THE SCARLET AND orange of a stormy sunset, flaming above the purple-black peaks of Ben Lomond and its attendant mountains, made the young man’s fiery red hair positively seem to blaze above his ruddy features. His eyes flashed too, but that was but little the effect of the sunset, for those notably light blue eyes were apt to flash, especially when their owner was roused – which was often. He was roused now, as he pointed back towards a dark knoll behind him, and ordered his score of fierce MacGregor clansmen to retire to its cover – and to keep their steel sheathed. Quietly as he spoke, and in the soft Gaelic, his voice quivered a little, an extraordinarily gentle, even mild voice for so fierce-seeming a character.
His men – or more properly his elder brother’s men – did not accept any such unpopular command without question. Highland clansmen did not necessarily obey orders like enlisted soldiers, since each considered himself to be a gentleman and in some sort of kinship to his chieftain. The order to retire, and before a mere rabble of Lowland cottagers, was not such as Highlanders could readily swallow, MacGregors especially, even though the odds might be five to one. A low rumbling growl supported the protest of a giant of a man in ragged tartan and sleeveless calfskin jerkin.
The red-headed young man frowned, and stabbed again with his finger towards the dark, tree-clad hillock, briefly insisting – and though he did not raise his soft voice, there was no mistaking the tenseness or the determination behind it. Then he smiled suddenly, widely, infectiously, and pointed out to his friend Ewan Mor MacGregor that this was a special occasion, that they were here on business after all, and not pleasure.
The tension ebbed at once; the men shrugged, dropped their hands from sword and dirk, some even grinned. Silently, swiftly, like shadows, they slipped away from the last squat, low-browed, thatched cottages of the village of Buchlyvie towards the small birch-grown hummock that lay 100 yards or so northwards, nearer to the vast watery wastes of the Flanders Moss.
Even so, their withdrawal must have been observed, probably by women from some of the nearer cot-houses, for there were high-pitched shouts and an answering roar from the dense throng of men advancing up the narrow village street – the dark moving mass that, in the fading half-light of the sunset, had at first been mistaken for the great herd of cattle for which the MacGregors had been waiting.
Reassembled among the birch trees on the knoll, the fierce group around the young man waited again, the red and green MacGregor tartan of their kilts and plaids hardly distinguishable against the russet bracken and September leafage in the sunset glow. Nevertheless, their presence there was quickly discerned, and the angry, noisy crowd came on towards them, brandishing pitchforks, sickles and cudgels. There might have been 100 villagers against the score of Highlanders.
With exclamations at the insolence of these Lowland clodhoppers, the clansmen were beginning to edge forward again, when once more they were stopped. Despite his commanding ways, the man who restrained them was quite the youngest among them, a mere 20 years old. But for all his open boyish features and silky, carroty beard, he presented no undeveloped or unimpressive appearance, dressed not in a kilt but in close-fitting trews – long tartan tights that hugged his muscular legs almost as far as the ankle – silver-buckled brogues, a piebald calfskin doublet, MacGregor plaid about chest and one shoulder, and on his head a blue bonnet enhanced by a single up-thrusting eagle’s feather. At first sight he seemed to be only of medium height, but a second glance would reveal that he was taller than almost everyone around him – only his height was dwarfed by the enormous width of his shoulders. Unkind critics said that he was in fact deformed, so wide and massive was his torso, so barrel-like his chest above comparatively slender hips and very slightly bowed legs. His was a peculiar physique, certainly, but one that gave a tremendous impression of strength and vigour, an almost sinister quality of aggressive energy that was further reinforced by the extraordinary length of his arms – arms so long that he could tie the garters of his tartan hose without stooping. Armed now with a broadsword hanging on a shoulder-belt, a great dirk at his waist, and a sgiandhu – or lesser dagger – tucked into his garter, his aspect but little matched the gentle lilting voice, and the pleasant friendly smile which transformed his features.
He managed to still his companions’ grumbling complaint about the utter unsuitability of running away from a few Lowland peasants by demanding whether any of them had ever seen Rob Roy MacGregor running away from anything – except perhaps Ewan Mor’s terrible wife, and even then not so fast as her own husband. And while he still had them smiling he went on more seriously to point out that their chieftain’s, his own father’s freedom, perhaps even his life, depended on this enterprise. For Glengyle’s sake, there must be no mistake this night, no losing of the cattle through any foolish entanglement with the villagers.
