And so here they were, crouched in a dense copse of weed and tangled briar with wadding, shot, and powder laid out before them, guns clasped nervously in their hands. There was indeed movement up on the hillside; Deirdre saw splashes of crimson darting among the sparse trees—far too many of them for ten courageous Highlanders and two frightened women to deal with effectively. This could well be the end of it all.
“I love you Aluinn MacKail,” she whispered soundlessly. “And I thank you with all my heart for loving me.”
A roar, loud and bloodcurdling, split the air and sent the womens’ hearts catapulting into their throats. Ahead of them on the path, they saw MacSorley leap up from the cover of the bushes, his arms raised and thrashing the air, his shaggy mane of hair whipping to and fro in his frenzy. One by one the rest of Struan’s men bounded out from under cover, unsheathing their swords and waving them overhead, spinning in a swirl of tartan, bending back their heads and shouting curses up the side of the mountain.
Deirdre gripped the pistol tightly between her clenched hands and gaped at the sight in total bewilderment. She was on the verge of screaming herself when Catherine suddenly laughed and clutched at her arm.
“Look! Down there!”
In the basin of the glen, emerging from between two domes of green- and brown-tinged rock, was a column of tartan-clad Highlanders; scores of them, hundreds of them, marching out of the fog and mist behind their chief, Cluny of MacPherson.
Struan fetched one of the horses and thundered down the slope to intercept the startled party of MacPhersons. A few hastily exchanged sentences and an outthrust hand sent fully half the armed contingent streaming eagerly up the side of the slope. Catherine and Deirdre, hugging each other with relief, waited until the surge of roaring Highlanders swept past them before they descended, weary but happy, to join the welcomed troop of rebels.
As exhausted as they were, there was no desire on anyone’s part to linger any longer in the glen than was necessary. A sharp, easterly wind had begun to gust into the mouth of the valley, bringing sprays of icy sleet and driving rain.
It brought something else as well: the low, distant rumble of cannonfire.
William, Duke of Cumberland, rode along the neatly formed lines of men, oblivious to the rain and wind at his back, his tricorn pulled well down over an ominous glower. His scarlet frock coat was edged in thick bands of gold, the lapels faced in dark royal blue. Even his saddle housing was scarlet, heavily ornamented in gold tassels that flipped and danced as the animal stalked imperiously past the formed battalions. Cumberland’s face below the brim of the tricorn was red and sullen, the eyes black and protruding as they inspected his army. Three months younger than Charles Stuart, he was decades older in experience, and no stranger to battlefields. His men respected and feared him, and there were few among them who doubted “Billy’s” pledge to personally shoot the first man he saw turn and run from the field today.
On the government side, there were twelve battalions of infantry formed into square blocks of unbroken red. Five batteries of artillery commanded the center and either flank, supported by eight companies of kilted militia from the glens of Argyle. In all, close to nine thousand government troops lined the gray and windswept moor below Culloden. They stood in units of military precision ten across and five deep, divided and squared into companies and platoons, each with its own flags and pennants fluttering forward in the wind. The men wore wide-skirted tunics and breeches of heavy scarlet wool, the coats cuffed and faced with the colors of their regiment, the breeches covered to mid-thigh with spatterdash gaiters of white or gray. Each man carried, as standard issue, a Brown Bess musket equipped with a bayonet of fluted steel sixteen inches long. Until the order was given to load and fire, the guns were held close to the body to shield the firing pins from the rain and sleet. Their heads, beneath the black beaver tricorns, were held upright by tight leather stocks that prevented them from looking in any direction but straight ahead.
What they saw, half a mile away across the rolling moor, was a writhing, turbulent sea of plaid and steel. What they felt, despite the fact they were well rested, well fed, and well drilled in the methods of fighting and withstanding a Highland charge, was pure, unadulterated terror. More than one man suffered an acute shortage of confidence and turned to glance at his comrades on either side, hoping he was not alone in suffering tremors and fits of cold sweat. The depth of their fear angered them, enraged them, for it made them feel helpless even before any fighting had begun. Those who had been at Prestonpans and Falkirk knew all too well that the Highlanders were not the normal breed of soldier who quaked and fell back in the face of volley after volley of precision fire. Instead, the Scots had shown not only their willingness but their eagerness to climb, fight, and crawl over their own dead to reach the line of arrogant redcoats and, once there, to inflict bloody, hellish slaughter with the greatest enthusiasm.
