Idleness was not Duncan’s virtue. “That no one is quite certain what you get of this, nor why you should concern yourself with an oath to William if you are Jamie’s man.” He sat upright, striking the tented kilt as he crossed his legs beneath him. “What do you get of this?”
“Peace,” the earl answered. “And power.” He repositioned the dirk so its stag-horn handle lay in easy reach. “Tell me how.”
“A lesson, is it?”
“You should have learned one. You should have learned several, but one will do—provided it is the right one.” The earl did not smile. “Tell me how.”
Duncan shrugged, shaking his head. “Power is easy enough; the man who offers Highland peace makes William take notice of him.”
“Aye?”
“And peace is the means to win that notice.”
“It is.”
Duncan scowled into darkness, looking across the encampment. At distant fires men laughed and talked, trading jests and stories; the bards held sway for many. “They dinna trust me, the chiefs. I am a Campbell of Glenorchy, and Grey John’s heir.” He looked back squarely at his father. “You have a gey supple tongue and the wit of a fox; which king do you serve?”
Breadalbane did not shirk the truth. “The one who can hold Scotland.”
“But that could be either of them, William or James.”
“Aye, so it could be.”
Duncan was perplexed. “The Jacobites want James, but the Sassenachs dinna. They prefer William.”
It is so obvious; are you my son, truly? Or merely passed off as mine? “Then one must weigh whether the Jacobites are strong enough to win.”
Duncan muttered an imprecation beneath his breath. “ ’Tis the only thing that matters to you. Winning.”
“Losing is cold company: one lives his life outside of politics, or one loses his head.” Breadalbane did not smile. “Is this what you have learned? To question my intent? But that, I should have said, you learned long ago.”
“I will reap what you sow,” Duncan retorted. “Therefore it makes some difference to me what you do.”
“As it makes some difference to me what you do.” The earl’s tone was deadly. “Such as desiring to marry against my wishes.”
Duncan stiffened. “You canna blame me! You’ve had the ordering of my life in everything. . . now when I’ve met a woman I want, without depending on you, you say I canna have her. I’ve given in on everything else—I willna give in on this!”
Despite the inclination, Breadalbane would not shout. Instead he took solace in soft condescension. “If I rule you, ’tis because someone must. You are a fool with no wits to see that sacrifices must be made—”
“What sacrifices? You? You’ve made none; ’tis me who makes them all! ”
“Ah,” he murmured, thinking of his father’s paupery and indecisiveness that had nearly ruined them all. But Duncan could not see it; he saw only what lay before him, what his father had won. A mark then of his success: that his son could not see the failure that preceded it.
“Well?” Duncan challenged. “ ’Tis true. You are the Earl of Breadalbane, Lord Glenorchy, and all the other titles—you hold lands I canna count, own castles all over Scotland—”
“And how do you suppose I came by all these things?” the earl asked silkily.
Color splotched Duncan’s face. “They say you stole it all, through lies and trickery.”
Breadalbane had learned long before not to get angry; it weakened a man’s position and damaged his dignity. “And do you believe that?”
Duncan flung out a hand to encompass the encampment. “They do.”
“I asked you: do you?” He paused. “Or are you a blind boy led everywhere by one-eyed men who would be kings in Breadalbane’s place?”
“You would,” Duncan said tightly. “You would be king, if you thought you could keep the crown!”
The earl smiled blandly. “If it were offered to me, I would certainly accept. . . but Campbells are not kings.” Not crowned kings, perhaps; but there were ways of ruling Scotland that did not require anointing.
“Aye, but—”
“Meanwhile, William holds the crown and James wants it back, whilst the clans desire nothing more than to be left alone in their petty Highland kingdoms so they may raid and pillage and kill one another with impunity.” Breadalbane lifted a single shoulder in elegant disdain. “But the price is too high. William needs peace in the Highlands to salvage face and pride—and Highland flesh to catch musket balls and cannon scraps in place of Dutch and English.”
