Highland Sunset

by Joan Wolf

  Two hours later the pipes sounded to call the men into position once more on Culloden Moor.

  Niall had had no sleep at all, nor had Alasdair. When they marched back to the moor the army left some thousand men asleep where they had fallen; nothing, not even the rant of their clans shrilled on the pipes, had been able to wake them. In spite of this, behind Niall and Alasdair, to the left of the Athollmen in the line of battle, stood some five hundred MacIans.

  The army that faced the Duke of Cumberland on the sixteenth was in considerably poorer condition than it had been twenty-four hours earlier. The men had made a night march of nearly twenty miles and consequently had had no sleep. For two days they had subsisted on a ration of a biscuit and water. They had lost almost two thousand of their number to desertion and exhaustion. The French adviser to the prince, the Marquis d'Eguilles, wrote that morning to the French king: "In vain I represented to the prince that he was still without half his army; that the greater part of those who had returned had no longer any targets; that they were all worn out with fatigue; and that for two days many of them had not eaten at all." In spite of the French ambassador's advice to retreat, the clans that morning stayed in position on Culloden Moor.

  Niall stood beside his father and watched the English lines form. Snow was falling. Once Cumberland had his cannon placed, he began to cannonade the Highland line.

  The cannon fire went on and on. The prince, waiting for Cumberland to initiate the attack, rode up and down among his troops encouraging them.

  The deadly round shot went on. "For God's sake, Father," Niall cried to Alasdair, "when are we going to charge?" Men were falling all around him.

  Alasdair stood among his dying MacIans, sword and pistol in hand. There was both anguish and anger on his face. "Go to Lord George, Niall! Tell him I cannot hold my men longer."

  Niall ran hard until he reached Lord George, who was seated on his horse among his Athollmen looking like a thundercloud. Niall repeated his father's message.

  "I will send to the prince and ask if he wants me to charge," Lord George snapped immediately. "Get back to your position, MacIan."

  Niall had scarcely returned to Alasdair's side when the order came to charge.

  Alasdair turned to his men and screamed the war cry of the clan: "Buaidh no Bas! Buaidh no Bas!" And, raising his sword, he began to run forward. Without a moment's hesitation, the men of his clan followed their chief.

  Lord George and the Athollmen were to their left, Lochiel and the Camerons to their right. The entire right wing of the Highland army came on in a surge of tartan and pipes, and broke through Cumberland's first line.

  Niall fought to keep his shoulder next to his father's. The fighting was fierce and Lord George's command found itself pressed between their own center line and a wall on their right flank. The quarters were so tight that Niall could hardly use his sword. They kept going forward, climbing over their own dead as they penetrated the ranks of Barrel's regiment.

  It was not until much later that Niall was to learn what had happened to the left wing of the Highland army. It received orders at last from the prince to charge, just as the right had, but the MacDonalds, angry and sullen that their traditional position on the right had been taken from them, refused to advance.

  The Duke of Perth, commanding the left wing, vainly urged them on. "Claymore! Claymore!" he shouted. "Convert the left into the right. Behave with your usual valor and henceforth my name is MacDonald!"

  The battle wavered before them. In anguish MacDonald of Keppoch called out, "Mo Dhia, an do threig Clann mo chinnidhmi?" (My God, have the children of my clan abandoned me?) He rushed forward, pistol in one hand and drawn sword in the other. He was shot down immediately and the clan, which had begun to move forward slowly, halted.

  Niall and Alasdair were deep inside the enemy lines when the English began to reform behind them. Men were falling all around them, from musket shot in front of them and bayonets behind. In ones and twos and then in groups, the Highlanders began to fall back.

  Still Alasdair pressed forward with Niall at his side. It was a soldier from Sempill's regiment who fired the shot that hit the Earl of Morar in the breast.

  Niall dropped to his knees beside his wounded father. Alasdair's eyes were open and he looked at his son. "I'll get you away, Father," Niall said urgently. "Can you put your arm around my shoulder?"

