The Blood of Roses (13 page)

C
atherine led her horse slowly along the sun-gilded pathway, her footsteps crunching lightly on the brittle crust of hoarfrost that coated the forest floor. The trees were naked, stripped of their summer greenery and fullness. The bared branches left great gaps of crystal-blue sky overhead, the color so intense it hurt the eyes to stare upward too long. The sun on her back was warm, turning what might have been another dismal winter morning into a brief escape from the gloom and silence of her rooms at Rosewood Hall.

The air was clean and crisp, faintly tinged with wood-smoke. In league with the sun and fresh air, the brisk canter that had brought Catherine across the fields and into the forest had left her cheeks touched with a blush of pale rose. Her hair, never known for its willingness to respect the orderly confines of combs and pins, trailed over her shoulders in shiny wisps, clinging to the lavender velvet of her riding suit like fine silk threads. The suit was tailored snugly from shoulder to waist, falling from there in deep, rich folds of velvet to within an inch of the ground. An abundance of cream-colored lace was gathered in dainty scallops at her throat and wrists, and as she walked, a hint of similarly adorned petticoats splashed up over the toes of her Moroccan leather boots.

Catherine hated the winter months. Hated the month of December in particular when the constant dripping, drizzling chill out of doors made it too drafty and damp to feel comfortable indoors. The brilliant colors of fall had all faded, burned dull and lifeless by the frost. Days were short, gray, and dreary; evenings were long, lonely, and miserable, and, by necessity, spent before a stifling hot fire.

An even worse prospect looming in the skies was snow. Catherine knew this happy little interlude of sunshine was only a cruel prelude to the heavy, wet, mushy stuff that melted and seeped into clothing, ruined shoes, and generally sent her mood spinning into an abyss of bad temper. She had never enjoyed winter, not even as a child. Never felt the urge or the inclination to don bulky layers of clothing and feign throes of rapture while slogging and sledding through the wretched business. Thankfully, there had been but a few brief flurries in Derbyshire so far this season, none of which had survived on the ground more than an hour or so. She had heard reports of heavier snowfalls farther north, of cruel winds and cutting storms of sleet and hail, hindered by banks of fog that froze into solid walls of ice.

Weather, so she heard, was being made the convenient scapegoat in affording the army excuses as to why it had been unable to prevent Charles Edward Stuart from crossing the border from Scotland into England unmolested. Three battalions of Guards and seven regiments of government infantry had been pinned at Newcastle by the snow and fog, effectively stopping Field Marshal George Wade from marching out to meet the invading army.

Taking advantage of the weather, the prince’s forces had crossed into England on November 8, half by a westerly route over the River Tweed, half by an easterly cut across the River Esk. By the next day the entire rebel force—reputed to be upward of twenty thousand strong—had rendezvoused unchallenged at the outskirts of Carlisle and, after placing the town and castle under seige, received its unconditional surrender on the fourteenth. On the fifteenth, Charles Stuart had ridden triumphantly into the English city to proclaim his father king and himself regent in the presence of the lord mayor and the entire cheering population.

Incredible as it seemed, until then no one in Parliament had taken the threat of invasion seriously; no one had even taken the necessary steps to block the main roads into England. The handful of token patrols that had been dispatched to guard the border and report on any untoward activity had either been swept up by the avalanche of marching Highlanders or had fled with all due haste, not troubling themselves to take notice of the numbers or whereabouts of the attacking forces. At the time of the defeat of the army at Prestonpans, there had been fewer than six thousand regular troops available in England. Following the astonishing news of the prince’s victory, a hasty appeal was sent to Holland for troops to honor their treaty with England. William, Duke of Cumberland, was also recalled from Europe, and Admiral Vernon was ordered to abandon his patrols of the Mediterranean and concentrate his navy in the Channel and along the English coast.

It took time to move men and equipment from the Continent, however, and the Jacobite army had begun its advance southward on November 20, marching boldly through Lancaster to Preston. Field Marshal Wade, aware of the relatively small number of Highlanders who had achieved the staggering defeat of Cope’s army, was loathe to risk his inadequate forces without reinforcements, and made only one attempt to harass the rebels from Newcastle before hurriedly retreating behind the city’s defenses again.

