by Jane Yolen
The horse’s hooves made a dull clopping sound as we trotted along the road. It would soon start to grow light, and we needed to get as far away as possible. At daylight people could start tracking us.
Dunbar pointed to the right, to the north of us. A loch flanked the road. “Loch Dearg,” he said.
It went on for miles, a long stretch of dark, silent water. To the south rose a line of bare, rocky hills, steep as a rampart. If they had a name, he didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.
Neither of us spoke more, but I held on tight to the Rogue’s waist. I guessed if I fell off again, he wouldn’t stop for me but thank his good fortune and ride on.
Our mutual silence was broken only when Dunbar let out a sudden stream of foul oaths under his breath. I leaned to one side to see what had irked him. There were fires burning in the night up ahead and a tang of smoke was on the breeze.
“I havena seen any houses along this road,” I said.
“Army campfires,” Dunbar grumbled. “I know that smell well enough.”
“So Rood was telling the truth about the garrison soldiers.” I peered through the gloom, for the clouds were once more obscuring the moon, which had been hanging low before us for some time. I could just make out the shapes of tents and the murmur of distant voices.
“We must chance it anyhow,” said Dunbar. “There’s no other road, and the countryside will be slow going, and we dinna know it.”
He urged the horse on with a kick of his heel, but already a voice up ahead was shouting out orders. They must have heard our hoofbeats. Sure enough, as we closed on the camp, a line of redcoats spread out across the road, loading their muskets as they took up position.
“Hold up there!” called an officer’s voice. “Halt and be recognized!”
“Ye’re taking us straight onto their guns,” I said anxiously.
“Och, I never thought they’d be so quick!” snarled the Rogue. He reined in the horse so sharply, she bucked and kicked and I almost fell off.
“Stop, I say!” barked the officer.
“Should we stop?” I asked. “Do ye have whisky for them? They canna know who we are.”
Dunbar paid him no mind but wheeled the horse about.
Then came the command I’d been dreading.
“Take aim! Fire!”
The line of muskets all went off in a single volley, like the cracking of giant branches. A bullet whistled past my ear and another struck our horse in the flank. The animal reared up, whinnying in shock.
“Steady, girl!” said Dunbar. “Ye’re only nicked. On now!” And we headed back at a gallop down the road the way we’d just come—east toward Kildarry House.
V. ROGUE’S BLESSING
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.
—Sir Walter Scott, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”
27 HIGHLAND CHASE
Glancing back through the gloom, I saw soldiers leading horses out of the trees and throwing on their saddles.
“Could we not have passed ourselves off as innocent men?” I shouted into his ear over the beating of the hooves. “They might have let us go.”
“They’ve come to clear the country of the likes of us,” said Dunbar, turning his head to shout at me. “And that brooch would mark us as thieves for sure.” He threw the horse into a mad gallop down the road toward Kindarry.
“The laird’s men will be after us as well,” I cried. “What will we do? We’re caught between the hammer and the anvil.”
“We do what hunted men have always done,” Dunbar shouted back. “We take to the hills.” He yanked on the reins and the horse swerved to the right, hard away from Loch Dearg and up the rising ground to the south. Before us a rampart of mountains rose up against the night sky, and we began climbing toward them. “We can lose ourselves in the dark if the moon stays clouded.”
Of course the moment he said that, the clouds passed and the crescent moon and thousands of stars lit the hillside. Dunbar looked up and cursed again.
“It’ll take more than cursing the moon and stars to get us clear of the redcoats,” I told him.
He said over his shoulder, “We’d not outrun them for long on the open road.” Then he took a deep breath before continuing. “Our horse has been ridden too hard already, and she’s been carrying two.”
I nodded.
“So, lad, we’re heading into the hills, where it’s a soldier’s instinct to go slow, watching for an ambush behind every turn. That’s our chance to steal a march on them.” His voice was as raw as the breeze that beat on our faces. “If only the moon hides itself.”
This time I was the one who cursed the moon and stars and let Dunbar get on with the business of urging the horse forward across the broken ground, the few hundred feet till the start of the hills.
Soon we were weaving our uphill way through a maze of rocks and hillocks, twisting through the flowering gorse, all in search of a route. Walls of rock reared up, steeper and steeper on both sides, funneling us into a V-shaped defile. Steep slopes loomed on all sides, strewn with loose stone and pebbles, a dangerous scree.
“We’ve got to go on foot from here,” said Dunbar.
Once we’d dismounted, Dunbar led our horse by the reins, but the poor mare plowed through the shale like a boat struggling against a mounting tide. Her chest heaved, and her legs were trembling.
“Och, she’s finished for now,” said Dunbar. “Even if she could go on, she’d only slow us down and make us easier to spot.”
“She’s done us good service,” I said, giving the mare a grateful pat on the neck. But even then I craned my neck to see where we were going: up and up and up a seemingly impassable slope.
Dunbar turned the mare around and started her back down the slope. “Aye, that she has.” He let the reins slip from his hand. “Awa’ home with ye, lass,” he said. “I hope there’s a trough of water and a bag full of feed for ye below.”
