Jennifer Roberson

by Lady of the Glen

  A shoe, and a foot in it. In the corner of his eye.

  Dair flung himself headlong against the rock-encrusted turf. The blade followed him unerringly, cutting through the loose crumple of shirt at the juncture of upper arm and back. It snicked briefly on targe edge, then by. The flesh of Dair’s side caught fire even as the rib beneath protested the grate of steel on bone. —no’ so bad . . . He twisted, splayed hands against the ground, thrust himself up even as he snatched at his sgian dhu. Fabric tore; his shirt, pinned to the turf —blade planted, then—

  With the sweep of his targe he knocked aside the empty musket now empty of threat as well, with its bayonet too firmly rooted, and caught a clutch of scarlet jacket. “For James—”He thrust the sgian dhu into the soldier’s belly, driving home the blade, digging deeply; it was neither sword nor dirk, and its steel short. But wielded properly in the hand of a Highlander, the sgian dhu was nonetheless deadly.

  Bagpipes were screaming. So were Sassenachs. As the dead man fell Dair hung on to sgian dhu. Blood thundered in his ears; he turned, squinted, saw the last glory of the sun as it slid beneath the ridge of mountains. In disbelief he marked the retreat: red-coated men deserting the field by the hundreds, leaving behind fallen comrades, muskets, swords, and William’s cause as they ran toward the baggage near the river.

  “—won—” Dair squinted again. The pipes on Craigh Eallaich shrilled a victory rant.

  He sat down all at once. He trembled now, like a child, chilled and weak and weary; wanting to laugh, to cry, to sleep, to lie with Jean Stewart; to feast on beef and gulp down usquabae, until his head was full of it and he passed from among the living into something of less lurid reality, a state of less pain, less exhaustion, less overwhelming weakness—

  “MacDonald.” A man squatted down beside him. “Here. Let me bind it.”

  Dazedly he did not protest as someone helped strip from his arm the wedged targe and set it aside. Dair blinked. “Robbie—?”

  Hands were on him. “Lift the arm—och, I ken . . . I’ve no whisky for it now; later—” Robbie Stewart bent his head to peer under Dair’s lifted arm. “A flap of skin—here—”

  Dair hissed an inhalation. “Christ, Robbie—hurts less wi’out fingers in it!”

  The fingers retreated. “Ugly, but no’ so deep. A sliver of bone gone, but ’tis whole underneath.” Robbie pulled the remains of the bloodied shirt over the wound, then wrapped binding around Dair’s ribs.

  The rich and bloodied colors of the field were all at once watered into a pastel blur as Dair gritted his teeth. “A Stewart plaid—?”

  Robbie’s tone was brusque as he set the binding. “ ’Twill do as a bandage until we find clean linen.”

  Dair shut his eyes. His body wanted to give itself over to trembling, to abject surrender, quivering in all his joints like a dollop of oatmeal porridge. Laughter bubbled up, inane and inappropriate; he wanted to rant like a bagpipe of the victory for James, knowing all the while that the enemy believed as firmly in William, and that the battle might have gone the other way so that instead of skirling of victory, the pipes would be droning of death.

  Robbie worked methodically, doubling the plaid over Dair’s left shoulder and tucking the end into the swath across his chest. He patted the wool. “ ’Tis a thick man, MacDonald.” His young face was grimy. A spatter of blood highlighted one cheekbone. Sandy hair was mussed, but he appeared whole. “The Stewart is dead, Dair. He won’t miss his plaid. Nor you yours; here.”

  Dair accepted his own bundled plaid. Just now he could not bring himself to put it on. “I’d have died wi’out you, aye?”

  Robbie hitched a shoulder. “You were entangled with the man whose skull you’d just split, aye?—the other would have had you.”

  Dair sat very straight against the ache beneath the Stewart plaid. “Jean will thank you.”

  “Oh, and you willna? Too proud to admit an Appin Stewart had the saving of a Glencoe MacDonald?”

  “Not too proud.” Dair smiled. “Too weary.”

  Robbie laughed. “Aye, well—I’ll have your thanks in the morning, aye?” He glanced up. “Ah—here’s John—”

  Dair’s brother squatted down. He had taken the time to kilt his plaid around his loins and the tails of his shirt, belting it into place. The shirt was torn and soiled, his face befilthed with blood and powder grime, but he was whole. “Alasdair?”

