Sophia's Secret (55 page)

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 neighbours, 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.

The village of Malplaquet 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 sabre-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 colours 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 burnt 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 bloodsoaked 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 knelt and placed a hand against his throat.

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

A voice he recognised, 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 leant 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 burnt, 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.’