D. Broster - The Jacobite Trilogy

“You’ll not get into trouble, eh?”

“Not to-night, at any rate, sir; the Major is in bed by now. And to-morrow, if it is discovered, I can say that you ordered me to do it, and that I dared not dispute the orders of a staff-officer.”

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And thus it was that a few hours later Major Windham started back to Beinn Laoigh again with bread and meat and wine, and an orderly who plainly thought him mad. Lieutenant Paton had seen them clear of the camp, whose commander was fortunately wrapped in slumber. Keith would not need to pass its sentries on his return, for the track up from the Tarff joined the road to the pass on the farther side of it.

He found that he had noted the position of the shieling hut better than he could have hoped, considering the disagreeable preoccupation of his mind during the ride thence with Major Guthrie, and by good chance there was a moon not much past the full. In her cold light the mountains looked inexpressibly lonely and remote as Keith rode up the sheep track to the pasture where the harmless little shelters had stood. A faint exhausted smoke yet lifted itself from one or two of the blackened ruins. The stream was chanting its changeless little song, and in the moonlight Neil MacMartin still lay on guard outside the broken door of the one unburnt shieling. Keith bent over him as he passed; he was stiffening already in the plaid which was his only garment. And Ardroy?

Taking from Mackay the lantern which he had brought for the purpose, and the food and wine, Keith went rather apprehensively into the dark, low-roofed place. Except that he had flung his left arm clear, its occupant was lying as he had left him, long and quiet under the tartan covering; his eyes were closed and he did not look very different from his dead foster-brother outside. But as the light fell on his face he moved a little and faintly said some words in Gaelic, among which Keith thought he heard Lachlan’s name. He stooped over him.

“Ardroy,” he said gently, and laid a hand on the arm emerging from the tattered shirt-sleeve.

At the touch Ewen opened his eyes. But all that he saw, evidently, in the lantern-light, was the bright scarlet uniform above him. “What, again!” he said with an accent of profound weariness. “Shoot me in here, then; I cannot stand. Have you not . . . a pistol?”

Keith set the lantern on the floor and knelt down by him. “Ardroy, don’t you know me—Windham of the Royals? I am not come for that, but to help you if I can.”

The dried fern rustled as the wounded man turned his head a little. Very hollow in their orbits, but blue as Keith remembered them, his eyes stared up full of unbelief. “Windham!” he said at last, feebly; “no, it’s not possible. You are . . . someone else.”

“No,” said Keith, wondering how clear his mind might be, “it is really Windham, come to help you.” He was searching meanwhile for the flask of brandy which he had left, and finding it slipped down, untouched, among the sprigs of heather, he wetted Ewen’s lips with a little of the spirit.

“Yes, it is Windham,” said Ewen to himself. His eyes had never left his visitor’s face. “But . . . there were other soldiers here before . . . they took me out to shoot . . . I think I must have . . . swooned. Then I was . . . back in this place. . . . I do not know why. . . . Are you sure you . . . have not orders to . . . take me out again?”

“Good God, no!” said Keith. “I have nothing to do with shootings; I am alone, carrying despatches. Tell me, you are wounded—how severely?”

“My right arm . . . that is nothing much. . . . This thigh . . . badly. I cannot . . . move myself.”

“And what of food?” queried Keith. “I do not see any here—but I have brought some with me.” He began to get it out. “Are you not hungry?”

“Not now,” answered Ewen. “I was once . . . Captain Windham,” he went on, apparently gathering together what forces he had, “your coming . . . this charity . . . I cannot . . .”

“Do not try!” put in Keith quickly. “Not hungry? How long, then, is it since you have eaten?”

“Eaten!” said the Highlander, and what might be interpreted as a smile dawned on his bony face. “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: