Gentleman Captain (27 page)

At precisely four the following afternoon, the
Jupiters
boat brought me alongside the jetty beneath the high walls of Ardverran Castle, a great tower jutting out over the sea with a strong curtain wall to its landward side. This was a place of strength built in the usual fashion of the country, a far cry from the fantastical Tower of Rannoch. Campbell of Glenrannoch's father must indeed have been a confident and powerful man to have abandoned this form of protection from the raiding parties of his enemies. The fact that its walls remained high and intact when only the earthworks of, say, Bedford Castle were left to mark where it had stood, bore silent witness to what Judge had told me of the constant blood feuds of these people. The writ of successive Kings of Scots must have run but weakly for such fortresses to survive; most of England's had fallen to neglect or royal edict long before the guns of civil war brought down the rest.

It was one of those dull and dismal days where the combined greyness of sea and sky seem to penetrate the very spirit of a man. As my eyes roamed over the inscrutable fastness of the castle, I thought I could have been transported back two hundred years and not have noticed. Ardverran's gaunt, grey walls spoke of other days, of the knights and longships of which I had dreamed as a child. There was, however, one visible concession to modernity: three cannon protruding through holes in the base of the walls. But even they were old and small, perhaps sakers salvaged from the Armada wrecks. They would frighten off a few clansmen, no doubt, but they would be good for little else. The artillery train that the king's regiment was bringing from Dumbarton could, in fact, make short work of Ardverran's walls, so imposing and yet so desperately fragile. The world had left them well behind.

Judge was already ashore, wearing an astonishing gown that looked from a distance like cloth-of-gold, and a periwig even larger than his usual fashion. I was attired more modestly, in a black tunic coat that Cornelia had chosen for me. An elaborately skirted and swathed old man with a vast beard came down from the castle's postern gate and announced himself in perfect, heavily accented English as Macdonald of Kilreen, kinsman and steward to the noble Macdonald of Ardverran and the Countess of Connaught, who would welcome us shortly in the castle hall. Then he turned and bounded back to the gate. I confess I found myself startled at the sight of the man's wiry, thickly muscled legs. I would surely grow used to the outlandish costume of the Scots in time, but still, it was a queer thing for a courtier to behold.

We strode up to the gate and entered the courtyard. A few rough herdsmen and their hirsute cattle eyed us curiously. Steps led to the first floor of the huge tower-house, and Kilreen indicated that another flight led from that to the hall. We climbed up and came to a barrel-vaulted space filled with Highlanders, who fell silent at our coming. The room was warmed by a great fire of peat which spread its pungent smoke generously over the assembled company. Light came from four small, high slit-windows, two on each side, and blazing torches were mounted at intervals along the walls. Those walls were largely bare and austere, but at the far end, either side of the great fire and the dais that stood in front of it, grand tapestries hung in splendour. I knew a little of such things; it was difficult not to, living in Flanders, where tapestry is both one of the greatest industries and also the chief topic of conversation among an ineffably dull population. These hangings were very fine and fit for the palace of a great court. How they came to be hanging on the walls of this hole on the edge of oblivion, I could not help but wonder.

Kilreen led us through this chamber to a small staircase and up to a gallery. We took our places where minstrels and pipers must once have played for the favoured ones below, and perhaps still did. From here, we could look out over the entire scene. As soon as we had passed, excited talk began again, as though we had never been, and there was undisguised mockery both of Judge's appearance and my height. Serving boys clad all in tartan brought us silver plates laden with carved meats and cakes, and cups that contained the fearsome drink of the Scots which they call the 'water of life'. As we supped and looked upon the throng, a grey, wasted creature in Ardverran tartan stepped out into the middle of the hall. The effort seemed too great, and he struggled for breath. All the same, the crowd of befeathered clansmen turned towards him. Their talk ceased. There were moments, perhaps a whole minute, of utter silence. Then the old man looked up, seeming to stare directly at me in the gallery. His eyes were damp with tears. I knew those eyes were not looking at me. Their gaze penetrated right through me, out beyond the windows and walls of Ardverran Castle, to some place and time beyond the reckoning of everyone else in that hall.

And then the man spoke. It was not the voice that I had expected, the reedy, broken whisper that such an ancient one should possess. It was perhaps the deepest and loudest voice I ever heard.

