An Ancient Strife Read online

  How and why a young man like Kendrick Gordon, the future earl of Cliffrose and the most handsome youth for miles, had been drawn to a peasant such as she was still a marvel to her. He had always said it was her smile that won his heart.

  Even as she walked, Aileana’s lips parted in a hint of that same smile, remembering their meeting on the shores of the River Spey.

  She had actually first seen him the day before. Aileana and several friends had been laughing together in the small marketplace in Baloggan, where they had traveled from their homes in the surrounding hills to sell their handmade items. Her back had been turned, and she had not seen him dismount and walk toward them. But as her friends stopped laughing and stared behind her, she turned, still smiling, and saw him standing in front of her small display of baskets.

  Her face flushed.

  “I had to see the face that went with the beautiful sound of that laughter,” he said. “And now I realize that the smile is just as pretty as the sound.”

  She didn’t know what to say, or who he was, and was relieved when he began looking over her wares.

  “I would like to find something for my mother,” he said, picking up first a wool basket, then a creel, both of which she had woven herself. “Hmm . . . how about this ciosan?” he went on, now picking up a round basket with flat bottom. “It looks sturdy and well made—I think she would like it.”

  He took out two silver coins and laid them before her.

  “Oh, but, sir,” she said, finally finding her voice, “’tis far too muckle.”

  “I always pay a fair price, and unless I am mistaken, that basket took a great deal of time to make. Consider one of the coins for the ciosan and the other for the laughter that drew me to it.”

  Her face flushed again at his words. She glanced up, their eyes met briefly, then she looked away.

  “Thank ye, sir,” she said. “Ye’re verra kind. I am sure baith oor mithers will be weel pleased.”

  He turned and mounted his horse, basket in hand, and rode away. The instant he was out of earshot, her two friends began chattering at once.

  “Aileana, du ye ken wha it was ye were speakin’ t’?”

  She shook her head.

  “’Twas the earl’s son,” said the other. “Isna he the most handsome man ye’ve e’er seen!”

  The next day, while she was collecting bent river grass beside the Spey for more baskets, she heard in the distance the splashing sounds of a fisherman tromping along the river’s edge. She glanced toward the sound, but saw no one—the tromping came from just around a bend, where the river was lost to her sight. Maybe it had been a deer, she thought as she returned to her work.

  Another few minutes went by, when suddenly another sound startled her, this time close by. She glanced up again. There stood the handsome earl’s son. Recovering her momentary fright, she smiled and nodded.

  “Guid day t’ ye, sir,” she said.

  “Ah,” he replied, smiling now in turn, “I hoped I would be so fortunate as to see it again.”

  “An’ what wad that be?” she said, tilting her head in confusion.

  “Your lovely smile.”

  She felt her face grow pink. She dropped down to cut some more grasses.

  “What is that you’re doing?” he asked.

  “Gatherin’ grasses fer oor wee baskets.”

  “You weave the baskets yourself?”

  “Ay, me an’ my mither.”

  “Did you make the one I bought from you in the village?”

  “Ay, that I did.”

  “Then that makes it all the more special. My mother was very pleased with it, by the way.”

  “Then I am aye pleased too,” she replied, venturing another look in the young man’s direction.

  “If you will show me what to do,” he said, stooping down beside her, “I will help you. I have my own knife, and if we work together, you shall have twice the grass by day’s end.”

  “Ye’re verra kind, sir. Thank ye.”

  Now for eight years she had been his wife, mistress of Cliffrose. In those years, he had made a lady of her, and she had worked hard to be a good wife to him. In one thing only had she failed. She had not been able to give her Kendrick a son. And now that at last the time seemed at hand, she dreaded what it might mean.

