White Rose Rebel (39 page)

James Ray stood watching Jessie as he listened to the sound of horse and drums move off. The girl slumped against the wall, clutching a bloody, tattered plaid in her arms. He waited while the beat faded out of earshot until the only audible sound was the pregnant girl whimpering and the fainter hooting yells from
the redcoats still outside. Then he waited again, till it came.

‘Anne!’ The shout, muffled, repeated.

Ray smiled, walked along the hall until he came to the door. He turned the handle. It wouldn’t open. He walked back to Jessie.

‘Where is the key?’ There was no answer. He studied the plaid she grasped over her swollen abdomen. That explained the snivelling. ‘I suppose he fathered your brat,’ he said, sliding his hand under the tattered cloth and spreading his fingers over the bulge of her belly. There was something wholly disgusting about this young woman with her puffy eyes, snotty face, the shuddering breasts. Like a rutting sow, that was it. Animal, barely human. He clenched his fist, drew his arm back, punched into her abdomen as hard as he could. She doubled forward, the filthy plaid falling to the floor, the grunted squeal just like a pig’s.

‘Where is the key?’ he repeated. Didn’t she understand English? Maybe not. Most of these barbarians didn’t. He reached down to search her pockets, and she reared up, fists flailing, smashing into his face. He grabbed her arms. She spat in his face. He punched her belly again, harder, and again. As she went down, he swung his boot into her gut. Hunkering down, he raked in her pockets, turning her roughly as she retched, his hand closing on the key. He pulled it out. This would be the one.

Crouched astride her bare trembling legs, he glanced at her naked thighs, tugged her skirt up higher to expose her buttocks. They were at it all the time, these Highlanders. That’s what accounted for their dress, male and female, barely decent. Rumour had it the heather was alive with moaning, thrusting couplings come May Day, and this one had certainly already had a man in her. No ring on her hands either, nobody’s property. He was near bursting out of his trousers, had never rutted with a pregnant sow before, and if she still had some fight in her, it would be livelier than his wife’s dutiful submission. Subduing the natives, that’s what he was paid to do. They had to learn who was master. He slid the cellar key into his own pocket. The captain would keep a while longer.

∗

Hawley did not take the road to Inverness. He led his captive on the older paths through the estate. Two scouts went in front to keep them on the route he wanted followed. Anne stared straight ahead, the drumbeat thudding in her ears, saw drifts of dark smoke in the sky, and nearer, through the trees. They slowed going past two burning cottages. The old crofter and the boy who’d packed then unpacked her belongings earlier lived in one of those. She turned her eyes away from the charred heap lying in one smouldering doorway. They were heading for the north-west cotts.

Reaching them, the general slowed the procession, winding in and out among the shot and torn bodies. He wanted to ensure she saw everything. Cath, raped and shot dead, lay half-way up the slope. Her baby hung, still spiked on a nearby bayonet. Ewan’s cott smouldered, roofless. Old Tom would be inside, what was left of him. The other dwellings burned still, even Meg’s. Had she been home? Acrid smoke stung Anne’s nostrils, a roast-pig smell of charred and burnt flesh. Hawley said nothing to her, though he watched as, blow on blow, she was hammered down, numbed. She stared at the white hair blowing between Pibroch’s ears, knowing she was now in hell with no way out.

On they went, drums tolling their beat, winding through the hills, down the slopes, past the tree where she’d picked up Lachlan. At the Nairn, higher upstream than she had tried to cross, she wondered if the horse would refuse again, but he didn’t, following Hawley’s mount across, led by the English redcoat’s hand on the reins. The smell reached them first, a cloying metallic sweetness, then the buzz, the buzzing of millions of flies busy in congealing blood and open wounds, laying eggs in dead eyes, crawling into split intestines. If what had gone before was a taste of hell, this was its banquet. The field fluttered here and there with crows. Now and then, a body shifted, a limb moved, a voice moaned. Government soldiers searched the two thousand dead, checking. Dull thuds echoed as they clubbed a wounded survivor to death. A shot fired off into another, scattering the crows.

