Clandara (19 page)

Within the day it was reported that Sir John Cope and his men had landed at Dunbar, too late to rescue Edinburgh, but effectively barring the path to the south to the Prince's army.

When he was summoned to join the main force marching to the attack, James Macdonald sent the Prince a note reminding him of his father's promise. “The forefront of the battle is my place. Otherwise I cannot come into your Presence and I would consider myself better dead in battle than alive and in your continued disfavour.” When the note was given to him Charles read it and smiled. He looked up at Lord George Murray, his constant companion and the one man in the world whose pessimistic temperament suited him the least.

“James Macdonald of Dundrenan wants to make amends for that quarrel,” he said. “I like the man's spirit; I wish we had more like him.”

“I'm afraid I disagree.” The older man prefaced so many of his remarks with those words that the Prince often felt tempted to say them for him. “James Macdonald is a man of notoriously bad temper and aggressive spirit; he is not particular about the Cause, Highness, only about the chance to fight his fellow men. What does he ask in that letter, then?”

“The right to go in the front of the attack on Cope,” the Prince answered. His voice was a little curt. He was not used to being lectured and his opinions questioned. Lord George was more like a pedantic tutor than the commander of an army.

“In that case I should grant his wish,” Lord George said.

“I have every intention,” Charles remarked, “of doing so, and welcoming him back into my councils when he returns alive. Which he will, I know. Men like that bear charmed lives. I think I'll sleep now. In a day or so we must face our first battle with the English. I can hardly wait for it!”

Lord George bowed without answering and backed out. He was old and he had been in arms against the English often enough to have a hearty respect for them. He might hate them, but there were men among his own compatriots who were equally odious to him. The young Duke of Perth and the Prince's secretary, Murray of Broughton, were two who offended him constantly by their rashness and their lack of respect for his superior intelligence and past experience in fighting for the Prince's father.

All these young men were the same; he could see more in common between the Prince and that ruffianly Macdonald and his dreadful sons, more like pirates than gentlemen, than himself, child of a duke, a man of sense and property and reputation. More and more he had to resist the conclusion that he had been mad to engage himself in the business at all. If they suffered a quick defeat at the hands of Cope they might all be lucky to disband and escape.

Two nights later on the evening of the 20th the two armies faced each other on Gladsmuir, midway between the villages of Prestonpans and Cockenzie. Sir John Cope had the advantage, for his front was protected by a treacherous bog. The position justified all Lord George's forebodings, and in despair at the enthusiasm of the Prince and his captains for the coming battle, the Joint Commander went to his tent to sleep. The Prince had insisted on lying down wrapped in his plaid like the Highlanders in the middle of a field of cut pease, happy, as he said to the protests of Lord George and others, to share the discomforts with his men as he hoped to share the dangers.

But at a little after twelve, Lord George was roused by his servant.

“Wake up, my lord. There's a man says he must see you urgently!”

The Joint Commander sat up irritably, rubbing his tired eyes.

“Send him away! Whatever it is, let him go to someone else with it or wait till morning.”

“It had better not,” the servant whispered. “'Tis a Mr. Anderson; he says he's brother to the lassie that gave the Prince a drink on the road this afternoon.”

“Ach, what of it? Go away, man, and tell him to do the same!”

Lord George remembered the little scene, so often duplicated all over the country wherever the Prince appeared. A blushing girl had offered him a glass of wine and been given a kiss on the cheek and a piece of cloth from his dirk-scabbard as a souvenir. It was not a practice that recommended itself to Lord George's sense of how Royalty should behave. It was too familiar and even … vulgar – he hesitated and then chose the word deliberately. Vulgar and foreign. Perhaps the Polish Princess who had borne him was to blame …

“My lord, this Mr. Anderson says he knows a safe way over the bog!”

Lord George was out of bed in a moment. He gave the man a push and told him to bring the gentleman in, without another moment's delay. Five minutes later, Mr. Anderson was brought into the presence of the Prince's commander and was a little embarrassed to see him without wig or coat, sitting in his shirt and breeches.