  She stared ahead into the mist, as if with physical senses trying to make out more detail of the impressions that had awakened her. They were good eyes that squinted into the morning fog, of light blue tinged at the edges with green, eyes that when they saw suffering tried to meet it with compassion. Even without an accompanying smile from the lips, they were eyes that would yet for many years to come cause men to pause for a second look. The visage out of which gazed the orbs of blue-green light, and which an occasional smile turned to radiance, was a mysterious face in its own way, beautiful with the beauty that increases, not fades, with age. Her beauty held the elegance of the Highlands, whose features love imbues with subtle enchantment. Faint lines of the years were becoming evident in neck, forehead, and the corners of those remarkable eyes, the severity of the climate hastening their approach by several years. But they were lines that added character and enhanced the mystery. If the thick mass of unruly light brown hair was already streaked with a strand or two of coming gray, that too, in the eyes of her husband and every Highlander for twenty miles who loved her, gave Aileana Gordon yet the more stature and dignity. They loved her for who she was—the earl’s wife—and also for the peasant she had been. But they loved her most that her heart was true, and all knew it.

  Even for those who dwelt in castles, however, life in the Highlands was difficult in the eighteenth century. Age seemed to advance more quickly here. Nearly as tall as her husband, Aileana was large and powerful of frame, but no ounce of fat was to be found on her. She had worked hard as a child and had continued the practice all her life.

  She crested a small rise. Gradually the white morning brightened, though the river down the slope to her left and the snowy peaks in the distance behind it remained invisible even to one possessing the second sight. As she gazed into the mist, she saw mountains and water only in her imagination.

  In truth, the handsome wife of the young earl of Cliffrose was not as common of ancestry as she supposed. Though she would never know it, in her veins pulsed reminders of the fierce Viking stock that had invaded and impregnated this land with its Scandinavian vigor in the tenth century. So too did her carriage bear hints of an even more ancient heritage. If the Pict inhabitants of prehistoric Caledonia were now a breed of humanity all but lost to the sight of their descent, nonetheless did their blood continue to energize the race they had founded. Aileana Gordon carried herself with an inborn stature reminiscent of those from whom she had sprung, the Pict warrioress, Deargicca, and her daughter, Turenna, who, with the man who would become her husband, had led the Pict attack to repulse the Romans from their land. The blood of these ancients, therefore, which might be detected in the pale blue of her farseeing eyes, interwove the threads of her own Celtic lineage, though faintly, with those of her husband.

  She was a Celt. Had she lived in another era, she would likely have taken her place in the forgotten annals of prehistoric legend. But most of all, Aileana Gordon was woman. This was the day, not some age long past, when destiny had chosen for her to walk upon the earth. And she was afraid. Afraid for what bringing a son into this world at such a critical hour could mean. Was she to suffer the heartbreak of birthing a child, only to lose him to the sword?

  She knew of the Queen’s death. She knew of the King over the water, and what the men of her country had on their minds when they toasted his health. She sensed the direction in which the unrest was building, and the very thought filled her with dread. She was as deeply a Scot as any of them—a MacPherson and a Forbes by birth, a Gordon by marriage, a Highland Catholic by upbringing. She had longed to be a mother of one who would share her Highland blood and that of her husband and uphold their way of life. But all she
could envision on this morning was the shed blood from both their legacies staining the cold and desolate moor of her waking nightmare.

  This was no time to bring a son into the world.

  Sons went to war. Sons spilled their blood. And no cause was worth such a legacy to a heart that longed to be a mother. Now that her dream seemed about to be fulfilled, she could not bear the thought that the nationalistic passions of her nation’s men might take that dream from her.

  She walked awhile longer with undefined thoughts filling her breast.

  “Holy Mother,” suddenly burst from her lips, “pray for me, that I might have a daughter, not a son!”

  Two

  AUGUST 1715

  Three months later, another walker made his way across a wide moor in the crisp sunlight of early morning.

  High summer had come to the Highlands, though it would be another hour before the sun’s rays altogether removed the brief night’s chill from the ground. As the man went, he detected a thin wisp of white probing its way skyward in the distance, spreading out lazily as it rose above the ridge of a low range of hills bordering the moor to the north. Faintly now invaded his nostrils the singular aroma of peat burning in the hearth of the cottage toward which he was bound. His nose told him fresh peats had recently been added to the fire—sure evidence that the midwife’s husband had followed his usual custom of rising early.

