Dragonfly in Amber (88 page)

"And the chiefs! Lochiel's Camerons drew the lot that gives them the honor of fighting on the right hand in the battle—if there is one—but the MacDonalds, having agreed to the arrangement, now energetically deny having done any such thing, and insist that they will not fight at all if they're denied their traditional privilege of fighting on the right."

Having started this recitation calmly enough, Lord George had grown heated again in the telling, and at this point sprang to his feet again, rubbing his scalp energetically with both hands.

"The Camerons have been drilled all day. By now, they've been marched to and fro so much that they can't tell their pricks from their arseholes—saving your presence, mum," he added, with a distracted glance at me, "and Clanranald's men have been having fistfights with Glengarry's." He paused, lower jaw thrust out, face red. "If Glengarry wasn't who he is, I'd…ah, well." He dismissed Glengarry with a flip of the hand and resumed his pacing.

"The only saving grace of the matter," he said, "is that the English have been forced to turn themselves about as well, in response to our movements. They've turned Cope's entire force no less than four times, and now he's strung his right flank out nearly to the sea, no doubt wondering what in God's name we'll do next." He bent and peered out the window, as though expecting to see General Cope himself advancing down the main road to inquire.

"Er…where exactly is your half of the army at present, sir?" Jamie made a move as though to join His Lordship in his random peregrinations about the cottage, but was restrained by my grip on his collar. Armed with a towel and a bowl of warm water, I had occupied myself during His Lordship's exegesis with removing the soot from my husband's ears. They stood out now, glowing pinkly with earnestness.

"On the ridge just south of town."

"We still hold the high ground, then?"

"Yes, it sounds good, doesn't it?" His Lordship smiled bleakly. "However, occupation of the high ground profits us relatively little, in consideration of the fact that the ground just below the ridge is riddled with pools and boggy marsh. God's eyes! There's a six-foot ditch filled with water that runs a hundred feet along the base of that ridge! There's scarce five hundred yards between the armies this moment, and it might as well be five hundred miles, for all we can do." Lord George plunged a hand into his pocket in search of a handkerchief, brought it out, and stood staring blankly at the wig with which he had been about to wipe his face.

I delicately offered him the sooty handkerchief. He closed his eyes, inhaled strongly through both nostrils, then opened them and bowed to me with his usual courtly manner.

"Your servant, mum." He polished his face thoroughly with the filthy rag, handed it politely back to me, and clapped the tousled wig on his head.

"Damn my liver," he said distinctly, "if I let that fool lose this engagement for us." He turned to Jamie with decision.

"How many men have you, Fraser?"

"Thirty, sir."

"Horses?"

"Six, sir. And four ponies for pack animals."

"Pack animals? Ah. Carrying provisions for your men?"

"Yes, sir. And sixty sacks of meal abstracted from an English detachment last night. Oh, and one sixteen-inch mortar, sir."

Jamie imparted this last bit of information with an air of such perfect offhand casualness that I wanted to cram the handkerchief down his throat. Lord George stared at him for a moment, then one corner of his mouth twitched upward in a smile.

"Ah? Well, come with me, Fraser. You can tell me all about it on the way." He wheeled toward the door, and Jamie, with a wide-eyed glance at me, caught up his hat and followed.

At the cottage door, Lord George stopped suddenly, and turned back. He glanced up at Jamie's towering form, shirt collar undone and coat flung hastily over one arm.

"I may be in a hurry, Fraser, but we have still sufficient time to observe the civilities. Go and kiss your wife goodbye, man. Meet me outside."

Turning on his heel, he made a leg to me, bowing deeply, so that the tail of his wig flopped forward.

"Your servant, mum."

I knew enough about armies to realize that nothing apparent was likely to happen for some time, and sure enough, it didn't. Random parties of men marched up and down the single main street of Tranent. Wives, camp followers, and the displaced citizens of Tranent milled aimlessly, uncertain whether to stay or go. Messengers darted sideways through the crowd, carrying notes.

