White Rose Rebel (16 page)

Aeneas, trying to order the guddle of Black Watch into lines facing south, saw three of their six cannon were captured. The clansmen who’d taken them began to turn the guns round to face the government troops. Beside Aeneas, a soldier crossed himself. Ray went running past without stopping.

‘Retreat,’ Aeneas muttered. ‘We have to sound retreat.’

He left his sergeant to sort the men out and hurried back to find Louden.

On the rise, Anne leant forward over Pibroch’s neck, craning to see Cope, to see what he would do now the tables were turned. Locals and folk from Edinburgh began arriving on the slopes and other vantage points to watch the battle.

‘Whit are we waitin for?’ Clementina asked.

‘Enough light,’ Anne answered. ‘So we know our own.’ A movement among the enemy caught her attention. It was Aeneas,
running back through the ranks. He seemed to be chasing his own lieutenant. She wondered where he was going that he would leave his men without command. Aeneas reached a group of officers, Louden among them, and gesticulated, pointing. His lieutenant ran on. Anne could see nothing of significance in the direction Aeneas pointed, except a drummer boy. A drum! She trotted Pibroch over to Lord George.

‘George,’ she said. ‘They’re going to retreat.’

‘A minute more,’ Lord George said. ‘Let them see each other first.’

‘
Mais non,’
the Prince objected. ‘Shouldn’t we allow them to retire?’

‘We won’t have this advantage another day,’ Lord George said.

The Prince had been scouring the scene too.

‘I do not see General Cope.’

‘He’s not there,’ Anne told him.

‘
Pas ici?
Then this retreat might be a ploy,’ the Prince said. ‘He might mean to bring a force in behind us. We’d be caught between them.’

‘With respect, sir,’ Lord George assured him, ‘he hasn’t the troops.’

‘Then where is he?’

In the Musselburgh tavern, a red, tasselled nightcap was all that could be seen from below the covers when the landlady went into the guestroom.

‘Sir,’ she said, tentatively. ‘General Cope?’

The heaving bump in the bed snored.

‘General, sir,’ the landlady tried again. ‘You wanted wakened early.’

There was a snort, a gasp and one eye peered out of the covers.

‘What time is it?’

‘Dawn, sir. Your retainers left a half-hour ago.’

Cope threw off the covers and leapt out of bed. The landlady averted her eyes from his short white nightshift and went out.
Downstairs, she set his breakfast on the table. In minutes, he was clattering down the stairs, his uniform buttoned askew, trying and failing to straighten his wig and fasten on his sword at the same time.

‘You’ll want tae eat, sir,’ the landlady waved at the steaming-hot plate of food. ‘Ye cannae die on an empty stomach.’

‘No time, no time,’ Cope headed for the door.

‘But they’ll no start withoot you.’ The door banged behind him. ‘Will they?’

On the flats, MacGillivray watched Lord George on the rise. The sun was half up now, the mist almost clear. He could see well enough to charge and wanted the order. On the ridge, Lord George’s sword was raised, held aloft and then chopped down. MacGillivray tugged his blue bonnet forward, reached behind his head to draw his two-handed great-sword and raised it high above him.

‘Claymore!’ he roared.

The same cry rose from all the chiefs, from Lochiel on the left to Keppoch on the right. All those in the front line scrugged their bonnets and drew their pistols. As the other chiefs shrieked their war cries, MacGillivray thrust his sword forward.

‘Loch Moy!’ he bellowed.

The war cry howled from Clan Chattan behind him, and they erupted across the field in the Highland charge. MacGillivray set a cracking pace. The inexperienced conscripts at the front of the government army had never witnessed such a sight. Terrified, they fired off their muskets, too soon. Every shot expired uselessly before it reached the Highlanders rushing towards them. Now in range, MacGillivray stopped abruptly, his warriors halting with him.

‘Aim,’ he shouted. ‘Fire!’

The pistols were discharged. As the redcoats who took the fire fell, the Highlanders dropped the guns at their feet, lifted their targes off their backs and, in one searing slash of steel, all their swords were drawn and raised.

‘Loch Moy!’ MacGillivray screamed again, the cry echoed by his men. They raced on towards the enemy. The redcoats still standing among the dead and wounded in the front government line stared in horror as the wild, bladed tribes rushed at them. Back on the Jacobite lines, the second line scrugged bonnets. In front of her
men, having refused to place them under another command, Jenny Cameron drew her sword.

‘Claymore!’ she shouted. The men behind echoed it, drawing pistols.