It was the year 1691, and Colonel Donald MacGregor of Glengyle, Rob Roy’s father, had been a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle for two long years. The Clan Gregor had always been loyal supporters of the royal house of Stewart – Jacobites as they were being called now that King James was an exile in France and ‘Dutch William’ sat on the throne in London – and Colonel Donald had led a Gregorach regiment in the campaign which collapsed after the Battle of Killicrankie. He had been captured. The government were now prepared to free him, as they had done most others, for he was an elderly man and ill – but they demanded a large ransom – not all of which would find its way into the treasury, for government in 1691 was corrupt indeed.
Money, however, was a commodity in which the Glengyle branch of Clan Gregor was somewhat lacking, but if there was one commodity that could most conveniently and profitably be turned into money in the Scotland of that time, it was cattle. The MacGregors were experts on cattle. And a great herd of cattle was due to come along that road at any moment!
All the previous night Rob Roy and his heavily-armed men had hurried secretly from their own mountains of Glengyle and Balquhidder around the head of Loch Lomond, down through the foothill country to the great wide levels of the River Forth, and across the huge wildfowl-haunted marshes of the Flanders Moss. All day they had lain in hiding on the outskirts of this village of Buchlyvie, at a vital point on the drove road which led from Drymen and the west, skirting the great Moss, to Stirling and the east. The Earl of Linlithgow, no friend of the Jacobites, as the MacGregors had learned, had purchased almost the entire entry of beef cattle at the Balloch Fair the day before, and his drovers were driving the beasts back to his east-country estates, almost certainly along this road – over 200 prime steers. Lord Linlithgow had been foolish enough to refuse to continue with his payments of mail, or protection money, to the Glengyle Highland Watch – which was the Gregorach under another name, and a semi-official body which guaranteed the safety of all its clients’ cattle, at a price. The highest in the land were more or less prepared to pay this mail since they could by no means protect their herds from Highland cattle thieves, and the MacGregors could. Lord Linlithgow, then, had to be taught a lesson. Rob Roy’s eldest brother John, Younger of Glengyle, was Captain of the Highland Watch.
The cattle should have been past this stage of their journey hours ago, before the Buchlyvie villagers returned home from their work in the fields. Something had delayed the drovers. Unfortunately, a cottar girl had stumbled on a couple of the Gregorach lying in hiding whilst she was herding geese and had given the alarm. Now, the villagers, returning with nightfall, had assembled in wrath. No doubt they believed the lurking intruders to be just a few broken men, stragglers of the defeated Jacobite army, vagabonds, out to filch what they might. Since the failure of the 1689 Rising for the exiled King James, Scotland had been full of broken men, and settled folk everywhere were on their guard against their depredations. These men of Buchlyvie would never have sallied forth thus boldly if they had realised that the strangers were of the feared and terrible Gregorach. But it was most important, from Rob Roy’s point of view, that they should not learn it now. For these were Graham folk, the Earl of Montrose’s tenants, and Montrose was great with the government. Everything depended on anonymity.
As the villagers neared the birch knoll, their pace slowed down even as their shouting and fist-shaking grew fiercer. It was one thing to gather and brandish weapons for the defence of hearth and home; but quite another, without discipline or leadership, to undertake a concerted assault on the silent shadowy figures among the dark trees. Few had ambition to be other than the hindmost in such an attack.
Rob listened to the hullabaloo, frowning, tapping a brogued toe on the trampled bracken. He was not yet actually regretting this venture of his – but beginning to wonder whether he might perhaps have been a little hasty. For it was very much all his own responsibility. This was a highly unofficial foray. His brother did not know of it, and undoubtedly would not have approved – even though Lord Linlithgow was so obviously in need of being reminded of the usefulness of the Watch.
A weak government had set up – or rather permitted – these growing Highland Watches of which Glengyle’s was one of the most active and successful. They were irregular forces, backed by the authorities in war-torn Scotland after the recent troubles, intended to keep the peace, King William’s or anyone else’s, in their given areas, by the strength of their own arms. They were especially to put down, if possible, the serious plague of cattle-stealing, which was menacing the reeling economy of the country, by being stronger than the unofficial thieves — on payment, of course, of mail by their protected neighbours. In this area, along the edge of the Highland Line, the fiery MacGregors, hopeless Jacobites as they were, had been the obvious nominees for the task – since they were the most warlike and united … and the most expert cattle-thieves in the land.
