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.