White Rose Rebel

by Janet Paisley

  ‘Dying would’ve been better,’ MacGillivray agreed, but he couldn’t resist smiling. Aeneas could no more have killed him than he could have killed Aeneas. Things were straight between them now. Anne would have to sort the rest out.

  ‘I should keep him in the cellar till he rots.’

  ‘He’s in the wine cellar?’ MacGillivray shook his head, grinning. ‘That’s a terrible punishment for a man to endure.’

  Anne laughed. There was no staying angry with MacGillivray, and she knew he was at least relieved Aeneas wasn’t in her bed.

  ‘I’ll have him chained when I go back.’ She grew serious again. ‘We can’t be in the same room. When the war is won, I might go home to Invercauld.’

  Hope flared in MacGillivray as if she’d breathed on dying embers.

  ‘If you leave, come to Dunmaglas.’

  She couldn’t promise that. Last night had proved the passion between her and Aeneas was still powerful, strong enough to break them both. They’d be tied together until there was no anger left.

  ‘It’s not over,’ she said. ‘I can’t come to you unless it’s finished. Not again.’

  Watching the hope die in him, she would have ripped this thing out of her if she could, if she knew what it was and how to end it. She had a joyous, untarnished love for MacGillivray with none of the unfathomable currents that eddied around Aeneas. He did not deserve the grief she gave him.

  ‘He said you’d never be mine while he lived.’

  ‘I don’t mean to do this to you.’ She put her hand on his chest. ‘Find someone else to love.’

  He covered her hand with his, threading his fingers between each of her own. ‘I don’t even wish that was a choice. My heart has a mind of its own, as yours has. All we can do is follow, until it beats a different tune.’

  She reached up and kissed him.

  ‘I’m so glad of you, Alexander. Never mistake that. You’re right, and we should leave the future where it is. But be certain my world is brighter with you in it.’

  ‘Better watch my back then,’ he smiled.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ she promised. ‘We’re not done with this adventure yet.’

  They discussed tactics. The Prince had asked the McIntosh regiment to hold Inverness. The other regiments were stationed at Ruthven or further afield in order to supply themselves. Several were already holding other parts of the country. They’d be called back when Cumberland moved out from Aberdeen. Weather permitting, it might all be over in a few weeks.

  ‘We will be up to strength?’ Anne frowned, none too happy about the geographical spread of their army if conditions prevented a rapid return. Cluny’s Macphersons were still at Atholl. Kept in Inverness, her depleted Clan Chattan forces would be the front line.

  ‘The regiments in Perth and the north will need time but we can avoid Cumberland till then. George is no fool. He’ll choose the right time and place.’

  Reassured that everything was in good order, she took her leave.

  ‘I’ll be back when I’m needed,’ she assured him.

  ‘When the time comes, I’ll send word.’

  Now that her relationship with MacGillivray was settled, the confidence and excitement in the liberated town was infectious. As she walked along the streets towards the Dowager’s house, people waved and called or stopped to talk to her. She was still their heroine, the anticipation of victory heightened by how easily she’d routed the hated government troops from Moy, causing them to flee Inverness. It had been her intention to ask the Prince to remove Aeneas from her custody, but here, away from the oppressiveness of the house, that became inconsequential. She wasn’t disappointed to find their royal leader was out inspecting troops with O’sullivan. Even Elizabeth’s huff that she’d been dispatched on an errand like a child couldn’t dampen her mood.

  ‘And how is Aeneas?’ the Dowager asked, giving her a delighted hug.

  ‘Well, and out of harm’s way,’ Anne answered.

  ‘Good,’ the Dowager said. ‘My house is full of argument between the Prince and George, and I wouldn’t wish a disagreeable home on anyone. It’s good to have a day when they’re both out. Now come through and eat with us.’

  A dinner party had been hastily arranged in Anne’s honour, the dining room full of old and new friends. The provost and dignitaries of Inverness showered her with plaudits and invitations, that she sit on the town council, join this guild and that. The French officers of the Écossais Royaux flirted, declaring her magnifique and notre guerrière héroïque. Margaret Johnstone and David Ogilvie were there with Greta Fergusson and Sir John, and Robert Nairn, her companion from the Edinburgh parole sessions.

