The Blood of Roses

by Marsha Canham

  Four hundred yards down the road, Colonel Blakeney raised his hand and brought his troop of men to a standstill.

  “Did you hear something?” he asked his second-in-command.

  The younger officer listened, his head cocked to one side, his eyes searching the twisted, vaulting shadows that crowded either side of the road.

  “An owl perhaps?”

  “Owls do not scream, Lieutenant,” Blakeney remarked, his own head swiveling in an attempt to judge their position and guess how much farther the forest ran before emptying onto the glen.

  “Send back for MacLeod,” he ordered. “And for the love of God, do it quietly. Pass the word as you go: I want absolute, blood-still silence among the men. The first sneeze I hear ends in a slit throat.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The lieutenant ran noiselessly back along the fidgeting column of infantry, relaying the colonel’s command for silence as he went. The men had been nervous to begin with, for they had all heard the rumors of the massive Jacobite encampment in the glen surrounding Moy Hall, and few of them believed it to be truly deserted. The names Cameron and MacDonald reacted on their bladders and bowels more fiercely than the brisk winter air; some of the soldiers had been present at Prestonpans and knew firsthand the fighting savagery of the two clans. Others, who had been at Falkirk, remembered the terror of seeing screaming Highlanders charge out of nowhere wielding blood and death in their hands.

  Fully half of Lord Loudoun’s army was English, and they hated and feared these bens and glens where no normal soldier could be expected to fight efficiently. The other half consisted of Highland regiments raised from the clans who supported the Hanover monarchy. Their hearts were not attuned to a pitched battle with their own kinsmen, and because of their own proud blood, they knew that the blind passion carrying the rebels this far would be eradicated by nothing short of death.

  “Why have ye stopped the column?” demanded Ranald MacLeod, captain of the company of MacLeods. Like his father, he was short and blunt of feature, quick to find fault with every tactic suggested by anyone other than a Highlander. Unlike his father, however, he was acutely conscious of the trust the MacLeods had betrayed in refusing to honor their pledge of support for the prince and was grudgingly envious of his younger brother, Andrew, who had thrown scorn in their father’s face and ridden off to join the Jacobites.

  “We are nearing one of the junctions marked on the map,” Blakeney surmised. “Once through this narrow gorge and over the hill, we will be able to divide the men and spread out in a pincer movement to surround Moy Hall.”

  “Over this hill there are ten ithers.” MacLeod spat derisively. “A better approach would ha’ been from the east, where there were moors an’ a level field.”

  “And a greater likelihood of being seen and discovered by our enemies.”

  MacLeod considered the mist, sniffing it like a hound scenting game. “Nae doubt they’ve seen us already. Nae doubt the owls are soundin’ the alarm even as we sit here shiftin’ foot tae foot.”

  Blakeney reddened. “Then I suggest we close ranks and fix bayonets.”

  “We’re under nae orders tae fight the whole blessit rebel army,” MacLeod said evenly. “The general were clear on that, bein’ as how we’re all what stands atween them an’ full possession O’ the Heelands.”

  “Is your concern for the welfare of the Highlands … or the well-being of the MacLeod estates?”

  An angry paw of a hand fell to the hilt of a broadsword. “Ye’ll take a care in what ye say, Thomas Lobster. Some O’ ma men are no’ too keen tae be trampled by yer brave sojers should they happen tae catch a glimpse O’ the white cockade.”

  Blakeney’s cheeks flushed at the blatant reference to his men’s retreat at Prestonpans. His hand dropped to his own sword hilt, itching to test the burly Highlander’s mettle, and well he might have, had one of the advance scouts not come tumbling out of the shadows, screaming at the top of his lungs.

  “Rebels, sir! Up ahead! In the trees, in the hills!”

  “Slow down, man!” Blakeney commanded harshly. “Calm yourself and tell me exactly what you saw.”

  “Rebels, sir! Half a mile down the road, maybe less by now.”

  “Damn!” The colonel glared ahead into the darkness and obstructing mist. “How many? An advance guard? A company? A regiment? Speak up, man, what did you see?”