Anne was guided through the carnage from what must have been the rear of the Jacobite lines. At the moorland edge, several
young boys sprawled together, shot where they stood. Nearby, a kilted lad lay face down, a hole in his back, his right arm gone. Pibroch’s hooves squelched in gore. There was no respite. If she closed her eyes, the procession stopped and waited, letting the fetid smell, the cawing and the buzz jerk her back to awareness. For relief from torn limbs, ruined bodies, gaping eyes, she looked skywards until the circling crows dizzied her. She tried to keep her grip then. This was her punishment, duly meted out. The dead merited her respectful attention. Ahead of her, triangular mounds peaked out of the ground, unfathomable until, closer, she saw they were bodies heaped on bodies. More, they were her clans. Knowing the line-up, she knew where each would fall. Only the MacDonalds were out of place, on the left, but her own were where she expected.

Unable to turn away, she scoured the Farquharson corpses for signs of her brother or Francis, not seeing them but sometimes catching sight of a face she recognized: Dauvit, the diviner; little Catríona’s father; a shepherd she last saw tying a bloodied fleece to an orphaned lamb. The dead were difficult to know, with life gone, features torn or crusted with dried blood. It seared her that she might look on her brother, James, the quiet gentle one, and not know him. Now the M
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Intoshes. Would she know MacGillivray in death? How deep the pain drove home. All these men who once had lived and loved, marched and fought with such hope, gone. Hawley ensured she saw them all, winding in and out of pile and pile of dead. Among the Atholl Murrays, she could not tell if George lay with them, nor any of her uncles or other cousins. She was beyond begging to be taken from here.

Finally, the heaps were behind them, there were fewer scattered dead, then almost none. The bodies here were government soldiers, redcoats being collected on to a cart for burial. Hawley led his horse past one group and stopped, turned in his saddle to watch her. These were not redcoats. She would not look, she would not, yet she did. They were M
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Intosh men who’d died crowding together among the enemy, the shoemaker, Duff, at the edge of them. Further in, there was MacBean, arm reaching out, to Will, poor,
dear Will, and, oh dear life, to… She couldn’t look, turned her head, saw Hawley staring at her face.

‘Have you no mercy to beg?’ he asked. ‘No forgiveness to plead?’

Her throat closed. Her eyes ached, sore with tears that would not come. Could she not be blessed by blindness, not even by the release of tears?

Nor could she go without seeing him. She turned back round, gazed down at his red-gold hair lying in the mud and gore, that brave, strong body she had loved broken like a great tree torn down by storm. If only he could see she’d come, know she’d been here. With no more thought than the desire to close his dead eyes from the crows and stroke his face, she shifted in the saddle. Hawley barked a command. The two soldiers at her sides gripped her legs. She would not be allowed to dismount. She was not to be allowed any grief, any relief.

The sharpness of her own nails bit into her palms, blood trickled from her hands. Hawley swung back round in his saddle and led them on, picking up the pace.

Ignoring his bleeding wrists, Aeneas prised the last chain free with Fraser’s dirk, shook off the shackle and ran up the stairs. Just as he reached the top, the key turned in the lock, the door swung open. James Ray jumped back, surprised.

‘Captain,’ he saluted.

Aeneas shoved him backwards, glanced around the hall. Jessie lay between the wall and the chairs. A slight movement told him she was still alive. He raised the dirk to slash Ray’s throat.

‘Not me, Captain,’ Ray raised his hands, protested. ‘I just let you out.’

‘Where’s Anne?’ Aeneas yelled.

‘Hawley took her.’ Ray pointed to the door.

Aeneas tossed the dirk to his left hand, grabbed Ray’s sword from its sheath with the other and ran. Ray ran after him. Aeneas flung open the front door, leapt down the steps, looked around. A group of men in red coats with yellow facings hung around the stables,
watching something on the ground. It took a second to register what they watched before Aeneas heard the grunt, the sniggering, recognized the jerking movement, saw the woman’s skirts. A great, raging bellow roared out of him, and he raced towards them. All the men’s heads, bar the busy one, turned towards him.

There were ten of them, one of him. Three turned and ran. One, their sergeant, drew a pistol from his belt. The others dived for muskets that stood against the wall. Aeneas swung at the sergeant, a poor stroke. It hit the gun, sent it flying, took the man’s thumb off. The others tried to aim their muskets, but Aeneas was on them and in his stride now. He swung the sword, hard, fast, cutting two to the ground, one near headless. The dirk slashed in the opposite direction, opening one man’s gut.

