I hadn’t a signet, but Jamie’s bonnet was in one of the bags, bearing a badge with the Fraser clan crest and motto. I dug it out and pressed it into the splodge of warm candle wax with which I had sealed the note. It looked very official.
“For the Scottish milady with the freckles,” I instructed Fergus, and with satisfaction saw him dart out the door and into the melee in the street. I had no idea where Jenny Cameron was at the moment, but the officers were quartered in the manse near the kirk, and that was as good a place to start as any. At least the search would keep Fergus out of mischief.
That errand out of the way, I turned to the cottage wife.
“Now, then,” I said. “What have you got in the way of blankets, napkins, and petticoats?”
* * *
I soon found that I had been correct in my surmise as to the force of Jenny Cameron’s personality. A woman who could raise three hundred men and lead them across the mountains to fight for an Italian-accented fop with a taste for brandywine was bound to have both a low threshold of boredom and a rare talent for bullying people into doing what she wanted.
“Verra sensible,” she said, having heard my plan. “Cousin Archie’s made some arrangements, I expect, but of course he’s wanting to be with the army just now.” Her firm chin stuck out a little farther. “That’s where the fun is, after all,” she said wryly.
“I’m surprised you didn’t insist on going along,” I said.
She laughed, her small, homely face with its undershot jaw making her look like a good-humored bulldog.
“I would if I could, but I can’t,” she admitted frankly. “Now that Hugh’s come, he keeps trying to make me go home. Told him I was”—she glanced around to be sure we weren’t overheard, and lowered her voice conspiratorially—“damned if I’d go home and sit. Not while I can be of use here.”
Standing on the cottage doorstep, she looked thoughtfully up and down the street.
“I didn’t think they’d listen to me,” I said. “Being English.”
“Aye, you’re right,” she said, “but they will to me. I don’t know how many the wounded will be—pray God not many,” and she crossed herself unobtrusively. “But we’d best start with the houses near the manse; it’ll be less trouble to carry water from the well.” With decision, she stepped off the doorstep and headed down the street, me following close behind.
We were aided not only by the persuasion of Miss Cameron’s position and person but by the fact that sitting and waiting is one of the most miserable occupations known to man—not that it usually is known to men; women do it much more often. By the time the sun sank behind Tranent kirk, we had the bare rudiments of a hospital brigade organized.
* * *
The leaves were beginning to fall from larch and alder in the nearby wood, lying loose, flat and yellow on the sandy ground. Here and there a leaf had crisped and curled to brown, and took off scudding in the wind like a small boat over rough seas.
One of these spiraled past me, settling gently as its wind current failed. I caught it on my palm and held it for a moment, admiring the perfection of midribs and veins, a lacy skeleton that would remain past the rotting of the blade. There was a sudden puff of wind, and the cup-curled leaf lifted off my hand, to tumble to the ground and go rolling along, down the empty street.
Shading my eyes against the setting sun, I could see the ridge beyond the town where the Highland army was camped. His Highness’s half of the army had returned an hour before, sweeping the last stragglers from the village as they marched to join Lord George. At this distance, I could only pick out an occasional tiny figure, black against the graying sky, as here and there a man came over the crest of the ridge. A quarter-mile past the end of the street, I could see the first lighting of the English fires, burning pale in the dying light. The thick smell of burning peat from the cottages joined the sharper scent of the English wood fires, overlying the tang of the nearby sea.
Such preparations as could be made were under way. The wives and families of the Highland soldiers had been welcomed with generous hospitality, and were now mostly housed in the cottages along the main street, sharing their hosts’ plain supper of brose and salt herring. My own supper was waiting inside, though I had little appetite.
A small form appeared at my elbow, quiet as the lengthening shadows.
“Will you come and eat, Madame? The goodwife is keeping food for you.”
“Oh? Oh, yes, Fergus. Yes, I’ll come.” I cast a last glance toward the ridge, then turned back to the cottages.
“Are you coming, Fergus?” I asked, seeing him still standing in the street. He was shading his eyes, trying to see the activities on the ridge beyond the town. Firmly ordered by Jamie to stay with me, he was plainly longing to be with the fighting men, preparing for battle on the morrow.
“Uh? Oh, yes, Madame.” He turned with a sigh, resigned for the moment to a life of boring peace.
* * *
The long days of summer were yielding quickly to darkness, and the lamps were lit well before we had finished our preparations. The night outside was restless with constant movement and the glow of fires on the horizon. Fergus, unable to keep still, flitted in and out of the cottages, carrying messages, collecting rumors and bobbing up out of the shadows periodically like a small, dark ghost, eyes gleaming with excitement.
“Madame,” he said, plucking at my sleeve as I ripped linens into strips and threw them into a pile for sterilization. “Madame!”
“What is it this time, Fergus?” I was mildly irritated at the intrusion; I had been in the middle of a lecture to a group of housewives on the importance of washing the hands frequently while treating the wounded.
“A man, Madame. He is wanting to speak with the commander of His Highness’s army. He has important information, he says.”
