Dragonfly in Amber (121 page)

The weather had been bad all the way, delaying us. It was April 13, and I rode and walked with a constant, gnawing feeling of dread beneath my heart. Lord George and the clan chieftains, the Prince and his chief advisers—all were at Culloden House, or so we had been told by one of the MacDonalds that we met along the way. He knew little more than that, and we did not detain him; the man stumbled away into the mist, moving like a zombie. Rations had been short when I was captured by the English a month gone; matters had plainly gone from bad to worse. The men we saw moved slowly, many of them staggering with exhaustion and starvation. But they moved stubbornly north, all the same, following their Prince's orders. Moving toward the place the Scots called Drumossie Moor. Toward Culloden.

At one point, the road became too bad for the faltering ponies. They would have to be led around the outer edge of a small wood, through the wet spring heather, to where the road became passable, a half-mile beyond.

"It will be swifter to walk through the wood," Jamie told me, taking the reins from my numbed hand. He nodded toward the small grove of pine and oak, where the sweet, cool smell of wet leaves rose from the soaked ground. "D'ye go that way, Sassenach; we'll meet wi' ye on the other side."

I was too tired to argue. Putting one foot in front of the other was a distinct effort, and the effort would undoubtedly be less on the smooth layer of leaves and fallen pine needles in the wood than through the boggy, treacherous heather.

It was quiet in the wood, the whine of the wind softened by the pine boughs overhead. What rain came through the branches pattered lightly on the layers of leathery fallen oak leaves, rustling and crackled, even when wet.

He lay only a few feet from the far edge of the wood, next to a big gray boulder. The pale green lichens of the rock were the same color as his tartan, and its browns blended with the fallen leaves that had drifted half across him. He seemed so much a part of the wood that I might have stumbled over him, had I not been stopped by the patch of brilliant blue.

Soft as velvet, the strange fungus spread its cloak over the naked, cold white limbs. It followed the curve of bone and sinew, sending up small trembling fronds, like the grasses and trees of a forest, invading barren land.

It was an electric, vivid blue, stark and alien. I had never seen it, but had heard of it, from an old soldier I had nursed, who had fought in the trenches of the first world war.

"We called it corpse-candle," he had told me. "Blue, bright blue. You never see it anywhere but on a battlefield—on dead men." He had looked up at me, old eyes puzzled beneath the white bandage.

"I always wondered where it lives, between wars."

In the air, perhaps, its invisible spores waiting to seize an opportunity, I thought. The color was brilliant, incongruous, bright as the woad with which this man's ancestors had painted themselves before going forth to war.

A breeze passed through the wood, ruffling the man's hair. It stirred and rose, silky and lifelike. There was a crunch of leaves behind me, and I started convulsively from the trance in which I had stood, staring at the corpse.

Jamie stood beside me, looking down. He said nothing; only took me by the elbow and led me from the wood, leaving the dead man behind, clothed in the saprophytic hues of war and sacrifice.

It was mid-morning of April 15 by the time we came to Culloden House, having pushed ourselves and our ponies unmercifully to reach it. We approached it from the south, coming first through a cluster of outbuildings. There was a stir— almost a frenzy—of men on the road, but the stableyard was curiously deserted.

Jamie dismounted and handed his reins to Murtagh.

"D'ye wait here a moment," he said. "Something doesna seem quite right here."

Murtagh glanced at the door of the stables, standing slightly ajar, and nodded. Fergus, mounted behind the clansman, would have followed Jamie, but Murtagh prevented him with a curt word.

Stiff from the ride, I slid off my own horse and followed Jamie, slipping in the mud of the stableyard. There was something odd about the stableyard. Only as I followed him through the door of the stable building did I realize what it was—it was too quiet.

Everything inside was still; the building was cold and dim, without the usual warmth and stir of a stable. Still, the place was not entirely devoid of life; a dark figure stirred in the gloom, too big to be a rat or a fox.

"Who is that?" Jamie said, stepping forward to put me behind him automatically. "Alec? Is it you?"

