White Rose Rebel (10 page)

‘The guards were snoring in the heather,’ MacGillivray said. ‘Aeneas took us in under their noses and we drove the cattle out past them again.’

‘It wasn’t till we were well clear that we counted them,’ Aeneas went on. ‘And he,’ he slapped MacGillivray’s shoulder, ‘he tells me then that only ten had been raided from Dunmaglas.’

‘How many did you take back?’ Anne asked.

‘Twice that,’ Aeneas laughed. ‘MacDonald will be scratching his head when he sobers, wondering why his herd looks so thin after he’d just increased it.’

‘He’ll be a week working it out,’ MacGillivray hooted. ‘He can’t count above ten before he runs out of fingers!’

Aeneas filled more ale into their tankards.

‘So we’re all better off,’ he said. ‘MacDonald’s herd will have more grass to fatten on. Yours is increased, and we have five new beasts in our stock. A fine morning’s work.’ He raised his tankard. ‘To MacDonald.’

Anne and MacGillivray responded to the toast.

‘MacDonald!’

‘There is something more we can do, that might offset the harvest losses,’ Aeneas pondered. ‘Trade some of our stored wool.’ He paused. ‘Quietly.’

When they heard the Farquharsons had sheared all their sheep, on Anne’s suggestion for safe storage, they’d both followed suit.

‘Smuggle it out to the boats?’ MacGillivray said, catching on. ‘You won’t need to ask me twice.’

‘And the Black Watch might look the other way now,’ Anne said dryly.

‘It’s a fine thing to have,’ Aeneas raised his glass to her, ‘a wife with impressive ideas.’

The door from the kitchen clattered open and young Jessie rushed in.

‘Aeneas, there’s trouble,’ she got out.

He was instantly on his feet, the chair scraping back.

‘What, is it the MacDonalds?’

‘No, no,’ the girl said. ‘It’s the Dowager.’

From outside, Will, the stableboy, half carried the exhausted woman in through the front doors. Aeneas and MacGillivray rushed to help, relieving the young lad of his burden and carrying Aeneas’s aunt to a chair.

‘She’s galloped that horse from Inverness,’ Will complained.

‘Would you see to it?’ Aeneas asked, and the lad hurried back out.

Anne poured ale into a fresh tankard and held it to the Dowager’s lips.

‘Here,’ she urged. ‘Drink.’

The older woman gulped the liquid down.

‘What on earth brings you in such haste?’ Aeneas asked.

‘The Prince,’ the Dowager gasped.

‘But his ships were turned back,’ Aeneas said. ‘Is he taken?’

‘No.’ The Dowager shook her head. ‘He’s come. He’s here.’

‘Here?’ Anne said, beginning to look round, then stopping. ‘Where?’

‘Put in at Borrowdale and is heading for Glenfinnan now.’

‘He’s here?’ MacGillivray frowned as if, surely, this couldn’t be.

The Dowager nodded. ‘Aye.’ Now she had her breath back, her voice steady. ‘He has come at last.’

There was stunned silence as the news sank in. MacGillivray was first to speak.

‘Now we can free ourselves,’ he shouted, lifting Anne off her feet to swing her round. ‘And live how we please!’

As he let her go, Anne gripped his arms.

‘He’s come,’ she squealed, then turned to her husband, alive with excitement. ‘He’s come, Aeneas. He’s really here! Oh, Jessie,’ she said to the wide-eyed girl. ‘Would you fetch wine, and glasses? We must celebrate.’

As the girl rushed out, Aeneas pulled a chair over beside his aunt and sat down.

‘And the French army, are they with him?’

The Dowager was slower to shake her head this time. ‘Seven men, they say.’

‘Seachdnar!’
Aeneas repeated, appalled. ‘Seven men!’

‘Some guns and ammunition.’

Aeneas stood, throwing his chair back angrily so it toppled with a clatter on the wooden floor. ‘The clans won’t rise for seven men!’

‘They’ll rise for him,’ Anne asserted.

‘I very much fear they will,’ the Dowager said.

‘We’ll give him an army,’ MacGillivray affirmed. He was already impatient to go. ‘We’d best move fast to bring Clan Chattan out, Aeneas, or Macpherson might seize the chance to steal command from you. He’s not forgiven your chieftainship.’

Aeneas walked to the window and stood, looking out, his back to them. Anne’s tremendous surge of joy was seeping away. She walked over, put a hand on his shoulder. There was tension in him.

‘Aeneas?’

He turned then, but when his eyes met hers, they had no warmth or excitement in them, only cold certainty, and were strange to her.

