It must have been midnight when my father woke and uttered curses, and rose to his feet and swung his sword. He seemed in a fury; but the darkness gave no answer back to him.
“They are helpless, and stupid and eternal,” he muttered.
“But who, Father?”
“The little people. They will not get what they want. Come, we can’t sleep here any longer, and we aren’t far from home.”
We rode cautiously through the darkness, and then through a forlorn winter day that scarcely gave us any light.
At last we entered the narrow rocky path of the secret pass to the Glen of Donnelaith.
My father told me the story. There were two other known entrances to our precious valley-the main road over which the wagons traveled incessantly, bringing produce to market, and the loch where the ships docked which took the goods to sea. By both routes came the incessant parade of pilgrims to lay gold at the altar of St. Ashlar, to seek his healing miracles, to lay hands upon the sarcophagus of the saint.
This story struck terror. What would these people want of me! And I was hungry already for milk, and for cream, and for things that were thick, and white, and pure.
There had been much war in the Highlands, said my father. There had been pitched battles; and our kind, the Clan of Donnelaith, he said, had resisted the King’s men and would not burn the monasteries nor sack the churches nor take a vow against the pope in Rome. Only under heavy guard did Scotsmen come into this valley, did the traders come into the small port.
“We are of the Highlands; we are the Christians of St. Columba and St. Patrick, we are of the old Irish church, and we will not yield to this pompous King in Windsor Castle who shakes his fist in the face of God, or to the Archbishop of Canterbury, his lackey, let both of them be damned. Let all Englishmen be damned. They are burning the priests. So they make martyrs. You will understand all in time.”
These words brought a peace to me, but I could not claim that I knew the name Columba or Patrick, and when I tried again to recollect all I knew it seemed that my inborn knowledge had become smaller even as we had traveled north. Had I known things in my mother’s arms which I had forgotten? Had I known things in her womb? I could not chase these receding phantoms with any success. They were gone from me, leaving only a shimmer.
I am born. I am flesh! I was living and breathing again. The darkness is dispelled and even this soft snow surrounding me is part of the living world, and look! The sky above, a blue no painter could capture, and then the deep glen spreading out before us, as we came out of the mountains-look, the great church.
The snow fell in small soft flakes around us. I was so used to being cold I had forgotten to dislike it. I was charmed by what I saw.
“Wrap the wool around you,” said my father. “We are going into the castle, that is our home.”
I didn’t want to follow the path up to the castle. Rather I wanted to go down into the town. It was a great town then, you cannot imagine. It had nothing to do with the small pathetic village that grew up on its ruins later on. It had its walls, its battlements, and within were its citizens and its merchants, its bankers, and its great Cathedral! And all around lived the farmers, said my father, on rich land which, though it was now covered with snow, gave good harvests, and provided for fat and healthy sheep.
Beyond in the hills, here and there, and there, where he pointed, were other strongholds, in which lesser chieftains loyal to Donnelaith lived under our protection and in peace.
Smoke rose from a hundred chimneys pressed within the battlements and from the towers scattered and barely visible in the high woods. The air was thick with delicious smells of food cooking.
And there rising out of the center of the town stood the massive Cathedral, quite visible beyond the houses and the walls, the snow sliding from its steep Gothic steeples and peaked roof, and light blazing inside it so that its great windows were filled with myriad colors and enchanting designs. I could see, even at this late hour, hundreds moving in and out of the Cathedral doors.
“Father, please let me go there!” I begged. I was drawn to this place as if I knew it, yet I did not. I hungered for the discovery of it.
“No, my son, you come with me.”
We had to go to the castle, high above the loch, which was our home.
Down below, the water was covered with ice, but in the spring, said my father, the merchants would come by the hundreds, and so would the salmon fishermen, and the banks would be full of traders, and men would come to trade linen for the wool and skins and fish which we had to sell.
This castle was a series of round towers, no more beautiful than the ominous heap of stone in which I’d been born. Once inside, I perceived it was less luxurious, but nevertheless filled with a bustling life.
The great hall itself might have been a mountain cave, so crude were its adornments-its few grand arches, its staircase-but it was all decorated for a great banquet, and the fairies of the wood could not have created a scene of greater warmth or charm.
The floor itself was entirely covered in green. And great garlands trimmed the sides of the stairway, and were placed above those arches deep enough to hold them, and placed all about the huge hearth. Indeed green branches of the Scots pine were everywhere laid, fragrant and beautiful, and mistletoe and ivy were likewise used in decorations, and I knew these lovely evergreens. I knew their names.
I saw the splendor with which the woods had been brought indoors. Candles by the dozens blazed along the walls, and down the length of the banquet table, and benches were being brought up for those who would dine.
“Sit down at the table,” said Father, “and keep quiet, whatever you do.”
It seemed that we had arrived at the very moment of the banquet, which was only one of the twelve banquets of Christmas, and the entire kindred was gathering for the feast. No sooner were we seated at a bench at the far end, than in came the ladies and men in gorgeous attire.
This attire did not match the clothes given me at the London court, but it was nevertheless very fine, and many of the men wore Highland dress of belted plaid. The ladies had the same fine headdresses as those worn in the King’s castle, though their sleeves and skirts were simpler, but nevertheless brightly colored, and there were many who wore jewels.
I was dazzled by the jewels. It seemed to me that in the jewels, all the color and light I beheld around me was concentrated, as if it had been drawn into the bits of glass by magnetism. In sum, were I to drop a ruby in a glass of water, I thought it would sparkle and glow, and that the water would turn bright and red.
My mind was delighting in this sort of mad perceptual error. I beheld that in the fireplace there lay a log so big it seemed an entire tree. Indeed, one could see its various branches still, burnt off at the ends like limbs from which the hands had been cut. It was blazing away furiously and my father gave me to know in a whisper that that was the Yule log, and that his brothers had dragged it out of the woods and into the great hall.
It would burn the full twelve days of Christmas.
And now as dozens of people took their places on either side of the long table, there came the Laird himself down the stairs, my father’s father, Douglas the Great Earl of Donnelaith.
He was a white-haired man with close-set very red cheeks, and a full white beard, and he wore his tartan or plaid with a great flourish, and had with him three beautiful women who were his daughters, my aunts.
My father cautioned me again to be quiet. I was attracting some notice. People were wondering, “Who is the tall young man?” By this time my beard and mustache had grown out full and dark brown, and I could not, on account of my skin, be taken for a tall child. My hair had grown long as well.