The flight of the heron, p.10
The Flight of the Heron, page 10
part #1 of The Jacobite Trilogy Series
Yesterday only had come to an end the latest (and not entirely humorous) episode, of some days’ duration, when, the Prince having ‘blockaded’ the Castle, in other words, having cut off daily supplies, the garrison had retaliated by firing on the town, killing some innocent inhabitants, striking terror into them all, and making it very undesirable to be seen in the neighbourhood of the Castle in the company of a Highlander. Violent representations on the part of the city to the Prince, embodying ‘the most hideous complaints against the garrison’, had brought this uncomfortable state of affairs to an end by the raising of the ‘blockade’—itself originated, so the story went, by the discovery of smuggled information in a pat of butter destined for the valetudinarian General Guest, for whom milk and eggs were permitted to pass daily into the Castle. Yet the old gentleman’s treacherous butter was only one of the many whimsical touches of the goddess Thalia, who had devised, during these weeks of occupation, such ingenious surprises as the descent of a soldier from the Castle, by means of a rope, into Livingston’s Yard, where he set a house on fire and returned in triumph, by the same method, with a couple of captured Jacobite muskets; the discomfiture, by a sudden illumination from above, of three Camerons sent experimentally to scale the Castle rock under the cover of darkness; and—perhaps the most genuinely comic of all—the solemn paying out to the cashier and directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland, within the very walls of the Castle, and in exchange for Prince Charles’s notes, of the ready money which had been taken there for safety, but the lack of which inconvenienced the Edinburgh shopkeepers as much as anybody. This transaction had taken place, under the white flag, during the blockade itself.
But tonight, the guns being silent, and General Joshua Guest once more in possession of his invalid diet, the lately terrified citizens, in the high crammed houses with their unsavoury approaches, were preparing to sleep without fear of bombardment next day by their own defenders. Those outposts of the invading foe, which always kept a wary eye upon the Castle and its approaches—and which had not passed through a very enviable time the last few days—the Highland guard at the Weigh-house, the West Bow, and elsewhere, had received their night relief, and Mr. Patrick Crichton, saddler and ironmonger, was writing in his diary further caustic and originally spelt remarks anent these ‘scownderalls’, ‘scurlewheelers’ and ‘hillskipers’. Inside the walls all was quiet.
But at the other end of the town Holyrood House was fit up, for there was dancing tonight in the long gallery under the eyes of that unprepossessing series of early Scottish kings due to the brush of an ill-inspired Dutchman...and under a pair of much more sparkling ones. For the Prince was gay tonight, as he was not always; and though, following his usual custom, he himself did not dance, it was plain that the growing accessions to his cause dining the last few days had raised his spirits. For besides all those who had joined him soon after Glenfinnan—Stewarts of Appin, MacDonalds of Glengarry, Grants of Glenmoriston—two days ago had come in fierce old Gordon of Glenbucket with four hundred men, and the day before that young Lord Ogilvy, the Earl of Airlie’s son, with six hundred, and Farquharson of Balmoral with two hundred, and his kinsman of Monaltrie with more. And others were coming. Whatever the future might hold, he was here as by a miracle in the palace of his ancestors, having defeated in a quarter of an hour the general who had slipped out of his path in August and returned by sea to the drubbing which awaited him among the morasses and the cornstubble of Prestonpans.
So there, at the end of the gallery nearest to his own apartments, in a costume half satin, half tartan, stood the living embodiment of Scotland’s ancient dynasty, and drew to himself from time to time the gaze of every lady in the room. But it was to those of his own sex that he chiefly talked.
