White Rose Rebel (41 page)

There was no answer. Living rough among barbarians for what might be some time clearly did not appeal. Cumberland leant forward again.

‘A quiet execution can be arranged,’ he said. ‘In the barren northern hills, a few anonymous graves would never be found.’ He sat back. ‘Now do you understand?’

The man nodded.

‘Then our business is concluded. You’ll receive our instruction from time to time, on the area we would like to attend to next.’ He poured a glass of wine.

His guest turned for the door.

‘A moment,’ Cumberland called. ‘I’m curious. England’s triumph would not be King Louis’s wish.’

‘Neither was Scotland for the Scots.’

‘But he wouldn’t be averse.’

‘We could have had London, and Britain’s Crown, but the Highlanders wouldn’t give it. I wouldn’t give them Scotland then.’

‘So it was revenge,’ Cumberland nodded. That made sense. ‘Now you can watch me exact it.’

The door closed behind the nocturnal visitor. After a few minutes, Hawley returned from seeing the informer out, discreetly.

‘He doesn’t look pleased.’

‘He ought to,’ Cumberland smiled. ‘He’s about to enjoy the luck of the Irish. Always one step ahead.’

Better news began to filter into the prison, about some who survived. Cluny castle was burnt down but Macpherson had escaped. The French
Écossais Royaux
, treated as prisoners of war, had been shipped home. The Irish mercenary Wild Geese, also sent by King Louis, went with them. Between them, they’d provided cover for the Highlanders’ retreat from the battlefield, brave action that had saved many Scots lives. There was relief that they, at least, had been spared.

Greta Fergusson surfaced, at least in gossip, safe with friends, also pregnant and hiding out in Edinburgh, it was said. Her husband, Sir John Murray, had been taken to London. To save himself, he offered evidence against Lord Lovat, buying his own life with an old grudge for Lovat’s rape of his kinswoman. With Lord Balmerino, Lovat was held in the Tower. Lord Kilmarnock, sent down from Edinburgh, had joined them.

But many had escaped abroad. Thwarting the trap set for him, Sir William Gordon fled without seeing his firstborn. Lochiel, Lord Elcho and Margaret Johnstone’s husband, Lord Ogilvie, had gone to France. Under the Auld Alliance, citizens of each country were citizens of both. They would be safe there. Late that night, Anne heard Margaret crying in her cell, weeping with relief that her husband was alive and for the loneliness of facing the last few days of her life without him. Other women wept too, frightened for their lives or grieving. Anne’s own cell seemed all the more
oppressive. She lay, listening to the sobbing through the walls, and she ached for the release that death would bring.

When the Dowager visited again, she hurried in, barely able to contain herself.

‘Anne, Anne –’ she took hold of the younger woman’s arms, her face alight ‘– your brother and your cousin are alive!’

Anne stared. After weeks of mourning them, the words did not make sense.

‘James, and Francis, they’re free?’

‘No.’ The Dowager’s face fell. ‘They were taken on the field, injured. Not seriously,’ she assured. ‘But they’re being nursed, that’s why they’re not in jail. Their wounds are almost healed and…’ her voice trailed away ‘… they will be shipped south soon.’

The joy that had begun to surge inside Anne fell away. What kind of pain was this, to have them back from the dead to lose again? Her sweet, gentle brother. Her strong, self-assured cousin. Both of them would rather have suffered a quick death in battle than the indignity of trial and the ignominy of a traitor’s end. She slumped back on her bunk.

The Dowager sighed. These were brutal days when good news only brought more sorrow in its wake.

‘I’ve had two kings’ sons under my roof,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I hope to never see another.’

While her home remained occupied by Cumberland, she had decided to go to Moy. A young M
^c
Intosh girl waited outside the cell, carrying a jug and basin. The Dowager called her in.

‘Morag says she’ll come every day and see to your needs,’ she explained. ‘She’ll dress your hair, bring clean clothes and help with your toilet. It’s shameful that they keep people like this. Animals are better treated.’ She tried again to rouse Anne from her grief. ‘They’re alive,’ she insisted. ‘While there’s life, there is hope.’

‘Hope of what?’ Anne asked. The trials had begun.

In the cold stone dungeon of Carlisle Castle, the prisoners were processed in small groups, the English Jacobites first. Each day, lots were drawn. Whoever drew the short straw went for trial.
The others were transported to the colonies to be sold as indentured slaves. Then they started on the Scots.

‘My faither cannae draw lots,’ Clementina objected. ‘He’s no weel!’

