“But my father would not listen to reason,” the Duke said cynically. “How old is Torquil now?”
“He will be seventeen next birthday, Your Grace – the same age as you were when you ran away.”
The information, the Duke knew, was given to make him realise that Torquil had felt just as he himself had – rebellious, angry and determined to do something about it.
“Has he been educated at all?” he asked.
“Yes, Your Grace. Your father engaged several excellent Tutors for him, but unfortunately he found them boring.”
“I am not surprised at that,” the Duke said, “knowing the type of man my father would engage.”
“He needs, Your Grace, to play games with boys of his own age and his own class.”
“And those who were captured with him?”
“Crofters’ sons, decent boys, but of course, Your Grace, uneducated.”
“The whole thing is out of date. Ridiculous! It should never have been allowed to happen!” the Duke stormed.
Even as he spoke, he knew he was being unfair. Mr. Dunblane had surely done the best he could for Torquil, just as he had done the best he could for himself, but against his father’s obstinacy and supreme authority anything he could have suggested would have proved hopeless from the start.
“Well, what are we going to do?” he asked more quietly.
“I have arranged tentatively for you to call and see The Kilcraig tomorrow. He will not come here.”
“Do you mean that I have to go to him?”
“It may seem a loss of face. At the same time he holds the trump card, Your Grace.”
“Torquil!” the Duke murmured.
“Exactly!”
“Very well. But I warn you, Dunblane, that, if The Kilcraig makes it too difficult, I shall tell young Torquil he can go to the devil!”
The Duke spoke violently, but even as he did so he knew he was shadow-boxing.
It would be quite impossible for him to allow his nephew and his heir presumptive to come up for trial in the Edinburgh courts like a common felon.
What was more, it would not be Torquil who would be humiliated and punished, but the whole Clan. They all bore the same name. They all believed themselves to be part of the same stock.
He knew that every Clansman on his lands would fight to the death for his own family and his honour, just as he would fight any battle his Chief might lead him into.
“The sooner we get this over the better!” the Duke said sharply. “Send a message to The Kilcraig that I will call on him at noon tomorrow. I presume you will come with me?”
“If you are going into Kilcraig country, Your Grace, you must travel as befits your position. Not to do so would be looked upon as a sign of weakness.”
The Duke looked at his Comptroller in surprise.
“What does that imply?”
“You will go with your immediate henchmen, bard, piper and gillies, as your forefathers travelled before you.”
“God in Heaven! In this day and age, is this necessary?” the Duke asked.
“As I have said already, if you do anything else it will be looked on as a sign of weakness and at the moment, as Your Grace knows full well, you have no good cards in your hand.”
The Duke thumped with his clenched fist on the arm of his chair.
“This is intolerable! What is more, I feel, Dunblane, as if I have stepped back into the past. In England Noblemen do not hold each other’s children as prisoners. Duelling is almost out of date and an argument is conducted in a gentlemanly manner over a glass of port!”
“Unfortunately, Your Grace, The Kilcraig is very like your father, who would always rather have used a claymore than a sensible argument.”
“Very well,” the Duke said harshly. “Have it your own way! I will leave everything to you, Dunblane, and I only hope we can retain some vestige of pride out of all this tomfoolery!”
He walked towards the door and, only as he reached it, did he turn back to say,
“Do you expect me to get myself up in fancy dress?”
“If you mean should you wear the tartan? Your Grace must meet The Kilcraig as a Chieftain – the Chief of the McNarns.”
The Duke did not reply, but went out of the library, slamming the door behind him.
CHAPTER TWO
The Duke was in an extremely bad temper.
He had in fact got up with what his Highland nurse would have called ‘a wee black devil’ on his shoulder. His valet had laid out for him, obviously on Mr. Dunblane’s instructions, the Highland dress that he had brought from London.
He had taken very little interest in it and had merely given the order to his tailor to make what was necessary.
He was to realise later that the tailor was in fact a conscientious man who had taken immense trouble in finding out what was the correct regalia for a Chieftain.
The Duke saw lying on the chair after he had finished his bath, trews of skin-tight tartan that a Chief would wear when he preferred to ride rather than walk.
There was also a tartan jacket, a tartan waistcoat and the plaid that would be clasped with a silver and Cairngorm brooch on his left shoulder.
He had seen his father often enough wearing the same traditional garments, but quite suddenly he revolted.
“Take them away!” he cried out harshly. “I will wear the clothes of the gentleman which I am and which I hope to remain!”
When he went down to breakfast, he thought that the kilted servants attending him glanced at him with a question in their eyes.
It made him even more determined than ever that he would not pander to the ridiculous nonsense of ancient customs which should be ‘as dead as a doornail’.
Deliberately, so as to avoid mention of the ordeal that lay ahead of him, he said in a conversational tone to Lord Hinchley,
“What do you intend to do with yourself today, William?”
“Something that will make you extremely envious,” Lord Hinchley replied. “I am going fishing.”
The Duke did not reply and he went on,
“Dunblane tells me there are plenty of salmon in your river and tomorrow, if you can spare the time, Taran, I should like to have a shot at your grouse.”
