Jennifer Roberson (41 page)

The bitter cold had faded, but it was still winter withal and the puppies young. In the courtyard Breadalbane took up burlap sacking and, with much effort and no little protest of winter-wracked joints, knelt to dry the puppies.

It was messy work and as equally unappreciated by the squirming subjects. He might have left it to the gamekeeper to tend the puppies, but the earl took pleasure of it. Kilchurn was his world, inviolate of such things as judgment by others, and he spent much time catching and drying the puppies, gently insistent. One by one, struggling and squawking, each leggy, fuzzy deerhound sprat was warmed in the earl’s burlap-filled hands, until all were set free again, dry, to roll against the flagstones in frenzied disgust, or to leap upon one another in mock ferocity.

He rose at last, if slowly, and tossed damp sacking aside. His efforts had disordered his clothing, but he was disinclined to care. And then Sandy came with a letter in his hand, saying a courier had arrived from Edinburgh.

Breadalbane broke the seal and unfolded the parchment. He read swiftly, then again, less swiftly. And crumpled the letter in one muddied hand full of damp and dog hair. “London,” he said succinctly. “At once.”

Sandy departed with alacrity to make preparations. His master delayed a moment to gaze at his puppies, but saw nothing at all of dogs. And even when the bitch came up and set her head beneath his hand, pressing a shoulder against his leg, he was not moved to pet her.

“One week,” the earl said bitterly. “One week only before the year is out, before the scheme can be set in motion, my compensation rendered—and now James releases them!”

But he calmed himself with effort. All was not lost. He need not panic. One week in the Highlands, with winter yet settled in, could equal a month on the road. And the reprieve would be undone, and MacDonalds would die after all.

Grey John Campbell glared up at the clear skies.
“Snow,
”he ordered succinctly, as if he were God to command it.

 

Cat, sensitized by now to MacIain’s moods, sat quietly near the fire in MacIain’s house as Ewan Cameron’s son related the news. The hilarity of the evening at Carnoch, begun after supper as first John and then Dair battled their father at chess and were badly beaten in flamboyant displays of MacIain’s skill, faded now into stunned silence.

Lady Glencoe, pouring wine for Cat and herself, set the flagon on the table, task unfinished. Dair, who had knelt to tend the glowing peat-fire behind Cat’s stool, stood up. No one spoke, not even Young Sandy, who slumped against his father’s side as sleep overcame him. It prevented John from doing anything other than stare at the Cameron who brought such news.

Eiblin MacDonald, within weeks of delivering John’s second child, cupped rigid hands over the mound of her belly. She looked expectantly at MacIain. So did they all, now, turning as one, while MacIain himself, masked against expression, set down beside the chessboard the pawn he held.

“I thank you for your news,” he said calmly. “Will ye drink usquabae?”

The Cameron accepted with a bob of his ruddy head. He was clearly nervous—MacIain was infamous—but just as clearly proud of his heritage; he was also the son of a laird, even as Dair and John. His father was of equal standing as Glencoe himself.

But Cat could not help a faint smile; no man in the world, laird or no, was equal to MacIain in anything but title.

For some time the Cameron was hosted according to Highland tradition, given food, drink, and welcome. He declined the offer of a bed within the laird’s own house, explaining his father and his gillies awaited his return near the ferry at Ballachulish by the road to Inveraray, where they would meet with Ardkinglas.

In Campbell lands was Inveraray, and the sheriff himself a Campbell. Cat looked again at MacIain. He had welcomed a Campbell into his house, but that was withal a minor thing when compared to swearing an oath.

With friendly words exchanged and good whisky drunk, the Cameron departed. Only MacDonalds now, save for Cat Campbell. She thought perhaps she should leave. But Dair, standing behind her, put a hand on her shoulder and held her there.

MacIain knocked back his whisky, then set the glass down upon the table with an audible sound. “So,” he said.

No one spoke. Young Sandy stirred against his father’s side, murmured briefly, then slumped back into sleep as his mother, seated nearby, leaned to smooth tousled hair. The Parisian clock on the mantel ticked loudly.

Cat was glad of Dair’s hand on her shoulder. She wanted badly to look up into his face, to judge his expression, but she could not turn away from MacIain. He had spellbound them all.

