White Rose Rebel (44 page)

‘Maybe,’ he said slowly, ‘if nobody looks too closely at her.’

‘Then let’s find out,’ Anne said.

Jessie hid in the corner of the cell so as not to be seen through
the door. Susan pulled her chair in front of the bed and sat, talking to the mattress while screening it from view. Anne and Tom walked to the main gate, Margaret close behind, head down. The guard unlocked the gate and held it open.

‘Her sister not coming?’ he asked as they walked through.

‘She wants to visit a while longer,’ Anne said, certain he must hear her heart thumping and discover them. ‘I have other things to do.’

‘All of them better’n hanging,’ the guard joked as he locked up again at their backs. He barely glanced at the serving girl on the far side of the man. She’d come in with Anne. She left with Anne. Had he looked in her basket, he would have discovered a fine lady’s dress, but there was no reason to check what people took out of prison.

Once in the street, the trio did not take time to congratulate themselves on how easy it had been. Hands still shaking, Anne kissed her trembling friend goodbye.

‘Now get away to France and David.’

Tom helped his sister into his carriage and they were off, heading for the coast to seek safe passage. Anne walked back to where Shameless waited.

‘Jessie found a friend to visit,’ Anne told him. ‘I said she could have an hour.’

Though Shameless didn’t know it, they waited for the guard to change at six o’clock. Serving girls came and went without attention. Even if the new guard looked at Jessie, he would not suspect her of being other than herself.

Shameless wandered off to talk to old acquaintances. The time came and went. The guard changed. Anne fretted. What was taking so long? Then the two women appeared, Jessie hurrying down the street to the carriage. Margaret’s sister came too and gave Anne an excited hug.

‘It couldn’t have worked better,’ she said, quietly but ecstatic. ‘I chatted on as if she was still there. When we left, I told the guard she wasn’t feeling well and had gone to sleep. He hardly looked in the cell as he locked it. By morning, she’ll be far away.’

Susan left then, to walk back to her lodgings. Seeing Jessie with Anne, Shameless came back to drive them home. Sitting behind him in the coach, the two women grinned conspiratorially at each other. The plan had worked perfectly. Both their hearts began to slow to normal speed. Anne felt better than she had since Culloden. One saved.

The following night, in the middle of supper, Lord Louden paid Moy a visit.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Aeneas,’ he apologized, ‘but I have an order to search your home.’ While the troops he’d brought rattled through the rooms, checking, he explained. Margaret Johnstone, the Lady Ogilvie, had escaped from prison some time during the night. ‘From a locked cell, apparently.’

‘And what has this to do with Moy?’ Aeneas asked, quite deliberately not looking over at his wife, though he noticed that the Dowager did.

‘Probably nothing,’ Louden said. ‘Anne visited her yesterday, but she had other visitors after that and was there when the guard locked up, or so it appeared.’ He had orders to search places where Margaret might take refuge.

‘And I’m suspect?’ Aeneas asked, angrily.

‘Not at all,’ Louden reassured him. ‘But she and Anne were friends.’ He turned to Anne, sitting, head bowed, at the table. ‘Did she mention her plans?’

Anne looked up at him and shook her head. ‘Margaret wouldn’t compromise me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t stay long. She talked of her execution. We said goodbye on parting and didn’t expect to see each other again.’

‘Much the same as her sister said.’ Louden seemed satisfied. ‘Her brother has disappeared. I suspect he bribed the guards.’ As his men returned from their fruitless search, he repeated his apologies and left.

‘Well, there’s a turn-up,’ the Dowager said, holding out her empty wine glass to be filled.

‘In a moment,’ Aeneas said. ‘I think we can expect Jessie.’

The door from the kitchens opened. Jessie hurried in, her eyes seeking out Anne. The relief on her face was as obvious as it was fleeting, quickly suppressed as she lifted up the wine bottle to fill the Dowager’s glass.

‘Leave that, Jessie,’ Aeneas said, ‘and wait here.’ He leant forward towards Anne, chillingly calm. ‘You didn’t stay long,’ he repeated. ‘Yet that was your reason for going, and you must have spent several hours with your friend.’ He had counted those hours, wanting them safe back home.

‘We visited others,’ Anne murmured, not looking at him.

