The Blood of Roses

by Marsha Canham

  The watery eyes flicked to one side. “I’m shamed tae say I were too busy seein’ after my ain hide tae take heed O’ too many ithers.”

  “You have nothing to feel ashamed about,” Deirdre assured him, knowing by the number of bruises, cuts, and patches of blood on the clansman’s body he had given a good account of himself on the battlefield.

  “Blankets,” Catherine snapped, reminding them of the urgency of their mission. “And whisky. We’ll take as much as we can carry.”

  Deirdre nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

  When she was gone, Catherine delayed the clansman a moment longer and laid a gentle hand on his arm. “You do know something else, don’t you? Please, I beg you, sir. If you can tell me anything at all …”

  The clansman looked down at his hands. “Aye. Aye, it’s about the lassie’s husband …”

  Aluinn MacKail stared up at the dull, heavy cotton clouds that rolled across the sky. A pale, faintly luminous circle suggested there was indeed a sun up there somewhere, but just where it was or how far it had progressed toward the rim of mountains was anyone’s guess. Aluinn, personally, would have sworn it had not moved so much as an inch in the past few hours. But then neither had he.

  It was just as well. Four … or was it five times now, groups of soldiers had tramped past and, because of his lack of movement, had assumed him to be as dead as the body of the redcoat he was pinned beneath. They would discover their oversight soon enough, he supposed. As soon as they began collecting their dead for burial, they would come to fetch this one and … well, perhaps they would be merciful after all.

  Aluinn ran a thick and sourly furred tongue across his lips, wishing he could somehow turn his head just enough to lick at the dew coating the long deergrass. He had tried once already, but although he felt as if he should be able to stand up and walk away with a shrug and a mocking salute, he had heard the distinct crack of his spine when he had fallen, and he had not been able to rouse so much as a twitch since.

  At least the pain had faded. Initially he had been left with some sensation in his arms and hands, but it had slowly receded and the chilling numbness had spread, inch by insidious inch. With any luck, the chill would reach his heart before the dragoons came and then he would not care what the butchers did when they found him. He just did not want to die like the others. He had heard them screaming, begging for mercy, shrieking with pain and humiliation as the soldiers cut into their living flesh. Men who had fought so valiantly and defended their honor so bravely—whether their cause was wrong or right, just or unjust—should at least be allowed the dignity of dying like men. They should not have to plead for mercy on a field of honor. They should not have to suffer the degradation of being stripped naked and left to bleed to death in agony, untended.

  He parted his lips slightly, trying to suck in a deep lungful of air, but found he could barely manage a small gasp.

  Good. It was a good sign … although he had thought the end was near an eternity ago and he was still here. Still breathing. Still able to think and see and hear and smell with remarkable clarity. If only he could move. Just a hand, Lord. A finger. He still held a loaded pistol, wrested from the bastard lying on top of him seconds before an obliging broadsword had ended the struggle in Aluinn’s favor. Unfortunately, the son of a bitch had had a healthy appetite, and had pitched forward with the thrust of the blade, taking Aluinn down with him. The damned rock had been sticking up just so, and …

  By God’s grace, if he could just move his hand, turn the gun around, and ease back on the trigger!

  Where is Alex when I need him? Alex would know what to do; he would never let me die like this, slowly, inch by inch. Certainly not skewered helplessly on the end of some grinning bastard’s bayonet.

  Maybe if he shouted, someone would hear him and come over to investigate. He had been aware of men and women creeping among the dead for some time now, local farmers in some cases, who had come to search for friends and relatives. The soldiers kept driving them away, but they always came back.

  He had to be careful, however. There were scavengers out, as well, some of them no better than the soldiers when it came to slitting a throat or stripping loot from the wounded. Some of them, in exchange for being allowed to continue searching among the dead, drew attention to the living so that the soldiers could amuse themselves while the thieves continued looting. And the women were no better than the men.

