White Rose Rebel (49 page)

‘My, my,’ Lady Suffolk said. ‘He does mean to rub it in.’

Francis stood with his wife’s family, his hand automatically going to his empty scabbard. Anne would surely walk off the floor.

She didn’t. Instead, she kept her eyes on her partner’s face, her expression bland, as if the tune meant nothing to her. Cumberland held out his hand, a question in his eyes. Without any hesitation, Anne raised hers and laid it lightly on his. Together, as the singer launched into the lyrics, they began to step out the dance.

Stunned by the humiliation being visited on their Highland guest, it was a few minutes before the crowd responded.

‘They must have her on laudanum,’ Helen whispered to her friends.

‘Perhaps we should join them,’ Lady Suffolk suggested to Aeneas.

Dancing to the Duke’s victory music was the last thing Aeneas
wanted to do but, if Anne could do it, he could. He offered his arm, and they took the floor. As soon as they did, other dancers crowded on, most of them trying to get nearer the central couple, desperate to overhear the exchanges between them.

‘You’re as fine a dancer as they say,’ Cumberland complimented Anne as he turned her.

‘As are you, sir,’ she smiled, sweeping out from him and back.

‘Your husband has done a fine job,’ he approved. ‘I must congratulate him.’

‘You’re most kind,’ Anne dipped her head.

Helen Ray danced behind them with her brother. ‘It’s awful that he’d torment her like this.’

‘I’m sure he just wants her to know her place.’

An air of disappointment and let-down hung over the hall, though no one could have said what they’d expected. This mild-mannered young woman acquiescing to the Duke’s superiority wouldn’t make the good story they’d hoped to tell those poor, eager folk who’d been left off the guest list.

Anne shut her ears against the lyrics as the singer sang of Popery and cast the Prince as the son of a robber and a thief. She had one thing to do here. Aeneas had said any opportunity should be grasped. Affecting the coquettishness she had seen Helen use when speaking to men, she smiled coyly at Cumberland as they turned around each other.

‘There is a woman in Inverness jail,’ she said, lightly, ‘Nan MacKay.’

‘The riff-raff doesn’t concern me,’ Cumberland responded.

‘She’s to be given eight hundred lashes.’

‘I doubt it. Few could live beyond five.’

Nearby, the lord who had enquired about Anne’s battle record bent to his partner’s ear.

‘Hardly the bloodthirsty warrior.’

Aeneas had given up trying to overhear what Anne and Cumberland talked about, giving his full attention to his dance partner.

‘I’m told your wife killed a dozen men at Culloden,’ Lady Suffolk said.

‘My wife wasn’t even there. She was at home, with me.’

‘How perfectly boring.’

‘Life with my wife is many things,’ Aeneas said. ‘Boring isn’t one of them.’

‘And you, M
^c
Intosh –’ she stroked his cheek with her fan as they made a pass ‘– is life with you boring?’

‘You can ask my wife about that,’ he suggested.

The singer sang on:

When Duke William does command, you must go, you must go;

When Duke William does command, you must go;

When Duke William does command,

Then you must leave the land,

Your conscience in your hand like a crow.

Ignoring thoughts of her beloved brother, and all the others driven from home, Anne concentrated on her purpose. She and Cumberland stepped forward and back, then passed around each other again.

‘Then I can’t prevail on you to intervene?’ She returned to her plea for mercy.

‘Don’t have me revise my opinion,’ Cumberland warned. ‘I’m sure M
^c
Intosh can deal with any concerns.’

‘And I will be suitably grateful,’ she smiled, certain her face would crack.

‘I hope so.’ Cumberland turned her around him. ‘Politics is a male province, not for you to worry about. A wife is an adornment, Lady M
^c
Intosh. Stick to dancing.’

The dance was coming to an end. The singer drove home the last words.

It was a long time since Anne heard old MacBean’s voice, but she remembered it now. Death should come with honour, he’d said. Nan was ready for it, as Anne had once been ready and could
be again. Without honour and the dignity of it, a person was nothing. She executed one last pass with Cumberland. The music ceased. The Duke bowed, Anne curtsied. Everyone applauded. Cumberland offered his arm to escort her off the floor.

