Bonnie Dundee (26 page)

‘We will give him something to be looking at, though not on the road from Blair,’ Dundee said, and sent forward a handful of Atholl Foresters to show themselves on the forward slopes of the ridge that we were making for, to catch the enemy’s interest and draw them in the right direction.

Then we gained the true ridge ourselves – a long spur of Creag Eileich, it was — and began to form our battle line.

Even I could see how the pattern was going to work. From the long crest where we were taking up our position the hillside fell away, then levelled gently to a lower ridge about half a mile away, before it fell steeply to the Garry and the Blair road; and I had marched that way often enough to know that from the road as one came out from the Killiecrankie pass, it looked as though the lower ridge was the crest of the valley wall to the right, the higher ridge on which we were now taking station being out of sight behind it. (In the same way of course it hid the valley floor from us, but that was no great matter.) It would look like that to
MacKay; shame on him with his Highland name and he not knowing his own country! And therefore it must seem to him that the thing he had to do was to get his troops up to that ridge before we could gain it, and outnumbering us as he did by more than two to one, his troubles were as good as over.

And all the while, us sitting along the higher ridge and waiting for him.

We did not have long to wait before MacKay’s standards topped the lower ridge, and then the heads of the cavalry and then the foot. He must have ordered Right Wheel, at sight of our Atholl men, and brought them straight up through the steep birch woods in the same order in which they had come out from the defile. And a sair shock it must have been to him to find that further ridge, and us sitting on it waiting for him.

We watched them check, and work out some kind of battle-line. The ridge was too long for the number of Government troops, and he must take care of his flanks, from the place where it sank away into marshy ground on his left to the place where it ran up into the steep wooded slopes of Creag Eileich on his right; and by the time he had done that, his regiments were only three ranks deep, strung thin and ragged as a piece of fraying rope.

That meant we must lengthen our own line, too, or risk having our flanks rolled up when it came to fighting. But for us the situation was different. We knew, all of us, as well as Dundee himself, that MacKay could not attack uphill, and therefore, when the moment came, it would be for us to make the charge. And so he lengthened our line, not by drawing it out thin, but by moving the clans apart, so that there were wide gaps between. In a charge, the gaps would cease to matter.

The run of our battle line is in my mind yet, as though we had formed it yesterday; the clan names singing in my head like an old song. On our far right stood the MacLeans under Sir John MacLean of Duart; then Colonel Cannon with his wild Irish, then the MacDonalds, with Clanranald and Glengarry and then us, Claverhouse’s Horse, with the royal standard in our midst; us that had ridden into Ayrshire and Galloway behind him, and been the General’s troop of His Majesty’s Regiment of Horse; us that had followed him down to London to save King James, and ridden with him north again when the King failed us, because we were still Claverhouse’s men to follow where he led. And on our left stood Lochiel and his Camerons; and beyond them again the MacDonalds of Sleet, and Keppoch with his cattle-rievers, and away on the far left, where the ridge ended in the up-thrust of Creag Eileich, a mixed battalion of MacLeans and Stewarts and MacNeills.

And there we waited; for it was then that the waiting really began.

Partly it was the usual custom whereby when two armies are drawn up ready for battle, they stand and stare each other in the face a while to get each other’s measure as you might say, like two dogs walking stiff-legged round each other before they fly at each other’s throats. Partly it was because MacKay, in his bad position, could not be the first one to move, while we in our better position were fronting west and the sun getting low; and Dundee had, I am thinking, no mind to fight with the dazzle of the sunset full in our faces. At that time of year in the northern hills there would be an hour of fighting time left after the sun was down, and we should not be needing more…

I mind that waiting; the first faint coolth of the evening stealing ahead of the long shadows after the heavy heat of the day; and the midge clouds dancing in the sunlight, making the horses stamp and fidget. The first heather just waking into flower; and the bees booming among the first of the little papery bells. And in front of us MacKay’s troops strung along the lower ridge, black as a row of corbies, with the light behind them; and the sun westering slowly, slowly towards the distant sugar-loaf crest of Schiehallion.

