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  Return To Fender

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  Virginia Brown

  (Please continue reading for more information about the author)

  Author’s Note

  WHILE I’VE TAKEN some liberties with this book, using historical fact as a background for my fictional characters, it’s intriguing that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. In 1499, Iain Calder, Thane of Cawdor, died. His daughter, four-year-old Muriella Calder, became heiress. John of Lorn, the second Earl of Argyll, sent Campbell of Inverliver on Lochaweside all the way across Scotland to abduct her. Campbell took with him a huge camp kettle, carrying it two hundred miles across the width of Scotland, for what reason history does not record. However, on the wild return to Argyll, the kettle was put to good use when that wily soldier inverted it and charged his seven sons to guard the empty cauldron with their lives. They did, and all were killed. Upon delivery of Muriella to Innishonnel Castle, the chief Campbell seat at Loch Awe, the question was asked of him if the loss of his sons would be too heavy a price to pay should the little girl die. Inverliver is reputed to have replied that Muriella Calder could never die so long as a red-haired lassie could be found on Loch Aweside. (History also records that the child’s nurse had bitten off the tip of her little finger so she could be identified if necessary, so it’s presumed that Inverliver would have done the same to another child should the worst happen.) The worst did not happen, however, and eleven years after her abduction, Muriella was married to Sir John Campbell, third son of the Earl of Argyll. The Campbells still hold Cawdor today, in the capacity of the sixth Earl of Cawdor.

  There was a real Campbell of Lochawe during this time period, Sir Neil Campbell, married to Robert Bruce’s sister Mary. In 1327, there was no castle of Argyll, the area in western Scotland that encompasses Loch Awe. I used for my story a description of Kilchurn Castle, situated on the banks of Loch Awe, though this keep was not built until the fifteenth century. It was located, however, upon a site long used for a fortress, probably by the MacGregor clan, so logically, there may well have been a peel tower there long before Kilchurn was erected. It is fact that builders took advantage of previous occupants and defendable sites through the ages.

  History records that the MacGregors once held lands in Glenlyon and indeed, in Perthshire and Argyllshire, before the powerful Clan Campbell relieved them of their properties. There was much intermarrying in those days, and brides were frequently abducted to acquire their lands.

  The raid in Weardale by James Douglas and two hundred picked men was told much as it happened, with of course, literary license taken in including my fictional hero, Robert Campbell, as well as Judith’s brother.

  On a final note, King Robert Bruce did not get to go on his crusade to fight the heathens. He died on June 7, 1329, a little short of his fifty-fifth birthday. Before he died, he asked James Douglas, Black Douglas, to carry his heart on the crusade for him. This James Douglas did and was killed rescuing a comrade from the Moors in Spain in 1330. He still wore the Bruce’s heart in a silver casket hung around his neck, token to a beloved king. The body of James Douglas and the Bruce’s heart were returned to Scotland by their companions.

  I hope you have enjoyed The Laird.