It was pointless. Lord George would not be moved. It didn’t help that he and Broughton detested each other. It would have been better if O’Sullivan had come in his stead. Alex left the meeting with Broughton, having given up trying to persuade the lieutenant-general to change his mind.
“Charles will go mad when he reads this,” said Broughton despairingly. “What’s wrong wi’ Lord George? Why is he so reluctant to fight?”
“He’s no’ reluctant, John, he’s tired, I think. And he truly believes the men are deserting. He’s doing his best, no one can ask for more.”
“That isna the way Charles will see it,” said Broughton sourly.
It certainly was not the way Charles saw it.
“Good God!” he raged the next morning. “Have I lived to see this? Since when did the victorious army retreat, to allow the vanquished to advance! It is lunacy!”
After some time he calmed down enough to write a letter, pointing out all the flaws in Lord George’s plan which Broughton and Alex had outlined the night before, adding that France and Spain would never help them if they retreated any further than they had already done.
Two of the chiefs came to Bannockburn on receipt of the letter to put their argument in person to the prince. A heated debate ensued in which Charles lost his temper, something he rarely did; but the chiefs would not be moved.
It was the death blow to relations between Prince Charles and Lord George Murray. Recognising that nothing he could do would change his chief officers’ determination to retreat, Charles capitulated, stating despairingly that he foresaw fatal consequences to this act, and that as he could not hinder them, he washed his hands of them.
On the first day of February the retreat began, in a confused and chaotic manner. The discipline of the clansmen was finally breaking down, exacerbated by the bickering between their commanders. O’Sullivan and Lord George argued openly in the street in full view of the clansmen. Prince Charles made no secret of the fact that the retreat was not his idea.
On the second of February the army straggled into Crieff, where the prince held a general review. Lord George Murray had been wrong. The strength of the Jacobite army had been depleted by less than a thousand men, far short of the enormous figures Lord George had claimed.
This news did not improve the prince’s faith in his lieutenant-general. Nor did it improve the morale of the army as they trudged wearily north into the mountains of the Highlands, now in the relentless grip of winter.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Moy, near Inverness, February 1746
Beth raised her hand to stifle a yawn and wished, not for the first time, that she had stayed with the MacGregors at Ruthven barracks, which had been taken from the Hanoverians three days before, instead of being persuaded by Alex to go to this party, which the prince had commanded him to attend.
It was true that if she had stayed with the clansmen she would have feasted on oat cakes, broth and whisky instead of roast beef, honey tart and sherry, and she would have been far less warm than she was now in the well-heated drawing room of Moy Hall. But then she would also not have had to wear tight corsets and an uncomfortable blue silk dress, the only court dress she now possessed, which felt heavy and cumbersome after weeks of loosely laced stays and soft practical woollen dresses. By agreeing to accompany her husband, she had at least hoped to spend some time with him, instead of which he had abandoned her on the steps of the hall at a call from the village blacksmith Donald Fraser, who had said he needed another man to help him watch the road to Inverness, which town was currently occupied by Lord Loudoun and his redcoats. Several of the Highlanders, willing to forego a good meal in view of the price to be paid for it, had rushed forward, but Alex had got there first.
So now he was no doubt laughing and exchanging rude jokes with the blacksmith and his friends, whilst quaffing the bottles of claret the hostess had sent out to them and generally having a good time, whereas she had to pay for her supper by delicately negotiating the minefield of conversation with the increasingly factional company, a large proportion of whom were no longer on good terms with each other.
Which should have been nothing to one who had been married to Sir Anthony Peters for nearly two years, except that Beth had trod on a very sharp stone the day before which had pierced through the thin leather of her shoe and cut her foot quite badly. She had not slept last night and was feeling distinctly antisocial, desiring nothing more than to curl up by the fire and go to sleep. Instead of which the party showed no signs of ending, although it was midnight. She shifted her weight to favour her left foot and the ever-vigilant Margaret Murray of Broughton noticed immediately.
