Читать книгу Joseph Knight - James Robertson - Страница 8

Sir John Wedderburn, 5th Baronet of Blackness, forty-two years of age and feeling sixty, spoke to his son side-mouthed and out of the hearing of the troops drawn up a few paces in front. ‘The men are dead on their feet. I fear this may be the end, John.’

His caution was hardly necessary: most of them, though not yet dead, were half asleep, heads bowed, bonnets scrugged down against the wind and wet. The army stretched in thin grey lines across the sodden moor. Opposite them the Government forces waited in solid red blocks.

‘We are cold and hungry and exhausted,’ the father said. ‘Cumberland’s men are fat and rested and twice our number. It is not a happy meeting.’

‘We have won against the odds before,’ the son said. ‘And they are not desperate like us.’ Making a virtue out of desperation had turned his lips blue. He was shivering uncontrollably, and as he spoke another squall of sleet, colder and more vicious than snow, battered over the moor and hit him full on the face, forcing him to turn away from his father.

Two months before, he had celebrated, if that was the word, his seventeenth birthday by toasting the Jacobite army’s capture of Inverness. But even then it had been obvious that Prince Charles Edward Stewart and his Council were divided and running out of options. Even then, all young John Wedderburn had wanted was to go home. And now this. A shattered, sullen remnant of at most five thousand men, aching from a stumbling, useless march through the night – a failed attempt to surprise Cumberland’s camp with a dawn attack – and a misty afternoon laced with sleet and bitter wind. It was April, but felt more like midwinter.

Sir John put his arm around his son’s shoulders, pulling him close. An observer might have thought he was simply trying to rub warmth into him. He spoke urgently into his ear. ‘John, when this starts the outcome will be clear in a matter of minutes. If we take the fight to them perhaps we have a chance. But the MacDonalds have no belly for it on the left. They are nursing their injured pride, and without them this army has no backbone.’

‘We are its backbone,’ the boy said, sweeping his arm at the two battalions of Lord Ogilvy’s regiment formed up in front of them: Angus men, drawn from the glens of Isla, Clova and Prosen; from the Sidlaws, Forfar and Dundee. Hard, silent cottars from lands straddling the Highland-Lowland divide, they had marched without complaint the hundreds of miles to Derby, then back to Scotland and all the way to this bleak northern moor. Some had been killed, others had slipped away to Inverness in search of food, a few had deserted and headed back south to their homes, but nearly five hundred remained, relatively well armed with musket and sword, still maintaining the discipline which had begun to break down among the northern clansmen.

Because of his social position, young John Wedderburn was a captain in the Glen Prosen company raised by his uncle Robert. To him was given the honour of carrying the colours, which were snapping and billowing angrily a few yards away, kept upright for the time being, and with great difficulty, by a tiny drummer boy jacked between the staff and the wet ground; and though Wedderburn was too young to lead troops into battle, and acted more as an aide de camp to Lord Ogilvy, he felt it his duty to hold out some hope of success. ‘We are the army’s backbone,’ he said again, trying to convince himself.

His father shook his head. Hopelessness was all over his face.

Poverty was what had led Sir John to throw in his lot with the Prince. Although he had inherited the title Baronet of Blackness on the death of his father, it had come without land, since one of the 4th Baronet’s last acts had been to sell the estate, on the edge of Dundee, in a desperate attempt to make ends meet. Since then, the family had been living on a run-down farm at Newtyle, a few miles to the north-west of the town. Lured by the prospect of reward into what had not then seemed a mad and impossible enterprise, the new Baronet had allowed himself to be persuaded to accept an appointment as collector of excise for the Prince, and now he feared all those receipts held by the merchants and magistrates of Perth and Dundee – receipts which bore his signature. They had been signs of his diligence. Now they were paper witnesses to his complicity.

‘Listen to me,’ he urged. ‘If it goes badly, do not wait for the end. Ride away before it is too late.’

‘Leave my men, sir? Desert the colours? How can I do that?’

‘We are being held in reserve here. Your men may not even be called upon to engage. If it comes to a retreat, you’ll only be a step ahead of them. In a way you’ll be leading them.’

The boy blinked at the ground, as if dazed by the lameness of this reasoning. ‘And you?’ he mumbled. ‘What about you?’

