Lady Of The Glen Part 1

Lady of the Glen.

JENNIFER ROBERSON.

To the true professionals:

Russell Galen, agent; Ann LaFarge, editor

Deepest thanks for unflagging faith, support, and tenacity.

And especially to the friends and family:

Debby Burnett; Mike Stackpole and Liz Danforth; Sam Stubbs;

Shera Roberson and S.J. Hardy; Georgana Wolff Meiner;

Arzelle Drew; Clare and d.i.c.k Witcomb;

Phil and Greta Murnane; Jay Dunkleberger; Tom Quaid.

Simon Hawke; Robyn Carr; Melanie Rawn; Alis Rasmussen.

Sam Hardy; New Years'/40th Birthday Gang.

Thursday Morning Corgi Club; GEnie "Runcibles;"

the household menagerie.

All of whom were there when I most needed them.

Preface.

By the seventeenth century Scottish politics could not be divorced from English politics, and were directed from London at the behest of English monarchs. Yet despite the incompatibilities of language, dress, and customs, and despite England's numerous campaigns to subjugate the Scots, Scotland enjoyed in 1603 a perverse revenge: it was to Scotland unmarried Elizabeth I was forced to look for an heir, and on her death James VI of Scotland became James I of England.

Decades later, Oliver Cromwell subverted the monarchy, but his regime was of short duration; eventually Charles II, a Stuart, a.s.sumed the throne in place of his executed father. But the Queen was barren, and on Charles's death the throne pa.s.sed to his brother, James-a man who provided both the English and the Scots new ground over which to battle. For James II was Catholic, and England Protestant.

In the midst of political turmoil, strong men came forward to demand the throne from James, an ineffectual and politically dangerous king. One of these men was Archibald Campbell, the ninth Earl of Argyll, a Scot who supported Charles II's illegitimate son, styled the Duke of Monmouth. This bid to wrest the throne from James and place his b.a.s.t.a.r.d nephew on it failed; Monmouth and Argyll both were executed.

Thus besieged, Catholic James II fled England for France, leaving the throne to his Protestant sister, Mary, who had married William of Orange, by blood half a Stuart, by upbringing thoroughly Dutch.

With James in exile, with William and Mary as joint monarchs, England settled into a measure of civil stability. But there was the war with France William was determined to win at all costs, and thus Scotland became vital to his success. William needed men. He wanted Scots. Primarily Highlanders, fierce and loyal fighting men who would serve ably as cannon fodder.

The Highlanders themselves were divded as usual by clan rivalry and feuding. It would take a very strong man to unite them, to persuade them to give up their oath to the exiled King James-a Stuart, a Scot-to swear allegiance to William and Mary. The Earl of Argyll, a Campbell, was dead. But another rose to the forefront, Grey John Campbell, the Earl of Breadalbane. And he, working closely with a Lowland Scot, Sir John Dalrymple, the Master of Stair, concocted a plan that would, by example, unify the Highlanders in the name of William and Mary.

But old oaths forgiven, and new oaths made, require peace. And peace in the Highlands was dearly bought with the blood of Glencoe.

Listen, then, to my pibroch,

it tells the news and tells it well

of slaughtered men

and forayed glen,

Campbell's banners and the victor's joy!.

-Breadalbane bagpipe rant, 1692.

Glen Lyon.

Summer 1682.

-so bonnie was he . . . bonnie, bonnie prince-bonnie lad, bonnie lad- She made up the tune as she went, singing it in her head where no one could hear, neither her father the laird, called Glenlyon, nor her brothers, any of them, Robbie or Jamie, Dougal or Colin, who would surely laugh, or worse. She would offer them no sgian dhu, to stick its blade in her heart.

-with silver in his hair, and white teeth a'gleaming- With grave deliberation, Catriona Campbell walked the wall. It was a pile of tumbled fieldstone, all ash and slate and pewter . . . was the drawbridge over the moat leading into the magical castle, where surely she would find her prince languis.h.i.+ng in captivity, the bonnie prince, bonnie lad, with silver in his hair and white teeth a'gleaming.

