Jennifer Roberson (44 page)

The room was smoky with peat and sputtering lamp oil, ocher and agate in shadows with glints off copper and silver, the dull patina of aged pewter. It was late; within the hour the overtired children would be put to bed, and he and his host as well as additional guests would sit up until dawn playing cards and backgammon. Inverrigan won frequently, but Glenlyon was not made a pauper. The MacDonald took his duties as host seriously, for all his larders were being emptied by the hour.

And blizzards coming on
. . . Glenlyon knew it would be difficult for the people of Glencoe to replenish their depleted food supply before the snows locked them inside their dwellings, but there was nothing for it. The orders had been explicit: Argyll’s regiments, under Captain Robert Campbell’s command, were to wait for additional orders before they could leave, and until such time the MacDonalds, their laird having sworn the oath, had no choice but to host them properly.

At the table with him were MacIain’s sons. The eldest, John, Glenlyon had found friendly enough, quiet of manner yet clever, but there was a honed edge to Alasdair Og’s brittle courtesy. And Glenlyon supposed he did not blame him; the hemp scar on MacDonald’s throat was a daily reminder of a certain discourtesy extended by the man who sat across from him now, and with whose daughter he had, but hours before, formally announced a handfasting. It was a Highland marriage without benefit of kirk or minister, but as legal withal as any according to Scottish law. And so he had lost his daughter to Glencoe forever, while his sons bred bairns in Glen Lyon.

Even now Alasdair Og was clearly impatient as he set the cards to rights before dealing them out. Glenlyon smiled; it was not a way a man might choose to spend part of his first night of marriage, but an invitation extended from his new father-in-law kept him bound to Inverrigan for a while. Glenlyon wondered how explicit MacIain’s orders had been to his sons to treat the Campbell captain with utmost courtesy.

The old fox willna let a word be spoken against his hospitality
—A knocking came at the door. As the latch was undone from outside a soldier entered, shaking a skein of snow from his scarlet coat sleeves.

Inverrigan, laying more peat on the fire, grunted. “Blizzard commencing, aye?”

The new arrival ignored him. “Captain Thomas Drummond,” he announced, eyeing MacIain’s sons with startled disfavor. Then he looked at Glenlyon. “Captain Campbell, sir, I have your orders from Major Duncanson.”

Inverrigan turned to his wife. “Bairns to bed,” he said. “ ’Tis men’s business.”

Drummond took the folded and sealed order from the heavy cuff of his glove and handed it with crisp precision to Glenlyon. He waited in stiff silence.

Glenlyon broke the seal, unfolded the parchment and read rapidly in fitful lamplight, scanning the heavily inked lines. He got no farther than the first sentence beyond the salutation before his heart thumped erratically and the breath stilled in his chest.

“
You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the MacDonalds, of Glencoe, and to put all to the sword under seventy
.”

The words blurred. Surely Inverrigan, from the fire, could hear the thundering of his heart.

“
You are to have special care that the old fox and his sons do on no account escape your hands
. ”

It was painful to breathe. Glenlyon wet dry lips. With great effort he read the rest of the orders calmly, allowing no expression other then bland expectation mold his features; when he was done he refolded the paper more tightly yet and put it inside his coat, taking great care that it was tucked away securely.

One of the younger children began to shriek petulant defiance as Inverrigan’s wife ushered them all into another room. The piercing sound caught everyone’s attention but Drummond’s, who waited beside the door with one gloved hand on his sword hilt.

Glenlyon looked into that pockmarked, emotionless face. Drummond knew what the order was.

Glenlyon took up his pewter cup and downed the remaining whisky. By the time he finished MacIain’s sons were looking at him expectantly, waiting explanation.

“I fear our game must end,” Glenlyon declared regretfully. “We are to march at dawn, and must spend the rest of the night preparing. But now you will have your burden lifted, aye?—for no more will you be required to feed Campbell mouths.” He managed a smile as he pushed his chair back and rose. “If you will forgive me, I will step outside and have a word with Captain Drummond.”

Drummond opened the door immediately and went out into blowing snow. The storm had only begun; the ground yet showed dark patches of hardening mud.