  “I dunno how many, sir. They was all around me though, that much I could tell just by listening. They was swarmin’ through the trees, thick as bluddy flies in June. Settin’ up for an ambush, I’d say. Already killed Jacobs arid would have had me, too, if I’d been a hair slower.”

  A buzz rippled through the column of men, and en masse, they could almost be seen to flinch back a step. Neither their expressions nor their stance altered much when Blakeney wheeled his horse around and lunged to the centre of the road.

  “Form up the men! Muskets primed, bayonets fixed! Prepare for attack! Prepare for attack!”

  Two hundred yards down the road, Colin Fraser heard the order and left his grove of junipers, plunging back through the underbrush to where his men were crouched and waiting. His primary concern now was to find a way to warn the others back at Moy Hall that what looked to be the entire government force posted in Inverness was on the road and about to break through their feeble defenses.

  Feeble be damned! he thought. Raising his musket in the air, he fired it, shouting at his men to prepare to attack. In desperation, he not only shouted their names, but the names of every clansman he could think of, and began running from bush to bush, screaming the cath-ghairm of the Camerons, the MacDonalds, the MacGillivrays, the Stewarts, the Chisholms … His men quickly grasped the idea and discharged their weapons, reloading as they ran into the trees, roaring orders back and forth, moving constantly to make it seem as if the woods were alive with bloodthirsty Highlanders.

  “Christ!” MacLeod shouted. “That’s Lochiel himsel’! They were waitin’ f’ae us! The bluidy bastards were waitin’ f’ae us!”

  “Hold your ground!” Blakeney screamed, drawing his sword and raising it in the air.

  “They were waitin’ f’ae us!” MacLeod raged, drawing his own broadsword. “The whole bluidy lot O’ them, waitin’ tae take us in our own trap!”

  Blakeney’s horse reared as a musketball hissed by his ear and struck a man standing in the front line of the infantry column. Clutching his throat, the soldier gurgled an ear-piercing scream and was jerked back off his feet, the blood spraying the men on either side and behind. Breaking apart, the column started to split out of formation. Blakeney, sensing they would turn and run, regardless of what orders he gave, had no choice but to try to salvage what discipline, if any, remained.

  “Retreat!” he shouted. “Fall back! Fire at will into the woods on either side of the road! In God’s name don’t let them box us in!”

  His horse bolted as he dug his bootheels into the quivering flanks. MacLeod was right behind, stopping long enough to pull the wounded man up into his saddle, and long enough to shout a reply to the blood-curdling challenges being hurled at them from the bushes.

  Further down the road, Colin Fraser maintained his frenzied shouting and shooting until his supply of powder and shot was exhausted, and his voice was reduced to a dry rasp. Drenched in sweat, knowing he had done all he could to delay the inevitable, he and his men collapsed by the hedgerow, astonished they had managed to hold the government troops as long as they had, convinced the reprieve was only temporary before the soldiers would return with a vengeance.

  It would not be until morning that they would learn the twelve of them had sent fifteen hundred men scrambling all the way back to Inverness.

  “Definitely gunfire,” Damien murmured, listening to the distant pop and crackle of musket reports. “Although, the way the sound carries up here, there is no telling where it is coming from or how big a force is involved.”

  “There’s nothing much we can do about it,” Corporal
Peters said, loudly enough to remind Damien of the women’s presence. “I suggest we air move into the cave, where it is warm and dry, and perhaps we can brew up a soothing cup of tea.”

  “Tea?” Catherine said, startled. “In the middle of nowhere?”

  Peters flushed and drew a small parcel out of his coat pocket. “I remembered hearing you say how much you longed for a good cup of strong English tea, and, well, I managed to barter some away from a man in Brigadier Stapleton’s regiment.”

  Half a dozen paces away, Laughlan MacKintosh tugged gently on Damien’s coattail to draw his attention. “Sir! Sir, it’s him.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Sir, it’s him. He’s the one I seen outside the stable talkin’ wi’ the Sassenach colonel. I wisna sure until he spoke just then, an’ now … well, I seen the colonel gi’ him that wee packet in the stable. It’s him, I swear it. The one wha’ betrayed the prince an’ Lady Anne.”

