White Rose Rebel (37 page)

‘Loch Moy!’ MacGillivray roared again, and charged on.

Skirting the lower braes, head down over Pibroch’s neck, Anne had heard the change in the sound of the cannonshot. Not knowing the cause, she hoped it meant some of the bigger guns had been silenced. Now, she heard musket fire, rapid, repeating volleys from massed guns. She was too late. The charge had begun. Her men would be racing into that, M
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Intosh and Clan Chattan men she had raised for the cause, Farquharson and Atholl men she’d known all her life, men she cared for, men she loved, all three of her families, her mother’s, father’s, and her married family, charging side by side. She prayed to all the forces known to humankind to keep them safe together and strong. More than half-way to the river Nairn, she drove her horse on, leaning low to urge it with her voice, faster, as its hooves drummed over the grassland.

∗

MacGillivray thudded across the moor, setting the pace, grape-shot whistling past his head. Ahead, he saw bog in front of him. If his charging warriors ran into that they’d come to a stop. He veered right to skirt it, losing momentum as the whole line following did likewise. Exposed to crossfire of their flank, several men behind the dozen leaders fell, making a gap in the charging ranks.

Behind them, racing Camerons and Atholl men saw their route to the enemy narrowed by the drift of M
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Intoshes into their path, forcing them tighter against the walls on their right. Behind those walls, General Hawley commanded his troops to throw down the stones and fire at the Atholl flank. At the Jacobite front line, Francis of Monaltrie drew his claymore and roared the Farquharsons into the attack, Anne’s paternal clan following her husband’s towards the massed government ranks. Behind him, her brother, James, waited to lead the second line. On the left, Lord Drummond urged the MacDonalds to join the charge, but they would not go, angry to have been usurped from their place on the right of the field by Lord George coming forward. They stood, stoic and stern, weapons sheathed and shouldered, as a hail of grape-shot tore into them, a third of their force already dead around their feet.

Plunging into the enemy, MacGillivray swung his claymore, down and across, beheading the nearest foot soldier in one swipe. Around him, his men crashed through the front government lines, slashing, hacking, trying to force the break that would weaken the wall of enemy guns. He swung again, splitting a redcoat’s head open down to the neck. As the man dropped, MacGillivray glanced around. Only a dozen of his men had got through with him. The government lines closed at their backs, still firing at the oncoming warriors. Beside him, MacBean and Donald Fraser parried bayonets with their targes, cut and hacked with their swords. Behind him, the shoemaker, Duff, speared his sword through a redcoat’s throat but took a bayonet in his gut from the next man down and dropped to the ground.

Will, who had run fast to be as near Fraser as he could, dropped the targe he had little idea how to use and swung wildly, cutting one man to the ground, slashing another across the face. An officer
pulled a sword, raked it across Will’s arm, then his throat. As the boy fell, MacGillivray brought his claymore down, bringing off the officer’s sword and hand both. Fending back the foot soldiers, he dragged Will nearer to him and stood over the boy as his remaining men drew tighter to their chief. Fraser, seeing the protective move, turned to cover MacGillivray’s back. A bayonet stabbed into the blacksmith’s ribs. As he staggered on the point of it, a sword glanced off his face and he went down. The heavy weight of another Highlander collapsed on top of him.

MacGillivray dropped his claymore, drew his broadsword and targe, dirk behind the shield. He thrust his sword into the throat of the nearest soldier and swung his dirk back to cut another on his left. On his right, a bayonet stabbed forward. He felt it go into his side, shuddered as it was withdrawn. With one stroke, MacBean cut the arm from the man who wounded his chief. A raised musket took aim, fired. The ball tore into MacBean’s chest. He fell, twitching, blood pumping out of his back. MacGillivray was on his knees, in a red mess of blood, his side weeping fluid, breath coming in great gasps. An English lieutenant stepped up behind him, raised and thrust his sword down between the wounded chief’s shoulders. It was James Ray. As MacGillivray pitched forward, Ray put his foot on the Highlander’s broad back and withdrew his blade.

Half a mile away, at the Jacobite rear, O’sullivan reached over to the Prince’s horse, took hold of the reins and turned them both away from the decimated field. Lord Elcho cantered up, his horse’s rump and legs spattered red. Like Lord George, he, too, had begged for the order to charge, his cavalry brutally torn to shreds by the cannon as they waited, unused.

‘Will you order retreat?’ he shouted at the Prince.

