Bonnie Dundee (14 page)

That winter the bad blood that Balcarres had foretold grew into some kind of open quarrel between Claverhouse and the new-made Duke of Queensberry. Garbled murmurs of it even reached us in the
stable-yard. It seemed there was a deal of mischief made at Court, and King Charles, who was already a sick man, listening to lying tales and allowed himself to be pulled this way and that; and at the last, for all that Claverhouse had been friend to him and his brother a’ many years, he felt that he must support his Officers of State – that meant Queensberry – and the South West that had been Claverhouse’s kale-garth for so long was stripped from him and the military command given to Queensberry’s brother, Colonel Douglas, while his powers as a magistrate were given to a certain Lord George Drummond – so now there was two to muddle up between them the job that he had dealt with single-handed well enough.

So all that winter and into the spring Claverhouse was left kicking his heels, the unemployed colonel of an unemployed regiment of horses, while under Douglas and Drummond things went from bad to worse in Ayrshire and Wigtown and Dumfries.

And the chief thing I mind about him in those months is that his patience snapped over-easily and his eyes looked hot in his head.

Early in the spring we heard that the King was dead, and James his brother was king in his stead; and then that Queensberry had been made High Commissioner for Scotland in James’s place. And within a few weeks all Scotland – and I suppose all England too – knew that the young Duke of Monmouth, him that was Charles’s by-blow son, was ready in Holland to make a try for the English throne, and the Duke of Argyll with him; and I’m thinking that with those two on the doorstep, and the Scottish South West behaving like one of those heath fires that smoulder among the heather roots unseen, and break out in pockets of flame for the wind to
carry it where it will, King James must have felt that he could not be doing without the best soldier he had. So he ordered Claverhouse and Queensberry to make up their quarrel (I would have liked fine to see that!) and then – eh! the weakness and shilly-shallying of the man! – he promoted both Colonel Graham and Colonel Douglas to Brigadier, Douglas with just two days’ seniority to counterbalance the fact that Claverhouse was Horse and Douglas Foot, and cavalry always counts for just that bit more.

Then Claverhouse was ordered down into the South West again to clean up his old territory.

The night after the order arrived, when a galloper from the Brigadier’s own troop who were quartered in Dundee town had been sent off with word to the rest of the regiment in Edinburgh, and the red-coated coming and going in the stable-yard was over, I lay in my sleeping place, staring into the darkness and listening to the spring wind over Dundee Law, and thought long thoughts to myself, with Caspar lying in his usual place with his warm chin across my ankles under the blanket. I had never changed my plan to go for a soldier, but I had yet maybe a year to wait, by my own reckoning, for I was but sixteen as yet, and they did not take raw young callants in Claverhouse’s Horse. It had all seemed a comfortable way off, something bright and beckoning on the skyline. But now suddenly the remoteness was gone, and I was being torn two ways.

Part of me, still set on following Claverhouse when the time came, was glad that the time was not yet. Not this time, not down into Ayrshire against my own people, like enough to get my death at their hands. Part of me knew that if I was going to follow Claverhouse at all, it must be anywhere, at any time, against my own
kind if need be, facing the wrench of divided loyalties, because that was the only kind of following worthy of the man… But to ride down into Ayrshire in a red coat… even if Claverhouse would take me; like enough he would not, and all this drama and agonising be to no purpose… I tried to laugh at myself, but that did not work, either. My thoughts went round and round inside my head like a squirrel in a cage, and could find no rest as I lay wakeful and staring with hot open eyes into the dark.

At last Caspar, as though sensing my trouble, came crawling up from his usual place to thrust his silky head into the hollow of my shoulder, whimpering softly; and I buried my face in his fur and put my arms round his neck while he licked and licked at my chin. And so at last I fell asleep, with the thing still chasing itself round and round inside me.

But when I woke in the morning, the decision had made itself while I slept. Whether Claverhouse would take me, young as I was, I knew that I was going to try.

I had to speak with my lady Jean before all else, for I was still her riding-groom. So as soon as I could get away from the work in the stable-yard, I went up to the house and contrived to get hold of one of the serving lassies and ask her to take word to my lady that I begged leave to speak with her. She departed, tossing her head and proclaiming that my lady had other things to do, the day, than talk with horseboys; and brought back word that I was to go to my lady in her bower. ‘And wipe your feet!’ said she, ‘for I wasna born to clean up stable-muck tramped all over the house!’

