The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [370]
“Sometimes, I think I canna blame him,” Jocasta said. She sat bolt upright, the light of the candles gleaming from her hair. “He thought Seonag wouldna go without her husband, and Clementina wouldna risk her bairns at sea. Perhaps he was right about that. And perhaps it would have made no difference to warn them. But I knew I shouldna see them again. . . .” Her mouth closed, and she swallowed.
In any case, Hector had refused to stop, fearing pursuit. Cumberland’s troops had converged upon Culloden, but there were English soldiers on the Highland roads, and word of Charles Stuart’s defeat was spreading like ripples near the edge of a whirlpool, moving faster and faster, in a vortex of danger.
As it was, the Camerons were discovered, two days later, near Ochtertyre.
“A wheel came off the coach,” Jocasta said with a sigh. “Lord, I can see it now, spinning down the road by itself. The axletree was broke, and we’d no choice but to camp there by the road, while Hector and the groom made shift to mend it.”
Repairs had taken the best part of a day, and Hector had grown more and more edgy as the work went on, his anxiety infecting the rest of the party.
“I didna ken then what he’d seen at Culloden,” Jocasta said. “He kent weel enough that if the English took him, it was all up wi’ him. If they didna kill him on the spot, he’d be hangit as a traitor. He was sweating as he worked, and more wi’ fear than with the heat of his labor. But even so . . .” Her lips pressed tight for a moment, before she went on.
“It was nearly dusk—it was spring, dusk came early—when they got the wheel back on the coach, and everyone got back aboard. The coach had been in a wee hollow when the wheel flew off; the groom urged the horses up a long slope, and just as we reached the crest of the hill, two men with muskets stepped out from the shadows into the road ahead.”
It was a company of English soldiers, Cumberland’s men. Arriving too late to join in the victory at Culloden, they were inflamed by news of it—but frustrated at not sharing in the battle, and only too ready to wreak what vengeance they could on fleeing Highlanders.
Always a quick thinker, Hector had sunk back in the corner of the coach at sight of them, his head bent and a shawl pulled over it, pretending to be an aged crone, sunk in sleep. Following his hissed instructions, Jocasta had leaned out of the window, prepared to pose as a respectable lady traveling with her daughter and mother.
The soldiers had not waited to hear her speech. One yanked open the door of the coach, and dragged her out. Morna, panicked, had leapt out after her, trying to pull her mother away from the soldier. Another man had grabbed the girl, and dragged her back, so that he stood between Jocasta and the coach.
“Another minute, and they meant to have ‘Grannie’ out on the ground as well—and then they would find the gold, and it would be all up wi’ all of us.”
A pistol shot startled all of them into momentary immobility. Leaning from the coach’s open door, Hector had fired at the soldier holding Morna—but it was dusk and the light was poor; perhaps the horses had moved, jostling the coach. The shot struck Morna in the head.
“I ran to her,” Jocasta said. Her voice was hoarse, her throat gone dry and thick. “I ran to her, but Hector jumped out and seized me. The soldiers were all standing, staring with the shock. He dragged me back, into the coach, and shouted to the groom to drive, drive on!”
She licked her lips and swallowed, once.
“‘She is dead,’ he said to me. Over and over, ‘She is dead, you cannot help,’ he said, and held me tight when I would have thrown myself from the coach in my despair.”
Slowly she pulled her hand away from Brianna; she had needed support to begin her story, but needed none to finish it. Her hands folded into fists, pressed hard against the white linen of her shift, as though to stanch the bleeding of a desecrated womb.
“It had gone dark by then,” she said, and her voice was remote, detached. “I saw the glow of fires against the sky to the north.”
Cumberland’s troops were spreading