White Rose Rebel (21 page)

Going to bed with Elizabeth was like being a girl again. They undressed to their shifts, quickly because of the cold, but joking and laughing. It was good to snuggle into the shared warmth of another body. As soon as the candle was snuffed, her sister only wanted to talk about men, men as lovers not warriors.

‘Are you fucking MacGillivray again?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, come on, Anne. You’ve been away for months. How do you manage?’

‘We’ve been busy.’

‘Is there someone else?’

‘No.’

‘
Och
, tell me. You must be fucking with somebody.’

‘Nobody, honest.’

‘I am.’

‘Really? Who’s this?’

‘You won’t laugh?’

‘Of course not. If some man is mounting my baby sister, I want to know who it is.’

‘It’s the other way round. I took his belt off in the woods one day and, well, he looked quite interesting without his plaid. So I made him lie down and took him.’

‘Just as it should be,’ Anne giggled.

‘You’re laughing.’

‘I’m not. Who is he?’

‘You’ll laugh.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Dauvit.’

‘Dauvit, the diviner?’ Anne’s voice rose.

‘Isd!’
Elizabeth hushed her. ‘Yes.’

Anne started to chuckle, then she laughed. She writhed in the bed, turned over, beat the bolster with her fists. Elizabeth couldn’t help but join in.

‘Dauvit,’ Anne yelped. ‘Dauvit, the diviner.’

‘You said you wouldn’t laugh,’ Elizabeth giggled. ‘Mother will be through in a minute.’

‘She wouldn’t find it funny.’ Anne hollered more. ‘He’s beneath you.’ She buried her face in the pillows, squealing.

‘He’s good-looking,’ Elizabeth protested.

‘He is,’ Anne chuckled. ‘He’s also slow.’

‘Well, he’s only for practice,’ Elizabeth defended herself. ‘And slow is fine. He does everything I tell him to and he’s quite good at it.’

‘I’ll say he is,’ Anne hooted again, ‘and maybe not so slow.’ She bit the bolster this time to control herself. ‘Nearly every woman in the clan has had him, at least once.’

‘Have they?’

Anne nodded. ‘There’s something about the way he stands, just watching, and his hands being so sensitive. Most women want to get the plaid off him, especially for a first time.’

‘Did you?’

‘Not saying.’ Anne put her head under the bolster, snorting. Her body heaved. She squealed, laughing. The bed shook.

Elizabeth started to giggle too, shrieking and holding her stomach.

Sharp knocking rattled the bedroom door.

‘Are you two wasting candles in there?’ Lady Farquharson’s muffled voice demanded from behind it.

The two young women only laughed the harder.

‘Nothing ails me but the wanting of you,’ the writing on the white page read. It was held under the nose of a nervous aide-de-camp who read it out.

‘Romantic fool,’ Hawley snorted. He threw the letter down on to the pile spilling from the postbag on the table. Next to it lay the Jacobite dispatches, opened and read. A whip cracked, rhythmically, into flesh. The cat-o’-nine-tails had cord thongs. This one had wire barbs added to the tips. With each stroke came a yelp of pain followed by a low moan. ‘But this –’ Hawley picked up a letter that interested him, the seal broken. It was addressed to Captain Aeneas M
^c
Intosh, Fort George, Inverness.

In the bleak stone cell of Inverness jail, Ewan was bent forward, head hanging down, stripped naked and strapped between two wooden posts. His body jerked as the cat cut again into his bleeding back. The cries and groans stopped. Hawley stalked over to the limp prisoner, Anne’s letter dangling in his left hand as if it was a bad smell. He could not read it himself. The aide who read it to him was now nursing a sore head from the clip with Hawley’s pistol he’d received for vocalizing the unhelpful contents. It gave little detail, only that she would be back soon and hoped to talk.

Hawley waved the whip to stop, gripped Ewan by the hair and jerked his drooping head back. He was unconscious. The jailer threw a cup of water in his face. Hawley waited. The post-rider had been captured by a detail out from Stirling castle. The idiots there had kept him several days while they read the dispatches, worried for their own sorry necks, before they had sent their captive on, under guard.

Ewan’s eyes flickered open, dull with pain. Hawley bent down close to the side of his head; his thin snake-lips brushed the tormented cottar’s ear.

‘The Jacobite whore,’ he hissed. ‘Where is she?’

Ewan’s mouth moved. No sound emerged. Hawley bent closer.

‘Say it again, man.’

‘Pòg,’
Ewan muttered, coughed,
‘mo thòn.’

