Prince Across the Water (19 page)

“Claymore! Claymore!”

The MacDonald call came again, this time erupting from hundreds of throats at once.

Clanranald's men rattled their swords and shouted:
“Dh' aindeoin co theireadh e!
Gainsay who dare!”

Then the MacDonalds of Glengarry roared back at them,
“Creaghan-an-Fhithich!
The Raven's Rock!”

Not to be outdone, Ewan and I joined in the Keppoch's yell along with the rest of our men. “
Dia
'
s Naomh Aindrea!
God and St. Andrew!”

The yell seemed to give me the strength I needed.
Once we charge, no one can stand against us
, my heart told me, as I thought of what Da had said about Edinburgh, about Falkirk.
The English always run before Highland swords
.

The men in front of me suddenly charged, and I ran after them. Behind me the pipes screamed out for blood. They sang of glory. And suddenly all I could think of was killing the redcoats, the
sassanachs
, the invaders.

“God and St. Andrew!” I screamed.

But half a dozen steps later, my feet began sinking into muddy pools. The lingering smoke in the air caught again in my throat.

“This … is … hard … going,” I cried out. The boggy ground had grabbed off my right cuaran and I had to kneel to free it.

“I'm caught, too.” That was Ewan right behind me. Then I heard him laugh. “That's it, then. I'll go shoeless. Come on, Duncan, we're almost to the English line.” He shook his sword. “Let them taste our steel.”

“Wait for me,” I begged. I didn't want to face the English alone, with only my dirk. A wasp has the right to be a little afraid.

“But we're so close, Duncan.”

“Och, we're not that close. Look, will ye, Ewan? Ye can barely make them out. They're a hundred yards away. There'll be plenty left for us.” I got the stupid shoe back on and stood.

The crash of English musket fire and the iron boom of their cannon came again. Huge clouds of smoke rolled across the moor, plunging Ewan and me into a choking darkness. Then a rush of hot air whipped past my ear and I flinched from it with a sharp intake of breath.

Cannonball!

I clutched my dagger so hard, the pommel left an imprint on my palm. Sighing in relief when the ball flew past me, I looked for Ewan to make a joke of my fright.

“Did ye see me shake, Ewan?”

He didn't answer.

“I was like a tree in the wind, Ewan.”

He was silent.

“Ewan?”

Then some of the smoke cleared and I saw him, off to my right. He had been slammed to the ground by the cannonball so suddenly, he'd not even had a chance to cry out. His face was white, his head was covered with bright-red blood. Shards of white breastbone showed through his open chest. His right hand—the sword hand—was gone completely.

Oh, God, Ewan. If I hadn't asked you to wait
…

I looked around, desperate for help, then saw his severed hand a couple of yards past a gorse bush, its lifeless fingers still fastened around the hilt of the stolen sword.

Oh, God, Ewan
.

I knew then with crushing certainty that I'd killed him as surely as I'd killed Mairi. Suddenly, I remembered Mairi telling him: “There's blood on yer head, Ewan, as if ye were wearing a scarlet bonnet.” An uncontrollable tremor began to run down my arms and legs, and I sank to my knees, one hand stretching out helplessly toward his body.

“Ewan!” I cried, for an instant unable to summon grief, only a strange kind of relief that it wasn't me there on the ground.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” I cried, relief turning to shame.

Someone grabbed me by the arm and hauled me roughly to my feet.

“Up, lad!” a gruff voice ordered. “The best service ye can do the dead is to avenge them.”

An abrupt shove propelled me forward. I struggled onward, my dirk held before me, through more smoke and muck and sleet. I was so dazed, I didn't notice the face of the man who had grabbed me. I hardly noticed anything. Even the din and roar of the battle faded to a distant buzz. I felt as if I had been plunged into an icy pool and would never be warm again.

As I moved forward, I tripped over something, a man, a Cameron, knee-down in the muck. Blood dripped from jagged wounds in his neck and chest, mingling with the mud. I touched his shoulder. It was cold as ice and as hard.

“Is there nae end to this blasted moor!” someone exclaimed behind us. I could hear the sucking sound of his feet in the bog.

