The Pretender's Lady

by Alan Gold

  She had always had a vivid imagination. When she was a slip of a girl, the local school teachers would call her “the dreamer” and “the far-away child” as she’d always be staring into space or out of the window instead of practicing letters and numbers on her slate; when she went to school in Edinburgh to finish off her education, she was regularly reprimanded for wasting her parent’s money because even though her results and marks were generally very good, she often didn’t finish an assignment or hand in her homework and was always accused of being in another world, far away.

  And just as on so many previous occasions, it was while she was doing some boring and monotonous task that she was struck with a stunningly simple and marvelous idea, which had to be undertaken straight away. She couldn’t wait until her mother and father came in from the fields before she told them. Even though she couldn’t see the image clearly, it was beginning to coalesce as an idea in her mind. She nearly burst in excitement, waiting for her parents to return. But when she told them, their reaction was not what she’d expected.

  “You will not go. I forbid it. There are ten thousand English troops scaling every hill and valley killing every Scotsman and woman they find. If you think for one moment I’ll allow a daughter of mine to go to the mainland, you’re insane,” Hugh said to her.

  “I shall be going, father, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I have determined that if I leave now, I can be in the lands of the Mackenzie or the MacDonells of Glengarry within the week,” she said to him.

  Her mother Anne said, “Your father is right, darling. This is an act of madness. You know what the Duke of Cumberland is doing. They’re calling him the Butcher. He’s slaughtering everybody. Thanks to the wisdom and foresight of your father, we on Skye won’t be affected, but God only help those poor souls on the mainland. If you leave here, your life will be in mortal peril. And if you go to the prince, you’ll be viewed as one of his supporters and that’s an end of it. You’ll be lost to us forever. No, Flora. You will not go. You’ll stay here and be safe.”

  Flora stood from her chair and walked over to the chimneybreast, trying to retain her composure. How was it that she could see so clearly and yet her parents were so blind?

  “But don’t you see that the prince needs support now more than ever. If I went over there, it’d give him courage. I could guide him, cook for him, ease his pain. Father, mother, you must understand that he’s our rightful king. He can reverse this misfortune and rise again. Once the Scots see what the damnable English are doing, they’ll rise up in fury and . . .”

  Hugh lost his temper completely and banged his fist on the table. “Rise up? What are you talking about, girl? Have you any conception of what’s happening on the mainland? There’s a slaughter taking place. Murder on a scale not seen in over four hundred years, not since the time of Longshanks after the disaster caused by your beloved William Wallace. Cumberland’s soldiers are butchering our Scottish men, women, and children. Lairds are being dragged off their land; crofts are being burned; people are being rounded up like cattle and forced off their property. And all because of the pretensions of a lad who’d never set foot in Scotland for a single day of his life and who suddenly appears to claim a heritage taken from his grandfather dozens of years before. Away with you, girl, and dream another dream. You’ll not go to the mainland. You’ll remain here. If you try to sneak away, I’ll follow you and drag you back by your hair.”

  She stared at Hugh in a rare fury. “You speak to me as though you were my father. Yet it was you who dragged my own mother by her hair when she’d been a widow for barely two years and carried her away and forced her to marry you. How dare you tell me that you’ll drag me anywhere, Hugh Macdonald?”

  Anne Macdonald gasped at her daughter’s impertinence. “Flora, apologize to your stepfather immediately. He’s as much father to you as your own father who you barely knew. When your poor father died, you were only two years old. How dare you speak to Hugh in that manner?”

  Knowing she’d gone too far and looking at the hurt in Hugh’s eyes, Flora nodded and said softly, “It was wrong of me to say that, father. I said it in haste and I apologize. You are my father in all but flesh. And I do love you fiercely for the way you’ve brought me up and treated me as your own. But you forget that I’m a grown woman and not a child who you can command anymore.”

  “You’re a grown woman to the rest of the world, but to me you are and will always be my child, Flora, as much as you were the child of Anne’s first husband David. I love you now as I loved you when you first came to me as a bairn. Which is why I’m ordering you to put these ideas of going to the mainland and trying to assist Charlie out of your mind. He’s brought enough destruction to Scotland. God forbid he brings destruction to my family.”