At the other end of the gallery, which looked out on to the garden and the chapel, Alison Grant, very fine in her hoop and powder, her flowered brocade of blue and silver, with a scarf of silken tartan and a white autumn rose on her breast, was talking with animation to three young men, one of whom, in a French uniform, bore a strong resemblance to her, and was in fact her young brother Hector, just come over from France. The others were distant kinsmen, Grants of Glenmoriston and Shewglie respectively. Right in the corner, on a gilded chair, sat Mr. Grant in a not very new coat (for it was more fitting that Alison should go braw than he). His hands rested on his cane, and his lined face, half shrewd and half childlike, wrinkled into a smile as he saw the likelihood that neither young Glenmoriston nor young Shewglie, who seemed to be disputing in a friendly way for the honour of the next dance, would obtain it, since someone else was making his way between the knots of talkers to this corner. To judge by the glances cast at him as he passed, it appeared that Alison was not the only lady there to think that a certain tall cadet of Clan Cameron, a captain in Lochiel’s regiment and one of the Prince’s aides-de-camp, who wore powder for the nonce and amber satin instead of tartan, was the match of any other gentleman in the room—except, of course, of him with the star on his breast.
Yet Alison, for some reason, gave the newcomer the briefest glance now, though it was a sweet one enough; then her eyes wandered away again. The two Grants, evidently thinking their cause hopeless, took themselves off.
‘Alison, here is your cavalier come to claim you,’ said her father from his corner.
‘Alison has not a look or a thought to give to me nowadays,’ observed Ewen, looking at his love from behind, at the back of her white neck, where the sacque fell in imposing folds from the square of the bodice, and where two little unruly tendrils of hair, having shaken off their powder, were beginning to show their true colour. ‘Like the rest of the ladies, she has eyes only for the Prince. ’Tis pity I am not a Whig, for then she might pay me some attention, if only in order to convert me.’
At that Alison turned round, laughing.
‘Well, sir,’ she said, looking him up and down, ‘your costume, I vow, is almost Whiggish. In those clothes, and without a scrap of tartan upon you, you might be an Englishman?’
‘Or a Frenchman,’ suggested her father from his corner.
But this accusation Alison repudiated somewhat indignantly. ‘No; Frenchmen are all little men!’ Yet, having lived so much in France, she must have known better.
‘No one could call Ardroy little, I admit,’ agreed Mr. Grant. ‘And he has not the French physiognomy. But in that dress he has quite the French air.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Ewen, bowing, ‘since I suppose I am to take that as a compliment.’
‘There are some tall fellows in my regiment,’ declared Hector Grant, drawing up his slim and active figure. ‘For my part, I’ve no ambition to attain the height of a pine tree. Alison, is it customary in Scotland, think you, for a brother to lead out his sister?’
‘Not unless they are so unlike that the company cannot guess the kinship,’ responded Ewen for his betrothed. ‘Not, therefore in this case, Eachain!’
‘Proprietary airs already, I see,’ retorted the young soldier, a smile in the dark eyes which were Alison’s too. ‘Eh bien, if I may not have Alison, I vow I’ll dance with the oldest dame present. I like not your young misses.’ And away he went, while Ewen, offering his hand, carried off his lady for the minuet which was just about to begin.
And, intoxicated by the violins, the lights, the shimmer of satin and silk—with just enough tartan to show the gathering’s heart—thinking of Cope soundly beaten, Edinburgh in their hands, Ewen distinguished by the Prince for Lochiel’s sake, Alison felt that she was stepping on rosy clouds instead of on a mortal floor. Her feet ached to dance a reel rather than this stately measure. And Ewen—the darling, how handsome, though how different, he looked in powder!—did he too know this pulsing exhilaration? He always kept his feelings under control. Yet when his eyes met hers she could see in them, far down, an exultation profounder, perhaps, than her own.
The music ceased; her betrothed bowed low, and Alison sank smiling in a deep curtsy that spread her azure petticoat about her like a great blue blossom. Then she took his hand, and they went aside.
‘Now you must fan yourself, must you not, whether you be hot or no? What are these little figures on your fan—Cupids or humans?’ asked Ewen.
‘Mercy on us!’ exclaimed Miss Grant suddenly, looking towards the end of the apartment, ‘the Prince is no longer here!’
‘Is he not?’ responded Ewen calmly. ‘I had not observed.’
‘And you one of his aides-de-camp! Fie on you!’ cried Alison, and took her fan out of his hand.
‘I was looking at you, mo chridhe,’ said her lover in his deep, gentle voice, and offered no other excuse.
‘But where can His Royal Highness have got to?’
