Loch, The

by Steve Alten

  In late August 1297, Longshanks sent an enormous army into Scotland to defeat Wallace. When Moray heard, he joined forces with Wallace, and together they headed south to Stirling. Three days later, half the English cavalry crossed the narrow Stirling Bridge then paused, realizing their leader, John de Warenne was not among them (he had overslept). In the confusion, no more troops were sent across, while Wallace and Moray’s army, half-naked and screaming, swept down from the hills to attack. Carpenters pulled pegs from the bridge and destroyed it, killing hundreds while cutting off the rest of the English army’s retreat. As Moray continued his frontal assault, Wallace led his troops downriver, where they crossed and attacked the remaining English forces, soundly defeating them. It is said English fatalities exceeded five thousand.

  Moray died from his battle wounds, leaving Wallace as sole com­mander. More conquests ensued, and Wallace’s reputation as a char­ismatic leader grew. His army of followers recaptured Stirling Castle, then invaded the English shires of Cumberland and Northumberland. Later that December, he was knighted and proclaimed Guardian of Scotland, ruling in Balliol’s name. Still, most of the Scottish nobles refused to support him.

  On July 3, 1298, Longshanks invaded Scotland, his ninety-thou­sand-strong army soundly defeating Wallace at Falkirk. His military reputation ruined, Wallace resigned his guardianship and traveled to France on a diplomatic mission.

  By 1303, the hostilities between England and France were over and Longshanks could again concentrate on his conquest of Scotland. Stirling was recaptured in 1304, Wallace betrayed a year later by a Scottish knight, who served Edward.

  On August 23, 1305, Sir William Wallace was hanged, kept alive, then disemboweled, his entrails burned before his eyes. His body was then decapitated and quartered, his head impaled on a spike and dis­played on London Bridge.

  The barbarism of Wallace’s execution made him a martyr to the Scots and gave Robert the Bruce the momentum he needed to lead another uprising. In 1306, the triumphant Bruce was crowned King of Scotland.

  Bruce’s army would defeat the English in 1314 in the battle of Bannockburn. Twice he invaded England before finally accept­ing a truce with Longshanks’s son, King Edward II. Peace between Scotland and England lasted thirteen years before another war broke out. The Scots were again victorious, and in 1328, Bruce secured a treaty recognizing Scotland’s independence. A year later, the king would die of leprosy, leaving the crown to his son, David II.

  In 1390, David II died, and Bruce’s nephew, John Stewart (Stuart), Earl of Carrick, was crowned King Robert II.

  Thus began what is known in Scotland as the Stuart Monarchy.

  The next three centuries of rule would be marred by internal strife, conflicts of commerce, and marriages manipulated between Scotland’s and England’s royal houses. More bloodshed followed, as brother fought brother and religion battled religion in the age-old nonsense of settling whose method of worship was holiest to our Creator, who, for all our murderous efforts, most likely despises the lot of us.

  Religious differences would lead to the House of Stuart’s undoing.

  In 1603, King James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, cousin to Elizabeth I, Queen of England, also became King James I of England in the Union of the Crowns. By succeeding to the throne of England, he thus united Scotland and England as one kingdom—Great Britain—believing the English would accept his Scottish brethren just as they accepted him. But centuries of blood­shed are not so easily forgotten, and England’s parliament quickly voted against the proposal.

  The King’s successor, James VII of Scotland ( James II of England), openly supported Roman Catholicism, Scotland’s traditional religion. England’s parliament forced James VII out, and rather than fight for his crown, he went into exile in France. England offered the crown to his son-in-law, William of Orange, who became known as King William III of Great Britain.

  James VII and the House of Stuart were gone, but they still had support from many Catholic Highlanders, who considered the Stuarts Scotland’s true bloodline. These Stuart supporters became known as the Jacobites.

  When James VII died in France in 1701, the Jacobites felt his son, James VIII, the old Pretender, was rightful heir to the crown. When King William III of Great Britain died a year later, the crown fell to his daughter, Queen Anne, who had no heirs.