“Well, I’m not stopping him, am I?” I tugged at a recalcitrant shirt seam, then used my teeth to wrench loose the end, and yanked. It tore cleanly, with a satisfying ripping sound.
I spit out a thread or two. He was still there, waiting patiently.
“All right,” I said, resigned. “What do you—or he—think I can do about it?”
“If you will give me permission, Madame,” he said eagerly, “I could guide him to my master. He could arrange for the man to speak to the commander.”
“He,” of course, could do anything, so far as Fergus was concerned; including, no doubt, walking on water, turning water into wine, and inducing Lord George to talk to mysterious strangers who materialized out of the darkness with important information.
I brushed the hair out of my eyes; I had tied it back under a kertch, but curly strands kept escaping.
“Is this man somewhere nearby?”
That was all the encouragement he needed; he disappeared through the open door, returning momentarily with a thin young man whose eager gaze fastened at once on my face.
“Mrs. Fraser?” He bowed awkwardly at my nod, wiping his hands on his breeches as though he didn’t know quite what to do with them, but wanted to be ready if something suggested itself.
“I—I’m Richard Anderson, of Whitburgh.”
“Oh? Well, good for you,” I said politely. “My servant says you have some valuable information for Lord George Murray.”
He nodded, bobbing his head like a water ouzel. “Ye see, Mrs. Fraser, I’ve lived in these parts all my life. I—I know all of that ground where the armies are, know it like the back o’ my hand. And there’s a way down from the ridge where the Highland troops are camped—a trail that will lead them past the ditch at the bottom.”
“I see.” I felt a hollowing of the stomach at these words. If the Highlanders were to charge out of the rising sun next morning, they would have to leave the high ground of the ridge during the night watches. And if a charge was to be successful, plainly that ditch must be crossed or bypassed.
While I thought I knew what was to come, I had no certainty at all about it. I had been married to an histo
rian—and the usual faint stab came at the thought of Frank—and knew just how unreliable historical sources often were. For that matter, I had no surety that my own presence couldn’t or wouldn’t change anything.
For the space of a moment, I wondered wildly what might happen if I tried to keep Richard Anderson from speaking to Lord George. Would the outcome of tomorrow’s battle be changed? Would the Highland army—including Jamie and his men—be slaughtered as they ran downhill over boggy ground and into a ditch? Would Lord George come up with another plan that would work? Or would Richard Anderson merely go off on his own and find a way of speaking to Lord George himself, regardless of what I did?
It wasn’t a risk I cared to take for experiment’s sake. I looked down at Fergus, fidgeting with impatience to be gone.
“Do you think you can find your master? It’s black as the inside of a coal hole up on that ridge. I wouldn’t like either of you to be shot by mistake, traipsing around up there.”
“I can find him, Madame,” Fergus said confidently. He probably could, I thought. He seemed to have a sort of radar where Jamie was concerned.
“All right, then,” I conceded. “But for God’s sake, be careful.”
“Oui, Madame!” In a flash, he was at the door, vibrating with eagerness to be gone.
It was half an hour after they had left that I noticed the knife I had left on the table was gone as well. And only then did I remember, with a sickening lurch of my stomach, that while I had told Fergus to be careful, I had forgotten altogether to tell him to come back.
* * *
The sound of the first cannon came in the lightening predawn, a dull, booming noise that seemed to echo through the plank boards on which I slept. My buttocks tightened, the involuntary flattening of a tail I didn’t possess, and my fingers clasped those of the woman lying under the blanket next to me. The knowledge that something is going to happen should be some defense, but somehow it never is.
There was a faint moan from one corner of the cottage, and the woman next to me muttered, “Mary, Michael, and Bride preserve us,” under her breath. There was a stirring over the floor as the women began to rise. There was little talk, as though all ears were pricked to catch the sounds of battle from the plain below.
I caught sight of one of the Highlanders’ wives, a Mrs. MacPherson, as she folded her blanket next to the graying window. Her face was blank with fear, and she closed her eyes with a small shudder as another muffled boom came from below.
I revised my opinion as to the uselessness of knowledge. These women had no knowledge of secret trails, sunrise charges, and surprise routs. All these women knew was that their husbands and sons were now facing the cannon and musket fire of an English army four times their number.
Prediction is a risky business at the best of times, and I knew they would pay me no mind. The best thing I could do for them was to keep them busy. A fleeting image crossed my mind, of the rising sun shining bright off blazing hair, making a perfect target of its owner. A second image followed hard on its heels; a squirrel-toothed boy, armed with a stolen butcher knife and a bright-eyed belief in the glories of war. I closed my own eyes and swallowed hard. Keeping busy was the best thing I could do for myself.
“Ladies!” I said. “We’ve done a lot, but there’s a lot more to do. We shall be needing boiling water. Cauldrons for boiling, cream pans for soaking. Parritch for those who can eat; milk for those who can’t. Tallow and garlic for dressings. Wood laths for splints. Bottles and jugs, cups and spoons. Sewing needles and stout thread. Mrs. MacPherson, if you would be so kind …”
* * *
I knew little of the battle, except which side was supposed to win, and that the casualties of the Jacobite army were to be “light.” From the far-off, blurry page of the textbook, I again retrieved that tiny bit of information: “… while the Jacobites triumphed, with only thirty casualties.”
