by Ken Hood
"Nineteen years ago, son, the cream of the hills fell at Leethoul."
The old man was embarking on one of his rigmaroles. Toby said, "Yes, sir," and prepared to be patient.
"The Battle of the Century, they called it, and the century won't likely see another like it."
What Toby recalled was that Leethoul wore that name because it had been fought in the year 1500. And the century had already seen at least two more like it — almost as bad anyway.
"A fine company we were!" The miller sighed. "Nigh two hundred of us marched off with the laird at our head — Kenneth Campbell, that was, the last of the real lairds of Fillan. His family had held Lochy Castle for hundreds of years. Not like these traitor puppets they put over us now." His porcine eyes turned to study the effects of this treason.
"No, sir."
"There's never been fighters to match the Campbells of Fillan. King Malcolm himself said so, when he inspected us on the eve of the battle. We tend to be small, he said, but we make up for that in enthusiasm. True that was! The best of the Highlander array, we were. Volley after volley the English fired, and our charge never wavered. Not forty of us came back to the glen, you know, lad. 'Twas a sad day for Scotland. King Malcolm himself fell, and two of his sons, and the laird of Fillan and both his sons, and the manhood of the Highlands was scythed like corn. The Sassenachs slaughtered us."
"Yes, sir." Leethoul had not been the first disaster, nor the last. It had been bloodier than most because King Edwin had grown tired of putting down rebellions every few years and had resolved to teach his Scottish subjects true obedience. Leethoul had been only the first lesson.
History was a very depressing subject. As taught in the Tyndrum schoolhouse, it comprised long lists of battles where Highlanders wielding spears or claymores faced Lowlanders or English — or sometimes both — armed with muskets and cannon. Result: massacre. In Toby's own lifetime there had been Norford Bridge and Parline, and Leethoul the year before he was born. There must be a limit beyond which raw courage became sheer folly. A boy learned not to say so in Strath Fillan.
Iain Miller bunched his thick white brows. "They put a garrison in the castle that winter. Soldiers need women — but you know this."
Toby knew only too well. "They rounded up six girls from the village."
"Aye, they did. Was shameful. And six women between so many men was more shameful yet. In the spring, when they marched away, they let the girls loose, every one of them with child. One of them was Meg Inishail. She wanted to call you Toby Campbell of Inishail, but your grandfather swore he wouldn't have his name hung on a… on an Englishman's bastard."
"I didn't know that! Inishail?" Family gossip was a new experience.
"Rae Campbell of Inishail. Och, lad, he was a bitter man even before, was Inishail. Two wives he'd had, and both dying young. He never found a third. Meg was all he had, and he couldn't forgive. Not that it was her fault, but he couldn't see that. He wouldn't let her under his roof again. He didn't have much to spare, nothing to offer anyone to care for her, too proud to accept help."
"My grandfather was a Campbell from Inishail?"
"Oh no, he was born here in the glen. I think it was his father came from Inishail, or his grandfather."
Granny Nan had always been evasive about Toby's mother. Now he could see why — unexpected answers brought more questions. A man's clan and kin were determined only by his father, of course, but he did have Campbell blood in him, which he'd never known before. Where had Iain Miller been while his kinswoman was being rejected by her own father? Why had she been forced to bear her babe in the witchwife's cottage, with no company but Granny Nan herself?
"She named me Tobias."
The miller shrugged and looked uncomfortable, as if he wished he had not brought up the subject. "Doesn't mean anything, does it? She couldn't know which of the Sassenachs had scored. Granny Nan took her in; Meg bore you, and she died. That broke old Rae's heart, if it wasn't broken already. He died two days after you were born. He never saw you."
His daughter had named her baby Toby with her dying breath — so Granny Nan said, and no one else could know. Tobias was not a Scottish name. Perhaps the Sassenach Tobias had been the one she liked best, or just hated least. Had he been a little kinder than the others? Didn't mean a thing about fatherhood, though. Just wishful thinking. Tobias Strangerson — Toby the bastard. Nobody could ever know who had been his father.
