‘Did you send for Anne?’ Donald Fraser, on MacGillivray’s left, asked.
‘I did,’ MacGillivray answered, face grim. ‘Maybe Aeneas keeps her back.’
‘If she’s trying to unchain him, he will,’ Fraser laughed. ‘For I doubt he’ll be out of that cellar till me or Lachlan get back.’
‘You have him chained?’
‘Last thing I did before coming up here,’ Fraser said. ‘He’s so far the wrong side of Anne now, I doubt there’s any right side to be found any more.’
MacGillivray was puzzled. However Anne treated her husband was for her to decide. He couldn’t guess what Aeneas might have done to merit chains. A smile flitted across his face. Disagreeing with Anne was probably enough. But it was strange, all the same. Not quite the situation described by Elizabeth. For the first time he wondered about the note he’d sent. Anne would not have ignored it. Yet it had been delivered; Elizabeth knew where to come.
‘I think her sister has my note,’ he told Fraser. ‘I doubt Anne ever saw it.’ She wouldn’t abandon them or let him down.
He squinted against the sleet, across the field. Lord George and his Atholl men were lined up on the right, leaving the Prince with O’sullivan to command from the rear. George had let loyalty to their cause win the day, against his judgement. They were going to fight. It was as well Anne didn’t come. This would be a hard-won victory, if they could do it. Better she found out afterwards. It would be a bloody field to watch.
Despite the weather, there were watchers. Crowds of folk from Inverness stood a good way off. A bunch of older boys who should have been in school settled on a ridge. The warriors’ womenfolk and children were well behind the lines, out of harm’s way on this flat ground, apart from a group of commanders’ wives led by Margaret and Greta, who stayed near the Prince. Will McIntosh pushed up between MacGillivray and Fraser.
‘Can I stand with Donald?’ the stable-boy asked, looking strangely at odds with the weapons belted at his side.
‘No, you can’t,’ MacGillivray said. ‘You have to earn your place at the front.’ MacBean was on his right. Age and experience went first into battle, to inspire the young behind to bravery and courage. ‘Get on back,’ he told Will, ‘behind Lachlan, where you were put.’ As the boy dodged off, MacGillivray walked along Clan Chattan’s lines, from the McIntoshes to the Farquharsons. Commander-in-chief of Clan Chattan, he had charge of both, and would have a word with their captains, Anne’s brother and cousin, before the enemy arrived. While he was talking with James and Francis, they heard the drums. Peering forward into the sleet and rain, MacGillivray saw the first flash of red coats in the distance.
In her room, Anne laid out her riding habit, the blue velvet trimmed with tartan that she’d worn to raise the clan the first time she’d ridden away from Aeneas. She would change when everything was loaded up. It seemed right to wear it the last time she’d ride away from him. She pinned a fresh white cockade to her blue bonnet, ready to pull on. There would be no coming back, not again. Behind her, their marriage bed was made up with clean linen sheets and fresh covers. Not even the scent of her would linger. Aeneas would have it to himself as soon as she was gone. He could move his own clothes back from the boxroom. Jessie had Donald’s tools. They could work it out between them or wait till the blacksmith returned.
The old crofter and the boy had arrived to load the cart. The last things were taken down from her bedroom. Everything to be loaded was downstairs. Anne checked the room, opening cupboards and drawers, wanting to leave no trace behind. In the bottom of the wardrobe, only the box with Aeneas’s private documents remained. She had forgotten their marriage lines, as much hers as his. She lifted the box on to the dressing table and opened it. The papers on top were new. Curious, she opened them and read.
Aeneas stood up, chains rattling, when the cellar door opened at the top of the steps. Feet came down, Anne’s feet, white skirts skimming the stairs. Now he could tell her, ask forgiveness, make his peace.
‘Anne,’ he said, as soon as he could see her face, ‘thank God. Jessie said you were leaving. I thought you might go without letting me speak.’
‘I haven’t come to let you speak,’ she snapped. She was furious. ‘I’ve come to tell you what I think of you.’ In her hand she had papers, the debt waiver with the deeds of Moy Hall and their clan grounds. She shook with rage as she held it out. ‘You sold us out! You sold our cause, sold out your clan, and you sold out our marriage, for this! For stone walls and a bit of ground! Now I know why you went to the Watch, why you stood against us for this government!’
