‘Captain, is it?’ the sergeant said, noting Aeneas’s uniform. ‘Then you’ll have a name, and orders to be out at this time.’
His men sniggered, clearly thinking the clandestine meeting on this quiet road was exactly as it appeared, an adulterous tryst.
‘Couldn’t you spare the lady’s blushes, Sergeant,’ Aeneas answered, letting go of Anne, ‘and just go on your way?’
There was more tittering from the three privates. The sergeant grinned, as if he shared the joke. He shifted the musket a fraction. There was no thumb on his right hand.
‘We’ll take care of the lady,’ he snorted as crude laughter spluttered behind him. ‘You worry about yourself.’
Anne fired through the tartan cloth. The shot made a round hole in the sergeant’s forehead. Aeneas drew his pistol, aimed and fired in one smooth move, dropping the private behind. As he leapt to the ground, drawing his sword, Anne pulled her other pistol out, aimed and fired at the third redcoat. Aeneas swung his sword across the throat of the fourth. Their bodies crumpled to the road.
There was a scuffle from behind the seat. Robert’s head appeared, peering over. He gaped at the four bodies lying twisted as they’d landed, on either side of the carriage horse, then he let out a low whistle.
‘I’m glad we’re all on the same side.’
‘I’ve met these men before.’ Aeneas sheathed his sword and dragged the thumbless sergeant’s body away from the horse. ‘This one, for certain. They were overdue for death.’
‘We should move fast,’ Anne said, ‘in case the shots were heard.’
‘Can you ride?’ Aeneas asked Robert.
He nodded, getting himself out of the carriage.
‘Take my horse.’ Aeneas held out the reins. ‘Go on through Nairn to Elgin. The farrier there will give you money for him and put you on a fishing boat at Lossiemouth.’
‘You two will be all right?’
‘If we get away without being seen,’ Aeneas said. ‘But you’ll have a reputation as a warrior when your escape’s discovered and this lot are found.’
Robert rode the horse round to Anne, leant over and kissed her.
‘If you’re ever done with him,’ he winked, ‘send him my way.’
‘Go safely, Robert,’ she urged as Aeneas got back into the seat beside her. ‘Good speed.’ For some inexplicable reason her eyes filled with tears.
The young paymaster swung the horse round, kicked it away and rode off, fast, into the night. Aeneas lifted the reins, snapping them as he gave a curt command to the horse, and they were off. Tears blinded Anne, no matter how she dashed them away. A lump swelled in her throat. She buried her face in the arasaid’s warm woollen cloth and sobbed, broken-hearted, as the carriage picked up speed, taking them through the night, back to Moy, and home safe.
She was still weeping, great, deep, agonizing sobs that shook her whole body, when they pulled up in the yard. Aeneas shouted to Shameless to see to the horse, then he lifted her out of the seat, carried her into the house and up the stairs. In her room, he laid her on the bed, and she turned her face into the pillow, body heaving. Jessie was not long behind them, bringing ale and wine.
‘I’ll brew tea as well,’ she said. Glancing at the bed, she saw the hole burnt through the arasaid. ‘Is Anne hurt, is she shot?’
‘No.’ Aeneas shook his head. ‘Hurting, not hurt. Don’t fret for the tea.’
‘She has a lot to grieve for,’ Jessie said. ‘Crying will help.’ She left them to it.
All that night, Aeneas lay beside Anne, holding her, stroking her hair, murmuring words of love and comfort. Gradually, her crying slowed and ceased. Worn out, she fell asleep, still in his arms. He lay a long time, his cheek resting on her head, taking in the sleeping scent of her, his woman. Even when she’d thought her rescue was threatened by him, she didn’t shoot, couldn’t. She asked for his help instead. He hadn’t lost her. It was she who got the first shot off, to save his life, and left herself exposed, relying on his support. Relying on him? No, he hadn’t lost her, he had thrown her away. For hours, he lay, tormented by his own guilt. Eventually, he fell asleep. When he woke, she was gone.
