CHAPTER VIII
THE MUSTER OF THE HILL FOLK
Men who know the strange history of the later life of me, Quintin MacClellan, may wonder that the present narrative discovers so little concerning my changes of opinion and stresses of spiritual conflict. But of these things I have written in extension elsewhere, and those who desire more than a personal narrative know well where to find the recital of my difficulties, covenantings, and combatings for the cause.
For myself, the memory of the day on the Bennan top was more than enough, and made me a high Covenant man for life. So that when I heard how King James was fled and his son-in-law, William of Orange, landed I could not contain myself, but bade Hob and David to come with me and light a beacon-fire on the top of the Millyea, that fair and shapely mountain. This after severe labour we did, and they say that the light was seen over a dozen parishes.
Then there came word to the Glenkens that there was to be a Convention in Edinburgh of men chosen out of every shire and county, called and presided over by Duke Hamilton. But it was the bruit of the countryside that this parliament would turn out even as the others, and be ground under the heel of the old kingsmen and malignants.4
So about this time there came to see my father two men grave and grey, their beards blanched with dripping hill-caves and with sleeping out in the snell winds and biting frosts of many a winter, without better shelter than some cold moss-hag or the bieldy side of a snow wreath.
“There is to be a great rising of the Seven Thousand. The whole West is marching to Edinburgh!” cried in at the door the elder of the two – one Steel, a noted Covenanter from Lesmahago.
But the other, when his dark cloak blew back, showed a man of slender figure, but with a face of calm resolve and indomitable courage – the proven face of a soldier. He was in a fair uniform – that, as I afterwards found, of one of the Prince of Orange’s Scots-Dutch regiments.
“This,” said Steel to my father, “is Colonel William Gordon, brother of Earlstoun, who is come directly from the Prince of Orange to represent his cause in his own country of the West.”
In a moment a spark lighted in my heart, blazed up and leaped to my tongue.
“What,” I cried, “William Gordon – who carried the banner at Sanquhar and fought shoulder to shoulder with Cameron at Ayrsmoss.”
For it was my mother’s favourite tale.
The slender man with the calm soldier-like face smiled quietly and made me a little bow, the like of which for grace I had never seen in our land. It had so much of foreign habitude in it, mixed with a simple and personal kindliness native to the man.
“Ah,” he said, “I am ten years older since then – I fear me not ten years wiser.”
His voice sounded clear and pleasant, yet it was indubitably the voice of a man to be obeyed.
“How many sons and limber house-carles can you spare, Ardarroch,” said he, watching my father’s face, “to march with me to keep the Convention out of the clutches of my Lord Dundee?”
“Of the devil’s hound, Clavers, mean ye?” corrected my father suddenly, the fierce, rooted light of hatred gleaming keen and sharp, like the blade of a dagger which is drawn just an inch from its sheath and then returned. “There are three of us on the farm, besides the boy Quintin, my youngest son. And every one of them shall ride to Edinburgh with you on their own horses.”
“Four shall ride, father,” said I, stepping forward. “I am the youngest, but let me also strike a blow. I am as fit of my body as either Hob or David there, and have a better desire and goodwill than either of them.”
“But, lad,” said my father, not ill pleased, “there are your mother and sister to look after. Bide you here and take care of the house.”
“There needs none to take care of the house while ye leave us here with a musket or two and plenty of powder and lead,” cried my mother. “Anna and I shall be safer, aye, and the fuller of gladness that ye are all in Edinburgh doing the Lord’s work. Ride ye, therefore, all the four of you!”
“Yes,” added Anna, with the sweet stillness of her eye on the ground, “let Quintin go, father. None would harm us in all the countryside.”
“Indeed, I think so,” growled my father, “having John MacClellan to reckon with on our return.”
Whereat for very thankfulness I took the two women’s hands, and Colonel Gordon said, “Aye, Ardarroch, give the lad his will. In time past I had my share of biding by the house while my elders rode to battle, and I love the boy’s eagerness. He has in him the stuff of good soldiers.”
