The Gathering Storm (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 3) (57 page)

“No,” Alex interrupted. “No, they’re fine. We havena lost. Well, no’ as far as I ken. Charles is riding to meet Cope now. I’m sorry,” he continued. “I shouldna have…” He waved a hand at the mess he’d made.

“Nae bother,” put in Maggie. “I’ll clean it up.”

“To hell with that,” Beth said hotly. “If everyone’s alright, and we haven’t lost, then what’s going on?”

“He wants me to stay,” Alex replied. He’d regained some measure of control now, had blinked away the tears, although his breathing was still a little ragged.

“Stay? Who wants you to stay? Where?”

“Charles. He wants me to stay here, as Sir Anthony.”

“We know that already,” she said, puzzled. “We’re staying for a few weeks, and then we’re off to join him in Scotland, as soon as we can.”

“No,” Alex broke in. “He wants me to
stay
here. He’s worried about the lack of good information about troop movements and suchlike, and he’s asked me to continue gathering and passing information on. He says I’m in a unique position to find out intelligence crucial to the success of the cause, that no one else can do it.”

Prince Charles had a point. Beth sat down at the bench, and put the letter on the table.

“How long does he want you to stay for?” she asked.

“Until he arrives in London to take the throne for his father,” Alex replied desolately.

They abandoned the kitchen as it was, and repaired to the library with a bottle of wine to discuss the matter further. Alex picked up the book that Beth had abandoned on the sofa and glanced from it to her. It was not the sort of reading matter she usually chose.

“It was on the table,” she said by way of explanation. “I was just passing time until you woke up.”

He sat down and flicked through the opening pages whilst they were waiting for Maggie to bring some glasses for the wine.

“’…my soul entered that of a young man,’” he read aloud. “’And as he was an egregious fop, a busybody, a scandal-monger, a vain butterfly, an authority in trifles, serious only about his dress, his complexion, and a hundred other vapid nothings’…Christ!” he exclaimed, throwing the book down. “Is this what I’m tae be? When Angus and Duncan are telling their bairns about their great deeds in the glorious battles of the revolution that put Jamie back on the throne, am I tae tell mine about how I pranced around London dressed as a fucking molly? I’m sorry,” he said.

That he’d used such a word in front of her and Maggie, who had now appeared with the glasses, told Beth more than anything just how upset he was.

“Charles does have a point,” she ventured. “Lots of people can fight, but not many can do what you’re doing. I think it takes a lot more courage to spend every day putting on an act, walking a tightrope, never knowing if you’re going to be discovered, than it does to charge across a battlefield when your blood’s up, hacking at the enemy.”

“I was reared tae charge across battlefields and hack at the enemy, Beth,” Alex countered. “There’s nae glory in sitting in drawing rooms drinking tea and eating cake while ye blether on about the latest fashions. I canna tell ye how tired I am of it. The only thing that’s kept me going these last weeks is knowing that it’d soon be over. I dinna think I can keep this up much longer.” He looked across at his wife. “Is that how ye feel about what we’re doing?”

“Well, I’ve never hacked at the enemy on a battlefield,” she admitted. “I expect that takes a lot of courage, but only for a few minutes at a time, and then once the battle’s over, you can go back to doing whatever you do afterwards, marching about and suchlike. With all your friends, who are doing the same as you. What we’re doing is a lonely thing, and dangerous all the time. Or most of the time, anyway. We have to think about every word we say.”

“Beth’s right,” Iain put in. “I ken ye’re upset, Alex, and what ye’re about may no’ make such a good story, but it’s important to the cause.”

“Are ye no’ wanting tae be fighting yourself, laddie?” Alex asked.

“Aye, of course I am, but there’s nothing tae be done. We canna go against the prince.”

From the look on Alex’s face, it was very clear that he’d been intending to do just that. Maggie filled the glasses and handed them round. They all drank in morose silence for a few minutes as they variously contemplated months of formal visits, gentlemen’s clubs, evenings alone with books entitled
The Sofa,
and dashing cross-country in all weathers with coded messages.

“Well,” Alex said finally, “I might have to stay, and you too, Beth, but I see nae reason why you and Maggie canna go and join the rest o’ the clan.”

