Dragonfly in Amber

  He wasn’t dead, but wasn’t doing well, either. His hands were chilly, and his breathing had a wheezing, whining note to it.

  “Dougal,” he whispered.

  “I’m here, Rupert. Be still, man, you’ll be all right soon.” The MacKenzie chieftain quickly pulled off his own plaid and folded it into a pillow, which he thrust beneath Rupert’s head and shoulders. Raised a bit, his breathing seemed easier, but a touch below his beard showed me wet blotches on his shirt. He still had some strength; he reached out a hand and grasped Dougal’s arm.

  “If…they’ll find us anyway…give me a light,” he said, gasping. “I’d see your face once more, Dougal.”

  Close as I was to Dougal, I felt the shock run through him at these words and their implication. His head turned sharply toward me, but of course he couldn’t see my face. He muttered an order over his shoulder, and after a bit of shuffling and murmuring, someone cut loose a handful of the thatch, which was twisted into a torch and lit with a spark from a flint. It burned fast, but gave enough light for me to examine Rupert while the men worked at chiseling loose a long splinter of wood from the poles of the roof, to serve as a less temporary torch.

  He was white as a fish belly, hair matted with sweat, and a faint smear of blood still showed on the flesh of his full lower lip. Dark spots showed on the glossy black beard, but he smiled faintly at me as I bent over him to check his pulse again. Lighter, and very fast, missing beats now and then. I smoothed the hair back from his face, and he touched my hand in thanks.

  I felt Dougal’s hand on my elbow, and sat back on my heels, turning to face him. I had faced him once like this before, over the body of a man mortally wounded by a boar. He had asked me then, “Can he live?” and I saw the memory of that day cross his face. The same question stood in his eyes again, but this time in eyes glazed with fear of my answer. Rupert was his closest friend, the kinsman who rode and who fought on his right-hand side, as Ian did for Jamie.

  This time I didn’t answer; Rupert did it for me.

  “Dougal,” he said, and smiled as his friend bent anxiously over him. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed as deeply as he could, gathering strength for the moment.

  “Dougal,” he said again, opening his eyes. “Ye’ll no grieve for me, man.”

  Dougal’s face twitched in the torchlight. I could see the denial of death come to his lips, but he bit it back and forced it aside.

  “I’m your chief, man,” he said, with a quivering half-smile. “Ye’ll not order me; I shall grieve ye and I like.” He clasped Rupert’s hand, where it lay across his chest, and held it tightly.

  There was a faint, wheezing chuckle from Rupert, and another coughing spell.

  “Weel, grieve for me and ye will, Dougal,” he said, when he’d finished. “And I’m glad for it. But ye canna grieve ’til I be deid, can ye? I would die by your hand, mo caraidh, not in the hands of the strangers.”

  Dougal jerked, and Jamie and I exchanged appalled glances behind his back.

  “Rupert…” Dougal began helplessly, but Rupert interrupted him, clasping his hand and shaking it gently.

  “You are my chief, man, and it’s your duty,” he whispered. “Come now. Do it now. This dying hurts me, Dougal, and I would have it over.” His eyes moved restlessly, lighting on me.

  “Will ye hold my hand while I go, lass?” he asked. “I’d like it so.”

  There seemed nothing else to do. Moving slowly, feeling that this was all a dream, I took the broad, black-haired hand in both of mine, pressing it as though I might force my own warmth into the cooling flesh.

  With a grunt, Rupert heaved himself slightly to one side and glanced up at Jamie, who sat by his head.

  “She should ha’ married me, lad, when she had the choice,” he wheezed. “You’re a poor weed, but do your best.” One eye squeezed shut in a massive wink. “Gi’e her a good one for me, lad.”

  The black eyes swiveled back to me, and a final grin spread across his face.

  “Goodbye, bonnie lassie,” he said softly.