-bonnie, so bonnie was he . . . Cat sucked at her lip, reconsidering. Not stone, but a serpent, a silver serpent; a silver serpent-bridge stretched from bank to bank across the moat full of kelpies bespelled by a witch. She would walk the magicked serpent to rescue her bonnie prince.

-silver in his hair, and white teeth a'gleaming. . . Traversing the serpent-bridge required such sacrifice as the shedding of shoes, which she undertook readily; immense concentration, with bony elbows outthrust like the wings of a hissing greylag; and lastly, most importantly, the insertion of tender tongue between teeth. But the tongue was uninhibited by a portcullis of teeth. Ten-year-old Cat had shed her front teeth the week before.

"Hag!" her brothers had gleefully chorused immediately upon sighting her lack. "Toothless auld crone!"

To which Cat had replied, with grandiose derision, that at least hers would grow back in; fifteen-year-old Robbie, who had lost a dogtooth in a fistfight with a Campbell cousin, would lack his forever.

The argument but ten days before in the doorway of Chesthill, in the laird's own house, might have escalated into a pitched battle save for the intervention of her oldest brother, Robbie, who had led the chorus himself. He merely picked his sister up, lugged her out of doors to the barrel put out to collect rainwater, and stuffed her headfirst into it.

Bubbling outrage, Cat banged and sc.r.a.ped her elbows, thrashed her legs frenziedly, and eventually realized she might do better to husband her breath rather than spend it on curses. She stilled, holding the remnants of air, h.o.a.rding her last reserve, aware of pressure stuffing her ears, dimness crowding her eyes, and the taste of whiskied water.

St.u.r.dy Robbie slapped her on the rump as if she were a weanling calf, then dragged her forth. "There now, Cat, ye'll learn your manners better."

In silence, courting patience, Cat allowed him to set her on her feet. Inside her head sounded a voice, her voice, the one she kept secret from others.-wait you . . . wait you, Cat- Robbie grinned, displaying the gap in his teeth. "There, now, Cat-"

-now-She loosed the mouthful of water in a deliberate, vigorous spray that soaked Robbie's face. Astonished, he let her go; Cat tore loose and ran away before Robbie or the others, equally astonished, could catch her again.

Heading toward the front door of her father's house, Cat twisted her head to cast a glance at her brothers. Robbie, Dougal, Colin, and Jamie were, as she fully expected, in demented pursuit.

-I'll beat you-A vicious, malignant joy welled up in Cat's chest as she thought quickly ahead to escape.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed open the door, darted through, delayed three ticks of a clock, then slammed it shut in their faces.

Silence. There were no shouts, no threats, no flinging open of the door. Poised to flee, Cat waited for the rattle of the latch, the adolescent curses, the cacophony of brothers bent on punis.h.i.+ng the youngest of them all, and a la.s.s at that. They made a practice of it.

Surely they would come. They always had before.

Wet from her hips up, Cat dripped onto the polished oak of her father's floor. Foreboding knotted her belly. She scowled at the nearest glazing, wondering if her foolish brothers would have the temerity to break it. Gla.s.s windows cost dearly; likely there'd just be a shutter nailed over it again, and they'd lack for daylight in the gray gloom of a Scottish winter, still months away.

And then the door at last was flung open. Cat twitched, preparing to run, and felt the welling up in her chest of the great shout she meant to make, fierce as a clansman slicing the air with a deadly claymore.

But the shout withered to breathy exhalation; shock grew roots from bare feet into the hardwood floor.

-not Robbie-Nor Jamie, nor Colin, nor Dougal, but a man she did not know. Cat gaped. -giant- In fact, the largest man she had ever seen, ever, even in her dreams. His height was such that he was required to stoop to enter her father's house, so he wouldn't knock his white-maned head on the lintel . . . after he jerked open the heavy wooden door and bellowed rudely for attention.-like one of Father's bulls- "I am MacIain," he shouted, "come to speak to a Campbell, aye?-and wi'out a dirk in my hand, or a sword, but soft words and fine courtesy in my mouth, instead." He paused just inside the door, now filled with other men, and none of them her father's. "I am Glencoe," he roared, "come to speak with Glenlyon!"