  Back in France, James VIII’s son, Charles Edward Stuart, also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, decided it was time to lay claim to the Scottish crown. Supported by France (or so he believed), he jour­neyed to Scotland’s Highlands and recruited an army of Jacobite fol­lowers. The first Jacobite uprising had taken place years earlier, ending in defeat. The second uprising gained more support, and soon Bonnie Prince Charlie and his followers were marching south to Edinburgh, where his troops easily defeated Britain’s opposing forces.

  News spread quickly in England that, once again, an army of Highlanders was on the march. The British King, George II, sent British, Dutch, and German troops to intercept, under the command of General Wade and William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland.

  Meanwhile, the French decided not to back Charlie, leaving him to fight these masses with only his Jacobite troops. The prince closed within 120 miles of London, then retreated when he heard (false) rumors that Cumberland had amassed a force of thirty thousand men and was heading his way.

  Fearing a massacre, Charlie led his rebels on a long, exhaust­ing retreat back through snow-covered hills and up through the Highlands. Upon reaching Inverness, the Jacobites learned that Cumberland’s army had made camp in Nairn, fifteen miles away.

  On April 16th, 1746, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his exhaust­ed Jacobites faced Cumberland’s heavily armed veteran force on Drummossie Moor, near Culloden.

  The massacre took a mere thirty minutes.

  Upwards of two thousand Jacobites died that day, some Highlanders losing entire clans. But the worst was yet to come.

  After the fight, the Duke of Cumberland rode into Inverness, brandishing his bloody sword, shouting out orders, “No quarter given,” meaning none should live. By the end of the day, the bloodied bodies of men, women, and children lined the roads into town. Hundreds of innocent Highlanders were butchered, and for months, Cumberland’s forces continued to search the countryside for Jacobites, refusing to stop until the ethnic cleansing was completed.

  Bonnie Prince Charlie managed to escape, but England was far from done with the Highlanders. Fearing the ancient crofting way and the fighting men it yielded, the “Highland Clearances” were put into law, intended to destroy the clans’ very culture. The speaking or writing of Gaelic and the wearing of tartan were made hanging offenses. Entire communities were “encouraged” to emigrate to the New World, while other Highlanders were sold off as slaves, their land stolen and used to raise sheep.

  More than two centuries have passed since the dark days of Culloden. Those Scots who fled long ago have seeded great genera­tions that have flourished the world over. George Washington claimed Scottish ancestry, and more than thirty other American presidents bear the Scot credentials as well.

  Today, a new kind of invasion is under way. Italians and Pakistanis, Asians and Africans, and many other nationals have settled in Scotland, calling it home. Though they may not share our turbulent history, they, too, are Scots, and now they are part of our heritage.

  Still, there are those of pure Gael blood, those like my father, who swear they’ll never forget what the English did to their ancestors on the moors of Culloden so long ago.

  That John Cialino hailed from London did not surprise me in the least.

  * * *

  Dawn blinded me, the sun’s rays striking my sleep-deprived eyes beneath the partially drawn window shade. We were circling Gatwick Airport, the long night finally over. In just a few short hours I would be back in the Highlands, reunited with my father, and though I had no inkling about what lay ahead, if history was any teacher, then I knew my stay in Scotland would be filled w
ith turmoil.

  Chapter 6 Quotes

  « ^ »

  A country having species, genera, and whole families peculiar to it, will be the necessary result of its having been isolated for a long period, sufficient for many series of species to have been created on the type of pre-existing ones, which, as well as many of the earlier-formed species, have become extinct, and thus made the groups appear isolated. If in any case the antitype had an extensive range, two or more groups of species might have been formed, each varying from it in a different manner, and thus producing several representative or analogous groups.

  —ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE “ON THE LAW WHICH HAS REGULATED THE INTRODUCTION OF NEW SPECIES”, 1855

  As I have no doubt you are aware, some animal or fish of an unusual kind has found its way into Loch Ness. I think I can say the evidence of its presence can be taken as undoubted. Far too many people have seen something abnormal to question its existence ... I have indeed been asked to bring a Bill into Parliament for its protection.

