by Nora Roberts
* * *
It was snowing when Serena stood by her father’s grave. He had come back to them nearly a month before, and all Glenroe had wept. Her own tears fell freely as she longed for him, for the thunderous sound of his voice, for the crushing strength of his arms and the laughter in his eyes.
She wanted to cry out. Serena much preferred fury to tears, but the anger had drained out of her. There was only a sorrow, a deep, abiding grief that stirred in her heart even as the child she now carried stirred in her womb.
It was the helplessness, she thought, that made a body weak and the heart brittle. No amount of work or temper or love could bring her father back or take the dull pain out of her mother’s eyes. Men fought, and women grieved.
She closed her eyes and let the snow fall stinging to her cheeks. There must be more, she thought, more than waiting and mourning. She had already lost one man she loved. How would she go on if she lost another?
The rebellion, she thought with the first flash of fire she had felt in weeks. The damned rebellion was … was right, she realized, pushing the heels of her hands over her face to dry them. It was right and it was just. If people believed strongly, they should be willing to fight, and to die. Her father had said so, and had stood unwaveringly by his words. How could she do less?
“I miss you so,” she murmured. “And I’m afraid. There’s the child now, you see. Your grandchild.” She smoothed a hand over the slight slope of her belly. “There was nothing I could do to save you, just as there’s nothing I can do to protect Brigham or Coll. I wish—Oh Papa, I’m with child and part of me still wishes I could be a man so I could pick up a sword for you.” She searched in her pockets until her fingers closed over the handkerchief Brigham had given her so many months before. She laid it on her cheek, using it as a talisman to bring him clearly to mind. “Is he safe? He doesn’t even know we made a child between us. I would go to him.” She felt the baby quicken. “But I can’t. I can’t protect and fight for him, but I can protect and fight for the child.”
“Rena?”
She turned to see Malcolm standing a little way off. Snow fell in sheets between them, but she could see the quiver of his lips and the sheen of tears in his eyes. Wordlessly she opened her arms to him.
While he wept, she held him, finding comfort somehow in comforting another. He had been so brave, she remembered, standing so straight, holding their mother’s arm while the priest had said the last words over their father’s grave. He’d been a man then. Now he was a little boy.
“I hate the English.” His voice was muffled against her shawl.
“I know. Mother would say hate is not Christian, but sometimes I think there is a time for hate, just as there is a time for love. And there is a time, my love, to let go of it.”
“He was a fierce warrior.”
“Aye.” She was able to smile now as she drew him back to study his tear-streaked face. “Do you not think, Malcolm, that a fierce warrior might prefer to die fighting for what he believes?”
“They had retreated,” Malcolm said bitterly, and Serena saw a glimpse of Coll in his eyes.
“Aye.” The letter she had received from Brigham had explained the maneuver, his dissatisfaction with it and the growing dissent in the ranks. “I don’t understand the strategy of generals, Malcolm, but I do know that whether the Prince is victor or vanquished, nothing will ever be the same.”
“I want to go to Inverness and join.”
“Malcolm—”
“I have Father’s sword,” he interrupted, passion darkening his eyes. “I can use it. I will use it to avenge him and support the Prince. I am not a child.”
She looked at him then. The little boy who had run weeping into her arms was a man again. He stood as high as her shoulder, his jaw firm, his hand clenched on the hilt of his dagger. He could go, Serena realized with a flutter of fear.
“No, you are not a child, and I believe you could raise Father’s sword like a man. I will not stop you if your heart tells you to go, but I would ask that you think of Mother, of Gwen and Maggie.”
“You can care for them.”
“Aye, I would try, but every day the child within me grows.” She took his hand in hers. It was stiff and cold and surprisingly strong. “And I’m afraid. I can’t tell Mother or the others, but I’m afraid. When I grow as big as Maggie, how will I be able to keep them safe if the English come? I don’t ask you not to fight, Malcolm, nor do I tell you you’re a child. But I will ask you to be a man and fight here.”