“Is your foot still paining you, Beth?” she asked, looking around for a chair.
“Yes, a little, but it’s already starting to heal. It will be fine in a day or two.” At least Angus had got some pleasure from it, holding her foot still while Maggie had swabbed it with whisky. His wound had healed cleanly while Duncan’s was still puffy and red, so whisky was now the order of the day where cuts were involved.
“You are very welcome to ride in my carriage, you know,” Mrs Murray said. “You’re very small, I’m sure I can find a corner for you.”
As pleasant as Broughton’s wife was, Beth had no desire to spend the next day in a cramped carriage with her. Apart from their mutual devotion to the Jacobite cause they had little in common. Given a choice between polite conversation and the boisterous camaraderie of the MacGregors, there was no competition.
“Thank you, but Alex has found a garron for me to ride, and I prefer to be in the open air when I can,” she said, thinking that if she revealed that she felt her place to be at her husband’s side, Margaret might take it as a criticism of the fact that she spent her days in a coach and her evenings with other women, while Broughton dealt with the copious business of provisioning the army on his own. Beth yawned again.
“Are we boring you, Mrs MacGregor?” came a soft, low-pitched voice from behind her. Beth turned to the vivacious figure of her hostess, Lady Anne Mackintosh, whose brown eyes were sparkling at the honour of entertaining her prince.
“No, not at all,” said Beth, blushing. “I didn’t sleep very well last night.”
“Beth cut her foot yesterday, but insists on marching with her husband every day,” said Margaret.
“Very commendable,” commented Lady Anne. “Would that I could do the same.”
Even as the beautiful young Lady Mackintosh was entertaining the prince, her husband was fighting for the Hanoverians under Loudoun as a captain in the Black Watch. Lady Anne, in no doubt as to where her allegiance lay, had immediately set about raising the clan for Charles and had sent three hundred men to fight for him, earning herself the nickname Colonel Anne, which she had adopted with delight. Now she was receiving her reward. The prince had shown her the utmost courtesy and respect all evening, and had danced with her twice.
“What will your husband say when he comes home?” asked Beth, impelled by curiosity to ask an impertinent question. “Will he be very angry?”
Lady Anne smiled.
“I doubt it,” she said. “He hesitated enough before he took up his commission. Now he has the best of both worlds. If the Elector wins, Aeneas can say I acted against his wishes and punish me. If the Stuarts win, he can say he was obliged to pay lip service to George, already having his commission, but that he instructed me to bring out the clan before he left.”
“Did he?” asked Margaret.
“No, but he should have done,” Lady Anne replied. “It is only what many of the clans are doing. The Frasers, for example. Lord Lovat sent his clan out under his son. If the rebellion fails, he’ll let the blame fall on young Simon, saying he acted without his father’s permission.”
“The MacGregors are all out, without exception,” Beth pointed out.
“Aye, that’s true,” replied Lady Ann. “But then the MacGregors have got nothing to lose anyway. They hold no land. Well, they do,” she amended w
ith a smile, “but they hold it by the sword, no’ by the law. If we win, then they’ll retrieve all the land the Campbells took from them, and your husband and the other MacGregor chieftains will be rich men.”
“And if we lose, then they’ll go back to what they were doing before, and be no worse off,” added Beth. “Whereas Lochiel and other wealthy chiefs like him who’ve declared openly for Charles stand to lose everything.”
“Aye. They’ll lose their lands, their homes, and their lives, if they’re caught. That’s why some of the chiefs are hedging their bets. As for the MacGregors, they might be better off, whatever happens. The clan’s been fragmented for so long it had started to lose its identity. But the rebellion has brought them back together, even though Glengyle’s at Doune and others are fighting with the Duke of Perth, while your husband’s wi’ Lochiel, is he no’?”
“You’re very well informed,” said Beth admiringly.
