Jennifer Roberson (8 page)

Glenlyon offered a too-hasty toast—
“Chruachan!”
—and gulped down the whisky.

Breadalbane, with less need, swallowed only a small amount. “And to the monarchy!”

Startled, Glenlyon lowered his glass. A sheen of liquor stood on his lip. “To—James?”

Breadalbane merely smiled and offered no answer.

To James. To Mary. To William. He would serve the strongest of them, in the name of his clan, his God, and himself.

 

Dair MacDonald, feasted within the walls of Castle Stalker, warded against the rain that now shrouded the loch, was not blind to Jean Stewart when she came into the hall. He, as the other Glencoe-men, marked her at once; no man could not. No man could not look at her and not want her. And he was no Papist priest or saint, sworn away from women.

Robbie Stewart, slouched in his chair, arched sandy brows. His was a mobile face with features made for movement, and he used it well. Just now he smiled benignly, blue eyes preternaturally bright.

His sister moved to stand just off Dair’s right shoulder. He smelled her perfume as, with elegant aplomb, she bent over his arm and reached for his horn cup, taking it from him so she might refill it with the whisky in her flagon. She performed properly as chatelaine, mindful of her duties; but no man there was unaware of other such duties as they would take up willingly, did she give them leave.

With murmured thanks, Dair accepted the filled cup. He did not look at her. He looked instead at her brother, who grinned broadly and buried his face in his own horn cup as if he had nothing else on his mind save the taste of the liquor.

After brief hesitation, Jean moved away. He felt her go, intensely aware of her obvious interest as well as her allure. He ignored her no more than any other man, MacDonald or Stewart, because no man could. And she knew it. And he knew she knew it. It was withal a cunning game, if left unspoken, yet played nonetheless.

Robbie set down his cup. Like a cat he stretched, then leaned forward in studied nonchalance. Lamplight glistened in wiry hair, deepening it to purest gold. “Och, aye,” he said quietly, “I see it. I ken it. And I willna interfere—she’ll do as she chooses, my Jean . . . but a wise man kens I am a protective brother.” He pushed his cup over to smack against Dair’s in unstudied toast. “You will do as
you
choose, aye?—but a wise man kens I will kill the man who hurts her.”

 

The rain infuriated Cat. But it also reinforced her determination; to give up the calf after bringing him so far, after falling so many times into burns both wide and narrow and the sticky edges of bog, was to admit defeat, and that she would not do.

Dampness was no burden; she was soaked already. And when the rain at last beat through thick hair to the pale scalp beneath, she turned her face to the heavens and laughed out loud. “Are you kin to MacDonalds, come up against me to steal my cow? Well, you willna. He’s mine, the brawlie lad—he’ll be home to Glen Lyon with me!”

Thunder answered lightning. The calf at the end of her twisted plaid skittered sideways.

Cat nearly lost her grip. “No, no—dinna fash yourself. Brawlie lad, sonsie lad—” She took a firmer grip on the sodden wool. “You’re a Campbell cow, now; likely before, as well. Come along wi’ me, then, brawlie lad, and forget the poor grass in Glencoe. We’ve better to offer in Glen Lyon!”

A burn cut through the track. Water ran hard in it, swollen by new rain; Cat slipped in, climbed out, and realized she had lost a battered brogue. Likely the shoe was gone before she got out; the water ran that fast.

She turned her face to the sky again. “A poor blow, that! Here—have the other one!” She stripped off the remaining brogue and tossed it into darkness. “I’m a
Campbell
; d’ye hear? Naught so pawkie as that can defeat a Campbell!”

The calf protested again, twisting his head against her makeshift rope. Cat inspected and repositioned the plaid, testing its strength. It was good wool, or had been, once, loomed in Glen Lyon. “Naught so puny as a tug or two will tear it . . .” She scratched the calfs knobby poll, grooming wet hair with a deft twisting of big-knuckled fingers. “There now, you’ll see all is well—”

The skies lit up around them, illuminating the wasteland of Rannoch Moor with its treacherous bogs; blighted, twisted trees; the frenzied vegetation. In lightning’s wake thunder crashed so loudly Cat thought her skull might split.

She cupped one hand over an ear.
Can thunder break my lug-holes
?

It broke the calf’s courage. Panicked, it tore free of her grip and shed the tattered plaid.

Blinking rapidly in the aftermath of blinding glare, Cat saw the flick of the calf’s tail as the shaggy beast scrabbled clumsily away from her, heading back into renewed darkness.