  ‘You were so right, Anne,’ Robert said happily as he greeted her. ‘Better here in the wild and generous Highlands than down among those dour, hidebound Sasannaich.’

  ‘So who’s the lucky man, Robert?’ Anne laughed, glancing round the room, trying to guess which of those present had his favour.

  ‘I am,’ he assured her. ‘The place is crawling with muscular warriors, and a wee politician or two doesn’t go amiss for afters.’

  ‘Don’t you ever fall in love?’

  ‘Every five minutes.’ His face became serious then. ‘I am in love, don’t you know that? But, for the moment, he prefers a touch of the blarney.’

  Anne was mystified. Then she remembered the Prince, drunk and petulant at Stirling, giving ear only to O’sullivan, enduring no other companion, allowing no other advice.

  Robert grinned at her again. ‘If you can’t have whoever you love, love whoever you can. Isn’t that what we both do?’

  Returning home in the dusk, a light slushy snow falling, full of wine and fond wishes from good friends, with Elizabeth cuddled in beside her for warmth, Anne thought about that. Did she love Aeneas? If love could be measured by the degree of anger it could generate when thwarted, then she did. What bound them seemed hard as iron, inescapable, welded with fury. Shouldn’t love be kind, tender and joyful, as it was with MacGillivray, without challenge or confrontation? Aeneas didn’t accept or forgive, he demanded the absolute of their union. Her mind, body and soul committed to him. He could go hang. Twice, he’d held MacGillivray’s life in the palm of his hand, on the battlefield at Prestonpans, believing they were lovers, and when he was captured, knowing they were, and had given his life back to him. Yet he gave her nothing.

  The carriage rattled over another rut. Elizabeth bumped sleepily against her. Anne looked down at her sister’s pretty young face. She loved her and she didn’t doubt Elizabeth returned that love. But it wasn’t the same as that shared by Aeneas and MacGillivray. Loyalty was a fair-weather companion between women, trustworthy only until it conflicted with other desires. The close bond between men was enviably more noble and selfless. They made no demands, didn’t judge and never turned away from each other. Even Robert Nairn, who loved and wanted the Prince, could serve without rancour, love without expectation.

  Perhaps with a child, she might love so unconditionally, but not with a man. Aeneas had it quite the wrong way round. It didn’t matter if she loved him. It mattered that he should love her.

  THIRTY

  ‘Can’t we at least torture him?’

  ‘Isd! Shh!’ Behind the scrub, Anne ducked her head lower and steadied her aim.

  ‘It would be more fun than this.’ Elizabeth lowered her voice to almost soundless.

  Anne’s musket cracked off the shot. Elizabeth’s followed.

  ‘Siuthad! Go!’ Anne ordered the dog beside her. The black-and-tan setter streaked off into the darkening waters of the loch to retrieve the kill. ‘We got both,’ she told her sister. ‘You’re a good shot.’

  ‘Well, guess who taught me.’ Elizabeth extricated herself from the scrub.

  ‘I thought you’d forgotten. Why don’t you hunt more often?’

  ‘Because –’ her sister picked leaves and twigs from her clothes and hair ‘– I don’t like doing boy things. I like doing girl things.’

&nb
sp; Anne laughed, and took the first goose from the setter’s mouth. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Girl things like torturing prisoners?’ She held out the heavy bird by its limp, slippery neck.

  Elizabeth screwed up her face in disgust as she took it. ‘Girl things like not getting blood, dribble, mud and sodden feathers all over me. Why didn’t we bring Will or Lachlan to do this?’

  ‘They’re busy.’ Anne took the second bird from the dog, and the trio set off back towards the house.

  ‘Torture would at least be a change,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He’s been down there more than a week. It must be freezing.’

  ‘Has he apologized yet?’

  ‘To what, the wall?’

  ‘He could tell Jessie,’ Anne insisted. ‘Three times a day she takes him food. I’m sure they talk.’

  ‘We’re not plucking these, are we?’ Elizabeth got no response. ‘Oh, come on, Anne.’ Still nothing. ‘All right, Jessie’s busy, but there are plenty other folk on the estate.’

  ‘It’s their party. The whole point is they don’t do the work.’

