The Impregnable Women, page 28
He stood silent for nearly a minute, and Lysistrata lowered her sword. Unmoving, they stood in the golden heat, and in her grave beauty Lysistrata was like the Demeter, calm and lovely in her promise of happiness, that once looked down at the Spartan colonists of Cnidos. The anger died in Scrym-geour’s heart, and as though anger had been the upholding skeleton of his strength, his strength grew less. He saw the beauty of Lysistrata, and nothing else. He knew that he loved her, and knew nothing more.
But while they stood, in love and the noonday’s cataleptic hold, there rose to the Castle walls a far confusion of noise that held in its midst a shrill high music. The women heard it, and ran to the ramparts. The soldiers heard it, and looked at each other in sudden doubt. It was the noise of an army marching, and the people cheering as it passed, and the music in its midst was the pipers playing.
III
In the very middle of the Castle Esplanade stood a group of elderly gentlemen, darkly clad and of solemn aspect. Despite their obvious importance, they presented a forlorn and desolate appearance, as though they had been forgotten, and having been forgotten, did not know what to do. Which was, indeed the case.
The whole Cabinet was there, except Mr Percy Small who was still in prison, and the Ministers were attended by several secretaries, Private or Parliamentary, and about a dozen junior Ministers who by their serious demeanour did what they could to disguise their present dubiety and comparative youth. They were waiting to hear the result of the battle.
There was a column of soldiers on Castle Hill, and a cordon of policemen at the lower end of the Esplanade. But the Esplanade itself was empty save for the Ministers, and a row of agitated sacks on the pavement near the entrance to the Castle. For some considerable time they had seen no fighting nor any sign of it, nor any movement of troops. They did not know whether the battle was still going on, or whether it had finished, and they were very annoyed because no one had come to tell them.
It was Lord Pippin who finally suggested that they go and see for themselves, and though two or three of the more cautious demurred, the majority of the Ministers were much impressed by the simple good sense of his proposal. They set off in a body, not rapidly indeed, but with a movement that revealed the ponderous resolve by which it was activated.
At the entrance to the Castle they paused to examine the forty or fifty potato-bags which held the earliest batch of prisoners. Many of the occupants were still writhing and heaving, and their heels beat a tattoo on the pavement.
‘This is utter barbarism!’ exclaimed, Cure indignantly, and anxiously surveyed the long row the legs to see if the could recongize his Delia’s
Several other Ministers also condemened so strict a confinement, and Sir Joseph Rumble, stooping over a well-filled sack, requested a moment’s silence. ‘This unfortunate woman is trying to tell me somrthing’ he declared.
He and several of his colleagues listened intently. The prisoner had a great deal to say, and her spirit was undiminished by captivity. The expression of the Ministers changed from exaggerated sympathy to the stony aspect of a prosperous congregation when some unfortunate curate preaches from the text, Thou shalf love thy neighbour as thyshelf.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, a practical man, suggested that it would be a mistake to interfere with the dispositions of the Commander-in-Chief; and the other Ministers, having listened in turn to the voluble prisoner, fully agreed with him. They crossed the bridge and entered the Castle.
In the cul-de-sac to the left of the Gate they were surprised to see a sight very different from anything they had anticipated. A great raw-boned girl, her strong face was transfigured by love, was fondling and cosseting a singularly handsome young officer who lay with his head in her lap. She looked up, with lioness difiance, and with protective arms clutched her lover to her breast. The Ministers abashed, turned the other way, and immediately beheld a Quartermaster-sergeant to the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment in the act of Kissing a charming girl with lint-white hair band a badly torn frock. In growing embarrassment they hurried up the causeway, but before they had gone twenty yards they saw on either side a dozen couples, soliders and rebels locked in each other’s arms, who either turned and glared at them with manifest displeasure, or, what was worse, ignored them completely.
