White Rose Rebel

by Janet Paisley

  ‘The Hielan dirk is at your doup and that’s the Hielan law,’ he sang, splashing noisily and ducking below the water again.

  Behind him, from the bank, the shining tip of a sword, lethal and menacing, thrust out over the water towards him. As he straightened up, it paused behind his shoulder.

  ‘Hielan Geordie’s at your tail, wi Drummond, Perth and aw.’ He sang on, oblivious.

  The sword tip rose, level to his shoulder, at the side of his neck.

  ‘Had you but stayed wi ladies maid an hour or maybe twa…’

  The sword tapped him on the shoulder. He turned his head, looking down, saw the blade, spun round. The sword tipped under his chin. Anne was on the bank, arm stretched out, wielding it. The range was useless. All he had to do was step backwards. But she’d made her point. A speared Lochaber axe could have run him through.

  ‘Is that you watching your back?’ she asked.

  ‘Washing it,’ he grinned. ‘Come on in. Give me a hand.’

  ‘I will not. It must be freezing.’

  ‘Not where I am.’ He grinned wider. ‘Hotter’n hell.’

  Anne smiled, plunged the blade into the banking, unbelted the arasaid she had over her dress and let it fall. She bent, patted it.

  ‘Trobhad,’ she invited. ‘You come out.’

  He took two steps towards her. The water level dropped to his navel. He stopped.

  ‘Will you hold out my plaid?’

  ‘I’m not touching that,’ she said. ‘It will be bloody.’

  ‘It’s fresh and dry,’ he protested. ‘I got it clean from supplies.’

  ‘And did you also get shy?’ she asked. She held her hand out, not the plaid. ‘Trobhad! Come on, out.’

  He gripped her hand, firmly, and winked. Then he pulled, using his other hand to push her at the waist so she flew on past him and splashed into the deeper water behind. Laughing, he turned round.

  ‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ he chuckled.

  Her dress ballooned on the surface. He waded over, caught the material to help her upright, but all he gripped was wet cloth. He searched the sodden folds for firm limbs. The dress was empty. He pulled it up, dropped it, spun round, looking. Under the water, bubbles rose at his back. He felt teeth nip his buttocks. A laugh burst from him, but then his knee was kicked from behind and he went down. Anne broke the surface, naked, looking for him. He rose a few feet away and spouted water at her from his mouth.

  ‘It is freezing,’ she giggled, sweeping water back at him. He slid under the surface again, coming up behind her.

  ‘A back worth watching,’ he said, reaching out, running his fingers down her spine. She turned round, her wet breasts brushing his bare chest. The game was over. Their eyes met and held. She slid her arms round his neck. In the chest-deep water, their bodies pressed together. Their mouths met and kissed, and kissed.

  He swung her up, still kissing, carried her to the bank. Keeping her tight to him, he laid them both down on her arasaid, reached out and pulled his plaid over them, rolling them over twice so they were bundled together. Inside the warm tartan, they kissed each other’s chilled skin, mouths, faces, throats, until heat grew in them. Words of desire and love murmured between them as hands and tongues explored every part of each other they could reach. The world blotted out. There was only sensation, overpowering, her parted thighs astride him, his hands on her buttocks, her hips raised, guiding him, the thrust down. A hundred times he might have spoken her name but never did it cry from him like this. In the steamy dampness of hot, wet skin, blanketed together, bound the length of them, arms, legs, hearts, hopes and lives, when he finally rolled them over, driving for release, it was him she cried out for, his name she spoke.

  ‘Alexander,’ she moaned. ‘Mo chridhe, my love.’

  Bells rang out all over Edinburgh, celebrating the victory. Whose victory, no one was certain. The first rider, a terrified dragoon, declared for the Jacobites, the second for the government, a third that it was indecisive, a fourth hailed the rebels. The citizens had suffered under Hangman Hawley before he and his ruffians departed to give battle. Now they were determined to be seen, and heard, siding with the winner. Prince or general, one or other would surely arrive soon, triumphant, to reclaim the capital. Provost Stewart remained a prisoner in the Tolbooth, where Hawley had consigned him, and could not be released till then. City business was conducted from his cell. It was stuffed to the gunnels with the bailies, all of them fussing.

