The Bride

by Margaret Irwin

  A soldier thrust his sword down through the straw; it went clean between Montrose’s legs and hit against the bottom of the trough, and he drew it out, saying ‘Nothing there!’ Then he asked questions and threatened the shepherd.

  ‘If you lie, we’ll pull this house over your ears and leave you both dead beneath it. But if you get a chance to put us on the track of Montrose it will be the best chance you ever got – there’s a reward on his head that would make you rich for life.’

  Now indeed he was awake. Something had woken in him that he had never known before. Those poor half-starved creatures had sheltered and warmed him and given him of their own pitifully scanty food, and were now risking their lives to save his own, when with a word or sign they could buy wealth for themselves and their children for ever.

  ‘Do you live and save the cause!’ Frendraught had called to him, and again and again his comrades had told him, just lately and after Philiphaugh, ‘What do the lives of a few hundred soldiers matter, as long as you live and can get together more armies for the King?’

  But in such a criss-cross of purposes as he had been engaged in all his grown life, it had become too complicated to distinguish any more between them, and who but God Himself could say that his King’s life, or his own, was of any more importance than the lives of a man and woman of such simple faith and goodness?

  When all was quiet again in the house they came and let him out of his hiding-place, and the woman, whose voice had sounded so dull and unconcerned before the soldiers, was shaking all over, and the tears running down her haggard cheeks. He took their hands and thanked them and told them that never again would he put two fellow-creatures in the danger that they had undergone for him.

  ‘You owe me no loyalty,’ he said, ‘and yet you have done as much for me as if I were your chief and your brother. I thank God that you have not come to harm through me.’

  He insisted on leaving them then and there, though they urged him to stay. But he said he would go to the laird of Assynt, young Neil Macleod, who, as far as he could remember, had served under him for a short time when some of the Northern Highlanders had joined his standard at Inverness just before he had left Scotland four years ago.

  He told them, too, of Sir Edward Sinclair, and described the rock under which they had left him by the stream, but it was impossible to say where. Only by chance they might stumble on him.

  The shepherd gave him full directions as to the way to Assynt: if he went on down the hillside and along this valley he would see the loch ahead of him, and Macleod’s castle of Ardvreck on a long spit of rocky land that thrust out into its waters. He stood in the doorway, pointing out the lie of the land in the misty sunrise, then wished Montrose God-speed, and the woman took his hand and kissed it.

  The day brightened as he went down the hill. Sleep and the small amount of food he had eaten had made him stronger. The air was fresh, swept clean of rain, and now the early sun had pierced the mists and was shining on the further slopes where the wet heather and bracken looked as though they had all been spun over with diamonds; a lark’s song soared over his head, rising higher and higher into the pale blue.

  He had left two unknown friends of a condition as wretched as any animal’s, but of a courage and kindness to make glad the hearts of heroes; he was walking to meet a man who had served with him, who had married, he now remembered, into the family of Monro of Lemlair which had been friendly to him. All the freshness of this spring morning shone with his new hope and strength and belief in men.

  Nor was he dismayed when he saw two men walking ahead of him. They were none of the soldiery, he could see, and he called to them and said he was seeking Macleod. They were two of his gillies and offered to lead him to Ardvreck. He was still too weak from his wounds to be able to keep pace with them, but they helped him along, and after some time they saw a great stretch of loch below, sparkling in the sunshine. All round it the hills came down as blue and clear as turquoise to that glassy water, and the great mountains behind, that had looked so monstrous in the stormy sunset of the previous evening, were now pale as faint shadows painted on the mist.

  In this vast circle of the hills the loch was set like a mirror at the bottom of a cup, a mountain-ridge running in an enormous jagged wall alongside it. A small grass-grown peninsula of limestone rock, all the low foreshore whitened at its edges by the water to the unnatural bleached whiteness of bones that have been picked clean by the crows, jutted out into the loch some way down, forming a tiny narrow bay in the shape of a crocodile’s long jaws.

