Jennifer Roberson (47 page)

Her fall had disturbed the snow. She saw the trews around his ankles, the bloodied nightshirt, the white hair dyed crimson. She knew him by his size, by the hugeness of his body; there was no face to see. Nothing remained of his features save the dull white splinter of jawbone.

The wail came up in her throat, was snatched away on the wind.

 

Glenlyon, Drummond, and others went down the glen to Carnoch. Around them sang the snow, keened the pipe-song of the storm, broken from time to time by the barking of dogs, by shots, by fading cries and screams cut off into silence. At five of the clock the execution had begun; an hour later much of the work was done, though soldiers still found pockets of MacDonalds, or set fire to their houses.

Other soldiers came up to ask orders as Glenlyon went down to Carnoch. Drummond spoke for him, usurping authority, and said that when every MacDonald was dead they were to plunder and burn the houses, then gather and drive the stock from winter pasturage so they might profit from that which MacDonalds had stolen first.

Glenlyon himself had suffered depredations. The raid after Killiecrankie had stripped him of what little remained to him after selling so much for debts; this was fair, this was just, this was repayment for all his pain.

Carnoch came into sight. The house had not yet burned, but its people were killed, or escaped. There were no lighted lamps, no movement within the door, no MacDonalds to defend it.

“Wait—” Drummond’s hand was on his arm, holding him back.

“There is someone . . .”

The curtain of snow parted. A figure before the door, crouched beside a body dragged out of the house, looked up and saw him.

“Glenlyon!” the figure shouted, and began to run across the snow.

Beside him, muttering of MacDonalds, Drummond drew his pistol.

 

Climbing down the brae was more difficult than climbing up, for now the storm hindered progress, trying to force him up again. Dair fought his way through drifts, battered by the wind, and struggled to remain upright. He was numb now, no longer shivering, his chest coated with wind-crusted snow. If he still had ears he could not feel them, but they heard the keening cry of the storm running in and over the stones, the humps and hollows, winding through the trees.

He fixed his concentration on one task: to get down to the house and find clothing and blankets—if any still remained—then make his way back to his mother. But other thoughts intruded. Many thoughts intruded. The one foremost in his mind could not be avoided, though he placated it with truth: she was Glenlyon’s daughter. He would not harm his daughter. No man, even a fool——
even a drukken, pawkie bastard!
——would have his daughter murdered.

Glenlyon had gone to Cat. He had asked Dair to give him time to speak alone with her before he took his leave. And Dair had done so, and when he had gone home Cat was there to greet him, saying nothing of her father save he had come and he had gone.

A man would not kill his daughter, nor suffer her to be killed.

Of them all, Cat was safest. Cat would not be harmed.

His father was dead. His mother would die if he did not fetch her clothing, bury her with blankets. He fought his way down to the wood and through it, stumbling at last to fall at the tree line behind the dooryard.

Motion. A floundering in snow. Dair turned, alarmed, and snatched his dirk from his belt. His impression was of a plaid-swathed, bonneted man shrouded in snow—and then he saw the avid eyes: his own.

“—Christ,” he croaked. “John—”

Hands were on him. “Are ye unharmed? Alasdair—?”

He nodded wordlessly, struggling to thrust the dirk back through his belt. “You—?”

“Aye—aye! And Eiblin as well; I’ve taken her and Young Sandy up the mountain to shelter in the corries. . . there are men with her, some wounded, and women—John paused. “Alasdair?”

“Mother,” Dair managed. “Up the brae near the caves—I’ve come for blankets, John . . . she has naught but my shirt and plaid—they stripped her of everything and turned her out of the house. . . .”

John’s expression warped into despair and outrage. “Bluidy bastards! Oh, Christ—” But he let it go; his hands tightened on Dair’s bare arms. “You’re ice, man! Come on to the house, then—we’ll fetch blankets for us all. . . .”

They skirted the tree line, skulking like beasts. A few more paces, then the dooryard . . . they need only get across it and into the house.

And by MacIain’s body.

“He’s dead,” Dair blurted. “You are MacIain now.”

John turned toward him, face hard and still. He opened his mouth to speak; but Dair looked past him, beyond the corner of the house, and saw the figure before the door, beside the body, as it rose and shouted Glenlyon’s name.

He knew her better clothed as a lad than as a woman. “Cat—”

Pistol flame blossomed from ten paces away. It briefly illuminated a pockmarked, powder-burned face, a shine of white teeth, and then the report cracked.

John clutched his arms and hurled him to the ground, smothering him in snow. But Dair knew better. Dair knew the truth.

“Not me—” He gagged on snow, struggling futilely. “Christ—it isna
me—”

It wasn’t. It was Cat.

 

Too late, Glenlyon flung Drummond aside. “No—
no
—” Soldiers came up around them, bayonets glinting dully on musket barrels. He smelled the acrid tang of powder, tasted it in his mouth, felt the smack of metal on glove as he smashed the pistol from Drummond’s hand.

He left him then, left them all, and ran, staggered, stumbled. He cursed Drummond for his accuracy, for his eyesight, for his attention to duty, all commendable things in the midst of battle, but not when it threatened a man’s daughter.

The impact had hurled her backward. She lay broken against the snow, bonnet fallen aside, so that red hair spilled free of wool. Like blood, it wet the snow, and at first he could not tell which was blood and which was hair.

“Catriona—?” He knelt, trembling, and peeled a fold of plaid away from her face. It was warm beneath his knees, warm and wet . . . it was not hair after all. Drummond’s aim was true.

He gathered her in his arms, cradling her head in the crook of an elbow. Soldiers came up to see; Drummond as well, who primed his pistol once more.

