Jennifer Roberson (20 page)

He looked for something of her in the man, but found nothing there to suggest it. Dair supposed once Glenlyon had been a handsome man—it was said of him, though ten years before he had already looked hard used—but drink had ruined him. He was nothing more now than an aging, weak-willed man, but one who nonetheless now had the authority to sentence MacIain’s son to death.

“Have we a proper tree?” Glenlyon asked.

“There,” someone said. “Up the knowe.”

“Good.” Glenlyon turned away to look at the indicated hill with its lone tree. “Hang them from it. Then bind the bodies onto their garrons and send them home to MacIain. ’Twill be message enough, as concerns Campbell cattle.”

—He doesna ken who I am . . .
But Dair supposed it did not matter. He was cattle thief, reiver, be he Stewart or MacDonald; Glenlyon would take retribution from any man caught driving cattle off Campbell lands.

It was quickly done. Dair was flopped over onto his belly even against his will, face ground into rock-strewn track as they bound his hands behind him. Then he was dragged up.

“You’ll mount,” a Campbell said.

It was all too fast, too fast—

“Heave him up,” another ordered.

They trapped his arms. Hands were on his legs, lifting him by the knees; he was tossed down across the saddle like a new-killed red deer.
—not so soon . . . not so swiftly—
Hands pushed and pulled, yanking him frontwise into the saddle.
—will you give me no time—?

It was not his own garron, now hamstrung and due to die, but the one he recognized as belonging to Hugh MacDonald, a cousin.
Where is
—? Even as they pulled his legs down, one on either side, he searched for Hugh—and found him in the heather across a cluster of stones, with a dirk slash in his throat and the blood flowing into his eyes.

They turned Dair’s horse to face the makeshift gallows: a noosed rope thrown over a tree limb. It was indeed a proper tree, not so twisted as the others, and therefore tall enough to accommodate a mounted man and support his struggling weight when the garron was slapped away.

Two others were in like circumstances: one of Robbie’s Stewarts, whom Dair knew in passing, and a second MacDonald, Walter, who was kin by marriage to Dair’s mother’s sister.

Robert Stewart was absent.
—one man dead, they said, and that man being Hugh . . .
Then Robbie had escaped. Of the six of them, Robbie and another had escaped, while Hugh MacDonald was already dead, and three more bound for hanging.

Glenlyon stood by the tree, one foot set up on a stone. He gave the order, and the Stewart’s garron was brought forward.

Dair supposed, as they set the rope around the Stewart’s neck and slapped the garron away, that it was good Robbie had survived. He was violently traditional, and would see to it that proper songs were sung of them all.

Dair did not flinch as the Stewart’s cry was cut off abruptly when he dropped against the rope. A good hanging, then, with his neck quickly broken; better than choking slowly.

Then Walter, much younger than Dair, who stared wide-eyed at his laird’s son as the Campbells pulled down the dead Stewart and tied him onto a garron.

Walter’s horse was led under the tree. The rope was settled around his neck and snugged tight. “Alasdair—?”

He knew what Walter required: explanation, absolution, a word from his laird’s son to make it easier. But such things were hard come by when Walter’s death would be his own in but a moment.

Dair unclenched his jaws. He stared fixedly at Glenlyon until the laird looked at him, and then he offered Walter all he could:
‘Fraoch Eilean.
“When Glenlyon’s eyes narrowed, he spoke again in words the Campbell laird knew very well:
”Per mare per terras.
“ The MacDonald clan slogan: ‘
By sea and by land
.’ ”Now you’ll ken,“ Dair said.

“Wait—” Walter began, but the garron was slapped away as if in repudiation of MacDonald war cry and slogan. This death was not so easy. As Walter kicked in protest, gagging against the rope, Dair felt the sweat running icy down his flesh.

When Walter hung slackly, Campbells took him down.

They tied the body to the garron and sent it on its way.

They took up the reins to Dair’s horse and led it under the tree.

The bite of the rope was harsh as they set it around his neck.

