by Fiona Faris
Cailean felt both nervous and alert. His father was angry at the audacity of the MacGregor raid and the weakness it had exposed in the Castle defenses. But it was a simmering anger that could boil over at any small cause, and Cailean did not want to supply such a cause. Someone would pay dearly for this, and he hoped it would not be him. He wanted above all to ensure that it would be the MacGregors who paid and who paid dearly.
Cailean stopped a safe distance from the swirling sword.
“You wanted to speak to me, Father.”
Neil lowered the longsword and walked over to his son. He placed the tip of the blade on the floor and his chin on the pommel, resting his hands limply over the crosspiece.
“That I did, Cailean, that I did.”
Cailean swallowed nervously but met his father’s gaze without flinching. He knew he was being tested. His father would already have decided what he was going to do; however, he would also want to make a lesson of the interview to his son and heir. Cailean hoped he would acquit himself well and give what his father would consider to be the correct and proper responses. Only then would he confirm to his father that he would be a fit successor to the chiefdom. It was a perpetually ongoing test.
“We cannot let it go unpunished,” Cailean began confidently. “The sentries have been lax; at the very least, we need to reprimand the captain of the guard. And that damned drain needs to be filled in as soon as possible. I can’t believe we left a tunnel that leads right into the heart of the castle.”
Neil nodded reflectively. His eyes narrowed as he peered even more deeply into Cailean’s thoughts.
“That has all been done already. What about the perpetrators, the MacGregors?”
Aye, the MacGregors, Cailean thought; what was to be done about the MacGregors was a far thornier issue.
After a moment’s consideration, Cailean gave his firm and unequivocal response.
“We need to come down hard on them. March on Glen Strae, raise Meggernie to the ground and scatter the MacGregors from the land. Not only will they be punished for the audacity of their crime against us, but it will be a useful lesson to the other clans as to what will happen if they try to stand against us. It will let them see what Kylquhurne Castle can do, the control it gives us over the three glens and the eastern end of Loch Awe.”
Neil nodded again, slowly, thoughtfully, stroking his clean-shaven chin as if he were contemplating growing a beard. He continued to delve into Cailean’s soul for a moment longer, with a look that had turned from curious to appraising.
“But what if I were to say that I am reluctant to show my hand just yet, that I am worried that, by acting too soon against the MacGregors, we would damage our longer-term strategy by stoking the resentment of the other small clans in the east of Argyll?”
Cailean licked his lips nervously, with a quick, almost imperceptible serpent-flick of his tongue. By the salty taste he found on his upper lip, he realized that he was beginning to perspire with anxiety.
He thought rapidly. He could not let his father rob him of his revenge on Uilleam, who had humiliated him personally by snatching the bitch, Siusan, right out from under his nose.
“I think that to do nothing, to just suffer the insult in silence, would be counter-productive and damaging in the long run. If you let the MacGregors get away with such an audacious raid as the one they made last night, it will make the Campbells look weak to the other smaller clans and encourage them in their resistance. By making an example of the MacGregors in a show of strength, on the other hand, the smaller clans might be persuaded to cut their losses by capitulating and becoming clients of the Campbells, thereby limiting the damage they must inevitably suffer in the extension of our rule to the whole of Argyll. In the pursuit of our strategy, it might be timely to make such a show of strength against the MacGregors. And remember: the MacGregors are not popular; with their incessant thieving and banditry, they have been a thorn in the side of everyone in the country. The other clans might well be grateful to us when we rid the country of them.”
Neil’s appraising scrutiny then turned to a nod and smile of approval.
“Good lad! I happen to agree. I will immediately send out word to raise the clan. You will march on Meggernie as soon as the clan has gathered. Let us strike quickly and decisively. But this is just a show of strength, mind. We just want to make an example of the MacGregors. We do not want to do anything that will decide the other clans of the three glens to come out against us.”
Neil leaned the longsword against the wall and strode from the room.
Suddenly, Cailean was aware of the cries of the seagulls above the river and loch and the girn of the rooks from the trees and battlements. He could hear the regular clang of the smith’s hammer and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves in the cobbled courtyard.
He felt the tension leak from the muscles of his neck and shoulders. He wondered at the resumption of the world, its sounds bobbing once more like the buoys that marked the safe channels for the fishing boats in and out of the river mouth. It was as if the world had been holding its breath, which, now that the die has been cast and fallen in his favor, had been slowly released. He pulled a silk square from the cuff of his doublet and rubbed it over his mouth and brow.
He picked up the longsword his father had discarded. He felt its lethal weight and the cunning balance which allowed that weight to be wielded lightly. A cold thrill ran through his veins at the prospect of a bloodbath.
He regretted that the course of action on which his father had now embarked the clan would put paid to his prospects of possessing and enjoying the Gunn lass as his wife, his kept woman. However, he consoled himself with the thought that, as he had previously pointed out to the bitch herself, he could easily get whatever he desired of a woman from any wench that took his fancy.