  “A cut,” Dair said briefly, “and worth it, aye? We won.” He nodded toward the river. “Mackay is in retreat.” He swallowed; his mouth tasted of metal. “What of MacIain?”

  “Whole, as am I.” For a moment John fixed him with a hard, assessive stare, as if weighing for himself the truth of his brother’s condition, and then he relaxed. “But the victory is hollow—”

  “What?” Stewart exploded. “Christ, man, we won! We’ve routed the Dutchman’s forces!”

  John’s expression was solemn. “Dundee is wounded. The lairds have wrapped him in their plaids and mean to take him to Blair Castle, but ’tis unco’ bad, Robbie. He is not expected to live.”

  “Dundee?” Dair’s tongue felt thick. “But—without him—” He leaned his forehead into the heel of his hand, propping up his too-heavy skull. “We’re too mettlesome, John. All of us. We need a Stuart, or a Graham . . .”

  “The Stuart is in France, and not like to come again until we’ve secured his realm,” John said. “And the only Graham left in Scotland who could bind us together in James’s absence will not live to command again.” He ran a crusted hand through disheveled hair, painting the gray red with blood. “At Blair the lairds will meet. Some alliance may yet come of this, even without Dundee. But . . .” He sighed. Lids drooped briefly; in the aftermath of victory exhaustion often usurped the place of exultation. “We’ve lost men. Not so many as Mackay has, but there are not so many men of Glencoe we can spare without hardship.”

  “Nor of Appin,” Robbie agreed. “We’d do best to go home.”

  The day was gone. Torches whipped fitfully in the breeze, casting haphazard light across the dead, the dying, the living. “We’re to go to Blair with MacIain,” John said, “then to Perth. It was Dundee’s plan, and his successor, Colonel Alexander Cannon, will carry out the order. But Dunkeld is in the way . . . there is a regiment of the Earl of Angus’s Foot there, sworn to William and the teachings of the Covenanter preacher Richard Cameron. We must defeat them first.”

  “Cameronians,” Robbie murmured. “Christ, I hate a man who puts God before a true Stuart king.”

  John laughed softly. “Dinna discount them—they are strong in the Lord, Robbie.”

  The Appin Stewart drew his bloodied dirk and uprooted grass to clean the blade. “And I am strong in this, aye?”

  The Earl of Breadalbane knew himself a meticulous man of great self-control. He had labored to train himself so in the household of the weak man who had sired him—he would not mimic his father’s fatuous follies—but such strictly held demeanor was banished in an instant as he strode into Glenlyon’s Chesthill and faced his recalcitrant kinsman. “How could you be such a muckle-headed fool, Robin? ’Tis Campbell land, not Murray!”

  Glenlyon’s obvious shock at seeing the travel-stained earl appear in his front room was usurped by wounded pride. He drew himself up. “ ’Tis my house,” he declared with a pitiable dignity. “You willna shout in it.”

  “Your house! Your house?” Breadalbane slapped dust from one shoulder. “Didna ye sell it too?”

  Glenlyon opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. He looked at his white-faced sons clustered near the door. “You’ll go.”

  Breadalbane paid them little heed; they had come in not long behind him, tense and silent, lurking like wary wolfhounds with hackles only half-risen, uncertain of the moment. Three remaining sons . . . The eldest dead of MacDonalds, he recalled—Devil take them all!—but the others now were men well cognizant of men’s concerns, and certainly of more promise than their dissolute father. It was apparent they were no more pleas
ed by Robert Campbell’s folly than the earl; as clearly they wanted to protest the order to leave the house. He could see it in their eyes.

  But they did not protest. With a grimace of contempt, the oldest—James, he thought, dredging up their names—yanked open the door so hard it rattled against the jamb and went out stiff-legged, followed by his brothers.

  It left a girl, who did not go despite the laird’s order; Glenlyon’s get as well, the earl knew, though she did not resemble him.

  Breadalbane said nothing as she stood resolutely in the room, chin thrust out in defiance. Insolent baggage . . . and unmindful who sees it; does she think herself protected here before a guest—?

