The Last Sunset (27 page)

He could hear Rhona’s voice outside the cottage
now. He also recognised Jamie’s nervous laughter. Dammit! He’d hoped his own
guys would still be unconscious this morning, and the whole idiotic idea would
have come to nothing.

Groggily Andy rose to his feet. He looked around
for his combat jacket, then remembered he’d given it to Ishbel to keep her warm
on her way home. His head hurt even more when he moved, but he managed to make
his way outside without serious embarrassment.

Tethered to a post was a train of six Highland
ponies. One was laden with packs, another carried the G.P.M.G. and ammunition
box. Rhona looked grim faced as she tightened the girth on one of the saddles.
She was dressed in dark green tartan trews and green tartan jacket that didn’t
quite match one another. Colin stood to one side, rifle in hand, looking lost
and out of place. Jamie, Rae and Fergie were making last-minute adjustments to
their webbing.

“Ye’re still gonnae go through with it, then?”
he said, narrowing his eyes in the early morning sunshine.

A surprised grin appeared on Jamie’s face. “Didnae
think we’d see ye up this early.” He looked at his N.C.O. the way an evangelist
would look at one of the unconverted. “It’s still no’ too late. We’re gonnae be
gone six days at most. Even if the redcoats do come again it’ll no’ be within
the week. You’re gonnae be sitting here twiddling your thumbs while ye could be
out there with us.”

“Jamie, we’ve been over this…”

“Ah, sod ’im,” Rae put in sourly. “He’s got more
important things on his mind.”

The remark drew a coarse laugh from Fergie. Andy
was too tired to rise to the bait.

“We have but three days to reach Inverness.”
Rhona interrupted. “We may say our farewells now for we must leave this
instant.”

Jamie drew a deep breath and slung his rifle
over his shoulder. His pouches bulged with spare magazines.

Andy searched for something meaningful to say:
“Listen, if ye make it tae Culloden in time, ye’ll be arriving from the west,
the Highlander’s right wing, where the battle’s gonnae be decided. Take out the
artillerymen. If ye get the chance take out some of the dragoons as well.
That’ll even up the odds a bit.”

Jamie nodded. He would have known all this
already, of course.

Colin came over to shake Macmillan’s hand. “If
anything should happen to ourselves will you tell Alistair that… that…”

Andy nodded. “You two keep yer heads down, ye
hear me?” He lowered his voice. “Any chances tae be taken let those two morons
take them. And keep an eye on that lassie. She’s no’ as strong as she likes tae
make out.”

Already Rhona was on the path heading east, the
train of ponies strung out in single file behind her. Rae and Fergie followed,
both with their hands in their pockets, emphasising their ex-military status.
Colin and Jamie fell in behind, the soldier taking up the rear as if he was on
patrol. They were nearly four hundred yards away when Jamie turned and yelled
something at his corporal. Andy caught only brief snatches:

“…Mags… twenty rounds… spare ammo…”

With a last wave Jamie disappeared from view.
Andy was left with a nagging sense of failure. Then he thought of the soldiers
from the fort licking their wounds only a few miles away, and he thought of
Ishbel, and his sense of failure vanished.

It was barely 6.30 am. The fresh air was
beginning to ease his headache, and the thought of returning to the smoky
depths of the cottage held little appeal.

A layer of frost had gathered overnight; Andy
could see the white hoar in the north-facing hollows. Vapour rose from
vegetation and thatched roof alike as the morning sun began to warm the glen.

He scratched at the three-day growth on his
chin. A tentative sniff told him he was overdue a scrub down. He made his way
to the burn and followed the downstream flow until he came to a point where the
water cascaded over a waterfall into a pool about five feet deep. He decided this
must be where the people bathed and washed their clothes. In the distance he
could hear cattle lowing, otherwise there was no sign of life.

