Hunger was only the beginning of their troubles. One cold grey morning, Malcolm was awakened by shouts and cries that were stitched with terror. Peering from his window, he saw about three hundred red-coated British soldiers outside the gates, escorting wagons on which two gallows had been mounted. “Open up, rebels!” roared a beefy officer on horseback.
Downstairs, Malcolm found Mildred MacDonough confronting a half dozen soldiers, led by the officer, who continued to speak in a voice that was never less than a roar. He was Brigadier Henry Hawley, commissioned by the Duke of Cumberland, commander of the Royal Army, to root out disaffection in the countryside. They had information that Mildred’s husband and sons were in the rebel army.
“I am authorized by His Grace to hang every male person found in this house and burn it to the ground,” Hawley thundered. “You have five minutes to collect what clothes you may need for warmth and get yourselves into the road. These men will hang.”
He pointed to Malcolm and David MacGregor, who had joined them in the hall.
“Why would you murder a man of his age? And a young man from America—my sister’s son,” Mildred MacDonough said.
“I would murder a man of his age because according to our informers he’s a papist priest. As for this fellow,” Hawley said, glaring at Malcolm, “I’ve spent enough time in your miserable country to recognize a highland scoundrel, with or without his kilt.”
“He was born in America. Let him speak. He hasn’t a trace of Scot in his tongue!”
“I don’t care how or what he speaks,” Hawley roared. “Get busy gathering your things, woman, or I’ll burn the house with you and your damned treasonous bitches in it.”
“Do as he says, Mildred, dear,” David MacGregor said. “I’ve long been resigned to such a death.”
Mildred MacDonough dropped to her knees. “Bless us one last time, Father,” she said.
All the other women in the house joined her on their knees. The priest drew a sign of the cross in the air and murmured something in Latin.
“We’ll soon shut off that mumbo jumbo,” Hawley said. “Drag him out and get the hemp around his neck. Take this highland scum with him.”
Malcolm simply could not believe he was going to be hanged. In the garden he spoke to the young officer and two privates who were leading him to his doom. “My name is Malcolm Stapleton. I was born in the colony of New York. This is a mistake. I’m ready to swear I’m no rebel.”
“He’s telling the truth,” David MacGregor said.
“Malcolm Stapleton,” the young officer said. He was straw thin, with pipestem wrists and a face almost devoid of a chin. But his eyes glittered with intelligence. “Did you fight a battle in the forest? The Battle of the Bracken?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be damned. Your brother’s outside with our regiment. I’m Major Wolfe. He gave me your account of that scrape. He overheard me declaring in my portentous way that the British army must begin learning how to fight in the forests of North America.”
“Am I still to hang for visiting here at the wrong time?” Malcolm said.
“I hope not,” Wolfe said. “I’ll speak to the brigadier.”46
The sobbing women streamed out of the house. Soldiers wrestled David MacGregor up on one of the wagons and placed a noose around his neck. Another soldier ran out with the priest’s chasuble. “Let’s dress the papist devil up right!” he shouted.
“Good work,” said Brigadier Hawley, standing at the gate. He gave the man a shilling. The soldier draped the chasuble over the old man’s shoulders. MacGregor’s hands were clasped, his head was bowed in prayer. In the background, smoke swirled from the house, flames gushed from the lower-floor windows.
Major Wolfe spoke to Brigadier Hawley, who glared at Malcolm and shook his head. “That’s so much stuff. I say hang him!” he roared.
Disgust evident on his face, Wolfe turned to the regiment in formation across the road. “Ensign Stapleton. Step forward, please,” he called.
Jamey Stapleton, in red coat and white breeches, a sword on his hip, emerged from the red mass. Wolfe led him over to Hawley. “This young officer will identify him, General,” he said.
Jamey vigorously affirmed Malcolm as his brother. “I don’t believe a word of it. I’m inclined to hang both of them,” Hawley bellowed. “We’ll carry him with us to headquarters and see what the duke thinks of such folderol.” It dawned on Malcolm that Hawley was drunk.
