his foolish ideas of punctilio bringing us a
mile or two off our road and into a part of the country where we were
more certain of being observed by enemies than in the way behind us.
“You jink from ambuscade to ambuscade of phrase like a fox,” I cried.
“Call it like a good soldier, and I’ll never quarrel with your
compliment,” he said, good-humouredly. “I had the second excuse for the
woman in my mind before the first one missed fire.”
“Worse and worse!”
“Not a bit of it: it is but applying a rule of fortification to a
peaceful palaver. Have bastion and ravelin as sure as may be, but safer
still the sally-port of retreat.”
I stood on the road and looked at him, smiling very smug and
self-complacent before me, and though I loved the man I felt bound to
prick a hole in his conceit.
But at that moment a dead branch snapped in a little plantation that lay
by the way, and we turned quickly to see come to us a tall lean man in
MacDonald clothing.