Читать книгу Scotland's Heir - Winifred Duke - Страница 5

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“But, rising from the wave of the north, I beheld him bright in his looks. I beheld the son of the king. My beating soul is high. I laid my head down in night: again ascended the form. Why delayest thou thy coming, young rider of stormy waves!

But, there, far-distant, he comes, where seas roll their green ridges in mist! Young dweller of my soul, why dost thou delay——”

Old Gaelic: Fingal and Roscrana.

During the month of June 1745 there were dwelling at Nantes seven gentlemen, whose main aim and object seemed to be the avoidance of each other. They had all arrived in the town at different times. They lodged under different roofs. Did two of them chance to meet, in street or tavern, either took snuff and glanced askant over the encountered one’s head. Thus it was surely a strange coincidence which brought all seven together aboard a small vessel that slipped out of the mouth of the Loire on June 22nd. The oldest of the group, lean and humorous-looking, walked and talked much apart with a slim young man in the dress of a student of the Scots College. To a casual eye the pair might have passed for father and son.

These seven were the sole retinue that Prince Charles Edward brought with him on his rash and ill-judged expedition. “No Irish need apply” was not the royal motto, for they predominated in the little group immediately surrounding him. Take Sir Thomas Sheridan, cousin to King James on the wrong side of the blanket, ex-governor to His Royal Highness, whose spelling was a criterion of the amount of instruction the jovial Irishman had succeeded in imparting to his idle charge. He had known the Prince from childhood, spoilt him, petted him, called him endearing names in private, but in public was deferential and urbane. Take, if you prefer, Captain O’Sullivan of the rolling eye and wide mouth, an officer in French service, and destined to high promotion in Prince Charles’s, though uncharitably declared by his detractors not to be overfond of appearing in action. Also and likewise there were Colonel Strickland, that bone of contention in letters between the Prince and his father, doomed to pass out of his own story and this narrative at Carlisle, Sir John MacDonald, crazy and convivial, and the Rev. George Kelly, once upon a time secretary to my Lord Bishop of Rochester. For burning his fingers in the episcopal pie known as the Atterbury Plot, the Rev. George had languished fourteen years in the Tower, but without losing his appetite or enthusiasm for Jacobite ploys. Hibernian enterprise and rashness were leavened by Scots commonsense in the person of the sober banker Æneas MacDonald, who knew to a fraction the strength of the Jacobite funds, and the attainted, exiled Marquis of Tullibardine, whose younger brother reigned in his stead as Duke of Athol. This courageous Whig fled to London upon the approach of danger, while another brother, my Lord George Murray——But we are keeping His Royal Highness waiting.

His Royal Highness did not like waiting, far from it. If the miniature in Murray’s snuff-box had moved men by its promise, the living Prince was a personality taut, vivid, bubbling over with ill-suppressed nervous energy. Without being actively restless, he was seldom still. The whole effect he gave was of something over-emphasised, over-brilliant, surcharged with vitality. The carriage of the head, right royal, the eyes, dropping haughty lids in disdain, or arching finely-curved brows in half-petulant inquiry, the long, beautiful hands, the firm body, big-boned without clumsiness, the clean lines of the straight limbs and erect young back marked him out from the rest as his mere youth could not do. He carried his burden of royalty easily, unconcernedly, but it showed in every gesture, every movement, each turn of head and body. He could not conceal it any more than he could change the colour of his eyes. In silks and jewels he was a very royal prince. Even in rags he looked a king’s son. He was as selfish as the devil, as narrow-minded as a barren woman, as strong as a team of horses, and as full of tricks and slyness as a Jesuit priest. He walked through life with his head high, over the anguish of women and the tears of strong men. Yet for all this he lit a blaze in the Highland hearts destined never to be put out. “Tearlach’s year” was a year of bloodshed and agony and disembowelled hopes, a year that left its legacy of burned hearthstones and vacant roof-trees to generations then unborn, but if he came again to-day he would find the same loyalty awaiting him amongst the children of men.

He paced the deck now, gay and sanguine. At last he had cut the fraying cable that held him to the rotting wharf of his past. He was young, glowing, ardent, with a head full of plots and ambitions, empty pockets, scant support save the pie-crust promises of France, and the lukewarm approval of Murray of Broughton. “If I fail, at least I shall have struck a blow for my own rights. If I die, at least I shall have lived first.”

