Jennifer Roberson

  Cat reacted instinctively, knocking aside his arm with her own in a sharp, sideways slash. She did not think of the sword, still gripped in his other hand; she thought of his fingers, of his broken nails, of his intimate, groping hand. “Dinna touch me, MacDonald!”

  His surprise did not last long. He caught her wrist and crushed it cruelly, threatening the bones, then swung her toward the door. “A lad with breasts, is it? Or a boy-faced lass?” He glanced briefly beyond her, then jerked his head even as the croft-boy fell away, scrambling to escape. “Strip it,” he ordered unseen men. “I’ll have plates, rack-spits, candlesticks—anything of value! Spare Glenlyon nothing . . . he’s naught but a drukken man; let him weep into his usquabae!”

  “Leave it be!” Cat cried; they had so little left, now that her father had sold off anything that might bring a silver penny. “Dinna touch my house!”

  “Your house? Yours?” His grip tightened. He was not, she realized, a MacDonald after all. His bonnet badge, though caked with soot, boasted another clan. “Are you Glenlyon’s whelp, then?”

  “Leave that!” she shouted as the first man beyond the threshold tore from the window her mother’s lace curtains, painstakingly repaired after Jamie’s recent fury by Una’s careful work.

  Her captor shook her. “I asked you: Are you Glenlyon’s?”

  Cat’s head snapped on her neck, sending a sharp pain shooting into her skull. For all he was shorter than she, he was neither slight nor weak. His fingers on her wrist were rigid as wire.

  “—daughter,” she muttered, hating herself for the tears that sprang to her eyes.

  “The laird’s daughter? Then you’re fit to serve the man outside. He’s in need of a wet throat.” He snatched a stolen cup from the clansman who had stolen it, then shoved it beneath her chin. “Usquabae.”

  Cat stared into his face. A young man; younger, she thought, than Jamie. I should be afraid—And so she was, but not so afraid that she could not think, could not consider and assess the result of this action, or that—I am taller—But she shut it off. He would hurt her. Any attempt at escape now, as he touched her, would fail, gaining her naught, and he would hurt her.

  He laughed, as if he read her intent. A shiver coursed through her body. With the rim of the cup pressed cruelly against her chin, Cat nodded acquiescence as much as she was able.

  They had plundered her father’s whisky, but one man poured the cup full. The tang of liquor filled her head, stinging her eyes. As around her the MacDonalds stripped Chesthill bare of even such small riches as pewter spoons and platters, Cat made her way outside. It was no less frenzied there as men brought out their plunder from house and outbuildings. Iron clanked, and pewter, loaded onto garrons already bearing stolen wealth.

  —they’ve robbed the croft-houses—From farther up the glen she heard the shouts of the clansmen who had already appropriated cattle, sheep, goats, and horses, gathering them for driving. —they will leave us nothing. . . nothing at all. . . Cat bit into her lip. If there was any consolation, it was that Lord Murray of Atholl would lose as much as her father; but winter would be hard, bitter hard, if not impossible. In their greed, in their ferocity, the MacDonalds would make certain nothing remained on which the Campbells might live. Better to kill us outright, than starve us to death!

  Two garrons, one riderless, the other mounted, pawed idly at hoof-churned mud still puddled from morning rain. She refused to raise her head, to meet the eyes of the mounted man to whom she was to give her father’s whisky in her father’s cup. Through a haze of bitter tears Cat saw a foot thrust into the stirrup, a bare bruised knee pressed against horseflesh. The sett of the kilt was of the deep black-green and rich crimson colors often favored by MacDonalds.

  Cat stared steadfastly at the mucky ground as she picked her way to the horse. I willna. look at him—She stopped at the stirrup, clenching teeth so firmly her jaws ached. As the hand came down to grasp the cup, she deliberately turned it over. “Chruachan, ” she murmured fiercely.

  Whisky splashed bare feet, splattered mud on her ankles and soiled the ragged bottoms of her borrowed breeks, but she did not care. She exulted in it. Chruachan. Chruachan. I’ll say it till I die . . .for dead Robbie and for Glen Lyon—

  From behind someone grabbed a handful of hair. The grip twisted her head sideways, then a rough shove sent her sprawling to the ground. Cat landed on chin, hip, elbow, and shoulder, then dug the elbow into muck to lever herself up. She watched in numb comprehension as whisky and horse urine soaked her ill-plaited braid.

