The Chieftain (26 page)

Hector turned sharply and lifted Isobel, and then slipped soft-footed into the yard, sliding as soon as he could into the shadows at its edge. The groom was talking loudly now, with extravagant gestures, and the soldier was laughing appreciatively. Hector reached the archway and darted beneath it.

Outside, a camp fire glowed, and the voices of the soldiers reached them on the damp still air. Hector turned from it to skirt the side of the stable buildings and the house beyond, and then broke into a run. The friendly blackness of the night swallowed them up.

They did not rest until they knew they had left house and soldiers far behind them.

Three days later Hector and Isobel came at evening to a wide shining sea loch set in a
tumbled landscape of rock and mountain. The last lingering fires of sunset touched the sea with rose, and the peaks about it, and loitered on the tall masts and graceful lines of the two ships rocking at anchor on the still waters of the loch. On the shore a knot of men waited, black against the white sand. Beside them a small rowing boat was drawn up, and they were clearly making ready to use it.

Hector paused, his arm about Isobel, gazing at the scene. They had come here by slow stages, resting often so that Isobel could harbour her small strength. Just now they had identified themselves to the Highlanders on watch in the surrounding hills and been allowed to pass. Their journey was nearly over.

Hector slid his arm down to take Isobel’s hand in his and lead her to the shore.

The waiting fugitives, several of them leaders of the fated rebel army, welcomed them warmly. After a bewildering few moments—for she had grown unused to company—Isobel found herself standing before a tall young man wearing a motley assortment of tartan clothes, with light auburn hair roughly tied back, and an unkempt beard. Brown eyes met her
gaze and he smiled: it was a smile of considerable charm.

‘You are welcome, Mrs MacLean,’ he said in heavily-accented English. But the accent, she knew, was not Highland, nor even Scots.

And then, with alarm and confusion, she knew who he was, and sank, blushing furiously, into a deep curtsey. She knelt now before the man who above all must carry the burden of guilt for the suffering land he was leaving: Charles Edward Stewart, the Young Pretender, his long flight ended at last.

Late in the night Isobel stirred and woke from a brief but restful sleep. She lay listening to the sounds of wind and waves, the creak of the ship’s timbers, revelling in the unaccustomed comfort of the bunk on which she lay.
L’Heureux
they called this ship, Hector had told her, ‘the Fortunate One’. It could not be better named, she thought, though she knew that for Hector this moment of parting must be hard indeed.

He had left her soon after they came on board, so that she could rest while he went to talk to the other fugitives, to grieve with them for the cause that was
lost and for the ruin that had come upon their people because of it. And also, she knew, to stand on the deck and gaze his last on the land he loved and might never see again.

Distantly she heard the sailors calling orders to each other in French. Another language to learn, another strange land to grow to understand at the journey’s end—But this time she would not be alone.

Hector came to her at last, as the first dawn light crept into the cabin. For a moment she scarcely recognised him, for he had shaved off his beard. And she saw that the young man from the orchard had gone for ever. The man who came now to kneel at her side and draw her into his arms was older and leaner, darkly tanned, with new lines etched about his mouth, and a new bitter knowledge deep in his eyes.

And he loved her.

She reached out and slid her arms about his neck, and made room for him to lie at her side, raising her mouth to meet his kiss, firm and warm and tender. The ship rolled gently through the morning mist, leaving behind the mountains and lochs and glens, and the treeless windswept
islands. Somewhere, hundreds of miles away, the coast of France waited, silent beneath the same veiled sky, to welcome the fugitives to safety and a new life.

A long road lay ahead of them, with its share of hardship and sadness and pain, but in Hector’s arms Isobel MacLean was smiling and unafraid. For she had come home at last.