A History Maker

by Alasdair Gray

  She jumped out of bed and pulled on her dress. “Come back, Annie! Let’s have another wee cuddle. I’m all right again. I said I was sorry.”

  “I don’t want a mad baby, Wat.”

  “There is no such thing as a mad baby.” She slipped on her shoes without looking at him. Wat said, “Done with me, have you?”

  “I’m too young to say, Wat. Bowerhope men never come here now because twice Craig Douglas women got weans with diseased blood by Bowerhope — and the disease was curable. I don’t know if daftness is, and my mammy is your dad’s second cousin. The grannies will know what’s right. But O Wat,” she wailed, tears flowing down her cheeks again, “I liked you fine before this! I wanted a bairn by you!” He said, “Aye,” and got up and started dressing. She lingered by the door, drying her tears and watching.

  “I’ll be in the Warrior house if your grannies want to test my sanity,” he said abruptly, “They might want that before deciding you shouldnae carry our bairn. But I’ll no come back to Craig Douglas unless invited — tell everyone that. Tell Nan. Say goodbye to her for me. I never much liked the Warrior house but now it seems the one place where I’ll be welcome — though mibby no for much longer.”

  THREE

  WARRIOR WORK

  LIKE ALL WHO LOVED VISITORS Annie had a room with a door onto the veranda of her home, so Wat left Craig Douglas that morning almost unnoticed at first. Near the stables he heard musical jangling and shrill shouts of, “Fall down you’re dead!” — ” No I clonked you first!”

  In a sandpit by the path a jumble of colourful shelled creatures were hitting each other with tiny swords: infants in helmets and armour which pinged, twanged or clonked under different strengths of blow. They stood still as he drew level then the smallest ran to him and stuttered breathlessly, “When I grow up I’ll be a Amazon and kill men like you do cousin Wattie!”

  She was a very wee girl. Wat paused and said politely, “Name and age?”

  “Betty. Four.”

  “Soldiers don’t fight to kill each other, Betty. We fight to win the respect due to courage.”

  “Aye but killing men is still fun intit cousin Wattie?”

  He shook his head hopelessly and entered the stable.

  Three twelve-year-old lads knelt on the floor playing jorries. They sprang up, led the dapple grey from her stall, saddled and bridled her.

  “Are you for the Warrior house Wat?” said one,

  “Can we come with ye?”

  “I’m for a quiet ride on my lonesome lone, men,” Wat told them sombrely, “I’m sorry your brothers got killed.”

  “But they helped us draw with Northumbria,” said one gently as if offering consolation.

  “Don’t fool yourselves, men. Geneva will declare our draw a foul. I know because I was chief fouler. Open that door.”

  On the common he found his hands had healed enough to let him mount Sophia with dignity and after waving goodbye rode down to Yarrow. He suspected many eyes now watched him from the big house with the wood behind so did not look back. Wanting solitude he headed downstream toward Mountbenger along a mossy track between tangled hedges which followed the line of an old motorway.

  The air felt close and heavy this morning though little gusts of wind sometimes refreshed it. A dull sky looked full of rain which never fell. Yellow gorse on the hillside was the only vivid colour. A mile above Mountbenger he soaked his legs fording the river and rode up the glen behind White Law, avoiding the houses of Altrieve and Hartleap by keeping to the hillside, and ascending Altrieve burn to the saddle between Peat Law and the Wiss. Though still brooding on the affection and respect he might lose by his quarrel with Annie he was soothed for a while by lonely distances which grew more visible the higher he came. Houses, cultivation, everything human was hidden in dips between a wilderness of grey heights. Vapour from powerplants was buried in ragged cloud which dimmed the highest summits. Nothing he now saw had changed since these hills divided Scotland from England in the historical epoch, the killing time when huge governments had split the world into nations warring for each other’s property. He recalled with pride that for centuries the border clans had held aloof from England and Scotland, siding with whichever nation was too weak to tax them. But theft and murder had flourished in these rough hills too. The old ballads were full of it. The only wealth here had been small black cattle and when illness or famine thinned the herds the wife of a homestead set a plate with a pair of spurs on it before her man when he sat down to eat, a hint that he must now raid the English farms or starve. Yes, it was luxury to fear the ill opinion of the Ettrick aunts more than an empty belly, to worry about an unfair blow struck in a war between willing fighters, to suffer because he had frightened a healthy young girl in a moment of rage. He smiled and heard wind stir the grasses, near and distant cries of the whaups, and once what sounded like voices behind a clump of whins. Crossing a shoulder of hillside with a view into the gardens of Hartleap he saw what seemed half the family down there looking up at him. Later he glimpsed tiny figures withdraw behind the cairn on the summit of Bowerhope Law.

