The Blood of Roses (66 page)

Maura had lived within those impregnable walls for sixteen years. She knew every stone and rosebush, every twisting pathway through the gardens and along the rugged shoreline. She knew enough not to trust the early-evening shadows; mists that crept through the bordering forests looked like white-clad figures, a fallen tree resembled a crouched man. For several days she had felt as if the castle were being watched, as if invisible threats were closing in around them, and, as a result, she had doubled the sentries posted high atop the walls and kept the twin black oak gates closed and barred at all times. At her sister-in-law Jeannie Cameron’s suggestion, she had even put the castle smithy to work cleaning the rusted fittings that had rendered the heavy, iron portcullis inoperable for decades. Some of the other family members gave her odd looks, but she did not care. Achnacarry was her home and she would take every measure to protect it in Donald’s absence, regardless of how drastic those steps seemed.

“Can you make anything out?” she asked in a low voice, aware of the tense sentry who stood by her side at the ramparts. He had seen something too. Or sensed it. Even the quality of the air had altered slightly, no longer soft and melodic, but taut and secretive with hidden threats.

“Pass the alarm,” Maura decided. “Make certain everyone is—”

They both heard it then. The breeze had been against their backs, a current of air humming down the throat of the Great Glen and swirling south toward the mountains. Its whisper faded now and then, calming the trees, permitting a backwash of foreign sounds to drift up to the roof of the castle. One of those sounds was the thin skirl of a lone piper and the strained, valiantly boastful chords of the
piob’rachd
being played was that of the
Spaidsearchd:
the March of Lochiel.

“Dear God,” Maura whispered. “Dear God in heaven … it’s Donald. It’s
Donald!”

Whirling into a crush of her own velvet skirts, Maura flew along the catwalk to the east tower, barely pausing to adjust her eyes to the torchlit gloom as she ran down the spiral stone staircase. She flung herself around and around the twisting corkscrew, bypassing several landings as she descended into the heart of the castle. Bursting onto the corridor of the principal apartments, she did not waste the time to detour into the main parlor but shouted with enough exuberance to bring heads popping out of doorways all along the vaulted hallway.

Rose Cameron, nearing eighty but as spry and crisp in character as her thatch of snow-white hair, awoke from her nap with a startled curse. Jeannie Cameron, Dr. Archibald’s wife, veered toward the door, her hand balancing a full glass of freshly poured
uisque bough.

“What the bluidy hell,” she muttered. “Have the walls come bluidy tumblin’ doon, then?”

“What is it?” Rose demanded, struggling up from her chair. “I thought I haird someone scream.”

“Only Maura,” Jeannie said dryly. “Mayhap she’s seen a wee ghostie in the tower room.”

“Aye, I’ve told her nae tae go wanderin’ roun up there in the cold air.” Rose nodded sagely. “Nae wi’ her lungs filled and rattlin’ like coins in a purse. She’ll catch the rot again, mark ma words.”

“Whisht, Rose!” Jeannie frowned and held up a leathery, work-worn hand. “What’s that? Sounds like as if the whole blessit castle’s gone daft.”

Rose hobbled to the doorway, cursing the further need to exercise muscles that had been quite content to sleep. She cocked an ear into the hallway for a moment, and when she straightened, she thumped Jeannie’s arm with enough force to send the preciously guarded contents of the glass leaping halfway across the carpet.

“Christ, but! Ye must be the one wha’s daft, hen. Daft or deef!” she declared, launching herself out into the hall. “They’re hame! It’s the men come hame!”

Jeannie stared after her for two full seconds until, with a whoop of excitement, she sent the glass smashing after the whisky and began running nimbly down the corridor.

As Alexander walked through the polished black-oak gates, the familiarity of the sights and smells of the outer courtyard brought a rush of hot tears into his eyes. He was not alone in his reaction. The weary, filth-encrusted men who stumbled through the gates after him all stood stock-still for several moments, swaying on unsteady limbs as if they could not believe they had come to the end of their journey. Some still had several miles to go to reach their farms and
clachans
, but to them Achnacarry represented home and sanctuary. Stoically silent throughout the furtive trek along the shores of Loch Ness and Loch Oich, many of them fell onto their knees and wept openly. The piper, who had played Lochiel’s march despite the pain of a wounded leg and a torn eye, sobbed a final breath into the chanter and let it fall, the remaining air escaping in a low, tuneless wail.

Maura was first to greet them at the gates. Aglow with relief and happiness, her wide, soft eyes searched the ragged faces and finally came to rest on the first of many, many stretched tartan litters. Donald’s head was bare, his hair flown this way and that as his head lolled with the motion of the stretcher-bearers. Maura’s smile faded, her face blanched, and her hands crushed against her breast as she moved haltingly forward.

Braced for the worst, her relief was palpable when she saw that he still breathed, that he was only asleep. She touched a hand to his cheek, her eyes skimming down to where the thick, bloodstained bandages encased his feet and ankles.

“He’s all right,” Alex said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “He’s been unconscious for the past mile or so. We should have stopped to rest, but—”

Maura looked up at Alexander Cameron and felt a deeper tearing in her heart. His tartan was crusted with blood, pierced by bayonet, sword, and musket shot. His left arm was bound in foul-smelling rags, the fingers protruding stiff and blue with cold. There was a week’s growth of beard on his cheeks and circles so deep and black under his eyes it looked as if he hadn’t slept in a month. His teeth were clenched tightly together in a futile attempt to control the tremors that wracked his body, but a blind man could see he was flushed and burning with fever.

“We must get you inside where it’s warm,” Maura said, taking command at once. “We must get you all inside where there is hot food and proper medicines.”