  ‘Weel, if it’s the Jacobites hae won,’ one of them said, ‘you’ll be let oot and we kin get back tae the city chambers.’

  ‘If it’s the government,’ Provost Stewart said, ‘Hawley will hear hoo pleased we are tae be free fae the rebels and maybe let me oot anyroad.’

  ‘Mair important,’ grumbled another, ‘his lot might no break the windaes this time.’

  ‘We’ll ken soon enough,’ the provost reassured them. ‘The victors will come here tae announce theirsells.’

  ‘And if it’s the Prince –’ a third bailie rubbed his hands, counting the profit that would come from royal favour ‘– we’ve made a better showin in support of him than Glasgow ever did.’

  The door of the cell was flung back with a clang against the stone wall. General Hawley, despite his lack of stature, filled the doorway.

  ‘Who ordered the bells rung?’ he roared.

  A dozen faces fell. Twelve bulky bailies endeavoured to melt into the walls. Trembling, Provost Stewart got to his feet.

  ‘We wantit tae commend yer triumph, sir,’ his voice wavered. Hawley did not have the look of a conquering hero about him. ‘Maybe we are a bit previous…’

  Hawley grabbed him by the throat.

  ‘Previous?’ he snarled.

  ‘If it’s the noise ye dinnae like –’ the provost was turning purple ‘– Bailie Jamieson there’ll have it stopped.’

  Bailie Jamieson slid round the door and vanished. Whether he was heading for the bells or making his escape was debatable. Hawley let go of the provost’s collar.

  ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘All of you. Get out.’

  The members of Edinburgh council did not have to be told twice. As fast as their portly bulks and the small cell door would allow, they were out, and scurrying up the High Street.

  ‘What happened there, ye think?’ asked one.

  ‘Did they win or no?’ asked another.

  ‘Wha cares?’ the provost said. ‘We’re oot, and withoot oor necks stretched.’

  One by one the city bells fell silent. Hawley consigned Kilmarnock to the castle dungeon, put a guard on the provost to make sure he didn’t escape the town and filled the Tolbooth with other men, his own. Any deserters he could identify, and the junior officers who’d failed to keep control on the field, were court-martialled and sentenced to hang. For the next two weeks, the gallows he’d erected on his last visit were kept busy. Sixty were dispatched before he was interrupted.

  TWENTY-THREE

  William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, rode into Edinburgh looking every inch the conquering hero he intended to become. Fifes and drums, immaculate cavalry, scarlet coats and gold braid accompanied him. The city bells rang out again, with expedient fervour. Folk lined the streets to see this younger son of King George. Comparisons with the bonnier Prince Charlie were passed in whispers. The Duke nodded to the crowds, but he had little time for the backwater of Scotland or its whining inhabitants. His father had ordered him to crush the Scots.

  ‘If none remain,’ Pelham, the government leader, had added, ‘it will be no loss.’

  Cumberland had come to stamp out the rebellion. His princely cousin had made a first mistake, turning back from London at Derby. His second was returning to besiege Stirling after Falkirk, when he could have routed Hawley’s army, taken the capital and held Scotland. Instead, he left his enemy a foothold. The Jacobite command, so far invincible, had its weaknesses. They could be exploited, a third mistake encouraged.

  ‘You let me down, Henry,’
Cumberland said, carefully controlling his temper. Hawley was a favourite of the king. ‘And I’m hearing rumours I do not like the sound of.’

  They were in the state room at Holyrood Palace. Hawley paced about. Cope sat to one side, wealthier by £20,000, vindicated, calm, playing with a folded-paper caricature of Colonel Anne. He was the only man who’d have dared repeat the gossip to the Duke.

  ‘That woman, that bloody rebel, had nothing to do with it!’ Hawley lied. ‘We had the bitch of a storm in our faces. The guns stuck and couldn’t be put in use, and they had the advantage of the ground.’

  ‘So, if I order up a storm at my back,’ Cumberland mocked, ‘and turn the ground to my advantage, these half-naked barbarians can be beaten?’

  Cope leant forward, benignly. He could afford to be generous.