And for these words I could have kissed the feet of Colonel William Gordon. The muster was appointed to be at Earlstoun on the morrow, and immediately there befell at Ardarroch a great polishing of accoutrement and grinding of swords, for during the late troubles the arms had been searched for over and over again. So it befel that they were hidden in the thatch of outhouse roofs, wrapped in cloths and carried to distant sandhills to be buried, or laid away in the damp caves of the linns.
Yet by the time all was brought in we were armed none so ill. My father had first choice, and then we three lads drew lots for the other weapons. To me came the longest straw, and I took the musket and a broad-bladed dagger, because I knew that our madcap David had set his heart on the basket-hilted sword to swing by his side, and I saw Hob’s eyes fixed on the pair of excellent horse-pistols which my father had bought when the effects of Patrick Verner (called “the Traitor”) were sold in Dumfries.
At Earlstoun, then, we assembled, but not immediately at the great house – for that was presently under repair after its occupation by troops in the troubles – but at a farmhouse near by, where at the time were abiding Mistress Alexander Gordon and her children, waiting for the final release of her husband from Blackness Castle.
When it came to the point of our setting out, there came word from Colonel Gordon that no more than two of us were to go to Edinburgh on horseback, owing to the scarcity of forage in the city and the difficulty of stabling horses.
“Let us again draw lots!” said my father.
But we told him that there was no question of that, for that he and David must ride while Hob and I would march afoot.
“And if I cannot keep up with the best that our David can ride on Kittle Kate, I will drown myself in the first six-inch duck-pond upon the road to Edinburgh!” cried Hob MacClellan.
So we went down the green loaning of Ardarroch with the women’s tears yet wet upon our cheeks, and a great opening of larger hopes dominating the little hollow qualms of parting in our hearts. Wider horizons beckoned us on. Intents and resolves, new and strange, thrilled us. I for one felt for the first time altogether a man, and I said within my heart as I looked at the musket which my father carried for me across his saddle-bow in order that I might run light, “Gladly will I die for the sake of the lad whom I saw murdered on the Bennan top!”
CHAPTER IX
I MEET MARY GORDON FOR THE SECOND TIME
And when we arrived, lo! before the little white farm there was a great muster. My Lord Kenmure himself rode over to review us. For the Committee of Estates drawn together by the Duke Hamilton had named him as responsible for the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright.
But that which was of greater interest to me than any commission or enrollment was the appearing of two women upon the doorstep of the cottage – the Lady of Earlstoun and her daughter Mary.
Now it is to be remembered that Alexander Gordon’s wife was a sister of Sir Robert Hamilton, the commander at Bothwell Brig – a man whose ungovernable temper, and genius for setting one man at variance with his fellow, had lost us Bothwell Brig and the life of many a brave lad of the hills. And Mary’s mother, Jean Hamilton, was like her brother in that somewhat pretentious piety which is of all things the most souring and embittering.
So that even my father said – good, honest man, that would speak ill of none all the days of his life: “If I had a wife like yon woman, I declare I would e’en turn Malignant and shoot her without warrant of law or benefit of clergy.”
Jean Gordon came down off the doorstep and stood in front of us four MacClellans, looking out upon us with her keen, black eyes, and seeming as it had been, ready to peck at us with her long nose, which was hooked like a parrot’s in the middle.
“Have any of you paid the King’s cess,5 or had any dealings with the malignants?” she said, speaking to us as to children taken in a fault.
“Not save along the barrel of a musket, my lady of Earlstoun!” quoth my father, drily.
The stern-visaged woman smiled at the ready answer.
“E’en stick to that, goodman of Ardarroch – it is the safest commerce with such ill-favoured cattle!” she said.
And with that she stepped further on to interrogate some newcomers who had arrived after us in the yard of the farm.
But indeed I minded her nothing. For there was a sweeter and fairer thing to see standing by the cheek of the door – even young Mary Gordon, the very maid I had once carried so far in my arms, now grown a great lass and a tall, albeit still slender as a year-old wand of willow by the water’s edges. Her hair, which had been lint white when I brought her down the side of Bennan after the shooting of the poor lad, was now darkening into a golden brown, with thick streaks of a warmer hue, ruddy as copper, running through it.
This girl leaned against the doorstep, her shapely head inclined a little sideways, and her profile clear and cold as the graving on a seal ring, turned away from me.
