I felt it when I went up from the horse lines in search of Alisdair, saw it in men’s eyes in the firelight, heard it behind their voices speaking in their own tongue. Caspar felt it too, and whimpered at my heels. As I checked among the Atholl men, looking about me, he stood up with his forepaws against my knee, and I felt that he was shaking, and stooped down to reassure him. His paws had hardened so much over the months that he could march moorland mile for moorland mile with us now and never get footsore; but when I took his forepaws in my hand, he picked one up awkwardly, and I saw by the light of the nearest fire that he had left blood in my palm. I rolled him over on his back to look, and found a fresh gash in one pad – a camp is a fine place for finding sharp things lying about. Alisdair would have to wait. And truth to tell, I was not sorry to leave the clan gatherings with their vague sense of trouble behind me. ‘Come,’ I said, ‘cold water for that, my wounded sojer,’ and scooped him up under my arm and made for the river.
Under the bank, a little spit of ground ran out into the current, and the light of the rising moon slanting under the low-hanging alder branches made a cobwebby paleness that was enough to see by. I squatted down with Caspar between my knees, and began to bathe his paw in the cold swift-running water. He was a good wee dog, and whimpered, but did not try to pull away, though it must have hurt him sore as I opened the cut between my thumbs to make sure that there was nothing left inside.
I was just about done when a shadow fell across me, and looking up, I saw a short squat figure blotted dark against the mingled light of moon and campfires. I could not see his face, but there could be but one such pair of bow legs in all the Highland army.
‘Alisdair,’ I said, ‘I was coming seeking ye, by and by.’
‘Ach well, ’tis I that am the honoured one,’ said he, ‘but I was seeing you coming down that way, and so I am come seeking you instead. What will be amiss with Skolawn, then?’
He always called Caspar by the name of Finn MacCool’s great hound of ancient legend, it being his idea of a joke.
‘Naught but a cut paw that needed bathing,’ I said, ‘’tis done now.’ And as he scrambled down the bank I got up and we settled ourselves comfortably along the alder roots, with the wee dog at our feet.
For a while we sat in companionable silence, the sounds of the camp behind us, and in front of the lapping of the Garry water under the bank and the occasional plop of a rising trout. But Alisdair, though he sat so still, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, was not at ease, but had the same odd smell of trouble about him that I had caught among the Highland fires. Whatever it was, it began reaching out from him to me…
‘What’s amiss, Alisdair?’ I asked at last.
‘What should be amiss?’
‘I’d not be knowing. But something is. ’Tis up there –’ I jerked my head back towards the camp. ‘And ’tis on you, my mannie.’
‘Ye’ve the keen nose, I’m thinking,’ said he, ‘ye should ha’ been a Hielan’ man.’ And then after a few moments, almost as though he spoke against his will, ‘Did ye see anything – any one, by the cattle ford an hour’s march up-river, as we came by?’
‘An old woman doing her household wash,’ said I, when I had had a moment to remember.
He did not look round, and I only saw the side half of his face blotted dark against the white water. ‘Aye, and you a Lowlander, ye would not be knowing.’
‘Knowing what?’ I said.
‘The Woman of the Sidh – the Washer by the Ford.’
But I would be knowing; I who had listened to the wild tales of Philip of Amryclose. I had forgotten, but it came back to me all too clearly… The Washer by the Ford, and she was washing the blood-stained linen, who comes before the death of chiefs and heroes – aye, before the death of Cuchulain himself…
‘Och, away! Dinna be sae daft,’ said I, as much to myself as to Alisdair. ‘She was real enough; just an old hen-wife a wee thing late with her spring washing. Aye, she was real enough.’
‘She seemed real enough,’ he said, ‘she always does.’
And I wished that I had not suddenly remembered the something dark-reddish brown among the bundle of linen; the shawl or whatever it was…
At first light, with the camp just beginning to stir, Claverhouse called a council of war.
