Aeneas scanned the document, barely able to take it in. Anne was to remain his captive until such time as she demonstrated proper, modest behaviour befitting a wife subject to her husband, the law and the Crown. She would not espouse any cause bar that acceptable to him and he was charged to ensure the denial of her previous unlawful activities at all times, present or future. He looked up at her. She had not moved, nor responded to the Dowager’s warmth, but stood tense and unapproachable, eyes downcast, barely present.
‘Are you all right?’ the Dowager asked, worried.
‘I’m well, thank you,’ Anne replied. Her quiet politeness was chilling. She might have been a stranger in a strange place.
For seven weeks, from the moment Shameless told him she was taken, alive and unharmed, to Inverness, Aeneas had been unable to think of her without becoming enraged by his impotence to act. Now she was here. His aunt had petitioned for her release, as had many others. He had not, could not, without further jeopardizing his beleaguered people. His role in the British army was all that
protected any of them now, a role that shamed him. There was nothing he could say to her.
‘Would you take Anne up to her rooms?’ he asked Jessie.
Anne’s head came up. Her eyes met his, alarmed.
‘Don’t worry, my lady,’ he said, tersely. ‘I’ll confine myself elsewhere.’
Immediately, she dropped her gaze but not before he saw her relief.
‘As you wish,’ she murmured.
‘As I wish?’ he burst out. ‘There is not one single thing in this whole sad and sorry situation that is as I wish!’
The others, standing around, gasped. Anne flinched, but she kept her head down.
‘I didn’t choose this,’ she said.
He snorted; even gratitude was beyond her if it meant she must bear his presence.
‘Neither of us has any choice now,’ he snapped, turning his back as Jessie took Anne upstairs. When the door closed at the top, the Dowager came over to him.
‘Aeneas, have pity. She’s alive.’
‘Barely, since she obviously would rather be dead than here.’
‘
Isd, no!
That’s shock. She was prepared to hang. Can you not be kinder?’
Aeneas unbuckled his sword and threw it down. ‘I have trees to fell,’ he said, snatching up the axe Jessie had left against the wall. ‘There are homes to build.’ He went out. Fraser and Shameless exchanged a look and followed behind.
The axe glinted as it rose. On the block, Lord Lovat pulled the cloth that would catch his head closer to it. The crowding folk on Tower Hill held their breath, waited. Some said this old man should have hanged five times over for past crimes. Now he met his match. The axe flashed down.
There had been a point on the road when Anne realized where
they headed. Before she could form the thought of execution at her home, Lord Louden turned in the saddle.
‘Moy will be glad to have you back,’ he said.
Weakness hit her. This was all wrong. Hope was a bitter thing, unwanted and undeserved. At the door of Moy Hall, white roses, their fat buds about to burst, mocked her return. The sickening echo of a scuffle by the stable rose in her memory. Inside, they all stood, like accusations: Jessie without her child, Donald without his son, Shameless without Robbie, Aeneas with hundreds from his clans gone.
Now, upstairs, Jessie talked as if some good had come.
‘I unpacked your things,’ she said. ‘Even when we thought you were gone for ever, I hoped you would come back.’
‘How could you want that, Jessie?’ Anne sat down, heavily, on the bed. ‘Look what I caused.’
‘Not you.’ Jessie crouched down on the floor in front of her, looking earnestly into her eyes. ‘We all did our own choosing. I tell myself my baby did too, that she’d rather be with her father, where the heroes are, than here, where we are now.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘Even Will…’
Anne put her fingers to the girl’s mouth. The mention of the lad’s name brought his face in front of her, lying in the gore. Visions of them all, cut and torn, swam up.
‘
Isd
, wheesht,’ she said, fighting for control. ‘I have them all inside me, but if I speak of them or cry for them, they will all come out for me, as they did before.’
‘But you can’t hold them. Not so many.’
‘I can. I have to.’
Jessie got up, sat beside her on the bed and put an arm round her.
‘We can’t live without hurt.’
‘I am so sorry, Jessie.’
‘Now you
wheesht
,’ the girl echoed her, ‘or you’ll have me crying again. Your life is saved. There will be something you are meant to do with it.’
The Dowager came in then, with a tray of wine and glasses.
‘You’ll be needing a drink,’ she said. ‘And if you’re not, I am.’
‘And a bath,’ Jessie said, jumping up to go and prepare one. ‘I bet they don’t have baths in the jail.’
‘Would it be all right,’ Anne asked, ‘if I had paper, pen and ink?’
Jessie and the Dowager exchanged a glance.