‘My dear, His Royal Highness is under no vow that I know of to watch us dance any longer than he pleases. However, there’s another to his aides-de-camp, Dr. Cameron; perhaps he can assuage your anxiety. Archie!’
Dr. Archibald Cameron, Lochiel’s brother, turned round at his kinsman’s summons. He was a man only a dozen years or so older than Ewen himself, with much of Lochiel’s own wisdom and serenity, and Ewen had for him a respect and affection second only to that which he bore his Chief.
‘Archie, come and protect me from Miss Grant! She declares that I am a Whig because I am wearing neither trews nor philabeg, and unworthy of the position I occupy towards the Prince because I had not observed his withdrawal, nor can tell her the reason for it.’
But already the fiddles had struck up for another dance, and one of the young Grants had returned and was proffering his request anew. So Ewen relinquished his lady and watched her carried off, sailing away like a fair ship.
‘Taken to task so soon!’ said Dr. Cameron with a twinkle. He was a married man himself, with several children. ‘No doubt if my Jean were here I should be in like case, for though I knew the Prince had withdrawn I have not fashed myself about it.’
Neither did Ewen now. ‘Is it true,’ he asked, ‘that Donald will not be here tonight at all?’
‘Yes; I left him by his own fireside in the Canongate.’
‘He’s not ill, Archie?’
‘No, no; he’s older and wiser than we, that’s all.’ And giving his young cousin a nod and a little smile Dr. Cameron went off.
Ewen abode where he was, for it was too late to secure a partner. Suddenly, hearing his name uttered in a low tone behind him, he turned to see Mr. Francis Strickland, one of the ‘seven men of Moidart’, the gentlemen who had landed with the Prince in the west.
‘Captain Cameron,’ said he, coming closer and speaking still lower, though at the moment there was no one within a couple of yards or so, ‘Captain Cameron, the Prince desires that in a quarter of an hour you will station yourself at the door of the ante-room leading to his bedchamber, and see to it that no one approaches his room. His Royal Highness finds himself indisposed, and obliged to withdraw from the ball; but he particularly wishes that no attention shall be called to his absence. Do you understand?’
Ewen stared at him, a good deal astonished at this commission. There was something furtive, too, about Mr. Strickland’s manner which he did not relish; and in common with many of the Highland chiefs, he was coming to dislike and mistrust the Irish followers of the Prince—though Strickland, to be accurate, was an Englishman.
‘This indisposition is very sudden, Mr. Strickland,’ he observed. ‘A short while ago the Prince was in the best of health and spirits.’
‘I suppose, sir,’ retorted Strickland tartly, ‘that you scarcely consider yourself to be a better judge of the Prince’s state of health than he is himself?’
‘No,’ returned Ewen, his Highland pride all at once up in arms, ‘but I do conceive that, as his personal aide-de-camp, I take my orders from His Royal Highness himself, and not from any...intermediary.’
Mr. Strickland’s eye kindled. ‘You are not very polite, Captain Cameron,’ he observed with truth. Indeed he seemed to be repressing a warmer retort. ‘I am to tell the Prince, then, that you refuse the honour of his commands, and that he must find another aide-de-camp to execute them?’
‘No, since I have not refused,’ said Ewen with brevity, and he turned upon his heel. But Strickland clutched at his arm. ‘Not yet—you are not to go yet! In a quarter of an hour’s time.’
And Ewen stopped. ‘The Prince intends to be indisposed in a quarter of an hour’s time!’ he exclaimed. ‘Then indeed ’tis a very strange seizure; I doubt Dr. Cameron would be better for the post.’
‘For God’s sake, Captain Cameron!’ said Strickland in an agitated whisper, pulling Ewen by the sleeve. ‘For God’s sake show some discretion—moderate your voice!’ And he murmured something about a delicate task and a wrong choice, which only inflamed Ewen’s suspicions the more. What intrigue was afoot that the Prince’s door should be guarded, under plea of illness, in a quarter of an hour’s time? He was expecting a visit, perhaps—from whom? Ewen liked the sound of it very little, the less so that Strickland was plainly now in a fever of nervousness.