As the mare made her tentative way down the hillside, she glanced back at us and shook her shaggy head, as if to say we were mad to go on. And maybe we were. The footing was treacherous, the loose stones on the mountainside sliding away at each step, a wind came down the tunnel of stone, while the moonlight made us easy targets for any with eyes to see.
After an agony of clawing and sliding, the ground finally became solid beneath us again as we rounded the shoulder of the hill. We heard no soldiers behind us, and no shots had been fired.
I whispered, “Yer a lucky rogue, Alan Dunbar.”
He turned back and smiled at me, a thin smile with not a bit of mirth in it. “We’ve only just begun, lad. Save yer praise for later and use yer prayers now.”
“Then I’ll pray for clouds to darken the sky.”
“That’s a good one,” he said, and kept climbing.
More hills and mountains rose beyond the hills where we stood, rearing up ahead of us, a great mass of blackness. Dunbar was careful to keep us below the hilltop so we could not be seen against the moonlit sky. “An old poacher’s trick,” he called it.
Forsaking talk, we saved our breath for the climb until at last Dunbar called a halt. He’d found a hollow in the hillside and immediately made himself comfortable among the sparse patches of heather. Unslinging hi
s musket, he began charging it with powder and shot.
“We canna go on without rest,” he said. “We’ll have some food and water, then catch what sleep we can.”
“What about the soldiers?” I asked.
“The going’s as hard for them as us,” Dunbar replied, “and they dinna want to be stumbling about in the dark. We’re a small priority for them and no danger. They know nothing about us yet. They have no reason to push too hard. When they find the mare, they’ll know we’re on foot and relax, thinking that we’re easy prey. So they’ll find a spot to settle down and try to pick up our trail at sunrise.”
“How do ye know …”
This time he grinned. “A soldier knows a soldier’s tricks.”
We took our supper in silence from the supplies in Dunbar’s pack, snugged in under a rock in the hollow and out of the wind. However, something besides food and wind was on my mind. We were in a dangerous spot, and I worried what was to become of the Blessing.
“I think it best if I carry the brooch from now on,” I said.
“Oh, ye do, do ye?” said Dunbar, barely glancing up from his cheese and bread. “Now, if I was going to run off with it, wouldna I have done that long ago and left ye to the redcoats?”
I chewed on that as I chewed on the cheese, gone a bit moldy from its time in his pack. “Aye, I suppose. But now that we’re companions again, why shouldna I carry it for a while?”
Dunbar took a swallow of water before answering. “Are ye better fitted to guard it than I? No, ye’re not. And of the two of us, who is more likely to take a fall and wind up dead at the foot of a cliff, lad? And the brooch with him?” He tipped the mouth of his water flask in my direction. “And where would that leave me? All this work, all this danger, a price on my head, and not a penny of profit to show for any of it.”
“So if I don’t make it through the mountains, what then?” I asked. “What of my family? That treasure is theirs by right. It was given to my great-grandfather by the Bonnie Prince himself, for services in the war and …” I tried to remember Ma’s stories. “My great-grandfather led the prince across the Highlands to the boat that took him back across the water. The prince gave him the Blessing for his help.”
Dunbar pondered this for a moment, then faced me squarely. “Ye’ve my word that I’ll do right by them, lad. I’ll see they receive their fair share.”
He watched me, waiting for my reaction. At last I nodded. “Aye, I believe ye will.”
“Then that’s all that need be said.” With that Dunbar finished his supper and settled himself down for the night, placing his bonnet under his head as a pillow.
“Should we no set a watch?” I asked uneasily.
“Ye can watch all ye like if ye’re afraid of bogles coming in the night,” Dunbar said, still settling. “I’ll not be fashed. Remember, I’ve been a soldier. I know a soldier’s ways. There’ll be nae creeping about in the night. Especially one as dark as this.”
The sky was black with clouds now, the moon and stars completely hidden, and from the east came a rumble of thunder. It would most likely rain before the night was through. The very weather I’d prayed for. Good news and bad.
“But what if ye’re wrong about the soldiers …,” I began, but he didn’t answer. His back was to me, and within a few seconds, though he was lying on rock, he was fast asleep.
How could he take his rest so easily after all that had happened and with a troop of the king’s men at our heels? But as he said, he’d been a soldier, and a soldier couldn’t afford to let fear rob him of his sleep. However, I was not like him. I wriggled about, trying to get comfortable, thinking that I could never sleep in the face of such danger. Every stone seemed to find a tender spot—in my back, on my arms, in my bum. But in the end sheer weariness overtook me, and I slept without dreams.
When I woke, a shaft of sunlight was flickering through a cleft in the mountains like a stick poking through a keyhole. Morning, and a bright one too. That hadn’t been part of my prayers.
Rubbing my eyes and yawning, I looked around and saw to my shock that Dunbar was gone.
I jumped up, my heart racing, and cursed his name under my breath. “Dunbar!” I cried. “Dunbar, where are ye?”