  ‘Personally, I’d put my money on artillery,’ he said, ‘though suitable ground wouldn’t hurt.’

  ‘We’ll leave betting aside.’ Cumberland’s purse was also lighter by this defeat. ‘Defeating them is required. Severe miscalculations have been made. These loutish savages can fight. They’re well-organized, daring, audacious.’

  ‘And ill-disciplined,’ Hawley burst out.

  ‘The way they took down your horse?’ Cumberland corrected. ‘I think not.’ It was said Hawley was a by-blow of the king. That being so, the Duke would have wished for a brighter half-brother. His viciousness was all Hawley had to commend him, if it was directed to the right foe. ‘I want to know their strengths and their failings. I want to know who commands, who can be bought, who ignored. This time, we will take our time. So –’ he paused, leant back and considered both generals ‘– bearing in mind there is more than one way to skin a cat, I want a plan.’

  In the clearing among the trees, Anne knelt by a headstone, brushing ice and moss off the words with her fingers. ‘John Farquharson of Invercauld. Died 1738’, it read, and below, ‘Beloved wife, Margaret Murray, died in childbirth 1725’. She had brought a white cockade to put on the grave.

  ‘We’re winning,’ she whispered. ‘I wish you could know. I’m doing all I can.’

  Doubts had haunted her last visit home, over Aeneas, over the venture into England. Now they were gone. A chicken scurried off from the clump of grass beside the stone, clucking. Anne parted the icy blades to reveal a large brown egg, still warm. Chickens, like people, were creatures of habit. She smiled, picked up the egg and stood.

  As she crossed the yard, a horse clattered into it, MacGillivray on its back. Seeing her by the trees, he rode over, slid off and wrapped her in his arms.

  ‘The pass is too risky,’ he said. ‘We should go round, and soon. Before the snow comes.’

  ‘We’ll go now.’ She looked at him, thoughtfully. Doubt never troubled Alexander. She’d never known him hesitate, as if the light of clear reason always lit the path he should take. ‘Why do you fight?’

  ‘How else can we survive?’

  ‘I wondered if you chase your own hopes and dreams, or those of others.’

  ‘You think I fight because you asked me to?’

  ‘Because we grew up with it. Would we think, and do, the same if we hadn’t?’

  ‘We would. Our ancestors put freedom above life, above god and king. The men who sold us into the Union dishonoured them. But, if we choose to stay enslaved, the shame is ours.’

  ‘Others don’t think so.’

  ‘Aeneas, you mean?’

  ‘No.’ She put her hand over his mouth. ‘Don’t speak his name. That’s finished.’

  He kissed her fingertips, moved her hand to lie on his chest, above his heart.

  ‘If you mean the Scots who’re still against us, they fear what they might lose. Their lives, land, trade.’ He shrugged. ‘What England gives, it can take away.’

  She would never understand. There was no pride, no dignity, in subjugation. Without self-respect, both nation and people were poor things, and the poor had nothing but poverty to lose. Did they have no faith in themselves?

  ‘The Kirk threatens their immortal souls, if they join us.’ She could feel his heart beat against her palm and moved her hand inside his plaid, against his shirt, to feel it better. When she was this close, this close to the pulse of life and vigour in him, the loneliness went away.

  ‘Then they deserve immortality,’ he said. ‘They pay dearly for it. No song, dance or coupling.’ He pulled her tight. ‘I would rather this life, however short.’

  ‘I have an egg in my hand,’ she warned.

  He nuzzled her neck.

  ‘Let’s see if you can hold it without breaking.’

  ‘So that’s why you fight,’ she teased. ‘To sing, dance and fuck.’

  ‘To spend my male urges between your thighs –’ he nipped the lobe of her ear with his teeth ‘– is this not why the world was made? Can you think of a better cause?’

  ‘It’s cold. Be serious.’

  ‘Anne,’ he leant back and looked into her eyes. ‘If it wasn’t cold, this would be serious indeed. Ice is forming under my kilt. And that is no state for a man to be in when his passion is aroused.’

  They were still laughing when they fell in the door of Invercauld together. Lady Farquharson glared at the pair of them.