For my life I could not take my eyes off her.
“I, even I, Quintin MacClellan, have carried that girl in my arms and thought nothing of it!” I said the words over and over to myself, and somehow they were exceedingly pleasing to me.
I had ever sneered at love and love-making before, but (I own it) after seeing that fair young lass stand by the low entering in of the farmhouse door, I scoffed no more.
Yet she seemed all unconscious that I or any other was near her. But it came to me with power I could not resist, that I should make myself known to her. And though I expected nothing of remembrance, grace, or favour, yet – such is the force of compelling love, the love that comes at the first sight (and I believe in no other kind) that I put all my pride under my feet, and went forward humbly to speak with her, holding my bonnet of blue in my hand.
For as yet we of the Earlstoun levies had fallen into no sort of order, neither had we been drilled according to the rules of war, but stood about in scattering groups, waiting for the end of the conference between my Lord of Kenmure and Colonel William Gordon.
As I approached, awkwardly enough, the maid turned her eyes upon me with some surprise, and the light of them shone cold as winter moonlight glinting upon new-fallen snow.
I made my best and most dutiful obedience, even as my mother had showed me, for she was gentle of kin and breeding, far beyond my father.
“Mistress Mary,” I said, scarce daring to raise my eyes to hers, but keeping them fixed upon the point of my own rough brogans. “You have without doubt forgotten me. Yet have I never for an hour forgotten you.”
I knew all the while that her eyes were burning auger holes into me. But I could not raise my awkward coltish face to hers. She stood a little more erect, waiting for me to speak again. I could see so much without looking. Whereat, after many trials, I mustered up courage to go on.
“Mind you not the lad who brought you down from the Bennan top so long ago, and took you under cloud of night to the tower of Lochinvar on the raft beneath the shelter of beech leaves?”
I knew there was a kindly interest growing now in her eyes. But, dolt that I was, I could not meet them a whit the more readily because of that.
“I scarcely remember aught of it,” she said, “yet I have been told a hundred times the tale of your bringing me home to my aunt at Lochinvar. It is somewhat belated, but I thank you, sir, for your courtesy.”
“Nay,” said I, “’tis all I have to be thankful for in my poor life, that I took you safely past the cruel persecutors.”
She gave me a quick, strange look.
“Yet now do I not see you ready to ride and persecute in your turn?”
These words, from the daughter of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, who was scarcely yet liberate from the prison of Blackness, astonished me so much that I stood speechless.
“To persecute in my turn?” said I. “Nay, my dear mistress, I go to uphold the banner of Christ’s Kingdom against those that hate Him.”
Very scornfully she smiled.
“In my short life,” she said, “I’ve heard overmuch of such talk. I know to an ell how much it means. I have a mother, and she has friends and gossips. To me the triumph of what you call ‘the Kingdom’ means but two things – the Pharisee exalted and the bigot triumphant. Prince Jacob of Orange may supplant his father and take the crown; every canting Jack may fling away the white rose and shout for the Orange lily. But not I – not I?”
She flaunted a little white hand suddenly palm upward, like an apple blossom blown off the branch by the wind.
To say that I was astounded by this outbreak is to say little. It was like an earthquake, the trembling and resolving of solid land under my feet. Alexander Gordon’s child – “the Bull of Earlstoun’s” daughter – standing openly and boldly for the cause of those who had prisoned and, perhaps, tortured her father, and brought about the ruin of her house!
At last I managed to speak.
“You are a young maiden,” I said, as quietly as I could, “and you know nothing of the great occasions of state, the persecutions of twenty-five years, the blood shed on lonely hillsides, the deaths by yet wearier sickness, the burials under cloud of night of those who have suffered – !”
I would have said more, but that she prevented me imperiously.
“I know all there is to know,” she cried, almost insolently. “Have I not broken fast with it, dined with it, taken my Four-hours with it, supped with it ever since I was of age to hear words spoken? But to my thinking the root of the matter is that you, and those like you, will not obey the rightful King, who alone is to be obeyed, whose least word ought to be sufficient.”
“But not in religion – not in the things of conscience,” I stammered.
Again she waved her hand floutingly.