Andy stripped off and plunged into the water. He
clawed handfuls of sand and gravel from the bottom of the pool and scraped
wildly at his body until he could stand the cold no longer. He dried himself as
best he could with his army shirt before putting on his phillamhor. He spent
another ten minutes washing socks, shirt and underwear before tiptoeing
barefoot back to the cottage, teeth chattering from the cold. Between him and
Mother Nature lay nothing but a tartan plaid, belted around his waist.

All seemed quiet inside the house. Andy draped
his wet clothes on the overhang of the roof and padded into the cottage, looking
for dry clothing. The lassies had returned to their beds. In one corner
somebody was snoring rhythmically. Nearby a young woman was murmuring in her
sleep. He squatted beside the fire, trying to force heat into his shivering
limbs. He wondered how these people survived such a lifestyle. Yet they seemed
to maintain a reasonable standard of hygiene; any odours he’d detected were
natural and not unpleasant. Perhaps they rubbed some plant extract over
themselves; perhaps the secret lay in their dark past:
…First you rub a life
toad under your oxters…

Warmth was returning to his hands and feet. The
contents of the cooking pot had begun to look appealing. He helped himself to a
bowlful. It was the same porridge he’d eaten the previous day, the texture
grainier than he was accustomed to, but he marvelled at the flavour of such a
simple dish.

He scrabbled about in semi-darkness until he
found a pair of woollen stockings and a thick hand-woven blanket, then stumbled
outdoors once again. The stockings were of different shades of tartan, and one
barely reached his calf while the other stretched to his knee. But at least he
was able to put on his boots. Andy stretched out on the blanket, his back
against the wall of the cottage. His headache was now gone, and for the first
time in days he felt clean and refreshed. He decided he would rest his eyes,
for a few moments perhaps. Maybe go for a wee wander later.

Andy felt the sudden loss of heat on his face as
the sun was blotted out. He looked up to see a woman standing over him. At
first he thought it was Ishbel, but as he scrambled to his feet he realised it
was Shawnee.

“Sorry, Andy, I didn’t mean to waken you. Y’were
so still, for a moment there I thought…”

Andy ran a hand through his hair, and was
surprised to find it dry.

“Ah must’ve dozed off,” he mumbled. He looked at
his watch. “God Almighty, it cannae be ten-thirty already…”

Shawnee nodded. “Most of us have been awake for
a while; some poor girl’s been crying out in her sleep. Poor kid; it’s awful
what these people have been through.”

The soldier was beginning to gather his senses.
The sun had climbed well above the southern ridge of hills, melting the last
remnants of frost. It was a beautiful spring day, with barely a cloud in the
sky.

“Have ye had any breakfast? The lassies did a
lovely drop o’ porridge earlier.”

Shawnee shook her head. She was casually dressed
in the shorts and sweatshirt she’d been wearing the day they’d first met.
“Y’know I would give anything for a nice warm shower. Sam can be quite useful
with his hands, maybe when things settle down he could put something together
for me.”

Andy had an image of the house that Shawnee
would demand from her husband to be, with sturdy chimney and wooden
floorboards, and half a hundred other improvements on the black houses of Glen
Laragain, and he realised it was probably women like Shawnee who’d been the
driving force that had taken the species from caves to suburbia.

“There’s a decent-sized pool about four hundred
yards downstream,” he told her. “The water might be warmer now. It was freezing
earlier.”

Andy could see Shawnee taking note of the
washing hanging from the roof, and he suddenly became conscious of his
nakedness beneath the bolt of cloth that covered his waist.

“Wha Ahndy Macmillan,” she said, like a shocked
Southern Belle, “Ah do believe yawl’s bin skinny dippin’.”

The soldier laughed at the ease with which this
lovely American handled such awkward moments. Not for the first time he found
himself confused by the effect she had on him. She and Sam were as good as
walking down the aisle, while Andy’s world had begun to revolve around Ishbel;
yet he still found it important to make a good impression on Shawnee.

“Let’s just say nature in the raw is no’ all
it’s cracked up tae be.”

