Jennifer Roberson (52 page)

“I would not trouble myself with an impossible task.” With economical movement, Breadalbane sat down behind his writing desk. He did not bother to point out another chair to his kinsman; let Glenlyon stand if he would. “The only hope of success we had was if all were killed. But they were not. And now the world knows.” He put his hand upon a folded paper. “This is a pamphlet written by Charles Leslie, an Irishman making coin off of Scotland’s private troubles. And there are broadsheets throughout the city, carried south to London.”

“What of it?” Glenlyon challenged, then pressed his hand against his pocket. “I’ve the order here. ’Tis plain what I was to do.”

“ ‘Plain,’ ” Breadalbane echoed. “And plainer still your failure.”

“Good Christ, I did what I could!” Glenlyon cried harshly. “I was promised aid from Hamilton, but no men arrived. I was promised aid from Duncanson, but no men arrived. Until it was too late!” His words slurred, but his anger burned away much of his drunkenness. “I was told five of the clock, and at such time did I give orders to fall upon the MacDonalds. And yet no aid came until half a day later!”

Softly Breadalbane said, “They were all of them to die.”

“We killed whom we could,” Glenlyon retorted. “Christ, man, the glen ran red wi’ their blood from the Devil’s Staircase to Loch Linnhe, and all the dwellings burned . . .” Overbright eyes glittered with sudden tears in a corpse-pale face. “You were not there to see what was done, aye?—to see those who died, the men and the women, and the bairns—”

“All
of them were to die.”

“You were not there!” Glenlyon cried, smashing his fist down so hard on the desk top the empty glass bounced on wood. “How dare you rebuke me? How
dare
you question my competence—”

“Because I must. You failed.”

Glenlyon snatched up his drained glass and threw it against the panelled wall. It shattered and fell, leaving behind a sticky residue of redolent French brandy. “Pox on you!” he said harshly. “You asked the worst of me, and I gave you my best! ”

The earl drew in a calming breath; it would do no good if they both lost their tempers. “And that was
my
folly, to expect success of you.”

Glenlyon braced himself against the wood with both hands spread. His voice rasped in his throat. “You were not there, cousin. You canna declare it success or failure.”

“But I can. And I do. I declare it abject failure.” Breadalbane was not in the least intimidated by his kinsman’s truculent stance. “And I fear it will undo us all.”

“Undo. Undo?” Glenlyon was plainly baffled. “How d’ye mean, ‘undo’?”

He kens naught of politics, this bluidy fool of a Campbell!
“Only a man such as a king may survive such debacle,” Breadalbane said. “There are questions already as to why this was undertaken.” He tapped the crisp pamphlet beneath his hand. “Even the highest may fall, saving the king himself.” Even Stair. Even himself. Especially himself, who was loved by no man.

Glenlyon grunted contempt. “Do I care?”

“You should.” Breadalbane shook his head. “You are a fool, Robin. A blind, drukken fool. Your incompetence may yet touch us all.”

“You would do better to ask Duncanson and Hamilton why they didna come to Glencoe until the killing was done,” Glenlyon retorted thickly. “In such weather as that, we needed the aid . . . and the passes were left open. Those who escaped did so because there were not enough soldiers to catch them.”

But Breadalbane did not answer. He had his own suspicions why Duncanson and Hamilton had not arrived in time. Far better to let one drunken gambler be blamed for failure than to assume any blame themselves.

It was possible that, in the bad weather, additional troops would not have made a difference. MacDonalds might have escaped regardless. As it was, only Glenlyon’s command was known to have failed its duty, and only Glenlyon’s command could take the blame of the people who decried such tactics.

But Glenlyon had followed orders. Those who gave them, those who devised the plan, would be blamed in the final evaluation.

“There will be trouble of this,” Breadalbane said. “I have been to London. I have heard the talk. There will be trouble of this.”

Glenlyon’s expression was one of surly contempt.

“Bide a wee,” the earl said darkly. “Bide a wee, and see.”

