ABSTRACT Lamont, Marianne NINE MOONS WASTED 1976 Pan Books0-330-257102 Lamont’s name is a pseudonym of Jean Sanders who also
writes as Anne Rundle. This is a romantic
historic novel set in the English Civil War in Scotland in 1644 and 1645. Unusually, the author sets her action amidst the Irish Camp followers who accompanied Alastair MacColla’s forces to Scotland to assist Montrose in his doomed campaigns there on behalf of King Charles 1st. It is the story of the fictitious Grey Drummond, a kinsman to Montrose, and the tow women who love him, Barbary, his wife, and Bridget, an Irish girl. Barbary follows her cold, distant husband to war, disguising herself as a man, in the tradition of the real Mrs. Pierson (who makes a cameo appearance in the book). Barbary’s ruse is quickly discovered, and she is cast among the gypsy like Irish women, Most recognise her as a woman, but Bridget is one of the few who assumes she is male. Only when Barbary is left for dead in Aberdeen, where she is heavily pregnant and taken in by a family she has saved from a massacre by the Irishry does Barbary leave the story for a while. Now the same
events are covered from Bridget’s point of view, as her own affair with Drummond intensifies. As she learns that Barbary is alive, and watches Drummond depart to meet his errant wife, Bridget discovers that she too is pregnant. Feeling abandoned, she becomes suicidal. Drummond meets his son, but then returns to battle, and saves Bridget from taking her own life. However, at Tippermuir, Bridget is slaughtered, and her unborn child dragged from her womb. Drummond, captured, pledges to stop fighting the Royalist cause, and he is allowed to return home to his wife and son. The Civil war makes an interesting backdrop and the historic accuracy behind the story is well presented, (though the Gordon Clan are introduced too soon). However, the story coming from the eyes of the women puts the main battle sequences in the distance for much of the story. At one point, Drummond is left in a coma for several months, conveniently allowing the author to bi-pass important events at Auldearn and Alford. There are good descriptions of the Irish women on nomadic movements across the Scottish Highlands, and taking boots and clothes from the corpses on the field of battle. The story is far from Mills and Boon Mush, but its repetition of many events from alternating points of view slows things down a great deal. Characters spend too much time apart, rather than in direct conflict. The major historic events are often summarised by those who witnessed them, though the march on Inverlochy and the battle of Philipaugh are given full attention. An unusual and worthy Bronte-esque study of the Scottish battles, but hardly a literary classic.