Men sprawled through the house, worn to exhaustion, seeking oblivion from gnawing hunger and the knowledge of certain and imminent disaster. There were no women here; those chiefs whose womenfolk had accompanied them had sent the ladies safely away—the coming doom cast a long shadow.
Jamie left me with a murmured word outside the door that led to the Prince's temporary quarters. My presence would help nothing. I walked softly through the house, murmurous with the heavy breathing of sleeping men, the air thick with the dullness of despair.
At the top of the house, I found a small lumber-room. Crowded with junk and discarded furniture, it was otherwise unoccupied. I crept into this warren of oddities, feeling much like a small rodent, seeking refuge from a world in which huge and mysterious forces were let loose to destruction.
There was one small window, filled with the misty gray morning. I rubbed dirt away from one pane with the corner of my cloak, but there was nothing to be seen but the encompassing mist. I leaned my forehead against the cold glass. Somewhere out there was Culloden Field, but I saw nothing but the dim silhouette of my own reflection.
News of the gruesome and mysterious death of the Duke of Sandringham had reached Prince Charles, I knew; we had heard of it from almost everyone we spoke to as we passed to the north and it became safe for us to show ourselves again. What exactly had we done? I wondered. Had we doomed the Jacobite cause for good and all in that one night's adventure, or had we inadvertently saved Charles Stuart from an English trap? I drew a squeaking finger in a line down the misty glass, chalking up one more thing I would never find out.
It seemed a very long time before I heard a step on the uncarpeted boards of the stair outside my refuge. I came to the door to find Jamie coming onto the landing. One look at his face was enough.
"Alec was right," he said, without preliminaries. The bones of his face were stark beneath the skin, made prominent by hunger, sharpened by anger. "The troops are moving to Culloden—as they can. They havena slept or eaten in two days, there is no ordnance for the cannon—but they are going." The anger erupted suddenly and he slammed his fist down on a rickety table. A cascade of small brass dishes from the pile of household rubble woke the echoes of the attic with an ungodly clatter.
With an impatient gesture, he snatched the dirk from his belt and jabbed it violently into the table, where it stood, quivering with the force of the blow.
"The country folk say that if ye see blood on your dirk, it means death." He drew in his breath with a hiss, fist clenched on the table. "Well, I have seen it! So have they all. They know—Kilmarnock, Lochiel, and the rest. And no bit of good does the seeing of it do!"
He bent his head, hands braced on the table, staring at the dirk. He seemed much too large for the confines of the room, an angry smoldering presence that might break suddenly into flame. Instead, he flung up his hands, and threw himself onto a decrepit settle, where he sat, head buried in his hands.
"Jamie," I said, and swallowed. I could barely speak the next words, but they had to be said. I had known what news he would bring, and I had thought of what might still be done. "Jamie. There's only one thing left—only the one possibility."
His head was bent, forehead resting on his knuckles. He shook his head, not looking at me.
"There is no way," he said. "He's bent on it. Murray has tried to turn him, so has Lochiel. Balmerino. Me. But the men are standing on the plain this hour. Cumberland has set out for Drumossie. There is no way."
The healing arts are powerful ones, and any physician versed in the use of substances that heal knows also the power of those that harm. I had given Colum the cyanide he had not had time to use, and taken back the deadly vial from the table by the bed where his body lay. It was in my box now, the crudely distilled crystals a dull brownish-white, deceptively harmless in appearance.
My mouth was so dry that I couldn't speak at once. There was a little wine left in my flask; I drank it, the acid taste like bile on my tongue.
"There is one way," I said. "Only one."
Jamie's head stayed sunk in his hands. It had been a long ride, and the shock of Alec's news had added depression to his tiredness. We had detoured to find his men, or most of them, a miserable, ragged crew, indistinguishable from the skeletal Frasers of Lovat who surrounded them. The interview with Charles was far beyond the last straw.
"Aye?" he said.
I hesitated, but had to speak. The possibility had to be mentioned; whether he—or I—could bring ourselves to it or not.
"It's Charles Stuart," I said, at last. "It's him—everything. The battle, the war—everything depends on him, do you see?"
"Aye?" Jamie was looking up at me now, bloodshot eyes quizzical.
"If he were dead.…" I whispered at last.
Jamie's eyes closed, and the last vestiges of blood drained from his face.
