Jennifer Roberson (53 page)

Dair stared fixedly at the spurned dirk, unable to look away. “I havena,” he said absently. “I have no mirror, aye?—and the burnwater I drink.” Now at last he could look again at Robbie. He swallowed tightly. His body, having done all it could, wanted to give out. “Have you a wee bit of food?”

Stewart opened his mouth. Shut it.

Chastened, Dair gestured awkwardly. “I shouldna ask it, aye? Not of you. Not after—Jean.”

“My garron,” Stewart said harshly. “Would you have me butcher him for you?”

A weak laugh gusted out. “Och, no, Robbie—”

“Christ—I
should . . .
”Stewart examined him intently. The skull beneath thin flesh was more pronounced than ever. Softly he said, “I canna do it, Jean. He has suffered enough for Glencoe.”

Dair blinked dazedly, clinging to his crutch.

Stewart’s enmity abruptly spilled away, replaced by weariness and resignation. “John said you would come. He and the others went on. He asked me to come daily to see if you were here, so I might tell you what has become of them, and what will become of you.” Blue eyes did not waver. “The king has pardoned MacDonalds. You may go home again. ”

“—home?” It was incomprehensible. Dair clutched at the crutch to keep from falling. “To Glencoe—?”

“Home,” Robbie repeated. “John and the others have gone on to Fort William so he may wish well of Governor Hill. He has given his oath to Ardkinglas in Inveraray.”

Dair’s lips were cold and stiff. “My father gave his oath to Ardkinglas at Inveraray. They killed him anyway.”

“Not now. No more. They’ll no’ do such again.” Robbie’s thin smile
was
fixed. “They have learned their lesson of it.”

“They
have learned their lesson!” Fury dulled and diminished by deprivation abruptly kindled and took fire. Dair, balancing precariously upon two trembling legs, flung the crutch against the cave wall. “What lesson have they learned save how to butcher a clan under a sacred trust? What lesson have they learned save how to kill a laird, how to kill his wife, how to hack to pieces the women and the bairns?”

Transfixed, Stewart gaped at him.

Dair sucked in a noisy breath.
“What have they learned,
Robbie, that absolves them of such things? That starving men canna fight? That people with no homes live as animals? That a woman stripped of clothing will freeze to death in a blizzard? That a woman is shot down even though she be a Campbell?” His throat was scraped raw. He did not care if it bled. “What lesson have they learned from which they take the right to pardon
innocent
people?”

Tears painted Robbie’s face. He flung back his head and howled like a Gael of old, his grief and anger so loud it rang in the cave and echoed, hands knotted into fists thrust into the air.

And then he stopped the noise as abruptly as he began it and stared fiercely at Dair, new tears glittering in his eyes. “I meant to kill you. For Jean. I meant not to tell you. For
me.
So I kent you would suffer.” He had bitten his lip. Blood welled in the wound. “But you have suffered enough.”

Dair gazed at him blankly, exhausted by his outburst.

Bitterly, Stewart spat blood and saliva. “She isna dead, MacDonald. Glenlyon’s daughter lives.”

Now at last he fell. He permitted himself to fall.

“—
Christ
—”Robbie caught him, eased him to the floor. His arm was strong across Dair’s shoulders, propping up his head. “Aye, well . . .” Comprehension and acknowledgment warred with loyalty to his sister. “I might wish such love for myself, one day, though it seems unlikely; I am what I have always been. But I’ll no’ deny it to you, even for Jean’s sake.” He pressed Dair’s shoulder briefly. “Wait you,” he said gruffly, “I’ll fetch the garron here.”

In great heaving gulps Dair began to breathe, to laugh, to cry. Weakness no longer mattered. Even hunger he could bear.

Glenlyon’s daughter lived.

 

Lured by summer sunlight, Cat sat collapsed upon the wide wooden bench set against her father’s house and gazed out across the dooryard. In deference to the day she had cast off shoes, rolled up trews and cuffs, and folded her legs crosswise upon the bench, slumped against the wall in a posture favored in childhood but rarely indulged when Una was present to see it.

Just now it did not matter; she was grown withal—and Una was after all too busy baking bread.

The view of the dooryard and what lay beyond—winding track, familiar hill, scant stands of fir and pine—was wholly unchanged, as was grief, the abiding loneliness. For a moment, a moment only, in the sun, she had found surcease; now it bounded back and snared her, squeezing her heart again.

—
so many rumors. . .
so much gossip traded freely, gleefully, embellished by avid mouths telling tales of the massacre and of MacDonalds escaping, including MacIain’s sons.

But no one knew the truth, and no one knew to tell
her:
she was Glenlyon’s daughter.

She would, she thought, go up herself to Fort William and confront the governor, who ought to know what had become of the MacDonalds.

Cat shut her eyes, conjuring the memory of Dair leaving her to go to Inverrigan’s in the midst of the blizzard, because he was not easy in his mind regarding the soldiers’ presence. A brief kiss, a murmured promise he would be back . . . and no more did she see him again.