  She was a thin girl, tall as a man and awkward because of it. Haphazardly braided hair was a vivid red, as were the level eyebrows. The eyes beneath them were a peculiarly brilliant blue. He saw the sheen in them; her taut mouth jerked briefly. She was angry, he realized, that he saw her tears.

  She did not look at her father. Her level stare challenged Breadalbane levelly, focused as any man. “Will you stop it?” she demanded. “Will you undo what this drukken fool has done?”

  “Cat!” In two steps Glenlyon reached her; his hand flashed across one cheek. “You willna say such to the earl—you’ll go at once!”

  His splayed hand immediately raised a reddened blotch high on one cheekbone. She would bruise easily, Breadalbane knew; the blood ran too close to the skin. The blow had spilled the tears, but clearly she disdained them. A plain girl of common looks . . . And yet her fierce pride was tangible.

  “Will you undo it?” she asked again.

  Robin had spoiled his girl—or else she had grown wilfull in her father’s absence and neglect. Which was but another sin; the girl should have been married off already and tending the household of a man better fit to give her orders. “If it is within my power, I will.” Breadalbane felt the pride deserved an answer even if disobedience did not. “We canna have Campbell lands sworn over to Murrays.”

  “Good.” She looked back at her father. Briefly her mouth twisted. “Then the skelping will be worth it, aye?”

  “Cat—” But she went smartly out the door and jerked it closed behind.

  Breadalbane looked on his cousin. He could not suppress his contempt. “ ’Tis a relief to know that if I do have this sale overturned, someone in this family deserves the benefit.”

  Glenlyon’s hands trembled. “I need whisky. Will you have—”

  The earl cut him off, slapping again at dusted clothing. “I’ve no’ come to drink whisky with you, Robin. You’ll face me without it. ’Tis that, and other folly, that has led to this travesty.”

  Glenlyon’s lips writhed. “You’ll refuse my hospitality? What sort of Highlander are you?”

  “One in sore fear of a foolish cousin who sells lands and leases without compunction . . . and all for debts incurred because of an overabundance of ‘hospitality.’ ” Breadalbane’s nostrils pinched. He was hungry and thirsty, but would not accept the suspect hospitality Glenlyon had bartered away. “You’ve robbed your sons of their patrimony, Robin; d’ye mean for them to work the land as tacksmen, then, owing rents to the Murray laird?”

  Glenlyon’s face was ashen. He wiped a hand over it, briefly stretching out of shape the soft, drink-sallowed flesh. “They’ll have their lands back.”

  “When?”

  “Before I’ve died. Before they’re due to inherit.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll buy them back from Murray—”

  “I say again: ‘How?’ With your winnings?” The earl did not trouble himself to adopt a diplomatic stance in tone or expression. “There will be no ‘winnings,’ only ‘losings.’ And when you have lost, what have you left to sell to make good these debts? Your sons’ strong backs and straight limbs? Your daughter’s maidenhead?”

  The sound that burst from Glenlyon’s throat was a garbled protest of outrage and torment. From another man it might prompt compassion, regret, a recanting of harsh words, but from Glenlyon, who knew what he was and what he had done, it prompted only Breadalbane’s derision and a marked distaste that a man so close in kinship could be so great a fool.

  “I swore to give you no more silver,” the earl declared, “and I willna forswear myself. But for the sake of your children, and the children they will sire, I will go to Murray and do what must be done to overturn this sale.”

  Glenlyon pressed a trembling hand against his mouth. “He willna listen.”

  “D’ye owe him that much?”

  “He’s a greedy bastard,” Glenlyon muttered. “If he smells silver in your pocket, he’ll ask for that yet at home.”

  “Then if necessary, I will take this to the courts of law. I will do what must be done.”

  “How?”

  “Comhairl’taigh, ” Breadalbane said curtly. “You turned over to the Earl of Argyll and to me the administration of your estates. The old earl is dead, but his son stands in his place; therefore, only he and I are in position to sell such things as land and leases.”

  Glenlyon’s mouth slackened. “You would tell Murray of the oath? ’Twas a private thing!”

  “There is no such thing as privacy in the household of a fool, lest he kill himself of his folly.” Breadalbane looked beyond his cousin. “Drink your whisky, then—drown yourself in it, aye?—so you may forget what you’ve done. Just recall that when you’ve died and God weighs your worth, he will most assuredly find you lacking . . . and you’ll have all the days in hell to repent of your doings.”

