The Winter Sea (45 page)

Sophia thought of the expression in the elder Mrs Kerr’s eyes when she’d spoken of King James, and knew that many others here were of a like mind. ‘So you are sent to keep him safe?’

‘Aye, for the time that he is here, afore he goes across to Ireland, to Ulster, for ’tis there King Jamie wishes to have eyes and ears and voices that can turn men to his cause. I’ll not be needed there. But we must wait awhile afore he makes the crossing, for the sickness that did strike me on the ship from France did strike him harder, and he’s not yet well enough to travel.’

Something made a faint connection in Sophia’s memory— something Mr Kerr had said this very day while they’d been sitting at the midday meal, about a man who had but lately come to live here in Kirkcudbright, and who was not well. ‘This spy of yours,’ she asked the colonel, curious, ‘would his name be McClelland?’

She could tell from his reaction that it was. ‘And how the devil would ye come to think of that?’

‘The people of this house do take an interest in their neighbors. And your Mr McClelland, by choosing to stay with his sister-in-law, has been giving them much to discuss. I am told he defended her honor most ably, in spite of his illness.’

The colonel half smiled. ‘Aye, he would. She’s a sweet lass, and was good enough to take him in despite the fact they had not met afore this and she barely has the means to keep her own self and her wee son fed and clothed. Who was it attacking her honor?’

‘An elderly woman of rigid opinions.’

‘Aye well, he’d have measured his words, then. But illness or no, I don’t doubt he’d cross swords with a man who spoke ill of the lassie.’ He glanced at her sideways, assessing. ‘You’ll not yet have met him.’

‘No.’

‘Then let me tell ye a bit about David McClelland. He came from Kirkcudbright, or near to it anyway, he and his brother, but when they were wee lads their father took ill and died, and they were sent into Ireland, where they had kin. David’s brother, being older, was apprenticed to a cooper and became one in his own right, and returned here several years ago. But David,’ said the colonel, ‘had a different sort of soul, and had a yearning for adventure, so he took up with the Royal Irish Regiment and went to fight in Flanders. That’s the other side from us, ye ken. I likely faced him once or twice myself across a battlefield.’

Sophia had gone silent, looking down at her linked fingers while she thought. She asked him quietly, ‘Was he at Malplaquet?’

‘He was.’ She felt his eyes upon her face. ‘But no man who did fight at Malplaquet came out the same as he went in, and David McClelland was changed by that day more than most men.’

She gave a small nod. She had heard many tales of that battle these past months, and many accounts had been printed and widely discussed in the drawing rooms here, so she knew it had been an unthinkably bloody and brutal encounter beyond even what the most hardened old soldier could bring to his mind. While she might bear resentment that David McClelland had fought on the opposite side, against Moray, she knew any man who had lived through that day was deserving of sympathy.

Colonel Graeme carried on, ‘He was too badly wounded in the battle to continue with his regiment, and after that he came to serve King Jamie, and has served him with a loyalty that none would dare to question.’

She was mindful of the earlier betrayals that had touched both him and Moray. ‘You are certain that he does deserve your trust?’

‘Aye, lass. As certain as my life.’ He was still watching her. ‘I’d like for ye to meet him. Will ye come with me?’

‘What, now?’ She glanced instinctively toward the open doorway to the entry hall. ‘It would not be so wise for me to leave the house when everyone believes I have a headache.’

With a crinkle at the corners of his eyes he said, ‘Ye’ve done things in the past that were not wise, and have survived them. Come, ’twill be two hours yet till your good hosts are home from kirk, and ye can tell the servants that ye have a mind to go out walking with your uncle, which is no more than the truth.’ She knew that look, the one that dared her to accept his challenge, knowing that she would. ‘My mother always said a walk in open air was the best way to cure the headache. Tell them that.’

‘All right. I will.’ Her chin went up with something of her old defiance, and he gave a nod.

‘Good lass.’

Outside, she drew the loose hood of her cloak up so it all but hid her face, though there was no one in the High Street to observe them. There was nothing but the quiet of a Sunday afternoon with everybody gone to kirk, including, most likely, the widow McClelland. She asked, ‘Does David McClelland have no other kin in Kirkcudbright?’

‘No, not anymore. Nor in Ireland, for all his kin there have died off.’

‘He’s alone, then.’ She knew what that felt like. She thought to herself that it must have been hard coming back to this place after being so wounded in war, to be ill and surrounded by strangers.

The colonel was reading her thoughts. ‘You’re much alike, the two of ye. ’Twill do ye good to meet.’ They’d reached the turning of the High Street where the old stone mercat cross stood lonely in the empty marketplace.