She lurched after it. “Wait. . .
wait
—”She stumbled three steps, still clutching her plaid, still meaning to catch the calf “—you canna go! Wait—” to put the twisted wool around him again, to lead him once more out of Rannoch Moor to the gentler lands of Glen Lyon . . .
where he can spend his days with good Campbell cattle
—

All at once she began to cry in great heaving gulps. She did not shout again for the calf to wait; did not offend the skies again with a Campbell challenge for fear the storm would consume her “—
MacDonald clouds
—”and take again, this night, the life of a Glen Lyon Campbell.

Cat collapsed onto buttocks naked of breeks, clad only in threadbare smallclothes, and dug brogueless heels into mud. She scraped fingers into her hair until the nails abraded scalp. The tattered, ruined plaid echoed her dishevelment as it dangled from rigid fists. “
Ochone
,” she wailed, in traditional Gaelic lament. “
Ochone, ochone
—”

Robbie was dead. Robbie was dead.

And I have lost the calf
—

The brawlie, sonsie calf.

Robbie
was dead.

—
oh God, oh God
—

What would her father say—

—
what will he SAY
?—

—to know the dirk he had cast off that she had later lifted was the means to his heir’s death?

“
O—O
—”She buried her face in sodden wool and began to rock in the rain.—
o-chone
—Back and forth, back and forth, while the thunder crashed around her.

Robbie. Dead.

She flinched away from it. Far easier to greet for the calf. In that, there was no guilt.

 

Thunder was muffled by the stone walls, forming only a dull, rumbling mutter inside Castle Stalker, like a hound displeased by his master. Jean Stewart stood near the doorway leading into the hall, counting up the men; counting
on
one man. Twin-born, Appin-born, bred of reckless Stewarts, Jean claimed her own tenfold measure of intransigence and volatile Highland pride. She was, as was her brother, overblessed of ambition, ruthless in implementation.

Alasdair Og MacDonald. Not blind to her—no man was blind to her—but seemingly indifferent, circumspect, careful.
Or warned away by Robbie . . .
Which irritated her intensely. Here was a man she wanted, who did not, apparently, want her badly enough to risk her brother; Jean took it as a personal affront as well as valid challenge. She would win his regard. She would win his worship. She would win his body, his soul.

She would take him prisoner as she had so many men, and turn him out of his dungeon on the day she wearied of him.

Thunder rumbled again. Jean Stewart smiled.
He will do, aye
?

For now. For the night, the day, the week. Until the next man with naught beneath his kilt but the all too transient bounty bestowed by God.

 

A
t the edge of the gloaming, as the day faded to night, Dair saw the fire blossom. It was but a spark at first, a distant blot of flame dipping up and down the hilltops, but he knew what it was without seeing its shape. The wind had carried rumors, and a name as well:
James Graham, Viscount Dundee.

His view was of water, and hills beyond, framed by a narrow window. He watched the fire blossom, then bloom, spilling over the hilltops. Up and down, up and down, across the weft of burn-broken braes, and at last to the lower slopes spilling down to the water’s edge. It was an eloquent dance, an ancient dance, the dance of a thousand men; of thousands and thousands before them, Norse and Pict and Scot, sleeping now in barrows still swelling under turf.

Dair shut his eyes. Behind his lids he could see the flame yet; see in its passage a tangled skein of smoke fading into darkness. He could hear the pipes, the pibroch; the keening of fresh-honed blades, the battle cry of the men, his men, Glencoe-men: MacDonalds. The distant fire kindled in his blood until he burned alive with it; until his genitals tightened and the fine hairs stood up on his flesh.

He opened his eyes. The fire still burned, still smoked, still came on. Not a loosed fire, but a carried one, a
purposeful
flame; its message, though lacking in detail, was well known to every man of Appin, of Glencoe, of Argyllshire and Breadalbane. To every man Highland-born.

Dair did not hear her, but he knew the instant she entered the chamber. He had memorized her scent, her step, the fit of her neck to shoulders, the slant of hip curving into waist, the husky catch in her voice. He knew all parts of her, all manner of her habits.

She came to stand behind him, but did not put her hands on his flesh. “ ’Tis come, aye?”

He watched the flame carried nearer, lighting up the darkness. His voice belonged to another man, though it came from his throat, his mouth; he was more than Alasdair Og, MacIain’s son, the second son, but a Highlander who knew the task before him. “ ’Tis come.”

“Robbie said it would.”

Dair smiled faintly. “He’s no’ a liar, your brother. He merely—elaborates.”

Her laugh was quiet, then faded, shut up inside her mouth. “You’ll go.” It was not question, but declaration; she knew him that well, now. She had taken pains.

He did not turn to her; did not reach for her; did not so much as tilt his head. The burning cross transfixed him. Its message fired his blood. “I am a man, Jean.”

