White Rose Rebel (36 page)

‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’ the man said, then ran on into Culloden House. MacGillivray was on his feet, calling his men awake. The pipes and drums began sounding the call to arms. It was eleven o’clock.

In a cottage at the edge of the moor, MacBean’s wife kneaded bread. Her husband hovered at her back, belting on his sheathed sword. When she’d had enough of his dodging about, she spun round, grabbed him by the plaid and planked a warm, wet kiss on his mouth.

‘Now, get on. Go if you must,’ she grumbled, turning back to the dough so she wouldn’t see the love in his watery eyes. Old fool. ‘Give me peace to my baking.’ The door opened behind her, letting wind and rain blow into the warmth. ‘You’ll be wanting fed –’ the door shut behind him ‘– when you get back.’

At breakfast, Anne looked up from her porridge and listened. It wasn’t weather for clear sound, everything muffled by the curtain of driving sleet. She strained to hear – drums, pipes, she was sure, here then gone. They must be gathering, leaving Inverness. Her decision to go was timely. MacGillivray would send for her soon. Elizabeth came in, dressed but half-slept by the look of her. Anne wished she could speak to her sister about last night, and about her ride to Inverness that stormy night in February, but it was better not, better left to Elizabeth to confess.

‘Are you looking forward to going home?’ she asked instead.

‘I am now,’ Elizabeth said, miserably, ‘with you gone.’

Anne poured tea, but her sister wrinkled her nose, preferring ale with her porridge. When Jessie brought it in, thick, steaming hot, she told Anne that she’d found an old man – a crofter – and a young lad to ride the cart to Dunmaglas and then escort Elizabeth on to Invercauld.

‘They’ll be along shortly,’ Jessie said. In Highland time, that could mean several hours.

‘Did you hear the pipes and drums?’ Anne asked. ‘My ears were maybe playing tricks.’

‘Aye, started a half-hour ago,’ Jessie said. ‘Stopped now. They’re gathering on the moor. That’s where Will went.’

So she was right enough, gathering. They wouldn’t fight on Drumossie, unless they wanted to lose. George would bring them over the Nairn, to this side of the water, where the ground was dry, hilly and rough. If she waited till they crossed, she wouldn’t have so far to ride, a half-hour trot instead of twice that. But she wanted away, wanted to be with them. The army was more her home now than here. She went out and hitched the wagon, brought it to the door. When Elizabeth had eaten, they started to bring down the kists and boxes from upstairs. Jessie was excused heavy lifting, packing food for the journey instead.

Up on Drumossie, driving sleet blew into the faces of the warriors. Visibility was poor. They’d been lined and blocked in battle formation for an hour or more, tired, hungry and growing chilled because of that. Among the tufts of rough moorland grass, crusts of icy white collected.

‘Did you send for Anne?’ Donald Fraser, on MacGillivray’s left, asked.

‘I did,’ MacGillivray answered, face grim. ‘Maybe Aeneas keeps her back.’

‘If she’s trying to unchain him, he will,’ Fraser laughed. ‘For I doubt he’ll be out of that cellar till me or Lachlan get back.’

‘You have him chained?’

‘Last thing I did before coming up here,’ Fraser said. ‘He’s so far
the wrong side of Anne now, I doubt there’s any right side to be found any more.’

MacGillivray was puzzled. However Anne treated her husband was for her to decide. He couldn’t guess what Aeneas might have done to merit chains. A smile flitted across his face. Disagreeing with Anne was probably enough. But it was strange, all the same. Not quite the situation described by Elizabeth. For the first time he wondered about the note he’d sent. Anne would not have ignored it. Yet it had been delivered; Elizabeth knew where to come.

‘I think her sister has my note,’ he told Fraser. ‘I doubt Anne ever saw it.’ She wouldn’t abandon them or let him down.

He squinted against the sleet, across the field. Lord George and his Atholl men were lined up on the right, leaving the Prince with O’sullivan to command from the rear. George had let loyalty to their cause win the day, against his judgement. They were going to fight. It was as well Anne didn’t come. This would be a hard-won victory, if they could do it. Better she found out afterwards. It would be a bloody field to watch.

Despite the weather, there were watchers. Crowds of folk from Inverness stood a good way off. A bunch of older boys who should have been in school settled on a ridge. The warriors’ womenfolk and children were well behind the lines, out of harm’s way on this flat ground, apart from a group of commanders’ wives led by Margaret and Greta, who stayed near the Prince. Will M
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Intosh pushed up between MacGillivray and Fraser.