Sophia said, ‘Perhaps he will not wish to have a visitor.’

Colonel Graeme felt more sure that he would welcome the diversion. ‘He is not a man to lie so long abed. It fouls his temper. And as fascinating as I am myself, I do suspect he’s borne enough of my own company these past weeks.’

She smiled at that, and then fell into sober thought once more. ‘Is he recovered of his wounds?’

The colonel shrugged. ‘He has a limp that he will carry all his life, for he did nearly lose his leg. And he was shot below his heart, which left his lungs so weakened that the illness we encountered on the ship did strike him badly. But in all, he was most fortunate. So many in those woods of Malplaquet did not survive.’ And then he too fell silent.

They did not have far to walk before they reached the house—a stone-built, square-walled building huddled close against its neighbors, with its windows standing open to the warming air of spring.

‘He may be sleeping,’ warned the colonel as they entered, so Sophia kept behind him as he knocked upon the door to the front room. There was a brief word of reply, which she could barely hear, and then the colonel swung the door full open, motioning that she should step inside.

The room was dim, the curtains only partly drawn as though the daylight was not wanted here.

The man they’d come to see was up and standing at the window with his back to them, so that Sophia only saw his squared stance and his shoulders and the brown hair fastened back above the collar of his shirt. He wore no coat, just breeks and boots, and in the fine white shirt he stood there still and pale and like a ghost, the only thing of light in that dull room.

He spoke again, not looking round, his voice grown hoarser from the illness. ‘Did ye see her? Was she well?’

‘She will be now,’ the colonel gently said, and stepping back retreated to the entry hall and closed the door behind him.

Sophia could not move from where she stood. Could not believe it.

Then he turned, a ghost no longer, but a breathing man. A living man, whose shadowed eyes grew brighter in the grip of hard emotion as he left the window and in two strides crossed to fold her in his arms, his touch as careful as it had been on their wedding night, as fierce as it had been at their last parting.

Still she could not move or speak, not even when he took her face in both his hands and brushed away her tears and drew a ragged breath himself, and in a voice she had not thought to hear again he said, ‘I told ye I’d come back to ye.’

And then his mouth came down on hers and for a long time after that there were no words at all.

XXIII

T
HE VILLAGE OF
M
ALPLAQUET
stood at the border of Flanders and France, with deep woods to the north and the south. On September 11th, the morning of battle, the French had been firmly dug into those woods and were waiting for first light, and for the attack of the massed Allied forces—the English and Germans and Dutch fighting now with the great Duke of Marlborough.

Dawn had come, and brought a dense mist rolling from the fields into the wood to make grey phantoms of the men who crouched there, waiting, weary from a lack of rations and a night of little sleep. The Allied armies used that mist to hide their movements; when it cleared they started firing, and a short while after that they gave the signal and began the fight in earnest, throwing everything they had against the wood.

It seemed to Moray there were four of them for every one of his own men. The air hung thick with smoke and screams and cannon-fire, the edges of the wood were set ablaze by the artillery, and men on both sides fell beneath the fury of the guns and flashing swords.

He fell himself at midday. The cut across his leg came first, and brought him to his knees so that he scarcely felt the pistol shot that tore him near his heart and knocked him down to lie in leaves and mud among the dying and the dead. He could not move. The pain within his chest was so consuming he could only breathe by concentrating, and although he willed his arms to find the strength to lift him, drag him, anything, they would not answer.

He could hear the sounds of struggle moving past him, leaving him behind—the clash of men and steel, the raw-voiced yells and rush of feet and sound of branches splintering, and further off the thunder on the ground that shook the forest as the cavalry advance of countless horses and their saber-wielding riders started down upon the battlefield beyond.

And some time after that there came a silence that to Moray was more horrible than any sound of war, because it was not truly silence. In the dimness of the shattered wood, where smoke yet rolled across the trampled undergrowth and mingled with the smells of fire and blood, he heard the moans and anguished praying of the fallen. Some men prayed for life and some for death, in languages as varied as their uniforms—the Dutch and Germans and the Scots and French and English tangled side by side, for all men looked alike when they were dying.

To his left there lay a boy who had been dead before he fell and was released from fear and suffering, but on the ground to Moray’s right a soldier in the colors of the Royal Irish regiment was trying now without success to roll upon his side, his grey face sweating with the effort.

Moray told him, low, ‘Keep still.’

The words burned fire within his chest, but somehow he found strength to roll his head to meet the stranger’s wide, uncomprehending eyes.

‘Keep still,’ he said again. ‘Ye’ll bleed to death, and no one will be coming yet awhile.’

