"Ye've forgotten to pay the score," he said. "Hey, Mary," and the
tavern maid came forward.
The King's shilling that was mine paid for the sergeant's hospitality.
It's the way of the army.
So I became Trooper Bryden of Lag's Horse.
*CHAPTER II*
*TROOPER BRYDEN OF LAG'S HORSE*
After the cloistered quiet of Balliol I found my new life passing
strange.
Sir Robert Grierson of Lag, our Commanding Officer, was a good soldier,
a martinet and a firm believer in the power of the iron hand. He was,
we knew, held in high favour by the authorities, and he had been granted
a commission to stamp out, by all means in his power, the pestilent and
bigoted pack of rebels in Dumfriesshire and Galloway who called
themselves Covenanters. He was quick of temper, but he did not lack a
kind of sardonic humour, nor was he without bravery. A King's man to
the core, he never troubled his mind with empty questionings; his orders
were to put down rebellion and to crush the Covenanters, and that was
enough for him.
My fellow-troopers interested me. Some of them were soldiers of fortune
who had fought upon the Continent of Europe--hard-bitten men, full of
strange oaths and stranger tales of bloody fights fought on alien soil.
In their eyes the life of a soldier was the only life worth living, and
they held in contempt less bellicose mortals who were content to spend
their days in the paths of peace. Of the rest, some were Highlanders,
dreamy-eyed creatures of their emotions, in which they reined in with a
firm hand in the presence of any Lowlander, but to which they gave free
vent when much liquor had loosened their tongues. Brave men all--from
their youth accustomed to hardship and bloodshed--fighting was as the
breath of their nostrils. To me, accustomed to the milder ales of
England, their capacity for the strong waters of the North was a
revelation. They could drink, undiluted, fiery spirits of a potency and
in a quantity that would have killed me. I never saw one drunk; and at
the end of an evening of heavy indulgence there was not a man among them
but could stand steady upon his feet and find his way unaided back to
billets. So far as I could see the only effect of their potations was
that after the fourth or fifth pot they became musical and would sing
love-songs in the Gaelic tongue with a moisture gathering in their eyes
like dewdrops. After that they tended to become theological, and would
argue angrily on points of doctrine too abstruse for me to follow. The
Lowlanders were a curious mixture of sentimentality and sound
common-sense. They carried their drink less well than the Highlanders,
but they too were men of unusual capacity--at least to my way of
thinking--and always passed through a theological phase on their way to
a condition of drunkenness.
I do not know whether my companions found as much interest in studying
me as I derived from observing them. Probably they pitied me, as the
Highlanders did the Lowlanders. I had not been born in Scotland: that,
in their eyes, was a misfortune which almost amounted to a disgrace. My
incapacity to rival them in their potations, and my inability to take
part in their theological discussions, made them regard me with
something akin to contempt. Once I overheard a Highlander whisper to a
Lowlander, "Surely she iss a feckless creature," and I guessed with a
feeling of abasement that he was speaking of me. On the whole, they
treated me with a rude kindliness, doing all they could to make me
acquainted with the elements of the rough-and-ready discipline which was
the standard of the troop, and protecting my ignorance, whenever they
dared, from the harsh tongue of the sergeant-major.
We were mounted men, but our weapons were those of foot-soldiers. Our
horses, stout little nags, known as Galloways, were simply our means of
conveyance from place to place. If we had been called upon to fight, we
should probably have fought on foot, and we were armed accordingly, with
long muskets which we bore either slung across our shoulders or
suspended muzzle-downwards from our saddle-peaks.
Equipped for rapid movement, we carried little with us save our weapons:
but under his saddle-flap each dragoon had a broad metal plate, and
behind the saddle was hung a bag of oatmeal. When we bivouacked in the
open, as many a time we did, each trooper made for himself on his plate,
heated over a camp fire, a farle or two of oat-cake, and with this
staved off the pangs of hunger. It was, as the sergeant had said, a
man's life--devoid of luxury, compact of hardship and scanty feeding,
with little relaxation save what we could find in the taverns of the
towns or villages where we halted for a time.