‘Can I stand with Donald?’ the stable-boy asked, looking strangely at odds with the weapons belted at his side.

‘No, you can’t,’ MacGillivray said. ‘You have to earn your place at the front.’ MacBean was on his right. Age and experience went first into battle, to inspire the young behind to bravery and courage. ‘Get on back,’ he told Will, ‘behind Lachlan, where you were put.’ As the boy dodged off, MacGillivray walked along Clan Chattan’s lines, from the M
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Intoshes to the Farquharsons. Commander-in-chief of Clan Chattan, he had charge of both, and would have a word with their captains, Anne’s brother and cousin, before the
enemy arrived. While he was talking with James and Francis, they heard the drums. Peering forward into the sleet and rain, MacGillivray saw the first flash of red coats in the distance.

In her room, Anne laid out her riding habit, the blue velvet trimmed with tartan that she’d worn to raise the clan the first time she’d ridden away from Aeneas. She would change when everything was loaded up. It seemed right to wear it the last time she’d ride away from him. She pinned a fresh white cockade to her blue bonnet, ready to pull on. There would be no coming back, not again. Behind her, their marriage bed was made up with clean linen sheets and fresh covers. Not even the scent of her would linger. Aeneas would have it to himself as soon as she was gone. He could move his own clothes back from the boxroom. Jessie had Donald’s tools. They could work it out between them or wait till the blacksmith returned.

The old crofter and the boy had arrived to load the cart. The last things were taken down from her bedroom. Everything to be loaded was downstairs. Anne checked the room, opening cupboards and drawers, wanting to leave no trace behind. In the bottom of the wardrobe, only the box with Aeneas’s private documents remained. She had forgotten their marriage lines, as much hers as his. She lifted the box on to the dressing table and opened it. The papers on top were new. Curious, she opened them and read.

Aeneas stood up, chains rattling, when the cellar door opened at the top of the steps. Feet came down, Anne’s feet, white skirts skimming the stairs. Now he could tell her, ask forgiveness, make his peace.

‘Anne,’ he said, as soon as he could see her face, ‘thank God. Jessie said you were leaving. I thought you might go without letting me speak.’

‘I haven’t come to let you speak,’ she snapped. She was furious. ‘I’ve come to tell you what I think of you.’ In her hand she had papers, the debt waiver with the deeds of Moy Hall and their clan grounds. She shook with rage as she held it out. ‘You sold us out!
You sold our cause, sold out your clan, and you sold out our marriage, for this! For stone walls and a bit of ground! Now I know why you went to the Watch, why you stood against us for this government!’

‘I didn’t ask for that, or expect it.’

‘It has your name on it! It makes you owner of Moy, which you never were and cannot be. It is the clan’s land!’

‘Woman, will you ever let me speak!’ The anger he thought would not be roused by her again rushed through him. ‘It has my name on it because that’s how they work. You know that! Ownership is what you fight against.’

‘Because they create it to control us!’

‘I know. Forbes held the loss of Moy over my head. But he drew that up, after Prestonpans, when he thought we were defeated. He gave it to let me go!’

‘What, he gives a gift of what is not his to give nor yours to take!’ She was scathing. ‘And, having got it, did you go home to your clan, to your wife? I think not!’

Aeneas glowered at her.

‘My wife was in the arms of another man.’

‘Not then. Not till I thought you hanged Ewan. Not till after Falkirk.’ She moved closer to him. ‘But I’m going to him now. You can stick this in your sporran.’ She threw the papers at his feet. ‘See if it can keep your sex roused from now on!’

There was a crack of thunder, a loud boom. Both Aeneas and Anne looked up at the small window high above them. The boom became a volley of cannon fire, distant but unmistakable. Elizabeth appeared at the top of the stairs.

‘Anne, do you hear?’ she shouted, coming down a few steps till she could see her sister, her face fearful.

‘That’s up on the moor.’ Aeneas turned back to Anne.

‘It can’t be.’ She looked from him to Elizabeth. ‘MacGillivray would’ve sent for me.’

Elizabeth was in tears, slumping down on to the stair.

‘He did, yesterday morning,’ she cried. ‘I didn’t mean any harm. He said you wouldn’t want them to fight there.’

Anne ran up to her. The noise of the big guns, almost seven miles away, was like rolling thunder.

‘You let him think I wouldn’t come?’