He saw the man’s eyes calm, and gain their sense again. A man his own age, and a soldier like himself, for all that they were enemies. It was a trick of fate, thought Moray looking at their uniforms, that they had faced each other on opposing sides—his own brigade was Irish also, though it served the French king and King James, and not Queen Anne.

The stranger lay his head back with a sigh. ‘’Twas useless trying, anyway. I’ve no more feeling in my legs. Are they yet there?’

Impassive, Moray angled his own gaze towards the blood-soaked ground beneath the other’s boots, and answered, ‘Aye.’

The man’s eyes closed a moment, either from the pain or in relief, and then he opened them again as if determined not to drift. ‘You are a Scotsman, like myself. Why do you fight for France?’

There was a pause. Moray was not inclined to talk, but he himself could feel the deadly lure of drowsiness, and knew the conversation would help keep him conscious. Help him stay alive. He said, ‘I fight for James.’

‘For James.’

‘Aye.’

‘I have never met a Jacobite. I thought you all had horns.’ The smile was faint, as though it hurt him, and he coughed. ‘Where do you come from then, in Scotland?’

‘Perthshire.’

‘I am come from Ulster now, but I was born in Scotland, near Kirkcudbright in the Western Shires.’

A breeze had swept by Moray like the memory of a touch. He said, ‘My wife is of the Western Shires.’ He had not spoken yet to any person of his marriage, but from the glimpse he’d had of this man’s wounds he knew that little harm could come of speaking now.

The other soldier in surprise asked, ‘Is she Presbyterian?’

And Moray was not certain how Sophia would herself have met that question, she who claimed to have no faith yet prayed when no one else was watching, so he simply said, ‘She is my wife.’

‘I have no wife.’ The other man was drifting once again. He shook himself and said, ‘My brother did. He was a cooper in Kirkcudbright, and he has a widow and a son who live there still, though he himself did die before the summer. He was all the kin that I had left. If I die here, there will be none to mourn me.’

‘There will be your nephew.’

‘I have never met my nephew, nor his mother.’ And the smile this time was sad enough that Moray felt a stirring of compassion for the man, enough to make him keep the other talking in the hope that it might somehow ease his suffering, if nothing more.

And so the two had lain there through the afternoon and on into the evening, holding death at bay by telling tales to one another of their boyhood days, and of their lives as soldiers, and though Moray had more often listened than he’d talked, he still had done his part. But in the end, as he’d already known, it was no use.

By nightfall there was no one left but him to face the darkness, and the screams that marked the killing and the plunder of the wounded by the soldiers yet alive. He lay as dead and felt the cold creep through him as he fought a battle with delirium. At times he thought he must be truly dead, and then he’d draw a deeper breath so that the pain would tell him otherwise. And once he closed his eyes and for that moment he was back again at Slains, beside Sophia, lying warm against her body in the bed. It was so real he felt her breathing, and he tried to hold her closer but the darkness pulled him back again, and shivering he woke.

Someone was coming.

He could hear the stealthy movement of their legs against the underbrush, and instantly he closed his eyes and made his breaths as shallow as he could. The steps went past him. Stopped. Returned.

And then somebody kneeled and placed a hand against his throat.

A voice called out, ‘This man is yet alive!’

A voice he recognized, and with it came a light so bright that Moray knew he must be dead. His eyes came open cautiously. The woods were still in darkness, but a torch was being held nearby, and by its light he clearly saw the man who bent above him, dark eyes clouded with concern.

The young king’s face was pale and weary, and his own arm had been bandaged, but the pain that showed upon his features was not for himself. He leaned in closer.

‘Colonel Moray, can you hear me?’

It was just a dream, thought Moray, so he answered, ‘Aye, Your Majesty.’

And smiling went to sleep.

He was aware of being carried, and a softer brightness and the taste of something bitter, and of gentle hands that cleaned his wounds and not-so-gentle hands that bound them, while he floated with the pain.

He woke to voices.

Or at least, he thought he woke, though when he heard the voices he was not so certain, for the first belonged to Colonel Graeme, who should not have been there. ‘Aye, I’ll see to it, Your Majesty.’

And the king, who could not possibly have been there, said, ‘My mother will not soon forgive me if he were to die.’

‘He will not die. He’s half a Graeme, and we’re not such easy men to kill.’ A pause, and then, ‘Your arm does bleed.’

‘The devil take my arm!’ There was a sound of movement, and when next the young king spoke his voice was changed, as though he’d turned away. ‘Have not you seen the field? The woods? What is my arm compared to that? Compared to what this man has suffered for my family?’

