Summer of Love (11 page)

    
"Creag an Tuire!" came their battle cry. "Friend or foe?"

    
"I am Dougal MacGregor! And you are Donald MacLaren," Dougal
answered their call. "The last time I saw you was in Inverness. Welcome to
our humble abode!"

    
"Aye, Dougal MacGregor. You made it back safely."

    
"Yes, just to see our clachan burned and our cattle driven away!"

    
The four slowly walked down to the huts. Dougal met them halfway and
embraced the limping man.

    
"Come inside. You are wounded?"

    
He helped him to a bench in the hut. "Woman, look at his leg!"

    
Mary brought a fir candle and carefully removed the bloody cloth
wrapped around Donald MacLaren’s thigh. He looked her over questioningly. "And who ripped your clothing, lady?"

    
Dougal answered instead: "They got attacked and robbed by five dragoons
this afternoon."

    
"Ah, that must have been the same group who surprised us on the slopes
of Beinn Leabhain. That’s how I got wounded."

    
Mary looked up from her task, hope in her face. "Did you kill them?"

    
"No, we did not."

    
Visibly disappointed, she went back to cleaning the wound.

    
"How did you get away then?" asked Dougal.

    
"Something very strange happened. I still don’t comprehend it. We were
resting behind bushes, when suddenly four dragoons with their officer and
a young Campbell lad came riding down the glen."

    
"Yes, that’s them all right," interrupted Dougal.

    
"Anyway, we ducked for cover, but the officer must have spotted us, and
they came charging. We ran down into the ravine—the only escape
route—but a bullet hit me in the thigh, and I fell. I ordered the others to make
a run for it. The four dragoons pursued them, while the officer stayed behind.
He had his second pistol out and was aiming at me, when suddenly the
Campbell lad shot him at close range—"

    
"You were probably his target and he hit the officer by mistake," Dougal
interrupted again. "That deceiving bugger could not even hold a pistol
straight—the coward that he is!"

    
"No, Dougal, you are wrong there. It was a very clean, well-aimed shot.
Almost like an execution. Went into the man’s temple and out the other
side."

    
"Mm," mutters Dougal, waving his hand with a sneer.

    
"But now it gets even stranger. The lad calmly reloads his pistol and then
only checks the officer, and ties him over the horse… All done in absolute
silence. He never even looked at me. Then, he tosses the officer’s pistols to
me, and says calmly: "You killed him, understood?" and off he rode, after
the dragoons. I was too stunned to say something, and that takes quite a bit…
A very strange lad. And a Campbell of Argyle! The very people I just faced
in battle! I owe him my life. I was sure to meet my maker right then. The
English had his pistol trained on me and was pulling the trigger. I was lying
on the ground, hardly twenty feet away… And I didn’t even thank the lad…
My cousins soon came back to fetch me after they were able to shake off
their pursuers in the ravine."

    
As he told the story, Mary stopped tending his wound, her eyes almost
taking the words off his lips. When he finished, she sighed. "The officer is
dead, you said."

    
"Yes, as dead as a corpse, and killed by a Campbell."

    
"One down, four to go," she murmured.

    
Dougal pressed out a forced laugh. "Five, woman."

    
MacLaren looked questioningly from one to the other. But he did not ask
what was meant. He seemed to have guessed that the women suffered more
than just blows.

    
As Helen listened to Donald MacLaren, cold shivers ran up her spine.
Betty came to her, and she folded her arms protectively around the girl, as
much to comfort her as to share her anguish. Her mother’s curse had struck
like lightening, and in the most unexpected way, while her father’s correction
felt like a stab in the back. For a moment, she held her breath. Betty began
to tremble again. She took the girl back to the rough straw sack that they
shared as mattress and lay down with her.

 * * *

That night, holding her restless sister, sharing her plaid for warmth, sleep
escaped Helen until the early morning. Her thoughts went in circles. She
couldn’t understand Andrew’s actions. Why had he led the soldiers to their
clachan? Why had he brought the dragoons into the shielings? Why had he
helped Betty and her to get away unhurt? Why hadn’t he tried to prevent the
dragoons from raping her mother and aunts, but then killed the officer in cold
blood? Executed him. Wouldn’t they hang him for this? Was her father right
that he hadn’t raped her because he was impotent? But why had he then
helped Betty? Had he joined her attacker with the intention to rape her and
then suddenly discovered that he couldn’t? The fright in his eyes hadn’t
looked like the fright of shame, but rather the terror for what might happen
to her. His impatient plea for her to pretend hadn’t seemed to be motivated
by fright for himself, but for her. She got more and more confused.

 
    
When the first glimmer of dawn entered the hut, she finally dozed off,
only to be woken shortly afterward by the bark of the dogs. Several of the
men rushed outside, pistol in hand. She heard the hollow sound of galloping
hooves pounding the hard ground, first approaching, then getting dimmer
again, briefly interrupted by the dry thud of a pistol shot. Only the murmur
of the men outside the hut broke the silence.

    
"What was that all about?" asked one of the MacLaren men.

    
"I think he dropped something over there," said Donald MacLaren.

    
She heard quick footsteps.

    
"It’s the women’s plaids … and their brooches," shouted Dougal.
Exhausted, Helen fell asleep again. Her last fleeting thought was:
He brought
them back. He’s still alive.