“I understand you have some information for us,” Lord George said.

Mr. Anderson was a small man with sandy hair and a freckled complexion like a chicken. “I heard from my sister about the Prince,” he said. “She showed me the red piece from his own dirk-sheath. She spoke of him so well I thought I'd best come and help you for the battle tomorrow. I shoot snipe in these parts, sir, and I've gone over that bog many a time without wetting my feet. If it'll be of use, I can show you the path.”

“Mr. Anderson,” Lord George held out his hand and shook the little man's so hard that he winced. “All I ask is that you wait here while I wake the Prince. Wait here, there's a good fellow. My servant will give you anything you need.”

“A wee glass of whisky if that's not too much to ask,” Mr. Anderson said modestly. “I'll be needing it if we're going over the bog; it's a devilish cold, damp place at night.”

At three o'clock in the morning the army began to move out over the quagmire, and Mr. Anderson found himself at the head with James Macdonald of Dundrenan. The path was only wide enough for three men to walk abreast and their progress was slow, for they travelled as silently as possible. James walked by the side of their guide, and after the first half an hour, when they were safely on the firm ground and within sight of the lights of Cope's camp, he said suddenly, “Why did you wait so long to give this information?”

“I wasn't sure whether or not to interfere,” Mr. Anderson said. They were standing on the edge of the bog and a long file of men, carrying their weapons and their brogues, crept past them out of the sodden ground and began dispersing into groups. A thousand men had crossed already and there was another hour to go before the dawn.

“My sister decided me,” he continued. “She's aye mad for the Prince you see, talking of nothing else but how bonny he was and how he kissed her.” The little man smiled up into the fierce dark face above his. “I thought to myself, ‘If he's as bonny as that to a poor, silly lassie like my sister, he'd make a bonny King of Scotland instead of the German King in London.' That's why I came, sir.”

“Ah, the good guide, sent providentially to lead us!” Hugh Macdonald loomed up at them out of the darkness; he carried his sword wrapped in his plaid to prevent it clanking against his legs as he picked his way through the mud. He paused beside his brother to salute the small man. “Thank God for you, sir. We could no more have crossed through that than flown over it. One of our men strayed off the path a foot or two and it took three of us to pull him out again. All our men are through now.” He turned to James. “We'd better begin re-forming before the light grows and they see us.”

“If you'll excuse us, sir.” James bowed to Mr. Anderson. “Call up your men, Hugh, but do it from mouth to mouth, passing the word on. No one is to make a sound. Good night, sir.” He shook Mr. Anderson's hand and disappeared into the darkness.

By six o'clock, the English pickets on duty were sure that something had gone wrong; they could hear the rattle and thud of men moving very close to them, but they could see nothing, for a thick white mist rose up from the bog as the sun began to warm it, obscuring everything in a phantom fog. It was most unnerving for the British troops, who had been sick from the sea journey after their forced march to Aberdeen, and were tired and hungry as well. Scotland held no attractions for any of them. Most were veterans of the French campaign and they said among themselves that they preferred to stand in the field at Dettingen or Fontenoy and face a force of civilized troops like themselves than garrison a country like Scotland and come to blows with a people who were half mad with superstition and wholly mad in their language, customs and means of making war. And behind the fortuitous haar of white, Prince Charles's army assembled in line of battle, with the regiment of Macdonalds in the forefront of the attack, James and Hugh standing before their men, their broadswords in their right hands, their round, brass-studded bucklers fastened securely to their left arms, the deadly dirk in their hands.

When the haar lifted they were going to charge straight into the enemy.

“It's thinning,” James said. “Look, I can see the outline of that hummock over there and it's fifteen paces or more distant.”

“In less than half an hour we'll be looking down their throats,” Hugh answered. “I saw the Prince a moment ago. He sent a message to you. ‘Tell him a brave man is never in my disfavour; I shall expect him to wait on me after the victory.'”

“Father will be satisfied,” James said. “I'll bring him some little token of the battle as a peace offering.”

