Читать книгу Collected Works (Historical Novel) - D. K. Broster - Страница 28

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The mist shrouded every mountain-top, sagging downwards in some places like the roof of a tent, and in others, where a perpetual draught blew down a corrie, streaming out like smoke. How different from last week, when, cold as it was up there, the top of the Corryarrick Pass had presented to Major Windham’s eyes a view from Badenoch to the hills of Skye. To-day, recrossing it, and looking back, he could hardly distinguish through the greyish-white blanket more than three or four of its many traverses winding away below him.

But here, on the lower levels of the mountain road, where it prepared to debouch into that which ran along the Great Glen, this clogging mist had become a fine and most penetrating rain, bedewing every inch of the rider’s cloak and uniform, his hat, the edges of his wig, his very eyebrows and lashes, and insinuating itself down his collar. Major Windham did not know which was the more objectionable form of moisture, and wished it were late enough in the day to cease exposing himself to either, and to put up for the night at Fort Augustus, which he should reach in another twenty minutes or so. But it was still too early for that, and, bearer as he was of a despatch from Lord Albemarle to the Duke of Cumberland, he must push on beyond Fort Augustus before nightfall; must, indeed, reach the only halting-place between that spot and Inverness, the tiny inn known, from Wade’s occupation of it when he was making the road, as the General’s Hut. However, he intended to stop at Fort Augustus to bait the horses—and to make an enquiry.

It was six days since he had left Guthrie’s camp, and he was not altogether surprised to-day to find it gone, but, to judge from the litter lying about, only recently gone. There was, therefore, no one to give him news of Ardroy, but he was sure that, if the Jacobite had been made prisoner, he would have been sent or taken to Fort Augustus, and he could get news of him there.

That night in the shieling, just a week ago, seemed to Keith much farther off than that, and the emotions he had known then to have lost their edge. ‘Gad, what a fit of philanthropy I had on me that day!’ he reflected. If ‘Hangman Hawley’ came to know of it how he would sneer at him, and the rest of the staff, too. Luckily they would not know. So consoling himself, and cursing the rain anew, he came to Fort Augustus, or rather to what remained of it. Its Highland captors who, during their attack upon it, had partially demolished the new fort, had, on the summons to face Cumberland, blown up and fired most of the residue. A small temporary garrison had been sent there after the victory to secure the abandoned stronghold for the Government; but it had now been taken possession of by a larger force in the shape of the Earl of Loudoun’s regiment, under the Earl himself, and eighteen ‘independent companies’. These had only marched in a few hours before, in consequence of which influx the whole place was in a state of great turmoil.

There was so little accommodation in the ruined fort that a small village of tents was being erected in the meadows by the mouth of the Tarff, and between the confusion of camp-pitching and the fact that nearly everyone whom he encountered was a new-comer, Keith found it difficult to discover who was or had been responsible for prisoners sent in before Lord Loudoun’s arrival. He did, however, elicit the information that Major Guthrie’s detachment was now somewhere on the road between Fort Augustus and Inverness. And at last, though he did not succeed in seeing anybody directly responsible, he was told that a wounded Cameron, said to be the head of one of the cadet branches of the clan, had been captured the previous week and sent in by that very detachment, and that he had been given proper care and was progressing favourably.

That was all Keith wanted to know for the moment, and he delayed no longer. A certain vague disquiet which had teased him during the past week about Guthrie’s possible treatment of his prisoner was allayed. For the rest, he had already made his plans about Ardroy. It was at Inverness, with Cumberland, that he could really do Ewen service, especially if the Duke did take him on to his personal staff. To His Royal Highness he could then represent what he owed to the captured rebel, and, before he himself returned with the Commander-in-Chief to Flanders, he might very well have the satisfaction of knowing that the object of his ‘philanthropy’ had been set at liberty.

As he turned away from Fort Augustus, where the vista of Loch Ness was completely blotted out in rain, and addressed himself to the long steep climb up the Inverness road, Keith’s thoughts went back to the Earl of Albemarle in Perth, craving like himself to get overseas once more—whence, though colonel of the Coldstream Guards, he had come to serve as a volunteer under Cumberland. His lordship, who had, moreover, greatly preferred commanding the front line in the recent battle to his present post with the Hessian troops in Perth, had lamented his situation quite openly to Cumberland’s messenger; he detested Scotland, he announced, and had fears, from a sentence in the despatch which that messenger had delivered to him, that he might be appointed to succeed Hawley in this uncongenial country. Having thus, somewhat unwisely, betrayed his sentiments to Major Windham, he was more or less obliged to beg his discretion, in promising which Keith had revealed his own fellow-feeling about the North. When they parted, therefore, Lord Albemarle had observed with much graciousness that if this horrid fate of succeeding General Hawley should overtake him, he would not forget Major Windham, though he supposed that the latter might not then be in Scotland for him to remember. No; Keith, though grateful for his lordship’s goodwill, distinctly hoped that he would not. He trusted to be by then in a dryer climate and a country less afflicted with steep roads . . . less afflicted also with punitive measures, though, since Perth was not Inverness, he was not so much dominated by those painful impressions of brutality as he had been a week ago.