  Alasdair shook his head. His voice was perfectly clear although very low. "Niall," he said, "comma leat misse, mas toil leat do bleatha thoir 'n arrigh dhuit fhein!" (Niall, do not think of me, take care of yourself if you value your life.)

  Niall looked around him wildly and a man of his clan came to his side. Together they lifted Alasdair in his plaid and began to retreat from the field.

  The battlefield was in chaos, with the Highland army now in full retreat. Niall carried the body of his wounded father further and further away from the enemy lines, away from the moor, his eyes straight ahead of him, his exhausted legs trembling with effort.

  He turned at the sound of his name and saw a wounded MacIan clansman leaning on the shoulder of his own son. "Is it Mac mhic Iain?" the man asked sorrowfully.

  "Yes," Niall replied. "He has been wounded. We are trying to get him to a place of safety."

  The man removed his own arm from around the neck of his son. "Go to Mac mhic Iain," he said sternly. Then, as the boy hesitated, "Your first duty is not to your father but to your chief. Go." And the boy came and took up a piece of the plaid on which they were carrying Alasdair.

  On and on Niall and his two clansmen went, Niall in front, the two men behind, Alasdair's body slung in its plaid between them. Toward Balrain they came upon a little barn. "Inside!" Niall called, and they carried Morar in and placed him on the ground. Niall bent to his father and found he was dead.

  Outside came the thunder of hooves and then the sound of English voices. A party of dragoons in pursuit of fleeing clansmen had found the barn. Niall drew his sword and motioned the two MacIans to do the same. The three men ranged themselves between the door and the body of their chief and prepared to die with him.

  There came another shout and then the clink of steel as troopers once more mounted their horses. The sound of hooves and then silence. The dragoons had been called away.

  Niall sheathed his sword and turned back to his father. Alasdair's chest was covered in blood, but his face was peaceful.

  "I cannot just leave him here for the Sassenach to find," Niall cried despairingly.

  "Mac mhic lain." It was one of the clansmen speaking. Niall looked at him in bewilderment before he realized it was he who was being addressed. "Mac mhic Iain," the man said again, "burn the barn."

  Niall looked around him. It was quiet in the small barn now. Peaceful. Fire. "Yes," he said. "We will send him out cleanly, with fire. There will be nothing of him for the Sassenach to defile."

  They built a funeral pyre out of straw for Alasdair Niall Hector Donald MacIan, Earl of Morar, Mac mhic Iain, and set it afire. Then the three of them took to their heels and ran for their very lives.

  CHAPTER 21

  Van knew as soon as the first of the fleeing Highlanders reached Inverness that the ax she had been dreading for so long had fallen at last. The army was beaten. She remembered her promise to her father and told her mother to make ready to leave.

  Frances did not want to go.

  "If we stay, Mother, we will be made prisoners," Van said relentlessly. "That will not help Father or Niall at all."

  "I cannot leave until I know what has happened to them!" Frances cried wildly.

  "I know," Van replied. "I know." She had studied her maps diligently and now she said, "We shall remove to Beauly for the moment, Mother. We should be able to get further news there. But I promised Father I would get you out of Inverness!"

  Frances finally acquiesced and with the two clansmen whom Alasdair had left for their protection, the two women rode west out of Inverness only half an hour before the Duke of Cumber
land entered the town. Cumberland immediately appropriated the house recently occupied by the prince—"my cousin Charles," as the duke called him. The prince's former hostess, the dowager Lady Mackintosh, was made a prisoner.

  Cumberland ordered that no quarter was to be given to the defeated Jacobites. All those who had taken up arms for the prince were to be regarded as traitors and outside the law.

  Orders were issued that no one was allowed to go near the wounded rebels, who still lay on the battlefield entwined with the already dead.

  The pursuing army had sabered pretty well everyone they saw during the pursuit, whether they were innocent bystanders or Jacobite soldiers, yet there were still enough prisoners to fill the jail at Inverness to overflowing.

