Lady Of The Glen Part 49

If the new MacIain should come-With as much alacrity as was circ.u.mspect, Hill had himself escorted to his small quarters.

Before the door waited a clutch of Highlanders with wary eyes and the tense posture of those who expected hardship. Hill's expectation grew; if John MacDonald came down and swore the oath, all survivors would be free of the king's order. There would be no more killing.

He greeted them absently, saw startled glances, then went by them and through the door. Other Highlanders waited within, guarding the man they had brought to Fort William on a stretcher.

With a prayer of thanks, Hill made his way through the men and then stopped short.

He was no longer on a stretcher but sat in Hill's own chair, as it was the st.u.r.diest in the room. He was thin, hollow-eyed, clearly ill. But even illness did not disguise the insolent glitter of his eyes, or the ironic hook of his mouth.

"You are not John MacDonald," Hill blurted.

The mouth broadened. "I am not. But you ken who I am, aye?-'twas I who was guested in your finest cell."

Not John MacDonald. Not even Alasdair Og.

Robert Stewart of Appin.

Stewart shifted in the chair and winced faintly, as if his very bones ached, then smiled again. "Did you expect John MacDonald?"

"I hoped," Hill admitted honestly and without hesitation. "I have no wish to see any more of Glencoe harmed."

"Och, well, you've done enough harm, aye?" The stubbled jaw, despite its fever-thinned flesh, remained firm. "We all ken what was done . . . only a muckle-headed fool would believe such a tale might remain secret."

"Is he alive?-John MacDonald? And his brother?"

Stewart raised a shoulder in a slight hitch. "I canna say."

"Will not say," Hill corrected. He supposed he could not blame him. "I did not welcome those orders, Stewart. I would as soon it had never happened-and I would as soon MacIain's heir came down and agreed to swear the oath anew. He is laird now."

"And would like to remain alive so he might be laird," Stewart said softly. "Does a hound beaten near to death come back to the hand wi' the stick?"

"If he does not," Hill answered as softly, "I cannot say what might be levied as punishment."

"Punishment?" Sandy brows arched up. "Glencoe has been burned to the ground, aye?-and even now you hold the livestock that once pastured near the houses. 'Tis a glen of sorrows, an empty place of blood and broken stone, of charred timber and burial cairns-is there anything left to punish?"

Hill was aware of movement behind him, a subtle tense shifting among the men who waited for Robert Stewart. No one spoke; he heard no metallic sc.r.a.pe of drawn dirk, but knew there was no need. They as much as he understood the repercussions of Sa.s.senach wishes disobeyed.

He looked Stewart in the eye. "What there is left to punish should remain unpunished-so long as I am given good and sufficient reason to stay my hand."

"Aye, well . . ." Stewart's defiant insolence faded, replaced with a pallor offset by the high color in his cheeks and an overbright glitter in his eyes. "Well, I am somewhat aware of that, Governor Hill-and so I have come down to offer Appin's oath."

"From your sickbed."

"Och, aye . . . I've no wish to be Glencoed."

Hill felt the muscles of his face tauten. Already they had made a word of the killings, replete with implicit threat. "Then I shall be pleased to accept your offer, Stewart, but I will give to you such answer as I gave MacIain: you must swear the oath before Ardkinglas in Inveraray."

"I kent that," Stewart said, "but 'twasn't his soldiers who snooved their way under MacDonald roofs and killed them, aye?"

Hill supposed he deserved such rebuke as that. "Then I shall write you a pa.s.s, so no detachment that you may meet can detain you."

Stewart smiled again, though it faded. "D'ye mind if I wait in your chair while you write it? I'm gey indisposed to move."

Hill inked quill and pulled parchment, laboring to write clearly despite his awkward position at the writing table. He was very aware of Stewart watching every mark he made on the paper; did he wonder if Hill wrote lies and sentenced him to death? Surely no Highlander would trust him now, not even Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, who had sent his heir so often.

Trust was banished. Threat stood in its place.

