White Rose Rebel (45 page)

‘My dad says men need women who’ll argue with them to keep their wits sharp,’ the girl added, ‘until you argue with him, of course.’

‘My wits are sharp enough,’ Fraser grinned.

‘You did a fine job on the cottages,’ Anne said. ‘I walked past yesterday. Ewan’s daughter was out washing the windows. The novelty will wear off, I expect.’

‘Aeneas did most of the work. I just banged the nails in.’

Anne dropped her head at the mention of her husband. Aeneas suffered her because he had to. He’d made that clear enough.

‘Do you know what I wish most, Donald? I wish I’d been on the field that day, at MacGillivray’s side.’

‘Surely not. You have your life. He’d have wanted that.’

‘A life I can’t bear,’ she said. ‘He sent for me and I didn’t come.’ She looked up into the blacksmith’s eyes. ‘I’ve let everybody down. Even he died thinking that of me.’

‘I don’t see how.’ Fraser scratched his head. ‘He knew your sister had the note he sent, that you didn’t.’

‘Dè bha siud?’
Anne’s legs weakened under her. ‘He knew?’

‘Aye, and he was right glad you wouldn’t see the mess we were in.’

‘Then he didn’t believe I failed him?’ She felt light-headed.

‘As if you could.’ Fraser took hold of her arm, seeing she had gone pale. ‘As if you ever would.’ He led her over to a bench and called for Màiri to bring ale.

While she drank it, Fraser told her as much as he could remember, about Elizabeth’s visit to the field the day before, about their pointless march to Nairn and back that night, and the morning of the battle.

‘Lord George stayed, so we did,’ he said. ‘The will of the majority. We knew it would be bloody, but if the Prince had ordered the charge, we’d have gone sooner and could’ve broken through to their cannon. MacGillivray did all he could, but we’d no chance with our numbers down and grape-shot chewing up our flanks.’

‘I was coming to take you off the field.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘It was too late.’

‘
Isd
, don’t torment yourself. There’s nothing you’ve done that needs forgiven.’

He got up then to check the shoeing, gave each new one a cursory tap lest his daughter think she’d done too good a job. Anne wiped the tears from her eyes. Grief was a luxury she couldn’t afford, her guilt was greater than that. She had put freedom and independence before life and led them out in the first place.

She rode Pibroch back to Moy, leaving him with Shameless to strip down and put out to the grass with the other horses. Aeneas and the Dowager were already at dinner. A letter lay beside Anne’s place.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Aeneas prompted. ‘It might be more good news.’

She shook her head. The hand was familiar. She’d wait for privacy.

‘I have good news of my own,’ the Dowager announced. ‘The Duke of Cumberland has vacated my house and gone back to London.’

‘Pity he didn’t take his troops with him,’ Aeneas commented.

‘I expect we’ll live with them a while yet, with a prince hiding under every stone,’ the Dowager said. ‘But at least I can leave you to your home now.’

‘What,’ Aeneas smiled, ‘while my cellar still has stock in it?’

‘This afternoon,’ the Dowager said, archly, then, with a wicked grin, ‘before you check the cellar.’

She was eager to get off, to find out what state her house had been left in. Aeneas offered to change his plans and accompany her, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

‘Shameless can take me,’ she insisted.

Anne’s mind was on the letter in front of her. As soon as she could escape, she took it upstairs to her room, opening it by the window in the sunlight. It was from Robert Nairn. The military doctor had pronounced him fit to be moved.

The rest was his good wishes to her, thanking her for help and friendship, and for the good food she’d sent during his convalescence. She was not to think it had contributed to his well-being, in case she tormented herself, but it had made the days lying in bed more palatable. He was being removed to a ship tomorrow for transport to his trial in Berwick.

She let her hand drop and stared out the open window. All these months to heal and for what? He was the Jacobite paymaster. Despite his joke, it wouldn’t take paroled prisoners to hang him. There would be enough evidence to string him up a hundred times. Beyond the loch, she could see Aeneas ride away through the trees. Down in the yard, Shameless hitched up the carriage. The Dowager would be in her room, packing.

