MATTERS BECAME still worse—or much better, depending on your viewpoint—as dusk fell. The temperature had risen since the ice storm, but the ground was sodden; moisture rose from it during the day, but then as night came on, condensed into a fog so thick that even the campfires were barely visible, each one glowing like a sullen coal in the mist.

Excitement was passing through the militia like a mosquito-borne fever, as the new conditions gave rise to new plans.

“Now,” Ian said softly, appearing like a ghost out of the fog beside Jamie. “Caswell’s ready.”

Such supplies as we had were already packed; carrying guns, powder, and food, eight hundred men, together with an uncounted quantity of camp-followers like myself, stole quietly through the mist toward the bridge, leaving the campfires burning behind us.

I wasn’t sure exactly where MacDonald’s troops were just now—they might be still on the wagon road, or might have cautiously detoured, coming down to the edge of the swamp to reconnoiter. Good luck to them in that case, I thought. My own insides were tight with tension as I stepped carefully across the bridge; it was silly to tiptoe, but I felt a reluctance to put my feet down firmly—the fog and silence compelled a sense of secrecy and furtiveness.

I stubbed a toe against an uneven plank and lurched forward, but Roger, walking beside me, caught me by the arm and set me upright. I squeezed his arm, and he smiled a little, his face barely visible through the mist, though he was no more than a foot away.

He knew quite as well as Jamie and the rest did what was coming. Nonetheless, I sensed a strong excitement in him, mingled with dread. It was, after all, to be his first battle.

On the other side, we dispersed to make fresh camps on the hill above the circular earthwork the men had thrown up a hundred yards from the creek. I passed close enough to the guns to see their elongated snouts, poking inquisitively through the mist: Mother Covington and her daughter, the men called the two cannon—I wondered idly which was which, and who the original Mother Covington might have been. A redoubtable lady, I assumed—or possibly the proprietor of the local brothel.

Firewood was easy to find; the ice storm had extended to the pines near the creek, too. It was, however, bloody damp, and damned if I was going to spend an hour on my knees with a tinderbox. Luckily, no one could see what I was doing in this pea-soup fog, and I stealthily removed a small tin of Brianna’s matches from my pocket.

As I was blowing on the kindling, I heard a series of odd, rending screeches from the direction of the bridge, and knelt upright, staring down the hill. I couldn’t see anything, of course, but realized almost at once that it was the sound of nails giving way as planks were pried up—they were dismantling the bridge.

It seemed a long time before Jamie came to find me. He refused food, but sat against a tree and beckoned to me. I sat down between his knees and leaned back against him, grateful for his warmth; the night was cold, with a damp that crept into every crevice and chilled the marrow.

“Surely they’ll see that the bridge is out?” I said, after a long silence filled with the myriad noises of the men working below.

“Not if the fog lasts ’til morning—and it will.” Jamie sounded resigned, but he seemed more peaceful than he had earlier. We sat quietly together for some time, watching the play of flames on the fog—an eerie sight, as the fire seemed to shimmer and merge with the mist, the flames stretching strangely up and up, disappearing into the swirl of white.

“D’ye believe in ghosts, Sassenach?” Jamie asked suddenly.

“Er … well, not to put too fine a point on it, yes,” I said. He knew I did, because I’d told him about my meeting with the Indian whose face was painted black. I knew he did, too—he was a Highlander. “Why, have you seen one?”

He shook his head, wrapping his arms more securely around me.

“Not to say ‘seen,’” he said, sounding thoughtful. “But I will be damned if he’s no there.”

“Who?” I said, rather startled at this.

“Murtagh,” he said, surprising me further. He shifted more comfortably, resettling me against him. “Ever since the fog came in, I’ve had the most peculiar sense of him, just by me.”

“Really?” This was fascinating, but made me thoroughly uneasy. Murtagh, Jamie’s godfather, had died at Culloden, and—so far as I knew—hadn’t been going about manifesting himself since. I didn’t doubt his presence; Murtagh’s had been an extremely strong—if dour—personality, and if Jamie said he was there, he very likely was. What made me uneasy was the contemplation of just why he might be there.

I concentrated for a time, but got no sense of the tough little Scotsman myself. Evidently, he was only interested in Jamie. That frightened me.

While the conclusion of the morrow’s battle was a foregone one, a battle was a battle, and men might be killed on the winning side, as well. Murtagh had been Jamie’s godfather, and took his duty to Jamie seriously. I sincerely hoped he hadn’t had word that Jamie was about to be killed, and shown up to conduct him to heaven—visions on the eve of battle were a fairly common occurrence in Highland lore, but Jamie did say he hadn’t seen Murtagh. That was something, I supposed.

“He, um, hasn’t said anything to you, has he?”

Jamie shook his head, seeming unfazed by this ghostly visitation.

“Nay, he’s just … there.” He seemed, in fact, to find this “thereness” a comfort, and so I didn’t voice my own doubts and fears. I had them, nonetheless, and spent the rest of the short night pressed close against my husband, as though daring Murtagh or anyone else to take him from me.

113



THE GHOSTS OF CULLODEN

COME DAWN, ROGER STOOD BEHIND the low earthwork by his father-in-law, musket in hand, straining his eyes to peer into the mist. The sounds of an army came to him clearly; sound carried through fog. The measured tramp of feet, though they were not marching in any sort of unison. The clank of metal and rustle of cloth. Voices—the shouts of officers, he thought, beginning to rally their troops.

They would by now have found the deserted campfires; they’d know that the enemy now lay across the creek.

The smell of tallow was strong in the air; Alexander Lillington’s men had greased the support timbers, after the planks had been removed. He’d been grasping his gun for hours, it seemed, and yet the metal was still cold in his hand—his fingers were stiff.

“D’ye hear the shouting?” Jamie nodded toward the mist that hid the far bank. The wind had changed; no more than disconnected Gaelic phrases came from beyond the ghostly cypress trunks, and I made no sense of them. Jamie did.

“Whoever’s leading them—I think it’s McLeod, by the voice—he means to charge the creek,” he said.

“But that’s suicide!” Roger blurted. “Surely they know—surely someone’s seen the bridge?”

“They are Highlanders,” Jamie said, still softly, eyes on the ramrod he pulled from its rest. “They will follow the man to whom they vow loyalty, even though he leads them to their death.”

Ian was nearby; he glanced quickly toward Roger, then over his shoulder, where Kenny and Murdo Lindsay stood with Ronnie Sinclair and the McGillivrays. They stood in a casual knot, but every hand touched a musket or rifle, and their eyes darted toward Jamie every few seconds.

They had joined Colonel Lillington’s men on this side of the creek; Lillington was passing to and fro through the men, eyes darting back and forth, assessing readiness.

Lillington stopped abruptly at sight of Jamie, and Roger felt a nervous qualm in the pit of his stomach. Randall Lillington had been a second cousin of the Colonel’s.

Alexander Lillington wasn’t a man to hide his thoughts; it had quite evidently dawned on him that his own men were forty feet away and that Jamie’s men stood between him and them. His eyes darted toward the mist, where Donald McLeod’s bellowing was being answered by increasing roars from the Highlanders with him, then back at Jamie.