The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

Ewen, who was sitting comfortably in the heather at a few yards’ distance, nearer the battery, rested his elbows on his knees and shaded his eyes the better to see also, his brain at these words busy with a vision of a possibly gratified desire for what he considered real fighting.

      Suddenly, as it were with half an eye, he became aware of something unusual in the fort, where, a mere eight hundred yards away, movements were perfectly visible. Surely the defenders had altered the position of one of their six-pounders . . . could they be intending . . . Lochiel standing there with the glass to his eye looking at the sloop was fully exposed to their view . . .

      In a second Ewen was on his feet, shouting a warning, but as he sprang came the flash and the roar. “God!” he cried in agony, and with another bound was up on the crest of the hillock, his arms wide. Could one man’s body suffice?

      There was a crash as the shot pitched into the ruined wall on the slope below, breaking and scattering the big rough stones in all directions. Ewen never saw what struck him, but at the moment of impact, which seemed to drive his soul from his body, he had just time to think, “It is for him! Alison, forgive me . . .” Then he went into darkness.

      When he came out of it again he found himself lying on the farther slope in the midst of a group of people, with his head on someone’s arm, and hands unfastening his coat. A voice said, “No, the head wound is only slight; ’tis here on the breast that the large stone must have struck him.”

      Ewen tried to get his own voice. It was difficult, and the world heaved. “Is . . . Lochiel safe?”

      Archibald Cameron, kneeling beside him, looked up for a second. “He is holding you at this moment, dear lad. No—lie still!” He went on with his examination.

      But Ewen disobediently turned his swimming head a little, and saw that he was indeed in Lochiel’s hold, so Lochiel must be unharmed. Why then had he his other hand over his eyes? Puzzled but content, he shut his own again.

      When next he thought much about his surroundings he was lying in the same place, wrapped in a plaid, with Lachlan squatting near, gazing at him with anguished eyes. Over the level top of Ben Nevis clouds, as white as the snow which crowned it, were hurrying against the blue. It came back to Ewen that he had heard Archie say that he was greatly bruised, but that no bones seemed broken, and no internal injury, he hoped, inflicted; so, after speaking a word or two of reassurance to his foster-brother, he relapsed into his state of happy content, with pain every time he drew a breath and a violent headache. But Lochiel was safe.

      Presently he felt his hand taken, and there was Lochiel himself kneeling by him, and Lachlan on the other side removing himself respectfully to a distance.

      “Ewen, Ewen,” said the well-beloved voice, with trouble in it, “you should not have done it!”

      Ewen gave him a radiant smile. He felt neither penitence nor any need for it.

      “I saw . . . what was going to happen,” he observed.

      “I do not think that anything would have reached me. No one was struck but you, who deliberately threw yourself in the way of the fragments, and one of Keppoch’s gillies, slightly. If you had been killed on my behalf——” Lochiel left the sentence unfinished, and glanced down at the cuff of his coat; there was a stain on it.

      Ewen’s eyes had followed his. “Do not say that you are hurt after all!” he exclaimed in a tone of horror.

      “It is your own blood, Ewen. Your head was not much cut, Archie says. But oh, my child, if I had had your death too at my door, when there is so much that I must answer for!”

      And the young man saw that his Chief was moved—more deeply moved than he had ever seen him; but, being still stupid from the blow on the head, he thought, “Why does he say that . . . whose death is at his door?” And he lay looking with a mixture of affection and perplexity at the kinsman who was still as much his pattern of all that was noble, wise and generous as when he himself had been a boy under his tutelage. Then the fort fired one of its twelve-pounders at the battery, and through the din Lochiel told him that a litter had been sent for to take him to Glen Nevis House, where he should see him again later.

      Soon after, therefore, four of his men carried Ewen to that house of Alexander Cameron’s at the opening of the glen which Lochiel and Keppoch had made their head-quarters; and he heard the voice of the Nevis, telling of the heights from which it had descended; and a little later, when that had faded from his hearing, a less agreeable one, Lowland and educated, saying how disgraceful it was that a peaceful writer could not go a mile from Maryburgh to visit a client without being seized by cattle-thieves; that indeed the said thieves could do no less than send him back under escort and safe-conduct. And here the indignant speaker’s gaze must have fallen upon the litter with its burden, for his next remark was: “What have we here—another of ye killed? I’m rejoiced to see it!”

      Ewen felt constrained to deny this imputation. “I am not in the least killed,” he rejoined with annoyance, opening his eyes to find himself almost at the door of Glen Nevis House, and to see, in the midst of a group of rather shamefaced Highlanders, Mr. Chalmers, the Whig notary of Maryburgh, whom he knew and who knew him. The lawyer gave an exclamation.

      “Gude sakes, ’tis Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy! I’m unco sorry to see you in this condition—and in such company, Ardroy!”

      “Why, what other company do you suppose I should be in?” asked Ewen, and shut his eyes again and heard no more of Mr. Chalmers and his grievances. But that chance meeting was to mean a great deal to him afterwards.

      What meant more to him at the moment, however, was that Dr. Cameron kept him in bed longer than he had anticipated, and he had not been on his legs again for more than a day or two when the siege of Fort William was suddenly abandoned. The defenders were too resolute, the besiegers unfortunate, and their artillery not sufficiently powerful; and in the night of April 3, after spiking their remaining cannon, the attacking force withdrew. And, since they were in their own land of Lochaber, and it was seed-time or past it, Lochiel and Keppoch gave permission to their men to go home for a few days. So Ewen and his little force returned to Ardroy, and he saw Loch na h-Iolaire again, and caused Neil to row him upon it, for it was too cold for a swim; in the middle of which voyage he was struck by a sudden suspicion, and, landing on the islet, examined it for traces of the heron. There were none; and the nest, up at the top of the tallest pine-tree, must long have been uninhabited, for the winds had blown it nearly all away.

      Shortly afterwards Lachlan had a singularly unpleasant interview with his chieftain, in which, upbraided with the most direct disobedience, he replied that his concern for the being he loved best on earth was even stronger than his wish to obey him; after which, in a dramatic but perfectly sincere manner, he drew his dirk and said that rather than Mac ’ic Ailein should look at him with such anger he would plunge it into his own heart. In the end Ewen was constrained to forgive him, after pointing out how little his disobedience had availed. There were more herons than one in Lochaber.

      And other officers than Captain Windham in King George’s army, he might have added. His twice-held prisoner had indeed passed from his thoughts these many weeks; the question of the slaughtered heron necessarily brought him back there for a moment, but without any permanence. Ewen did not anticipate another meeting with him, for were Angus’s prophecy going to be fulfilled to the letter, they would surely have encountered each other in the confusion of Falkirk fight, where the second battalion of the Royals had—until it fled—faced the Camerons across the ravine. No; that two meetings should come to pass out of the five predicted was quite a reasonable achievement for the old taibhsear.

      And then one afternoon, when he was absorbed in thoughts of Alison, with all the final suddenness of the expected came a panting messenger from Achnacarry, with a scrawl in Lochiel’s writing: “Gather your men and march at once. Cumberland is moving. God send we reach Inverness in time!”

      * * * * *

      A bad dream is sometimes only a dream to the sleeper; he may know it to be such, and tell himself so. But this, though it held some of the elements of nightmare, was no dream; it was reality,