Torn, he turned back to stare down at her father’s grave. The snow lay over it in a soft white blanket. “Father would have wanted me to stay.”
Relief coursed through her, but she only touched his shoulder. “Aye. There is no disgrace in staying behind, not when it’s the right thing.”
“It’s hard.”
“I know.” Now she slipped her arm around him. “Believe me, Malcolm, I know. There are things we can do,” she murmured, thinking aloud. “When the snow stops. If the Prince’s troops are as close as Inverness, the English will not be far behind. We cannot fight in Glenroe, there are too few of us, and almost all women and children.”
“You think the English will come here?” he demanded, half eager, half terrified.
“I begin to believe it. Did word not come to us that there was a battle at Moy Hall?”
“And the English were routed,” Malcolm reminded her.
“But it is too close. If we cannot defend, then we protect. You and I will find a place in the hills and prepare it. Food, supplies, blankets, weapons.” She thought of the strongbox. “We will plan, Malcolm, as warriors plan.”
“I know a place, a cave.”
“You will take me there tomorrow.”
* * *
Brigham rode hard. Though it was nearly April, the weather remained cold, with snow often whipped up by the hateful wind. He commanded a handful of weary, hungry men. This foraging party, like others that had been sent out from Inverness, went in search of much-needed food and supplies. One of their greatest hopes, a captured government sloop renamed Prince Charles, had been retaken by the enemy off the Kyle of Tongue, and her desperately looked-for funds were now in the hands of the enemy.
Brigham’s party had found more than oats and venison. They had discovered news. The duke of Cumberland, the elector’s second son, lay in Aberdeen with a well-armed, well-fed army of twice their strength. He had received a powerful reinforcement of five thousand German soldiers, who remained in Dornoch, blocking the route south. The word came that Cumberland was beginning his advance on Inverness.
Hooves thudded on the layer of snow still covering the road. The men rode mostly in silence, edgy with hunger and fatigue. They wanted a meal and the cold comfort of sleep.
Redcoats were spotted to the west. With a quick signal, Brigham halted his troops and scanned the distance. They were outnumbered nearly two to one, and the dragoons looked fresh. He had a choice. They could run, or they could fight. Turning his horse, he took a hard look at his men.
“We can make the hills and lose them, or we can meet them here on the road, with the rocks to their backs.”
“We fight.” One man fingered his sword. Then another and another added his voice. The dragoons had already spurred into a gallop. Brigham flashed a grin. It was the answer he’d wanted.
“Then let’s show them the faces of king’s men.” Wheeling his horse, he led the charge.
There was something fierce and chilling about a Highland charge. They rode as if they rode into hell, screaming in Gaelic and brandishing blades. Wall met wall, and the lonely hills echoed with the fury. Around Brigham men fought like demons and fell dying from the slice and hack of steel. Snow ran red.
It was unlike him to allow his emotions to surface in battle. Here, after weeks of frustration and anger, he let himself go, cutting through the line of oncoming dragoons like a man gone mad. He saw no faces, only that nameless entity known as the enemy. His sword whipped
out severing flesh as he dragged his horse right, then left, then right again.
They drove the dragoons onto the rocks, pursuing them mercilessly. Weeks of waiting had worked like a cancer that came rising to the surface to eat away at the civilized veneer.
When they were done five Jacobites lay dead or dying alongside a dozen dragoons. The rest of the government troop had fled over the rocks like rabbits.
“After them, lads,” one of the Highlanders shouted. Brigham swung his horse to block the next charge.
“For what purpose?” He dismounted to clean his blade in the snow. “We’ve done what we’ve done. Now we tend to our own.” A foot away, a man moaned. Sheathing his weapon, Brigham went to him. “The English dead will be buried. Our own dead and wounded will be taken back to Inverness.”
“Leave the English for the kites.”
Brigham’s head whipped around. His eyes had lost their fever and were cold again as they studied the blood-spattered face of the hefty Scot who had spoken. “We are not animals. We bury the dead, friend or enemy.”
