The old man rose slowly from the hay, crippled body moving with painful deliberation. He set one gnarled hand on Jamie’s shoulder; the arthritic fingers could not close, but the hand rested there, a comforting blunt weight.
“They didna take Donas,” he said quietly. “They kept him – for Prince Tcharlach to ride, on his triumphal return to Edinburgh. O’Sullivan said it wouldna be… fitting… for His Highness to walk.”
Jamie covered his face in his hands and stood shaking against the boards of the empty stall.
“I am a fool,” he said at last, gasping to recover his breath. “Oh, God, I am a fool.” He dropped his hands, showing his face, tears streaking through the grime of travel. He dashed the back of his hand across his cheek, but the moisture continued to overflow from his eyes, as though it were a process quite out of his control.
“The cause is lost, my men are being taken to slaughter, there are dead men rotting in the wood… and I am weeping for a horse! Oh, God,” he whispered, shaking his head. “I am a fool.”
Old Alec heaved a sigh, and his hand slid heavily down Jamie’s arm.
“It’s as well that ye still can, lad,” he said. “I’m past it, myself.”
The old man folded one leg awkwardly at the knee and eased himself down once more. Jamie stood for a moment, looking down at Old Alec. The tears still streamed unchecked down his face, but it was like rain washing over a sheet of polished granite. Then he took my elbow, and turned away without a word.
I looked back at Alec when we reached the stable door. He sat quite still, a dark, hunched shape shawled in his plaid, the one blue eye unseeing as the other.
Men sprawled through the house, worn to exhaustion, seeking oblivion from gnawing hunger and the knowledge of certain and imminent disaster. There were no women here; those chiefs whose womenfolk had accompanied them had sent the ladies safely away – the coming doom cast a long shadow.
Jamie left me with a murmured word outside the door that led to the Prince’s temporary quarters. My presence would help nothing. I walked softly through the house, murmurous with the heavy breathing of sleeping men, the air thick with the dullness of despair.
At the top of the house, I found a small lumber-room. Crowded with junk and discarded furniture, it was otherwise unoccupied. I crept into this warren of oddities, feeling much like a small rodent, seeking refuge from a world in which huge and mysterious forces were let loose to destruction.
There was one small window, filled with the misty gray morning. I rubbed dirt away from one pane with the corner of my cloak, but there was nothing to be seen but the encompassing mist. I leaned my forehead against the cold glass. Somewhere out there was Culloden Field, but I saw nothing but the dim silhouette of my own reflection.
News of the gruesome and mysterious death of the Duke of Sandringham had reached Prince Charles, I knew; we had heard of it from almost everyone we spoke to as we passed to the north and it became safe for us to show ourselves again. What exactly had we done? I wondered. Had we doomed the Jacobite cause for good and all in that one night’s adventure, or had we inadvertently saved Charles Stuart from an English trap? I drew a squeaking finger in a line down the misty glass, chalking up one more thing I would never find out.
It seemed a very long time before I heard a step on the uncarpeted boards of the stair outside my refuge. I came to the door to find Jamie coming onto the landing. One look at his face was enough.
“Alec was right,” he said, without preliminaries. The bones of his face were stark beneath the skin, made prominent by hunger, sharpened by anger. “The troops are moving to Culloden – as they can. They havena slept or eaten in two days, there is no ordnance for the cannon – but they are going.” The anger erupted suddenly and he slammed his fist down on a rickety table. A cascade of small brass dishes from the pile of household rubble woke the echoes of the attic with an ungodly clatter.
With an impatient gesture, he snatched the dirk from his belt and jabbed it violently into the table, where it stood, quivering with the force of the blow.
“The country folk say that if ye see blood on your dirk, it means death.” He drew in his breath with a hiss, fist clenched on the table. “Well, I have seen it! So have they all. They know – Kilmarnock, Lochiel, and the rest. And no bit of good does the seeing of it do!”
He bent his head, hands braced on the table, staring at the dirk. He seemed much too large for the confines of the room, an angry smoldering presence that might break suddenly into flame. Instead, he flung up his hands, and threw himself onto a decrepit settle, where he sat, head buried in his hands.
“Jamie,” I said, and swallowed. I could barely speak the next words, but they had to be said. I had known what news he would bring, and I had thought of what might still be done. “Jamie. There’s only one thing left – only the one possibility.”
His head was bent, forehead resting on his knuckles. He shook his head, not looking at me.
“There is no way,” he said. “He’s bent on it. Murray has tried to turn him, so has Lochiel. Balmerino. Me. But the men are standing on the plain this hour. Cumberland has set out for Drumossie. There is no way.”
The healing arts are powerful ones, and any physician versed in the use of substances that heal knows also the power of those that harm. I had given Colum the cyanide he had not had time to use, and taken back the deadly vial from the table by the bed where his body lay. It was in my box now, the crudely distilled crystals a dull brownish-white, deceptively harmless in appearance.
My mouth was so dry that I couldn’t speak at once. There was a little wine left in my flask; I drank it, the acid taste like bile on my tongue.
“There is one way,” I said. “Only one.”
Jamie’s head stayed sunk in his hands. It had been a long ride, and the shock of Alec’s news had added depression to his tiredness. We had detoured to find his men, or most of them, a miserable, ragged crew, indistinguishable from the skeletal Frasers of Lovat who surrounded them. The interview with Charles was far beyond the last straw.
“Aye?” he said.
I hesitated, but had to speak. The possibility had to be mentioned; whether he – or I – could bring ourselves to it or not.
“It’s Charles Stuart,” I said, at last. “It’s him – everything. The battle, the war – everything depends on him, do you see?”
“Aye?” Jamie was looking up at me now, bloodshot eyes quizzical.
“If he were dead…” I whispered at last.
Jamie’s eyes closed, and the last vestiges of blood drained from his face.
“If he were to die… now. Today. Or tonight. Jamie, without Charles, there’s nothing to fight for. No one to order the men to Culloden. There wouldn’t be a battle.”
The long muscles of his throat rippled briefly as he swallowed. He opened his eyes and stared at me, appalled.
“Christ,” he whispered. “Christ, ye canna mean it.”
My hand closed on the smoky, gold-mounted crystal around my neck.
They had called me to attend the Prince, before Falkirk. O’Sullivan, Tullibardine, and the others. His Highness was ill – an indisposition, they said. I had seen Charles, made him bare his breast and arms, examined his mouth and the whites of his eyes.
It was scurvy, and several of the other diseases of malnutrition. I said as much.
“Nonsense!” said Sheridan, outraged. “His Highness cannot suffer from the yeuk, like a common peasant!”
“He’s been eating like one,” I retorted. “Or rather worse than one.” The “peasants” were forced to eat onions and cabbage, having nothing else. Scorning such poor fare, His Highness and his advisers ate meat – and little else. Looking around the circle of scared, resentful faces, I saw few that didn’t show symptoms of the lack of fresh food. Loose and missing teeth, soft, bleeding gums, the pus-filled, itching follicles of “the yeuk” that so lavishly decorated His Highness’s white skin.