Drummers stood to the rear and flank of each battalion, their arms moving in a blur to beat courage into the spines of the waiting soldiers. Before each corps of drums was the standard-bearer, his square of embroidered silk snapping to and fro, colorfully emblazoned with the device of each battalion. There was a dragon for Howard’s, a lion for Barren’s, a white horse for Wolfe’s, a castle for Blakeney, a thistle for the Scots regiments. The latter, instead of the drag, roll, drag of the drums to encourage them, had two stout lines of pipers who were red-faced and sweating in their efforts to respond to the cacophony of wailed challenges railing at them from across the field.
Major Hamilton Garner, looking resplendent in his scarlet tunic and gold braid, rode before his assigned regiment of King’s Horse, prancing up and down the line to fix each man in turn with a stare, defying any of them to repeat their cowardly performances of the past. His nostrils flared eagerly at the acrid scent of the slow-burning fuses the nearby gunners held aloft, and his green eyes peered through the sheeting rain and haze at their target. The wind was driving straight into the faces of the Highlanders, adding yet another misery to their host of misfortunes. The stupid bastards had to be exhausted, Garner exulted, what with waiting on the field all the previous day, then attempting an abortive night march only to have to drag themselves back onto the field again today.
His smile broadened. “I hope you are with them, Cameron. I hope you have the wit and luck to remain out of cannon range, however, because I want the pleasure of killing you myself.”
Alexander Cameron turned his face to the side to avoid a gust of raw wind, cursing inwardly when he saw a dozen other men beside him doing the same thing. He was feeling the chill more than he cared to admit. Having barely snatched an hour of sleep before being wakened with the news that Cumberland was marching onto Drummossie Moor, he was irritable and his head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton wool. He was tired and hungry, and for the first time in many months, he cursed the absence of warm woolen breeches. The icy wind, it seemed, was determined to remind him he had spent the past fifteen years enjoying a more civilized and practical mode of battle dress.
The moor itself offered little protection from the elements. A sea of grass in the summer, in the fall and winter months it was a bleak wasteland with nothing but a few bent, skeletal trees to break the howling breath of the north wind. Visible on the fringe of the distant slope to the north was Duncan Forbes’s estate, Culloden, its parks and fields stretching from the firth to well beyond the moor. The estate supported three farms, the largest being Culwhiniac, where the enterprising owners had erected a stone enclosure eight hundred paces wide, one thousand in length. Alex was not comfortable about the prince using the wall to protect their right flank, knowing that it gave Cumberland’s gunners a range and position to sight upon. An even worse thought was that the English could send a regiment circling around to use the wall as cover while they fired into the backs of the advancing rebels.
Lord George Murray, bowing to Charles Stuart’s insistence upon leading the battle himself, had assumed command of the
right wing, clans consisting of his Athol Brigade, the Camerons, The Stewarts of Appin, and Lord Lovat’s Frasers—about thirteen hundred men in all. The center was under the command of Lord John Drummond, who rode proudly before the Edinburgh Regiment—the only front line unit with no clan ties—the Chisholms, the Farqharsons, and Lady MacKintosh’s Clan Chattan. Colonel Anne was present on the field, dressed in a riding habit of tartan, a man’s blue wool bonnet on her head. She rode before her clan on her huge, gray gelding, tears of pride in her eyes as she returned the smile of her tall and brave Colonel MacGillivray.
On the left wing, grumbling because they had dispersed to Inverness following the night march and had returned in answer to the prince’s summons too late to assume their traditional place of honor on the right, were the MacDonalds—Glengarry, Keppoch, and Clanranald. They were under the command of the Duke of Perth and were, because of the lay of the land, formed on an angle away from Cumberland’s geometrically straight front lines, giving them almost three hundred extra yards of ground to cover when the order came to charge.