  —EXCERPT FROM A LETTER TO SIR GODFREY COLLINS, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND, FROM SIR MURDOCH MACDONALD, M.P. FOR INVERNESS-SHIRE, 13 NOVEMBER 1933

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  Inverness, Scottish Highlands

  Scotland

  I STARED OUT MY WINDOW, a lump in my throat, as we flew over the snow-covered peaks of the Grampian Mountains. Through wisps of clouds I could see evergreen patches of pine and the dark waters of Loch Ness, an ominous highway of water running northeast through the Great Glen before narrowing at Tor Point into the River Ness.

  Ten minutes later, we landed at Inverness Airport.

  Located at the mouth of the Ness river (Inver meaning “mouth of,” thus the name) the capital of the Highlands is a city of sixty-five thousand, its architecture steeped in Scottish tradition, its land filled with history. Inverness began as an ancient fortress on Craig Phadrig, a hill fort with huge ramparts, which served as the capital of the Pictish Kingdom as far back as A.D. 400. It was here that St. Columba embarked on his quest to convert the Picts to Christianity ... and, in so doing, discovered a water creature that would be turned into a legend.

  I walked through the terminal, dead on my feet, not having slept for the last twenty-eight hours. Max led us to the baggage carousel, and twenty minutes later we were in his car, motoring south along Old Military Road, the sounds of The Cure’s synthesizers and guitar blaring from the radio speakers.

  “Max, I need to get some sleep. Just drop me off at my hotel, I’ll see Angus later.”

  “Sorry, but Angus was quite insistent on seeing you now.”

  “It’s been seventeen years since I’ve seen him, he can wait another twelve hours.”

  “Actually, he can’t. We go to trial tomorrow” He handed me a copy of the Inverness Courier. The article covered most of Thursday’s front page.

  INVERNESS PROSECUTORS SEEK DEATH PENALTY IN CIALINO MURDER CASE

  Lord Neil Hannam and the High Court of Justiciary have agreed to consider the death penalty in the murder trial of Angus Wallace of Drumnadrochit. Wallace is accused of killing John Cialino, Jr., CEO of Cialino Ventures, one of Great Britain’s wealthiest and most influential businessmen. Witnesses report seeing Cialino fall into Loch Ness after being stricken by Wallace on the banks of Urquhart Castle. Police are still dredging Loch Ness, searching for the victim’s remains. Opening statements are scheduled to begin Friday.

  “First calling was months ago,” Max explained. “Judge decided to keep the old man locked up, afraid he’d skip bail. We entered a plea of not guilty back in March, been waiting ever since.”

  We passed Castle Stuart, heading for the A96, my pulse quicken­ing as I took in the deep blue waters of the Moray Firth. Beaches and cliff tops lined its shoreline; dolphins, porpoises, and killer whales inhabited its North Sea waters.

  Despite being part of one island, England and Scotland look nothing alike, due to the fact their geologies were actually conceived thousands of miles apart. About 550 million years ago, the planet’s landmasses were all located in the Southern Hemisphere. Scotland belonged to the North American continent (part of Canada’s Torngat Mountain Range) while England, Wales, and southern Ireland were united in the remains of a massive continent known as Gondwana. The two kingdoms that would one day form Great Britain were separated by a three-thousand-mile expanse of ocean, known as the Iapetus. After 75 million years of continental breakup and drift, the islands of Scotland and England collided—a million to one shot if ever there was one.

  Today, Scotland’s topography can be divided into two distinct regions: the Lowlands, densely populated with its industry and bus­tling cities, and the Highlands, a vast mountainous region rich in wildlife, surrounded by hundreds of coastal islands.

  During the last ice age, which ended some ten thousand years ago, Scandinavia and the Scottish Highlands were buried beneath great expanses of glaciers. As these mountains of ice and snow moved, they deepened and rounded out the Highlands’ existing river valleys, leav­ing behind deep lakes (lochs) and long valleys (glens).

  Imagine one enormous trench splitting Scotland in two and you’d have the Great Glen. Spanning nearly seventy miles, this 400-million-year-old glacial rift is set upon a geological fault line that widened and deepened during the last ice age. When the ice finally retreated, it left behind a series of freshwater lochs that cut diagonally across the Highlands from the Atlantic to the North Sea. These four bodies of water have been connected to one another through a series of man-made locks, known collectively as the Caledonian Canal.