  Orders were given that the wounded prisoners were to be offered no medical assistance. Two doctors with the prince's army, also prisoners, asked for permission to treat the wounded about them. They received no permission and their instruments and medicines were confiscated. They did their best with their unaided hands.

  It was three days before Cumberland allowed anyone on the field of battle and then he sent detachments of soldiers to kill all those who were still alive.

  The duke had come north with a sanction from his father the king "to do whatever is necessary for the suppressing of this unnatural rebellion." He was going to do his duty.

  News came to Frances and Van at Beauly that the prince had got away. Lord George Murray was also known to be safe.

  Several Camerons fleeing through Beauly reported seeing Niall carrying his father off the field. There was no word of Alan.

  "If I thought they were lying on that bloody field I would go to the duke myself and beg to be allowed to look for them," Frances said despairingly.

  "The clan would not have left Father or Niall wounded on the field, Mother," Van replied. "Not so long as there was a man of them left to carry them away. If they are lying on that field, they are dead."

  Frances' face was white and set. "I think your father is dead, Van. I can feel it."

  "Mother." Van's nostrils were pinched-looking. "I think we should go to Morar. If they are alive they will look for us there. Or they will send us word."

  "Yes," Frances said dully. "Yes. And I promised your father I would be there for the clan."

  So they went southward, down the Great Glen, only a day in advance of companies of Cumberland's soldiers who were bringing his ultimatums to the towns of the Highlands:

  All arms were to be surrendered, under penalty of hanging;

  Information was to be laid against hidden rebels, under penalty of hanging;

  The young pretender was to be surrendered, under penalty of hanging....

  It was at Fort Augustus, still in ruins from the work of Lochiel the previous month, that Van and Frances first heard that the prince was ahead of them. He had been through Fort Augustus the day before.

  From Fort Augustus the two MacIan women turned west, toward Loch Arkaig, where they stayed the night at Lochiel's house of Achnacarry. Lady Lochiel was in residence, although she spoke of taking the children to a cottage in the hills the following day.

  "I fear the English will be here looking for Donald," she told Frances and Van. "I do not want to be made a prisoner."

  Lochiel was alive, she told them, but injured in both ankles. He had been carried off the field by his clansmen.

  She too had heard that Niall was seen carrying Morar off the field. She knew nothing more of their fates.

  The prince had been through Loch Arkaig the previous day.

  "Who is with him?" Van asked.

  "Just three men," Lady Lochiel replied. "They stayed at Cameron of Glen Pean's cottage, so that is how I know. I believe they were heading for Morar."

  "Morar is inaccessible enough to shelter him for a while," Van said grimly. And the following morning she and Frances, with their two MacIan escorts, turned westward once more, toward the braes of their own country.

  Niall was making for Morar also. After the battle he and his two companions had gone to Ruthven to join Lord George Murray. Lord George, however, was understandably bitter about the way the battle had been conducted and furious at the incompetence of both O'Sullivan and Hay of Restalrig. He told Niall he was resigning his commission and would not order his men to remuster. He was going to send a message to the prince to recommend that he return to France.

  Consequently, when Niall set out for Morar he was a day behind the prince and only hours ahead of his mother and Van.

  Charles Edward spent the day of April 20 in Morar, sleeping in a clansman's cottage. That night, under a moon four days from the full, he walked to Borrodale on the north shore of Loch nan Uamh.

  It was early in the afternoon of the twenty-first when Niall arrived at Creag an Fhithich.

  The old men and the women servants were still there. They broke into terrible keening when they heard that Mac mhic Iain was dead. Niall was wandering around the rooms like a lost ghost when he looked out a window and saw Van and Frances coming wearily up the drive.

  Frances knew the moment she saw her son standing alone in the doorway that Alasdair was dead.

  Niall told them about the battle as they sat in Frances' small sitting room with the fire burning in the chimneypiece. His voice was low and he did not look at his mother. He could not bear to see her eyes.

