All night she soothed him when he cried out in pain and gently caressed him and nursed him in her arms.
Nancy and Calum were sleeping at the front of the house and it was they who heard the clatter of horses’ hooves in the yard outside early next morning. They rushed to warn Annabella and Lavelle before hurrying to hide in the woods at the back of the house.
But Lavelle’s leg had swollen and stiffened during the night and, despite Annabella’s efforts to help him, it was obvious he was not going to reach the woods in time. Regina was standing in the doorway watching.
‘God damn you, don’t just stand there, help him, can’t you!’ Annabella cried to her.
Regina said: ‘There’s a whole crowd of troopers. They’re coming in the front door.’
‘Into this cupboard.’ Annabella struggled to support Lavelle over to the kitchen cupboard and immediately she reached it she pushed him in and shut the door. Then she rushed from the kitchen to the front of the house, knocking Regina roughly aside as she flew past. Reaching the front of the house, she slowed her pace to her usual swagger and faced the troopers with head in the air and cool impudent eyes.
‘Have you any food with you, gentlemen? I and my servant are prodigiously hungry. We have journeyed all the way from Glasgow to visit friends and this is what we find. A house empty of both people and sustenance. I have searched every cupboard and I’m damned if I can find a crumb.’
One of the men lumbered towards her and Annabella drew a pistol from her dress.
‘Careful, sir, do not make a mistake you will regret. For one thing, I am a Whig and a Hanoverian. For another, my father is a wealthy merchant and a friend of the Provost of Glasgow and many other influential gentlemen who could easily have you hanged.’
The men sheepishly drew back and then, unexpectedly Annabella heard Regina’s voice:
‘It’s true what she says. She is of important and wealthy Whig people. But there is a Frenchman who is for the Prince.’
‘Regina!’ Annabella’s whole appearance changed to wild terror. She pushed the gun into Regina’s hands. ‘If you hate me so much, shoot me! But for pity’s sake no more!’
‘It’s not you I hate, mistress.’
‘Where is the Frenchman?’ The trooper shouted and his companions crowded eagerly forward. ‘We can have some sport with him.’
‘Regina, no.’ Annabella flung herself on her knees in front of the girl. ‘Oh, please. Oh, Regina. Regina, I’m begging you.’
‘You’ll find him through that door in the kitchen cupboard,’ Regina said.
Immediately the men lunged towards the kitchen with Annabella after them clawing at their backs like a wildcat.
Regina left quietly by the front door. The troopers’ horses were standing where they’d left them in the cobbled yard. Quickly, deftly, she rifled their saddlebags and transferred into her own saddlebag on her own horse gold and silver sovereigns and jewellery they had obviously looted. She found a gun and a sword too. Then, mounting her horse, she galloped off until Annabella’s screams and Lavelle’s screams and the insane laughter of the troopers faded further and further away.
The men never missed either Regina or their loot when they mounted up and rode off to find their next sport. They were much too elated.
Annabella was left kneeling on the floor distractedly nursing Lavelle to and fro like a baby. He was still alive but with an unrecognisable pulp of a face and the stench of burnt flesh thick about him.
‘Oh, love,’ she wept. ‘What can I do? Oh, love, oh, love.’ She flung back her face and with eyes closed shouted heavenwards: ‘Help him, damn you, help him!’
But Lavelle died in her arms. She was still holding him tightly, still nursing him backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, when Nancy and Calum returned. They prised him away and Calum buried him while Nancy struggled to hold Annabella back. She fought like someone crazed to reach him, to prevent the earth from covering him, to stop him becoming irrevocably lost to her. Until the grave was filled in and she flung herself on top of it.
Nancy said: ‘You’ll come home with Calum and me.’
‘Glasgow’s where I’m making for now.’
‘You can’t find your way back there on your own.’
‘That girl. She betrayed him,’ Annabella said. ‘That girl. She’ll head for Glasgow.’
‘You’re in no fit state to travel anywhere alone,’ said Nancy. ‘You’ll do as I tell you.’
‘God damn you!’ Annabella lifted a ravaged face. ‘I do not take orders from an impudent bitch of a servant. If I say I’m riding to Glasgow, Glasgow is where I’m going.’
