Midnight Honor

by Marsha Canham

  He stopped short of snorting, but only just. “Me crook my finger? One look from you, madam, the smallest touch, the faintest scent of your hair or skin, and I am reduced to a randy schoolboy stumbling about on three legs. Even now, as angry as I am, as angry as I should be, all I can think of is being inside you again. It is as if I can't get enough of you. As if I am afraid I will never get enough of you.”

  Anne smoothed a dark lock of his hair off his cheek, tucking it tenderly behind his ear. She cupped his cheek in her hand and gently forced him to turn his head, to look at her. “I wonder: Will you still feel that way a dozen years from now?”

  “Those words will be on my lips with the last breath I draw on this earth,” he whispered tautly, “and the first I take in eternity.”

  Trembling, Anne drew him down onto the bed again. “I am so very glad, my lord, for I will never tire of hearing you say them.”

  At almost the same time Anne was welcoming Angus back into her arms, General Henry Hawley raised his sword and brought it slashing down with out preamble or sentiment. He was trembling as well, but out of rage, not pleasure; with contempt, not anticipation. He stood in the market square of Linlithgow, the snow falling thick as wool shearings over the bowed heads of every officer who still possessed enough sense to have answered the general's summons. To Hawley's immediate left was a long, sturdy tree trunk that had been chopped down and denuded of its branches before being suspended from the corners of two buildings. From this makeshift gibbet the bodies of fourteen men jerked and twisted at the ends of their ropes, their lives forfeit on the downstroke of Hawley's blade.

  Most of them were dragoons whose names had been put forward by a choleric Major Hamilton Garner. Another score waited hatless, their tunics stripped of any identifiable rank or rating, their hands bound behind their backs. When the macabre dance of their comrades ceased, they too would be summarily hoisted above the solemn crowd by way of demonstrating the extent of Hawley's outrage and disgust.

  “Cowards!” he screamed. “Cowards and curs! Look well on these fornicating dogs, for they are no better than the dung they left behind in their haste to desert their posts! Was there ever an army so rife with poltroons and miscreants! Was there ever a general so cursed, so shamed, so humiliated, so completely appalled by the character of his troops! Hang them! Hang them all, by God, for they are not worth the powder it would take to shoot them! Powder, I might add, that we no longer have in any adequate supply since every godforsaken piece of equipment, fourteen heavy artillery pieces, and ammunition was left behind for the enemy to enjoy!”

  Winded by the fury of his diatribe, Hawley paced to the end of the raised boardwalk and, having no other immediate outlet for his rage, broke his sword over the head of the nearest man.

  “I want names,” he raged, his chest heaving, his mouth flecked with spittle. “I want the names of every man in every regiment who turned and ran. I want them flogged! I want their skin flayed and hanging in shreds, and I want them left on the racks so that every soldier who sees them will know the consequences of cowardice in my army! I want them to know,” he screamed, “that in future, death on the battlefield will be a thousand times preferable to dereliction or dishonor! Never think … never think for one foolish moment that I will hesitate to hang the lot of you if you fail me again! Now go! Get out of my sight! You disgust me!”

  He strode off the end of the walk and stormed away into the darkness, leaving the officers shaken and silent enough to hear the heavy flakes of snow falling around them. As the bodies of the first hanged men were cut down and new ones pushed forward to take their place, those who had been lucky enough to avoid the worst of Hawley's wrath began to slink away.

  Garner was one of the few who lingered, as was Major Worsham, both of whom had found redress on the battlefield following their inauspicious departure from Callendar House.

  Both men were wounded. Garner stood with his hand bracing two broken ribs, his face gray with the pain, his jaw set against the nauseating sound of the bones grinding together. Worsham's cheek had been sliced open to the bone and his left arm hung limp and nerveless by his side; his injuries had been hastily bandaged by a surgeon stained to his elbows with other men's blood, but he dared not have them properly stitched until the general's spleen had been vented.

