The Enchantress (Book 1 of The Enchantress Saga)

by Thorne, Nicola

  ‘Come, I will take you to the Prince. He is to have you as part of his very own company.’

  The Prince had just finished a council of war and looked preoccupied as Brent and Stewart were led into his presence.

  ‘Your Royal Highness may I present my brother, Brent Delamain and my cousin, Stewart Allonby – a family well known to your Royal Highness.’ The three men bowed and a smile appeared on the Prince’s tired face.

  ‘Indeed it is. The name Delamain is well known to me and you, sir, are well called after my own, Stewart.’

  ‘Your Royal Highness.’

  Stewart bowed low, too overcome to speak. There was indeed a magic about the Prince; to be in his presence was to be aware of something awesome and mysterious. The Prince, he noted, was tall and slim, his face round and brown from his exposure to all kinds of weather. He had a small but full mouth and lively eyes. Altogether he was very well proportioned and his appeal to the ladies was easy to discern. But he also inspired fierce loyalty in his men, and this was because of his regal manner combined with an easygoing informality that seemed to get the best out of them. The Prince lived as his men, did as they did and he was always cheerful and courteous and imbued with an optimistic and resolute air that it was impossible not to be carried away by.

  ‘You are to serve in my company, as your brother may have told you, both as lieutenants. I am grateful to you, Mr Delamain, for the service you have rendered providing arms for us. Your work is appreciated by me.’

  ‘My honour, your Royal Highness.’

  ‘Thank you gentlemen, and God remain with us.’

  The Prince looked preoccupied again and, turning from them, was immediately surrounded by his commanders.

  ‘They are discussing what to do next,’ Tom whispered as they left the audience chamber. ‘The enemy are approaching on all sides.’

  ‘God grant I get my sword at them,’ Stewart growled, his patriotism kindled anew by the encounter with his Prince. ‘Let us harry them ahead of us to London.’

  ***

  But although the Army began its march south almost at once there was no harrying to be done, no encounter with the enemy who were always to one side or the other, or ahead. The Duke of Cumberland himself blocked their path to London, and the Prince eventually halted at Derby.

  There he had to take the hard and, to him, indefensible decision to retreat. There were three Hanoverian armies poised to attack his small numbers. There was no sign of the massive rising he had expected in England nor of the French landing promised by his brother Henry. The Prince had done everything in his power to persuade his commanders to go on, but all had voted against him. They thought to continue would mean annihilation of the Jacobite Army and, with it, the Jacobite Cause. Better to retreat and try again. Yet only Charles, possibly, knew the full importance of what they had decided as on 6 December 1745 the Army started to go back the way it had come so triumphantly and with such hope.

  For Brent and Stewart it was a bitter moment when they were told, with their fellow officers, in advance of the men, that they were going backwards rather than forwards. Orders to move had been given at first light and it was not until they were some miles north of Derby that the rest of the army realized what had happened. The officers were hard put to explain to the men, so near to London, the reason for the retreat and the day was spent in recriminations and expressions of discontent.

  But the worst thing was the way the whole complexion of the operation changed, even the character of the Prince. From being so cheerful and always in the vanguard he now sulked and kept behind. The mood of the population in the countryside through which they had marched victoriously only a few days before changed quickly to hostility, and the Highlanders who had held themselves hitherto in commendable restraint now set to pillaging, looting and despoiling everything in their path.

  To the English officers like Brent and Stewart and others who had joined them – Manchester had provided a complete regiment – it was a horrible sight to see these men, half savages some of them, reverting to their former reputation. And the Prince, although he knew what was afoot, did nothing to try and stop them. Lord George Murray did all he could to keep the Army together but his fellow commander, the Duke of Perth, was now a sick man and the officers discontented and dispirited.

  Stewart and Brent who had not once been engaged in battle or even a skirmish, who had not been part of the force that so triumphantly conquered Scotland, felt this disillusion as much if not more than most. Having spent such a large part of their lives preparing for this event it was now unbearable to see it all founder without exchanging a single blow against the enemy. It was galling; it was humiliating.