The greater part of the lengthy and tiresome ascent from the level of Loch Ness was now over, and Keith and Dougal Mackay found themselves again more or less in the region of mist, but on a flat stretch of road with a strip of moorland on one hand. Water glimmered ahead on the left; it was little Loch Tarff, its charms dimmed by the weather. Keith just noticed its presence, tightened his reins, and, trotting forward on the welcome level, continued his dreams about the future.

Twenty-five yards farther, and these were brought abruptly to a close. Without the slightest warning there came a sharp report on his right, and a bullet sped in front of him, so close that it frightened his horse. Himself considerably startled too, he tried simultaneously to soothe the beast and to tug out a pistol from his holster. Meanwhile, Dougal Mackay, with great promptitude and loud Gaelic cries, was urging his more docile steed over the heather towards a boulder which he evidently suspected of harbouring the marksman.

As soon as he could get his horse under control Keith also made over the strip of moorland, and arrived in time to see a wild, tattered, tartan-clad figure, with a musket in its hands, slide down from the top of the boulder, drop on to hands and knees among the heather and bogmyrtle, and begin to wriggle away like a snake. Major Windham levelled his pistol and fired, somewhat at random, for his horse was still plunging; and the Highlander collapsed and lay still. Keith trotted towards him; the man had already abandoned his musket and lay in a heap on his side. The Englishman was just going to dismount when shouts from Dougal Mackay, who had ridden round the boulder, stayed him. “Do not pe going near him, sir; the man will not pe hit whateffer!” And as this statement coincided with Keith’s own impression that his bullet had gone wide, he stayed in the saddle and covered the would-be assassin with his other pistol, while Mackay, who certainly did not lack courage, slid off his own horse and came running.

And it was even as Mackay had said. At the sound of the feet swishing through the heather the heap of dirty tartan lying there was suddenly, with one bound, a living figure which, leaping up dirk in hand, rushed straight, not at the dismounted orderly, but at the officer on the horse. Had Keith not had his pistol ready he could hardly have saved himself, mounted though he was, from a deadly thrust. The man was at his horse’s head when he fired. . . . This time he did not miss; he could not. . . .

“I suppose I have blown his head to pieces,” he said next moment, with a slightly shaken laugh.

“Inteet, I will pe thinking so,” replied Mackay, on his knees in the heather. “But it will pe pest to make sure.” And he put his hand to his own dirk.

“No, no!” commanded Keith, as he bent from the saddle, for somehow the idea of stabbing a dead man, even a potential murderer, was repugnant to him. “It is not necessary; he was killed instantly.”

There could be small doubt of that. One side of the Highlander’s bearded face was all blackened by the explosion, and as he lay there, his eyes wide and fixed, the blood ran backwards through his scorched and tangled hair like a brook among waterweeds. The ball had struck high up on the brow. It came to Keith with a sense of shock that the very torn and faded philabeg which he wore was of the Cameron tartan. He was sorry. . . .

Deterred, unwillingly, from the use of his dirk, the zealous Mackay next enquired whether he should not put the cateran’s body over his horse and bring him to Inverness, so that, dead or alive, he could be hanged at the Cross there as a warning.

“No, leave him, poor devil,” said Keith, turning his horse. “No need for that; he has paid the price already. Let him lie.” He felt curiously little resentment, and wondered at the fact.

Dougal Mackay, however, was not going to leave the musket lying too.

“Ta gunna—she is Sassenach,” he announced, examining it.

“Take it, then,” said Keith. “Come, we must get on to the General’s Hut before this mist grows thicker.”

So they rode away, leaving the baffled assailant staring into vacancy, his dirk still gripped in his hand, and under his head the heather in flower before its time.

Once more the road mounted; then fell by a long steep gradient. The General’s Hut, a small and very unpretentious hostelry, of the kind known as a ‘creel house’, was at Boleskine, down on its lower levels, and before Keith reached it he could see that its outbuildings were occupied by soldiers. They were probably Major Guthrie’s detachment. Indeed, as he dismounted, a uniformed figure which he knew came round the corner of the inn, but it stopped dead on seeing him, then, with no further sign of recognition, turned abruptly and disappeared again. It was Lieutenant Paton.

So these were Guthrie’s men, and he could hear more of Ardroy. But he would have preferred to hear it from Paton rather than from Guthrie, and wished that he had been quick enough to stop that young man.

