The Blood of Roses (61 page)

It was because of the sheer strength and persistence of Catherine’s courage that Deirdre was able to shore up her own. She also bolstered herself with the knowledge that when and if they ever made it back to Moy Hall alive, and when she was returned to Aluinn MacKail’s side, she was never going to leave him again. Not
ever.
It was a promise she made herself in the mist-steeped blackness of the night, and it was a promise she vowed to keep with all the stubbornness and determination of her Irish ancestors.

“There,” Catherine said suddenly. “Up on those rocks. Something moved.”

Deirdre squinted upward, the chilling rain making visibility a game of guesswork. MacSorley had taken advantage of the long night to push up and over the mountain, and it had not seemed possible the English soldiers would have the courage or perseverence to follow so closely. Twice already MacSorley had become annoyed with their diligence and had doubled back, demonstrating how, with the proper use of darkness, mist, and shadow, he could leave half a dozen bodies in his wake. But dawn had come upon them and so had the English, and with little more than a few minutes’ sleep snatched against a niche of a rock, they were moving again, legs and arms and backs cramping in protest.

Struan had tried to suggest the women ride on ahead— Inverness was only a handful of miles along the road—but once again Catherine had stubbornly refused.

“We have come this far together, Mr. MacSorley,” she had said with quiet determination. “We shall go the rest of the way together, or not at all.”

“Ye dinna ken what ye’re sayin’, lassie.”

“I
ken
very well,” Catherine insisted. “You estimate there are forty soldiers following us, another forty or so circling around to cut us off somewhere up ahead. You have ten good men, including those not wounded too badly to prop a musket on their shoulders and pull the trigger. The way I see it, Deirdre and I can make ourselves useful by loading those muskets and readying them for the men to fire.”

“Ye ken what will happen tae ye if ye’re caught?” he exclaimed.

“They killed my brother, Struan,” she replied evenly. “They will kill you and me and all of us if they have the opportunity. But we are not going to give them the opportunity. We are Camerons, by God, and they’re … they’re only a pack of … squint-eyed,
Sassenach
lobsterbacks.”

MacSorley stared at her for a moment and then grinned. “Aye, lass. Aye, that they are.”

And so here they were, crouched in a dense copse of weed and tangled briar with wadding, shot, and powder laid out before them, guns clasped nervously in their hands. There was indeed movement up on the hillside; Deirdre saw splashes of crimson darting among the sparse trees—far too many of them for ten courageous Highlanders and two frightened women to deal with effectively. This could well be the end of it all.

“I love you Aluinn MacKail,” she whispered soundlessly. “And I thank you with all my heart for loving me.”

A roar, loud and bloodcurdling, split the air and sent the womens’ hearts catapulting into their throats. Ahead of them on the path, they saw MacSorley leap up from the cover of the bushes, his arms raised and thrashing the air, his shaggy mane of hair whipping to and fro in his frenzy. One by one the rest of Struan’s men bounded out from under cover, unsheathing their swords and waving them overhead, spinning in a swirl of tartan, bending back their heads and shouting curses up the side of the mountain.

Deirdre gripped the pistol tightly between her clenched hands and gaped at the sight in total bewilderment. She was on the verge of screaming herself when Catherine suddenly laughed and clutched at her arm.

“Look! Down there!”

In the basin of the glen, emerging from between two domes of green- and brown-tinged rock, was a column of tartan-clad Highlanders; scores of them, hundreds of them, marching out of the fog and mist behind their chief, Cluny of MacPherson.

Struan fetched one of the horses and thundered down the slope to intercept the startled party of MacPhersons. A few hastily exchanged sentences and an outthrust hand sent fully half the armed contingent streaming eagerly up the side of the slope. Catherine and Deirdre, hugging each other with relief, waited until the surge of roaring Highlanders swept past them before they descended, weary but happy, to join the welcomed troop of rebels.

As exhausted as they were, there was no desire on anyone’s part to linger any longer in the glen than was necessary. A sharp, easterly wind had begun to gust into the mouth of the valley, bringing sprays of icy sleet and driving rain.

It brought something else as well: the low, distant rumble of cannonfire.