21
‘TELL me, have you seen a girl with wicked green eyes and long red hair?’ Annabella demanded, at the same time impatiently peering past the woman in the doorway into the hovel beyond.
The woman stared tragically, uncomprehendingly. She looked like a skeleton hiding under a plaid too heavy for her skull. Eventually she moved aside and allowed Annabella to enter. The house was dark and thick with brown shadows and an earthy smell. Moist slabs of turf were stacked together to make walls. A fire burned on the floor and smoke belched about and drifted upwards through a hole in the turf that arched overhead. Around the fire crouched five children and an ancient woman like a walnut hidden deep in a long plaid. Sunken defeated eyes rested on Annabella’s yellow hair, pink flushed face and peacock dress. No one said anything. Then the first woman shuffled over on bare stiff feet to a corner and slowly returned holding out a filthy wooden bowl. Annabella stared at it in disgust. It contained a little oatmeal mixed with blood.
‘No, thank you.’ She waved the bowl away. She was hungry, but her hunger was nothing compared with the fury that clawed inside her head and heart. Anyway, the obnoxious offering was probably all the food the wretched family possessed and she had no wish to deprive them of it. The children’s eyes clung to the bowl in anguish. Annabella grabbed a girl who looked about thirteen and dragged her in front of the woman.
‘Have you seen a girl of this age? A stranger with green eyes and long red hair. Has she passed here recently? Tell me, damn you, tell me!’
Suddenly the girl said: ‘My mother will only be speaking the Gaelic.’
‘You tell me then, and be quick about it. I’m wasting a prodigious amount of time and I’ve no time to spare.’
‘I have seen such a person ride through the glen. We called to her. We were anxious about our father who will be fighting for the Prince. But she hastened on and would make no reply.’
‘When was this?’
‘I will not be knowing exactly.’
‘God damn you, you’d better know.’
‘It was not very long ago. But without a clock I will not be knowing exactly.’
‘In what direction was she travelling?’
‘Her horse was galloping very fast towards the south.’
Without another word Annabella grabbed up her skirts and flew from the house. The girl put out a hand as if to stop her.
‘Will you be telling us any news of our father?’
But it was too late. Annabella had leapt on her horse and was away. A kind of insanity possessed her. Her brain was fevering her body. Her brain was split, refusing to contain the memory of Lavelle’s death, hysterical in its confusion, rejecting his mutilated face, his screams, his moans, his whimpers. Her brain stuck like a leech to another image, a cream-coloured stone set with two hard emeralds and framed with auburn fire. Her brain bloodied that face, clawed the emeralds from it, tore and trampled the fire.
She sobbed to herself as she urged her horse on through boggy heather. The animal kept sinking and stumbling and she yelled at it.
‘Faster, faster, you stupid clumsy beast.’ She kicked it again and again, but it only whinnied with fear and plunged deeper. Eventually she had to get off and haul it along while sinking knee-deep herself, and losing her shoes and stockings, and muddying her dress. Sheer will-power, sheer maniacal determination, made her go on
pulling and sweating and struggling until she reached drier, firmer ground. Almost collapsing with exhaustion, she leaned against the horse’s steaming flanks, then forced herself to mount and go on. It was a devilish job to avoid the heather. The mountains were draped with it like a lush, multicoloured plaid of copper, and deep river blue, and smoky purple, and redbrown, and golden yellow, and orange glistening from the earth like the rising sun. A vast panorama of colour kept unfolding before her eyes. Every shade of green, of gold, of silver sparkled all around. High above white mountain peaks disappeared into the heavens. But she had no eyes for beauty, or lofty grandeur, no eyes for anything but another horse on the horizon, another female figure. But there was nothing.
Dusk came creeping over the land, making shadows of trees, and spiky bushes of broom point ghostly fingers. A river barred her path, silver-grey against silver-green. She was shocked at the coldness of it as she and her horse plunged in. Emerging at the other side, her teeth were chattering and she was violently shivering as if she had the plague. Ahead now she could see a ploughed field and as she neared it she thought she could discern the figure of a man. Dismounting, she led the horse through the gathering gloom towards him. She knew that once darkness fell it was impossible to keep travelling and hoped that the ploughman would tell her where she could find shelter. But when she reached him she discovered he was crouched over a small boy of about eight or nine, as if trying to shield him. Both man and boy were dead.