“’Tis not my idea of loyalty only to be loyal when it suits my whim, only to obey when obedience is easy and pleasant. The man whom I shall honour shall know nothing of such summer allegiance as that!”
She paused a moment and I listened intently.
“Nay,” she said, “he shall speak and I shall obey. He shall be my King, even as King James is the sovereign of his people. His word shall be sacred and his will law.”
There was a light of something like devout obedience in her eyes. A holy vestal flame for a moment lighted up her face. I knew it was useless to argue with her then.
“Nevertheless,” I answered very meekly, “at least you will not wholly forget that I brought you to a place of safety, sheltering you in my arms and venturing into dark waters for your sake!”
Now though I looked not directly at her, I could see the cold light in her eyes grow more scornful.
“You do well to remind me of my obligation. But do not be afraid; you shall be satisfied. I will speak of you to my father. Doubtless, when he comes home he will be great with the Usurper and those that bear rule under him. You shall be rewarded to the top of your desires.”
Then there rose a hot indignation in my heart that she should thus wilfully misunderstand me.
“You do me great wrong, my Lady Mary,” I answered; “I desire no reward from you or yours, saving only your kindly remembrance, nor yet any advancement save, if it might be, into your favour.”
“That,” she said, turning petulantly away, “you will never get till I see the white rose in your bonnet instead of those Whiggish and rebel colours.”
CHAPTER X
THE BLUE BANNER IS UP
Now though at first I was grievously astonished that the daughter of Alexander Gordon and his wife Janet Hamilton should so speak, yet when I come to consider further of the matter it appears noways so wonderful.
For her father, when I came to know him, showed himself a great, strong, kindly, hard-driving “nowt” of a man, with a spiritual conceit equal to his knowledge of his bodily powers. But, for all his great pretensions, Sandy Gordon was essentially a man carnal and of the world, ever more ready to lay on lustily with the arm of the flesh than trust to the sword of the Spirit.
The “Bull of Earlstoun” was he right fitly called.
And with his children his method of training would doubtless be “Believe this! Receive that other!” Debate and appeal there would be none. So there is nothing to wonder at in the revolt of a nature every whit as imperious as that of her father, joined to a woman’s natural whimsies and set within the periphery of a girl’s slender form.
And then her mother!
If Sandy Gordon had proved trying to such a mind as that of Mary Gordon, what of Janet Hamilton, his wife?
She had been reared in the strictest sect of the Extremists. Every breath of difference or opposition to her orthodoxies or those of her brother Sir Robert was held rank treason to the cause. She had constant visions, and these visions pointed ever to the cardinal truth that Janet Hamilton was eternally right and every one else eternally wrong.
So Alexander Gordon, as often as he was at home, bullied back and forth concerning Covenants and sufferings, while at other times his wife worried and yammered, bitter as the east wind and irritant as a thorn in the flesh, till the girl was driven, as it were, in self-defence into other and as intolerant extremes.
Yet when her parents were most angered with her for this perversity, some sudden pretty wile or quaint bairnliness would set them laughing in spite of themselves, or a loving word of penitence bring the tears into their eyes. And while she chose to be good Mary Gordon, the family rebel, the disgrace of a godly home, would be again their own winsome little May, with a smile as sweet as the Benediction after sermon on a summer Sabbath morn, when the lilac and the hawthorn blossom scent all the kirk.
But as for me, having had trial of none of these wiles and witchcrafts, I was grieved indeed to hear one so fair take the part of the cruel persecutors and murderers of our brethren, the torturers of her father, the men to whose charge could be laid the pillage and spoiling of the bonny house of Earlstoun, and the turning of her mother out upon the inclement pitilessness of a stormy winter.
But with old and young alike the wearing iteration of a fretful woman’s yammering tongue will oftentimes drive further and worse than all the clattering horses and pricking bayonets of persecution.
Yet even then I thought within me, “Far be it from me that I should ever dream of winning the heart of so fair and great a lady.” But if by the wondrous grace of God, so I ever did, I should be none afraid but that in a little blink of time she would think even as I did. And this was the beginning of the feeling I had for Mary Gordon. Yet being but little more than a shepherd lad from off the hills of heather she was to me almost as one of the angels, and I thought of her not at all as a lad thinks in his heart of a pretty lass, to whom one day if he prosper he may even himself in the way of love.