‘Anne, get me out of here.’ Aeneas pulled against his chains. ‘I’ll come with you!’

‘It’s too late for that!’ she screamed at him. She dragged Elizabeth to her feet, up the last few stairs and out of the cellar. The door slammed shut and locked.

Thick smoke surrounded MacGillivray, standing at the front of his men, while round-shot from government cannon whistled overhead and grenades from the Coehorn mortars exploded among the Jacobite lines. Further back the ranks, horses squealed, men cried out as the missiles tore into their targets.

‘Close up, close up,’ he heard the captains in the rear yell to their troops to fill the gaps left by the onslaught. Ten minutes of this they had stood, waiting the command to charge. Lord George had left his post, gone back to seek the order to attack from the Prince. Grim-faced, MacGillivray waited, flinching as a low ball tore into his own line, not turning to see who had been taken down, just hearing the thud, the sickening thump of bursting flesh and cracking bone. Whoever it was, dead already, did not cry out.

‘Close up, close up,’ Donald Fraser yelled behind him.

Anne galloped Pibroch past the end of Loch Moy and on to the hills, urging the horse faster than she dared. Even at the gallop, Drumossie was twenty minutes away. However well she navigated the slopes and streams, there was hill and bog to cross, the Nairn to ford. All would slow her down. The booming cannon grew louder with every stride, the thump and crack of mortars. Would she hear the war cries over the barrage, the answering musket-fire? If MacGillivray was already away, cutting into the enemy, she couldn’t stop them, could only hope to make her presence known, to let them see she hadn’t abandoned them to fight while she sat safe at home. ‘Don’t go,’ she prayed, ‘not yet.’ Again, she urged the white horse on to greater effort.

‘We have to take down the wall on our right,’ Lord George shouted at O’sullivan. ‘We’re being outflanked behind it!’

O’sullivan kept his eyes front, ignored him. Lord George swung round to the Prince.

‘
Pour la pitié
, will you order the charge,’ he urged, ‘or will we just die out there?’

The Prince turned on his horse, looked at him, indecision in his eyes.

‘The enemy should advance first,’ he said.

‘And if they don’t?’ Lord George was chilled by the look of the man. The Prince had no idea how to command, despite assuming it. ‘Highlanders charge,’ he prompted again, stating the obvious. ‘That’s their strength.’

The government cannon boomed. A ball thudded into Lord Elcho’s horse regiment, dangerously close to the Prince. O’sullivan leant over to speak in his ear.

‘Let the guns do their work,’ he said. ‘Then they’ll advance.’

‘Ours are near silent,’ Lord George raged. ‘The only work is done by theirs!’

‘We can wait,’ the Prince assured him.
‘Noblesse oblige.’
But he looked to O’sullivan for agreement. The adjutant nodded and indicated the command party should retire further back, behind their French reserves, out of range. Already there was slaughter, limbs, bodies, the smell of blood and death, in the rear ranks.

Lord George gave up, swung his horse round and headed forward again.

Up front, MacGillivray clenched his jaw tighter. Twenty minutes now they had stood and still no order came. The government artillery thundered on. Shot whistled past, cutting swathes into their ranks. Men screamed from the back of his own lines.

‘Close up, close up,’ Fraser yelled again behind him. The order was echoed from further back as the living moved forward to fill the places of the dead.

‘No more,’ MacGillivray muttered. They had taken all they would take. He scrugged his bonnet, raised his hands behind his head and drew the great-sword from its scabbard on his back.

‘Claymore!’ he roared.

Relief swept along the M
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Intosh and Clan Chattan lines. Embattled men pulled their bonnets down, drew their pistols. MacGillivray thrust his claymore forward.

‘Loch Moy!’ he bellowed, the war cry taken up by the men behind, and then they charged, racing down the field towards a tightly formed red-coated enemy.

Hearing them come, the government guns changed to grape-shot, loading the cannon with bags of nail, shards of metal, the angle lowered to cover the field in front. Seeing MacGillivray go, Lochiel drew his own sword and roared his Cameron men on to battle. Lord George, arriving back at his Atholl brigade, saw the decision had been taken from the Prince’s hands by the M
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Intosh regiment and gave the command to charge.

Half-way down the field, the first grape-shot cut into MacGillivray’s men as they stopped to fire off their pistols. Bodies fell but the shot went off, pistols were dropped, and the great searing slash of steel sounded as broadswords, axes and dirks were drawn. The front line of government foot fired into them and dropped to their knees to load. The second line took aim.