Clandara (38 page)

James came close to him.

“The Lady of Clandara gave you shelter?” he asked. “Speak up, man. The lord's daughter, you say?”

“The same.” The Chisholm nodded. “But 'twas not she who gave this letter for ye, nor who smuggled horses to us when her father turned us out. 'Twas the other, the Macdonald lady, who is kept close prisoner there. She saved our lives when the Fraser would have delivered us to the troops of the English. We gave our word to find ye and deliver what she wrote. The bond is honoured now.”

“We thank you,” Sir Alexander said. He put the letter in his coat. “What are the English doing at Dundrenan?”

“Searching for ye,” the Chisholm answered. “And looting the house. Some of the women escaped but others are still kept within for the soldiers. We've heard cries, but the few men left there are dead or made prisoner and there's naught that my brother and I could do alone, save wait for ye and warn ye.”

“How many are there?” James snapped.

“Fifty or more, with horses, fully armed.”

James turned to his father and David.

“Fifty! Are we to stand here while they rape our women and steal our goods? Is this your ‘peace', Father?”

“Lord,” the Chisholm said. “May a poor humbly speak?”

“Wait, James.” Sir Alexander held up his hand and nodded to the clansman. “Speak on.”

“If you go against them you will all be killed or taken. I see many of ye here, but tired and sick and hungry as we were when we fled the battle. Nothing can save your women or bring back your servants they have killed, and the same is being done to every house whose chief fought for the Prince and to every farm and croft belonging to the clans. Take your people, lord, and go into hiding until the fury is over. Our home is gone; we found the Campbells driving off our few cattle while the croft burnt to the ground. We hid and watched it being done, for it's better to have life and wait for vengeance than throw all away. I shall take my brother into the mountains and wait for quieter times.”

“Wise words,” the old man said. “Wiser than yours, my son.” He turned to James. “We stay here until a decision can be made. If we attack Dundrenan, it must be in the dark. Meantime, let our people stay low. Let us see what is in Cousin Margaret's letter …”

Captain James Booth of Lord Mark Kerr's Dragoons glanced quickly at his reflection in the mirror on the wall at his left, and, satisfied that he presented all that could be required of a well-favoured English officer, made yet another attempt to be friendly with the Lady Katharine Ogilvie.

Two weeks earlier, he and his company had come to the gates of Clandara demanding admittance. They were making an inspection of all the big houses in the area to the south of Loch Ness, while their comrades of Cholmondleys dealt with the gentry and their tenants to the west.

There was a list at the Duke's headquarters in Inverness of those clans who were in Rebellion, and Captain Booth had received orders to billet himself on the Earl of Clandara and make discreet enquiries whether his loyalty to King George was genuine. It was more than likely that many of the cunning Scots had abstained from the battle from self-interest rather than from a sense of duty to their rightful king. Any one of these found harbouring the Rebels was to be counted equally guilty and placed under arrest. But the Captain could find no fault with the Earl. He had been welcomed politely to the Castle and offered its hospitality for as long as he wished. None of the Earl's tenants had taken up arms, and the thorough search instituted the same day discovered no fugitives hiding in the Castle. The Captain and two young ensigns were given comfortable rooms and invited to share the Earl's table and consider themselves his guests. In return, the officers behaved with tact, and their men billeted themselves and their horses in the outbuildings and so far no incidents had occurred.