Then the usual long-range firing began. Just a fitful spattering of musketry from MacKay’s troops, and an occasional shot from his artillery – he had three small field pieces. It did little damage at that range, which was as well, for we could make little reply, short of ball and powder as we were. But it galled us, none the less, especially the field pieces, which to judge from the yells from the Camerons, the Highlanders thought unfair.

They began to grow as fidgety as the horses, straining like hounds in leash, and shouting to Dundee as he rode with a handful of officers up and down the line, ‘Give us the word,
Iain Dhub
! Give us the word!’

But Dundee, with a buff coat under his breastplate like the rest of us, in place of his general’s gold and scarlet (his one concession to the council’s fear for his safety that day), did not give the word, did not slip the leash, while the sun was still above Schiehallion, dazzling into our eyes. I doubt any other man could have held them – held
us
, for the restiveness of the Highlanders was setting the blood jumping in our own veins also. And the enemy musketry was getting heavier. MacKay had plenty of powder and ball, aye, and twelve hundred baggage beasts, so I have heard, waiting below in the cornfields at the mouth of the pass.

The great bowl of the hills before us was filling with shadows; the rim of the sun in a ragged blaze of clouds that had gathered seemingly out of a clear sky was touching the high shoulder of Schiehallion, slipping behind it; and all the mountains westward standing up suddenly bloomed with sloe-dark shadows, while the last light still burned upon the hillside. For a moment, as though in a kind of breath-drawing before the next thing, MacKay’s musketry slackened – the field pieces had fallen silent a while since, their carriages having collapsed beneath them – and in the silence the larks were singing overhead.

I was with Dundee by that time, sitting Jock close behind him – for was I not the General’s galloper? – and for the moment almost knee to knee with Amryclose. The folds of the standard, caught by a breath of evening wind, flowed out across my face so that for a breath of time the Lion of Scotland was turned to crimson flame by the last of the sun shining through it; and when it fell back towards its shaft, the sun was half down, and turned to a golden demi-disc that you could look in the face without dazzle.

Claverhouse drew his sword, and the light of the West ran along the blade like bright water as he brought it up in the signal to charge.

‘Forward in the King’s name! God be with the right!’

The cheering ran along the line from the MacLeans at one end into the shadow of Creag Eileich at the other, and was lost in the bright yelping of the bugle and the sudden wild crying of the pipes that seemed to leap up from the heather as the crying of the whaups leaps skyward.

And the line moved forward.

It was slow at first, so slow that as I drew my pistol I
had a moment for a sideways glance through helmets and horses’ ears along the spread of our battle-line. The clansmen were loping forward, flinging off their plaids as they came – the Highland men like best to go into battle naked, or at the most in nothing but their saffron shirts – their muskets at the ready. The enemy musket fire ploughed into them, and from the first men began to fall; but their fellows leapt over them and held on at that purposeful lope. Dundee had ordered that no man was to fire until a man of MacKay’s was ‘at the end of his barrel’ and they carried out his order to the death. Then as the slope levelled out the pace grew quicker, gathering speed and momentum as a wave does before it breaks. The air was full of the slogans and war-cries of the clans. Away to the left, above our hoof-beats and the roar of the descending charge, I could make out the baying of Lochiel’s men, ‘Ye dogs of dogs, ye dogs of the breed, come here and eat flesh…’ And then all was drowned in the screaming of the pipes.

Ahead of us the Government battle-line, half lost in a murk of powder smoke, seemed rushing towards us, as I heeled Jock to a swifter pace. Beside me, somebody pitched from the saddle, but I had no time now to even wonder who it was. We were going full gallop now; at our head Dundee rose in his stirrups, sword up to sweep us forward. I heard his voice, the clarion voice that could carry from end to end of a battlefield, ‘Follow me! Follow on! Into them, lads – charge home!’

Something like a hot iron seared my bridle arm just above the elbow, but at the time I scarcely felt it. For the first and only time in my life, maybe because it was the only time in my life that ever I was part of a Highland charge, the smell of blood came into the back of
my nose, and the terrible red mist of battle-drunkenness was upon me. Most other times I have just been cold afraid.