Glenlyon followed, tucking his head down inside his high collar. They did not halt just outside the house but walked several paces away, into the wind, where words might be exchanged without another man hearing.

“What has been done?” Glenlyon asked as his officer of the watch came up.

Drummond’s mouth was drawn into a flat, taut line. “Word has been sent to all of the detachments. The officers are aware. There is no need for the private soldiers to know until the hour your order is given.”

My order
. . . It was to be his responsibility, his duty, to order the slaughter of every MacDonald in Glencoe. At five o’clock in the morning, mere hours from this moment.

Wind whipped his exhalation away. Cold snow nearly choked him; or was it cold fear?

“
See that this be put in execution without feud or favour, else you may expect to be treated as not true to the King’s government, nor a man fit to carry a commission in the king’s service
. ”

“Sir,” Drummond said, “MacIain’s sons are still inside.”

He was to have special care that the old fox’s sons did not escape his hands. On no account.

“Sir,” Drummond said; as captain of a grenadier company he was senior in rank, but made no move to assume command.

God help me, I am to order the deaths of folk who have hosted me
—

“Sir—”

A slash of watery lamplight briefly illuminated falling snow. Inverrigan’s door opened to admit two men to the night, wearing bonnets and tartan plaids. The house behind them bulked blocky and black against the luminous snow.

MacIain’s sons, whom Captain Robert Campbell was—‘
on no account
’—to permit to escape.

He heard the betraying hiss of sword being pulled an inch or two from its scabbard. Drummond.

“Wait you,” Glenlyon said sharply. “Give me time.”

John MacDonald came toward them, then veered away as if recalling they spoke of military matters that did not concern him. “Aye, well,” he called above the wind, “we’re to bed, Glenlyon. We thank you for your game.”

Glenlyon turned sharply; Alasdair Og meant to go the other way, down the glen below Carnoch where MacIain slept.

“Wait!” He heard Drummond’s gritted oath beneath his breath, but paid it no mind. “Alasdair Og, I am to depart in the morning. Would you allow a father a private time with his daughter?”

The second figure wavered. John swung back, calling, “Come to the house. Share a dram wi’ me before you go down to Cat.”

Glenlyon held his breath. If Alasdair Og insisted on going home . . .
But I must see Cat alone!
“I willna be long,” he said diffidently. “We havena always been close, my daughter and me, but I would like to say good-bye.” He managed a deprecating smile he hoped was visible in the falling snow. It thickened, though as yet a man could see. It was not true blizzard yet. “A fool for a father, I am, but she’s wed now, and I would give her my blessing.”

It was enough. With a bob of his head MacIain’s youngest son went with his brother, and left Glenlyon to a parental duty far more vital than he could ever have dreamed.

“Sir?” Drummond yet again.

Glenlyon glared at him. “I have until five of the clock, Captain, which gives me some little time to speak with my daughter.”

The implication was plain. Drummond’s face froze. “You can say naught to her! If word were carried to MacIain, or to his sons—”

“D’ye think I dinna ken that?” Fury boiled up. “Good Christ, man, surely the king wouldna ask me to leave my daughter in danger! Nor would you, I suspect, if you thought I might report it!” He turned before the other could answer to his officer of the watch, waiting in patient silence as the snow crusted on his shoulders. “You and Captain Drummond are to go at once inside this house, where you will bind and gag Inverrigan, his wife, and all of their bairns. At once.” He raked Drummond with a contemptuous glance. “Will that meet with your approval, Captain?”

With equal disdain Drummond answered, “I believe it will, Captain.”

Glenlyon swore, then swung on his heel and began to walk down the glen to the house his daughter shared with a man he would order murdered in less than six hours.

N
ewly handfasted, Cat was at first indulgent of her husband’s tardiness, then annoyed by it. He had told her explicitly he would not be gone long; in fact, he had not wanted to go at all, but his father had impressed upon both his sons—and even his new daughter-in-law—with explicit and crude clarity that it was
his
desire they give good welcome to Glenlyon. Cat, kin to both men now—and wise already to that tone of voice—could neither protest nor fault the suggestion.