But if the Earl was friendly, his daughter Katharine remained hostile and silent. Her attitude was a disappointment to the Captain; he considered her to be one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in his life and he was only too anxious to be amiable. He found the Scots an irritating mixture of barbaric feudalism and outrageous pride. Many of the hovels he had burnt were so crude that they were fit only for animals, and the wretched people in them who fled before the sabres of his troopers were little better than savages. He could not understand them when they cried for mercy in their uncouth language and he would not have spared them if he could. He was a little irritated to find that the great medieval Castle was in many ways more luxurious than his own modest manor in Suffolk, and that the Earl was a man of such wide culture that he was often at a disadvantage with him. He did not like or trust the imperious old man, and he was becoming very angry with the Lady Katharine, who wore deep black and did not scruple to tell him, as soon as they were introduced, that she was the widow of a man who had fought for the Prince at Culloden. Once or twice, after a particular rebuff, the Captain found himself wishing that the Fraser of Clandara were not so well within the law. In his own eyes the Captain considered himself a model guest; he was courteous and appreciative and avoided all mention of their purpose in the neighbourhood. He had done nothing that could give offence and the only man in his troop who had been caught stealing from the castle servants' quarters had been summarily hanged as an example.

And still the Lady Katharine avoided him, and when he tried to speak to her she stared at him with such contempt and dislike that he stammered and blushed like a boy. It made him very angry, and because of it he ordered a second search, even invading the rooms where the Earl's wife was confined in the hope of discovering some compromising secret. His encounter with the eccentric Countess and her maid had yielded nothing. He was forced to accept the Earl's curt explanation that she was a little crazed, and he abandoned his search in some discomfort.

He advanced farther into the Green Salon, and the woman sitting sewing by the window looked up at him. “I hope I'm not disturbing you, madam.”

Katharine put down her sewing and began to fold it up. “I was just leaving, Captain. Please make use of my room if you wish.”

“My room”. He grew red at the tone and the implication that he was intruding.

She was gratified to see the round young face flush with embarrassment. He pulled at the tight white stock above his blue-faced scarlet coat and stood still. He had such an ordinary face, with undistinguished features and curiously sharp brown eyes, and she hated him as if all her hatred for his king and his victorious army were concentrated on that one pompous young officer who would have smirked and strutted at the slightest encouragement from her. She wondered what the women of his country would do if the Highlanders of Prince Charles were in occupation of their country and invaded their homes and had the insufferable impudence to expect them to be friendly. She knew her father hated him too, but he concealed it, and forced his people to do the same. One hostile incident would be enough to signify their sympathy with the Rebellion, and bring the punitive squads out from Inverness to burn and ravage their lands as they were doing to the Chisholms and the Mackintoshs, and the Macdonalds in the area.

Every day Booth and his men went out to hunt for fugitives; Katharine noticed with horror that they never returned with prisoners, and one night at dinner she saw the Captain take out a fine gold watch which she knew he had not possessed before.

“I
am
disturbing you, I see,” he said stiffly. “I must protest, madam, that whenever I come into a room you always make a point of leaving it!”

Katharine stood up.

“You are here at my father's invitation, sir. Not at mine. I find it extraordinary that you expect Henry Ogilvie's widow to treat your presence here as if it were a pleasant social call.”

“I am sorry about your husband,” he said stiffly. “But if he had not taken arms against his king, he would be with you now.”

“King George was not his king!” Katharine retorted. “What do you want from me sir – must I call on God to save Prince Charles? I will, if it will give you the excuse you need to arrest me.”

“If I wanted to arrest you” – the Captain stepped up to her, barring the way to the door – “if that was what I wanted, I could have done it long ago! Don't make any mistake, madam, I can do what I please and order what I please here. But we're not punishing anyone except the guilty, and it seems your family are not guilty. As for your feelings, I can hardly punish a woman for the treason of her husband. All I want,” he said angrily, “is that you should stop treating me and my two officers as if we were cut-throats!”

“When I think of my husband and so many that I loved …” But it was not Henry who was in her mind then as she stood confronting the enemy; it was not his memory that brought the tears to her eyes and made her so far lower herself as to weep in front of the Captain. It was James who haunted her. James dead on that dreadful field, James lying for two days and nights among the wounded until the execution squads of Cumberland marched out and killed him where he lay. Suddenly she began to cry, and her tears touched the heart of the young man standing in front of her; he had seen many women weeping in the last few weeks, some of them as well born and as proud as the beautiful widow of the traitor Ogilvie of Spey. But he had seen their suffering quite unmoved. He was a soldier and accustomed to unpleasant duties, some of which, like the summary execution of the savage Highlanders, gave him a sense of satisfaction. He was quite unprepared for the effect that Katharine's tears had upon his feelings. He took a step nearer her.