We were into them; and half blind with the drifting powder smoke, I fired my pistol into a yelling face. All along the line rolled and ricocheted the sudden deafening crackle of fresh musketry as the Highlanders fired their one point-blank volley, then flung aside their muskets and betook them to sword and dirk. The front rank of MacKay’s force was torn to red rags in that moment. Only for a few moments more, a man here and there stood struggling frenziedly to plug his bayonet into the muzzle of his discharged musket. Ahead of me, half lost in the murk, Dundee still rode with upswept sword, and we charged after him. My hand was just moving of its own accord for my second pistol when Jock screamed and reared up under me, then plunged forward like a mad thing, answering neither bit nor hand nor voice. I had one instant of knowing that we were going through the ranks of MacKay’s Lowlanders like a knife through cheese, and then we were over the ridge, sky and ground changed places as Jock pitched down, going forward over his own neck, and I was flung through the air.

I must have hit my head in falling, or maybe Jock had caught me with a hoof, for the next thing I knew the fiery sunset clouds were gone, and I was lying on my back looking up into a quiet night sky made milky by a faint thunder-wrack that blotted out the stars. Around me a little night wind came hushing up through the heather, bringing with it from the valley below the terrible sound of an army fighting for its life, fighting even for the right to run; and all about me were the ugly sounds of a spent battlefield, where most of the sprawled shapes are dead, but not all.

I rolled over on to my face, and felt the rough springy harshness of the heather under me, and dragged myself up on to my knees. My head ached, a leaden thumping, but that was all. Jock lay close by, and I crawled across to him. He was trying to get up. God knows how long he had been trying; with his belly ripped up and his guts spilled out of him in a stinking bloody pile among the heather.

I mind thinking dully that somebody must have got their bayonet fixed in time.

By Heaven’s Grace he had fallen on his right side, so that the left holster with my unfired pistol in it was uppermost and I did not need to leave him longer in his agony. I pulled out the pistol. I rubbed and fondled his sweating neck for the last time, talking to him – I do not know what I said. I put the muzzle to his forehead and pulled the trigger; and wished that we had not got him out of that boghole three months ago.

Then – training is a fine thing – I undid his girth, my hand slipping on the blood and filth as I freed the buckle, and pulled off his saddle, then his headgear, and bundled the lot on to my shoulder, and began to stumble back up the slope.

On the very lip of the lower ridge a group of men, one of them holding a makeshift torch, stood looking down at something – someone – lying in their midst.

The fitful light ran and flickered on the gold and crimson of the royal standard as it stirred in the night wind, and on the edge of the group someone was holding the bridle of a tall sorrel horse; and I began to know what I would see when I came up with them. But somehow it did not seem real.

Dunfermline was there, Philip of Amryclose holding the standard; Coll MacDonald of Keppoch, a few
more, troopers and clansmen. I did not see who, I was looking down also, at Claverhouse, lying with his head on Tam Johnston’s knee.

They had unstrapped his breastplate and done what they could for him, but there was little enough that could be done. They had torn up a dead Highlander’s shirt and bound it tightly round him to staunch the bleeding, but all along under his ribs the bright scarlet stain was spreading through. I remembered my last sight of him, sword arm up to cheer us on. Just under the raised ridge of his breastplate the bullet must have taken him.

Someone began to greet. Maybe it was me; I am not sure; but I seemed too numb for greeting.

Dundee opened his eyes and looked up at us that stood about him, frowning as though he found it hard to see our faces. ‘How goes the fight?’ he asked, quite clear, though with not enough breath for the asking.

From far down the valley, growing fainter as it drove on into the pass, we could still hear the sounds of the pursuit; and after a moment Dunfermline answered him, ‘It goes well for the King – but I am grieved for your lordship.’

A quietness came over Dundee’s face. ‘It is the less matter for me if – the day goes well for – the King,’ he said.

The last few words we could scarcely hear.

Then a little blood came out of his mouth, and his head rolled sideways on Tam Johnston’s knee.