FORTY-THREE
Anne walked Pibroch across the battlefield. In the morning sun, it was quiet, so quiet, and peaceful. Coarse moorland grass sprouted green hummocks among the clumps of purple heather. Even the long graves had almost blended in, nature taking life back to its heartland. She walked along them, slowly, knowing he was there and there was no telling where. But it was the last moment of life and not dead bones she looked for. She wasn’t certain she could find the right spot till she saw the stone.
Well of the Dead, it read. Here the Chief of the MacGillivrays fell.
On her knees in front of it, she drew her dirk, pushed the blade into the ground and opened up the soil. Reaching into her dress, she took out his note and looked again at the written hand. He was present in it, such a personal stamp, part of him, his own writing of his name. For a long time, she sat, just holding it in her hands. Then she pressed it to her lips, folded it and pushed the paper into the slot in the earth.
‘So you know I came,’ she whispered.
With the handle of her dirk, she pushed the edges of soil together, closing the wounded earth back over it. She cleaned the blade on the grass, pushed it back in her belt and leant forward, tracing the writing on the stone with her fingertips.
‘Slàn leat, mo luaidh,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, my love.’
She rose, took Pibroch’s reins and turned. Several yards away, Aeneas stood beside his horse, watching her. On the spongy ground, she had not heard feet or hooves approach. She walked over to him, stopped close enough to reach out and touch, looking up into his eyes.
‘It’s a fine stone,’ she said, knowing he had put it there.
‘I loved him too.’
‘I know.’ Last night, he stood beside her, risking his own life for a man he didn’t know, to save her. It was what he’d always done, tried to protect those he cared for. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘I gave you a world of great pain and loss.’
He closed his eyes for a moment, from hurt or relief she couldn’t tell, then he put his hands on her shoulders.
‘No, Anne, ’s mis’ a tha duilich,’ he said. ‘It’s me who is sorry, and ashamed. If we’d been together in this, it would not have ended here, or like this. My place was with you.’
She slid her arms round his waist and drew close to him, resting her head on his chest, hearing his heart beat strongly inside him. The fight had gone out of her. Her spirit was spent. She’d done all she could, but it would never be enough. There was no way back to what was lost, and she couldn’t imagine the future.
‘Has it ended?’
‘No.’ He looked down at her. ‘We’re only defeated if we give up. There will be other ways.’
She wasn’t sure what question he answered, or which she had asked. They were irretrievably bound together because others had made it so. She was his prisoner. Could they truly choose each other when they couldn’t choose otherwise? She put her hand in his and they walked the horses to the edge of the moor.
‘Last night,’ she said, ‘you knew an escape route.’
‘It was for us. If they’d tried to hang you, or take you to the boats, we’d be in France now. Moy would belong to an Englishman.’
He would have given it up, put her before himself, before clan and country. All those long weeks in jail, she hadn’t been alone. He’d watched over her. The food that came, Morag’s care, an escape arranged. He chose her even then, as he had from the first and through everything that parted them, just as he’d vowed; his sword and clan in her defence, for only death would part them now. No, the future couldn’t be imagined, only that she wanted to live it with this man.
‘Let’s go home,’ she said.
∗
After breakfast, James Ray and his wife set off in their packed carriage, heading south out of Inverness. With his tour of duty done, th
ey, too, were going home.
‘Can we stop at Moy Hall on the way?’ Helen asked. ‘It would be nice to say goodbye to your captain and his wife.’
‘No.’ Ray was blunt. ‘The sooner I get you back to civilization the better. I haven’t been at all happy with your behaviour since we came here.’
‘We could have gone by boat,’ she said, looking the other way. Her husband suffered seasickness. He didn’t like reminding of it. ‘Oh, look.’ She pointed. They were passing a group of ruined turf cotts, only one of which remained whole. Smoke drifted through its roof. ‘Aren’t those the turf houses we came past on our way here, where we first met Colonel Anne? I wonder what happened to them.’
‘Be quiet!’ Ray pulled the coach to a stop. He was looking the opposite way, up the gentle slope on the other side of the road. Half-way up, the figure of a woman crouched near a cow, milking it. There was something familiar about her. He got down, drew his sword and started up the slope.