  Completed in 1822, the Caledonian Canal spans twenty-two miles through the Great Glen, connecting the North Sea’s Moray Firth to the Atlantic by way of Lochs Dochfour, Ness, Oich, and Lochy. Its most impressive feature is at Fort William, where “Neptune’s Staircase” uses eight locks to raise and lower vessels sev­enty feet above sea level.

  We were traveling along the east bank of the Ness River when Max surprised me by making a quick left, following a winding access road up to Inverness Castle.

  “We’re not going to Portfield Prison?”

  The attorney-slash-Goth freak shook his spiked head. “Portfield’s overcrowded, and the labdicks don’t want to mix an accused murderer in with the rest of the remands, most of the wankers being held for nothing more than bar brawls. So the High Court plucked our father from Her Majesty’s Prison and shoved him inside the bowels of the Sheriff Court.”

  By “Sheriff Court,” Max meant Inverness Castle.

  Originally built in the twelfth century, Inverness Castle was reconstructed in 1835 after nearly being razed by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746. Besides being a popular tourist attraction, the enor­mous Victorian red sandstone, sitting majestically on a low-lying cliff overlooking River Ness, also housed the Sheriff Court.

  “Sheriffdom” dates back eight centuries to when the sheriff, an officer of the king, presided over all judicial matters in his district. Today, there are six sheriffs in Scotland, each a legally qualified judge overseeing civil cases in his region.

  Angus’s case involved murder, so its jurisdiction was left to the High Court, but the castle still had ample jail space to house the accused.

  Max parked and we followed a flower-lined path to the main entrance. A bronze statue of Flora MacDonald, the woman who aided the escape of Bonnie Prince Charlie, stood on a stone pedestal on the castle lawn. Entering the castle gate, we bypassed the tourist line for the “Garrison Encounter,” and headed for the Sheriff Court.

  After twenty minutes of paperwork and an embarrassing body cavity search using a metal detector, a prison guard led us down a century’s old winding stone stairwell into the bowels of the castle. Modern lighting mixed with ancient iron fittings as we approached another officer guarding a corridor of holding cells.

  “Here tae see oor Angus, I take it. That’d be the honeymoon suite, last cell.”

  “You go on,” Max said, “I’ll meet you outside. Got a few
calls to make.”

  The guard slid open the barred door, allowing me to pass. The first six cells on either side were empty.

  The last one on the left held my father.

  He was lying on a mattress, his back against the wall, reading a copy of the Inverness Courier. The years had turned his mane of jet-black hair to silver, and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, more salt than pep­per, had replaced his goatee. Liver spots blotched his tan skin, crow’s-feet cornering his eyes, but his gray-blue irises were still piercing and animated, his physique still imposing, though his waistline showed a slight paunch.

  I stood outside his locked cell door, my body trembling from nerves and fatigue.

  “Bloody daft reporters. Must’ve telt that coffin-dodgin’ slag at least ten times aboot us bein’ direct kin tae Sir William Wallace, but does he mention it? Hell no! Well, that’s the last he gets oot o’ me, I tell ye.”

  “Nice to see you, too,” I managed.

  He rolled off the mattress and stood, still light on his feet, but no longer a giant. “Ye sound like a Yank, but ye look like hell. Yer eyes are blood-red an’ hollow, and I can smell the stench o’ whisky in yer sweat.”

  “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “Aye, since the accident. Read aboot that. That’s twice ye’ve drooned an’ been brought back. Best be careful, Nancy, I hear three times is the kicker.”

  Thirty seconds, and he’d already picked the scab clean off our old wounds.

  “If you’ve got nothing else to say—”

  “Now, now, dinnae get yer skirt in a ruffle. Let me have a look at ye.” He reached through the bars, placing his hands on my shoulders. Powerful fingers kneaded my deltoids, working their way down to my biceps.

  I clenched subconsciously.

  He gave me a half grin. “Nae longer a runt, are ye? Thank Christ the Wallace men ‘aye resilient genes. So tell me, whit dae ye think o’ my bastard, Maxie? I ken he’s half-English but—”

  “He’s a nutcase. Are you deliberately trying to piss off the judge?”