'Behold, all you who come to Ardverran of the ages! Behold, all you of lesser humanity! Behold, I proclaim to you the mighty Ian! Bow, and acknowledge your lord, Macdonald of Ardeverran! For this is Sir Ian, the son of Sir Callum, the son of Sir Ian Mor, the son of James, the son of Alastair, the son of Callum...' The recitation of names went on, song-like, back through the generations. The dozens of men in the hall listened intently, some of them speaking the names with the old man.
Or not speaking them
–for when the old man spoke the words
son of,
his listeners mouthed the word
mac.
This was a ritual usually conducted in the Gaelic tongue, I realized. This English was for our benefit, but surely there was little point in that?

'...the son of Donald, the son of that illustrious prince Alexander, Earl of Ross, last true Lord of the Isles! Hail Ardverran, descended of kings! All hail Ardverran, of the truest royal blood in all the land! Tremble, you rulers of the world, for Ardverran comes! All hail Ardverran! Ardverran! Hail Macdonald! All hail Macdonald!'

And now his audience joined him, their acclamations building to a crescendo that seemed to shake the old walls of Ardverran–'Macdonald! Macdonald! Macdonald!' My heart raced, for it was impossible not to be swept into that whirlpool of emotion. The door at the end of the hall opened. The entrance of Macdonald of Ardverran was at hand, the entrance of this awesome, all-powerful prince...

A very small, pale boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, stood in the door. He was dressed in a simple clan tartan and a cap from which three feathers protruded. My astonishment died away, and I almost laughed.
We had come to this God-abandoned hole for an audience with a mere runt?

As the boy moved nervously to the dais the shouts of acclamation died away. In the hush that followed, the aged herald spoke once more. And hail to the Lady Niamh, Countess of Connaught
suo jure,
daughter of the noblest blood of old Ireland, mother to Ardverran.'

A woman followed the boy into the hall. All eyes fell upon her greedily, my own among them. She was very tall, this Countess of Connaught, clad in a shimmering white gown that would not have been out of place at a court ball in Fontainebleau. Her hair was of a red that could only be seen in a fire, or in the defiant, blazing hues of the setting sun. It framed a face that outdid any other that I had ever seen–even the beauties who thronged Whitehall hoping to win a place in the king's bed. Her skin was smooth and unadorned; it was of such a lustre she had no need of jewels or pearls. A delicate mouth and sad green eyes should have given her a look of weakness, but instead they somehow composed a face that seemed at once infinitely vulnerable and infinitely strong. I was a married man, and true to my dear wife. But I knew then, in all certainty, that surely here, in the cold hall of this castle set between a bleak ocean and a barren headland, I was looking at the most beautiful woman that lived.

Like all men, even men in the contentment of the warmest marriage, I have had that same thought of a woman many hundreds of times in my life. But perhaps once in every man's lifetime he meets a woman for whom, he knows in his heart, the thought is true.

Lady Macdonald took her place slightly behind her son. She raised a hand and the audience hushed in expectation. She and the ancient nodded as one to the boy. The child took his cue and began speaking, stumbling almost inaudibly over the words.

'I, Ardverran, give you greeting, my lords and friends.'

Then Lady Macdonald spoke. Her voice, accented with the lilt of the Irish and strangely harsh, broke through my reverie at once. 'You of the Clan Macdonald, we bid you welcome once again to Ardverran, and to the hospitality of this, our humble house. Especially, we greet our guests, the officers of our sovereign lord Charles, King of Scots and his other territories. We invite them now to join us, to greet the Macdonald in person and to discuss with us those matters which bring them to this
brutish edge
of their world.'

There was some murmuring at that, but some mocking laughter too. Dismissing the kingdom of England as too insignificant to name would be well received even by those incapable of realizing the irony that lay behind her choice of words.

At that moment the burly, bearded Kilreen came forward to beckon us down the stairs. Judge nudged my arm and, as we descended, murmured, 'All show and flummery, sir. I have witnessed it before, of course. Clinging to their dead history...'

We strode across the hall, between the ranks of the clansmen. The stares of the hostile easily outnumbered the gazes of the merely curious. I had a disquieting image of the mob closing round us, cutting us to pieces with their dirks, but we passed through unscathed and came before the dais. Judge bowed his head very slightly to the child and the countess, and I followed suit. The tiny Macdonald nodded uncertainly, his mother gravely.