Instead of taking it, she stood, motionless, facing him. Acting like an Englishwoman meant being treated like one. An image flickered in her memory, of a small child thrashing on the ground, fighting its shadow. This time she was glad to lose the battle, glad frustration won. The applause frittered away. Nobody moved. No one could until the Duke left the floor. He indicated again that Anne should take his arm. She didn’t. Be who you are, Aeneas had said. There was no one else she could be. She raised her chin a little, looked Cumberland in the eye.

‘Sir,’ she said, her voice steady and clear as a bell in the silence, ‘I have danced to your tune. Now will you dance to mine?’

Aeneas flinched. Automatically, his hand went to his sword. Lady Suffolk put her hand on his wrist, gave a brief shake of her head. Francis, with his empty scabbard, marked the nearest guard whose weapon could be purloined and drew his wife close. This might be a short marriage. Like most in the room, Helen’s mouth gaped like a dead fish. Nobody breathed, no one dared in case they missed the Duke’s response.

The Duke hesitated – it was only a moment but one of the longest moments the court could recall – then he bowed his head, acceding politely to the request. Anne turned towards the musicians.

‘Can you play “The Auld Stuarts back Again”?’ she asked.

A collective intake of breath surged from the mass of people in the hall. She had asked for the rebel song. Several women swooned and had to be caught by their partners. Helen was near delirious with delight. Lord Boyd smiled and shook his head, flushed with admiration. Elizabeth’s hand went to her mouth. Realizing now what was happening, she gazed at Francis, tears starting in her eyes. Sir John Murray, shamed by his own cowardice, stared, uneasily, at the floor.

The musical conductor nodded. It might be the last time he would have a head to nod but he couldn’t seem to stop nodding it.

‘Yes, my lady,’ he answered Anne. ‘We can, we can.’

‘Then play it,’ she said calmly and turned back to the Duke, dropping the deepest curtsey as the first chord was struck. She placed his hand around her waist and showed him how to skip out the first steps. Everyone quickly joined in. This was faster, wilder and, from time to time, required a partner to be held close to execute the steps well. Even those around the edges of the floor
found their feet tapping, legs twitching, their hands clapping. Lady Suffolk squeezed Aeneas’s wrist. They hadn’t moved, though bodies whirled around them.

‘You see, M
^c
Intosh,’ she said, ‘there was no danger. Manners are everything at court. The Duke could not refuse.’

Aeneas grinned, broadly. It felt good. He might be ordered to kill his wife when he got her home, if he got her home, but right now pride swelled in him and all he could do to celebrate was dance. He pulled the countess into his arms, tight against him.

‘My goodness,’ she said, ‘my hair will come down.’

‘Then let it,’ Aeneas said as he spun her round.

For a rather stiff and bulky young man, Cumberland was light on his feet and a fast learner, quickly taking over the lead as soon as he’d mastered the pattern of steps and movements. Scottish dancing was easy to do. Mistakes simply looked like innovation. By the half-way point, he was expert. Anne spun back into his arms, put her cheek against his and spoke into his ear.

‘Have Englishmen always been afraid of women?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know any who are,’ he answered.

She leant back as they turned so that she could see his face.

‘Then why do they control them?’

They danced forward and back, out, clapped and back into each other’s arms.

‘Women are the weaker sex, Lady M
^c
Intosh. They need guidance.’

‘Eight hundred lashes, half of which will be administered to a corpse? That sounds more like fear than guidance to me.’

‘You’re tenacious, I’ll give you that.’

Needing breath for the dance, they swung on in silence until, with a final flourish, the ladies were spun, skirts billowing, as the music came to a close. Bows and curtsies were exchanged. The Duke offered his arm.

‘If your husband attends me in the morning,’ he said as she took it, ‘he’ll be issued with an order remitting that sentence to a short period in prison.’ He led her off the floor, both of them a little breathless. ‘I admit to a grudging admiration that M
^c
Intosh would
choose to be married to you. But that caper, Colonel Anne, will be your last. Do we understand each other?’

‘Yes,’ Anne smiled. ‘Yes, sir, we do.’