‘I’ll not be far behind you. I’ll stay with my Lord Ogilvy as long as I can, but I’ll not wait to be killed if that’s all there is to be had from the affair. Nor, I doubt, will he. Don’t look affronted, lad. There’s no shame in this, no disgrace. Better to live for another day, if there’s to be one, than be butchered in a bog.’ He looked around quickly, as if expecting the Prince to walk by and accuse him of treachery. ‘John, I am your father. Do you love me?’

‘Yes, Papa, of course.’

‘Then honour and obey me.’

A thin series of cheers went up in front as Lord Ogilvy and the Duke of Perth rode along the line, waving their hats. Ogilvy’s regiment was in the second line of the army. To the right, seventy yards ahead, and only three hundred from the red coats of the Government forces, were the men of Atholl, who had been given the place usually taken by the MacDonalds, who felt insulted as a result. In return for this privilege, the Atholl men were up to their shins in bog, and crowded together by a dyke running along their right between them and the river Nairn. Across the moor Cumberland’s drums were rattling away like hailstones. Shouts from the Highland officers drifted up into the heavy air. Men began to stamp their feet, check their powder and muskets. It was just after one o’clock.

‘I must get back to Lord Ogilvy,’ said Sir John, ‘and you must take your position.’ Their horses were being held by a servant twenty yards away, and they started towards them. As they went, there was a roar from the left: the Jacobites’ paltry collection of artillery had begun firing at the enemy.

A minute later the response came from Cumberland’s three-pounders and mortars. Roundshot whistled overhead, thudding into the ground just behind the waiting Jacobite troops. Mud and heather showered up and splattered down again. Somebody screamed in agony. The enemy artillery had found the range at the first attempt.

‘God help us!’ said Sir John. He seized his son’s arm again. ‘I beg you, do not ride for Inverness. If the battle’s lost Inverness will be lost too, and they will show no mercy to those they find there.’ A mortar shell screamed overhead and exploded thirty yards away. ‘Turn south as soon as you can, and get back to the lands you know. Get into Badenoch, past Ruthven, and keep riding. Lose yourself in the mountains. Take the Lairig Ghru or one of the other passes, and keep moving till you come in above the Dee. You’ll know where you are from there?’

‘Of course. There’s no need for all this, Papa.’

They were shouting at each other now as the roundshot crashed around them. Smoke was blowing thickly across the field, but already their own guns were firing only sporadically, while the Government bombardment intensified.

‘There’s every need. I wish it were not so. A hard time is coming on us all.’ Another volley flew so low overhead that they fell to the ground, flattened by the turbulence, and when they rose they were both streaked from chest to knee in black mud and scraps of heather. Their horses were panicking, the servant struggling to control them. As they mounted, Sir John bellowed his last instructions. ‘Get across the Dee and over the hills again, by the Monega Road, till you come into Glen Isla. Seek out Mr Arthur, the minister. He got the living from your uncle Robert, who vouches for him. He will give you shelter till I can come up with you.’

‘If you’re only just behind me, we’ll meet long before Glen Isla.’

‘Aye, that’s right, John. But you’re not to wait on me, do you understand?’

A band of smoke mixed with driving rain half obscured father from son. When it cleared a little, young John turned his horse to join his troops, lifting the colours as he went from the numb hands of the drummer boy, who promptly collapsed, covered his head with his arms and started to scream.

The men of Angus were standing firm against the bombardment; so far the shot had either gone over their heads or fallen short. In front of them, though, it was a different story. As the enemy guns shortened their range, the iron balls drove great lanes through the ranks of shivering Highlanders. They tore off limbs like rags, punched holes that removed entire guts from men who were still standing, and left others dead or beyond repair on the freezing wet ground among their comrades. MacLeans, Maclachlans, Frasers, Camerons, the roundshot slaughtered them with perfect indifference. But even through the steady crack and thud of cannon fire young John Wedderburn could hear the frantic cries of the Highland officers: ‘Dùinibh a-steach! Dùinibh a-steach!’ Close up! Close up!

Runners were scurrying, back and forth between the front line and the commanders at the rear, yet nobody seemed to be in control. Wedderburn watched with rising horror. ‘Dùinibh a-steach!’ he heard again. But tightening the ranks only made them more vulnerable. Why were the men not ordered to advance? Were they all to die without striking a blow?

