Jennifer Roberson (42 page)

The old fox was not hastened. He took the sealed letter with deliberation, put it inside his battered buff-colored coat, and tugged on his bonnet once more. The tarnished silver of his clan crest glinted dully.

“God go with you,” Hill said as MacIain turned and went out the door, bending his head beneath a lintel built for a common man.

The governor latched the door and turned away, back toward his bed. Relief warmed him in the snow-dusted room.
Ardkinglas is a good man, albeit he is Campbell. Glencoe is safe after all.

 

Cat slid down toward sleep. She did not want to let go; the bed was empty of Dair, who had gone outside to speak with John after his brother came to wake him, but it was warm beneath the covers and she was lured by its seduction. Only when the door opened again and Dair came in did she turn her back on blandishments to rouse to full alertness.

He latched the door and came into the cubby, unwinding his plaid. Snow dusted his hair; he was, for the moment, his father, save his face was incongruously young.

It struck her afresh, the knowledge and the wonder:
This man is mine
. . . She marked anew the scar against his ribs that had come from a Sassenach blade, and the hemp-track around his neck. The flesh that was not scarred pimpled from chill. “Come in with me.” Cat peeled back the covers. “I’ll lift the ice from your bones.”

“You could lift more than ice, were I not so frozen.” The wind had chafed his face. As he got in beside her, muttering of the storm, she gritted her teeth and wrapped his bare feet in her own.

“—warm,” he murmured. His hair was damp as he tucked his head against her own. “ ’Twas a message from MacIain. He has been sent on to Inveraray, to Ardkinglas.”

Cat, winding her limbs around his to warm him, shivered, then stilled. The words were simple enough, but the tone, for all his care, divulged concern. “ ’Tis a bad storm,” she said, “and a long way to Inveraray. Couldna he sign the oath at Fort William? ”

“John says no, that Malcolm told him they had to go on. But the governor gave MacIain a letter to explain away his delay.” He pulled a strand of her hair out of his face. “ ’Twill take him a day or two to reach Inveraray, but John Hill has spoken for him.”

He warmed but slowly. Cat pressed herself more tightly against him. Inveraray was a Campbell town, and in it once, many years before, MacIain had been imprisoned. Uneasily she asked, “What happens when he arrives?”

Dair shrugged: the barest twitch of one shoulder. “He swears himself and Glencoe in service to King William.”

Such simple words, explaining equally simple actions. But two years before with the pipes wailing of war they had all of them sworn for James on the eve of Killiecrankie. It was not, Cat knew, as casual an undertaking as Dair suggested.

She knew his now, better than she knew her own, as well as his courage. And what he would not admit, what he could not confess, were his own thoughts and feelings. If he feared for his father, he said nothing of it. But she had greater latitude than MacIain’s son. She feared for a MacDonald gone deep into Campbell country, where he had no support at all save the strength of his own will.

But it was MacIain’s will withal. She doubted even Ardkinglas, reputed a decent man, would attempt to break it. Breadalbane, a Campbell earl, and all of the other Williamites had their victory in Glencoe’s capitulation. They would, she prayed for the sake of the man beside her, be gracious in that knowledge.

Quietly she asked, “What does the oath mean?”
To us?
she meant, but could not voice that selfishness.

He stirred, shifting closer. “No more nor less than it meant when Jamie’s name was attached.” His tone hardened. “But he isna a Scot, is William.”

It mattered. It would always matter. England had usurped so much of what once was Scotland’s. Even her kings, transmuted later to Sassenach ways. Rumor said neither James nor his daughter, William’s wife, could speak a word of Gaelic.

Cat stroked a chilled MacDonald shoulder, coveting the flesh. “King’s man,” she murmured.

Dair, muffled against her, made an odd sound. “Aye, well—that hasna changed. Only the name of the king.”

Cat supposed so. And she also supposed that if it bought them peace, the oath was worth it. Others might disagree but MacIain, plainly, had not.

Nor had Dair, nor John. The women had not been asked.
Unless he spoke of it to his wife after sending the rest of us home.
That, she knew, was likely. Margaret MacDonald, styled Lady Glencoe, was not a stupid woman, nor MacIain a fool to ignore her canny counsel.

Cat stared into the darkness, wondering what her father had said of her upon receipt of Colin’s letter with news that she had gone to Dair, to Glencoe, to live among MacDonalds; wondering too what he would say to know that at last Glencoe and Glenlyon, after so many years as enemies, served the same interests.

