The Chevalier

by Jacqueline Seewald

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Madeline disliked the many hours of sitting stiffly in a moving coach. After a time, watching the scenery go by became monotonous. Their trip was as uneventful as it was uncomfortable until they reached Derby. Here they found people in total panic. Merchants were shutting their shops and local residents were running to the banks for payment of their notes.

  They disembarked at the local inn only to discover the landlord and his wife frightened out of their wits.

  “What is all the agitation about?” Maman asked them.

  “Your ladyship, don’t know that the Highland army is coming this way? The barbarians will kill us all!”

  “Nonsense,” her mother said indignantly. “That is totally absurd.” She demanded that they be served and offered to pay the landlord double his usual price, which had a remarkable effect in allaying his fears.

  They dined on wine and capon and were soon on their way, in spite of warnings from the citizenry. Six miles out of Derby, their coach was surrounded by riders, and they were stopped. Jim Wenders, their coachman, knocked on the door of the vehicle.

  “Beg, your pardon, milady, but there seems to be some soldiers wishing to speak with you.” He sounded very nervous.

  Maman stiffened her spine and opened the door immediately. The men who stared at them were rough-looking and bearded. Madeline saw immediately that they wore the tartan and the kilt, and allowed herself to breathe again.

  “Why they’re Highlanders,” she exclaimed excitedly.

  Maman gave her a sharp look that silenced Madeline, then turned back to face the men. “What is it that you want?”

  “We saw the white cockade on your driver’s hat and knew that you were sympathizers. Are you on your way to Scotland?”

  “That we are,” Mama responded. “And who would you be?”

  “Happen we’re of the clan Glengarry, Madame. And who would you be?”

  “My father was the Chief of the MacCarnan until he was attainted and forced to flee to France.”

  The Highlander rubbed his dark beard thoughtfully. “The MacCarnan clan is here with the Prince’s army. If you’ll wait, I’m certain you might visit with your relatives.”

  “Thank you. We’ll remain where we are.”

  Maman gave orders for their coach to be pulled to the side of the road. However, there was hardly a need: no one else was coming along the narrow country lane at this time. It was clear to Madeline that the deserted nature of the road was due to the panic surrounding the advent of the Highlanders.

  Madeline observed that her mother’s eyes were brilliant emeralds in silent anticipation of the meeting. “Perhaps you will finally get to see your cousin,” Maman said happily, “then you will think of no other man.”

  Did Maman realize how attracted she had been to Gareth Eriksen? Probably, for even in illness, there was no one more sensitive or perceptive. Madeline waited, uneasily shifting her weight from one side to the other. It seemed as if an eternity passed before riders returned again. Madeline looked out to see that only two men were actually on horseback. Although there were other soldiers, they were all on foot. Her mother was right; they were a handsome people, these Highlanders; tall, fair-skinned, fierce-looking warriors. They simply took her breath away.

  The man who rode up to their coach made her gasp in surprise. His hair was auburn, a dark red-brown, and his eyes were a deep forest green. His broad, muscular build made him seem quite formidable and virile.

  Leaning on Marie’s arm, her mother climbed out of the coach, straining with effort. Madeline quickly followed.

  “You are James and Annie’s son. I’d know you anywhere. I’m your cousin Katherine and this is my daughter, Madeline.”

  Andrew MacCarnan stared at them both as they came out of the coach. “They told me I had relatives here but I thought it some sort of joke.”

  “Indeed, we are going to visit your mother.”

  “It is bad times for a visit,” Andrew told them. “But you will be welcome nonetheless.”

  Madeline could feel his eyes on her and she turned her look modestly downward.

  “I did not know I had so lovely a cousin,” he said.

  Her eyes came up and she caught the warmth of his smile.

  “You’ll be staying until I come back from the fight?” he asked hopefully.

  “And then some, I expect,” her mother answered.

