Jennifer Roberson (13 page)

“Some, forbye,” the swordsman said, “but no’ all.” He put up a hand and beckoned Cat, waggling imperious fingers. “Come here to me, lass . . . come
here
”—more intently, as she stiffened to spin and run—“or I’ll have a taste of your flesh.”

He meant it; she felt the cold kiss of steel as it touched the thumb-sized hollow splitting her collarbones. If she so much as swallowed, she could be cut.

“To me,” he said, and moved the blade minutely as she descended a single step. His grin was white-toothed in a grimy, spark-pocked face. “Aye, one by one, and slowly—have you a dirk behind your back?”

She did not. She wished she had.
Another step . . .
Careful inhalation; a fierce self-admonition not to tremble, lest the sword tip scratch her flesh, nor to show her fear lest he take pleasure from it. She stood on the stone floor now, cool against callused bare soles, and was supremely surprised to discover she was taller than he.

Clearly so was he; blue eyes blinked, sandy brows arched, and he laughed. His lips, she saw, had been burned enough to blister; minute peelings of dead skin curled up from newborn flesh. “Christ, lass—” He paused. “Are you a lass?” A broken-nailed hand caught at the folds of her shirt even as he shifted the blade aside. “Are there duckies beneath the cloth?”

Cat reacted instinctively, knocking aside his arm with her own in a sharp, sideways slash. She did not think of the sword, still gripped in his other hand; she thought of his fingers, of his broken nails, of his intimate, groping hand. “Dinna
touch
me, MacDonald!”

His surprise did not last long. He caught her wrist and crushed it cruelly, threatening the bones, then swung her toward the door. “A lad with breasts, is it? Or a boy-faced lass?” He glanced briefly beyond her, then jerked his head even as the croft-boy fell away, scrambling to escape. “Strip it,” he ordered unseen men. “I’ll have plates, rack-spits, candlesticks—anything of value! Spare Glenlyon nothing . . . he’s naught but a drukken man; let him weep into his usquabae!”

“Leave it be!” Cat cried; they had so little left, now that her father had sold off anything that might bring a silver penny. “Dinna touch my house!”

“Your house? Yours?” His grip tightened. He was not, she realized, a MacDonald after all. His bonnet badge, though caked with soot, boasted another clan. “Are you Glenlyon’s whelp, then?”

“Leave that!” she shouted as the first man beyond the threshold tore from the window her mother’s lace curtains, painstakingly repaired after Jamie’s recent fury by Una’s careful work.

Her captor shook her. “I asked you: Are you Glenlyon’s?”

Cat’s head snapped on her neck, sending a sharp pain shooting into her skull. For all he was shorter than she, he was neither slight nor weak. His fingers on her wrist were rigid as wire.

“—daughter,” she muttered, hating herself for the tears that sprang to her eyes.

“The laird’s daughter? Then you’re fit to serve the man outside. He’s in need of a wet throat.” He snatched a stolen cup from the clansman who had stolen it, then shoved it beneath her chin. “Usquabae.”

Cat stared into his face. A young man; younger, she thought, than Jamie.
I should be afraid—
And so she was, but not so afraid that she could not think, could not consider and assess the result of this action, or that—
I am taller—
But she shut it off. He would hurt her. Any attempt at escape now, as he touched her, would fail, gaining her naught, and he would hurt her.

He laughed, as if he read her intent. A shiver coursed through her body. With the rim of the cup pressed cruelly against her chin, Cat nodded acquiescence as much as she was able.

They had plundered her father’s whisky, but one man poured the cup full. The tang of liquor filled her head, stinging her eyes. As around her the MacDonalds stripped Chesthill bare of even such small riches as pewter spoons and platters, Cat made her way outside. It was no less frenzied there as men brought out their plunder from house and outbuildings. Iron clanked, and pewter, loaded onto garrons already bearing stolen wealth.