 

With the wind in his face, billowing kilt and plaid, and the smell of water in his nose—imminent snow, damp wool, the pungency of peat—Dair stood beside his brother near Gleann an Fiodh, the Valley of the Wood, hard by Invercoe. He was, as John was, wholly aware of men at their backs, but more aware yet of the men who stood before them, glinting of English steel in muskets, pikes, and swords.

Dair examined them closely, learning their weaponry so he might know how to stop it; but he was not certain he could. The flintlock muskets the soldiers bore were superior to the matchlocks used at Killiecrankie, as well as the new device that allowed the dagger-bladed bayonets to be attached beneath the musket barrel so the gun could still be discharged, unlike the barrel plugs used two years before. The men also carried spear-headed pikes, scabbarded short swords known as hangers, and cartridge boxes on their belts. Soldiers all they were, clad in scarlet, black, yellow, and gray, with buckles on their shoes and uneasy eyes in their heads.

Twenty MacDonalds, no more, ranged across the track behind Dair and John from the edge of the brae to the shore of the loch. They were badly outnumbered and none of them bore weapons; MacIain had seen to that. He had announced to one and all that, in the name of Governor Hill’s guarantee and the cause of peace, they were to put away the weapons of war as required by the oath. And so they had, but cleverly, hiding them in peat-stacks or beneath cairns upon the braes; yet no man among them was not suspicious of the soldiers, nor wished he had targe and claymore, or even a Lochaber ax.

“Holy Christ,” Dair muttered. “Are we to accept these as friends? I’ve seen enemies wearing fewer weapons.”

“We are at peace with ‘these,’ ” John rebuked without heat. “He signed the oath, did MacIain; we’ve naught to fear of these men.”

Dair snorted derision. “Aye, well . . . I trust you dinna mind if I hold them in some doubt. For all we ken they fought us at Killiecrankie.”

“Then they should fear us, aye?” John’s smile did not last. “Come, Alasdair—they’ve sent a man forward. Let us see what he has to say.”

His body would not move. “I dinna like it, John.”

“Nor I. But the oath is sworn; they havena come to harm us, when we serve their Sassenach king.” Straight-backed, high of head, John MacDonald strode forward.

Dair followed after a moment’s hesitation. The storm at last had died away and the weather warmed again, but he trusted it no more than the many-hued soldiers drawn up in disciplined files, filling the muddy track that cut along the lochside.

A young uniformed man waited for them, standing stiffly before the others. Papers fluttered in his hand, worried by the wind. “I am Lieutenant John Lindsay,” he said, “of the King’s Foot, the Earl of Argyll’s regiment. These are our orders.”

Lindsay held them out but John forbore to accept them. Quietly he asked, “Have you come as friends, or as enemies?”

The young officer’s face stiffened. “As friends, by God! Sir, on my honor, no harm is intended MacIain or his people. But we have orders, and by his oath he must abide by them. As you shall see if you read them.”

This time John accepted the papers. He made short work of them even in the wind, his face expressionless. Dair, standing next to him, could make no judgment of his brother’s thoughts.

“Two companies,” John said finally, “to be quartered in Glencoe. For what purpose?”

Lindsay was clearly nervous, but acquitted himself well in declaration. “There are yet rebellious clans in defiance of the Oath of Allegiance. The indemnity is lifted. But Fort William is full; it is ordered that the folk of Glencoe quarter us here, only until such a time as the weather lifts and we may set about our business. A week, perhaps two . . . no more than that. We hope it is no hardship.”

It would be. “And that business?” John inquired.

“Punishment of those Scots such as Glengarry who yet defy the oath,” Lindsay answered promptly. He hesitated, glanced at Dair, then looked to John again. “There is no room at the fort.”

A man came forward then, clearly an officer in crimson coat and steel gorget, and as clearly a Scot with plaid thrown back from his shoulders. He glanced sidelong at his young and earnest lieutenant, then spoke forcefully in Gaelic. “Will you have us in?” he asked. “I willna depend upon the orders—what are they save the words of a Sassenach and written by English-speakers?—” With elegant disdain. “—but upon your goodwill and generosity according to the law of hospitality that binds us all, and that all of us do honor, who were born of the Highlands.”

It was a crisp, calculated appeal that was also brutally honest, and clearly designed for their benefit—or perhaps for the benefit of the MacDonalds ranged behind, listening distrustfully like hackled hounds. Dair looked at the man indifferently at first, cynical in his thoughts, then stared fixedly in sharp astonishment. And found himself made mute, frozen to his marrow.

