An Ancient Strife

by Michael Phillips

  If only there were still ruins of the broch of Caldohnuill that he might actually set his eyes upon! And what a thrill it would be to find the stones of the ancient monument of burial from which the sacred Coronation Stone had been cut by Columba’s Pict companions and taken back to Iona—the very stone that he and Paddy Rawlings had recovered in Ireland.

  But alas, wherever the ancient Caledonii had lived, and wherever Cruithne and Fidach had dragged their commemorative stones, and wherever Maelchon had buried his father Foltlaig near the grave of the ancient Caledonii chief who had longed for peace among the tribes of Caledonia—all was now lost with the passage of time, just as was the Culloden grave of Kendrick Gordon.

  Andrew tarried three days at a bed-and-breakfast in Invershin, driving and walking the desolate Highland moors and hills from early morning until late every afternoon and retracing, not in fact with his feet but within his soul, the journey the two Caledonii brothers Cruithne and Fidach had taken with Domnall, son of the bard. He was drinking in the spirit of the Highlands and allowing Scotland’s historic past to enter yet more deeply into him.

  Surely, he thought, these empty, unpeopled, windy, rocky places captured the essential mystique of this land!

  On the third day, knowing he would be leaving the region in the morning, he drove into the wilderness along the River Carron, parked his car at Alladale Lodge, and struck into the remote hills on foot, climbing up the slopes toward the peak of Carn Chuinneag.

  The blanket of heather on the mountainside had nearly reached its full glory, spreading its color out across the otherwise barren slopes.

  He stooped to pluck a tiny sprig, then sat down and gazed at the mixture of purples that surrounded him, reflecting on its subtle hues and its hardy nature.

  Would the Scots, he wondered, hold their heads so high in the world without the immortality they gave their heroes? The romantic mist surrounding the legend of the Bonnie Prince, for instance, added almost an aura of triumph to the chronicle of that heroic time, even in the face of his defeat.

  What a fit symbol was this heather—characteristic plant of the expansive lonely moors and the vast, rugged, mountain—for the prince whose rule over the land as son of his father, the last Stuart king of Jacobite legend, was so poignantly brief. Both burst into their royal explosions of color for but an instant and then were gone, left to elicit sonnets and ballads that elevated both blossom and prince to the stature of legend.

  As short-lived as was the prince’s shining moment, Andrew thought to himself, out of the fading bloom of Stuart royalty in the years following Culloden grew a legend that gave new hope to the very land the prince could not conquer.

  And though the purple robe of the prince’s royalty broke into flower like the heather—for a mere flicker of time—English swords could not entirely destroy its power. The spirit of Prince Charles lived on in these Highlands, giving life and warmth and hope, and like the heather, becoming greater in death than in life.

  As winter leads to spring and death to life, so, in the seeming end of his cause, Bonnie Prince Charlie had infused what would become a yet deeper life into Caledonia’s consciousness—a final victory, in the imaginations of Culloden’s descendents, over those who had slain them.

  Andrew gazed about at the subtle robe of Caledonia’s majestic royalty waiting again to be donned, perhaps by some future Stuart king. There was no other place quite like this, he thought. Scarce wonder Robert Burns, a Lowlander, made the claim that his heart was in the Highlands.

  His brain full of many such thoughts, with a smile Andrew now pulled his well-worn green volume of Burns from his jacket pocket and read the words over slowly and thoughtfully again. He must have read this poem a dozen times back in London. Never had it carried the depth of meaning it possessed on this day. It was time now for him to bid this region farewell, and he would let Burns’s melancholy love anthem to the wilds express the sentiments of his heart.

  Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,

  The birthplace of valor, the country of worth!

  Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

  The hills of the Highlands forever I love.

  Farewell to the mountains high cover-d with snow,

  Farewell to the straths and green valleys below,

  Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,

  Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods!