The cart was already high enough now that the village lay spread out below it. The sod roofs blended with the grass, but roads and walls showed like a cobweb. Farther away, halfway to Crianlarich, stood Lightning Rock, with Granny Nan's little hovel by its base — birthplace and home. Bossie would be grazing on her tether, but he couldn't see her at this distance. He could barely see the house. There was fresh snow on the summit of Ben More.
The miller jiggled the reins. The horse ignored his impatience.
"Are you knowing what happened to the other five, lad?"
Not much. "I always heard that they left the glen."
Who would speak of such things anywhere near Toby Strangerson? All Granny Nan would ever say was that they'd been sent off to visit kin over the hills and bear their bastards out of sight and mind. She had never admitted that any of them had come back later. She had never admitted that there might have been refugees come to Strath Fillan in exchange, although the English behavior had been just as barbarous elsewhere in the aftermath of Leethoul. The Taming, they had called King Edwin's revenge. It had kept Scotland quiet for ten whole years, even the Highlands.
"Some went," said the miller. "Dougal Red lost his sons at Leethoul."
Dougal Who? Toby felt as if he'd dropped something and should turn around and look for it. "Sir?"
"Dougal wasn't like Rae. He welcomed his Elly back. Young Kenneth lost a leg at Leethoul, of course. Ploughman with one foot'd go in circles all the time, wouldn't he?"
Oh, so that's where the conversation was heading!
Kenneth the tanner was a gloomy man, heavy in body, dark in spirit. Being a cripple, he rarely left his house, and he drank too much. Toby didn't care for him, and could not imagine him as having ever been young. Being married to screechy Elly might excuse a lot, and having a no-good son like Fat Vik a lot more.
"A house and a trade — that's what Dougal paid to buy a husband for Elly and a name for her babe. We chaffed young Kenneth a lot about what he must be selling. That Vik of theirs was born just a few months after the wedding—'bout the same time as you."
"He's a week older than me, sir."
Iain nodded. "Well you're the biggest man in the glen now. He's but half a hand shorter. The two of you do stand out! I'm saying he'd no right to be calling you what he did, and I think maybe you have kin closer than me. You not know this?" he added skeptically.
"No, sir. I never guessed."
Did the miller really think he was that stupid? Of course he'd known. It was obvious. They were the same age and almost the same size. Fat Vik had straight black hair, Toby's was brown and curly, but at school their height had marked them out in their age row. They'd always been foes. The other boys had taunted them by calling them the Twins, until they'd learned better, for that had been the one way to unite them. No one could ever prove it, but it was a reasonable guess that they'd been sired by the same anonymous English soldier. Toby Strangerson had a half-brother who had just tried to get him killed.
Forget him. Vik Tanner was a liar, a lazy do-nothing, a bully who pestered young girls and already drank more than his stepfather. He wouldn't even make good pike bait.
Much more interesting was why Iain the miller was confessing his own kinship — now, after all these years. From what Toby could recall of the glen's complex lineages, if he was related to Iain, then he was related somehow to at least a quarter of Fillan, quite apart from the general Campbell connection. They could have said, couldn't they? So he wasn't a Campbell and never could be, would it have been so terrible to acknowledge a mothe
rless, fatherless boy being raised by the local witchwife, who was older than anyone and out of her mind half the time? It wouldn't have needed much effort. Couldn't any of them have broken the wall of silence?
And why had one of them done so now? It was too late for a woman to play auntie and hug a toddler who had fallen and hurt his knee. It was too late for a man to take another boy along when he took his own sons to dangle worms in the loch or poach the laird's deer — which everyone tried, but few ever managed. None of them had ever said. Or done.
The miller had been kind enough. He had let little Toby lead the donkey around, but he let all the kids do that. He still dropped off a sack of meal to Granny Nan once in a while — but a lot of the villagers brought her gifts. They did that because she was the witchwife and kept the hob happy, not because she'd taken in a rejected, abused girl and saved her baby and managed to rear it without even the help of a wet nurse.