  "I could not leave his body for the Sassenach," he finished at last. There was deep bitterness in his voice. "He would have been a likely trophy for them."

  "Cumberland would not allow anyone on the battlefield to search for their men." Van's voice was as bitter as his had been. "He posted guards, Niall, to keep the families away. You did well by Father. He would have been left there to rot."

  At that Frances cried out.

  Van put a hand on her mother's arm. "I'm sorry, Mother."

  Frances didn't answer, just stared ahead of her with dazed-looking eyes and set face. Van looked at Niall but he only shook his head uncertainly.

  "I think you should rest, Mother," Van said softly. "It's been a long, hard journey. You're exhausted. Go up to bed for a while."

  "Yes," said Frances. It was the first word she had spoken since Niall had told her Alasdair was dead. She rose from her chair slowly and painfully, like an old woman, Van thought.

  "Shall I come up with you?" Van asked.

  "What?" Frances paused and looked at her.

  "Shall I come with you?" Van repeated.

  "Oh. No, darling. No. I shall be all right." She clutched her plaid around her shoulders as if she were very cold, and left the room.

  Their bedroom was so cold. Frances stood in the doorway for a full minute before she could bring herself to go in. Then, as she paused, uncertain, by the foot of the bed, Morag came in to light the fire.

  The room was warmer with the fire going, and more cheerful, but nothing would ever fill its emptiness again.

  Alasdair was dead.

  She had feared it for so long, lived for so long with the possibility of this moment, that she had thought herself prepared. She had been wrong.

  He was dead. Niall had burned his body on the battlefield. She would never see him again.

  She could not believe it.

  She looked slowly around the room and clutched the plaid even closer to her breast.

  Her whole life had been spent within the circle of Alasdair's arms. How was she to go on without him? What would she do? How would she live? After a moment she found herself walking like a sleepwalker to the wardrobe that held his clothing. She opened the door, took out one of the shirts she herself had made for him, and slowly raised it to her face.

  Anguish struck her like a blow in the stomach, and she sat down on the small blue chair and wept.

  Downstairs in the sitting room Niall and Van talked quietly.

  "Have you news of Alan?" was the first thing Van said after Frances had gone upstairs.

  "I think he is safe. Lochaber was wounded and taken off the field; I believ
e Alan got away also." Niall looked at her somberly. "Alan fought," he said. "Both Lochaber and Alan. They did not hang back with the rest of the MacDonalds. Someone at Ruthven told me he had seen Alan and some men of Lochaber leaving the field after the English overwhelmed us. That is all I know, Van."

  Van nodded without any other reply.

  "Father had the right of it," Niall said. "This whole enterprise should not have been undertaken without French help. But, even so, we came so close, Van! If it had not been for that damn night march, if there had been food, if the prince had chosen other ground..."

  "But he did not," Van said wearily. Then, "You must get away to France, Niall."

  "Aye. I must get to Jeannie. She will be fretting for news of me."

  "Where is the prince now?" Van asked.

  "Angus has told me he is in Borrodale. Young Clanranald and Elcho are to join him there."

  "You must join him also," Van said. "The French will send a ship to take him off. It is your only chance of escape, Niall."

  "Yes." He looked at her gravely. "I do not know how long you and mother will be safe here, Van. But how are you to get ship for France?"

  "I will post watchers," Van said. "If the English come I will take Mother to the cave. I'll get blankets and food out there tomorrow."

  Niall looked around him. "They may burn Creag an Fhithich," he said.

  "I'll get some of the pictures down to the cave too. And we'll bury the silver."

  For the first time since the battle Niall smiled. "Father would be proud of you."

  Van's eyes were wide. "I cannot believe he is gone," she said. "I keep expecting to hear his step at the door."

  "I know," said Niall. "Somehow I always thought Father was immortal." He rubbed his forehead in a tired gesture. "There was nothing I could do, Van," he went on a little desperately. "I was right next to him when the shot hit him."