Anne laid the letter down on her dressing table, went out the door and hurried quietly along the corridor to the rooms Aeneas had been using. Her heart began to thump in her chest. His bed was made, but something of his presence in it hung about, the slight untidiness. On his dresser a bottle of whisky, three quarters
full, sat beside a glass. The air smelled of maleness, so close she’d turn round and he’d be there. It was terrifying. Feeling criminal, she searched his wardrobes. He would never miss what she was looking for. Once she had it, she turned to leave. The whisky bottle caught her eye again. She grabbed it too and left.

Later, downstairs, Jessie eyed the covered basket.

‘Why did you take it upstairs first?’

‘I was putting a surprise in it,’ Anne answered, filling food through the opening in the cloth cover. ‘Have you any potted hough?’

‘There’s nobody sick at the cottages,’ Jessie said, fetching a small pot of it.

‘I know. But I should take something when I visit.’

Shameless carried the Dowager’s kist through the kitchen at their backs. He wasn’t dressed for town.

‘Aren’t you driving?’ Jessie asked him.

‘No, the chief asked me to but the Dowager changed her mind. You know what she’s like.’

‘Women,’ Anne tutted, sympathizing.

Outside, the Dowager waited in the sunshine for Shameless to load the kist behind the carriage seat.

‘I should come with you,’ he grumbled.

‘I drove myself around before you were born,’ the Dowager told him. ‘And the English troops don’t trouble Moy. So
isd
and let me be.’

Anne stood waiting, the covered basket at her feet.

‘Can I say goodbye and thank you,’ she said, giving the older woman a hug.
‘Tapadh leat.’
That done, she picked up the basket and set off towards the cottages while the Dowager took her leave of Jessie and Morag.

Ten minutes later, a mile up the road, the Dowager pulled the carriage under some trees and waited. It wasn’t long till Anne appeared through the wood. She put the basket beside the kist and climbed up into the seat.

‘Better folk are treated worse,’ the guard complained, seeing the whisky in the basket.

‘That’s not for him,’ Anne smiled. ‘It’s for Nan. She’s done such a good job getting him well enough to hang. Maybe she’ll share a dram with you, if you’d like that.’

‘After dark, tell her,’ the guard said, ‘when I won’t get caught.’

Inside, sensing trouble, Nan’s smaller child hid under the table. The older one peered out from the curtained box bed. Nan was upset to be losing her patient. Robert sat at the table, trying to convince her she’d done a fine job and it was his own fault, not hers, that the government would soon undo it. But, when Anne emptied the basket, it was the whisky he reached for not the food.

‘Uisge beatha,’
he said, ‘the water of life.’

‘I hope it will be,’ Anne said. ‘But that’s for Nan. The food is for the children. This –’ she pulled the cloth from inside the bottom of the basket ‘– is yours.’ Underneath, neatly folded, was a linen frock coat and a rather squashed hat. ‘Aeneas never wears them.’ She made a face. ‘Maybe they’re from his misguided youth, from France?’

‘The French have more style,’ Robert joked. ‘I should think they’d hang me for that alone.’

‘You’re not going to hang,’ Anne said, reaching under her skirts. ‘You’re going to walk out of here, wearing them.’ She pulled down the matching breeches she had worn underneath her dress. ‘They’ll be looking for a kilted warrior.’

‘Fetching,’ Robert grinned. ‘I’m glad they match at least.’

‘I have some stiff white linen,’ Nan said. ‘I could be making a collar to pass you for a minister.’

The plan was simple. Just before the ten o’clock curfew, as soon
as it was dark enough, Nan would distract the guard by drinking whisky with him while Robert slipped out the door. Once in the street, nobody would pay him any attention. Anne would wait on the edge of town with the carriage and drive him out of Inverness overnight to Portsoy where he might get a boat for France.

‘Overnight? But you’ll be missed.’

‘Not till it’s too late,’ Anne assured him. ‘And Aeneas won’t turn me in.’

‘Love’s young dream,’ Robert sighed.

‘Not quite,’ Anne said, wryly. ‘But he won’t. He has too much to lose now.’

The hours waiting would be hard. Anne went back to the Dowager’s. The older woman had carried an
arasaid
and her pistols out of Moy for her, in the kist. They spent the time removing all traces of the recent occupation from her home.

