Lady Of The Glen Part 45

Even her jaw hurt. "Bluidy b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she whispered, barely moving her mouth. "Oh Christ, you murdering b.a.s.t.a.r.d-"

He had known. Her father.

"MacDonald," she had said-and the soldier shot her.

Weak, drukken man . . . weak, drukken coward. . . .

Glenlyon had known.

Cat ground her teeth together, locked her jaw, drew in her left arm and pressed her hand against the hardwood to push herself over onto her right side.

She smelled blood. Her right hand was full of it, clutching sodden nightshirt. Pain blossomed throughout her rib cage. Awkwardly, Cat plucked the heavy fabric away from her side, trying to pull the wool up along her body so she could see herself.

She could not. She could pull the nightshirt no higher than her left hip. She would have to sit up.

Wind banged the door against the wall. Startled, Cat looked up from the bloodied fabric, expecting to see a soldier--he will finish the task--but no one was there. The wind howled through the room and brought snow with it, so that Cat shivered again despite her preferences.

Pain stabbed. Cat caught her breath on a hissing inhalation that did as much as the shiver to set her ribs afire. She held the breath as long as she could, then slowly let it out. "-move," she muttered. "If they havena plundered the house, they'll be back . . ."

They would kill her if they came. She would rather do it herself then permit a soldier to. And they would kill her out of hand, even as she tried to tell them who she was: she was shot already, and b.l.o.o.d.y, and only a fool would believe her; likely they would claim she was lying to save her skin.

"-aye, well, I would-" Cat took a breath, shut her eyes, pushed herself from the floor into a sitting position.

The world around her reeled. She kept herself from falling by bracing both hands against the floor. The right one slipped in blood, but held her upright.

Sweat bathed her flesh. In the wind she shivered, and pain broke out afresh.

She needed to know. She could not delay. There was Dair to find. Cat hitched her hips up from the floor and tugged on the nightshirt. She pulled it free of her weight, bunched up around her b.u.t.tocks; she took another breath and worked her arms down inside the sleeves until she was free of them, tented by the nightshirt hanging around her neck. It was loose now, unconfined; she reached up over her shoulders and caught the wool, wadding it as she gathered it from top to bottom. When she could, she pulled it over her head.

Naked, in pain, she shivered. Snow blew across her feet. Her pale skin showed the blue-green veins that Dair so often traced, and the spill of drying blood from the left side of her rib cage.

Trembling, Cat touched it. And found there was no hole.

Crusted blood, yes, and powder burns, bits of torn wool and a shallow gash scored in flesh, but there was no hole.

"Och," she said in brittle disgust, " 'tis no' so bad, aye?-dinna waste any more time . . ."

Relief was palpable; she would not die of this. But Dair might die. Dair might be dead.

Naked and shivering, Cat worked herself to her feet. Shock had receded; she knew the wound now, knew it would not kill, knew it was only sore and torn and b.l.o.o.d.y. That she could mend. This she could bear.

Meanwhile, there was clothing to put on and weapons to gather.

"Chruachan," she muttered out of girlhood habit, thinking of the enemy and what she desired to do-then bit into her tongue in brutal acknowledgment.

Campbells had done this. Campbells were killing MacDonalds.

"MacDonald," she had said. MacDonald she would be.

Cat bared her teeth. "Fraoch Eilean. "

Three.

At Inverrigan, Glenlyon himself supervised the executions of his host, plus all the men who served him. They were dragged from out of the house, thrown down on dung heaps, and shot. Other MacDonalds were stabbed by bayonets or hacked to death by swords in the hands of Campbell soldiers.

The blizzard was fitful now, snow swirling so thickly a man could not see his hand, or sucked up by eddies of air that parted the blinding curtains and permitted visibility. It was enough for a man to see that other men died, as well as women and children.

He supervised the destruction of Inverrigan's household until a soldier brought him a torn and bloodied paper from Inverrigan's pocket. Glenlyon took it with distaste, scanned it, and saw that the letter was from Fort William's governor, Colonel John Hill, swearing that so long as the oath was taken no MacDonald would be killed or molested, nor his plenishings taken from him.

Glenlyon shivered. Here was a promise from a man with authority . . . yet surely Hill had been a party to the plan. Some of the companies come down to block the pa.s.ses were from Fort William, sent by Hill's command.

In his gloved hand, the paper grew damp and tore. Pieces fluttered away. Glenlyon turned and looked at the house behind him, where he had been hosted in fine fashion according to the laws of Highland hospitality.

What I do has been ordered. He blinked snow from his eyes. I have been ordered to do this. And yet Governor Hill himself had but recently promised them safety. I was ordered. Who was he to question? A captain in Argyll's regiment, to be instructed what to do. It was duty.