  The opening Jacobite volley had shattered the resolve of the dragoons; less than half an hour later, the government forces had been in full flight. It was impossible at this time to even begin to know the tally of dead, wounded, or captured, for there were surely those who were still running and would keep on running until they were certain they would never be found again.

  Worsham had no qualms about punishing deserters or cowards. It was a harsh fact of army life that any man who signed his name to the roster was giving his oath to obey the orders of his superiors regardless of whether he agreed or disagreed with the execution. Any man who violated that oath did so at his own peril.

  And then there were the men who'd had no intention of fighting at all. They had formed up in their ranks and they had marched onto the field, but once there, they had crouched down to avoid the heated fusillades and, when those had passed, had run across the moor and joined their Highland clansmen. Worsham had shot one such man just as he was about to hand off Pulteney's regimental colors to a kinsman in the Jacobite ranks.

  The MacKintosh contingent was a fine example of this attrition. Most had deserted on the march from Edinburgh, but of the handful who remained to take the field that day, not one had returned to his regiment. Their chief, Angus Moy, had not been seen since forming up on the field, and Worsham sincerely hoped, for the bastard's own sake, that he was lying among the dead on Falkirk Moor.

  He closed his eyes against the sharpening agony in his arm and reached into the pocket of his waistcoat for the small packet of powder the surgeon had given him to dull the pain. He had only taken a few grains the first time, cautioned that too much would render him so free of pain he would be unconscious. He measured out more this time, holding it on his tongue until he could reach one-handed for a flask of wine confiscated from one of the condemned men. The powder was bitter and it required several swallows to wash away the worst of the taste. What remained was a dry metallic taint that coated the back of his throat, not unlike the taste of blood.

  And, oddly enough, not unlike the aftertaste left by the dinner wine served to them the previous evening at Callendar House.

  He dismissed the thought, attributing it to his own state of near exhaustion. He looked into the swollen face of one of the last men to stop twitching and recognized him as the young corporal who polished his boots each night.

  Now that was a genuine waste, for he had been the only man able to polish the boots to a high gloss.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Upward of three hundred Hanoverian prisoners were taken at Falkirk; nearly twice that many lay dead or wounded. On the Jacobite side, there were fewer than eighty casualties all told, but with the weather turning sour and Hawley's army retreating hastily to Edinburgh, it once again became incumbent upon Lord George and the chiefs to convince the prince his force was still vulnerable.

  Lord George had implored Charles Stuart to send his troops after the English, but the prince, taking the advice of O'Sullivan instead, decided that the retaking of Stirling Castle, which had been under siege since the Jacobites had departed Glasgow, would be far more beneficial to morale than chasing after a defeated army. Better, he said from his sickbed, to consolidate their victory at Falkirk by driving the rest of the government troops out of Stirling and Perth, thereby reclaiming control of the Lowlands south of the Grampian mountains.

  Lord George disagreed as violently as he dared, but to no avail. He could only vent his frustration in private, then get reeling drunk at the squandering of such a hard-won opportunity to crush their enemy—one that might not come again without paying a much steeper price. He understood, where the prince and his insufferable Irish advisor did not, that th
e Lowlands had never been receptive to the Stuart cause. They could waste weeks trying to take the impregnable castle at Stirling—weeks that would be better spent in the Highlands, where most of the clans were sympathetic to the prince and it would be possible to strengthen their army, not weaken it.

  Moreover, the vast tracts of mountain ranges cut by lochs and hostile sweeps of frozen moorland would not appeal to the English for a winter campaign; weather and terrain would discourage pursuit until at least the spring, when the Jacobites would have had time to regroup.

  For Anne's part, she was disappointed to say the least, having come this far only to be told they were likely turning around and going back to Invernesshire. At the same time she was elated and vicariously delighted at the thought of marching home with an army of thousands to oust Lord Loudoun and reclaim the capital city for the prince.

