Both stared awestruck for a moment. Then a smile gradually broke across his visitor’s face.
The next instant they were in one another’s arms, sharing an affectionate embrace accompanied by manly tears of love.
“Beath!” Gachan exclaimed to his twin. “How . . . how did you know where to find me?”
“It was not hard,” replied his brother. “Strathbogie is not difficult to locate from Aberdeen. Everyone for miles knows of you the moment I mention the earl. Never Pharaoh had so loyal a Joseph. They thought I was you!” he laughed.
“But this is too wonderful!” said Gachan as they stepped back. “When did you grow so large and tall—so strong?” he exclaimed.
Beath laughed.
“At the same time you did.”
“But it has only been, what, four years?”
“Five—and you have changed as much as I. Just look at you—and gaffer over all the construction!”
“The factor is an excellent man too. But you are right. The earl places great trust in me.”
“With good reason, my brother, I am certain.”
“How are Mother and Father?” asked Gachan.
Beath’s face fell.
“That is why I am here,” he said. “Father is ill. He has been asking about you. I told him I would find you.”
“Is his life in danger?”
“It is possible,” answered Beath gravely. “The end is not imminent, but we believe is approaching.”
“I will be there at the soonest the earl can part with me. I will leave before winter.”
“How can you be certain Lord Duncan will grant your request?”
“The earl is a fair man. He will let me go. And Mother?”
“Very well—strong and healthy.”
“Ewan and Letitia?”
“Ewan and his wife have two sons and a daughter. Letitia remains with me at home, but a man in the village fancies her. I do not doubt it will soon be only myself left to care for Father and Mother.”
Gachan took in the news of his family with many emotions. It broke his heart to be so far from them. But it could not be helped that his life was in Strathbogie now.
Sixteen
Beath and Gachan remained together four days, during which time Beath joined his brother on the construction site. Those were times of great rejoicing, hard work, laughter, and a newfound manly comradeship to replace that childhood friendship they had left behind fifteen years earlier. Early the morning following Beath’s arrival, the two were out before any of the other laborers, working together on the troublesome chimney joint, discussing the best method to insure that not one of the ten billion drops which would fall on that roof during the coming winter’s rains would penetrate the inner walls of the house.
When the earl came to inspect the premises midway through the morning, he was surprised to see two Gachans standing before him! A young man himself no longer, the earl was steadily advancing toward that second childhood into which all must grow, and many emotions from his own past now revisited him with increasing regularity.
He glanced back and forth between the identical faces and physiques with a look of bewildered astonishment. Then, unexpected by any of the three, tears slowly filled his eyes. Beholding so vividly the close relationship between these two, the great man realized again his own loss so many years before. Surely Gachan and his brother possessed, each within the other, a wealth no power or worldly title could buy. Perhaps one or two tears resulted as well from the realization—how clear does much become in old age to which the eyes of self are oblivious in youth—that he had himself caused in these two the same separation which all his life had stung him with regret.
Coming quickly to the rescue of the master he had grown to love, Gachan now explained with a beaming smile.
“It is my brother, my lord!” he said.
The two shook hands—the earl who had crowned the King of Scotland and Gachan’s humble peasant brother. They were instantly friends.
“He journeyed north to tell me that our father is ill,” said Gachan as his smile faded.
“Then you will return to the south with your twin immediately.”
“I must see to the completion of the roof and the bailey wall,” replied Gachan. “Beath assures me there is no impending danger to our father.”
“You must go regardless,” insisted the earl.
“I would have your family snugly inside your new home before winter’s first snowfall,” rejoined Gachan. “Then, with my lord’s gracious leave, I shall return home to spend the winter with my family in the south.”
“I see when I am beaten,” laughed Lord Duncan. “All right, then. I agree to your plan, and most heartily.”
Beath departed for Fife at the end of his four-day visit. On the first night of his return journey, he stopped at an inn in Aberdeen, for which accommodation the earl himself had insisted on paying. As he opened the small parcel in which were packed his few clothes and other traveling necessities, twelve silver coins tumbled onto the floor. They had been wrapped inside a cloth containing provisions for the journey which Gachan had given him from the earl’s kitchen.
Beath smiled. His brother had indeed risen high in the King’s service. But he had not forgotten his humble roots, nor had his affection for his family diminished. What wealth this was!
The castle at Strathbogie was completed on schedule. Afterward, in the autumn, young Gachan returned to Fife—and great was the rejoicing of his entire family to greet him. He spent the winter in his childhood home. And when their father, Darroch, died the following spring, Beath and Gachan were sitting on either side of his bed, one of his hands resting within the gentle clasp of each.
The twins’ sister, Letitia, married within the year. Beath continued to live in the same cottage where he had been born, caring for his mother. He did not marry till he was forty-one. Neither did he nor any of the other sons or daughter of Darroch want for anything, for the earl of Fife grew more and more generous as his years advanced.
Upon his return to Strathbogie, Gachan assumed the duties of overseeing the new and expanded stables at the castle. Dhuibh was by now an old man and able only for the smallest of tasks. The earl, however, continued to show Dhuibh and his wife kindness for their years in his service. They lived out their days happily and contentedly in two small rooms attached to the stables.