  The family descended into silence. Both Hugh and Anne knew that nothing could shift an idea once it was in Flora’s mind. Hugh now considered telling the ferryman to forbid Flora from boarding his vessel; Anne was considering ways to keep her daughter’s mind occupied so that thoughts of joining Prince Charles evaporated like a pond in summer. And Flora, for her part, wondered at the damage she would do to her parent’s love of her when they came into her room and found that she’d disappeared in the middle of the night leaving only a note asking for forgiveness and understanding.

  THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS

  MAY 12, 1746

  Even at a distance, Prince Charles Edward Stuart looked haggard and drawn when Lord George Murray first rode over the hill and saw him and his party in the valley floor. As he drew nearer, it was apparent that these men were suffering the effects of sleeping in the roughness of the landscape. The prince’s once regal coat was filthy, his hair was long and devoid of the shine of pomade, and he had the look and feel of a poor crofter whose life is spent grubbing in the dirt for roots and vegetables.

  Shocked beyond belief, Lord Murray fought to repress his distress at the change which had come over the young chevalier. Instead, he rode his horse toward the fire, dismounted, and greeted the prince with a kiss on both cheeks. The delight on the prince’s face at seeing his former commander in chief was palpable.

  Lord Murray greeted all of the prince’s retinue with a handshake and said to him, “By God, sir, but it was no easy task finding you. No wonder you’ve managed to evade the English all these weeks. It was only by having men who held implicit trust in my good intentions that I was able to predict where you’d be.”

  “And how close are the English? We’re so hidden here from information that I could be standing on the Moon for all that I know of what’s happening in the rest of Scotland,” he asked.

  “The English are no more than forty miles to the southeast. They’re following the Road to the Isles. We’re well north and traveling in the opposite direction. However, sir, there’s no telling when the Butcher will send a detachment up this way when he finds you’re not where he thinks you are.”

  “Come, George, sit and take refreshment, as best as we can offer. Unfortunately the servants are not working tonight, so there’s only a five-course banquet of fish and pheasant and a good beef stew and three kinds of puddings to ease our bellies and slake our thirst,” said the prince.

  Murray smiled, and a place was made for him to sit down before the fire. Special precautions had been taken to build a brush fence on all sides so that the light from the fire was hidden to a distant observer. Alistair Macdonald gave Murray a crude wooden bowl and motioned for him to take part of one of the three rabbits that they’d caught and roasted for their supper. There was nothing to eat it with, as the barley bread and oatmeal cakes that a crofter had given them a week earlier had long since been used up.

  Lord Murray tore off a hind limb of the rabbit and ate it greedily. “It grieves me that Your Highness is reduced to such penury. Even a humble farmer can expect more out of life than what you and your party are enjoying.”

  “I shall soon shake off the hunting dogs that the Duke of Cumberland has sent after me,
and then I’ll somehow return to France and Italy,” he said.

  Lord Murray looked at the prince in amazement. “Return? France? But I don’t understand, sir. I bring you news that ten thousand Scotsmen are ready and willing to stand by your side and rejoin you in the fight for your kingdom.”

  The prince looked at him in equal and utter amazement. “Ten thousand? Ten thousand you say. What in God’s name are you talking about George? Are there still men willing to stand by me? What? Even after the disaster that was Culloden Moor?”

  “Especially after the disaster. But more than that, Charles, they talk of your other successes, those battles you enjoyed at Prestonpans and Carlisle and Falkirk, and they talk of the way you came so close to taking London from the fat bastard George. Yes, Culloden was a disaster and some in Scotland think you’re the Devil incarnate for what’s happened to us since, but many believe that you’re the rightful heir and hate and detest George and his evil spawn the Duke of Cumberland for what they’re doing to us right now. And being Scotsmen, they’re not willing to be slaughtered, but are determined to take to the field and fight.”