  ‘They say we will regroup in Scotland,’ Brent said one night as they tried to sleep, having been pursued out of Manchester by a hostile crowd. What was more they knew that General Oglethorpe’s army, sent ahead by the Duke of Cumberland to harry them, was not far behind.

  ‘Nay, we are done for,’ Stewart sighed. He felt ill and coughed frequently. The weather was terrible; it was cold and it never stopped raining. There was not enough to eat and, now that the local people had turned against them, nowhere warm to lay their heads at night.

  ‘Will you leave the Army when we reach Carlisle?’

  ‘No. I’ll stay to the bitter end. But we are done for Brent. The Stuarts are finished.’

  ‘Hush,’ Brent looked anxiously around though it was dark, ‘people will hear you. You will be split in half by a claymore as you sleep.’

  ‘They know. Everyone knows. The Prince knows. It was ill planned this expedition. Five thousand men in all and they say in each of the Hanoverian armies awaiting us there were 30,000 men. In each. The country has not risen to the Stuarts.’

  ‘Aye, that is the reason,’ Tom said. ‘That is the real reason. People are too content as they are. They do not want change; they do not want the Stuarts and the Catholic Church back again.’

  They had hardly seen Tom. He spent time tending the sick or cheering the faint-hearted. But now as he sat with them, trying like them to keep warm against the bitter night, he nodded.

  ‘That is the truth. The English people will not tolerate Catholicism. It is too foreign to them; it smacks of the French and the arbitrary rule of James I and Charles I. They hate the Pope and that is that. The Stuarts have become alien to them and we did not realize it. We were too distant and our spies did not rightly detect the mood of the people.’

  ‘What will you do Tom?’

  ‘Oh, stay to the bitter end, like you; but we are done for, I agree.’

  From Preston on 11 December Charles despatched the Duke of Perth to try and rally forces in Scotland. The Duke was mortally sick and had to travel by coach. Charles announced that he would stay in Preston and await reinforcements from Scotland; but the hooves of General Oglethorpe’s soldiers could almost be heard outside the walls, and the dispirited Jacobite army took refuge in Lancaster.

  Charles vainly tried to make a stand there to assure people he was merely retiring and not fleeing, but the Duke of Cumberland was said to have arrived in Wigan with 1000 cavalry. Charles set off for Kendal and then more trouble began as the men had difficulty negotiating the heavy ammunition carts on the steep hills in the terrible relentless weather. Charles and Lord George were at loggerheads again. The Prince had gone ahead and peremptorily ordered Lord George not to leave anything behind, not even a cannon-ball. His lordship, who brought up the rear, was said to be angered by this command being aware of the temper of his men and the state of their health. Disease was rampant. In the end he gave his soldiers sixpence a head to carry the cannon-balls over Shap. It was at this point that Brent and Stewart were split up, Stewart going ahead to join the Prince in Penrith and Brent staying behind with Lord George Murray and the rearguard. And it was here that the first chance of action came, unexpectedly, at Clifton near Penrith.

  All day Lord George Murray had been aware of enemy activity. They were in the neighbourhood o
f Lowther Castle and knew that the Duke of Cumberland was expected there. Lord George sent to the Prince at Penrith to ask for assistance, but Charles sent word that he was proceeding to Carlisle and Lord George should follow him there.

  Brent could see the distress on Lord George’s face at the latest difference between the Prince and his commander. Lord George was a tall robust man, legendary for his bravery; but the weeks of marching, the indecision and unrest had wearied him. He was said to be aloof and haughty, to dislike receiving orders but now his face looked worn and his uniform was bespattered with mud like everyone elses’. The rain came down in a seemingly endless stream and the news of the enemy’s whereabouts was conflicting. Some said they were a cannonshot away on Clifton Moor drawn up in two lines, and others said they had dispersed and were heading towards Penrith after the Prince.

