The Rogues (10 page)

“A good day for battle,” Colin called out, holding his stick in the air. He was wearing a blue bonnet on his head, the kind our grandfathers had worn when they marched behind the prince to fight the English. It made his bony face seemed skull-like in the dawn's half-light. “A great day for battle.”

“Aye,” Da said. “Grey.”

Colin laughed as if Da had made a joke, and his son, Hamish, laughed with him, but I knew better. Da never joked. Especially about important things.

“All here, then?” Da asked.

“Every man and boy,” Tam McBride called out, waving a hand over the crowd.

I looked at the faces I knew so well—two dozen or more—and saw grim determination written across every one. Not a smile among them. The wind blew everyone's hair about and almost snatched Colin's bonnet off. He clamped his hand on top of it and smiled, but there was little mirth in it.

“Then let's go, lads!” Da called.

We marched on up the road three and four abreast, more men rushing to join us as we went. Now a thin sun, like an old copper coin, was peering through the grey clouds. By the time it was shining full on us, I'd begun to sweat with it despite the continuing wind.

Soon we'd gathered nearly half a hundred more men and boys from the neighboring towns. That surprised me. I suppose a call had gone out, as in the old days when the men were roused to battle, but I hadn't heard word of it. Yet still I felt wary. I wondered if they felt as nervous as I, for they were a grim-looking lot.

To lighten the mood, Tam started singing. “A beggar man came o'er yon lea.…” His black beard waggled with each word, and the others quickly took up the song.

Lachlan bellowed out the chorus—“Lassie to my tow roo ray!”—in such a tuneless voice, I couldn't help but laugh. When I finally joined in, my stomach felt fine again. There were fifteen or so verses in the song, which took us well over a mile. We followed it with rousing versions of “Johnny Cope” and a round of “Maggie Lawder” as well, and so we passed over the hills.

As we neared Glendoun—a solid wave of men—we were spied by a solitary shepherd. He almost dropped his staff as he turned and ran down into the valley. Probably going to warn his companions.

Da raised a hand to bring us to a halt. “Once we march over that hill,” he said, pointing to the spot where the shepherd had disappeared, “there'll be nae turning back. That's where we'll be rounding up the sheep. It's illegal to touch the laird's sheep, as ye all know well enough, even if our excuse is that we are bringing them to him. So, if there's any who want to leave, do it now. After that, we are all in it together, for curse or cure.”

There was a gruff murmur of agreement and a slow nodding of heads. No one made a move to go back. We were Highlanders, after all. Cattle and sheep raids were in our blood.

“Good, then,” Da said. Then he and Tam McBride ordered us to spread out in a long line just an arm's length apart. It made us look like an army lined up for a charge. Though some army we were, with nae sword nor musket in sight.

Then up the slope we went, keeping our line, all chatter quieted, all songs fled.

I nodded at Lachlan, at Hamish, at the other boys I knew, but didn't whisper any encouragement. It felt like the moment before battle, and I was now cold as ice but hot too.

When we overtopped the hill, we saw the sheep spread out below us, drifting about in small knots, like eddies in a snowy sea. If we were a hundred, they were a thousand, but we'd come to make them work for us, not against us, to turn the tide of their coming. One or two turned their black faces up to have a look at us, but the rest kept cropping the grass.

The shepherds who retreated to the far side of the glen clung tightly to their staffs, as though their flimsy shafts of wood lent them some authority. A bearded fellow, short and stocky, raised his staff at us as if firing a musket, then Colin laughed and pointed at him, and he lowered it again. We were far too many for them to fight, and they did the right thing by keeping away from us. No need to suffer a broken head for another man's property. Besides, they could identify us later to the sheriff and his men.

Down we went, our line curving in to keep the flocks contained, driving them together into one bleating band. As we closed in, the sheep swayed this way and that, like water sloshing in a tub. For all their size and richness of fleece, they were no cleverer than our own animals and just as easy to drive. A great heaving sea of sheep.