  ‘There must be somebody who’s not going off to fight,’ Elizabeth persisted, ‘somebody who’s not invited?’

  ‘There is,’ Anne said. ‘He’s in the cellar.’

  ‘I think I’ll join him.’

  They walked on, the dog panting along beside, its tongue lolling from its mouth, every now and then stopping to shake water from its coat, spattering them.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Elizabeth halted. ‘I’m not gutting this.’ Anne didn’t stop. ‘I’m not,’ Elizabeth insisted. ‘Anne!’

  Fifteen minutes later she grimaced at the soft, squelching sound as she pulled the warm innards out of the carcass before carefully separating the gizzard, heart and liver to be cooked later. The rest of the slimy, bloody mass of intestine was taken out to the dog, which waited patiently outside the kitchen door. This was its reward, a change from its usual diet of porridge, and gobbled up quickly before it took itself back to the stable where it lived and slept.

  ‘Your mother would be proud of you,’ Anne said, washing out the inside of her own gutted bird before stringing its legs to hang on the pantry hook.

  ‘I should write and tell her how much fun I’m having,’ Elizabeth said, pulling a face. ‘I thought we were plucking too?’

  ‘Tomorrow. They could do with hanging longer, but needs must.’

  ‘Something to look forward to,’ Elizabeth groaned. ‘Sore hands, aching fingers, feathers up my nose and down my back.’

  ‘More good stuffing for pillows,’ Anne said. ‘If you want to be a wife, you must think like one. Waste not, want not.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ Elizabeth retorted. ‘Can’t have good stuffing go to waste, not to mention a deal of wanting, or a spare husband.’

  Anne sighed. There just was no stopping this sister of hers. ‘I can’t make him give himself to me.’

  ‘I know. It’s not fair. We get the appetite, men get the means of satisfying it. Are the gods perverse, or what?’

  ‘Mischievous,’ Anne said. ‘A woman loved wants loved again. Men want sleep. If we could just take our pleasure, they’d die of exhaustion in a week.’

  ‘Gu sealladh orm!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘You know one who’d last a week?’

  They both laughed. Anne poured two tankards of ale. ‘Anyway,’ she said, more seriously, ‘Aeneas has the desire, if he’d submit to it. He’s just being spiteful. So he’ll stay in the cellar until his humour improves.’

  ‘A little bit of torture might help it along,’ Elizabeth suggested again.

  The party was two days later, two days of cooking, baking, rendering, steaming. Sheep turned on the spit, the geese were plucked, stuffed with sweet chestnuts and oatmeal then cooked, the larder and kitchen gardens raided, a plentiful supply of ale and pipers laid on. It was a send-off to those who’d billeted with them and would return to their own units the following day, and for their own warriors who’d been needed at home but would now rejoin MacGillivray.

  Everybody who could walk, and some who had to be carried, came. Moy Hall throbbed with life. Braziers stood round the yard, filled with glowing peats. Singing, dancing, drinking, eating and telling tall tales was the order of the day. Anne and Elizabeth donned aprons and served. Jessie was supposed to have the time off as a guest, but she refused, armed herself with a tray and helped. Will, despite Jessie’s constant cold-shouldering of him, carved the mutton. He was a quiet lad who said little and Anne ached for him in his youthful devotion.

  ‘Just give her time,’ she told him when she caught him gawping at the girl again. ‘When the baby’s nearer, she’ll want someone to lean on.’

  ‘A man is what she’ll want,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Not me.’

  Old Meg had her new man with her. The Sasannach shoemaker, Duff, had settled into Highland life fine, as good a hand at the dancing now as any.

  ‘Didnae ken what ma feet were for afore,’ he told Anne as she filled his tankard for him. Or other parts, Anne thought, smiling to herself at the spring he’d put in Meg’s step. Somewhere between sixty and seventy years old, Meg had lost her husband and two sons in the last rising thirty years ago. Ewan had taken the place of those sons. She had a lot to pay back, had Meg. It was a joy to see her find warmer feelings in her heart too.

  Anne refilled her own tankard of ale and went to speak with MacBean and his wife. Their cottage was up on Drumossie, near Culloden House, and she wanted to know if they still had need of the extra grazing rights.

  ‘Not during winter,’ the old man said. ‘We sold some beasts into army supplies.’