‘She didn’t stay long in the jail,’ Jessie defended her. ‘A n hour maybe.’

‘Would you lie to me now, as well, Jessie?’ Aeneas asked.

The girl shook her head, miserable. ‘That wasn’t a lie,’ she said.

‘Then perhaps I should ask you for the whole story?’

‘Jessie’s not at fault,’ Anne protested.

Aeneas threw his chair back as he stood. It clattered to the floor.

‘So,’ he thundered. ‘Does my wife hide inside that submissive shroud after all? And still does not care whose life she risks!
Taigh na Galla ort!
Jessie, of all people?’ He stormed round the table as he raged. ‘With Will and her baby dead, her body raped, and you –’ he stood over Anne ‘– you involve her in your schemes!’

‘I chose to do it,’ Jessie insisted, tears in her eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Anne whispered, staring at her hands clasped in her lap.

‘Sorry?’ Aeneas was only more enraged. ‘Get up, get on your feet!’ He dragged the chair from under her as she stood, throwing it backwards to crash across the room.

‘Aeneas!’ The Dowager got up. ‘Calm yourself.’

‘I’m calm,’ he bellowed, glaring at Anne, standing, hands clenched at her sides, head down, staring at the floor between them. ‘Look at me!’

Anne’s head came up. If she’d been a man he would have hit her.

‘So you can look at me,’ he thundered. ‘As you looked at Louden. To lie!’ He stared at her, chest rising and falling as he fought to control himself. ‘I had a wife who could look any man in the eye and speak fearlessly. But you? You hide, pretend, deceive. I don’t know who or what you are now.’

Anne lowered her eyes again. ‘Your wife,’ she whispered.

Her response only enraged Aeneas further. He swept the dirk out of his belt and, while the others gasped, tilted Anne’s chin with the tip of the blade.

‘Show me,’ he said when her eyes met his again. ‘Show me if they sent back the wife I know. Take off your dress.’

‘No, Chief,
sguir dheth
,’ Jessie objected. ‘Don’t.’

‘Do it,’ Aeneas ordered, not taking his attention off Anne, his voice dangerously quiet now. ‘Let’s see how obedient you really are. Take it off.’

Anne reached behind and untied the ribbons round her waist, then she began to undo the hooks at the front, from the top down. When they were all undone, she paused, still looking at him, her expression unreadable.

‘Aeneas,’ the Dowager said, ‘stop this.’

He ignored her, watching his wife’s face intently. Now he wanted to know when she would stop, when she would reveal the spirit she’d been pretending was cowed since she’d come home. Disturbingly aroused by the tantalizing ease with which she could be naked with him, he also wished they were alone upstairs, to push her dress aside, touch the warmth of her skin, make her his wife again. But he was not about to break the tension of the moment. Lightly, he traced the tip of the dirk down the length of the gap in the front of her dress to her navel.

‘Go on,’ he prompted.

She seemed as fixed in the moment as he was, her eyes holding his. Her left hand rose to her right shoulder, eased the straps off. As the material peeled away from her skin and began to slip down, she raised her other hand and pushed the straps off her left shoulder. The blue silk began to slide to the floor. A scrap of paper fell out from against her breast where it had been lodged.

Anne gasped and tried to catch it, but he was quicker. He had the note in his hand as she clutched her dress to stop it falling round her feet. She stood, half-naked, holding the crumpled cloth against her with one hand, reaching out with the other. Now he could tell what was in her eyes. They were pleading. He pushed the dirk back in his belt, unfolded the paper, looked down and read.

Aeneas rocked back, punched in his own heart by the hand, and the signature.

‘Please,’ Anne begged, holding out her hand.

He put the note into it.

‘Cover yourself,’ he said, his voice rough, hoarse. ‘And get out. All of you, get out of here!’

Jessie rushed to Anne, to help raise her dress and get her out of the room. The Dowager lifted the wine bottle and her glass and followed. The door shut behind them. Aeneas collapsed into the nearest chair, swept his arm across the table, clearing the space in front of him with a clatter of dishes, put his head on his folded arms and wept, his body wracked with the grief he had held back for weeks, grief for the torment of his people, for the deaths of his
clann
, his family, for their losses and his own, and for the loss of MacGillivray, his bright, brave friend and brother chief, and for the pain of having lost the woman who was not his wife now and never could be again, a woman who loved a dead man.