—they’ve robbed the croft-houses—
From farther up the glen she heard the shouts of the clansmen who had already appropriated cattle, sheep, goats, and horses, gathering them for driving.
—they will leave us nothing. . . nothing at all. . .
Cat bit into her lip. If there was any consolation, it was that Lord Murray of Atholl would lose as much as her father; but winter would be hard, bitter hard, if not impossible. In their greed, in their ferocity, the MacDonalds would make certain nothing remained on which the Campbells might live.
Better to kill us outright, than starve us to death!

Two garrons, one riderless, the other mounted, pawed idly at hoof-churned mud still puddled from morning rain. She refused to raise her head, to meet the eyes of the mounted man to whom she was to give her father’s whisky in her father’s cup. Through a haze of bitter tears Cat saw a foot thrust into the stirrup, a bare bruised knee pressed against horseflesh. The sett of the kilt was of the deep black-green and rich crimson colors often favored by MacDonalds.

Cat stared steadfastly at the mucky ground as she picked her way to the horse.
I willna. look at him—
She stopped at the stirrup, clenching teeth so firmly her jaws ached. As the hand came down to grasp the cup, she deliberately turned it over. “Chruachan, ” she murmured fiercely.

Whisky splashed bare feet, splattered mud on her ankles and soiled the ragged bottoms of her borrowed breeks, but she did not care. She exulted in it. Chruachan. Chruachan. I’ll say it till I die . . .for dead Robbie and for Glen Lyon—

From behind someone grabbed a handful of hair. The grip twisted her head sideways, then a rough shove sent her sprawling to the ground. Cat landed on chin, hip, elbow, and shoulder, then dug the elbow into muck to lever herself up. She watched in numb comprehension as whisky and horse urine soaked her ill-plaited braid.

Inanely she thought,
Una will be angry.

The man with the claymore stood beside her, setting the tip into mud so the sheen of steel was dulled. “Drink it, then. If you willna serve a MacDonald or Stewart, you’ll serve yourself instead!”

Stewart.
Stewart,
not MacDonald; he had denied it at the beginning. Likely of Appin, then; they were nearly as close as Glencoe.

Glencoe.

Cat, still sprawled in muck, looked up sharply. She ignored the Stewart entirely and stared instead at the mounted man, the MacDonald, the laird’s son to whom she had been ordered to serve Campbell whisky.

The man beside her stirred. “Christ, Dair, you’re white as a corpse—” He forgot her abruptly, swinging toward the horse. “We’ll have you down, aye? . . . we’ll have you in the house—”

His eyes were the same whisky-gold, she saw, though sheltered in bruised sockets deeper than she recalled. The lean face was thinner, paler, nearly gaunt; a grimy smudge emphasized the hollows beneath sharp cheekbones, the stark contours of his skull. Near-black hair, curling this way and that beneath the fit of his bonnet, was grayer than Cat remembered, speckled more thickly. He had not shaved; dark stubble etched his jaw, proving only the hair on his head was graying to tarnished silver.

“I’ll ride on to Glencoe,” Alasdair Og said. “There will be warmer welcome there.”

“Warmer yet in Castle Stalker, aye? Here—” The Stewart snatched something from a passing man, then thrust it toward Dair MacDonald. “Take something to Jean of the Campbells.”

In sunlight, it glinted copper. Cat stared, outraged:
Even my mother’s kettle!

Dair handed down the reins of a riderless horse to the Appin Stewart. “Ride on. My garron’s limping a wee bit—I’ll catch up.”

“But—”

“Ride on. The men are done here.”

The voice was precisely as she recalled it, though a trifle frayed around the edges, as if he had spent its timbre on too much shouting.

Cat was aware of kilted clansmen departing the house with plunder stuffed into table linens, tied in bundles onto horses, or swung over plaid-swathed shoulders. One by one they mounted, laughing and jesting, shouting to one another of the booty they had acquired, and turned their garrons toward the track. Eventually even the Stewart, muttering of fools and madmen, departed Glenlyon’s dooryard.