‘In English!’ Hawley shook the cottar by the hair.

‘Go,’ Ewan gasped.

‘Yes,’ he encouraged. ‘Go, go where?’

‘To hell.’

Hawley let go the man’s hair. The jailer raised the whip. Hawley stayed his hand.

‘Rub some salt in his back,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to kill him, not yet. He’ll talk. It’s just a matter of time.’

Anne held out a small silver box to Lady Farquharson.

‘A present,’ she said. ‘The ladies in Edinburgh use it all the time.’

Lady Farquharson flipped the lid and stared at the brown powder.

‘
Ciod e?
What is it, gunpowder?’

‘Snuff. You take a pinch –’ she showed her ‘– then you sniff it up your nose.’

‘Really?’ Her stepmother was not convinced. Anne had brushed it back into the box, not put it in her own nose.

‘Go on,’ Anne urged. ‘Try it.’

Lady Farquharson took a pinch, sprinkled it into the V-shaped depression on her thumb as Anne had demonstrated, and sniffed.

‘Oh,’ Anne reached out and snapped the box shut, ‘and you’ll need a handkerchief.’

‘What for?’ Lady Farquharson sneezed.

‘That’s what for,’ Anne said.

Lady Farquharson sneezed again, and again. Her eyes streamed.

‘They do this for pleasure?’ she asked.

‘They do. You’ll see in a minute.’ They were outside at the door of Invercauld, Anne’s horse saddled and waiting. She’d sent her
remaining guard on ahead and had dallied long enough. It was early, first light, but in winter the Lairig Ghru was impassable so she must take the longer route around the mountains. She turned to her sister.

‘I have to go.’

‘Let me come with you, at least to Moy,’ Elizabeth begged.

‘Not this time.’ She gave her a hug. ‘Keep practising with Dauvit,’ she whispered, grinning, in her sister’s ear. ‘You’ll learn a lot.’ Then she took her leave of James, smiled at her stepmother, now staggering about a little, still sneezing, mounted Pibroch and rode off.

‘Well, my goodness,’ Lady Farquharson kept repeating, clutching her forehead. ‘My goodness me.’

Four hundred miles away, MacGillivray strode into the war council with Lochiel. They were in Derby, a few days from London, and should have been celebrating. The march down, thanks to George Murray’s skill in outmanoeuvring General Wade’s army, had been uneventful. Their spies reported London was in uproar, militias that would be no match for armed Highlanders were being raised. King George had his personal belongings packed on a Thames barge, ready to escape. They
should
have been celebrating, yet the faces round the council were tense. Runes lay scattered across the map on the table top. The Prince almost wept.

‘You heard that man,’ Balmerino thundered. ‘Cumberland has his veterans back from the continent. Ten thousand seasoned troops, advancing on us as we speak.’

‘The informer is a spy,’ the Prince said, ‘a government agent. He lies.’

‘Somebody lies,’ Margaret Johnstone, the Lady Ogilvie, spoke quietly but her voice carried more approbation for it. ‘What happened to the promises of English support?’

‘Only a handful at Preston,’ MacGillivray backed her up, ‘two hundred in Manchester.’ The people of England had responded in various ways, fearful, curious or friendly, but they had not joined the march.

‘Pitiful,’ David Ogilvie agreed.

‘We don’t fight England’s battles.’ Lochiel thumped the table with his fist.

‘If indeed they have one, except against us,’ Kilmarnock added.

‘
Mon dieu
, the good people of England will not fight against their true Prince.’ The Prince slapped his forehead.

‘They don’t fight for you, either,’ Jenny Cameron pointed out.

‘The French army’s after assembling at Dunkirk.’ O’sullivan came to the rescue. ‘Ready to embark, so it is.’

‘Show me,’ George Murray asked.

‘What?’

‘The letters from the French.’

‘Ah, well –’ O’sullivan was caught out ‘– I wasn’t thinking to bring them.’

‘Sir John?’ Lord George turned to the Prince’s secretary.

‘We only have earlier communications,’ the dapper man stared down at his feet. ‘The confirmation hasn’t come yet.’

MacGillivray leant forwards.

‘Show me the promises from England’s Jacobites,’ he said.

Sir John continued to stare at the floor. Greta Fergusson, his wife, put an arm round him. A feather fluttered from her outfit to the floor.

‘There are none,’ she said.

George Murray stared at the Prince.

‘You deluded us.’