On the west coast of Scotland a full moon hung over Loch nan Uamh, lighting a path across the water. A small boat put out from Borrowdale. In the bow, a prince sat with his retainers. Rocking gently on the tide in deeper water, two French privateers waited, flying the false colours of British men-of-war. Several Highland chiefs were already aboard, men who could not return home, their clan lands, and their lives, forfeit. Wood creaked, thudding into wood, as the small boat came alongside. Feet ascended the narrow ladder. Anchor chains rattled, rolling up. Sails unfurled, billowing as they caught the wind that would carry them out to sea. The ships lurched forward into the swell. Behind them, the land lay etched in the moonlight, sharply shadowed in shades of grey.

In Inverness jail, Nan MacKay lay on the bunk in her cell watching thin shafts of late October sunlight fan in through the small window high above. The swelling in her legs was gone, the bruises faded to yellow stains. Food arrived for her every day, so she did not hunger or thirst. She was a patient woman, had waited patiently for her husband to return long after she knew he never would. She had tended Robert Nairn patiently, believing for many weeks he’d leave her house a corpse before realizing she’d saved him for the gallows to claim. She was patient again now, waiting for Anne and Aeneas to return. Fate had a dark face and a light one, and you never knew which would turn towards you. She kept herself patient by conjuring images of Skye, of returning to the island with her children, hurrying up from the harbour with their few belongings as rain hissed down on shining cobbles, to the home she had been born in. As she imagined, she murmured old, forbidden words, softly chanted words that could draw a dream closer to being.

The lock on her cell clanked as the key turned. She jerked upright as the door swung open. But it was not Anne or Aeneas. It was the Dowager Lady M
^c
Intosh, with a package which she pulled from
her cloak and unwrapped as soon as the jailer was gone. Inside was a bottle of gleaming straw-gold liquid.

‘Uisge beatha?’
Nan frowned.

‘Whisky, Nan.’ The Dowager shed her cloak, took up Nan’s mug and poured. ‘We must get you speaking the English.’

‘Should I be troubling with it now? It’s bearers of bad news that bring whisky.’

Anne and Aeneas were late. Their boat should have docked seven days since. Whatever news they had would be bad news if it didn’t arrive soon.

‘There is no news.’ The Dowager handed Nan the mug. ‘They’re not back.’

‘There’s only the one cup I have.’

‘The bottle will do fine for me. We can sit till it’s gone.’

‘They wouldn’t be having storms at sea, not in harvest month.’

‘No, the lack of wind, most likely.’

‘If the
Sasannaich
let them go.’

‘Robert Nairn’s family put someone to see to your children.’ The Dowager avoided the implication. ‘When all’s done, they’ve promised transport to Skye and a pension for –’ she hesitated to say ‘life’, for that might be short, nor could she say ‘till they’re grown’, for that implied they’d be motherless ‘– for as long as it’s needed.’ She settled herself on the bunk, clinked the bottle against Nan’s tin mug.
‘Slàinte mhòr,’
she said, and drank.

In his offices, Lord Louden studied the plans spread out on the table in front of him. The new Fort George would spread across the whole of the Ardersier promontory that jutted into the Moray Firth. It would replace the old fort in town, dismantled by the inhabitants when the Jacobites arrived. In resentment of it housing a government garrison since the Union, as if they were a conquered people, they had torn it down with bare hands. Now they were a conquered people, and the magnificence of the new fort would stand for centuries to remind them of that. It would be the mightiest artillery fortification in Britain. How he coveted command of it.

The guard outside tapped on the door and opened it. ‘Captain M
^c
Intosh and the Lady M
^c
Intosh, sir,’ he said.

‘Show them in, man. Show them in.’

It was late in the evening when Anne and Aeneas drove back to Moy. In the dusk, a squawking flight of geese arrowed overhead towards the loch, the first greylags arriving for winter. The journey home had been nerve-wracking, even after a fair wind filled the sails north of Berwick, for fear it would drop again. But the order remitting Nan’s sentence was delivered. They stopped at the prison to tell her she would be free in another month’s time. At the Dowager’s, they had supper, caught up on the news Louden had already sketched in and collected their carriage. Now, as greylags cross-stitched the faded purple sky, dropping out of formation to land, Aeneas guided the horse easily around familiar curves and through known shadows.