  Signs of being watched and followed increased until he emerged from the woods above Thirlstane burn where the watchers and followers stopped trying to keep out of sight. He went down the gully with children of every age between eight and fifteen scrambling and leaping and dodging along the slopes on each side. The smallest rode ponies, two or three to a back. A surprising number were girls and the whole crowd was too big to be local — several must have come over from Eskdale or farther. Obviously something he did not know had made him interesting yet untouchable; only a huge, communal, fascinated shyness explained the movements of this company which covered the slopes beside him yet stayed out of talking range. His killing of the Northumbrian who held the standard had likely been condemned as a war crime so that Ettrick was now a shamed and beaten clan. Did these children hate or sympathize with him? They probably did not know themselves; they were waiting to learn how he would be received at the Warrior house. Wat feared nobody in the Warrior house, he dreaded nothing but the ill opinion of the women. Determined to learn the worst he sat upright and rode forward with a bold front unlike his usual brooding slouch.

  A line of water as pale as the sky appeared above trees below; it was the head of Saint Mary’s Loch and the Warrior house flag wagged against it. With various shouts the children raced downhill away from him and in less than five minutes he was alone again. If Sophia had not been a tired old pony he would have raced ahead of them; instead he paused, tempted by a track which ran sideways to Bowerhope where he was sure of a private welcome from a couple of sisters. Then a gleaming globe spun up from behind a blaeberry clump and hung before his face saying, “What is your reaction to the news from Geneva, Major Dryhope?”

  He shut his eyes, clapped the pony’s flanks with his heels and was carried straight downhill. He heard another voice, soft and female, say, “By all means treat the public eye with contempt Major Dryhope, but you must have something to say against Geneva’s condemnation of your father and clan.”

  With an effort he kept his face immobile and eyes shut for at least three minutes. When he opened them the globe had vanished.

  The Warrior house was built over the short river flowing into Saint Mary’s Loch from Loch of the Lowes. Four steep glass-fronted gables, a central pyramidal skylight, a hexagonal tower faceted with mirrors made it look like a futuristic village in a 1930s Hollywood movie or a postmodern art gallery designed sixty years later. This archaic appearance was enhanced by an absence of powerplant. Wat saw that the plain before the eastern gable was covered by a standing horde of children too young to be cadets, and adolescents of both sexes, and older men on horseback from houses normally indifferent to warrior business. A greybeard and three younger men from the musical house of Henderland were conspicuous by the instruments they held. The horsemen and pony riders stood right and left of the path to the entrance. As Sophia ambled down it Wat had a dream-like sense of
having done this before, then remembered his walk from the stable through the children of Craig Douglas. Passing a group of boys with Annie in it he noticed many of the Craig Douglas children were here too. She was staring open-mouthed with hand half raised as if wanting yet fearing to catch his attention. He nodded absent-mindedly to her for he was trying to understand the mood of this dense crowd gazing at him with no obvious sign of anger or pleasure. Then a shrill voice from behind (and it sounded like Annie’s) cried,

  “Hooray for Wattie Dryhope!” and the whole crowd began roaring, howling, yelling that too. Through the roar he heard powerful drones followed by vivid squeals. The Henderlands were piping. Their tune swelled up and overwhelmed the welter of cheering and it was the tune of a song everyone had known since childhood. In less than a minute the crowd was singing —

  “March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale,

  Why my lads dinna ye march

  forward in order?

  March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale,

  All the Blue Bonnets are over the Border!”

