His own personal history, so Anna explained, was like Scotland’s—divided. “He was himself a Covenanter, at the start, but—”
Lily interrupted her with, “Why are they called Covenanters?”
“Why, because of their Covenant. D’ye not know what that is?”
Lily shook her head.
Anna explained. “Well, a long time ago, everybody in Scotland was Catholic. For centuries, they were, and then up came the Presbyterians, led by John Knox. He was fighting with Queen Mary, who was Catholic, and at length he won and the Presbyterians became the new official Kirk. But when Queen Mary’s grandson, the first Charles, became king—he was Episcopalian, like us—he stood against the Scottish Presbyterians and then there was rebellion here and rioting in Edinburgh, and in the end the Presbyterians rose up and signed a document that they called their great Covenant—that is a word that means a solemn promise or agreement—that they’d always keep to their own faith. ’Tis said some signed it with their blood. That’s why they are called Covenanters.”
“And they went to war against the king,” Emelia added, “and they caught him, and they cut his head off.”
“That was Cromwell and his Parliament, in England,” Anna said. “They killed the king, although the Covenanters played their part. Grandfather fought them, and he could I’m sure tell many stories if he chose. I wish he would.”
Emelia, sounding wiser than her own nine years, said, “Father says that men who’ve truly seen war seldom speak of it.”
Her sister only sighed and said to Lily, “Anyway, there was a war, and Cromwell occupied our lands, and it was then illegal to keep any but the Covenanting faith, until the king’s son—our King Charles—returned from exile, claimed his throne again, punished the people who had killed his father, and restored our church.”
Lily was grateful that he had. “I would not wish to be a Covenanter.”
“Nor would I,” said Anna. “The laws have rightly turned against them since the king’s return, and Presbyterians who try to worship now will lose their land if not their lives, yet they believe theirs is the only true religion, and they’ll die before they’ll see it altered.”
Emelia, stubborn herself, argued, “Ours is the true religion, because God does bless and choose the king, and our king is, like us, Episcopalian.”
Her sister smiled. “And yet his brother is a Catholic, and he will be our king next, so what will be the true religion then?”
Montrose, from his portrait, was still watching them, and Anna drew them back into their proper history lesson.
In that shadowed corridor, she told them stories of the battles Montrose waged for the king’s side against the forces led by his relentless enemy, the Earl of Argyll. Every tale was more exciting than the last, and filled with danger. Lily felt every clash of the swords, every galloping horse bearing Montrose to battle.
And when the Covenanters laid a trap for Montrose—sending him a false captain and ship to delay his departure while they closed the snare, setting English ships offshore to choke off all routes of escape—Lily’s heart fell.
“But,” said Anna, painting pictures with her words, “when all seemed black and lost, he did outwit them. He went north, and found a vessel on the coast to carry him to Norway.”
There was something in the triumph of that moment that appealed to Lily—thinking of the great Montrose at sea, far from the reach of wicked Argyll and the Covenanters, sailing toward freedom on the misty shores of Norway.
She was happy to discover he had made the crossing safely, and been welcomed to the castle of a Scotsman there, and so continued on with his adventures.
But it broke her heart when Anna carried on, through his return to Scotland, and his final battle, his betrayal, and his capture, and his brutal execution.
Lily hadn’t liked that part at all.
Anna had tried to make it better, telling her, “They did give him a proper funeral, ten years later. Grandfather was there, and all the grand people of Edinburgh came. They gathered up the pieces of his body and they took his head down from the spike and let him lie in state at Holyrood, and then they had him buried at St. Giles’s cathedral, as a hero.”
But that hadn’t helped Lily feel better when she looked up at the dark eyes of the Marquis of Montrose that beckoned her to follow from his portrait.
She was thinking of that feeling now, as she tried to keep pace with Jamie through the field of waving summer grass that sang with unseen insects.