She smiled and made a half-hearted attempt to
pull some of the tangle out of her hair. “Ishbel was so pretty last night, and
did y’notice how clean she looked and how shiny her hair was? One thing’s for
sure, she didn’t get to look like that by jumping into ice-cold water. Whatever
it is they do, I need some of it and I need it soon.”

They could hear the sounds of movement and the
murmur of voices from inside the cottage.

“It’s no’ gonnae be easy, ye know,” he said suddenly,
“trying tae make a life for ourselves here.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she murmured. “Sometimes it
scares the hell outta me when I think of what we haven’t got here, and then I
think are people from the future any happier than these folks? D’you think our
lives are richer, more purposeful, with our automobiles and refrigerators, and
television sets? I think it’s in our nature to wanna make our lives as
comfortable as possible, yet without adversity we become stale and bored.”

“Aye, Ah saw that maself. Most o’ the lads
preferred tae take their chances in Ireland rather than vegetate in Germany.”

“Germany?” she echoed. “Of course, you guys were
part of N.A.T.O., weren’t you? Before the fall of communism.”

Andy looked stunned. “Before the fall of
communism? Ye mean in Russia? God Almighty, when did that happen?”

“Back in the nineteen nineties.”

“Ah cannae believe this. What happened? Was
there a war, or what?”

“No, not really, there was a series of popular
uprisings throughout Eastern Europe. The whole Soviet empire just sorta
crumbled away.”

“Jeezus,” he breathed. “Of all the things we
reckoned were gonnae come at us from Eastern Europe, Ah don’t think too many
saw that coming. What about China? Did they get rid o’ the communists as well?”

It was a logical question, but immediately Andy
knew he’d touched a nerve.

“In a way they did,” she said, trying to avoid
his eyes, “but the old guard clung on in China, like a dead hand at the wheel…”

Realisation hit Andy like a fist in the face.
“That nuclear explosion we saw; it
was
from your time, wasn’t it? It was
the Chinese… It wasn’t the Russians, it was the bloody Chinese…”

Shawnee nodded faintly. “China was gripped by
famine, appealing for international aid. When no aid came they musta resorted
to force.”

The blood drained from Andy’s face. He felt as
if his mind was about to implode. He turned his back on Shawnee, his hands
swiping at the sides of his eyes. Sam emerged from the cottage before he could
collect his thoughts.

“Hi, guys, how’s it going?”

Sam’s attention was taken up by Shawnee,
uncertain of her reaction this morning after the momentous events of the night
before. She gave him a reassuring peck on the cheek.

“Hi, honey, how y’feeling today?”

“Not too bad I guess. Head’s a little sore.”

“Good,” she said. “The way you were downing that
stuff last night, anybody’d think prohibition was coming back.”

He smiled conspiratorially and nodded at Andy.
“I didn’t wanna offend the old guy that made the stuff, so I tipped a lotta the
moonshine I was given into Andy’s glass.”

Sam’s voice had been loud enough for Andy to
share the joke, but the soldier was lost in his own world.

“What’s wrong?”

Shawnee took Sam by the arm and led him out of
earshot. “He knows about some of the stuff that happened, about the Chinese and
all. He’s gonna wanna know more…”

She stood on tiptoes and kissed him again. “Go
easy on him, huh?”

“Me? Y’want
me
to tell him?”

She looked over her shoulder as she was about to
re-enter the cottage. “I’m gonna see about getting a bath, or something. I feel
kinda dirty, y’know?”

Andy turned around as Sam approached him. The soldier
had the eyes of a man who has seen the fires of hell.

“Okay, big guy. Let’s get this over with,” the
American said bluntly.

Andy had to clear his throat before he could
respond. “None of us really believed they were gonnae be used. They were only
meant tae be a deterrent. What the hell went wrong?”

“What didn’t go wrong? Everything had been going
to hell long before there was any talk of ultimatums, or war.”

“Right, things got a wee bit tough so out came
the nuclear missiles,” said Andy scornfully.

“Y’ever hear of something called global climate
change; G.C.C. for short?”