I had met Lord George before, in Paris. He was not a man to stand on ceremony when action would better suit, though I thought it likely that the fraying of his temper at Prince Charles's actions, and a desire to escape the company of O'Sullivan, were more responsible for his coming in person to meet Jamie than any desire either for expeditiousness or confidentiality. When the total strength of the Highland army stood somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand, thirty men were neither to be regarded as a gift from the gods, nor sneered at altogether.

I glanced at Fergus, fidgeting to and fro like a hoptoad with St. Vitus's dance, and decided that I might as well send a few messages myself. There is a saying, "In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." I promptly invented its analogy, based on experience: "When no one knows what to do, anyone with a sensible suggestion is going to be listened to."

There was paper and ink in the saddlebags. I sat down, watched with an almost superstitious awe by the goodwife, who had likely never seen a woman write anything before, and composed a note to Jenny Cameron. It was she who had led three hundred Cameron clansmen across the mountains to join Prince Charles, when he had raised his banner at Glenfinnan on the coast. Her brother Hugh, arriving home belatedly and hearing what had happened, had ridden posthaste to Glenfinnan to take the chieftain's place at the head of his men, but Jenny had declined to go home and miss the fun. She had thoroughly enjoyed the brief stop in Edinburgh, where Charles received the plaudits of his loyal subjects, but she had been equally willing to accompany her Prince on his way to battle.

I hadn't a signet, but Jamie's bonnet was in one of the bags, bearing a badge with the Fraser clan crest and motto. I dug it out and pressed it into the splodge of warm candle wax with which I had sealed the note. It looked very official.

"For the Scottish milady with the freckles," I instructed Fergus, and with satisfaction saw him dart out the door and into the melee in the street. I had no idea where Jenny Cameron was at the moment, but the officers were quartered in the manse near the kirk, and that was as good a place to start as any. At least the search would keep Fergus out of mischief.

That errand out of the way, I turned to the cottage wife.

"Now, then," I said. "What have you got in the way of blankets, napkins, and petticoats?"

I soon found that I had been correct in my surmise as to the force of Jenny Cameron's personality. A woman who could raise three hundred men and lead them across the mountains to fight for an iian-accented fop with a taste for brandywine was bound to have both a low threshold of boredom and a rare talent for bullying people into doing what she wanted.

"Verra sensible," she said, having heard my plan. "Cousin Archie's made some arrangements, I expect, but of course he's wanting to be with the army just now." Her firm chin stuck out a little farther. "That's where the fun is, after all," she said wryly.

"I'm surprised you didn't insist on going along," I said.

She laughed, her small, homely face with its undershot jaw making her look like a good-humored bulldog.

"I would if I could, but I can't," she admitted frankly. "Now that Hugh's come, he keeps trying to make me go home. Told him I was"—she glanced around to be sure we weren't overheard, and lowered her voice conspiratorially—"damned if I'd go home and sit. Not while I can be of use here."

Standing on the cottage doorstep, she looked thoughtfully up and down the street.

"I didn't think they'd listen to me," I said. "Being English."

"Aye, you're right," she said, "but they will to me. I don't know how many the wounded will be—pray God not many," and she crossed herself unobtrusively. "But we'd best start with the houses near the manse; it'll be less trouble to carry water from the well." With decision, she stepped off the doorstep and headed down the street, me following close behind.

We were aided not only by the persuasion of Miss Cameron's position and person but by the fact that sitting and waiting is one of the most miserable occupations known to man—not that it usually is known to men; women do it much more often. By the time the sun sank behind Tranent kirk, we had the bare rudiments of a hospital brigade organized.

The leaves were beginning to fall from larch and alder in the nearby wood, lying loose, flat and yellow on the sandy ground. Here and there a leaf had crisped and curled to brown, and took off scudding in the wind like a small boat over rough seas.

One of these spiraled past me, settling gently as its wind current failed. I caught it on my palm and held it for a moment, admiring the perfection of midribs and veins, a lacy skeleton that would remain past the rotting of the blade. There was a sudden puff of wind, and the cup-curled leaf lifted off my hand, to tumble to the ground and go rolling along, down the empty street.