Dair MacDonald watched them go, then turned back. His expression was predominantly solemn, but Cat, sitting up in mud and puddles, marked a peculiar set to his mouth, as if there were other words he meant to say but dared say none of them.

Eventually he offered: “If I get down, I willna get up again.”

From another man it might constitute apology. But not from a MacDonald, surely; a MacDonald would never dismount to pull a Campbell from the ground. Nor would a Campbell offer the service to a MacDonald.
I willna have his hands on me.

Cat felt hollow and filled with light as she stood slowly. Wet breeks stuck to her thighs. Her muck-laden braid glued itself to her neck and shirt; she felt the damp weight of whisky-scented mud stubbling her chin, dribbling slimy wetness down her neck. She put up her dirty chin to ward away mockery, but into her mind leaped a wholly unexpected vision of Lady Glenlyon’s French perfume packed neatly away by a girl who did not believe herself worthy of its scent.

A wild laugh bubbled up.—
usquabae and horse-piss
—She gulped a hiccup and bit into her lip, shutting off the impulse. “Go,” she said tightly. “Have you no’ done enough?”

He ignored her entirely, wholly focused on something else. “Catriona—?
Cat?”

Humiliation gagged her. Seven years later he knew her, knew even her
name . . .
A wail of grief was briefly born, then died in her throat. It was worse, then, far worse. She had expected never to see him again; that he would never see her, all things she could bear, but to know he
remembered . . .
to know he saw her in such a state as this blunted anger entirely and robbed her even of pride. She bit again deeply into her lip, hoping pain would halt the helpless uprush of tears. Broken fingernails cut crooked crescents into the flesh of slimy palms.

“Cat—” But he broke it off. His mouth worked stiffly, then stilled into a rigid, taut-lipped line. With infinite care he climbed down from his garron.

He said if he got down, he couldna get up again. . . .
But he
was
down, splashing into muck. It slopped across bare feet and ankles, but he did not heed it.

Cat shook back her sticky braid. She expected him to turn away from her, to inspect his mount’s sore hoof; it was why he delayed as the others rode away.

But he did not. Instead he held out the kettle.

Cat gazed at him, uncomprehending. When he did not withdraw the kettle or speak again, she ventured to put trembling hands on the dented metal. As their fingertips brushed she jerked the kettle away. She stared hard at the callused male hands, now empty, because she could not look into his face, could not meet his eyes to see the pity there, the compassion, the comprehension of what she felt. He would know. He would understand. As he had years before.

Cat hugged the battered kettle, willing herself not to cry. She heard him turn away, saw the tarnished glint of silver. He moved stiffly, as if his joints ached. She remembered there had been a battle fought at Killiecrankie; that the Jacobites had won. He and others like him, fighting for King James, had defeated King William’s men.

She wanted to ask it aloud:
How many men did you kill?
But she did not, knowing he would tell her only because she asked; he had proved his honesty seven years before in the name of a laird’s boy-faced daughter. A battle was more important. Victory cried out for truth.

Yet he would tell her
because
she asked, and because it was the truth, not to rejoice in death. She prayed he would not rejoice, or become a lesser man than in the dreams she had created.

He mounted, muttering beneath his breath:
“Dinna be a puny calf, Alasdair Og—”
—and then he was in the saddle, gray-faced and sweating, gathering reins, settling kilt, plaid, claymore, and targe. His bonnet badge flashed argent in the gilt-and-rose light of fall.

Cat clutched the kettle. As he turned his garron after the others, she saw it did not limp after all.

 

T
he road existed because of cows; there were ways held in common with other clans of driving cattle to and from pasturage, and later on to market. This road was one of them, a hoof-beaten, rock-strewn track wider than a deer trail but little better, and certainly no cobbled road like the Romans had built in the land of the Sassenach. But road it was nonetheless, hedged by granite, heather, and bracken, cutting across the mountain fastness warding the northern side of Glencoe.