The figure in the hay raised its head slowly, and the plaid fell back. The Master of Horse of Castle Leoch had but one eye; the other, lost in an accident many years before, was patched with black cloth. Normally, one eye sufficed him; brisk and snapping blue, it was enough to command the obedience of stable-lads and horses, grooms and riders alike.

Now Alec McMahon MacKenzie's eye was dull as dusty slate. The broad, once vigorous body was curled in upon itself, and the cheeks of his face were sunk with the apathy of starvation.

Knowing the old man suffered from arthritis in damp weather, Jamie squatted beside him to prevent him rising.

"What has been happening?" he asked. "We are newly come; what is happening here?"

It seemed to take Old Alec a long time to absorb the question, assimilate it, and form his reply into words; perhaps it was only the stillness of the empty, shadowed stable that made his words ring hollow when they finally came.

"It has all gone to pot," he said. "They marched to Nairn two nights ago, and came fleeing back yesterday. His Highness has said they will take a stand on Culloden; Lord George is there now, with what troops he has gathered."

I couldn't repress a small moan at the name of Culloden. It was here, then. Despite everything, it had come to pass, and we were here.

A shiver passed through Jamie, as well; I saw the red hairs standing erect on his forearms, but his voice betrayed nothing of the anxiety he must feel.

"The troops—they are ill-provisioned to fight. Does Lord George not realize they must have rest, and food?"

The creaking sound from Old Alec might have been the shade of a laugh.

"What His Lordship knows makes little difference, lad. His Highness has taken command of the army. And His Highness says we shall stand against the English on Drumossie. As for food—" His old-man's eyebrows were thick and bushy, gone altogether white in the last year, with coarse hairs sprouting from them. One brow raised now, heavily, as though even this small change of expression was an exhaustion. One gnarled hand stirred in his lap, gesturing toward the empty stalls.

"They ate the horses last month," he said, simply. "There's been little else, since."

Jamie stood abruptly, and leaned against the wall, head bowed in shock. I couldn't see his face, but his body was stiff as the boards of the stable.

"Aye," he said at last. "Aye. My men—did they have their fair share of the meat? Donas…he was…a good-sized horse." He spoke quietly, but I saw from the sudden sharpness of Alec's one-eyed glance that he heard as well as I did the effort that kept Jamie's voice from breaking.

The old man rose slowly from the hay, crippled body moving with painful deliberation. He set one gnarled hand on Jamie's shoulder; the arthritic fingers could not close, but the hand rested there, a comforting blunt weight.

"They didna take Donas," he said quietly. "They kept him—for Prince Tcharlach to ride, on his triumphal return to Edinburgh. O'Sullivan said it wouldna be…fitting…for His Highness to walk."

Jamie covered his face in his hands and stood shaking against the boards of the empty stall.

"I am a fool," he said at last, gasping to recover his breath. "Oh, God, I am a fool." He dropped his hands, showing his face, tears streaking through the grime of travel. He dashed the back of his hand across his cheek, but the moisture continued to overflow from his eyes, as though it were a process quite out of his control.

"The cause is lost, my men are being taken to slaughter, there are dead men rotting in the wood…and I am weeping for a horse! Oh, God," he whispered, shaking his head. "I am a fool."

Old Alec heaved a sigh, and his hand slid heavily down Jamie's arm.

"It's as well that ye still can, lad," he said. "I'm past it, myself."

The old man folded one leg awkwardly at the knee and eased himself down once more. Jamie stood for a moment, looking down at Old Alec. The tears still streamed unchecked down his face, but it was like rain washing over a sheet of polished granite. Then he took my elbow, and turned away without a word.

I looked back at Alec when we reached the stable door. He sat quite still, a dark, hunched shape shawled in his plaid, the one blue eye unseeing as the other.

Men sprawled through the house, worn to exhaustion, seeking oblivion from gnawing hunger and the knowledge of certain and imminent disaster. There were no women here; those chiefs whose womenfolk had accompanied them had sent the ladies safely away—the coming doom cast a long shadow.

Jamie left me with a murmured word outside the door that led to the Prince's temporary quarters. My presence would help nothing. I walked softly through the house, murmurous with the heavy breathing of sleeping men, the air thick with the dullness of despair.