Eight men killed, among them Inverrigan, and now a ninth pulled out of the house by ungentle soldiers.

He thought again of Hill's letter. "Hold!" Glenlyon shouted as they made to drag the MacDonald to the dung heap.

They held at his order and waited, eyes slitted against the storm, but gripping the frightened MacDonald with no thought to letting him go.

Captain Thomas Drummond, who had personally brought the order that set the killing in motion, came out of the house behind them. His pockmarked, powder-burned face stood out in rough relief against the white of the storm. "Why is he still alive?" he shouted. "What of our orders? Kill him!"

The men looked to Glenlyon, who found no words in his mouth.

With a grimace of contempt, Drummond pulled one of his pistols and shot the young man in the head. "All of them!" he shouted. "All of them are to die!"

All dead now but the child, the lad, who came crying through the storm to throw himself at Glenlyon, clutching his legs. He was perhaps twelve, and begging to be saved. He would go, he said, go anywhere with Campbells if they would allow him to live.

Drummond himself yanked the boy away and hurled him at a soldier. "Shoot him! Now!"

Glenlyon flinched as the shot rang out.

Drummond turned on him. "Are you a man," he asked angrily, "or are you a coward? These are our orders, man-they are to be obeyed to the fullest! Anything less is treason!"

Anything less would result in the destruction of what small world Glenlyon had left. The orders to him had been specific in their language: ". . . else you may expect to be treated as not true to the king's government, nor a man fit to carry a commission in the king's service. "

All were dead here. But Inverrigan was not the man, nor any of his sons, considered most important.

"MacIain," Glenlyon said. "MacIain and his sons." He met Drummond's eyes. "Carnoch is down the glen."

Drummond's teeth were white in the scarred field of his face. "Carnoch," he agreed.

Above the braes were corries and rough caves hewn out of stone in the palisades of the mountains. Dair carried his mother upward, away from the floor of the valley, struggling for unseen footing buried beneath snow. The terrain was not kind to a man who could neither see nor feel it, and less kind yet to a naked, plaid-wrapped woman sixty years old.

-cold, so cold . . . clad only in shirt and trews, but his mother was colder yet. She needed a fire, she needed clothing, she needed blankets, and he had none to give her. Only of his strength, and that was none so inexhaustible under such conditions.

He slipped, recovered, slipped again, and fell finally to one knee. Cursing breathlessly, he struggled to rise again and bring her up from the snow.

"Alasdair," she said.

Not Alasdair Og.

"Alasdair-?"

She had never called him MacIain, the man she had married, but by his Christian name.

"Stop," she said. And then, "Alasdair Og!"

He stopped. Cold air sawed in his chest as he tried to catch his breath.

"Alasdair Og, I willna have you spend yourself this way-"

She was his mother again. He managed a choked laugh. "Och, well, I'm spent already, aye?-too late to say me nay."

She struggled to pull the plaid more closely around her. "Where is John?"

"-dinna ken-" He coughed, leaned over, spat into the snow.

"You must find John."

"Mother-" He coughed again, spat again. "Mother, I mean to take you up to the corries-"

"I ken that," she said, "but you must find your brother."

"One task at a time-"

"Alasdair! You must find your brother!"

She had meant him after all. Her Alasdair was dead, Alasdair MacDonald, also called MacIain.

Alasdair Og felt the winter in his lungs and fought to expel it. And when he saw her shiver again he hastily tugged his shirt off over his head and grasped one of her arms to guide it through the sleeve. "Here-"

"Alasdair-" She struggled briefly. "You'll die of the cold!"

"Aye, well-look to yourself." She was chilled and in shock, too weak to defeat him. He unwound the plaid, then wrapped it again around her over the shirt. From his head he pulled his bonnet and put it on hers, tugging it down in an attempt to cover her ears, to shield her scalp. It was not enough, never enough, not in such snow and wind, but he had nothing else to give her. "We must go up, Mother-"

"Find your brother, Alasdair."

Her implacability was frustrating. With effort he kept his voice down, so it would not carry on the wind. They were through the trees and midway up the braes, in all likelihood safe from the Campbells down below, but he dared not take the chance.

"We will go up," he said. "I will search for John after I have you out of this storm."

She shut her hand around his wrist. He felt her broken nails dig in, felt the swollen raggedness of her fingers where soldiers had bitten rings from her. "Find him," she commanded. "He is MacIain now."

He knew then what she did, what she intended. The old laird was dead, the towering man who had ruled an entire clan with the force of his personality, the power of his presence. There were people in Glencoe who had never known another laird save Alasdair MacDonald. In the midst of grief and terror, Lady Glencoe-who was no longer Lady Glencoe-thought of her kinfolk.