Each clan had its own piper, its own standards, flags, and proudly displayed shields and mottos. The moor throbbed with color, bright and vivid, even though the sky was gray and seemed to press down upon them like a sodden blanket. The clansmen were restless, impatient to begin. They shouted jeers and insults at the stolid red mass across the field, but there was no response to their baiting, no answer to their pipes aside from the steady staccato of battalion drums.
Lining the upper slopes and crowded along the road to Inverness were the townspeople and local farmers who had come to watch. Boys were playing truant from school to watch their fathers and older brothers whip the English in battle. Women gathered on the brae, chattering among themselves like excited magpies; even the beggars had come to watch the proceeds, hoping to loot the dead, whoever won or lost.
Great rousing cheers rose from all quarters whenever the prince rode by. Few noticed that beneath all the bravado, his face was pale, his palms clammy, and his stomach tied in knots. It had seemed like such a brave and bold idea to lead his men into battle, to prove once and for all that he was worthy of their trust and respect. Only now he wished he had Lord George’s axlike features by his side. Lord George could glare the enemy into shriveling submission with one cold stare, could spur the men into glorious acts of courage with one wave of his broadsword.
Charles drew his light saber and windmilled it over his head, scorning the thickening red wall of soldiers on the opposite side of the moor. He was gratified to hear the Highlanders’ voices swell behind him, and for a moment he forgot his apprehension as he enjoyed the sound of their approval.
One man, startled from an exhausted drowse, thought the roaring voices and the prince’s bright, waving saber was the long-awaited signal for the battle to commence. He was the one regular gunner Count Giovanni Fanducci had managed to find and rouse from the deathlike slumber most of his men had fallen into after the abortive night trek. They had dragged the heavy cannon back and forth through the marshes, expending almost superhuman effort to keep them from becoming mired in the knee-deep muck. Most of them had fallen asleep in the parks surrounding Culloden House and had not yet appeared on the field.
His feathers drooping over the rim of his tricorn, his satins flashing out from beneath the folds of a vast, multicollared greatcoat, Count Fanducci had called upon his alternative gunners—men and boys who had watched enough drills to have some inkling of how the monsters worked. He had led his flock from one gun to the next, showing the men how to shore up the wheels with heather to prevent slippage on the wet grass. They had watched as he ladled black powder into each gun, packed it into the breech with a wooden plunger, then fed the three-pound iron shot into the snout. A dribble of powder was measured into the touch hole and, while the makeshift crews stood nervously by, Fanducci fixed the aim of each cannon with a quadrant, pronounced the efforts “bene,” and moved off in a flurry of satin, wool, and Italian invectives to the next position.
The dozing gunner who had been left with the meager battery of three guns that divided the center and left wing was so bleary-eyed, it had taken all his concentration just to keep his smoldering linstock—the fuse soaked in saltpeter used to fire the cannons—out of the rain. He heard the roar of voices and jerked himself awake. He saw the prince’s saber waving, saw the arm lowered in a grand sweeping motion, and, adding his own voice to the Gaelic roar around him, lowered the glowing fuse to the nearest cannon.
Catherine and Deirdre both knew there could be no mistaking the cause of the distant rolls of thunder. It was the sound of guns, firing steadily, volley upon volley until each echo blended into the next with the quaking impact of a volcano. Struan MacSorley, honoring his oath to Alexander to see to Catherine’s safety, rode with them as far as Moy Hall, setting such a fast and furious pace across the fields that the women were too weak and out of breath to protest when he left them unceremoniously at the door and streaked off like a demon toward the sound of the guns.
Lady Anne was not in residence, they were told. With complexions as pale and waxy as sheep tallow, the servants relayed the events of the past twenty-four hours—ending with the fact that only moments before Catherine and Deirdre had arrived back at Moy, the last of the clansmen who had been seeking food and respite had departed for the battlefield.