‘I’ll not bring the clan out,’ he said.

‘Not fight?’ She misunderstood. He couldn’t mean that. ‘But we must. We agreed, when he came, that we’d rise.’

‘Words are easy said.’

‘Like those that bind us?’ Anne accused.

‘No, of course not!’

‘This is our cause he comes to lead.’

‘Without the French, the government will crush this in its infancy. I will not risk our people for seven men. We’ll wait to see what the other clans do.’

‘We’ve waited long enough,’ MacGillivray reminded him. ‘Our people die of patience!’

‘He’s come alone,’ Aeneas reiterated. ‘And England won’t easily give Scotland up. Make no mistake, Alexander, if this starts, we daren’t lose.’

‘It has started,’ the Dowager said. ‘Lochiel sent the fiery cross from Achnacarry. The Camerons are already marching. That’s how I know.’

‘You see?’ Anne put her hand on Aeneas’s arm, entreating him. ‘We should all stand together.’

‘With the Camerons?’ Aeneas said. ‘That we won’t.’ Their two clans had been at odds for centuries. ‘Lochiel is a foolish old romantic.’

It was more than MacGillivray’s hot temper could bear.

‘But a loyal one,’ he retorted, snatching up the short-bladed
sgian dhubh
he had been eating with. ‘Man, is it water not blood in your veins!’ And he stabbed the knife deep into the table.

Instantly, Aeneas pulled his dirk. ‘We can settle that outside,’ he challenged.

The Dowager leapt out of her chair and between them.

‘It is settled,’ she said forcefully, and while she might have meant their unspoken rivalry over Anne, it was his loyalty she called on to calm MacGillivray. ‘When Clan Chattan chose Aeneas, we chose a warrior with a wise head not just a strong arm. You wanted that lead then, Alexander. Will you fail the first test of your own bond?’

MacGillivray could, with impunity, set his king before his chief, but he struggled with it. The Prince was still formless, King James a vague and distant notion. Aeneas was flesh and blood, and here, supporting and defending his own. That morning’s adventure to benefit the MacGillivrays had been at his lead.

‘Since I could walk, Aeneas,’ he said, ‘you have led. Lead now.’

Aeneas pushed the dirk back into his belt.

‘As I’m trying to,’ he said. ‘Any fool can fight, but it takes wit to win. I’ll speak to our other chiefs.’

MacGillivray, who would not have stood down to any other man, took his hand off the hilt of his dirk.

‘Then I’ll ride with you,’ he said.

‘Our chiefs will come out,’ Anne said. ‘They’ve wanted this for so long.’

Aeneas took hold of her, gently, asking for patience.

‘I’ll ask them to wait,’ he said, ‘until the French arrive.’ He and MacGillivray left then. Joyless and uncertain, Anne watched them go, then she turned to the Dowager.

‘But what if the French wait for us to declare?’

‘A few more weeks will do no harm,’ the Dowager assured her.

Jessie hurried back into the room bearing wine and glasses. Her excitement faltered as she saw the men had gone and the mood changed.

‘Are we not celebrating now?’ she asked.

‘No matter.’ The Dowager relieved the girl of the tray. ‘We can always drink.’

Deep inside Anne a fear had taken root, a fear she didn’t want to admit to, not even to herself. She had married a man she didn’t know. Now she discovered qualities in him she could not have guessed. Aeneas wasn’t like MacGillivray, open and easy to read. She could always tell what MacGillivray would do. Sometimes, she even knew what he would say, often before he appeared to know himself. But Aeneas had unknown depths to him. What now surfaced did not bring delight with the surprise. She was uncertain about his loyalties or what he held dear, and that uncertainty threatened her.

To keep from dwelling on it, she resorted to brittle conviction. He would come back chastened, convinced, enthused. The other chiefs would talk him round. She had Will prepare the four crosses ready to be sent out to raise the clan and doubled the watch on the cattle in case MacDonald tried to take advantage of Aeneas’s absence and steal back his beasts. She kept busy with estate business, dispensing extra grazing rights to an elderly couple who lived on the edge of Drumossie, and she heard more news. The Prince raised his standard at Glenfinnan, announcing his father’s commitment to restore Scotland’s independence with his crown. From Angus, the newly wed Margaret Johnstone and her husband, Lord Ogilvie, joined Lochiel for the cause. The MacDonald chiefs, cattle-thieving forgotten, took their people out.

