The Border Lord and the Lady (56 page)

Kier wondered if this great show of magnificence and men was meant to do honor to James Stewart, or to intimidate him. If it was the latter, the lord of the isles had wasted his time, for the king, while admiring, was not in the least cowed, even when all the clans, pipes playing, plaids blowing in the summer breeze, marched down from the hills to Inverness Tower. James stood atop the tower and listened as his kinsman, the Earl of Atholl, identified the colors worn by the clansmen below.

“The dark green-and-blue plaid with the narrow red and white stripes, that’s the MacDonalds. The red with the broad and narrow green stripes is his son, Hugh of Sleate. The Camerons are the red with the broad green and narrow yellow stripes. The Campbells wear the dark blue and green with the narrow yellow stripe. The MacLeods of MacLeod wear the green with the red and yellow stripes, or the yellow and black with the red stripe. The MacArthurs are the green with the yellow stripe.”

“Enough,” the king said. “I’ll not remember in any event. It’s the men among them I’m interested in, not their garments. They have brought their women and bairns with them, I’m told. Good! Let them see my justice for themselves, so they may report it afterwards,” James
Stewart said with a grim smile. “Allow the MacDonald, his mother, the Countess of Ross, the clan chieftains, and their women into the hall. The rest are to remain outside. I am ready for them, Atholl, although I doubt they are ready for me.”

The gray stone hall in which the king received the lord of the isles had no windows. At one end of the hall was a raised wooden dais with a gilded wooden canopy, beneath which the king sat upon a throne with carved arms and lion’s-paw feet. He sat unmoving, his face showing no emotion whatsoever as his guests entered the hall.

Escorting his mother, the MacDonald led his chieftains and the other invited members of the Highland contingent into the hall. Alexander MacDonald stopped at the foot of the dais. He offered the king a slow, elegant bow. Next to him the old Countess of Ross curtsied. Her wobble was barely noticeable, and the king could tell her knees hurt her as she rose, but the smile on her face was genuine. He briefly felt regret at what was about to transpire.

“My lord,” the MacDonald said, “I welcome ye to the Highlands. May yer stay be a pleasant one, and may ye return often.”

The king’s reply was a terse one, and Alexander MacDonald, not to be shamed before his clansmen and allies, answered sharply. He was not used to being spoken to in such a manner. He was the king of the north, and resented this Stewart upstart who would attempt to pull him down from his high place.

But James Stewart was not the kind of Stewart he had been used to dealing with in days past. This king was a hard man. Looking first directly at the lord of the isles, and then at the others in the hall, he said, “I am told there are some among you who would have my life.” Signaling his guard, who had been notified in advance of what they would do, he watched as Alexander MacRurie and Ian MacArthur were hauled forth from among the other clan chieftains and dragged before him. “You two spoke of my murder. I cannot trust you. Your deaths will provide an example to your companions.”

Raising his hand, the king signaled his executioners, who stepped forward and swiftly beheaded MacRurie and MacArthur. Neither man had the chance to cry out. Their heads fell from their bodies, rolling a short distance. The women in the hall screamed and began to weep in their fright as blood gushed from the severed necks of the two clan chieftains.

“Seize them all!” the king roared angrily. “They shall be imprisoned in the dungeons prepared for their arrival.” Rising from his throne, he stepped down from the dais, stepping over the river of blood, and offered his hand to the Countess of Ross. “You, madam, will be my guest,” he said, “while your son and his friends contemplate their disobedience to me, to Scotland.”

“Are you not Scotland?” the Countess of Ross replied, taking the hand offered.

James Stewart smiled grimly. “I am, madam,” he agreed. “I am.”

This was the tale Kier Douglas told Cicely when he returned home in early August. “No one, or at least only a very few, knew what he intended,” Kier said.

“What happened afterwards?” Cicely asked.

“The MacDonald’s sister-in-law stepped forward and upbraided the king for his behavior. She asked if this was the king’s justice.”

“Did the king throw her in the dungeon too?” Cicely asked, fascinated.