The prisoner who had the job of making the draw held out the straws.

‘We all have to do it,’ he said.

Clementina drew first, then her father, then the others of their group, men and women.

‘I’ve got the short wan,’ the girl shouted.

‘You broke it,’ her father said. All the others agreed, she had broken hers on purpose. Her father held the short straw. Somehow it was always a man who went to trial, never a woman or a child.

‘Tell them ye were made tae fight,’ she cried, holding on to him. ‘Tell them ye were forced. That’s what awbody else is saying.’

Most prisoners denied raising arms against king and country. Expecting to be understood, some said their wives had sent them out, others that their chief had. To the English judges, from a nation where women had no power and the obligation of the clan system was a mystery, their excuses meant nothing. Many said whatever might spare them. That they were forced to fight on pain of death, by threats to their families, of their homes being burnt. Few pleaded guilty. Guilt meant being hanged, taken down half dead, castrated, their intestines drawn out and burnt before their eyes. Hearts were ripped out, sometimes still beating, to be held up to the crowd. Heads were picketed outside town gates, warning of the fate that awaited traitors. In the northern towns of England where most trials were held, newly erected gallows worked daily, three at a time. Rarely was a prisoner judged innocent. Clemency, when given, meant not being castrated, drawn and quartered, just hanged by the neck till dead.

When Clementina’s father kissed her goodbye, it was final. He went to the gallows, she to the boats. In the ship’s crowded hold, she wished she could go up on deck, under the creaking sail, just
to see the shores they left behind. They were going to a foreign land from which they’d never return. A Highland woman, her husband hanged, sat rocking to the rhythm of the swell and sang softly, as if she sang herself a lullaby.

When Morag brought Anne a pillow, she slept with MacGillivray’s note under it. In the mornings, washed and changed into clean clothes, she tucked the note back into the top of her dress, where it nestled against her breast. She would go to her grave with it. Knowing her life would end soon was all that kept her sane.

Cells emptied and refilled. Hundreds were sent to England for trial, Anne’s brother and cousin among them. Others were tried and executed where they were caught. Thousands were transported. In the West Indies, they would be sold to the highest bidder, to labour till the end of their days. Even those with shorter sentences would never obtain the means to return home. The banishment to slavery was permanent.

Margaret’s brother and sister arrived in Inverness to provide care for her. Anne’s visitors increased. The situation was not without its ironies. Young Morag fetched a tray of morning tea, complete with china cups, so incongruous in that grim place.

‘You’ll want to take tea with your visitors,’ the girl said. It seemed there were many who wanted to see her.

The first day with tea, her earliest visitor was James, Lord Boyd, the young man despondent but still capable of blushing when his eyes met hers.

‘I’m glad to see you,’ Anne said. ‘How is your mother?’

‘Distressed for my father,’ he answered, seating himself. Lord Kilmarnock was to be executed, with Lords Lovat and Balmerino, on Tower Hill.

‘No clemency then?’

‘Only that it will be quick.’ Scotland’s Jacobite lords would be beheaded, an easier death than the hanging meted out to those without title.

‘I can’t sympathize with Lovat,’ Anne said. ‘Nor will many.’ Fifty
years earlier, he’d fled a death sentence passed by the Scottish courts for the rape of his brother’s widow, the Marquess of Atholl’s daughter. ‘His end is long overdue. But I’m pained for your father. He is a kind, gentle man.’ She poured tea, barely able to recall a time when con versation was of life and love, births and farming matters.

‘I leave next week to attend,’ Lord Boyd said, ‘but I wanted to see you first.’

‘There is something I can do?’

‘No, but I thought you’d like to hear about a friend of yours, Robert Nairn?’

‘You know Robert?’ Anne was jolted. Memories of their weeks in Edinburgh flooded back, weeks when they were so full of life. ‘Is he well?’

‘Severely injured. I found him two days after the battle and brought him in.’

‘That was k ind of you. From what I hear, others would have finished him off.’

‘I didn’t know then he could expect to hang.’ Lord Boyd struggled with his place on the side of such brutality. ‘He’s being nursed by someone you also know, a woman from Skye, name of Nan MacKay.’

‘Yes, I do know her. She held my horse for me once, in her kitchen. Her husband came over to fight. Is he safe?’

‘There has been no word since the battle. She hopes. Today they began digging long pits at Culloden for the burials. I think she hopes in vain.’