“Go on! Go on!” cried someone else.

I left the kneeling man and struggled on. Another man lay facedown in the bog in front of me. I stepped over him. Still another lay faceup, sleet melting into his eyes. More, then more, faceless, armless, legless, headless men. I didn't know their names. I couldn't see their faces for the mud and blood and smoke and sleet.

What could I do for them?

Take revenge
.

But revenge sounded like poor comfort in the midst of all this horror. How could more bloodshed wash away what had already soaked into me? I was covered in it, head to toe. I remembered Ma saying, “Hope is sowing while death is mowing.” Mowing indeed. Death had mown us down like a scythe through corn.

Directly ahead, the crash of muskets grew. The calm voices of English officers barking out their orders seemed distant, uncaring. As if we Scots really were only a crop to be cut down in the field, not flesh, not blood.

Blood
—
dear God
—
so much blood!

The image of Ewan's hand by the gorse bush suddenly came back to me. Not his blanched, dead face, but his severed hand. I fell to my knees and began to cry.

“Fire!” commanded the calm English voices. And immediately after came the awful boom of cannon. The mass of standing men ahead of me quivered.

The cannon boomed again.

And again.

The pipes behind me fell silent as if they had nothing more to say. The beat of our drums faltered.

“Grapeshot!” someone cried in warning.

Granda had told me about grapeshot.
Awful stuff
, he'd said.
The worst
. The cannonball replaced with bundles of musket balls, nails, scraps of metal. At close range, it could kill or maim half a dozen men at a go.

Oh, God
, I thought,
not grapeshot
.

A huge groan went up around me as if the very earth protested.

I stood. I don't know why. Staying down made more sense. Staying down meant staying safe. But I stood.

Not for honor.

Not for glory.

For revenge.

“On!” cried our chiefs. “It's no far now, brave lads!”

Once again swords were brandished in the air, banners waved. I lifted my knife. Now it seemed as heavy as a sword.

I found a group of Highlanders. I couldn't tell which clan. Just men, muddy, bloody, nameless men. Men who were still standing. For this moment.

The pipes—were there fewer now?—resumed their labored tunes. We started forward.

The sleet lessened. The smoke lifted. Ahead I saw someone I knew: a mane of white hair; a tall, handsome, mud-spattered old man. So, I was near the front line.

If only I can get to his side
, I thought.
The Keppoch will see me through
.

There was another volley of musket fire, then a further round of grapeshot. Beside me, three men staggered backward, falling on the boggy ground, their sarks just crimsoned tatters.

By now the men in front of me were crouching low or flinging themselves full-length on the heather to avoid the next English volley. Before I could do the same, a giant of a man stumbled backward, colliding with me, knocking me flat on my back. He dropped his sword as he fell, pinning me to the ground beneath him.

Winded, I lay gasping until I could summon the strength to wriggle out from under. I pushed myself up onto one knee and stared at him. His lifeless eyes—one blue, one a blind white—gazed up at the leaden sky. A jagged fragment of iron was embedded in his forehead like a dagger.

Stupidly, I wondered what his name was.

And then I thought:
Sandy. Sandy MacDonald, of course
.

Somehow I managed to get to my feet. I could have turned then and run. God knows, others were racing away. Ma would have told me to run. Da, too. I looked down at my hand, the one that still held the dirk. It was covered with poor Sandy's blood. MacDonald blood.

“To me!” Suddenly I heard a familiar old voice up ahead yelling. “To me, sons of Donald! Will ye no charge, for the sake of yer honor!”

I knew then that I couldn't retreat. I owed Sandy something. I owed Ewan something. I owed the Keppoch something. Not a throne for a king. Not vengeance. I understood that now. What I owed them was my honor. It's all a man has, all a MacDonald has, after all.

“For God and St. Andrew!” I cried, and started forward again.

26 FLEEING

“To me, sons of Donald!” the Keppoch called again.

Peering through the billowing smoke and the sleety rain, I caught a glimpse of him. He stood as boldly as a young warrior, sword in one hand, pistol in the other, his guards gathered around him. A young man with flame-colored hair was just now lifting a flag from the fingers of a fallen standard-bearer, then raising it overhead where it flew bravely in the sullen wind.