Still shivering, Annabella stared around. There was bound to be some hovel nearby where the man and his family had lived. Then she spied a thread of smoke curling up from the middle of a wood in the distance. Not without some difficulty, because she was exhausted, she heaved herself back on the horse. The animal had no energy left either and despite her angry commands it dragged its feet and hung its head down.
The wood was dark and sombre with no grass, only a thick brown covering of needles. The horse drooped slowly through the silence until it came to a clearing and what had been a cottage. Fire had consumed most of the roof and walls. Charred remnants of a home could still be seen inside, a cracked jug, a cooking pot, and what looked like a woman with long black dust of hair.
Annabella closed her eyes and allowed the horse to carry her wearily past. Emotion condensed into a clear essence. The agonising memory of Lavelle’s suffering, her hatred of Regina, the terrible crimes she was witnessing, mixed together to form icy tear-drops which shimmered inside her. But her eyes remained dry and she kept her face stubbornly tilted up.
It was not until she was out of the wooded area and once more in the open moonlit countryside that she slithered from the horse and on to the ground. Even the knowledge that soldiers must be in the area could not prevent her from collapsing into an exhausted sleep. Yet her sleep was neither deep nor peaceful. Macabre images pulsated continuously behind her closed lids. Screams and whimpers mixed with the squeaks and squawks of small animals of the night. Then she saw Regina’s closed face and heard her voice quite distinctly. Immediately she wakened and struggled to her feet. But everywhere she looked there was no one. She seemed to be alone in the world. Her horse was grazing nearby and she patted it and stroked it and rubbed her face against it before mounting. The feeling that soldiers were somewhere in the vicinity still clung to her and she wished that she did not need to ride through the open glen. She prayed as she went along for another wood to act as cover but many hot and harrowing miles seemed to pass before she came to one. Gratefully she entered its cool green, underwater atmosphere. It was as if the air itself was green, quite divorced even from the sounds of birdsong. Dappled light danced on the ends of rays of gold like candlelight through green shutters; buzzing of myriads of tiny midges disturbed from every light bright green bush as she passed. Then she heard the tinkling sound of a burn and slid from the horse to stumble over to sink to her knees and splash her face and mouth with refreshing water. It was while she was revelling in this that a hand suddenly gripped her and hauled her up. She whirled round and stared with cool impudence at the dragoon who had a coarse-grained face as red as his coat.
‘Must you startle a lady like that, sir? Have you no manners?’
‘I mean to do more than startle you, mistress. By God, you’re a beauty, aren’t you, eh?’ He jerked her close to him. ‘Eh?’
She wriggled provocatively and flashed him coquettish glances as her hands began caressing over his body.
‘Gently, gently, sir. There is an art in this that must be enjoyed. Relax and let me show you.’
Lips parted, she raised her face to his. Suddenly he stiffened, a look of surprise straining his eyes wide as she stabbed him with the dagger she had slipped from his belt. He slithered to the ground at her feet without making a sound. Bending over him, ignoring the staring eyes, she wrenched the knife from his body, wiped the blood from it with the end of his coat and secreting it in her dress she scrambled back on her horse. It had only galloped a few paces when suddenly it was out of the woods and she was confronted with the scene of two dragoons struggling gleefully with a bedraggled Highlander.
One of the dragoons bawled: ‘Forster, come back! He’s here. We’ve got him.’ He looked round towards the wood as he called and saw Annabella emerge. She had two choices. Either she turned back or she kept on. Without hesitating, she kicked and yelled the horse forward, straight at the knot of men. The dragoons were trampled down before they had a chance to race from her path. The Highlander was faster and flew towards the woods as swift and light-footed as a red deer.
Galloping hard away, Annabella stole a glance back. The dragoons were stumbling about trying to catch their panicking horses.
They would be after her soon.
22
THE FLOWER of Highland manhood was buried under the boggy earth of Culloden Moor. It became a vast graveyard over which the wind moaned like a piper’s lament and the air was for ever heavy with sadness. In that bleak place the ‘45 rebellion ended and with it died a nation.