  “But—wait—”

  But the earl unlatched the door and departed the only shelter Robert Campbell still owned.

  Dair roused to damp hands and hot water, and the rough tones of his father. “Will he live, John?”

  “With rest, proper food, proper care—aye, he will live.” It was his brother who tended him with firm gentleness, pressing Dair’s left arm across his bare chest so the cloth could reach the wound. “ ’Tis no’ so bad as all that—a loose flap of skin, a sliver of rib gone—but the fever wracks him. Leave him here at Blair . . . we’ll go on to Dunkeld wi’out him.”

  Confusion held preeminence. But his father’s words at last parted the clouds massed within his mind. Dair opened his mouth to protest that indeed he was well, not sick at all; his fever-chapped lips split and bled.

  “Christ,” MacIain growled. “He looks puny as an early calf.”

  “—not—” Dair managed, and cracked gummy eyelids. The room swam laggardly into blurry focus: stone walls, wooden beamwork, the smell of dampness and despair. Blair Castle, then, where Dundee had died——when—? He could not remember. He could remember little save departing Killiecrankie for Blair. There was a journey in between, but none of it was in his mind. “—how long—?” But he gave up; he sounded more goose than man, honking dispiritedly.

  John soaked the cloth in a dented pewter bowl, then sponged the wound again carefully. “We came three days ago. You seemed well enough up to yesterday . . . but until you collapsed we weren’t permitted to look at your wound. ‘Twas healing, you insisted, causing no discomfort; you wouldna be so weak a man as to take much heed of it.” His mouth jerked briefly in wry chastisement. “Unco’ stubborn, Alasdair—and now you’ll stay here while the rest of us go on.”

  Dair chanced a glance at his father’s malevolent face looming from a great distance over the rude pallet on the stone floor, like Moses from the Mount: white mane straggling over the furrowed brow, across massive shoulders; the thicket of snowy eyebrows clutched together above fierce, penetrating eyes.

  —I’ve disappointed him—It chafed so painfully Dair stirred against the pallet despite John’s protest, then wished he had not. But movement roused him fully; returning senses told Dair others in like circumstances also inhabited the chamber that had become an infirmary. It was rank with the thick fug of unwashed wounded and dying men: blood, urine, feces, the acrid tang of fever-sweat, and the decay of too-vulnerable flesh cut open by mus
ket ball, sword, knife, bayonet—or the saw wielded by a man who meant to cut off the offending limb lest its corruption engulf the body.

  He heard muttered prayers, keening moans, childlike sobbing and fever-ravings. But he did not care about the others just now; MacIain’s expression was thunderous. “I’ll go,” Dair declared promptly, thinking no additional difficulty from the wound could be half so distressing as his father’s disapproval. “I’ll go with you . . . the fever’s broken, and I’m back in my head again.”

  “You willna,” MacIain growled. “Christ, Alasdair, you couldna hold up a sgian dhu in your state, let alone a claymore! You’ll stay.”

  “ ’Tis open now, and draining; it willna take so long before you’ve found your feet again.” John carefully dried the wound; gentle fingers pressed the loose flap of flesh down again. “By the time we’re back, you’ll be well enough to travel.”

  Dair’s laughter was weak, catching in his throat so that all he expelled was a faint breathy exhalation. “—so certain ’twill take no time at all. . .”

  “And so it willna!” MacIain declared.

  Desperation usurped weakness; he would not be judged as impotent in the ways of a warrior. “What about Perth?” he asked. “We’re to take it after Dunkeld . . . if I canna come in time to Dunkeld, I’ll go on and meet you there.”

  Ferocious white brows knitted themselves together. “I willna have my son riding about the glens before time! You’ll fall off and break your heid and no’ be found until next spring . . . will ye have me so shamed?”

  Regret faded instantly, and the certainty of failure. He knew that gruffness. Dair wanted to laugh; there were times MacIain’s bluff manner was belied by his true feelings, though neither of his sons dared to tell him so. Instead he smiled wryly, upholding his father’s intent. “I’d no’ shame MacIain so.”

  “Good.” A bob of massive head. “You’ll stay here while we go to Dunkeld, and meet later at Perth—if you’re able. And not before, aye? D’ye hear?”