‘I didn’t ask for that, or expect it.’
‘It has your name on it! It makes you owner of Moy, which you never were and cannot be. It is the clan’s land!’
‘Woman, will you ever let me speak!’ The anger he thought would not be roused by her again rushed through him. ‘It has my name on it because that’s how they work. You know that! Ownership is what you fight against.’
‘Because they create it to control us!’
‘I know. Forbes held the loss of Moy over my head. But he drew that up, after Prestonpans, when he thought we were defeated. He gave it to let me go!’
‘What, he gives a gift of what is not his to give nor yours to take!’ She was scathing. ‘And, having got it, did you go home to your clan, to your wife? I think not!’
Aeneas glowered at her.
‘My wife was in the arms of another man.’
‘Not then. Not till I thought you hanged Ewan. Not till after Falkirk.’ She moved closer to him. ‘But I’m going to him now. You can stick this in your sporran.’ She threw the papers at his feet. ‘See if it can keep your sex roused from now on!’
There was a crack of thunder, a loud boom. Both Aeneas and Anne looked up at the small window high above them. The boom became a volley of cannon fire, distant but unmistakable. Elizabeth appeared at the top of the stairs.
‘Anne, do you hear?’ she shouted, coming down a few steps till she could see her sister, her face fearful.
‘That’s up on the moor.’ Aeneas turned back to Anne.
‘It can’t be.’ She looked from him to Elizabeth. ‘MacGillivray would’ve sent for me.’
Elizabeth was in tears, slumping down on to the stair.
‘He did, yesterday morning,’ she cried. ‘I didn’t mean any harm. He said you wouldn’t want them to fight there.’
Anne ran up to her. The noise of the big guns, almost seven miles away, was like rolling thunder.
‘You let him think I wouldn’t come?’
‘Anne, get me out of here.’ Aeneas pulled against his chains. ‘I’ll come with you!’
‘It’s too late for that!’ she screamed at him. She dragged Elizabeth to her feet, up the last few stairs and out of the cellar. The door slammed shut and locked.
THIRTY-FOUR
Thick smoke surrounded MacGillivray, standing at the front of his men, while round-shot from government cannon whistled overhead and grenades from the Coehorn mortars exploded among the Jacobite lines. Further back the ranks, horses squealed, men cried out as the missiles tore into their targets.
‘Close up, close up,’ he heard the captains in the rear yell to their troops to fill the gaps left by the onslaught. Ten minutes of this they had stood, waiting the command to charge. Lord George had left his post, gone back to seek the order to attack from the Prince. Grim-faced, MacGillivray waited, flinching as a low ball tore into his own line, not turning to see who had been taken down, just hearing the thud, the sickening thump of bursting flesh and cracking bone. Whoever it was, dead already, did not cry out.
‘Close up, close up,’ Donald Fraser yelled behind him.
Anne galloped Pibroch past the end of Loch Moy and on to the hills, urging the horse faster than she dared. Even at the gallop, Drumossie was twenty minutes away. However well she navigated the slopes and streams, there was hill and bog to cross, the Nairn to ford. All would slow her down. The booming cannon grew lou
der with every stride, the thump and crack of mortars. Would she hear the war cries over the barrage, the answering musket-fire? If MacGillivray was already away, cutting into the enemy, she couldn’t stop them, could only hope to make her presence known, to let them see she hadn’t abandoned them to fight while she sat safe at home. ‘Don’t go,’ she prayed, ‘not yet.’ Again, she urged the white horse on to greater effort.
‘We have to take down the wall on our right,’ Lord George shouted at O’sullivan. ‘We’re being outflanked behind it!’
O’sullivan kept his eyes front, ignored him. Lord George swung round to the Prince.
‘Pour la pitié, will you order the charge,’ he urged, ‘or will we just die out there?’
The Prince turned on his horse, looked at him, indecision in his eyes.
‘The enemy should advance first,’ he said.
‘And if they don’t?’ Lord George was chilled by the look of the man. The Prince had no idea how to command, despite assuming it. ‘Highlanders charge,’ he prompted again, stating the obvious. ‘That’s their strength.’