‘You would not have come else,’ the Prince declared. ‘Yet now we can take London.
Fait accompli.
Tomorrow, it will be ours!’

‘No English support,’ Balmerino growled, ‘and nothing from King Louis but empty words.’

‘The French army is coming,’ the Prince shrieked. ‘Trust me.’

‘We trusted you about the English support,’ MacGillivray pointed out.

‘Louis will not let me down,’ the Prince waved his hand in panic at the table. ‘The runes never lie!’

Lochiel snatched up the runes and ground them in his fist.

‘George, George.’ The Prince grabbed Lord George by his coat. ‘We can take London, you know we can. Tell them.’

‘We’re going home,’ George Murray said. ‘We’ll wait there for the French to come. Those for?’

Every hand rose except from Prince Charles and O’sullivan. Lochiel blew the dust out of his palm across the map. In a body, the Scottish commanders left the room. The Prince threw his chair across it.

‘J’ai promis mon père,’
he shouted. ‘You are fools, fools! I will never, never consult with you again!’

With every stride, Pibroch carried Anne over the route her wedding party had taken. Then it had been a sedate trot, with an overnight stop, a slow, celebratory advance through lush, green countryside. Now it was a brisk canter, the horse’s hooves drumming on road, splashing through fords, thudding across open land, past forests of naked trees. Twice they stopped to rest, drink water and walk for a bit. It was cold, but winter would not grip till the year turned.

The December light was already failing when they arrived at Moy. Anne’s trepidation returned. She was glad of the dark here. It wrapped around like a comforter, blotting out sights she couldn’t bear to see: the tree she’d hidden in by the loch; the space where the platform was for her wedding; the bedroom window behind which she had first known her husband, that she had leant out of, afraid that Aeneas and MacGillivray were fighting to the death.

When Will, the stable-boy, ran to take her horse, he was wordless with surprise at seeing her. Inside, the Dowager sat beside the fire reading her
Scots Magazine
, attempting to look unperturbed, though she must have heard the horse arrive. When it was Anne who entered the hall, she threw the publication aside.

‘Anne!’ she exclaimed with relief. ‘I thought, when I heard the one horse, it would be Aeneas.’

‘And that worried you?’

‘After your troops arrived, yes. But we had words last time he came, and he stays at the fort now.’ She took hold of Anne’s hands.
‘All that can wait. It’s so good to see you.’ She called Jessie in and asked the excited girl to fetch ale.

‘Not ale,’ Anne said. ‘I’ve got something better.’ She put the small box she’d carried in with her on the table and opened the lid. ‘Tea.’

‘I’ve heard of tea,’ the Dowager said, frowning at the black dry flakes in the tin. ‘
Ciod e?
Is it food?’

‘Or seasoning?’ Jessie put a bit on her tongue, then spat it out. ‘It’s got no taste.’

‘You make it into a drink,’ Anne said. ‘The Edinburgh ladies have it for their four hours now instead of ale.’

‘They drink for four hours?’ The Dowager was impressed.

‘From four o’clock till eight, when they socialize in their parlours, before dining. Their ministers preach against tea-drinking to make them go back to ale, but they won’t. I thought, if it annoys that dour kirk, it must be a fine drink.’

The three women peered at the tea leaves. Anne, having only a vague idea of how it was prepared, gave Jessie instructions. The tea duly arrived, in a steaming kettle, with three tankards, a dish of sugar and a jug of cream.

‘I arranged for a teaset to be sent,’ Anne said, ‘but this will do for now.’

Jessie was not convinced. She set down a flagon of ale.

‘I brought this too,’ she said. ‘In case.’

The tea was not a great success. The taste was pleasant enough, though bland, but the black leaves floating in it stuck in their mouths and put them off. They resorted to ale.

‘Now that we are as grand as ladies in Edinburgh,’ the Dowager said, spitting out yet another tea leaf, ‘you must tell us all about your adventure.’

Jessie brought steaming plates of minced collops and mealy potatoes through to the fireside. Knowing there was a story in the offing, Will came in from the stable to join them. With Anne and the Dowager settled in the big chairs, him on the hearth and Jessie on the footstool, it began. She told them about meeting the Prince and, since they’d yet to see him, was urged for detail. What did he
wear, what colour were his eyes, hair, how tall was he, was he as good-looking as everyone said? Similar detail was asked of the arrival in Perth, the capture of Edinburgh, Prestonpans, the crossing of the border. It was a long story, almost four months of adventure, a story they would retell, that would be passed around the clan, a story for the long cold winter nights.