  Andrew took her mother into his huge, strong arms and gave her a bear hug. “I’ll be looking forward to celebrating our victory with you and my family,” he said. Then he turned to Madeline. “In olden times a lady would give her knight some token to carry with him into battle. Will you give me something of yours?”

  She nodded her head shyly. From her sleeve, she removed a blue, silk scarf and handed it to him. He took it into his hand, and as he did, his fingers brushed her own. Then he put the scarf to his nose.

  “What a fine scent, like fragrant spring flowers, just like yourself.” His smile was a brilliant sunburst. “When I come home, I’ll welcome you properly to Scotland. You have my promise as the Chief of the MacCarnan.”

  “Please take a sack of oats back with you,” her mother hastened to say. “We would consider it an honor to in some way help the Prince’s army.”

  “I won’t deny our need is great. Thank you, Cousin.”

  “Is there a message for your good mother?” Maman asked.

  He favored them with a wide grin displaying pearly teeth to advantage. “Just tell her you saw me as our army began the march to London. Tell her we’ve marched into the heart of England, no more than some one hundred and twenty five miles from the capital and 13,000 men strong. Tell her we intend to face the Duke of Cumberland’s army without fear as true Highlanders with courage in our hearts.” His eyes glistened proudly.

  Madeline clapped her hands with joy and blew him a kiss.

  Andrew MacCarnan swooped down gracefully from his mount and kissed Madeline’s hand in return. “You’re a bonnie lass and I’ll ne’er be forgettin’ ye.” Then he put the proffered sack of meal across his saddle and rode away.

  “I told you he would be wonderful,” Maman said in a soft, husky voice.

  Madeline agreed silently. Andrew was quite impressive. But strangely she found herself thinking about Gareth Eriksen again. By now he must have joined his own regiment of English soldiers. Would they soon be fighting her cousin’s Highlanders? The thought made her feel ill. She could not think well of war, not if it meant that good men would have to fight and kill each other. To consider either Gareth or Andrew killing the other was unbearable, insupportable. Surely, there must be some better way to settle disputes?

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  When they reached Scotland, the countryside changed dramatically. For one thing, the beautiful rolling green farmlands and forested acreage so typical of Northern England were gone. Scotland, it seemed, was mostly ugly flatlands. When Madeline commented on this, her mother observed that the trees in the Lowlands had long since been depleted, never to be replaced.

  “But the Highlands are quite different; you will see.”

  They did not go directly to the Highlands however. As they had promised Constance, they made a brief visit to her father. The elderly Baronet seemed quite happy to make them welcome to his home. The laird was a country gentleman and lived in a tall, stone mansion with a corbel-stepped gable roof that stood gaunt and fortress-like in the treeless and hedgeless stark landscape. There was no lawn or garden to speak of, but cornfields came up to the mansion wall on one side. The interior of the house boasted no luxuries, the furniture simple while the floors had no carpets. The walls lacked paintings and seemed bare with their lack of decoration. The bedchamber that she and Maman were shown to even lacked a fireplace.

  Madeline’s first impression of lowland Scottish aristocratic life was that it was impoverished in comparison to England or France. But the old man was so chivalrous that it more than made up for the gloom of his meager home.

/>   They ate with the laird that evening, a plain meal of grouse and salmon, served in one course with Scottish ale. The talk was all of Prince Charles and the Jacobites.

  “They might have a chance this time around,” the old man said, excitement showing in the glimmer of his eye. “My daughter thinks I’m an old fool in that regard. She prefers her dead mother’s English relatives to her family in Scotland and takes the English side in political matters. She went and married herself a titled Englishman much against my wishes. But she’s a strong-willed lass and I would not fight her. She’d ne’er have forgiven me. What will your lassie do? Will she marry a Scot?”

  Maman smiled with an inner radiance. “A Highlander if I have any say in the matter. She’ll marry her cousin, the MacCarnan.”

  “The MacCarnan, is it?” the old man smiled roguishly. “Perhaps then you will be able to get him to stop coming down to filch my cattle each year.”