  Dougal’s dirk took him under the breastbone, hard and straight. The burly body convulsed, turning to the side with an coughing explosion of air and blood, but the brief sound of agony came from Dougal.

  The MacKenzie chieftain stayed frozen for a moment, eyes shut, hands clenched on the hilt of the dirk. Then Jamie rose, took him by the shoulders, and turned him away, murmuring something in Gaelic. Jamie glanced at me, and I nodded and held out my arms. He turned Dougal gently toward me, and I gathered him to me as we both crouched on the floor, holding him while he wept.

  Jamie’s own face was streaked with tears, and I could hear the brief sighs and sobbing breaths of the other men. I supposed it was better they wept for Rupert than for themselves. If the English did come for us here, all of us stood to be hanged for treason. It was easier to mourn for Rupert, who was safely gone, sped on his way by the hand of a friend.

  * * *

  They did not come anytime in the long winter night. We huddled together against one wall, under plaids and cloaks, waiting. I dozed fitfully, leaning against Jamie’s shoulder, with Dougal hunched and silent on my other side. I thought that neither of them slept, but kept watch through the night over Rupert’s corpse, quiet under his own draped plaid across the church, on the other side of the abyss that separates the dead from the living.

  We spoke little, but I knew what they were thinking. They were wondering, as I was, whether the English troops had left, regrouping with the main army at Callendar House below, or whether they still watched outside, waiting for the dawn before making a move, lest anyone in the tiny church escape under cover of darkness.

  The matter was settled with the coming of first light.

  “Ho, the church! Come out and give yourselves up!” The call came from the slope below, in a strong English voice.

  There was a stir among the men in the church, and the horse, who had been dozing in his corner, snapped his head up with a startled snort at the movement nearby. Jamie and Dougal exchanged a glance, then, as though they had planned it together, rose and stood, shoulder to shoulder, before the closed door. A jerk of Jamie’s head sent me to the rear of the church, back to my shelter behind the altar.

  Another shout from the outside was met with silence. Jamie drew the snaphance pistol from his belt and checked the loading of it, casually, as though there were all the time in the world. He sank to one knee and braced the pistol, pointing it at the door at the level of a man’s head.

  Geordie and Willie guarded the window to the rear, swords and pistols to the ready. But it was likely from the front that an attack would come; the hill behind the church sloped steeply up, with barely room between the slope and the wall of the church for one man to squeeze past.

  I heard the squelching of footsteps, approaching the door through the mud, and the faint clanking of sidearms. The sounds stopped at a distance, and a voice came again, closer and louder.

  “In the name of His Majesty King George, come out and surrender! We know you are there!”

  Jamie fired. The report inside the tiny church was deafening. It must have been sufficiently impressive from outside as well; I could hear the hasty sounds of slipping retreat, accompanied by muffled curses. There was a small hole in the door, made by the pistol ball; Dougal sidled up to it and peered out.

  “Damn,” he said under his breath. “There’s a lot of them.”

  Jamie cast a glance at me, then set his lips and turned his attention to reloading his pistol. Clearly, the Scots had no intention of surrendering. Just as clearly, the English had no desire to storm the church, given the easily defended entrances. They couldn’t mean to starve us out? Surely the Highland army would be sending out men to search for the wounded of the battle from the night before. If they arrived before the English had opportunity to bring a cannon to bear on the church, we might be saved.

  Unfortunately, there was a thinker outside. The sound of footsteps came once more, and then
a measured English voice, full of authority.

  “You have one minute to come out and give yourselves up,” it said, “or we fire the thatch.”

  I glanced upward in complete horror. The walls of the church were stone, but the thatch would burn in short order, even soaked with rain and sleet, and once well caught, would send flames and smoking embers raining down to engulf us. I remembered the awful speed with which the torch of twisted reed had burned the night before; the charred remnant lay on the floor near Rupert’s shrouded corpse, a grisly token in the gray dawn light.

