D. Broster - The Jacobite Trilogy

“That was good fortune, too,” agreed Keith. “Certainly I should not have known you bearded.”

“And it is because I had been shaved that I am alive now?” Ewen gave a little laugh. “Do you know, Windham, that before ever I met you old Angus, my foster-father—you remember him?—predicted that our lives would cross . . . I think he said five times. And this is . . . I can’t count. . . . How many times have we met already?”

“The old man predicted five meetings!” exclaimed Keith, struck. “How strange! This is the third . . . yes, the third time we have met. If he is right, then we shall meet again, and more than once. I hope it may be in happier circumstances.”

“And that I can thank you more fitly,” murmured Ewen. “Last time . . . do you remember the house in the Grassmarket? . . . You told me the comedy would end some day, and the players be sorry they ever took part in it.”

Keith nodded. It was not the first time in the last twelve hours that he had remembered the house in the Grassmarket.

“But I, for one, do not regret it,” went on Ewen, with a touch of defiance. “Not for myself, that is. I would do it again. Yet there is poor Neil outside, killed defending me . . . and so many others on that horrible moor. . . . You were there, I suppose?”

“I was there,” said Keith. “But my hands are clean of the blood of massacre!” he added almost fiercely. “If I could have stopped—— We’d best not speak of it. But your cause is lost, Ardroy, and I suppose you know it. It only remains for you to escape the consequences, if you can.”

“I do not seem to be in very good trim for doing that,” said Ewen, and again he gave the shadow of a smile. “But, since we speak so frankly, I cannot think that our cause is lost while the Prince and Lochiel remain at large. We may be scattered, but—— The Prince has not been captured, has he?” he asked sharply, having evidently seen the change which the mention, not of the Prince but of Lochiel, had brought to Keith’s face.

“No, no, nor is it known where he is.”

“Thank God! And Lochiel?”

Keith shrank inwardly. Now it was coming. His momentary hesitation had a cruel effect on Ewen, who dragged himself to his elbow. “Windham,” he said hoarsely and imploringly, “surely he’s not . . . what have you heard? . . . My God, don’t keep me in suspense like this! If he’s captured tell me!”

“You mistake me,” said Keith, nearly as hoarsely. “He has not been captured. . . . I am sorry if I misled you.”

Ewen had relapsed again, and put a hand over his eyes. It was fairly clear that his Chief’s fate was even more to him than that of his Prince. And now that odious information must be imparted.

Keith tried to gain a little time first. “But Lochiel was wounded in the battle. Did you know that?”

Ewen removed his hand. “Yes, and have thanked God for it, since it caused him to be early carried off the field.”

“You saw him fall?”

“No, but afterwards we met with some of the clan, and got news of him.”

“That must have been a great relief to you,” murmured the Englishman. Suddenly he was possessed with a desire to find out how much Ewen knew about Lochiel. Half of him hoped that he knew very little—why, he could not have said—but the other half thought: If he knows a certain amount, Guthrie will take better care of him. “But you can have had no news of your Chief since then?” he hazarded.

“No,” answered the Highlander. “There has been no opportunity.”

Keith looked at him nervously. Ardroy was lying gazing upwards; perhaps he could see that peering star. Would it be possible to advise him, if he found himself in Major Guthrie’s custody, to pretend to have definite knowledge of Lochiel’s whereabouts, even though that were not the case? Dare he suggest such a thing? It was not one-half as offensive as what he had already suggested to Guthrie!

Ewen himself broke the silence. “Since we speak as friends,” he said, his eyes travelling to the open doorway “—and how could I regard you as an enemy after this?—I may tell you that I have, none the less, the consolation of knowing where Lochiel is at this moment—God bless him and keep him safe!”

Keith’s mouth felt suddenly dry. His unspoken question was answered, and the frankness of the acknowledgment rather took his breath away. Yet certainly, if Ardroy was as frank with Guthrie it might serve him well.

“You know where Lochiel is?” he half stammered.

Ewen shut his eyes and smiled, an almost happy smile. “I think he is where (please God) he will never be found by any redcoat.”

“You mean that he has gone overseas?” asked Keith, almost without thinking.

Ardroy’s eyes opened quickly, and for a second, as he looked up at the speaker, there was a startled expression in them. “You are not expecting me to tell you——”

“No, no,” broke in Keith, very hastily indeed. “Of course not! But I should be glad if he were so gone, for on my soul there is none of your leaders whom I should be so sorry to see captured.”

Yet with the words he got up and went to the doorway. Yes, Ardroy had the secret; and he wished, somehow, that he had not. The moment could no longer be postponed when he must tell him of his conversation with Guthrie, were it only to put him on his guard. Bitterly as he was ashamed, it must be done.

He stood in the doorway a moment, choosing the words in which he should do it, and they were hatefully hard to choose. Hateful, too, was it to leave Ardroy here helpless, but there was no alternative, since he could not possibly take him with him. Yet if Lachlan returned, and in time, and especially if he returned with assistance, he might be able to get his foster-brother away somewhere. Then Ewen Cameron would never fall into Guthrie’s hands. In that case what use to torment him with prospects of an interrogatory which might never take place, and which could only be very short?

No; it was mere cowardice to invent excuses for silence; he must do it. He came back very slowly to the pallet.

“I must tell you——” he began in a low voice, and then stopped. Ewen’s lashes were lying on his sunken cheek, and did not lift at the address. It was plain that he had fallen anew into one of those sudden exhausted little slumbers, and had not heard even the sentence which was to herald Keith’s confession. It would be unnecessarily cruel to rouse him in order to make it. One must wait until he woke naturally, as he had done from the last of these dozes.

Keith took the lantern off the stool and sat down there. And soon the wounded man’s sleep became full of disjointed scraps of talk, mostly incoherent; at one time he seemed to think that he was out after the deer on the hills with Lachlan; then he half woke up and muttered, “But it’s we that are the deer now,” and immediately fell into another doze in which he murmured the name of Alison. Gradually, however, his slumber grew more sound; he ceased to mutter and to make little restless movements, and in about five minutes he was in the deep sleep of real repose, which he had not known, perhaps, for many nights—a sleep to make a watcher thankful.

But Keith Windham, frowning, sat watching it with his chin on his hand, conscious that his time was growing very short, that it was light outside, and almost light in this dusky hovel, and that the pool of lantern-shine on the uneven earth floor looked strange and sickly there. He glanced at his watch. No, indeed, he ought not to delay any longer. He took up and blew out the lantern, went outside and roused Mackay, washed the bowl and, filling it with water, placed it and the rest of the food and wine within reach.

His movements had not roused the sleeper in the least. For the last time Keith stooped over him and slipped a hand round his wrist. He knew nothing of medicine, but undoubtedly the beat there was stronger. It would be criminal to wake Ardroy merely in order to tell him something unpleasant. There came to the soldier a momentary idea of scribbling a warning on a page of his pocket-book and leaving this on the sleeper’s breast; but it was quite possible that the first person to read such a document would be Guthrie himself.