  On this promontory stood a small, neat, delicately proportioned castle, set in a smooth piece of pasture-land where clumps of blue-green flag leaves made brilliant patches in the rusty turf; the mica on its stones glistened in the sunshine; it looked like a pretty toy dropped by some giant child.

  Montrose told his guides they need come no further with him, and made his own way down to the shore. All over that whitened foreshore of low, bleached rock there grew a climbing white rock-rose that he had seen nowhere else, the flowers much larger than the ordinary yellow rock-rose, and dead-white with a golden centre. He picked one as he passed and stared at it, seeing the white starry flowers on the candle-lit table at Rhenen that last night when he had said goodbye to Louey. He had sat beside her mother, answering her gay flicker of talk, and all the time seen Louey’s face through the white flowers.

  ‘Shall I see it again?’ he asked himself, counting the petals of this strange flower. There were eight of them, so he had better not pluck them for his answer, since it would work out ‘No.’ And he laughed and threw it away, knowing himself a little light-headed still from his fever, but not minding since he had now so little way to go.

  A young man was strolling along the shore towards him, carrying a fishing rod. He wore a plaid round his shoulders, and his trews showed him to be of the quality, though he had none of the air of it. Montrose realized that this must be Neil Macleod, but was surprised to see how loutish and unformed he looked. He must be about two or three years over twenty, a fair, fresh-coloured lad with a softly rounded jaw inclined to be podgy, a mild blue eye, and an indolent rather indecisive walk.

  Montrose stood still, scanning him as he came towards him. Yes, he knew him. This must have been the raw young cub of seventeen or so who came with his uncle and a hundred men to join his standard at Inverness.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the young laird, and the ragged scarecrow figure answered,

  ‘I am Montrose.’

  Neil Macleod stared at him, heavily aghast; for an instant it was plain that he thought the man before him must be mad.

  But Montrose went straight on: ‘We were ambushed at Corbiesdale, as I think you must have heard by now. I got away and had these clothes from a shepherd. I have been on the moor since, but there has been no sun till today and I have missed my way and come due west. I don’t know if you are still of the same mind as when you and your uncle Hugh Macleod served under me before. If you are, will you help me get north to Thurso and so back to Orkney? If you feel that you cannot do so, tell me, and I will go on my way as I am.’

  ‘You can’t go like that. You’re ill – I saw you walking. You must stay here first. Are you wounded, my lord?’ There was real concern in his voice, and his smooth face had wrinkled up till it looked like a bull-pup’s. ‘I must tell my wife,’ he added as though he had said the thing that was of most importance.

  ‘I must warn you,’ said Montrose, ‘that it would be to your danger to take me into your house. I’ve sworn not to bring that danger again on anyone who did not wish to run it for their own reasons. Have you those reasons still? Will you come with me to Orkney and help me start our venture again?’

  Macleod had flushed to the roots of his fair hair. ‘My God, if I only could!’ he exclaimed, and then a lugubrious shadow fell over his face and he turned impatiently and said, ‘But we can’t go on talking here. It might not be even safe. You must come back with me, my lord, and at least hav
e your wounds seen to before you go on your way. My wife will wash and bandage that cut. Ardvreck is as secure a place as any in the Highlands. One can see who is coming from miles off – with all that narrow neck of land between us and the shore there’s no chance of being taken unawares. I’ll have my men out. You’ll be safe with me, my lord.’

  He was talking rapidly, excitedly. He took Montrose’s arm to help him along, still talking, with exclamations under his breath: ‘Back on the hill again – to get away – to see fighting again – to be away from the women – God’s blood, if I could do that!’

  Montrose paid little attention to these jerks and starts. He was getting pretty well exhausted again, both with his long walk and the mental effort of putting the case fairly and squarely before this oddly boyish creature. He had to tell him also of Sir Edward and try to describe that rock and stream again and give some idea of the lie of the land. Macleod at once promised to send out some of his men to search for him.