She moved beside him. He saw in her profile the clean purity of her nose, the arch of brow above it, the sweet sharpness of her chin, and the lushness of bottom lip. A strand of sandy hair fell down beside one eye, curving on her cheekbone. In the only eye he could see, blue as Robbie’s own, burned the reflection of the cross calling him to war.

“For James,” she said; it bordered on contempt.

“He is king.”

“In
France
. ”

“But
of
Scotland, and England.”

Jean Stewart laughed bitterly. “He was a fool to leave. ‘Tis always harder to get back what one has lost, aye?” She turned to him then, and the blazing cross bloomed in her other eye. “I’ll no’ lose you, Dair. Come back to me from this. You’ll go, and so will Robbie—good Christ, I
ken
you’re men!—but I’ll have you both come back!”

Outside, the gillie stopped on the edge of the shore. He raised the cross high. “
Robert Stewart, laird of Appin; Robert Stewart, his son; and all the gillies, clansmen, and tacksmen!”
he cried
“In the name of James, King of Scotland and England: loyal Scots are called to battle!
”

Jean’s inhalation hissed. “Swear it! I will have you back!”

“
In the name of James, King of Scotland and England
—”

Her bared teeth glinted briefly in firelight. “Alasdair Og MacDonald—”

“—
loyal Scots are called to battle!
”

In the waters of Loch Laich, so shallow by the shore, flames reproduced on wavelets. From the threshold of the doorway below Dair’s window a voice answered at last: young Robert Stewart of Appin, bellowing at the gillie. “Will you bring your news inside? Will you drink whisky in the name of the king?”

The man bent and doused the flames. His voice carried clearly. “I’ll come. Will you?”

Robbie Stewart laughed. “Oh, aye, we’ll come to fight for Jamie . . . we’ve naught else to do the summer!” He strode out of the castle toward the water. “Bide a wee, will you?—I’ll have a boat to you.”

“Naught else to do?” Jean Stewart laughed. “He’s no’ got a woman, then . . .” And she turned fiercely to Dair, catching up great handfuls of his shirt. “If you willna swear it in words, I’ll have it another way . . . ’tis but pace or two to the bed—” She loosed a wad of cloth and grabbed in its place the hair on the back of his neck—“or will you have me here?”

Outside, the cross of war was extinguished in the waters of Loch Laich. In her bed they rekindled it in a battle of their own making.

 

The knot lay deep in Cat’s belly, as deep and painful as the memory. She massaged the flesh, hoping to ease the pain, but it did not aid her.

Beyond her flimsy door, behind his own, her father played the pipes.

Cat writhed in her bed. Robbie dead four years . . . and she was a woman now, according to Una, who had served Lady Glenlyon. By Una’s lights, then, Cat had been a woman for two years, though she did not feel it herself; her courses were, Cat thought, naught but an inconvenience, setting greater distance yet again between her remaining brothers and herself. Men need not worry about such things as linen at the ready, nor the cramping deep in a belly.

Her breasts, too, were sore. Cat cupped one through the fabric of her nightclothes, gently squeezing the contours of flesh that had been, but a year before, as tight against her body as a kneecap.

Cat detested sewing. But she and Una had had to remake the bodices of her dresses so she could continue to wear them. They had no silver to spare for such things as cloth; they would make do with what Cat had until she matured enough to wear her mother’s clothing.

She thought again of her brothers, those who survived: Jamie, Dougal, Colin. They did not know. They viewed her still as
Cat
, not as a woman; if they knew, they would tease. And that she could not bear.

Cat chewed her bottom lip. She supposed some lasses might be glad of womanhood, of the proof of their fertility, so they might marry or handfast and begin their own families. But she wanted none of it, yet. She preferred life the way it was, unencumbered by the responsibilities such as her father knew. Let all the other girls-become-women bear the children and tend the men; Cat wanted better. Cat wanted more.

She grimaced against renewed cramping.
I wish I were a lad.

For more reasons than courses, or cramping, or breasts rearranging her chest. Perhaps, had she been a lad, she might have kept Robbie from dying.

Yet there was more to it than that. Cat knew she was meant for something far different than the tedium of a woman’s life.
I would sooner steal a cow than tend a man’s meal.

A woman now. The world within her changed, as much as the world without. And she a hostage to both.

Bagpipes squawked into silence. In the blessed cessation of noise, Cat relaxed. The cramping had passed, as had the noise. She could sleep at last.

Her eyes flew open as she heard the sound of garrons outside in the dooryard. “Father—?” But she dismissed that at once; likely he slept in his chair. “—oh
CHRIST
—” She flung herself out of bed and went at once to the window, heaving back the shutters.