‘I don’t see why not,’ the Dowager said.
‘I’ll fetch some up,’ Jessie said, brightly, ‘when I come to take you for your bath.’
As she went out, the Dowager poured wine and put a glass in Anne’s hand.
‘What is it you would write?’ she asked, casually.
Anne stared at the red liquid. The windows were wide open. In the summer warmth, the scent of the opening roses below already filled the room.
‘Whatever I can,’ she said, her voice a whisper, ‘to stop others following them.’
‘I can’t let you send these.’ Aeneas laid the letters down carefully on the table and looked up at Anne. ‘You’re not allowed to talk or write about the things you did, not even to get someone else released.’
It was almost two weeks since she’d been returned to them and still he could not get used to her demeanour. She stood, hands folded in front of her, head bowed, staring at the floor, not looking at him.
‘Anne –’ he tried to speak more gently ‘– saying your brother and cousins only did as you asked isn’t an excuse, even if it was true. The English don’t understand clan law.’
‘Then what can I write?’ Even her words didn’t seem like her. Anne usually just said what she would do. She sounded lost.
‘Plead for mercy. Say they were misguided. Point out what their loss will mean to others. If you can throw doubt on the Crown’s witnesses, do that. Blame a chieftain only if that chief is dead or safe abroad, and make sure you explain clan obligation.’
‘So I can try?’ Briefly, she looked at him.
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Margaret Johnstone –’ He paused. Now he couldn’t look at her. ‘Lady Ogilvie has been sentenced to death. You might want to appeal for clemency.’
Anne turned and left the room. The Dowager, seated by the open window reading, had heard the whole exchange.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked her.
‘In what way?’
‘The way she speaks, as if there was no one inside her who could decide anything. Even her friend’s sentence provoked no reaction. She wears acquiescence like a shroud.’
‘She’s a prisoner.’
‘Oh, come on. The Anne I know would rage about that.’
‘Then why don’t you ask her?’ The Dowager looked over her magazine at him.
He couldn’t, that was the answer. Subservience was a foreign attitude, not one Highlanders wore. Pride was usually their problem. Guilt was his.
‘Is it me, what I’ve done, what I do?’
‘You just read her mail.’
‘I have to.’ He put the sheets of paper in the cold hearth and set light to them. ‘She’ll get us all hanged.’
‘He’s a clever man, the Duke. We’re Scots, but now you live by English rules, your wife under your thumb.’
‘Which doesn’t alter the fact they’d hang me first, take over Moy and –’ he couldn’t resist it ‘– leave you without a wine cellar to raid.’
‘You really need to re-stock.’ The Dowager didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Things have been let slide. Your uncle must be turning in his grave.’
A few days later, at breakfast, he approved the letters Anne had written.
‘These are very good.’ The people she wrote to plead for included her brother, her cousin, Margaret Johnstone and Jenny Cameron, but she had also written on behalf of those who would have few champions left, their chiefs either dead, fled overseas or among those in prison. Every word made him more ashamed. ‘I hope they bring results.’
Across the table, Anne kept her head down, ate her porridge and said nothing.
‘I’ll have Shameless take them to the post,’ Aeneas added.
‘Can I do that?’ she asked, still not looking at him.
‘What, go into Inverness?’
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Margaret will be gone soon. Can’t I see her one last time? Jessie could come with me.’ She glanced at the girl, who was pouring her tea, then dropped her eyes back to the table. ‘If she likes.’
‘I’d like that fine,’ Jessie said. ‘I haven’t been out since, well, for months.’
‘Not three months, Jessie,’ Aeneas corrected. ‘I don’t want you risking your recovery.’
‘I have an easy time,’ she assured him, ‘now Morag’s come to do the cleaning.’
‘She’ll be fine,’ the Dowager added. ‘If she’s well enough to cook, she can sit in a carriage. Let Anne say her goodbyes.’
So it was settled. Shameless hitched up the carriage. He wasn’t the natural with horses that Will had been, but he was willing. In the kitchen, out of earshot, Anne helped Jessie prepare a couple of food baskets for the prisoners.
‘You don’t have to do this for me, Jessie,’ she said. ‘It could be dangerous.’
‘I’m doing it for me,’ Jessie said. ‘I’ve scores of my own to settle with the
Sasannaich
. A life for a life seems a fine way.’