But tonight’s enterprise was Rob’s own idea – indeed it was his first truly independent exploit on a major scale, experienced as he was in the everyday lieutenancy of the Watch. His heart ached for his warrior father, cooped up in a cell in Edinburgh – a living death for any outdoor Highland man. Word of the great sum demanded for his release had spurred his youngest son to this escapade, even if it had not so spurred his eldest son and heir.
It was his own over-eager fighting men who worried Rob now, rather than any threat posed by that rabble. Somehow he must prevent them coming to blows – for once their swords were out there would be no holding his fierce clansmen. It was not that he was frightened of a little blood-letting, in a Scotland where blood had long flowed as readily as water; but so long as his father remained hostage in government hands, the Gregorach must be careful indeed whose blood they shed, especially where the Earl of Montrose was concerned.
Rob decided to try what sweet reasonableness might achieve. ‘Wait you now,’ he ordered, hand out to hold back his men’s almost imperceptible edging forward. ‘Not a word out of you. I will speak.’ He stepped out a little way, but not sufficiently for him to be beyond the deep shadow of the trees. He raised hand and voice. The gabble and shouting did not diminish.
Rob Roy’s normal tones were soft, certainly but he could bellow like any Gregorach bull out of that great chest when occasion demanded. His roar now shattered the evening. Raggedly the crowd’s clamour almost died away.
‘Friends,’ he called out in English, deep-voiced, now. ‘What mean you by this? We offer you no hurt. We have touched nothing of yours.’ This was not entirely factual, perhaps, for a duck or two, a few eggs and the like, were folded away in convenient Gregorach plaids as reasonable precaution against night-time hunger on the long road home; but compared with what the MacGregors might have done, this was indeed not worth mentioning. ‘We are quiet men, and peaceably disposed.’ It was as well that none of his warriors could speak the English.
A chatter rose from the village throng, and went on rising, with nothing of sympathy or friendliness to it.
Rob Roy’s chin rose a degree or two. He was, he believed, a notably reasonable young man, and prepared to put up with a certain amount in the cause of peace and understanding. But to hear himself shouted at as a stot, a gangrel heathen, and worst of all a black Irishman, was too much. It was his educated speech that was largely responsible, probably – for Rob was highly educated for his day, speaking good Latin and Greek as well as English, and with a great fondness for Latin tags. No doubt these yokels, hearing the unexpectedly scholarly English, so unlike their own uncouth version of the language, judged the speaker to be one of King James’s disbanded Irish-Catholic mercenaries, a plague to all decent Presbyterian Scots.
‘Watch your words, fools!’ he rapped out, therefore. ‘We are better Scots than your wretched selves – and better men, whatever! So watch you! Back to your holes, vermin!’ That was much more honest MacGregor-like talk.
A snarling growl rose from the crowd. A couple of stones came flying through the air, one to hit a birch trunk close to Rob’s head.
‘As Royal’s my Race!’ he swore, his own hand dropping to his sword-hilt. As, like a wave of the sea, his clansmen surged up at his back, dark eyes glittering, steel screaming from scabbards and sheaths, Rob made the major effort of his career to date, to take hold upon himself as well as these others, commanding them in Glengyle’s name not to move another inch, to leave it to himself.
For seconds the issue hung in the balance.
Although a command in their chieftain’s name was law to the clansmen, the present group of fighters did not consist of the most amenable of the MacGregors, volunteers for this private enterprise, deliberately chosen for other qualities. Moreover, Rob was very young, little more than a laddie to these veterans of the wars. In that brief but vital moment of decision, another dark figure moved. Up to the youthful leader’s side a spare, stooping, lanky man stepped, whose head hung forward in a curious sideways fashion. He put himself at Rob’s wide shoulder and turned to face his fellows, silently. No word was spoken.
For the moment the situation was saved.