In his room, preparing for supper, Aeneas saw the bottle of whisky was absent from his dresser. His aunt was incorrigible but she might, at least, have left him his nightcap dram. Downstairs, the dining room was empty. While he waited for Anne, he read the day’s mail. The first was from Forbes, to include a copy of the Disarming Act recently passed by parliament. The old judge did not approve: ‘Scots law is for Scotland to decide,’ he wrote. ‘This is a travesty of the Union.’

The act was worse than Aeneas had expected. Every Highland weapon was named and banned: ‘Broad Sword or Target, Poignard, Whinger, or Durk, Side Pistol, Gun, or other warlike Weapon.’ North of the River Clyde, all arms were to be collected and destroyed. Men or women keeping, bearing or using any were subject to prison until heavy fines were paid. Men who could not pay would be sent to fight for the British army in the Americas. Women would be jailed for six months. A second offence by either sex meant transportation to the colonies for seven years’ servitude. The act went on to ban Highland clothes, bagpipes and tartan, except within the armed forces, and to compel all school teachers to swear oaths of loyalty to the Crown. The penalties were the
same. It was crushing. Their culture would be eradicated and, between the lines, their children would be taught lies, their language put down.

His impotence beat down on him. He had helped this come about. They had all seen it happening, a creeping domination that, since the Union, had bit by bit eaten away at their tribal lives. He had tried to save what he could. Anne had fought to stop it. She’d been right. He wished she would come down. At least if she was roused to anger, they would talk with honesty. He glanced at the second letter. It was on fine headed paper, from the English royal court. He and his wife were ordered to London to attend a celebration ball to mark the restoration of peace.

‘Taigh na Galla ort!’
he swore. ‘First destroy us then make us dance!’ He threw it down, called Jessie and sent her up to find out if Anne meant to eat with him. The girl was back in minutes.

‘She’s not there.’

‘Did she go out?’

‘After dinner, when the Dowager left. She was going to the cottages.’

‘But you saw her come back?’

Jessie shook her head. ‘I didn’t think anything of it. She could have come in while I was busy. But she wouldn’t be all this time. It’s near dark out.’

‘Ask Shameless to saddle up a fresh horse for me.’ He ran upstairs to Anne’s room, a bad feeling in his gut. The letter she’d received that day lay on her dressing table. He squinted at it in the fading light. His brow furrowed as he read, seriously doubting, now, that his wife had met with any mishap on the road. He yanked open the drawer where she kept her pistols. They were gone. Hurrying back to his own room, he changed into his kilted Black Watch uniform, strapped on his sword, thrust a pistol in his belt, ran back downstairs and out to his horse.

Outside her house, Nan MacKay poured another dram for the guard and topped up her own glass. She had positioned herself beyond him so his back was to the open door. Flirting was not her
usual style and, with him English and her speaking only Gaelic, it was difficult. But Robert had shown her how, and she did the best she could, with smiles and shrugs, glancing into his eyes, asking questions and answering though he couldn’t understand, nor she him. It seemed to please the man, at any rate. As he laughed heartily at what she supposed was his own joke, Robert keeked out the doorway. Nan joined in the laughter, as if she knew what was funny. Robert slipped out and away down the street, vanishing quickly into the darkness. Nan splashed more whisky into the guard’s tin, drank a toast with him and, as the curfew sounded, went back inside.

On the edge of town, Anne sat in the carriage, waiting. She wrapped the
arasaid
tighter round her to keep out the evening chill and tucked the pistols more securely in its folds. Ten o’clock, they’d said. It was past that now and dangerous to be out. But then Robert was there, climbing up beside her, looking every inch the cleric he most definitely wasn’t. She grinned at him, clicked the reins and drove off sedately. It was hard to be restrained, not to gallop, but that would draw attention. As soon as they were out of earshot of the houses, she urged the horse up to a fast trot, heading east for the coast.

‘We made it!’ Robert exclaimed.

‘We did,’ she grinned.

‘Colonel Anne, you’re a hero.’

‘Not me,’ she said. ‘Nan took the real risk.’

‘They can’t prove she helped me, can they?’

‘No. She’ll be questioned. But she’s too poor to have bought you clothes or paid your transport. So long as she keeps quiet, they’ll have to let her go.’