After a day or two at Earlstoun, spent in drilling and mustering, in which time I saw nothing more of Mary Gordon, we set off in ordered companies towards Edinburgh. The word had been brought to us that the Convention was in great need of support, for that Clavers (whom now they called my Lord Dundee) was gathering his forces to disperse it, so that every one of the true Covenant men went daily in fear of their lives.
Whereupon the whole Seven Thousand of the West and South were called up by the Elders. And to those among us who had no arms four thousand muskets and swords were served out, which were sent by the Convention to the South and West under cover of a panic story that the wild Irishers had landed and burnt Kirkcudbright.
Hob and I marched shoulder to shoulder, and our officer was of one name with us, one Captain Clelland, a young soldier of a good stock who in Holland had learnt the art of war. But Colonel William Gordon, the uncle of the lass Mary, commanded all our forces.
So in time we reached the brow of the hill of Liberton and looked northward towards the town of Edinburgh, reeling slantways down its windy ridge, and crowned with the old Imperial coronet of St. Giles where Knox had preached, while the castle towered in pride over all.
It was a great day for me when first I saw those grey towers against the sky. But down in the howe of the Grassmarket there was a place that was yet dearer – the black ugly gibbet whereon so many saints of God, dear and precious, had counted their lives but dross that they might win the crown of faithfulness. And when we marched through the West Port, and passed it by, it was in our heart to cheer, for we knew that with the tyrant’s fall all this was at an end.
But Colonel William Gordon checked us.
“Rather your bonnets off, lads,” he cried, “and put up a prayer!”
And so we did. And then we faced about and filed straight up into the town. And as the sound of our marching echoed through the narrows of the West Bow, the waiting faithful threw up their windows and blessed us, hailing us as their saviours.
Company after company went by, regular and disciplined as soldiers; but in the Lawmarket, where the great folk dwelt, there were many who peeped in fear through their barred lattices.
“The wild Whigs of the West have risen and are marching into Edinburgh!” so ran the cry.
We of Colonel Gordon’s Glenkens Foot were set to guard the Parliament House, and as we waited there, though I carried a hungry belly, yet I stood with my heart exulting proudly within me to see the downtrodden at last set on high and those of low estate exalted.
For the sidewalks and causeways of the High-street were filled with eager crowds, but the crown of it was kept as bare as for the passing of a royal procession. And down it towards Holyrood tramped steadily and ceaselessly, company by company, the soldiers of the Other Kingdom.
Stalwart men in grey homespun they were, each with his sword belted to him, his musket over his shoulder, and his store of powder and lead by his side. Then came squadrons of horses riding two and two, some well mounted, and others on country nags, but all of them steady in their saddles as King’s guards. And when these had passed, again company after company of footmen.
Never a song or an oath from end to end, not so much as a cheer along all the ranks as the Hill Men marched grimly in.
“Tramp! tramp! tramp!” So they passed, as if the line would never end. And at the head of each company the blue banner of Christ’s Covenant – the standard that had been trailed in the dust, but that could never be wholly put down.
Then after a while among the new flags, bright with silk and blazening, there came one tattered and stained, ragged at the edges, and pierced with many holes. There ran a whisper. “It is the flag of Ayrsmoss!”
And at sight of its torn folds, and the writing of dulled and blistered gold upon it, “For Christ’s Cause and Covenant,” I felt the tears well from the heart up to my eyes, and something broke sharply with a little audible cry in my throat.
Then an old Covenant man who had been both at Drumclog and the Brig of Bothwell, turned quickly to me with kindly eyes.
“Nay, lad,” he said, “rather be glad! The standard that was sunken in a sea of blood is cleansed and set up again. And now in this our day woe be to the persecutors! The banner they trailed in the dust behind the dripping head of Richard Cameron shall wave on the Nether Bow of Edinburgh, where the corbies picked his eyes and his fair cheeks blackened in the sun.”
And so it was, for they set it there betwixt the High-street and the Canongate, and from that day forth, during all the weeks of the Convention, the Covenant men held the city quiet as a frighted child under their hand.