At a gesture from Hawley, the soldiers hoisted David MacGregor on the gallows, where he quietly choked to death. They left the women of the McCulloughs and the MacDonoughs weeping before their burning house and headed north to rejoin the main army. Father MacGregor’s body swung on the gallows behind them as a grisly trophy. Along the way they burned two more houses and hanged another aged man, though he was not a priest.
“The brigadier tends to be a literalist about his orders,” Major Wolfe said. He had invited Malcolm to double up on his horse with him.
Personally, Wolfe said, he thought such random murdering was beneath his dignity as a soldier, but he had to obey orders. In between hangings and burnings, he quizzed Malcolm about the tactics of the American Indians and compared them to the partisans that had harassed the Greek general, Xenophon, on his famous march.
At the end of the day, Hawley led Malcolm before His Grace, the Duke of Cumberland, second son of George II. “Major Wolfe says this piece of highland dross is American as he claims. I’m for hanging him to satisfy my doubts,” the brigadier roared.
The duke was sitting in an open field, drinking champagne with his staff. His tents were spread along the bottom of a hill a few feet away. Cumberland was a stocky young man of twenty-five with a weary bemused manner. His entourage wore the same attitude as they examined Malcolm.
“How many did you hang today, Hawley?” the duke asked.
“Only two. But one was a priest.”
“Better luck tomorrow. If Major Wolfe vouches for this fellow, that’s good enough for me,” the duke said.
“I propose we enlist him as a volunteer aide, Your Grace,” Wolfe said. “He’s already won a battle in America, in which he defeated a swarm of Indians and irregulars with a mere twenty men.”
“He must have Scotch or Irish blood, to tell such lies,” the duke drawled. “Maybe we should hang him after all.” This drew a laugh from his entourage.
Malcolm felt shame suffuse his flesh. He could almost hear his stepmother sneering “Booby.” These English considered themselves a superior race. Where had he gotten the idea that he was one of them? More to forestall hanging than anything else, he stumbled out words about being ready and eager to serve.
The duke told Wolfe to find him a uniform. “It may take two coats to make one for him,” Wolfe said. “But we’ll be training up a Samson for our defense overseas.”
“Let’s see if we rule here first before we worry about that,” the duke said.
Three nightmare weeks later, Malcolm Stapleton sat on a horse beside Major James Wolfe on the flank of the British army as it deployed onto a barren Scottish moor known as Culloden, from the name of a nearby castle. They were far to the north of Dumfries now, near Inverness. On a low rise about a quarter of a mile away was the army of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Bagpipes skirled across the distance. Highlanders in kilted plaids waved long broadswords called claymores.
Malcolm had ridden out with Wolfe and Hawley every day of these three weeks, watching them spread death and flaming terror through Scotland. Hawley’s rolling gallows seldom returned without trophies swinging from both ropes. At night Malcolm tried to blot out the memory by getting drunk. Almost every officer in the army did the same thing, except Wolfe, who stayed in his tent reading Xenophon and other military classics by candlelight.
Again and again Malcolm wanted to cry out against the slaughter. These were his mother’s people, yes, his father’s people too, now that he knew his origin. He was finding out that kings ruled by spilling blood, oce
ans of it. Now he was about to watch a far more terrific slaughter.
The armies were roughly equal in size. But the English had two cannon positioned between each regiment, while the Scots had only a few paltry guns on their flanks. With a mighty howl, the Scots charged, claymores whirling. The English cannon, firing grapeshot, tore horrendous gaps in their ranks but they kept coming, a plaid wave, kilts flashing in the sunlight. Malcolm had his eyes on the left of the British line, where his brother’s regiment stood, muskets leveled. Beside him, Major Wolfe was explaining how important it was to wait until the enemy reached point-blank range before firing a volley.
“You’re about to see the advantage of trained troops, Stapleton,” Wolfe said.
At one hundred paces, the order to fire rang out. A tremendous blast leaped from the British muskets, a hellish mixture of smoke and flame. The whole front rank of the Scottish line toppled to the grassy earth but behind them came the next wave, their fearsome claymores raised. The British infantry had been training for weeks to meet this weapon. Every private had orders to bayonet the man to his right, so his thrust would go under the upraised arm of the attacker.