Now, alone in the house, she dared.
But he might have been more understanding, might MacIain!

And yet she was not certain the old laird had not known precisely what he did; he had grinned broadly at his younger son’s unspoken dismay and cuffed him smartly on one side of the head, then sent him off with his brother. Cat, bereft of husband, took herself away to wait in the house that was no longer his, but theirs.

Time passed at first because she spent it cleaning the house. That she had done it but three days before meant nothing; now they were handfasted. It was her duty. Her responsibility. She would make the house new again, despite its age. The child she had been would begin anew beneath the slate shingles that formed the roof of adulthood.

Cat, scrubbing at the heavy table, caught herself in mid-whistle. She froze for a moment, then laughed aloud. “You pawkie bizzem!” she exclaimed. “Will you look at yourself, tending house like a wife—and without Una to insist!”

Una who was, she assumed, still back in Chesthill minding her father’s house.
Far better than I would . . .
Cat laughed again and returned to scrubbing the tabletop with a damp cloth. Forcefully. “And I’ll be stitching his shirts, forbye, and mending his plaid, and asking if his meat is cooked to his taste, and would he like a wee dram more in his cup? . . . oh
aye
, ’tis a fair revenge, this! Una would be gey glad of it, too!”

With the table clean, she was done. Cat washed in a ewer and hung the soiled cloth near the stove to dry, then wandered to the door. She lingered there a moment, trying to decide if Dair would be annoyed or pleased if he came home to find her waiting outside in the cold for him, then gritted a curse between clenched teeth and jerked the door open.

Let him laugh if he will
—She blinked. Snow. The storm the day had promised was here. And Dair nowhere in sight.

Cat slammed shut the door and collapsed against it as if to lock it with her weight, spine pressed against wood as she crossed her arms and scowled into the shadowed room. She had blown out all but one of the lamps, and now her fraying temper began to match the darkness.

Into the silence she announced, “My father has corrupted him. Already!”

Could she live with another man who wasted himself on drink and dicing?

Cat ground her teeth. “I should have your head off with a Lochaber ax, or even a claymore—but you’ve buried all of them beneath the peat-stacks!” She laughed ruefully. “Perhaps ’tis as well, aye?—if only so your wife doesna make it so you’ll never be a father.”

But no, she thought that unlikely. There were benefits to man left whole, even one who demeaned himself with her father’s company.

Irritation quickened anew. Cat straightened and strode toward the cubby. “Well, I willna wait for you. Come in when you will—I will be asleep.”

But she wasn’t. Even stripped of clothing and clad in soft wool nightshift, burrowed beneath covers, she could not sleep. In four months’ time she had become dependent on his presence to fall asleep.

Cat flung herself over onto a hip and mauled the pillow with rigid fingers. “Christ, is it so old already? Am I naught to him after all, even though he swore so tenderly—just today!—to love me all my days?”

But a man could love a woman and still desire dice. Or chess. Or whisky.

Or cards with her father.

Inspiration stilled her. What would a man think if his newly handfasted wife came looking for him in the night, fierce as a Gael of old? Trew-clad, hair stuffed under a bonnet, dirk thrust through her belt . . . would he laugh? Be ashamed? Embarrassed? Or pleased enough even before others to know she cared so much? “Och, good Christ . . .” Cat tore the covers back. Inactivity was the worst enemy she knew, when all her senses clamored at her to go. He could not blame her for being true to herself, could he?—when he himself had explained that was a part of adulthood?

Trews. Saffron shirt. A cropped-down jacket. A battered cast-off bonnet. And brogues against the snow . . . no more bare feet, with blizzards coming in.

Dressed, Cat snatched up a lengthy plaid and began to wind it around her torso as she went through to the front room. Even as she tucked in a crumpled, fraying end she reached out to the door latch and tugged it open awkwardly.

She fell back at once, startled. Her father stood before the door, fist upraised to knock.

His face was curiously slack as he looked upon her, and the blue eyes in reddened rims were blackened by the darkness. It was a ghastly smile he gifted her. “Catriona . . .”