 

Cat saw the cows first. And then she saw the granite-crowned hill with its single tree as a scepter, Campbells gathered there like subjects before a king, and the man atop the horse with a rope around his neck.

This was not what she had envisioned, not at all, none of it, not the dying, the death; she had envisioned none of it because she had thought no further than
catching
the MacDonalds; than keeping them from stealing more Campbell cows.

“Wait!” That much she got out at last, aloud where a man might hear; but they did not hear, or did not heed. The horse was driven away and the bound man was jerked free of the saddle to dangle, kicking frenziedly, until he choked to death.

Another horse waited. Another man waited. That man, that MacDonald, she knew.

A violent shudder shook her. Cat dug heels into her garron’s side, urging it through milling cattle. Her eyes were fixed on the dangling, now-slack body. “No, no—
wait
—”

They took the body down, brought the quivering horse back, and slung the dead man across the saddle, where they tied his body and sent his garron off again with shouts and crude witticisms.

—wait you
—She wished she had a claymore to use as goad, driving the cattle from her path. All she had were feet and lungs, and she used both frantically, cursing, shouting, kicking, pushing cows aside by forcing the garron through them.

She stared now at Dair, waiting on his horse. “Hold!” she cried.

Atop the hill with its hanging tree the Campbells led him forth.

“Hold!”

They set the rope around his neck.

That they heard. As she reached the outer perimeter of the gathered Campbells, faces turned toward her. She saw men she knew well, and men she knew very little. She saw her father with one foot set upon a stone as if he watched in idleness, resting a leg. She saw Dair MacDonald with his hands tied behind him, and the rope around his neck.

“No!” Cat cried. “Hold—”

Glenlyon put up his hand as he had before to signal the hanging commenced.

“Dinna—” Cat shouted, “—dinna
do
it!”

She was through at last; men were easier to part than cows. She broke free of them and halted atop the hill, staring in shock at the dirty, blood-smeared face of Dair MacDonald, turned to her now but partially obscured by the rough hemp rope knotted beneath one ear.

—I did this
. . . He was white, very white, very stark except where he was bloody, except where a smear of dirt darkened a cheekbone. The brown eyes were black and bleak and empty altogether of the light she had witnessed before, the amber-hued whisky-warmth she looked for now and did not find, while knowing why she could not; the eyes were instead wholly transfixed by the moment, by the rope, by the quivering of the horse he rode unwillingly, and which would, if it moved too far, yet carry him to his death.

Cat looked straight at the Campbell who held the garron’s reins. Explicitly she said, “Dinna let go.”

“Cat.” It was her father.

“Dinna let
go!”

This time the Campbell nodded.

Glenlyon took his foot from the stone. “Cat, what have you come for? I sent you home.”

She again looked at Dair and saw Robbie Campbell instead, dead Robbie, her brother, her MacDonald-murdered brother. She saw the pallor again; the frozen, rigid, blood-sullied features; the exquisite stillness of his limbs, his skull, lest something happen to harm him, or to kill him. It was Robbie come again, dead Robbie Campbell, who had died not of enmity but of a meaningless scuffle intended only to contain him. It was her dirk, her borrowed dirk, that had had the killing of him.

And her alarm that had brought the Campbells here, where Dair MacDonald, captured, would be hanged for his name as much as for his crime.

“No,” she said.

“This is for men,” Glenlyon told her. “Go back home, Cat.”

She could not look away from Robbie’s face, the face that was also Dair’s. “
I
killed him.”

There. It was said, was admitted, was declared before them all, who believed the laird’s son murdered by Glencoe MacDonalds.

Below the hill, cattle milled and began to scatter, grazing in indolence alien to the men who gathered to kill. There was silence save for the cattle, an intense, tangible silence. The faces stared back at her, waiting; she had asked them to wait, and they waited. Now it was for her to explain her purpose here, where men killed men in a common retribution never questioned among Highlanders.

For her to explain why they should not kill a MacDonald who had, in all likelihood, killed a Campbell. Or two.
As we have killed MacDonalds.