From the outset of the fated expedition the omens were unpropitious. They lingered a week at Belleisle, awaiting fair winds and the escort of a French war-ship. Four days after the two vessels had set sail for Scotland, the Lion, a British man-of-war, hove in sight. The Doutelle, fearful for her precious freight, sheered off and watched: the Elizabeth attacked and engaged. After five hours, she damaged her enemy sufficiently to oblige the beaten foe to retire, but she herself was forced to return to France, crippled and full of wounded men. The incident was ominous of the blood shortly to drench Scotland, but Charles, watching the fight with quick breath and shining eyes, saw it not thus.

He was Papist, superstitious, full of unshaken belief in good or evil portents. They sighted Bernera Island, a smudge on the horizon, thirteen days later. He dreamed dreams, gliding through the dark nights without guiding light, for they dared burn no lamp. The little ship drove lonely amid the seas which sprayed her deck with lacy foam. Suddenly huge, dark wings shadowed it. The Prince looked up curiously at the large Hebridean eagle, tilted against the wind, poised above the vessel, a thing of loneliness and cruelty, a savage law unto itself. It followed steadily, swooping nearer, receding, returning. Fear clouded Charles’s eyes, and he crossed himself furtively.

The bleak, low-lying island of Eriska, dropped down between South Uist and Barra, dawned upon their view in the late evening. They anchored beneath a languid sky, primrose with the end of the sunset. They had been eighteen days at sea, encountering boisterous winds and great waves, cold and mildness, tempest and calm. Leaving the Duke of Athol, groaning with gout, on board, the rest went ashore in the longboat. The Prince walked the remote little strand proudly, light of foot as of heart, treading the white sand as if it had been a royal carpet. Mist, louring over the landscape, was beginning to turn to thick rain. The rising wind dashed chill drops in their bent, unprotected faces. Smoke rose up from the thatched roof of a mean cottage. They hastened towards it to seek shelter. Charles was laughing and easy, but Sir Thomas Sheridan’s teeth chattered, and the others thought longingly of France and fires.

The tenant of the hut, a dark MacDonald, received them sourly and with suspicion. He could offer them nothing to eat or drink. The hut boasted neither meal, bread, nor whisky. One of the party went out and fished for flounders, which he roasted roughly over bare coals. They were not a festive group. Sheridan had a sore throat, O’Sullivan toothache, George Kelly, mercurial Irishman, a fit of deep depression. The Prince perched on a heap of peats at the cheek of the little ingle. His fair head was thrown back in constant laughter at the gloomy faces. He chaffed Donald Cameron about his rough cookery and the primitive conditions. No thought of failure or of ignominious return menaced him. He had the rash confidence, the eager fatalism of his over-sanguine temperament. A few miles away the chiefs of great clans awaited him, friends and supporters. He was come to lead them, their rightful Prince, their King’s son.

Night, wet, black, ragged, encompassed the little house. Rain made sodden the slanting thatch. Inside, the blue peat-reek eddied about the room, obscuring faces and detail. It smarted the Prince’s eyes and teased his throat. At intervals he went to the door, and regardless of the falling rain, stood staring out at the grey line of beach and the grey sea beyond. The breakers moaned and boomed.

“Go to bed, Sherry,” he told the baronet of the chattering teeth. “I am not weary, and shall sit up all night.” Sir Thomas declined, apprehensive of ague and rheumatism.

“What! scared of damp sheets?” mocked the Prince. Then he softened, changed his mood, tested the bed with his own hand. The host announced in grumbling Gaelic that a prince need not be ashamed to lie in it. When the remark had been translated by Donald Cameron, the laughter of the plainly-dressed guest, whose quality he never suspected, puzzled and exasperated him.

Charles had sent a message desiring the presence of MacDonald of Boisdale, the brother of Clanranald, chief of a branch of a mightily important clan. Hard upon the summons he came, long of stride, straight of glance, the wind blowing the plaid swung about his sinewy body. The little bay was grey in the rain, the sky broken by flying scuds of grey cloud. Boisdale kissed the Prince’s hand, and they paced the wet beach together, the one listening with pursed mouth to the other’s fairy-kist, visionary hopes.

“ ’Tis a mad scheme, sir.” He spoke in slow, careful English, his thoughts obviously framed in Gaelic and laboriously translated. “France is not minded to aid, England and the half of Scotland hostile to your Royal Highness’s Cause——”

“Your advice, Boisdale, your advice?” The words were rapped out peremptorily. The half-averted cheek burned suddenly scarlet.

