"Belhaven!" he exclaimed, in a positive shower of spray. "Aye - I might have known it! That . . . renegade!"
"My lord Belhaven is a very noble gentleman and my good friend, my lord Duke."
"I say different! And you may tell him so. Let him watch where he treads! And you, sirrah - watch
youl"
He paused, glowering expression changing. "See — you are young yet. Young enough to mend your ways. Put it by, Dand - put it by. Be not used by such as that old fox Belhaven. Gang a mair canny gait!" He was back to the Doric again, poise recovered. He flicked the paper back across the table. "Burn you that, laddie. It's no' too late. And we'll say nae mair about it."
"If you mean, my lord, that I should stand down from this election - then I say no. Not on any score. I regret it if I inconvenience your lordship — but my candidature stands."
"Fool! Knave! Upjumped Hielant scum! God damn you -you will regret this, Fletcher! You'll learn - ooh, aye you'll learn that it doesna pay to tangle wi'
John Maitland! You'll no' gain this Haddington seat - but you'll gain paiks and pains aplenty! That I promise you! You'll rue this day . . ."
Deliberately turning his shoulder on the Secretary of State, the young man spoke to the Provost.
"There is nothing else I require to do? For the election? Through you as officer, Provost? If there should be, you know where to find me."
"Aye, Saltoun, sir." They were the first words the Provost had uttered since his entry, and even so the chief magistrate's eyes were on the Duke.
Inclining his head in a still briefer bow than on his arrival, directed somewhere between provost and duke, Andrew Fletcher turned to stalk out.
He was mounted and on his way, before it occurred to him that he had not so much as glanced at the three gentlemen with Lauderdale, one of whom almost certainly would have been Colonel Sir George Stanfield, newly knighted, the Duke's personal nominee, along with John Wedderburn of Gosford, for this double-seat of Haddingtonshire in the Scots Parliament, former sitting commissioner and now his rival candidate for the landward division. One of the others likely would be Wedderburn.
The estate of Saltoun Hall lay some six miles south-westwards of the county town, in the Lammermuir foothills, with Lauderdale's Lethington seat to pass on the way. But Fletcher did not head that way. Instead he rode away eastwards, over the humpbacked Nungate bridge and out of the little town, past its former abbey, the once-famed Lamp of Lothian, seat of learning if mistaken piety before the godly Reformation of the previous century.
A
staunch Presbyterian, Andrew frowned over the errors and follies of men - although in this instance it was women, for the Abbey of Haddington had been the most renowned nunnery in the land. The tragedy was that having so dearly got rid of papacy, now they were having episcopacy thrust down their throats, from the Court at London, by this turncoat and time-server Lauderdale and his like.
But, at twenty-three, that young man could not be wholly preoccupied with the problems and sorrows of his native land, not when riding down the Vale of Tyne, one of the fairest straths of Lowland Scotland, on a sunny June afternoon, on a fine horse and with all the challenge of life before him. Past the fine demesnes of Stevenston and Hailes, Whittinghame and Ruchlaw, he rode, whistling tunefully, these the seats of friends and acquaintances; but today he was bound farther afield, well beyond the whale-back hill of Traprain which rose like a stranded leviathan out of the wide vale, where Lothian was said to have taken its name from the Pictish King Loth. Eight miles from Haddington, where the encroaching foothills
narrowed the vale near the great estuary-bay of Tynemouth, at Belhaven, he came to the fortified tower-house of Beil, perched on a shelf above the secret wooded valley of the Beil Water.
His close friend and associate, John Hamilton of Beil, welcomed him warmly, although engaged in his favourite activity of breaking-in a horse - breeding, training and racing horses his consuming passion.
"Andrew!" he gasped, panting from his exertions. "Good . . . to see you. I hoped that
..
. you would come. Have you done it?"
The other nodded.
"God be praised! Man, that is splendid! See you - hold this beast. While I get my coat. Watch her - she's skittish . . ."
Leading his visitor up from the paddock in the green valley-floor to the house, he was eager for details. Hamilton's had been the second signature of sponsorship on Fletcher's candidature paper - although he was only just old enough to append it, being a year younger than his friend. Stocky, open-faced, freckled, boyish-seeming, he looked even more youthful than the other.