  “The clansmen steal your cattle?” Madeline asked, truly appalled.

  The laird nodded at her. “‘Tis the way of the Highlanders, lass. They’re a wild lot. We lowlanders have suffered their incursions for centuries. ‘Tis nothing new, I do assure ye.”

  He and her mother seemed to just accept the fact that the Highlanders were cattle thieves, but she found the information quite disturbing. What other disagreeable things did she not know about the nature of the clansmen?

  As if he were reading her mind, the laird continued to speak. “They’re a damn sight better than the English anyway. Our neighbors to the south are purse-proud and overbearing, you may be quite sure. Why there’s hardly a place in the kingdom but its inhabitants could tell how the English had burnt it, and we’re still unavenged.”

  “Perhaps that will change when Prince Charles rules.”

  “Aye, let’s drink to the Stuarts!”

  They lifted their glasses and drank.

  “Will you be seeing Constance before I do?” the old laird asked them, blinking through watery eyes.

  “I think not, sir. We are going on to the Highlands. I believe your daughter intends to visit you in the spring. But she will, in any case, be sending word to you,” Maman responded.

  The old man looked pleased. “Perhaps by then there will be word of a bairn,” he said. “It’s high time.”

  At the Baronet’s insistence, they remained several days before resuming their journey. These were days that her mother desperately needed to rest and Madeline was glad for them as well. She did not sleep well at night. Her nights were tortured by dreams from which she would awaken with remembrance all too vivid. Usually, she was held in Gareth Eriksen’s powerful arms and he was kissing her, his hands moving sensuously along her body. She would wake up yearning, wanting, she knew not what. But always, the dreams were so real. Sometimes her nigh-trail was soaked with perspiration.

  If only she could put the man completely out of her mind. He was interested in adulterous affairs with married women. Even if she were a married woman, she would never consider such a relationship. When she married, it must be with a man she loved and respected completely, the way Maman had regarded Papa. And this man must love her just as totally in return. Gareth Eriksen could never be that man. What did he know of love or commitment or honor? She must stop desiring him so; it was sinful. If only she could make herself dream of Andrew MacCarnan instead. He was truly a magnificent man, like a knight of chivalry. Whenever thoughts of Gareth Eriksen entered her mind, she must force them away and think of her cousin instead.

  The trip north-west continued slowly through rough terrain. Maman was very brave, but Madeline was all too aware of her suffering. She determined that she would indeed marry her cousin if he wanted her so that her mother could feel at peace.

  Her first sight of the MacCarnan domain was breathtaking but intimidating. A river flowed smooth and tranquil then fell steeply over a waterfall, the water of the falls looking like poured buttermilk. The glen in which the MacCarnan lived was wild country, full of rocks and hilly land, of thorns and heather. There were also pastures where scrawny cattle grazed, but for the most part, the farmland looked unproductive. She reminded herself that all able-bodied men had gone off to fight for Prince Charles.

  They passed the thatched roofs of the crofters’ cottages and she saw painfully thin children playing barefoot in tattered clothing. They rode on upland to what was a tumbledown castle. Adjoining the castle was a relatively large house with an indifferently maintained park.

  “We’re home at last,” her mother said with an air of finality. “This is Castle MacCarnan, home of the Earls of Glencarnan for four centuries.” Madeline took a deep breath and silently prayed that her Maman was right about what the Highlands would be like – for at the moment, she had her doubts. To her, this seemed like nothing more than an untamed, gloomy wilderness, uncivilized and totally foreign to her sensibilities, a far cry from Paris or even London. How was she ever to feel at home in such a place?

  Their coachman knocked at the door of the manor house, and Madeline held her breath then stared in shock and dismay at what she saw when the door was opened.

  Eight

  A horrible-looking, toothless hag stood at the door, reminding Madeline for all the world of the witches from Macbeth. Had Shakespeare ever seen this dreadful old woman?