"If he were to die…now. Today. Or tonight. Jamie, without Charles, there's nothing to fight for. No one to order the men to Culloden. There wouldn't be a battle."
The long muscles of his throat rippled briefly as he swallowed. He opened his eyes and stared at me, appalled.
"Christ," he whispered. "Christ, ye canna mean it."
My hand closed on the smoky, gold-mounted crystal around my neck.
They had called me to attend the Prince, before Falkirk. O'Sullivan, Tullibardine, and the others. His Highness was ill—an indisposition, they said. I had seen Charles, made him bare his breast and arms, examined his mouth and the whites of his eyes.
It was scurvy, and several of the other diseases of malnutrition. I said as much.
"Nonsense!" said Sheridan, outraged. "His Highness cannot suffer from the yeuk, like a common peasant!"
"He's been eating like one," I retorted. "Or rather worse than one." The "peasants" were forced to eat onions and cabbage, having nothing else. Scorning such poor fare, His Highness and his advisers ate meat—and little else. Looking around the circle of scared, resentful faces, I saw few that didn't show symptoms of the lack of fresh food. Loose and missing teeth, soft, bleeding gums, the pus-filled, itching follicles of "the yeuk" that so lavishly decorated His Highness's white skin.
I was loath to surrender any of my precious supply of rose hips and dried berries, but had offered, reluctantly, to make the Prince a tea of them. The offer had been rejected, with a minimum of courtesy, and I understood that Archie Cameron had been summoned, with his bowl of leeches and his lancet, to see whether a letting of the Royal blood would relieve the Royal itch.
"I could do it," I said. My heart was beating heavily in my chest, making it hard to breathe. "I could mix him a draught. I think I could persuade him to take it."
"And if he should die upon drinking your medicine? Christ, Claire! They would kill ye on the spot!"
I folded my hands beneath my arms, trying to warm them.
"D-does that matter?" I asked, desperately trying to steady my voice. The truth was that it did. Just at the moment, my own life weighed a good deal more in the balance than did the hundreds I might save. I clenched my fists, shaking with terror, a mouse in the jaws of the trap.
Jamie was at my side in an instant. My legs didn't work very well; he half-carried me to the broken settle and sat down with me, his arms wrapped tight around me.
"You've the courage of a lion, mo duinne," he murmured in my ear. "Of a bear, a wolf! But you know I willna let ye do it."
The shivering eased slightly, though I still felt cold, and sick with the horror of what I was saying.
"There might be another way," I said. "There's little food, but what there is goes to the Prince. I think it might not be difficult to add something to his dish without being noticed; things are so disorganized." This was true; all over the house, officers lay sleeping on tables and floors, still clad in their boots, too tired to lay aside their arms. The house was in chaos, with constant comings and goings. It would be a simple matter to distract a servant long enough to add a deadly powder to the evening dish.
The immediate terror had receded slightly, but the awfulness of my suggestion lingered like poison, chilling my own blood. Jamie's arm tightened briefly around my shoulders, then fell away as he contemplated the situation.
The death of Charles Stuart would not end the matter of the Rising; things had gone much too far for that. Lord George Murray, Balmerino, Kilmarnock, Lochiel, Clanranald—all of us were traitors, lives and property forfeit to the Crown. The Highland army was in tatters; without the figurehead of Charles to rally to, it would dissipate like smoke. The English, terrorized and humiliated at Preston and Falkirk, would not hesitate to pursue the fugitives, seeking to retrieve their lost honor and wash out the insult in blood.
There was little chance that Henry of York, Charles's pious younger brother, already bound by churchly vows, would take his brother's place to continue the fight for restoration. There was nothing ahead but catastrophe and wreck, and no possible way to avert it. All that might be salvaged now was the lives of the men who would die on the moor tomorrow.
It was Charles who had chosen to fight at Culloden, Charles whose stubborn, shortsighted autocracy had defied the advice of his own generals and gone to invade England. And whether Sandringham had meant his offer for good or ill, it had died with him. There was no support from the South; such English Jacobites as there were did not rally as expected to the banner of their king. Forced against his will to retreat, Charles had chosen this last stubborn stand, to place ill-armed, exhausted, starving men in a battle line on a rain-soaked moor, to face the wrath of Cumberland's cannon fire. If Charles Stuart were dead, the battle of Culloden might not take place. One life, against two thousand. One life—but that life a Royal one, and taken not in battle, but in cold blood.