Transfixed by his hugeness, his thunder, his overwhelming presence, Cat stood before him, dripping, staring, because she could not believe any man would shout so in her father's house, or make such outrageous statements.

The giant eventually looked down at her. She saw the great white mane curling around broad shoulders; a thicket of brows hedging blue eyes; backswept, elegant moustaches, and thick, snowy beard.

Zeus! she decided instantly, well taken by the tales her brothers had told her of Olympian lairds. But this Zeus was plainly a Scot: she saw the sett of his plaid; the great circle-shaped penannular brooch pinning the cloth crosswise to the shoulder of his buff-dyed jacket; the silver clan badge and accompanying plant crest affixed to his dark blue bonnet, clinging slantwise, Highland-style, to his ma.s.sive head.

The badge glinted in wan light, transfixing her gaze. She saw the crest more clearly than the rest: a sprig of purple heather. And so she knew who he was, this giant, and what the giant wanted, and of what treatment he was deserving, he and his clansmen, his tacksmen, all gathered behind in the doorway.

She did not see her brothers. Had they run, then, knowing whom they faced? Had MacIain chased them away?

Cat was humiliated. Carefully, she spat onto the floor before his feet, clad in leather brogues glinting of silver buckles. "Dinna you knock on doors in Glencoe?" she asked with a ten-year-old's eloquent derision born of a lifetime of b.l.o.o.d.y feuding. "Dinna you behave yourselves like true men do, and come wi' manners as well as shouting?"

Blue eyes in deep sockets caught fire. He bent down, put out large hands, caught her by the upper arms. The growl arose from deep in his plaid-swathed chest. "Dinna ye ken who I am?"

She did. They all knew him, and cursed him over whisky. "I do! MacDonalds, from Glencoe: the Gallows Herd itself, come to steal more cows from Glen Lyon!"

Huge fingers clamped more tightly upon soaked linen and the fragile arms beneath. He plucked her from the ground as easily as he might a sprig of heather. He lifted her and left her hanging in midair, wholly dependent upon his temper as to whether she would be set down again, or dropped.

-dinna drop me-She thought he might; he was that angry. But he didn't. He drew her close, still hanging, and thrust his big, bearded face into her own considerably smaller one. "Dinna the Campbells teach you manners, then?"

He was hurting her, though she doubted he knew it. He was so huge and she so thin; undoubtedly he'd forgotten how solid his grasp on her arms. And scrawny arms they were, too, like all the rest of her.

"I am a Campbell!" she cried. "And Glenlyon has taught me all the manners I must have, dealing with MacDonalds!"

"Has he, now? And why?-what would the laird want with a tart-tongued scullion like you?"

She gaped. Scullion, indeed! Her father would be furious.

But for the moment, her father wasn't present. "Put me down," she said. "Put me down, MacDonald, and take your hands from the flesh of a trueborn Campbell!"

He laughed. The giant laughed, throwing back the large head with its tangled swath of snowy curls. And then he set her down, firmly, and took his hands from her arms. She forebore to rub them. "Trueborn Campbell, are ye? Well, then, fetch your master, la.s.s, and tell him MacIain is here to speak words wi' him."

"I'm certain he knows," she said coldly, "you with all your shouting. "

And indeed her father did know, shouting or not, and was abruptly there: startled, puzzled, frowning, yet saying nothing that might cause dirks to be drawn, or swords. Her brothers, brave now in his presence, gathered behind him, slanting her startled, disbelieving glances.

Have they naught to say to him? Campbells to a MacDonald? Well, if they did not, she did; and would say it, wouldn't she, no matter what others thought!

Men came into the house behind the Maclain, Highlanders all, like him, in kilts and breeks and bonnets, all wearing bright sprigs of heather and showing hard MacDonald faces. She liked none of them, not knowing what they wanted, and particularly misliking the way they brushed her aside, this way and that, until she stood at the open door, alone, behind the sea of tall MacDonalds.