“Where?” cried a woman's voice.
“At Moidart, the country of the MacDonalds. With only seven men. But the clans are rising. We'll see his standard fly from London tower in a month's time. Mark me!”
Malcolm rushed downstairs and soon learned they were talking about Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the twenty-five-year-old son of James Edward Stuart. He had landed in the north of Scotland and called on the nation to support him. At breakfast, Mildred calmly informed Malcolm that the prince's arrival had been plotted for a year. Her husband, Robert MacDonough, had gone north with her three sons to join the prince's ranks. When he came down to Dumfries, they planned to rally the country around him.
David MacGregor announced they would all celebrate mass in the courtyard. He was, Malcolm soon realized, a Catholic priest. From somewhere in the cellar the servants retrieved sacred garments, a green chasuble and a white surplice, and set up an altar. His mother had been a Catholic! So much for his devotion to the Protestant cause. He felt compelled to kneel with the others in pretended reverence but he declined to receive the host, explaining he had been raised a Protestant.
Malcolm did not know what to do. England and Scotland seemed about to erupt in civil war. The days and nights were filled with messengers galloping down from the north, reporting one clan after another had declared for “the Bonnie Prince,” as everyone in the house called Charles Edward Stuart. Soon came news of victoriesâBritish armies routed and the capitulation of Scotland's chief cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Malcolm feared for me and our son, marooned in London. But Mildred MacDonough told him he would be mad to try to travel there now. He looked too much like a highland Scot. All roads south were under guard to prevent the revolt from spreading to England.
“They'll hang you without even a show of justice,” she said.
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In London, I watched with amazement as the English government wavered and wobbled and seemed on the verge of collapse. When the Bonnie Prince landed, George II was in Germany, inadvertently emphasizing he was a foreign king. Most of the British army was in Holland fighting the French and there seemed to be no rush to bring them home. Then came news of the prince's victories in Scotland. Next, the prince and his army of mostly highland Scotsmen invaded England.
In a week the Jacobites were at Derby, more than halfway to London, calling on the countryside to support them. Prominent English noblemen and their followers joined the prince's army. Peter Van Ness told me that he expected his patron, Lord Bolingbroke, to arrive from France at any moment to form a Tory government. Panic gripped the capital. The headquarters of the Bank of England was mobbed by thousands of depositors, trying to withdraw their money for possible flight. The tellers paid them in shillings, a desperate measure designed to slow the outrush of funds and stave off bankruptcy.
Intensifying the crisis, Walpole's heirs, the Duke of Newcastle and his brother, Henry Pelham, clashed head-on with King George II and led a mass resignation from the government to force the king to accept their policies and placemen. The Patriot newspapers screamed outrage and mobs swirled through London, shouting for a new king and a new Parliament. Jacobites broke every window in the White Horse Inn and beat up proprietor John Williams when he tried to stop them. I moved across the street to the Black Horse Inn and rushed to Chesley White for advice.
White told me to stay calm. “The Pelhams are old gamesters like their master, Walpole,” he said. “They're betting everything on this tossâbut I'm inclined to wager with them. The army's come back from Holland. You'll soon see the Bonnie Prince on the run.”
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In Scotland, Malcolm shortly witnessed the truth of this prophecy. He had watched the prince's army stream south through Dumfries. He declined to join themâa decision that caused not a little coolness toward him among the McCullough servants. But Mildred MacDonough defended his right to choose neither side. “This is not his country. It's birth, not blood, that gives a man a country,” she said. Malcolm was grateful to this large-hearted woman. She obviously regarded him as a kind of son.
Soon the prince's army trudged north again and the wild optimism that had permeated the McCullough house trailed away like fog before a harsh wind. The English Jacobites had failed to rise and the British army from Holland was on the march. All the cattleâthe chief wealth of the propertyâvanished into the highlanders' hungry jaws as they passed.
Mildred MacDonough vowed she did not regret the loss of a single beastâthough the house was reduced to eating bread and salt fish.