  — so they liked him. Tears of relief streamed down his face though he kept it rigid. He also noticed, without pleasure, public eyes spinning over the heads of the crowd. Recovering most of the assurance he had lost since rolling off the cliff he began to notice something unpleasant in this unanimous bellowing of what had once seemed a nostalgic old marching song —

  “Come from the hills

  where your hirsels are grazing,

  Come from the glen

  of the buck and the roe;

  Come to the crag where

  the beacon is blazing,

  Come with the buckler,

  the lance and the bow!”

  He reacted by scowling while Sophia, also disliking the noise, broke into a clumsy little gallop which brought him to the porch. Here Boys’ Brigade captains, one of them Wat’s twelve-year-old brother Sandy, swarmed round him grinning like lunatics and jabbering something in which standard was the only distinct word. He yelled, “Give Sophia a feed ye gowks — let Sandy get me a whisky,” and leapt down and rushed inside.

  Within the door he was stopped by a group of veterans: men over forty whose thick beards and moustaches did not hide their scars. Each shook his hand in turn, looking him straight in the eye and giving a firm little nod which struck him as more farcical than the communal roaring outside. Behind the veterans every cadet in Ettrick between eleven and fourteen years seemed crowded into the eastern lobby, grinning or open-mouthed or trying to look as grim as he felt himself. On the stair to the officers’ mess the house servants stood like servants in the mansion of a Victorian duke assembled to welcome the young laird home. They were ranked behind the major domo, a stately giant with whiskers bushier than the fiercest veteran’s. He said, “Master Wattie, I hope at last I may persuade you to a dram?”

  “Thanks Jenny. I have asked Sandy for one.”

  “Master Sandy will receive it from my hands.” The major domo led Wat upstairs processionally with Sandy beside him and the veterans in the rear. Martial discipline ensured a decent silence among them but did not lessen the deafening bellow outside which still made sense to those who knew the words —

  “England shall many a day

  tell of the bloody fray,

  When the Blue Bonnets

  came over the Border!”

  The officers’ mess was under the gable above the eastern lobby. Wat was appalled by its emptiness. A week ago over two hundred cheerful men most of them in their late teens and twenties, had been drinking, laughing and chatting there; the dozen veterans now converging on the bar emphasized the difference. So did three cripples in orthopaedic chairs playing a game of whist: Colonel Tam Wardlaw, Rab Gillkeeket and Davie Deuchar. Wat had not seen them since the charge downhill with the standard. He went over and stood looking down on the game but they gave no sign of recognition though the Colonel said to the others, “Here comes trouble. I pass.”

  “Solo,” said Rab.

  “Misère,” said Davie.

  Wat covered his embarrassment by saying,

  “Northumbria has made a bonny mess of you three.”

  “We might have been as fit as you if we’d rolled off a cliff,” muttered Rab.

  “True,” said Wat abruptly, “Public eyeballs are snooping outside. D’ye mind doing with less daylight, Colonel?”

  Colonel Wardlaw shrugged a shoulder.

  “Frost the window, Jenny!” Wat called to the major domo behind the bar. Between the double sheets of glass a paperthin water fall slid down then froze into starry white patterns which broke the appearance of the crowd and the hills outside into jagged shadows. Wat pulled a chair up to the table and sat watching the players until the Colonel said, “Do you want a hand?”

  “I want news from Geneva.”

  Tam Wardlaw handed him a printed sheet. Wat held it without reading until his young brother put a whisky in the other hand.

  “Wattie Dryhope is at The Macallan,” sang Davie softly.

  “Not possible!” said Rab, “Dryhope never touches alcohol. It upsets his chemistry.”

  “He’s drinking it now,” said the Colonel, “His chemistry must be out of order.”

  “Give us peace,” muttered Wat and read the printout.

  The Global and Interplanetary Council for War Regulation Sitting in Geneva has considered General Dodds’s complaint against the recent draw between Ettrick and Northumbria United. General Dodds accuses Ettrick of obtaining the result by a foul pretence of surrender which did not take place, resulting in the murder of at least three Northumbrians who dropped their guard having been deceived into thinking the battle over. As proof of this he refers the Council to the public eye battle archive.

