White Rose Rebel

by Janet Paisley

  ‘Soon there will be nothing here but cattle and sheep,’ he complained. Hardest of all, the name of his home would live in history as the site of that bloody slaughter, as the start of a bloodier pacification, the ruination of a people, and not as the seat of a reputable justice. Culloden. Cumberland, amused by Forbes’s protestations, had thought it apt.

  The Dowager Lady McIntosh had petitioned the judge as soon as she heard of Nan MacKay’s torture. Now he harangued Lord Louden. When Anne and Aeneas came in, the beleaguered earl threw up his hands.

  ‘I suppose you’ve come to confess?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Aeneas said.

  ‘I have,’ Anne said.

  ‘My wife was with me when Robert Nairn escaped,’ Aeneas glared at her.

  ‘If you’d let me finish,’ she protested, ‘I was about to add, if it will stop her torment.’

  ‘Oh, come now, Aeneas,’ Louden urged. ‘Don’t be left out.’ The commander was clearly under pressure. ‘I take it you know your aunt has already confessed to supplying whisky, clothes and transport to aid the rebel’s escape.’

  ‘She has?’

  ‘Along with every single member of her household,’ Louden fumed, ‘one after another. I’m just about to take Forbes’s confession, and his staff ’s, no doubt. Perhaps you’d like to get in line.’

  ‘Eh, no,’ Aeneas declined. ‘We’ve a boat to catch.’

  ‘Then catch it. I’ve just sent an order to the prison that the torture of Nan MacKay ceases forthwith. But she’ll stay in prison till her sentence is carried out.’

  ‘I came to protest at her treatment,’ Forbes growled, ‘not confess. I’ll also lodge appeal against that sentence. Eight hundred lashes is an execution. She’s not military, they have no right to try or punish her.’

  ‘Eight hundred lashes?’ Anne grabbed Aeneas’s arm for support.

  ‘I spoke to the woman,’ he said. ‘She did nothing wrong.’

  ‘They all say that,’ Louden pointed out. ‘The guard insists she distracted him. I agree the sentence is excessive, but I can’t overrule the verdict.’

  ‘The Duke of Cumberland can,’ Forbes suggested.

  ‘Then we’ll ask him,’ Aeneas said. ‘When will the sentence be carried out?’

  ‘The end of next month,’ Louden answered. ‘Go to London. I’ll see she comes to no harm till you get back.’

  With that settled, they all shared a dram. Forbes resumed his criticism of the punitive legislation. Yet another act was being drawn up, to end the heritable jurisdictions. The clan chiefs would have no authority over their people when it was passed.

  ‘You’ll be relegated to landlords,’ he told Aeneas, ‘nothing more. The clans are finished.’

  ‘They can’t prevent you being chief, can they?’ Anne asked. ‘The people chose you. Only they can take that away.’

  Aeneas shook his head. This was a blow, perhaps the hardest to their culture than any. It removed the bond between clansmen, took away their choice of leadership.

  ‘Without the power to settle disputes, what will a chief be? The people will turn to the law, to the state. The reason to have and uphold a chief will be gone.’

  Louden poured the old judge another whisky and saw Anne and Aeneas out to catch their boat.

  ‘Did you hear your lieutenant was killed?’ he asked as they reached the door. ‘We shipped his body south last week, with his wife. Just outside of Moy, it was.’

  ‘Was there a skirmish?’ Aeneas frowned.

  ‘No.’ Louden sounded weary. ‘The work of a solitary villain. Usual story, nobody saw anything. He left his wife in the carriage on the road and went to speak with an old woman. Never came back. Stabbed twice, bayonet the surgeon thinks.’ He paused. ‘I saw the wounds. Strange thing is, I’d swear it was a pitchfork. So much for banned weapons, eh?’ He bid them safe journey and shut the door.

  Anne and Aeneas stared at each other. The old woman had not been seen since the cotts were raided. They’d assumed she was dead.

  ‘Meg,’ they both said at the same time.