Glencoe MacDonalds had come up the drove-road to see the English-speakers who, with their Lowland lapdogs, dared to come into the Highlands to set up housekeeping. There had been rumors of it since Killiecrankie, but now rumor was fact. At the behest of General Sir Hugh Mackay, who had lost Killiecrankie—and others who hated Highlanders—King William had given permission to build a fort near Inverlochy. Its placement clearly was deliberate: on a narrow spit of land beside the River Nevis, in the shadow of the mount, where once stood Gearasdan dubh nan Inbhir-Lochaidh, the Black Garrison. There were memories attached, and MacIain of Glencoe, accompanied by his sons and a small tail of men, said he should not doubt the recollections were stirred of a purpose.

The fort was as yet unfinished, though it neared completion. The ramparts of earth, stone, and timber stood firm, setting up a formidable barricade against the enemy. Inside stood crude-built buildings for the housing of ammunition, stores, and officers. Outside huddled a cluster of canvas tents, and the haphazard beginnings of peat huts far more crudely constructed than the shielings that housed the clans during summer. The common man gone for a soldier, wintering in hut instead of house, was less well off than the poorest Highlander.

The MacDonalds did not attempt to hide themselves from view. MacIain and his sons stood upon the crown of the hill looking down upon the fort, and let the men working there see who and where they were. There would be no fighting; there was at present no battle intended, nor even a skirmish, merely reconnaissance. They took the measure of one another.

MacIain’s white hair blew in the breeze that crested the hill and set the bracken to waving. He had brought with him, by habit, an assortment of weapons, including claymore and blunderbuss, though he let those below at the fort see he had men to carry such arms for him, and a gillie to carry
him
across each stream so as to keep his brogues dry: he was a Highland chieftain.

Dair and John stood together, making independent count of the red-backed Sassenachs. It was early yet; there would be more men to come. Their task, then, was to make the coming dreaded by those men; to make the living so difficult—or even impossible—that no matter how many soldiers were garrisoned at the fort, they would find food less than plentiful and supplies such as clothing and other simple plenishings—pots, kettles, even spoons—nonexistent. It was a simple task: to fall upon supply trains wending from Atholl and Badenoch, taking such supplies as they could carry away. Glencoe would profit from it, while the Sassenachs did not.

MacIain’s voice rumbled, though he spoke quietly. “They’ll send out patrols to drive us away so they forage for food in peace. Thinking to be clever, they’ll send out
Scots
levies . . . well, we’re no’ fools, are we, to let even another Scotsman take what belongs to Glencoe.” His eyes burned like a banked peat-fire in withered, deep sockets. “We’ll take the cows away.”

Dair nodded, half-smiling. It was a simple and bloodless solution. Even with protection the soldiers dared not wander too far from the fort for fear of clan reprisal, and those who did would find there was little food to be had. A lack of cattle combined with diverted supply trains would soon combine to demoralize the hungry army. They would turn elsewhere, of course—likely to supply ships coming up Loch Linnhe—but those schemes would take time to implement. The Lowland government would initially delay turning to the sea out of pride and stubborn resolve, and by the time supplies were sent by ship the army garrison would be sick and half-starved.

Dair picked from his eye a windblown lock of hair.
Starving men dinna fight so well . . .
A movement from MacIain caught his attention. His father took from his jacket pocket a tarnished, battered spyglass brought home from France one year. MacIain raised it to an eye and peered down upon the fort.

When he took it away he was smiling sweet as a babe. “ ’Tis as I thought,” he said, tucking the glass away. “They’ve a graveyard begun already.”

 

English-born Colonel John Hill, former Constable of Belfast and now Their Majesties’ Governor of the fort near Inverlochy but newly named after its Dutch-born king, stood before the gates and stared up at the granite-crowned hills. Behind the rocky crest bloomed a lowering sun, but the silhouettes were eloquent enough for a man such as Hill, who understood what a fort meant to the way of life most jeopardized by its presence. There were Highlanders up there, he knew, because he had been told so by a near-panicked English soldier; undoubtedly they were MacDonalds, and fully anticipated by anyone with wit enough to acknowledge the Highlanders would take a pointed and wholly natural interest in Fort William’s construction.