"Now, let us hope, we shall see a new beginning in this sorry Scotland!" he declared. "You will wipe that Stanfield's nose for him! And go on to greater things."
"Be not so sure, Johnnie. Lauderdale was there
..."
"Lauderdale? Himself! Here? Back from London?"
"Yes. At Haddington, with the Provost. He was . . . displeased."
"He saw you? Spoke with you?"
"He more than spoke! He threatened me. First he sought to talk me out of standing. Then he told me that I would pay for it. My lord Belhaven too, for sponsoring me. You yourself, perhaps, Johnnie - if he saw your name . . ."
"I care not for that! Damn the man! But - you will wish to see Belhaven. Ah - here is Margaret."
Margaret Hamilton was a smiling if plain-faced creature, little more than a girl really, although at nineteen she had been married to Johnnie for almost three years. It was scarcely a love-match, it all having been carefully arranged in typical
Hamilton fashion long before; but they made a happy and wholesome pair nevertheless. She was a great heiress, of course, which helped.
Kissing Andrew, Margaret cheerfully went off to get wine and cakes, to bring them to the wing of the house which the old lord occupied.
John Hamilton, first Lord Belhaven and Stenton, was now in his early seventies, and frail. But the spirit still burned brightly in that stooping frame and glowed intensely in the blue eyes deep-set in the hawklike face - and his had been a vehement spirit indeed. He had been one of the late King Charles's most bold and vigorous cavaliers, fought on many Civil War battlefields, languished in sundry prisons and escaped, and attempted an audacious rescue of his imprisoned monarch at Carisbrooke. After his sovereign's execution, with Cromwell's bloodhounds after him, he had actually feigned death for seven years. With a brother and two servants he had made to cross the great tidal Solway Sands on his way back to Scotland, but had never reached the northern shore, the others bringing only part of his clothing, to sorrowfully announce his lordship's death in the treacherous sinking sands. In fact he had returned to England and gone to work as a simple gardener, at a small manor-house, for those dangerous years of the Commonwealth, until the present monarch's glorious Restoration allowed him to return home in 1660. His only son had died; and he had persuaded the grateful Charles the Second to redestine his peerage to be heired by the young man he had chosen to marry his grand-daughter, Margaret - a kinsman, Johnnie Hamilton, eldest son of Lord Presmennan, of Session, which kept lands and title nicely in the family. His lordship, of the main Hamilton line, was the son of two Hamiltons, the grandson of four Hamiltons, had married a Hamilton and seen his daughter married to another. His wife long dead, now he lived with his grand-daughter at Beil.
"Andrew, lad," he greeted his grandson's-in-law friend. "You get liker your good father each time I set these old eyes on you! A sore loss he was to this land. But his son, now, will make up for his untimely passing, I swear! Eh?" The voice was strong, vibrant, however feeble the body.
"That is my hope and prayer, my lord - however lacking I feel in the abilities. Do I find your lordship well?"
"As well as I shall ever be, I think. My time wears to its end. But I too, I hope, have heir to follow on and do the things I ought to be doing! That is, if I can wean him away from breaking horses before he breaks his own fool neck!"
Johnnie grinned. "I have a thick and stiff neck, my lord - as you have frequently told me! And you risked yours sufficiently often - even almost on the block! But-Andrew, here, has in a manner of speaking risked his today. When he handed in his nomination-paper at Haddington. Lauderdale was there. And - displeasured!"
"He was? That overblown toad! Save us - he comes early. Why, I wonder? It is three weeks before the opening of the new parliament. He usually spares us his company until the day before - thank God! Why? He could not possibly have got to hear? Of our plans. In London. To unseat his Stanfield?"
"I think not, my lord," Fletcher said. "At least, he seemed much surprised at my candidature. Angry when he heard of it, yes - but surprised."
"Yet he was there, at Haddington? On the day for the depositing of papers. Not by chance, I swear! He is ever well-informed, is John Maitland - even down in London. He has spies everywhere. He could have learned of talk that Stanfield was to be opposed. But not hear that it was yourself, Andrew. And came to put a stop to it."
"It could be. He
is
well-informed, yes. In more ways than one. He surprised
me
by naming me Hielant scum! Not many would have said that."