Seventeen
As the twelfth century gave way to the thirteenth, a well-ordered feudal system under Scotland’s landowning aristocrats was solidly in place. Clan rebellion continued to be beaten back by William the Lion’s successors. Norman blood and customs continued to spread throughout the land.
The Gaelic language, already intermingled with Norse, now became steadily infused and corrupted by Anglo-Saxon, or “Inglis” as it would come to be called—the old and new tongues mingling in a way that would ultimately produce a unique hybrid Scots dialect of its own.
The character of the Scots people was becoming intermingled as well, with the vigor and independence of the Celt proving hard to vanquish.
The new century demonstrated increasingly, in fact, that the lords and nobles who came to Scotland after the Norman Conquest were allowing the spirit of the Highlands to infect them. They became ever more intent upon securing and consolidating their own power and feudal holdings than upon strengthening the crown of Scotland. As the year 1066 retreated further into the past, in truth the descendents of the Norman newcomers behaved more and more like native Scots themselves.
Though many of these nobles held lands in England as well as Scotland, by the thirteenth century the individualistic Celtic blood in their ancestry rose to predominate. Brown peat ran stronger than sea blue, and the clans continued to thrive.
While their neighbors and relations south of the border were learning to pride themselves on being English, the descendents of Cruithne, Foltlaig, and Maelchon would forever be MacDonald or Forbes, Campbell or MacLeod, Douglas or Moray . . . or Bruce, Balliol, and Co
myn.
But that they were all Scots together mattered little when disputes arose.
In the year 1284, more than a hundred years after the births of Darroch MacDonnuill’s twin sons, arose the greatest dispute it is possible for a monarchy to face—an empty throne. King Alexander III of Scotland was dead, and all three of his children had preceded him to the grave—two sons and his daughter, Margaret, who had married the King of Norway and become that nation’s Queen.
The heir to the throne of Scotland, therefore, appeared to be Alexander’s three-year-old granddaughter, also named Margaret, whose birth had ended the life of the Norwegian Queen, her mother.
Complications and disputes set in immediately.
Two Scottish lords put themselves forward and laid claim to the throne in place of Margaret—stating that no female could inherit the kingdom. The first was the aging Robert Bruce, lord of Annandale, a region just north of Carlisle, who held large estates in both England and Scotland. His Scottish lands had been granted to the Bruce family by David I in 1124, and his own father had married David’s great-granddaughter. That made Bruce a direct descendent of David I, and therefore of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret—a lineage that Bruce might well trace all the way back to Kenneth MacAlpin. It was a strong claim.
But John Balliol, lord of Galloway, stepped in to contest Bruce’s claim. He also was in David I’s direct line, with nearly identical descent. He not Bruce, insisted Balliol, ought to be made King.
The Scottish Parliament listened to the plea of both claimants, but decided only that peace should be kept and the “nearest by blood must inherit.”
The nearest blood remained three-year-old Margaret. And she remained in Norway.
Eighteen
The prospects in Scotland were not bright for a child-queen, a foreign one at that, hovered about by jealous regents and nobles scrambling for power.
To make matters worse, south of the border a strong English king, Edward Plantagenet, great-uncle of the so-called Maid of Norway, possessed his own claim to the rule of Scotland—a claim not only of descent, but of homage. For even though Richard the Lionhearted of England had repudiated the subjection of Scotland accorded in the Treaty of Falaise, his successors, when it suited them, continued to consider Scotland de facto among their dominions.
By loose interpretation of an oath sworn to him some years before by Alexander—a statement of homage similar to the one Malcolm Canmore swore to William the Conqueror—Edward found justification in considering himself Lord Paramount over all Scotland. He was also, conveniently, Alexander’s uncle. Did not his position give him as strong a right to the Scottish throne as a Norwegian toddler?
The English King, therefore, was added to the list of claimants, now grown to four. The young Margaret, Maid of Norway, was by all rights Queen—but Bruce, Balliol, and Plantagenet were not far behind with their claims.
Scotland’s nobles were not eager to give Edward I of England a more secure foothold than he already had. But neither did they relish placing the kingdom in the hands of either Bruce or Balliol. A nervous parliamentary council of lords and clergymen therefore hastily convened to appoint a regency to rule Scotland in Margaret’s name, before Edward should press his own potential rights in the matter.
This regency represented the strongest of Scotland’s aristocracy and included the great-grandson of the earl of Fife, who had raised Gachan, son of Darroch, so high from his humble birth. These regents—called guardians—were William Fraser; Robert Wishart; Duncan, earl of Fife; Alexander Comyn; James the Steward; and John Comyn. For obvious reasons, neither of the chief Scottish contenders for the throne was included.
The powerful Bruce family—Bruce the elder, at seventy-seven, and his son, also Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick—resented being omitted from the ruling council of guardians. They began to gather men and arms. The growing dispute over the throne now appeared capable of sending the country into civil war.