“An Englishman's head would be appropriate,” Hugh laughed softly. “Choose something above the rank of major if you can find one that hasn't run away. Do you know the definition of an English officer? One who remains at the rear so as to beat back his men as they retreat!”

“Keep your judgment until after we've fought them,” James said. “I doubt their cowardice. You wouldn't get our people to stand in little lines firing and reloading like so many clockwork toys while their enemies rushed on them. Wait till later. And don't make a fool of yourself and be killed.”

Hugh looked sideways at him and his grin faded.

“That's what I was going to say to you. Kill, my dear brother, and do it until you're red to the elbows, but don't throw yourself on death. Remember Janet, waiting patiently for you in Edinburgh. She's worth coming back to; I only wish I had found myself some little consolation,” and he sighed mockingly.

“Think of Fiona Mackintosh,” James snapped back at him.

“Ah, that I will. She's promised to come to Edinburgh to see me if we go back before moving down on England. Alas, if I were killed today, she'd lose me and I'd lose her fortune!”

“A true calamity,” James agreed. He glanced over his shoulder. The Red Murdoch had taken his dead servant Donal's place; now he followed James into battle and rode after him when he went out, and he was just behind him on his right.

“Pass the word,” James said. “The haar is lifting fast. Those men who have muskets, prime and load them and be ready to fire. After the volley, strip off and charge!”

The mist was vanishing like smoke, thinning so quickly before their eyes that the forward ranks of the enemy were visible and the sound of their shouts of alarm and the officers barking commands carried back through the mist to the Prince and his escort of picked cavalry, the Fitzjames Lifeguards.

The battle opened with a round of shot from the English artillery which fell on the right wing among Lochiel's Camerons, killing and injuring so few that his men greeted it with a derisive cheer. The first Highland line began to run forward, and at a distance of twenty paces James turned and halted, yelling to his men to fire. There was a loud discharge of muskets and many of the English soldiers in their red coats fell backwards, bowled over like rabbits, and the second and most terrible sound of battle was heard for the first time, the dreadful howling of the wounded, and it was followed by a sound unknown to the veterans of many foreign wars, the terrifying war-cry of the clans that rose and echoed over the moor from over two thousand throats. And then the Macdonalds were upon them. The clansmen had stripped off their plaids and they ran down on them almost naked, the buckler held out in defence on the left arm, the heavy broadsword whirling over their heads and that unearthly yell of fighting spirit in their throats.

James leaped over the body of an English soldier who had fallen with his head opened by that first fusillade of musket-fire, and he slashed at faces and redcoats everywhere, thrusting the spike of his buckler against their bodies as they pressed upon him, cutting and slashing and shouting encouragement to his men. He saw Murdoch for a moment, wielding a Lochaber axe, yelling with joy as he cleaved a head or an arm at a single stroke. The noise of firing and men screaming was like the sound of a great storm. James lived an eternity within those first few minutes. His arm had a life of its own; his strength seemed to grow in him and the redness before his eyes was sometimes the bodies of the enemy or the fighting madness which possessed him. He came suddenly upon a young Englishman, wearing the crimson coat, blue facings and gold epaulettes of an officer. And he sprang upon him, his sword raised high to bring it down upon his shoulder at the point where arm and trunk were joined. In those few seconds he saw fear in that other human face and the mouth open in a soundless yell, and then it changed and the yell was a curse of defiance. He saw then that the arm was already hanging useless from another wound. As his sword came down, shearing through cloth and flesh and bone, the wounded man fired a pistol point-blank at his chest. For a moment he faltered, there was a searing pain in his side and then he drew back the sword and aiming it at the man's body he threw his weight upon it. Murdoch found him, leaning on his weapon, underneath him a dead officer, armless and skewered into the ground for a depth of six inches. It was all over. Everywhere James looked through the remnants of mist, mutilated and dead men were lying over the moor; the axes and scythe-poles had done terrible damage. Almost all the wounds were hacked-off limbs or heads, and the place was full of clansmen standing up, panting with excitement and exhaustion while the dead and wounded Englishmen lay at their feet. The rest had fled. Prince Charles had won his first battle at Prestonpans in exactly seven minutes.