“You,” she said flatly, and realized almost at once it was not the warmest of welcomes. But surely he would understand. “Is Dair with you?”

He gestured emptily. “He is with John. He will be down presently.” He swallowed tautly. “May I have a word wi’ you?”

She stepped aside then, recalling her courtesy. He came in stiffly, snow clustered on shoulders and head, and she offered at once to get him whisky.

“None, I thank you.” He lingered aimlessly near the door.

“None?” Cat echoed, astounded.

It pinched him; she saw that. The flinch was minute but visible, and made her wish she might have framed another response. But—Glen—lyon refusing whisky?

His face was strained. “You willna thank me for what I’ve come to say. I’ll no’ put whisky on the table for you to fling at me.”

And she knew then why he had come without Dair. Why he had come in the darkness without an official military escort. Why he had come without a bonnet, and dripped snow onto her floor.

“I will not,” Cat said. No more. More was unnecessary.

A harsh laugh issued from his throat. “Oh, aye, I kent you would say so. No need to ask it, aye?—but I will.” His eyes shifted from hers to the room, inspected it blindly, then locked again onto her own. “Will you come back to Chesthill?”

She wanted to shout at him. Instead she heard a still, cool voice answering him. “My place is here, with him.”

“
MacDonald!
” Glenlyon cried, and in its broken raggedness she heard a desperate despair.

“Aye,” she said. “I am.”

“No, no—you dinna understand . . . oh, Cat—” He bit down on his lower lip. His hands trembled as he lifted them to his face, to grope awkwardly at melting snow dripping fitfully from his eyebrows. “Catriona, I would have you come home with me.”

“With
you
?”

“When I may go,” he amended. “I am given leave to go in the morning. My orders have come.” His eyes glistened wetly in the lamplight. “Will you come with me now, and leave with me in the morning?”

Oddly, she wanted to cry; he would never understand her. “Is your honor so pawkie,” she said, “that you would have me break my own at a word from a man who has done naught but waste himself and his fortune on foolhardy pleasures?”

And then anger spilled away, carrying contempt with it. What she said was cruel, but she did not mean it to be. Not now. It was truth. It was no more nor less than a declaration of freedom, of conviction. Of adulthood.

“You have given me a home,” she told him, “and kept me fed and clothed, and brought me up as well as you could . . . I ken that. And you have done as best as you saw fit to replace what has been lost, to repair what has been broken . . .” She smiled at the wasted, weeping man, wondering what he had been before drink and dice had taken him. “But I am grown now, and I have made my home elsewhere. I have a husband, aye?”

His jaw worked. She saw the tremble in sagging jowls, the bruising in soft fleshy pockets beneath his reddened, smoke-shot eyes. He was withal a ruined man, a travesty of a soldier, and not so much of a laird that she was moved to respect him. But he was her father.

“Dair isna wrong after all,” she said. “I do love you. I always will.”

He turned then, nearly tripping in awkwardness, and jerked open the door. He went out into the darkness in a lurching, ungainly stagger, though he did not run, and strode stiffly away from her, uniform tarnished a bloodied crimson by his desertion of laggard lamplight.

Behind him, wetting her floor, snow fell, and tears. Cat closed the door.

 

In his brother’s peat-warmed house, Dair set down the horn cup upon the oak trestle table in the center of the room. “Enough,” he declared. “More, and I willna be able to find my way home.”

John slouched comfortably across from him in a chair, with legs outstretched and hands clasped over his stomach, and smiled sleepily. “You could stay here the night and go back in the morning.”

“Good
Christ
, man, have you no wits—?” And then Dair grinned self-consciously as John’s soft laughter betrayed the jest. “Och, aye . . . you’ve had your laugh, I ken. But d’ye blame me?”

John snickered, pulling an eyelid out of shape as he rubbed a smoke-reddened eye. “I’ve my own wife waiting, aye?”

It was Dair’s turn to snicker. “Aye, well—you’ll get naught but complaints from
her
, so close to her time. Two weeks?”