  FORTY-FOUR

  London was startling. Street after street after street of tall buildings, relieved only by the river running through it. Even that waterway seemed to be alive with people, throbbing with boats and barges, the many bridges constantly criss-crossed by horse-drawn carriages and sedan chairs. Grandiose stone mansions filled elegant squares, chained off with iron padlocked gates. Hovels huddled incongruously between them. Beggars, traders and hawkers crowded the pavements. Political pamphleteers and way-side preachers bawled their different furies on every corner. Smells of smoke, street food and bakeries mixed with the fumes of sugar-processing and textile trades, the stench of breweries, distilleries, the stink of fleshers and sewer ditches running open through the streets from overflowing cesspits under houses. It was altogether both grander than Edinburgh and more squalid.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Aeneas asked, coming over to the window where Anne watched the throng below.

  ‘They’re very small,’ she said.

  ‘But plentiful,’ he said, wryly, looking down. ‘Like ants.’

  ‘I can meet the men’s eyes without tilting my head, and the women only reach my nose.’ She glanced up at him. ‘You must feel like a giant.’

  ‘I feel out of place,’ he smiled. ‘You didn’t answer my question. Pensive doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘I think I’m afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘For Nan. Bad comes of everything I do.’ Her brows furrowed over clouded eyes. ‘Will Cumberland see you?’

  ‘I’ve sent a request, and he’s hosting the ball tomorrow. We can talk to him there.’

  ‘You can.’ Anne turned back to the window. ‘Helen says I should only speak to my superiors when spoken to.’

  Aeneas turned her round to face him.

  ‘There will be none there,’ he said, ‘for there are none. Don’t accept this. At home, you speak with stable-lads, cottars and blacksmiths, or with princes, earls and dukes, and you are the same with each as they are the same with you. That’s who we are. If the opportunity arises to speak with Cumberland, take it.’

  Unconvinced, she nodded. They were in Helen Ray’s home. The Englishwoman had insisted, despite her recent bereavement, and tutored Anne in the manners expected at court. Aeneas was a lost cause. He refused to entertain courtly bowing. A brief nod to humour Cumberland was all he would agree to, and that only because Nan’s life might depend on it.

  ‘It’s Highlanders they want, it’s Highlanders they will get,’ he insisted.

  Helen fluttered back into the room, clearly excited. ‘You have visitors,’ she announced.

  Behind her, a tall, blond man in city clothes ducked his head as he came through the doorway and then stopped just inside. Behind him, a dainty, younger woman hovered.

  ‘Francis!’ Anne breathed out his name in a whisper of disbelief, then rushed across the room into her cousin’s arms calling it. ‘Francis!’

  ‘Anne, Anne.’ Farquharson of Monaltrie lifted her off her feet and crushed her in his arms. ‘It’s been so long. I feared we’d never meet again.’

  Aeneas crossed the room to join in the welcome. ‘If you’d put my wife down,’ he said, ‘I’d like to shake your hand.’ There was much back-slapping, hugs and teasing about the unfamiliar London garb. Francis, Baron Bàn, was a man back from the dead, his sentence commuted from hanging to banishment from Scotland for ever.

  ‘And, along with your petitions, my new wife to thank for my life,’ Francis said, introducing her. ‘Mistress Elizabeth Eyre, the Lady Monaltrie.’

  As Aeneas took Elizabeth’s hand to shake it, she dipped a curtsey.

  ‘Oops,’ he said, catching her arms, then realized she hadn’t tripped but was doing that strange thing women here did at such moments. They all laughed together.

  ‘I’ve asked them to stay and dine with us,’ Helen beamed. ‘You’ll want time to catch up with each other.’

&nb
sp; Anne’s first concern was for news of her brother, now exiled in France.

  ‘Did you see James before he sailed?’

  ‘Went with him to the boat,’ Francis nodded. ‘That’s where I would have gone too, but for Elizabeth. It was you he thanked for his life. Didn’t he write to say so?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but you know how mean he is with words. Was he well?’

  ‘He has a slight limp, but his health is good. His heart is another matter.’

  ‘We’ll keep trying for a pardon,’ Aeneas promised, ‘to bring him home, and yourself.’

  ‘Francis talks all the time of his beloved Highlands,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I expect poor Helen feels a bit of that too, now her home is lost.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not the same,’ Helen said. ‘My brother offered me a home. At least I’ll still be in London. That doesn’t compare with banishment.’

  ‘Then you won’t stay here?’ Anne asked.