The first person whom Keith saw when he entered the dirty little parlour was Guthrie himself—or rather, the back of him—just sitting down to table.

“Come awa’, Foster, is that you?” he called out. “Quick noo; the brose is getting cauld.” Receiving no response he turned round. “Dod! ’tis Major Windham!”

Keith came forward perforce. “Good evening, Major Guthrie. Yes, I am on my way back to Inverness.”

“Back frae Perth, eh?” commented Guthrie. “By the high road this time, then, I’m thinkin’. Sit ye doun, Major, and Luckie whate’er she ca’s hersel’ shall bring anither cover. Ah, here comes Foster—let me present Captain Foster of ma regiment tae ye, Major Windham. Whaur’s yon lang-leggit birkie of a Paton?”

“Not coming to supper, sir,” replied Captain Foster, saluting the new arrival. “He begs you to excuse him; he has a letter to write, or he is feeling indisposed—I forget which.”

“Indeed!” said Guthrie, raising his sandy eyebrows. “He was weel eneugh and free o’ correspondence a while syne. However, it’s an ill wind—— Ye ken the rest. Major Windham can hae his place and his meat.”

Keith sat down, with as good a grace as he could command, at the rough, clothless table. This Foster was presumably the officer whose bed he had occupied in the camp, a man more of Guthrie’s stamp than of Paton’s, but better mannered. Lieutenant Paton’s excuse for absence, coupled with his abrupt disappearance, was significant, but why should the young man not wish to meet Major Keith Windham? Perhaps because the latter had got him into trouble after all over his ‘philanthropy’.

Between the three the talk ran on general topics, and it was not until the meal was half over that Guthrie suddenly said:

“Weel, Major, I brocht in yer Cameron frien’ after ye left.”

Keith murmured that he was glad to hear it.

“But I got little for ma pains,” continued Guthrie, pouring himself out a glass of wine—only his second, for, to Keith’s surprise, he appeared to be an abstemious man. He set down the bottle and looked hard at the Englishman. “But ye yersel’ were nae luckier, it seems.”

Keith returned his look. “I am afraid that I do not understand.”

“Ye see, I ken ye went back tae the shieling yon nicht.”

“Yes, I imagined that you would discover it,” said Keith coolly. “I trust that you received my message of apology for departing without taking leave of you?”

“Yer message of apology!” repeated Major Guthrie. “Ha, ha! Unfortunately ye didna apologise for the richt offence! Ye suld hae apologised for stealing a march on me ahint ma back. ’Twas a pawky notion, yon, was it no’, Captain Foster?”

“I must repeat that I am completely in the dark as to your meaning, Major Guthrie!” said Keith in growing irritation.

“Isna he the innocent man! But I forgie ye, Major—since ye gained naething by gangin’ back.”

“Gained!” ejaculated Keith. “What do you mean, sir? I did not go back to the shieling to gain anything. I went——”

“Aye, I ken what ye said ye gaed for,” interrupted Guthrie with a wink. “ ’Twas devilish canny, as I said, and deceived the rebel himsel’ for a while. All yon ride in the nicht juist tae tak’ him food and dress his wounds! And when ye were there tendin’ him sae kindly ye never speired aboot Lochiel and what he kennt o’ him, and whaur the chief micht be hidin’, did ye?—Never deny it, Major, for the rebel didna when I pit it tae him!”

“You devil!” exclaimed Keith, springing up. “What did you say to him about me?”

Guthrie kept his seat, and pulled down Captain Foster, who, murmuring “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” had risen too. “Nae need tae be sae distrubel’d, Captain Foster; I’m na. That’s for them that hae uneasy consciences. What did I say tae him? Why, I tellt him the truth, Major Windham: why ye set such store on saving his life, and how ye thocht he micht be persuaded tae ‘drap a hint’ aboot Lochiel. Forbye he didna believe that at first.”

Keith caught his breath. “You told him those lies . . . to his face . . . and he believed . . .” He could get no farther.

“Lies, were they?” asked Guthrie, leaning over the table. “Ye ne’er advised me tae bring him into camp tae ‘complete ma knowledge’? Eh, I hae ye there fine! Aweel, I did ma best, Major Windham; nane can dae mair. But I doot he has the laugh of us, the callant, for he tellt me naething, either by hints or ony ither gait, a’ the time I had him in ma care. So I e’en sent him wi’ a bit report tae Fort Augustus, and there he is the noo, as ye may have heard, if ye speired news o’ him when ye came by.”

Keith had turned very white. “I might have known that you would play some dirty trick or other!” he said, and flung straight out of the room.

Fool, unspeakable fool that he was not to have foreseen something of this kind with a man of Guthrie’s stamp! He had had moments of uneasiness at the thought of Ardroy’s probable interview with him, but he had never anticipated anything quite so base as this. “Take me to Lieutenant Paton at once!” he said peremptorily to the first soldier he came across.