William, Duke of Cumberland, rode along the neatly formed lines of men, oblivious to the rain and wind at his back, his tricorn pulled well down over an ominous glower. His scarlet frock coat was edged in thick bands of gold, the lapels faced in dark royal blue. Even his saddle housing was scarlet, heavily ornamented in gold tassels that flipped and danced as the animal stalked imperiously past the formed battalions. Cumberland’s face below the brim of the tricorn was red and sullen, the eyes black and protruding as they inspected his army. Three months younger than Charles Stuart, he was decades older in experience, and no stranger to battlefields. His men respected and feared him, and there were few among them who doubted “Billy’s” pledge to personally shoot the first man he saw turn and run from the field today.

On the government side, there were twelve battalions of infantry formed into square blocks of unbroken red. Five batteries of artillery commanded the center and either flank, supported by eight companies of kilted militia from the glens of Argyle. In all, close to nine thousand government troops lined the gray and windswept moor below Culloden. They stood in units of military precision ten across and five deep, divided and squared into companies and platoons, each with its own flags and pennants fluttering forward in the wind. The men wore wide-skirted tunics and breeches of heavy scarlet wool, the coats cuffed and faced with the colors of their regiment, the breeches covered to mid-thigh with spatterdash gaiters of white or gray. Each man carried, as standard issue, a Brown Bess musket equipped with a bayonet of fluted steel sixteen inches long. Until the order was given to load and fire, the guns were held close to the body to shield the firing pins from the rain and sleet. Their heads, beneath the black beaver tricorns, were held upright by tight leather stocks that prevented them from looking in any direction but straight ahead.

What they saw, half a mile away across the rolling moor, was a writhing, turbulent sea of plaid and steel. What they felt, despite the fact they were well rested, well fed, and well drilled in the methods of fighting and withstanding a Highland charge, was pure, unadulterated terror. More than one man suffered an acute shortage of confidence and turned to glance at his comrades on either side, hoping he was not alone in suffering tremors and fits of cold sweat. The depth of their fear angered them, enraged them, for it made them feel helpless even before any fighting had begun. Those who had been at Prestonpans and Falkirk knew all too well that the Highlanders were not the normal breed of soldier who quaked and fell back in the face of volley after volley of precision fire. Instead, the Scots had shown not only their willingness but their eagerness to climb, fight, and crawl over their own dead to reach the line of arrogant redcoats and, once there, to inflict bloody, hellish slaughter with the greatest enthusiasm.

Drummers stood to the rear and flank of each battalion, their arms moving in a blur to beat courage into the spines of the waiting soldiers. Before each corps of drums was the standard-bearer, his square of embroidered silk snapping to and fro, colorfully emblazoned with the device of each battalion. There was a dragon for Howard’s, a lion for Barren’s, a white horse for Wolfe’s, a castle for Blakeney, a thistle for the Scots regiments. The latter, instead of the drag, roll, drag of the drums to encourage them, had two stout lines of pipers who were red-faced and sweating in their efforts to respond to the cacophony of wailed challenges railing at them from across the field.

Major Hamilton Garner, looking resplendent in his scarlet tunic and gold braid, rode before his assigned regiment of King’s Horse, prancing up and down the line to fix each man in turn with a stare, defying any of them to repeat their cowardly performances of the past. His nostrils flared eagerly at the acrid scent of the slow-burning fuses the nearby gunners held aloft, and his green eyes peered through the sheeting rain and haze at their target. The wind was driving straight into the faces of the Highlanders, adding yet another misery to their host of misfortunes. The stupid bastards had to be exhausted, Garner exulted, what with waiting on the field all the previous day, then attempting an abortive night march only to have to drag themselves back onto the field again today.

His smile broadened. “I hope you are with them, Cameron. I hope you have the wit and luck to remain out of cannon range, however, because I want the pleasure of killing you myself.”

Alexander Cameron turned his face to the side to avoid a gust of raw wind, cursing inwardly when he saw a dozen other men beside him doing the same thing. He was feeling the chill more than he cared to admit. Having barely snatched an hour of sleep before being wakened with the news that Cumberland was marching onto Drummossie Moor, he was irritable and his head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton wool. He was tired and hungry, and for the first time in many months, he cursed the absence of warm woolen breeches. The icy wind, it seemed, was determined to remind him he had spent the past fifteen years enjoying a more civilized and practical mode of battle dress.