“Are ye mad?” Maggie asked bluntly. “Who’ll take the messages tae Foley if Iain’s no’ here? Who’ll do all the cleaning and cooking if I’m no’ here?”

“I’m no’ happy wi’ Iain taking the messages as it is,” Alex replied. “He’s a Scot and he canna pretend otherwise, which puts him under suspicion straight away. If he’s caught wi’ a coded message on him, he’ll hang, after they torture him tae find out what’s in it. I’ve never been happy with it, but I thought it was worth the risk for a week or two, a month at most. But now…we could be here for months. I canna expect ye to keep taking such a risk. I’ll take the messages from now on. It’s safer. I can be any nationality I want.”

“What?” Beth cried. “Just when exactly are you going to do that? You’re already exhausted as it is, staying out most of the night, and then going half-blind writing coded letters by candlelight! You’re not getting more than four hours sleep a night now! I’ll do it,” she continued. “Foley knows me, and if I’m stopped I can pretend to be a maid carrying a letter from my mistress to her lover.”

“Ye canna ride across country alone in the middle of the night!” Alex countered hotly.

“I won’t do it at night. I’ll do it in the morning, or in the afternoon, after we’ve visited,” she said. “We can send out to a pie shop for dinner, that’ll save some time, and I can do a bit of cleaning in the evenings when you’re out at the clubs.”

Alex tore his fingers through his hair.

“Ye’ll no’…”

“Will the pair of ye haud yer wheesht?” Iain shouted. “I’m no’ going anywhere. I ken what I’m doing, and I ken the danger. I dinna need tae be telling my bairns about my brave deeds on the battlefield. Tae hell wi’ that. Charlie’s my prince, and you’re my chieftain, and if he wants ye tae stay here, then I’m staying here with ye. And so is Maggie. For as long as it takes. And there’s an end of it.”

He banged the glass down on the table, stood, and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving the other three occupants sitting open-mouthed at this uncharacteristic display of temper.

“Aye, well,” said Maggie calmly after a few moments. “That’s settled then. I’ll away and see tae the dinner.” She rose and followed her husband, closing the door quietly.

Silence reigned for a minute or so.

“Is that how ye feel?” Alex repeated his earlier question. “Are ye afraid and lonely?”

“No,” she replied. “I didn’t say that. I said it’s a dangerous and lonely thing that we’re doing, and it is. But I knew what I was getting myself into when I married you. Well, just after I married you, anyway. The only time I’ve felt lonely was when I thought you didn’t trust me, after Henri. But we’re past that now.”

“Ye didna think that we’d be staying here forever, though, did ye?”

“We won’t be staying here forever. Once this is all over, we’ll go home. To Scotland,” she clarified. “And if we have children…”

“When we have children,” he corrected her.

“…when we have children, I’ll be proud to tell them what their father did to restore King James to his rightful place, and to allow the MacGregors to use their rightful name. And if we’ve brought them up properly, they’ll understand that there’s more than one way to win a war, and that their father’s a great hero, every bit as brave as any soldier on the battlefield. More so, in fact.”

He smiled then in spite of himself, and reaching across the sofa, took her arm and pulled her on to his knee.

“I’m no’ the only great hero in the room tonight,” he said softly. “When ye put it like that, I can see that ye’re in the right. But I wanted so much tae fight at my prince’s side. I’ve spent my whole life waiting for this moment, and I’m sore disappointed, Beth. I canna pretend otherwise.”

She put her arms round his neck and buried her face in his shoulder, inhaling the fresh, clean male smell of him, this man she adored.

“But there’s one thing ye’re wrong about,
mo chridhe
,” he continued. “This path we’re on, it is dangerous, for all four of us. And it was lonely at first, for me. But I’m no’ lonely now, no’ while I’ve got you.” He bent his head and tenderly kissed the top of her head.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, her lips against his neck, her voice muffled slightly. “Whatever happens, we’re in this together, for as long as it takes.”

After that they sat quietly, embracing and drawing strength from each other to face the months ahead. And downstairs, in the kitchen, Iain and Maggie were doing the same.

In view of the interest many of my readers have shown in the historical events portrayed in The Jacobite Chronicles, I thought some of you might find it interesting to learn that quite a few of the more unlikely scenes in my books, are in fact taken from historical record.