Very quietly the colonel said, ‘He’d suffer it again, and more, Your Majesty.’

‘I will not have it. Not from him, nor anyone. No crown is worth what I have witnessed here at Malplaquet. What is a crown?’ His words were harsh. ‘A bit of metal set with stone, and by what right should I command a man to give his life that I may wear it?’

‘By the right God gave ye when he made ye king.’ The colonel said that calmly, stating fact. ‘There’s not a true Scot standing would not do whatever ye did ask, and for no other reason than ye are our king, and we do love ye for it. And ’tis not ourselves alone. I have been told your health was drunk afore the battle in the English camps as well, and they did take pride in your conduct on the battlefield the same as we did. Ye did lead the charge a dozen times upon that field, and I can promise ye, Your Majesty, there’s none among your men would say ye had not earned the right to wear that crown.’

There was silence for a moment. Then more movement, as though both men had come closer to the bed.

The king remarked, ‘If he does live, he will not fight again.’

‘He’ll find another way to serve ye.’

Moray heard no more than that, for he was sliding back into the darkness. When he surfaced next the pain within his chest was agony. He had to clench his teeth to keep from crying out.

‘There, lad,’ said Colonel Graeme, close beside him. Moray felt a cup pressed to his lips. He drank. The brandy burned, but helped to take his focus from the effort of his breathing. He lay back again, and looked around the room. He did not know where they had taken him—it looked to be a private house or cottage, plainly furnished, with bare walls and floors and curtains of white lace that let the daylight through to touch the wooden chair where Colonel Graeme had been sitting with his feet propped on the bed—the dent still showed upon the blankets. Moray’s gaze, disoriented, fell upon the red coat that was hanging from that chair, and he inhaled enough air to speak. ‘Not mine.’

‘What’s that?’ His uncle looked round, saw the coat, and turned back with a soothing nod. ‘Oh aye, I ken it’s not yours, lad. We took it off the soldier lying next to ye and used it as a blanket when we brought ye from the woods. Ye felt like ice, and that poor laddie had no further need of it.’

He knew that coat. Knew every button on it, he had looked at it so long. ‘He was’—he drew in breath to force the words—‘a Scot. McClelland.’

‘Fighting for the wrong side, from his coat. That’s Royal Irish.’ Colonel Graeme raised the brandy cup again, his wise eyes knowing. ‘Fell to talking, did ye? Well, ’tis sometimes what does happen, though I’m fair surprised he had the wit to talk. Ye saw his legs?’ And glancing down, he read the answer in his nephew’s eyes. ‘What did ye speak of ?’

‘Life. His life. He came from’—Christ, it hurt to talk—‘Kirkcudbright.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Colonel Graeme’s tone held interest as he glanced again at Moray’s face. ‘When I was last at Slains, I met a lass who came from near Kirkcudbright. Bonny lassie, so she was. Ye might have met her?’

Only Moray’s eyes moved, locking silently upon his uncle’s face as Colonel Graeme said, ‘I took it on myself to teach her chess, while I was there. She did fair well at it, her only weakness being she did seek to guard her soldiers in the same way she did guard her king, and did not like to see them taken.’ He was smiling faintly at the memory as he offered up the brandy one more time and said, ‘Had I a lass like that, the very thought of her would make me fight to stay among the living.’

Moray meant to make reply, but he was drifting with the pain again and though he did not want to close his eyes he could not help it.

When he opened them the next time he at first thought he was dreaming that first day again, for there were both his uncle and the king in conversation by the window, with their backs toward the bed.

‘Aye, he is much better now, Your Majesty,’ said Colonel Graeme with a nod. ‘I do believe we’ve brought him through the worst of it.’

The king was glad to hear it, and he said so. ‘I do leave for Saint-Germain within the hour, and it will please me to have some good news to carry to my mother.’

Moray’s voice was weaker than he wanted it, but when he called across to them they heard it, all the same. ‘Your Majesty.’

The young king turned, and Moray saw it really was the king. ‘Well, Colonel Moray,’ he said, crossing to the bed. ‘Are you in need of something?’

Speech still hurt him, but he braved it. ‘Nothing but my sword.’

‘You will not need that yet awhile.’

And Colonel Graeme came behind to put the point more bluntly. ‘Lad, your leg was badly wounded and it never will come right again. Ye’ll no more be a soldier.’

And he knew it. Though his mind might yet resist the truth, his body could not hide it. ‘There are other ways to serve.’ He winced as, rolling slightly to his side, he looked beyond his uncle to the king. ‘I’ve not yet lost my eyes and ears, and both are yours if ye see fit to send me back where I can use them.’