Beside him, General Sir Hugh Mackay stirred. “I should take a patrol up there to send them scrambling back to their hovels.”

Governor Hill did not acknowledge the comment, though he could not help a brief twitch at the corner of his mouth. He understood very well that Mackay’s pride yet stung from his defeat at Killiecrankie, but Hill knew just such a patrol would win the king’s general no sop to that pride; in fact, he would encounter an additional defeat. At home in their heather, hills, and crags, the clansmen would not be beaten by hungry, ill-clad soldiers more interested in food than in killing or catching a Scot.

“They’ve come to watch, no more,” Hill said quietly. “We would do well to accustom ourselves to the glint of their steel and the sett of their tartan; we’ll see them all through summer.”

Mackay’s sour mouth was grimly set. “We waste time. Breadalbane’s scheming will accomplish naught; you should burn the houses, lift the cattle, and destroy all their crops.”

Governor Hill did not answer. He had an entirely different opinion of the Campbell earl, whom he believed to be a man singularly dedicated to seizing the main chance for himself. For now Breadalbane spoke of treaties and peace; but Hill had heard rumors that from the other side of his mouth the earl, a Highlander himself, whispered of war to the chiefs.

“It will be left to you,” Mackay said. “ ’Twill be your task to bring the Highlanders to heel; the king has defeated the Irish at the River Boyne, but now there is another threat. A French fleet lies of Beachy Head and may invade . . . ’tis time I saw to soldiering instead of building forts.”

Hill would not be sorry to see Mackay go, though he murmured his regrets. Mackay was a Scot, but his long years of service abroad in the Scottish Brigade had painted over his nationalism with a more lurid dedication to William of Orange. He held his fellow Scot in contempt, while Hill admired the Highlander’s fiery pride and virulent traditionalist’s culture.

“If it be within my power to persuade the government to send me the meat they promised, as well as other necessities such as beds, of which we yet have none, I shall be content to do as I may here,” Hill said. “But leave me English in place of Scots, and all shall be well.”

“No.” Mackay shook his head. “You will have companies from Clan Grant and Clan Menzies—and four companies of Campbells from the Earl of Argyll’s regiment.”

Hill felt a twinge of uneasiness. “This is MacDonald country. To invite Campbells here—”

“This is land belonging to whoever is able to hold it,” Mackay interrupted disagreeably. “Across the loch are Camerons and Macleans; to the east lie Murrays and Menzies, with the Hendersons closer yet. And Campbells.” He glared up at the hill crowned with MacDonald tartan, sparking MacDonald steel. “They are cattle thieves, no more; let them all be hanged.”

Hill, no longer young, was decidedly nearsighted; he could not see the steel. But he knew it was there. Mildly he said, “If you hang a man for lifting cattle, you will have to hang half of Scotland.”

Mackay turned a congested face upon him. “I am a soldier! I know my duty!”

Hill did not dispute Mackay’s choler; he did not blame the man for his frustrations. “Indeed, our duty is to the king . . . but just now a plan for peace prevails in place of force.”

“Peace,” Mackay muttered. “ ’Twill delay the only means for subduing these savages.”

“I have had some experience of men such as these,” Hill began diffidently; he was not a man who sought confrontation or bombast. “A man keeping in his mind that these Highlanders are at once a proud and honorable people, but wholly reasonable when the way seems clear, can often persuade them to sheathe their claymores and set aside their targes.”

“They are savages!”

“Savage in battle, savage in pride and honor; indeed, they are men apart from all, save the Irish, who are similar.” The governor smiled; he had reason to know the Irish, after service in Belfast. “But there is kindness in them, given leave to show it.” He squinted up at the man-shaped silhouettes clustered on the hilltop. “It is my task to present them with
presence;
with the promise of strength. They will respect that.”