In my ignorance, I had thought that when we set out from Dumfries to
march through Galloway we should find, opposed to us somewhere, a force
of Covenanters who would give battle. I had imagined that these rebels
would have an army of their own ready to challenge the forces of the
King: but soon I learned that our warfare was an inglorious campaign
against unarmed men and women. We were little more than inquisitors.
In the quiet of an afternoon we would clatter up some lonely road to a
white farm-house--the hens scattering in terror before us--and draw rein
in the cobbled court-yard.
Lag would hammer imperiously upon the half-open door, and a terrified
woman would answer the summons.
"Whaur's the guid-man?" he would cry, and when the good-wife could find
speech she would answer:
"He's up on the hills wi' the sheep."
"Think ye," Lag would say, "will he tak' the Test?"
"Ay, he wull that. He's nae Whig, but a King's man is John,"--and to
put her words to the proof we would search the hills till we found him.
When found, if he took "The Test," which seemed to me for the most part
to be an oath of allegiance to the King, with a promise to have no
dealings with the pestilent Covenanters, we molested him no further, and
Lag would sometimes pass a word of praise upon his sheep or his cattle,
which would please the good-man mightily.
But often our raids had a less happy issue. As we drew near to a house,
we would see a figure steal hastily from it, and we knew that we were
upon the track of a villainous Covenanter. Then we would spur our
horses to the gallop and give chase: and what a dance these hill-men
could lead us. Some of them had the speed of hares and could leap like
young deer over boulders and streams where no horse could follow. Many a
sturdy nag crashed to the ground, flinging its rider who had spurred it
to the impossible; and if the fugitive succeeded in reaching the vast
open spaces of the moorland, many a good horse floundered in the bogs to
the great danger of its master, while the fleet-footed Covenanter, who
knew every inch of the ground, would leap from tussock to tussock of
firm grass, and far out-distance us.
Or again, we would learn that someone--a suspect--was hiding upon the
moors, and for days we would search, quartering and requartering the
great stretches of heather and bog-land till we were satisfied that our
quarry had eluded us--or until, as often happened, we found him.
Sometimes it was an old man, stricken with years, so that he could not
take to flight: sometimes it was a mere stripling--a lad of my own
age--surrounded in his sleep and taken ere he could flee. The measure of
justice meted to each was the same.
"Will ye tak' the Test?" If not--death, on the vacant moor, at the
hands of men who were at once his accusers, his judges, and his
executioners.
Sometimes when a fugitive had refused the Test, and so proclaimed
himself a Covenanter, Lag would promise him his life if he would
disclose the whereabouts of some others of more moment than himself. But
never did I know one of them play the coward: never did I hear one
betray another. Three minutes to prepare himself for death: and he
would take his bonnet off and turn a fearless face up to the open sky.
And then Lag's voice--breaking in upon the holy silence of the moorland
like a clap of thunder in a cloudless sky--"Musketeers! Poise your
muskets! make ready: present, give fire!" and another rebel would fall
dead among the heather.
The scene used to sicken me, so that I could hardly keep my seat in the
saddle, and in my heart I thanked God that I was judged too unskilful as
yet to be chosen as one of the firing party. That, of course, was
nothing more than sentiment. These men were rebels, opposed to the
King's Government, and such malignant fellows well deserved their fate.
Yet there began to spring up within me some admiration for their
bravery. Not one of them was afraid to die.
Sometimes, of a night, before sleep came to me, I would review the
events of the day--not willingly, for the long and grisly tale of horror
was one that no man would of set purpose dwell upon, but because in my
soul I had begun to doubt the quality of the justice we meted out. It
was a dangerous mood for one who had sworn allegiance to the King, and
taken service under his standard: but I found myself beginning to wonder
whether the people whom we were harrying so mercilessly and putting to
death with as little compunction as though they had been reptiles
instead of hard-working and thrifty folk--as their little farms and
houses proved--were rebels in any real sense. I had no knowledge, as
yet, of what had gone before, and I was afraid to ask any of my fellows,
lest my questioning should bring doubt upon my own loyalty. But I
wondered why these men, some gone far in eld and others in the morning
of their days, were ready to die rather than say the few words that
would give them life and liberty. Gradually the light broke through the
darkness of my thoughts, and I began to understand that in their bearing
there was something more than mere disloyalty to the King. They died
unflinching, because they were loyal to some ideal that was more
precious to them than life, and which torture and the prospect of death
could not make them forswear. Were they wrong? Who was I, to judge? I
knew nothing of their history, and when first I set out with Lag's Horse
I cared as little. I had ridden forth to do battle against rebels. I
found myself one of a band engaged in the hideous task of exercising
duress upon other men's consciences. The thought was not a pleasant
one, and I tried to banish it, but it would come back to me in the still
watches when no sound was audible but the heavy breathing of my sleeping
companions,--and no sophistry sufficed to stifle it.
