The Low Road (32 page)

At midnight we assembled in the town square, as strange an army as Scotland has ever seen. The boys had gone about the project with a good deal of enthusiasm (‘We've your arse to thank for that, Charlie!' said the captain) and had decked themselves out in the most sluttish costumes they could find. Some of the younger ones could pass muster as women, just about; the older ones would only fool the most demented. Fortunately, they had made inventive use of shawls and gloves to conceal the more obvious signs of their true gender. In each pair of hands there dangled a pair of dainty women's shoes; for now, they were shod in their working boots for the march on Edinburgh.

We set off in high good humour, the captain leading a hearty chorus of Loch Lomond as we rode at the head of our troops. I began to believe that the scheme might work.

By two o'clock, we were silent, trudging through the freezing air as Edinburgh loomed in the distance. Another hour brought us within striking distance. We skirted the town to the south and made our way to the lonely crags of Holyrood Park, from which vantage point we could see the walls of St Leonard's Castle in the first glimmerings of the early summer dawn. Now there was no more laughter or play; with all seriousness, the men sat down on
the grass and struggled into their women's shoes, trying them out with short runs up and down the rocks, modifying them by breaking off a heel here, ripping open a toe there. The captain called them to attention and began his final inspection.

There was a weird solemnity about the affair. Last night I thought Robert was insane. I had gone along with his scheme, happy to have each and every one of the soldiers empty his balls up my arse, but scarcely believing that this ridiculous escapade could truly lead me to Lebecque. Now, however, there seemed a real possibility of success. The captain was a fine orator.

‘It's a simple job, men, but it must be done properly. Surprise is everything. They will not be expecting us. You must convince them that you are tired, fragile little things who have been cruelly persecuted by Jacobite bandits on the road.' I looked down the line; a less fragile group it would be hard to imagine. I prayed that it was dark in the castle gate.

‘You know my signal?' The captain pulled from his pocket a small silver whistle. ‘Two long blasts means attack. Short-long-short means retreat. There is no other option.'

The men nodded and stamped in the cold.

‘Very well, then. Follow me! For Scotland!' He winked at me, and we rode on. We tethered the horses at Canongate and proceeded to St Leonard's Castle on foot. Dawn was breaking; the sky in the east was already tinged with pink.

St Leonard's Castle was an ugly hulk of a building, fenced around with tall spiked iron railings, its massive studded doors guarded by two soldiers with bayonets. We ran down the last hundred yards of the street; the guards were instantly on the alert.

‘Oh for God's sake, boys, help us!' stammered Captain Robert in a voice quite unlike his own, an effete English accent. ‘We've been attacked! Those cursed brigands have taken some of my poor, poor girls!'

The surviving ‘girls' came limping up to the gate in a convincing
display of wretchedness; the prettier ones had been pushed to the front, and looked imploringly at the soldiers.

‘Your papers, ladies,' asked one of the guards querulously. He could not have been much older than me.

‘For pity's sake, man, we're desperate! They killed poor Susie...' He feigned a sob, which was echoed by a shrill moaning from somewhere within our ranks.

‘We'd better let them in,' said the other soldier, looking around in terror for the brigands he believed were on our tail.

‘Please, for the love of mercy,' begged Robert, and the gate was unbarred. The temptation to charge was overwhelming, but instead we limped into the courtyard.

‘Can you give these poor young virgins warmth and shelter? Do you have men who can help to tend them? They're very frightened, gentlemen, and they need comfort. The poor young maidens. Look at them. So soft, so helpless.'

The soldiers were whispering to each other, and at length beckoned the ‘girls' through to the kitchens. Our plan, to my astonishment, was working.

The ‘girls' displayed themselves in various attitudes of grief and terror as, one by one, more soldiers filtered into the room, roused from their slumbers by the rumour that there were women in the castle. Robert and I, feigning exhaustion in the corner, counted heads. When there were twenty in the gloomy room, and they were occupied in tending to the poor, fragile young ladies, we slipped back into the courtyard.

None of the other doors was unlocked, so, like a couple of monkeys, we scaled a drainpipe and clambered across the slate roof of what I assumed were the sleeping quarters. Robert, weaker than I with his injured arm, slipped and dislodged a tile, which broke with a crash on the cobbles below. Nobody came out to investigate; I could only assume that the soldiers were busy getting their cocks sucked.

We reached the highest roof within the castle walls just as the sun came over the battlements and gleamed back off the chapel spire. There were windows in the side of the chapel, unprotected by bars. That would be our point of entry.

We were just scrambling over the last furlong when, from a small courtyard far below us, came a sound that froze my blood. A long, low roll on the drum. Silence, then again, the long roll. Robert was poised like a cat. We hauled ourselves up to the top of the roof and looked down.

There, in the gloom below us, was a group of perhaps six soldiers. Six soldiers! Our information was wrong! We had not tricked them all into abandoning their posts. Where had these new forces come from? I glared at Robert, who signalled silence, and pointed.

A crude timber construction stood in the yard: a platform, perhaps three feet high and three feet wide, from which sprouted a long upright beam and a crossbar. A gallows. The hangman was adjusting the rope round the neck of a pale, gaunt figure.