Macanleister, Son of the Arrow-maker, Rob’s personal running gillie and henchman, was the sourest, bitterest, most wordless man in Clan Dougal Ciar, the Glengyle branch of Clan Gregor – besides being the most nimble man with a dirk and the best shot with a pistol. He had been Glengyle’s own gillie in the wars, and had been wounded when his chieftain was captured. Only with difficulty had he been prevented from voluntarily following his master to prison in Edinburgh. Thereafter he had transferred his peculiar silent allegiance not to the elder and second sons, but to the young Robert Ruadh, Rob Roy. Not always the most gracious or docile of attendants, he sometimes could be worth any dozen other men.
As the Gregorach’s inching forward halted and their mutterings sank, Rob turned back to the distant mob, shouting to them that if any of them had any special point to make, any specific complaint, let them come forward and make it to himself.
As he had anticipated, this invitation produced no forward rush – but it did herald another ragged shower of stones. Somebody behind Rob emitted an involuntary gasp of pain. The young man bit his lip. Another one or two such insulting pin-pricks, and there would be no restraining his men, despite Macanleister’s support. On an impulse he drew his broadsword right out of its scabbard, tossed it up, caught it expertly one-third way along the blade at the point of balance, and in one swift movement launched it out towards the mob in a fierce explosive throw. There was enormous power in those long arms, and the weapon sailed in a flat arc, whistling through the air, flashing steel catching the last smoky orange-red rays of the sunset in a bloodstained gleam, to curve down and pitch into the earth fully 30 yards away, more than halfway to the seething throng, there to stand erect, quivering, in manifest challenge.
There followed a period of almost complete silence, save for the wind in the trees and the little sigh of approval from sundry MacGregor lips. The light was poor now, but even so the watchers on the knoll could see the front of the villagers’ line bend back, away from that symbol swaying above the grass before them.
The silence was quickly broken by a confused gabble – but not before Rob’s keen ears had heard something else. His head jerked up – as did others behind him. On the west wind there had drifted the unmistakable sound of the lowing of cattle.
In an instant he was a different man. Gone was indecision and anxiety. He swung round. ‘The drove!’ he jerked. ‘At last! Praise be! Ewan Mor off with you. All go, but Macanleister. Aye, and Duncan. Behind the houses. To the far end of the village. Take the herd as it enters the narrows of the street. The drovers will be weary, easy game. Hurt as little as you may. Get the beasts running. Hard running. But three of you, four, to get ahead of them. In front. Down the street. Run to this end. You understand? Be waiting for the beasts. Tear thatching off the roofs. Dry thatch. Fired, as the cattle reach these last houses. To turn them this way. You have it? Fire. Smoke. And, mind – no shouting of slogans!’
They replied that they understood.
It must be timed to the moment, he pointed out. They must not light the burning thatch and throw it into the road too soon, or it might turn the herd back. And it must be thrown down only on the far side of the road, just as the first cattle came surging out of the narrows of the street, so as to swing them off the road, free of the houses, northwards in this direction.
No more explicit orders were necessary for these expert cattle-handlers. Like swift ghosts the MacGregors faded away into the gloom of the trees and bushes, leaving only their three companions standing there under the birches. Rob cleared his throat. It now fell to him to do some major talking.
Seeking to mix judicious moderation and firm authority in both words and tone, the young man raised his voice towards the restive and uncertain crowd. He talked as he had never talked before, in a flood of words. He repeated that they were peaceable men, loyal servants of the king – which king he left unspecified. That they wished no hurt to the honest folk of Buchlyvie. That they were here on business, important business, with my Lord Earl of Linlithgow, a great nobleman. That when that business was over they would leave Buchlyvie as though they had never been. They were no Papist Irishry. Heaven forbid! Nor broken men, landlopers, or beggars of any sort. And so on, at much length.
As the spate of speech continued, the crowd began to stir, to murmur again, to lose its fear of that single eloquent sword. Rob had to raise his voice higher, shout louder. When the villagers began, almost imperceptibly at first, to edge forward once more, a shade desperately he cried to them to halt, declaring that if they were determined on a trial of strength then they must choose any two of their number and he would fight them alone, his sword against any weapons they chose.
As he had calculated, this gave them pause for a little longer, while unwilling champions disclaimed any desire for such fame. Finally, however, they united to howl down the challenge, and stones began to fly again. Rob was nearing his wits’ end for wordy invention when, at long last, his flagging talk and their strengthening courage were both overtaken, lost and swallowed up in a greater and more violent uproar which abruptly burst out to westwards, from the other end of the single village street.