So why had Iain the miller let out the secret now? Was he testing Toby's loyalties? He took English silver, too. He probably made more money out of the garrison than anyone else did. He had just rescued Toby from a very nasty confrontation.
The old man was waiting for a response, and the cart was under the black walls of the castle already. On the open turf, the Sassenachs were at their drill, marching to the beat of a drummer. A brief moment of sunshine made their helmets and muskets gleam, then they were hidden as the track detoured around a spur of rock.
"You're telling me that Vik Tanner may be my brother, sir?"
"It's possible. I wouldn't say it to anyone else."
"Neither would I." Fat Vik wasn't worth the horse dung to turn him green.
Iain turned the cart into the archway. "You'll have to decide soon, Toby Strangerson. You've got no inheritance in the glen. Will you be going off to seek your fortune elsewhere, do you think, one of these days?"
Toby would like nothing better than to wipe the glen off his feet and begone forever, but he couldn't go yet, and what the miller seemed to be hinting was that the village was no longer safe for him.
"Granny Nan needs me."
The cart clattered through the gate and into the echoing yard. The old man reined in and the horse lumbered to a halt. He turned his clever piggy eyes to study his passenger. Now he was going to get to the point.
"You're a strapping lad, Toby," he wheezed. "Whose man are you to be? You won't have much time. Better to make a free choice than swear an oath with a blade under your chin. Both sides are recruiting that way now."
Meaning which side would the strapping lad choose? More than two years had passed since the rout of Parline Field, and Fergan was still at large — the fugitive king of Scotland was said to be hiding somewhere in the hills. The English king's puppet governor ruled in Edinburgh and, although the Lowlands were relatively quiet, rebellion still flickered in the Highlands.
Iain Miller had fought at Leethoul, the Battle of the Century; he had lost a son at Norford Bridge. He had proved his loyalty, surely? But he took the Sassenachs' money. He had just rescued their hireling, reminded him of his English parentage, and tried to turn him against the villagers with tales that might or might not be true.
If Toby gave the wrong answer it would get back to the wrong ears, and he did not know which was the right answer.
"Yes, sir. I know the problem. But my first loyalty is to Granny Nan. As long as she needs me, I'll stay in the glen."
Rescue or not, he would never trust his throat to a Campbell.
CHAPTER THREE
As a child, Toby had been taught that Lochy Castle was a great and fabled stronghold. The English soldiers had corrected him on that. It was just a tall stone house with a high wall around it, they said. It looked impressive enough in the glen, where there were no other buildings with more than two rooms. It had withstood sieges in olden times because it had a good spring, but modern cannon would knock holes through its battlements in minutes.
Bringing cannon to the glen in the first place would be another matter, but Toby knew better than to mention that.
Another odd thing he'd learned from the Sassenachs was that, man for man, they weren't all that bad. Take an English soldier out of his uniform, and a Highlander out of his plaid, and you wouldn't be able to tell them apart. The Sassenachs had funny names, like Drake and Hopgood, or Miller and Mason, although they were soldiers, not millers or masons, and certainly not drakes. They griped in drawly voices about their food, Sergeant Drake's unending drill, and this bleak mountain wasteland they had been stuck in. They were unhappy and homesick. More than anything they yearned for female company. Perhaps the Taming of eighteen years ago had been a failure, or King Nevil preferred different techniques from his father's, or perhaps King Fergan's long-festering rebellion made a difference, but this time the garrison had been forbidden to touch the local women. As a result, all the men were screamingly horny, except presumably Captain Tailor, who had his wife here with him.
The drill squad came marching in through the archway with Sergeant Drake barking like a dog. The drummer's beat echoed back and forth between the walls. Captain Tailor lurked on the sidelines, watching. If Toby Strangerson had notions of joining the Sassenachs' Royal Fusiliers, it would not be because he wanted to spend his days doing musket drill.
He sprang down from the cart. Steward Bryce was approaching, but there was no need to wait for orders. The load must be moved to the granary, and it would travel on Toby Strangerson's back.