Catherine, her loyalties torn, did not know whether to applaud or dread each report she heard. She could not deny the pride she felt upon first learning of the audacious victory at Prestonpans, knowing Alexander and his clansmen would have played a vital role in the events. Yet she had been raised in a Whig household. Her father was a staunch Hanover supporter, as were most of their friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. She herself had been presented at court and had met the pudgy German king on more than one occasion.

With the fall of Edinburgh and the defeat of Cope’s army, Scotland belonged to the Stuarts. Why could they not have been content with that? Only the castle at Edinburgh, two small garrisoned forts—Fort William and Fort Augustus—and the city of Inverness remained in Hanover hands. Probably …
possibly
, if the Scots had kept to their own borders and taken immediate steps to bring about a peaceful alliance with England, they could have avoided any further bloodshed. Instead, they had invaded England’s sovereign territory. To add to the insult, they did so after deliberately and openly allying themselves with England’s hereditary enemies, France and Spain. That alone would ensure the emnity of the military, regardless of any political or social sympathies toward the Stuarts. The three nations had fought too many wars for England simply to sit by and watch their enemies obtain a foothold on their isles.

Certainly it was all the fashion to speak at dinner parties of the prince’s charm and the tragically romantic history of the Stuarts. But more, Catherine suspected, with an eye toward what might well lay ahead if his army reached London than out of any true sense of affection for the dynasty. Outside the gaily tolerant parlor discussions, the country militias were being brought up to strength. Several noblemen were raising regiments of cavalry and infantry at their own expense; the city of York alone had armed four hundred men for its defense, and even the fox-hunting gentlemen of the area had formed themselves into a colorful regiment of hussars.

Cities that lay directly south of Preston and Manchester began to empty of their more weak-hearted citizens who defended their actions with rumors of the Highlanders’ unbridled savagery. The inevitable tales of assault and rape had black-busked matrons swooning by the droves. Parlor conversations often ended abruptly in a crush of silks and satins as the women fainted
en masse
over ill-timed and graphic descriptions of how the Highlanders offered live sacrifices to their Celtic druids.

Catherine, who had been to Scotland and seen the gentle honesty of Lochiel and his clansmen, wanted to scream at the absurdity of the lies, and constantly had to remind herself that her husband was supposed to be an English businessman away seeing to his enterprises in the North American colonies. She had to hold her tongue and resist the urge to contradict the stories, regardless of how outlandish or ridiculous they became. It was difficult and draining, especially since many of the fleeing refugees found themselves the center of attraction at so many luncheons and parties that they fled no farther south than Derby.

Lady Caroline Ashbrooke, not to be outdone by any of her peers, managed to score a brilliant coup in the acquisition of Captain John Lovat-Spence as a houseguest. Wounded at Prestonpans, he had been on his way home to recuperate and had stopped in at Rosewood Hall to pay his respects to Lord Ashbrooke. Ten years Lady Caroline’s junior and unable to resist her porcelain beauty and soft, violet-gray eyes, the captain had been in residence ever since. His understandable reluctance to disclose too many details of the battle fell easy prey to Lady Caroline’s powers of persuasion, and, at her behest, he stunned selected audiences with eyewitness accounts of the surprise attack.

Catherine had initially avoided his company, preferring the solitude of her own rooms to the silly squeals and heaving bosoms of the gossip sessions. She had further cause to resent Lovat-Spence upon noting his early-morning departure from her mother’s bedroom the day after his arrival. But her curiosity won the better of her and she found herself drawn to the parlor, hoping there might be some mention made of a tall, black-haired specter taking to the field astride a midnight-black destrier.

The Highlanders had fought like demons from hell, Lovat-Spence assured the avid audiences, descending from nowhere and leaving a charnel house of screaming, limbless bodies, writhing in a sea of their own blood. The screeching wail of the rebel pipes had haunted his every waking and sleeping hour since that fateful day, as had the memory of their gleaming, blood-smeared bodies charging out of the morning mists.

