Prince Across the Water (17 page)

“Dinna take on so!” Angus Ban told him. “That's just the prince riding before our men to fire their mettle. He wants to make them ready for the charge.”

“The charge!” Ewan said. “Then why are we waiting? Let's find the MacDonalds now.”

The prince!
It was all I could think of and I squinted through the rain. And there, past the cheering men, I saw him. He was wearing a tartan coat and a buff-colored vest, riding a gray gelding, and waving to his men. The wind was behind him, blowing his hair about his ears. As he rode past, the men cheered, shaking their swords over their heads. At that very moment, the sun broke through a gap in the clouds and light poured over him like God's own blessing. The skirl of the pipes, the beating of the drums, the loud cheers all lifted me up like a surging tide. I turned to tell Ewan.

He had an excited gleam in his eyes, and he clutched the hilt of his sword with both hands. I knew he was feeling the same thrill.

I snatched my bonnet from my head, waved it, and cried out, “MacDonald! MacDonald!” and Ewan did the same.

“That's it, lads,” said Angus Ban. “Now, both of you, follow me. If ye want to serve the prince and join the charge, here's yer chance.” Then he strode away, saying over his shoulder, “Our reckoning's come at last, here at Culloden.”

23 BATTLE LINES

“We're away!” Ewan cried, speeding after Angus Ban. I had to practically run to keep up.

As suddenly as it had come, the sun was gone, and cold rain once again spit at us, this time slowly turning to sleet. A horseman galloped by, splattering us with mud. Six men, with badges proclaiming them to be Camerons, raced past, nudging us to one side. “Out the way! Out the way!” one cried and Ewan gave him a look as sharp as a dagger.

Still we kept up our pace and Angus Ban said, pointing, “My father argued against this ground, saying it's too flat and open.”

Flat? Open?
As we ran by, I looked with horror at where he was pointing. We were on the side of a large, featureless moor. Sleet sheeted down into our faces, obscuring the other side. But I knew from my previous glimpse that the redcoats were lined up facing us, patiently waiting for a signal to advance. I could still hear their drums beating:
rat-a-tat-tat
.

We dodged around a huddle of men standing quietly in thin tufts of yellow grass.

“There's a bog in the middle,” Angus Ban was saying. “That suits the English horse and cannon too well. A Highland man wants cover, and high—”

“High, solid ground and the wind at his back to charge from,” I finished for him, remembering Granda's lesson. And suddenly I worried if this battle was an awful mistake, being here on the low, boggy ground, the wind spitting sleet in our faces.
Oh, Granda
, I thought,
ye should be here to give them all advice
.

“We'll charge home whatever the ground,” said Ewan, raising his sword as high as he could manage and slicing through the sleety air. “We're MacDonalds!”

We hurried briskly past an enclosure, beyond which a line of Atholl Highlanders stood, their faces grimly fixed on the enemy. I looked where they looked and shuddered. The English still stood as imposing as a stone wall. They would take some beating.

“The MacDonalds are further on,” Angus Ban said.

Beyond the Highlanders and to their rear, I spotted a small group of horsemen trying to steady their mounts. In the middle, I caught sight of a tartan coat.

The prince!

I wanted to run to him, to tell him how we had spoken at Glenfinnan, wanted to touch the hem of his coat. But Angus Ban kept pushing us on.

“A wee bit further, lads,” he said, heading us past the first group of men.

I had expected to find our clan assembled there, in the place of honor by the prince's right, but as we passed by, I quickly realized by their banners and badges that a different clan mustered here.

“Where
are
the MacDonalds?” I asked, looking about. “I thought we always battled at the prince's right hand.”

Angus Ban made a grimace. “Away over there, on the left.” He spat the words out. “Robbed of our place of honor by the men of Atholl.”

I was appalled and thought:
The other side of an honor is an insult
. I felt the insult like a knife to the heart.

“That canna be right,” Ewan blurted out. “The prince wouldna treat us so.”

“He did it as a sop to his generals,” Angus Ban explained, not letting us catch breath. “Murray, the laird of Atholl and the prince's chief general, insisted his own men deserved to be on the army's right, along with Lochiel's Camerons.”