Even Lord Pippin’s equanimity was faintly ruffled. He stopped, and his colleagues stopped with him. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, despite his reputation for Britannic sangfroid, nearly jumped ou of his morning-coar when a deep voice immediately behind him murmured, ‘Do you love me?’ But turning, he perceived that the speaker was a gunner in the Royal Artillery, and the person he addressed an exquisite little creature with bright blue eyes and a fascinating dimple. ‘I propose to go no farther,’ he said decisively, and there was a murmur of approval from the other Ministers.
‘I was about to ask Mr Pelham-Blair if he would consent to investigate for us,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘If he will be so kind as to undertake this mission, then I suggest that we return to the Esplanade and wait for his report.’
Mr Pelham-Blair could not refuse. With a stern expression he went forward, and with a general sigh of relief the Cabinet turned in the other direction and hurried out of the Castle.
Silent after their embarrassing experience, they gathered on the north pavement of the Esplanade, between the statues of Lord Haig and Queen Victoria’s Uncle York. Some of them removed their hats, and dried perspiring foreheads. Then they became aware of a multifarious and approaching noise, a populous clamour that carried with it a combative high-pealing music; and they saw below them, in Princes Street, a mass of people of which the centre moved in the discipline of marching troops and the pomp of an army with banners.
‘Another regiment, I suppose,’ said the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
‘Reinforcements, I presume,’ said Sir Joseph.
‘For which side?’ inquired the Prime Minister mildly.
‘ Good God!’ exclaimed Mr Curie. ‘It’s an army of women!’
IV
Half a mile from Queensferry Rose Armour was stopped on the road by a forward picket of the Highland army, and having made known her name and mission, was taken without delay to the Hawes Inn. There, in a large room, she found about twenty officers in a very cheerful frame of mind, though many were nearly exhausted by their long day’s march, and all were travel-stained and tired.
So far their plans had been successful. In the late evening a strong advance-guard had occupied North Queensferry, and taking prisoner the master and engine-room crew of one of the ferries, had compelled them to keep steam up. As soon as the first troops of the main army arrived, the crossing was begun, and pickets thrown out to guard the roads. The army had straggled rather badly during the march from Stirling, and the ferry was still crossing with late-comers. Except for pickets and sentries, the women were now sleeping in Dalmeny woods. They were tired out, and it would be impossible to rouse them before morning. But tomorrow they would certainly march to Edinburgh. That was what they had come for, and they were very glad to think they had arrived so opportunely.
Rose Armour was much taken by the appearance and manner of the Highland officers. Most of them wore short kilted skirts and tartan plaids fastened with a big silver brooch. Nearly all the tartans were different, and the room was a blaze of colour, of soft sea-green and the dark green of pine-forests, of broom-yellow and the blue of a faded battle flag, of wine-red and the red of a morning sky. There was a great deal of laughter and excited talk, and Rose found it difficult to remember the ladies’ names, for most of them had some territorial appendage: Stewart of Lochroyal, Chisholm of Lyon, Mackenzie of Altnashielachan; there were Mackays and Sinclairs differenced by the title of some lonely hill or wide moor in Caithness or Sutherland; Grants and Gordons called after strath and river-reach of the Spey and the Dee; MacNeils and Macdonalds with the style of an island firth or Atlantic glen – it was as though the wilder half of Scotland itself were in the room, and when Mrs Moncrieff – to whom Rose had been commended by Mrs MacLeod of Rhidorroch – came in followed by the landlady and a maid, the one carrying a tray of glasses, the other a vast silver bowl, then the smell of honey was added to all the heather-names, and they sounded more nobly still. For the bowl held three or four quarts of Athole brose, a specific against fatigue and a liquor in which success might not unworthily be drunk to any mortal cause.
More officers came in, and the colour and the noise increased. Many of the ladies were extremely handsome, and most of them had a very proud and dominating manner, which they combined with a loud good humour. Rose had not yet learnt who was in command of the army, and inquiring of Mrs Moncrieff she was told, ‘For God’s sake don’t ask that question here! We’re all in command. There’s a dozen more in Dalmeny woods, and half a dozen still in North Queensferry, and there’s only one thing we’re all frightened of, and that’s being second to anyone else. So at present we’re a sort of blue-blooded Soviet – but I don’t advise you to call anyone Comrade. At the moment we’re agreed that the first thing to do is to get to Edinburgh, and we’ll fight at the dropping of a handkerchief. But there may be trouble afterwards, unless Lady Lysistrata takes charge.’
