The Jacobite Trilogy: The Flight of the Heron, The Gleam in the North & The Dark Mile. D. K. Broster

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СКАЧАТЬ enquired Alison. “And how could Ewen have met any of them in the Grassmarket? The poor men dare not show their faces there; the place is hotching with Camerons and MacDonalds!”

      “Who said I met them in the Grassmarket?” retorted Ewen. “But never fret, Miss Curiosity; some day I’ll be free to tell you where it was.”

      “Wherever it was,” said Miss Grant with decision, “I’ll be bound ’twas you provoked the disturbance!”

      Her lover continued to smile at her with real amusement. In a sense there was truth in this last accusation. “It’s a fine character you give me, indeed! I think I’d best be taking my leave until you appreciate me better!” And he put out his left hand to take his bonnet from the table where he had laid it. Something sparkled on the hand as he moved it.

      “Who gave you that ring?” exclaimed Alison. “Nay, that I have a right to know!”

      Ewen put his hand behind him. “No woman, Alison.”

      “Then you can tell me who it was. . . . Come, Eoghain mhóir, if there be a mystery over the ring also, why, you should not be wearing it for all the world to see!”

      “That’s true,” said Ardroy, and he relinquished his hand. “Yes, you can take it off. ’Tis not so plain as it looks, neither. There is a spring beneath.”

      “Oh!” breathed Alison, her eyes very wide. The chased gold centre of the ring had moved aside in the midst of the rose diamonds, and it was a tiny miniature of the Prince which she held. “Ewen, he gave you this?”

      “I did not steal it, my dear. Yes, he gave it me this morning.”

      “For . . . on account of what happened last night?”

      Ewen nodded. “For my prudence. You see, the Prince does not write me down so turbulent as you do.”

      There was something like tears in Alison’s eyes. “Prudence? No! It was because you gained that ‘needle-scratch’ for him!” She kissed the ring, and, taking the strong, passive hand, slipped it on again. “I will not plague you any more. Does the wound pain you, dearest heart?”

      But next day Hector Grant came into possession of the story, more or less correct, which was flying about Edinburgh, and presented his sister with a fine picture of her lover, alone against a score of the Castle redcoats, standing with his back to the secret stair hewing down the foe until his sword broke in his hand, and the Cameron guard rushed in only just in time to save him. And, Alison unveiling this composition to the hero himself at their next meeting, Ewen was constrained in the interests of truth to paint out this flamboyant battle-piece and to substitute a more correct but sufficiently startling scene. Alison certainly found his sober account quite lurid enough.

      “And you let the English officer go, after that!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “But, Ewen dearest, why?”

      “For one reason, because ’twas such curst ill luck that his men should run away for the second time!” replied Ewen, settling his silken sling more comfortably.

      “For the second time?”

      “I have not yet told you who the officer was. Cannot you guess?”

      “Surely ’twas not . . . Captain Windham . . . here in Edinburgh?”

      “It was Captain Windham himself. I have no notion how he got here; it must have been before we took the town. But I was sorry for him, poor man, and it was quite plain that he had no real intention of killing me; indeed he was greatly discomposed over the affair. So you must not lay that to his charge, Alison.”

      “And so you have met again!” said Alison slowly, her eyes fastened on her lover. (‘A great service’ . . . ‘a bitter grief’ . . . This was neither.) “It was not then because of your foster-father’s prophecy that you let him go?”

      And now Ewen stared at her. “Faith, no, darling, for I had clean forgot about it. Dhé! It begins to fulfil itself then!”

      Bright and cold, or wet and windy, the October days went by in Edinburgh. Ewen’s hand healed, and that secret fear which he had mentioned to no one save Dr. Cameron, who dressed it, that he would never be able to grip a broadsword again, passed also. And having waited upon Lady Easterhall and Miss Cochran a day or two after the fracas to ask how they did (not that he had omitted to reassure himself of this on the night itself, before he left) he then, by the old lady’s desire, carried Alison to visit them also. And it is possible that Miss Cochran envied Miss Grant.

      But up at the Castle the days went a great deal more slowly, particularly for Captain Keith Windham, who had little to do but to pace the battlements and look down, as he was doing this morning, when October was almost sped, on that unrivalled vista of which he was now heartily sick, and remember all the mortifications, professional as well as personal, which he had suffered there since the end of August, when he had made his way thither from Fort William with the news of the Highland advance. For after the startling tidings of Cope’s avoidance of the rebels, leaving the road open before them to Edinburgh, Keith, secure but chafing, had endured the spectacle of vain attempts by the frightened citizens to repair and man the walls, and to raise a body of volunteers (almost immediately disbanded lest their lives should be endangered), and the sight of two regiments of His Majesty’s dragoons in full flight along the Lang Dykes with no man pursuing. Finally, to complete and symbolise the great scandal and shock of Cope’s lightning defeat, he had with his own eyes seen, struck defiantly into the outer gate of the Castle, the dirk of the single Jacobite officer who on that occasion had chased a party of terrified troopers thither like rabbits to their burrow.

      On top of all this had come his own personal humiliation and disappointment, and of this Ewen Cameron and no other had been the cause. The soldiers of Lascelles’ regiment who had so shamefully deserted the officer in charge of them had been severely punished, but this did little to heal the very sore place in Captain Windham’s memory. Sometimes it was only anger which coloured his recollections of that scene in Lady Easterhall’s house, sometimes it was shame. Sometimes he wondered if he had not permanently injured Ardroy, and though, as a loyal subject of King George, he ought no doubt to have been glad of the possibility, in view of how the hurt had been inflicted and of the Highlander’s subsequent behaviour, the idea filled him with a feeling far removed from satisfaction. And even worse might easily have come of his onslaught. Keith was inclined to shudder still when he thought of that contingency, and not merely because, with Ewen dead or dying on the floor, he himself would have received short shrift from the Camerons when they broke in.

      How nearly he had succeeded in capturing the Prince he supposed he would never know, but there was no doubt that it was Ardroy who had destroyed whatever chance he might have had. Chosen as Keith had been to lead the flying raid that evening because he was the only officer in the Castle who had seen Charles Edward Stuart face to face, he could then have blessed Fate for having sent him to Glenfinnan. Thus, he had reflected as they marched stealthily down the close, does profit come out of the unpleasant. Already he saw his name in every news sheet as the captor of the Pretender’s son. . . . Alas, he had merely come anew into collision with the same stubborn and generous character, and once again, though their positions this time had seemed to be reversed, he had had the worst of it. And on this occasion the Highlander had shown him a new and unsuspected side of himself, for it was Ardroy who had played with him, sitting so coolly in front of that table on which hung the secret. God! if he had only guessed!

      And so Keith had come back empty-handed, with the knowledge that but for Ardroy’s quixotry he would not have come back at all. Huddled in his enemy’s own cloak (for its real ownership, СКАЧАТЬ