The sheepdogs looked puzzled, keeping their distance and growling deep in their throats. Still, without encouragement from their masters, without a whistle and a shout to guide them, they didn't dare move. They were too well trained to go out on their own.

Lachlan and I were standing by Da when one of the shepherds shouted at us. I could hardly hear his voice above the bleating sheep.

“This is no more than stealing!” His voice was raw and flat, an English voice, not a Scot's.

Da faced the man squarely and shouted back, “We're taking them to our laird's house,” he said. “How can that be stealing?”

The shepherd's large jaw gaped open. He hardly knew what to answer. Taking several giant steps forward, he waved his fist at Da and called out, “You'd best keep those beasts safe. Any one of them is worth more than the whole gang of you!”

I gave a sharp snort of laughter. Imagine saying that a sheep was worth more than a man. “We'll keep them safe,” I answered him, “safer than ye'll be if ye follow us.”

Lachlan laughed, but Da frowned at me. “Dinna let yer tongue keep running away,” he warned. “There's nae sense in stirring up more trouble than there's need for.”

He was right, of course. I must have still had the Rogue's spirit in me. Or that terrier.

“Aye, ye dinna know what ill will might come back to haunt ye later,” added Tam. As he spoke, a sudden wind whistled down the valley, spooking the sheep. They ran about in frantic circles, their black faces all alike, blank and white-eyed, bleating in chorus. I should have taken it as a warning.

But in my heart I couldn't regret my words. Already this felt like a victory: the English shepherds who were trying to take the land from us had been reduced to a cowering band of helpless watchers.

The sheep milled about like bugs under a tipped-over rock, running about without reason. But sheep are like that. Any little thing can spook them. Some men are like that too, I have come to learn.

Then the wind left as quickly as it had arrived, and we rounded up the sheep once again, driving them northward, leaving the shepherds behind us to snarl and sputter in frustration, more like dogs than the dogs themselves. There were additional flocks farther up the glen and we gathered them up as well, too many for counting. We were an army now, marching against the laird, who thought less of us than the sheep we were driving to his yard.

10 A DEAL

Eventually the Lodge came into view on our left, and I thought about all I had seen inside it—the pictures and the soft cushions on chairs, the rooms opening up one after another. I was suddenly struck with how rich it all seemed.

The Glendoun folk who had taken refuge there waved at us from the yard and cried out cheers. We called back to let them know what we were about, and some of the men joined us in our herding. Lachlan looked about for Laughing Johnny or Big Dune and especially for the beautiful Fiona, but none of them were there.

Coming out the front door, Bonnie Josie peered curiously at us. I might have heard her laugh, but I wasn't sure. It was hard to hear anything over the bleating sheep, upset at having left their grazing land, and the cheers of the Glendoun folk.

I wanted to go up and talk to Josie, but Da would surely have disapproved, reminding me that I needed to behave like a man who was about serious business, not a boy playing a game.

Then the widow appeared at her daughter's shoulder, shook her head and retired indoors, as if afraid of an approaching storm. And perhaps she was right to do so. For we were gathering like bad weather over the mountains and bringing it down on the laird's head. Bleating bad weather and a storm of white sheep.

As we neared Kindarry, some of the laird's men stepped into our path and made a feeble effort to block our way. But the sheep surged around them, as sheep will, and as the men tried to struggle toward us, they looked like swimmers floundering in a fast river. Eventually they gave up, shaking their fists and falling back, till they were driven right to the door of the laird's grand house.

The house itself, with its high tower and steep grey walls and many open windows, looked astonished by this invasion, a gentleman set upon by a gang of raggedy beggars.

I could see servants at the lower windows pointing their fingers. One young maid—perhaps she was Annie Dayton, who'd given Rood such a hard time—held her hand over her mouth, as if trying to muffle her laughter.

In an upstairs window, a pair of shutters was suddenly thrown open and a pale face peeped out. He must have thought it had snowed in the night, for the grounds about Kindarry House were now covered with white sheep.

“Look!” Lachlan cried, pointing. “It's the laird.”

