Midnight Honor (31 page)

“Yessir. What shall I tell the Lady Kilmarnock with regard to compensation?”

“Tell her what we tell them all: After we have gone, she may apply to the offices of the Judge Advocate if she wishes an accounting. Her generosity has not fooled me in the least, I say, not in the least. She claims her husband is away on business, but I suspect that business is being conducted in the company of the Pretender's camp. She should therefore count herself lucky we do not confiscate every scrap of furniture and every grain of salt, and peel the silk off the walls as well.”

“Yessir.”

“Which reminds me—” He sipped and pointed. “Those curtains—?”

“Yessir. I shall see to it.”

A delicate peal of laughter from the hallway made Hawley wince as he turned his head. Grudging the effort, he lowered his boots from the corner of the table and stood as their hostess swept through the open doorway. Lady Kilmarnock was young, with a lively eye and a ready laugh that she used freely with guests and servants alike. She dismissed the maid to whom she had been giving instructions, then smiled and dropped in a gracious curtsy when she saw the general.

Hawley's thin-lipped response was somewhat less genuine. He had bought his first commission in 1694 and spent most of his life in the army. Approaching his seventh decade, he was unmarried and biliously unattractive. Lady Kilmarnock had not had to worry about the sanctity of her own boudoir in the absence of her husband. The general was as particular about his companions as he was his accommodations, and there was no one in Callendar House who might have enticed him save for the cook's daughter, who was barely above nine years of age and plump as a dumpling.

“Good morning, General. Good heavens, can it really be nearing noon? I trust you slept well?”

“In truth,” he scowled, “I barely recall. My head feels a treat and I have stayed abed much later than my normal
hour—a fit of sloth that appears to have affected some of my officers as well.”

“It must be the sleeping draught I put in the supper wine.”

Hawley looked startled for a moment, but when she tipped her head and laughed, he saw the jest for what it was and nodded. “I prefer to credit my lethargy to my berth, madam. Would I could fit such a comfortable bed in my tent—I should do so upon the instant.” He thought about that statement a moment and looked inquiringly at his aide-decamp, who nodded and scratched another notation on his writing tablet. When he was done, the general dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “That will be all for the time being, Corporal Martin, thank you. Please inform Majors Worsham and Garner that I expect them to be occupying those two chairs”—he pointed to opposite sides of the long table—“in five minutes, or they risk court-martial.”

The aide snatched up his cap and offered a smart salute, then departed, leaving the general and Lady Kilmarnock to their breakfast. Hawley's plate was heaped high with sliced ham and beef tongue, cheese, and sweetmeats swimming in a robust gravy, none of which had appealed to him thus far, but when he heard the lady order a rasher of bacon and sausage, he signaled to the manservant to fetch two.

“I admire a female with an appetite,” he said. “None of this picking at bits and slivers.”

“My husband accuses me of eating like one of the cattle, though if you met him, you would see he has no shy hand at the table himself.”

“Ah, yes, the cattle. We will have need of your livestock, madam, in the days ahead. There will be prisoners to feed over and above the requirements of my own men.”

Lady Kilmarnock smiled. “You sound confident of victory, General.”

“I am confident of the resolve of my men, dear lady. Oh yes, I know their discipline is wanting and their valor has been precarious in the past, to say the least. But”—he waved a fork with a piece of ham impaled on the tines—“a more magnificent sight than the British army standing at the ready in full battle dress is not to be found anywhere. Imagine it. Eight thousand men lined up straight as arrows. A field of
scarlet, with drums beating and flags snapping overhead. It almost brings a tear to the eye, I say it almost brings a tear! What it will do to an ill-trained band of skirted rabble, well, it only remains to be seen.”

“I have been told,” she said carefully, “that ill-trained rabble can be quite intimidating.”

“Grown men in petticoats?” The general guffawed, spitting a morsel of cheese across the table. “I should think a strong wind up the backside would render their appearance somewhat more farcical than intimidating. A most despicable enemy, I assure you. Unmannered, unprincipled. Undisciplined in the extreme, with a want of military acumen that simply stupefies the mind. Why, they have left the Pretender's standard flying in plain view these last two days on a small moor to the south and east of Bannockburn, as if that should entice us to panic. Panic? Faugh! I have been tempted to send a man on foot, on foot I say, to retrieve the damned thing for a trophy.”

Lady Kilmarnock set her jaw but glanced at the door where a butler had suddenly appeared.

“My apologies for the interruption, my lady. A courier has arrived from the general's field headquarters. A most agitated young man. He insists on seeing the general at once.”

“Insists, does he?” the general asked, frowning. “Tell him I am engaged and will see him when it is convenient.”

The butler glanced surreptitiously at Lady Kilmarnock before apologizing to the general again. “I have already told him you were indisposed, sir, but he is most obstinate.”

“Tell him to wait,” the general said, pronouncing each word as if it were ten syllables long.

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”

Hawley sucked a shred of ham out of his teeth and glared along the table at Lady Kilmarnock. “You must excuse the lack of manners in my men, dear lady. Most are villains recruited straight out of the brothels, and with little more than a sworn oath of their being Protestant and without rupture, they are entrusted with a musket and sixpence a day. They
complain about the climate, they complain about their rations of biscuit and water—” He paused to shovel another forkful of dripping egg into his mouth. “I vow, some days my head aches from the sound of the lash.”

“As you say, however, they do look magnificent on the battlefield,” Lady Kilmarnock murmured.

Hawley's lip twisted, but before he could address her comment, the butler was back, coughing anxiously into his hand.

“Yes, Donald?” Lady Kilmarnock arched an eyebrow.