“Aye, well, if I canna fight, I still want to know what’s going on. Although the MacGregors are fighting in different units, they’re fighting under their own name, even though their name no longer exists by law, and they’re all united under Charles. As are all the other loyal clans. If it does nothing else, it should lay to rest some of the blood feuds between the clans and give us some cohesion.”
Beth personally doubted that. Even the senior men of the prince’s party couldn’t get on together. Old animosities might have been laid aside for the present, but they were far from dead.
“As for the Frasers though, would Lord Lovat really let his own son take all the blame for raising the clan? He’ll be executed!” asked Beth.
“You dinna ken Lovat, if ye doubt that for a minute,” said John Murray, who had joined them. He put his arm around his wife’s waist, and she looked up at him fondly. “He’s a vicious, evil man, who will change allegiance as it suits him. If he’d come out openly from the beginning as he should have, the Grants, Mackintoshes and Macleans would have come out too, and that would have forced MacLeod and MacDonald of Sleat to think again. It would have given us thousands of extra men, and we’d have been drinking claret in St. James’s now. If we fail, I blame Lovat, primarily. And Traquair for no’ delivering the letter that would have stopped Charles coming in the first place.”
He did not blame Charles himself, then, or Lord George Murray. Beth glanced round the room in search of the prince and saw him standing near the fire with a glass of brandy, deep in conversation with Lochiel. Although he was smiling, he looked wan and there were lines of tension around his eyes and mouth. Lord George Murray was absent, still battling his way from Aberdeen with the artillery through the worst weather the Highlands had seen for years.
“But we will not fail,” said Lady Anne, raising her glass. “Let us drink to victory, and King James!”
They raised their glasses, and around the room others followed suit.
“And then let me show you to your room,” Lady Anne said quietly to Beth, taking her arm and leading her away from the company. “No one will notice your absence, and we will all be in bed before long anyway.”
Beth had never been so grateful to see a bed in her life. Pausing only to take off her dress and loosen her stays, she pulled the covers over her and was asleep in seconds.
It seemed only moments later that she was roused by a loud banging on her door. She sat up, disorientated. The candle she had forgotten to extinguish before going to sleep had not burned down by more than an inch or two. The door opened and Donald Cameron peeped his head round it. Beth instinctively dragged the sheet up to her neck.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But ye must come, now.”
She was already reaching for her dress, but having seen that she was still wearing her shift, Lochiel abandoned courtesy and striding into the room took her shawl, a lacy, impractical thing, and threw it to her.
“There’s nae time to dress,” he said. “Put your shoes on and we must go.”
“What’s the matter?” she asked, wincing as she pushed her injured foot into her shoe. Lochiel was not one to panic at the slightest thing. If he was telling her to hurry, there was good reason for it. She drew the shawl round her shoulders and followed him from the room, having to run to keep up with him.
“Loudoun has marched from Inverness, with fifteen hundred men,” said Lochiel bluntly. “He intends to surprise us and arrest the prince.”
“Where is he?” she asked.
“Coming up the road as we speak.”
Beth stopped, and Lochiel grabbed her arm impatiently, dragging her after him. He was only partially dressed himself, still barefoot, his shirt unbuttoned, his light brown hair loose on his shoulders.
“We must warn Alex!” she cried.
“He’ll already ken about it. The laddie who brought the message had to pass him to get here. Dinna worry about Alex, he’ll shift for himself,” said Lochiel shortly.
The house was a bustle of frantic activity, and not a little panic. Men were carrying the prince’s baggage down the stairs, banging the wooden chests against the walls and chipping the paintwork, while the rest of the mainly Cameron entourage, in various states of undress, were nevertheless buckling on swords and priming pistols. Charles was on the landing in nightshirt and dressing gown, hurriedly fastening his shoes, his reddish-brown hair sticking out in all directions, his eyes still heavy with sleep.