Hill set down the quill, sanded the paper, then folded and sealed it. He offered it to Stewart, who accepted it in an overwarm, trembling hand.

"I am sorry," Hill said. "I know that you and Alasdair Og were friends."

Stewart stilled. "Once."

"Despite such orders as called for his death, I hope he survived."

"Aye, well . . . for myself, I dinna care." Stewart flashed a hollow echo of his usually charming, impudent smile. "I have a personal reason for hoping the Campbells killed him." He handed the paper over to one of his Highlanders, then thrust his spine against the back of Hill's chair, clutching the armrests. His mouth was hard as stone. "Will you stay and watch a sick man be carried forth like a dead one? It may prove gey amusing to a Sa.s.senach."

But Hill, who had heard too many reports of dead Highlanders, did not care to see such. He turned on his heel and left.

Dair was propped against the cold bones of the cave wall, his own bones wary of such posture as the one he chose, spine set rigidly against ancient, unworked stone, but he paid the protests of his body little mind. It had been favored too long, his body, given too much lat.i.tude in the ordering of his life; time now for him to set aside illness, weakness, and pain and look to the present in order to shape the future, despite the grief of the past.

He was no longer so naked; he wore now the blood-blackened shirt of a dead man and his scorched, crusted plaid, for they had buried Lady Glencoe in her youngest son's shirt and plaid. His broken leg was for the moment settled in its awkward splints.

Dair smiled at his brother. He knew the expression, the stubborn set of the jaw. "You must, John. Surely you can see 'tis the only way."

John MacDonald was unconvinced. He stood in the center of the cave and glowered down at his brother. "D'ye think I could do such a thing?"

"You must," Dair repeated. "I canna travel yet myself, but you canna wait for that."

"This is foolishness, Alasdair-"

"You canna stay here, John, as you well ken. 'Tis too dangerous. The soldiers will come back. Would you have what few folk remain to us treated as the others were?"

It was a telling if painful argument, and he would use it as he had to. There was no choice. He appreciated John's loyalty, his wish to remain with his brother, but it was senseless to jeopardize the others.

"We have no food," Dair said evenly, "save what we can catch. The stores are burned, the livestock driven away to fill the bellies of Sas-sanachs and Lowlanders, even Argyll murderers. But there are caves in Appin as well, and men there who will aid you as they may. 'Twill be gey difficult, but not so impossible as what you propose in wishing to stay here."

John's voice cracked. "This is our home, Alasdair!"

"Our home is burned," he answered. "Our home is naught but a burial yard, now . . . too many MacDonald bones lie beneath the cairns." Including their mother's, their father's, and his brother's stillborn daughter's, who might, G.o.d willing, one day be interred on the sacred isle of Eilean Munde. "You have Eiblin and Young Sandy, and the others to lead. You are MacIain, now. Lead them from here, John. Take them over the mountains to Appin, and make a clan out of what is left of our father's loins."

The others waited in the shadows, holding silence. John was Maclain, John was laird. They would do as he would have them do.

But Dair was not a man who refused an argument with any man, even his father for all that man might clout him over the lug-hole; and his father was dead now anyway, and John stood in his place. With John he could argue, and win. With John he need fear no clout, especially now. And he would weave strong fabric of the yarn of his injury.

"If you stay here, you will die," Dair said quietly. "You will die of hardship, or you will be killed by soldiers."

John's pale face was shadowed by dark stubble thickening to beard. "We will take you with us."

Dair laughed. " 'Twill be difficult enough for a two-legged man to make his way to Appin . . . you have women and children, John. No one can carry me so far."

"You canna stay here, Alasdair!"

"Not alone, no," Dair agreed. "Leave me Murdo. Let him serve one of the old laird's sons as he served his father, aye?-and when I am healed enough, we shall come to Appin."