Hunger was only the beginning of their troubles. One cold grey morning, Malcolm was awakened by shouts and cries that were stitched with terror. Peering from his window, he saw about three hundred red-coated British soldiers outside the gates, escorting wagons on which two gallows had been mounted. “Open up, rebels!” roared a beefy officer on horseback.
Downstairs, Malcolm found Mildred MacDonough confronting a half dozen soldiers, led by the officer, who continued to speak in a voice that was never less than a roar. He was Brigadier Henry Hawley, commissioned by the Duke of Cumberland, commander of the Royal Army, to root out disaffection in the countryside. They had information that Mildred's husband and sons were in the rebel army.
“I am authorized by His Grace to hang every male person found in this house and burn it to the ground,” Hawley thundered. “You have five minutes to collect what clothes you may need for warmth and get yourselves into the road. These men will hang.”
He pointed to Malcolm and David MacGregor, who had joined them in the hall.
“Why would you murder a man of his age? And a young man from Americaâmy sister's son,” Mildred MacDonough said.
“I would murder a man of his age because according to our informers he's a papist priest. As for this fellow,” Hawley said, glaring at Malcolm, “I've spent enough time in your miserable country to recognize a highland scoundrel, with or without his kilt.”
“He was born in America. Let him speak. He hasn't a trace of Scot in his tongue!”
“I don't care how or what he speaks,” Hawley roared. “Get busy gathering your things, woman, or I'll burn the house with you and your damned treasonous bitches in it.”
“Do as he says, Mildred, dear,” David MacGregor said. “I've long been resigned to such a death.”
Mildred MacDonough dropped to her knees. “Bless us one last time, Father,” she said.
All the other women in the house joined her on their knees. The priest drew a sign of the cross in the air and murmured something in Latin.
“We'll soon shut off that mumbo jumbo,” Hawley said. “Drag him out and get the hemp around his neck. Take this highland scum with him.”
Malcolm simply could not believe he was going to be hanged. In the garden he spoke to the young officer and two privates who were leading him to his doom. “My name is Malcolm Stapleton. I was born in the colony
of New York. This is a mistake. I'm ready to swear I'm no rebel.”
“He's telling the truth,” David MacGregor said.
“Malcolm Stapleton,” the young officer said. He was straw thin, with pipestem wrists and a face almost devoid of a chin. But his eyes glittered with intelligence. “Did you fight a battle in the forest? The Battle of the Bracken?”
“Yes.”
“I'll be damned. Your brother's outside with our regiment. I'm Major Wolfe. He gave me your account of that scrape. He overheard me declaring in my portentous way that the British army must begin learning how to fight in the forests of North America.”
“Am I still to hang for visiting here at the wrong time?” Malcolm said.
“I hope not,” Wolfe said. “I'll speak to the brigadier.”
46
The sobbing women streamed out of the house. Soldiers wrestled David MacGregor up on one of the wagons and placed a noose around his neck. Another soldier ran out with the priest's chasuble. “Let's dress the papist devil up right!” he shouted.
“Good work,” said Brigadier Hawley, standing at the gate. He gave the man a shilling. The soldier draped the chasuble over the old man's shoulders. MacGregor's hands were clasped, his head was bowed in prayer. In the background, smoke swirled from the house, flames gushed from the lower-floor windows.
Major Wolfe spoke to Brigadier Hawley, who glared at Malcolm and shook his head. “That's so much stuff. I say hang him!” he roared.
Disgust evident on his face, Wolfe turned to the regiment in formation across the road. “Ensign Stapleton. Step forward, please,” he called.
Jamey Stapleton, in red coat and white breeches, a sword on his hip, emerged from the red mass. Wolfe led him over to Hawley. “This young officer will identify him, General,” he said.