Glenlyon heard a hoarse cry. At first he thought it was his own, but Drummond snapped out an order. Four soldiers fired. The reports from so close momentarily deafened Glenlyon; he flinched and cradled his daughter, shielding her from further atrocity. Discharged powder stank, burning in his nostrils.

“All of them,” Drummond said crisply. “All of them are to die. Even the women, so they will breed no more pawkie thieves.”

Drummond had left the house when Glenlyon put to his officers the task of not harming his daughter. Drummond had not heard the order. Drummond had not been at Glencoe for thirteen days to know Glenlyon’s daughter.

“This woman—” Glenlyon said. “This woman is a Campbell.”

Drummond was shocked. “
Here
?”

“She handfasted with Alasdair Og, MacIain’s youngest son.”

The pocked face twisted. “Then she deserved to die.”

Glenlyon’s laughter was a harsh blurt of sound. “She is my daughter,” he said, “and you had best pray she lives, or I will have you shot for disobeying my orders.”

“Disobeying—!”

“No one was to harm her.” He looked up at the soldiers. “Were you given the order?”

All of them nodded, avoiding Drummond’s eyes.

“I heard naught of it!”

“Everyone kent it,” Glenlyon declared. “Everyone.” He stood up then, lifting Cat into his arms. She was not a small woman, had not been small for years; but in that moment she was a bairn again, a red-haired, helpless infant too blind to see the day, bloodied not by birth but by a man’s folly.

Frantic, Dair threw his brother from him and stumbled to hands and knees, then pressed himself upright. His shout had done nothing, nothing at all; she fell beneath the shot without word of protest.

“Alasdair—John caught at him again. “Alasdair—
no
—”

His arm was trapped, hindered by another. Dair swung around furiously, facing his brother as he tried to jerk free. “—Christ—let me
go—

“Alasdair, dinna do this—”

He knocked John back a step. “Dinna stop me—” He heard a shout. Heard the reports. Felt the impact in his thigh: a sharp rap, a burst within his leg, and then a dull snap. His leg gave out of a sudden and he fell against his brother.

“Oh Christ—
Alasdair
. . . ”

Hands clutched at his arms, dragging him upright. But he fell again, sagging. His right leg was deadwood, useless below the hip. “—Cat. . .” he murmured.

“Alasdair—can ye stand?”

He could not. He tried, but could not.

“They’ll come for us . . . Alasdair, can ye walk?”

And then the pain at last came in, snooving from out of the darkness. His body knotted with it in one unflagging convulsion.

He buried his face in the snow so they would not hear his cry.

“Alasdair—” The grasp tightened, flipped him about, then arms came around his chest.

John dragged him a single pace. Then the storm within his body proved more powerful than the blizzard. It provided welcome sanctuary; if he died he would never know it.

 

Most of the dwellings in Glencoe were on fire, undeterred by snow. Glenlyon carried his daughter into Inverrigan’s house, as yet unrazed, and placed her in the senior tacksman’s bed. Inverrigan would not mind; he was dead, and all of his men with him.

Glenlyon settled his daughter atop the bed and set about determining how badly she was injured. She bled from the wound in her left shoulder, but no major vessels had been broken by the musket ball, and the ball itself, fired from so close, had gone directly through the meat. Glenlyon had fought before and tended such things; the entrance wound was no larger than a silver penny, and the exit smaller yet. So long as he could clean the wound of powder grains and wadding scraps and keep it free of corruption, he believed she would live.
If she chooses to . . .

The thought unnerved him. Hastily he tore back the plaid, the cut-down jacket, the oversize shirt, reddening at the intimacy as his hands brushed unbound breasts, and found bandaging. Blood spotted the wool in a fitful pattern; he stripped the bandages from her and saw the scorched welt along her ribs, crusted and burned black at the edges from powder residue.

“Och, Cat . . . oh my lass—” Tears filled his eyes. In the aftermath of the killing he now had time to think, to acknowledge what had come upon them all, even himself, who was required to order such undertakings. And now his daughter suffered.

And would suffer more for the loss of MacIain’s son.

As yet there were no reports of the old fox’s cubs. That MacIain himself was dead all of Glenlyon’s men knew; the death of the man so many revered or hated with equal ferocity was not a thing to remain unspoken. But no word yet had come of MacIain’s sons, and Glenlyon felt tension knotting his belly. Their deaths had been ordered as explicitly as their father’s; if he failed in that, he failed in all.

And yet here was his daughter who loved one of those sons, who handfasted with one of those sons, and who defied a father’s wishes that she leave one of those sons. And now it brought her to this.

An aide came in. Glenlyon called for water, for such washing soap as there was, and for whisky. He had drunk plenty before his host’s fire; surely some remained. He would drink his share now to dull the tension and worry, force Cat to drink as well, then pour a goodly amount through the wound itself.

She would scream, he knew, and would as likely cry. But there was no more he could do; and certainly nothing at all to ease her grief beyond keeping her insensible on whisky.

He knew that well enough. It was his only refuge.

Glenlyon looked down upon her pale, smudged face. She had matured since he had seen her last, losing the transience of youth to a new and fixed adulthood. She had always been hard in her angles, shaped as much of temperament and determination as of unsubtle bones, but now there was no mistaking the maturity of her face, the fit of flesh over skull. She was not what all men would clamor after, being overbold in features and coloring—and her propensity for opinion—but for a man who loved the blood and bones of Scotland, whose spirit answered her history and the ballads of the bards, Catriona Campbell was as much bred up of legend as any man might be.

Glenlyon wet wind-cracked lips. “He must be dead,” he said gently. “He must be dead, my lass—even if he lives.” For her father’s sake as well as her own; he knew her too well. If she believed MacIain’s son alive, she would never give up hoping they might be reunited.