The next day, as soon as he knew she was up, he went to Anne’s room, the room they had once shared and which he’d been unable to occupy even in her absence. She was seated at the dressing table but jumped up, as if she was afraid, when he came in.

‘Anne, don’t.’ He couldn’t deal with this or the gulf it put between them. ‘I did wrong to you last night.’

She only bowed her head.

‘If I could send you home to Invercauld, I would. But until the order of constraint is lifted, you must stay here.’

‘I know,’ she whispered.

‘Can’t you understand? There is no escape. I hope Margaret lives. But, in Angus, the Ogilvie lands are forfeit, like the Camerons’ and MacGregors’, like Monaltrie and Dunmaglas. The people are driven off by new English landlords. Invercauld survives only because Forbes supported your stepmother. Isabel –’ he stopped. Isabel Haldane was not young, pregnant with her fourth child when she was raped, her home dismantled, the looted shell torched before her eyes, she and her children turned out of doors, left to give birth alone in a barn. He was too harsh, driven by his own guilt, wanting to protect. When he spoke again it was with sorrow. ‘Ardsheil came out because Isabel insisted. Now she and the Appin Stewarts have no home. Is that what you want here?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was so quiet he could barely hear. ‘I didn’t think.’

He ached to take her in his arms, to give and receive forgiveness, but couldn’t bear to have her flinch from him again.

‘Anne, you can only help if you co-operate. Confine yourself to the estate. Write your letters. If you save one chief, lawfully, you might save a clan.’

Even as he said it, he didn’t believe. This British government would not be appeased. Loyal clans also felt their wrath. A life here and there, a home, a piece of land, those might be saved. Moy would go on, but changed. He might keep Anne safe but had failed his people. There was no reward in having made his point. All he could do was leave the room. Outside, in a white drift, the last petals fell around Moy Hall from the white rose of Scotland.

Aeneas spent the weeks of summer occupied with moving the cottars, changing their status to tenant farmers, allocating land. It would be hard, with so many gone. The skills lost with them would
need to be bought from strangers. They could not survive as a reciprocal family group any more. From now on they would sell produce and pay rents, be self-sufficient – if they could with their cattle stolen, tools burnt, their grain stores looted. But currency, not kinship, would matter now. Survival would depend on wealth, not warriors. The old ways were gone, dead on that moor with more than half their men.

Anne wrote her letters. When Shameless took the mail to Inverness, she sent Morag with food for the prisoners. Letters began to arrive back. Jenny Cameron was released, without trial, from Edinburgh, where she’d been held for months. Without a husband to blame, her story was too like Anne’s to bear exposure in court. Women who thought for themselves, who bore arms and led troops to fight for freedom, were too threatening to the stability of England, where everyone knew their place and women’s was not in the lead. Her friends had carefully hinted as much. It paid off. Jenny’s life, like Anne’s, was exchanged for silence, her part in the rebellion erased.

Anne’s brother, James, wrote to say his death sentence was reduced to banishment beyond the shores of Britain. He would go to France, travelling with the Kinlochs, who were also banished, and hope some day to be pardoned and return. Her cousin, Francis, also reprieved, was released into the care of Miss Elizabeth Eyre, whom he hoped to marry, but banned from return to Scotland. The tone of Anne’s petitions changed, from pleading for clemency to seeking pardons.

But, with each letter, there was less to do. By August, and a fine summer almost over, normal concerns began to clamour for attention. Anne walked Pibroch down to the forge. Outside, in the filtered sunlight under the trees, Donald Fraser taught his eldest daughter how to shoe a horse. Old habits died hard.

‘Get a firm grip,’ he told her as the girl bent to lift Pibroch’s hoof. ‘And dig in. You’re getting a shoe off, not tickling the beast.’

‘She’s doing well,’ Anne said.

‘Aye,’ Fraser said, proudly. ‘Wants to, what’s more. It was her asked me.’

‘Rather this than work in the house,’ the girl said.

‘She’s no housekeeper.’ Fraser watched his daughter pull off the last shoe. ‘She’ll not be agreeing with everything a husband says, either. Not like those young Edinburgh women, picking up newfangled ideas from the English
Sasannaich
.’