The fact that his friend intended to do some things he would have liked to do himself did not improve the Duke’s temper.
He merely concerned himself with breakfast which he found, despite a desire to find fault, extremely appetising. As he was finishing the excellent dish of sea trout, his nephew Jamie came into the room.
He had only a brief glance at the boy the evening before when he arrived and now he appraised him more critically, noticing that he had red hair and blue eyes.
He found that surprising until he remembered that it was characteristic of the Campbells – The Race of Diarmid – and Jamie’s grandmother on his father’s side had belonged to that Clan.
As he had obviously been instructed to do, Jamie bowed first to him, then to Lord Hinchley.
“Good morning, Jamie,” the Duke said perfunctorily.
“It is not a good morning!” Jamie replied hotly. “Jeannie says I should be coming with you today to fight The Kilcraigs, but Mr. Dunblane will not let me.”
“I am not going to fight the Kilcraigs,” the Duke replied, “so Jeannie, whoever she may be, has been misinformed.”
“They are our enemies and we hate them!” Jamie insisted. “You must battle with them as Chief of the McNarns and I should be with you.”
The Duke sighed impatiently.
It seemed that even the child was inoculated with these barbaric customs, for he was well aware that if a Chieftain went into battle, his kinsmen accompanied him besides all the other henchmen whom Dunblane had mentioned last night.
“Now let me make this quite clear,” he said firmly. “I am not fighting the Kilcraigs nor do I intend to do so. Those feuds and hatreds are out of date. They are our neighbours and we must learn to live in peace with them.”
&n
bsp; “In peace with the Kilcraigs?” Jamie exclaimed. “And also the MacAuads?”
“With both!” the Duke said firmly and concentrated on his breakfast.
He knew that his small nephew was staring at him in surprise and also with what he thought was an expression perilously near contempt.
It was an impertinence, he told himself, that should be severely corrected, but not this morning, not when he had so many other troubles on his hands.
Jamie had, however, started off a train of thought, which returned to his mind when he was wending his way up the moors.
Behind the Duke came, as Mr. Dunblane had predicted, a procession of mounted Clansmen, although the Duke knew that in the past they would have walked with the piper playing a battle-tune to stir their senses and accelerate their progress.
As it was over a two hour ride to Kilcraig Castle, the Duke was grateful that at least he was permitted to travel there on horseback and he guessed that his entourage had been reduced in size to fit the availability of horses to mount them.
Nevertheless he told himself sourly that there were quite enough and by the expression on his henchmen’s faces they were all as ready as Jamie had been for a fight with their traditional enemy.
The Duke, however, had no intention of doing anything but rescue Torquil and he hoped to create a new spirit between the Clans, which would prevent this sort of escapade from happening in the future.
With the MacAuads it was a different cup of tea all together.
The lands of the McNarns stretched Eastward for many miles and the Clans between them and the sea were either too small to be of any importance or united by marriage with what amounted to blood ties.
But all through the centuries, the MacAuads, a wild uncouth and savage Clan, had been an hereditary enemy whom every other Clan hated and feared.
They shared the Western border of the McNarn lands with the Kilcraigs and, while the latter were in some way almost a respected enemy, the MacAuads’ deeds had put them beyond the pale of any emotion save that of utter loathing.
“Touch a snake and ye’ll find a MacAuad!” was a current phrase amongst the Clansmen.
Another said even more forcefully,
“If ye go down to Hell, ye’ll find the devil is MacAuad.”
Not having heard of the MacAuads since he was a boy, the Duke wondered if they were still so ferocious.
He imagined that, if there was any cattle-stealing in this part of the world, it would be done by the MacAuads, not as a boyish prank but deliberately to enrich themselves at another Clan’s expense.
It was a clear day with just a touch of wind, the heather smelt fragrant and the purple of it was more vivid than the Duke remembered.
There was enough water still left in the burns to make him feel sure that Lord Hinchley would catch several salmon.
It was unfortunate that he could not join his friend, but instead was forced to expend his time and his energy in visiting a man he had never seen and in the uncomfortable position of a supplicant.
Then the Duke told himself that The Kilcraig would surely listen to reason.
He supposed that if he paid the full price for the cattle that Torquil had stolen and perhaps made it more generous than the animals were worth, the whole confrontation would die down.
“Why Dunblane could not have settled the matter for me, God only knows!” the Duke muttered beneath his breath.
Then he knew that was impossible, because only a Chief speaking to a Chief could negotiate over problems which concerned a Clan and Dunblane would have no authority despite his long connection with the McNarns.
The Duke’s thoughts were back to his position as a Chieftain.
It had been impossible not to notice the solicitousness, which was almost an act of reverence, with which he had been helped onto the saddle of his horse and the way the henchmen saluted him.
The women who had been waiting at the gates to The Castle to see him leave curtseyed while the Clansmen amongst them had lifted their bonnets and waved them at his approach.
The Duke remembered now when he was a small boy about the same age as Jamie, saying to his father,
“Why do they love you, Papa?”
