Jamie, sitting on the floor, said, “He can have my place at Mr. Skene’s school, if he likes.”
The captain thanked him very solemnly, but Lily saw the crinkles at the corners of his eyes that meant that he was holding back a smile. “I doubt that Mr. Skene would be the best instructor of Scots law. Although,” he said to Lily, “I believe that ye could well instruct our Robin in the art of pure persuasion.”
She was not sure what he meant by that, but she liked Robin, and she said so. “Will he be here long?”
“I do hope not,” said the captain, but again he was not serious. “I’ve four lads of my own. What I shall do with five, I can’t imagine, and my wife, poor lady, is beside herself at the idea.”
Jean remarked, “Your sister’s brave, to travel such a distance at a time like this.”
“My sister in her life has met too many dangers on her own estate to fear a little travel when the need arises.”
Jean said, “I should not stray far from my own hearth when such a monster as the Earl of Argyll is yet loose upon the countryside with his wild Highland men.”
The captain smiled again, but this time it was with his lips alone, and there were no crinkles beside his eyes. “Ye’ll be confusing Highland men with Campbells,” he told Jean. “’Tis a mistake the earl himself makes all too often in his scheming, but the hearts of our good Highlanders are true, and they will hold fast for King James. We’ll have that devil Argyll in our hands afore the month’s end.”
Lily stopped combing the kitten to look up at Captain Graeme. “When ye catch him, what then will ye do with him?”
His smile, for her, was genuine. “I’ll pay him the same wages that his father paid the great Montrose, with interest. Then he’ll worry ye no more.”
But it did worry Lily, thinking of the Earl of Argyll.
She was thinking of him when her father came to settle her with Bessie in their little bed built close against the larger one. She asked him, “Are the rebels in the west, still?”
“Aye.” He smoothed the curling hair back from her forehead so that he could kiss her there. To sweeten her dreams, so he always said. “Why d’ye ask?”
She’d thought about the rebels much. She knew that things were different, since King Charles had died in February. Now, his brother James was king, and many men were angry because King James was a Catholic, and some did not think a Catholic should be king.
She’d heard the adults talk, these past two weeks. Somewhere in England was a nephew to the king who, while he had no right to sit upon the throne, was making plans to claim it, and the Earl of Argyll—son to that same Argyll who had driven all the games she’d played with Jamie and his cousins—had now landed in the west of Scotland, raising men for a rebellion. While the adults, when they talked, spoke of important-sounding things like freedom and the crown and bishops and the Covenant, one thing alone concerned her: “Will ye have to go away to fight them?”
“No.” Her father’s hand upon her forehead was a reassurance. “No, I’m not that kind of soldier anymore. I guard this town. My sword stays here.”
“And if the earl comes here?”
“He’ll have to get through Captain Graeme and myself afore he does ye any harm, and there’s no chance of that,” he promised. “Get to sleep, now.”
“Daddie?” she asked. “Why do some men not like Captain Graeme?”
“What men?”
When she told him what she’d seen the violer, their neighbor, do—the way he’d spat upon the ground—her father’s eyes flashed darkly with a swift show of his temper, but he held it in and only said, “Some men are fools.”
But that was not an answer, so she pressed him, and he told her that the town guard in its present form had only been created some three years ago, and that there were still people who resented it, and resented even more the tax collected from them for the wages paid to Captain Graeme’s soldiers. And, he said, some wished there were no town guard there at all to keep the peace.
“But those are lawless men, and ye need not concern yourself with what they think,” he told her.
“Cannot ye put the lawless men in prison?”
“Some we can, aye. But there always will be lawless men, the prisons cannot hold them all, so ye must learn to ken them when ye meet them, for it is not by their look alone.”
“How will I ken them, then?” she asked.