The moor itself offered little protection from the elements. A sea of grass in the summer, in the fall and winter months it was a bleak wasteland with nothing but a few bent, skeletal trees to break the howling breath of the north wind. Visible on the fringe of the distant slope to the north was Duncan Forbes’s estate, Culloden, its parks and fields stretching from the firth to well beyond the moor. The estate supported three farms, the largest being Culwhiniac, where the enterprising owners had erected a stone enclosure eight hundred paces wide, one thousand in length. Alex was not comfortable about the prince using the wall to protect their right flank, knowing that it gave Cumberland’s gunners a range and position to sight upon. An even worse thought was that the English could send a regiment circling around to use the wall as cover while they fired into the backs of the advancing rebels.

Lord George Murray, bowing to Charles Stuart’s insistence upon leading the battle himself, had assumed command of the right wing, clans consisting of his Athol Brigade, the Camerons, The Stewarts of Appin, and Lord Lovat’s Frasers—about thirteen hundred men in all. The center was under the command of Lord John Drummond, who rode proudly before the Edinburgh Regiment—the only front line unit with no clan ties—the Chisholms, the Farqharsons, and Lady MacKintosh’s Clan Chattan. Colonel Anne was present on the field, dressed in a riding habit of tartan, a man’s blue wool bonnet on her head. She rode before her clan on her huge, gray gelding, tears of pride in her eyes as she returned the smile of her tall and brave Colonel MacGillivray.

On the left wing, grumbling because they had dispersed to Inverness following the night march and had returned in answer to the prince’s summons too late to assume their traditional place of honor on the right, were the MacDonalds—Glengarry, Keppoch, and Clanranald. They were under the command of the Duke of Perth and were, because of the lay of the land, formed on an angle away from Cumberland’s geometrically straight front lines, giving them almost three hundred extra yards of ground to cover when the order came to charge.

Each clan had its own piper, its own standards, flags, and proudly displayed shields and mottos. The moor throbbed with color, bright and vivid, even though the sky was gray and seemed to press down upon them like a sodden blanket. The clansmen were restless, impatient to begin. They shouted jeers and insults at the stolid red mass across the field, but there was no response to their baiting, no answer to their pipes aside from the steady staccato of battalion drums.

Lining the upper slopes and crowded along the road to Inverness were the townspeople and local farmers who had come to watch. Boys were playing truant from school to watch their fathers and older brothers whip the English in battle. Women gathered on the brae, chattering among themselves like excited magpies; even the beggars had come to watch the proceeds, hoping to loot the dead, whoever won or lost.

Great rousing cheers rose from all quarters whenever the prince rode by. Few noticed that beneath all the bravado, his face was pale, his palms clammy, and his stomach tied in knots. It had seemed like such a brave and bold idea to lead his men into battle, to prove once and for all that he was worthy of their trust and respect. Only now he wished he had Lord George’s axlike features by his side. Lord George could glare the enemy into shriveling submission with one cold stare, could spur the men into glorious acts of courage with one wave of his broadsword.

Charles drew his light saber and windmilled it over his head, scorning the thickening red wall of soldiers on the opposite side of the moor. He was gratified to hear the Highlanders’ voices swell behind him, and for a moment he forgot his apprehension as he enjoyed the sound of their approval.

One man, startled from an exhausted drowse, thought the roaring voices and the prince’s bright, waving saber was the long-awaited signal for the battle to commence. He was the one regular gunner Count Giovanni Fanducci had managed to find and rouse from the deathlike slumber most of his men had fallen into after the abortive night trek. They had dragged the heavy cannon back and forth through the marshes, expending almost superhuman effort to keep them from becoming mired in the knee-deep muck. Most of them had fallen asleep in the parks surrounding Culloden House and had not yet appeared on the field.

His feathers drooping over the rim of his tricorn, his satins flashing out from beneath the folds of a vast, multicollared greatcoat, Count Fanducci had called upon his alternative gunners—men and boys who had watched enough drills to have some inkling of how the monsters worked. He had led his flock from one gun to the next, showing the men how to shore up the wheels with heather to prevent slippage on the wet grass. They had watched as he ladled black powder into each gun, packed it into the breech with a wooden plunger, then fed the three-pound iron shot into the snout. A dribble of powder was measured into the touch hole and, while the makeshift crews stood nervously by, Fanducci fixed the aim of each cannon with a quadrant, pronounced the efforts
“bene
,” and moved off in a flurry of satin, wool, and Italian invectives to the next position.