John was heir, and thus perhaps the bravest. “If we are released from the oath we swore to James at Dalcomera, we are free to swear another.”

MacIain grunted. “I heard the lad, aye?”

Silence again, and the ticking of the clock. Cat wanted to scream. John continued. “The proclamation was plain. If we dinna sign by the end of the year, we will be punished.”

“Och, I recall it,” MacIain said. “ ‘. . . to the utmost extremity of the law.’ ” He poured more whisky. “I am neither deaf nor blind, John, to not ken what we face.”

Soft but pointed reprimand. Cat, who had only experienced the bombast, felt this was infinitely more dangerous. The expression on John’s face confirmed it.

From behind her, Dair spoke quietly. “You have the warning I carried from Governor Hill at Inverlochy.”

“I do, aye.” MacIain sipped slowly, savoring the liquor. “You did tell me, Alasdair.”

“For all he is a Sassenach, he strikes me as a fair man. A truthful man.”

“So you said, aye. Twice over.”

“Six days,” John said.

In candlelight, the white mane glowed. “Neither deaf nor blind, aye?—nor unable to count.”

“What will you do?” Cat asked, because no one else had. Because she thought no one else would.

MacIain’s eyes burned into her own. “What would you do?”

It took her by surprise. “I? But—I am not a laird—”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Of course it does! If I am responsible for only myself, I might decide one thing . . . but if I had a clan to protect, I might decide another.”

Teeth showed briefly in a feral smile, then hid themselves away in the nest of his beard and moustaches. “And yet you have the temerity to ask me what I will do, here and now, when there are many things to be considered, no’ the least of them the people—
my
people, aye?—who depend upon me.” He swept the room with a level glance. “All of you ask it. I see it in your faces.”

Cat could not recall a single instance when her father had said so much as MacIain about tending his people. Glenlyon was also a laird, and yet he commanded nothing save dice, very badly, and whisky very well.
What would I do, were I laird of Glencoe?
She was only a laird’s daughter. She had no responsibilities save those she created.

MacIain grunted. “This game is done.” He broke up the hard-won positions and moved the chess pieces back into position for a fresh gambit. “A new one has begun.”

Eiblin MacDonald looked at her husband, who looked in turn with studied consideration at his sleeping son. Lady Glencoe’s hands were folded in her lap, her face composed, but Cat saw the line of tension in her shoulders. And Dair, still standing between the fire and Cat, released a quiet breath that was, by its lengthiness, a statement of itself.

Cat waited. She had said what she could, and knew no more now than she had before the Cameron had arrived. But the world had changed completely, and their lives with it.
’Twill be for him to decide what becomes of us all
. . . And she knew in that moment she would have no other man save the aging, giant MacDonald make such a decision. He was a harsh man, a stubborn old fox, but he loved his people. She trusted his conviction more than she did her own.

He looked at them all one by one, then rose and strode to the door. He pulled it open and turned. To his sons he said, “Take your women home.”

Abject dismissal. Cat stiffened, shocked.

MacIain saw it and looked directly at her. “Take your women home,” he repeated, “and leave me to my own.” Beyond the door, beyond MacIain, snow fell out of the darkness. The respite was over; winter had returned.

Cat, chilled, rose as Dair moved to stand beside her.
But it could be no more bitter than the winter in his eyes.

 

John Hill started violently as the door to his quarters was flung open. A man stood upon the threshold. In guttering light before him, with snow-scoured darkness behind, he might have been a hero out of the tales of Celtic bards, a giant Norseman come up alive from the barrow-grave dripping of earth and damp. But John Hill saw immediately the damp was melting snow, and there was no earth at all upon him. Only a mask of implacable stone in place of a man’s face.

He wore wool, leather, and steel. He glinted with it in candlelight, a hard, martial glitter born of pistols, dirk, and sword. And all wrapped up in tartan, head now bared of bonnet, so that melting droplets of snow formed diamonds in white hair and a shawl across his shoulders.

“MacIain,” Hill said, because there was no doubt.

“Governor,” MacIain returned in a quiet rumble.

