The Patriot Read online

  The Patriot

  Published: 1994

  Tags: Historical Novel

  Historical Novelttt

  * * *

  THE PATRIOT

  'Dear God - and this is Scotland! Like a rudderless ship in a storm! Is there nobody left in the land to grasp the helm? No spirit surviving in this ancient nation? Have we become a race of serfs, cowards and toadies?'

  'Not that, Andrew - never that, surely. But... we require a lead. It is leadership we lack. Our natural leaders seem to have died out. Many, to be sure, have been executed, or driven into exile. As were you. But you, at least, have come back!'

  'Yes, yes - we have a leader, one leader again!' Margaret exclaimed, in a rush, eyes shining.

  'But do not look on me as one of Scotland's leaders, see you. I have neither the stature nor the station and standing. But I will do what I can. Oh, yes - I will do what I can, God aiding me!'

  Also by the same author,

  and available in Coronet Books:

  Lords of Misrule

  The Wisest Fool

  Black Douglas

  Montrose: The Young Montrose

  Montrose: The Captain General

  MacBeth The King

  The Wallace

  Robert The Bruce Trilogy:

  Book 1 - The Steps To The Empty Throne

  Book 2 - The Path Of The Hero King

  Book 3 - The Price Of The King's Peace

  The Patriot

  Nigel Tranter

  CORONET BOOKS Hodder and Stoughton

  Copyright © 1982 by Nigel Tranter

  First published in Great Britain 1982 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Coronet edition 1984

  British Library C.i.P.

  Tranter, Nigel The patriot. I. Title 823'912 [F]

  PR6070.R34

  ISBN 0-340-34915-8

  The characters and situations in this book are

  entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or

  actual happening

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way or trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which this is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain for Hodder and Stoughton Paperbacks, a division of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., Mill Road, Dunton Green, Sevenoaks, Kent (Editorial Office: 47 Bedford Square, London, WC1 3DP) by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk

  Principal Characters

  In Order of Appearance

  ANDREW FLETCHER: Laird of Saltoun, East Lothian, a rich property.

  JOHN MAITLAND, DUKE OF LAUDERDALE: Secretary of State; Lord High Commissioner to the Scots Parliament.

  JOHN HAMILTON OF BEIL: Another young laird, later 2nd Lord Belhaven & Stenton.

  JOHN HAMILTON, LORD BELHAVEN AND STENTON: Uncle of above.

  WILLIAM DOUGLAS, DUKE OF HAMILTON: Premier Scots peer. JOHN LESLIE, EARL OF ROTHES: Chancellor of Scodand, later Duke.

  ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, 9th EARL OF ARGYLL: MacCailean

  Mor, chief of Clan Campbell.

  HENRY FLETCHER: Brother of Andrew.

  SIR DAVID CARNEGIE OF PITARROW: Brother of the Earl of Southesk, legal luminary.

  MARGARET CARNEGIE: Daughter of above.

  JOHN GRAHAM OF CLAVERHOUSE: Laird and soldier, later Viscount of Dundee. (Bonnie Dundee of the ballad.)

  JAMES STEWART or CROFTS or SCOTT, DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH & MONMOUTH: Son of Charles the Second; Captain-General of the royal forces.

  JAMES STEWART, DUKE OF YORK: Brother of Charles; later James the Second and Seventh.

  SIR JAMES DALRYMPLE OF STAIR: Lord President of the Court of Session. Later Viscount Stair.

  REV. DR. GILBERT BURNET: Scots scholar and divine, former tutor to Andrew and Henry Fletcher. Later Bishop of Salisbury.

  SIR PATRICK HOME OF POLWARTH: Border laird, later Lord Polwarth and Earl of Marchont.

  ALDERMAN HEYWOOD DARE: Taunton jeweller. Purse-bearer to Duke of Monmouth.

  PRINCE WILLIAM OF ORANGE: Stadtholder of Holland. Later King William the Third.

  PRINCESS MARY: Wife of above. Elder daughter of James, Duke of York. Later Queen.

  WILLIAM PATERSON : Banker. Founder of the Bank of England. Initiator of the Darien Scheme.

  JOHN HAY, EARL OF TWEEDDALE: Great Scots lord. Later Chancellor and Marquis.

  ROBERT KERR, EARL OF LOTHIAN: Great Scots lord. Later Marquis.

  JOHN KER, EARL OF ROXBURGHE: Great Scots lord. Later Duke.

  SIR JAMES MONTGOMERY OF SKELMORLIE: Baronet and lawyer.

  SIR JOHN DALRYMPLE, MASTER OF STAIR: Secretary of State, son of Stair. Later first Earl of Stair.

  JOHN CAMPBELL OF GLENORCHY, EARL OF BREADALBANE: Great Highland lord.

  ROB ROY MACGREGOR OF INVERSNAID: Captain of Glengyle Highland Watch.

  WILLIAM DOUGLAS, DUKE OF QUEENSBERRY: Lord High Commissioner.

  JAMES OGILVIE, EARL OF FINDLATER, later SEAFIELD: Secretary of State and Chancellor.

  JOHN CHURCHILL, DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH: Captain-General of royal forces.