  As night fell Brent, who had remained close by Lord George, taking his commands and issuing them down the line, was sure that they would not engage the enemy who could now clearly be seen on the moorside. Some dragoons dismounted and came down the hill ready for action, their swords drawn. Lord George conversed closely with Colonel Cluny MacPherson, then a signal was given to the men to align themselves in the shelter of a hedge. Brent lay shivering on the ground, listening to the exchange of gunfire, his clothes sodden, his eyes caked with mud. He gripped his sword in his hand and prayed to God, aware of the blood pounding in his head. The smell of battle was all around and he knew for sure that for the first time he would engage the enemy.

  At a signal from Colonel Macpherson the Highlanders from his clan uttered their blood-curdling cry that was said by some to freeze the hearts of an enemy before battle commenced, to frighten them to death in advance. With one accord the force leapt over the hedge and fell on the dragoons who, taken completely by surprise despite their drawn swords, put up little resistance.

  Brent could hardly see for the rain and the dusk that had fallen so quickly. The blade of his broadsword flashed about him and as he felt it encounter solid flesh he experienced a feeling not of pity for his victim, but of exultation that at last he was drawing blood for the Cause. Maybe after all the tide would turn; maybe ...

  Suddenly Brent felt a stab of pain in his arm and was aware that he had been hit. He put his hand in the spot and felt it warm with blood; but, though painful, the arm was still usable, and he continued advancing plunging his good broadsword to the right and to the left, echoing the savage cries of the Highlanders.

  The rain began to lessen and, in the intermittent moonlight which appeared through the clouds, Brent could see that the enemy, outnumbered and terrified by the ferocity of the Highlanders were in flight.

  Around them on the sloping moorside the dead and wounded lay, men of both sides, but many more dragoons than Jacobites. The stench of sweat and blood engendered even by the brief skirmish was overwhelming and the cries of the injured pitiful to hear. The broadswords did terrible damage, limbs and heads were hacked off and bodies disembowelled.

  Yet in all the carnage, his own arm bleeding freely, his stained sword still in his hand Brent felt a joyous, fierce elation. The fact that here were dead men who moments before had lived and breathed disturbed him not at all.

  As the retreat sounded he saw the Highlanders creep over the scrub putting the injured enemy unceremoniously to the sword and moving their own wounded to the shelter of the hedge. Brent placed his sword on the ground and, bending down, tore the shirt from the still warm body of a dragoon and began to bind his wound with it. The blood would not staunch and the bandage was soaked. But Brent did not mind. He had been bloodied in battle; he had killed or maybe wounded fellow men. He was no more a talker, a plotter. He was a doer, a man of action. This was a war and he was a soldier, and war was about valour and courage and indifference to death.

  Brent knew that life and his attitude to it could never be the same again. More than all the riding, fencing and athletics, all the womanizing, smuggling and heaving huge smelly barrels of fish in rough seas, the skirmish at Clifton had made him a man.

  15

  Analee opened her eyes and saw it was dawn. Usually birdsong awakened her, but this day it seemed as though the very birds themselves were too chilled to warble. Nelly still lay asleep pressed up against her for warmth, but even in her sleep her slender frame shook with cold. They had found a large overhanging hill beneath whose shelter they had bedded down for the night, making a screen with loose stones and branches to protect them from the wind and rain.

  In all her years on the road Analee never remembered such biting cold, such pitiless weather. And the countryside was alive with other dangers; wandering soldiers who had deserted from the Jacobite ranks and who told of disease and defeat. But not only this; they also had to combat the hostility of the population who had so readily turned against them once the Prince’s cause was lost.

  Some were trying to make their way to Scotland, others to slink back to their Lakeland homes before the terror that was sure to follow the ultimate Jacobite defeat which they knew could not be long delayed. The men were hungry and savage. Rape as well as looting was on their minds as Analee well knew, as she and Nelly hid in a ditch or under the bare hedgerows as the angry, hungry soldiers passed by. Since the Prince had crossed the border and war had been on everyone’s mind there was only one thought which drove her on: to reach the Buckland camp which lay directly in the Army’s route, to see her baby safe.