  “No!” I screamed. “Bloody bastards! This is a church! Have you never heard of sanctuary?”

  “Who is that?” came the sharp voice from outside. “Is that an English-woman in there?!”

  “Yes!” shouted Dougal, springing to the door. He cracked it ajar and bellowed out at the English soldiers on the hillside below. “Yes! We hold an English lady captive! Fire the thatch, and she dies with us!”

  There was an outbreak of voices at the bottom of the hill, and a sudden shifting among the men in the church. Jamie whirled on Dougal with a scowl, saying, “What…!”

  “It’s the only chance!” Dougal hissed back. “Let them take her, in return for our freedom. They’ll not harm her if they think she’s our hostage, and we’ll get her back later, once we’re free!”

  I came out of my hiding space and went to Jamie, gripping his sleeve.

  “Do it!” I said urgently. “Dougal is right, it’s the only chance!”

  He looked down at me helplessly, rage and fear mingled on his face. And under it all, a trace of humor at the underlying irony of the situation.

  “I am a sassenach, after all,” I said, seeing it.

  He touched my face briefly with a rueful smile.

  “Aye, mo duinne. But you’re my sassenach.” He turned to Dougal, squaring his shoulders. He drew in a deep breath, and nodded.

  “All right. Tell them we took her”—he thought quickly, rubbing one hand through his hair—“from Falkirk road, late yesterday.”

  Dougal nodded, and without waiting for more, slipped out of the church door, a white handkerchief held high overhead in signal of truce.

  Jamie turned to me, frowning, glancing at the church door, where the sounds of English voices were still audible, though we couldn’t make out words as they talked.

  “I don’t know what you’re to tell them, Claire; perhaps ye’d better pretend to be so shocked that ye canna speak of it. It’s maybe better than telling a tale; for if they should realize who you are—” He stopped suddenly and rubbed his hand hard over his face.

  If they realized who I was, it would be London, and the Tower—followed quite possibly by swift execution. But while the broadsheets had made much of “the Stuart Witch,” no one, so far as I knew, had realized or published the fact that the witch was English.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, realizing just what a silly remark this was, but unable to come up with anything better. I laid a hand on his sleeve, feeling the swift pulse that beat in his wrist. “You’ll get me back before they have a chance to realize anything. Do you think they’ll take me to Callendar House?”

  He nodded, back in control. “Aye, I think so. If ye can, try to be alone near a window, just after nightfall. I’ll come for ye then.”

  There was time for no more. Dougal slipped back through the door, closing it carefully behind him.

  “Done,” he said, looking from me to Jamie. “We give them the woman, and we’ll be allowed to leave unmolested. No pursuit. We keep the horse. We’ll need it, for Rupert, ye see,” he said to me, half-apologetically.

  “It’s all right,” I told him. I looked at the door, with its small dark spot where the bullet had passed, the same size as the hole in Rupert’s side. My mouth was dry and I swallowed hard. I was a cuckoo’s egg, about to be laid in the wrong nest. The three of us hesitated before the door, all reluctant to take the final step.

  “I’d b-better go,” I said, trying hard to control my shaking voice and limbs. “They’ll wonder what’s keeping us.”

  Jamie closed his eyes for a moment, nodded, then stepped toward me.

  “I think you’d better swoon, Sassenach,” he said. “It will be easier that way, maybe.” He stooped, picked me up in his arms, and carried me through the door that Dougal held open.

  His heart pounded beneath my ear, and I could feel the trembling in his arms as he carried me. After the stuffiness of the church, with its smells of sweat, blood, black powder and horse manure, the cold fresh air of early morning took my breath away, and I huddled against him, shivering. His hands tightened under my knees and shoulders, hard as a promise; he would never let me go.

  “God,” he said once, under his breath, and then we had reached them. Sharp questions, mumbled answers, the reluctant loosening of his grip as he laid me on the ground, and then the swish of his feet, going away through wet grass. I was alone, in the hands of the strangers.