Duncan gazed at him blankly, then swallowed back a choked laugh. “If I went to them now and told them what you said, what you truly believe—”
“They ken what I believe. They ken it gey well. But they also ken that their days of freedom are numbered; William holds the Highlands by virtue of his forts and the soldiers within them—do you think there is a chief here foolish enough to turn his back on my truce? That is power, Duncan. . . that is sacrifice: to ken what must be done no matter how much you hate it, and to do it. One time or one hundred.”
Duncan sat very still. “Then none of this matters. None of it.”
“ ’Tis over,” Breadalbane said. “They will agree to my truce, swear the Oath of Allegiance by the end of the year—or their clans will be subject to extirpation.” Stair had promised it.
“Extir—”
“And every man here—every man out there”—he gestured expansively—“ understands it perfectly.” He smiled; it was truth, it was power, it was Duncan’s future—if he understood how to grasp it. “Though they will none of them admit it.”
Duncan’s jaw worked awkwardly. “This is a sham, a travesty—this is done for your own amusement!”
“No; there is naught here that amuses me. Certainly not my son.”
The splotches grew redder. It was all Duncan could do to force the words from his mouth. “I’ll see you have it, then. Amusement. ” He flung himself flat on the turf, tugged his plaid over his shoulder, and turned his back on his father.
“Sleep well,” Breadalbane offered.
Sometime before dawn Dair awoke. He was aware that the side of his face hurt and that his right arm was trapped beneath his body. Alarums rang faintly: he was hardly in a state to defend himself with his dirk-arm dead as stone.
He rolled over, grasping his right arm and carrying it across his abdomen. For several moments he lay quietly on his back, sorting out his senses; and then he remembered.
He stared blindly at the sky and damned Breadalbane.
He was still amidst Stewarts despite his MacDonald name; Robbie had not roused him from his stupor to send him back to his own fire. Around him lay clumps of plaid-wrapped Highlanders nestled in against the turf. One man snored dreadfully, while another murmured tender words not meant for others to hear.
Dair contemplated his state. He rarely drank overmuch, and usually when he did he went to sleep before causing much trouble. But whisky wore off; he always awoke too soon for sobriety, left dulled in wits and with a powerful desire to return immediately to the kind of leaden sleep that had won him his current afflictions: a pebble-pocked, turf-chilled face, and a wholly useless arm.
Dair worked the flesh of that arm, trying to rouse its responses without encouraging the discomfort that came with such a thing. But it came to spite him, and he gritted his teeth against the tingling; to take his mind from it he sat up slowly. His head remained attached, permitting him to view the encampment.
It was false dawn, illuminated by a raft of stars. With the fires died out to coals and the moon beginning to fade, there was little diffusion of starlight. He could see very clearly. Here and there gillies sat watch for their chiefs, but nearly everyone in camp was soundly asleep.
Dair glanced at the plaid-wrapped man closest to him. He saw little enough of the face, which was pressed into wool with a tartan edge fallen across one cheek, but he knew Robbie. He was boyish in slumber, stripped of the hardness tha
t aged him.
He worked the arm again briefly, then gave up; he was now too awake, too restless to stay, and his mind too full of thoughts. He got up quietly and resettled a sagging plaid. He made his way carefully through scattered fires and clumps of men, lifting a hand in greeting and placation to watching gillies, and came at last to the Glencoe fire.
They were no different from Appin Stewarts or any number of other clans strewn throughout the encampment: men redolent of whisky, swaddled in tartan grave wrappings, snoring gently against the turf while the travesty of Achallader stared starkly down upon them.
Dair looked at the castle. What did MacIain think, riding up to the ruins? It was his father, as well as others, who had raided and razed Achallader, destroying all outbuildings and the braeside township. Dair supposed then there had been jubilation at depriving Campbells yet again of possessions they had, in the MacDonald view, unfairly gained; he supposed there was something of that again when MacIain came across Rannoch Moor to the wreckage he himself had caused. It would take more than Breadalbane’s summons to peace to settle the Campbell-MacDonald feud.
Dair knew there were no regrets of the burning. There were never regrets when a MacDonald took back from Campbells what Campbells had won from others by their own insidious methods. And MacIain of Glencoe would be the last man on earth who might admit there could be.