Clutching his bleeding hand, the injured sergeant ran off after the others. The man on the ground leapt to his feet, his organ still jutting erect. Aeneas chopped the sword down, castrated him, then pinned the dirk through his neck. A musket fired, the shot tore his right arm. It was the last thing that soldier did as his breath stopped, his windpipe severed. The sixth man thrust his bayonet. Aeneas chopped down on it. The spear stabbed bluntly through his plaid, catching his thigh. The soldier ran. Aeneas threw the dirk. It speared the runner between his shoulder blades. Aeneas looked down at the woman on the ground. It was Elizabeth.

‘Oh, lass.’ He bent down to her grey face. Her head was turned awkwardly to the side. Semen trickled out her mouth. She was dead, suffocated. He threw her skirts down to cover her body, stood and let out a terrible howl. Behind him a horse galloped away, James Ray on its back. Aeneas ran over to the sixth man, drew the dirk from his back, kicked the man over and cut his throat.

‘Chief!’ It was a half-shrieked gasp. He looked back at the house. Jessie was in the doorway, doubled over, hanging on to the doorframe. He thrust the weapons into his belt, limped back to Elizabeth’s body and, gently as he could, lifted and carried her to the house. When he got near to Jessie, he saw blood round her feet. It trickled down her legs.

∗

On the outskirts of Inverness, Hawley slowed his company down again, to match the dead beat of the drum. Hearing the death march, people peered out their windows, came out to the street. Seeing Anne, their chatter fell to silence as she was paraded past them. Their heroine was taken, the drums proclaiming she was going to her end. Everyone who watched strained to see till she was out of sight. A few fell in behind the soldiers, others followed. Hearing the tramp of feet multiply, Hawley looked round. He wondered if they expected a hanging this late in the day. The sun was low. They would be disappointed.

Cumberland had taken over a downstairs room in the Dowager’s house as his command centre. Seated at the table, he drank wine, good wine, from her cellar. His chefs were busy in her kitchens, cooking a special dinner. He looked forward to it. It would be a celebration. Lord Boyd had just presented him with a list of the ranked prisoners. There were a few names still missing but, for a day’s work, it was most satisfactory.

‘General Hawley is here,’ Lord Boyd announced.

Cumberland did not think he’d ever adapt to a delighted Hawley. The hollow-cheeked bony face was most disconcerting when pleased.

‘I have the rebel bitch, Anne M
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Intosh,’ Hawley announced. ‘A crowd followed up the street, looking for a hanging, I suspect.’

Cumberland went to the window, peered out. Several hundred silent townspeople thronged the doorway and beyond, hats in hands.

‘Not a hanging, I think,’ he said grimly and addressed Lord Boyd. ‘Disperse that crowd, with fire if you have to.’ He walked back to his seat, settled himself. This would be interesting. ‘Well, Henry, bring in your prisoner.’

She was not at all what he expected, a young slip of a woman, extremely pretty, who walked in with that strange dignity he’d noticed in these Highland folk. Even though he knew she was a few years younger than himself, he had still envisaged someone mature, more solid, and not this ethereal, graceful girl. She stopped in front of his desk, staring straight ahead rather than at
him, her face pale but calm, as if she felt and feared nothing.

‘I brought her across Moy and Culloden,’ Hawley said, ‘rubbed her nose in the dirt she’d made. But I doubt she sees the error of her ways.’

‘Does she speak English?’

‘I do,’ Anne answered as Hawley nodded, looking down at him for the first time. Her eyes were clear, blue but empty of emotion.

‘Then you will understand you are a prisoner of the Crown,’ he said. ‘Charged with treason and fomenting rebellion, the penalty for which is death. Have you anything to say?’

She had not taken her eyes off him as he spoke, nor had she shown any reaction. Now, she drew a deep, audible breath and stood even taller.

‘You have made a sad slaughter of my regiment,’ she said. ‘It will be my honour and privilege to join them.’

Aeneas carried Jessie carefully to the kitchen as the water from her womb washed out of her. It was warm here, and there was fire, water, ale, towels. He laid her into the box bed, fetched extra pillows from the linen store and propped them behind her head. He’d have gone then, to find a woman who’d borne children to help with this, but Jessie’s birth pains already wracked her and, though it could be a long night, she was too distressed to be alone. Elizabeth’s body lay in the hall. Donald Fraser was still in the cellar, asleep, unconscious or dead. Aeneas had washed and dressed the blacksmith’s wounds before he’d freed himself. That would have to serve until Jessie’s need of him was done.