  Part One

  The young man frowned as he dismounted in the Sidegate of Haddington. He was, to be sure, a ready frowner; but then, he was a ready smiler too, mobile and expressive of feature, quick to reflect his emotions, temperament and temper both far from placid. His frown now was directed not so much at the clutter of men and horses, children and dogs, all but blocking the street outside Haddington House, which must cause him difficulty in gaining access to the building; for this he was not wholly unprepared, for it was a special occasion. What he had not looked to see was the great coach with its six matching bays and lounging flunkeys and outriders, which all but filled the courtyard of the L-shaped tower-house, dominating all. He did not require to examine the vulgar display of paintwork on the carriage-door, surmounted by the newly-repainted coronet, from earl's to duke's, to recognise whose equipage it was.

  He found an urchin to hold his mare, nodded to Willie Bryce, Baron-Baillie of the Nungate, who appeared to be in charge outside, and pushed his way through the crush to the forestair and main doorway, where two burgh officers stood guard, reinforced by two of the Duke's own men wearing steel breastplates painted with coronets, hands arrogantly on sword-hilts. The town-guards knew Andrew Fletcher, however, and passed him inside, with only cold stares from the other pair.

  The interior of the house was as crowded as was the Sidegate outside, each of the fine first-floor chambers spilling people out into the hallway and corridors, what they were all finding to do not clear. The place stank, despite its excellent proportions, fine panelling and rich decoration, and not just on account of the throng in the June warmth but because the dark basement cellars below were still serving as overflow for the town-gaol, the Tolbooth in the High Street. In the year of Our Lord, 1678, the gaols of Scotland could be guaranteed to require some extra accommodation.

  The young man guessed that what he sought would be found in the finest apartment, the former hall of the house. This, in fact, proved to be the least crowded, folk needfully keeping their distance. Only half-a-dozen men flanked the great central table with its papers, quills, inkwells, wine-flagons and goblets - and of that number three hovered about the gross, florid, fleshy man who lounged midway on the window-side, wineglass in hand. Of the other two, one, elderly, short, thick-set but neat, in markedly plainer clothing but wearing a chain-of-office, sat at the head of the table, hands clasped in front of him; the other, a thin, elderly and clerkly individual, bent of shoulder, kept his head well down and his quill scratching over paper.

  The young
newcomer removed his broad-rimmed hat and bowed - but not too deeply. It was the little man with the chain that he saluted first - for in his own burgh, in theory, the provost ranked supreme. Nevertheless, it was the other, the big, heavy, over-dressed individual further down the table, who spoke.

  "Ha - young Fletcher!" he said, thick-voiced. "It's yoursel’ ‘oking liker a whitrick than ever! Eh, Provost? And hoo's Saltoun looking, these days?"

  "Well enough, my lord Duke." That was stiff. Andrew Fletcher did not relish being likened to a weasel, even though he was slightly, wirily built, narrow of feature and quick of manner. But the hulking man before him was uncrowned king in Scotland, so he added, carefully, "As is Lethington and yourself, I hope?"

  "Ooh, aye - weel eneuch, lad, weel eneuch. Better than some o' my unfriends would hae me - eh, Provost?" John Maitland, second Earl and first Duke of Lauderdale, Secretary of State for Scotland and Lord High Commissioner to Parliament, had adopted a broad Scots accent since he became so largely London-based — as had James the Sixth and First, of sacred memory, three-quarters of a century before, both allegedly finding it to pay, for some reason.

  Provost Scott of Haddington moistened his lips, nodded, but said nothing. The three fine gentlemen around the Duke laughed heartily.

  Fletcher came forward to the table, but to the Provost's end of it, drew out a paper from a pocket, and laid it down before the little man. "I think that you will find that to be in order, Provost," he said.

  No doubt it was the list of scrawled signatures at the bottom half of the paper which caught the ducal eye. Maitland heaved himself up, to lean over and peer at it. Frowning suddenly, he reached out and twisted the sheet so that it faced him.

  "God's death - what's this? What's this?" he spluttered, bedewing the letter - for also like the aforementioned King Jamie, Lauderdale's tongue was too large for his mouth and he tended to spray moisture even when he spoke normally -which was excellent excuse for frequent liquid replenishment. "Dammit, man - this is . . . this is a nomination-paper! For Parliament. The election - this election!"

  "Yes, my lord Duke."

  "You . . . ? Christ God - you! In your name!" "To be sure, mine."

  "But . . . !" Prominent eyes all but popping, the Duke glared, breathing stertorously. In his sixty-third year and after the life he had led, full but dissipated and indulgent, he was physically in poor shape - although shape is hardly the word to apply to that man. Corpulent, sprawling, he flopped and shook like a jelly. But there was nothing jelly-like about those pale eyes, however podgy and undistinguished the red and sagging features from which they protruded, choleric but shrewd, menacing.

  "... for this Haddingtonshire seat?"

  "For what other, my lord, would I bring my paper to the Provost of Haddington?"

  "Then - how dare you! Devil roast you, man - in my own county! To think to stand here! Against my, my .. . against Stanfield!" Maitland had rather forgotten his broad accent in his wrath.

  "A choice, my lord Duke. Is that not what an election is for? To give the voters a choice. Of men and policies." "Insolent!"

  They stared at each other, elderly man and young. And two greater contrasts in appearance, as in character, would have been hard to find, Andrew Fletcher, at twenty-three, so slight, supple, probably not half the weight of the other, keen-faced, alert, hot-eyed, not handsome but personable, straight and slender as a rapier-blade.

  The Duke dropped his gaze, to grab at the offending paper with a slightly trembling hand. It was at the signatures of the sponsors, at the foot, that he looked now. The first, in a large if somewhat shaky hand, was BELHAVEN AND STENTON.

  "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.