I heard a noise from behind me and turned in time to see the Rogue diving down at me from the upper slopes like an eagle swooping on a sparrow. He landed hard on top of me, slamming me backward to the ground. Before I could catch my breath, he clamped a hand over my mouth. I tried to break free, but he pressed me down all the harder.
“Wheesht! Have ye lost yer mind?” he snapped. “There’s redcoats all over the hills, lad. Keep yer silly mouth shut. Now blink if you understand me.”
I blinked twice up into his grim face and he removed his hand, rolling off me and getting to his feet with his musket at the ready.
“If we’re no to die up here, ye must trust me,” he said angrily. “If that’s beyond yer power, say so now.”
I was too embarrassed to look him in the face. “Where were ye?” I asked sheepishly.
“Surveying the land,” Dunbar answered. “And a good thing too. Now that ye’ve given us away, we need to move quickly. Come on, lad, make brisk!”
I bit off the apology that was trembling on my lips and scrambled after him, my heart pounding in my chest. I doubt I’d been so frightened since Willie Rood had tried to drop me over the cliff, and then I’d been too exhausted and sick to care.
As we made the rough ascent, I heard voices echoing not far away.
“Have you sighted them yet?” called one.
“Not yet! They must be over that way!” came the answer.
I cursed myself for a daftie. Maybe the Rogue should have left me behind.
Dunbar was a few yards ahead of me, hauling himself up a sheer wall of rock onto a broad shelf. I tried to climb after him, but my feet could gain no purchase on the stone. Reaching down, he seized me by the arm and dragged me up after him.
“Word may have reached their officer by now of the happenings at Kindarry,” he said. “Else I doubt they’d still be so keen on our trail.”
“Maybe there’s a reward out on us.”
Dunbar nodded. “Aye, that would put a burr in their breeks right enough.”
“Shouldn’t we find a better place to hide?” I asked. The shelf was barely disguised with shrubs and vines.
“Speed will serve us better than stealth now,” Dunbar answered. “We have to keep on the move going up and over.”
This was a countryside even harsher than the place where the Rogue had made his lair. Patches of thorn jabbed into my bare hands and face, and rocks cut and chafed us at every step. “Is there no track through here?” I whispered.
“This is nature’s own backyard,” Dunbar answered. “A perfect place for a Rogue to disappear.”
I was beginning to understand. From here we could swerve off in any direction, and it would take a long time searching for the soldiers to pick up our trail on rock.
Again and again we heard the redcoats calling out to each other.
“Fools,” I heard Dunbar whisper once under his breath. “If I were your captain …” For each time the soldiers cried out, the Rogue could adjust our route. And I, of course, followed silently.
We mounted higher and higher until the drop below was so sheer it made me giddy to look at it.
“Keep yer eyes straight ahead, lad,” warned Dunbar quietly. “And yer head way down. Give them yer back, with no skin showing. Think of yerself as mere heather or gorse.”
I thought of our scrawny sheep and cows grazing on the hillside. The whiter their coats, the easier they were to find. Dunbar and I had to blend in with the land. Our dark clothing would do it; our pale skin would give us away. I looked straight ahead and bent over. If the soldiers were going to find me, they would not have an easy time of it.
Now I heard a new sound, a great roaring. When we rounded a section of the mountain, I saw a glittering waterfall leaping off the heights a
bove our heads.
I started up in awe, but Dunbar caught my sleeve and pulled me down low. So I lay on my stomach and craned up at the waterfall. It plunged a hundred feet down past us to rage and froth in a whirling pool. Turning my head slightly, I could see that from there it launched itself down a steep-sided ravine in a series of racing, foam-topped rapids. A shimmering spray kicked up by the waters hung in the air about us.
We began to move downward now, but the edge of the ravine and the rushing current below blocked us off.
“The redcoats have been circling around to get to the top,” said Dunbar. “I could hear it in their voices. They do that so we will make easy pickings even for a poor marksman.”
“Then what are we to do?” I wondered. “The path is getting too narrow.”
“We have to cross to the other side,” said Dunbar. For the first time he seemed distracted.
“The other side of what?” I asked, though of course I knew. No need to keep my voice down now. The water’s raw shout drowned out everything.
He didn’t answer but started toward the edge of the ravine, his boot heels skidding on the loose stones. I wriggled down after him on my belly, clutching the ground with my fingers to slow my descent. We reached a lip of rock that jutted out over the spuming river. When I gazed down, I saw the water raging like a beast over jagged rocks. It looked as if it wanted to snatch the legs out from under us and drag us off to our doom.
Dunbar laid down his musket and unslung his pack. “It’s a fair jump,” he said, “but there’s no help for it.”
On the other side, the slope was gentler, with scrub and pines to give cover, but the size of the gap—it looked as wide as a river—made me tremble. I hoped the dampness in my eyes came from the spray and not from tears.
“It’s too far,” I said. “We’ll never make it.”
Dunbar narrowed his gaze at me, then suddenly adopted a casual, nearly jaunty air. “Of course we can,” he said, as if the feat were as simple as stepping over a rabbit hole. Holding his pack by its strap, he whirled it once, twice, then hurled it across the gap to thump down on the far side, where it rolled over three times before stopping.