  The rest of the clan chiefs, men like Lochiel and the MacDonalds of Keppoch, had their own reasons for wanting to return to the Highlands. In their absence, the English had strengthened their positions at Fort William and Fort Augustus, placing heavy garrisons at either end of the Great Glen, and with the ancestral homes of the Camerons and MacDonalds located in the middle, it was urgent to send relief. News from the remote regions of Lochaber had been sporadic at best, but the effects of such a harsh winter could prove devastating. Many of the clansmen had been away from their farms since the previous July; they needed to assure themselves that their families had not starved and would not starve if the war dragged on through another long summer. Despite the snow and frigid winds that kept the prince hemmed in at Falkirk the latter two weeks of January, at the first sign of a thaw, fields would still have to be plowed, crops planted.

  That was the trouble with raising an army of farmers and shepherds. As brave and loyal and valiant as they might be, if they had no land, no homes, no crops, no herds to go home to, what was the point of fighting at all? The chiefs would demand their rents and tithes regardless if they won or lost, and while the grand castles at Achnacarry and Blair Atholl might suffer from a lack of wheat for fresh uisque, they had stood for centuries and would stand for centuries more, supported by the sweat and toil of the common tacksmen. In the feudal system, it was the crofters who would starve from the lack of bread, and when they could not pay their rents, they would find their meager sod cottages torn down or burned and the land taken over for cattle.

  The prince turned belligerent. He had forbidden Lord George to pursue the English farther than Linlithgow, but when he heard Hawley had escaped to Edinburgh, he did an about-face and laid the blame squarely on Murray's head. To make matters worse, news arrived in the Jacobite camp on the last day of January that Cumberland had left London and marched his army to Edinburgh in near record time. He had brought reinforcements of cavalry and infantry, as well as a fresh artillery train to replace the heavy guns lost at Falkirk— guns that took a week to haul and position to best advantage around Stirling, and that fired no more than two rounds apiece before they were blown off their carriages by the superior firepower of the English gunners on the walls.

  Lord George, with his last nerve snapped, ordered the ineffectual siege to be abandoned and dragged the remaining cannon to the nearest cliff, where he had them spiked and rolled over into the churning waters of the firth.

  The prince did not take either the news of his cousin's arrival or the departure of the artillery well. He ranted against Lord George, believing now more than ever that his general was determined to sabotage his every effort to win back the throne. He raged and banged his head against a wall until he staggered like a drunkard, at which time he retired to his wagon with two bottles of whisky and became one. With the prince mired in self-pity, it was decided to once again split the army into two divisions, the prince being escorted by the majority of regiments through the high mountainous passes that cut through the Jacobite territories of Blair Atholl, Dalnacardoch, and Dalwhinnie. Lord George would travel a more circuitous route by way of Aberdeen, hopefully to draw off any pursuit Cumberland might be mounting. The two divisions would reunite at Inverness, where they could then set about routing the government forces garrisoned at Fort George.

  “Might I play devil's advocate a moment,” said Angus Moy, “and ask what the prince will be able to do with Inverness even if he does take it?”

  The question was practical and forthright, greeted by the silence of a grim circle of men that included Alexander Cameron, Aluinn MacKail, and John MacGillivray. Angus had been surprised by the invitation to join the others at the tavern, but he had had his own reasons for obliging.

  “The entire coastline is under a tight blockade,” he continued, “and unless I've missed something in the thousands of dispatches I've read over the past months, the prince has no navy. Not one single ship. Loudoun, on the other hand, has fresh supplies delivered every day—meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, even tuns of French brandy confiscated by the revenue ships in the Channel. Their lead shot comes in barrels; they do not have to make their own in the field. If a musket fails or misfires, there is another in common stores to replace it. I have seen their warehouses; they want for nothing, whereas I have seen some of your men walking in the snow with rags wrapped round their feet.”

  Cameron's dark eyes assessed the two Highlanders seated across the table. Big John MacGillivray was a genuine throwback to a Viking warrior: Nothing seemed to slow him down. He had been wounded in three places on Falkirk moor, but had barely acknowledged his injuries long enough to allow Archibald to stitch and bandage them. The men were in awe of him; his experience as a smuggler and reiver made him doubly valuable to the prince's army.