  “Deirdre,” he whispered, the sweet, soft torture of her name bringing the sting of tears to his eyes. How cruel the fates were not to have given them more time together. Such dreams he’d had. Such plans for their future together …

  If nothing else, dear God, I thank You for letting her be safe. I thank You for letting her be far, far away, and I curse You for not letting me see her sweet face one last time before I die.

  Oh, Christ! Christ, no! he thought, squeezing his eyes shut against an agony worse than any physical pain he could have imagined. Now I’m hearing things! I’m hearing her voice!

  The soldier regarded the two women before him with an equal measure of suspicion and curiosity. He had strict orders not to let anyone onto the field—especially not the dog-faced women who wailed and clawed at him in an unintelligible brogue. These two were different, however. They spoke the king’s English better than he did, and one of them—a yellow-haired beauty—carried herself with the unmistakable air of nobility. But if she was English and she was of the nobility, why was she dressed like a peasant in homespun and a tartan shawl?

  “I’m not supposed to let anyone near the bodies until a proper tally’s been done,” he said.

  “I am looking for my brother, sergeant,” Catherine said clearly. “Captain Damien Ashbrooke of Kingston’s Light Horse.”

  The guard shrugged noncommittally, the name meaning nothing to him.

  “Surely you cannot mean to stop us from searching among the wounded?” Deirdre asked. “The battle has been over for hours and Captain Ashbrooke has not yet reported back to his regiment.

  “You may be sure we haven’t come for our pleasure,” she added sharply. “Nor have we come all this way to be stopped and questioned by an insensitive blunderhead. If you prefer, we can take our appeal directly to Major Hamilton Garner, but I shouldn’t think he would be too pleased with the disturbance.”

  The soldier stiffened, reacting to the major’s name with suitable approbation. It was none of his business who they were and what they wanted: Ghouls came in all shapes and sizes. If they wanted to go traipsing ankle deep in blood, who was he to deny them the pleasure?

  Deirdre relaxed the grip she had on the pistol but kept it handy beneath the folds of her shawl as the guard waved them past. Having been told that most of the Highland women were being driven away from the moor, it had been Catherine’s idea to use their obvious assets to advantage. After all, it was not so preposterous to suppose some of the English women traveling with Cumberland’s baggage train would be anxious to learn the fate of their men.

  Believing themselves to be inured to the sights and smells of the carnage that awaited them, Deirdre and Catherine were capable of taking only a few halting steps before the appalling horror of their surroundings forced them to stop. There were bodies everywhere—clansmen, redcoats, even horses lay piled one upon the other in a ghastly tableau of war. The ground was pitted and charred from the barrage of cannonballs. Fires smoldered everywhere, sending twisting columns of smoke upward to blend with the mist.

  The moor was half a mile square, and every inch was steeped in gore. The slope they stood on was a gentle one and the road on which they walked cut diagonally through the field. To the right, separated by a neat stone wall, was a farmer’s field, already cleared for spring planting. On their left, the hazed vista of the Firth with its dull lead-colored water and black isles beyond. Incredible beauty and unbelievable horror in the same picture: It was almost too much to absorb.

  “My God,” Deirdre whispered. “My dear sweet God.”


  Catherine was numb with shock. It could only be hell they had walked into. Nightmares could be screamed away; this was not a dream, it was real, and the memory of it would surely affect the way she lived and breathed for the rest of her days.

  There was no rain, no wind, no air moving at all, it seemed. The mist was thin and coated everything in a shiny wetness. Some of the bodies, still warm and bleeding sluggishly into the grass, steamed faintly where their wounds met the cool air. The first such sight they had encountered had caused both women to empty their stomachs instantly and violently, and Donald Macintosh had almost wheeled the tiny cart around and headed back for Moy Hall.

  Catherine would have been only too happy to flee if not for the thought of Alex possibly lying somewhere wounded and helpless. There were other women staggering along the road, dazed and weeping as they went from one bloodied splash of tartan to the next, hoping against hope they would find a husband or relative alive.

  The prince, they had been told, had managed to escape the moor with about a third of his army. Another third had scattered into the surrounding forests and glens, running for their lives; a final third would never leave the battlefield.

