The Pretender's Lady
Page 18
The tiny rowing boat was tossed from the crest of one wave to the crest of another as the huge tide swelled with the winds and seemed to make the very water expand and explode. When they were high on the crests threatened with cascading into a deep mid-ocean trough, they surged down the back of the wave into the depths to find a monstrous body of water towering over the boat and threatening to engulf them in its fury. It was only by the extraordinary oarsman skill of Neil that he managed to maneuver the craft out of a hundred potentially disastrous precipices into safer places, that they remained alive.
Occasionally they would see a large sea bird, an albatross, or a sea eagle desperately beating its wings in an attempt to reach land. And that was good for Neil, for it meant that, although they were prey to the tides and were tossed like flailed grain by a demented thresher, just by following the direction in which the birds were frantically flying to reach cover, he knew that eventually, God willing, he would hit landfall.
The storm seemed to go on forever, and in their exhaustion, they didn’t know how they would carry on. To stop rowing or bailing was death. But there was neither life nor power in their arms or legs, and exhaustion had overtaken them. Their work was failing, and soon, very soon, they would face mortal danger as the boat filled with water became unmanageable, and soon they would sink.
But somehow, they continued. They drew on unknown sources of power and energy and managed to row and bail, row and bail, even when their minds were numbed into thoughtlessness. After the third and then the fourth hour, Flora and the prince found that their bailing of the water from the bottom of the boat had become so routine that they barely realized what they were doing. They were all freezing cold, their clothes stiff and heavy as medieval armor instead of the soft wool and linen from which they were made.
The work and the foul weather brought the three of them close to fainting from fatigue. Flora was biting back tears from the exertion of bucketing water from the bottom of the boat and tossing it over the side. Though used to hard work, she could no longer feel her arms in their leaden state. Her shoulders ached continuously, interspersed with stabbing pains as the rowboat pitched, and she was tossed roughly against the sides or thrown back into the bottom of the boat. Yet she knew that her pains would have been infinitely worse had Neil not been plying the careful passage that he was, riding the waves as best he could under the most appalling circumstances.
With all their exertions, the one thing they knew was forbidden to them was rest, for Neil still had to negotiate every mountainous wave every moment to prevent floundering, and the prince and Flora had to keep the boat as light and as free of flooding rain and seawater as possible.
Rowing, bailing, praying . . . rowing, bailing, praying. Praying to a deity who laughed at their plight with his thunderous voice and lit their terror so that he could see his playthings and their frantic attempts to survive.
Rowing, bailing, praying for what seemed like eternity. Not a letup, not a moment to rest. Their breath was heavy and labored, their bodies soaked by both sweat and the torrents of rain that continued to pour down, and their minds were continuously numbed by the gargantuan flashes of lightning and explosions of thunder.
And then, in a moment, something occurred that changed their circumstance. It was noticed first by Flora, and without any words, she seemed to communicate her sudden appreciation to the prince who also looked up and took notice of the change. They turned to Neil, whose face appeared to carry less anxiety, less strain. They even noticed him nodding in encouragement. It was as though a calming hand had suddenly been brought down from the heavens themselves. It was difficult to appreciate, because the change at first was very slight, but soon the time between lightning strikes became noticeably longer, and the violence of the thunderclaps, the noise, and the vibrations shaking their bodies, were less insistent; it somehow didn’t sound as terrifying, nor did it rattle their bones or their hearts to the very core of dread.
They were working less hard and the rain seemed to be less solid. There were even moments when they were able to look up at each other and grimace, to stop doing what they had been frantically doing and take a moment’s rest.
It wasn’t sudden, and it took another half an hour of hard work, but by the time they had been on the ocean for six or seven hours, the wind had dropped, the rain lessened, the seas were much calmer and smoother. The storm had passed eastwards and was now flying beyond Skye and toward the mainland.
Neil pulled in the oars, slid down toward the waterlogged bottom of the vessel, and said “Dear God in heaven, but I have no arms left. I have the strength of a bairn and I can’t row another yard.”
The prince and Flora put down their buckets, and they too collapsed into the bottom of the boat, letting the craft follow the currents as it wished. They lay there, soaked, exhausted, bereft, and completely numb as the vessel drifted with the waves and the currents. The once black and menacing sky began to clear, and occasionally breaks in the dark clouds revealed a starry firmament. The crescent moon was gone, for it was only an hour or two to daybreak, but as time passed, more and more stars could be seen, and the torrential downpour had given way to a blessed and gentle shower.
Flora was the first to say something. “We’ve done it. Dear Lord, for a time there, I thought we’d all drown. I’ve never worked so hard nor been so terrified in all my life.”
The prince raised his head, which was resting on a drowned anchor rope, but was too tired to speak. Neil was snoring, having fallen fast asleep from the exhaustion. And so, as the rain stopped, the boat meandered gently onward, as though it had been abandoned by its crew, or had come adrift from its moorings and was floating listlessly upon an empty sea.