Nothing, the captain confided passionately, could ever equal the sheer terror he had felt that morning. He had fought but to this day could not recall actual details of how he had earned his wound (a dramatic pressing of a hand against his upper thigh had sent two abigails fluttering after their mistresses with unstoppered bottles of smelling salts) only that he had been collected up with the others and placed in a hospital tent.

To his amazement (and additional agonies of delight for the ladies), the Stuart prince himself had visited the wounded men, inquiring after their needs. With grudging respect, the captain related how the prince had not taken a scrap of food or refreshment until such time as the last wound had been cleaned and bound and each man assured a comfortable night’s sleep. Neither had his officers shown a lack of concern. Lord George Murray had billeted himself with the captured English officers in a house nearby, remaining with them throughout the night, sharing a bale of hay for a bed, so that his presence would deter any thoughts of mischief the celebrating rebels might have had.

Many, if not all, of the prisoners—over seventeen hundred—had been released within a few days or permitted to escape. There had simply been too many for the rebels to attempt to feed and confine. The officers had been released on their own parole after swearing an oath not to actively participate in any further military encounters against the prince.

“An honorable and generous release,” he conceded, “although there were some who only took the gesture as a further insult and were no sooner away from the Pretender’s camp than they beat a straight path for the nearest government garrison.”

The captain had paused during this particular dissertation to glance at Catherine.

“A former acquaintance of yours, Mrs. Montgomery, was one of the officers who did not consider a promise made to a rebel to be one worth keeping.”

Catherine had felt the color seep into her cheeks and the owlish eyes of everyone present in the drawing room turn to her in breathless expectation.

“Captain Hamilton Garner was
not
pleased with the cowardly way his men behaved. Why, after his dragoons fled, he fought with the infantry, urging them to continue alongside him until every last man but himself was slain.”

He paused so the ladies could gasp in wonder at the brave captain’s demonstration of courage, and again Catherine felt their gazes upon her—most of them scorning her for having summarily dallied with Hamilton’s affections.

“At the first opportunity, Captain Garner and several others broke out of the compound where they were being held and made for Edinburgh Castle, which as you know, is still in the capable hands of Colonel Joshua Guest. A stout old soldier,” Lovat-Spence remarked with a smile, “quite adamant about the castle remaining in the proper hands. Since the prince does not possess any heavy siege equipment he can do little against the well-provisioned garrison; any attempts to blockade the castle instantly bring the guns firing down upon the open city. I should think Captain Garner will find a kindred spirit in the general. It was rumored—unconfirmed to my express knowledge, but quite possible—that the captain has already been promoted to the rank of major in recognition of his outstanding valor on the field.”

The captain had regaled the small crowd for another two hours of selected memories, but Catherine had barely heard any of them. The descriptions had remained vivid in her mind long after she had retired and that night, like so many others that had gone before, she dreamed of a battlefield. Dreamed she was
on
the battlefield, hearing the screams, running on ground that had been trampled red with blood. She dreamed she had run past the splayed bodies, through the muck and tangled grasses, past fighting men locked in mortal combat and panicked horses trembling in a sweat of sour white foam.

It was always the same. The same dream, the same battlefield. Each time she had it, the sequences seemed to grow longer, although she never seemed to get any further than a screamed warning, a glimpse of someone high on a hill surrounded by a glittering ring of raised swords. Alexander was always just starting to turn, his dark sapphire eyes searching for the source of the scream … when she wakened, drenched in sweat, utterly drained and shaken as if she had indeed been running for miles on end.

It had been because of an almost desperate need to feel the sunlight on her face, to smell the crisp, clean air, and to escape to the haunting beauty of the still, silent forest that Catherine had ridden away from Rosewood Hall that morning.

Somewhat calmer now, she led her horse along the dappled pathway, the only sound being that of the hoarfrost crunching underfoot. Why she found solace and comfort in retracing the steps that had led to her initial meeting with Alexander Cameron, she did not know. Was it because, secretly, she hoped to find him in the clearing again? Or that by some miracle he had come back to her and was waiting to carry her away just as he had promised?