Prince Across the Water (23 page)

“Caught, most likely,” said Da.

Granda hobbled up, looking far older than when I'd left. He was leaning on a stick now and when he embraced me, he almost overbalanced and fell. But still he wouldn't let Da get the last word. “The bonnie prince caught? With all the Highlands to hide in? Nae, he'll be as free as a bird gliding over the heather.”

Da turned on him. “Free to do what? Ye dinna think he can fight another battle, do ye? Ye canna want that! Look at the boy, old man. Look what yer prince has made of him.”

“I never said there was to be more war,” Granda answered stubbornly. “I just said the prince was free.”

“Maybe he's gone back across the water.” I hoped that was true, for his sake. And even more, for ours.

We walked over to our fire, which was ringed with stones.

Ma handed me a piece of toasted cheese stuck between two slices of bread.

“Bread! Heaven!” I gobbled it down like it was the tastiest thing I'd ever eaten. At that moment it was.

“We've made an oven out of stones,” Ma said. “And bake every day. Though there's scarcely enough for all.”

“Never mind,” Da told her. “We'll move back down to the village in another few days, after we get the roofs back up on the houses and …” It was clearly a conversation they'd had before.

“Where's Ewan's ma?” I asked, after drinking a full pint of water.

“She's sleeping.” Ma looked at me closely. “If ye've bad news for her, it can wait till morning.”

I knew from her tone that she'd guessed Ewan wouldn't be coming home.

Then Granda insisted I tell what happened at Culloden. He pulled me toward a stool by our fire. I recognized it as one from our house. So, they hadn't all been burned. “Sit—and let us know where ye stood and what ye saw and …”

I was sore tired, and the last thing I wanted to do was talk about that bloody place. “Please, Granda, can it no wait?”

“Nae, lad, ye owe us that. The others all came home with their tales. But I know ye did better than they. Ye had my dirk and the prince knew ye.” His eyes seem to glint in the firelight, and Andrew crowded next to him and leaned forward as if into my story.

“I have nae gift for telling,” I said.

Seeing Andrew quivering like a dog after a bird, Ma grabbed his arm and led him away. “This is nae tale for bairns,” she scolded.

“This is nae tale at all,” said Da. “The lad needs his sleep.”

But then others of the village came over to hear what I'd been about. Old men and boys my age who hadn't been to the war. And one or two, like the twins and John the Miller, who'd escaped the battlefield before me and found their way home.

So I didn't go to sleep right away, though Da hovered nearby, ready to take me off if I faltered. Instead, I leaned toward the fire, a dram put in my hand, and sipped it while telling them all about the men sleeping in ditches, and the sound of the thundering cannon, about the soldier with the blind eye, and how Angus Ban and Iain and I carried the Keppoch away from the field.

“The Keppoch dead?” Granda whispered. “That grand old man.” Though he was much older than the Keppoch had been.

“Godspeed,” the men murmured.

“Give the lad some more whiskey,” John the Miller said, when I stopped, exhausted, my voice dry.

“He's nae more a lad,” Granda said, clearly proud of me. “He's a man now.”

But I didn't feel like a man and I drank no more whiskey and I left the telling of Ewan's death for the morning.

Da put his hand on my arm. “Come to bed, son.” So I stood.

Granda pointed his stick at me. “What became of my dirk? I see ye dinna have it with ye.”

“It's sticking in the neck of an English dragoon's horse.”

“For God and St. Andrew,” Granda said, and several of the men said it with him.

So I had to tell that story as well, but I told it badly and quickly while I stood. Then Da took me off to bed, a straw pallet by the fire that I shared with Andrew.

Two other things I didn't tell. I never mentioned how the fits that had plagued me for so long had saved my life. And I didn't mention the Keppoch's brooch. There were too many folk gathering around and I didn't know who might be tempted by such a treasure.

31 BUILDING ANEW

The next day got off to a bitter start. I took my aunt Fiona and cousin Maggie aside, far from the cook fires. We sat on a rock under a stunted larch tree that shaded us slightly from the sun.