  ‘Can’t you two grow up?’

  ‘We will, we will,’ Anne promised.

  ‘We just won’t grow old,’ MacGillivray grinned, turning his back to the fire and raising his kilt to heat his naked backside. Anne giggled.

  ‘I don’t know if I should let Elizabeth go with you,’ her stepmother grumbled.

  ‘But she begged to come, last time I was home.’ Anne said. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Out the back, putting every piece she possesses on the cart.’

  ‘Good. We need to get away before the cloud breaks.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Lady Farquharson sighed. ‘You’re just here and you’re off again.’

  ‘We only stopped to pick up Elizabeth.’

  ‘And will Francis and your brother be home soon?’

  ‘They will,’ Anne assured her, ‘with the rest of our troops.’

  The Prince had been persuaded to give up besieging Stirling and come north when Cumberland reached Edinburgh. Anne had left earlier, a week after the battle, when all the prisoners had been paroled. She brought half her own company with her as bodyguards but had sent them on ahead to Auchterblair. She and MacGillivray would spend the night with them there. It would be the next day or soon after, at Moy, that she could expect trouble. Lord Louden still held Inverness. Hawley had not taken the Black Watch companies south with him. That meant the Jacobites would have Louden to contend with when they returned and, along with his forces, Aeneas.

  Lady Farquharson stopped stitching the white ribbon into yet another cockade and considered Anne. ‘I don’t suppose you brought any of that snuff back with you?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’ Anne bit her lip, trying not to laugh. ‘I didn’t get to Edinburgh this time.’

  ‘My little box is quite empty.’ Her stepmother turned back to her sewing, hiding her disappointment.

  ‘Next time, I promise.’

  ‘It really is rather good for clearing the head.’ She glanced at MacGillivray, then at Anne again. ‘You should try it,’ she said.

  As they slept, a few inches of snow fell. The world changed overnight into its quiet winter shroud. In the morning, Anne and her party set out early from Auchterblair. Wrapped against the chill, Elizabeth begged to ride behind MacGillivray rather than in the wagon.

  ‘He’ll keep the cold off,’ she pointed out, clambering up behind him from the wagon step when he nodded yes. Her space in the cart was taken by a woman with a young child, who could now sit on her lap. Elizabeth tucked herself tight in at MacGillivray’s back, arms round his waist, head rested on his back. She was pleased he’d arrived home with Anne this time. Now she could make sure he noticed her. She’d never quite got over the desire for him she experienced after he fished her out of Moy loch. He
was one of the more marriageable chiefs, and it was time she had a home of her own to run. Surely, by now, he would be looking for a wife.

  They set off, white smoky breath puffing damp clouds into the crisp, clear air. The horses’ hooves crunched in the snow, the wagon wheels creaked through it and, behind, the march of several hundred feet crump-crumped along. Every now and then, they’d stop, scrape snow out of the horses’ hooves, clear the wagon wheels, kick ice off their shoe soles and go on again. It was very boring. Elizabeth cuddled into MacGillivray. She wondered how long it was since he’d had sex. Probably not long. He was the kind of man to inspire lust in women.

  She thought about Dauvit and all she’d learned about how to please a man and how to please herself. Anne was right. The diviner was a good teacher. However many Sasannach women had lain down with MacGillivray, she knew she could surprise him. She pressed her cheek into his plaid, between his shoulder blades. He was broad-shouldered, strong. She could feel his muscles moving under the cloth as he guided the horse. His taut abdomen shifted against her gloved hands with every stride.

  He and Anne, riding side by side, talked about war and troops and arrangements. Elizabeth thought of love, warm skin and rumpled sheets, white like the snow-laden landscape but infinitely more fun. She hitched her hips closer and tighter against MacGillivray’s buttocks and felt him tense. Even though his plaid was tucked around and beneath him, he was aware. She moved her upper body, enough so he would know it was her breasts that shifted against his back. They were not far from Moy. Flat white flakes of snow began to fall. Her breath, hotter, came faster. She shifted her gloved hands higher, drawing them back to his waist. Perhaps, if she removed the gloves, she could warm her hands inside his plaid.