  Inanely she thought, Una will be angry.

  The man with the claymore stood beside her, setting the tip into mud so the sheen of steel was dulled. “Drink it, then. If you willna serve a MacDonald or Stewart, you’ll serve yourself instead!”

  Stewart. Stewart, not MacDonald; he had denied it at the beginning. Likely of Appin, then; they were nearly as close as Glencoe.

  Glencoe.

  Cat, still sprawled in muck, looked up sharply. She ignored the Stewart entirely and stared instead at the mounted man, the MacDonald, the laird’s son to whom she had been ordered to serve Campbell whisky.

  The man beside her stirred. “Christ, Dair, you’re white as a corpse—” He forgot her abruptly, swinging toward the horse. “We’ll have you down, aye? . . . we’ll have you in the house—”

  His eyes were the same whisky-gold, she saw, though sheltered in bruised sockets deeper than she recalled. The lean face was thinner, paler, nearly gaunt; a grimy smudge emphasized the hollows beneath sharp cheekbones, the stark contours of his skull. Near-black hair, curling this way and that beneath the fit of his bonnet, was grayer than Cat remembered, speckled more thickly. He had not shaved; dark stubble etched his jaw, proving only the hair on his head was graying to tarnished silver.

  “I’ll ride on to Glencoe,” Alasdair Og said. “There will be warmer welcome there.”

  “Warmer yet in Castle Stalker, aye? Here—” The Stewart snatched something from a passing man, then thrust it toward Dair MacDonald. “Take something to Jean of the Campbells.”

  In sunlight, it glinted copper. Cat stared, outraged: Even my mother’s kettle!

  Dair handed down the reins of a riderless horse to the Appin Stewart. “Ride on. My garron’s limping a wee bit—I’ll catch up.”

  “But—”

  “Ride on. The men are done here.”

  The voice was precisely as she recalled it, though a trifle frayed around the edges, as if he had spent its timbre on too much shouting.

  Cat was aware of kilted clansmen departing the house with plunder stuffed into table linens, tied in bundles onto horses, or swung over plaid-swathed shoulders. One by one they mounted, laughing and jesting, shouting to one another of the booty they had acquired, and turned their garrons toward the track. Eventually even the Stewart, muttering of fools and madmen, departed Glenlyon’s dooryard.

  Dair MacDonald watched them go, then turned back. His expression was predominantly solemn, but Cat, sitting up in mud and puddles, marked a peculiar set to his mouth, as if there were other words he meant to say but dared say none of them.

  Eventually he offered: “If I get down, I willna get up again.”

  From another man it might constitute apology. But not from a MacDonald, surely; a MacDonald would never dismount to pull a Campbell from the ground. Nor would a Campbell offer the service to a MacDonald. I willna have his hands on me.

  Cat felt hollow and filled with light as she stood slowly. Wet breeks stuck to her thighs. Her muck-laden braid glued itself to her neck and shirt; she felt the damp weight of whisky-scented mud stubbling her chin, dribbling slimy wetness down her neck. She put up her dirty chin to ward away mockery, but into her mind leaped a wholly unexpected vision of Lady Glenlyon’s French perfume packed neatly away by a girl who did not believe herself worthy of its scent.

  A wild laugh bubbled up.—usquabae and horse-piss—She gulped a hiccup and bit into her lip, shutting off the impulse. “Go,” she sa
id tightly. “Have you no’ done enough?”

  He ignored her entirely, wholly focused on something else. “Catriona—? Cat?”

  Humiliation gagged her. Seven years later he knew her, knew even her name . . . A wail of grief was briefly born, then died in her throat. It was worse, then, far worse. She had expected never to see him again; that he would never see her, all things she could bear, but to know he remembered . . . to know he saw her in such a state as this blunted anger entirely and robbed her even of pride. She bit again deeply into her lip, hoping pain would halt the helpless uprush of tears. Broken fingernails cut crooked crescents into the flesh of slimy palms.

