Chapter 26
The fellow was a shortish, wide-set man, balding evident now he’d taken his hat off in greeting but with a stout set of mustachios, dressed well but sturdily. Older than either Montrose or Campbell, by perhaps as much as twenty years, he was armed with back-sword and what was unmistakably one of the future pistols that had come back in the Ring of Fire.
“Your laddies, my lords, if they saw me at all, saw a mounted man go behind trees and no’ come out. And didnae stop to think that a man might dismount and seek smaller cover. Ye’d do well tae have a few veterans about ye, my lords. Is it no’ a good thing I’m such a friendly fellow?”
The sound of pounding hooves showed that whatever their prior faults, both noblemens’ retinues were thoroughly attentive now.
Montrose turned and waved his own people off and saw to his relief that Campbell was doing the same. The last thing anyone wanted at this point was a dozen armed retainers per side in a state of confusion with loaded weapons. It helped that Lennox had appeared as from nowhere, like one of the fair folk, and now stood straight, as tall as he could, hands clasped behind his back in token of no threat, and grinning. Montrose had not a shred of doubt that the fellow was well able to handle himself. He’d his own training in swordsmanship, and doubtless Campbell too, but all of his practical studies had been at the hands of tough old fellows like this. He’d been thrown on his arse more times than he cared to recall by men who even looked like that. There wasn’t an arms-master the length or breadth of Europe who didn’t have such men in his employ.
“The returning soldiers, you say, Major Lennox?” Campbell asked. “And may I ask, would you be the same as the Captain Lennox that distinguished himself so signally in Rome?”
“The very same, aye,” Lennox said, “and had I known what manner of embarrassment I was storing up for myself, I’d have stayed on my arse. And, aye, returning soldiers. Thousands of guid lads of guid character, and I hear they’re to be offered a choice of submission or exile? I fancy that’s no’ a good choice for any man.”
“It’s the choice your king offers, man,” Montrose, said, “or would you have a bushel of burning coals tipped into the tinder that is Scotland?”
“Speaking as one of the same coals, my lord, I’m of a mind that it was no’ I that made a tinderbox of my ain homeland. I went abroad, went for a soldier, all according to law, and took up arms in the Protestant cause wi’ the king’s blessing. I’ve changed not a jot of my faith in my time abroad. Why is it I must be hedged about with conditions before I come back to my home?”
“A fair question,” Campbell observed.
“By royal command,” Montrose said, “I am charged as I am charged. The king has cure of the nation’s souls, and every concern to see that ye bring no heretical notions home with you. And what was lawfully done when you went abroad is no longer being done, if I judge aright.”
Lennox put his hat back on. “Gustavus Adolphus is the emperor of the United States of Europe. I remain in his service, as permitted by my enlistment. As permitted by the enlistment of all such men as I. I’ve paid attention—the warrant names His Majesty Gustavus Adolphus, not the king of Sweden. Which he remains, it so happens. Does His Majesty care to give back-word on his ain warrant?”
“Do the Scots in the service of Gustavus care to levy war against their own monarch?” Montrose asked. “For such seems to be the tenor of what you say.”
“If you hear that, my lord, you’re no’ listening. And if it’s to be war, His Majesty has already struck more than enough blows. Issued warrants and charges threatening exile, demanding surety from good Protestant Scots where his father asked only for outward obedience even from papists, arrested my own former commander, charged with no crime at all, whatever gown law may say—”
Montrose held up a hand. “Enough, man. Ye talk of gown law like you’re about to demand satisfaction.”
Lennox snorted. “It’s no’ your fault, my lord, I understand that. And I’ve had tae carry out hard orders enough times that I’ll no’ think the less of you for the following of the orders you’re given by your ain commander. But the best o’ the case that rat Finnegan has is he says he saw the colonel fifty yards distant on a ship he thinks this man Cromwell sailed on. And there’s still no guid account o’ the crimes this Cromwell is said to be convict of.”
Campbell cleared his throat. “I think Major Lennox is saying, in his bluff soldier’s manner, that there’s a great deal that disnae smell right about Colonel Mackay’s remand in the Tolbooth. And he mightily suspects there’s a morsel o’ politics staining that arrest warrant.”
“Aye. Which is why for the moment we’ve no taken tae prison-break ourselves,” Lennox said.
“We?” Montrose asked.
Lennox grinned. “Och, did ye no’ hear o’ the colonel’s wife? Finest rifle-shot in the world? Baroness o’ some spot in Lappland I cannae even say the name o’? Lady who’s watchin’ us frae, it might be, three hundred yards? If either o’ my lords would care for a show of her shooting, wi’ smokeless powder so ye’ll no see where she shoots frae, simply hold your hat up in the air and she’ll shoot it. I’ve other signals I could give, ye mind.”
Montrose didn’t feel he had anything he could add to the silence that followed. He’d heard what had happened to Wallenstein at the Alte Veste. There had to be some exaggeration in the report of a thousand-yard shot—some accounts had it at fifteen hundred, and one at two miles, with angels wafting the bullet home in the accompanying woodcut. Three hundred yards, with a rifle, though? That was a dangerous shot to a standing man even without assuming some Ring of Fire gunsmithing. A fellow would have to be unlucky to be hit, for certain, but even levelheaded soldiers told tales of the American weapons being very accurate and long ranged. Even if the American baroness could only manage a hundred yards more than the best gun Montrose had ever laid eyes on, they had to assume she was able to hit them.
Lennox went on. “The plain fact o’ the matter is this; did we want blood shed, my lords, ye’d be bleeding. Did we simply want the colonel oot o’ the Tolbooth, no’ a stone would stand upon another there, for we’ve a muckle few fighters by us wi’ all manner o’ powder an’ steel. We’re no’ even the readiest tae fight o’ the German veterans, mind, but we’ve a muckle lot o’ learnin’ in the business o’ war, wi’ all the most modern o’ arms. What I would have ye understand, gentlemen, is that if either o’ ye is minded tae have the colonel hang by some bribery or subornin’ o’ the’ judge, we’ll tak’ it amiss. With which, gentlemen, I’ll bid ye guid day.”
He was in the middle of turning away, and then paused. “Yin matter that I was like tae forget.” He took a small bottle from inside his green-dyed buffcoat, and placed it gently on the taller of the two standing stones. “I’m no’ happy tae be giving guid drink tae a pagan stane, ye mind, but ye’ve a lesson tae learn, I’m thinkin’. If ye bide here as I go, and wait while I pass from the sight o’ ye, look tae this bottle tae see what the baroness would hae done wi’ ye. And let the stane drink your health. Dinnae stand by it, mind, glass will fly and the losing of an eye is nae laughing matter.”
The brawny cavalryman strolled away—a fairly quick stroll, it had to be said, but somehow the fellow made quick-march look casual—and both Montrose and Campbell watched him down the hill, detour slightly around a small knot of sheep, pass not so much as a blade of grass that might have hidden him on the way up, and stroll in among a small copse of trees.
It was almost an anticlimax when the wine-bottle cracked gently, the neck neatly severed and dropping into the body of the thing. Wine bled and dribbled out of a crack that ran all the way down. Looking closer Montrose could see that the ball had been barely so wide as a reed and had punched clean through the glass. The round of it was clearly visible, the crack of the gun a mere snap compared with even a pistol of the ordinary kind.
“We’ve a mite more to discuss, I fancy,” Campbell observed, looking over Montrose’s shoulder at the broken bottle.