Behind him, snow fell steadily. An unrelenting storm had piled banks against the buildings, formed a second if softer defense for the palisaded walls. That MacIain had made his way through from Glencoe was a remarkable feat—until one looked at the man and judged the spirit in him, the unwavering determination. He simply could not fail, in himself or for his people. His pride would not permit it.

MacIain filled the doorway. He would dwarf the governor’s spartan room. But it was the only shelter Hill had to offer worthy of his guest. “Come in. Will you have whisky, or wine?”

The giant’s eyes glittered. His jaw worked a moment; his beard dripped water that beaded on his plaid, rolled across the leather of his silver-buckled baldric. He was withal a warrior, a Gael from other times, as massive in arrogance as in bone. “I have come to swear the oath,” he said at last, and softly, more softly than Hill expected. “Will you administer it, that I may have King William’s indemnity?”

In the moment before shock, in the instant prior to painful protest, John Hill marked the bitter conviction in aged eyes, the honed edge of rumbling voice, the knowledge that what Glencoe did ran counter to his wishes. And yet he had come.

—And very nearly too late . . .
“No,” Hill blurted, forsaking diplomacy in the magnitude of his surprise. “Oh no, don’t you see? I cannot accept your signature. I cannot extend the indemnity of the king. It is to Ardkinglas you must go, in Inveraray.”

“I have come,” MacIain declared, brooking no further protest.

It washed up from out of the darkness, filling his soul with sick dread.
Stair shall have his scheme after al—-
“Oh, no—MacIain, I beg you . . . I can do nothing for you.” He went on swiftly despite the narrowing of distrustful eyes. “You must go to Inveraray, to the Sheriff of Argyll. Ardkinglas will accept your signature, not I.”

The old face hardened until Hill believed it might shatter. “You refuse?”

“But I
must
!” Hill cried. “It is not my duty . . . it is for Ardkinglas to administer the oath. You know that, MacIain—it was stated in the proclamation. It is to the sheriffs the lairds must go.”

The giant Highlander dripped snowmelt onto the floor. A gust of wind blew snow into the room, threatening even glass-warded lamps; and yet Hill could see no way to have the door shut, with Glencoe still in it. “I have read it,” MacIain said at last. “But
you
are a soldier, aye?—and no’ a bluidy Campbell.”

It was rough flattery, and wholly comprehensible to Colonel John Hill, who had spent his life in the military serving England; he understood very well how a fellow warrior would view such meticulous service, enemy or no. It was honor of itself, despite the name of its king. He was no politician, no nobleman, merely a soldier. And it was to that soldier MacIain now appealed, a Sassenach who was, nonetheless, not a Campbell man.

Speechless, Hill looked upon the old man who was Scotland incarnate, bred of her bones and blood, of the stone and bogs and burnwater. His eyes had seen a multitude of sins, his hands had committed them, and yet he came to sign an oath that would forever mark him the Dutchman’s man instead of Jacobite. Glencoe’s capitulation was the death of rebellion.

And yet Hill could find no joy in it, nor relief. Only a great and growing fear.
He does not know what Stair has planned
for
him—and I cannot confide it—
“You must go,” he said desperately. “You must go on to Inveraray. Tarry no longer here!”

The granite mask that was MacIain’s face began, barely, to crack. “I canna,” he said. “ ’Twould take me longer than I have, before the year is done.”

And so it would. The weather by itself would delay him beyond a day, and there was no more time than that.

One day, no more . . .
He had come, had MacIain; Glencoe had come at last. It was the price of survival, the end of a brutal plan, and yet it might be too late.

“Wait—” Hill blurted. He turned at once to his writing table and took up dry quill. Quickly he inked it, pulled a rumpled parchment close, and began to scribble. “I will ask Ardkinglas to receive you as a lost sheep . . .”

It was done in haste, with swift explanation: a mistake, no more, and due forgiveness; surely Ardkinglas could administer the oath despite the tardiness . . .
‘he has been with me, yet slipped some days out of ignorance, but it is good to bring in a lost sheep at any time, and will be an advantage to render the King’s government easy. ’Hill
sanded, folded, and sealed the letter. He held it out to MacIain. “Now I must hasten you away.”