Midnight Honor (2 page)

She was alone in her cell. Cumberland had called it a luxury, for there were easily a hundred half-starved men crowded into an area that normally held no more than twenty, some with festering wounds who were too weak or feverish to roll out of their own waste. An oatcake and small tin cup of water were the daily ration. Pleas and prayers went unheeded. The weak eventually grew too frail to squander their strength on such futile measures and simply died in silence. The stronger ones clung to their rage and sat huddled in dank corners, showing their defiance the only way they could: by continuing to live.

How, indeed, could they show any less courage than the tall and straight-backed Lady Anne Moy, who had spat her contempt in the porcine face of Butcher Cumberland with such magnificent defiance? He had come to the prison three times over the past six weeks offering to free her in exchange for giving king's evidence against the Jacobite leaders. All three times she had sent him away spluttering German oaths under his breath.

It was a heavy burden to carry on such slender shoulders, and Anne had come closer to accepting his offer on that third visit than she cared to admit. But he had made it in the open courtyard, below windows filled with the strained, haunted faces of the brave men who had already lost so much in a cause that had been doomed from the outset. If all she could do was give them this last shred of pride and honor to cling to, then it was little enough. It was also a sacrifice that grew pitifully smaller in importance with each day that passed, each hour that saw another rack of Jacobites hung for treason, each minute that brought the inevitability of her own death closer and closer.

Her once lustrous red hair was dull and matted with filth. Her skin was gray and the flesh had shrunk from her bones, leaving her body gaunt and always cold in spite of the spare blanket one of the kinder guards had smuggled through the bars. Deep purple smudges ringed her eyes, and her hands
were stained black, her nails cracked and torn from repeatedly pulling herself up to the narrow window cut high in the cell wall.

She held one almost transparent hand up to the murky light and could not entirely stifle the sob that rose in her throat. She was so thin she could no longer wear the ring Angus had given her on their wedding day. It had fallen off one night, and she had become nearly frantic groping through the straw and filth that littered the floor until she had found it.

That was the closest she had come to weeping since her arrest. The closest she had come to screaming out an oath to the devil himself if he would take her away from this place.

She did not even know if Angus was alive or not. Cumberland assured her that he was, miraculously clinging to a thread to be sure, yet Anne had no reason to believe him, certainly none to trust him. The royal toady had said himself that belly wounds were the quickest to mortify despite all the skills a surgeon could bring to bear.

Anne curled her fingers into a tight ball and pressed them against her lips.

A gleaming, fat tear squeezed between her lashes and streaked slowly down the length of her cheek to her chin. It hung there a moment, glistening like a liquefied diamond before a tremor shook it free and it dropped unnoticed among the other stains that darkened the bodice of her dress. The once lovely gown was filthy, the silk rendered colorless and torn in a dozen places. The layers of ruffled linen petticoats she had discarded after the first week of confinement now served as her bedding. Her cloak had gone to ease the fevered chills of another prisoner. Over the weeks, she had bartered her shoes, her gloves, even the tiny rosette buttons that had adorned her bodice for a taste of cheese or an extra crust of black bread.

When she had nothing left to trade, one of the
Sassenach
guards had suggested other ways of earning favors, but the first time he came into her cell at night, he left doubled over, his ballocks damn near kicked into his pockets.

She had expected him to come back, with friends, but she never saw his ugly face again, and one of the men in a nearby cell whispered a reassurance that she would not. No one
would ever see him again for the insult he had paid to their valiant Colonel Anne.

They did not know that the cruelest insult had already been delivered by Cumberland himself. Nor did they know it had been Anne's own blade that had pierced her husband's belly.

Chapter One

Invernesshire, December 1745

T
he track was narrow and deeply rutted, slushed with puddles of melted snow. The two riders kept their horses on the frozen deer grass wherever possible, and several times abandoned the road entirely to cut across a field, or shave the corner off a moor in order to shorten the journey from Moy Hall to Dunmaglass. Anne Farquharson Moy was dressed for the hard ride and wore plaid trews, a warm woolen shirt, and a leather doublet. A long length of tartan was wrapped around her waist and draped over her shoulders to further blunt the icy effects of the wind. Her bonnet was pulled low over her forehead, stuffed full of her long red hair. In her belt she wore a brace of Highland dags, the heavy steel pistols loaded and primed, and she was comfortable with the knowledge that she would use them without hesitation should the need arise.

Riding beside her was her cousin, Robert Farquharson of Monaltrie, also dressed for the bitter cold, swaddled in plaid. When the wind snapped at his kilt, his legs were bare beneath, the skin red, but he was accustomed to withstanding the raw weather.

Robert had been waiting in a grove of trees close by Moy Hall at the appointed time. When Anne had joined him, they
had exchanged but a few frosty whispers before setting out across the frozen landscape.

Great care had to be taken when traveling from home these days. There were three battalions of government troops stationed in nearby Inverness, Highland regiments formed up under the command of John Campbell, earl of Loudoun. Patrols were regularly sent out from Fort George to scour the countryside day and night, and anyone could be arrested or taken away to prison without benefit of either a warrant or a trial. Several local clansmen had been dragged from their homes just this past week, their only crime being the sprig of thistle worn in their bonnets to show support for Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

Anne glanced up as a thick blanket of cloud crawled across the moon. She could smell more snow on the way and was grimly thankful for it. Snow—the driving icy crystals that were indigenous to the clear Highland air—would make the night safer for her, safer for everyone.