Mackay glared at him. “Is that what you will do? Promise them kindness?”

“Honor,” Hill replied simply. “If you hold them in contempt, that is what you yourself shall reap.”

General Sir Hugh Mackay of Scourie, defeated by the ‘savages’ now watching him from the hills, barked a derisive laugh. “And how will
honor
succeed where military strength has not?”

Hill smiled gently; he did not wish to offend the general, who remained in William’s favor, but neither did he desire the man to consider the fort’s governor incapable of grasping even rudimentary procedures. “I have promises of John Stewart of Ardshiel, close-linked to Appin’s laird, that he and others like him will not protest my governorship with a show of arms. I have promises of Coll MacDonald of Keppoch that he and Ewan Cameron of Lochiel may yet be moved to persuade other clans not to rise, if—in his words—‘they can be made to live.’ ”

“ ‘Made to live?’
Bribed,
you mean.” Mackay’s mouth knotted beneath his nose. “A dishonorable way of winning a war . . . and I’d trust no Highlander to respect his promise!”

Hill sighed inwardly, though he maintained an even tone. “If I can save the life of a single man, be he Sassenach or Highlander, I will praise God for the chance.”

It brought hot color to Mackay’s face again. He muttered imprecations beneath his breath as he swung away. “I have duties to attend!”

Hill felt a sense of relief as the general stomped off. He prayed nightly for peace, knowing its path was thick with human obstacles such as Hugh Mackay and John Dalrymple, Master of Stair—now also Secretary of Scotland—who advocated main force. But it was because of men like Mackay and Stair that an old campaigner such as John Hill was made governor, whom they believed could use his experience in the easing of Jacobites from freedom to subjugation.

“Ease it I will, in the true sense of the word, if they give me leave to do so.” Hill shielded his eyes from the glare of the setting sun. There were men of the clans he trusted to hold their word if not shown another way as honorable. But a Highlander equated oaths and promises with a system of honor not wholly comprehended by Sassenachs. If one laird stood up to the rest and persuaded them that to tolerate William was to dishonor James, their rightful monarch, all of Hill’s careful plans could collapse in disarray.

“One man,” he murmured. “One old fox, such as MacIain of Glencoe, could bring down everything.”

 

Breadalbane had lost Achhallader to the MacDonalds on their way home from Killiecrankie; therefore, the earl, possessor of many fine castles, took up residence in Kilchurn on the shore of Loch Awe and immediately set about repairing damages to his reputation.

A knock sounded at the door of his private study. Breadalbane sanded his signature at the bottom of the newly completed letter, then set it aside as he called for entrance.

It was not his gillie, Sandy, whom the earl expected, but his eldest son, Duncan, whom he did not like, had never liked, and did not desire to inherit; but short of petitioning the king to have Duncan set aside in favor of John, his second son, there was little he could do.

Breadalbane could not suppress a twinge of displeasure, though no guilt accompanied it. “Aye?”

Duncan Campbell was a thin, slight young man narrow through the shoulders, with long, ill-fleshed limbs. The neck separating head from shoulders was short, and the skull perched atop it a trifle too large, Breadalbane felt, for ordinary proportions. Duncan’s coloring was sallow, his hair more brown than fair, but with no life in it to lift it from his scalp.

John should be in his place.
“Aye?” he repeated.

Duncan Campbell shut the door behind him. He did not approach his father. “I’ve a thing to say.”

“You’ve many things to say,” his father observed, “but I’ve never known any of them to be worth my effort to hear them.”

Dull color flushed the sallow, sensitive features. The eyes were brown, but so dark as to be indistinguishable between pupil and iris. “I wish to be married.”

It was astounding news, though Breadalbane did not permit his surprise to alter the austerity of his expression. “Do you?”

“I do.”

“And is this notion something that occurred last night over a dram of whisky, in some harlot’s bed—or something someone else has put into your head?” There were men who would, the earl knew, seeking preferment through their daughters.