  44

  IN WHICH QUITE A LOT OF THINGS GANG AGLEY

  I hunched closer to the fire, holding out my hands to thaw. They were grimy from holding the reins all day, and I wondered briefly whether it was worthwhile walking the distance to the stream to wash them. Maintaining modern standards of hygiene in the absence of all forms of plumbing sometimes seemed a good deal more trouble than it was worth. No bloody wonder if people got ill and died frequently, I thought sourly. They died of simple filth and ignorance more than anything.

  The thought of dying in filth was sufficient to get me to my feet, tired as I was. The tiny streamlet that passed by the campsite was boggy near the edges, and my shoes sank deep into the marshy growth. Having traded dirty hands for wet feet, I slogged back to the fire, to find Corporal Rowbotham waiting for me with a bowl of what he said was stew.

  “The Captain’s compliments, Mum,” he said, actually tugging his forelock as he handed me the bowl, “and he says to tell yer as we’ll be in Tavistock tomorrow. There’s an inn there.” He hesitated, his round, homely, middle-aged face concerned, then added, “The Captain’s apologies for the lack of accommodation, Mum, but we’ve fixed a tent for yer for tonight. ’S not much, but mebbe’ll keep the rain off yer.”

  “Thank the Captain for me, Corporal,” I said, as graciously as I could manage. “And thank you, too,” I added, with more warmth. I was entirely aware that Captain Mainwaring considered me a burdensome nuisance, and would have taken no thought at all for my night’s shelter. The tent—a spare length of canvas draped carefully over a tree limb and pegged at both sides—was undoubtedly the sole idea of Corporal Rowbotham.

  The Corporal went away and I sat by myself, slowly eating scorched potatoes and stringy beef. I’d found a late patch of charlock near the stream, leaves wilting and brown around the edges, and had brought back a handful in my pocket, along with a few juniper berries picked during a stop earlier in the day. The mustard leaves were old and very bitter, but I managed to get them down by wodging them between bites of potato. I finished the meal with the juniper berries, biting each one briefly to avoid choking and then swallowing the tough, flattened berry, seed and all. The oily burst of flavor sent fumes up the back of my throat that made my eyes water, but they did cleanse my tongue of the taste of grease and scorch, and would, with the charlock leaves, maybe be sufficient to ward off scurvy.

  I had had a large store of dried fiddleheads, rose hips, dried apples and dill seeds in the larger of my two medicine chests, carefully collected as a defense against nutritional deficiency during the long winter months. I hoped Jamie was eating them.

  I put my head down on my knees; I didn’t think anyone was looking at me, but I didn’t want my face to show when I thought of Jamie.

  I had stayed in my pretended swoon on Falkirk Hill as long as I could, but was roused before too long by a British dragoon trying to force brandy from a pocket flask down my throat. Unsure quite what to do with me, my “rescuers” had taken me to Callendar House and turned me over to
General Hawley’s staff.

  So far, all had gone according to plan. Within the hour, though, things had gone rather seriously awry. From sitting in an anteroom and listening to everything that was said around me, I soon learned that what I had thought was a major battle during the night had in fact been no more than a small skirmish between the MacKenzies and a detachment of English troops on their way to join the main body of the army. Said army was even now assembling itself to meet the expected Highland charge on Falkirk Hill; the battle I thought I had lived through had not, in fact, happened yet!

  General Hawley himself was overseeing this process, and as no one seemed to have any idea what ought to be done with me, I was consigned to the custody of a young private, along with a letter describing the circumstances of my rescue, and dispatched to a Colonel Campbell’s temporary headquarters at Kerse. The young private, a stocky specimen named Dobbs, was distressingly zealous in his urge to perform his duty, and despite several tries along the way, I had been unable to get away from him.

  We had arrived in Kerse, only to find that Colonel Campbell was not there, but had been summoned to Livingston.