He found consoling, too, the thought that he could also look forward to enjoying Siusan Gunn’s undoubted charms when it came time for the Gunns to suffer the same fate as the MacGregors.
And, he resolved, when that time came, he would make her plead for mercy even as he took what was rightfully his.
Chapter Seventeen
Meggernie Castle
A few days later
Iain Mor stood on the walkway that ran around the roof of the castle keep and peered down the length of Glen Strae in the direction of Loch Awe. Scores of people, a few on shaggy ponies but mostly on foot, were walking quickly up the glen beside the tumbling river.
The rooks that were perched in scattered twos and threes on rooftop and parapets cawed out their omens, as if insisting that the exodus they were witnessing portended no good. Iain’s fingernails scraped the rough stone of the parapet as he clutched and unclutched the claws of his hands.
“What brings them here, I wonder?” he murmured anxiously to Addie, his steward, who had only minutes earlier alerted him to the fact that a host of his clansfolk, his ‘children’, were approaching Meggernie.
“I don’t know, Iain,” Addie responded, “but they are so many and look so sorely pressed that I wat there’s something serious afoot further down the glen.”
Even at a distance, Iain could see that the folk were hurrying. The rooks too were hopping up and down with increasing alarm. There was an intensity to their haste that he did not like; it was as if the very hounds of hell were on their heels.
“The Campbells, do you think?” Iain voiced his suspicion.
Addie drew his lips into a thin grimace and raised his eyebrows.
“That is what I fear. And there must be a wheen o’ them, wi’ murder in their breasts, for the folk to be in sic a stir.”
Iain gazed at the sight with growing concern. They were his children. He, as the ‘father’ of the clan, was responsible for their security and welfare.
“We must make ready for them,” he said.
Addie blew out his cheeks.
“I’m not sure we have provisions to feed sic a number. I’m no’ even sure we can fit them all into the castle
.”
Iain closed his eyes, as a deep feeling of inadequacy swept over him. But this was quickly followed by a flare of defiant anger.
“Have the kitchen prepare whatever food they have,” he commanded, turning with a decisive air to face his steward, “and share it equally around. Take the weakest and most vulnerable into the great hall, and let the rest make themselves as comfortable as they can in the courtyard and outbuildings. And tell Lewis and Gillespie that I said they had to set watches on the walls before joining me in the great hall.”
“Aye!” Addie acknowledged and turned towards the stair-door.
With a final glance back towards his harried clansfolk, Iain quickly followed him.
Iain hurried down the stairs, past the solar, and into the great hall.Already, preparations were being made for the arrival of the refugees. The tables were being removed and stacked at the back of the hall, behind the dais. Fresh rushes were being strewn thickly on the floor, and the fire banked up, the peats in the peat-baskets replenished. The room was filled by a frenetic babble, as excited maids and gilles raced back and forth with their burdens, dogs and children getting under their feet, as Addie and other senior house-servants bawled out orders. The air was full of dust and stour from all the shifting that was going on.
Iain’s heart soared. He was both anxious and excited by the prospect of action. The quieter life he had been enjoying in his old age suited him ill, though he doubted that even his still robust body could survive the exertions to which he had put it in his prime. He stood to the side of the tumult of activity and bit his lip. The hall looked full already, just with the servants; God alone knew how it would accommodate the impending influx of another score or two of his people. And as Addie had pointed out, he would not be able to provide for that many people for too long. Whatever the threat that had gar’t them abandon their crofts and flee to his protection, he must identify it and remove it quickly.
He wove his way through all the activity and seated himself at the top table to await his clansfolk’s arrival.
It was not long before the first of the refugees came streaming through the door. Most prominent among them were the elders of the clan, old and lame, supported by the women and children. The women were wrapped either in bulky saffron-colored arisadhs or in lighter plaid scarfs over linen-and-wool gowns, the children – boys and girls – in yellowed plain kirtles. The elders were all dressed in belted plaids and bonnets. All were barefoot and looked exhausted.
The elders were lowered down carefully into the rushes by the women and children before they collapsed down beside them. The noise in the hall swelled and was punctuated by tired groans and sobs of relief. The air gradually became fuggy and laced with the earthy smell of body odor. Almost immediately, hard on their heels, came servants bearing deep bowls of broth and baskets of bread and bannocks.
The elders and children were distributed them first. Once they had been seen to, the women were served, but as Iain had feared, there was not enough to go around, and some of the women had to share a bowl with a sister, daughter, or neighbor. The few babes-in-arms began to grizzle and cry and were disappeared into the folds of a dress or an arisadh to be fed. Some of the elders coughed and retched. Behind the cacophony of noise, the dried floor-rushes whispered beneath the feet of the servants that passed between the refugees.
Iain’s heart went out to his children.
