1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC (22 page)

Chapter 25

The morning had been a soft one. No hard rain, but not dry. No more than a small breeze and occasionally cracks in the cloud. It was clearing up somewhat, but was always going to be a muggy, unpleasant day that left a man writhing with sweat in his britches. The earl of Montrose, Lord Lieutenant of Scotland, was not above such discomforts and knew he never would be. There was this to thank Campbell for, at least: this meeting wasn’t indoors where it was even worse.

On the downside, he’d had to ride for three hours the night before to get here.

It was a pleasant spot, though, for all it was out in the sticks. Just short of Bathgate on the ride out of Edinburgh along the Glasgow road, and Bathgate was nobody’s idea of a landmark. Although the inn Montrose had spent the night in, owned by a fast-talking MacDonald—who peppered his speech with bits of French, of all things—had been pleasant enough.

The spot Campbell had picked to meet the new Lord Lieutenant of Scotland was marked by small gaggle of old pagan standing stone on the brow of a hill that overlooked Bathgate and the barony of Ballencrieff to its north. The country hereabouts was littered with the things. And this lot did well as a meeting-place for a king’s direct representative with a powerful feudal vassal who was one error of judgment away from open, armed rebellion against his lawful monarch. There were places aplenty in the area to spend the night before, for all Montrose had cut the Gordian knot of which local lord, laird or gentleman to favor by hiring inn-rooms.

Riding to the meeting place just before noon, Montrose had noted that with maybe six inches of concealment in the whole country around the stones neither side could easily ambush the other.

He decided he was going to take comfort in that. Argyll had had more than enough reason to be wary of royal overtures—the last one had been news to the effect that his king wanted him in a cell for a treason he’d not committed yet. So it could easily be read that the chief of the Campbells wanted to meet where he could be sure he wouldn’t be taken by a ruse. Montrose was going to be very careful
not
to mention the number of times it had been the Campbells taking others by surprise or ruse. There was a reason that the other highland clans hated them.

Of course, the other side of that reason was that the Campbells made sure always to be on the side of the king of Scotland, and profited by taking land and goods from the king’s enemies. A history Montrose was determined to mention as much as possible; they’d done all they had by getting and keeping royal favor. To lose it now over a single issue? By the same token, favor that was rejected could be bestowed elsewhere. The question was, did Campbell think he had enough strength in his own right to set the king at defiance? Enough to rally the critical lowland support he would need to have the throne, or at least a protectorate-and-parliament?

He left his escort behind on the road back to Bathgate and struck across the open heath to the standing stones. None of them stood particularly high; the tallest of them barely came up to his horse’s withers. Campbell had left his party perhaps three hundred yards to the north and was trotting away from the road. Doubtless he’d be fuming. By simply getting on with the business at hand, Montrose had put Argyll in violation of protocol, in full sight of his own people. Montrose, theoretically the king’s representative, had ceded the privilege of arriving last. His people would note that. Would have it influence their thinking. Their chief wouldn’t seem quite so wronged if it looked like the king’s man approached with humility. Something the actual king wouldn’t ever do, as it happened.

Deciding that rubbing it in a little harder wouldn’t hurt, Montrose dismounted with Campbell still thirty yards away, and ostentatiously set to tending to his mount. Nowhere to tie him up to, but the gelding was well trained and would stand as long as required. No harm in making much of the beast, and he’d brought a couple of apples along. A little wrinkly, perhaps, but it wasn’t like the horse would care. He didn’t care to eat apples this late on himself; you were more likely than not to bite into a brown, rubbery, tart-tasting mass.

“Forgot your new station, Montrose,” Campbell said, not dismounting.

“More that I had a sweaty arse,” Montrose replied, grinning, and pretending he wasn’t deliberately trying to play a different game to Campbell’s own. “And it’s a nice day, and I wanted the horse to enjoy it too.”

He turned away, not going quite so far as to give Campbell his back, and looked out over the country. Movement caught his eye. “Is yon fellow one of yours?” If truth be told, the fellow just visible in the distance, down on the plain below the promontory where they stood, with his horse at the walk, didn’t look remotely like a threat. Or like he was much to do with anyone.