All around, the land throbbed with talk. A government army was marching north to reinforce Inverness. Weapons that had not seen daylight for years were taken from their hiding places, sharpened and polished till they shone. Several chiefs lit the fiery cross and sent the runners out with it, calling their clan to arms. Many, like Aeneas, did not. Still he did not return. Anne entertained the Dowager, who had stayed on to keep her company. When she tired
of the house, she showed Jessie how to mince the meat of a hare with onion and turnip to make a thick, nourishing broth. Next day, she set off with a flask of it to visit the north-western cotts. Even as their world spun into rebellion around them, the sick, old man, Tom, would still need good fresh food.

It was mid-morning as she came over the rise in sight of the cotts. Ahead, she saw Cath, baby wrapped against her in the tartan shawl, holding the gifted MacDonald cow while old Meg, on a stool beside its rump, drew milk from its swollen teats. She expected a welcome but, as soon as the women saw her coming, Cath tied the rope to the tethering post and hurried away through the cotts. Meg watched as she drew near, head tucked side-on against the cow’s black hide, hands working rhythmically at its udders. Her expression was shuttered, suspicious.

‘I brought some meat broth for the old man who’s ill,’ Anne said.

The hiss of milk spurting into the wooden pail stopped. Old Meg sat back on the stool, drying her hands on her rough skirts.

‘Cath’s gone to let him know you’re coming.’

‘You guessed my reason?’

Meg shrugged.

‘No one else here wants charity.’

‘It’s not charity,’ Anne corrected. ‘We look out for each other.’

‘That’s as maybe.’

‘The woman who was hurt with the peat-spade,’ Anne asked, ‘is she well?’

‘Gone back to her own people, a week past.’ The old woman turned again to her milking. ‘It’s the last one at the far end,’ she said. ‘They’ll be expecting you now.’

Perplexed by the change in attitude, Anne walked down the row of turf dwellings. There seemed to be no one else about. Many of them would be in the fields, seeing to crops, beasts, turning peats or collecting wood for winter fire stocks, but she would have expected some women and children to be busy spinning wool, churning butter or making cheeses. Then, from the corner of her eye, she caught a flutter of movement crossing the gap between
cotts. A woman’s skirt, an ankle. Whoever it was, she was avoiding Anne, going in the opposite direction, and did not want to be seen.

Anne sighed. The trust she’d won from them last time had gone. While Aeneas hesitated, his people did not know where they stood. They would come out for the cause. That was not in doubt. But, just as the rising needed the leadership of the Prince, the people needed leadership from their chief. Maybe they thought Anne had influenced his decision to wait. Clearly, it would take longer than she thought to be accepted here.

Cath emerged from the last cott as Anne arrived. She nodded to indicate that Anne should go in but did not speak. Anne dipped her head to pass in under the low doorway, her spirit more depressed than when she’d set out.

As soon as she was out of sight, there was a flurry of activity. Meg jumped up from her milking and waved the unseen person out from behind the cotts. A woman emerged, her arm round a young lad. Shielding them with her body from sight of Anne’s possible re-emergence, Meg ushered them into her own cott, closed the door tight then, with barely a pause in her movements, resumed her position on the milking stool and continued her task.

Inside the dim, smoky one-room interior of the old man’s cott, Anne warmed the broth in a pot over the low peat fire. The old man lay propped up on a bracken pallet, coughing.

‘I’ve brought you some hare soup, Tom,’ Anne said. Behind his pallet, two small grubby children crouched, staring at her with wide, mesmerized eyes. Both were girls, though it was hard to tell at that age and in the gloom.

‘It’s a princess,’ the bigger child informed the smaller.

Anne smiled and told them who she was, in the customary style, her own name followed by title and her husband’s, just as she had with James Ray on her previous visit.

‘Your chief’s wife,’ she explained as she spooned the steaming soup into a bowl. ‘And perhaps there will be broth enough for three in this pot.’ She knelt down, stirred the broth with the horn spoon, tested the temperature was not too hot, then held the spoon to
the old man’s trembling lips. He swallowed greedily. Nothing much was wrong with his appetite. Behind her, the door of the cott opened. A stocky, fair-headed man came in. She recognized him right away. He was the cottar who first challenged Aeneas’s request that they send their sons to the Black Watch, the same man who’d held the brutish Dùghall while Aeneas took the hand off him.

‘Ewan M
^c
Cay, Lady M
^c
Intosh,’ he introduced himself. ‘This is my home and you’re welcome in it. How is my father?’

‘Alive,’ Anne said. ‘If you would send the older one,’ she nodded at the children, ‘up to the Hall every third day, Jessie will see to it there is always fresh broth for him.’