  “Cat—” But he broke it off. His mouth worked stiffly, then stilled into a rigid, taut-lipped line. With infinite care he climbed down from his garron.

  He said if he got down, he couldna get up again. . . . But he was down, splashing into muck. It slopped across bare feet and ankles, but he did not heed it.

  Cat shook back her sticky braid. She expected him to turn away from her, to inspect his mount’s sore hoof; it was why he delayed as the others rode away.

  But he did not. Instead he held out the kettle.

  Cat gazed at him, uncomprehending. When he did not withdraw the kettle or speak again, she ventured to put trembling hands on the dented metal. As their fingertips brushed she jerked the kettle away. She stared hard at the callused male hands, now empty, because she could not look into his face, could not meet his eyes to see the pity there, the compassion, the comprehension of what she felt. He would know. He would understand. As he had years before.

  Cat hugged the battered kettle, willing herself not to cry. She heard him turn away, saw the tarnished glint of silver. He moved stiffly, as if his joints ached. She remembered there had been a battle fought at Killiecrankie; that the Jacobites had won. He and others like him, fighting for King James, had defeated King William’s men.

  She wanted to ask it aloud: How many men did you kill? But she did not, knowing he would tell her only because she asked; he had proved his honesty seven years before in the name of a laird’s boy-faced daughter. A battle was more important. Victory cried out for truth.

  Yet he would tell her because she asked, and because it was the truth, not to rejoice in death. She prayed he would not rejoice, or become a lesser man than in the dreams she had created.

  He mounted, muttering beneath his breath: “Dinna be a puny calf, Alasdair Og—”—and then he was in the saddle, gray-faced and sweating, gathering reins, settling kilt, plaid, claymore, and targe. His bonnet badge flashed argent in the gilt-and-rose light of fall.

  Cat clutched the kettle. As he turned his garron after the others, she saw it did not limp after all.

  Wind rustles trees. There is no peat-smoke upon the air, no smell of cooking meat, no odor of frying fish. No odor at all save of trees, of sap, of turf. Nothing at all of people.

  The glen remains, girdled by cliffs and peaks, cut through by the river, but no one lives in it despite fertility. The valley is empty of habitation, save for its natural game. Empty of MacDonalds.

  She rides unerringly to the house, ignoring the ruins of others. And there she finds identical destruction as well as similar methods: charred timber and broken stone shattered by the heat, collapsed roof slates. Wind has scoured the ruins free of ash, so that only the stark timbers remain thrusting impudently skyward, fallen into a tangle like a handful of dropped kindling.

  Nothing remains to mark human habitation. No scrap of cloth, no pewter plate, no perfume brought from France. Only the detritus of massacre, of fire and plunder, and the flowers of late spring breaking up through blackened soil.

  Part III

  1691

  One

  The road existed because of cows; there were ways held in common with other clans of driving cattle to and from pasturage, and later on to market. This road was one of them, a hoof-beaten, rock-strewn track wider than a deer trail but little better, and certainly no cobbled road like the Romans had built in the land of the Sassenach. But road it was nonetheless, hedged by granite, heather, and bracken, cutting across the mountain fastness warding the northern side of Glencoe.

  Glencoe MacDonalds had come up the drove-road to see the English-speakers who, with their Lowland lapdogs, dared to come into the Highlands to set up housekeeping. There had been rumors of it since Killiecrankie, but now rumor was fact. At the behest of General Sir Hugh Mackay, who had lost Killiecrankie—and others who hated Highlanders—King William had given permission to build a fort near Inverlochy. Its placement clearly was deliberate: on a narrow spit of land beside the River Nevis, in the shadow of the mount, where once stood Gearasdan dubh nan Inbhir-Lochaidh, the Black Garrison. There were memories attached, and MacIain of Glencoe, accompanied by his sons and a small tail of men, said he should not doubt the recollections were stirred of a purpose.

  The fort was as yet unfinished, though it neared completion. The ramparts of earth, stone, and timber stood firm, setting up a formidable barricade against the enemy. Inside stood crude-built buildings for the housing of ammunition, stores, and officers. Outside huddled a cluster of canvas tents, and the haphazard beginnings of peat huts far more crudely constructed than the shielings that housed the clans during summer. The common man gone for a soldier, wintering in hut instead of house, was less well off than the poorest Highlander.