She saw what she feared to see: three bonneted, plaid-swathed brothers, already mounted, and a handful of gillies with them. The moon was full, flooding rumpled, summer-clad hills, but nothing metallic glinted, no badges, no buckles, no bared dirks, nothing to give them away.

“I willna let them—” Cat snatched up her shawl, yanked it on over her bedclothes, jerked the door open and ran down the stairs two at a time. “—willna
let
them—”

She was utterly heedless of bare feet. She had to stop her brothers before they left Chesthill, left Glen Lyon, went out on Rannoch Moor; before they went to Glencoe, to MacDonalds, to death.

The dogs commenced barking as Cat ran out of the house. She saw horses abruptly reined in and the pallor of Campbell faces turned sharply in her direction as the door, flung open in violence, smacked the wall behind it; she left it so, and ran.

“Jamie!” It was his horse she caught, clutching leather reins tautly. She jerked the garron to a decisive halt, ignoring its gaped-mouth protest. “
You willna
, Jamie! None of you!”

“Let be!” Jamie shouted. “Christ, Cat—”

“Dinna GO!” she cried.

It was Dougal’s turn. “Cat, ’tis none of it your concern.”

“None of
my
concern? Mine?” She clung to the reins, only vaguely aware of the garron’s damp, noisy snort, its pinned ears and white-edged eyes. “Have you forgotten it, then? Forgotten Robbie?”

Colin pressed his own garron close to her. She felt the warmth of its shoulder, the pressure of Colin’s brogue against her hip. “Cat—we’ve no’ forgotten Robbie. But ’twas
four years
ago. We’re men now, not lads! ”

“Men die too!”

Jamie swore, yanking ineffectually at his captive reins. “Go be a woman elsewhere! We’ve no time for greeting!”

Dougal was less abrupt. “Cat, by God’s eyes . . . ’tis over. ’Tis done. Robbie’s dead four years.”

“We’ve cattle enough.” She clung to Jamie’s reins, undaunted by human or horse. “Have you been out to the shielings? Have you counted? We’ve cattle
enough!
”

Jamie laughed. “We’ve never cattle enough! Christ, Cat,
let be
—” Then, angrily, “—have ye spilled your Highland blood and replaced it with Sassenach?”

“Then go to Appin!” she shouted. “Go there, and not to Glencoe.”

“Jamie, hold.” Colin put up a silencing hand. He was less impatient, less harsh; at eighteen no longer a boy, but not quite a man, either. “Cat—we canna hide ourselves forever. The MacDonalds are lifting our cows with no protest from Campbells . . . dinna you think ’tis time we got them back?”

She did not release the reins to Jamie’s garron. He could cut himself free with his dirk, but she’d not let go. “I willna lose another brother.”

“Then stay here!” Jamie snapped. “ ’Twas
you
who got him killed. Had you no’ come, Robbie’d be alive.”

It was burnwater over her flesh. Cat shuddered violently.—
told them naught . . . told them NAUGHT of the dirk
—

“Let be,” Dougal said. “Cat—they’re gone, the MacDonalds. Dundee sent the burning cross around the lochs. They’ve answered. They’ve gone to Dalcomera, to fight the Sassenachs.”

“Jacobite fools,” Jamie muttered. “They’d do best to support William. If I’m to die in battle, it were better to die for a king in power than one beating his breast in France!”

“I’d go to fight against the Jacobites,” Dougal said seriously, “but Breadalbane keeps us home.”

“He’s a woman,” Jamie declared in disgust, “and so is our father. A letter from Breadalbane, and we’re all of us unmanned!”

Cat did not care about who was king, who was not, and who kept whom from war. All she wanted was to keep
them
from raiding Glencoe. “The MacDonalds were gone before, aye?—and Robbie still died! ”

Colin slid off his garron and gave his reins to Dougal. His hands on hers were gentle but firm as he peeled her fingers loose one by one from leather. She was not a small woman nor a weak one, but he was, at long last, taller and stronger than she. “Go to bed, Cat.” He jerked his head at Jamie in a mute order to back away. “When you wake up in the morning we’ll have more cows on the braes.”

“Colin—” But protest died. Sickness rose up in her belly, tickling the back of her throat. She wanted to spew it out, to purge herself of the guilt.—
none of them ken it was MY dirk
—“Colin, dinna go,” she gulped. “Promise me.”

“I willna promise such a thing.” He guided her back from the horses, turning her toward the house. “Go to bed.”

Protest was futile; helplessness enraged. She thought her skull might split with the virulence of her frustration, the pain of powerlessness. “Then kill them all!” she shrieked. “Kill every MacDonald there and be
done
with it, and then they willna kill you!”