Nigel Tranter - Past Master

James plucked his thick lower lip. He did not look at Lennox, any more than he did at Argyll. In the month which had elapsed since the scene in the Queen's boudoir at Falkland, there had been a notable stiffness between the cousins. The King would not allow the other to retire from Court, but he behaved towards him almost as though he was not there. On his part, Ludovick was rigidly, coldly correct, and that was all – at the Court but not of it. All knew the cause of the trouble – the Queen's ladies-in-waiting left none in doubt – and whispers inevitably magnified the entire business dramatically, so that most had come to assume that Anne had indeed been Lennox's mistress; indeed the English envoy wrote to his own Queen to that effect. This progress to the north had, in consequence, come as a most welcome break to Ludovick.

'Aye, well,' James said. 'Maybe. I'ph'mm.'

The Master of Gray nodded. 'There is much in what all have said, Your Grace. I would humbly suggest that something of all should be done. Have my lord of Morton, and perhaps the Laird of Buccleuch, return south to strengthen the defences of Edinburgh. Call a muster here at Dundee. No doubt the Treasurer will be glad to remain here and see to it.' He raised a single eyebrow in the direction of the Master of Glamis, an old enemy. 'Although I think it need not take a month. For the rest, let us march north forthwith, as Master Melville advises. Before Huntly rallies again after this battle. My lord Duke is right -Huntly cannot fail to be ill prepared for us at this juncture. His victory was dear won, it seems. Enroll is out of the fight. Auchindoun, the best of the Gordon leaders, is slain. Angus is a weakling. Moreover, my lord of Forbes and the loyal northern clans have not yet been engaged. With my Lord Marischal and his Keiths, and the reassembled Campbell host of my lord of Argyll, we should outnumber Huntly three to one.'

'But not his cannon!' Home pointed out

'Our strategy must be to give him no opportunity to use his cannon, my lord. We all know that cannon have their drawbacks. They are cumbersome, slow to move, and require a set target. At Leith; once Bothwell moved, our cannon were of no service to us. We must offer Huntly no target, seek not to bring him to battle, but to harass him at every turn. Attack not Huntly himself, but the Gordon and Hay lands of his lairds and supporters. So that they leave him to go defend their houses. Thus, too, shall we provision ourselves whilst cutting off his provisions.'

That was shrewd pleading. At the thought of the easy pickings, under royal license, of a hundred fat Gordon lairdships, many eyes gleamed and hps were licked. Only the Treasurer's voice was raised in opposition.

'How does the Master of Gray, Sire, ensure that his old friend Huntly obliges us thus kindly?'

'Your Grace – if we play our cards aright, he has no choice. He cannot move the Gordon lands and castles, that have been his pride and strength. Nor can he defend them all, or any number of them. We shall make them his weakness rather than his strength. We shall not fight my lord of Huntly and his host, we shall fight his broad provinces of Aberdeen and Buchan and Moray and the Mearns – and watch his army melt away like snow in the sun! I assure you…'

He was stopped by the great shout of acclaim.

Ludovick Stewart had great difficulty in making himself heard. 'I had not meant, Sire, that we should go to war against a land, an entire countryside. These are your people, as well as Huntly's. Your Grace's subjects…'

'They are rebels, young man!' Melville declared sternly. 'And Papists to a man. In arms against both God and the King! They must be rooted out, as were the Amalakites…'

'They are Christian men and women, sir. Fellow-countrymen, fellow-subjects of your own.'

'We are well aware, my lord Duke, that Huntly is your sister's husband!'

'To my sorrow and hers! That was a marriage arranged otherwhere!' He shot a glance from the King to the Master of Gray. 'On Huntly I would make war, yes – but not on the homes of his people!'

James frowned. 'Aye, but it's no' you that's making the war, Vicky Stewart! It's me. I, the King, make the war.' He wagged a finger. 'Me it is they rebel against, mind – no' you! They slew my herald, Red Lion. That's tantamount, aye tantamount, to an attack on my own royal person. It's no' to be borne.'

'Then we march, Sire? Northwards?' the Earl Marischal demanded.

'Och, well. I'ph'mm. Aye, it seems so, my lord, does it no'?' 'God be praised!' Melville exclaimed.

Patrick Gray caught Lennox's eye, and almost imperceptibly shook his head.

Perhaps two-thirds of the way up the long, long ascent of Bennachie, Ludovick of Lennox drew rein, to rest his weary sweating horse, and behind him his straggling column of something like one hundred men-at-arms thankfully did likewise. All Aberdeenshire seemed to slope up, from every side, to this thrusting central isolated cone of Bennachie, and if the Duke's magnificent Barbary black was weary and flagging, the lesser mounts of his followers were all but foundered. And not only the horses; the riders also were drooping with fatigue. Few would elect to go campaigning with the Duke of Lennox again, were they given the choice.

This land of Aberdeenshire was vast- so much more widespread, richer, populous and diverse in aspect than Ludovick had realised. They had been in the saddle since daybreak, and now it was mid-afternoon, and most of the intervening hours they seemed to have spent climbing, climbing towards this green rock-crowned pinnacle of Bennachie. There had been distractions, of course, diversions, turnings-off from the line of general advance; but these- in the main, Ludovick would have preferred to forget – if he could.

This was the second day of the advance into the great Gordon territories, and they were not yet within twenty-five miles of Huntly's inner fastnesses of the upper Don basin, of Strath-bogie, Formartine and the Deveron. But yesterday, whilst still south of the River Dee, Ludovick had had his bellyful of the royal progress, and had urgently sought permission to lead instead one of the scouting forces which probed ahead of the main army, seeking contact with die enemy – since he could by no means bring himself to recognise as the enemy the occupants, men. women and children, young and old, of the innumerable houses, towers and castles, small and great, which were the object of the kingly wrath and the Council's policy, rebels as they might be named. Sickened, after witnessing the fate of a dozen such lairdships, belonging to Hays and Douglases and other lesser allies of Gordon, on the mere outer fringes of Huntly's domains, and finding his protests of no avail, he had chosen this scouting role of the advance-guard, hoping for clean fighting, honest warfare, in place of sack, rapine, arson and pillage, in the name of Kirk and Crown. Allotted a company mainly of Ogilvy and Lindsay retainers from Angus, with a leavening of more local Leslies and Leiths, his task, along with other similar columns, was to ensure that there was no unknown enemy threat ahead of the more slowly advancing and widely dispersed main punitive force of the King. The high pass between the two peaks of Bennachie, and its secure holding for the King, had been his day's objective.

Their route here had been devious indeed, despite the way that all the land rose to this proud landmark – for in this vast rolling countryside it was not sufficient just to press ahead; always they had to scour the intervening territory to left and right, to ascertain that there were no concentrations of men hidden in the far-flung ridge-and-valley system, with its spreading woodlands, and to link up regularly with other columns similarly employed. Groups of armed men they had encountered now and again, and some had even shown tentative fight – but these were small parties and obviously merely the retainers of local lairds, concerned to defend their homes. Although it was no part of his given orders to do any such thing, the Duke had further used up considerable time and effort in seeking out the towers and mansions in his area of advance, which might be linked with the Gordon interests, to warn their occupants of the fate which bore down upon them so that they might at least have time to save their persons, families, servants and valuables by fleeing to some hiding-place. These warnings had not always been well received nor acted upon; nor had Ludovick's men-at-arms considered the giving of them a suitable and profitable employment.