The government cannon boomed. A ball thudded into Lord Elcho’s horse regiment, dangerously close to the Prince. O’sullivan leant over to speak in his ear.
‘Let the guns do their work,’ he said. ‘Then they’ll advance.’
‘Ours are near silent,’ Lord George raged. ‘The only work is done by theirs!’
‘We can wait,’ the Prince assured him. ‘Noblesse oblige.’ But he looked to O’sullivan for agreement. The adjutant nodded and indicated the command party should retire further back, behind their French reserves, out of range. Already there was slaughter, limbs, bodies, the smell of blood and death, in the rear ranks.
Lord George gave up, swung his horse round and headed forward again.
Up front, MacGillivray clenched his jaw tighter. Twenty minutes now they had stood and still no order came. The government artillery thundered on. Shot whistled past, cutting swathes into their ranks. Men screamed from the back of his own lines.
‘Close up, close up,’ Fraser yelled again behind him. The order was echoed from further back as the living moved forward to fill the places of the dead.
‘No more,’ MacGillivray muttered. They had taken all they would take. He scrugged his bonnet, raised his hands behind his head and drew the great-sword from its scabbard on his back.
‘Claymore!’ he roared.
Relief swept along the McIntosh and Clan Chattan lines. Embattled men pulled their bonnets down, drew their pistols. MacGillivray thrust his claymore forward.
‘Loch Moy!’ he bellowed, the war cry taken up by the men behind, and then they charged, racing down the field towards a tightly formed red-coated enemy.
Hearing them come, the government guns changed to grape-shot, loading the cannon with bags of nail, shards of metal, the angle lowered to cover the field in front. Seeing MacGillivray go, Lochiel drew his own sword and roared his Cameron men on to battle. Lord George, arriving back at his Atholl brigade, saw the decision had been taken from the Prince’s hands by the McIntosh regiment and gave the command to charge.
Half-way down the field, the first grape-shot cut into MacGillivray’s men as they stopped to fire off their pistols. Bodies fell but the shot went off, pistols were dropped, and the great searing slash of steel sounded as broadswords, axes and dirks were drawn. The front line of government foot fired into them and dropped to their knees to load. The second line took aim.
‘Loch Moy!’ MacGillivray roared again, and charged on.
Skirting the lower braes, head down over Pibroch’s neck, Anne had heard the change in the sound of the cannonshot. Not knowing the cause, she hoped it meant some of the bigger guns had been silenced. Now, she heard musket fire, rapid, repeating volleys from massed guns. She was too late. The charge had begun. Her men would be racing into that, McIntosh and Clan Chattan men she had raised for the cause, Farquharson and Atholl men she’d known all her life, men she cared for, men she loved, all three of her families, her mother’s, father’s, and her married family, charging side by side. She prayed to all the forces known to humankind to keep them safe together and strong. More than half-way to the river Nairn, she drove her horse on, leaning low to urge it with her voice, faster, as its hooves drummed over the grassland.
∗
MacGillivray thudded across the moor, setting the pace, grape-shot whistling past his head. Ahead, he saw bog in front of him. If his charging warriors ran into that they’d come to a stop. He veered right to skirt it, losing momentum as the whole line following did likewise. Exposed to crossfire of their flank, several men behind the dozen leaders fell, making a gap in the charging ranks.
Behind them, racing Camerons and Atholl men saw their route to the enemy narrowed by the drift of McIntoshes into their path, forcing them tighter against the walls on their right. Behind those walls, General Hawley commanded his troops to throw down the stones and fire at the Atholl flank. At the Jacobite front line, Francis of Monaltrie drew his claymore and roared the Farquharsons into the attack, Anne’s paternal clan following her husband’s towards the massed government ranks. Behind him, her brother, James, waited to lead the second line. On the left, Lord Drummond urged the MacDonalds to join the charge, but they would not go, angry to have been usurped from their place on the right of the field by Lord George coming forward. They stood, stoic and stern, weapons sheathed and shouldered, as a hail of grape-shot tore into them, a third of their force already dead around their feet.