The man was much changed. Older, more haggard, very pink of face, with lank, yellowed gray hair and red-rimmed eyes, now an officer in the Earl of Argyll’s regiment clad in martial finery, but his identity—and his title—was unmistakable.

And Dair abruptly no longer stood in MacDonald lands so near the loch and the braes but in lands held by a Campbell, on a windswept, rugged moor beside a time-wracked tree, mounted on a garron with noose around his neck, with rope upon his wrists, with prayers between clenched teeth—

—
and the sound in his ears of the flat of this man’s sword brought down without hesitation upon a shaggy rump to send the horse away.

This man, this Campbell:
Glenlyon
—who stood before them now in service to the king, asking hospitality of them. Knowing Highland honor and the bindings it bore, and how they must respond.

Dair swore feelingly with vulgar vehemence. He felt young Lieutenant Lindsay’s shocked stare, was aware of John’s sharp concern, sensed the rapt tension in the Glencoe-men behind him—but could not look away from the dissipated features of Robert Campbell.

Glenlyon smiled warmly, with no evident suggestion of rancor. “Alasdair Og,” he chided, as if to a son, “would I mean you harm with my daughter in Glencoe?”

 

G
lenlyon discovered his daughter was nothing as he recalled—not the Catriona of old, not the child, the lass, not even the burgeoning beauty, but a grown woman of fierce, luminous will and a full understanding of how to employ its power in any circumstance.

Nor did she spare it now as he came up to the house MacIain’s son had indicated, when asked for direction. Glenlyon had seen the shuttered expression in Alasdair Og’s brown eyes, the stilling of his body, the tension in his mouth, but he had given direction politely enough and Glenlyon had taken it.

Now he paused before that house, marked the woman in its door.
By God, I bred this . . . no one else may claim it!

She did not trouble to hide her shock, or the inflexible contempt of her tone. “Why are you here?”

Glenlyon forced a laugh. “Have you no better welcome for your father?”

Her expression did not change, nor her question. “Why are you here?”

He drew himself up very straight of spine, summoning what small measure of dignity he could still occasionally lay claim to. “Duty,” he announced succinctly. “We’re to be quartered here until the weather lifts, and then we’ll be about punishing men like Glengarry, who scorn the king’s generosity.” And then, with blatant disdain—mostly hoping he might shake her out of such edged self-possession, “D’ye think I’ve come to take back a woman who’s exiled herself from my house?”

Clearly she was unshaken despite his attempt; her wide mouth twitched briefly, as if she found the word ironically amusing. “Aye, exiled; and I’ve a better home now.”

“Not a better
house
. ”

“But mine.”

“Och, aye? I thought ’twas MacDonald-built.”

“And Campbell-inhabited.”

“So.” The initial skirmish was done. “I see he hasna softened your tongue.”

“Did you think he would?”

“I hoped.” That startled her. He smiled indulgently and reset his wind-billowed plaid, adjusted the steel gorget at his throat.
Let her see what I have become in the king’s own army . . . a man to be respected.

She lifted quizzical brows. “I wouldna have said that was your first thought, my tongue, on getting Colin’s letter.”

“ ’Twasn’t,” he agreed. “My first thought was verra much as you might expect.”

Now she was amused. And satisfied. Glenlyon was not certain if either set well with him. But he was adamantly curious.

“Did you do it to fash me?” It would be like her. Exactly like her. And thus he found it convenient to recall her mother had bred her as well, so he need not blame himself.

She laughed aloud, a glorious, unfettered sound that rang through the trees. “I did it without a thought for you at all! ”

And he knew then he had lost her entirely.
No more the lass, my Cat
. . . Nor any more wholly his daughter. The surrender of her maidenhead troubled him not in the least, but with that shedding of virginity had come a new resoluteness, a fierce self-confidence that pierced him like a claymore.

She had always defied him, even from girlhood, depending on steely stubborness and a quick, agile tongue, but now she was collected, confident, much less driven, as if she, now an adult, assessed and knew his weaknesses, named them, accepted them—and dismissed them out of hand as wholly unimportant. He no longer mattered enough to make her angry.

And that made
him
angry. “Have you no hospitality to offer me? MacIain does, and has.”

“Then accept it,” she suggested.

Somehow she reduced him. Diminished him. In martial glitter and glory, in command of two companies of the king’s own soldiers, he was as nothing before her, a dissolute, empty man, wholly deflated of worth as a cast-off bagpipe of air; a feckless, weak-spined man who had wagered away all of Glen Lyon’s fortunes save a single house, and that house she had left to live with the enemy’s son.