The man led him towards a barn looming through the mist at a little distance. The door was ajar, and Keith went in, to see a dimly lit space with trusses of straw laid down in rows for the men, and at one end three horses, his own among them, with a soldier watering them. The young lieutenant, his hands behind his back, was watching the process. Keith went straight up to him.

“Can I have a word with you alone, Mr. Paton?”

The young man stiffened and flushed; then, with obvious reluctance, ordered the soldier out. And when the man with his clanging buckets had left the building, Paton stood rather nervously smoothing the flank of one of the horses—not at all anxious to talk.

“Mr. Paton,” said Keith without preamble, “what devil’s work went on in your camp over the prisoner from Ben Loy?” And then, at sight of the look on Paton’s face, he cried out, “Good God, man, do you think that I had a hand in it, and is that why you would not break bread with me?”

Lieutenant Paton looked at the ground. “I . . . indeed I found it hard to believe that you could act so, when you seemed so concerned for the prisoner, but——”

“In Heaven’s name, let us have this out!” cried Keith. “What did Major Guthrie say to Mr. Cameron? He appears to have tried to make him believe an infamous thing of me—that I went back to the shieling that night merely in order to get information out of him! Surely he did not succeed in making him think so—even if he succeeded with you? . . . Answer me, if you please!”

The younger man seemed very ill at ease. “I cannot say, sir, what Mr. Cameron believed about you in the end. He certainly refused, and indignantly, to believe it at first.”

“He cannot have believed it!” said Keith passionately. “ ‘In the end’? How long, then, did Major Guthrie have him in his custody?”

“He kept him for twenty-four hours, sir—in order to see if he would make any disclosures about Lochiel.” And Lieutenant Paton added, in a very dry tone, turning away and busying himself with a horse’s headstall, “A course which it seems that you yourself advised.”

Keith gave a sound like a groan. “Did the Major tell Mr. Cameron that also?”

Paton nodded. “Yes, he did—and more, too: whether true or not I have no means of judging.”

Keith had the sensation that the barn, or something less material, was closing in round him. This honest boy, too—— “Look here, Mr. Paton, I will be frank with you. I was so desperately afraid that Ardroy would be left to die there in the shieling that I did suggest to Major Guthrie that it might be of advantage to bring him into camp, though I knew that he would have his trouble for nothing. Though I unfortunately recommended that course I was perfectly certain that Mr. Cameron would not give the slightest inkling of any knowledge that he might have.”

“No, it was plain from the beginning that he would not,” said the young man, “and that was why . . .” He broke off. “If Mr. Cameron is a friend of yours it is a good thing that you were not in our camp that morning . . . or no, perhaps a misfortune, because you might have succeeded in stopping it sooner. I could not.”

“Succeeded in stopping what?” asked Keith. Then the inner flavour of some of Guthrie’s recent words began to be apparent to him. He caught Paton by the arm. “You surely do not mean that Major Guthrie resorted to—violent measures? It’s impossible!”

Thus captured, the young soldier turned and faced him. “Reassure yourself, sir,” he said quickly, seeing the horror and disgust on his companion’s face. “He could not carry them out; the prisoner was in no state for it. He could only threaten, and . . . question.”

“He threatened to shoot him after all?”

“No, not to shoot him, to flog him.” And as Keith gave an exclamation and loosed his hold, Paton added, “And he went very near doing it, too.”

“Threatened to flog him! Mr. Paton, you are jesting!” said Keith incredulously. “Flog a badly wounded prisoner, and a gentleman—a chieftain—to boot!”

“I am not jesting, sir; I wish I were. But I am thankful to say that it was not carried out.—Now, if you will excuse me, Major Windham, I must be about my duties.” His tone indicated that he would be glad to leave a distasteful subject.

But Keith made a movement to bar his passage. “Mr. Paton, forgive my insistence, but your duties must wait a little. You cannot leave the matter there! For my own sake I must know what was said to Mr. Cameron. You see how nearly it concerns my honour. I implore you to try to recall everything that passed!”

Reluctantly the young man yielded. “Very well, sir; but I had best speak to the sergeant to ensure that we are not disturbed, for this barn is the men’s quarters.”

He went out to give an order. Hardly knowing what he did, Keith turned to his horse, busy pulling hay from the rack, and looked him over to see that Mackay had rubbed him down properly. Threatened with flogging—Ewen Cameron!

Paton came back, closed the door and brought up a couple of pails, which he inverted and suggested as seats. “You must be tired, Major, after your long ride, and I am afraid that this will be a bit of a sederunt.” So Keith sat down in the stall to hear what his ill-omened suggestion had brought on the man whom he had saved.