Most regiments obeyed this order with fierce elan and highlanders fell by the hundreds. But in Jamey’s 24th Regiment, panic shook half the line. They dropped their guns and fled to the rear. Malcolm caught a glimpse of his brother, screaming curses at the running men. Without asking permission, Malcolm leaped from his horse and flung himself into the melee. The Scots, decimated elsewhere, tried to break through the 24th’s splintered ranks. Malcolm waded into the confused struggle, his eyes on Jamey, who stood his ground and labored to reform his company. Malcolm reached him just as a highlander raised his sword to split Jamey’s head like a melon. Seizing an abandoned musket, Malcolm bayoneted the Scot in the heart. Then, armed with his claymore, he stood in the breach like a maddened Hercules, felling his Celtic kinsmen left and right.
Jamey Stapleton pointed to Malcolm and shouted: “See what we have for reinforcements! Stand by him, men. Stand by the hero of the Bracken.” The boy had told his company about his brother’s American exploits when Malcolm visited their camp on the march north. Other officers took up the cry and the regiment rallied. It was an amazing example of what courage can accomplish on a battlefield.
A few minutes later, the Duke of Cumberland ordered his cavalry, led by Hawley and Wolfe, to strike the Scots from both flanks. The shattered clansmen fled, leaving over fifteen hundred dead and dying men on the field.
An aide rode up to Malcolm and ordered him to report to His Royal Highness immediately. Was he to be hanged for disrupting the regularity of the battle line? Malcolm wondered.
He found the duke on horseback, surrounded by aides and generals, including Hawley. “Mr. Stapleton,” Cumberland said. “I want to apologize for any aspersions Brigadier Hawley and I may have cast on your loyalty and courage. You’re a soldier after my own heart. Take this as a small gesture of my appreciation.” He handed Malcolm a leather purse containing one hundred guineas.
The duke invited Malcolm and Wolfe to ride across the battlefield with him in the place of honor, on either side. It was a scene of carnage, dead and dying men everywhere. When the rebels saw the royal standard flying from the flagstaff of the dragoon at the head of the troop, several hurled Gaelic curses at them. One man, slumped against a rock, his chest soaked in blood, simply stared, defiant to his last breath.
“Wolfe,” the duke said. “Shoot me that highland scoundrel who dares to look on us with such contempt and insolence.”
“My commission is at Your Royal Highness’s disposal,” Wolfe replied. “But I can never consent to become the executioner of a brave enemy.”
“What a peculiar fellow you are, Wolfe,” His Royal Highness said. “Don’t imitate his example, Stapleton. You’ll never get promoted.”
The duke, having disposed of the Bonnie Prince’s army, now planned to extirpate rebellion from the Scottish soul by multiplying Hangman Hawley a thousandfold. Not a glen in the highlands would be safe for disloyalty. Malcolm begged to be excused from this duty and turned his face south to London. He was worried about his wife and his son but his chief motive was escape from his Scottish nightmare. His brain seemed split into atoms by it, his heart was a torment of confusion. He stayed drunk from the beginning to the end of his journey.
You can imagine his amazement when he arrived in the metropolis to find he was London’s hero. Perhaps worse, from his point of view, it was his wife who had worked the miracle.
NINE
COLONEL HARTSHORNE HAD WRITTEN ME A letter, describing Malcolm’s heroism at Culloden. Hartshorne’s regiment had been in line beside Jamey Stapleton’s and the older man was an eyewitness to the whole performance, which he naturally thought was motivated by patriotism and the military prowess he had encouraged in Malcolm at Oswego. I showed it to John Williams, the owner of the White Horse Inn. He took the letter to the Daily Courant, a paper financed by the Walpole-Pelham regime. They published it immediately, with embellishments that had “the American volunteer” sustaining the entire right wing of the Duke of Cumberland’s army.
