"This is my friend, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, my lord Duke," Graham presented him. "A man of some parts."
"Ah, yes - I have heard of Mr. Fletcher," Monmouth said civilly. "From whom was it? Perhaps it was my lord of Lauderdale?"
"Perhaps, sir," Andrew acceded carefully. "Depending on whether you heard good or ill!"
"So? Now, which would it be? How say you, Colonel Graham?"
"I think that my lord of Lauderdale may have been a little . . . prejudiced."
"Ah - who knows? Perhaps our Mr. Fletcher was also? But . . . both loyal subjects of my father."
"That certainly, my lord Duke," Andrew agreed, still more carefully.
"To be sure. Then may we hope that we can rely upon so loyal and able a subject to aid in the King's cause hereafter? In a new . . . dispensation? To the much advantage of all."
Andrew moistened his lips. "I would hope so, sir. That the King's cause should be mine also is my earnest prayer."
"Well said, Mr. Fletcher - well said! But . . . you fear otherwise?"
"A, a new dispensation, my lord Duke, could put much to rights."
"Exactly. So say we all. So - may we rely on your aid? To help bring about this happier state?"
Pressed thus, as into a corner, the other hesitated. He tried to be in all things honest; and this was difficult. "I hope so," was the best he could do.
"It could be much to your gain, my friend," Monmouth added.
Andrew was usually of a temper to give as he got - and he resented both the cornering and this suggestion of personal advantage. "My own wellbeing is not for consideration, sir," he said. "But that of many others is at stake. Even now. I had heard that your lordship made a more generous victor than did . . . some we are used to! Yet your Covenanting prisoners, a thousand of them, are penned like cattle in the churchyard of Greyfriars, here. And unfed. This in the King's name!"
Monmouth looked unhappy and his attendants outraged. "This pains me, Mr. Fletcher, I assure you," he said. "But - the matter is not in my hands. I am but the military commander. At present. The prisoners are in the hands of the civil power."
"They were
your
prisoners, my lord Duke. -And you represent the King's Grace, do you not?"
"Sir - do not speak so to my lord Duke!" one of the gentlemen hotly, when Monmouth waved him silent.
"I treated these people fairly, Mr. Fletcher. Although they were rebels. There were no hangings and shootings, no reprisals on their supporters."
"Yet this offence against humanity and decency is perpetrated in the King's name, even as we drink wine in this palace!"
"I will speak with the King's Advocate, sir. But I cannot promise anything. The matter rests with others." The Duke frowned, nodded briefly and turned away, the interview obviously at an end. Then he looked back. "Remember, Mr. Fletcher - your aid will be looked for. And valued."
John Graham looked at Andrew cynically. "You should have been a soldier, Fletcher. A captain of light cavalry, perhaps? But not a general, I think!" And he sauntered after Monmouth.
'Tell me about the Duke of Monmouth," Margaret requested. "They say that he is handsome and civil both. And like his father."
"I have never seen his father - who does not come to Scotland! But I found the Duke civil enough. As to handsome I know not. I judged him a little strange. A mixture. Perhaps because he was playing a role for which he was not suited."
"And that role was . . . ?"
"Politician! I think that he is honest. No dissembler. Yesterday he was trying to act the politician . . ."
Her laughter interrupted him. "Mr. Fletcher - do I hear aright?
You
calling politicians dishonest, dissemblers! You who are becoming so notable a politician?"
He frowned despite himself. "I would hope to prove that it is possible to be both. Both honest and in politics!" That was distinctly stiff, not to say pompous. Realising it, and that with a large basket of bread, hard-boiled eggs, milk-pitchers and the like over his arm, pomposity was less than suitable, he changed tune. "He was seeking both to warn us and to lead us, I think. And finding it difficult. Between what he had been told to say and what he wanted to say."
"I think that you must really have liked him?"