5

The morning after the incident, Lord Glenorchy personally interrogated
everybody involved about how Lieutenant Gordon got killed. Before
Andrew entered the earl’s chambers, he took deep breaths for a minute or so,
willing himself to look calm and sincere. The earl’s questioning was sharp
and probing. He made Andrew repeat the account for a second time, but
Andrew did not get caught in any contradictions. His story was simple and
told exactly what happened, except for the fact that he himself had fired the
lethal shot. He had told the same to the dragoons when he had met up with
them, and had rehearsed it in his mind several times since. Finally satisfied
that Andrew was telling the truth, the earl ordered him to make a written
report and give it to him for forwarding to the English command in Perth.

    
Andrew surprised himself how calm and calculating he had remained over
these last twelve hours. At times he worried that he felt no remorse or regret
for having killed a man in cold blood. Instead, there was just relief—relief
that this callous man was no more, relief that he wasn’t consumed with
hatred any longer. When he had caught up with Gordon alone in that glen,
his heart black, he had acted from instinct. He had pulled his pistol, primed
it, taken careful aim, and then had called out: "Gordon, look here!" And as
he did so, he had seen in his mind how the man had forced Mary to the
ground. Watching him slowly fall sideways off his horse, he had been
surprised how small the hole in his temple was.

    
After the grilling by the earl, he was summoned to report immediately to
sergeant Miller who had taken command of the platoon. The infantrymen
had left the castle already an hour earlier in the direction of Beinn Leabhain.
Miller had waited for him to lead them back to the scene of the murder and
begin a thorough search of the area. Accompanied by the four dragoons, they
galloped through Killin and caught up with the infantrymen a quarter of a
mile outside Achmore, where the Achmore Burn issued from the slopes of
the mountain.

    
Andrew led them slowly along the creek to the place where he had shot
Gordon. They searched the ravine and soon found an area of disturbed
ground and trampled grass on the slopes east of the creek. There were even
telltale blood stains on the clay. Higher up in that direction were the shielings
of the MacGregors, where early that morning, as the dawn had begun to
creep over the eastern horizon, he had dropped off the women’s plaids and
brooches. It still bemused him how readily the dragoons had sold him these
things for three pence each. He only had to play on their superstition that
keeping them might bring down the same swift passing of the terrible curse
the MacGregor witch had cast on them. Didn’t it strike down the lieutenant
within minutes after he had ravished her?

    
 The sergeant ordered his men to fan out, and they slowly advanced up the
hill in a southeasterly direction, finding further clear signs of a group of
people climbing higher into the hills, with three of them walking side by
side, as if the one in the middle needed support. They had covered about a
mile, when they reached a sizable terrace, to Andrew’s reckoning no more
than half a mile above the burned-out clachan of the MacGregors.

    
Not finding any further traces, the sergeant ordered half of his man and
two of the dragoons down into the glen to search the cottages, while he took
the rest slowly higher up toward the shielings. Andrew hadn’t counted with
this eventuality. What if the MacLarens were still sheltering with the
MacGregors? Wounded as he was, this was more than likely.

    
They had climbed about half a mile, when one of the dragoons returned
hurriedly and reported that a Campbell cavalryman had just brought a
message. The fugitives had been sighted earlier that morning near Ardeonaig,
four miles further along the loch, and the platoon was to march there at the
double without delay to take up the pursuit. Andrew said a silent prayer of
thanks. Another half mile up and they would have been in sight of the huts
on the shielings.

    
The search for the fugitives continued for another two days. But the
MacLarens seemed to have evaporated into thin air, their scent gone cold.
Andrew surmised that they probably had gone south over the mountains to
Loch Earn.

 * * *

With their punitive action completed, the English infantrymen, less their
lieutenant, left for Perth to rejoin the main force. Only the four dragoons
remained behind to liaise between the Earl of Breadalbane and Perth. As
soon as it became known that the English had marched off, complaints came
pouring in with the factor’s office of looting and plunder committed by the
infantrymen on loyal subjects of the earl. The English had found it difficult
to distinguish between loyal subjects and rebels, or they had simply viewed
anybody wearing Highland garb as rebels. Andrew had to record the claims
for forwarding to the English command in Perth.
Not that this will do much
good
, were his thoughts as he completed the first bunch of them.

    
On Andrew’s suggestion, the earl gave orders to confiscate some of the
loot bought by the speculators and not yet carted or driven away, so as to
compensate the injured parties at least in part. This was done to the loud and
vociferous protests of these vultures, who now in turn flocked into the
factor’s office to lodge their complaints with threats of going to report these
confiscations to the English command. Andrew literally chased them out of
the chamber where he conducted his business while at the castle, telling them
to go quietly or else the earl would have them thrown into the dungeons as
profiteers and buyers of stolen property.

    
Few of the tenants were in a position to pay their rents. Those who had
suffered the punitive sanctions of the English first hand had nothing left. But
even those who had fought under the banner of the Campbells found it hard
to make ends meet. So suddenly, Andrew had little to do. There was no point
in trying to collect rents from people who couldn’t pay. When Dougan
Graham voiced his concern about the state of affairs, Andrew reminded him
of his prediction that these punitive actions would hurt the Earl as much as
the tenants.