“It is the courier, my lady. He is quite beside himself. He is threatening violence unless he is brought before the general at once.”

“You see, m'dear?” Hawley spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “Self-aggrandizement. Oh, very well. Show him in, show him in.”

The butler stepped aside and nodded disdainfully to a figure out in the hallway. A corporal hurried past, his hat under his arm, his hair and clothing shedding rainwater as he crossed to the general's side and, without waiting for leave, leaned over and murmured a few taut words in his ear.

The general stopped chewing. “What? What's that you say?”

The corporal bent forward again.

“On the moor! Impossible! The morning report said they were twelve miles to the north and west.”

“I assure you, sir, there is no mistake. They may have marched north and west, but only in order that they might circumvent Torwood and cross the river Carron at Dunipace. The rebels have taken Falkirk Moor, sir, and they look to hold it.”

“Look to hold it? The devil you say!”

Hawley scraped to his feet. He strode to the door without so much as a nod in Lady Kilmarnock's direction, his shouts echoing along the hallway, startling both Major Garner and Major Worsham as they were descending the staircase. Screaming obscenities, he called for his horse and guards. At the main door, one of his aides flung his cape around his shoulders, dislodging his wig. Another scrambled to pick it
up, but the general was already gone, hatless and hairless out into the rain, his napkin still tucked into his collar.

Back in the morning room Lady Kilmarnock lifted her cup and took a sip of hot chocolate. She closed her eyes a moment to savor the sweetness, then set about enjoying the rest of her meal.

Chapter Sixteen

A
ngus Moy arrived back in the Hanover camp in plenty of time to see General Henry Hawley riding hell-bent across the field, the large white square of what looked to be a dinner napkin flapping at his throat. Close on his heels were Majors Garner and Worsham, neither of whom brought his horse to a complete halt before they veered off in opposing directions to join their regiments.

The entire camp was in an uproar with men running hither and yon, yelling for horses, for muskets, for saddles, fastening buttons and strapping on leather neck stocks as they ran past. Rain was adding to the confusion. The storm had descended with a fury, bringing high winds and torrents of freezing rain throughout the morning. As the layer of snow on the ground turned to ice, the slopes became ever more treacherous, slippery with dead grass and bramble.

Earlier, MacGillivray's escort had left Angus a mile from the moor; it had taken him nearly two hours to struggle over the uneven terrain from there to the camp. Having been shocked by the sight of Highlanders pouring through the ravines and clambering up the slopes, he had been forced to periodically find cover while the men led by Lord George Murray had taken command of the high ground. Accomplishing the deed without firing a single shot, three regiments of
men from Clan Donald had held the road open for the rest of the advancing Jacobite army to snake their way onto the moor, and by noon, with the Elector's troops still scrambling to button their stocks and find their ammunition loaves, Prince Charles was erecting his standard at the rear of the field. With the pipes skirling, the MacDonalds took their traditional place on the right of the battle line with their flanks protected by a morass of bogland. Occupying the far left were the Appin Stewarts and, in between, the Camerons, Frasers, MacPhersons, MacKenzies, and the lustily cheering men of Clan Chattan.

The second line was made up of seven more battalions, including Lord Elcho's Lifeguards, and three of Lord George's Athol Brigade. Lord John Drummond's men formed up behind them in reserve. The only part of the master plan that had not gone according to dictates was the positioning of the heavy artillery. Led by the flamboyant Italian, Count Fanducci, the guns sank up to their axles in the mud as soon as they left the road, and could not be coaxed up the unstable slope in spite of a steady stream of colorful invectives.

When Angus heard the haunting strains of the MacKintosh
piob rach'd
, half of him wished he were standing alongside the golden-maned MacGillivray.

The other half prayed.

He had searched the moor, the ravine, the surrounding slope for a glimpse of Anne, but he had not seen her—not until the very last, when Hardy, at his wits' end, had been about to drag his master from the field to avoid being seen and shot out of hand.

Anne had arrived with the men of Clan Chattan, but after securing their position on the battle line and delivering some words of encouragement, she had ridden reluctantly to the rear, where the prince stood with his royal guard. Angus prayed harder than he ever had in his life that she would remain there, surrounded by a phalanx of Highlanders whose sole responsibility it was to protect Charles Stuart and his entourage with their lives.

Three regiments of dragoons gained the moor first, followed by twelve battalions of Hawley's veteran frontline troops, with
the general's artillery lagging well behind. Despite the far superior firepower of their heavy guns, they were able to haul only two four-pounders and one smaller “grape-thrower” that might just as well have been left in the bog with the others.

The infantrymen were hardly better off. The rain soaked through their paper cartridges and wet their powder, so that when it came time to unleash their first volley, one in three muskets misfired.

Hawley was furious but not daunted. He put his faith in his dragoons and ordered the drums to beat, sending nearly three hundred mounted Horse into a full charge.

Facing them down, their lines holding steady, the Jacobites nervously fingered the triggers of their muskets, one eye on the thundering wall of approaching horseflesh, the other on Lord George Murray, who walked up and down the line encouraging the men to hold their positions, ordering them not to fire until he gave the signal. He, like every other clan chief, was fighting on foot that day.

He waited until the screaming dragoons were ten yards away before raising his musket and signaling the steady line of clansmen to fire. In the deafening noise and smoke-filled discharge of a thousand guns, the dragoons balked. Their lines broke apart in wild confusion, with half their number dead in their saddles. Those who kept coming forward discovered why the Highlanders had remained so calm: Not twenty feet in front of their lines there was a deep rift in the ground that the rain and mist had obscured and where, lying in wait at the bottom of the trough, there were more Highlanders with pikes and
clai' mórs
ready to slash at the exposed undersides of the horses.