Free The Patriot by Nigel Tranter Page B

more generous victor than did . . . some we are used to! Yet your Covenanting prisoners, a thousand of them, are penned like cattle in the churchyard of Greyfriars, here. And unfed. This in the King's name!"
    Monmouth looked unhappy and his attendants outraged. "This pains me, Mr. Fletcher, I assure you," he said. "But - the matter is not in my hands. I am but the military commander. At present. The prisoners are in the hands of the civil power."
    "They were your prisoners, my lord Duke. -And you represent the King's Grace, do you not?"
    "Sir - do not speak so to my lord Duke!" one of the gentlemen hotly, when Monmouth waved him silent.
    "I treated these people fairly, Mr. Fletcher. Although they were rebels. There were no hangings and shootings, no reprisals on their supporters."
    "Yet this offence against humanity and decency is perpetrated in the King's name, even as we drink wine in this palace!"
    "I will speak with the King's Advocate, sir. But I cannot promise anything. The matter rests with others." The Duke frowned, nodded briefly and turned away, the interview obviously at an end. Then he looked back. "Remember, Mr. Fletcher - your aid will be looked for. And valued."
    John Graham looked at Andrew cynically. "You should have been a soldier, Fletcher. A captain of light cavalry, perhaps? But not a general, I think!" And he sauntered after Monmouth.
    'Tell me about the Duke of Monmouth," Margaret requested. "They say that he is handsome and civil both. And like his father."
    "I have never seen his father - who does not come to Scotland! But I found the Duke civil enough. As to handsome I know not. I judged him a little strange. A mixture. Perhaps because he was playing a role for which he was not suited."
    "And that role was . . . ?"
    "Politician! I think that he is honest. No dissembler. Yesterday he was trying to act the politician . . ."
    Her laughter interrupted him. "Mr. Fletcher - do I hear aright? You calling politicians dishonest, dissemblers! You who are becoming so notable a politician?"
    He frowned despite himself. "I would hope to prove that it is possible to be both. Both honest and in politics!" That was distinctly stiff, not to say pompous. Realising it, and that with a large basket of bread, hard-boiled eggs, milk-pitchers and the like over his arm, pomposity was less than suitable, he changed tune. "He was seeking both to warn us and to lead us, I think. And finding it difficult. Between what he had been told to say and what he wanted to say."
    "I think that you must really have liked him?"
    They were walking up the Cowgate of Edinburgh westwards and having to pick their way heedfully, both on account of the crowded narrow thoroughfare and to avoid the unpleasantness underfoot for those not automatically conceded the crown of the causeway by their superior dress and manner. Today neither of them were clad at their best, to say the least. Margaret Carnegie might not look very like a fish-wife as her father had suggested; but she wore her oldest available clothes. Andrew had borrowed an old plaid from one of the Southesk servitors, despite the summer warmth. The reason for this was that any persons of rank seen taking comforts for the prisoners would certainly be reported on, and might well suffer, Advocate Mackenzie's spies being everywhere. Andrew would not have cared greatly, but implicating Margaret was a different matter.
    Where Cowgatehead merged with the wide Grassmarket, directly below the towering cliff of the Castle-rock, the steep access to the kirkyard rose between high walls - but long before that the stink of the place was reaching them.
    "I did not mislike him. But I was much exercised. To know what he was at. I have thought much on it, since. I think there was much to learn. It is my guess that Lauderdale is down. That a new Secretary of State will be appointed, to rule Scotland. And that Monmouth hopes to gain the office. Yesterday he was seeking to prepare the way. To make, if not