  Damien took a split second too long to absorb the information and react, and by then Corporal Peters, sensing the reason for the alarmed exchange of whispers, had already drawn a brace of pistols from beneath his coat. In an almost gracefully fluid move, he wrapped an arm around Catherine’s waist and drew her against his body, the muzzle of a gun thrust up against the underside of her throat.

  Catherine’s shocked cry was bitten short as she felt the cold metal dig sharply into her flesh.

  “I wouldn’t try it if I were you, Ashbrooke,” Peters grated, halting Damien’s reach for his own guns. “Not unless you want to see your sister’s brains splattered all over the hillside.”

  “Corporal!” Deirdre gasped. “What are you doing?”

  “My job, madam,” he replied calmly, his voice as level and even as a razor blade, and displaying none of his previous hesitancy or stuttering. “Hardy: Drop whatever it is you are carrying beneath your tartan and move over with the others where I can see you.”

  Robert Hardy’s hand and arm emerged from the wide swath of his tartan, the pistol he clutched gleaming dully in the moonlight. He did as he was told, laying the gun carefully at his feet before stepping over beside Damien and the boy.

  “I implore you, sir, to let Mrs. Cameron go free,” the prince said. “I assume it is me you want, and I will go with you willingly, if you will only let the dear lady go free.”

  “Very touching,” Peters said, aiming the second gun at the prince. “But what I want you to do, Highness, is move over to the edge of the cliff. I want you standing with your heels at the edge and your arms stretched out in front of you. Now, or the lady dies.”

  Peters waited until the prince complied, then backed closer to the cliff himself, dragging Catherine with him. He stopped near enough to the prince that a sudden kick or shove would send the regent backward over the edge of the rocks, yet far enough from the others to have plenty of warning to pull the, trigger of either gun should anyone make a move to attack. His eyes darted from face to face, halting finally on Deirdre.

  “Moving very slowly and very precisely, Mrs. MacKail, I would like you to gather up all the weapons … guns, muskets, knives … everything. Throw them over the cliff, if you please.”

  Deirdre did as she was told, making two trips to the edge of the plateau before all of the weapons were located and disposed of.

  “Very obliging of you, Mrs. MacKail,” Peters said when the job was done. “If you will go now to my horse, you will find some rope tied to the saddle.”

  “Why?” she asked, bewildered and stunned by the unexpected turn of events. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why? Come now, Mrs. MacKail. My king and country forevermore—do you really believe ten shillings a month is ample pay for a soldier to risk life and limb?”

  “You prefer higher stakes, I gather,” Damien snarled.

  “Thirty thousand pounds is not to be laughed at,” Peters replied, unperturbed. “And fifty thousand should about set me up for life.”

  Catherine’s eyes fluttered half shut on a stifled cry. “Alex. Dear God, we led you right to him.”

  “A bit of luck I hadn’t planned on,” Peters admitted, chuckling dryly in her ear. “A masterful calculation on my part, as it turned out. I had originally been ordered to simply join the Jacobites in Derby, but, as you well know, their hasty departure from the area caught everyone a little by surprise. I was setting out to catch up to them when I stumbled across Lieutenant Goodwin’s path, surmised where he was going and what he was planning to do, and followed him to Rosewood Hall. Imagine my astonishment when I found out the innocent lamb I had escorted safely out of the wolf’s lair was none other than the wife of Alexander Cameron! The Dark Cameron himself! What better way to ingratiate myself with the rebel leaders and carry out my assignment for Major Garner.”

  “Hamilton Garner?” Catherine gasped.