It was daylight before the Highland officers went to bed, many in the woods, some in the inn; but all were afoot again in a couple of hours’ time. Rose slept soundly on a sofa till she was wakened, and by then the army was on the march. There was no food left in the inn but some dry bread, and she was given a cup of Athole brose to sweeten it. She mounted her bicycle and set off to look for the head of the column.
In the bright sun, beneath a high unclouded sky, the woods of Dalmeny were like a green furnace blazing to cool flame with verdant tongues of beech and sallow, the glow of jade. It was so resplendent a background that any army, marching by, would be diminished that had not breast-plates of silver, and flags of scarlet and gold. The women of the Highlands had no banners. The most of them were dressed in workaday clothes, dusty and drab. So to march equal with the woods they had torn down branches and sprays of greenery, and some carried holly as though it were a banner, belts of ivy, and young saplings like pennants waving. This leafy ornament gave many of them a gay holiday look, but more it transfigured and turned into maenads flourishing the emblems of a Celtic Dionysos, the divinity of their own mountains. There were women from the outer isles who called to each other in high-pitched Gaelic. It was the speech of an older world, more fierce and jocular than modern tongues. They were the Bacchae, at one with the joyous god, and troop after troop, under the greenery of the torn trees, they marched against those who had neglected his worship for a proud and sterile creed, and forgotten the virtue of country places.
They were the last of the many armies who had come our of the Highlands. Their glens were low their clachans ruined, but they marched with all the formidable spirit of their fathers who had sold their valiancy for a day’s pay, and made an empire and taken the wide for their tomb. The Highlands bad bred soliders, but little $$ and now the remnant women were marching against war because all their history was a tale of war, and war had brought no lasting good to their land. But there was nothing sullen in their determination. They sang as they marched, and hurried to the fight. They were marching under green boughs againsts a greyness that had darkened men’ spirit and chilled the ripe abundance of the world. Like Dionysos they could put on the likeness of a lion when they chose, but their inner heart was in love with jollity. They were raiders, marching for booty, and the booty was their husbands and their lovers and their sons. They wanted to have their men at home. Thev wanted mirth about them, a house tight against the weather, arid some plenishing of meat and meal, of milk and honey. It was little enough that they wanted, but much of that little had been taken from them, or threatened, and so they had risen to fight for it. And their spirit was the spirit that took the clans to red Ha1rlaw, and the spirit that made the Theban women rebel against King Pentheus and his dreary rationalism. There were girls, sloe-eyed, with soft voices and a swift grace of movements there were shepherds’ wives, and wives of gillies and tradesmen in small grey towns: there were burly women broad of beam, who waddled in their stride, and sweated, and cracked loud jokes in the ancient tongue – and ail were ruthless as wolves, devout as saints, in their demand for peace and the home-coming of their men.
It was noon when they came into Edinburgh, and they came like a moving forest in whose leafy rides were pipers plaving. They were marching six or eight abreast, and from every company of their mile-long column rase the wild music that had called their fathers to Flodden fontenoy and Loos, and among the green branches had still an older sound. A flock of small birds, of inches, tomtits, and yellow-hammers, had followed the marching trees, and voices of the women, shriller as they neared their goal, were like the baying of the White Hounds on high Cithaeron. Staves, ivy-girt, were raised aloft, and Gaelic vocables had the very sound of ‘Iacchos! Iacchos!’ From the glens of Ross and Sutherland and the sealochs of the isles, the Bacchanals had come to town.
Crowds gathered, and the hale excitement of the women spread to the watching throng. People ran alongside, cheering. The pipers played more loudly, and the frightened finches and the tomtits fled like coloured motes into the upper air. The Highlanders quickened their pace, shouted, and waved their leafy banners. They were like a forest in a high wind, a forest in a furious summer gale.