  The Council has scrutinized the battle archive closely and believes there is good reason to condemn Ettrick but not for the action to which General Dodds objects. That a certain amount of deception is an inevitable and accepted part of combat is proved by that sword stroke known as a feint, nor is it unusual for hard-pressed troops to relinquish their standard to an enemy in order to counterattack more strongly. The Northumbrians holding the Ettrick standard believed the momentary pause signified surrender because they knew Ettrick could not win, being hopelessly outnumbered; but the Geneva Convention expressly states NO SOLDIER IS DEEMED TO HAVE SURRENDERED BEFORE HE DROPS HIS WEAPON OR OFFERS THE HILT, BUTT OR HANDLE TO THE OPPONENT. This did not happen. In the slaughter following the resumption of fighting after a twelve-second pause nearly every Ettrick warrior died sword in hand. If any dropped them or flung them away General Dodds’s troops did not notice.

  But the Global and Interplanetary Council for War Regulation Sitting in Geneva is forced to condemn General Jardine Craig Douglas for a war crime worthy of the twentieth century. He was wrong to lead his clan into a third day of battle which must end in the death of nearly all his men, many of them cadets recently promoted from the Boys’ Brigade. His own death — however gladly embraced — is no compensation for theirs, however gladly they embraced it. The purpose of warfare is not scoring points over an opponent: it is to show human contempt of pain and annihilation. Most armies do this without exploiting the self-sacrificial urge of trainees who admire their senior officers. When such exploitation is proposed it is not treachery for officers to defy the general who proposes it. The Global and Interplanetary Council for War Regulation Sitting in Geneva regrets that Major Wat Dryhope was the only Ettrick warrior who appeared to recognize this fact …

  Wat chuckled and said loudly, “I’ve just read the bit that explains why you chaps don’t like me now.”

  “Aye,” said the Colonel, “You’re suffering the doom of everyone too good for their kindred.”

  “Wat Dryhope, humanity’s darling,” sang Davie.

  “Wattie! The standard!” whispered Sandy urgently, “Ask them when we can — ”

  “Wheesht,” said Wat and continued reading.

  For the past twenty years the Council has noticed
a tendency for small, competitive clans to throw younger and younger cadets into the battle line. True lovers of fighting must deplore the harm this does to the noble art of war. By his holocaust of young lives General Jardine Craig Douglas has broken the splendid line of Ettrick victories which began with the century. At least a decade must pass before Ettrick breeds and trains enough adult soldiers to fight again at a professional level.

  So the Global and Interplanetary Council for War Regulation Sitting in Geneva proposes three additions to the Geneva Convention.

  1 - No war will extend to a third day of battle.

  2 - No cadets of less than sixteen years shall be admitted to the battle line.

  3 - When a standard leaves a field of battle by the interposition of a natural feature or phenomenon (cliff, crag, hill, cavern, canyon, pot-hole, volcanic vent or other geological formation; bog, swamp, shifting sands, stream, pond, river, lake, lagoon, sea, ocean or other body of water; breeze, wind, gale, tempest, sandstorm, hurricane, cyclone, tornado, lightning, fireball, aerolith or other meteorological event) the battle will be judged to have ended at that moment of the standard’s departure from the field of battle, and victory will belong to the side which has lost fewest men.

  The Global and Interplanetary Council for War Regulation Sitting in Geneva hereby declares a moratorium upon all armed conflict until a global and interplanetary referendum decides by a simple majority that each of these rules is accepted or rejected as part of the Geneva Convention. Everyone over fifteen years of age will be eligible to vote.

  Meanwhile the Global Council for War Regulation Sitting in Geneva declares that these humanitarian proposals in no way disparage the honesty and courage of the Ettrick soldiers who carried out General Jardine Craig Douglas’s plan, while still condemning absolutely their recklessness in obeying him. The Global and Interplanetary Council for War Regulation Sitting in Geneva agrees with the public eye and the mass of public opinion, in declaring the battle between Northumbria and Ettrick a draw; but also declare it a battle fought in circumstances degrading to the senior officers responsible, a kind of battle which must never be repeated.