I told them how Ewan had died, though I made it prettier than it was, and left out the stolen sword.

“He didna suffer at all,” I said. “And he was glad to have won his share of the honor.” I tried to put great meaning in the word
honor
, though I felt little.

Aunt Fiona sat stony-eyed and never said a thing, but then she was never one for light talk. Her hair, greyer than I'd remembered, kept falling before her face as if to hide her from what I was saying. Maggie sobbed quietly. When I was done, my aunt stood up and walked off to shed her tears alone in the shade of the pines.

I told Ma how they'd reacted, and Ma said, “I'll comfort Fiona presently. For now we need to leave them to their grief. Now ye go to the fire and get yerself a cup of warm milk to draw away the bitter taste in yer mouth. The cows have just been milked.”

“How did ye know about the taste?” I asked.

“It is the taste of someone else's tears,” she said. “A mother knows it well.”

Just then Da called me over to him, drawing me to the same rock where I'd broken the news to my aunt and cousin. He made me sit down and then sat next to me.

“Last night,” he said, his voice near a whisper, “ye didna tell the whole of the tale. Ye never once mentioned having any fits. It's why I so feared for ye, son.”

I looked at my hands clenching and unclenching in my lap.

“Well?”

I bit my lip. “I only had one, Da. A small one, and it scarce worth mentioning.”

“Only one? In all that horror? Surely yer leaving something out in the telling.” His face got a pinched look, like a fox on the trail of a rabbit.

“Why do ye say that?” I tried to keep my voice level, but it rose and broke on the last word.

“All the while ye were telling yer tale, yer hand kept reaching for yer plaid, for a spot over yer heart.”

I gulped and my traitor hand went back to the same spot. “A bit of trouble digesting the cheese,” I said. “After so many days of starving.”

“Nay, lad, yer doing it again.” He reached over and touched my hand.

I knew I had to tell him. And I
wanted
to tell him, too. “I've been meaning to say something to ye, for I've a duty yet to do. I just didna know how to say it.”

“Just speak, son. I'll no say anything but keep yer confidence.”

Nodding, I reached under the plaid and unpinned the brooch, holding it before me in the flat of my hand. Though the day had gone grey, the sun hiding behind a dark cloud, the gold casing shone.

“I think I've seen its like before,” said Da.

“It was the Keppoch's, given to him by Prince Charlie.”

“Ye didna steal it, Duncan?”

I shook my head, and quickly told him how I'd come by the treasure.

He reached out one finger to stroke the brooch. “It must be worth a prince's ransom.”

“I've thought of that,” I admitted, “and of what we could buy with it.”

Da nodded slowly, imagining out loud the possibilities just as I had, and rejecting them one by one. He finished, saying, “We could take money for it, but there would be no honor in that. We must keep it safe for now. With the redcoats combing the hills, we dinna want it falling into King George's hands.”

I was so relieved, I told him the rest. “I need to give it to the Keppoch's widow.”

“Aye. That's the right choice,” Da agreed. “But ye canna go till the hills are free of the soldiers.”

We sat for a moment, considering. Near us on a branch of a pine tree, a hoodie crow cried out to its friends, a sharp, loud warning.

“There's a hiding place among the rocks above Glenroy,” said Da. “I used to keep things in it when I was yer age, though nothing so precious as this.”

“Is it safe?” I asked.

“I would have thought Glenroy safe once,” Da said. “But there's nowhere totally safe these days.”

I nodded. “But safer than the village or under my plaid. We'll hide it there. I trust ye, Da.” Then I sighed. “Ye do believe I'm doing right by bringing it back to the widow Keppoch?”

“Well, the thing is yers now, son,” he replied. “Ye must do with it as yer conscience dictates.”

So we hid the brooch in the rocks, telling the others we were going down to salvage what more we could from the cottage. We wrapped it in a piece of cloth torn from the bottom of my sark, then placed it carefully in a small cavity that we blocked with a loose stone. No one could have told there was anything there at all.

Then we went on down to Glenroy, slowly and carefully, being sure that there were no soldiers about.