Putting a hand up to shade my eyes from the sleety rain, I tried to see where our MacDonald men were gathered. “It's bad luck to break with tradition, my granda says.”

Angus Ban stopped us and said grimly, “Good luck or bad, it's all that we have. We'll do our duty still, lads, even if there's a sour taste to it. And make our own luck this day.”

“Aye,” Ewan agreed, equally grim.

I thought about Granda and what he would say—us battling from the left side, on low and boggy ground. The wind spitting into our faces. “Aye,” I said at last, thinking that honor was in the fight, though I could still wish for a better position.

We made our way eastward between the front line of Highlanders and the second line, where men stood in clusters a hundred feet behind. Ewan hailed the first band of men we passed, but they made no response. From their garb, I could see they were Lowlanders, and unhappy ones, too, their stooped shoulders and long faces telling their story all too well. They were pressed together in a tight huddle against the cold rain, wearing breeks and not the belted plaid.

“Da said there were
no
Lowlanders fighting for the prince's cause,” I said.

“There's always some join up for the promise of silver,” Ewan remarked. “But they look none too happy now.” He grinned. “Well, let them moan. We'll bring our honor home without them.”

“Are we near the MacDonalds yet?” I asked Angus Ban.

“Not far. Not far.”

More horsemen galloped by, this time going toward the spot where the prince's small band waited. I turned to watch them go and got a face full of mud. Wiping it off with the sleeve of my jacket, I hurried after Ewan and Angus Ban.

We passed a line of Stuarts, in their green-and-red tartans, a banner of yellow and blue flying bravely above them. Then the Frasers, with badges of yew in their bonnets.

“Go, young MacDonald!” someone called out to Angus Ban, who waved in greeting but never stopped. Ewan turned and raised his sword with both hands, grinning and trotting backward.

“They're no cheering for ye, ye daftie,” I said as I passed him by, but I was smiling, too. Yes, there was wind and sleet and a boggy moor. Yes, the men were tired from being up all night, and they were hungry. But we were Highlanders, the Keppoch MacDonald's troops, the prince's men. There would be a victory this day. The Stuart was God's own.

Ahead, I saw three McLean men pushing four small cannon into position. They were arguing with one another over how the things should be loaded. From what they were saying, I guessed the proper gunners were either dead or had long since deserted. I had once caught Andrew trying to use Ma's spinning wheel. He'd been as much at a loss trying to work it as these men looked to be with their big guns.

But I was not worried. God's sun had wrapped the prince with its warmth. We could not fail.

At last, well beyond the cannon, we found the MacDonalds under our clan banner: the white cross on its bloodred background.

I took a deep breath. “Ewan,” I called, then couldn't say more. I felt tears pooling in my eyes. I bit my lip till the pain made the tears go away. A MacDonald doesn't cry.

Ewan never noticed. He'd let the sword fall to his side. “We're here.” He sounded relieved, excited, ready.

Looking around, I thought I recognized a few of the men from Glenfinnan. I hoped to see someone from our village, and then I spotted John the Miller on the far side of our line. I raised my hand to wave, and was pushed aside.

“Here, lad, out of the way.” It was redheaded Jock, Uncle Dougal's farmhand. He seemed not to know us as he dashed down the line. He'd either slept through the morning or gone foraging for supplies. He wasn't the only one late. There were scores of men just now running to find their places.

“Get … in … place. Firm … up … the … line … ye verminous layabouts.” An officer on horseback pushed the men into position, cursing them for their tardiness, and using his horse's rump as a battering ram. “Get a move on there, ye bloody laggards.”

“Where now?” I called to Angus Ban, but he never turned to tell us. Probably hadn't even heard me over the constant drum of rain, the shouting of the officers. “Where should we go?” I tried again.

Now the pipers were playing in earnest, each with his own clan's rant. Drummers, too, pounded out a beat, trying to forge the disordered lines into shape, like a blacksmith fashioning a straight blade from molten steel.