The old woman bent over beside the cow worked its udders rhythmically. Pale, creamy milk scooshed into the wooden pail. Her head was tucked into the beast’s rump, turned to one side. In the corner of her eye, she saw the man creep closer, drawing his pistol as he came.
‘You there!’ he called when he was near enough.
She did not respond, though her eye went down to the wooden shaft lying in the long grass beside her. The man was right behind her.
‘Are you deaf ?’ he shouted.
She jumped, snatched the shaft up, turned and thrust. The pitchfork dug deep into the man’s gut. She jerked it upwards, grinned a maniacal gap-toothed grin.
Ray shuddered on the end of the prongs. His head jolted, his eyes widened. The sword dropped from his hand. His mouth opened. Blood dribbled from it. He tried to bring the pistol round.
‘Danns, a Shasannaich!’ Meg snarled, twisting the fork again and again, up into his rib cage. ‘Dance!’
The pistol fired, uselessly. Blood spurted from Ray’s open mouth. He was still upright, impaled on the pitchfork, but his life was ended.
Hearing the shot, Helen stood up in the carriage, looking up the slope. Her husband was still there, jumping about angrily in front of the woman. She sat back down and waited.
Up on the hill, the old woman let the Englishman’s body drop, stabbed her pitchfork in the soil to clean it, gathered up her pail and hurried off.
A culture was dying. Almost overnight, tartan vanished from the land. Yarn-dyers emptied vats of bright colours. Looms clacked busily with browns and greys. Bonnets, belts and brooches were put aside, bagpipes burnt. Dancing ceased. The old songs died away. Men put on the unmanly Lowland clothes, cursing the inconvenient discomfort as they did. Women turned their arasaidean to blankets, their tongues to learning new words. The Gaelic slunk behind locked doors as English stumbled on to the streets. Weapons were delivered up for destruction. The British army began a systematic search of every house for any arms that were not surrendered, looting and brutalizing again as they went.
At Moy, Aeneas took on the task of clearing weapons himself. There would be no more raids on his people. As August mellowed into September, he and Shameless drove the cart around the farms and cottars, thanking men and women for their co-operation, trying not to notice their shame.
‘Swords into ploughshares,’ Donald said, sorrowfully, as they delivered them to the forge for breaking, ‘as the good book says.’ But none of them believed good could come with dishonour.
Anne began the work of teaching the adults the language of the English. Their children helped them, since the school teachers would now not allow a word of their native tongue to pass their lips in class and the young were quicker learners. It wasn’t joyful work, except that she learnt more Gaelic curses in that first fortnight than she’d heard in her whole life before. The interruption of their royal invitation was almost a relief.
‘You can’t really want to go.’ Aeneas watched Anne pack the last few things into the kist sitting on their bed.
‘I do,’ she said. ‘I want to see these people who tell us how to dress and speak and live. And I want them to see us. Besides –’ she motioned him to sit on the lid of the kist so she could strap it down ‘– we have no choice.’
Aeneas wore his Black Watch kilt. Military was the only use of tartan not proscribed. He would have resigned his commission, but to do so would have meant no plaid or weapon, going naked in a world that was under duress. People were still hauled to prison from the straths and glens, and now there were additional reasons for punishment.
‘I feel like a traitor, wearing this.’
‘One of us should be armed for travel,’ Anne said, pulling the leather strap tight round the kist. ‘It will be safer.’
‘Are you expecting trouble?’
‘Not at all,’ she smiled, planting a light kiss on his lips as she moved around him to the second strap.
‘I’d feel a lot happier if you didn’t smile when you said that. You’ll have to behave down there.’
‘I’ll behave perfectly,’ she assured him, buckling the strap. ‘I have a duke to impress.’ The constraint against her would not be lifted until Cumberland agreed.
‘You’re smiling again.’ He pulled her in front of him, wrapped his arms round her waist.
‘Did I miss that bit?’ she asked. ‘There will be no smiling. Any Scot found smiling north of Stirling will be shot on sight.’