They were walking up the Cowgate of Edinburgh westwards and having to pick their way heedfully, both on account of the crowded narrow thoroughfare and to avoid the unpleasantness underfoot for those not automatically conceded the crown of the causeway by their superior dress and manner. Today neither of them were clad at their best, to say the least. Margaret Carnegie might not look very like a fish-wife as her father had suggested; but she wore her oldest available clothes. Andrew had borrowed an old plaid from one of the Southesk servitors, despite the summer warmth. The reason for this was that any persons of rank seen taking comforts for the prisoners would certainly be reported on, and might well suffer, Advocate Mackenzie's spies being everywhere. Andrew would not have cared greatly, but implicating Margaret was a different matter.
Where Cowgatehead merged with the wide Grassmarket, directly below the towering cliff of the Castle-rock, the steep access to the kirkyard rose between high walls - but long before that the stink of the place was reaching them.
"I did not
mislike
him. But I was much exercised. To know what he was at. I have thought much on it, since. I think there was much to learn. It is my guess that Lauderdale is down. That a new Secretary of State will be appointed, to rule Scotland. And that Monmouth hopes to gain the office. Yesterday he was seeking to prepare the way. To make, if not friends, at least to find supporters to aid him when he comes."
"My father thought similarly."
"Yes. But there is more to it than that. King Charles is said to be in failing health, although not yet fifty - and lives as loosely as ever. So there is much talk of the succession, since he has no lawful children - however many otherwise! We know that there is a party in England who seek to have Monmouth legitimated and so made heir. A Protestant - and so keep Catholic James of York out. But there is a further whisper, here in Scotland. That the two crowns could be separated again, Scottish and English. They have been united for only seventy-five years. It could be that if Charles dies and Monmouth is not legitimated first, and so York becomes King in England, then Monmouth could be proclaimed King of Scots! All Presbyterians would rather have that than any Catholic, I swear! And he is Duke of Buccleuch, names himself Scott and has a Scots-born son as heir."
"Mercy - you think that is possible?"
"I do. And I think that he does, also. It would account for much of what he said yesterday. If he was ruling Scotland anyway, as Secretary of State, or High Commissioner, in place of Lauderdale, it would all be the more simple. And if he makes himself liked by the Scots people, it would aid, the more merciful victor, the moderate man and a Protestant! And he
is
the King's eldest son . . ."
There was no opportunity for more meantime. They were climbing the ascent to the graveyard which, in the late Queen Mary's reign, had been granted, in the grounds of the Grey Friars' Monastery south of the Grassmarket, to replace the old burial-ground of the High Kirk of St. Giles, which had been not only overfull but its space required for extensions of the Parliament House, the law courts, the Mint and other government buildings. At the heavily-guarded gate in the high perimeter wall, however, Margaret turned right-handed, westwards, along a narrow outer wynd.
"It is wrong of me, weak," she confessed, "but with the wind from the west, the smell is less grievous at the far side. And there is an alehouse there, Mother Pringle's, overlooking the kirkyard, where I have an arrangement."
Andrew certainly voiced no reproach.
Some distance along, near the West Port in the city wall, they
came to the tavern, a low-browed rendezvous for drovers and country-folk coming with their produce to the Grassmarket. Margaret led the way indoors, uncaring for the noise, semi-darkness, alternative smells and rough company, to make for and climb the stairs at the rear. These led up to small, grubby bedchambers on the upper floor, into the first of which, on the south side, the young woman turned and shut the door behind them.
"This I have hired, meantime," she confided.
Crossing over to the window, she tugged it open. Immediately the sounds and smells from below were overwhelmed by others from outside, the stench of unwashed, untended, wounded and massed humanity in warm weather, the noise loud, prolonged but various, rising and falling in waves, shouts, groans, cursing, raving, hymn-singing. The house had been built directly against the monastery wall, so that they looked immediately down into the kirkyard. Andrew gazed out, appalled at the sight. He had not visualised it as so utterly shattering. Twelve hundred men packed into an area of about three acres which was already crowded with tombstones and monuments, was in itself something scarcely to be comprehended. When all these had had to live in that space for weeks, without any facilities or shelter save for one well, many of them wounded and sick, the enormity of it all beggared description.
"Dear God, this is beyond belief!" he exclaimed.