Day after day we continued our march westward through Galloway, leaving
behind us a track of burning homesteads, with here and there a stark
figure, supine, with a bloody gash in his breast, and a weary face
turned up to the eternal sky. The sky was laughing in the May sunshine:
the blue hyacinths clustered like a low-lying cloud of peat-smoke in the
woods by the roadside, and the larks cast the gold of their song into
the sea of the air beneath them. The whole earth was full of joy and
beauty; but where we passed, we left desolation, and blood and tears.
As the sun was setting we rode down the valley of the Cree, whose
peat-dyed water, reddened by the glare in the sky, spoke silently of the
blood-stained moors which it had traversed in its course. A river of
blood: a fitting presage of the duties of the morrow that had brought us
to Wigtown!
*CHAPTER III*
*BY BLEDNOCH WATER*
Sharp and clear rang out the bugle notes of the reveille, rending the
morning stillness that brooded over the thatched houses of Wigtown. We
tumbled out of our beds of straw in the old barn where we had
bivouacked--some with a curse on their lips at such a rude awakening,
and others with hearts heavy at the thought of what lay before us. To
hunt hill-men among the boulders and the sheltering heather of their
native mountains was one thing: for the hunted man had a fox's chance,
and more than a fox's cunning: but it was altogether another thing to
execute judgment on two defenceless women, and only the most hardened
among us had any stomach for such devil's work. Inured to scenes of
brutality as I had become, I felt ill at ease when I remembered the task
that awaited us, and, in my heart, I nursed the hope that, when the
bugle sounded the assembly, we should learn that the prisoners had been
reprieved and that we could shake the dust of Wigtown from our feet
forever.
It was a glorious morning: and I can still remember, as though it were
yesterday, every little event of these early hours. I shook the straw
from my coat and went out. There was little sign of life in the street
except for the dragoons hurrying about their tasks. My horse, tethered
where I had left him the night before, whinnied a morning greeting as I
drew near. He was a creature of much understanding, and as I patted his
neck and gentled him, he rubbed his nose against my tunic. I undid his
halter and with a hand on his forelock led him to the watering trough.
The clear water tumbled musically into the trough from a red clay pipe
that led to some hidden spring; and as my nag bent his neck and dipped
his muzzle delicately into the limpid coolness, I watched a minnow dart
under the cover of the green weed on the trough-bottom. When I judged he
had drunk enough I threw a leg over his back and cantered down the
street to the barn where we had slept. There, I slipped the end of his
halter through a ring in the wall, and rejoined my companions who were
gathered round the door.
We had much to do; there was harness to polish, bridles and bits to
clean, and weapons to see to--for Sir Robert was a man vigilant, who
took a pride in the smartness of his troop.
"It's a bonnie mornin' for an ugly ploy," said Trooper Agnew, as I sat
down on a bench beside him with my saddle on my knees. From his tone I
could tell that his heart was as little in the day's work as mine.
"Ay, it's a bonnie morning," I replied, "too bonnie for the work we have
to do. I had fain the day was over, and the work were done, if done it
must be."
"Weel, ye never can tell: it may be that the women will be reprieved.
I've heard tell that Gilbert Wilson has muckle siller, and is ready to
pay ransom for his dochter: an' siller speaks when arguments are waste
o' wind." He spat on a polishing rag, and rubbed his saddle vigorously.
"They tell me he's bocht Aggie off: and if he can he'll buy off Marget
tae. But there's the auld woman Lauchlison: she has neither siller nor
frien's wi' siller, and I'm fearin' that unless the Royal Clemency comes
into play she'll ha'e tae droon."