When the sun appeared, they roused themselves. It came up over the Island of Skye, which was still nowhere to be seen, and within a quarter of an hour of its first rays, the entire ocean was clearly visible. It was calm and peaceful now compared to the way it had been in the middle of the night. There was still a considerable swell, but now the waves were gentle and there was only the occasional white cap to be seen in the distance. Gulls were wheeling around, and a blessed wind had blown up to refresh their faces, dry the sweat and water, and ruffle their sodden hair. Had this really been the same sea and sky and wind that only a few hours earlier had threatened to extinguish their lives at any moment? Had this really been the same creation of the same God who had toyed with their safety and their state of mind, throwing them into a panic as though they were drawing their last breath? Flora shook her head in wonder, and thought what a life they were leading.
As the sun grew warmer, the trio roused themselves at almost the same moment, their spirits ecstatic, having come through the “valley of the shadow of death” together and survived. The three sat up in the boat and surveyed the early morning ocean. It was, as far as they could see, empty of any other boats. Flora looked at the prince and Neil and burst out laughing.
“Merciful Lord in heaven, but you both look like drowned rats. I must look the same.”
“Not at all, Miss Macdonald. You look very pretty and . . . and . . . wet.”
Neil grasped the oars, looked toward the direction of the sun, and with a grunt of resignation, knowing that he still had more than enough work for ten men, rowed eastward to Skye.
“Charlie, you’d better take off your cloak and dress because they’ll dry much better if we suspend them from the wee mast on the prow. A good wind, and they’ll be dry in an hour. If you gentlemen don’t mind, I’ll do the same, though I’m not looking forward to exposing my body after the freezing and soaking it received last night. But first thing we have to do is to renew our strength by having something to eat and drink.”
As Charlie removed his garments to sit in the boat in his sodden petticoats and stays, Flora opened her bag and took out the food and drink she’d brought for the journey. Much had been soaked by the rain, and she threw the sodden loaf of bread overboard for the benefit of the fish. But the cheese and mea
t were wrapped in oilskin and the ale was bottled, and all were still good and wholesome. She cut off thick chunks that, along with bottles of ale, she gave to the men. When they were eating, she removed her own dress, without any embarrassment, and took hers and her seamstresses’ to the prow where she threaded a rope through the armholes and secured them. They fluttered like flags.
Neither Neil nor Charlie looked at her; they were too interested in their food. As she sat, she mused on her circumstances. It was interesting that she was in a tiny rowboat, in the midst of a vast ocean, alone with two men more enamored of their food and drink than on the fact that they were alone with a lady dressed in nothing but her petticoats. Well, two ladies, if you included Betty Burke.
Dressed, fed, somewhat refreshed although still aching and horribly bruised from the buffeting they’d received from the storm, the three took turns in rowing the boat as it plied its way eastwards toward Skye. Having seen the prince hard at work bailing the water, Neil reluctantly agreed to allow the young man a spell on the oars in order to allow him to rest a while; and he had to admit that, except for the beginning when he’d rowed like a drunk after a wedding, the lad had gotten into the rhythm and was now plying the waves manfully, quickly learning how to ride the crests and take advantage of the troughs. Flora also insisted on doing her share of rowing, but although she was strong, she tired easily and could only manage a half of what her prince was able.
As the sun rose, the clothes and their bodies dried and warmed, and the food and ale began to replenish the energy they’d lost during the storm, their lives returned to a semblance of what it had been when they left South Uist. Their spirits were lifting by the hour, especially when Neil pointed up, wordlessly and somewhat laconically, to the sky. Flora glanced up and smiled back. The prince looked upwards and saw nothing.
“Gulls. It means that land is over the horizon,” Flora told him.
“But there are always gulls at sea,” he said.
“Aye, but not this many. Some gulls fly far out in search of food for themselves and their hatchlings, but most nest in rocks or in the scree and only fly over the shallow waters near to the coast. The more gulls you see in the sky, the more likely it is that land is close by.”
Risking seeming ungainly and being tossed around even in the more gentle morning sea, Flora stood in the boat, holding onto the prince’s hand to prevent herself from falling. She looked eastward into the morning sky. There was a sea mist that prevented her from seeing properly, but she fancied that along the horizon she could perceive a line that might be land.
It took a further half an hour of Neil’s strong arms to row them so that Flora could say for certain that land lay in front of the horizon. She tried to recognize what part of Skye they had rowed to, but from this distance, it was too difficult to distinguish.
“Look out for any boats,” said Neil. “It’s more likely than not that the English have put out coastal patrols in order to find you.”
Both Flora and the prince peered out from port and starboard, but the coast and the sea appeared to be completely empty except for themselves and an increasing number of sea birds wheeling and swooping over the ocean. Now the land loomed large and Neil stopped his rowing to look and try to ascertain just where they were on the western coast of the Island.
After looking carefully and scratching his chin a few times he smiled and turned to the others. “You’re lucky, Charlie. I think we’ve been blown far north. Tell me if you disagree, Flora, but isn’t that Waternish Point,” he said.
“Waternish? Where’s that on Skye?” asked Prince Charles.
“It’s a northerly point, the tip of a peninsular, and well to the northwest of the main body of the Island,” Neil said.