"This
is . . . hell on earth." Their appearance at the opened window seemed almost to make things worse. A sea of faces, bearded and filthy, turned in their direction and a forest of imploring hands rose high. It could not be said that there was a rush towards them, the unfortunates being too tight-packed for that. But there developed a sort of surge, in which scuffling and fighting grew, to get near them, below the window, and hoarse yells and pleas and supplications drowned all other noises.
Margaret had a rope attached to her basket, by which it could be lowered the score or so of feet to eager hands. But she waited, calling for Master King, explaining to Andrew that this was one of the outed ministers, much respected, who would be able to ensure some fair distribution - otherwise the strongest and toughest would grab all. Eventually a black-clad elderly
man, with a shock of white hair, struggled forward, flanked by stalwart supporters; and into the hands of these they lowered the basket - to be rewarded with a benediction pronounced with quivering fervour and upraised hand amongst the many others.
Embarrassed they drew back. Voice as quivering as the clergyman's, in her emotion, the young woman wailed that it was so little, so hopelessly little for all these people. Only a very few would taste of what she had brought. It was always the same - she left feeling more useless than when she arrived.
When they hauled up the basket again, now containing the empty milk-pitchers from the day before, Andrew emptied his pockets of such coins as he had with him down into those hands so urgently beseeching, in the hope that some of the soldiers of the guard might be persuaded to buy food surreptitiously for the unhappy folk - and felt ashamed as he did it, as though arrogantly bestowing largesse on wayside beggars.
They actually hurried away, somehow guilt-ridden at being free and clean and well-fed.
"I
asked
Monmouth to help them," Andrew muttered, as they emerged into the wynd again. "Pray God that he does! And God's curse on those who can perpetrate this on their fellow-men! And in the name of the King and religion . . .!"
"Yes," she said.
4
It was the Parliament Hall again, awaiting the entry of the High Commissioner - and this time all had been properly done, in traditional fashion, the officers of state, the lords and commissioners and burgh representatives having ridden or marched through the Edinburgh streets in procession, as provided for in the old Riding of Parliament. To that extent it was an improvement. And it was, in fact, to be a parliament and no convention.
But as far as Andrew Fletcher was concerned, there the
betterment ended. He was only there, as it were, by the skin of his teeth. Not because the Haddingtonshire electors had failed to vote for him but because the Chancellor's office had declared that his own and his colleague's, Cockburn of Ormis-ton's, election was invalid, for unspecified reasons, and that therefore the two opposing and government-sponsored candidates were elected instead. This despite the fact that the actual voting figures were leaked from Haddington, and gave Fletcher and Cockburn a massive majority. The court party could hardly have expected Andrew, at least, to lie down under this - so presumably there was more to the manoeuvre than met the eye. He had promptly appealed to the Committee on Disputed Elections, set up at the former convention, and this had duly pronounced in his favour - but only just in time for Andrew and Cockburn to be able to take their seats. They were wary, in consequence.
There was more than that amiss, to be sure. Conditions were no better, despite the fall of Lauderdale - he had been forced to resign as Secretary of State the previous year, 1680, not by the Scots but by the English government, and was now living in retirement at his London house, allegedly afraid to return to Scotland. Indeed under Rothes - who had succeeded as Secretary of State and been promoted duke - the persecutions were almost worse, though perhaps less efficient. But by an extraordinary coincidence - or else divine intervention, as claimed by the Covenanters - a new situation had suddenly developed. Only the day before, the Reverend Donald Cargill, a zealous ousted minister, had been hanged for publicly cursing and actually excommunicating the King, the Duke of York, the Duke of Monmouth, the Duke of Lauderdale, the Duke of Rothes and General Tarn Dalziel; and that same yesterday Rothes, Secretary of State and still Chancellor, had taken a seizure and expired. So Scotland was now freed of both men who had for so long ruled her in the King's name. But, led by Sir George Mackenzie, the King's Advocate, there were plenty of others to carry on their work with equal enthusiasm, Andrew had no shadow of doubt. This session of parliament ought to indicate the way things would now go - although inevitably the Chancellor's sudden death must effect some disarray.