Aye, there was a battle under way five miles to the northeast, near as they could guess, on a moor adjacent to the Lord President’s estates at Culloden. The cannons had been roaring steadily for nigh on half an hour. Nearly all the servants from the house and stables had gone to watch. Lady Anne was there …
Dizzy and weak in the knees, Catherine clung to Deirdre for support but would not leave the great hall either to change out of her wet clothes or to retire to a warm bedchamber. She sat by the fire, her eyes dark and haunted as she stared into the flames. Her hands were like ice, her feet and toes had no feeling left in them at all. She drank the hot broth someone pushed into her hands but there was no taste to it. She moved her arms and legs dutifully as Deirdre and another maid peeled away the soaked layers of her clothing and bundled her into a plain but warm woolen gown.
At one point she stood listening, uncaring of the cup she had dropped that crashed and shattered against the hearth. She ran to the front door and flung it open, straining now to hear and identify the cause of yet another shocking sound: the sound of absolute, deathly silence.
The battle lasted under an hour. Although the rebels had fired the first round of shot, neither their guns nor their gunners were an adequate match for Cumberland’s disciplined artillery. The prince, after unwittingly giving the signal to commence firing, retired to a position of safety behind the front lines, where he remained, so rattled by the swift and sudden eruption of violence all around him that he neglected to issue the command to his generals to charge-—not even when the Hanover artillery began pounding in deadly earnest … not even when the men in the front lines began screaming and dying, as shot after shot raked through their ranks.
Count Fanducci was like a wild man, running from gun to smoking gun in an attempt to keep the men swabbing, loading, ramming, and firing, but Cumberland’s aim was better, his master of ordnance more skilled and determined, and in less than nine minutes the last Jacobite cannon was silenced.
The clans screamed for the order to charge, but Charles Stuart had moved again in search of the best vantage point, and murderous time was wasted in locating him. If he was waiting, as it seemed, for Cumberland’s infantry to attack, he was waiting in vain. The Hanover general was too canny a soldier to hasten his men forward while his guns were tearing the rebel ranks apart where they stood.
Lord George Murray, appalled by the disaster unfolding before him, did not wait for the prince to give the order but released his Athollmen on a cry of clai’ mor! His men broke out of the line only to find they were not the first; The MacKintoshes of Clan Chattan, being closest to the nest of now-silent artil
lery and having suffered the worst of the bloody cannonading, had broken away under MacGillivray’s command and streamed across the moor only steps ahead of the Athol Brigade, the Camerons, and the Stewarts of Appin.
The charge was not the wild, bowel-clenching rush of bloodthirsty humanity it should have been. The MacDonalds, with the farthest to go to reach the enemy line, were the last to realize the prince’s order was taking too long in coming. With wind and hail and smoke from the enemy guns blinding them, the MacDonalds finally gave the order to charge, but by then Cumberland’s seven regiments of front-line infantry—each consisting of four hundred men— had been ordered into position.
“Make ready!” the majors screamed, and in a wave, the first of four ranks went down on their right knees.
“Pree-zent!” Muskets snapped up to red-clad shoulders, right cheeks pressed close to wooden stocks, right eyes sighting along hammer to muzzle. As the first of the leaping, kilted clansmen came pouring through the smoke and haze …
“Fire!”
Donald Cameron of Lochiel, running at the head of his clan, felt a sheering hot wave of powder and shot slash through his men. A second wave, not of musket fire but of human agony, rippled through his contingent as men went down in a thrash of bloodied arms and legs. Donald’s voice, already strained to the limit, altered in pitch as he felt the ground give way beneath him. Pain unlike anything he had experienced before flared through his body, stunning him so that he was not even aware of the second, added crush of agony as he sprawled broken and bloodied on the grass.
Behind him Aluinn MacKail swerved to avoid the staggering, reeling mass of dying humanity and fell to his knees beside Lochiel.
“Go!” Donald screamed. “Go, f’ae the love O’ God!”
Aluinn took a last, despairing look at the shattered mass of bone and torn flesh at the end of Lochiel’s legs and launched himself furiously to his feet, firing both of his pistols as he ran, charging headlong into the red, unmoving wall of soldiers.
The Blood of Roses Page 46