  Macintosh had dared to venture no closer than the edge of the forest, for there were still dragoons and laughing infantrymen prowling the roads, drunk on blood and victory, scouring the area for more victims. They eyed the groups of women and spat crude insults into their stricken faces. Some of the more loathsome creatures offered money or looted trinkets for a quick tumble in the grass; some just took what they wanted if they found a girl who was young and pretty and foolish enough to be on the road alone.

  Catherine and Deirdre remained with a large group, keeping their heads bowed and their shawls low over their brows whenever the soldiers came into view. They both hoped and dreaded to see a familiar face among the dead. Once, when Deirdre glimpsed a tawny blond cap of hair by the side of the road, she had cried out and stumbled over to the body, but it had not been Aluinn. Thankfully, it had not been Aluinn.

  The little cart they had brought from Moy Hall had been filled with wounded long before they had ever reached the main road. Macintosh had driven it away and come back with another, but it was useless to hope they could help everyone they found. Of the wounded who still clung to life, many did so by a thread so slender they were, for the most part, beyond pain, beyond awareness. The effort it took to pull at a last sip of strong uisque exacted the ultimate price and they died without even swallowing it.

  And the wounds …

  “My God,” Deirdre said again. “How can men do this to one another? How can they sleep at night, or—”

  Her face blanched and her sorrowful brown eyes froze on a bright ripple of tartan farther along the slope. She knew that tartan. She knew it by the distinctive stripe of ocher that had been added to the Cameron colors of crimson and black.

  Deirdre pushed away from Catherine’s side and ran toward the two entangled bodies. Catherine raised ice-cold fingers to her lips as she heard Deirdre’s cry of anguish and saw her drop to her knees and begin to pull frantically at the body of the dead government soldier that was draped across her husband. Catherine had hoped Macintosh had been mistaken when he’d told her he thought he had seen Aluinn MacKail go down. Poor Deirdre. Poor, sweet, gentle Deirdre.

  Catherine dashed away the hot tears that flooded over her lashes, surprised there were any left to shed, and started to follow after Deirdre down the slope. Somehow they would find a way to move the body off this desolate field. It was the least they could do …

  Catherine stopped again, a gasp torn from her throat. Fear, as pure and raw as anything she had ever felt, gave strength to her limbs as she stumbled back along the slope, weaving her way around bodies, her feet sucking into the mud at each slippery step. She fell once, twice, each time struggling to her feet again, hauling sodden blood- and dew-soaked skirts behind her. Just as in her dream, she ran and ran, but seemed to make little headway. Her tears blinded her, sobs burned in her throat, and her heart pounded so loudly she could hear nothing else.

  When she reached the far side of what had been the Jacobite’s front line, she slowed and a fresh onslaught of tears streamed down her cheeks, drawn from a bottomless, unending well of pity as she stared down at the gleaming black body.

  There was no mistaking Shadow. The regal, tapered head, the sleek coat, and powerful beauty of Alexander’s faithful stallion was as recognizable in death as he was in life.

  Catherine sank to her knees beside the noble steed and her heart swelled with such a mixture of rage, sorrow, and senseless waste she did not know if her body could bear it. She reached out and stroked a gentle hand along the fine black coat. His mane and tail were flung out across the grass as if he were running, his head was arched high and proud; only the glaring obscenity of the shattered forelegs screamed out the reality of his death. She knew it would have broken Alex’s heart to see Shadow lying like this. It broke hers thinking she would have to leave the magnificent beast to the carrion-eaters and scavengers. Helpless to know what else to do, she removed her shawl and draped it over the torn stumps—a foolish gesture, since there were far more hideous wounds that should have been graced with the dignity of a shield.

  It was also a reckless gesture, for it drew attention to the glowing luminosity of her long blonde hair. One pair of jade-green eyes, in particular, noticed the incongruity, doubly exaggerated against the murky brown of the moor and the black of the stallion’s coat.