We greeted him with a raucous cheer. But Da cut us short with a reminder. “We are doing this politely, lads. Honey, no vinegar.”

All at once, Willie Rood appeared around the side of the house, his face flushed, cudgel in hand. His beady eyes swiveled from side to side and he stepped warily, as if all these sheep might really be wolves in disguise.

“What's this?” he spluttered. “Thievery?”

There was a sound like thunder, and it took me a moment before I realized it was our laughter echoing off the hills.

Da stepped forward. “Only honest men would come and stand before ye like this. Bringing the sheep back is no stealing.” His voice raised well above the bleating sheep.

That's when the laird called down at last. “The world is corrupted indeed if you are what pass for honest men.” He glared at us. “Get rid of them, Rood.”

Rood looked from us to his master, then back again, his feet shuffling as if he didn't rightly know how to proceed. We were too many for him. At heart, I guessed, he was a coward. He shook his cudgel. Suddenly a large ewe barged into him and he was knocked off balance.

It was so funny, I began to laugh, and Lachlan after me. The laughter spread throughout our men.

Rood began to tremble with anger. He hated to be made mock of. “Return to yer villages!” he commanded, though there was little conviction in his voice. “Leave the bloody sheep in the pen over there.” He pointed to a large enclosure across the road and some hundred yards from the house. “We'll settle this business at a later date.”

“We'll settle it now,” Da said firmly.

Tam MacBride took a step forward and raised his hand toward the laird in the window. “We offer ye a choice between sheep and men,” he shouted up to the laird. His black beard waggled fiercely, and he did all but shake his fist at the window, which had not been our plan at all. Soft talk and cozening was what we were to do. We were to be polite. But it was clear matters had gone too far, and Tam no longer remembered the plan. “If ye have any care left for the men of your clan, who supported the McRoys for as long as they held the land, give us back our animals that ye have penned up. Give us back our livelihood.”

In answer, the sheep began to baa again and stamp their feet restlessly.

“This is an outrage!” the laird spluttered. “I'll not be spoken to like that in my own home. Be off or I'll call out the militia and have you all dragged off to gaol at Fort William.”

“The sheep too?” someone called out, to a chorus of chuckles.

The laird narrowed his eyes. Then he leaned out the window, and his voice dropped threateningly. “You'll not laugh when there's a musket in your face and you stand before the gallows!”

That shut us up, though not the sheep.

After a long moment, Da spoke up again, his voice sweeter than Tam's. “We've no come here to do harm. All we ask for is what is just.”

“The law will decide that, Macallan,” spat Willie Rood, waving his cudgel again. For all his loud talk, though, he kept his distance.

“Well,” said a light, cheerful voice, “it's a long while since the Kindarry men came to pay their respects to their laird like this.”

I turned and saw Josie on her horse. She'd set out so quickly, she was without a saddle and sitting a-straddle. Her beaming face was in sharp contrast to the menacing mood hanging over us. As she moved toward us, the sheep opened up a path for her.

“Respect is the last thing on their minds,” her uncle shouted at her from his window.

Josie's horse moved a step backward as if the laird's loud voice startled him, but she kept her seat, even though one ram leapt up and knocked into another. Calmly, Josie answered, “If I understand rightly, Uncle, these sheep have been brought here as a service.”

Rood rounded on her sharply, hardly disguising his malice. “What are ye talking about?”

This time the horse moved forward, crowding into Rood, who was forced to step aside, right against a huge black-faced ewe. There was a ripple of laughter from all of us at that. His cheeks and nose turned a bright red.

“Well,” said Josie innocently, “it's my understanding that the sheep wandered from their pastures and strayed onto the farmland of these people, causing great damage to their crops.”

I looked at Lachlan, who looked at Da, who turned and stared, astonished, at Josie. Josie winked at him.

“Nobody's said that,” said the laird.

“Not yet,” said Josie, turning back and smiling at him. “You didn't give them time, Uncle. But there's enough men here that, if they all swore to it, you'd be hard put to deny them.”

The laird quirked an eyebrow. “Oh,
would
I?”