  “Ahh, I thought the name might stir some hot juices. Oddly enough, I only learned of your connection with the major this afternoon. Communications being what they are, I have been relaying the pertinent information to my superiors: numbers, locations, disbursements, that sort of thing. I had no idea the local gossip would be of equal importance to the major, or how very much he wanted to reacquaint himself with you and your illustrious husband. Nothing personal, you understand, as far as my part in any of this goes. Although, in these past few weeks, I must admit I have been sorely tempted to dispense with my naive and stammering impersonation of Corporal Milquetoaste and sample some of what has so obviously captivated the Dark Cameron.” He paused and the press of the gun against her flesh imitated a hideous caress. His body, which she had assumed to be slender and soft from uncertainty and inexperience, was like steel where it molded against hers; the muscles in his arms were whipcord taut and so well conditioned that not even the awkward balance and position of the heavy pistols had produced a tremor.

  “Who knows,” he murmured. “After we have rid ourselves of the excess baggage here tonight and trussed the prince up good and tight for delivery to his jailers, you could try to persuade me out of handing you over to the good major. I imagine you must be very good indeed to have brought the mighty Lion of Lochaber to his knees.”

  The brush of his lips against her temple caused such a shudder of revulsion to course through Catherine’s body, she staggered against a violent wave of nausea.

  Both Robert Hardy and Damien moved simultaneously, but Peters, his view briefly blocked by Catherine’s flying hair, saw only Hardy making his lunge. In a purely reflex action, he shifted the aim of the gun he held at Catherine’s neck and squeezed the trigger. The steel hammer tripped forward, striking the flint and causing a minor explosion of smoke and spark as the gunpowder was ignited. The lead ball blasted into Hardy’s forehead, smashing through the bone and carrying away the back half of the Scotsman’s skull.

  Deirdre’s scream of horror further distracted Peters, giving Damien the precious extra fraction of a second he needed to propel himself across the plateau. Striking Peters’s lanky body from the side, he had no choice but to carry Catherine to the ground with them and no way to shield her from the second gun except to place his own body between her and Peters. She rolled clear just as the second shot exploded, the flash of powder and spark temporarily blinding Damien, but, through sheer luck, it missed his temple by a margin so close, the lead creased his skin.

  The two men struggled together, cursing and grunting as they punched, kicked, and tore at each other’s exposed flesh. They rolled perilously close to the edge of the cliff, then back again, straining and writhing to gain control, to land a solid punch that could stun their opponent long enough to gain the advantage. Peters still maintained a grip on one of the pistols, the other having cartwheeled off into the darkness. He whipped it again and again at Damien’s head and shoulders, savoring each dull, sickening thud of metal on flesh.

  Damien screamed inwardly as each blow struck. For one of the few times in his life, he cursed the affluence and soft living that had left him a poor
physical match for the lithe and tough Corporal Peters. The man was trained to fight and to kill with his bare hands, and Damien knew he was quickly losing ground. Literally losing it, too, he realized with a lurch of his stomach as he felt his head and shoulders tilt over the side of the cliff. Only Peters’s weight across his legs kept him from losing his balance completely, but even as he was shaking the dizziness out of his eyes and trying to reorientate up from down, he saw the flash of reflected moonlight glance off the blade of a raised knife. He heard himself cry out Harriet’s name as he threw up both arms, sucked in his belly, and braced himself for the stabbing pain.

  When it came, it came not from a slicing wound to his chest, as expected, but from a secondhand bruise caused by the large rock that bounced once off the back of Peters’s neck before slamming into Damien’s shoulder. He saw the knife spin out of the corporal’s hand, saw Peters’s body jerk to the side, his mouth gaping wide in agony as young Laughlan MacKintosh’s foot caught him squarely in the groin. Dazed by the blow to the neck and seared by the flaring pain in his lower body, Peters rolled to the edge of the rock ledge and, too late to grab hold of any scrub or outcrop to save himself, slid off the lip of serrated stone. He was swallowed into the blackness, his scream ending abruptly in a crunch of broken branches some distance below.

  Charles Stuart was the first to move. He ran over to assist Damien, who was coughing and staggering unsteadily onto his knees. No sooner had he pulled the Englishman back onto the safety of the plateau than a second heartrending scream pierced the mountain silence.

  Deirdre was on her knees beside Catherine, her hands covered with blood, her face pale and stricken in the moonlight.

  “She isn’t breathing!” Deirdre cried. “The second bullet … help me please! She isn’t breathing!”