Shading my eyes against the setting sun, I could see the ridge beyond the town where the Highland army was camped. His Highness's half of the army had returned an hour before, sweeping the last stragglers from the village as they marched to join Lord George. At this distance, I could only pick out an occasional tiny figure, black against the graying sky, as here and there a man came over the crest of the ridge. A quarter-mile past the end of the street, I could see the first lighting of the English fires, burning pale in the dying light. The thick smell of burning peat from the cottages joined the sharper scent of the English wood fires, overlying the tang of the nearby sea.

Such preparations as could be made were under way. The wives and families of the Highland soldiers had been welcomed with generous hospitality, and were now mostly housed in the cottages along the main street, sharing their hosts' plain supper of brose and salt herring. My own supper was waiting inside, though I had little appetite.

A small form appeared at my elbow, quiet as the lengthening shadows.

"Will you come and eat, Madame? The goodwife is keeping food for you."

"Oh? Oh, yes, Fergus. Yes, I'll come." I cast a last glance toward the ridge, then turned back to the cottages.

"Are you coming, Fergus?" I asked, seeing him still standing in the street. He was shading his eyes, trying to see the activities on the ridge beyond the town. Firmly ordered by Jamie to stay with me, he was plainly longing to be with the fighting men, preparing for battle on the morrow.

"Uh? Oh, yes, Madame." He turned with a sigh, resigned for the moment to a life of boring peace.

The long days of summer were yielding quickly to darkness, and the lamps were lit well before we had finished our preparations. The night outside was restless with constant movement and the glow of fires on the horizon. Fergus, unable to keep still, flitted in and out of the cottages, carrying messages, collecting rumors and bobbing up out of the shadows periodically like a small, dark ghost, eyes gleaming with excitement.

"Madame," he said, plucking at my sleeve as I ripped linens into strips and threw them into a pile for sterilization. "Madame!"

"What is it this time, Fergus?" I was mildly irritated at the intrusion; I had been in the middle of a lecture to a group of housewives on the importance of washing the hands frequently while treating the wounded.

"A man, Madame. He is wanting to speak with the commander of His Highness's army. He has important information, he says."

"Well, I'm not stopping him, am I?" I tugged at a recalcitrant shirt seam, then used my teeth to wrench loose the end, and yanked. It tore cleanly, with a satisfying ripping sound.

I spit out a thread or two. He was still there, waiting patiently.

"All right," I said, resigned. "What do you—or he—think I can do about it?"

"If you will give me permission, Madame," he said eagerly, "I could guide him to my master. He could arrange for the man to speak to the commander."

"He," of course, could do anything, so far as Fergus was concerned; including, no doubt, walking on water, turning water into wine, and inducing Lord George to talk to mysterious strangers who materialized out of the darkness with important information.

I brushed the hair out of my eyes; I had tied it back under a kertch, but curly strands kept escaping.

"Is this man somewhere nearby?"

That was all the encouragement he needed; he disappeared through the open door, returning momentarily with a thin young man whose eager gaze fastened at once on my face.

"Mrs. Fraser?" He bowed awkwardly at my nod, wiping his hands on his breeches as though he didn't know quite what to do with them, but wanted to be ready if something suggested itself.

"I—I'm Richard Anderson, of Whitburgh."

"Oh? Well, good for you," I said politely. "My servant says you have some valuable information for Lord George Murray."

He nodded, bobbing his head like a water ouzel. "Ye see, Mrs. Fraser, I've lived in these parts all my life. I—I know all of that ground where the armies are, know it like the back o' my hand. And there's a way down from the ridge where the Highland troops are camped—a trail that will lead them past the ditch at the bottom."

"I see." I felt a hollowing of the stomach at these words. If the Highlanders were to charge out of the rising sun next morning, they would have to leave the high ground of the ridge during the night watches. And if a charge was to be successful, plainly that ditch must be crossed or bypassed.

While I thought I knew what was to come, I had no certainty at all about it. I had been married to an historian—and the usual faint stab came at the thought of Frank—and knew just how unreliable historical sources often were. For that matter, I had no surety that my own presence couldn't or wouldn't change anything.