John Williams offered me free room and board if I would move back to his establishment. Even before Malcolm arrived in London, crowds showed up at the White Horse to ogle the American hero. When the giant appeared in the flesh, all he had to do was dine twice a day in the inn’s taproom to pack the place. The government was equally delighted to hail a champion from distant America. Malcolm’s readiness to risk his life for their cause seemed to prove their popularity, although half of England and three fourths of Scotland despised them. Chesley White assured me that my credit would be good with him until my debts mounted to the moon—if I would bring Malcolm to dine at his house on Leicester Square.
Before I could accept that invitation, we were invited to a dinner at the Old Lodge in Richmond Park, one of the many houses of the Great Corrupter himself, Robert Walpole. We were escorted there by Colonel Hartshorne, who had returned to London to enjoy his money and bask in a share of Malcolm’s fame, leaving his regiment to fend for itself in Scotland. He told us the Patriots were no longer a political force. They had been routed by Walpole’s Parliamentary army as thoroughly as the highlanders had been broken at Culloden. Half had made their peace with the Duke of Newcastle and his brother, Henry Pelham, who was now prime minister, in return for a nice raffle of offices. The rest had taken to drink or gone to France to commune longingly with James Edward Stuart. Hartshorne had bought a seat in Parliament47 and was hoping to obtain the rangership of a royal park in Surrey in return for his vote.
Richmond Park was part of the king’s demesne, not far from London. Walpole had made his son Ranger of the Park and appointed himself his deputy. The son had given his father the Old Lodge, on which Walpole had spent a reported fourteen thousand pounds. The house was magnificent. Damask draperies on every window, French and Italian and Dutch paintings on every wall, statuary inside and outside, French furniture that rivaled Versailles.
The dinner was a private celebration of the victory at Culloden. The Duke of Cumberland was there with his generals, including Hangman Hawley. The Duke of Newcastle and his brother Henry Pelham and a half dozen other notables from Parliament were also in the crowd surrounding Robert Walpole. The Great Corrupter was one of the fattest men I had ever seen: a huge hearty slab of a fellow, with the hard knowing eyes of a successful highwayman. He exuded power; it seemed to emanate from his bulk as well as from the total assurance of his manner.
Walpole pounded Malcolm on the back and joked about his size. “If the latest crop of Americans are as big as you, the damn colonies may be worth the money we spend on them after all.”
Mrs. Walpole was nowhere to be seen, but the great man’s mistress, a tall thin dark-haired woman, was in cheerful attendance. Most of the women in the party were mistresses, not wives, Hartshorne offhandedly told me, confirming everything I had heard from Robert Nicolls about marital fidelity among t
he British upper classes.
The conversation was mostly about who among the captured Jacobites would be hanged, who would be beheaded, who would be shot. A half dozen noblemen were consigned to the ax at the Tyburn Gallows, the rest to the noose at the same site. Deserters from the army, mostly lowland Scots, were to be shot against the wall at Hyde Park. “Let’s appear generous,” Walpole said. “There’s no need to kill more than a few hundred.” His successor, Henry Pelham, cheerfully agreed. They were, of course, not counting the thousands of garden variety Scots who were being slaughtered at that very moment in Scotland.
The principal business of the evening settled, they sat down to a stupendous feast. There must have been a hundred dishes on the table—beef, venison, geese, turkey, lamb, fish of a dozen varieties. Everyone imitated the former prime minister and the present chief, Pelham, who was almost as fat as Walpole, and dug in with a gusto that I soon found beyond my capacity. Pelham seemed determined to outeat Walpole. He frequently had venison on his fork and a turkey leg in his other hand, chomping back and forth, while gravy drooled over his double chins. Never had I seen such gorging, except in my Seneca village after a starving time.
Even more abundant were the drinks, jeroboams of Château Lafite, Latour, and other French clarets, as well as strong beers, punch heavily reinforced by gin and brandy, and champagne. All this was poured down in staggering quantities as toast after toast was shouted along the table—from the king to the Duke of Cumberland to the army to the navy down to Walpole’s favorite racehorse. Soon everyone was as drunk as the Iroquois at Oswego. The Duke of Newcastle, who lacked the flesh of his brother and Walpole, toppled from his chair, unable to stand the pace. He was left flat on the floor and was soon joined by a half dozen others.
Remember the Morning Page 34