“My best advice to your Royal Highness is to go home.” The Highlander spoke steadily.

Charles looked about him at the gaunt islet, the fathomless waste of tossing sea, the white sand whirled in eddies round his feet by the stinging east wind. “I am come home, sir, and can entertain no notion of returning to the place whence I came.” The lift of the young head, unconsciously royal, emphasised the words. “I am persuaded that my faithful Highlanders will stand by me.”

Boisdale, a cautious Scot, was unmoved by this. “I fear that your Royal Highness will find the contrary the case. Upon whom can you rely?”

The Prince glanced quickly at him. “MacLeod of MacLeod, and Sir Alexander MacDonald of Sleat. These are men able and willing to bring twelve hundred broadswords to the field.”

Boisdale shrugged massive shoulders. “These gentlemen, sir, not only decline to aid your Cause, but are resolved to act against it.”

“Impossible!” Charles struck his hands together. “I have MacLeod’s written promise, procured by Lochiel, and sent to me by Murray of Broughton.”

Boisdale shrugged again. “Your Royal Highness can send to ask them.”

The Prince bit his lip and fell silent. He was cruelly disappointed, but wary of showing his feelings. An ingrained obstinacy, as much as any other motive, held him, drove him on. He softened subtly, slid a hand through the crook of Boisdale’s unresponsive arm, sank his voice. “Your brother, Boisdale? Surely he will follow his Prince?”

The Highlander stiffened, shifting the warm young arm beside his heart. “To be plain with your Royal Highness, the small influence I have with my brother will be exerted to dissuade him and his clan from taking arms,” he replied.

Charles entreated and expostulated, argued and appealed, but wasted his eloquence in vain. The last sight he had of MacDonald of Boisdale was an offended back descending into a small boat, watched by seven cross faces from the deck of the Doutelle. The handful which had come with him from France gathered round their Prince, he pleading, they proffering unpalatable advice. All he could do was to return, they declared. He looked about him, flying the colours of brilliant cheeks, bright eyes, long, wind-tossed hair. In answer to their entreaties that he would put back to Nantes: “You will see! You will see!” he cried impatiently.

They sailed to the mainland, Charles still resolute to pursue his course. He was very quiet, watching the strange scenery with listless eyes. The great mountains, sullen and aloof, glowed in the evening light, remote, serene, indifferent, still to stand when his little hopes and ambitions for a throne were less than dust. He spoke seldom, asking a few questions of the Duke of Athol as to the places they passed, or the species of birds which wheeled and cried about the ship. Later, he slept on deck, as he had done throughout the voyage.

The Duke looked down at the bright head, and drew the folds of a plaid that he had draped over the Prince closer round him. Even in sleep the Prince’s face was proud, haughty, wilful, high temper showing in every line, in the curves of the delicate nostrils, the fine, arched brows, the full, petulant mouth. The Duke knew him, loved him, feared for him. What did the future hold for this ardent spirit, so easily talked over, so mulishly determined?

Charles woke, chilled and apprehensive. The ominous eagle had gone, but its shadow lay heavy upon his heart. He sat, chin in hand, watching the mist that curled like smoke about the mountain-tops, the sky redden in the east. “It is all so bleak, so strange,” he told his companion. “Those years you wandered in exile, Athol, it stood there, just as remote and majestic, and now it has no welcome for me.” He turned and clung to his companion, crying: “If I fail, Athol, if I fail——”

The Duke took the cold, clenched hands. “You will not fail, sir. Is MacDonald of Boisdale the voice of Scotland? I tell your Royal Highness that there are swords and right arms enough, only waiting their Prince and leader. The Athol men, the Frasers, countless MacDonalds, Camerons of Lochiel——”

“It is the land—the land.” Charles turned pettishly from the frowning, unfriendly peaks and bleak shore.

The other bowed his head. “ ’Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure: they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.’ ”

Young Clanranald, companioned by his kinsfolk and acquaintance, came on board next day. The pair talked in the Prince’s cabin, Charles eloquent and bright-eyed, resolved to land, Clanranald immovable and calm. He steeled himself equally as Boisdale had done against the Prince’s arguments, the mad enterprise. “There is no possibility of success, sir. If your Royal Highness had brought aid from France, or could promise aid——”

The water lapped against the sides of the stationary vessel, and the last of the sunset burned the floor of the cabin. Hue of blood, warning of blood to be spilt with splendid recklessness in a Cause whose representative now stood straight-backed, head flung up, confronting the young clansman. “Clanranald, I did not think it of you. I have had you in my heart all along. Every day”—he threw out his hands—“I have thought and said: ‘I am nearer by miles to Clanranald. He is the last to turn his back on his Prince, and where he goes, others will follow.’ ” His voice broke. “You cannot mean to disappoint and fail me?”