I picked up the little doll's head from the ruined hearth to give to Sarah, and we found more neeps in the field. Dad cut up our poor cows, what little meat was left on them that hadn't been got at by scavengers—crows, buzzards, foxes, and the like. What was not too rotten. And we found a cart to haul it away. It was a hard return.

The Duke of Cumberland's burning and slaughter went on for many days. We heard about it from stragglers who managed to find us up in the hills. They told us of bodies stripped and violated, babies dashed against the rocks, and women hanged for nothing more than milking cows. The stories frightened us all.

“Is there to be no end to it?” Ma asked, her hands over Sarah's ears.

We sat around our fire, with Aunt Fiona and Maggie now part of our family, for we didn't dare let them be alone. Aunt Fiona stopped eating unless fed. She'd stopped sleeping unless led to her bed by Maggie. And though she didn't weep, she looked as if she wanted to. The only one she seemed to take to was Andrew, who sat with her and let her stroke his hair. And when she called him Ewan by mistake, he never corrected her. That made Maggie weep even more.

Strangely enough, though, it was the stories of the English depravities that brought Aunt Fiona back to the living again. Each new story seemed to make her stronger. So we took turns telling them, though Granda's were the best.

Then one night Aunt Fiona took off and we never found her, though we searched for days. We could only guess where she'd wandered to.

“Gone to kill some redcoats,” Maggie said, almost relieved.

“She'd never do that,” Ma countered. “More than likely she's found some quiet spot and there to grieve till she dies of it.”

Over the next few weeks the raids eased off, as if even the English soldiers tired of their sport.

Gradually we all returned to Glenroy, or what remained of the village.

“Angus Ban told me to rebuild, Da,” I said to him. “I want to help.”

“Yer a man now, son,” he told me, running his fingers through thinning hair. “Of course ye should help, whether Angus Ban willed it or no.”

“Me, too,” said Andrew.

I patted his head, then turned to Da. “He can run errands and fetch tools and …”

Da smiled. “Of course he can. With ye away, he did all of that and more.”

So, at our father's side, we fetched fresh stones to remake the broken walls. We gathered together the cattle that had been scattered in the flight from Glenroy. Doors were rehung on the byres and roofs rethatched. We worked side by side with our neighbors, they on our house, we on theirs. If any good came out of what had happened, it was that the MacDonalds of Glenroy banded together as one big family—not in order to make war, but to secure our village once more.

We even fixed Ewan's cottage for Maggie, hoping Aunt Fiona would return one day to live in it.

We heard more tales of horror, of course—of hangings and captured rebels being transported overseas to the colonies. Of great houses sacked and lairds beheaded and whole villages of people put to the sword. Of clan leaders making peace with the old king.

But at last Cumberland went home to London. One tinker, who stayed the night, said Cumberland had received his father's thanks for the bloody work he'd done.

“Work!”
Granda was furious. “What we are doing here in the village is work.”

But I understood what the tinker meant. The soldiers at Culloden had gone about their slaughter as if it had been no more than honest labor, and we Highlanders no more than cattle.

Granda nursed his anger with cups of whiskey and when he'd had enough, he went outside into the charging rain. Standing unsteadily by our door, right fist in the air, he raged against the lairds, crying, “Making peace with King George is like lambs thanking the butcher.”

I went out to lead him back inside. “Granda, let it go. The lairds are making peace so their people can return to their farms and their lives.”

But Granda would have none of my soft talk. He shook off my hand. “I thought better of ye, Duncan. We Keppoch MacDonalds didna make peace and we are here safe at home.” And then he added, “Look at our new Keppoch, a fine lad. A braw lad.” Meaning that Angus Ban—like a few of the other chiefs—remained a fugitive in the hills, living like a bandit, dodging the redcoat patrols that hounded his tracks.

But I guess Granda wanted it both ways, and didn't see any contradiction in what he said.

Word came by another tinker later in the spring that the Highlanders were to be forbidden to bear arms by King George's law.

“And what are we to do without our muskets and swords?” raved Granda, who had neither anyway.

“On pain of death,” Ma warned him. “That's what the tinker said.”