His father’s answer had been simple.
“I am their Chief.”
“What does Chief mean?” the little boy had insisted.
His father, speaking solemnly almost as if he was thinking aloud, had replied,
“The Highlanders esteem it a most sublime degree of virtue to love their Chief and ply him with a blood obedience, though it be opposition to the Government and the law of the Kingdom or even the law of God. He is their idol and they know no King but him.”
The Duke repeated the words now to himself and he wondered if it was possible to find anywhere in the world this unquestioning subservience that was not only for the Chief himself but for what he stood for in his followers’ imagination.
God knows his father did not deserve such devotion, and yet he had received it just because he was invested with the authority that had been handed down through the centuries.
It was somehow embarrassing as if one looked into another man’s heart and soul.
‘The sooner I get back to sanity,’ the Duke told himself savagely, ‘the better!’
He had decided before he left London that he would return South with the King on the Royal George.
He knew that His Majesty would be only too pleased to have him and he was quite sure that it would be an amusing voyage. They would all be able to laugh over the incidents that invariably occurred on such occasions.
The King, the Duke knew, was taking his visit very seriously.
Ever since he had decided to go to Scotland, he had talked about it with an enthusiasm that surprised those in attendance, who were quite sure that he would be disappointed at what he found in the most Northern part of his Kingdom.
But, when George IV made up his mind to do something, there were few people brave enough to dissuade him and the arrangements had gone ahead.
The Duke supposed that by this time Edinburgh was in a fervour of excitement and anticipation and he certainly had no wish to be there.
He was, however, hot and thirsty by the time they had ridden for over two hours and had the first sight of Kilcraig Castle.
The Duke had never seen it before and he realised that it was a very different building from his own.
From its vantage point on the side of the hill, it would have been impossible for an enemy to approach through the valley without being seen and there was something weird and eerie about its high walls with few windows.
Vaguely at the back of his mind the Duke remembered when he was young hearing that the Kilcraigs had ghosts and evil spirits besides ancestors who were cruel monsters, one of them having kidnapped children to use as sacrifices in his sorceries.
The Duke had not believed such stories even when he was a boy and yet now, looking at the castle in the distance, he could understand how they had arisen.
There was something about it that stirred the imagination and would, he was quite certain, arouse to wild flights of fancy, the superstitions of a primitive people who had been brought up to believe in such things.
The Duke had long ago laughed to scorn the Celtic mythology of giants, witches, unconquerable swordsmen, loch monsters, precognitions, and stones that spoke with the voices of men and singing trees.
In the South, while few people he knew were concerned with anything but their own amusements, even religion was spoken of with a faint air of mockery.
While the King was obliged to attend Divine Service on Sundays, the Duke and his contemporaries spent their Sunday like any other day in sport and gaming.
They were within a mile of the castle when Mr. Dunblane moved his horse beside the Duke’s.
“From here, Your Grace,” he said in a low voice, “we will all leave our horses with the exception of yourself.”
“Why?” the Duke enquired.
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��The Kilcraig, as was your father, is a stickler for custom.”
The Duke was about to reply that the Kilcraig could go to hell, then he told himself that the purpose of the meeting was to be conciliatory and to anger the old man before it had even started would be foolish.
“Arrange things as you wish, Dunblane,” he said curtly and rode on.
He was, however, well aware that the horses were being left in the charge of henchmen and a procession had formed behind him on foot.
First came Dunblane as his immediate bodyguard and with him should have been his kinsmen, if Torquil had not been a prisoner of the Kilcraigs and Jamie too young.
Then came the bard, an old man whom the Duke remembered since his father’s time.
Barding was hereditary and carried with it a grant of land. The Highlands had no written history and a man’s reputation and the memory of it could rise or fall on the tongue of the bard.
The Duke wondered wryly what would be said about him when he was dead and thought it unlikely that his behaviour would inspire an epic poem.
Behind the bard came the piper, who now was playing the marching tune of the McNarns – a tune that led them into battle and accompanied them on their last journey to the cemetery of their forefathers.
Behind the piper should have been the bladier, the chief spokesman, a golden-voiced man of debate and argument who knew every precedent in every quarrel.
If he was there then he was unnecessary, as the Duke had every intention of speaking for himself and certainly allowing no one else to interview on his behalf.
Behind these there should have been a gillie to carry his broadsword and buckler and several others who in the past would have been swordsmen, axemen, bowmen or musket-men.
It was compulsory for a Clan which was visited by the Chief of another Clan to bed and feed these wild, often savage men without protest.
Except in the case of a Clan like the MacAuads, once having accepted a Clan’s hospitality and eaten their salt, there would be no more fighting until they had left the land.
As they drew nearer to Kilcraig Castle, the Duke saw the Clansmen waiting for him.
He was surprised to see so many of them wearing the tartan. He had been told in the South that after the ban on it had been lifted in 1799 many of the Scots after years of persecution by the English had been too lethargic to reintroduce their own tartan.
The Chieftain Without a Heart Page 3