“No, and I take it by your asking he’s no’ one of yours?” There was a wry grin on Campbell’s face. “I’ve nae doubt we’ve enough lads between us to see off an inquisitive farmer. More to the point, are we here to discuss politics or the beginnings of a war?”

Montrose fed his gelding another apple. “Will ye no’ dismount, Archibald? I shall have a strain in my neck if you keep your arse so high. And I find when a man’s on horseback he tends to raise his voice in a vexing manner. I’d have our talk be quiet and peaceable.”

Campbell took a moment to mull it over, swung out of the saddle and, like Montrose, let his beast wander. They were both rich men, schooled from an early age in horsemanship, and either could show off a good command of his mount at will. Montrose’s own was staying a lot closer, in case there were more apples to be had, while Campbell’s had immediately turned to sampling the ferns and heather to see if any of it was tasty. Each animal was studiously ignoring the other.

There was a moment’s silence, which Campbell occupied by strolling over to the shortest of the two stones, sitting on it, and taking out his pipe and tobacco. “D’ye think, James,” he asked as he filled his pipe, “that the auld pagans that put up these stones for their heathen worship, d’ye think they would have cared for bishops?”

Montrose laughed. “I imagine the pagan religions had bishops of their own, did they not? What matter, at this remove of time? I care for what is lawful in the here and now, Archibald.”

“Aye, lawful. I’ll allow it’s lawful that you be lord lieutenant here in Scotland, James. Is it lawful that a man should be arrested for a crime that no man has yet committed?”

“If you mean Mackay—”

“I mean no such thing,” Campbell said, setting aside his pipe and drawing out one of the new-fangled spirit-lighters that were coming out of Italy. Most of them seemed to have the mark of a Baron Bich on them, which led Montrose to think that the rules for the Italian nobility engaging in trade were perhaps a little looser than they were in other parts of Europe. The thing only needed a moment or two of fiddling to get a flame out of the wee wand that came with it, and Campbell had his pipe lit. Montrose had spent much of the last few years in France, where tobacco was not so widely adopted a habit, and so had not indulged more than a time or two himself. He found himself rather envying Campbell his facility in delaying conversation a little while he had his thoughts in order.

“No,” Campbell went on, “I don’t mean Mackay. It’s for the justices to decide whether there is felony rescue of a man unlawfully imprisoned. Or if the man may be held here for a crime south of the Tweed. No. I mean the want of lawfulness in accepting fables from the future as evidence against the here-and-now.”

“You’re no’ one of these says the Ring of Fire didn’t happen?”

“No, but I am one of those who says they come from a future that’s no’ real. I’ve a fine gaggle of divines looking for God’s message in the whole, and in the details. And they say that the Americans must have been created whole and new in the moment of the Ring of Fire with their whole history writ in their memories as a parable told by God to us poor sinners. Warnings against sin, gifts of knowledge, and so forth. Placed here by God for our help and warning.”

“Creative,” Montrose remarked, quickly sketching in the likely politics of that theology in his mind. “And do you mean to say to me, as your monarch’s representative, that ye’ve had fair warning of the consequences of rebellion and mean to abide peaceful in the realm?”

Campbell took a deep puff on his pipe and scented the afternoon breeze with a long streamer of smoke. “Aye, that’s one warning a fellow may take. I hear also that a fellow might take warning about overmuch loyalty to a monarch, and the aptness of a monarch tae discard his loyal followers, or have them stand as scapegoats for him.”

Montrose nodded. Much as he’d guessed. Both he and Campbell were young men, neither having seen his thirtieth year yet, but neither were yet naifs. And with a deal of education and experience behind the both of them, they could probably manage a deal of subtlety, were it ever needed. Not today, though. “I’ll remind ye we both of us ended with our heads on the topmost prick o’ the Tolbooth. And here I am wi’ a charge to achieve quiet north o’ the Tweed. What’re we to do, you and I?”

Campbell puffed on his pipe some more. “Aye, weel. Now we come tae the heart o’ the matter. Charles Stuart is, one way or another, minded not to be king o’ Scotland anymore. He’s after a United Kingdom with one church, one parliament, one crown.”