The Jacobite artillery had now ceased firing entirely. Briefly the enemy’s guns also fell silent. But then they began again, this time loaded with grapeshot, withering sprays of lead pellets that ripped through the clans like scythes through a field of oats. To stand and take this, after everything else, was intolerable. First the MacLeans, then all the Highlanders still surviving in the centre and right, threw off their plaids, gripped their claymores and staggered forward through the bog, screaming into the grapeshot gale as they went. They left behind them a carpet of bodies and body parts. When they were halfway across the moor the Government infantry’s muskets opened up on them.

The Angus men waited in reserve, helplessly watching the carnage. Young John Wedderburn’s terrified mare was stamping and snorting, and in bringing her under control he let her run a few paces. He glanced back through the drifting lines of smoke to see if he could spot his father. A hundred yards away a group of horsemen seemed to be moving away from the battle. John Wedderburn screwed his eyes against the smoke. He could see, he thought, the Prince among them, but not his father. He could not see him anywhere at all.

There followed a dream of flight, stretching over days. The retreat his father had hinted at did not exist, only a stream of men and horses fleeing south in total disorder. John Wedderburn was carried along by this current. Shame barely crossed his mind: his only thought was to get away. He saw many of his own Glen Prosen company running in the same direction, showing not the least concern for his ignoble behaviour. This did not relieve the sickness in his stomach. Somewhere in the last minutes of the battle he had let go the colours and had not seen them since, but the sickness was not guilt, it was fear. By the time he reached Moy the men were straggled for miles along the road, some barely able to keep moving, others asleep where they had sat down for a minute’s respite. The ground was littered with discarded weapons and uniforms, forgotten bonnets, broken shoes. John paused to rest his horse, which was lathered and unsteady from being ridden too hard. He knew he should let her walk unburdened for a while, but when more riders came up and reported that the redcoats were slaughtering any male they caught – fit, wounded, young, old, armed or weaponless – he remounted and whipped the beast south again.

Twenty miles on, as night fell, he found himself alone. Fording the pounding, numbing Spey, the mare collapsed in midstream and John had to abandon her, then fight his way across on legs like blocks of stone, bawling out animal noises of rage and exhaustion. He had not eaten since dawn, was completely drenched, frozen, shattered, frightened, friendless, and now without a horse.

He stumbled on through the gloom towards the great hulks of the Cairngorms; knew he must stop and find shelter. Not far from the river he came across a huddle of houses crouched low as dogs and every one in darkness. He knocked at the first. He was sure there were people inside but there was no answer. He pushed; the door was barred. He tried the next one: the same. At the last house, despairing, he did not knock but leant against the door, and it opened under his weight. He stepped inside, closed the door behind him.

A woman’s voice said, ‘Cò tha siud?’ – Who’s there? – and something else fast and challenging, he could not make out what: ‘Ma ’s ann a thoirt an èiginn orm a thàinig thu, tha mi cho cruaidh ri cloich; ma ’s ann dha mo spùinneadh, chan eil càil agam ach seann phoit.’ ‘Tha mi le Teàrlach,’ he said, not caring any more. I am for Charles. The voice muttered something else; it was coming from a recess at one end of the room and sounded like an acceptance, if not exactly an invitation. The room was warm, the air thick with the smell of peat, and as his eyes adjusted he saw a bank of glowing red a few feet away. He went towards it, dripping at every step, and lay down in front of the fire. In a minute, he thought, I will take off my wet things, but just for now … Seconds later he was asleep.

He woke, his joints seized, still stretched on the dirt floor of the house. The fire was blazing now; steam poured from his clothes like hill mist. Stiff and shivery, he slowly pulled himself upright, began to feel the blood in him again. There was a bed set into one wall, and in it, watching him intently, was a very old woman.

John Wedderburn’s Gaelic was sparse – learned on the march to Derby from soldiers who had laughed good-naturedly at his efforts while appreciating the fact that he made them – and the woman had a rapid and almost impenetrable intonation. By slowing her down, he gathered that he had slept the better part of a day, that she was too old now to get out of bed except to feed the fire, which she had done before he woke up, and that so long as he fetched more peats from behind the house he was welcome to eat what little food she had, as she would die before him. He went out for the peats – there was not a flicker of life in the other houses – brought in several loads and stacked them in a corner, as if by prolonging the fire he could prolong the woman’s life and thus maybe his own, but there appeared to be nothing to eat in any case. He took off his boots and stuck them almost in the fire to dry them out, hung his tunic over the back of the one wooden chair in the place. When he tentatively asked about food, the woman signalled him nearer, and pulled from beneath the bedding a small poke, at the bottom of which were a few handfuls of oatmeal. He shook his head – not if that was all she had – but she insisted, again saying that she would die before him. Then she laughed, a toothless rasp, and added something that he had to get her to repeat three times. By the time he understood, there was no joke left in it: she would probably die before him, unless the redcoats arrived before he left.

