Diana Gabaldon - Dragonfly In Amber

“I always wondered where it lives, between wars.”

In the air, perhaps, its invisible spores waiting to seize an opportunity, I thought. The color was brilliant, incongruous, bright as the woad with which this man’s ancestors had painted themselves before going forth to war.

A breeze passed through the wood, ruffling the man’s hair. It stirred and rose, silky and lifelike. There was a crunch of leaves behind me, and I started convulsively from the trance in which I had stood, staring at the corpse.

Jamie stood beside me, looking down. He said nothing; only took me by the elbow and led me from the wood, leaving the dead man behind, clothed in the saprophytic hues of war and sacrifice.

It was mid-morning of April 15 by the time we came to Culloden House, having pushed ourselves and our ponies unmercifully to reach it. We approached it from the south, coming first through a cluster of outbuildings. There was a stir – almost a frenzy – of men on the road, but the stableyard was curiously deserted.

Jamie dismounted and handed his reins to Murtagh.

“D’ye wait here a moment,” he said. “Something doesna seem quite right here.”

Murtagh glanced at the door of the stables, standing slightly ajar, and nodded. Fergus, mounted behind the clansman, would have followed Jamie, but Murtagh prevented him with a curt word.

Stiff from the ride, I slid off my own horse and followed Jamie, slipping in the mud of the stableyard. There was something odd about the stableyard. Only as I followed him through the door of the stable building did I realize what it was – it was too quiet.

Everything inside was still; the building was cold and dim, without the usual warmth and stir of a stable. Still, the place was not entirely devoid of life; a dark figure stirred in the gloom, too big to be a rat or a fox.

“Who is that?” Jamie said, stepping forward to put me behind him automatically. “Alec? Is it you?”

The figure in the hay raised its head slowly, and the plaid fell back. The Master of Horse of Castle Leoch had but one eye; the other, lost in an accident many years before, was patched with black cloth. Normally, one eye sufficed him; brisk and snapping blue, it was enough to command the obedience of stable-lads and horses, grooms and riders alike.

Now Alec McMahon MacKenzie’s eye was dull as dusty slate. The broad, once vigorous body was curled in upon itself, and the cheeks of his face were sunk with the apathy of starvation.

Knowing the old man suffered from arthritis in damp weather, Jamie squatted beside him to prevent him rising.

“What has been happening?” he asked. “We are newly come; what is happening here?”

It seemed to take Old Alec a long time to absorb the question, assimilate it, and form his reply into words; perhaps it was only the stillness of the empty, shadowed stable that made his words ring hollow when they finally came.

“It has all gone to pot,” he said. “They marched to Nairn two nights ago, and came fleeing back yesterday. His Highness has said they will take a stand on Culloden; Lord George is there now, with what troops he has gathered.”

I couldn’t repress a small moan at the name of Culloden. It was here, then. Despite everything, it had come to pass, and we were here.

A shiver passed through Jamie, as well; I saw the red hairs standing erect on his forearms, but his voice betrayed nothing of the anxiety he must feel.

“The troops – they are ill-provisioned to fight. Does Lord George not realize they must have rest, and food?”

The creaking sound from Old Alec might have been the shade of a laugh.

“What His Lordship knows makes little difference, lad. His Highness has taken command of the army. And His Highness says we shall stand against the English on Drumossie. As for food-” His old-man’s eyebrows were thick and bushy, gone altogether white in the last year, with coarse hairs sprouting from them. One brow raised now, heavily, as though even this small change of expression was an exhaustion. One gnarled hand stirred in his lap, gesturing toward the empty stalls.

“They ate the horses last month,” he said, simply. “There’s been little else, since.”

Jamie stood abruptly, and leaned against the wall, head bowed in shock. I couldn’t see his face, but his body was stiff as the boards of the stable.

“Aye,” he said at last. “Aye. My men – did they have their fair share of the meat? Donas… he was… a good-sized horse.” He spoke quietly, but I saw from the sudden sharpness of Alec’s one-eyed glance that he heard as well as I did the effort that kept Jamie’s voice from breaking.

The old man rose slowly from the hay, crippled body moving with painful deliberation. He set one gnarled hand on Jamie’s shoulder; the arthritic fingers could not close, but the hand rested there, a comforting blunt weight.

“They didna take Donas,” he said quietly. “They kept him – for Prince Tcharlach to ride, on his triumphal return to Edinburgh. O’Sullivan said it wouldna be… fitting… for His Highness to walk.”

Jamie covered his face in his hands and stood shaking against the boards of the empty stall.

“I am a fool,” he said at last, gasping to recover his breath. “Oh, God, I am a fool.” He dropped his hands, showing his face, tears streaking through the grime of travel. He dashed the back of his hand across his cheek, but the moisture continued to overflow from his eyes, as though it were a process quite out of his control.

“The cause is lost, my men are being taken to slaughter, there are dead men rotting in the wood… and I am weeping for a horse! Oh, God,” he whispered, shaking his head. “I am a fool.”

Old Alec heaved a sigh, and his hand slid heavily down Jamie’s arm.

“It’s as well that ye still can, lad,” he said. “I’m past it, myself.”

The old man folded one leg awkwardly at the knee and eased himself down once more. Jamie stood for a moment, looking down at Old Alec. The tears still streamed unchecked down his face, but it was like rain washing over a sheet of polished granite. Then he took my elbow, and turned away without a word.

I looked back at Alec when we reached the stable door. He sat quite still, a dark, hunched shape shawled in his plaid, the one blue eye unseeing as the other.

Men sprawled through the house, worn to exhaustion, seeking oblivion from gnawing hunger and the knowledge of certain and imminent disaster. There were no women here; those chiefs whose womenfolk had accompanied them had sent the ladies safely away – the coming doom cast a long shadow.

Jamie left me with a murmured word outside the door that led to the Prince’s temporary quarters. My presence would help nothing. I walked softly through the house, murmurous with the heavy breathing of sleeping men, the air thick with the dullness of despair.

At the top of the house, I found a small lumber-room. Crowded with junk and discarded furniture, it was otherwise unoccupied. I crept into this warren of oddities, feeling much like a small rodent, seeking refuge from a world in which huge and mysterious forces were let loose to destruction.

There was one small window, filled with the misty gray morning. I rubbed dirt away from one pane with the corner of my cloak, but there was nothing to be seen but the encompassing mist. I leaned my forehead against the cold glass. Somewhere out there was Culloden Field, but I saw nothing but the dim silhouette of my own reflection.

News of the gruesome and mysterious death of the Duke of Sandringham had reached Prince Charles, I knew; we had heard of it from almost everyone we spoke to as we passed to the north and it became safe for us to show ourselves again. What exactly had we done? I wondered. Had we doomed the Jacobite cause for good and all in that one night’s adventure, or had we inadvertently saved Charles Stuart from an English trap? I drew a squeaking finger in a line down the misty glass, chalking up one more thing I would never find out.