Prologue #2
She needed to be alone. She would survey the damage later, but not now. Not now.
Madeleine closed the door behind her, righted an overturned armchair, and slumped down on the soiled brocade. Her thoughts began to roil and pitch, heated outrage gradually sweeping away the numbness.
Why had this happened? Why? Had the Highlands not suffered enough? Would the horrors that had begun a month ago never cease?
She leaned her head back on the padded cushion, recalling Glenis’s sorrowful words that wretched day in April.
“Come away from the window, hinny. Ye know yer da winna be comin’ home. Come away, Maddie. ‘Tis a hopeless thing ye’re doin’.”
Yer da winna be comin’ home… Her father…
Madeleine’s hands clenched into tight fists as fresh pain assaulted her, a jagged ache centered just over her heart. Her palms stung where her nails bit into the smooth flesh. Tears glistened from spiky dark lashes and spilled down her cheeks, staining the bodice of her gown.
She didn’t care. She surrendered to the grief, anger and frustration tormenting her, in this silent room where no one would see her cry.
Yer da winna be comin’ home…
The haunting words were so vivid, it could have been yesterday when Glenis bid her to stand away from the tall window.
But today was the sixteenth of May, one month to the day since the Battle of Culloden was fought on rain-swept Drummossie Moor, a scarce twenty miles from the valley of Strathherrick.
One month since she had learned from a kinsman that her father had fallen in the bloody mire, never to rise again.
One month since she had run to the window in anguished disbelief, searching the muddy road that wound past the estate for any sign of her father among the retreating Highlanders.
Madeleine sighed raggedly, her blurred gaze staring straight ahead. Out of the many bold, strong lads who had rallied to the Jacobite cause, fewer than half of her kinsmen had survived the merciless slaughter at Culloden.
The fiery cross—the ancient signal to rally clansmen for battle, formed by two yew branches that were first set alight, then doused in goat’s blood—had been carried to Strathherrick on a gray, misty morning last autumn.
It was the call of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat and the chief of Clan Fraser.
He had finally decided to come out for Bonnie Prince Charlie in the young Stuart’s bid to regain the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland for his father, the exiled King James III.
Her father, baronet Sir Hugh Fraser of Farraline and cousin to Lord Lovat, had immediately taken up the call, summoning his tacksmen and tenants from their warm hearth fires.
The entire valley had participated in a frenzied flurry of activity as the clansmen wholeheartedly prepared to join the Jacobite prince and his burgeoning forces.
Madeleine smiled faintly and wiped the hot tears from her face, tasting salt on her lips.
She recalled the brave sight of the Frasers of Strathherrick as they readied to march, wearing the clan badge of freshly cut sprigs of yew in their bonnets.
Her handsome father had been resplendent in his kilt and tartan plaid of red and forest green, a bonnet sporting a white cockade, the symbol of the Jacobite cause, atop his shining auburn hair.
How proud her dear mother, the bonnie Lady Jean, would have been if she had lived to see that day.
How fervently Madeleine had wished at that moment that she had been born a son.
She had cursed her sex and the skirts she wore which forced her to remain behind in Farraline with the rest of the women, instead of riding into battle at her father’s side.
Only his last words to her had helped soothe her angry frustration.
“Ye’re the mistress of Farraline now, Maddie, whilst I’m gone to war. Tend to the needs of yer people in my stead. The women, wee bairns, and men too old for battle depend upon yer care and good judgment. Now give me a kiss and one of yer bonnie smiles, lass. We’re off to fight for the Stuarts!”
Enveloped in her father’s fierce embrace, Madeleine had never felt so honored or so trusted. Mistress of Farraline! Aye, she would make her father proud, and more than live up to his faith in her.
Her slim shoulders were squared, her back was straight, and her chin was held high as Sir Hugh Fraser walked proudly to the head of his men and mounted his fine roan gelding.
The skirl of bagpipes soared on the whistling wind and resounded from the Monadhliath Mountains flanking the broad valley, stirring the blood of all who heard it, as the men of Clan Fraser began their long march toward Edinburgh.
With a rampant pounding in her breast, Madeleine had stared after the heroic parade of clansmen until their tartans faded into the distant slopes. She would never have believed it would be the last time she would see her father.
During the months that followed, news was carried often to Strathherrick on the progress of the Highland army under the command of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Madeleine hung on to every word.
There was the long victorious march into England as far south as Derby, the cities of Carlisle, Preston, and Manchester falling under the Jacobite standard.
But instead of pressing on to London, the army decided to retire to Scotland due to the massing of Hanoverian forces under the Duke of Cumberland, William Augustus, the corpulent third son of King George II.
There the Jacobites would make a stand on home ground.
Upon returning to Scotland, the army’s hopes were raised once again after the victory at the Battle of Falkirk in January and the successful routs of English forts scattered throughout the Highlands.
Then no more was heard until news was brought that Bonnie Prince Charlie and his forces were quartered at Inverness until spring, while the Duke of Cumberland remained in Aberdeen.
All seemed quiet until early April, when a large company of men from Clan Cameron passed through Farraline on their way north to Inverness and a rendezvous with the prince.
Madeleine’s excited inquiries discovered nothing more than that Cumberland and his troops were on the move toward Drummossie Moor, a barren, soggy plain to the west of the River Nairn.
Drummossie Moor. Why Madeleine felt a sudden chill seize her at that news she would only understand a few days later, when word arrived that the Battle of Culloden, from beginning to end lasting only an hour, had been lost to the government forces.
“Damn them, damn them,” Madeleine whispered. She had only to think of the bastards who had mowed down the Highlands’ finest sons with their cannon, bayonets, and grapeshot, and she was filled with rage.
How she hated them. Englishmen. Redcoats. The devil’s own spawn. Murderers!
Since that bloody day Butcher Cumberland and his men had wreaked their revenge on the Highlands, their brand of “justice” to right the treasonous wrongs perpetrated against the Crown by the rebellious clans. It was a reign of terror that still showed no signs of abating.
It had begun when the Butcher granted the fallen clansmen no quarter on the battlefield.
Both the wounded and the dead were stripped where they lay, then those still alive were bayoneted or shot or clubbed to death.
Only a few were reserved for public punishment.
A barn filled with wounded that had dragged themselves from the field was locked and set on fire, the unfortunate men inside suffering a grisly death.
It was several days before the dead were finally buried in mass unmarked graves, denied the dignity of being laid to rest in their own lands. How true Glenis’s words had been. Her father would never come home again.
Fleeing clansmen were pursued by dragoons all the way to Inverness, the fearsome horsemen cutting down Jacobite soldiers as well as innocent bystanders who chanced in their way, including women and children.
Only the Highlanders who fled in the opposite direction, south toward Strathherrick and beyond into Badenoch, lived to become fugitives in their own land, and they were hunted like wild beasts among the craggy hills.