She castrated him, did his daughter, with no more than her contempt, a clear comprehension of what and who he was despite his best efforts to be something—and some
one
—more.

Glenlyon felt a painful quiver deep inside. “Have you no whisky?”

Winter was in her mouth. “Fetch it for yourself.”

Astonished, he watched her walk away; watched her walk by him and down along the track snooving through the glen, winding up to tiny clustered settlements scattered along the river, such as MacIain’s Carnoch, or Inverrigan and Achnacone. Her stride was long and unhurried, steady and unflagging, taking her away from him until he saw no more.

Diminished. Dismissed. Not worth another thought.
Castrated
—His belly cramped. The house lay before him, offering empty welcome. But he accepted it nonetheless despite its cold comforts. He wanted the whisky, to wash away the bitterness left by an ungrateful daughter.

He was Robert Campbell, fifth Laird of Glenlyon. He would give himself welcome unto his daughter’s household if she would not do it for him, nor the man who bedded her, whom he himself had hanged on Rannoch Moor less than a year before.

Glenlyon drew himself up and walked into the house. Such things no longer mattered. MacIain had offered the hospitality of Glencoe, and such trust was inviolable.

 

Cat had no destination save to be away. She could not bear another instant in his company, nor spare a moment to listen to pawkie excuses. He was as he had always been, but less as well as more: less because he was so much the same and that not much of a man; more because now she understood his flaws, the singular weaknesses that made him, in her eyes, far worse than merely a weak man but also a worthless father.

She walked with unerring aim
away
, going nowhere, until she found herself near the massive rock at the elbow of the river beneath the looming Pap. She halted, transfixed by the stony splendor so much older and stronger than she.

Helplessness overwhelmed her. “If there is whisky in hell, he will surely drink it dry!”

“Cat.”

She knew the voice, loved the voice, but it eased nothing of her fury. She did not even turn but glared balefully at the rock. “I hate that man. I
despise
him.”

He came up beside her but did not touch her. It was enough to have him so close. “You dinna.”

“I do.”

“You love him, Cat.”

It burst from her painfully, like a harp string wound too tightly breaking abruptly from its peg. “Love
that
?”

He let a moment go by before he answered. “You want him to be perfect because he is your father. Were he just another man, you wouldna care, aye?—but he is more than that. He sired you, he is in you, he helped to shape you. And you want him to be perfect so he doesna reflect on you.”

In her silence she heard the wind slicing through the trees. Angry tears welled up. “How can you ken that? You’ve no cause to feel the same.”

“No cause?” He smiled as she glanced at him. “I have a father, aye?”

It was preposterous. “But—he is MacIain.”

“And no’ so perfect himself.” He touched her then, moved behind her and settled hands upon her shoulders. He began to gentle them, working the tension away. “You have grown up all at once, aye? It takes a man so, and some women . . . one day you dinna back down but stand your ground—not because you mean to fash the other, nor to spite him, but because you must. Because in that moment you realize you believe wholeheartedly in what you feel, and you willna allow the other to demean or diminish it. It doesna matter so much what the other thinks of you, but what
you
think of you. And if it pleases you, what the other thinks or says no longer carries weight. It doesna hurt anymore.”

She stared very hard at the massive stone. “Then I am not grown-up.”

He leaned his cheek against the crown of her head, looping both arms around her shoulders from behind. She felt his body against her own. “Och, aye. If it hurts, ’tis because you realize you’re no more the child. You are the adult now, and ’tis for adults to make the bairns feel better. So, you are doubly taxed: you want him to make
you
feel better, because he is your father and ’tis what fathers do; and you want to make
him
feel better, because he is in many ways the bairn himself, desiring succor from you. And you ken it. And it hurts.”

She pulled free and swung to face him. “He
hanged
you!”

Dair nodded as his hands fell to his sides. “But he isna my father. I am free to hate him.”

“But you willna allow me the same favor!”

“Och, if you wish to hate him because he hanged me, I willna say you nay.” The smile came but passed quickly, and never reached his eyes. “But that is a reason, aye? You canna hate a man merely because he is weak.”

“Why not?”

“Not everyone can be as you are.”

Cat made a rude sound. “The world will thank me for that!”

“The strong should never despise the weak. Cat—” Abruptly he caught her and held her tightly, hooking an arm around her shoulders as she pressed herself against him. “I ken it, I ken it . . . it hurts deep inside, aye? You want him to be everything you believe a father should be, but he is only a man . . . a weak man, forbye, and overfond of his whisky—but not a
bad
man.”