His royal commander looked at him, tears running down his cheeks. ‘Let every man save himself who can,’ the Prince cried out. ‘We are defeated.
Nous sommes défaits.
’

‘You snivelling, pampered coward,’ Elcho snarled. ‘Run away. Go back across the water. It was a better day for Scotland had you never come!’ He yanked his horse round, seeking a drummer boy
still alive and able to beat retreat. As the Irish Brigade and the
Écossais Royaux
moved forward to provide cover for it, the command party set off, O’sullivan escorting the Prince, at a fast gallop, away from the battlefield.

Anne urged Pibroch into the water of Nairn. The horse shied. She kicked it on, the water shallow over the pebbled bottom. Two steps, the horse tried to turn. She dragged the reins tight, wouldn’t let its head come round. They were close enough now to hear the screams of men and beasts, the roar of cannon, the repeated rounds of musket-fire.

‘Come on, Pibroch,’ she urged, kicking her heels into its sides.
‘Siuthad, a-nìs!’
The horse went forward four more steps, threw its head back, whinnied, stopped.

The squall of sleety rain had passed, the cloud gone as if it had never been. Face flat on the wet ground, MacGillivray stared ahead at the surrounding soldiers’ feet as they moved past, re-forming their ranks, ignoring the group of dying men in their midst. He could feel nothing except a cold, chilling calm. His breath staggered, came again. Blood from his chest leaked into a small moorland stream running past his shoulder. Beside him, Will’s cut throat still seeped. Ahead of him, MacBean struggled on the ground, inched towards MacGillivray, trying to reach his chief, to cover him with his body. He reached out, fingers almost making it, his hand dropping into the spring, blood running the length of his arm. MacGillivray, staring through stained, dank grass, watched the narrow flow of brackish water run red.

Anne jumped off, keeping a tight grip of the rein. Landing ankle deep in the water, she pulled the horse forward by its head. It wouldn’t budge. She stared ahead, looking for deep water, a drop the animal could sense but she could not see. Nothing, just pebbles, water rippling over, becoming murky. She looked up at the opposite bank. Shafts of warm April sun probed down through overhanging trees to where sleet still crusted white in the clumps of grass, lapped
by the river, staining red. She looked down to Pibroch’s white legs. Red crept up from the horse’s fetlocks. Glancing at her wet white skirts, trailing in the water, she saw the stain creep up, red on to white, white into red. She, and her mount, stood in a river of blood.

A gasp shuddered through MacGillivray’s chest. The green blades in front of his eyes, smudged crimson, were thick as a forest. He could see Anne on the ridge, on her white horse, snow falling round her shoulders, that smile men would die to be the cause of on her lips. He hoped she would be proud, not sad. The cold chill passed. There was no ridge, or snow, just white light, the sharp sound of battle.

‘Eyes front, soldier,’ a voice said. ‘Ignore ’em, they’re no harm to us now.’

He was dying. No more hurt could come. Peace flooded his bones. The old myths were right. Death was the last love a man lay down with. A well of it rose up to receive him, filling all the emptiness that life had hollowed out, bringing him in.

Emptiness filled Anne’s ears, the roar of nothing. She tore her gaze away from the bloody water to Pibroch’s wild eyes. The reins, twisted round her hands, burned as the horse pulled against her. The racket of cannon and guns had ceased. A strange mockery of silence fell, filled more fully by shrieks and calls from way beyond the far bank, up on the moorland. She raised her eyes to the sound. A pall of yellow smoke drifted above the riverbank trees.

Up on the moor, Cumberland had ordered fire to cease. His men had done a fine job. Following Highland form, he’d put his Flanders veterans to the fore, men who would not shirk, turn, run or break rank. His front lines stared through the rising yellow clouds of smoke, clouds eerily lit more yellow by the sunlight behind the impenetrable smoke. The field before them moved, writhed, groaned, shrieked and whimpered, bodies piled on bodies. Hardened soldiers, never had they seen such a field of slaughter. The
Highlanders had kept charging, wave on ferocious wave of them, even when knee-deep in their wounded, over piles four bodies high, before being shot down. Few had reached their lines, even fewer had breached them. They had held their ground.

Cumberland rode forward, the Earl of Louden beside him. Trotting his horse past the rubble of the walls he’d ordered taken down to attack the Atholl flanks, Hawley came to join them. Among a group of fallen Highlanders behind the lines, a bulky older warrior retched bile and blood.