Her grandfather had sent an urgent message to her earlier in the day. Despite the terrible risks involved to both parties, he had requested a meeting at the home of John Alexander MacGillivray, a laird of some considerable influence who possessed a reputation fearsome enough to keep Lord Loudoun's patrols at a wary distance. Anne strongly doubted that even the news of Fearchar Farquharson's presence at Dunmaglass would inspire the lobsterbacks to venture too close, though she had heard recently the reward had been doubled for the old gray fox's capture.

At one hundred and thirteen years of age, Fearchar Farquharson was a spry walking history of Scotland. He had seen six kings take the English throne since the Restoration and had endured each one's particular remedy for the “Scottish problem.” He had fought his first battle nearly a century before when James Graham, the Duke of Montrose, had raised an army of Highlanders in an attempt to save the doomed Catholic monarchy. He had fought for the Stuart cause again in 1689, when England had first dared to invite a German Hanover to wear the crown, and he had played a major role in the failed uprising of 1715. Some reverently referred to him as the “wee de'il in plaid,” but to Anne, he was
simply Granda', a stubborn old warrior who had reached his venerable age on the assumption that he was destined to survive as long as it took to see the Stuarts restored to their rightful place on the throne of Scotland.

His best hope for victory had landed in the Hebrides in mid-July. Charles Edward Stuart had embarked from France equally determined to reclaim the throne of England and Scotland in his father's name. In August, he had raised the Stuart standard at Glenfinnan and proclaimed himself Regent. To the astonishment of nearly every arrogant-minded Englishman who thought their army invulnerable, he had led his Highlanders to Edinburgh and recaptured the royal city, then dealt the government troops a resounding defeat at Prestonpans. Capitalizing on his victories, the prince had secured the Scottish borders and marched his army deep into the very heart of England.

Derby was one hundred and fifty miles from London; upon hearing that the Stuart prince had ventured unchallenged to within striking distance of the throne, the English king had ordered his household packed and loaded into waiting boats, prepared to flee at a moment's notice.

Fearchar—indeed, all of the Highland clans loyal to the Jacobite cause—had raised such a resounding cheer at the news that it was said to have echoed the length and breadth of the Great Glen. He had been all for setting out, on foot if need be, to join the brave and courageous army, even at the unthinkable cost of breaking the oath of fealty that bound the entire Farquharson clan to the will of their laird Angus Moy, The MacKintosh of Clan MacKintosh, Chief of Clan Chattan.

To Fearchar and others like him, the shame was nearly untenable that Angus Moy had not called out the clan and marched to Glenfinnan in support of their valiant prince. Instead, Angus had been one of a dozen influential lairds who had taken commissions in the government army and thereby bound their clansmen to remain at home—some even to take up the Hanover colors—while their prince marched bravely forth to meet his destiny. Fearchar had been one of the most outspoken dissenters; as a result, there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest, as well as for the arrests of Anne's three cousins.

Raised without benefit of a mother, Anne had spent most of her youth in the brash company of Robert, Eneas, and James Farquharson of Monaltrie. Out of ten children, eighty-six grandchildren, and too many great-grandchildren to count, these four progeny were the stars in Fearchar's sky. They were his hope, and he considered them to be Scotland's promise, for they were as fearless and proud as the mountains and glens that bred the fiercest, boldest hearts of courage. They were Highlanders and Jacobites who proclaimed their loyalty as openly as they wore the white Stuart cockade in their bonnets.

At the outset of the rebellion, Anne's cousins had joined Fearchar in the mountains, tirelessly tramping the miles between Inverness and Aberdeen, between Aberdeen and Arisaig, to keep the clans informed of events happening south of the border. They had been the first to report the stunning victory of the Highland army over General Sir John Cope's troops at Prestonpans, first to report the prince's march south into England and the subsequent fall of Carlisle, then Manchester, and finally Derby.

But for the small inconvenience of being a woman and married to the clan chief, Anne likely would have joined them. She was closer to them than to her own siblings—three silly sisters who were content with their stitchery and nursery chores. She had relied on her cousins to teach her the important skills—how to ride like the wind, how to hunt, to shoot a musket and bow—and to that end, she could toss a dirk into a plover's eye at twenty paces or, if the mood came upon her, down a pint of fiery
uisque baugh
without batting a long auburn eyelash. She had been as distraught as they when Angus had forbidden any of the clan to ride to Glenfinnan, as disillusioned, hurt, and angered when he had subsequently donned the uniform of the Black Watch and raised a battalion of four hundred clansmen to join the Hanover regiments under the command of Lord Loudoun.

Anne shivered and hunched lower in her saddle, not wanting to think about how enraged her husband would be if he knew she was riding to Dunmaglass to meet her grandfather. He had expressly forbidden her to have any further contact with her outlawed kinsmen lest word of her affiliation with
rebels reach the ears of Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session. But forbidding Anne to see her family was like forbidding fruit to ripen on the vine. Outwardly she may have striven to look and act the part of a gentleman's wife, shunning her trews and doublets for the silk underpinnings and stiff whalebone corsets of a proper married lady. Inwardly, however, she was still “Wild Ruadh Annie,” and if her family needed her, she would go to them. Blood was thicker than any bonds made by marriage vows.

Ruadh Annie, truth be told, had never given much weight to the state of holy matrimony. Growing up, she had known it would eventually be a necessary evil, as would the vow of obedience she would be required to pledge to her husband. There had not been any shortage of suitors eager to tame the red-haired wildcat, but had someone predicted that she would one day become the mistress of Moy Hall, the Lady Anne MacKintosh, she would have laughed until tears ran down her face.

She imagined Angus's reaction would have been much the same. Born in the Highlands, but educated in England and widely traveled, he had not had the faintest inkling he would one day inherit the mantle of chief, let alone be obligated to honor an agreement forged when he was still riding ponies and wearing knee breeks.