“Surely you don’t mean to fight fifteen hundred men!” Beth said, aghast.
“No, of course not,” said Lochiel, running down the stairs and steadying her as she tripped and almost fell. “The prince and his baggage will be concealed down by the lake in the grounds. There’s a wee wood there that will hide us all. When Loudoun arrives, he’ll hopefully think his intelligence was wrong. Colonel Anne will be outraged at being woken up and will tell him she hasna seen the prince.”
“But she’ll be arrested!” said Beth.
“True, but the prince will be free. And Lord Loudoun is an honourable man. He’ll no’ hurt her. We havena a choice.”
And if Lord Loudoun did not believe Colonel Anne…it was obvious from the grim faces of the Camerons as they slid silently into the cover of the trees, that they would fight and die to the last man to shield their prince. They did not have a hope, seventy against fifteen hundred. Beth huddled down behind a tree, smearing mud over her white shift in an attempt to camouflage it, and prayed. They all prayed.
On the steps of the house Lady Anne, still in her nightgown, her dark hair streaming down her back, was huddled with five men, engaged in frantic discussion.
“Ye’ll mind, my lady, the wee stramash at Lochaber last year, when the MacDonalds drove away two companies of redcoats,” Donald Fraser said, who had already explained the details of his plan to Alex as they ran up the road to the house.
“Aye, I do,” Lady Anne said, frowning. “But there were twelve men then, and you havena got a piper.”
“Och, away wi’ that,” said Donald. “We’ve muskets, and good lungs. It’s worth a try. If it doesna work, ye can claim ye were wakened by the noise and kent nothing of it.”
“It could work, but if it doesna, you’ll all be killed,” she said apprehensively.
“No we willna,” said Alex, who had never looked so much like his youngest brother as he did at this minute, his eyes sparkling, his body positively vibrating with energy. “If it doesna work, we ken the country better than Loudoun. He’s a Campbell. This is no’ his land. We’ll away off over Nairn water and into the hills.”
It wasn’t MacGregor or Fraser land either, but Colonel Anne knew the nature of men too well to argue any further. They were going to do this no matter what she said, and their enthusiasm was infecting her. She wished she could join them in this mad venture, even though they would more than likely die or be captured. Better than waiting in the house for Loudoun to hammer on the door. But they would never allow her to join them. Women were a liability to men when they were fighting.
“You’re a good blacksmith, Donal
d,” she said instead to the brawny Fraser. “I’ll be angry if you get yourself killed. I’ll no’ find another easily.”
“Dinna fash yourself, mistress,” said Fraser, grinning. “I’ll be at the forge tomorrow, as normal.”
The five men melted into the night, and Lady Anne went in and sat in the dark to await the arrival of Loudoun’s troops at her door. As she waited, there was a flash and a low grumble of thunder in the distance. It seemed God was sending a storm to help them, although whom it would benefit was anybody’s guess.
Alex looked up as the lightning forked its jagged way across the sky, clearly illuminating a field of cut peat which had been neatly piled up for the winter.
“At least there isna a moon,” he said. He pointed to the stacks of peat. “In the dark they could be mistaken for groups of men. If we stand among them, they’ll give us some protection from musket balls, too.”
The five men positioned themselves accordingly, checked their muskets and pistols and waited. The time between the flashes of lightning and the growling thunder lessened. Presently from the road could be heard the sound of a body of men trying to move as quietly as possible whilst fully armed and wearing stiff-soled military boots. Swords clinked, twigs snapped underfoot and whispered curses floated across the field towards the five concealed men. Apart from that, between the rumbles of thunder, the night was quiet.
This was the advance party that young Lachlan Mackintosh, who had skirted the army to get to Moy Hall, had warned them about. The rest of the army were on the heights not far behind. It was now or never. An owl called sleepily from the field of peat, a flash of lightning tore the night in two, and all hell broke loose.
The Storm Breaks (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 4) Page 30