Anne stirred her tea. MacGillivray would go in those great pits, dumped like a rotted carcass, he and so many others, nameless in a mass grave. Nothing became easier as each day passed.

‘But Robert is here, in Inverness, and still alive?’

‘For now.’ Lord Boyd leant forward, earnestly. ‘You have many friends, Lady Anne. They are doing what they can.’

The activities of those friends caused the Duke of Cumberland some annoyance. Petitions for release piled on his desk. Now it was Forbes of Culloden, Lord President of the Court of Session, rankled that his
family seat had been chosen to name the battle, angry that the law was usurped.

‘The Act of Union states Scots should be tried in Scottish courts, not in England.’

‘So you can set them loose again?’ Cumberland snapped.

‘She’s a slip of a girl,’ the old judge protested.

‘A dangerous one. Look at this.’ The Duke scattered the pile. ‘We’re pursuing warriors. Must we chase every pen as well?’

General Cope, seated beside General Hawley, put down his glass of port. ‘They only want to honour a woman they see as a hero,’ he said calmly.

‘Damn the bitch,’ Hawley snarled, getting to his feet and pacing. ‘I’ll honour her, with mahogany gallows and a silken cord!’

‘She has to be tried first,’ Cope said. ‘If she had bested me I would be less eager for the world to know.’

Cumberland considered him. Colonel Anne would certainly attract attention.

‘We do ourselves no favour by pursuing people quite so hard,’ Forbes said. ‘Our troops are brutal. They murder men, rape women, slaughter them and their children. The old are dragged from their beds, their homes burnt to the ground.’

‘To prevent the rebels re-forming,’ Cumberland explained.

‘And breed more hatred?’ Forbes asked. ‘What have we become?’

‘Without women and brats, they can’t breed,’ Cumberland said. ‘They’re a vicious race of savages who’ll rise again if they’re not wiped out.’

‘You can’t mean to achieve that.’ The elderly judge’s face paled.

‘Don’t talk like a whining old woman, Forbes.’

‘Rather that than the butcher of a people.’ Forbes was shaken. ‘I’ll write to the king and to parliament about this.’

‘Write,’ Cumberland said, grabbing a handful of the petitions about Anne and waving them in Forbes’s face. ‘You’ll not be the only one. But don’t expect sympathy. I’m charged to destroy these Scots, to ensure this cause can never be revived!’

∗

A few days after Lord Boyd’s visit, Anne received a more unexpected visitor, Lieutenant James Ray’s wife.

‘Anne.’ Helen took hold of both her hands. ‘My dear, I am so sorry. To think my husband had anything to do with this.’

‘He was doing his duty,’ Anne said.

‘Relishing it,’ Helen said. ‘Of that, I’m certain. It’s so awful. I could weep. They say you’ll hang.’

‘Don’t be upset. I’m content. Others have suffered so much worse.’

‘You, content?’ Helen was taken aback. ‘We can’t have that. My dear, you’ve been an inspiration. I’ve written to all my friends. You’ve been mentioned at court.’

‘I’m sure they celebrate our defeat, and mine, as their enemy.’

‘Pish tush, enemy nothing. Don’t believe everything you hear. The papers like a good stir-up, that’s all. Oh, there were fireworks and all that hoo-ha after Culloden, but not now. Do you know, after just three days of watching strong young men die so painfully on the gallows, the people of Carlisle turned their backs and walked away.’

‘They don’t have the stomach for what they do?’

‘Not for atrocities.’ Helen sat down on Anne’s narrow bunk and spread her skirts. ‘The English people are more kind-hearted than you think. We’re not all like Butcher Cumberland.’

‘Helen, be careful.’ Anne glanced around to see if any guard would overhear.

‘It’s all right,’ Helen reassured her. ‘They’re at the gate, and I know when to hold my tongue. Something you could learn.’

‘I doubt it,’ Anne smiled. It was the first smile for many weeks. ‘Mine will be silenced for me.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. There is no need. The Union is saved.’ She paused, looking pleased. ‘I have to say I’m glad of that. Why, you Scottish women have titles of your own, position, property, homes and land. And you can divorce your husbands! England has a lot to learn from you. I have, since I’ve been here. But –’ she patted Anne’s hand, conspiratorially ‘– I must teach you how to handle Englishmen. They like to be humoured. It allows them to feel strong and smart if women are docile and weak. Once you learn how, you can twist
them round your little finger.’ She looked round as Morag brought a tray of tea in. ‘I’m glad they’re civilized enough to allow you a servant.’