  The major halted dead in his tracks and stared up the slope, his pulse beginning to hammer in triumph for the second time that day.

  “Deirdre?” Aluinn gasped. “Deirdre … is that you?”

  “Aluinn.” She sobbed, her hands, her lips, her tears caressing his face. “Oh, Aluinn … Aluinn … Thank God you are alive! I was so afraid. We heard so many stories, saw so many terrible things on the road!”

  “Deirdre—-” He blinked hard several times, convinced he was hallucinating, knowing she could not possibly be real, knowing she was half a hundred miles away in Lochaber!

  “Hush,” she commanded, her trembling lips pressed against his. “You mustn’t try to talk. You must lie still and let us help you. We’ll get you safely away from this dreadful place and—”

  “We? Who is we?”

  “Catherine and I. Oh, Aluinn, I have so much to tell you, I don’t know where to start. We did not get twenty miles down the road when we were ambushed by soldiers. Master Damien was killed and if it hadn’t been for Mr. MacSorley, we would have died there too. But he got us away and brought us back to Moy Hall, and … and then we heard the cannon and … and …” She faltered, her voice quailing and her heart filling with a new dread as she saw the tears swimming in her husband’s smoky gray eyes.

  “Dear God, you should not have come here,” he said with difficulty. “And I should burn in eternal hellfire for being glad that you did, but … I am. I prayed so hard to see your face one last time before I died—”

  “You mustn’t talk like that!” Deirdre cried. “You are not going to die! We can help you. We can help you get up and then we can—”

  “Deirdre … I can’t move—”

  “Then we’ll carry you!” she insisted frantically. “I’ll carry you myself if I have to!”

  “Deirdre … listen to me. It’s my back. I cannot feel anything, I cannot move anything. I haven’t been able to for a long time. I was wondering why it was taking so long to die, what I had done so terribly wrong in my life to be punished this way, but now I know I wasn’t being punished at all. I must have done something terribly right in loving and marrying you.”

  All the blood and warmth drained from Deirdre’s face, her fear growing and spreading as she noted how truly still he was lying, how oddly angled his legs were to the rest of his body.

  “Archibald,” she whispered desperately. “He will be able to help you. He will know what to do.”

  “Archie cannot help me,” he said, smiling
sadly. “No one can help me, Deirdre. Only you.”

  “Me? What can I do? Tell me what to do, Aluinn. Anything. Anything! Just tell me what to do!”

  “You can set my mind at ease. You can get away from here and run as far and as fast as you can.”

  “I am not leaving you!” she cried, horrified at the thought, shocked that he would ask it of her.

  “Yes you are, and you are going to take Catherine with you. Has she … have you seen anything of Alex?”

  Deirdre shook her head. “No, but we’ve only seen what is here and on the road.”

  “If he isn’t here, then there is a chance he made it. The last time I saw him, he was … we were both blocking the road against the charge by the dragoons. Aye … if he isn’t here, he might have made it, pray God. And the prince?”

  “The devil take the prince, Aluinn MacKail, it is you I care about! You I love!”

  “Then if you love me,” he said gently, “you will go now, before the soldiers notice you and—”

  “You there! What are you doing?”

  Deirdre gasped and twisted around. There were three soldiers standing within hailing distance, their hands and arms red to the elbows as they systematically searched the bodies for loot.

  “Deirdre … please!”

  She looked back down at Aluinn, stricken by the pain and helplessness she saw in his eyes.

  “Run!” He gasped. “Take Catherine and run. Save yourself!”

  “I am not leaving you! Not like this!”

  Aluinn closed his eyes briefly, bracing himself. “The gun. In my hand. I promise, I will not feel a thing, and the soldiers will think you are one of them. Do it, Deirdre. Use the gun. Save yourself.”

  “No!” she cried aghast. “No … never!”

  “Then do it for me,” he pleaded. “Don’t let me die without knowing you are safe. And don’t let me die like the others—” He choked briefly on the words. “Don’t let the bastards find me alive. Do it, my love. Save yourself, and save me.”