  ‘I can’t,’ Helen explained. ‘My father gave me this house but, of course, it became my husband’s when we married. Now it will pass to his nephew.’ From her time spent among them, she expected the shock among the Highlanders. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she added. ‘The homes of your chiefs also pass to the next heir.’

  ‘But no other woman would lose hers, wife or no,’ Aeneas said, ‘and a chief’s widow is given a new home of her own, with an income to keep her for life. I hope your nephew means to provide for you.’

  ‘That’s not the way of things here,’ Helen said. ‘But,’ she added, brightly, ‘I will probably marry again. I’m young enough and still have my looks.’

  While that was undoubtedly true, an embarrassed silence struck the three Highlanders. To criticize their host’s way of life was an affront to hospitality. But marriage which stripped women of their belongings was surely theft. As the solution for enforced poverty, it made whores of women, whoremongers of men.

  ‘Tell them about Lady Broughton,’ Elizabeth prompted her husband, tactfully changing the subject.

  ‘My wife should tell you this story herself,’ Francis chuckled, ‘since it fascinates her.’ But Elizabeth ducked her head, shy again, and so he continued. With the help of several friends, Greta Fergusson had hidden out in Edinburgh after Culloden. It was there she delivered her baby, but the child, born too soon, had died. Twice, her attempts to sail for France from Leith had failed, so she travelled south, trying at several points to gain passage overseas. Finally, she fetched up in London.

  ‘But there’s still a warrant out for her,’ Anne worried. ‘Is she captured?’

  ‘No,’ Elizabeth answered, forgetting her shyness. ‘But only because Francis persuaded her not to seek out her husband.’

  ‘John Murray would surely help his wife,’ Aeneas said. ‘He certainly proved capable of helping himself.’ Sir John had turned king’s evidence, betraying the despised Lord Lovat to save his own life.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Francis disagreed. ‘With his title and estates restored, he wouldn’t jeopardize them again, not for Greta. After his release, he took up with a Quaker schoolgirl and passes her off as the Lady Broughton.’

  ‘But the real Lady Broughton is safe,’ Elizabeth finished triumphantly. ‘My father knew a ship’s captain who’d help, and she sailed for France the very next day.’

  ‘How exciting!’ Helen exclaimed. ‘I really don’t know why they must still hound people. After all, it’s over. That’s what we’re celebrating tomorrow.’

  ‘It wasn’t an invitation we could refuse,’ Aeneas pointed out.

  ‘Not when your wife is the guest of honour,’ Elizabeth said, then she caught the look which passed between him and Anne. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  Anne shook her head. The reminder that she faced the scrutiny of England’s courtiers the next night did nothing to lessen her anxiety. Knowing the attention would centre on her deepened it considerably.

  ‘I doubt the Duke of Cumberland had honouring me in mind.’

  ‘Forget him,’ Helen said. ‘He struts like a conquering hero, yet that victory was a fluke. He never won a battle before, and we’d all be very surprised if he ever does again.’

  ‘England is safe from invasion because of its navy,’ Francis said, ‘not because of its army. I doubt they’ll hold the New World territories against the French and Spanish.’

  ‘They will if the clans make up that army,’ Aeneas said, ‘and these prohibitions are designed to do that. It’s the only way our dress and martial skills can survive. This ball is probably the carrot to that stick.’

  ‘You’re very suspicious, Aeneas,’ Helen chided. ‘It’s a celebration, of peace.’

  ‘To which the enemy is invited?’

  ‘The defeated enemy,’ Anne added.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Elizabeth said. ‘People clamoured for your presence. Now that they feel safe, everyone wants to meet the fierce warrior woman they were so afraid of.’

  Anne glanced down at the table. That woman was long gone. Whatever they expected, she couldn’t provide it.

  ‘Do they hope a show of wealth and power will pass for courage and keep us cowed?’ Aeneas asked.

  ‘Some do,’ Francis replied. ‘Others feel amends are due for the purges. But most are just curious.’ He looked thoughtfully at Anne. ‘You’ve nothing to prove. They’ve invested you with an exotic glamour, that’s all. And I’m thankful for it,’ he grinned. ‘It means I can wear proper clothes again.’

  A long, convivial evening followed, the inevitable sorrows tempered by more immediate joys. As it wore on, Anne lapsed into silence. Despite Helen’s dismissal of him, Cumberland still had control of her and, through her, Aeneas, their home and people. It was his response tomorrow night that mattered, not the gossiping crowd.