‘Pray let go my arm, sir,’ he said, and, the Englishman not at once complying, added meaningly, ‘if you do not wish me to be still more indiscreet!’ On which Mr. Strickland hastily removed his grasp, and Ewen turned and began to make his way down the room, careless whether Strickland were following or no, since if that gentleman’s desire for secrecy were sincere he dared not make an open protest among the dancers.
As he went, Ewen very much regretted Lochiel’s absence tonight, and also the indisposition of Mr. Murray of Broughton, the Prince’s secretary, who had delicate health. Mr. Strickland must be aware of both those facts...And if Strickland were in this business, whatever it might be, it was fairly certain that Colonel O’Sullivan, the Irish Quartermaster-General, was in it also. For a second or so the young man hesitated, and glanced about for Dr. Cameron, but he was nowhere to be seen now. Then he himself would try to get to the bottom of what was going on; and as, when his mind was made up, an earthquake would scarcely have turned him from his path, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy made straight for the Prince’s bedchamber with that intention.
The drawing-room leading directly from the picture gallery had about a dozen couples in it; the ante-room which gave at right angles from this was fortunately empty, although the door between was open. The investigator went quietly through, closing this, marched across the ante-room, and knocked at the Prince’s door.
‘Avanti!’ cried a voice, and Ewen went into the bedchamber which had once been the ill-fated Darnley’s. The Prince was sitting on the other side of the gilded and embroidery-hung bed, with his back to the door, engaged, it seemed, in the absence of Morrison his valet, in pulling on his own boots. A black cloak and plain three-cornered hat lay upon the gold and silver coverlet.
‘Is that you, O’Sullivan?’ he asked without turning his head. ‘I shall be ready in a moment.’
Ewen thought: ‘I was right; O’Sullivan is in it!...Your Royal Highness...’ he said aloud.
At that, the Prince looked quickly behind him, then, still seated on the bed, turned half round, leaning on one hand. ‘My orders, Captain Cameron, were for you to post yourself at the outer door. There has evidently been some mistake, either on your part or on Mr. Strickland’s.’
‘On mine, then, may it please Your Highness,’ admitted Ewen coolly. ‘As the order puzzled me somewhat, I have ventured to ask that I may receive it from Your Royal Highness’s own mouth.’
The mouth in question betrayed annoyance, and the Prince arose from his position on the bed and faced his aide-de-camp across it. ‘Mon Dieu, I thought it was plain enough! You will have the goodness to station yourself outside the farther door and to let no one attempt to see me. I am indisposed.’
‘And the quarter of an hour’s interval of which Mr. Strickland spoke, sir?’
‘That is of no moment now. You can take up your place at once, Captain Cameron.’ And with a gesture of dismissal the Prince turned his back, and walked across the room towards the curtained window. It was thus plainly to be seen that he had his boots on.
He was not then expecting a visit; he was going to pay one! Hence the sentinel before the outer door, that his absence might not be known. Ewen looked at the cloak on the bed, thought of the dark Edinburgh streets, the hundred and one narrow little entries, the chance of a scuffle, of an encounter with some unexpected patrol from the Castle, and took the plunge.
‘Your Royal Highness is going out—at this hour?’
The Prince spun round. ‘Who told you that I was going out? And if I were, what possible affair is it of yours, sir?’
‘Only that, as your aide-de-camp, it is my great privilege to watch over your Royal Highness’s person,’ answered Ewen respectfully but firmly. ‘And if you are going out into the streets of Edinburgh at night without a guard—’
Charles Edward came nearer. His brown eyes, striking in so fair-complexioned a young man, sparkled with anger. ‘Captain Cameron, when I appointed you my aide-de-camp, I did not think that I was hampering myself with a s—’ He bit off the short, pregnant word, that aide-de-camp’s suddenly paling face evidently recalling to him whither he was going. But he instantly started off again on the same road. ‘Dieu me damne!’ he said irritably, ‘am I to have your clan always at my elbow? Lochiel may have walked first into Edinburgh, but he was not the first to declare for me. He sent his brother to beg me to go back again! I think you Camerons would do well to remem—’ Again he broke off, for there had come a knock at the door.