 

High above the timber Dair lay sprawled in scree, drifting hazily into darkness. Hunger was but a distant goad now, hounded away by detachment, by dispassion, as if his body’s pain was too adamant a guard dog to permit anything else his attention. He had tried once to rise, tried once to lever himself upright, to plant the crutch and force himself to his feet, but he was too weak, too bruised, and the guard dog unrelenting.

—best wait for Murdo
—Murdo would tame the hound.

Easier to sleep. Easier to let go. Easier to forget what had become of MacIain’s youngest son . . .

No. Of MacIain’s
brother.

T
he deerhound bitch, sitting beside the earl, thrust her sleek muzzle between his hands so he was forced to acknowledge her. And so he did, if absently, stroking the wiry hair while she rested her chin upon his thigh, all the weight of her body now transferred inexplicably into her skull so that he must hold her up, for surely she would collapse if he did not give her aid.

He took solace in the touch, eased himself in her presence. Dogs were, he knew, well cognizant of the temperament of their masters, recognized joy and sorrow, and this bitch knew him as well as he knew her.

But paces away his fine horse grazed, idly uprooting turf. Breadalbane sat upon the mound, unmindful of disrespect; despite the legend it was yet his land, and if he chose to sit upon a grave, it was his right to do so.

Uaigh a’ Choigrich. The Grave of a Stranger. The poor Sassenach soldier who, having no Gaelic, was murdered by Highlanders for trespassing upon their cornfield.

The cornfield grew anew in the kinder days of summer, topknots rustling in the breeze. Before long its bounty would be harvested and carried away, to be eaten at his fancy or sold to other men. Even in Edinburgh. Even across the border between England and Scotland.

Below the brae, below the Grave of a Stranger, razed Achallader yet mocked him for its state, for MacIain’s enmity. But that now was over; MacIain himself was razed even as the castle, and rumor claimed no one knew which grave was his on the isle of Eilean Munde, where MacDonald lairds were buried.

If he is buried . . .
Even that was uncertain. That MacDonalds survived, and more than at first believed, was obvious now, and they had come down from their mountain fastness to give honor to their dead. No bodies now in Glencoe save those beneath new cairns, or carried away to the island.

So much accomplished. And so little won. Glencoe destroyed, the Gallows Herd scattered; they were broken men in hiding, living as beasts apart from civility, apart from those who knew them as something other than outlaw. The earl was fully aware the king at last offered them pardon, prevailed upon by others to give them leave to go home, but no one knew how many yet survived or where to carry word.

Breadalbane smiled grimly. “Let them rot in the caves and corries.”

It tasted of wormwood in his mouth. So much accomplished, and so little won.
—and so much now at risk . . .
Glenlyon was in Flanders, serving his king in war. Stair was there as well.
He
was left behind to deal with the rumors, to turn aside the slights, to make what he could of such respect as few men offered now, contemptuous of his part in what was called travesty. Had everyone died, such things as rumor might have been controlled. But there were survivors, and those of weaker heart, hearing the tales, took the MacDonalds’ part and spoke of murder under trust.

Achallader, destroyed. His career endangered. And even his kin divided; no one knew what had become of Duncan, gone away with his Marjorie.

So much lost. His second-born, John, was heir now. There was a son to inherit his work, his earldom, but what was there to bequeath save potential disaster?

That was the word now in so many mouths. Inquiry was his future, and possibly his present. Political destruction; he was anathema, a leper without a blemish save in what he had designed in congress with his king, and would be publicly censured for his part in Glencoe.

The old man, stroking his deerhound, gazed up at the summer sky arching over his head above the Grave of a Stranger and permitted his eyes to water. “Let me live,” he said. “Give me leave to live long enough so I may repair myself.”

He was Grey John Campbell, Earl of Breadalbane. He deserved that much of God.

 

The latch rattled. John Hill looked up, squinting, as his aide threw open the door.

A slight, gaunt figure filled but a part of the frame. Even as his aide began to announce the visitor, Hill beckoned him in. Eagerly he rose. “Have you news of John MacDonald?”

The boy slid into the room with the care of a wary cat, avoiding the uniformed aide. Hill waved dismissal and the soldier pulled shut the door; the boy relaxed only a little. From the cracked leather of his belt he took a soiled parchment.