In the end, the English dead were given cairns. The ground was too hard for graves.
The men were still weary, still hungry, when they turned their mounts toward Inverness. They rode slowly, burdened by their wounded. With each long mile, Brigham thought of how close the dragoons had been to Glenroe.
Chapter 14
In the chill of April, the drums sounded and the pipes were played. In Inverness, the army readied for battle. Only twelve miles away, Cumberland had pitched camp.
“I do not like the ground.” Once more, Murray stood as Charles’s adviser, but the rift between them that the retreat had caused had never fully healed. “Drumossie Moor is well suited to the tactics of the English army, but not to ours. Your Highness …” Perhaps because he knew Charles had yet to forgive him for the retreat north, Murray chose his words with care. “This wide, bare moor might as well have been designed for the maneuvers of Cumberland’s infantry, and I tell you there could never be a more improper ground for Highlanders.”
“Do we withdraw again?” O’Sullivan put in. He was as loyal as Murray, as brave a soldier, but he lacked the hardheaded military sense of the Englishman. “Your Highness, have not the Highlanders proved themselves fierce and fearsome warriors, as you have proven a canny general? Again and again you have beaten back the English.”
“Here we are not simply outnumbered.” Murray turned his back on O’Sullivan and appealed to the prince. “The ground itself is the most terrible weapon. If we withdraw north again, across Nairn Water—”
“We shall stand to meet Cumberland.” Charles, his eyes cool, his hands neatly folded, watched his most trusted men. “We shall not run again. Through the winter we have waited.” And the wait, he knew, had disillusioned and disgruntled his men. It might have been that more than O’Sullivan’s flattery or his own impatience that swayed him. “We wait no longer. Quartermaster-General O’Sullivan has chosen the ground, and we shall fight.”
Murray’s eyes met Brigham’s briefly. They had already discussed the Prince’s decision. “Your Highness, if your mind is made up, may I propose a maneuver that may strengthen our advantage?”
“If it does not include a retreat, my lord.”
Color stained Murray’s cheeks, but he continued. “Today is the duke’s birthday, and his men will celebrate it. They will be drunk as beggars. A surprise night attack could turn the tide.”
The Prince considered. “I find this interesting. Continue.”
“Two columns of men,” Murray began, using candlesticks to illustrate. “They would close in in a pincer movement, coming into camp from both sides and cutting down the size of Cumberland’s army while they sleep off the effects of the birthday brandy.”
“A good plan,” the Prince murmured, excitement once more kindling his eyes. “The duke should celebrate well, for the celebration will be short-lived.”
They marched. Men with no more than a single biscuit in their bellies set out to cover the twelve miles in the dark and the unrelieved cold. The plan was a good one, but the men sent to accomplish it were tired and hungry. Once, twice, then yet again, they lost direction and heart, until they were no more than a group wandering.
On horseback, the sun newly up, Brigham and Coll watched them return to camp.
“My God,” the Scot muttered. “We’ve come to this.”
With his own fatigue weighing on him, Brigham shifted in the saddle. Men exhausted from the march and grinding hunger dropped to the ground, many nodding off to sleep in the park of Culloden House or near the road. Others grumbled, even as the Prince rode among them.
Turning his head, Brigham looked out on Drumossie moor. It was wide and bare, skimmed now with early frost and a thin, shifting mist. To Brigham, it might have been a parade ground for Cumberland’s infantry. To the north, across the river called Nairn, the ground was broken and hilly. There Murray would have chosen to stand. And there, Brigham thought, there would have been a chance for victory.
But O’Sullivan had the Prince’s ear now, and there was no turning back.
“It ends here,” Brigham said softly. “For better or worse.” In the east, the sun struggled sluggishly to life, trapped behind churning clouds. Spurring his horse, he rode through the camp. “On your feet!” he shouted. “Will you sleep until you wake with your throats cut? Can you not hear the English drums beating to arms?”