Within three years, the situation in Scotland had grown delicate and grave. By 1289, King Eric of Norway, concerned for his young daughter’s future and safety in Scotland, appealed to Edward in England for protection and assistance.
Nineteen
Edward had already established himself as a skillful mediator on the Continent and had many allies within the aristocracy of Scotland. Many Scots, therefore, followed the lead of the Norwegians and turned to Edward as the strongest individual involved, as well as the most likely to effect a harmonious solution. The blood ties between the three royal families were viewed not as a difficulty, but as a potentially unifying factor.
Edward was only too glad to help facilitate in Scotland’s difficulty—on one condition . . . that the Scots acknowledge his claim to be Lord Paramount over their kingdom, which was no more, he said, than their dead King himself had done. And Alexander had indeed given homage to Edward after the fashion of Malcolm Canmore. But now once again the critically ambiguous interpretation of this event surfaced. Was such homage only for lands held by the Scottish King in England? Or was it rendered for the entire kingdom of Scotland?
Edward knew exactly where he stood on the issue. He had not pressed the matter during Alexander’s lifetime. But with Alexander now dead and unable to dispute what had been said, and with the Scottish throne up for grabs, the English King was ready at last to assert his claim to rule all of Scotland.
To strengthen his claim, Edward now brought up a subject that he and Alexander had discussed before the Scots King’s death—the prospect of a royal marriage between the infant Margaret and the English King’s young son and heir, also named Edward, who was a year younger than the infant Queen of Scotland. Edward preferred to seize the throne peacefully if he could. What better way than by marriage? It was a plan certain to resolve any future disputes once and for all.
Discussions were arranged between the three nations—England, Norway, and Scotland. Negotiations proceeded in great detail. A treaty was at length concluded which firmly established Margaret as heir and Queen of Scotland and provided for the marriage between her and young Edward. The Maid would sail from Norway to England to be placed in the custody of her great-uncle Edward, who would send her north to Scotland to rule when he judged the time fit and the nation at peace.
This final provision extended the unclear homage a dramatic step further and established a vital precedent that would come back to plague the Scots time and again: the manifest right of the English King to intervene in Scotland’s affairs.
The Scottish Queen had been placed under the authority of the English King, who would himself decide what was to be done and when to do it. Edward might intervene whenever and however he chose.
The line between Scottish independence and English sovereignty thus grew all the more vague. Edward’s overlordship, left unresolved during Alexander’s reign, thus remained precariously ill defined.
The Scots did insist upon, and were granted, a declaration that appeared to insure independence. It guaranteed that Scotland was separate and divided from England and that its rights, laws, liberties, and customs were wholly and inviolably preserved for all time. However, to this promise were added words which kept English hands still vying for control: “Saving always the right of our lord King,” added the document, “and of any . . . that has pertained to him . . . or which ought to pertain to him in the future.”
Even in this attempt to clarify the relationship of Scotland to the English King, ambiguity deepened. Scotland had been guaranteed “separation” from England—but not independence.
The treaty of November 1289, signed at Salisbury, had compromised the future liberty of their nation. The Scots nobles did not yet realize how seriously.
One fact in the entire matter, however, was not ambiguous: Edward’s ambitions were clear enough. That he instigated no immediate hostile activity made the concession appear less serious than it was. But with the signing of the treaty, Edward’s desire to be recognized as Lord Paramount over Scotland had been committed to
writing.
At the end of September in the year 1290, seven-year-old Margaret, Maid of Norway, Queen of Scotland, and the implied ward of the King of England, set sail from Norway on her way to England.
The crossing was windy and rough. The child became deathly sick. The ship reached the Orkney Islands safely, but within days young Margaret was dead.
Years of schemes, negotiations, and treaties were suddenly for naught. If the Scottish throne had been in doubt before, now ambition surfaced from many new quarters.
Scottish affairs were thrown into instant turmoil. Whereas before there had been four, now at least a dozen contenders immediately claimed right to the throne of ancient Caledonia.
Strife appeared unavoidable.
Twenty
But a century before, when Gachan MacDarroch was making his move north into the region of Strathbogie, the people of Scotland could not have foreseen that their country was moving toward such a fate. For most, as they accustomed themselves to the Normanization of their land, life remained more or less as it had been—each small fiefdom doing its best to feed and protect its own.
In Strathbogie, the twin who had found favor in the earl’s eyes continued to prosper. When he was twenty-eight, Gachan met the daughter of a baron from Lothian. The man had traveled northward with his daughter to visit the earl.
The baron’s daughter and earl’s assistant were married the following year. The earl had built for them a small house in the village. Knowing of Gachan’s love for horses, an adjoining stable was constructed as soon as the house was complete. The earl’s wedding gift to the young couple was a fine roan mare and a black stallion with white forelegs.
Gachan’s four sons and two daughters all inherited their father’s love for horses. Every one of the youngsters would have been content to make his or her home in a stable forever. Gachan, who over the years had taken up the farrier’s trade, attempted to pass along his skills to his sons. His third son, Cein, took to it with greater proficiency than the others and made it his lifelong profession.
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