  As for the chief of Clan Chattan, he was a difficult man to read, not given to revealing too much either through his eyes or his expression. Perhaps that was what pricked Alex's instincts the most. Was the chief of Clan Chattan a more formidable adversary than he appeared to be? And if so, could it work to their advantage?

  Alex twirled one of his thin black cigars between his fingers and glanced across the table at Aluinn, but there were no insightful glances coming back his way.

  “Yes, well.” Cameron cleared his throat. “You play the devil well, Captain MacKintosh, but you are not telling us anything we do not already know.”

  “What if I did tell you something you didn't know?”

  “We might question the motive for your generosity,” came the blunt reply.

  “Of course.” Angus smiled. “Then why don't we speak of motives first and clear the air, so to speak?”

  Alex spread his hands. “You have our complete attention.”

  “Quite simply, when the army returns to Inverness, I want my wife sent back to Moy Hall. I care not how it is done or who does it, or under what pretense, but I want her sent home. I also do not want her to know she is being sent home, for if she believes that to be case, she will likely thumb her nose and tell you to break wind at the moon.”

  The midnight eyes narrowed further. “And in exchange?”

  “In exchange I can give you detailed maps of Fort George, inside and out. I can tell you where the walls have recently been reinforced and where there are concealed batteries of guns. And I can tell you the weakest points in the fortifications, which, conversely, would be the best places to lay your mines—assuming, naturally, that you wish to avoid another comedic debacle like Stirling Castle.”

  “We would indeed,” Cameron said after a moment, “but what if I told you your wife has offered us the same information?”

  “It would be accurate … to a degree. At least one of her rapscallion cousins has spent time behind bars there, and her grandfather has been around long enough to have seen the original walls go up. But there have been changes in the past year I doubt even they know about. Loudoun has been cautious since he assumed command. In recent months, he has been nervous, too, to the extent that he has had details of enlisted men doing most of the work, digging, building gun emplacements, setting traps and the like.”

 
“Traps?”

  Angus nodded. “In the armory, for one. If you fail to reach it quickly, there are kegs of powder set with fuses that need only be lit by someone requiring ten minutes to exit through a nearby tunnel. If they blow, they will send half the fort to hell and gone—and anyone in it at the time.”

  The pause was noticeable as Cameron glanced once again at MacKail, who shrugged but looked intrigued nonetheless.

  “It seems to be a fair exchange. It would also help if we had precise maps of Inverness as well as any defenses in the harbor and surrounding areas.”

  “Anne can give you that,” Angus said. “She has a better eye for detail and is more familiar with the moors and bogs. Plus, it will occupy her time when I have gone.”

  “Gone? You're going somewhere?”

  “Is that not why you asked to meet with me tonight? Because you want me to go back to Edinburgh with the other prisoners when they are released?”

  Alex tried not to look surprised—or excited. As had been the case following the Battle of Prestonpans, it had been decided that all prisoners would be released if they agreed to give their word not to take up arms against the prince again. The number was vastly smaller than the fifteen hundred prisoners taken in their first victory, but with supplies short and tempers frayed, the chiefs were more concerned with providing the bare necessities for their own men than catering to the needs of captured soldiers.

  “I will admit the thought occurred to us,” Cameron said. “The possibility of having someone close to Cumberland's command is intriguing, and your name did come up several times in various conversations.”

  “Now hold on a minute,” MacGillivray began.

  “You did not know this was what they wanted to discuss?” Angus asked.

  The big Highlander looked like he wanted to smash the table in half. “I did not.”

  “As I said”—Cameron leaned back and gave his cigar another thoughtful roll—“Aluinn and I were only toying with the idea. And it isn't as if you would be doing anything out of the ordinary. No skulking in dark alleyways, no cloak drawn over your face with a dagger at the ready. You would simply have to do what you do already: read dispatches, follow troop movements, let us know who is moving where and what their intentions might be. Then it would just be a matter of—”