  They nearly stepped on part of a family of young peewit fledglings walking valiantly along the muddy path that had been worn by generations of feet down the middle of the spit of land towards the peninsula; their mother, who was guarding the rest, piped shrilly from the long grass at the side of the road, but her brood merely flapped their minute and useless wings and strode on right under the monster feet that were descending on them. Neil Macleod stopped to chase them to the side; they rushed back again, he had to pursue them, and their tiny legs marched ridiculously fast, before he could shuffle them along to their mother with his large clumsy hands.

  ‘The dogs would get them,’ he murmured apologetically as he rejoined Montrose.

  They stood beneath the castle; very neat and bright and compact it looked, with the green slope of the little peninsula behind. Macleod pointed out the delicate chisel-dressing on one of the towers – ‘that’s very rare in the Highlands’, he said with pride. ‘It was my ancestor John the Grizzled built this more than a hundred years ago, but our branch of the family have been here far longer. My father died while I was an infant, and I inherited the place on my grandfather’s death, long ago, but his second wife kept her own children in possession of it, curse her wicked old soul! It was only last year that we got them turned out of it, and I can tell you it cost a fortune. It was all Christie’s – my wife’s – doing too,’ he added dutifully, as though he had said it a good many times before.

  Montrose’s dazed senses got the impression that his host was really a boy who was only pretending to be a grown married man. He had it still more when as they went into the hall the lad said, ‘It will be a grand little house to leave to one’s children.’

  ‘You have children?’

  ‘None yet, my lord.’ Again there was that lugubrious hangdog puppy look.

  ‘You are very young yet.’

  ‘That is what I tell my wife. There is plenty of time. But we are not lucky. I never had a chance as a child, my parents dead, and my grandfather never gave me any education or care – his second wife saw to that! I was brought up anyhow.’

  His voice had dropped into the whine of one accustomed to self-pity, but it broke off as a servant came forward, and Montrose heard him calling through the rooms on a high triumphant note, ‘Christie! Christie, come here! Who do you think I have here?’

  The servant, a shabby elderly man with thick red beard, who evidently did most of his work in the stables, stood staring at the strange guest; then, as Montrose swayed forward and put a hand on the wall to steady himself, pushed forward a bench for him to sit on.

  He seemed to sit there for hours. Neil Macleod was a long time telling his wife whom he had here. If he did not get some food quickly he would faint before he could speak again. He saw two blurred figures coming down the winding stone stair, he tried to rise, but it was no good – if he did that, he would fall on the floor. The two figures had disappeared and everything went black before his eyes; he held his head down to get the blood back into it, and with a mighty effort kept himself from collapse.

  They were round him now, giving him whisky. He whispered, ‘Bread.’

  A woman’s decisive voice said, ‘Bread indeed! He shall have my best broth.’

  He heard her swish off to get it. If only she would bring bread and not wait for the broth!

  But at last he got food, and then Macleod helped him upstairs and got him on to a bed, brought him water to wash in, got his damp clothes off him and gave him some of his own to wear. Then Christie Macleod came and washed his wounds and bandaged the cuts with firm plump capable hands. She seemed older than her husband, a fine sturdy young woman with a square jaw and shiny brown eyes like chestnuts, the sort of woman one would expect to have a baby punctually every year, so Montrose thought hazily as she bustled round him, ordering the servants and her husband about on the same high firm note of exasperated efficiency.

  Macleod hung behind after the women had left the room, asking a dozen questions as to his guest’s requirements, and repeating them: ‘You are sure that you don’t want this? – that you wouldn’t like that?’

  His hospitality was almost pathetically eager, he seemed to be trying to assure himself as well as his guest that everything would be well with him now. ‘You’ll soon be well, my lord. We’ll get you off to Thurso. Perhaps I can come too, I don’t know. I’d rather go with you than anything in the world, but one can’t always do what one wants. There’s my wife, you see, and the place is heavily encumbered. We are over our ears in debt. We’ve not been lucky.’