The muffled snort of a garron roused her, distracting her from pain. She opened her eyes, blinked away tears, and saw the rider approaching.

She unfolded her legs and sat up straight; visitors were uncommon, and she had been bred up on Highland hospitality. It was her father who had forgotten.

From distance she marked him: an old man, thin of frame, gaunt of features, entirely white of hair. Unhindered by bonnet, tousled by wind, it flowed back from his face like spring snowmelt, though someone had crudely cut it across the back of his neck.

He turned into the dooryard. At the well he halted the horse, which stretched its neck and pulled rein in pursuit of water. The rider climbed down slowly, carefully, as an old man does; loosed the rein, drew up the bucket, let the garron drink.

At last he turned to her, paused, then began to walk across the dooryard.

Barefoot, he limped.

Thin, gaunt, white-haired. But Cat knew the eyes. Cat knew the smile.

—
bonnie, bonnie prince
—

In one taut thrust she was up from the bench.

—
Dair
—
oh Dair
—

Barefoot, she ran.

“—Dair—oh, Dair—”

Thin, gaunt, white-haired. Less than he had been. More than she expected.

“—
alive
—”she blurted.

“Och, aye, forbye . . .” He caught her. He held her. He crushed her against him.

No words, there were no words; no words existed in her world, in his, only the language of their feelings, and that too great, too intensely full for anything beyond the sound of their ragged breathing, the desperate clinging of their bodies.

Comprehension. Acknowledgment. Reaffirmation.

—
alive
—

Alive.

He went down, was down, and so was she, with him, down in the dirt, the turf; and he laughed even as she cried, and cried as she laughed, sharing without words what lived in their hearts and bodies, all the pent, unspent emotions. All the knowledge, all the memories, the bleak weeks of falsehoods told to them as truths: that he was dead, that she was.

Not dead. Neither.

They were tangled like puppies, limbs seeking purchase against earth, against flesh. Nearby, the garron whickered, made uneasy by their ungainly sprawl.

They tended it, that sprawl. Sat up again, but let go of no comfortable portion, nor of any part they might reach, so long as it be flesh, alive, and whole.

He was not so old after all, only aged beyond what he had been. But there was time, so much time before them to finish what they had begun, all unaware, on a dew-damp day before her father’s house.

Cat leaned in, wound arms into plaid, into hollows; felt the bones beneath his flesh, the knotting of wiry tendons made pronounced by privation. But her Dair withal.

Alasdair Og MacDonald.

Whom her father had meant to murder.

She held him fiercely, setting her face into his neck. His warm, rope-scored neck.

So much done to this man.

She told him then, in words she forgot the moment she said them, of scouring guilt, of exquisite shame, of sorrow and anger and hatred. It was important that he know, important that she
said
it: how it was to house a heart burdened by so much shame, so much bitter pain. She was Glenlyon’s daughter.

And that she could not blame MacDonalds if MacDonalds blamed her.

“Why?”
he asked then, the only word of his set into the flow of her own.

And so she told him: had she not been present, had her father not used her name, there might have been no hosting, no hospitality of fered. And all would yet survive.

He was not so weak that he could not threaten her breath with the force of his embrace. “No man will say so! No man alive will say so, be he MacDonald or no.”

“But—”

“No man, Cat. I swear on my father’s soul.”

The great, turbulent soul housed in so huge a body that it even turned back a river when he planted himself in its current.

Tears sprang into her eyes. So many words to say, so many things to confess, but something took precedence. “Ten years,” she told him.

It deepened lines between his brows that had not existed before. “Ten years?”

Easier now to admit what should have been said before. “Ten years I have known you. Ten years I have loved you.”

He laughed very softly. Set his head against hers. Into her hair he said, “Come home with me.”

Fingers trembled as she reached up to touch his hair. All white, so white, white as MacIain’s, save for a glint of gray snooving there beside his temple.

He caught her hand and carried it to his mouth, where he kissed her palm as he had kissed it once before beside a MacDonald fire in the looming ruins of Achallader, below the Grave of a Stranger.

“Och, Christ—
Dair—
”

Against her hand he laughed. But there was more in his eyes, so much more than laughter: memory, and tears. “Come home with me,” he said. “Come home with me. To Glencoe.”

Through her own burden of tears, Cat laughed aloud. All it wanted was a piper and the keening of
ceol mor.

In her head she made her own:—
with white teeth a’gleaming
—

And silver in his hair.

S
ummer, and warm, but it was not the temperature that set a sheen S of sweat over John Hill’s face. Before the doors of Holyrood Palace he paused to account for his appearance in the moments before he would be called to account for his actions three years preceeding.

He was as yet a colonel, as yet a governor, as yet commissioned, and wore the scarlet-and-gold uniform of his duty. He shot the cuffs of his linen shirt beneath the crimson coat, resettled the polished gorget at his throat, and nodded to the man who swung open the door of the massive palace.

