The Jacobite Trilogy. D. K. Broster

“There is no food . . . in these hills. I have had nothing but water . . . for three days . . . I think. . . . That is why Lachlan has gone . . . to try . . .” The words tailed off as the spark of astonishment and animation in him went out quite suddenly, leaving his face the mask it had been when Keith entered.

      Three days! No wonder that he was weak. Keith threw the water out of the bowl, poured some wine into it, and lifting Ewen’s head from the bracken held it to his lips. “Drink this!” he commanded, and had to say it two or three times before Ewen obeyed.

      “But this is wine, Lachlan,” he murmured confusedly. “How did you come by wine?” Then his eyes turned on Keith as if he recognised him again, and the recognition was only a source of bewilderment.

      Keith meanwhile was breaking bread into the wine. He knew that one must not give a starving man too much food at first. But the fugitive, far from being ravenous, seemed to find it difficult to swallow the sops which were put to his lips. Keith, however, persevered, and even added some meat to the bread, and patiently fed him with that, till Ewen intimated that he could eat no more. Keith’s next intention was then announced.

      “Now I am going to dress your wounds, if they need it,” he said. “You’ll permit me?”

      “Permit you!” repeated Ewen, gazing at him with a renewal of his former wonder.

      Keith took the bowl, and went out for water. The moon was hidden behind a bank of cloud, but a planet hung like a great flower over one of the black mountain-tops. The grazing horses lifted their heads enquiringly, and Mackay, sitting propped against the shieling wall, scrambled sleepily to his feet.

      “No, I am not going on yet. Get me that torn linen from my saddlebag.”

      To his surprise, when he went back into the hut after even so momentary an absence, Ewen had fallen asleep, perhaps as the result of eating after so long a fast. Keith decided not to rouse him, and waited. But five minutes saw the end of the snatch of feverish slumber, for Ardroy woke with a little cry and some remark about the English artillery which showed that he had been back at Culloden Moor. However, he knew Keith instantly, and when the Englishman began to unbandage his wounded sword-arm, murmured, “That was a bayonet-thrust.”

      The arm had indeed been transfixed, and looked very swollen and painful, but, as far as Keith could judge, gave no particular cause for anxiety. He washed the wound, and as he bound it up again saw clearly in the rays of the lantern, which for greater convenience he had set upon an old stool that he had found, a curious white seam on the palm of the hand; another ran across the fingers. He wondered for a moment what they were; then he guessed.

      But when he came round and unbandaged Ewen’s thigh—and miserably enough was it bandaged—and found there a deep gash, in no satisfactory state, he was somewhat horrified. This injury called for a surgeon, and he had nearly said so; but, reddening, checked himself, recalling the deliberate denial of care to the Jacobite wounded at Inverness, and the actual removal of their instruments from the few of their own surgeons imprisoned with them. Would Ewen Cameron get real attention in Major Guthrie’s hands?

      He glanced at him, lying with his eyes shut and his hands gripped together on his breast, but making neither sound nor movement, and wondered whether he were hurting him intolerably, and what he should do if he went off into another of those long swoons, and thereupon finished his task as quickly as he could and had recourse to the brandy-flask once more. And then he sat down at the bottom of the rough bed—for the heather and fern was spread on a rude wooden framework standing about a foot from the floor—and gazed at him with a furrowed brow. The lantern on the stool beside him revealed the Highlander’s pallor and exhaustion to the full, but, though his eyes were closed, and he lay quiet for a considerable time, he was not asleep, for he suddenly opened them, and said:

      “I cannot understand; did you know that I was here, Captain Windham . . . or is it chance that has brought you . . . so opportunely?”

      “It was chance the first time—for this is the second time that I have been here,” replied Keith. “I will tell you about it. I was on my way this afternoon from Inverness to Perth when some impulse made me attempt a very foolish short cut among the mountains. I think now that it must have been the finger of Fate pushing me, for thus I came upon this place just a moment or two before they dragged you out and set you against the wall . . . only just in time, in fact. I protested and argued with the officer in charge—a Major Guthrie, who has a camp on the Corryarrick road up there—and was fortunately able to prevent his shooting you in cold blood.” And, as Ewen gave a little exclamation, he hurried on in order not to give him time to ask (should he think of it) how he had accomplished this feat. “But he intends—at least I think he intends—to send a party in the morning and take you prisoner; and indeed, brute though he is, I hope that he will do so, for otherwise what will become of you, alone here?”

      But Ewen left that question unanswered, and was equally far from asking on what ground he had been spared. The fact itself seemed enough for him, for he was trying agitatedly to raise himself a little. “It was you . . . though I saw no one . . . you saved my life, then!” he exclaimed rather incoherently. “And now . . . is it possible that you have come back again . . . out of your way! Captain Windham, this debt . . . this more than kindness . . .” He struggled to go on, but between emotion, weakness and recent pain it was more than he could do, and seeing him almost on the point of breaking down Keith stopped him quickly.

      “For God’s sake don’t talk of debts, Ardroy—or, if you must, remember what I owe you! See, you are horribly weak; could you not eat a little more now?”

      Ewen nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and put out a shaky left hand, apparently to show that he could feed himself. And while he nibbled in a rather half-hearted way at the slice of bread and meat which Keith put into it, Major Windham himself wandered slowly about the hovel. The ashes of last summer’s fires lay white in the middle of the floor, and through the hole in the roof which was the only outlet for the smoke a star looked in as it passed.

      It seemed to Keith that before he went on his way he must tell Ardroy the means he had used to save him. Surely there was nothing blameworthy or unnatural in his having revealed who Ewen was, when he stood between him and imminent death? But from telling him the reason which Guthrie supposed or feigned to suppose lay at the back of his action, he mentally shied away like a nervous horse, the Lowlander had rendered the whole subject so horribly distasteful to him. Moreover it was not Guthrie who had suggested that Cameron of Ardroy might ‘inadvertently drop a hint’. How could he tell Ewen that he had said that about him?

      He turned round, miserably undecided. Ewen had finished his pretence at a meal, and his eyes were fixed on his visitor. Keith had a sudden access of panic; he was sure that the Jacobite was going to ask him on what plea he had stopped his execution. He would put a question to him instead.

      “How did you get so far with a wound like that?” he asked, coming back to his former place, and sitting down again. “You had Neil MacMartin to help you, I suppose? You mentioned Lachlan, too, just now.”

      He had not anticipated more than a brief reply, but Ewen, once started, told him the whole story—not indeed, with any superfluity of words, and slowly, with pauses here and there. But the narrative was quite connected, though the speaker gave a certain dreamy impression of having half forgotten his listener, and of going on as if he were living his experiences over again rather than narrating them.

      It appeared that he had received both his wounds in that desperate charge into which the clans of the right wing had broken, maddened by the cruel artillery pounding which they had endured, a charge so furious that it had pierced and scattered the English front line regiments, only to dash itself to pieces on the bayonets of Sempill’s behind them. At the second and severer injury he fell, and was unable to get to his feet again, for it seemed as if a muscle had been severed in his thigh, and he was besides losing blood very fast. Only the devotion of one of his followers got him away from the heap of dead and wounded strewn like seaweed along the front of the second line; this man, powerful and unhurt, tied up the gash as best he could, and succeeded in carrying his chieftain a little out of the carnage, but in doing so he was shot dead, and