“Catherine?” Alex asked, shuddering as yet another racking bout of nausea threatened to topple him. He fought it, conquered it, but when he opened his dark eyes again, Maura obviously had not heard him and had turned her attention to the flock of servants who were suddenly clamoring to be of help. He shook off a concerned pair of hands and forced himself to place one foot before the other, determined to walk into the castle under his own power. Catherine was there, waiting. Catherine would take the pain away. Catherine would hold him and soothe the heartache; she would understand and share the sense of overwhelming loss he felt. She was his life, his sanity. God … how he needed her.

Achnacarry, May 1746
25

A
lex paced most of the morning away in a deep, black rage. Three weeks! He had been laid up with fever and illness for three weeks and as yet had heard no word of Catherine or Deirdre or the fate of the small party he had dispatched to Achnacarry in Struan MacSorley’s care. At first, he had not believed his ears when Maura told him his wife had never arrived. The shock had pushed him over the edge, and he had tried to run back out the gates of the castle—intending what? To run all the way back to Inverness to look for her? At the time, it had seemed the only possible thing to do.

The combined effects of his wounds, the raging fever, and the arms of four burly clansmen had finally brought him crashing to the ground. He had lain unconscious for a full week afterward, and then had been so pitifully weak he could barely manage to relieve himself without the indignity of helping hands or soiled bedsheets. Maura had placed him in the chamber adjacent to Donald’s so she would have easy access to both brothers. Archibald—miraculously unscathed even though he had been in the thickest of fighting—divided his time among Donald, Alex, and the scores of wounded men who passed through Achnacarry’s gates on their way home.

When Maura was not with her husband or her brother, she was with Jeannie and Rose in the kitchens baking bread and ensuring there was a steady supply of hot food on hand at all times. The men who came to Achnacarry were starving, and not one was turned away without clean, warm clothes, full bellies, and stout words of encouragement from Lochiel. They had fought well. They had worn the Cameron badge of oak proudly and upheld the honor of the clan despite the defeat of the army at Culloden. The prince was safe. Friends had taken him high into the mountains and would guard him until a ship could carry him away to France. He could ask nothing more of his loyal Scots.

When Alex was strong enough to walk ten paces without bringing the tapestries and wall hangings he was clenching down around his head, he informed Donald he was going back to find Catherine. He swore he had seen Struan MacSorley appear on the field at Culloden and that Struan had saved him from certain death at the hands of the dragoons. Struan had not been seen since. No one knew or had seen anything of the giant Scot either before or after the battle.

“I know MacSorley,” Alex said. “He wouldn’t have left Catherine anywhere that was unfamiliar or unprotected. He wouldn’t have returned to the battle unless he knew she was safe—knew they were all safe.”

“If he was there at all, brither,” Lochiel said quietly.

“What is that supposed to mean? You think I imagined him there on the battlefield?”

“Men have imagined stranger things.”

“Not this time,” Alex insisted quietly. “And if Struan was with me there, it can only mean Catherine and the others are somewhere between here and Inverness.”

Lochiel knew it would do no good to argue with Alexander. Undoubtedly he would do the same thing if it were Maura out there somewhere, and all the reasoning, rationalizing, and cautioning in the world would not stop him from going after her.

“Pray God they did not return to Moy Hall,” he said aloud, and instantly regretted his slip. Not only had the MacKintosh estate been among the first visited and searched by Cumberland’s dragoons, but they’d had word that Lady Anne had been arrested and taken to prison in Inverness. Moy Hall had been ransacked, and any servants who had been foolish enough to stay behind had either been shot or thrown into jail with their mistress. Both Lochiel and Alex had admired Colonel Anne’s courage, and to think of her behind bars in some fetid stone cell was an affront to every Scot, whether he be Jacobite or Hanover.

So many names, so many stories of horror and atrocities—from the nine-year-old lad and his father who were run down by dragoons and slain on the field they were plowing, to the woman who had given shelter to several wounded clansmen, only to have the government soldiers come and drag them into the yard where they were shot before her eyes. Two thousand already dead, more killed every day as Cumberland sent companies of soldiers into the glens and villages to search out anyone still boasting loyalty to King James. The duke had declared the lands, holdings, and titles of the Jacobite leaders forfeit, meaning that looting, raping, and theft had been sanctioned by the victorious general. He was sending out companies of soldiers to clear the land systematically, to search for rebels and confiscate any property or livestock of value to the crown. It would only be a matter of time before they came to Achnacarry.

“I wish there was something I could do tae help, Alex,” Lochiel said, staring glumly at the bulky bandages around his legs. Archibald had worked day and night to fit the splintered bones together and keep the ravaged flesh from becoming poisoned with gangrene. It would be weeks before Donald would be able to walk again—if ever.

“You’ll have enough to do here, if the soldiers come.”

“Aye.
When
they come, but. We’re no’ that remote a few good Campbell bloodhounds couldna point the way.”

“Will you fight?”

Lochiel lay back against the pillows. He had lived at Achnacarry all his life, and it had been his and Maura’s home for sixteen years. His brother Archibald and his family—uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews—and nearly a hundred men and women lived and worked within the stone walls. It was their home too.

“I had a dream the ither night,” Donald said, his blue eyes filming over with tears. “I dreamed I were walkin’ in the garden, out tae where Maura was waitin’ f’ae me in the gazebo. All the beds O’ roses she planted over the years … they looked different somehow. Changed. It wisna till I bent over tae pick some that I saw what was wrong. They were all red. No’ a yellow or pink or white one among the lot. They were red, Alex. Red wi’ blood. An’ where I picked it, the stem were bleedin’. The blood O’ the roses fell on ma hands an’ I couldna rub it off. I dinna think it will ever come off, whether we fight again or na.”

His eyes lowered to hide his tears, and Alex turned slowly away from the bed. Back in his own room again, he pulled a leather knapsack out of the wardrobe and threw it onto the bed.