‘My darling boy,’ I wrote, ‘I am glad that you are finding your Greek lessons a little easier. We miss you so much, especially Anne who pines for her big brother. We have some very exciting news. The king’s standard was raised at Braemar in September and there is a great army assembled in the north, ready to fight for the restoration of King James and put an end to the despised union with England. Your father is to fight too, leading our local men, and he has spent many weeks preparing …’
I put my pen down and watched Anne playing with one of the puppies by the fire. How could I tell our son that his father had struggled to persuade but twenty men to join him? We couldn’t lose men from our fields or we would starve and our tenant farmers and neighbours were no different. From the estate itself, we had found only the blacksmith’s assistant and two of the stable boys, one of whom was a child in a man’s body, willing to join the fight. Other local men had been pushed to join; men who drank too much or who were too slow to learn a trade and their families were glad to be rid of them. This was William’s army.
I wouldn’t tell the boy of the long wait, six weeks now, for something to happen with hope fading at the end of each day when no message came. I stared out of the narrow window panes, as if by watching I could create the sound of a horse cantering towards the castle. I picked up my pen and chewed the end of the quill.
‘… with the blacksmith making swords and daggers and the village women making uniforms. We have asked the blacksmith to make you a dagger like the ones he is making for the men but you must promise me to be very sensible and not let Anne play with it when you come home. Bea has had her puppies, six of them born alive, and we are letting Anne keep one. A fox got one of our chickens last night and I am very cross because she was meant for the pot on Sunday.
I will write to you again with news of your father and his bravery. Pray for his safety in the battles ahead and be proud of him.
Your loving Mother.’
At last, the call to arms came and William and the other lowland peers hurried to meet with Jacobite forces from the north of England. In letters, my husband spoke warmly of the bravery of their leader, the young Earl of Derwentwater, but he complained that the English Jacobites had failed to take Newcastle and missed their rendezvous with the French fleet, who were bringing precious arms and supplies. William described how they had roamed through Scottish and English towns, receiving a mixed welcome, without any clear direction from the Earl of Mar or further news of the French. As I read his words I heard his frustration and felt my own familiar loss of hope in the Jacobite cause.
My spirits revived as Charles arrived at Terregles with his men from Traquair, bringing news that Mackintosh of Borlum was on his way south with two thousand men and I joined Charles on the ride to Kelso and Jedburgh. Villagers seeking adventure on a warm October morning ran out from their mean, dark cottages as our troops marched past, pursued by wailing women. Charles and I rode at the rear to make sure that stragglers stayed with us and that any boy who looked younger than my son was sent back to his weeping mother.
At Jedburgh, my husband and Viscount Kenmure inspected their troops in the meadows below the ruins of the abbey. From horseback, we watched them ride up and down the ranks, their numbers now quite respectable. William said that this was the third time the men had been inspected as there was little else to do but he hoped to get them moving before the inns of Jedburgh became too much of an attraction. Some of the men were in uniform but the latecomers wore their ordinary working clothes and some carried pitchforks or scythes, whatever they had been able to find in their rush to follow.
Charles and I secured food for the men in the town and several innkeepers joined us on the meadow. A large fire was burning to roast a pig, the innkeepers’ wives had made a fresh batch of bread and there was enough ale to keep the men mellow but not drunk. It was clear even to me that the men needed to be moved on as soon as possible but there was still no sign of the highland force. Before it was quite dark, we were joined by a few hundred men from Northumberland and their approach had raised our hopes until we realised that the sound of their pipes was from the south and not the north.
The abbey ruins rose stark and black against the fading light. Smoke from the bonfires around the camp twisted lazily, barely able to rise above the tents without help from even the gentlest breeze. A murmur of voices and fragments of music played together in a quiet rhythm of contentment, as well-fed men turned to thoughts of sleep. Those who had a change of heart had already slipped away through the dark shadows and the remaining men were ones who could be relied on to fight. We sat with William at his fire, mesmerised by the rise and fall of the flames and the shifts of embers. There was nothing more to say.
I caught the first sound. I thought it was a sheep bleating, lost and alone. More sounds drifted, rising and fading, then pipes, unmistakably highland pipes and the tap, tapping of a drum. I touched William’s arm. He had heard too. We all heard and stood to listen. The camp fell silent. A rattle of drums, then a roar from the town and our men roared in reply and threw their hats above their heads. The Highlanders had come at last.
In the early morning, before the first rooks were awake, I watched the sturdy Mackintosh, flanked by William and Kenmure, lead what seemed like a never-ending line of men out of town. I felt a joyful pride as William passed, sweeping his hat from his head. Finally, as the last man became a wavering mirage on the horizon and the skirl of the pipes a memory in my ringing ears, I felt empty and alone. The silence was acute, filled only with sounds from inside my head. Slowly, the town awoke. People swept their doorsteps and talked to their neighbours, hands on hips. Mothers scolded their children. Food was bought and sold, coins exchanged. I stood for a long time, watching ordinary life return. Charles touched my shoulder and whispered. ‘You have to go home, Win. All you can do now is wait.’
Our quiet life at Terregles irritated. The days, growing shorter and darker, were filled by mindless tasks. I couldn’t sleep at night and in the day I struggled to move my heavy limbs or organise thoughts in the thicket of my brain. Anne pestered me to entertain her and I snapped, only to hug her close minutes later. I tried to concentrate as Grace raised endless details about the house, garden and estate but my mind drifted to the sound of highland pipes and William perhaps fighting for his life. I thought I should go to Traquair, where Anne could play with her cousins, but I stayed because news would come first to Terregles.