"Ah, but he would know your grandsire, old Innerpeffer, know that he came from the North, to Saltoun." Andrew, a Lowland laird with a Lowland name, and with his mother a Bruce, was not in fact so far removed from the heather. His grandfather and namesake, Sir Andrew, a shrewd lawyer, had come south from Perthshire, anglicising his name from Mac-an-Leister, the Son of the Arrow-maker, to the equivalent Fletcher. But when he had in due course mounted to the Bench as a lord of session, he had taken his title not from his new estate of Saltoun in East Lothian - the man he bought it from
was already Lord Saltoun - but from his ancestral home at Innerpeffray in Strathearn, where they were a sept of Mac-Gregor. Perhaps that is where his grandson heired his quick temper and high spirit.
"I hope that you answered
him suitably?" Johnnie said. "I
could think of a few things to call John Maitland!"
"No doubt. But I . . ."
"Easy said, here in Beil House, boy," the old lord reproved. "But to his face you might be less bold. Lauderdale may
look
like a horse-couper and worse, but he has all the unlimited power, more's the pity. He has the King's ear, is one of the Cabal, Lord of the Bedchamber, Lord President of the Council as well as First Commissioner of the English Treasury as well as Secretary of State
for Scotland. A man dangerous to
meddle with."
"That is almost exactly what he himself said to me," Andrew told them. "He said that I would learn that it did not pay to tangle with him. And to tell
you
that, my lord - when he saw your signature as my sponsor. He said that we would pay for it."
"As we may, yes," Belhaven agreed gravely. "Yet we must do what has to be done. Someone must give a lead, make a start. If our land and nation is to be saved. Lauderdale's rule has to be opposed. Scotland must be stirred to action, to be true to itself, to reject the evil policies and corruption which are rending and destroying her. Before it is too late. I am an old done man, by with it. I will do what I can - but that is little now. But you -you are both young, all before you. All depends on you and such as you. Win this election, and you will have your chance, soon. John, here, will take
my
place. Then . . ."
"But, my lord - what chance have I of winning the seat?" Fletcher demanded. "Young as I am, untried, against all Lauderdale's power and influence?"
"A fair chance, lad - a fair chance. Or I would not be bringing down Maitland's wrath on my grey head by sponsoring you! He has many enemies, that man. Even amongst his own kind he is scarcely loved. And though few will defy him to his face, many will be glad to vote secretly against his candidate. And Stanfield, although an able man, is not popular. He is English, one of Cromwell's former colonels. He has
made a fair member and has done much for Haddington and the shire. But few there love him either. He is arrogant. Forby, there are still some honest men left in the land, who will vote for the nation's sake, not because they are bribed."
"All my friends are for you, Andrew," Johnnie assured. "They do not all have votes, to be sure. But . . ."
"There's the rub. There are eighty-three voters in all. How many are in Lauderdale's pocket . . .?"
Margaret Hamilton came, with the refreshment carried by a servant, and for a little they observed the courtesies. But quickly they got down to calculations, by no means for the first time. Each of the voters, who qualified only by their land-holdings in the shire, had two votes, it being a double-seat; and nobody had been found to oppose Wedderburn, Lauderdale's other nominee in the seaward section of the county. Indeed, in opposing Stanfield, Fletcher was taking a very great risk, not only to his pocket and reputation but to his very freedom, and all knew it. Try as they would, the three men could not count on more than thirty probable votes - and some of those were doubtful. On the other hand, nor could they identify with any certainty more than a similar number of votes sure for Stanfield, who had been unopposed for the last elections. Wedderburn was in a different category, not a strong man but not unpopular, and a local laird. Not a few would vote for him who would shy at Stanfield; however, he was unopposed, so that did not signify. Which left over a score who might vote either way, depending on their religious scruples, whether they had ambitions for themselves or their adherents in the way of preferment, whether their pockets were empty, and so on. There was one advantage for Fletcher, in that Stanfield, who had done much for Haddington town itself, in establishing industry, mills, dye-houses and the like, could not look to that town for votes; for the burghs of Scotland appointed their own members to the Estates of Parliament, from amongst the burgesses. Nevertheless, shareholders of these enterprises amongst the East Lothian lairds might well vote for Stanfield as, thanks to Lauderdale's patronage, these mills and works were all exempted from taxation.