“Whoever has done this,” he thought to himself, “will pay for it dearly. These old clansmen should be sitting on their doorsteps, warming their bones in the sun, and not turned out onto the road.”
He rose from his chair and stepped down from the dais to be among them. Almost at once, his eye was caught by that of Fergus Colquhoun, one of his father’s old lieutenants.
Fergus was a shrunken wraith of his former self. His head was little more than a skull covered with a tight layer of translucent liver-spotted skin. His bare legs were painfully thin and stick-like, and his head and hands shook with the palsy. A short cromag, as twisted as himself, lay discarded by his side, and a middle-aged woman – his daughter, presumably, but perhaps even his granddaughter – was feeding him his broth with a horn spoon, occasionally stealing a sup for herself. The frosty bristle on his chin was streaked with the soup.
An arrow of sympathy pierced Iain’s heart. He remembered Fergus from when he had been his father’s right hand, fifty-odd years ago, when Iain himself had been but a bairn. Fergus had been a fine handsome fellow then, small-built but with a speed of movement and a wiry strength that had belied his stature, and which few could overcome. Iain nodded in recognition and salute.
Fergus’ watery, almost clear gray eyes beckoned Iain across to him.
“I would gi’e ye my report, Hector Mor,” Fergus said in a voice which was as weak and watery as his eyes.
Iain suppressed a gasp. Old Fergus mistook him for his father, he realized. The poor old soul was doiter’t, living locked in the past. The woman who was feeding him bade the old crone ‘Wheesht’ and raised a smile of apology to Iain.
Iain waved her embarrassment aside.
“Let me have your report, then, Fergus, man.”
Fergus leaned towards Iain and lowered his already weak voice.
“Campbells!” he rasped. “The Campbells are coming. A whole army of them, at least five hundred strong, horse and foot, barely an hour behind us. You must call out the clan, Hector Mor, though I fear the Campbell host may be too great for us.”
Iain grinned.
“What are you saying, Fergus, man? The Campbells are no match us, no matter how many they are.”
Fergus returned a toothless leer and cackled in his throat. His hand scrabbled for his cromag in the rushes beside him. Finding it, he raised it shakily above his head.
“Then call out the clan, Hector Mor, and we shall send the bastards homeward, to think again.”
A wave of affection for the old man swept through Iain. He was touched by the faith that old Fergus had still in the clan and his fierce loyalty towards his chief. Iain had no doubt that, were he to be asked, Fergus would stand in the front rank yet and face the might of the Campbells with nothing but his cromag… and expect to win.
But, five hundred strong… He knew that the strength of the Campbell army was overwhelming. At most, he only had a muster of twenty-odd fighting men at the castle; the rest of his clansmen were scattered the length of Glen Strae on their crofts.
All was lost, he realized; they had no choice but to surrender, to run away, or to fight and die. He put his hand on the old man’s shoulder and squeezed it firmly but gently, then he straightened up and signaled to Lewis, Gillespie, and Addie to join him on the roof of the keep.
Iain strode out onto the walkway that ran around the parapet of the tower and gazed out over the land in the direction from which the Campbells would be coming. He studied the broad, rugged cleft of the glen, the bens that formed its flanks climbing high into the vast expanse of the western sky. He drank in the sight of the Strae, picking its twisting way along the valley floor, through waves of windlestrae and between the sparse ragged copses of writhing silver birks and the massive boulders that the mountains, like angry giants, had tumbled down their precipitous braes. The rooks were still grumbling and complaining among themselves, their irritation sharpened by the appearance of the men who had no right trespassing on their domain.
Iain placed his hands on the rough stone of the parapet and caressed it gently with his palms, before leaning his full weight on it. A breeze had arisen, and Iain breathed in the sharp free air of Glen Strae, his homeland, that smelt so sweet that it almost broke his heart. He could taste that freedom too, on the light misty drizzle of rain that the same breeze carried.
He let out a long breath of despair. Surrender, flee, or fight and die; whichever option he chose, his freedom and inheritance would be lost by the end of the day.
He turned to his steward and his lieutenants.
“This is what I have decided,” he t
old them. “All is lost, but we shall go down fighting. All fit and able men will remain at Meggernie; everyone else will leave under the care of Addie and flee as far up Glen Strae as they can manage and then over the hills, as far as Clashgour if possible. With luck, Uilleam will find them there and lead them to safety. Addie,” he addressed his steward, “collect whatever clansfolk you find on the crofts along the way and take them with you, the men as well as the women and children, the old and the halt. The task of those who remain will be to keep the Campbells occupied for as long as we can, to give the others more time to escape and regroup and to take as many as we can of the devils down into Hell with us. What say you?”
He looked at each of them in turn. Each looked back at him unflinchingly, their features set in grim determination. Even the rooks had fallen silent, and the breeze whispered lovingly in Iain Mor’s ears.
“Need you ask?” Lewis grunted.