But Flora was barely listening. Instead, she was looking cautiously at the cliff face and the mountain beyond and realized that Neil was right. “Lucky, you lame brained hog foot? If that’s Waternish Point, and I think you’re right, then that’s MacLeod land, and Betty Burke and I are wearing scarves of the Macdonald tartan. If they see us, they’ll shoot at us for certain. I’d rather face the English than the MacLeod.”
Being a man of South Uist, he wasn’t empathetic to the eternal disputes between the two major clans that shared ownership of Skye, but he was well aware of the hatred they felt for each other. “Shall I row further south to Macdonald country?”
“No,” said the prince. “It’s safer that we remove our scarves and travel on foot. We can hide more easily on land than on the sea.”
Flora turned to him in sudden anger. “Remove my tartan. Are you mad? I’ll not deny my clan.”
“You have to, if only for a day or two, otherwise the MacLeods will know you instantly,” said Neil. He turned to the prince and said, “You’re right. If the MacLeod catch sight of you, you’ll be dead. Both of you. And they won’t spare me for being with you. Don’t be so stubborn, Flora. Do as your man says.”
Flora sighed, knowing that they were right. But the idea of being without her tartan made her feel as though she would be walking around naked. Which was funny because here she sat in an open rowboat in her petticoats, without a dress or bonnet, and almost naked. Still, she had to acknowledge that if they were caught on MacLeod land, it would be a catastrophe. After all the dangers of the sea, she didn’t want to come to her end by suddenly meeting a band of marauding MacLeods. And then she realized what Neil had said to her. “Your man!” She thought of correcting him, but just for a guilty moment, she rather liked the sound of that. Flora and Charlie. Her man.
Chapter Nine
THE ISLE OF SKYE
JUNE 29, 1746
The solidity of land felt oddly discomforting as they dragged the boat away from the water and the grasping waves, up onto the shingles to hide it above the high water mark in shrub and bushes. Neil found his land legs almost immediately, having been a sea dweller all his life; but the prince and Flora felt the solid land still roiling and undulating beneath their feet and their bodies swayed as though the waves that had been their driving force for many desperate hours were still pulling and pushing their bodies even on day land.
They heaved the heavy rowboat up the sand and scree and hid it in vegetation at the foot of the cliff until it was invisible from the sea. Neil then kicked sand into the furrow line the keel had made and walking backward, brushing out their footprints with a driftwood branch and leaves, eliminated any sign they had been there. Whether or not they uncovered the boat again depended on what they found when they climbed the cliff and spied out the land; for his part Prince Charles would have been ecstatic never to see the damnable vessel again.
The reception they received also depended upon whether they had been spotted from the shore as Neil had rowed toward the northern part of the Island of Skye. As they drew closer and closer to the cliff face, Flora scanned the escarpment with the eyes of an eagle but saw neither hide nor hair of anybody.
Now they stood on the sandy beach, and Prince Charles adjusted his petticoat, dress, and bonnet. God knew that he’d never tell a living soul, but he was becoming used to women’s clothing. Dresses were comfortable, petticoats sensible, and had it not been for the wet straw in his bosoms, he might even have been happy wearing the bodice and stays. Certainly they were far more amenable to movement and the shape of the body than the trews he wore or the uniforms he was forced to don or the silk cuffs and tight shirts with their strangulating neck ruffs and pinching cummerbunds and buckled shoes and stifling itching wigs, all of which constricted his body and made sitting in dining chairs into a nightmare.
“We have to climb up there,” said Flora, pointing to the top edge of the cliff high above them. “You’re going to find it cumbersome in your dress and petticoats. You might be better to remove them and dress again when you’re aloft.”
“And if we scale the cliff, and come face to face with an English regiment? How am I going to explain my state of undress? No, Flora dear, if you climb as a woman, I’ll climb as a woman.”
He led the way. From the base, the cliff looked impossibly high, and Charlie wondered about his decision to climb in such unfamiliar clothes. But by the time they’d negotiated the mass of loose scree and were ascending the sheer face, they were soon well above the beach and on their way to reaching the top. He soon came to understand that climbing in a heavy woolen dress wasn’t nearly as easy as doing it in trews, but the prince knew that if he were to survive the next few days or weeks before boarding the French boat that would take him to safety, he had both to dress and to think like a woman.
Neil was the leader of the party, and he was already more than halfway up the cliff, scaling it from handhold to handhold, pulling himself upwards easily from ledge to ledge. It was as though the exhaustion he’d suffered from a fifty-mile nightmare crossing only hours previously had been nothing more than a seafarer’s yarn; but the bruising on his body was a constant reminder of how real and dangerous the crossing had been.
Next came Flora, who was obviously suffering more than Neil, because her movements were stiffer and more painful. And finally, Prince Charles followed in her footsteps, spluttering from the occasional debris falling onto his face as the leaders of the climb ascended.
It only took six or seven minutes for the three of them to reach the top of the cliff and sit on the level sward of grassland and bushes that stretched into the distance. They were alone, and as they lay on the soft grass and looked up into the blue sky and then around the horizon, they saw with relief that there was neither a murderous party of MacLeods intent on revenge, nor a regiment of English troopers intent on capture. All they could see was a crofter’s hut in the distance and a track that led from a ruined dry stone tower toward the inland.