Midnight Honor (53 page)

From the moment Anne had walked into the courthouse she had known what the outcome would be. She had also bitten her tongue enough times to taste blood, but this was too much and she could not prevent the two blooms of color that rose to stain her cheeks.

“Civility
and
fairness?
Is that what I saw on the road coming into Inverness today? I counted fourteen bodies stripped naked and mutilated, left lying on the grass to be kicked and spat upon by every soldier who walked past. I am told there are still men alive on the field at Culloden who have been left out in the bitter cold, their wounds unattended, guards placed around the moor to prevent their families from taking them so much as a sip of water so that they might die easy. Yet you offer me
civility
and
fairness?
Why, because I am a woman and you would be called far worse names than ‘Butcher Billy’ if you were to hang me”—she glared directly at Henry Hawley—“whether you used silken cords or not?”

The duke's eyes bulged a little wider. “Your mockery does you no credit, madam.”

“Nor does your gullibility,
sir,”
she countered. “If you are willing to give credence to a report that there were women on the field at Falkirk, what must that do to further enhance the fine reputation of the brave men under your general's command who turned and ran that day?”

Hawley made a choking sound in his throat and might have leaped across the table if not for another officer, who introduced himself as Colonel Cholmondeley, taking up the challenge.

“If, as you say, you were only keeping company with the wives of the other officers, we would remind you your husband wore the regimental colors of the Royal Scots brigades!”

“He had his preferences for company, sir; I had mine.”

“You are the niece of Fearchar Farquharson, are you not?”

“I am his granddaughter.”

Cholmondeley took up a quill, dipped it in ink, and scratched a notation down on paper. “Was it he who persuaded you to disobey your husband and call out your clan for the Pretender?”

“Since I was a child, sir, I have not been persuaded to do anything I did not want to do.”

“We notice you have not yet inquired as to your husband's health,” Cumberland pointed out. “Are you not curious to know how he fared in the recent dispute?”

“If Lord MacKintosh were dead,” she said, attending upon a loose thread on her cuff, “I expect I should have heard by now.”

“You have not had any contact with him over the past three days?”

Anne dismissed the notion along with the pulled thread. “I have neither seen nor spoken to my husband in several weeks, nor, to my knowledge, has
he
made any inquiries as to the state of
my
comfort or health. I expect, in fact, you will hear from him long before I do, when he discovers his prize herd of cattle has been appropriated and his home left in shambles by your soldiers. These would be far more likely to draw his attention than the peccadilloes of an errant wife.”

Cumberland smiled. It was an evil, sly kind of smile that began with a thoughtful pursing of the too-red lips and spread across his porcine face like a bloody slash.

“As it happens, my dear, your husband is quite close by. Within a hundred paces, I should think.” He turned to consult one of the officers. “The hospital is a hundred paces away, would you not say?”

Anne stiffened. “Hospital?”

“Well, not in actual fact a hospital,” Cumberland said, swiveling on his heel to look back at her. “But we could not very well put our wounded officers in with the common rabble.”

It took two attempts for the rasp in Anne's throat to form audible words. “Angus was wounded?”

“He was struck down on the battlefield—he took a saber
in the belly, I believe. The doctors will, of course, do all they can, but…” He shrugged as if the devil cared more than he. “Belly wounds, in my experience, are usually quick to turn morbid.”

Anne felt the floorboards shift beneath her feet. The room took a sickening turn as well, and the faces of the officers behind the trestle table blurred and became nothing more than flesh-colored blobs over splashes of crimson.

A saber wound in the belly…?

For the last three days, each time she closed her eyes, she relived nightmarish reenactments of the battle. In most of them, MacGillivray was lying in her arms, dying, and a soldier came running up behind her. She would leap to her feet and engage his sword, and at some point, she felt the blade strike and punch through living flesh. In her dreams the face had been distorted, but now, even as the faces of the tribunal faded away into the shadows, the face of the soldier came clearly into focus. It was Angus.

“Dear God,” she whispered.

“Indeed, it is in God's hands,” Cumberland said. “Or so the surgeons tell me.”

“May I see him?”

“Of course you may, my dear.” The smile spread insidiously across his face again. “Just as soon as you tell us what we want to know.”

She frowned, her thoughts tumbling too fast to follow his words. “Tell you—?”

“Names, my dear. We want the names of all the chiefs and lairds who wore the white cockade. You say you went on this grand adventure to Falkirk merely to keep company with good men … we want to know who those good men were. Lord Lovat, for instance. We suspect he was an active participant, but we have no proof. We need sworn, signed statements, for it is not so easy to win a guilty verdict against members of the peerage as it is against common cotters. They must be taken to London and tried before the House….” He spread his hands as if soliciting her acknowledgment that it was, indeed, a great hardship.

“And you expect me to give you these names? To bear witness against these brave men?” Her voice had turned soft
and low. It trembled around the edge of each word and anyone who knew her would have instinctively stepped back a pace or two. “In exchange you will permit me to visit my husband, who may or may not be dying of a morbid wound?”

“You have the gist of it, my dear. Cooperate, and all charges against yourself will be set aside as well. We will even release your esteemed mother-in-law, the Lady Drummuir, much to the relief of the guards who have been forced to listen to her incessant pontificating day in and day out.”

Anne squeezed her fists tighter—tight enough she could feel the tips of her nails cutting into the flesh of her palms. The room, thankfully, had stopped slipping and sliding. The faces of the gallant gentlemen officers were beginning to clear as well, and she looked down the line, impaling each with her contempt, resting at the last on John Campbell, earl of Loudoun.