She clung to him tightly. “He hanged you.” It was the only thing she had on which to peg her anger; he diminished all the rest.

“I was on his land to lift his cows,
and
I was a bluidy MacDonald, one of the Gallows Herd. No doubt there are a dozen men who would care to do the same.”

And so he diminished that, too. She laughed briefly and painfully into the folds of his plaid, feeling the hard cold edge of his brooch against her chin. “Dinna say that.”

“ ’Tis true. We’ve lifted our share of cattle from other men’s braes, and raided their homes. We are none of us so perfect, aye?—and I hope your father doesna drink
all
the whisky in hell, or there will be none left for us.”

The worst had passed. Cat drew away, smiled into his face, then turned and tucked herself in next to his body. “I thought he would order me home.”

“And are you disappointed that he didna?”

She thought about that. “A little,” she confessed after a moment. “I thought he would, and he didna—and so I thought he didna care. And that made me angrier.”

“ ’Tis easier to fight a true enemy than a man who doesna care,” Dair agreed. “Takes all the fire out of your belly, and you’re left to deal with the coals. ’Tis unpleasant, forbye.”

Cat sighed. After the anger, the outburst, she felt weary and listless. “So, I am grown up at last?”

“In all the ways of a woman . . . as well I should ken.” He held her tightly and stared at the rock as she had moments before, as if he could not bear to look at her. “Do you want to go back to Glen Lyon?”

It shocked her. “I do not!”

Now he did look at her. “Then why greet over it? You have made your choice, aye?”

“Women greet,” Cat retorted. “We greet, because men give us reason.”

“Ah. ’Tis my fault, now.” In all seriousness.

“Often.”

“Oh, aye. I ken that. Now.” In equal and elaborate seriousness.

Cat scowled at him suspiciously. “Dinna poke a stick at me, Alasdair Og.”

His teeth shone whitely. “And here I was thinking you were fond of my stick . . .”

She lurched away and struck him with a fist. “Dinna be rude! ’Tis daylight!”

“Ah. Well, then, I will save it for tonight.”

Cat begged to differ, and did so. “Tonight you and John will sit up in MacIain’s house swilling whisky with my father, and dicing, and playing backgammon and chess, and telling blithe lies and half-true tales, wrestling one another with naught but words—
as mean do
—and by the time you come to bed you will have naught on your mind save sleep.”

He was laughing. “Will you wager on that?”

“I will not,” she said. “But my father will. He wagers on everything.”

“Ah, Cat.” He pulled her close and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Dinna fash yourself over him. He is what he is, aye?—but you will go verra much farther.”

“Och, aye? Glencoe isna so far, you ken.”

“From Glen Lyon?” Dair laughed. “Oh, my Cat, think again on that. ’Tisn’t measured in miles, the distance you’ve travelled, but in years and years, all the way back to Sommerled, and the Lords of the Isles.”

“MacDonalds,” she said sourly. “Aye, well, I didna come to Glencoe to sleep with history. I came to sleep with you.”

Dair glanced up assessively. “Clouds come in,” he said. “And if we shut the door and dinna light the lamp, ’twill seem like night within. Then my rudeness willna matter.”

“And will you swear to me MacIain willna send for you at the worst possible moment?”

Dair sighed. “Aye, well . . . I didna say he was perfect, did I? ’Twas you.”

Cat thought it over. “Then I’ve changed my mind about him.”

“I thought you might.”

“But we could try. . . .”

“I thought we might.”

Cat scowled at him. “Houd your gab, MacDonald. Dinna look so smug.”

He laughed at her. “I am as you have made me.”

“
Och
, no . . . I willna take blame for that!”

He bent his head against hers. “But you
will
take blame for what is beneath my kilt.”

Cat blushed fiery red. She could not help it. It was new, all of it new, and she did not as yet know how to deal with it. She had no ready response.

Dair did. “Come with me,” he said. “Come home with me to my house.”

 

In his spare officer’s quarters at Fort William, Governor Hill slowly and painfully got down on swollen knees beside his writing table. There he prayed for a substantial time, attempting to reconcile his faith with his duty, his orders with his conscience. He had spent his life in service to the Crown, and now once again he was called upon to answer without dereliction, without delay. He supposed even this prayer might be construed as delay, but he judged it necessary. He judged it
required
, if he were to die a good and committed Christian secure in the conviction his soul would lodge in Heaven.