  The palace buzzed with lords, ladies and excitement. Powdered periwigs were primped. Embroidered satin skirts were draped with finest silk. French lace and fans were in abundance. Even the government ministers wore new frock coats and matching breeches. Everyone who was anyone was there, grasping their sought-after invitations.

  Anne and Aeneas stood in line, waiting for their introduction before they could descend the broad, curving stairs to the ballroom. The few Highlanders available in London made up the final pairs. As guests of honour, the McIntoshes would be last.

  ‘It will be fine,’ Aeneas said in Anne’s ear.

  ‘Tha mi an dòchas,’ she said. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘We should speak English.’

  She bowed her head, stung.

  ‘I know when to hold my tongue,’ she muttered.

  He could have bitten his own. The proscriptions only applied north of Stirling.

  ‘There will be a lot of that.’ He cast a nod at her outfit. ‘But your dress speaks for you.’

  She wore the rebel white, a sweeping low-cut gown of silk and lawn, with a blue sash at her waist. In her dark, coiled hair was one perfect white rose. Not the Jacobite rose, it was the wrong time of year, but the closest to it she could get in mid-September London. A white lace fan and dance card dangled at her wrist.

  ‘I’m giving them what they expect,’ she said. ‘As you are.’

  He stood beside her in his full kilted chief’s attire, complete with feathers, bonnet and silver brooch and, with official permission sought and granted, his silver-handled broadsword. That dispensation was due to his military status and loyalty during the conflict. Francis had already escorted Elizabeth down to the ballroom, equally resplendent but, as a constrained enemy, with his scabbard empty.

  Anne’s stomach churned. They were there as curiosities, wild rebel Highlanders from a land that had now been safely pacified. Though Aeneas seemed as quietly dignified as she strove to appear, she knew he, too, was nervous. Whatever else happened, they had to win Nan’s reprieve from the Duke.

  Down below, England’s chattering, courtly crowd nudged each other, whispered and stared, trying to glimpse them behind the few in front still waiting to descend. At the wide doors, the major-dom
o thumped his cane twice on the floor.

  ‘Sir John Murray of Broughton, and Lady Broughton.’

  Anne studied the plain young girl beside the erstwhile Prince’s secretary. Greta would have loved this. Glamorous always, feathers flouncing in her hair, she would have swept elegantly down the stairs on her husband’s arm, head high. Defeat or subjection would not have entered her mind or her soul. She would do well in France. Aeneas grabbed the pencil from Anne’s dance card and scribbled on their invitation.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he winked.

  Thump, thump went the cane.

  ‘The Right Honourable, the Lord Boyd.’

  James glanced round briefly at Anne and nodded good luck, his face colouring as it always did in her company, then he, too, set off down the sweeping stairs. For all his loyalty to this government, three of the four titles he would have inherited were forfeit and his father executed. She wondered if he flushed now from shyness or from shame. Aeneas handed their invitation to the major-domo, then turned to her.

  ‘If it’s to be the last time,’ he said, ‘they should get it right.’

  Thump, thump, the cane went again.

  ‘The Much Honoured, Captain Aeneas McIntosh of McIntosh, Chief of Clan Chattan and –’ there was the tiniest of hesitations ‘– Colonel Anne Farquharson, the Lady McIntosh.’

  ‘Aeneas!’ Anne protested. Her rank and the Scottish form of naming might be construed as confrontation.

  ‘Be who you are,’ he said, placing her hand on his arm.

  Every head in the ballroom had turned at the announcement. A whisper like the sea rushing to the shore swelled round the room, rising to meet them.

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘She’s here.’

  ‘It’s them.’

  ‘Pretty little thing.’

  ‘So slender.’

  ‘That girl, I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Hardly savage.’

  ‘So that’s the heavenly Lady McIntosh.’

  The comments multiplied, washing back and forth, behind fans or hands or openly, as Aeneas led Anne down the flight of steps. Behind them the cane thumped again, ignored, announcing latecomers. All eyes watched the Highland couple come down and walk the length of the room to pay their respects to the host, the Duke of Cumberland. Anne’s fingers dug into Aeneas’s arm.