Thus admitted, thus committed, Hill entered the hall. He knew what lay before him: Inquiry. King William had at long last, worn down by suspicion and questions, sanctioned an Inquiry to determine who bore the guilt for Glencoe.

I do. He accepted it. He would admit it now before the others, the Commissioners assembled to question, to weigh the answers. Titled all, powerful men, men of politics. He was but a simple man, and Englishman—
Sassenach!
—who loved his God and served his king . . . whoever that king might be, English or Dutch. John Hill had no power. No politics.

But John Hill had himself, as much as anyone, ruined Glencoe.

Holyrood Palace was as dark within and without, illuminated by lamplight. Beyond the antechamber lay the hall proper, where the Commissioners waited. Built against the walls, beneath ornate hammer beams, were the crowded benches.

So many gathered to hear the tragedy of Glencoe
—A sound behind him, a sudden shaft of light. It fell across the antechamber, lanced through into the hall beyond.

Hill turned, blinded momentarily by the summer sunlight. He squinted, absently aware his eyesight worsened; but then he set aside such things. Others had come in, called as he was to bear witness to what had been done at five o’clock of the morning in the midst of a blinding blizzard.

Two men. Two Highlanders. Two MacDonalds.

Two tall Glencoe-men: the man who was now MacIain and his younger brother.

Not the old fox. The old fox was buried three years on Eilean Munde.

Hill drew in a breath.
Here is Scotland standing before me. . . .

—all swathed in creamy saffron-dyed linen shirts; brooch-pinned, looping, many hued plaids and kilts; fine-knit tartan stockings and silver-buckled brogues; sgian
dhu,
sporrans, dirks; with feather- and heather-sprigged bonnets worn slantwise on proud heads.

Both bared a moment later as, one by one, the MacDonalds removed the bonnets to clasp them in callused hands.

—
such
white, white heads for men yet so
young
—

The door opened again. Sunlight sparked off the silver of brooches and buckles. A woman came in behind them even as they moved apart to make room for her; one put out his hand.

Hill had met Alasdair Og. By him he knew the woman.

Her eyes were very clear, piercing as a claymore. Lamplight burnished hair. She was taller than he; nearly as tall as her husband. She examined Hill, assessed him, measured him as a man. The dim light of Holyrood Palace was gentle on her face, but the strong bones stood out as if she were carved of stone.

He drew breath and moved a single pace. He bowed before her. “Colonel John Hill, he said quietly. ”Governor of Fort William.”

Her tone was cool. “Have they called you to give evidence against my father?”

He did not know how to answer. She was Glenlyon’s daughter, but married to a MacDonald. Such personal complexities were beyond him, and so at last he spoke the truth. “If they should ask me so, I will. But I shall give equal evidence against myself.”

She laughed briefly and without mirth. “Och, I dinna care about that, aye?—have come to hear them declare the truth of
him:
he is a murderer.”

Sweat sprang out on his flesh again. Hill did what he could to mitigate the moment. “He did nothing of his own will but what he was ordered to do.”

“Ordered,” she echoed. “Ordered to murder MacDonalds. Oh, I ken what he was told to do. I ken how he did it. I ken
what
he did.” She looked at her husband. Something passed between them, something powerful if unspoken, and then she looked back at Hill. Softly she said, “I was there, aye?”

Lamplight glittered on plaid brooch and bonnet crest as John MacDonald shifted. “For what you have done, we thank you,” he said quietly. “You more than any man have done what could be done.”

Absolution was painful. He could not permit it. “No,” Hill said harshly, “I have done nothing. Nothing but ruin Glencoe.”

“Aye, well,” MacIain exchanged a glance with his brother. “We are rebuilding the houses.”

“And the families?” Hill demanded. “How do you rebuild human life that has been taken?”

“You canna.” Alasdair Og’s voice was uninflected. “You begin anew with what is left.”

“We are home,” MacIain said. “We are yet in Scotland, yet in the Highlands, yet in Glencoe. We have begun anew.”

Hill heard a step behind him and a diffident voice. “Colonel Hill, sir. You are called before the Commissioners.”

He nodded absently but did not turn away from the Highlanders.
Not yet
“—Begin anew,” he said with clear self-contempt. “A man may hope so. Indeed, a man may. But neither does he forget.”

“He doesna,” MacIain agreed, forgiving nothing. “And so long as there are pipes, and bards, and poets, no man may ever forget what happened to Glencoe.”

Glenlyon’s daughter smiled, and this time it was unfettered.
“Ne obliviscaris.
”

From beside him, less diffidence now: “Colonel Hill.
Sir.
”

He turned then and left them. He cared little enough what became of himself, called to Inquiry. He cared very much what became of them.

“ ‘Forget not,’ ” Hill murmured.

He did not see how he could.