I am not MacIain . . . will never be MacIain—Dair stumbled over an object, saw it was a corked, boiled-leather bottle, and retrieved it. He sat down with care, rearranged his plaid, then uncorked the bottle. There was little whisky left; he drained what there was, then set the bottle aside. In a matter of moments the new usquabae introduced itself to old, and he felt the slackness in his body that presaged welcome sleep.
He lay down against the turf and gave himself over to it, but it proved a contrary beast after all and remained at bay in the bleak darkness of his thoughts. He was aware within himself of the regret denied—or denied by—his father, if for a different reason; aware of desperation, that he might not get what he wanted; fully aware of fear that she would refuse it herself.
The plaid-wrapped bundle beside him stirred. Hoarfrosted hair, not much grayer now than his own, poked its way above a tartan shroud. Only the brow followed and let itself be seen; John MacDonald was not prepared to surrender sleep entirely, only a moment of it. “ ’Tis settled, then?”
Dair sighed. Trust his brother to know what ailed him. “I dinna ken.”
“There was some talk of it, aye? If you wanted to keep it secret from others, you and the lass might have picked another place.”
There had been no choice. Keeping it secret had not been in their minds, because in that moment they had lost them entirely.
Uneasiness threaded his spirit. “Did MacIain see?”
“He was with Glengarry; there was more in their mouths than Catriona Campbell and Alasdair Og.” John shifted against the ground, pulling the wool away from his face. “Is this why you want to break with Jean?”
“Christ, no—I barely kent who Cat was. . . well, I kent who she was—”—had known for a long time—“—but there was naught in it then.” Dair sighed; whisky lulled him into confession. “Am I a fool?”
John’s laugh was a soft gust of air, and not unkind. “All men are fools when there is a woman in it.”
“Do you think I’m a fool?” It mattered very much.
“I love my wife,” John said. “I am no’ the man to ask.”
Dair stirred restlessly. “MacIain would skelp me.”
“Not once Mother has clutched his lug-hole and set him down before her.”
Dair smiled. “Och, aye. . .” He squinted into starlight. “I told her something of it.”
“Mother?—aye, well. . . she would have something to say, would she no’?”
“Little enough,” Dair replied. “I expected more. . . but she said I wasna ready to hear it.”
“Likely because you didna ken—then—what you wanted.” John tugged his plaid more closely around his shoulders, exiling drafts. “Do you ken now?”
Desperately. “Oh, aye,” Dair answered without hesitation, with a hard edge in his tone and a perfect certainty. “I ken it verra well. But there is Breadalbane in my way.”
John’s tone was neutral. “Aye. And a Stewart.”
Dair shut his eyes. “Two.”
Three
Governor John Hill, behind the new-built walls of Fort William, within his spare officer’s quarters, received the caller with courtesy. He truly admired the Highlanders, no matter the tales told of their crudity, their barbarism, and it was always a pleasure to welcome one in to share a dram and pass an hour or two while they spoke of inconsequential things in place of reality.
But reality now had come; the man was a Cameron, a dusty, wind-ruffled Cameron of little style or consequence, and clearly reluctant to spend more time with the Sassenach soldier than was required. Even whisky had small appeal.
Hill welcomed him into his tiny private sitting room as the Highlander stripped off his bonnet, signalled the door to be shut so they might be alone, and offered usquabae by its Gaelic name as he waved his visitor to a chair. But the man refused the seat as well as the liquor. Lamplight sparked dully off a mud-smeared plaid brooch, weighting draped wool at one shoulder.
“I’m no’ to stay,” he said diffidently, clearly ill at ease as he gripped the doffed bonnet. “I’m to tell you what my laird says I should, that you’ll ken the truth of it.”
Hill, in the act of pouring a dram, froze. He set down the flagon and turned, aware abruptly of apprehension: his own, as well as the Highlander’s.
A lad. Fifteen? Sixteen? Tall; I took him for a man . . . But he managed a smile, and did not drink the whisky. Nor did he sit. “Are you from Ewan Cameron, then?”