Lebecque.

The drums rolled again. A priest stepped on to the platform, thumbed through a greasy black book, muttered something and clambered down. Standing at the foot of the gallows, the soldiers held two more captives bound and ready for the noose.

The light was increasing rapidly now; a sunbeam caught the chapel window and reflected on to Lebecque's face. I saw his lips moving in prayer, his eyes wincing in the light as he looked up to heaven and straight into my face, thirty feet above him.

He blinked, bowed his head, then looked up again. I suppose he must have thought he was seeing things.

The drum beat again, no longer the slow roll but now a steady, remorseless march as the hangman tightened the noose around Lebecque's throat. I looked up at Robert, who had the whistle poised at his mouth. But if he blew - and the soldiers attacked - we would still surely be too late. The hand that would push
Lebecque to his death was already on his shoulder.

And so this was their justice: murdered in secret, under a cloak of sham religion, without the benefit of a trial and with no friends to speak for him.

I don't remember hatching any particular plan, but before Robert could hold me back I hoisted my legs over the apex of the roof and slid down the slates into thin air, just as Lebecque was pushed off the platform. God's hand must have been upon me, for I landed with a crash against the beam of the gallows and knocked the whole shoddy assembly flying. Somehow I avoided dashing my brains on the cobbles, and landed instead on top of a
mêlée
of soldiers. The wind was knocked out of my body, and I had just the time to see Lebecque struggling with the cord around his neck, and to hear two loud blasts of the whistle above me, before I lost consciousness.

When I came to, what I thought was only a couple of seconds later, pandemonium had broken loose around me. There was blood on the cobbles in front of me; blood from my own nose, I soon discovered. I raised my head and looked straight into the open staring eyes of a dead soldier. A flurry of petticoats passed across my head as a woman - ah! one of our girls! - jumped over me in pursuit of a man in uniform. Captain Robert stood on the scaffold belabouring all and sundry with his sword; two or three lay dead at his feet. Everywhere I looked, there were mad Bacchantes brandishing daggers, swords and planks of wood, wreaking deadly havoc among the terrified men of the castle. The fat priest sat under the gallows clutching his prayer book. I could not see Lebecque.

Yes: there he was, kneeling over the bleeding form of a young man with long, curly dark hair. I dragged myself to his side and grasped his arm. He turned and saw me at last.

‘God in heaven. Charlie. It is you.'

I descended into darkness again as the chaos surged around me.

I came to my senses in the back of a covered cart, lying on my back and conscious of a terrible pain in my leg. A cool hand was on my forehead; my head was resting on something firm and warm which, I discovered, was somebody's lap. I opened my eyes, but found it hard to focus.

‘Lebecque?'

The hand smoothed my brow again, and a voice I knew well came from somewhere above me.

‘Yes, Charlie, I'm here.'

Again I fell into sleep, or unconsciousness, and awoke once more with the gentle hand stroking my hair, the warmth of another body next to mine. I felt better; my leg still hurt like hell, but I knew I would survive. I tried to raise myself.

‘No, Charlie, you mustn't move.'

‘I must see you, Lebecque.'

Strong arms raised me a little, and I looked up into those dark, hooded eyes, saw again the dark hair falling over the pale forehead. I buried my face in his chest.

‘Thank God. Thank God.'

He bent down and kissed me gently on the mouth.

‘Where are we?'

‘Bound for the north, Charlie.'

‘Captain Robert?'

‘He's gone.'

‘With his army?'

I heard the smile in Lebecque's voice. ‘Yes. God help Scotland.'

‘Who's driving?'

‘Sam. A friend.' He pointed to another body lying on a few sacks beside us. ‘Steven is badly hurt. We're going to find help.'

‘And then?'

‘And then home, Charlie. Home.'

The rest of my story is swiftly told.

Lebecque and I left our friends at Stirling and took horse for the Highlands. We were shy together for the first few days; I was ashamed of myself, to tell the truth, ashamed of the heinous amounts of time I had wasted on my journey, a delay which very nearly cost Lebecque his life. I agonised over each foolish adventure, each needless dalliance. I rebuked myself for a shameful lack of purpose and manly resolve. God, if we had lingered just one more day, one more hour, one more minute, Lebecque would be dead.

Lebecque, for his part, was full of praise for my bravery in leading the attack on the castle and rhapsodised over his feelings when he first looked up and saw my face peering over the rooftops. Then he checked himself and became strangely silent, more like the Lebecque I had known at Gordon Hall long, long ago. I began to wonder, as we rode together over the rough country around Strathyre, whether all my efforts had been worthwhile. What was the relationship between us now? Would we return to Gordon Hall only to say farewell? Or would Lebecque return to his sullen, secretive ways, resuming his profession of spy and false priest? I could hardly bare to think about it.

One night, however, as we were camping under the trees and
stars after a two days' ride, we started to talk. Lebecque asked me if I had received any of his letters. Only one, I replied, which had sent me out on my quest. None since? None. He was silent for a while.

‘I wrote to you many times, Charlie.'