Dragging themselves up, men began to gather in their clans. Artillery was manned. What rations were left were passed among the troops, but they served only to leave stomachs edgy and empty. With pike and ax, gun and scythe, they rallied under the standard. MacGregors and MacDonalds, Camerons and Chisholms, Mackintoshes and Robertsons and more. They were five thousand, hungry, ill-equipped, held only by the cause that still bound them together.
Charles looked every bit the prince as he rode up and down their lines in his tartan coat and cockaded bonnet. They were his men, and the oath he had sworn to them was no less than that they had sworn him.
Across the moor, they watched the enemy advance. They were in three columns that slowly and smoothly swung into line. As Charles had done, the duke, pudgy in his red coat, a black cockade pinned to his tricorn, rode along encouraging his men.
There was the sound of drum and pipe, and the empty hum of wind that whipped sleet into the faces of the Jacobites. The first shots were fired by Jacobite guns. They were answered, and devastatingly.
* * *
As the first cannon exploded near Culloden House, Maggie arched against a contraction. They were coming quickly, powerfully. Her body, weakened by the full night of labor, was racked with pain her mind no longer registered. Over and over she cried out for Coll.
“Poor lass, poor lass.” Mrs Drummond brought fresh water and linen to the bedchamber. “Such a wee thing she is.”
“There, darling, there.” Fiona bathed Maggie’s streaming face. “Mrs. Drummond, another log on the fire, please. We need it warm when the baby comes.”
“Wood’s nearly gone.”
Fiona only nodded. “We’ll use what we have. Gwen?”
“The babe’s breech, Mother.” Gwen straightened a moment to ease the strain in her back. “Maggie’s so small.”
Serena, one hand holding Maggie’s, laid the other protectively over the child growing inside her own womb. “Can you save them, save them both?”
“God willing.” Gwen wiped the sweat from her face with the sleeve of her dress.
“Lady MacGregor, I can tell Parkins to find more wood.” Mrs. Drummond’s wide face creased with concern as Maggie cried out with the next pain. She had birthed and lost two babies of her own. “A man ought to be good for something other than planting a seed in a woman.”
Too tired to disapprove of the sentiment, Fiona nodded. “Please, Mrs. Drummond. Tell him we’d be grateful to him.”
“Coll.” Maggie sobbed, turning her head from side to side. Her eyes focused on Serena. “Rena?”
“Aye, my love, I’m here. We’re all here.”
“Coll. I want Coll.”
“I know. I know you do.” Serena kissed Maggie’s limp hand. “He’ll be back soon.” Her own baby kicked, making her wonder if in a few months she would find herself confined, calling out Brigham’s name over waves of pain, all the while knowing he wasn’t there to answer. “Gwen says you must rest between the pains, gather your strength back.”
“I try. Should it take so long?” Weakly she turned her head back to Gwen. “Tell me the truth, please. Is something wrong with the babe?”
For a split second Gwen debated lying. But though she was young still, she had already seen that women dealt best with the truth, no matter how frightening. “He’s turned wrong, Maggie. I know what to do, but it won’t be a simple birth.”
“Am I going to die?” There was no desperation in Maggie’s question, only a need for truth. As difficult as it was, Gwen had already made her decision. If she had to choose, she would save Maggie and lose the child. Before she could speak, the next contraction hit, bringing Maggie, exhausted as she was, rearing up.
“Oh, God. My baby, don’t let my baby die. Swear it to me. Swear it.”
“No one’s going to die.” Serena squeezed her hand hard, so hard it cut through the other pain and had Maggie quieting. “No one’s going to die,” she repeated. “Because you’re going to fight. When the pain comes you’re going to scream it out if need be, but you’re not going to give up. MacGregors don’t give up.”
* * *
The round shot of the government artillery cut huge holes in the Jacobite lines. Their own guns could only answer ineffectually as men fell like slain deer. Wind blew smoke and sleet back in their faces while they stood and suffered the slaughter of their ranks. Even with their lines running six deep, the cannonfire broke through and brought writhing, miserable death.