Lady Of The Glen Part 44

John MacDonald, to his father's guest, had been only a quiet, friendly man; now Glenlyon saw a hint of that father in his posture and presence. The eyes, taking in the shine of lamplight on musket barrels and the industry of powder-stained hands, hardened. "There are soldiers," he said, "all over the glen. I would know why."

Glenlyon nodded matter-of-fact agreement. "With my men quartered up and down the glen from Achtriachtan to Ballachulish 'tis necessary to muster them here, and 'twill take some time in the storm. We are to march at dawn, as I said to you before, and go for Glengarry."

"Glengarry signed the oath," Alasdair Og said sharply. "Why must you go for him?"

It was not required for Glenlyon to affect surprise; if that were so, he had not been informed. "Word has not come," he replied truthfully, and knew they could not suspect a lie; he was a poor cardplayer because he was easy to read. "My orders stand, and they say we must march at dawn."

He waited. They were hackled like hounds, stiff with unease and expectation, and very alike in taut, suspicious expressions as they a.s.sessed the room and the inhabitants of it, glowing of crimson broadcloth in fitful amber lamplight, with a glib sheen glinting from newly shined steel. Neither claimed the overwhelming height and substance of MacIain, but they did not lack for wit or cleverness.

How many of my cows have they lifted? How much of my plate and plenishings Thus goaded, Glenlyon pulled himself to his feet. "D'ye think we mean you some ill? Is that why you have come? You suspect ill-doing because we are Campbells?" He laughed harshly, jerking his head in the younger son's direction even as he stared challenge at the eldest. "If such were my orders, d'ye think I'd give no warning to my daughter and your brother, her husband?"

It was enough. He saw so at once, and breathed again. He might have prated of honor, of offense given by such suspicion, but he had struck the proper note. No man would see his daughter put in such danger-Inside, his belly clenched. But it isna my wish . . . And it served to say so, it served very well.

Visibly, both MacDonalds relaxed. The eldest smiled a little in evident relief and stepped forward, offering his hand. "I wish you well on your morning march, then. We'll trouble you no more."

As they stepped outside into the storm, Drummond shut the door with a rattle. His eyes were furious, though he kept it from his face. "They are to die," he said. "It was expressly stated in the order. The old fox's cubs are to be killed."

Glenlyon sat down again. "Och, aye," he said, "but the killing isna to commence before five o'clock-and I willna be precipitate in what the king has ordered." He met Drummond's angry glare. Strangely, he no longer felt tentative or fearful. He had been a soldier once; he had even won a battle for his cousin Breadalbane. He could be so-and do so-again, and this time for a king. "There will be blood this day enough," he said evenly. "Can you not wait a few more hours?"

Drummond's jaw was a bent blade beneath pockmarked flesh. "Then I will have the signal fire lighted atop that great rock, if it so please you, Captain."

Glenlyon laughed softly. "Lowland fool," he said, "dinna ye ken the Highlands? That fire willna kindle-or will die before the dawn."

Drummond opened the door. "If it please you, Captain, I will see to it."

In disgust, Glenlyon bade him go. Then he looked at the officers and sergeants, waiting until he had undivided attention. Then he issued his personal orders quietly, with explicit clarity. "You will tell your men that Alasdair Og is to die," he said, "but his wife is my daughter, and I will kill any man myself-officer or no-who harms her in any way." He paused, marking their rigid attention. "Aye?" After only a moment he received quiet and quick a.s.sent. "Good." He fingered his sword, resting atop the table in its polished scabbard. "At five o'clock, we begin. There will be no avenue of escape-Major Duncanson's men and others of this regiment will block the pa.s.s over the Devil's Staircase and the ferry at Ballachulish."

He slid the blade partway out of the scabbard and tested its edge. The blood and bone will dull it.

Glenlyon looked at the others. The wording of the order was burned into his brain. "Put all to the sword under seventy, and do not on any account allow MacIain and his sons to escape."

Cat roused as Dair climbed out of bed. He was careful not to disturb her, but she felt the cold snoove beneath blankets and murmured sleepily, tugging them more tightly around her body. She a.s.sumed he meant to use the nightcrock, but instead she heard sounds of him pulling on clothing.

It was still dark, not even close to dawn. She rolled over and peered through the gloom; only the glow of the peat-fire and a single lone night-candle illuminated the house. She saw him affixing plaid to shoulder and bending to lace up brogues. Cat raised herself on one elbow. "Where are you going?"

He turned in the dimness. His expression was troubled. "Canna sleep."

She smiled and dropped the covers down to bare one shoulder. "We could find ways to make you weary so you would sleep, aye?"

He answered her smile with his own, but it fell away too quickly. "I am not easy in my mind. Will you forgive me?-I mean to go back to Inverrigan's."

Her shoulder pimpled with cold. Cat raised the covers again, looping blankets over her shoulder. "You said my father was mustering the soldiers."

