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

“You will march at daybreak with a hundred men. I do not say that you are to station yourself exclusively at this Loch nan—on my soul, I cannot pronounce its outlandish name. Dispose your men as you think best. My secretary is preparing a few notes for your guidance. The devil of it is, however,” confessed the harassed commander in a further burst of confidence, “that these informations, when one receives them, are always a se’nnight or two out of date.” And, after adding a few more recommendations as to Keith’s conduct, he said kindly, “Now go and get some sleep, Windham—and good luck to your endeavours!”

      Keith went out as one who walks on air. A chance at last—the greatest, if only he could seize it! So the day which had taken from him something which he felt that he had never really possessed had brought him . . . no, not compensation for the loss, for that, perhaps, he could never have, but opportunity to do more than purge his disgrace—to make himself the most envied man in the three kingdoms.

      V

       THE HERON’S FLIGHT IS ENDED

       Table of Contents

      “Hereafter, in a better world than this,

       I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”

      —Shakespeare.

      CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      It was fortunate for Ewen that the sorrel horse on which he was tied had easy paces, and that the troopers did not ride fast; fortunate too that his arms had been bound to his sides and not behind his back, as had at first been proposed when, limping badly, and shielding his eyes against the unaccustomed daylight, he was brought out into the courtyard of the fort to be mounted. For by midday so many hours in the saddle, under a July sun, were making heavy demands on a man come straight from close confinement and not long recovered of a severe wound.

      But from Ewen’s spirit a much heavier toll was being exacted; not by the prospect of the death which was in all likelihood awaiting him, not even by the remembrance of his lost Alison, but by the pain which was actually tearing at him now, this taking leave of what he loved better than life, the lakes and mountains of his home. This was the real death, and he kept his lips locked lest he should cry out at its sharpness.

      The picture which had been tormenting Keith Windham he could look at without undue shrinking; or rather, he did not trouble to look at it any more now. Like the man who had saved him, he could not avoid the thought that Guthrie’s musket balls had been more merciful, but the choice had not lain in his hands; and for the last two months it had been more important to try to keep his equanimity day after day in the cold and darkness of his prison than to think what he should do or feel when he came to stand in the hangman’s cart. And the parting with Alison was over; and because he had known that the kiss in the cabin of the brig might be their last, it had held the solemnity which had enwrapped their hurried marriage and the bridal night whose memory was so holy to him. Alison had been his, though for so brief a space; and one day, as he firmly believed, they would meet again. But Beinn Tigh . . . would he ever see again, in that world, his beloved sentinel of the stars?

      Ever since its peak had appeared, all flushed by the morning sun, as they began to ride by Loch Oich, he had kept his eyes hungrily upon it, praying that the horses might go slower, or that one might cast a shoe; watching it like a lover as it revealed more of its shapeliness and dominated the shoulder, between it and the loch, behind which, as they went farther, it would inevitably sink. And Loch na h-Iolaire, his loch, away behind there, invisible, secluded by its own mountains! If only he could get free of these cords, swim the water between, climb those intervening miles of scree and heather, and see the Eagle’s Lake once more! No, never again; neither in this world nor the next. For Loch na h-Iolaire was not like Alison and him; it had not a soul free of time and space. Loch na h-Iolaire existed over there, only there, on that one spot of earth, and in all the fields of heaven there would be no lake so lovely, and in heaven the grey mists would never swoop down on one who ambushed the deer.

      At Laggan-ach-drum they had halted and rested and eaten. It was Glengarry’s country, yet on the border of the Cameron, and Ardroy was known there; but in the burnt and ravaged clachan there seemed to be no man left, and no risk of a rescue. The troopers of Kingston’s Horse had shown themselves rough but not unkindly, and the sergeant, probably thinking that unless they gave the prisoner some attention they would hardly get him to Fort William at the end of the day, had him unfastened and taken off the sorrel and set down amongst them by the roadside with food and drink. But they were very careful of him, tying his ankles together, and putting a cord from one wrist to the belt of the next man. And Ewen had eaten and drunk in silence, looking at the sunlit desolation. This was what had been done in the Glen . . . done in all the countryside . . .

      A young girl had passed once or twice to a half-burnt croft carrying a bucket of water, and presently the sergeant, wanting some for the horses, called to ask where the water came from, since here they were no longer by a lake side. Setting down the heavy bucket, she came and stood before him, looking on the troopers with eyes like coals, and only once at their prisoner. (But the softness of evening was in them then.) The sergeant, without harshness, put his question, but the girl shook her head, and Ewen knew that she had not the English. Already he had seen a sight that set his heart beating, for as she stooped to put down the bucket he had caught a glimpse of the black handle of a sgian dubh in her bosom.

      “Shall I ask her for you?” he suggested to the sergeant, and, hardly waiting for the answer, he spoke rapidly to her in Gaelic, putting the question about water indeed, but adding at the end of it, “Try to give me your knife when I am on the horse again—if you have another for yourself!”

      The girl gave him a glance of comprehension, and turned away to show where to fetch the water; and the sergeant had no inkling that another question besides his had been put and answered. He even threw a word of thanks to the interpreter.

      But while they were tying Ewen on again the girl came among them, as if curiosity had brought her to see the sight, and, heedless of the jests which she did not understand, slipped nearer and nearer among the horses until she seemed to be jostled against the sorrel’s shoulder. And Ewen felt the little knife, warm from its hiding-place, slide into his right stocking; it was only with an effort that he kept his eyes averted and seemed unaware of her presence. But he turned his head as they rode away, and saw her standing at gaze with her hands joined, as though she were praying.

      That was an hour agone and more. How he should ever get at, much less use, the blade against his leg he had no idea, seeing that his arms were immovably pinioned, but to know it there made a world of difference. His thoughts reverted to Major Windham, to that interview yesterday. They might have been friends had Fate willed it otherwise; indeed he could not but think of him already as a friend, and with wonder at what he had done for him. But why had Angus’s heron brought them together to so little purpose, to meet, and meet, and then to part for ever, as they had met at first, ‘by the side of water’—Loch Oich and Loch Ness? Yet he owed his life to one of those encounters; there was no possible doubt of that. But it was still a mystery to him why the Englishman should have cared so much for his fate as to wreck his own career over it. He had really behaved to Loudoun and (as far as he could make out) to Cumberland—all honour to him for it—as if he were fey. And he had seemed at the outset of their acquaintance of so mocking a temper, so lightly contemptuous as scarcely even to be hostile. One saw him with different eyes now.

      But Keith Windham was swept from his thoughts again, as he realised afresh that he was going for the last time along Loch Lochy side. It was bright pain to look at it, but Ewen looked greedily, trying to burn those high green slopes for ever on his memory, to be imaged there as long as that memory itself was undissolved. There was the steep corrie and the wall shutting out his home. What though the house of Ardroy were ashes now, like Achnacarry and a score of others there were things the marauders could not touch, things dearer even than