  ‘I sold them,’ the old woman corrected. ‘They were too much for me while he’s gadding about pretending to be a young blood again.’

  ‘The blood is always young,’ MacBean said, winking at Anne. ‘It’s muscle that wastes if it’s not put to good use.’

  His wife elbowed him in the ribs. ‘I saw that wink,’ she said, then she caught Anne’s arm. ‘He’s more talk than action these days. Don’t let him be fooling you.’ Then she turned on MacBean again. ‘If you’ve spirit for fighting and winking, you’ll have spirit for dancing,’ she said.

  The two of them spun off to kick up their heels among the other dancers. The drums beat, the pipes skirled, feet stamped. Smoke from the braziers drifted through the whirling bodies. A boy with one arm birled about, hooching loudly as he turned the reel. It was Howling Robbie. Anne cut in to speak with him.

  ‘Robbie,’ she cried, delighted to see him so well. ‘You’re a fine dancer still.’

  ‘Not so good with the Highland fling,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but I can do most things without falling over. It’s a laugh when I forget and put up the wrong arm to catch something, or to open a door and end up walking into it because there’s nothing there to push with.’

  ‘Has Shameless been back?’

  ‘Can’t come back, can he?’ A sadness clouded Robbie’s otherwise cheerful face. ‘Gave me his parole, and he’s away with Lord Louden and them English folks.’

  Anne swung him around and then gave him a hug. ‘Never mind,’ she reassured him. ‘It’ll maybe be over before long and then he’ll come home.’

  ‘I’ll show him I can write my name again,’ the boy grinned. ‘With my wrong hand.’

  Anne swung him on to partner Cath and went back to serving. Donald Fraser and Lachlan came to find her.

  ‘My boy wants to come with me this time,’ Fraser said.

  ‘I owe you, for getting me off the field,’ Lachlan added.

  ‘It was your father that saved you at Prestonpans,’ Anne reminded him. ‘And he did it as a father, not as a warrior. You know I don’t want two from one family, and I won’t risk both my smiths.’

  ‘My back is healed fine well,’ Lachlan said, stubbornly. ‘And my mother says I’m to go.’

  Anne considered. It was Màiri’s right to say if her men fought or didn’t.

  ‘Then you’ll stay here till the pipes and drums call
us, and you’ll come back after the first battle. If there’s more fighting needed then, it’ll be one or other of you. Right?’

  ‘Right.’ The boy shook her hand as if he thanked her for treasure. ‘And I’ll look out for my dad this time.’

  ‘I won’t forget this.’ Fraser shook her hand too. ‘It’ll be fine to line up with him instead of against him.’

  The party lasted all the afternoon and into the evening, when the celebratory mood changed to one of leave-taking, and the singing started. Old MacBean’s wife, with the finest clear voice despite her age, led the songs. They ended with a rousing chorus of the rebel anthem, ‘The Auld Stuarts back Again’, before rag torches were lit at the dying braziers and they all began to find their various ways home.

  Anne chased Jessie off to her bed with strict instruction to leave all clearing up till morning, asked Will to do the first spell of house guard and went in to relax by the fireside. She was slightly tipsy from the ale she’d been drinking all day, but the bottle of wine opened by the fire was a welcome sight. Elizabeth being thoughtful, goblets ready and waiting. Of her sister, there was no sign. Anne poured her own goblet full, stuck the poker in the fire and, when it glowed hot, drew it out and thrust it into the ruby wine till it sizzled. Then she sat, with her feet up on the footstool, to sip it. It had been a good day, a great party, a fine send-off.

  Elizabeth appeared from the hallway, papers in hand, when Anne was half-way through her second drink.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, startled. ‘I thought you’d still be seeing them off.’

  ‘All gone,’ Anne said. ‘Wine?’

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Elizabeth put the papers she held on the table and came over to sit by the fire.

  ‘What’s the paper?’ Anne asked. ‘Where were you anyway?’ Then she realized the direction her sister had come from. ‘Were you in the cellar? Elizabeth –’ she tried to be serious, though her tongue proved tricky in getting it round the words without slurring them ‘– have you been torturing my husband?’

  ‘I tried.’ Elizabeth made an apologetic face. ‘But he wasn’t having any.’