"Aye, well . . ." He shrugged, checking the knots of brogue laces. "I'll do better to see it myself."

She tried not to sound plaintive, merely casually curious. "When will you come back?"

He came to the bed, smiling. "Soon as may be, I promise you. And then we can set about putting me to sleep." She stretched to kiss him as he bent down, and then he pulled on his bonnet and went out of the house.

It was emptier at night. When he was gone in the day she found duties to keep her busy, but at night before he came home from dicing with her father or speaking with other officers she found the emptiness of the house excruciating. It disturbed her at first that she would be so dependent on him after spending no many years depending only on herself, but she reconciled it with the knowledge he cared as much for her as she for him, and thus it was equal loneliness when one was without the other.

She tried to sleep, but sleep was banished. Even the warm impression of his body against the linens faded with his absence, and after some time Cat at last gave up. I'll sit before the fire . . . mull some brandy-wine . . . . And drink some, too, waiting for his return.

She crawled out from beneath the covers and caught up a crumpled plaid, pulling the tartan around her shoulders, over tangled hair. There were warm, woolen slippers for her blue-veined feet; she put them on with grat.i.tude for Dair's handiwork, for she abhorred a floor in winter.

Cat went into the front room, settling the plaid more comfortably. Dair's departure had allowed a drift of blown snow into the house. She saw the damp spot, the crystals melting against the pegged hardwood floor, and smiled ruefully to think of his warm, vibrant presence reduced to so little but wet tracery on scarred wood. Then she forgot it altogether; she heard shouting from out-of-doors, and a distant, m.u.f.fled cracking that sounded again and again.

The latch rattled. Cat took a step toward it, reaching out a hand, and then the door was thrown open to admit riotous images: -blowing snow become blizzard- -men cl.u.s.tered in her dooryard, engulfing the stone stoop outside- -red-coated soldiers with muskets and swords, and snow piling up on their shoulders- Their mouths and noses were masked by cloth, but there were powder burns under avid eyes, darkening the flesh so the whites stood out like beacons.

The man in the doorway raised his musket; from underneath the barrel glinted a wicked bayonet. "Campbell?" he asked sharply.

There were questions in her mind but her mouth formed only one. "What are you doing here?"

"Woman-are you a Campbell?"

Incongruous irritation . . . "MacDonald," Cat declared. Because, now, she was.

He levelled the gun and shot her.

The storm had thickened to blizzard, snow blown slantwise as well as into dervish flurries. The track beneath Dair's brogues was deep with drifts, so that he slipped and struggled. He hunched against the wind with his plaid drawn up for warmth. He had put on trews in place of kilt and was grateful for it; all Highlanders were inured to ordinary winter, but it was nearly false dawn and the blizzard was bitter cold. Wool wrapping his legs afforded additional defense against the keening wind.

He was nearly to Carnoch when he heard a storm-dulled, m.u.f.fled cracking, like a limb broken beneath a foot. It was not his own; he walked on beaten track covered with layers of snow. Dair halted, senses sharpening. He heard nothing but wailing wind.

He shivered. It was one long grue that ran the length of his spine into his limbs. I dinna like this. The night was still. A man should be inside. I should be home with Cat-Snow gathered on lashes. Dair dashed them away quickly; he had no time for such irritants. I dinna LIKE this- Instincts overruled thought. He turned and stepped off the track altogether, snooving into trees. It was not thickly wooded in Glencoe, but there was enough for shelter and some defense. He paused once to catch himself against a huge fir coated on one side by a cloak of snow and ice, then went on.

The wood took him to the side of his father's house instead of to the front, as the track did. At the edge Dair hesitated. Through the flurries he saw flashes of flame, heard the cracking again, and knew it was musket fire.

-MacIain- MacIain's house. His mother's house.

Shouting filled his ears, and a woman's shrill screaming. From the dwellings near the laird's house came the sound of musket fire, no longer occluded by wind and distance.

He knew his mother's screams.

Dair ran. Snow fouled his footing but he did not hesitate. One hand closed on the dirk thrust through his belt, but he did not draw it. He could fall in treacherous weather and stab himself instead of an enemy.-or lose the dirk altogether- More shots. More shouts. More screaming. All throughout the glen he saw flashes of flame, heard the reports of gunshots.

He did not break into the open and make himself a target. He went instead around the back of the house along the edge of the wood, until he could see the front of the house, the door- -and the broken hinges . . . the dull smolder of fire in one of the windows . . . the shine of flame on musket barrels and honed bayonets, the glint of light on sword blades- -his mother was screaming- They dragged her from the house, the men in crimson broadcloth, shouting and laughing and jesting. They tore her bloodied nightshirt from her so that she was naked and shivering, and even against her pleas they stripped the rings from her hands. When two would not come off, not even sliding in blood, one man gnawed them free of her swollen knuckles.