“Get in
line
!” one of the captains was screaming, his voice overriding the noise. “Ye canna fight like that! Form a proper rank!”

“Och, we'll look like the English laddies that way,” someone cried back at him.

“Ye've nae red coat,” someone else shouted.

The men near me laughed uproariously and pointed to the other side of the moor.

This time I could barely see them through the curtain of sleet. Just a blur of red, like a wall. I stopped and stared. “Ewan, look!”

He stopped as well.

Then one dark-bearded giant of a MacDonald called over toward the English side, “Did ye remember to shine yer buttons before battle, little mannie?” He turned and lifted his kilt at them, showing them his bare bottom.

Soon the MacDonalds were all hurling taunts toward the silent redcoats, questioning their manhood and insulting their wives and mothers.

The English made no reply.

There seemed to be thousands of men on both sides of the moor. I'd never seen so many assembled in one place. Glenfinnan had been a small gathering compared to this. Surely this would be the battle to end all others. I would have a story, indeed, to tell Granda and the family when I got home.

Angus Ban had been ahead, and came back to collect us. “Come on, come on, lads. Our line is just over there.” But now he, too, stopped to look over at the English. Then he glanced to our side as well. “Look at the way our line's been drawn. It's all aslant. We've twice as much ground between us and the redcoats as Murray and his men have.”

I tried to see what he meant, wiping the rain from my face to do so. The clan that had taken our place of honor was, indeed, a good deal closer to the redcoat line than we MacDonalds were. The line running from us to them looked like ripples in a river.

“It's still no enough to keep the English safe from our swords,” I said to him, speaking more boldly than I felt.

“Aye!” Ewan said, lifting his sword.

“Good lads,” said a man with a bloodstained sark standing next to me. “There's glory in that.”

But my mind had begun to turn a different way. It wasn't glory I was thinking about. The longer I looked at our slanting line, I understood what Angus Ban meant. We had almost twice the ground to cover than the Atholl Highlanders. We would be twice as long under the English guns when we charged. Then I grimaced, cursing myself for such unmanly thoughts. Surely we would win twice the glory this way, twice the honor. We would do what we must, and victory would be ours.

It
had
to be.

24 BATTLE JOINED

Angus Ban grabbed my arm and hauled me on through great splashes of muddy bog and trampled heather. Ewan trotted after us. At last we reached the band of Keppoch MacDonalds, where Angus Ban left us, saying to a bony man with a blind left eye, “Look after them, Sandy.” Then he pressed on to the front ranks to join his father.

When we tried to follow, Sandy blocked our path with his billhook. “Ye lads best bide here,” he said, “as Angus Ban wishes. The front of the line is for them as has muskets or pistols. I canna look after ye there.”

Our new neighbors were all humblies, too poor to afford swords and firearms, or boys like Ewan and me. Our arms were scythes, hatchets, billhooks, knives. But at least we knew we were all MacDonalds.

“We're going on to the front,” Ewan insisted, dodging around Sandy. “I've got a sword.”

Before he could take another step, one of the Keppoch's captains shoved him back with the butt of a musket.

“Ye belong back here, laddie,” he said curtly, “sword or nae sword. And that one's mighty big for a boy to wield. It'll give you a sore arm before dark. But mind yer place here and ye'll get yer fair share of the fighting and the glory, I promise ye that.”

Ewan bit his lip and lowered his head while the captain passed by. Then he whispered hoarsely, “They canna do that to us.”

“A soldier has to follow orders,” I reminded him. “We're at the battle, and that's what counts.”

The humblies around us stank of wet plaids, long days of walking, and longer nights without proper food or washing. They were as ragged and thin as Da had been. But I was certain that when the time came, these tattered troops would fight as bravely as the Keppoch himself.

So we waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

By my side, Ewan muttered, “When does this thing start?”

“Aye,” a man with a raised hatchet said, “and it's always the same. Get ready and wait. Och, Highlanders dinna wait well.”

And still we waited.

A sudden sharp
bang
off to our right made me to turn. My heart stuttered in my chest. I saw a plume of white smoke curling backward on the wind.