  As he sat, he was reminded once more of the legend of the white stag—first sighted by Son of Wanderer, then spotted by the brothers Fidach and Cruithne in just such a setting of forests and “loud-pouring floods.” Would indeed one day the majestic creature return to Scotland . . . and bring with it the unity and brotherhood it promised those early Celts? Or would the return of the stag perhaps be symbolic of a return of Scotland’s sovereignty?

  He bent again to the page and finished the poem:

  My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

  My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer,

  A-chasing the wild deer and following the roe—

  My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go!

  He rose, placed the sprig of heather in the book and closed it, then began the long walk back to his car. As he drove south again, the taped music of pipers, harpists, accordions, fiddles, and tin whistles wove a magical spell, now with a ballad, now with a dance tune, now with the sad lament of a poignant historic Burns verse, infecting him with a melancholic nostalgia. Never, he thought, did the folk music of a nation so perfectly harmonize with the evocative sensations caused by the land itself. If these Highlands, these streams, these forests, these bare and rocky mountains, these jutting and jagged seascapes—if they could produce music of themselves, if the sounds of symphony could arise from out of the places where hidden melodies haunted the ground and rocks and lifted their strains to the heavens, then surely that glorious symphony would be composed of the melodies, rhythms, instrumental combinations, ballads, and harmonies the musicians of Scotland had been giving her people through the years.

  As the cassette of music continued, now came the haunting words:

  Bonnie Charlie’s noo awa;

  safely o’er the friendly main.

  Mony a hert will break in twa,

  should he ne’er come back again.

  Will ye no come back again?

  Will ye no come back again?

  Better lo’ed ye canna be.

  Will ye no come back again?

  What might the future hold for the legacy of Prince Charlie’s land? mused Andrew. The Bonnie Prince himself could not come back again . . . but perhaps his cause, maybe even one of his own descendents, might “come back again.”

  Whenever that time came, surely the spirit the Stuart prince had come to represent would rise again in the hearts of Scots everywhere.

  Four

  This was the craziest thing he had ever done in his life, Bill Rawlings said to himself.

  Paddy and her ridiculous sleuthing!

  After their last talk, he’d thought to himself, “If she can do it, I can.” After all, the Reardon fellow didn’t know him from Adam. What would it hurt to poke around a little? Especially if it was as important as Paddy said.

  So he had hung around the lobby of the Auckland Towers for several days, on and off, thinking maybe he’d get lucky.

  Reardon showed himself a time or two, walking through the lobby and getting into a taxi out in front, then disappearing as Rawlings emerged behind him. Thus far he hadn’t summoned the courage to do the Bond imitation with a “follow that cab” scenario.

  But today he’d decided to go for it. If he lost his nerve, or if Reardon showed signs of becoming suspicious, he’d just tell the driver to stop and he’d get out and be done with it.

  He followed Reardon’s taxi through the city, across the Harbor Bridge, and eventually to Bayswater, where Reardon got out in front of a six-story office building of modern design. Rawlings told his own driver to stop, got
out and paid him, then followed Reardon inside at what he judged a safe distance. The elevator doors across the lobby were just closing as he walked in. Bill glanced at the second hand of his watch, then hurried forward and pressed the up button.

  Rawlings stood waiting. Forty seconds later the doors opened in front of him. The elevator was empty.

  He held the door open with one hand and thought a moment, then stepped inside, pressed one for the first floor, and hurried out. The moment the doors closed behind him, again he pushed the up button.

  The elevator took eighteen seconds to climb one floor, then return and open its doors.

  He stepped into the elevator again, now pressing two and stepping out quickly.

  Twenty-six seconds this time before the doors opened in front of him.

  Again for the third floor . . . thirty-two seconds.

  Fourth . . . forty-one.

  And floor five . . . fifty seconds.

  That was it—Reardon had exited on floor four.

  He didn’t want to follow him and risk being spotted, even if he and Reardon were strangers. He glanced about the lobby. There was what he was looking for—a building directory. He hurried over and scanned the entries. Only one tenant appeared to be occupying the entire fourth floor. That was all he wanted to know for now. He’d let Paddy figure out what to do with it.