The bagpipes were forbidden. To possess or carry arms was illegal. Laws were enforced to destroy the clan system and the feudal power of the chiefs. Although it was considered that all Scots were rogues, even those loyal to King George II, the chiefs who had fought on the King’s side, like the Campbells, were richly compensated for their loss of ‘pit and gallows’ jurisdiction over their clans. The others who had sympathised with the Jacobites received nothing and were deprived of their power of life and death over their people just the same. And once they lost their power, they lost their saving grace, their parental interest in their clansmen.
But to the fast-dwindling populace of ordinary men and women of the Highlands what most immediately affected them was the legislation that banned the Highland dress. It became an offence punishable by imprisonment, deportation or death to wear the kilt, the plaid, or any clothing of tartan weave. And the mountain folk had no other clothing but the tartan plaid and kilt and nothing could be so well suited for the inclemency of the weather and the life they had to lead. Their unique clothing had been their pride too and that pride withered when colourful tartans had to be sunk in vats of black dye and mud and their kilts sewn between their legs to make breeches.
By brutality and the destruction of Highland pride the glens were emptied and the clans destroyed. After Culloden people in the Highlands continued to die and suffer agonies of mind and spirit. But in the Lowlands, and in England, others who had never seen a battle or been within miles of a battlefield wrote poems and sent praises and petitions of gratitude to the King.
The pride of France is lily white,
The rose in June is Jacobite,
The prickly thistle of the Scot,
Is northern knighthood’s badge and lot;
But since the Duke’s victorious blows
The lily, thistle and the rose,
All droop and fade, all die away;
Sweet William only rules the day.
No plant with brighter lustre grows,
; Except the laurel on his brows.
At Sadler’s Wells in London a ballet called Culloden was performed to delighted audiences who were thrilled by a scene which was said to depict an exact view of the battle accompanied by the exciting sound of cannon fire.
A gay new dance was invented called ‘The Culloden Reel’, although when English officers asked this to be performed at a theatre in Edinburgh the Castle Guard had to be called out to quell the subsequent riot. But in London a gate of Hyde Park was renamed Cumberland Gate and everywhere ladies wore the pretty clustering flower with the new name of Sweet William on their clothes.
‘Tis he! ‘Tis he! the pride of fame, William returned! the shouts proclaim,
William with northern laurels crown’d,
William the hills and vales resound!
What numbers fled, what numbers fell,
Culloden’s glorious field may tell:
Culloden’s field the muse may fire,
To sing the sun and charm the fire.
He was also fondly referred to as the ‘martial boy’. The ‘martial boy’s’ luggage had arrived some days before and contained everything including bedding, linen and furnishings that could be pillaged from the houses in which he had lived during his stay in Scotland. But even Cumberland’s baggage could not rival his general’s. From one Scottish hostess alone, General Hawley had gathered literally everything she possessed but the clothes she stood up in. The distressed lady, a Mrs Gordon, wrote to her sister:
‘… every bit of china I had, which I am sure would not be bought for two hundred pounds; all my bedding and table linen, every book, my repeating clock which stood by the bed in which he lay every night, my worked screen, every rag of Mr Gordon’s clothes, the very hat, breeches, nightgown, shoes and what shirts there was of the child’s, twelve teaspoons, strainer and tongs, the japan’d board on which the chocolate and coffee cup stood. Even the larding pins, iron screws, the fish kettles and marble mortar and what the General did not desire for himself, he gave to his officers, like for example my flutes, music and cane. He also entertained lavishly and soon used five and a half pounds of my tea, seven loaves of fine sugar, half a hundred loaves of lump sugar, seven pounds of chocolate, a great stock of salt beef, pickled pork, hams, peas, butter, coals, peats, ale, verne jelly, rice and spice, some cheese, brandy, rum, sago, hartshorn, salop, sweetmeats, Narbonne honey, two dozen wash balls with many things ‘tis impossible to mention, all of which he kept himself, nor would he give me any share of them, even my empty bottles he took.’
The Tobacco Lords Trilogy Page 27