Aeneas insisted Shameless drive them, for protection. So that he could carry weapons with impunity, the lad wore his Black Watch uniform. Aeneas gave him a brief written order detailing his escort of the two women in case they were questioned. He wasn’t convinced the trip was wise but he hoped it might help Anne. He would rather face her anger with him than be treated to this pitiful subjection. It was at least a fine day they drove off into, Jessie jaunty in a fresh white cap and apron, Anne wearing her favourite blue summer dress. He didn’t realize until they left that he was afraid they might not drive back.
On the outskirts of Inverness, the first stop was at the house where Anne had left Pibroch on the day she’d witnessed Ewan’s death. The guard on the door checked the basket of food Jessie carried before he let them in. The Skye woman, Nan MacKay, had nursed several wounded Jacobites back to health and on to face trial. Now she only had one patient left, the paymaster, Robert Nairn.
‘Anne,
a ghràidh
!’ he exclaimed from his sick bed when she came in. ‘
Fàilte!
I heard you were released. You must be fond of Inverness to come back so soon.’
‘Fond of the folk in it,’ Anne said. ‘How are you?’
‘Healing too fast, with the gallows waiting.’ He smiled, his face
lop-sided with the livid scar across his cheek. ‘This arm’s near useless, though it’s a miracle I still have it, and Nan to thank for that. But I’ve lost my good looks.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ Anne insisted. ‘You look –’ she paused to consider ‘– interesting and wicked.’
‘Then you should see the rest of me,’ Robert grinned. ‘I have the most interesting body a man could wish, and no chance to be wicked with it.’
‘So your vital parts are still intact?’ Anne smiled. It was so easy to be with him, where no guilt weighed her down. With Aeneas, she was cowed by shame, deep shame. ‘How long till they decide you’re fit to travel?’
‘A month, maybe longer. Nan says she’ll keep me sick as long as she can. I think she plans a fever to set in, but it’s the filleting knife I least like the look of.’
They talked till it was well gone midday, about who was here, who was gone, who was going. Robert remembered Shameless and would like to see him, but another time, maybe. Despite his bravado, he was still in great pain, his internal injuries severe. Anne left him with a bottle of whisky, a kiss and the promise she’d visit again. On the way out, she stopped to talk with Nan in the kitchen, shooing her two children to play elsewhere. Outside, Jessie chatted with the guard.
The prison was the next stop. Again, the basket Jessie carried was checked. The guard recognized Anne. As he unlocked the main gate to let them in, he joked that her old room could be made available if she wanted it. He didn’t follow them through. Margaret’s cell was already opened for other visitors, her brother, Tom, and sister, Susan. They were all upset. Margaret would be sent south for execution in two days’ time. Unlike Anne, she had acted with her husband and could safely die for it. Since Lord Ogilvie had escaped, her death was a way to punish them both.
‘I doubt she’ll be pardoned,’ Tom Johnstone said. ‘They’re determined to make her an example.’
‘Having chosen not to with me,’ Anne said.
‘Aeneas made the difference,’ Tom said, embarrassed, ‘his loyalty to the Union.’
‘Not just that,’ Susan added. ‘Your story wasn’t one they relished in open court. Bad enough to go against the king, but to go against your husband? Every man in England would be threatened by that.’
‘To think I envied you David,’ Anne told Margaret.
‘At least he’s free,’ Margaret said. ‘In court, my lawyer blamed him for my involvement, but I persuaded him to fight. I earned the loss of my head myself.’
‘Well, let’s not lose it yet if we can help,’ Anne said. ‘Jessie?’
Jessie, standing waiting in the corner of the cell, untied her apron, unfastened her dress and let it fall. She was still fully dressed, complete with a second apron and frock under the first, another cap still on her head. Anne explained what they’d do next.
‘What do you think?’ she asked the bemused trio when she finished.
‘I’ve nothing to lose,’ Margaret said, ‘but what about the rest of you?’
‘You’ll be flogged, or worse, if you’re caught,’ Tom told Jessie.
‘I’ve a strong back,’ the girl said.
‘And we’ll be fined or thrown in jail,’ Susan said. ‘But none of us will have our heads chopped off, so let’s do it.’
While Margaret changed, Tom distributed the food in the basket around the other cells. Anne and Jessie rolled up the bunk’s thin mattress and pulled the cover over it. In the gloomy cell, laid with the pillow carefully arranged, it almost passed for someone lying asleep. Susan did Margaret’s hair in Jessie’s style, cap pinned on top. Dirt was rubbed into her face and hands to darken the pale skin which had not seen daylight for ten weeks. Anne had chosen well, asking Jessie. The two were reasonably alike in height and hair colour. When her brother came back in, they all studied the result.