"But why should they drown?" said I, voicing half unconsciously the
question that had so often perplexed me.
"Weel, that's a hard question," replied Agnew, as he burnished his bit,
"and a question that's no for the like o' you and me to settle. A' we
ha'e to dae is to carry oot the orders of our superior officers. We
maunna think ower muckle for oorsel's."
I was already well acquainted with this plausible argument, and indeed I
had heard Lag himself justify some of his acts by an appeal to such
dogma; but I was not satisfied, and ventured to remonstrate:
"Must we," I asked, "do things against which our conscience rebels,
simply because we are commanded to do so?"
Agnew hesitated for a moment before replying, passing the end of his
bridle very deliberately through a buckle, and fastening it with care.
"Conscience!" he said, and laughed. "What richt has a trooper to sic' a
thing? I've nane noo." He lowered his voice--and spoke quickly.
"Conscience, my lad! Ye'd better no' let the sergeant hear ye speak
that word, or he'll be reporting ye tae Sir Robert for a Covenanter, and
ye'll get gey short shrift, I'm thinkin'. Tak' the advice o' ane that
means ye nae ill, and drap yer conscience in the water o' Blednoch, and
say farewell tae it forever. If ye keep it, ye'll get mair blame than
praise frae it--and I'm thinkin' ye'll no' get ony promotion till ye're
weel rid o't."
"Whit's this I hear aboot conscience?" said Davidson, a dragoon who was
standing by the door of the barn.
"Oh, naething," said Agnew. "I was just advising Bryden here to get rid
o' his."
"Maist excellent advice," said Davidson. "A puir trooper has nae richt
to sic a luxury. Besides, it's a burden, and wi' a' his trappings he
has eneuch to carry already." He paused for a moment--looked into the
barn over his shoulder and continued: "To my way o' thinkin', naebody
has ony richt to a conscience but the King. Ye see it's this way. A
trooper maun obey his officers: he has nae richt o' private judgment, so
he has nae work for his conscience to do. His officers maun obey them
that are higher up--so they dinna need a conscience, and so it goes on,
up, and up till ye reach the King, wha is the maister o' us a'. He's
the only body in the realm that can afford the luxury: and even he finds
it a burden."
"I'm no surprised," interjected Agnew. "A conscience like that maun be
an awfu' encumbrance."
"Ay, so it is," replied Davidson. "They do say that the King finds it
sic a heavy darg to look after his conscience that he appoints a man to
be its keeper."
Agnew laughed. "Does he lead it about on a chain like a dog?" he asked.
"I canna tell you as to that," replied Davidson, "but it's mair than
likely, for it maun be a rampageous sort o' beast whiles."
"And what if it breaks away," asked Agnew, laughing again, "and fleshes
its teeth in the King's leg?"
"Man," said Davidson, "ye remind me: the very thing ye speak o' aince
happened. Nae doot the keeper is there to haud back his conscience frae
worrying the King, but I mind readin' that ane o' the keepers didna haud
the beast in ticht eneuch, and it bit the King. It had something to dae
wi' a wumman. I've forgotten the partic'lers: but I think the King was
auld King Hal."
"And what happened to the keeper?" asked Agnew.
"Oh, him," replied Davidson. "The King chopped his heid off. And that,
or something like it, is what will happen to you, my lad," he said,
looking meaningly at me, "if Lag hears ye talk ony sic nonsense. If thae
damnable Covenanters didna nurse their consciences like sickly bairns
they would be a bit mair pliable, and gi'e us less work."
I would gladly have continued the conversation, but we were interrupted
by the appearance of the cook, who came round the corner of the barn
staggering under the weight of a huge black pot full of our morning
porridge.
"Parritch, lads, wha's for parritch?" he called, setting down his load,
and preparing to serve out our portions with a large wooden ladle. We
filed past him each with our metal platter and a horn spoon in our
hands, and received a generous ladleful. The regimental cook is always
fair game for the would-be wit, and our cook came in for his share of
chaff; but he was ready of tongue, and answered jibe with jibe--some of
his retorts stinging like a whip-lash so that his tormentors were sore
and sorry that they had challenged him.