“Nay. He called her a cattle thief and a whore, and ordered her from his hall,” Kier told his wife. “But she had the last word and she left the king speechless. She told him, ‘Better an honest whore, my liege, than a dishonorable king.’ ”

“The woman must be mad to have spoken to James Stewart like that,” Cicely said. “And he let her go unscathed?”

“A priest stood near his side, his kinsman, I think. He murmured something to the king, and oddly the king refrained from taking any action against her. He said nothing more. The woman left the hall, followed by all the other women.”

“What happened then?” Cicely asked.

“Well,” Kier continued, “a couplet had been making its way about the encampments. ‘To donjon tower let this rude troop be driven, For death they merit, by the cross of Heaven.’ The Highlanders were on edge, as were the rest of us. The king, however, did not keep us waiting long. A week after his first meeting with the MacDonald and his allies, he invited all who had come to gather at Inverness to attend his parliament. He announced he would then render his judgment upon them all. The MacArthurs and the MacRuries had already left to take home their dead chieftains. The Highlanders were very fearful, for the couplet was said to have been written by the king himself.” Kier chuckled.

Cicely was fascinated by his recitation. Kier had kept a very close account of what had happened in Inverness so he might share it with her.

“In an effort to demonstrate to the Highland chieftains that he was showing no favor to any in particular, the king had hanged that same week James Campbell, who had murdered Alexander MacDonald’s cousin, Ian MacDonald. His execution got those in the dungeons talking among themselves. But then, to their great relief, the king fined them and released them back to their clanspeople,” Kier said.

“And the lord of the isles?” Cicely asked.

“A large fine to fatten James Stewart’s treasury, and a lengthy lecture. The king said there could be but one king in Scotland, and that king was James Stewart, by the grace of God, and anointed with the holy oil of the Holy Mother Church. He told the MacDonald that he had to stop taking up arms for every offense, real or imagined. He threatened MacDonald that if he did not cease his rude ways, James would come north again, and stop them for good and all. If Alexander MacDonald would keep the peace in the north he would find favor with James Stewart. Then he instructed the lord of the isles to kneel and pledge his fealty. You could tell the MacDonald was angry at being held up to public censure, but he did indeed kneel, and pledged his
fealty to the king. After that we were free to go home, and so our Glengorm men and I hurried south again.”

“What an amazing time,” Cicely said. “I wish I had been there to see it. My life hasn’t been as interesting at all, my lord.” Then she went on to tell her husband that the haying had been completed, and the harvest just begun. Summer was coming to an end, and they would need to prepare for the winter ahead.

But Alexander MacDonald had been embarrassed by what had transpired at Inverness. He had lost control of the situation, and on his own ground. He would need to make a public gesture so as not to appear weakened among his own. The king would certainly understand, and then the peace would hold for however long it would hold. Inverness would pay the price for their outspoken loyalty to James Stewart. The MacDonald gathered his clansmen and his allies. Marching upon Inverness, they burned it to the ground. Then, satisfied, Alexander MacDonald returned home to his island kingdom of Islay, and his army of ten thousand men dispersed.

However, James Stewart did not understand. A royal burgh had been burned to the ground, its inhabitants slaughtered, the town looted, the few survivors scattered, desperate to survive the coming winter. Autumn was already in the Highlands. The nights were cold, the days little better. But a party of Inverness’s survivors trekked south to Scone to tell the king what had happened. Reaching him after several weeks, they begged for his justice, and James promised to give it to them.

The king sent to all of his liege men, the border lords among them. He told them what had happened at Inverness. It was too late now to go north to wreak his revenge upon the MacDonald. They would go closer to spring. Kier Douglas was ordered to be ready at a moment’s notice, and to be prepared to travel hard. He was to bring as many men as he could muster. Alexander MacDonald would receive a lesson in royal justice he would never forget—if he survived the king’s initial wrath.

Cicely was not pleased. “Can you Scots not learn to live peacefully among yourselves?” she demanded. “I should have married a man like my father: rich and unimportant. One who did not have to answer a call to arms.”

“Now, sweetheart,” he attempted to cajole her, but she waved her hand at him.