At the top of the house, I found a small lumber-room. Crowded with junk and discarded furniture, it was otherwise unoccupied. I crept into this warren of oddities, feeling much like a small rodent, seeking refuge from a world in which huge and mysterious forces were let loose to destruction.

There was one small window, filled with the misty gray morning. I rubbed dirt away from one pane with the corner of my cloak, but there was nothing to be seen but the encompassing mist. I leaned my forehead against the cold glass. Somewhere out there was Culloden Field, but I saw nothing but the dim silhouette of my own reflection.

News of the gruesome and mysterious death of the Duke of Sandringham had reached Prince Charles, I knew; we had heard of it from almost everyone we spoke to as we passed to the north and it became safe for us to show ourselves again. What exactly had we done? I wondered. Had we doomed the Jacobite cause for good and all in that one night's adventure, or had we inadvertently saved Charles Stuart from an English trap? I drew a squeaking finger in a line down the misty glass, chalking up one more thing I would never find out.

It seemed a very long time before I heard a step on the uncarpeted boards of the stair outside my refuge. I came to the door to find Jamie coming onto the landing. One look at his face was enough.

"Alec was right," he said, without preliminaries. The bones of his face were stark beneath the skin, made prominent by hunger, sharpened by anger. "The troops are moving to Culloden—as they can. They havena slept or eaten in two days, there is no ordnance for the cannon—but they are going." The anger erupted suddenly and he slammed his fist down on a rickety table. A cascade of small brass dishes from the pile of household rubble woke the echoes of the attic with an ungodly clatter.

With an impatient gesture, he snatched the dirk from his belt and jabbed it violently into the table, where it stood, quivering with the force of the blow.

"The country folk say that if ye see blood on your dirk, it means death." He drew in his breath with a hiss, fist clenched on the table. "Well, I have seen it! So have they all. They know—Kilmarnock, Lochiel, and the rest. And no bit of good does the seeing of it do!"

He bent his head, hands braced on the table, staring at the dirk. He seemed much too large for the confines of the room, an angry smoldering presence that might break suddenly into flame. Instead, he flung up his hands, and threw himself onto a decrepit settle, where he sat, head buried in his hands.

"Jamie," I said, and swallowed. I could barely speak the next words, but they had to be said. I had known what news he would bring, and I had thought of what might still be done. "Jamie. There's only one thing left—only the one possibility."

His head was bent, forehead resting on his knuckles. He shook his head, not looking at me.

"There is no way," he said. "He's bent on it. Murray has tried to turn him, so has Lochiel. Balmerino. Me. But the men are standing on the plain this hour. Cumberland has set out for Drumossie. There is no way."

The healing arts are powerful ones, and any physician versed in the use of substances that heal knows also the power of those that harm. I had given Colum the cyanide he had not had time to use, and taken back the deadly vial from the table by the bed where his body lay. It was in my box now, the crudely distilled crystals a dull brownish-white, deceptively harmless in appearance.

My mouth was so dry that I couldn't speak at once. There was a little wine left in my flask; I drank it, the acid taste like bile on my tongue.

"There is one way," I said. "Only one."

Jamie's head stayed sunk in his hands. It had been a long ride, and the shock of Alec's news had added depression to his tiredness. We had detoured to find his men, or most of them, a miserable, ragged crew, indistinguishable from the skeletal Frasers of Lovat who surrounded them. The interview with Charles was far beyond the last straw.

"Aye?" he said.

I hesitated, but had to speak. The possibility had to be mentioned; whether he—or I—could bring ourselves to it or not.

"It's Charles Stuart," I said, at last. "It's him—everything. The battle, the war—everything depends on him, do you see?"

"Aye?" Jamie was looking up at me now, bloodshot eyes quizzical.

"If he were dead.…" I whispered at last.

Jamie's eyes closed, and the last vestiges of blood drained from his face.

"If he were to die…now. Today. Or tonight. Jamie, without Charles, there's nothing to fight for. No one to order the men to Culloden. There wouldn't be a battle."

The long muscles of his throat rippled briefly as he swallowed. He opened his eyes and stared at me, appalled.

"Christ," he whispered. "Christ, ye canna mean it."

My hand closed on the smoky, gold-mounted crystal around my neck.