I moved closer.

The Keppoch looked around, at men skulking away, not like wolves, but like their sons, the little foxes. “My God, has it come to this?” he exclaimed, staring right at me, right through me. “That I am abandoned by my own children.”

“Not I,” I croaked, holding up my dirk.

He didn't seem to hear me, though, for he turned and started toward the English lines, his guards following in his wake. As he strode along, scattered groups of fighters, men who had been lying prone on the ground, men who'd been scurrying away, men who were behind me and around me, took heart and ran to join him in one last desperate charge.

“God and St. Andrew!” they called, before disappearing into the smoke.

I meant to go with them. God and St. Andrew knew I wanted to. But suddenly my legs wouldn't obey me any longer. I couldn't take a single step. It was as if I had been turned to stone.

“Fire!” came the calm command from the English line, so close now, I could see the buttons on their uniforms.

This time the noise was deafening. Smoke spouted from redcoat muskets, gouts of fire, and scorching wind.

“No!” I gasped, thinking that no one charging into that storm could survive. Not the Keppoch nor any of the MacDonalds. And all at once I was running forward and weeping; sobbing for Ewan, and for big Sandy, and for the boy who'd lost his leg in the first round of cannon shot, and for all the maimed I had stepped over to get to this place.

And weeping, too, because for some reason, I was still alive on bloody Drummossie Moor at a place called Culloden. I—who should never have come to this muddy hell in the
first
place. And weeping because it was to be the very
last
place in the world I would ever know.

Suddenly, a wounded MacDonald came rushing out of the murk, his plaid trailing behind. He elbowed me aside, knocking me face-first into a large puddle in the bog.

As I splashed about in the cold water, a dreadful torpor seized hold of me. The noise of battle faded away and a voice whispered in my ear: “Stay here. That will be an end to yer troubles. Here ye can know peace.”

Peace
. That was what I wanted.
The peace between musket fire. The peace between battles. The peace between wars
. And then I had one last thought:
The peace of the grave
. It sounded so wonderful.

For a moment, I felt I was standing between two worlds, one where I could surrender to that blessed final sleep, the other where I was wide-awake in the midst of fire and smoke and noise.

“Stay here,” the voice whispered again.

And I almost listened.

But honor wouldn't let me. I pushed up hard, my fingers seeking some hold in the mud. Spitting out brackish water, I struggled to my feet, using the back of my hand to wipe the muck from my face. All I could see now were billows of smoke and the tartan of broken Highlanders who were stumbling around as if lost in a winter fog.

“Get up!” I told myself. “Move, ye slacker, move!” So I got up slowly and began to move, finding my way only by instinct and trudging toward what I thought was our front.

An agonized groan made me stop. Before me, sunk to his knees, hands clutching his belly, was a man, a MacDonald. From the quality of his weapons, I knew he was one of the captains. Beside him, on a tussock of muddy grass, lay his sword.

“Here, sir,” I said, offering my hand, “let me help ye.”

He waved me away, a trickle of blood spilling over his lips, bright red until the sleet turned it pale. “There's nae helping me,” he croaked. “I'm done, lad. Go to the aid of the chief. That's yer duty now. Nae use trying to help a dead man.” He pointed off to one side, in a different direction that I'd been heading. “Go to him.”

“Who, sir?”

“The Keppoch, lad.” Then he started coughing up more blood.

For a minute I thought about taking his sword. He had no more use for it. But it was a heavy thing by the look, too heavy for me. And a man's sword is his own. Taking it could bring me the same bad luck as Ewan. I hurried away.

The field was covered with bodies. Apologizing over and over to the dead men I stepped on, I made my way forward till I came upon a group of nine Highlanders crazed with battle madness. Even though it was clear that they could make no headway against another hail of bullets, they clashed their swords against their targes and bellowed out their defiance, saying “Come for us, ye sassanachs, or we'll be coming for ye!” One yelled the loudest. He was broad in the shoulder and wild-eyed, a bloodied fist wrapped around his sword hilt. “Sassanachs!” he cried again.