  His words disappeared into the early evening air. It was a warm night after a sunny day, but instead of their skin being berated by the icy cold of a Scottish winter or soaked by the sparkling rains of spring, they were now being eaten alive by Mayflies and midges and other flying insects that made their lives utterly miserable. The party of men thought deeply about the news that Lord George Murray had brought them.

  “Ten thousand, do you say?” asked Alistair Macdonald.

  Lord George Murray nodded.

  “By God, Charlie, we could teach that bastard Cumberland a lesson or two. We could cut his balls off with ten thousand Scottish Highlanders.”

  “And Lowlanders,” said Murray. “Those who don’t oppose you seem willing to stand up in your defense and come to your aid. There’s much ill feeling about what the duke is doing in the Highlands, slaughtering so many souls. There’s a growing hatred toward him and the king in London now that more and more people are learning about these massacres.”

  “What do you say, Charlie? Do you want another go at the bastard? I’ll be with you and ten thousand others,” Alistair Macdonald said enthusiastically.

  Softly, the prince said, “And how many more will die this time without artillery and ammunition? How many will be slaughtered by the duke’s guns? No, lads, what we need is more than powerful intentions. We need reinforcements and equipment, none of which will come from Scotland. We need well-trained fighting men to pit us against the training that the duke has given his army, for without them, what chance will we have? And we need cavalry and artillery, which can only be supplied to us from France. That is what makes an army to counter the bastard Duke of Cumberland. Scotsmen are the bravest on earth, and they’ll charge fearlessly into a cannon’s mouth like none other, but they’re not a modern army and today the bravest force of Scotsmen will easily be defeated by an army of British cowards hiding behind a wall of cannon. I shall go to France and raise a trained and professional army, and I will return to teach the Duke of Cumberland the lesson he deserves when I’m riding proud and confident at its head. So be assured, gentlemen, that until I have twenty thousand men behind me with those arms and munitions, then I won’t make the same mistake and take to the field again.

  “I regret, George, that we must tell our gallant ten thousand to return to their homes and wait awhile for my return. There’ll come a time, soon I hope, when I shall take to the field against the false king of England and his bastard brood, but only when I have the backing of a full French army, some gallant Irishmen, and the Welsh to join with my beloved Scotsmen. Then, and only then will I show German George just which one of us has the right to be called king and to rule the people of Great Britain.”

  Chapter Six

  THE TOWN (BAILE) OF MILTON THE ISLAND OF SOUTH UIST IN THE OUTER HEBRIDES

  JUNE 15, 1746

  It had all happened so suddenly, her head was still spinning from the way in which her world had suddenly changed. One moment she’d been a free spirit, like a puff of sea mist, able to go and do what she wanted, planning to go to the mainland and somehow assist Prince Charlie in his goal; next she was an engaged woman with the responsibilities of building a marriage home, of having a family with children, and becoming the owner of an altogether more prestigious social position.

  Oh, she’d known Alan Macdonald much of her life, and particularly well since she’d returned from school in Edinburgh as a young girl of thirteen. The two of them became great friends when she settled back on the Isle, going for long walks together on Skye’s fractured shores and discussing the most pressing issues of life; they’d swum naked in the cobalt lochs and they’d fondled and kissed and she’d allowed him to touch her in certain private places which brought her joy; and for his part, Alan had taught Flora how and where to touch him to give him the greatest pleasure; and they’d shared their secrets with nobody.

  Not that it was such a secret on the Island, for it was quite normal for intimate friendships to occur among Scottish children, even in their early teens, just so long as two issues were clearly understood and agreed to by the boys and the girls. The first was that if a pregnancy resulted, both parents would take responsibility for the bairn that would live with the girl’s family until a marriage had taken place; and the second was that a Macdonald from the south of the Island of Skye would never lay with, or even touch, a MacLeod from the north of the Island.