It was, Hill discovered, his own letter to John MacDonald, but an answer was scrawled on the other side in a crabbed yet skilled hand, as if poor conditions were all that denied the flourish of trained letters.

The parchment tore. Inwardly Hill cursed, then took greater care as he flattened the paper. He held it close, scowling fiercely against the weakness of his eyes.

 

 

Wholly without warning, tears filled stinging eyes.

 

“I am this day to take my voyage to find security to your honour’s contentment, and thereafter I will do myself the favour to come to your garrison and be honoured
with a kiss of your hand and end my affairs, with which cordial thanks for your courtesy never to be forgot by him who is

Yours most assured to obey your commands,

JOHN MACDONALD”

 

“Praise God,” Hill croaked. “Praise God for a wise man.” He lowered the paper and looked at the young MacDonald. “When will he come?”

The boy stood very straight, poised to depart as a fox to bolt. “As soon as may be. There are women and bairns with him. He is MacIain now, aye?—he must tend his folk.”

Hill looked again at the young Highlander, who was a man in a lad’s body, summarily robbed of his childhood by such doings as Breadalbane’s, and those political creatures who believed themselves superior to Scots in general, and to Highlanders specifically.

“Have you anyone left?” he asked. “A father . . . your mother? Brothers and sisters?”

“Naught,” the boy answered steadily; his grief was long spent. There was no more assuagement in it. “But now I may go home. ’Twill no’ be so bad in Glencoe again.”

Clearly he wanted to be gone. The governor thanked him, dismissed him, then collapsed into his chair. “Home,” he said aloud, and knew that except for the army and such solace as lived in the Lord, John Hill had no home.

 

Dair worked himself up over the lip of the last cave. He ached with exertion but gave in to none of it; the leg was whole again, if the muscles as yet still weak, and he had walked, limped, and crutched all the way from Glencoe to the kinder lands of Appin, searching for his brother and the remainder of his clan.

Ash. Charred wood. Scrapings in the dirt. A scattered pile of bones he took for a coney’s. Even a burial cairn not far from the cave. But no MacDonalds. All of them had gone.

Despair encroached. To come so far, so urgently, needing to find his people, longing to see his brother, only to know himself in hermitage again.

The splints he had cast off halfway from Glencoe, relied upon at first because of the leg’s fragility in intemperate footing. But despite the pain in wasted muscle, despite the protests of new-knitted bone, he refused to give in to weakness. He limped, aye, but was whole, and had walked every step.

—oh, good Christ—
He leaned on the crutch, overtaken by desolation. Had John feared him dead, or merely delayed? Had John trusted to Murdo to see his brother to safety? Or did John himself lie beneath the cairn of stones?

And Young Sandy now MacIain.

Overcome, Dair shut his eyes. He had, as he healed, managed to catch small vermin to put food in his belly, to drink from running burns, but not eat so much that a man survived unscathed. Murdo was gone; had been gone for weeks. He suspected Murdo was dead. But whatever the truth of it he was made to fend for himself, or die alone in the cave below the Pap of Glencoe as his mother, too, had died, wrapped in a borrowed shirt and bloodied tartan plaid.

Outside, a stone was displaced. Thinking of his brother, thinking of his people—such as still remained—Dair swung around, wavered, cursed his awkwardness; it was the crutch that saved him from toppling headlong to the ground.

A man came out of the sunlight. Dair nearly gaped. His voice, so long unused save for occasional discussions with his troublesome leg, croaked in a dry throat. “Robbie—?”

Indeed, Robbie Stewart. “Jean is dead,” he said only, and a dirk glinted in his fist.

 

In summer, heather blazed. Cat, unfettered by brothers, rode alone away from Chesthill, skirting the bogs of Rannoch Moor as she followed the common track cut originally by deer, if later by thieving MacDonalds intent on Campbell cows.

Una no longer mattered, nor did disparagement from men such as Jamie and Dougal; Colin said nothing of it. And so she wore trews and a man’s shirt, bound about by doubled leather with a dirk thrust through it. No plaid; the day was fine. No confining bonnet either; red hair flagged free in the wind.

Cat nodded grimly. This track, this moor, this hillock with its lone and twisted sceptre atop a stony crown, from where she had cut down the rope that nearly took Dair’s life.

