Melanie Jackson - The Night Side

Bonjour! called a softer, sweeter version of the voice that had hailed him earlier.

Dark hair had slipped its modest arisaid and now whipped about in the wind. The lady skidded to a halt only a handsbreadth from Colins outstretched arms. Delightful eyes, the color of Highland whisky, moved over his face. Colin noted that though the woman wore a traditional leine, the delicately pleated garment was fashioned of silk rather than linen or wool, and it draped most gracefully over her bosom. Her embroidered kirtle was long, but not so great a length as to drag upon the grounda sensible precaution as the rough terrain would quickly shred the delicate material.

She said breathlessly: We did not expect you so soon.

Weve had favorable winds, Colin answered. Colin Mortlock, at your service, Mistress Balfouryour new master of the gowff. And so much more.

For my cousin, Sarahwhat a lovely person
she has grown to be.

The king sits in Dumfermline town.
Drinking the blude-red wine: O
O whare will I get a skeely skipper,
To sail this new ship of mine?

The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens

Colin Mortlock sat at his table in his private study in York and read the messengers missive a second time, trying in vain to make some sense of it. It was not that the letters words werent straightforward enough. The sentences were all simple statements and arranged logically, though penned in a very ill fist by someone obviously not often given to scrivacious pastimes.

The difficulty came with comprehending the context in which the message was written, and in certain absences of comment when some remark would have been normal.

Colin shook his head. He did not for one instant suppose that the brief interregnum in the north isles had made the new laird of Skye any less intelligent or capable of looking after the clans demesnes than his ruthless and half-insane father and uncle had been before him. But Colin was still uncertain of precisely what the MacLeods wanted of him in this instance, and whether he should be wary of answering this intriguing familial summons.

The letter even began interestingly, using both Latin and the Christian calendar. This was certainly a change from the style of the previous laird, who had disowned Colins mother when she married a Catholic sassun and moved south to the lands of the enemy Englishmight the French pox rot them!

To our cousin, Cailean Mortlach, at the season of the mellowing moon, in the year of our Lord 1544

Greeting Dear Kinsman!

Sorrowful tidings we have had of the death of the fifth king of the Scots called Seumas. Many brave lives and things more precious were lost at the rout of Solway Moss. But such must be expected after the dissolution of the treaty of perpetual peace.

The Treaty of Perpetual Peace designed by Henry VII and James IV had lasted a mere eleven years and had ended at Flodden Field when the flowers of Scottish nobilityand King Henrys own brother-in-lawwere all mowed down in one bloody battle. The Solway Moss debacle was rather more recent. It was an exaggeration to say that there had been heavy casualties at Solway, unless one counted the death of pride among the fatalities. If that were added to the score, then the battles losses reached tragic proportionsat least among those who hadnt been there.

The facts of the battle were either amusing or horrible, depending on which side you were on. A great many border Scots had been cheerfully captured by the stunned English army, apparently deeming arrest by the sassuns preferable to fighting under a Scottish king whom they believed had persecuted them in their own land.

Colin shook his head again, this time in bemusement. Such a scandal would have been unthinkable under James IV. Colin did not know what had happened to Scottish pride. The Scots, Highland and Low, had always hated the English. The dislike was obligatory, part of the received truth that arrived with baptism in the cold peaty water, and possibly through a mothers milk. So this event at Solway was unique in Scottish history. All Colin could imagine was that this Lowland enthusiasm for the English monarch must have stemmed from what had happened at the battle of Soom Moss that previous year.

At Soom Moss, King Henrysometimes called Harryhad taken twenty-one Scottish nobles as prisoners, fed them a Christmas feast and then let them go again. It was one of the eighth Henrys splendid gesturesless excessive than his Cloth of Gold feast with the French monarch, but still quite memorable to the Scots. There had not been such a fete between the two opponents since the Yuletide wedding of Alexander to Margaret, when Henry III had put on a resplendent Christmas feast and the guests drank three tons of wine in five days. The Archbishop of York had provided 600 oxen, drawn and quartered, some of which had come from Colins ancestor at Pemberton Fells. Even then, his family had been in faithful service to the crown.

Colin snorted and then allowed himself a small smile. He might sometimes be baffled by the Scot Lowlanders, but he knew the northern Gaels minds very well. They were very like the Norse mind, and this show of wealth and magnanimity on the part of the English king, while popular with the Lowland masses, doubtless infuriated the MacLeods and many other Highland lairds. They hated their king for allowing the shameful incident to have come about. They believed that, had James lived among his men, as a good king shouldfought side by side with his troops as the lairds didthen his men would not have indulged in such cowardly behavior, and all of Scotland would not have been disgraced and left in the hands of an infant queen and her inept mother.

No, if the new Laird of the Isles was actually sorrowful at Jamess passing into the afterlife a few weeks after this disgraceful battle, it was the first that Colin or anyone else knew of it. There had been only an uneasy truce between James and the Lairds of the Isles, with the current times leaning more often toward the side of unease than truce. Solway would have been the final stone in the cairn of their faltering relations. James should probably be happy that he was already dead. Things were about to get ugly in the North. Civil war was possible.

Colin most certainly didnt envy Scotlands regent, Mary of Guise, the task of knitting up the unraveled politics of the North and in the Isles for the infant queen. It would take great skill and cleverness to keep the throne for her daughter. Fortunately, this was not his problem anymore.

Colin went back to his letter, squinting at the nearly illegible text.

Sir Michael Balfour and his thirty sons were also recently lost to this world. There remains only his daughter and a young nephew at Noltland Castle near our kin on Orkney.

This was where the letter began to get obscure. Everyone had heard the amazing tale of the deaths of Michael Balfour and all of his sons in one battleleaving only his daughter as heiress to his fortune and a distant kinsman, a lad of twelve, to inherit the titlebut Colin had not the slightest notion what it had to do with the MacLeods of Skye. MacLeods were descended from the Vikings who had settled in Orkney, but Noltland was now in the territory of the Keiths and Gunns and MacKays, and it was very unlikely that these others were going to stand aside if the MacLeods made a grab for power.

Cousin, cousin, what do you intend? Without indulging in offensive pridefulness, Colin knew that he was accounted as being an astute man. But though he could sense that his cousin was steeped in some purpose in regards to Noltland, what this project might be, Colin could not yet see.