Soon the last man was served and all of us fell to.
When our meal was over there was little time left ere the assembly
sounded. As the bugle notes blared over the village, we flung ourselves
into our saddles, and at the word turned our horses up the village
street. The clatter of hoofs, and the jingle of creaking harness brought
the folks to their doors, for the appeal of mounted men is as old as the
art of war. We were conscious of admiring glances from many a lassie's
eye, and some of the roysterers among us, behind the back of authority,
gave back smile for smile, and threw furtive kisses to the comelier of
the women-folk.
Near the Tolbooth Sir Robert awaited us, sitting his horse motionless
like a man cut out of stone. A sharp word of command, and we reined our
horses in, wheeling and forming a line in front of the Tolbooth door.
There we waited.
By and by we heard the tramp of horses, and Colonel Winram at the head
of his company rode down the other side of the street and halted
opposite to us. Winram and Lag dismounted, giving their horses into the
charge of their orderlies, and walked together to the Tolbooth door.
They knocked loudly, and after a mighty clatter of keys and shooting of
bolts the black door swung back, and they passed in. We waited long,
but still there was no sign of their return. My neighbour on the right,
whose horse was champing its bit and tossing its head in irritation,
whispered: "They maun ha'e been reprievit."
"Thank God for that," I said, out of my heart.
But it was not to be. With a loud creak, as though it were in pain, the
door swung open, and there came forth, splendid in his robes of office,
Sheriff Graham. Followed him, Provost Coltran, Grier of Lag, and Colonel
Winram. Behind them, each led by a gaoler, came two women. Foremost
was Margaret Lauchlison, bent with age, and leaning on a stick, her thin
grey hair falling over her withered cheeks. She did not raise her eyes
to look at us, but I saw that her lips were moving silently, and a great
pity surged up in my breast and gripped me by the throat. Some four
paces behind her came Margaret Wilson, and as she passed out of the
darkness of the door she raised her face to the sky and took a long
breath of the clean morning air. She was straight as a willow-wand,
with a colour in her cheeks like red May-blossom, and a brave look in
her blue eyes. Her brown hair glinted in the sunlight, and she walked
with a steady step between the ranks of horsemen like a queen going to
her coronal. She looked curiously at the troopers as she passed us. I
watched her coming, and, suddenly, her big child-like eyes met mine, and
for very shame I hung my head.
Some twenty yards from the Tolbooth door, beside the Town Cross, the
little procession halted, and the town-crier, after jangling his cracked
bell, mounted the lower step at the base of the cross and read from a
big parchment:
"God save the King! Whereas Margaret Lauchlison, widow of John
Mulligan, wright in Drumjargon, and Margaret Wilson, daughter of Gilbert
Wilson, farmer in Penninghame, were indicted on April 13th, in the year
of grace 1685 before Sheriff Graham, Sir Robert Grierson of Lag, Colonel
Winram, and Captain Strachan, as being guilty of the Rebellion of
Bothwell Brig, Aird's Moss, twenty field Conventicles, and twenty house
Conventicles, the Assize did sit, and after witnesses heard did bring
them in guilty, and the judges sentenced them to be tied to palisadoes
fixed in the sand, within the floodmark of the sea, and there to stand
till the flood overflows them. The whilk sentence, being in accordance
with the law of this Kingdom, is decreed to be carried out this day, the
11th of May in the year of grace 1685. God Save the King."
When he ceased there was silence for a space, and then Grier of Lag, his
sword scraping the gravel as he moved, walked up to the older prisoner,
and shouted:
"Margaret Lauchlison, will ye recant?"
She raised her head, looked him in the eyes with such a fire in hers
that his gaze fell before it, and in a steady voice replied:
"Goodness and mercy ha'e followed me a' the days o' my life, and I'm no'
gaun back on my Lord in the hour o' my death,"--and she bowed her head
again, as though there was nothing more to be said, but her lips kept
moving silently.
Lag turned from her with a shrug of the shoulders, and approached the
younger prisoner. She turned her head to meet him with a winsome smile
that would have softened a heart less granite hard; but to him her
beauty made no appeal.
"Margaret Wilson," he said, "you have heard your sentence. Will ye
recant?"