All along the line, the roar sounded.

‘Claymore!’ Ewan M
^c
Cay shouted for Clan Chattan. There was a beat, then the war cry, each clan with its own.

‘Loch Moy!’ The M
^c
Intosh cry roared again and they rushed down the field.

The straggled front line of redcoats waited with bayonets poised as the first wave of Jacobites thundered down on them. MacGillivray, leading his men, arrived first. He brought his claymore down, hard and fast, across the nearest soldier. The man’s neck and throat split open, his head tilted, blunt white bone exposed. Blood pumped out as he toppled. MacGillivray was already past and on to the next.

Up on the ridge, Anne saw and turned away, her stomach heaving.

‘Mibbe we shouldnae watch,’ Clementina suggested, her face greyer than before. Her father was down there.

‘I must,’ Anne said. ‘I brought them here. But you go back to the M
^c
Intosh women. Say I sent you and you’ve to stay with them.’

The girl didn’t need telling twice. She turned MacGillivray’s horse and rode over the brow of the rise to where they waited. Anne turned her attention back to the field.

Aeneas had heard the attack begin and ran back to his own men. The redcoat lines between his Black Watch and the Highland charge wavered, breaking up. The Camerons cut a swathe through the infantry to set about the dragoons. Nearest the sea, the MacDonalds butchered their way deep into the enemy lines. MacGillivray and his men were through the front line, cutting down soldiers as they came. Bayonets, targes and swords clashed. The men in the depleted front lines dithered about whether to attack them from behind or
turn to face the second line of Highlanders now charging towards them. Instead of doing either, they took to their heels, running through the fighting, back through their own forces, leaving the field.

Aeneas, running forward, drew his sword, pushed a young soldier out of his way and swung at the Highlander about to engage him. Nearby, the two Shaw brothers squared up to each other, beating the lights out of each other’s targes.

At the rear, Louden tried in vain to deploy the cavalry.

‘Fall back! Fall back!’ He shouted to the infantry, desperate for clear space to let the horses through. Redcoats from the front lines ran through them, escaping the battlefield. Turn by turn, each of the three captured cannon fired off shot. Horses screamed and went down. The cavalry broke up, the dragoons turned and galloped in retreat. Louden grabbed the drummer boy.

‘Sound the retreat,’ he ordered. ‘Now!’ Then he held him by his jacket while he did, in case he, too, ran away.

As the retreat sounded over the field, Aeneas dropped the M
^c
Gregor he’d engaged with a blow to the head and strode over to where the Shaw brothers wrestled on the ground, weapons abandoned. He yanked the younger one off.

‘I did it,’ Duncan shrieked.
‘Rinn mi a’ chùis!’

On the ground, his brother’s nose streamed blood.

‘And it will do you,’ Aeneas said. ‘Go!’ He turned the boy by his collar, pushing him in the direction of the retreat. As he did so, a clansman ran the boy through, his sword plunging into Duncan’s stomach, through him and out of his back. The weight of the boy’s body took him to his knees. Aeneas roared and, before the clansman could withdraw his claymore, he thrust his own sword through the man’s neck, pulling it back sharply as the man fell. Aeneas lowered Duncan to the ground, bent over and ripped the claymore from the dead boy’s twitching corpse. In front of him, the older lad was on his feet, blood streaming from his nose, staring in horror at his brother.

‘Duncan?’ he said, as if he expected a response.

Enraged, Aeneas, sword in each hand, raised the captured
weapon and yelling as if he might strike the boy in two, brought it down, sweeping past him, to thrust it deep into the ground.

‘Take your brother home,’ he said. As the boy struggled to get the dead weight on his back, Aeneas looked around the battlefield. The fighting had thinned out. Highlanders chased after the retreating troops. Some way from him, he saw MacGillivray, still in the thick of it, slash a Black Watch soldier, taking his arm off through the shoulder and, without pausing, engage two redcoats. Behind MacGillivray, an injured redcoat struggled on the ground. Aeneas tightened his grip on his broadsword and headed towards his cousin.

On the rise, Anne drew her pistol and kicked her horse off down the slope, weaving between the spectators, towards the battle. Margaret tried to call her back but the call went unheard or unheeded. Anne galloped on.

The third charge of Highlanders drew their swords, shrieked their war cry and set off towards the disarray. The second wave had reached the isolated Black Watch lines. Most of them ran past, seeking Englishmen to kill, not fellow Scots. The Black Watch were barely holding. Their lines broke now, running to join the retreat. Ewan saw Lachlan Fraser, the blacksmith’s son, cut down from behind with a single stroke.