Murdo stepped forward from the shadows. He was a man of middling height and frame, fined down now by grief and hardship. Tousled dark hair was flecked with gray, for he was not a young man, though not as old as his laird had been. His eyes were a clear, unclouded blue, piercing beneath heavy brows. Like all of them he had forgone shaving, and the beginnings of a thick beard shrouded half of his face.

" 'Tis for you to say," Murdo declared, "as you are laird now. But you would do better to go, John. Alasdair Og and I will come along smartly when the leg is whole again."

John wheeled, turning his back on them. He stood rigidly in the cave, the rocky ceiling looming over his head. Dair could read his spine well enough. He did not require John's face.

Dinna be a fool, John . . . not for me. He shifted a tiny amount and caught his breath on a m.u.f.fled hiss; he dared not let John know how much he hurt, or his brother would surely never agree to go.

Even as the sweat dried on his face, John swung back. "Aye!" he shouted. "Aye, we shall go. But I dinna like it, Alasdair! D'ye hear me?"

"Och, aye," Dair said mildly. "And any soldiers below, as well."

John swore viciously, then caught himself. Women and children were well within earshot, waiting in the shadows. "Verra well. But come you to Appin as soon as may be." He fixed Murdo with a sulfurous glare. "See to it he does!"

Murdo bobbed his head in a nod sufficient to acquiesence. Dair waited until John turned away to set about preparing the others. Then he shut his eyes.-Robbie will give them aid.

And they need not live in fear that each day might be their last.

Despite Una's protests, Cat made her way down the stairs to her father's writing table, and there took up parchment, quill, and ink. It was a laborious procedure; she could not as yet use her left arm without significant pain, and if she did cause herself pain, she would be unable to write. And so with great effort she relied only upon her right arm and hand to do the work.

The stairs had tired her more than expected. She sat a moment in the hard chair, closing her eyes against dizziness, then opened them again and slowly began to write. She had never been known for her letters; now she was worse than ever, sorely troubled by pain and weakness.

"I will do this," she said aloud, grimly. "I will, aye?" If she did not, no one else would. And she would not have falsehood spread. "I will do this."

Letter after painstaking letter, page after page, nib ground harshly into the parchment so that the ink spread. Very black letters that even a man with failing vision might read.

Cat did not sign her name. She was a woman; who would care about a woman's grief? Better to let them believe it was a man who wrote, a man in extremity, whose world had been destroyed.

She reinked the nib, then wrote at the bottom of the parchment: "MacDonald of Glencoe. "

She had no strength to sand it. She let it sit, let it dry, while she waited in the chair and tried to regather her strength. When she could, when the ink was dry on all the pages, she folded the packet haphazardly and used wax to seal it closed. There were men who would carry it for her to Edinburgh, Campbells who served her father. It would reach its destination.

"There," she murmured. "Let them ken the truth of Glenlyon's bravery."

Glenlyon's breath ran short in his chest. How could they stare at him so? How could they mutter and murmur of him? How dared they suggest he deserved disgrace?

The Royal Coffeehouse by Parliament Close had been a comfortable retreat before when he had visited Edinburgh, but of a sudden it was inhospitable. Before, he had been treated with the respect due a laird, but now they stared at him, now they murmured of him, now they pointed him out with hard glances and unsubtle stares as the butcher of Glencoe.

'Tisn't fair! He had followed orders. He had served the king. He had done as he was told.

He wanted whisky, not coffee. A dish of chocolate sat on the table before him, untouched. His hands, thrust beneath the table, trembled across his abdomen as he linked them tightly. It was difficult to breathe, to maintain the appearance of an officer at leisure, awaiting his orders to sail for Flanders and King William's forces on the Continent.

News of the killings had come at last to Edinburgh; had made its way south to London. There was no secret of it anymore, no privacy in his doings and the doings of his soldiers. What should have been touted as a discretionary action taken to suppress rebellion, to force peace among Highland clans, was now viewed with a perverse mixture of fascination and horror.

Men shot dead in their beds. Women and children, fleeing through the storm, cut down by Campbell swords.

How dared they? Can they not understand?