MacIain was dead. John was now MacIain.

"I canna go," he said. "I willna leave you here."

Her hand clutched more tightly. "In the name of your father-"

"I will not." He clasped both narrow shoulders and turned her upward, guiding once again, refusing to let her fall. If he kept moving, if he took her higher, if he fastened his thoughts on her, he would not feel the cold.

Cat wound bandaging around her ribs, using a portion of her nightshift. Then she put on shirt and trews; lacing the brogues was troublesome as the exertion hurt her wound, but she could not go out barefoot. When she finished tying the knots she clutched the bedframe until the sweat dried on her body, then took up one of Dair's older plaids and wrapped it around her body. She belted it, thrust a dirk through the leather, then braided and tucked her hair up into the bonnet she had worn to leave Glen Lyon.

Could she do it, she would take a claymore. But Dair had hidden away such weapons as claymore, ax, and pistols, acceding to the order from MacIain. It was compromise; they had not given over the weaponry to the soldiers in Fort William as commanded, but had instead gifted them with old, rusted blades. The rest they had buried in the peat-stacks or beneath stone cairns on the braes.

And all now were buried beneath snow as well. There were no landmarks Cat might use, did she know where Dair had put them.

Dressing had taken time, and in that time she had worked out enough of the plan to be sickened by it. Governor Hill had written MacIain and others that Glencoe would be safe if the oath were sworn. Breadalbane had promised it. Her father had sworn when he was welcomed in Glencoe that they went to punish Glengarry; Glencoe was safe, he said, because MacIain had signed the oath. And all the weapons elsewhere. For thirteen days peace had reigned between Campbells and MacDonalds in the name of hospitality, in celebration of the oath that freed Glencoe from the threat of retribution.

"-lambs to the slaughter," she murmured. "All the oaths for naught . . ." She left the cubby and went into the room where the door yet stood open, yet banged against the wall. She left it as it was and went out into the storm.

Snow swirled, parted, thinned. The blizzard hung low in the glen, but as Dair and his mother climbed higher there was less snow. Visibility improved, but the wind was bitter cold. Even through shirt and plaid he felt the convulsing of her body.

She fell then, despite his best efforts to save her. He knelt at once, cradling her, bringing her up from the snow. In his arms she was tiny, diminished somehow, as if the death of his father had sucked the substance from her. Her flesh was so thin he felt the bones beneath it.

In falling she lost his bonnet. He saw it skid away across the snow-laden ground, tumbled by the wind. In moments it was gone.

Gray-brown hair blew around her: a thin, ghostly shroud that hid her face one moment, bared it the next. Blood still smeared her face. Dair caught up a handful of snow and dampened the stains, using the end of the plaid to wipe away the thin crusts.

"Stop it." Again she held his wrist. "I bore you twenty-nine years ago, and John two before that. I am not a bairn, aye?-and you willna treat me so."

"Mother-"

"You will leave me here and go down the brae to find your brother."

He used his body to break the wind around her. In the pocket of shielding the force of the blizzard faded, and he saw the fragile bones cutting through the thin flesh of her face. Above the wind- and age-honed blade of her nose her eyes were clear of grief. She was wholly focused on her eldest son, who now was MacIain.

He would go down, then. He would leave her after all. But he would not look for John.-blankets . . . I will fetch blankets and clothing from the house-If Carnoch yet stood. But he doubted it was gone; in the snow fire would burn fitfully, and would require many hours to consume stone and wood.

"Aye," he said, "but not here. There is a rib of stone but five paces away-I'll take you there for the windbreak."

The magnitude of her relief nearly broke him. She nodded; it was enough. For now, it was enough.

Cat knew not to take the track. Instead she went through the trees, relying on memory to find her way. It was to Carnoch she meant to go first, then on to Inverrigan. MacIain was at Carnoch, and Lady Glencoe, and all the strength of the glen. MacIain could tell her where Dair was, what there was to do; she was a stranger in the glen and knew naught of its defenses, the habits of its people when danger came upon them.

The wound was stiff and sore, rubbed raw by the bandaging despite her care. There was naught she could do for it save ignore the discomfort; it was not a hole, and there was no musket ball hiding within her flesh. She would do well to recall there were others in worse straits. She had heard the dull crack of musketry, the shouts, and the screaming. She did not doubt there were MacDonalds dead; what profit in it to waste time on a powder burn and sc.r.a.pe?

In good weather, Carnoch was close. In bad, the distance trebled. Cold snooved into her lungs and took residence there, shortening her breath, until Cat had to stop and spit out the ache and phlegm. Coughing tore through her body and set her side aflame.