Foster nodded. “Sort of like the Alexander who led the invasion, last year?”
The Archbishop frowned. “No, Bass, not at all. Alexander was a strong, a very strong, king. But neither strong kings nor weak last long on the blood-splattered throne of the Kingdom of Scotland; only the shrewd men who know when to display strength and when to bow to the wills of the powerful nobles who are the real rulers of Scotland.
“These Scots be a strange race, Bass—two races, really, two, at least. The Lowlanders share in a full measure of the native pugnacity that seems to mark the Celt, wherever you find them. Over the centuries, they have caused their own kings almost as much trouble as they have caused the English kings, escalating reaving raids into border wars at times most inconvenient to Scotland.
“The Highlanders, on the other hand, while no less bloodthirsty, would much rather fight each other than the English or any other foreigners, and the great lairds of the various confederations of Highland clans reflect these isolationist sentiments at Edinburgh. Ignoring them, in favor of the Lowland-er nobles, can be exceedingly dangerous if not fatal, for more than one unwise king has been driven into exile or slain by hordes of aroused clansmen streaming down from their Highlands to march on Edinburgh.
“So it was with the overtures of the emissaries of Frangois: the Lowlander lords were heartily in favor of an invasion of England in support of the French, while the Highlander lairds, tied up as tightly as ever in then- own endless feuds, voiced a resounding ‘Nay!’ Ailpein swayed first one way, then the other, like a willow switch in a windstorm.
“The Frenchmen, mistaking Ailpein’s inability to make up his mind for a devious means of haggling, offered more and more inducements—gold, guns, a permanent alliance, even, I
understand, a French princess to wife. It all was just too much for Ailpein; forgetting just exactly who and what he was—a mere figurehead puppet of the lords and lairds and great chiefs—he agreed to serve the interests of ‘his royal brother/ Francois, in exchange for gold, guns, a loan of French troops to beat the Highlanders into line, and an investment into the Order of St. Denis. It was his greatest and almost his last mistake, Bass.”
CHAPTER 11
The Highlands began to boil, the Lowlands began to arm, the islanders—as often they have—declared a plague on both houses and a flat refusal to supply troops or wherewithal to either King or rebels. Of the Lowland lords there was a division: those of the south wanted to march immediately upon land, while those of the areas north and east of Edinburgh saw and favored the need to deal first with the savage menace of the Highlanders, wherein Eannruig of Macintosh was busily assembling the Clan Chattan Confederation at and around Inverness while both the Campbell Confederation and Siol Alpine were gathering about Loch Tay, only a few days’ march from Edinburgh itself; and Goiridh of Ross was rumored to be marching down from the far north with the most of the Ulbhaidh Confederation at his back.”
Despite the crackling fire before him and the warm tipple spreading its alcoholic heat outwards from his belly, Foster shivered, recalling again that hellish night of droning bagpipes, Gaelic war cries and the demonic chorus of human throats mimicing the howling-roaring-bellowing-snarling of the totem beasts—the wolf of Ulbhaidh, the lion of Campbell, the wild bull of Siol Alpine and the moorcat of Chat-tan—there on that blood-soaked moor near Durham.
The old man drained his cup, refilled it from the ewer, and heated the fresh liquid with one of the ready loggerheads before going on with his tale.
“With the arrival of the promised French troops—several thousand Slavic, Croatian and Albanian mercenaries, with a few score French knights and sergeants—the border lords grudgingly agreed to join with the other Lowlanders just long enough to put paid to the account of the Highlanders.
“Like the late and unlamented King Alexander, Ailpein was personally brave but a most intemperate commander. Rather than holding his troops in defense of the area about Edinburgh where his heavy cavalry might have done him some good, he chose to invade the Highlands, driving straight for Loch Tay.