  ‘Neil!’ called a high voice, and he hastily went out, leaving his last words echoing in Montrose’s ears.

  No, they were not lucky; they had a snug, even elegant little castle that had remained intact all through the troubles, while his own homes were either a heap of ruins or in the hands of his enemy Argyll; they were young, comely, in good health, while he was wounded and fevered, an outlaw fleeing for his life.

  Yet he would not change places with them; he even had an odd sense of pity for them, at any rate for that kindly, uncertain, apologetic youth; but in another instant he had ceased to think of him, for he had fallen deep into an unfathomable well of sleep.

  ‘If it’s money you need for your estate,’ said Montrose, ‘you will find it at Thurso. There is plenty there with the garrison I left as my base, and your reward for bringing me back to them will be more than you could get out of several years of your crops and cattle here.’

  ‘No, oh no,’ protested Macleod, flushing hotly, ‘it’s not that, my lord, I want no reward for helping you – if I could go with you, that would be my best reward – it’s not a question of money—’

  But he had been talking of money and nothing but money for the last half-hour – ‘there is no money – if only we had more money’ – while he explained the difficulties in the way of his going with Montrose. Yet he was genuinely longing to go – that was quite plain.

  They had talked this matter over again and again, and sometimes Neil swore that he would come with him, and, when he had had a little whisky, thumped his large purple-knuckled fist (he had had chilblains all the winter, he said) down on to the table and swore that nothing should prevent his going with the Marquis of Montrose, that this was the chance of his life, the only chance he had ever had, and nothing and nobody, ‘nobody, no damned soft woman’s body either’, should prevent his going with him.

  It was plain enough by now wherein he was unlucky. He had failed to please his wife, Christian Monro of Lemlair, to whom he had been married since he was well under age; and he could feel no real confidence in providing her with an heir to this house, of which she was even more desperately proud than himself.

  ‘Desperately’ was the word, for she was a woman to whom property, whether of the living bodies of husband and children, or the dead stones of a house, was the thing that mattered more than anything else in life.

  And hadn’t she the right to be proud of Assynt when it was she who had planned, saved, intrigued, and fought, fough
t, fought all those early years of their married life to win back the estate that was rightfully theirs and their children’s?

  If Neil permitted himself a doubt as to their ever having children, he never dared show it to Christie, for she would have regarded it as sacrilege. Her certainty that their line would last in Assynt had grown into a creed, fierce as creeds are apt to grow in Scotland. She was a woman who never stopped thinking.

  ‘Remember the Macleods of Assynt,’ she would whisper at night into the ear of her husband, who, married to her since he had been a nervous, self-conscious hobbledehoy of a youth, found it no encouragement.

  Their uneasy relationship showed itself in their continual irritation with each other; her manner told him he was a fool; and his, that she was a bully; they were at one only in their constant planning for the improvement of the estate and clearing it from debt; then they could both feel that they were people of importance and value, even to each other.

  Neil’s hope of escape from his galling position was proving an even higher bribe than the money Montrose would certainly be able to pay him once they got to Thurso. There were higher bribes too in further store. The Macleods of Assynt would be remembered to good purpose if Montrose’s next venture should succeed, and Neil be made known to his King as the man who had saved the Viceroy of Scotland and through him the country for King Charles. He said this to Christie the night after Montrose arrived.

  Outside their curtained bed, outside the thick stone walls, Macleod could hear the wind rising and gusts of sudden rain thrown in handfuls against the shuttered windows; he heard the loch waters lashing up into that regular rhythmic fury that he had heard again and again all through his life. They used to whisper to him in his childhood, ‘The Castle of Assynt is yours - yours - yours - those others have no right to it,’ and then again that hissing monotony, ‘Assynt is yours, yours, yours.’