“Three, we think.” John shrugged. “Who can say?—the bairn will come when ’tis ready.”

Dair pushed back on his stool. “ ’Tis time I saw to my own woman”—he grinned to think of Cat as wife instead of lover—“and the begetting of more MacDonalds.”

“Dinna work so hard at it,” John advised. “The bairns have a way of appearing whether you’re ready or no.”

Dair laughed. “Well, Glenlyon’s had enough time with her, aye?—I’m to bed. He can spend his hours drenching his wits wi’ usquabae if he chooses . . . and Inverrigan can lose sleep keeping him company, as a good host does—” He caught himself in a jaw-cracking yawn that warped his words. “—but ’tis not
my
duty, aye?—he isna my guest.”

“Be glad of that,” John suggested, “or your new-wed wife would be too shy to greet your soldier.”

Dair snickered again, moving to the door. He tugged on his bonnet and resettled his plaid, folding it high around bare neck. He unlatched and opened the door, looking over his shoulder at his brother. “We won the battle at Killiecrankie. My soldier’s invincible, aye?”

“But a wee sprat,” John retorted derisively, “and yet unproven in getting bairns.”

“Well, I
did
say I would make some—” Dair broke off and turned sharply toward the darkness. “John—d’ye hear?”

John got up from his chair and came across the room. Together they looked out into the storm and saw snow falling slantwise in the wind; a blaze here and there of fitful pine knots, flaring like torches; a glint of flame off metal.

“Shouting,” John said, pulling the door open more widely despite the storm. Behind them, lamp flame guttered.

Uneasily, Dair squinted through the blowing snow. “Soldiers—with swords out, and muskets.”

“Aye, well . . .” John’s frown cleared. “Glenlyon did say there was much to do to march out in the morning. ’Tis a few hours yet until dawn, but I imagine it takes time to roust out so many men half-drunk on MacDonald whisky.”

Dair shivered. “I dinna like it, John.”

John left the door and gathered up plaid and bonnet, swathing himself as his brother had done. “We’ll go to Inverrigan and see Glenlyon.”

Dair opened his mouth to say it wasn’t necessary, but his nerves were stretched taut. He would not find peace if he did not know. “Aye,” he said instead. “D’ye mean to tell Eiblin?”

“No, I’ll let her sleep, forbye. The bairn makes it hard, so big and active.” Teeth flashed in a quick, self-satisfied smile as he pulled the door shut. “Another lad, she says.”

Dair grunted. “Save a lad for me, aye?”

“You’re not man enough to make one.”

“Give over!”

John, laughing, slapped his shoulder. “Aye, well—you’re out of charity because your wife’s waiting below . . . come on, then, we’ll go up to Inverrigan and finish this business, aye?”

 

In Inverrigan’s house, under Captain Thomas Drummond’s disdainful eye, Glenlyon made shift to set about murder. With him were his officers and sergeants, priming muskets, honing blades, affixing the dagger-bladed bayonets to the underside of the barrels so a man might stab simultaneously as he fired; a decided improvement over plugs that prevented discharging of the weapon.

Throughout the room drifted a malodorous fug of smoke—peat brought in from out of doors was damp and did not burn well immediately—the tang of priming powder, the astringency of nervous perspiration and tense anticipation. He had spoken quietly to them all but moments before, reassuring them of their task. It was to be a military exercise, not bestial brutality, and Glenlyon would have it said his orders were executed with a minimum of confusion. Best the MacDonalds be shot in their beds, if possible; or the men killed in their houses, whisky-weary and unarmed under the oath MacIain had sworn at Inveraray.

The inhabitants now were all of Argyll’s regiment; the MacDonalds of Inverrigan, all nine—including the children—were bound and gagged in the bedroom beyond a narrow door blocked by a cowhide curtain. No protest could be made, no warning cried. Red-coated men worked quickly and quietly, preparing for duty.

From outside there came shouts of strident inquiry and authoritative answer. Every man in the room stilled. Even as Drummond moved to unlatch the door it was pushed open, and MacIain’s tall sons came out of the storm into the room, shawled and capped in snow-crusted plaids and bonnets.