Plunging into the enemy, MacGillivray swung his claymore, down and across, beheading the nearest foot soldier in one swipe. Around him, his men crashed through the front government lines, slashing, hacking, trying to force the break that would weaken the wall of enemy guns. He swung again, splitting a redcoat’s head open down to the neck. As the man dropped, MacGillivray glanced around. Only a dozen of his men had got through with him. The government lines closed at their backs, still firing at the oncoming warriors. Beside him, MacBean and Donald Fraser parried bayonets with their targes, cut and hacked with their swords. Behind him, the shoemaker, Duff, speared his sword through a redcoat’s throat but took a bayonet in his gut from the next man down and dropped to the ground.
Will, who had run fast to be as near Fraser as he could, dropped the targe he had little idea how to use and swung wildly, cutting one man to the ground, slashing another across the face. An officer pulled a sword, raked it across Will’s arm, then his throat. As the boy fell, MacGillivray brought his claymore down, bringing off the officer’s sword and hand both. Fending back the foot soldiers, he dragged Will nearer to him and stood over the boy as his remaining men drew tighter to their chief. Fraser, seeing the protective move, turned to cover MacGillivray’s back. A bayonet stabbed into the blacksmith’s ribs. As he staggered on the point of it, a sword glanced off his face and he went down. The heavy weight of another Highlander collapsed on top of him.
MacGillivray dropped his claymore, drew his broadsword and targe, dirk behind the shield. He thrust his sword into the throat of the nearest soldier and swung his dirk back to cut another on his left. On his right, a bayonet stabbed forward. He felt it go into his side, shuddered as it was withdrawn. With one stroke, MacBean cut the arm from the man who wounded his chief. A raised musket took aim, fired. The ball tore into MacBean’s chest. He fell, twitching, blood pumping out of his back. MacGillivray was on his knees, in a red mess of blood, his side weeping fluid, breath coming in great gasps. An English lieutenant stepped up behind him, raised and thrust his sword down between the wounded chief’s shoulders. It was James Ray. As MacGillivray pitched forward, Ray put his foot on the Highlander’s broad back and withdrew his blade.
Half a mile away, at the Jacobite rear, O’sullivan reached over to the Prince’s horse, took hold of the reins and turned them both away from the decimated field. Lord Elcho cantered up, his horse’s rump and legs spattered red. Like Lord George, he, too, had begged for the order to charge, his cavalry b
rutally torn to shreds by the cannon as they waited, unused.
‘Will you order retreat?’ he shouted at the Prince.
His royal commander looked at him, tears running down his cheeks. ‘Let every man save himself who can,’ the Prince cried out. ‘We are defeated. Nous sommes défaits.’
‘You snivelling, pampered coward,’ Elcho snarled. ‘Run away. Go back across the water. It was a better day for Scotland had you never come!’ He yanked his horse round, seeking a drummer boy still alive and able to beat retreat. As the Irish Brigade and the Écossais Royaux moved forward to provide cover for it, the command party set off, O’sullivan escorting the Prince, at a fast gallop, away from the battlefield.
Anne urged Pibroch into the water of Nairn. The horse shied. She kicked it on, the water shallow over the pebbled bottom. Two steps, the horse tried to turn. She dragged the reins tight, wouldn’t let its head come round. They were close enough now to hear the screams of men and beasts, the roar of cannon, the repeated rounds of musket-fire.
‘Come on, Pibroch,’ she urged, kicking her heels into its sides. ‘Siuthad, a-nìs!’ The horse went forward four more steps, threw its head back, whinnied, stopped.
The squall of sleety rain had passed, the cloud gone as if it had never been. Face flat on the wet ground, MacGillivray stared ahead at the surrounding soldiers’ feet as they moved past, re-forming their ranks, ignoring the group of dying men in their midst. He could feel nothing except a cold, chilling calm. His breath staggered, came again. Blood from his chest leaked into a small moorland stream running past his shoulder. Beside him, Will’s cut throat still seeped. Ahead of him, MacBean struggled on the ground, inched towards MacGillivray, trying to reach his chief, to cover him with his body. He reached out, fingers almost making it, his hand dropping into the spring, blood running the length of his arm. MacGillivray, staring through stained, dank grass, watched the narrow flow of brackish water run red.
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