The flight of the heron

by D. K. Broster

The faces of the aides-de-camp (one of them a most elegant young man) expressed the kind of shock produced on a refined mind by an exhibition of bad taste; Lord Albemarle shook his head and put his hand over his mouth, but Sir Everard Faulkner’s demonstration of horror could not be seen, since he was behind his royal master, and the latter had almost visibly swollen in size.

“What, you damned impertinent dog, are you to tell me what is a soldier’s duty!” he got out. “Why, this is mutiny!”

“Nothing is farther from my thoughts,” replied Keith quietly and firmly. “Give me any order that a soldier may fitly execute and your Royal Highness will soon see that. But I have been accustomed to meet the enemies of my country in the field, and not in the dock.” And as the Duke was still incoherent from fury and incredulity he repeated, “With the utmost respect, I must decline to give evidence in this case.”

“Damn your respect, sir!” shouted the Commander-in-Chief, finding his tongue again. “You’re little better than a rebel yourself! A soldier—any soldier—under my command does what he is ordered, or I’ll know the reason why!” He stamped his royal foot. “By Heaven, you shall go to Carlisle, if I have to send you there under guard! But you need not flatter yourself that there will be any vacancy for you on my staff after this. Now, will you go willingly as a witness, or must the provost-marshal take you?”

Keith measured his princely and well-fed opponent, the adulated victor, the bloodstained executioner. He was tolerably certain that the Duke, for all his powers, could not force him to give evidence, and that this talk of sending him to Carlisle by force was only a threat. But he knew that civilians, at all events, could be subpœnaed as witnesses, and was not too sure of his own ultimate position. He brought out therefore a new and unexpected weapon.

“If my presence should be constrained at the trial, I must take leave to observe to your Royal Highness that I shall then be obliged to give the whole of my testimony—how Mr. Cameron spared my life when he had me at his mercy after the disaster at High Bridge last summer, and how, in Edinburgh, he saved me from the hands of the Cameron guard and gave me my liberty when I was abandoned by the soldiers with me and trapped. Since those facts would undoubtedly have some influence on an English jury, I cannot think that I should prove an altogether satisfactory witness for the Crown.”

The victor of Culloden stood a moment stupefied with rage. When he could command his voice he turned to his secretary. “Is this true, Faulkner, what this—mutineer says?” (For indeed, owing to Keith’s calculated reticence at Inverness, it was news to him.) To Sir Everard’s reply that he did not know, the Duke returned furiously, “It’s your business to know, you blockhead!” and after that the storm was loosed on Keith, and a flood of most unprincely invective it was. The names he was called, however, passed him by without really wounding him much. They were nothing compared to those he would have called himself had he sold Ardroy’s life as the price of his own advancement.

But it was pretty clear that he had finally consummated his own ruin, and when he heard the angry voice declaring its owner’s regret that he had overlooked his previous ill-conduct with regard to this misbegotten rebel, Keith fully expected the Duke to add that he intended to break him for his present. Perhaps that would come later; for the moment the Duke contented himself with requesting him, in language more suggestive of the guardroom than the palace, to take his —— face where he would never see it again. “And you need not think,” he finished, out of breath, “that you will save the rascally rebel who has suborned you from your duty; there are plenty other witnesses who will see to it that he hangs!”

But that Keith did not believe, or the Duke and Sir Everard would not have been so eager to secure his evidence. And as, at last, he saluted and rather dizzily left the tent where he had completed the wreck of his ambitions, it was resentment which burnt in him more fiercely than any other emotion. That it should be supposed that anyone—even a Prince of the blood—could bribe him into an action which revolted him!

Late as it was, he would much have preferred to start back to Inverness that evening, but his horse had to be considered. And, while he was seeing that the beast was being properly looked after, he was surprised to find himself accosted by an elegant young officer whom he recognised as one of the two aides-de-camp present at the recent scene.