  “Happen ye be of the MacCarnan?” the old woman smiled to reveal a grotesque blackness where front teeth should have been. She held out an arthritic hand, gnarled and twisted like an old tree branch.

  Madeline instinctively drew back, but Maman came forward and extended her own pale digits to the claw. She told the old woman who she was and they were welcomed into the house immediately.

  “I dinna ken your da, but I know of ye, and now you have come home. Ye will be welcome by Lady Anne.”

  They were shown into a drawing room of sorts, though it was hardly what Madeline had been accustomed to either in France or England. The room was plain, unadorned and depressingly dreary. She made no comment, noting only that Maman had a smile on her lips.

  A tall, red-headed woman entered the room, along with a pretty child of eleven or twelve. The woman was several inches taller than her mother with hair a much fiercer shade of red. She came toward them and immediately embraced Maman. Then she turned to the old hag.

  “Ye can go back to your duties now,” the lady said with a wave of dismissal.

  Anne MacCarnan was the widow of James MacCarnan, her mother’s first cousin. As Madeline understood it, Anne was herself a second cousin. The two women greeted each other with affection. The cousins seemed immediately at ease, probably due to a long ago friendship that had been sustained by correspondence over the ensuing years.

  Madeline did not understand everything that was said; the two women often broke into a dialect of Gaelic, the true language of the Highlands. Her mother had schooled her to some extent in this language and Madeline was quick to pick up on different tongues. In the schoolroom, she had been tutored and become proficient in English and Italian as well as French. Her English had improved to the extent that she spoke almost without accent. But Gaelic was rarely used and so Madeline had to listen carefully to understand even a little of their rapid conversation.

  Madeline was introduced to Andrew MacCarnan’s younger sister as well. Her impression was of a tall, skinny girl all auburn hair, freckles and large, inquisitive eyes.

  Maman told Anne of their brief visit with Andrew and she nodded her approval. “They’re doing well then. ‘Twas high time we gave the English something to think about again. Maybe this time we’ll win. At least they’ll know the Scottish spirit hasn’t died simply because of the union.”

  While her mother and cousin spent hours talking about family and catching up on each other’s lives, Madeline went walking with her young cousin, Elizabeth, who seemed eager to show her around.

  Madeline was glad that she was wearing boots for they were needed. She readily conceded the Highlands were very different from the Lowlands. There were
trees for one thing, Scots pine and tall beeches, cliffs of rock, streams and lakes, mountains outlined in pinkish hues. Nature here seemed unspoiled, serene and sublime.

  “It’s beautiful, wild and untamed,” she said.

  Elizabeth smiled happily. “It is, isn’t it? Is France like this?”

  Madeline enjoyed the musical lilt of her cousin’s accent.

  “In comparison, France is cultivated – and a lot warmer.” For the first time, Madeline noticed how much colder it was here in the high country. She looked to the purple peaked mountains. “Will it snow soon?”

  “Oh, probably. It always does by December anyway. But winters aren’t as bad as you might think. Come along, I’ll take you to my favorite place.”

  The young girl pulled her by the hand and she followed along almost breathless by the time they arrived at a beautiful loch.

  “We catch trout here all the time,” Elizabeth explained. “And in the summer, we go swimming.”

  “Is it warm in the summer?”

  “Nay, but the water feels good just the same.”

  Madeline studied the area as if she might paint it. She had brought her sketchpad and water colors with her and thought that this would be the perfect landscape to inspire her art.

  “What is it like here in the summer?” she asked thoughtfully.

  “The banks are green with grass, and wild flowers grow everywhere in abundance. There’s foxglove and tall purple thistles.”

  Madeline’s eye was caught by a clump of beech trees and among them a red deer glanced its velvet brown eye in her direction and then just as quickly ran away.

  As they walked along, Madeline’s gaze fixed on the small pink and purplish flowers that grew in dense masses rising from low-growing evergreen shrubs. “What are those?” she asked. “They seem to be everywhere.”