[CHAPTER XIX
THE WINTER]
APRIL is slow in Scotland, distrustful of her own identity, timid of her own powers. Half dazed from the long winter sleep, she is often bewildered, and cannot remember whether she belongs to winter or to spring.
After the struggles and perplexities of the months that had elapsed since Balnillo and Christian Flemington met in Edinburgh, she had come slowly to herself amid storms of sleet. Beyond the Grampians, in the North, her awakened eyes looked on a country whose heart had been broken at Culloden. The ragged company that gathered round its Prince on that Wednesday morning was dispersed among the fastnesses of the hills, or lying dead and dying among the rushes and heather, whilst Cumberland’s soldiers finished their bloody business; the April snow that had blown in the faces of the clansmen as they hurled their unavailing valour on the Whig army had melted upon mounds of slain, and in the struggle of an hour the hopes of half a century had perished. Superior numbers, superior artillery, and superior generalship, had done their work; when the English dragoons had recovered themselves after the Highland charge, they pursued almost to the gates of Inverness, returning again to the battlefield before night should darken upon the carnage, to despatch the wounded wretches who still breathed among their dead comrades.
The country smelt of blood; reeked of it. For miles and miles round Inverness, where the search for fugitives was hottest, burnt hovels and blackened walls made blots upon the tardy green of spring. Women went about, white-faced and silent, trying to keep from their eyes the self-betraying consciousness of hidden terrors; each striving to forget the peat-stack on the moor where some hunted creature was lying, the scrub in the hollow that sheltered some wounded body, the cranny in the hill to which she must journey painfully after dark with the crusts in her apron.
The shot still rattled out over the countryside where the search was going on, and where, when it had been successful, a few maimed and haggard men stood along some shieling wall in front of a platoon of Cumberland’s musketry. All down the shores of Loch Ness and among the hills above the Nairn water south-west of Culloden, the dark rocks raised their broken heads to the sky over God knows what agonies of suffering and hunger. The carrion-crow was busy in the land. One-fifth of Prince Charles’s army was dead upon the battle-field, and the church and tolbooth of Inverness were full of wounded prisoners, to whom none—not even the surgeons of their own party—were suffered to attend.
And so April passed, and May was near her passing. Cumberland lay at Fort Augustus, to which place he had retired with Kingston’s Horse and eleven battalions of foot. The victorious army was the richer by much spoil, and money was free; the Duke’s camp was merry with festivities and races, and in the midst of it he enjoyed a well-earned leisure, enlivened by women and dice. He had performed his task of stamping out the danger that threatened his family with admirable thoroughness, and he had, besides, the comfortable prospect of a glorious return to London, where he would be the hero of the general rejoicing that was to follow. He was rooted at Fort Augustus, a rock of success and convivial self-satisfaction in the flood of tears and anguish and broken aspiration that had drowned half Scotland.
The Prince had begun his wanderings in the West, hiding among the hills and corries of the islands, followed by a few faithful souls, and with a price of thirty thousand pounds on his head, whilst Cumberland’s emissaries, chief among whom was John Campbell of Mamore, Commandant of the West Highland garrisons, searched the country in every direction. The rank and file of his army—such of his men as were not dead or in prison—were scattered to the four winds; and those officers who had escaped after Culloden were in hiding, too, some despairing, some holding yet to the forlorn hope of raising his standard anew when the evil day should be over. Among these last was James Logie.
He had come unhurt through the battle. Complete indifference about personal issues had wrapped him round in a protecting atmosphere, as it seems to enwrap and protect the unconcerned among men. He had left the field in company with the Prince and a few friends, with whom he reached the Ford of Falie on the Nairn River. They had held a rapid council at this place, Prince Charles desiring that the remnant of his army should rendezvous at Ruthven, in Badenoch, whilst he made his way to France; for his hopes were living still, and he still looked for support and supplies from the French king. He had taken leave of his companions at the ford, and had set off with half a dozen followers for the coast.
Logie turned his face towards Angus. He had been a conspicuous figure in the Prince’s immediate circle, and he knew that he had no time to lose if he was to cross the Grampians alive. He thirsted to get back, and to test the temper of the east coast after the news of the reverse; like his master, he was not beaten yet. He did not know what had become of Ferrier and the Angus men, for he had been on the Prince’s staff; but the friends had met on the night before the battle, and it was a compact between them, that, should the day go against them, and should either or both survive the fight, they were to make for the neighbourhood of Forfar, where they would be ready, in case of necessity, to begin on their task of raising new levies for the cause.
He had reached the Spey, and had gained Deeside in safety by the shores of the Avon, crossing the Grampians near the sources of the Isla.