‘Dispatch that man,’ Cumberland ordered Lord Louden.

The Scot glanced sideways at his commander. ‘You can have my commission, sir,’ he said, ‘but not my honour.’

Hawley pulled his pistol, aimed, fired. The Highlander’s body jerked, lay still.

‘Clear the mess up, Hawley,’ Cumberland said. ‘Dispatch the wounded. Round up any living officers who can walk. Give no quarter to the rest.’

Anne turned from staring at the pall of smoke, incongruous now against clear blue sky, back to Pibroch, gripped the bridle with both hands and pulled. She had to get there, had to get this stubborn beast across the river.

‘Come on, Pibroch.
Siuthad!
’

Behind her, feet slithered down the riverbank, splashed through the water. A hand grabbed her shoulder. She spun round. It was old Meg, pitchfork in her other hand, face alarmed with fear.

‘Run.’ She tugged Anne’s arm. ‘They’re killing everybody.’

The bank was now alive with folk, women and children, running for their lives. Upstream, warriors crashed through the trees, Highlanders fleeing the battlefield.

‘Come away,’ Meg urged, pulling Anne towards the other side.

Pibroch strained to turn, hooves stamping backwards towards the far bank. Anne held tight to the halter.

‘I have to go on!’ She struggled against the older woman’s iron grip.

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Meg argued, tugging her wrist.

‘That one’s alive!’ From high above, the thin voice sounded. Hooves stamped on sodden grass. The lifeless weight on Donald Fraser’s chest crushed down on him. His eyes flickered open. Another man’s arm half-covered his face. In the space where sky was, an English general, a shadow on a black horse, leant forward, pointed. A body in dark tartan stepped into the space, a face loomed. It was Shameless, peering down. Recognition lit his eyes, a brief smile. Then the M
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Intosh lad raised his musket, drew it back, plunged down with his bayonet, into the dead weight that lay across Fraser’s chest.

‘Dead now, sir,’ Shameless called over his shoulder.

∗

Pibroch was out of the water, backwards, feet gaining purchase on the grass. Tugged along by horse and Meg, Anne was pulled clear of the Nairn. They were surrounded by fleeing women. Those who passed close by urged Anne to run, hide, get away. A woman splashed out of the river, half-dragging a boy about seven or eight. They stumbled and fell. The mother grabbed the child by his plaid, hauled him up, tried to lift and carry him. The weight of water in the sodden woollen cloth slowed her down. Anne got up into the saddle, bent down to the frightened woman and pulled the child up in front of her.

‘Get up behind,’ she told the mother. She rode them on a mile or so, dropped them at a cottage and went back to pick up another woman trailing a youngster. Sometimes, it was the child who hauled the parent, fearful of staying, afraid to go on alone. Latterly, it was an older woman, her ankle turned and swollen, limping along as the others vanished over the hills. Each time, they were further from the river. On her last journey back, the distant bank swarmed with government troops. Meg had vanished. The women and children had all disappeared. No warriors were visible on the surrounding hills.

In the cottage on the edge of Drumossie, with a clean towel spread between her hands, MacBean’s wife drew a second loaf out of her oven and set it to cool on the table, next to the first. Bread kept her busy. The noise of battle had ended half an hour ago. Someone was coming now. The cottage door burst open, letting in the cold air. James Ray stalked in with two redcoats who searched quickly round the one room.

‘There’s no one here,’ the old woman said.

Ray raised his sword, drew it across at shoulder height. Blood spurted on the cooling bread. The old woman slumped into the hearth.

‘No one now,’ Ray said, and stalked out.

As the redcoats splashed through the river, Anne swung her tired horse back round towards Moy. It was warm now, the sun startling
in a blue and white spring sky. The bright flash of tartan under a nearby tree caught her eye. She rode over. It was Lachlan, wounded, his young face cut, a gash on his thigh bleeding badly; he had struggled this far before he collapsed. She jumped down beside him.

‘Can you stand?’

The boy shook his head.

‘No, go on. I’ll do fine here awhile.’ He grimaced. ‘Nine lives, I have.’ It was a saying of those belonging to the clan of the cat.

‘They’re hunting people down,’ Anne said. The soldiers had fanned out but were closing and would find him easily, as she had. ‘Come on, I’ll get you home.’ She hauled the lad to his feet, his arm round her neck, his injured leg dragging, got him up and on to Pibroch’s back. A shot from behind threw him forward over the horse’s neck.