  The walker’s thoughts were interrupted by the dull sound of a horse’s hooves faintly reaching his ears through the still morning.

  He paused to listen. The beast and its rider were coming this way, along the road half a mile south. There could be little doubt, both from the speed and the direction, who was astride what sounded to be an enormous creature. His cousin Murdoch Sorley from nearby Tullibardglass Hall was bound for Cliffrose Castle.

  He thought a moment. His guest would wait, he decided. He would deliver his message to the cottage, then hurry back to see what had brought the viscount across so many miles this early in the day.

  The man turned back to the path and continued on his way. His step was vigorous and strong, for he walked with the exhilaration of knowing his newborn son would carry his name into the next generation.

  In another five minutes he approached the stone cottage. He gave the door a single rap with the thick flesh of his fist, then opened it and strode confidently in without awaiting reply.

  “M’lord,” cried a raspy voice the moment his foot had crossed the threshold. “I was aboot t’ set oot fer the castle. Hae ye news?”

  “Ay, Robert—I’ve a son.”

  “’Tis good news ye’re bringin’!” exclaimed the man with wide smile, taking two gigantic strides forward across the hard-packed earthen floor. He clasped the hand of his visitor with a grip that could break the fingers of many a Lowland aristocrat. “My hertiest congratulations, m’lord!”

  “Thank you, Robert. You are the first I’ve told. The boy’s no more than half an hour old. I brought a bottle to give you, and to have a wee dram with you.”

  “Ye bring honor t’ my humble cottage, m’lord.”

  “Your own wife brought my son into the world. Drinking a toast with her husband and my friend is the least I can do. Will you drink with me?” asked the earl, withdrawing a bottle of whiskey from the large pocket of his coat, where it had rested for the journey across the moor from castle to cottage.

  “Wi’ pleasure, m’lord,” replied the shepherd, turning to find two glasses. “We’ll toast both the bairn an’ his father.”

  “And the future of Scotland,” added the earl, thinking of events that were gathering themselves about the land of his birth. Though his son was but an hour old, the earl already found himself wondering into what manner of Scotland his son would grow to become a man—a free nation again or a servile one.

  Robert returned a moment later, extending two small glasses. The earl poured out generous portions of the amber brew into each, then set the bottle down on the table.

  “To the future earl,” said the old Highlander, holding his glass aloft, “an’ to the lad’s father, Kendrick Gordon, the present earl o’ Cliffrose an’ friend t’ all, be they rich or poor.”

  “And to Robert MacGregor, friend to earls, be they young or old!” added Gordon.

  A light chink of glass and two or three sips followed. Then came a pause. As of one accord, both men lifted their hands again, more seriously this time. As had become common practice throughout the Highlands in the past several years, one final toast had to be added.

  “An’ to the King o’er the water,” said MacGregor.

  “To James Edward,” added Gordon.

  The nobleman and the shepherd, friends who loved one another deeply despite the vast gulf that stood between the stations into which each had been born, now emptied the remaining contents of their glasses in two long swallows of warm satisfaction.

  Three

  It had only been twenty-three years since the bloody massacre in the tiny Highland glen called Coe, but much had changed since then. Most significant for Scots, William of Orange—the Dutchman who had become King William III of England and had engineered the massacre at Glencoe—was dead. Enthusiasm for the Stuart dynasty he had ousted in 1688 was again gaining support throughout the Scottish Highlands. It seemed at last that MacIain’s death at Glencoe might be avenged, if not with his murderer’s blood, at least with vindication of the cause he had died for—the freedom of his beloved Caledonia from southern domination.

  But while the hope of that liberty was perhaps more realistic now than in 1691, it would be difficult to win. For English politicians now looked to measures even more permanent than the extirpation of a Highland clan to keep the Scots in their place.