Anne, riding hard through the cannon line, had her eye fixed on the injured redcoat behind MacGillivray. He struggled to his feet, a Lochaber axe from a nearby fallen Highlander in his hand. She spurred Pibroch on. The redcoat staggered, swung the axe up to sink it into MacGillivray’s back. Anne pulled Pibroch up, raised her pistol, aimed. The axe swung down. A pistol shot cracked off. Blood spattered over Anne’s skirts. The man fell, the axe landing harmlessly on the bloodied grass. Above him, smoke drifted away. Behind it, Aeneas stood, the smoking pistol in his extended left hand now pointing at Anne. She, on Pibroch, her pistol now aimed directly at him.

MacGillivray turned at the shot, saw Anne, the falling redcoat, Aeneas. The remaining soldier he was fighting made his escape.
Anne and Aeneas stared at each other. Men fled the field around them. Highlanders ran past in pursuit. Corpses lay everywhere. Horses shrieked. The wounded moaned and howled with pain. The field was thick with blood and severed limbs. The air smelt sickly-sweet. Anne had no words to speak. Aeneas broke the spell, stuck the pistol in his belt, raised the broadsword in his right hand and looked at MacGillivray. The look was a question. For answer, MacGillivray lowered his claymore. His chief turned his back and walked away.

‘Aeneas!’ Anne called.

Her husband kept walking. The Prince galloped between them, shouting uselessly to the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders pursuing the enemy.

‘
Cessez de tuer!
Stop the killing!
Ceux-ci sont les sujets de mon père
. They are my father’s subjects!’

Anne holstered her pistol on the saddle bow, swung Pibroch round and rode back to the ridge.

The third wave of Highlanders reached the front line and slowed, stumbling to avoid the fallen. Some ran on after the fleeing government troops. Meg, pitchfork in hand, led the way. She was mightily displeased not to have been in the front line and wanted a live one who still had some fight in him. The others stopped. There was no one left to fight. Government troops that couldn’t get away dropped their weapons, raising their hands in surrender. Less than fifteen minutes after it began, the battle was over.

As Anne rode back up the rise, women and children streamed down it. Some of the children went to collect pistols and muskets dropped by the Highlanders as they charged. The others, the oldest, picked whatever weapons could be found from among the dead and dying. It was the women’s job to tend the wounded, their own and the enemy’s, patching them up on the field, then carrying them to the doctors from Edinburgh who waited over the ridge. Their own dead they took off the field for burial. The enemy dead, they robbed.

Donald Fraser also searched among the fallen, stopping at body after body, turning them over, looking for his son. Those killed
with broadswords or dirks were often unrecognizable, with limbs and sections of faces missing. Claymores, usually swung in a circle, took a head off or cut the torso in two. The Lochaber axe did the same to a man’s skull, splitting bone and brain. It was grisly work trying to find someone in the slippery red mire. Fraser ignored the English, concentrating on bodies in dark tartan. He had almost given up when he turned over a body with a deep slash wound in its back, to see the unmarked familiar young face.

He knelt beside his son, knees sinking into the sludge of blood and flesh that once was men and grass. His love for his son weakened him with grief. In this torn body was the baby who had crawled around his feet in the forge, the child who’d strained manfully to blow the bellows, the young man who strove to beat as sure a horseshoe as his father. His eyes pricked with the start of tears as he stroked his son’s pale face. The boy’s arm twitched. Instantly, old Meg loomed over them, pitchfork poised.

‘Mind for his
sgian dhubh
,’ she warned, raising her pitchfork to strike.

‘No, Meg!’ Fraser shouted, sending her scurrying huffily away.

The boy’s chest heaved, his eyes flickered open.

‘You’re alive,’ Fraser choked, and glanced around to see who was near. ‘Help me,’ he shouted. ‘He’s alive. He’s alive!’

Three hundred English troops had died. The Jacobites lost thirty men, with seventy wounded, but took fifteen hundred prisoners, a third of them injured. Few of the enemy escaped. On the road back to Edinburgh, Anne and MacGillivray, both bloodstained, rode side by side. Anne’s horse drew a pallet behind it on which Fraser’s injured son was strapped. Immediately behind walked Fraser, Ewan, old Meg and MacBean, with Clementina and her father, reunited after the battle, following on with the rest of the troops straggling along the road from Prestonpans. They had left the Prince railing that no one would bury the English.