In after years, I heard from this man and that what passed in the Great Hall of Blair Castle that dawn. How Dundee put the question to his chiefs and captains, should they wait for the rest of the clan muster to come in, which would likely be about three days, or go forward at once, with what we had, to meet MacKay as he came out from the Killiecrankie pass. All the regular officers, and the leaders who had been trained to command regular and Lowland troops, were for waiting. ‘Wait,’ said they, the hardheaded and sensible men. ‘We have gained the castle and can hold it until the muster is complete. To meet MacKay with the force that we have now, half-starved and dead-weary from forced marching, would be madness.’ Aye, it was good sense; but when did sense ever have a meaning for the Highland men, the likes of Keppoch? Glengarry spoke out for them, ‘What matters an empty belly and a forced march to the men of the clans?’
And Dunfermline followed at his back. ‘If we bide here until MacKay attacks, we shall lose the advantage of attacking first, and risk being pinned down here. And the men of the clans do not fight their best behind walls.’
And that was true as well, and nearly all the chiefs spoke up with the same voice.
But the final decision of course was for Dundee, and they sat about the table and looked to him to make it.
That must have been a stark moment for Dundee! Having followed him as I had, I’m thinking the man’s own choice would lie with the Highlanders, but any man trying to drive two horses not broken to run as a pair in the same harness would know the difficulties he faced.
Och well, in the end he found a way out of the tangle; aye, and paid his debt of friendship to Sir Ewan Cameron at the same time.
‘So far, Lochiel has spoken no word on the matter,’ he said, ‘and his experience is greater than any of ours, so much so that he cannot fail in this to make a right judgement; therefore his judgement shall be mine. Choose, Lochiel.’
And Lochiel made gracefully light of his experience of ‘little sallies and skirmishes’. ‘But,’ said he, ‘since you ask for my word, it is that we fight now. I know the Highland heart. Delay, and the clansmen will grow uneasy, remembering that the odds are more than two to one against them. But take them forward to the attack now, hungry and tired as they are, but with their blood still hot within them, and they’ll gain you a victory that shall ring round Scotland, and fetch out every man who ever held a sword to King James’s cause.’
And so the thing was settled, and the decision to fight that day was made. But there was one more thing, and Lochiel put the words to it. It was the opinion of the council that Viscount Dundee, on whom depended not only the fate of the army but the fate of the King and of Scotland, should not engage personally in the coming battle, but direct matters from some vantage point, as was at most times the custom.
They must have known that it was hopeless; such customs were not for Claverhouse, nor ever had been.
He thanked them for their care, both for him and the cause, admitted that indeed his death might be some loss to them. But what power would he ever have over the clans again, if he kept out of this battle? ‘Give me this one Shear Darg, this one Harvesting-day for the King. One chance to show to the clansmen that I can hazard my own hide in King James’s service as freely as the least of them, and I give you my word that I will follow the more common custom hereafter, for so long as I have the honour to command you.’
And they knew that he would not yield.
Nothing of this was known to us at the time of course; but we felt the sense of waiting that met us as we roused to the green soft gloaming of the summer dawn with the smell of thunder in the air. We – the General’s troop, that is, or His Majesty’s Regimen
t of Horse, whichever you like to call us (och, I know fine a troop is not a regiment, but what was left of one, and a proud one, and we thought of ourselves by the old name) – were seeing to the horses, ready for whatever the day might bring, when we heard the cheering from the castle; and Lochiel’s pipe came swaggering down through the gate, playing some wild crying pibroch that calls out the claymores. Word was running through the camp from fire to fire before ever the official orders came and I mind an enormous Highlander standing with legs apart waving a flask of the Water of Life that he had got from somewhere, and bellowing challenges to come and fight him personally or run while there was still time, until he stepped backwards into the watch-fire behind him and had to be hauled out by his friends and the sparks beaten from his plaid.
And in the ready-making for battle the old hen-wife washing by the ford was quite forgotten.