So I wiped off my feet, and followed her up to my lady’s bower, where I had never been before; and found her folding shirts and the like and packing them
into a pair of scuffed and weather-worn saddle-bags lying on a fine polished table among all the bonnie fallals of a lady’s chamber. She looked as though she had maybe not slept so well, either, and there were bruise-coloured shadows under her eyes, but her smile came as quick as ever when she saw me.

‘Hugh,’ she said, ‘come in, and don’t be standing in the doorway turning your bonnet round and round!’

I had not known that I was doing that, and I stopped, carefully, and came in. ‘My lady,’ I swallowed. ‘My lady, I am for leaving your service.’

She put down the shirt she was folding, and looked at me, her eyes widening and seeming to darken. ‘Oh, Hugh, why? Are you not happy with us?’

‘Very happy,’ I said, ‘an’ the heart is sore within me at the thought of leaving; but I am wishful to go for a sojer.’

‘You always had that thought, did ye not?’ she said gently. ‘One day. But – now, Hugh? You’re so young.’

‘I am sixteen,’ I said, ‘there’s others go at sixteen.’

‘Into Claverhouse’s Horse.’

I nodded. There was a lump in my throat that made it not that easy to speak. ‘If Claverhouse will take me,’ I said huskily.

‘We shall miss you sore, if he does,’ she said, and then, ‘Would you have me to speak to him for you?’

I shook my head violently, ‘No, my lady, please no; ’tis – ’tis between me and himself.’

I mind the silence there was then, and the wuthering of the springtime wind, and a sharp spatter of rain against the windows, and my lady Jean and I standing there looking at each other.

‘Of course,’ she said at last, ‘that was foolish of me.’

Before I could answer, Darklis came in through another door with some more linen in her hands. She
checked at sight of me standing there; and my lady turned to her and said, ‘Darklis, here’s our Hugh come to tell us he’s minded to go for a soldier.’

‘Is he so?’ said Darklis, and without giving me another look, she dumped the linen on the table, and turned with a whisk of her skirts and disappeared again through the inner door.

I stood there looking after her, feeling a wee thing hurt. I had thought Darklis might show some interest, that she might even care if I was going away.

Lady Jean looked after her too, a moment, and then turned back to me. ‘I am thinking you had best go now and find himself, for there’s not so much time to spare. You’ll find him in his study, like enough. I never kenned how much of paperwork there was to being a soldier until I came to be a soldier’s wife!’ She was half laughing, but the weeping was none so far away – or would have been in a less proud lassie.

I knew where the study was, for I’d been there more than once, to report on a sick horse or the like. But when I came down the stair from the end of the Long Gallery, the study door at the foot of it was opening, and Claverhouse came out, hitching at his sword-belt as he came. He looked to be in a sore hurry, and I all but let him go. But not quite. ‘Sir,’ I said, and he turned and looked at me, those dark brows of his quirking up in the way he had.

‘Sir – can I have a word wi’ ye?’

‘Will it wait, Hugh?’ I knew well enough how little time he had to spare.

‘Sir – it canna wait – I’ll no’ keep ye but a minute—’

He checked a moment, then turned back to his study. ‘Come, then.’

I followed him in, and he propped himself against his
big writing-table and looked at me. ‘One minute, you said, Hugh; so – what is it?’

‘It has been in mind for a while back that I am wishful, when the time comes, to go for a sojer,’ I told him, somewhat breathless. ‘I waited, because I was feart that ye would mebbe think me over young. But now—’

I hesitated. Suddenly it seemed a big thing that I was asking.

‘I still think you over young,’ he said, and then, ‘Have you said anything of this to my lady?’

‘I dinna forget that I am her riding-groom. I am from my lady now.’

‘It’s serious then,’ he said, with a trace of a smile. ‘Do I flatter myself or am I right in supposing that it’s Claverhouse’s Horse you would be joining?’

I nodded, ‘Sir.’

‘Why
now,
Hugh? You are but one day older than you were yesterday. In a few weeks, you will be older still.’