He mixed some of the meal with water in her one blackened pot and put it on the fire. She would not take any of the porridge when it was ready, so he ate it all: a dozen mouthfuls. Nor was she interested in the money he offered her – one or two of the few coins he had in a purse slung round his neck beneath his shirt – but she did gesture to him to pass his tunic over to her. He laid it across her lap as she sat up in bed, and she felt the brass buttons with crooked fingers. Then she indicated to him to look under the bed.

There was an old wooden kist there. Opening it, the first item he came upon was a grey shepherd’s plaid, filthy and matted as a sheep’s winter coat. She nodded eagerly, apparently having given up trying to speak to him: he was to take it. She proceeded to pull the buttons of his tunic with surprising strength, and they disappeared under the blankets to join the meal poke. She signed that he must throw the tunic on the fire. He did so, watched it smoulder, then catch and blaze. With a stick he stabbed at it, a cuff, a sleeve, the collar, till the evidence of his visit was all gone. He put on more peats. Knowing it was time to move on, not wishing to go, wishing somehow he could stay in the cottage for years, he sat staring into the flames for a while, then stood and turned to the old woman still sitting in the bed. ‘Tapadh leibh,’ he said. She nodded. ‘Tapadh leibhse.’ Thank you. He put on his boots, hot and white-stained, wrapped the plaid around himself, and stepped back out into the world.

Nothing after that but walking and sleeping. That first night he managed perhaps six miles before stopping, not wanting to get deep into the mountains without seeing roughly where he was. He slept in the plaid among the roots of a huge pine tree, and the night, though cold, was at least dry. Early next morning, hungry again, he followed a track that headed south-east, rising steeply alongside a burn in spate. By instinct rather than knowledge he believed this to be the northern end of the pass known as the Lairig Ghru. He had stood at the other end, more than twenty miles away, while his father pointed out the route, but he had never walked it. Part of him feared travelling in daylight, but the ache in his belly told him he must risk it: it would take a day, and beyond it he still had another full day at least, probably two, to get into Glen Isla. If he travelled only at night, hunger would beat him. Also, the morning was sunny and dry, but the weather might change at any moment. He fixed his mind on the Reverend Arthur, and pressed on.

Huge, bleak, snow-covered hills rose on either side of him. The path faded and often disappeared altogether. The sun vanished behind clouds. Sleet, heavy rain and brief patches of sunlight succeeded one another. As he climbed higher, he entered the cloud itself, and the moisture enveloped him, lying greasily on the plaid. If he heard a sound that might be another traveller, he left the path and hunkered behind a rock. But nobody came. There were others in these hills, he could sense them, but they were all moving as discreetly as he, and all in much the same direction. He wondered if his father was one of them.

On Deeside there were more people in evidence, country folk going about their daily business, also many ragged men, of varying ages but all in some kind of distress, on their way to somewhere. The atmosphere was oppressive. It was as if a veil of some indefinable material had been dropped over the Highlands, clinging invisibly to everything: everybody knew what had happened; everybody knew that, whether they had been involved or not, they would suffer for it.

The cottars were wary but not unkind. John got half a thick oatcake from one wife, an egg from another. Information about the battle was cautiously sought in return: nothing so direct as ‘Were you there?’ – although it was obvious that he and the other men had sprung from somewhere – but what news he might have heard about this or that person who seemed against their will to have got caught up in that affair in the north. He could not help them, thanked them for the food, wandered on. Soon his boots cracked and split: they had been wet too often, and dried too fast. The sole of each foot was a mass of blisters. He crossed the Clunie Water, limped into Glen Shee, met a shepherd who pointed out to him the drovers’ track known as the Monega Road over the next set of hills, and started to climb. The weather turned foul again. He slipped on mud and rock, dragged himself through wet, treacherous snow, nearly fell off a cliff, screamed his despair to the relentless sky. He found the path, lost it again, walked through the night because it was too cold to stop, and in the morning came like a ghost to the head of lovely Glen Isla. There he sat down and he wept. There were still several miles to go before he reached the manse, but at last he was in a place he recognised.