I did not see Alisdair again that morning. I have always been sorry for that, for I never saw him after.
22
Dark Victory
THE CHEERING DIED into the rattaplan-rattaplan of the drums and the quick clear notes of the bugles, and the wild crying of the pipes, and all the ordered chaos that is an army making ready for the march with fighting at the end of it. My own last piece of ready-making was to leave Caspar firmly shut up and in charge of the small garrison remaining at Blair.
And so, with our morning issue of oaten bannock and strong cheese barely eaten, we marched out and headed for Killiecrankie – not by the made track, och no; the road ahead and the road behind was MacKay’s way; we took to the hills as we had always done, as we had done at Deeside, three long months ago. We crossed the Tilt and came over the high moors. That made a six-mile march of it instead of the four it would have been by road; but we had the time for it, so long as we met MacKay in the broad valley where the pass opens out, and he looking up the made road for us. At the Lude Burn Dundee called a brief halt to rest and water the horses – it was past midday – and of all the times and times and times that we had done the same thing, I mind that one time; slipping from Jock’s back and leading him down the bank, and the water riffling about his muzzle as he drank. It was a hazy blue day, and the water was blue where it ran smooth enough to reflect the sky; peat-brown under the shadows of the bank. Most of all I mind the cold soft wetness of his muzzle when he turned his head to slobber on my shoulder.
We were still at it when one of the scouts that Dundee had sent on ahead came dropping down the braeside like a shadow, with word that MacKay was halfway through the pass; and we remounted as the Highlanders scrambled to their feet, and pushed on. We were going to meet MacKay and have our reckoning with him at last!
As we came down the final slope towards the Clune Burn, another scout came in with word that the Government army was just through the pass and debouching into the valley; and General MacKay with a small escort was riding forward to see was there any sign of us yet on the road from Blair.
‘We will give him something to be looking at, though not on the road from Blair,’ Dundee said, and sent forward a handful of Atholl Foresters to show themselves on the forward slopes of the ridge that we were making for, to catch the enemy’s interest and draw them in the right direction.
Then we gained the true ridge ourselves – a long spur of Creag Eileich, it was — and began to form our battle line.
Even I could see how the pattern was going to work. From the long crest where we were taking up our position the hillside fell away, then levelled gently to a lower ridge about half a mile away, before it fell steeply to the Garry and the Blair road; and I had marched that way often enough to know that from the road as one came out from the Killiecrankie pass, it looked as though the lower ridge was the crest of the valley wall to the right, the higher ridge on which we were now taking station being out of sight behind it. (In the same way of course it hid the valley floor from us, but that was no great matter.) It would look like that to MacKay; shame on him with his Highland name and he not knowing his own country! And therefore it must seem to him that the thing he had to do was to get his troops up to that ridge before we could gain it, and outnumbering us as he did by more than two to one, his troubles were as good as over.
And all the while, us sitting along the higher ridge and waiting for him.
We did not have long to wait before MacKay’s standards topped the lower ridge, and then the heads of the cavalry and then the foot. He must have ordered Right Wheel, at sight of our Atholl men, and brought them straight up through the steep birch woods in the same order in which they had come out from the defile. And a sair shock it must have been to him to find that further ridge, and us sitting on it waiting for him.
We watched them check, and work out some kind of battle-line. The ridge was too long for the number of Government troops, and he must take care of his flanks, from the place where it sank away into marshy ground on his left to the place where it ran up into the steep wooded slopes of Creag Eileich on his right; and by the time he had done that, his regiments were only three ranks deep, strung thin and ragged as a piece of fraying rope.
That meant we must lengthen our own line, too, or risk having our flanks rolled up when it came to fighting. But for us the situation was different. We knew, all of us, as well as Dundee himself, that MacKay could not attack uphill, and therefore, when the moment came, it would be for us to make the charge. And so he lengthened our line, not by drawing it out thin, but by moving the clans apart, so that there were wide gaps between. In a charge, the gaps would cease to matter.