  For Morella was all Analee felt she had in the world now that she had lost Randal and given up Brent. For she could have had Brent; she knew it. It would have been so easy to have said ‘yes’, and to have slipped out of the house with him and ridden away. But the sight of the two lovers embracing in the grounds at the grange had decided her. Brent and Mary did love each other and they should have a chance to enjoy that love. It was shocking for Analee, dreaming as much of Brent as she had after leaving the camp, to see that it was he who was the betrothed, the object of Mary’s love. And then it seemed inevitable – of course he had told her he had cousins in Derwentwater; the sick man nursed to health; the family likeness which she had perceived only too late ...

  ... Until she saw him wait for her in the corridor and knew from his eyes that his love, his true love was not for Mary. It was still for her. It always would be; the gypsy in Analee knew that. But Mary whom in such a short time she had come to love and admire, who had suffered for so many years ... to deny Mary that happiness would be evil and Analee had made up her mind and acted accordingly.

  Many times she had regretted it as they tramped along the rough uneven paths to Carlisle or left the road altogether and climbed over the mountain ranges, either to shelter from the weather or the bands of marauding soldiers who passed by.

  Her baby. Yes she was going back to get her. She should never have left her; that one comfort to her life, that sole memento of her love for the aristocratic gadjo. And how beautiful he’d looked that day with the shimmering lake in the background, tall and bronzed, with his fair hair turned golden in the sun and his massive frame and his arms encircling another woman! It had been too much as she’d looked down and seen the tenderness of their embrace, the smile on Brent’s face as he’d gazed into Mary’s eyes. Analee knew that smile too ...

  No, she must put the memory from her mind. It was not intended; it was not to be. Besides this was a country at war and Brent had meant to go to the war too. What would happen to him and the Allonbys now that their glorious Prince was so near defeat?

  Nelly opened her eyes and saw that, as usual, Analee was gazing at some distant spot on the horizon. Analee daydreamed a lot these days; her mind was always far away. There was a sadness in her that distressed Nelly, who loved her and wanted to protect her from the harshness of the world. She had begged her not to leave the gadjo when she had found him again, to think of herself, to take the happiness owed to her. But no. All Analee could think of was the joy of the young girl, Mary, when from her room she had seen Brent ride into the grounds; t
he tearful happiness of her brave young face turned trustingly upwards to his.

  ‘I cannot build my life on destruction,’ Analee had said turning from the window; and that had been that. Nothing that Nelly could say, no arguments she could put forward, could convince Analee otherwise.

  In a way it made Nelly love and admire Analee more. Such nobility, such sacrifice had convinced Nelly that Analee was more than a mere gypsy; she was someone very special, a queen among women. And she had understood Analee’s reason for abandoning her plans to go to the coast and wanting to get back to her baby. Analee should never have given the baby up at all, never been forced to. Nelly could not easily forget the sight of Analee and the expression on her face as the baby suckled so contentedly at her breast.

  Now Analee was pinched and cold, her thin bones stuck out from her rags; but her beautiful lustrous eyes remained the same and her body was still round enough to attract the men as they roamed about looking for plunder. There was something about the way Analee held her head as she walked; something disdainful yet provocative, and no man failed to turn his head or quicken his step, however leaden it had been, as he passed by.

  Analee smiled at Nelly clinging to her against the cold.

  ‘Come, let us start walking and get the blood going again. Today we should reach the camp.’

  ‘We have been so long on the road and you keep saying that. How do you know this time for sure?’

  ‘Because I know. There are more soldiers heading for the border and Carlisle is very near Scotland; besides, I recognize some of the landmarks.’

  They had come a long way; a long roundabout way, since leaving Keswick. They had kept away from the road and skirted Skiddaw and the Lonscale Crags, Saddleback and Bannerdale by bridle paths. They had sight of the River Calder at Tarn Crags and then followed it, saying goodbye to the Lakeland mountains which had provided them with some hard climbs, but also given them shelter in its warm caves protected from the icy blasts of midwinter.