He rolled her over the kist on to the bed and pinned her down.
‘You need something to smile about,’ he grinned, pulling her dress up.
‘Now you’re doing it,’ she giggled, ‘smiling for no reason.’
‘Oh, I have reason enough,’ he said, kissing her throat, ‘and a cure, temporary though it is.’ His fingers stroked her thigh. ‘And when I’m done –’ his lips brushed her mouth ‘– I’ll know why you’re smiling.’
The bedroom door opened. Jessie came in.
‘Could you two save that for the carriage?’ she said, seeing them on the bed.
‘Now there’s an idea,’ Aeneas winked at Anne, straightening her skirts as he got to his feet. ‘Did you interrupt just to suggest it?’
‘No, I did not,’ Jessie objected. ‘But there’s a boat to catch and I thought you’d want to know Nan MacKay was arrested three days ago. They won’t let her eat, sleep or even sit down till she says who helped Robert Nairn escape.’
‘Three days?’ Anne was shocked. She’d assumed that Nan, too poor to provide means of escape herself, would not be suspected. ‘Why did no one let us know?’
‘The Dowager just found out and sent word.’
Aeneas threw the window open and called Shameless up to help with the kist. Anne ran downstairs and grabbed her cloak.
‘Don’t forget,’ Aeneas reminded Jessie as they headed for the door. ‘Speak English while we’re away.’
‘What, to myself ?’ She put her tongue out at their backs but, that being the part she might lose, quickly withdrew it. There had been stories of people’s tongues cut out and nailed to public doorways as warning. ‘Gonadh!’ she swore, then glanced guiltily around the empty hall.
In the carriage, on the way to Inverness, Anne fretted. ‘It was my idea. I can’t let Nan be punished for it.’
‘Your confession won’t stop that.’
‘It would stop the interrogation.’
‘And put you back on the scaffold, with me alongside.’
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll keep you out of it.’
‘You can’t.’ Aeneas drove home his advantage. ‘Even if I’d let you say I took no part, you’re my prisoner. I’m responsible for what you do now.’
Anne was staggered. In their home, the order against her had begun to seem no more than irksome. But out in the world, the incapacity inflicted by Cumberland was exposed. She was rendered helpless, a burden not a companion, an unequal being, powerless to act or to take responsibility for her actions, like a small child or a miscreant dog. If she spoke or acte
d out of turn, Aeneas would suffer and, through him, their suffering people. Even as her spirit began to rise and the desire to fight back returned, it was quashed. The constraint against her struck deep. She was not free. It was crushing.
‘Then what can we do?’
‘They want victims, not justice,’ Aeneas said, taking a hand off the reins to take hold of hers. ‘One of the clan will confess, if need be. It will only be a prison sentence.’
‘And if it’s not?’
‘One step at a time. We can play it by ear. Just, please, don’t say anything unless we’re agreed.’
At the prison, they were allowed into the interrogation room only because Aeneas was an army captain. Five minutes, the guard said. Nan MacKay was in a bad way. The Skye woman’s legs were swollen and puffy from standing for so long. She was black with bruises where they’d struck her to keep her awake.
‘Uisge,’ she begged through cracked lips.
Anne fetched her a little water from the pail. She bit back the warning against speaking Gaelic. There was no point. Like most Highland and Island women, Nan knew no English. She still had her tongue only because they wanted her to speak.
‘We’ll get you out of here,’ she promised as Nan gulped from the tin mug.
‘I’ll not be saying,’ Nan whispered. ‘Whatever they do.’
‘You’re not abandoned,’ Aeneas told her. ‘Don’t think it. We’ll get this stopped.’
Forbes was with the Earl of Louden in his offices. The judge had grown old and disillusioned since the victory. To support the government, he’d bribed chieftains and funded Black Watch companies from his own coffers, yet no reparation had been made. Now his courts were bypassed. Parliament passed repressive legislation against his beloved Highlands. Tribal people pushed off the forfeited estates fled to the cities. Others left of their own accord, unable to bear the changes forced on them. Ships sailed for America every day, crowded with disenfranchised clans.
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