Bryce of Crief had been steward in Lochy Castle since history began. He had served Kenneth Campbell, the laird of Fillan, before he went off to die at Leethoul, and probably his father before him. Lairds had come and gone, but Master Crief had remained like the battlements themselves. He was easily the oldest man in the glen, as ancient as Granny Nan. Although he must have been tall in his youth, now he was stooped and leaned heavily on a cane. Most the flesh and all of the hair had gone from his head, so it looked like a skull in a leather bag. Even in summer, he went around swathed in a fox fur robe, and his skeletal hands trembled all the time. Yet he still had eyes like dirks.
He had been here during the Taming. Once in a while Toby would feel a mad impulse to accost the dread old man and ask him if he recalled any of the garrison of those days. Did he remember an exceptionally big one — a virile young man, who had fathered two of the six children conceived that winter? Had there been a gentle, kindly one named Tobias?
He had never asked and never would.
He hauled a sack of oats from the cart, settled it on his shoulder, and turned to find the old man barring his path.
"You carry the sacks into the granary, Strangerson."
"Yes, sir." Did he think Toby had put one on his shoulder to run off with?
The disconcertingly sharp eyes stared up at him. "And come and see me right after."
"Yes, sir."
Toby headed for the granary. As he departed, he heard the old man's querulous complaint that he had ordered flour first, followed by the start of the miller's whining excuses. It sounded as if he would blame Toby for loitering on the way, and that would mean half a day's pay lost, at the least.
The sun never penetrated the courtyard. The main house formed one end, stables and guardroom flanked the arched gate opposite; high walls along each side connected them. Apart from a water trough and a couple of small sheds, that was all there was to Lochy Castle. Sentries paced the battlements, but it had no moat, no drawbridge, no cannons.
The granary was on the ground floor of the house, and the door opened as Toby reached it. "Over there!" said Helga Burnside.
He pulled a face at the heap she indicated, for it was shoulder-high already. "We've got a whole cartload, you know." He swung the sack into place with a great gasp of effort.
She laughed scoffingly. "Ah, and you just a puny slip of a boy! It'll put some muscle on you."
"Double helpings at lunch, then!" he said, hurrying off to get another.
"That'll be a change from the triples you usuall
y eat!" she shouted after him.
Everyone liked Helga, a big, cheerful woman from the village. Yet she took English money, too. Was there a difference between men and women working for the enemy? Of course there was — women were not expected to kill them. Men were.
He reached the cart and took up another sack. The miller had disappeared, probably into the kitchens. No one else had appeared to help the odd-job boy with the unloading — not that he cared. If he wasn't doing this, he'd be cleaning out the stable or the latrines, chopping brush, hunting rats, running errands. He might even be sent back down to the village for something or other, and he would rather not go there again in the immediate future — certainly not today, with the hob's prophecy still in effect. He would much rather heave meal sacks around.
The fusiliers were into musket drill, with Sergeant Drake barking as loud as ever and the drum beating:
"Shorten your scouring stick!"
Rat-a-tat-tat!
"Try your match!"
Tat-tatta-tat!
The lad with the meal sack was hardly more burdened than those poor sucker fusiliers. The guns alone were so heavy that the men must also carry rests to set them on when they fired. Each man was festooned with a sword, dagger, shot purse, smoldering match, powderhorn, scouring stick, and probably other things Toby had forgotten. Some had pistols tucked in their belts, as well. They wore spurred boots and white—white! — stockings. Their russet doublets and breeches were so padded and puffed that they weighed more than his plaid, and on top of it all went a spherical steel helmet with a brim that came to a point in front. They spent half the day drilling with muskets and the other half just cleaning and polishing their gear. He would rather be the odd-job boy any day.
Joking apart, hard work built muscles on the glen's bareknuckle champion, with a good chance to take the weight-lifting title from the smith this year. Maybe the caber tossing, too. If the previous laird of Fillan could come back from the grave, he wouldn't call Toby Strangerson a fishing pole now.