The war cry echoed, the one all MacDonalds hated most virulently. "Chruachan!" cried the Campbells.

Up and down the glen; no more was stealth needed. Glencoe was overrun.

Cat came to abruptly; one moment she was lost, the next found, and alive. She knew that instantly-and equally quickly that she dared not move lest they suspect the truth.

Wind and snow howled into the room. The door stood open, then . . . she gritted her teeth against a shudder. A dead person would not shiver, nor would dead teeth chatter.

She lay sprawled facedown, one arm trapped her. The left one was free, slung out away from her body . . . had she twisted, then, in falling? Had the musket ball knocked her around?

Musket ball. Cat bit into her lip. The soldier had shot her.

-where is Dair-?

Oh Christ. Where was Dair?

He had asked if she were Campbell.

'MacDonald,' she had said.

MacDonald-and he had shot her.

-where is Dair-?

Dead already? She lay on the cold, hard floor, naked now of slippers, wet with blood and fear, and tried to hear indications the soldiers were gone, or present.

Campbell soldiers.

A shiver overtook her.-Campbells are killing MacDonalds- The door banged in wind. The noise of it filled her head.

If she moved, they would kill her.

If they were here.

The lamp had blown out. Only the peat-fire lent her light, and the subtle glow of luminous snow.

Blood soaked her nightshirt, but she did not feel pain. Snow drifted onto her feet, but she did not feel the cold.

-Dair?- The door banged again.

Dead people did not cry.

Cat bit her lip till it bled. She knew it did not matter; they would believe that from the musket.

-am I dying-?

All of Glencoe was dying.

Naked, bloodied, now bereft of her rings, Lady Glencoe was forgotten utterly as soldiers plunged into the house that sheltered the laird, her husband. Dair pressed himself up from his crouch near the trees and ran across the dooryard.

He caught his mother in his arms, deadening himself to the opaque horror in her eyes, the blank, blinding eyes above a bloodied mask. "Huish," he said, "say naught-" He touched her mouth a moment to underscore his order, then hastily stripped the plaid from his body. "Here-we must go . . . here, Mother-" He shrouded her quickly, awkwardly; she made no effort to aid him. "Come wi' me-we'll go up the brae . . . Mother . . ." He guided her through the storm, through the deepening drifts. She was naked save for his plaid, and her feet were bare.

"Alasdair," she said.

"No, Mother-say naught-"

"Alasdair?"

She did not mean him. Dair knew that. "Come with me, aye-? We'll go up the brae behind the house-"

"Alasdair!"

"Mother, no . . . mind your tongue, aye?" He did not think anyone might hear her-her voice was thin and trembling-but he dared not take the chance. "Come along, aye?-we'll go away from the house-"

She struggled then in his arms. "They shot him," she said. "They shot him in the back . . ."

"Mother-"

"-in the back . . . when he bent to put on his trews-"

"Mother, huish-there will be time-"

"-in the back . . . did they think he was a coward?"

"Come with me, aye-up through here-"

"Could they not have allowed him to put on his trews?"

His face was cold and wet. The wind froze his tears. "Mother, huish-"

"Alasdair-"

He stopped then, as they reached the trees behind the house, and took her into his arms. Against his body her own trembled violently. Dair said things to her as a father to a bairn, trying to soothe the grief, the knowledge of what she had seen.

His father shot in the back. As he bent to put on his trews.

"-Sweet Jesus-" Dair said brokenly, then lifted his mother up into his arms. "Well go up Meall Mor," he said. "We'll find shelter in the caves . . ."

His father dead. And what of Cat?

His mother was neither large nor heavy, but the snow fouled his feet. Dair staggered, biting into a lip as he caught his balance. He would not let her fall; would not permit himself to falter.

-MacIain dead . . . and Cat-?

He heard shouting again, and screaming. The crack of musket fire, flame spitting into the night.

-MacIain, John, Cat- The world was snow and flame.

Cat did not know how long she had lain sprawled on the floor, but her body was stiff and cold. She supposed any man might take her for dead. But there was no man anymore, nor men; the soldiers had gone. She was certain of it now.

She lay on her right arm. She attempted to move it, to withdraw it from under her body so she might use both arms to brace herself. Where her hand touched fabric it was wet, wet and cold- -the soldier shot me- But she wasn't dead. He had shot, but failed to kill her.

She was afraid to move, but she must. There was Dair to find, Dair who was gone, Dair who had felt uneasy, Dair who had known somehow-who had wanted to go to Inverrigan's to see her father.

Cat's body spasmed. It brought pain, brought shivering, brought the truth of her wound. And it was blood she felt in her nightshift, blood she felt in her hand.

-my father- Who had command of the soldiers. Campbells, all of them.

"Campbell?" the soldier had asked her.

He had come, her father had come, to send her back to Chesthill.