'So, Captain Judge,' she said. 'We had not expected to see you return to Ardverran after all these years.' She studied him silently a moment. I had almost thought her my own age, but at close quarters the slightest of lines about her eyes betrayed the ten years or more between us. 'You have changed greatly since your last visit to us. A most fascinating wig, I must say. Would your Lord Protector Cromwell have entirely approved?'

Judge essayed a smile and inclined his head. 'As you say, my lady. I delight that I can continue to serve my country in a small way, and delight even more that this service brings me once more into your presence.'

She raised an eyebrow at that. 'You have become a flatterer, Captain. The perfect courtier, no less. You were not so genteel when you were here before. The king is indeed a forgiving man.'

'Time changes much, my lady, and we are all its slaves. As was the case even for the late Lord Protector, for time brought the malaria to cut him down. But now, may I name to you Captain Matthew Quinton, of His Majesty's ship the
Jupiter,
brother to that most noble and illustrious lord, the Earl of Ravensden.'

Lady Macdonald inclined her head towards me. 'Brother to an English earl, no less. The king does choose his sea captains from a mixed basket, does he not? And who did you sail with, Captain Quinton? You were surely too young for Prince Rupert's fleet? Or were you with the Dutch, and the mighty Van Tromp?'

Her knowledge of naval matters was unexpected and disconcerting. 'This is but my second commission at sea, my lady—'

'Your second commission? And our esteemed monarch and his royal brother send you among the islands and waters of Scotland! Some of the worst seas in the world, Captain Quinton, yet they send a novice, and an
English
novice at that! And where, pray, did you serve in your first commission, Captain?'

My eyes had been fixed so intently on the face of the countess that I had not noticed Kilreen still at my side. Now he spoke.

'My lady, the good captain had the misfortune to lose his first ship. She was the
Happy Restoration,
an inappropriately named vessel. That would have been at Kinsale in the County of Cork, the twenty-first day of October, last past. One hundred and seven men drowned, so they say.'

Kilreen's precision was as unsettling as it was obviously rehearsed. Lady Macdonald raised a mocking eyebrow and turned to the men of the hall.

'Indeed. How unfortunate. Yet the king is doubly forgiving, for he employs Captain Quinton again, who sinks his ships by accident, just as he employs Captain Judge who once sunk 'em on purpose. We do live in such a forgiving age, do we not?' There was some laughter in the hall at that, presumably from those who could understand the English tongue. 'So, Captains. What can we in these savage lands possibly have done to persuade the mighty king, Charles Stuart, to send two of his great ships to overawe us?'

Judge ignored her goading, made a preposterous courtly bow, and proceeded to deliver the same tale we had told the night before to Campbell of Glenrannoch. As he spoke, we stood like supplicants before a throne, with no chairs offered. But the countess stood too, and young Macdonald her son stood before her, listening with seeming intent to the words the adults spoke. The countess made but little comment on our mission, unlike her neighbour Glenrannoch. Finally, she laid a hand upon her son's shoulder and stepped forward.

'Well then, Captains,' she said, 'if you must remain in these waters to deter the wicked Dutch, or perhaps the even more wicked Campbells,' again that mocking raise of an eyebrow, 'then we must entertain you once again, severally or individually. The Scots and Irish alike have ever taken their duties of hospitality with a seriousness that you English seem to forget, upon occasion.' She nodded regally to us, and Kilreen moved forward to indicate that this strangest of audiences was over.

'A great beauty, isn't she, to be hidden away in this remote corner?' said Judge, as we walked back down to the jetty.

I asked him to tell me more about this startling enigma, Lady Macdonald, Countess of Connaught. He knew her story well enough, and related it to me. It seemed that her title of countess was not recognized by the king and his heralds. Her grandfather was one of the old Gaelic earls who fled Ireland at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, abandoning their inheritances and their people when the old harridan's armies got too close. Judge had been told that the lady's father died in a hovel in Spain, leaving his young daughter an empty title–for it was one of the few Irish earldoms that could descend through the female line, or so Judge thought. In due course her uncle was able to arrange a good match for her: Sir Callum Macdonald, seventh of Ardverran, baronet; a wealthy man, and a strong Royalist.