He had asked it himself: ‘
Have you forgotten the times Campbells came a’raiding to Glencoe?’
Her brothers had done so. They had intended to do so the night Robbie died, and they had
done
so four years later, when she had tried very much to keep them home; they had gone a’-raiding to Glencoe and brought home cattle. Some of them Campbell cows, she did not doubt, but as many perhaps MacDonald.

There was no guilt in the world between them save it was not equally shared, as well as blame. For that hard truth, that reality, if for no other reason she could not freely admit, she would prevent his execution.

“We owe him something,” Cat said, and saw Campbell eyes narrow; what was owed a MacDonald but the death awaiting him now? “We owe him for kindness,” she told them. “We owe him for an honor none of us will admit, but me; it was me he aided, when another meant me harm.” She looked at her father’s dissolute face. “It was me, aye? . . .
I
killed Robbie. I took your old dirk—they were going, the lads, and wouldna have me with them because I was a lass . . . so I followed. I took your dirk and
followed
—and Robbie was caught, and me, and the MacDonalds held him, and it was
my fault
he died because he fell upon the dirk.” She was shaking, and cold, and crying. “They didna mean him to die. But he tried to twist free, and fell—and they fell
on
him, and scuffled—and the dirk was there,
my
dirk—”

“Cat.” Glenlyon’s face was wasted. “Cat, stop this—”

“—my
dirk he fell on, he
fell—
and they ran, all of them ran; they kent what would happen, what would be said . . . and it was: MacDonalds killed Robbie Campbell, the laird’s own heir—but it wasna, it
wasna
MacDonalds—it was me . . . it was me . . .” She caught back a sob before it broke her entirely. “We owe him something, this MacDonald . . . of all of them, he has never intended us anything but fairness and honor. I will swear it. Give me a Bible, a relic . . . I will swear it.” She looked at Dair as the pain broke in her chest, and the wild grief welled up for a brother who was dead and another man who would die. “Dinna hang
him.
”

Glenlyon put hands to his face and rubbed it all out of shape. The flesh was much abused, sallowed and ruined from drink; the eyes dull and watery; the hair lank and graying. He was an old man to her, made older by her words, who looked at her now with such an emptiness of spirit she feared what was in his mind. It was possible, she supposed, he would still blame MacDonalds—and one of the Gallows Herd yet present and in an attitude that cried out for hanging. They need only send forth the horse.

She opened her mouth to tell Glenlyon who Dair was, thinking it might mean something; and shut it immediately. It would mean too much. One laird’s son was dead. Glenlyon, in his grief, his shock, might decide it worth doing to kill Maclain’s son, so the Glencoe laird would understand the anguish.

“I have told you,” she said rustily, “so you willna kill him.”

Glenlyon’s dulled eyes were bleak and glistening. “Would you have told me ever? Ever?”

From atop her garron, Cat looked down on him and shivered. “I told God,” she answered. “I kent He would punish me for it, one day. I didna see the sense in punishing you with it.”

“Me!”

“I thought ’twas easier for you to believe MacDonalds did it. You hated them already. I didna want—” It was hard, harder by far than anticipated, all those times; and now was here at last. “I didna want you to hate me.”

“MacDonalds
did
do it!”

“They didna mean it. I saw it. I saw it then . . . I see it now whenever I summon it up.” Cat looked at Dair’s white, stone-battered face. A trickle of blood bathed his throat; she could see the dirk cut and the vulnerable flesh beneath. “ ’Tis easy to blame them, any of them, even for such things as Campbells are responsible. Well, I willna see this man hanged . . . he of them all has done what he could to give back what was taken.”

“Give back!” her father cried. “ ’Twas MacDonalds who stripped Glen Lyon after Killiecrankie!”

“And this MacDonald who gave me back my mother’s kettle!” She looked again at Glenlyon, knowing he saw the tears in her eyes; tears for a MacDonald? Or for her mother? “Not so much, a kettle—but more than we would have had.”