Broadsheets were left in the Royal Coffeehouse as well as in other public rooms. Little written was truthful; Glenlyon had found a crumpled copy and read it in private, appalled by the brutality the words attached to him, the merciless bloodl.u.s.t ascribed to a Campbell who hated Glencoe MacDonalds.

Now he dared read nothing, not in public, lest they watch him read and remark upon his pallor, the thin, flat set of his mouth, the rigidity of his posture. And so he sat quietly at his table and did not drink his chocolate, but attempted to face down the disapproval of his peers.

No one could know who had not been there.

The stories were patently false, many of them, but there was truth as well. He did not believe the most virulent rumors truly came from a Glencoe MacDonald, but he suspected the worst. How else could there be so much fact mixed liberally with falsehood?

No one knew who had not been there.

But not all MacDonalds were dead. Glencoe was empty of MacDonalds, empty also of dwellings save the charred detritus, yet some of her people survived.

How did men come by such news? How could they know what to print? And he dared not confirm any of it. It painted too black a picture.

They canna understand! He wanted whisky badly. He wanted worse to leave. But he would not. He refused to be defeated, driven away from public like a cow driven out of its pasturage.

A Campbell cow lifted from Glen Lyon and driven away to Glencoe.

He sweated. Glenlyon reached into the pocket of his coat for linen to dry himself, and felt the crackle of paper. He drew it forth, blinked to see the dark smears upon the parchment, then unfolded it.

-Duncanson's order . . . Desperation welled up in Glenlyon's chest, took lodging in his throat. Here it was. Here was proof. Here was vindication.

He rose of a sudden, shoving his chair away. The discordant sc.r.a.pe of wood on hard floor caught the attention of everyone in the coffeehouse and stilled conversation; Glenlyon retained their attention by holding the tattered, bloodstained parchment into the air like a victory flag.

"Here it is!" he cried harshly. "Let any man who questions me read it, and understand: I am a soldier, and an officer, and I follow the king's orders!" He slapped the paper down on the table beside the dish of chocolate. "I would do it again!" he shouted. "I would dirk any man in Scotland or England, without asking cause, if the king gave me orders! So should every good subject of His Majesty!"

But they were hostile still, the faces; they none of them believed him. They chose instead to believe rumor and falsehood.

Trembling, Glenlyon rapped his fist upon the paper. "Here it is. You need only to read it to see I did my duty."

And then they began to come. Slowly at first, then swelling in numbers, all reading the words written by Duncanson in the name of King William.

Vastly satisfied, Glenlyon sat back down. They would understand. They would see he had done what any man should do who served his monarch.

In London, lamplight guttered. The Earl of Breadalbane adjusted the wick, then bent again to his labor. When he was done, he set aside the quill and sanded the paper.

Satisfied, he nodded. In careful language he had phrased a vital message to John MacDonald, now MacIain: that if he and his brother, Alasdair Og, would swear and write by their own hands that the Earl of Breadalbane had no part in the ma.s.sacre, he would use such influence as he had to procure them full pardon and rest.i.tution.

A sound gesture, he thought, designed to mitigate the extreme political damage the failed attack had done. Mercy had its place even in a ruthless world.

In Dair's dream she lived: a vivid, vital woman who gifted him with her love, her pa.s.sion, with her pride and defiance, altering strong men into mere echoes of their existence. He saw her atop the great rock in Glencoe, bright hair unfurled in the wind from off the loch, in trews instead of skirts, and a man's bonnet on her head.

Give her a claymore and she would wield it . . . give her a musket and she wold fire it. Give her his substance and she would accept it, unstinting in her vitality, in the brilliance of her spirit. He would be diminished until she gave him strength again, the inspiration and ability to begin anew.

He stirred, aware of an ache in his loins. He sought release, but instinctively knew there was none save the way of a young man with no self-control. And so he let the dream go, let the memory fade, and opened his eyes to the pallor of the cave, the hardness of a bed uninhabited by a woman.