With a sigh of relief Rob Roy relinquished distasteful eloquence and squared great shoulders for action.
Thereafter everything happened at great speed. Shouts, yells and screams rising above the sudden bellowing of hundreds of frightened cattle, had turned all the villagers’ faces in that direction, when in turn these were submerged under another and still more frightening torrent of sound the thunder of hooves. Shaking the air, the very ground, confined and magnified by the narrow channel of the cottage-flanked street, growing louder, more terrible every moment, the noise filled the night – and transfixed the crowd, Men stared, appalled, bewildered, unable to move. The village was a few hundred yards in length, consisting of merely this one street, but it took only a few moments for the frightened cataract to traverse the length of it. Lights suddenly appeared in the lee of the last houses, lights which quickly flared into waving torches, and then into flaming fires which seemed to set the very road ablaze. Clouds of acrid smoke came billowing towards the shocked watchers on the westerly breeze. Men began to cough, eyes streaming.
Then the dark, heaving torrent of stampeding cattle burst out from the confines of the houses, eyes gleaming red in the firelight, hooves pounding, horns clashing, nostrils steaming, a cloud of dust rising above. On and on they came, driven by the yelling Gregorach, fanning out into the open ground. But the burning thatch hastily torn from roofs and tossed in their path turned most of them off the road, north by east. Straight for the horror-struck crowd of villagers they surged, terrified, and terrifying. For seconds the men stood as though rooted there. Then, casting away forks and scythes, they turned as of one accord, and ran, every man for himself, tripping and stumbling in the shadows, scattering wide.
Rob Roy and the man Duncan shouted their great laughter. Macanleister never laughed. Rob actually darted forward, through the fleeing throng, towards the oncoming cattle. But only to retrieve his fine broadsword. Then he too, necessarily, turned and ran.
Unlike the others, however, the three Gregorach did not run far. Beyond the birch knoll was a reedy, boggy hollow and then slowly rising land. Plunging across the soft ground they went only a little way further up, to turn and wait, spread out now and pulling off the plaids from their shoulders. They allowed the rise of the knoll to slow up somewhat the trampling steers, the trees to break the solid phalanx of them, and then the soft marshy hollow further to scatter and damp down their impetus. Then, shouting and waving their plaids and darting to and fro, the trio confronted the panting, snorting, floundering brutes as they came lumbering out of the mire. The front rank swerved, hesitated and broke, only a few yards from the yelling Highlanders. Then, bearing to the right, flapping their plaids, the men headed off the bewildered cattle to the left, eastwards. In only a few seconds the mass of beasts was swinging round, plunging back towards the road at a slant. Ewan Mor and the main body of the MacGregors were catching up, roaring with mirth and glee.
In almost less time than it takes to tell, the entire great herd was streaming along the Stirling road towards Kippen, no longer stampeding but at a good heartening trot, under the cloud of their own steam, the Gregorach loping at flanks and rear like so many sheep dogs, grinning their appreciation of it all. Behind them there was confusion, wails, smouldering thatches and billowing smoke – but no pursuit.
A bare mile on, a lane turned off which led directly northwards between harvest fields, and then slanted down to end at a deserted mill. Beyond were only the watery wastes of the Flanders Moss, which stretched mile upon mile across the plain of the Forth towards the north and the distant ramparts of the Highland hills. Once into that vast quaking wilderness that only the wildfowl, the roe deer, and the Gregorach knew, where hidden fords, underwater causeways and secret tracks round bogs and meres and lochans guarded the approach to the Highlands, those cattle would be lost to any Lowland ken – until such time as they should re-appear to be sold again at Falkirk Tryst, duly branded with MacGregor markings.
Rob Roy caught up with Ewan Mor as they trotted down into the dark mist-shrouded levels. ‘The drovers?’ he panted. ‘You had no trouble, Ewan?’
‘Och, devil the bit, at all,’ the big fellow chuckled. ‘A few skelps with the flat of our swords, a few sore heads tomorrow, one snapping dog skewered – that was all of it. Not a drop of blood shed, at all, at all!’
‘Good!’ Rob nodded. ‘Myself, I have a sore throat with much talking!’