  He turned, left the building, signaled for another cab, and returned to his flat.

  Five

  Andrew’s sojourn now took him along the northern coast of the Grampian region of Scotland, through Elgin, Cullen, Portsoy, and Banff. Here the texture of the landscape changed from lonely Highland moors to bustling tourist and fishing towns. As it did, so did Andrew’s mood. The great variety enriched yet further his sense of the land and its people which seemed to evolve daily in new and unexpected ways.

  One morning he drove past a colorful blue sign near Huntly that read, “The Gordon District.” A surge of identification went through him at the sight. Did his family have roots everywhere in Scotland!

  Rounding the cape to Peterhead, he headed south to Aberdeen. He had never before visited the great seaport and historic center of learning for the north of Scotland. Walking the deeply rutted cobblestone streets of its Old Town near the original university buildings sent new and quietly pensive feelings through him, a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era in which he felt comfortably at home.

  He walked into the King’s College chapel. The bronze plaque by the entrance set a mood for reflection that had become more common within him these days:

  Here one may

  Without much molestation

  Be thinking

  What he is

  Whence he came

  What he has done

  And to what

  The King has called him.

  The chapel was empty at midday. He took a seat in the darkened sanctuary, the thin light streaming through the colorful stained-glass windows. He sat for some minutes quietly wondering where his travels would take him next.

  From the gray granite city, Andrew followed the River Dee up through the Royal Deeside region. His route took him past the Bridge of Feugh—where he stopped, walked out midway across, and there stood above the rushing, turbulent brown peat-fed river gazing down at the frothy display—and thence to Ballater, Balmoral Castle, and eventually Braemar, where the earl of Mar had once gathered his friends to plan an uprising.

  It was there, in the heart of southern Grampian’s most royal and poetic hills, that Andrew’s life would change in yet another way he could never have foreseen.

  Six

  Paddy, it’s Bill . . . I may have something for you.”

  “You followed Reardon?”

  “I know it’s loony, but I did.”

  “And?”

  “From what I could tell, he met with some bigwigs at a company in Auckland called World Resources, Limited.”

  “What do you know about them?”

  “Not much. But I did ask around. It’s a multinational corporation that’s into investments, land leases, bonds, offshore drilling . . . all sorts of things.”

  “Interesting, but . . . hmm, I don’t see much unusual in that.”

  “Their main interests, according to a friend of mine,” Bill went on, “involve North Sea oil.”

  “Oil!” exclaimed Paddy. “That could be significant. What about the ownership?”

  “Seems to be well shielded.”

  “Good work! Keep at it. If you can find out anything more about what Reardon is up to, I’ll . . .”

  “You’ll what?” said Bill with playfully significant tone.

  “Let’s just put it this way,” said Paddy, “—I’ll owe you one. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can dig up on World Resources on the Internet.”

  Seven

  Leaving Braemar after breakfast, and without a planned destination for day’s end, Andrew drove south on the A93 through Glen Clunie. Suddenly, on a narrow straightaway of only some four hundred meters, an expensive BMW of a near-black shade of rich maroon zoomed past him on the right. It seemed to come from nowhere. Briefly unnerved, Andrew watched as within seconds it disappeared from sight.

  Half an hour later, upon cresting a ridge of the mountainous drive, he found himself overlooking a flat cultivated valley where many cars were parked and several hundred people were assembled. The village called Spittal o’ Ballochallater stood just beyond. From the small size of the village, Andrew judged that all the residents, and more besides, must have come to the gathering.

  He made his way on down the winding road toward it. As he neared the site he saw the large maroon car that had passed him parked near a rectangular stone residence that was the closest thing to a castle this out-of-the-way region seemed to possess. On an impulse, his curiosity aroused, he pulled in and drove slowly past the BMW, then parked in a group of two- or three-dozen automobiles about thirty meters away.