The Cameron bobbed his ruddy head. His eyes were set deep in hollowed sockets, bright and wary as a fox’s. The bones of his face had not yet settled into manhood, but the line of the jaw was there, stubbled rusty red as his hair. “Cameron of Lochiel, aye,” the boy confirmed. “I’m to tell you the laird isna so willing to treat after all. I’m to say: look to Iain Glas.”
Grey John, in Gaelic. Breadalbane. Hill’s fears were coming to fruition. “Aye?” he asked cautiously.
The Cameron shifted awkwardly from bare foot to bare foot, plainly wanting to leave. “I’m to say: he no longer trusts the earl to deliver as he’s promised. The silver. ’Tis yet in London, the earl says, but there is a tale told of most of it carried to Edinburgh, or Kilchurn.”
“They are at Achallader,” Hill said, chafing inwardly. “The lairds, and their tacksmen.” As much as he detested Breadalbane for stealing his idea that the Highlands might be tamed with a treaty, he could not fault the earl’s attempts to find a peaceful resolution. “Do you say they will not agree to any treaty?”
A single hitch of a plaid-draped shoulder: crimson field, crosshatched boldly by black, and a narrow white stripe. “I’m to say: Lochiel of Cameron doubts the earl, as does MacDonald of Glengarry.”
“And Glencoe,” Hill murmured. He drew breath. It burned in his chest till he nearly choked on it. “Will you carry word to Lochiel that I mean to hold him to his agreement? That he has given me his willingness to consider the treaty, and to withdraw that willingness now could endanger the safety of the clans?”
He realized that despite the words he sounded too conciliatory; he should tell, not ask. But no man achieved success by telling the Highlanders anything. One asked, one hoped. One prayed.
The young Cameron worked the worn bonnet in grimy hands. Then he stopped and looked straightly at Hill. The spark of the plaid brooch was extinguished by the light burning in his eyes. “Look to your own safety.”
Another man might arrest him and clap him in irons for such insolence before the king’s governor. But Hill knew better. It was not insolence. It was truth, as far as any Highlander could recognize, or speak it.
“I thank you,” Hill said, �
�for your honesty. Will you have usquabae?”
The Cameron demurred. “I’m to go back at once, aye? To say what you have said.”
“Aye.” Hill managed a smile. “He is a man, your laird. Worth honoring.”
The boy smiled. “Aye, I ken that!”
“And I.” Knowing, as he opened the door so the young Highlander might leave, that he would have to find a way to impress upon such men as Ewan Cameron of Lochiel that the only safety he and anyone else, even this lad, might know lay in respecting the soldiers housed in the fort at Inverlochy.
The argument between the Earl of Breadalbane and the Laird of Glencoe brewed very briefly, then boiled over into steam-laden virulence. Cat, who had grown up amidst the verbal and physical battles of her brothers—had, in fact, been a frequent participant—was not taken aback by the birth of the argument, its noise, or the identity of the men involved, but by its bitterness. MacIain she knew all too well as a loud, argumentative man, but Breadalbane was not. She had never seen him angry, only icily disdainful when tested by Duncan’s truculence. It astonished her to hear him cast back at the giant MacDonald such words as would infuriate even a temperate man.
She wondered ironically how many wagers were won or lost in that moment, and could almost hear the coins changing hands as other men became aware of the disagreement.
It was of brief duration, even as they stood in the looming ruins of MacDonald-razed Achallader. A tall, massive Gael swathed in plaid and hostility, while the shorter, slighter man wore the suit of a Sassenach as if shamed by his Highland birth despite his Highland titles.
And perhaps that is a part of it. . . . That, and the castle, and cows, and titles, and one hundred other slights they might manufacture between them, dredging up history to fling at one another: Campbell and MacDonald, enemies from the beginning. Born into an enmity they could only preserve, because to do otherwise was to defy their heritage.
Is that what we do? she wondered, thinking of Dair, of a fire, and the warmth springing up between them that had nothing to do with the coals, with the flames, or even with the music rousing the blood and the bones. Do we defy what we are, mock our heritage—
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