Jamey vigorously affirmed Malcolm as his brother. “I don't believe a word of it. I'm inclined to hang both of them,” Hawley bellowed. “We'll carry him with us to headquarters and see what the duke thinks of such folderol.” It dawned on Malcolm that Hawley was drunk.
At a gesture from Hawley, the soldiers hoisted David MacGregor on the gallows, where he quietly choked to death. They left the women of the McCulloughs and the MacDonoughs weeping before their burning house and headed north to rejoin the main army. Father MacGregor's body swung on the gallows behind them as a grisly trophy. Along the
way they burned two more houses and hanged another aged man, though he was not a priest.
“The brigadier tends to be a literalist about his orders,” Major Wolfe said. He had invited Malcolm to double up on his horse with him.
Personally, Wolfe said, he thought such random murdering was beneath his dignity as a soldier, but he had to obey orders. In between hangings and burnings, he quizzed Malcolm about the tactics of the American Indians and compared them to the partisans that had harassed the Greek general, Xenophon, on his famous march.
At the end of the day, Hawley led Malcolm before His Grace, the Duke of Cumberland, second son of George II. “Major Wolfe says this piece of highland dross is American as he claims. I'm for hanging him to satisfy my doubts,” the brigadier roared.
The duke was sitting in an open field, drinking champagne with his staff. His tents were spread along the bottom of a hill a few feet away. Cumberland was a stocky young man of twenty-five with a weary bemused manner. His entourage wore the same attitude as they examined Malcolm.
“How many did you hang today, Hawley?” the duke asked.
“Only two. But one was a priest.”
“Better luck tomorrow. If Major Wolfe vouches for this fellow, that's good enough for me,” the duke said.
“I propose we enlist him as a volunteer aide, Your Grace,” Wolfe said. “He's already won a battle in America, in which he defeated a swarm of Indians and irregulars with a mere twenty men.”
“He must have Scotch or Irish blood, to tell such lies,” the duke drawled. “Maybe we should hang him after all.” This drew a laugh from his entourage.
Malcolm felt shame suffuse his flesh. He could almost hear his stepmother sneering “Booby.” These English considered themselves a superior race. Where had he gotten the idea that he was one of them? More to forestall hanging than anything else, he stumbled out words about being ready and eager to serve.
The duke told Wolfe to find him a uniform. “It may take two coats to make one for him,” Wolfe said. “But we'll be training up a Samson for our defense overseas.”
“Let's see if we rule here first before we worry about that,” the duke said.
Three nightmare weeks later, Malcolm Stapleton sat on a horse beside Major James Wolfe on the flank of the British army as it deployed onto a barren Scottish moor known as Culloden, from the name of a nearby castle. They were far to the north of Dumfries now, near Inverness. On a low rise about a quarter of a mile away was the army of Prince Charles
Edward Stuart. Bagpipes skirled across the distance. Highlanders in kilted plaids waved long broadswords called claymores.
Malcolm had ridden out with Wolfe and Hawley every day of these three weeks, watching them spread death and flaming terror through Scotland. Hawley's rolling gallows seldom returned without trophies swinging from both ropes. At night Malcolm tried to blot out the memory by getting drunk. Almost every officer in the army did the same thing, except Wolfe, who stayed in his tent reading Xenophon and other military classics by candlelight.
Again and again Malcolm wanted to cry out against the slaughter. These were his mother's people, yes, his father's people too, now that he knew his origin. He was finding out that kings ruled by spilling blood, oceans of it. Now he was about to watch a far more terrific slaughter.
The armies were roughly equal in size. But the English had two cannon positioned between each regiment, while the Scots had only a few paltry guns on their flanks. With a mighty howl, the Scots charged, claymores whirling. The English cannon, firing grapeshot, tore horrendous gaps in their ranks but they kept coming, a plaid wave, kilts flashing in the sunlight. Malcolm had his eyes on the left of the British line, where his brother's regiment stood, muskets leveled. Beside him, Major Wolfe was explaining how important it was to wait until the enemy reached point-blank range before firing a volley.