At the first noise of their coming the troops in Princes Street Gardens had been hurried out to meet them, and a reserve battalion from Castle Hill came at the double down the Mound. The soldiers formed a line across the road, a solid rampart from pavement to pavement. They stood six deep. They were shoulder to shoulder, redoubtable in their patient discipline. To all appearance their steady ranks were impenetrable.
But the Highlanders did not wait to gather their numbers before they moved to the assault. As soon as their leading company wheeled out of Princes Street, and saw the waiting soldiers, they threw away their green branches and charged with a wild halloo. The unbreakable line bent and quivered before the onslaught. The solid ranks opened and received their files, and before they recovered from the shock the second company was upon them with the fury of an angry sea. Like the high curving waves, dark green and emerald-hearted, hooded with spray, that sweep endlessly out of an Atlantic storm, the Highlanders came wildly surging, company after company, and fell upon the khaki ranks as if they had been a sandy beach. Like seagulls screaming, the pipers played on the outskirts of the fight, and like the undertones of a storm – the churning of boulders and the deep bass of the wind – were the trampling of feet and the muttering sound of strength hoarsely spent. Then suddenly, as suddenly as a squall passes in island seas, the battle was over. The six-fold line of soldiers broke and scattered. Many fled, and some lay still, but none resisted. The road lav open, the enemy was dispersed.
Impatiently the women suffered the hurried drilling of their officers. They gathered again into companies, into a column, and triumphantly resumed their march, They were, for a little while, almost silent. The battle, though short enough, had been arduous, and the hill was steep. They took the nearest way to the Castle, up the narrow pass of Ramsay Lane, and turning a blind corner their foremost ranks nearly collided with a company of elderly gentlemen, dark-suited and eminently respectable, who came hurrying towards them. The elderly gentlemen stopped in dismay. The women, after a moment of mute astonishment, uttered a shout of triumph and derision. They surrounded the Ministers, and seized them with hard-working hands, gathered them in their great red arms, and loudly hurried on. Lord Pippin and his colleagues, always averse from making any rapid decision, had dallied on the Esplanade a little too long.
A cordon of policemen, a few bewildered soldiers, were brushed aside, and like a deep river flowing strongly between straight banks, the Highlanders marched to the Castle. Many of Lysistrata’s garrison had come out to meet them, and standing on either side of the Esplanade, cheered them time and again. Now the pipers, having got back their breath, tucked their bags under their arms, and over the tumult of the crowd and the stormy ground-bass of their drones, soared the Mc-Crimmon pibroch, The War of Peace.
The front of the army halted before the moat and the broken Gate of the Castle, and successive companies came up on either side. In the midst of their array were the captured Ministers. Lysistrata came out and stood on the bridge. She carried, point down, her husband’s surrendered sword. Slowly the noise of cheering grew less, and a Highland officer, stepping forward, raised her sword in salute. ‘We came in time,’ she said.
‘You came in time,’ Lysistrata replied. ‘And you have assured us of victory.’
Chapter Seven
Victory
I
Major Graham, in temporary command of his battalion of the Royal Scots, deliberately ignored the song that rose from the column behind him. It was a popular song, but the troops had been forbidden to sing it because it derided the military spirit so necessary to an army in the field, and extolled the simple delights of peace. But Graham had made up his mind that in certain circumstances his men might sing anything they liked, and after a morning in the bull-ring he thought it natural that their choice of a song should be subversive. They had been out of the line for the last week, and most of their time had been spent on intensive training for the next battle. They were seasoned troops, and they resented their ceaseless instruction in bayonet-fighting, bombing, and Aldershot drill; so to relieve their feelings they sang, as they went marching back to their billets:
I want a quiet life, a lazy-day life,
I don’t want any fighting, and I don’t want any pain,
I want a quiet life!
But if you doubt my manhoocd, well, go home and ask your wife –