  The MacDonalds did not attempt to hide themselves from view. MacIain and his sons stood upon the crown of the hill looking down upon the fort, and let the men working there see who and where they were. There would be no fighting; there was at present no battle intended, nor even a skirmish, merely reconnaissance. They took the measure of one another.

  MacIain’s white hair blew in the breeze that crested the hill and set the bracken to waving. He had brought with him, by habit, an assortment of weapons, including claymore and blunderbuss, though he let those below at the fort see he had men to carry such arms for him, and a gillie to carry him across each stream so as to keep his brogues dry: he was a Highland chieftain.

  Dair and John stood together, making independent count of the red-backed Sassenachs. It was early yet; there would be more men to come. Their task, then, was to make the coming dreaded by those men; to make the living so difficult—or even impossible—that no matter how many soldiers were garrisoned at the fort, they would find food less than plentiful and supplies such as clothing and other simple plenishings—pots, kettles, even spoons—nonexistent. It was a simple task: to fall upon supply trains wending from Atholl and Badenoch, taking such supplies as they could carry away. Glencoe would profit from it, while the Sassenachs did not.

  MacIain’s voice rumbled, though he spoke quietly. “They’ll send out patrols to drive us away so they forage for food in peace. Thinking to be clever, they’ll send out Scots levies . . . well, we’re no’ fools, are we, to let even another Scotsman take what belongs to Glencoe.” His eyes burned like a banked peat-fire in withered, deep sockets. “We’ll take the cows away.”

  Dair nodded, half-smiling. It was a simple and bloodless solution. Even with protection the soldiers dared not wander too far from the fort for fear of clan reprisal, and those who did would find there was little food to be had. A lack of cattle combined with diverted supply trains would soon combine to demoralize the hungry army. They would turn elsewhere, of course—likely to supply ships coming up Loch Linnhe—but those schemes would take time to implement. The Lowland government would initially delay turning to the sea out of pride and stubborn resolve, and by the time supplies were sent by ship the army garrison would be sick and half-starved.

  Dair picked from his eye a windblown lock of hair. Starving men dinna fight so well . . . A movement from MacIain caught his attention. His father took from his jacket pocket a tarnished, battered spyglass brought home from France one year. MacIain raised it to an eye and peered down upon the fort.

  When he took it away he was smiling sweet as a babe. “ ’Tis as I thought,” he said, t
ucking the glass away. “They’ve a graveyard begun already.”

  English-born Colonel John Hill, former Constable of Belfast and now Their Majesties’ Governor of the fort near Inverlochy but newly named after its Dutch-born king, stood before the gates and stared up at the granite-crowned hills. Behind the rocky crest bloomed a lowering sun, but the silhouettes were eloquent enough for a man such as Hill, who understood what a fort meant to the way of life most jeopardized by its presence. There were Highlanders up there, he knew, because he had been told so by a near-panicked English soldier; undoubtedly they were MacDonalds, and fully anticipated by anyone with wit enough to acknowledge the Highlanders would take a pointed and wholly natural interest in Fort William’s construction.

  Beside him, General Sir Hugh Mackay stirred. “I should take a patrol up there to send them scrambling back to their hovels.”

  Governor Hill did not acknowledge the comment, though he could not help a brief twitch at the corner of his mouth. He understood very well that Mackay’s pride yet stung from his defeat at Killiecrankie, but Hill knew just such a patrol would win the king’s general no sop to that pride; in fact, he would encounter an additional defeat. At home in their heather, hills, and crags, the clansmen would not be beaten by hungry, ill-clad soldiers more interested in food than in killing or catching a Scot.

  “They’ve come to watch, no more,” Hill said quietly. “We would do well to accustom ourselves to the glint of their steel and the sett of their tartan; we’ll see them all through summer.”

  Mackay’s sour mouth was grimly set. “We waste time. Breadalbane’s scheming will accomplish naught; you should burn the houses, lift the cattle, and destroy all their crops.”