“Aye? He’s not said as much. My word on that, not within my hearing.” Montrose was wondering where this was going. It had been a long rumbling in the limited pamphleteering that Scotland was home to, that the House of Stuart wanted Scotland as a province, not a nation. The imposition of religious conformity was reckoned a straw in the wind of coming political conformity. Of course, the appearance of future history in which the United Kingdom was a reality was grist to their bitter, scurrilous mill. The fact that the father had forced through the first steps toward religious conformity and otherwise ruled Scotland from London was altogether evidence in aid of their case. That the son had done the same thing—not even the pretense of parliamentary government, either—could make even those at the topmost level wonder.

“No, it’s what he’s done,” Campbell said, following through on what Montrose was thinking. “Without an Act of Union he’s the problems he would have had in that other history.”

“Which is now real?” Montrose put in.

“Och, ye ken what I mean. If the man will act on the warning of a civil war by imprisoning the not-yet-guilty, will he not see the single most obvious course to prevent it? I’d surely love to know what our descendants were thinking, agreeing to it, for surely there’s no good call for it now.” More tobacco smoke. “We gain naught but mair chains for the loss of a border.”

Montrose shrugged. “Tomorrow’s problem. For now what I need from you is that you bide quiet. I’ve no desire to see me lord lieutenant of a province governed by bishops. Clan Campbell has done well by working hard on behalf of the king of Scotland. All His Majesty the king of England requires is that you do nothing. You’ve my word that the charge I bear goes no further than peace.”

“And the arrest of Mackay?”

“Aye, well, there’s always one bloody weevil in the flour, is there not? Baron Mackay has taken it amiss, the fellow’s his bastard. But, still, there’s evidence, there’s been an arrest, there shall be a trial. Cork wants a head over the escape of Cromwell, and he’s welcome to it if he can take it. I’ve made it quite clear he shall have not a penny of aid from me in the matter; this Irishman he’s sent was no more in hot pursuit than he was flying. It’ll be for the judges to determine if he may take his man cold trod. He had the sense to swear a warrant with Edinburgh’s justices, though, and—why is this relevant?”

Campbell was tapping his pipe out on the standing stone beside him. “Oh, it’s no’ relevant right now. Beyond that it makes your ain life hard, that is. But you’ve permitted a man wi’ no end o’ supporters among the veterans o’ the Germanies tae be immured in the Tolbooth. And he’s elected tae remain.”

“
Elected
tae remain?”

“Aye. Elected. The Tolbooth has never been what ye might call the maist secure o’ prisons tae a man wi’ friends, aye? Or a man wi’ money? And I’ve a mind that young Colonel Mackay has the both.”

Montrose controlled a surge of irritation. Campbell had come out for this meeting to
tease
him? He was well aware of the ease of getting a man out of Edinburgh’s Old Tolbooth. The medieval edifice that held the city’s main gaol was also its principal municipal building and was hardly what you’d consider an impenetrable fortress. Montrose had made it quite clear to Mackay senior that he wanted the thing done sooner rather than later and the bastard son out of the country without delay. And now it had been four weeks. The next Assize was in two weeks yet, and the lack of movement in the case was a constant irritant. While he had to take no notice of the talk around Edinburgh, around Glasgow, around any of the streets or lanes of Scotland, it was frequently a first spatter of an oncoming political downpour.

“I’m minded to wonder how this may be relevant to the question of your own obedience to the law,” Montrose said. “And aye, I ken right well what ye had to say on the subject of the proscriptions in England, and I agree with it. I speak of submission to lawful authority, not to tyranny in a panic. And before you bring Mackay up again, he’s under lawful arrest, lawfully in custody. When he comes lawfully before a court lawful judgement will be upon him. He’ll walk free or to the gallows and I wish the lawyers much joy of their wranglings in the matter. Never mind Mackay, Campbell, I want to hear about you.”

“Aye. That depends on you. Now, I’ll admit I’ve a deal more confidence in you since hearing how many times you said the word ‘lawful’ but you’ll no’ be the first man to say one thing and do another. My ain father had a fine record of the same, where it concerned his enemies. And, until he could stand the pretense no longer, religion.”

“You seek
terms
when I ask so little?” Montrose had to admire the man’s cheek, at least. “Will we now have to pay thieves to keep their hands out of the goods of others?”