  The ancient strife between the two neighbors could lead to but one inevitable conclusion: one of the two must be vanquished. To eradicate Scotland as a sovereign political entity had long been the unspoken goal of a certain political faction—mostly represented by the Whig party—in England. The most certain means, in its view, to achieve such an objective was to do away with its nationhood.

  Toward just such an end had Caledonia’s history inexorably been drifting for a century.

  Upon the death of Elizabeth I of England in 1603, Scotland’s King of twenty years, James VI, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, had been declared Elizabeth’s successor. Remarkably, the King of one nation now became also the King of another. James VI was crowned James I of England. The throne of the two rival nations now rested in a single monarch—James Stuart.

  Thus the situation remained for eighty-five years. When James’s Catholic grandson James VII of Scotland (James II of England) fell into disfavor with the Whig-dominated Protestant English Parliament in 1688, they deposed him from the English throne in favor of William of Orange, the King’s son-in-law. But the ousted monarch did not, as might have been expected, retreat north from London to carry on his Scottish monarchy in Edinburgh. Instead, he fled with his family to France. This appearance of abdication left William of Orange unopposed to declare himself King of Scotland as well.

  The two nations remained essentially separate, and most Scots begrudgingly accepted the new monarch. But while James remained in exile in France, a small loyal following continued to look to him as Scotland’s rightful King. The most ardent support for the fading Stuart dynasty—changed from the Scots Stewart to the French spelling of Stuart after Mary, Queen of Scots’ upbringing in France—clustered in the predominantly Catholic Highlands. These loyalists to the ancient Scottish house of Jacobus, Latin for James, were known as Jacobites.

  The massacre at Glencoe in 1691 had put an effective, if temporary, end to active Jacobite opposition to William III’s reign. Even in the Highlands after Glencoe, resistance to the new order gradually quieted. But William’s death in 1702 threw open once again the question of the rightful monarchy—and began to stir up Jacobite sentiment in Scotland once more.

  Queen Anne, William’s sister-in-law, immediately succeeded to the
thrones in both London and Edinburgh. But she was aging and had no direct descendent. Whenever her death came, the obvious heir to both thrones would be James VII’s fourteen-year-old son, James Edward, who had been living in France with his father most of his life. In the opening decade of the eighteenth century, therefore, the Stuart line seemed about to reassert its claim to both thrones. Upon the death of James VII, in fact, King Louis XIV of France publicly declared young James Edward to be James III of England.

  But the young descendent of the royal Stuart line, like his father, was a Catholic. The English Parliament had ousted his father for just that reason and was no more likely to accept the son now. Instead, they looked to another branch of the royal Stuart family tree—a line descending from the firstborn daughter of James I (James VI). The present progeny of that line was a German princess, Sophia of Hanover. Her claim to the throne was less direct than that of young James Edward, having come through the female line. But her claim was legitimate and, more important, she was a Protestant. So it was to Germany that the Whigs of England now looked for a solution to their dilemma.

  Fearing a Jacobite uprising to establish James Edward on either or both thrones, steps were taken in London to guard against a Stuart claim. The English Parliament passed an Act of Settlement, declaring that upon Anne’s death the English Crown should pass not to James Edward but to Sophia of Hanover—now called the Electress Sophia.

  Having made that declaration to insure that a Stuart Catholic would not take the English crown, English parliamentarians sought to close what they called “the back door.” Regardless of what happened in England, as long as Scotland remained a separate national entity, the possibility would remain of a Stuart restoration upon Scotland’s throne. The only true resolution, from the Whig standpoint, was a national union between England and Scotland. The crowns had been one since 1603. It was now time to fuse the two nations.

  An English coup d’état for complete control of Scotland was now set in motion. The lead player in the scheme was, fittingly, none other than one of the most powerful men in all Scotland, head of the ancient clan that had already proved itself so accommodating to the English on so many occasions.