‘It’s the right time,’ I said. ‘But first, there’s a thing I have to tell ye.’

‘Tell it, then.’ He was sitting sideways on the writing-table by then. He had taken up his riding-gloves and was stripping them between his fingers, but that was the only sign he gave that he had not all day to spare.

And standing there, with my eyes on the panelling just above his head, I told him of the night I had first seen him, and him me. Only I did not tell him even then aught that might betray Alan; seeing that he was a soldier with a soldier’s duties to carry out.

I had not known until I came into the room that I was going to tell him of that night, but suddenly I understood that it had to be told, and told now.

When it was done, I pulled my gaze back from the
panelling, and looked him in the face, nerving myself for the anger or disgust that I must surely see there. But there was no anger, no disgust, only that same alert, listening look of one giving his whole attention to whatever or whoever it was he looked at.

‘I have wondered sometimes, how long it would be before you told me,’ he said.

‘You – you knew all the time?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘But you – you said nothing at Place of Paisley – an’ you took me into your service –’ I was stammering like a July cuckoo.

‘I saw no reason why I should do aught else… How many nights have you dreamed of yon drummer laddie?’

I did not answer. He did not expect me to; but we looked at each other and there was no more to be said on that matter. Then Claverhouse said, ‘You’ll have to learn your soldiering on the hoof, Hugh.’

‘Then ye’ll take me?’

He tossed aside the gloves he had been playing with, and reached for a sheet of paper from the stack on the table. ‘I’ve need of a new galloper since Anderson went sick – you have already given proof of your abilities in that direction…’ He had taken up his quill and dipped it in the big silver ink-well; and leaning sideways on the table he began to write. When he had finished – it was but a few lines – he sanded the sheet, folded it, and sealed it with the big signet-ring he wore, then held it out to me. ‘Take this down to Major Crawford. ’Tis to tell him that you are joining the troop as my galloper. When they have kitted you out, come back to me. The Brigadier’s galloper stays within whistle of the Brigadier.’

So with Claverhouse’s note in my hand, down I went into Dundee town, first to Major Crawford, by whom I was handed over to Captain Livingstone – he being captain of the Brigadier’s own troop – who in turn handed me over to his senior corporal, Pate Paterson by name, to be kitted out from the Quartermaster’s Stores. And in a while and a while I was heading back for Dudhope, wearing the red coat laced with blue, the hard-topped riding-boots and black beaver hat of a trooper of Claverhouse’s Horse, and carrying a greasy and weather-stained buff coat under one arm, everything except the hat and boots a good deal too wide for me. ‘Ye’ll grow to them if ye live that long,’ Pate Paterson had said encouragingly.

Eh, but I was the proud one, with a cavalry sword belted round my waist, and a pair of horse pistols bundled in my buff coat, and the stiff black stock tipping up my chin for me.

I was greeted as though I was some kind of raree show, the lassies for the most part admiring, the stable folk jeering. Even Caspar, whom I had left lying on guard over my bed, that being the only way of keeping him from following me, sniffed me over as though he had to make sure who I was. And truth to tell, I was none too sure who I was myself just then.

There is something unreal about that day in my memory, even now. The day before, I had been Lady Jean’s riding-groom; the day after, when I rode away behind Claverhouse, I was a trooper of His Majesty’s Regiment of Horse, and the Brigadier’s galloper, but that day I was between lives. Once, Claverhouse sent me down into the town to Major Crawford again, with further orders for tomorrow’s march. But for the most part I hung about the stable-yard which I did not belong
to any more, not sure what to do with myself, and wondering how I was to get word with Darklis.

For I could not leave without bidding her goodbye, even though she did not seem to care that I was going. Besides, care or not, I had to ask her to take charge of Caspar for me. Just as it had had to be me that took that message for her to Captain Faa, so it had to be Darklis with whom I left Caspar.

As it turned out, I need not have worried – about getting word with her, I mean – for that evening as I squatted beside my bed, packing my few belongings, a clean shirt and the like, into my saddle-bag by the light of a lantern, with the voices of the grooms playing cards in the harness room coming up through the floorboards, there was a quick light flurry of feet and petticoats on the loft ladder, and there she was, with her skirts tucked up round her knees, and something white and neatly folded in her hands.