In Chapter One, at the dinner party, Beth disturbs the family by stating that the Old Pretender had a Protestant chapel. Although one of the main reasons the Hanoverians put forward against a Stuart restoration was that it would plunge the country back into popery, King James VIII and III, in spite of being a Roman Catholic, did have an Anglican chapel and retained two Anglican chaplains at his Court in exile in the Palazzo Muti in Rome, to minister to his Protestant subjects. He also believed that if his son, Prince Charles, was to one day become the king of a Protestant country, he should grow up surrounded by Protestants as well as Catholics. When Prince Charles, at the age of four, was presented to the pope, he steadfastly refused to kneel, leading some to believe that he would become Protestant someday. This does cast into doubt the somewhat hysterical anti-Catholic pronouncements of the Hanoverian supporters.

Also in Chapter One, Gabriel Foley talks about ‘Mr Red’. As unlikely as this sounds, Mr Red was a real person. His real name was Henry Read, and he agreed to bring English pilots over to Dunkirk to guide the French flotilla. However the English Jacobites became afraid when some of them were arrested, so sent Read to France alone, telling him to find suitable pilots there. But because his French was very poor, he couldn’t do this without help, and was unable to find either the prince or any other English contacts, so after a few days of wandering aimlessly about, he returned to England.

Chapter Five - washing of the feet. This is an old Scottish custom which still persists in some parts of Scotland. Traditionally the bride had her feet washed by the womenfolk, and the man’s feet were washed with soot and cinders. I’ve just adapted the genuine custom a little!

Chapters Fourteen and Seventeen - Prince Frederick, Prince of Wales, did have a very bad relationship with his father, and his shadow Court became a magnet for anyone who was in opposition to King George II. Numerous reasons have been put forward as to why father and son hated each other, but the fact remains that their acrimonious relationship was well-known and continued until the prince’s death. Prince Frederick was renowned for playing practical jokes on his friends and sycophantic followers. As he was heir to the ageing king, people wishing to curry favour would put up with his pranks in the hope of future preferment. I’ve taken liberties with this character trait to write some scenes in my book, such as the gardening scene. Although there’s no record of him actually being quite so horrible to his guests as to make them spread manure, Frederick
was
a keen gardener and also a lover of plays, even writing one himself under a pseudonym. So dire was the result that it ran for only two nights at Drury Lane before closing. He was also a great fan of cricket, and in fact died after being hit by a cricket ball in 1751, although this was not the direct cause of death.

As for Frederick’s sons, the eldest, Prince George (later George III) was thought by his tutors to be ‘lethargic and incapable of concentration’. He did not learn to read properly until he was eleven. He was very shy, and at times silent and morose.

Prince Edward, George’s younger brother, was described by Horace Walpole as ‘a very plain boy, with strange loose eyes…he is a sayer of things!’ As Walpole did not elaborate on the things Edward said, I put my own interpretation on this, and gave him the second sight, hence the premonition that Daniel will hurt Beth.

In Chapter Sixteen Anne tells us that Richard has ordered her to hand feed her baby. Whilst it was common for wealthier women to employ wet nurses to feed their children, there was an increasing concern that the characteristics of the nurse could be somehow transported through the breast milk to the infant, and because of this, wet nurses were carefully vetted. An alternative to wet nurses was hand-feeding, which increased in popularity in the 18
^th
century, both amongst poorer women who needed to go to work, and the more elite who felt breastfeeding was beneath them, but were unwilling to entrust their offspring to a wet nurse. By mid-century men of science started to become interested in the subject of childbirth, and in investigating the high mortality rates of children who were hand-reared. Natural scientists such as Carl Linnaeus began to argue that women should nurse their own children, as other mammals do. In 1739 Thomas Coram founded the Foundling Hospital in London, and in the 1740s, William Cadogan became an honorary medical attendant. He was a firm believer in breastfeeding, and believed mothers’ milk was essential to child health. The exceptionally high mortality rate of infants was of great concern to the government, as these children would soon constitute the workforce, and the issue was debated in Parliament. To give an example of the seriousness of the situation, statistics show that out of ten thousand babies hand-fed in the Dublin Foundling Hospital over a twenty year period, only forty-five survived infancy.