Casualties. Fatalities, I corrected. Any injury is a casualty, in nursing terms, and there were a good many more than thirty in my cottage as the sun burned its way upward through the sea mist toward noon. Slowly, the victors of the battle were making their way in triumph back toward Tranent, the sound of body helping their wounded comrades.
Oddly enough, His Highness had ordered that the English wounded be retrieved first from the field of battle and carefully tended. “They are my Father’s subjects,” he said firmly, making the capital “F” thoroughly audible, “and I will have them well cared for.” The fact that the Highlanders who had just won the battle for him were also presumably his Father’s subjects seemed to have escaped his notice for the moment.
“Given the behavior of the Father and the Son,” I muttered to Jenny Cameron on hearing this, “the Highland army had better hope that the Holy Ghost doesn’t choose to descend today.”
A look of shock at this blasphemous observation crossed the face of Mrs. MacPherson, but Jenny laughed.
The whoops and shrieks of Gaelic celebration overwhelmed the faint groans of the wounded, borne in on makeshift stretchers made of planks or bound-together muskets, or more often, leaning on the arms of friends for support. Some of the casualties staggered in under their own power, beaming and drunk on their own exuberance, the pain of their wounds seeming a minor inconvenience in the face of glorious vindication of their faith. Despite the injuries that brought them here to be tended, the intoxicating knowledge of victory filled the house with a mood of hilarious exhilaration.
“Christ, did ye see ’em scutter like wee mousies wi’ a cat on their tails?” said one patient to another, seemingly oblivious of the nasty powder burn that had singed his left arm from knuckles to shoulder.
“And a rare good many of ’em missin’ their tails,” answered his friend, with a chortle.
Joy was not quite universal; here and there, small parties of subdued Highlanders could be seen making their way across the hills, carrying the still form of a friend, plaid’s end covering a face gone blank and empty with heaven’s seeing.
It was the first test of my chosen assistants, and they rose to the challenge as well as had the warriors of the field. That is, they balked and complained and made nuisances of themselves, and then, when necessity struck, threw themselves into battle with unparalleled fierceness.
Not that they stopped complaining while they did it.
Mrs. McMurdo returned with yet another full bottle, which she hung in the assigned place on the cottage wall, before stooping to rummage in the tub that held the bottles of honey water. The elderly wife of a Tranent fisherman pressed into army service, she was the waterer on this shift; in charge of going from man to man, urging each to sip as much of the sweetened fluid as could be tolerated—and then making a second round to deal with the results, equipped with two or three empty bottles.
“If ye didna gie them so much to drink, they’d no piss sae much,” she complained—not for the first time.
“They need the water,” I explained patiently—not for the first time. “It keeps their blood pressure up, and replaces some of the fluids they’ve lost, and helps avoid shock—well, look, woman, do you see many of them dying?” I demanded, suddenly losing a good deal of my patience in the face of Mrs. McMurdo’s continuing dubiousness and complaints; her nearly toothless mouth lent a note of mournfulness to an already dour expression—all is lost, it seemed to say; why trouble further?
“Mphm,” she said. Since she took the water and returned to her rounds without further remonstrance, I took this sound for at least temporary assent.
I stepped outside to escape both Mrs. McMurdo and the atmosphere in the cottage. It was thick with smoke, heat, and the fug of unwashed bodies, and I felt a bit dizzy.
The streets were filled with men, drunk, celebrating, laden with plunder from the battlefield. One group of men in the reddish tartan of the MacGillivrays pulled an English cannon, tethered with ropes like a dangerous wild beast. The resemblance was enhanced by the fanciful carvings of crouching wolves that decorated the touch-ho
le and muzzle. One of General Cope’s showpieces, I supposed.
Then I recognized the small black figure riding astride the cannon’s muzzle, hair sticking up like a bottle brush. I closed my eyes in momentary thankfulness, then opened them and hastened down the street to drag him off the cannon.
“Wretch!” I said, giving him a shake and then a hug. “What do you mean sneaking off like that? If I weren’t so busy, I’d box your ears ’til your head rattled!”
“Madame,” he said, blinking stupidly in the afternoon sun. “Madame.”
I realized he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “Are you all right?” I asked, more gently.
A look of puzzlement crossed his face, smeared with mud and powder-stains. He nodded, and a sort of dazed smile appeared through the grime.
“I killed an English soldier, Madame.”
“Oh?” I was unsure whether he wanted congratulation, or needed comfort. He was ten.
His brow wrinkled, and his face screwed up as though trying very hard to remember something.
“I think I killed him. He fell down, and I stuck him with my knife.” He looked at me in bewilderment, as though I could supply the answer.
“Come along, Fergus,” I said. “We’ll find you some food and a place to sleep. Don’t think about it anymore.”
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