  Every child in his or her earliest years at school on the Island was taught of the massacre of the Macdonalds by the MacLeods on the Waternish Peninsular in 1578, and every Macdonald knew that the hated MacLeods could not be trusted. True that on this terrible day, the Macdonalds had earlier locked a worshipping party of the MacLeods into the Trumpan Church and set fire to the building killing everybody inside, but in the history of the Clan Macdonald, it was accepted that this act was well deserved and it was only the hated MacLeods who didn’t realize it.

  Though not an unconstrained child, Flora had kissed and fondled many a Macdonald lad and gone swimming naked with them while they were young, and it was viewed as charming and innocent. Maturity and her growth into a handsome young woman had brought with it longer and more settled relationships with some of the Island lads when she’d returned from the mainland.

  And the Lord knew how fiercely fond she was of young Alan Macdonald, and had been sweet on him since she could remember. So when her parents had announced a week earlier that they were betrothing her in marriage to Alan, she’d viewed the arrangement as sensible, exciting, and correct.

  At the age of twenty-four, she was ready to wed and begin a family. She was already many years older than the majority of other girls on the Island when they wed, and she was gaining the reputation for being too fussy in her choice of a husband.

  Now that she was engaged, of course, her Jacobite plans were put on hold, and she’d spent the previous month concentrating on the nuptials and the visit she and her new husband would pay to Edinburgh. The more she thought about her parent’s warnings and the worse the stories about what the Butcher of Cumberland was doing to the mainland Highlanders, the more she realized that they were right, and going over the sea from Skye would quite possibly result in her death.

  And one of her most important duties, a tradition of the Islands and one that she truly looked forward to, was for her and Alan to visit her brother Angus and other family members, to introduce her fiancé to them and gain their support. Angus had remained on the family property when his mother had remarried two decades earlier. Flora and Angus saw each other twice a year, and on each occasion she relished her re-acquaintance with her brother, his wife Elizabeth and their four wee bairns. And now Flora would be bringing home her own man, her husband to be, Alan; she would be an engaged woman, and as such, she would gain newfound respect in the small but close-knit Catholic community of Milton and all of South Uist.

  When s
he stepped off the boat with Alan behind her carrying her satchel containing a change of clothes and some food for the long journey, she looked around her at the island she had once called her home. She knew the island and its people well, even though most of her life was lived in Skye. But this time, she immediately sensed that things were different. South Uist was a poor place, its inhabitants earning their money from making tweed cloth as well as gaining an income from farming the vast beds of seaweed that they gathered to make soap for the people of England. Normally there would be five, maybe ten islanders on the dockside to greet the boat as it came in from Skye. Today, however, there were no Islanders, but fifteen or more English troopers, all of whom looked at Flora and Alan with immense suspicion.

  “Dear God in his heaven, what’s happening,” she whispered, and held her fiancé’s hand tightly.

  Alan was taller than Flora by a head. He enjoyed red hair and pale skin that had caused him to be mocked when he was a boy but was now attractive to young women especially on the mainland. Known for his fearlessness in hunting and sports, he looked at the soldiers with the same concerns felt by Flora and held his fiancée close to him as they stepped off the boat. “Whatever happens, stay close to me, darling, for these troopers look in no mood for frivolity. They’re hunting for the Stuart.”

  “I know who they’re hunting, fiancé, but why are they on South Uist? They surely don’t think that he’d come to so remote a place as this, do they?”

  Alan whispered as they walked along the jetty, “It’s told that the prince landed here last year when he began his great adventure.”

  “On Uist? Dear God, the prince was treading on the land where I was born.”

  Alan looked at her strangely. Unlike her parents, who were by now well used to the romance attached to Flora’s Jacobite sympathies, it was a closely guarded secret on Skye bearing in mind Hugh’s responsibilities as commander of the local Militia charged with preventing the Jacobite uprising. Neither she nor Alan had had the time in their brief engagement to discuss the prince or their loyalty one to the other. Alan had joined the Skye Militia and had practiced marching up and down with a gun so he was probably not a Jacobite supporter. But as a Macdonald, he was no lover of King George in London, either. She would have to tell him sooner rather than later that her sympathies lay with the other camp. How that would affect him, she honestly didn’t know.