“Please,” he said, “please don't cry. If there's anything I can do – if there's a chance that your husband might be alive …”

“There's no chance at all,” Katharine answered. “My father has made enquiries everywhere among the prisoners in Inverness; my husband was last seen fighting the Campbells. We have presumed him dead.”

She wiped her eyes and composed herself, and as she did so and saw the young man watching her, she suddenly decided to disguise her loathing and make use of him. With an effort she smiled.

“I'm sorry I was so rude to you, Captain Booth. You have been very kind. Please excuse me, I was overcome …”

His response was so immediate that, had she been less bitter, Katharine would have felt ashamed. He went red again to the edge of his tight curled wig, and offered her his arm.

“Come and sit down,” he said. “Can I ring for anyone for you? Do you want your maid?”

“No, thank you.” She shook her head. “There's nothing anyone in this house can do to help me. Captain Booth, have you ever lost someone you loved?”

“My mother,” he said slowly. “I was very fond of her.”

Katharine leaned towards him. “Then can you imagine what it is like not to know whether that person is dead or not?”

The Captain stared at her. “But you said it was certain that your husband …”

“I'm not talking about my husband,” she said. She decided to gamble everything on his vanity.

“I feel I shouldn't burden you,” she said. “But I cannot help myself. Can I trust you?”

The sharp brown eyes gazed into hers and then he looked away.

“You know you can, madam. Are you in trouble?”

“No,” Katharine said gently. “And I wouldn't take advantage of your chivalry to ask you to help me if I were. I am asking for something that only you can do for me – if you will. But it's not against your honour, Captain. All I want is news of one of the Rebels … whether he's a prisoner, or dead …”

“Why can't your father make enquiries for you?” He was still in doubt about her; his natural suspicion and dislike of the Scots fought with his increasing interest in the woman and the hope that gratitude might induce her to make some return to him. He was not even sure of what kind.

“You don't know Scotland, do you, or you wouldn't ask that question? I had a suitor once, long ago; my father disapproved and married me to someone else. I dare not even mention his name. Captain, can you find out for me what has become of James Macdonald of Dundrenan? That's all I ask.”

“I wish I knew,” he said curtly. “For he and his father and a number of their men are on my list of fugitives. We've been out searching for them the last three days. The Cholmondleys went to Dundrenan but the Macdonalds didn't go back there, and if they do they'll find it burnt to the ground. So far he has escaped; there are quite a number of dead British soldiers scattered round this countryside to prove it.”

She turned on him then in triumph; she didn't care what he thought of her nor was she afraid. Nothing mattered but that James was still alive.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “Thank God, and thank you too, Captain, for giving me the best news of my life.”

“You surprise me,” he said stiffly. “I thought you were mourning your husband. If I were you I shouldn't rejoice too soon. Your lover will be caught and executed. We're searching the woods round Loch Ness today – there's a rumour he's been seen there. We'll find him and punish him if we have to search the Highlands from coast to coast.”

Katharine moved away abruptly, leaving him standing glaring after her, but at the door she turned.

“You will never capture James Macdonald,” she said quietly. “You poor tame Englishman; if you ever catch up with him, I pity you!”

As she shut the door, he heard her laughing. The Captain left early that afternoon; he sat through the midday meal with the Earl and Katharine, and hardly spoke. His two junior officers were stiff and glum, and the Captain behaved with pointed rudeness by leaving in the middle of the last course and ordering his ensigns to saddle up and be ready to go out. He turned curtly to the Earl.

“Your pardon, Lord Clandara, but we have a wide area to search today. I hope you will excuse us.”