  He glanced toward the BMW. The glass shielding the rear seat was darkened. He thought he could faintly make out a figure seated inside, but he wasn’t positive. The driver’s seat was empty.

  What was such an expensive vehicle, and one so obviously in a great hurry, doing at what appeared some kind of rustic gathering? It was the kind of car one saw in London. In fact, now that he thought about it, he halfway thought he recognized it, although he couldn’t pinpoint where he might have seen it before.

  Andrew got out and maneuvered through the clump of parked cars in the direction of all the activity. Before long, he found himself walking amongst a diverse conglomeration of tents, tables, and booths where all manner of local handcrafts and woolen items were displayed for sale. Bagpipes sounded in the distance. Moving beyond the handcrafts, Andrew was drawn toward a sheep-shearing contest and for the next fifteen minutes watched the proceedings with fascination.

  All at once, Andrew’s eyes shot open. Beyond the hubbub of bleating and yelling in the distance, two men were talking, one of them heatedly. He was obviously a local, dressed in kilt and full Highland regalia. Andrew could make out nothing of what he was saying, but the animated gestures of his hands made clear that he was upset. The other, dressed in the only suit for miles, dark blue and of obvious expensive cut, was none other than one of the four vice-chairmen for the Conservative Party, a man he knew on a passing basis, Robert Burslem.

  What in the world was he doing here!

  Andrew shrunk out of sight amid the cheering spectators of the shearing display, intuitively realizing he did not want to be seen. Then he fingered his new growth of light brown beard, wondering if he could be recognized anyway.

  The interview between Burslem and the Scotsman lasted but a minute longer. The Tory MP now turned and walked back in the direction of the small car park and the castle. It came as no surprise when Andrew saw him get into the BMW and drive off, not quite so rapidly as before, but obviously wanting to waste no time getting to wherever he was going next.

  While Andrew was still pondering the s
trange coincidence of seeing one of his colleagues in this remote village, a loud speaker interrupted his thoughts, announcing several events about to begin. He glanced up, then toward his car, debating briefly with himself whether to hurry out and try to follow Burslem. Almost as quickly he realized he would never be able to catch up with a speeding BMW. Maybe he could discover what Burslem had been doing in the village by hanging around awhile, perhaps learning who was the fellow Burslem had apparently angered. Andrew couldn’t say why, but it seemed important that he know.

  As a result of the announcement, some half the crowd had by now turned and was walking toward the middle of the open field beyond the display area. Unconsciously he found himself accompanying the human tide.

  “What is this?” he asked an older fellow moving in the same direction beside him.

  “Hoo’s that?”

  “What is this . . . what’s going on here?”

  “They’re readyin’ fer the races,” answered the old Scotsman.

  “I mean the whole thing,” said Andrew, sweeping his arm around the entire gathering. “What is going on here today? I was just driving by and happened to stop.”

  “Ay, I git yer meanin’ noo!” laughed the man. “Why, ’tis oor Highland Games, laddie—fer the region o’ Ballochallater an’ Lochnagar. We hold oor ain Games every year.”

  “May anyone participate?”

  “Ay, laddie. Ye luik like ye’re fleet o’ foot. Why dinna ye pit yersel’ agin the rest o’ the laddies?”

  Andrew laughed at the thought of competing. He hadn’t done anything of the sort for years!

  Ten minutes later, however, as much to his own surprise as anyone’s, having succumbed to the hearty expostulations of his new friend and several others and having grabbed his sneakers from the car, Andrew found himself removing his shirt and approaching the starting line for a 2.8-mile run.

  This was not what he’d been thinking when he pulled off the road thirty minutes before!

  He glanced around at the group. One fellow looked to be in his forties; three appeared about his own age, in their midthirties. There were a couple of young men in their twenties, three in their midteens, and two boys not more than ten or eleven—comprising a total field of an even dozen.