“Nay, Kier, I do not like this constant fighting. What if I were with child again?”

“Are you?” he asked eagerly.

“Nay,” she admitted.

“We shall have to do something about that,” he teased her with a mischievous smile. “Johanna and Ian need another brother or sister.”

“Most men would want another son,” she replied.

“Aye, I do. But the lasses have their value too, sweetheart. Their marriages unite Glengorm with other families, who become allies. Did you think I was satisfied just to be my father’s son? Aye, Sir William loves me, and I bear his name, but I am still his bastard. My bairns, however, are legitimate. And Glengorm is not a poor apportionment to have been given. You say in your anger that you should have wed a rich man. I intend being a rich man, Cicely. I don’t yet quite know how I will accomplish this, but I will. I have not yet spent a penny of your dower. It remains in Edinburgh with the goldsmith.”

She had not known this, and was encouraged to learn it. “My father made his wealth investing in trading voyages to the Levant,” Cicely said. “You must be careful, of course, which ships and voyages you invest in, but ’tis no less risky than cattle or sheep, which can be stolen away. And you never put all your coin in one play, he advised me.”

He nodded. “This could be a way for us to begin, sweetheart. Together we will build a legacy for our descendants.”

“If you do not get killed fighting the king’s war,” Cicely responded tartly.

“I won’t,” he promised her, and he took her two hands in his and kissed them.

The king’s call came in late winter, a time when no one would expect a military campaign to be mounted. But the days were getting longer now, and the chance of a blizzard growing less with every day. The buds had not broken upon the trees and the snows still clung hard to the bens when James Stewart, a large army at his back, crossed the River Tay and moved north into the Highlands. When word reached Alexander MacDonald he was astounded, for the king had come earlier than any of them had expected. The lord of the isles smiled grimly, but he admitted to those closest to him that he had a grudging respect now for James Stewart that he hadn’t had before.

The MacDonald called forth the ten thousand men who had sworn fealty to him. Many came. But there were also those clans who, having been impressed with James Stewart after their meeting at Inverness—the Camerons, the Buchanans, and Clan Chattan—switched sides to fight for the king. The two armies met at Lochaber, and the lord of the isles was firmly defeated in a dreadful slaughter. The king would not be particularly merciful to those who had burned, killed, and looted Inverness.

Alexander MacDonald sued now for peace and forgiveness. His Highlanders fled deep into the mountains, attempting to avoid the king’s wrath, because they knew the harshest judgments would fall upon them. James Stewart would need the lord of the isles to bring his word and calm to the region, but before then the king did a bit of burning and destruction himself in an effort to make his point with the northern families. He would tolerate no more rebellion.

In the borders spring had come. The snows were gone from the hillsides, which were now green and blooming as the weeks passed from March to April to May. Cicely was certain she was with child again, and was eager for her husband’s return. This child would be born in December, and her instinct, even this early on, told her it would be a lad. Kier would be pleased, and she wanted him home so
they might share their happiness together. She had received a letter from her father in response to one she had written to him almost a year and a half ago. While he was still frail of body, his spirit was stronger than it had ever been. Her stepmother had died after escaping her keepers, drowning in Leighton Water, a swift-moving small river that ran through her father’s estates. Robert Bowen was saddened, but not unhappy. He and her half brothers would welcome a visit from Cicely, should she be able to come home, he wrote.

Cicely laid the missive aside. She would like to see her father before he died, but she had obligations as the lady of Glengorm, and there were the children to consider. They were too young for so long a trip. She would write to her father, explaining, on the morrow, she decided, climbing into bed. But tomorrow she had to ride out and inspect the hay fields and her herb garden was finally beginning to look healthy, with its new growth. The lavender would be particularly bountiful this year, from the looks of the plants she had growing. And the chamomile was already budding.

 

On the beach by the loch two of the men left behind by Frang patrolled the beach from one end to the other, meeting in the middle now and again. Bethia crept from her cottage, keeping to the shadows so that no one would see her as she made her way to the shoreline. Seeing the first man-at-arms, she called softly to him, and, startled, he turned about.