“You claimed friendship with my husband, sir. Have you nothing to say against this travesty?”

Loudoun harrumphed into his hand. “You have the conditions before you, Lady Anne. I suggest you accept them.”

Anne hardened her stare. He bore the full brunt of her loathing for nearly a full minute before his hand crept up to his collar. He thrust a finger between his skin and the linen neckcloth to ease the pressure, and when that failed, his jowls began to quiver, his chin to sag, and he began to wheeze like an overweight bulldog. In the end, his choking became so severe, the officers on either side helped him to his feet and led him, stumbling, out the rear door, where he could be heard coughing, spluttering, and wailing about “cursed devil eyes” for some time after.

“Shall we assume you require some time to think about your answer?” Cumberland asked, lazily scraping a speck of dirt out from under a fingernail.

You cannot show him you care. You cannot show him you care too much, or both you and Angus are lost
.

“You may assume, sir, that there is not enough time left for either you or me on this earth wherein I would bow to such
uncivil
demands.”

“Bravely said, my dear, but perhaps a few days in a gaol cell with rats as big as sheepdogs will temper your imprudence somewhat.”

He nodded to Colonel Cockayne, who came forward with the greatest reluctance. “Escort Colonel Anne to her new quarters, if you please. I would also caution you to search her well before you turn the key; if the dowager could smuggle in a knife large enough to put out the eye of one of the guards, I'm sure this one could do the same. One last chance to reconsider, madam?”

Anne gave him her answer, having collected just enough spittle under her tongue for it to reach the duke's highly polished boot.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Inverness, May 1746

T
he fear was like a blanket, smothering her. The slimy stone walls of her cell seemed to be shrinking around her, closer each day; the air was so thin and sour she had to pant to ease the pressure in her lungs. The sounds from the other cells were as bone-chilling and piercing as the screams that haunted her dreams day and night.

Cumberland had come to the prison three times over the past six weeks, offering to free her in exchange for giving evidence against the Jacobite leaders. All three times she had sent him away spluttering German oaths under his breath.

Her hair was dull, matted with filth. Her skin was gray. Deep purple smudges ringed her eyes. Her hands were stained black, her nails cracked and torn from repeatedly pulling herself up to the narrow window cut high on the cell wall.

She did not know what she hoped to see, other than a glimpse of the fading light to indicate another day had drifted into night. Both were endless, the one filled with the nightmares of the living, the other with nightmares of the dead. There were times she almost thought it would be a blessing if she simply did not waken one morning. Cumberland said Angus was still alive, but she had no reason to believe it. If he
had lived through the fever and putrefaction of a belly wound, if he were still alive, surely he would have found some way to get word to her. Not all of the guards had been chosen for their cruelty. There were some who didn't leer and rub themselves when they walked by her cell, some who smuggled in an extra cup of water or, once, a half-gnawed chicken leg in exchange for a rosette button off her bodice.

The buttons were gone, the silk of her bodice was more gray than pink, and the only thing of value she had left—the one thing she would never part with unless it was removed from her dead body—was the silver-and-cairngorm brooch Angus had given her the night before Culloden. She kept it against her breast, tucked beneath her corset, and when she felt herself growing weak, when the despair threatened to overwhelm her and the sounds of the dying men nearly deafened her, she pressed against the metal until it cut into her skin.

She would not give Cumberland the easy way out. If he wanted her dead, he would have to give the order to hang her, and because she was the wife of a prominent chief, that could not be done without taking her first to London to stand trial.

Common soldiers and deserters were not so lucky. Thirty men who had been found amongst the ranks of the Jacobite prisoners but who were recognized as having once signed on to serve the king were summarily tried and hanged, the courts-martial taking place on the stroke of one hour while their bodies hung naked and dead the next. One such man was led past Anne's cell, called out to the courtyard by the drums, and when he paused a moment outside her door, she nearly did not recognize young Douglas Forbes through the blood and filth. He managed a parting smile, however, and she was told later that he walked to the gallows with his head high and refused the blindfold, preferring to stare at the vastness of the sky overhead before the trap was sprung beneath him.

More prisoners were brought in every day, and when the Tolbooth filled beyond its capacity, they were taken to the churches, then onto ships that were subsequently converted to prison hulks.

In the latter days of April, Cumberland posted orders that all known and suspected Jacobites were to be reported to the
Crown officers. Ministers were told to make lists of those in their kirks who had been absent during the months of the rebellion; warrants were issued for all chiefs and noblemen, with rewards offered for their capture and arrest. A price of thirty thousand pounds was put on the head of Charles Stuart, with lesser, but still substantial, sums allocated for those names that had sounded most often on the battlefield: Murray, Cameron, Glengarry, Clanranald, Ardshiel. Regiments of infantry and dragoons were sent out to hunt down the fleeing Jacobite contingents. Lochiel's stronghold at Achnacarry was demolished, the castle reduced to rubble, while the chief and his kinsmen were forced to hide in caves in the hills. Gray clouds of smoke hung over the glens as clachans were burned, the sheep and cattle driven back to Inverness. Cumberland had been given the authority to do whatever he deemed necessary to suppress the rebellious nature of the Highlands, and in his determination to be thorough, he gave little thought to the innocence or guilt of the general population. With so many prisoners to deal with, a lottery was organized wherein every twentieth man was marked to stand trial. The rest, if they could afford to buy their freedom, were released on the condition they leave Scotland and never return; those who had no money were loaded on transport ships and sent to the colonies as indentured servants.