She reined in her garron and sat silent a long moment. The tree bore no fruit, neither hemp-hung nor human; the hill bore no Campbells save the memory of footprints now blown away. Her only witness was the garron she rode, and the lone eagle soaring above.

She climbed down then and turned to the panniers fastened to the saddle. She retrieved a small wooden box and a rusted spade, then climbed the nondescript hill to the crown and the sceptre. She dug a hole, gathered stones. Then set the box in the hollow, covered it with soil, and lastly built a cairn.

It was neither kirk nor kirkyard, nor consecrated ground save what lay beneath the sky. But it would do for the bairn that died the week she came home with whisky in her belly as well as Dair’s child.

So long she had waited. Una had been shocked and dismayed by Cat’s wishes, but she had given in at last. In the light of a quarter moon she and Cat had dug a temporary grave near the house for the poor wee bairn, locked away in a wooden box, and dug it up again now that summer had come, now that Cat was able to say a proper farewell.

Kneeling, she placed the last of the stones atop the crude cairn. She had nothing of its father. Nothing of its clan. Nothing that had not burned on the night Glenlyon betrayed them.

Cat looked up at the eagle.

So many MacDonalds dead.

And now MacIain’s grandchild.

“Ochone,
”Cat murmured.

Empty. Empty. Empty.

Overhead, the eagle shrieked.

 

Robbie’s face was haunted, the flesh fined down so that his eyes were set in deep hollows and glittered with enmity. Sharp lines incised the shape of his mouth, had set in the flesh of his brow. Bonnetless sandy hair tangled on his neck. He wore kilt, plaid, shirt, but no shoes upon his feet.

Beyond him, down the slope, his garron nickered. Behind him the sky was a blazing, brilliant blue.

“Dead,” Dair echoed hoarsely. Not Jean. No.
—not Jean also—

On the stag-horn hilt, Robbie’s fist tightened so that his knuckles shone white. “She meant to slip a bairn. She didna wish to bear it. The old bizzem gave her herbs . . .” Tears shone briefly, as briefly evaporated. “She died of it.”

So many MacDonalds dead.

So many MacDonalds: father, mother, kinfolk.

A Campbell lass.

“—and now a Stewart,” Dair blurted. “Och,
Christ—”
He wavered against his crutch, propping himself upright with effort. He was weary, so weary and hungry, and empty of the strength required to grieve . . .
and she deserving of it—
As much as anyone.

Stewart stared at him mutely, blue eyes black in the pallor of the cave.

Dair drew in a rasping breath. “I didna ken—I didna ken, I swear . . . och,
Robbie—”

Briefly, Stewart bared his teeth. “ ‘Twasn’t yours,” he said flatly. “D’ye take credit for another man’s labor?”

Shocked into stillness, Dair stared at him mutely.

“ ’Twasn’t yours,” Stewart repeated. “But she went wi’ the bastard because you deserted her.”

“—my fault—?” He could not shirk more grief. He owed Robbie that much. And Jean.
—och, Jean—
“My fault. Aye.”

Abruptly Stewart’s rage deflated. His face knotted. “Oh
Christ—”
Robbie hurled down the dirk. “—Christ, I canna do it . . .” He swung then, plaid billowing, and stalked to the lip of the cave, where he stood with hands on hips and stared out into the daylight. His spine was inflexible, like a flintlock’s ramrod. “She was all I had, was Jean. And twin-born!”

Dair said nothing.

“All,” Robbie repeated, voice muffled. “My father naught but an invalid, laird in name—and Jean, only Jean . . .” When he swung back his face was wet. “I ken what she was. Me, in female flesh; aye, well, so she was. I let her be, because I kent what it was to be so.” He scowled fiercely, painfully. “You are a man others love. I am one they fear.”

Dair offered nothing. It was Robbie’s confession.

“I swore to kill you, MacDonald. As she breathed her last.” Stewart’s smile was a rictus. “But how d’ye kill a dead man? Holy Jesus, I didna ken ’twas
you
till I saw your eyes . . . have you looked at yourself, all bearded and befilthed?”