The run of our battle line is in my mind yet, as though we had formed it yesterday; the clan names singing in my head like an old song. On our far right stood the MacLeans under Sir John MacLean of Duart; then Colonel Cannon with his wild Irish, then the MacDonalds, with Clanranald and Glengarry and then us, Claverhouse’s Horse, with the royal standard in our midst; us that had ridden into Ayrshire and Galloway behind him, and been the General’s troop of His Majesty’s Regiment of Horse; us that had followed him down to London to save King James, and ridden with him north again when the King failed us, because we were still Claverhouse’s men to follow where he led. And on our left stood Lochiel and his Camerons; and beyond them again the MacDonalds of Sleet, and Keppoch with his cattle-rievers, and away on the far left, where the ridge ended in the up-thrust of Creag Eileich, a mixed battalion of MacLeans and Stewarts and MacNeills.
And there we waited; for it was then that the waiting really began.
Partly it was the usual custom whereby when two armies are drawn up ready for battle, they stand and stare each other in the face a while to get each other’s measure as you might say, like two dogs walking stiff-legged round each other before they fly at each other’s throats. Partly it was because MacKay, in his bad position, could not be the first one to move, while we in our better position were fronting west and the sun getting low; and Dundee had, I am thinking, no mind to fight with the dazzle of the sunset full in our faces. At that time of year in the northern hills there would be an hour of fighting time left after the sun was down, and we should not be needing more…
I mind that waiting; the first faint coolth of the evening stealing ahead of the long shadows after the heavy heat of the day; and the midge clouds dancing in the sunlight, making the horses stamp and fidget. The first heather just waking into flower; and the bees booming among the first of the little papery bells. And in front of us MacKay’s troops strung along the lower ridge, black as a row of corbies, with the light behind them; and the sun westering slowly, slowly towards the distant sugar-loaf crest of Schiehallion.
Then the usual long-range firing began. Just a fitful spattering of musketry from MacKay’s troops, and an occasional shot from his artillery – he had three small field pieces. It did little damage at that range, which was as well, for we could make little reply, short of ball and powder as we were. But it galled us, none the less, especially the field pieces, which to judge from the yells from the Camerons, the Highlanders
thought unfair.
They began to grow as fidgety as the horses, straining like hounds in leash, and shouting to Dundee as he rode with a handful of officers up and down the line, ‘Give us the word, Iain Dhub! Give us the word!’
But Dundee, with a buff coat under his breastplate like the rest of us, in place of his general’s gold and scarlet (his one concession to the council’s fear for his safety that day), did not give the word, did not slip the leash, while the sun was still above Schiehallion, dazzling into our eyes. I doubt any other man could have held them – held us, for the restiveness of the Highlanders was setting the blood jumping in our own veins also. And the enemy musketry was getting heavier. MacKay had plenty of powder and ball, aye, and twelve hundred baggage beasts, so I have heard, waiting below in the cornfields at the mouth of the pass.
The great bowl of the hills before us was filling with shadows; the rim of the sun in a ragged blaze of clouds that had gathered seemingly out of a clear sky was touching the high shoulder of Schiehallion, slipping behind it; and all the mountains westward standing up suddenly bloomed with sloe-dark shadows, while the last light still burned upon the hillside. For a moment, as though in a kind of breath-drawing before the next thing, MacKay’s musketry slackened – the field pieces had fallen silent a while since, their carriages having collapsed beneath them – and in the silence the larks were singing overhead.
I was with Dundee by that time, sitting Jock close behind him – for was I not the General’s galloper? – and for the moment almost knee to knee with Amryclose. The folds of the standard, caught by a breath of evening wind, flowed out across my face so that for a breath of time the Lion of Scotland was turned to crimson flame by the last of the sun shining through it; and when it fell back towards its shaft, the sun was half down, and turned to a golden demi-disc that you could look in the face without dazzle.