The young Scot hung his head. “Your Royal Highness does not understand. It is not of myself I think. My sword would be at my Prince’s service, gladly, proudly, but there are others, my poor clansmen, my father’s people. Are they to perish miserably in a Cause that had no hope from the first?”

The Prince cried out sharply. “Mon Dieu! and do you think that I risk nothing? There is not only my person”—he glanced down at his splendid young body—“but my hopes, my future, my very life are staked on this.” He caught Clanranald’s hands and held them. “Fail me! Desert me! Send me back to France, or to my father, the laughing-stock of Europe, and quiet your conscience as best you may!”

The other knelt, kissed the clinging hands, gave them back. Charles raised him, held him by the shoulders, looked long and pleadingly into the inexorable blue eyes. “You are as hard as your own mountains.” He pushed Clanranald from him with a sob. “God help me! What a country, and what hearts!” he muttered brokenly.

The little cabin stifled him. He thrust from it, and went outside, followed by Clanranald. MacDonald of Kinlochmoidart, Clanranald’s dark-eyed kinsman, was brought forward and presented. From a temporary tent erected on deck came the clinking of wine-bottles and men’s laughter. Charles covered his face. “They laugh and jest and drink. It means little to them, but what does it not mean to me?”

They paced the deck, he arguing and pleading, the two Highlanders granite to his entreaties. Kinlochmoidart was even more adamant than Clanranald, readier of tongue, less personally swayed by Charles and his appeals. They made an odd trio, the Prince the tallest, yet palpably a foreigner in dress, gestures, and speech, the Highlanders sinewy, long-limbed, quiet, the far-off look in their eyes that comes to those who gaze all their lives across great spaces, their walk that of men accustomed to tread heather underfoot. The Prince stepped quickly, restlessly, taking three paces to their one, his mobile features working, his long hands never still. Now they caressed arm or shoulder of his two companions, or locked together nervously. He had a great hazard. He was pleading for a throne, and despair made him voluble.

“I do not choose to owe the restoration of my father to foreigners, but to his own friends.” The brown eyes flashed. “I am now come to put it in your power, sirs, to have the glory of that event.” He flung up his head. “As to returning again to France, foreigners shall never have it to say that I had thrown myself upon my friends, that they turned their backs upon me, that I had been forced to return from them to foreign parts.” His voice rose. “In a word, if I can get but six stout, trusty fellows to join me, I would choose far rather to skulk with them among the mountains in Scotland than to return to France.”

They reasoned quietly with him. They pointed out that he had no arms, little money, empty promises of help, and would only be bringing assured destruction on his followers. He fell silent, listening with frowning brows to their calm theories. Was it for this that he had passed listless years in the crumbling palace at Rome, secretly training his hardy body in all the arts and hardships of war, had schooled himself to patience and wisdom in France during heart-breaking months of lurking and inaction? He had taken the desperate step of coming single-handed to throw himself on the generosity of the Highland hearts, and found instead that he might equally well try to rase their mountains with a dirk. Something very like despair rose in his breast.

In the old Greek drama the happy ending was as often as not accomplished by the descent to earth of a god or goddess who untied the tangled skein of fate. The Prince’s deliverer bore a humbler aspect, for he was merely a slim Highland lad. Kinlochmoidart’s younger brother had come on board from motives of idle curiosity, and on learning that the eloquent stranger was his Prince, remained to watch. The tenor of the conversation between Charles and the recalcitrant chiefs was easily guessed from their gestures. Turning despairingly away, Charles caught the eager eyes of the boy, saw the hand grasping his sword-hilt, and addressed him pleadingly. “Will not you assist me?” he asked. Young MacDonald, with a glare of fiery indignation towards the other two, caught the extended, imploring hands. The Prince drew him into his arms, and they clung together.

“You, at least, will not forsake me?”

“I will follow you to the death, even were there no other to draw a sword in your Cause!”

The Prince, proud and moved, turned from him to receive the proffered hands and sword-hilts of the other two. Such was the little spark destined to set Scotland in a blaze.