I had expected a messenger or a letter from William but in late October, the day before the pig was to be slaughtered, Grace and I stood by his sty and scratched his back for the last time. He grunted and shifted so that I could reach the bit he liked, just behind his ear, and I turned my head to avoid inhaling the stink from his sty. We had paid a farmer to come with his men to do the murder and we needed to talk about the gory aftermath of butchery and preservation.
We had just agreed that I would take Anne out for the day, when Grace pointed towards the smithy. ‘Isn’t that the blacksmith’s boy, the one who went off with William?’
I looked closely as a familiar young man strode towards the smithy as if he had been on an errand and was simply in a hurry to get back to his master. He looked dirtier, thinner and more ragged and he stared at the ground, his head bent forward, as if by not looking at us he wouldn’t be seen.
‘Come on, Grace, let’s find out what’s happened.’ I lifted my petticoats and skidded on my pattens across the muddy yard and into the workshop, Grace close behind.
The blacksmith and his newly returned assistant bowed. This was not women’s territory and I felt the unfamiliar burn of the furnace on my face and the stinging charcoal in my nostrils. It was hard to breathe. The boy’s face was lit from below. His cheeks and chin shone translucent pink but his eyes and mouth were dark hollows.
‘Henry, why aren’t you with your master?’
He tugged at the cloth around his neck. ‘I came home, my lady.’
‘I can see that, but why are you home? Is your master well? Tell me everything.’
‘Aye, madam. The master is well. They’re marching towards …’ he struggled to remember. ‘Aye, that’s it, Preston.’
‘Why aren’t you with him? Wasn’t it your duty to stay?’
‘My lady, the men from the north, the Highlanders, they said the king’s not going to come from France. So they went home. And I did too.’
I leaned my forehead on Grace’s shoulder. ‘How many men have deserted?’ I asked, raising my head.
‘Many. We didn’t like it down there. The people wouldn’t join us. And the king’s not coming. So I came home.’
The blacksmith was as protective of his apprentice as he was cruel when they were alone and his tone was hard but polite. ‘He’s said enough, Lady Nithsdale. Leave the boy. Can ye no see he’s worn out.’
The door slammed closed behind us as we left the smithy to walk back to the pig. Grace put an arm around my shoulders but I shrugged her away.
‘How could they leave him? This isn’t going to end well.’
Grace shook her head. ‘You don’t know that. The boy was trying to justify his own desertion. It’s bound to be an exaggeration.’
‘I want to go to him. Other women follow their husbands into battle.’
‘But you have a duty to your children and to the estate,’ Grace reminded me.
‘So we have to wait,’ I protested, spreading my hands in despair, ‘always to wait. Why is it that men can act but women must wait?’
Grace lifted her head from the pig’s broad back, her grey eyes bright. ‘But, Winifred, only some women are allowed to act and when they do, they rely on other women to wait. I will not be left here alone, managing the business and raising your child.’
News followed swiftly after the blacksmith boy’s arrival. While he had strolled home on his solitary journey to Terregles, we learned that he had left his friends, neighbours and my husband to barricade the streets of Preston. I heard that William and Lord Kenmure had fought, stripped to the waist, until they had been forced to surrender on November 13th.
These unwelcome details came from Lady Kenmure as she sat in my library, with light from a high window falling on her pretty face, torn with grief. At the moment of her telling me, I hated her and my hatred blocked out the words she spoke. I studied her red eyes and dry lips and her curls hanging loose and wild like damp weeds. Her hands gripped each other tightly, as if she needed someone to hold her. She was not so griefstricken as to fail to notice that I wasn’t listening which led her to repeat herself. I understood how much the detail mattered to her but all I wanted to know was whether William was safe. Both of our husbands had been taken prisoner, along with other peers, and they had last been seen in a carriage, presumed to be on its way to London. Other officers had been arrested and twenty-two ordinary soldiers had already hung from the scaffold. Hundreds more had been corralled in a church and left to freeze and starve to death. Many were already herded together at the ports for deportation to the colonies. Breathlessly, Lady Kenmure told me that our urbane host from Braemar, the Earl of Mar, had wasted our advantage by dithering and was now hiding in Perth. Our blacksmith’s boy was right, there had been no backing from the French.
Her story told, she fell silent and I shivered as the cold night seeped into the room. Like the last of the light, I felt any shred of hope drain from me. Alice crept in to light the fire and whispered that we could join Grace and Anne at the table for some supper. Out of duty I had to offer the heartbroken young woman hospitality and my coldness towards her softened when I watched her play with Anne and saw her struggle to put her grief aside to answer Grace’s questions.
Once Lady Kenmure and her servants were settled for the night, I sat sewing by the drawing-room fire with Grace, as was our habit. This was our time to share the small details important to those who manage large but impoverished estates. Tonight we sat in silence and my needle rested on my lap. It was impossible to plan until we had more news. I found I couldn’t speak my thoughts. So much had been lost. The future was empty. And William might yet die at the executioner’s sword.
Word came in time. William’s letter was business-like and he assured me of his good state of health and mind. He asked me for money, which was the one thing I couldn’t find. My scrupulous management of the meagre amount the trustees allowed us every month meant that we had a well-stocked larder and cupboards of clean linen but there was never any money. He pleaded that I come to London at once, as he expected to be imprisoned again in the Tower but, without money or a friend to plead for him, his situation would become intolerable.
I knew that my own small drama was far outweighed by the loss of the Jacobite dream but selfishly, I could only grieve for us. Without the glory of victory, how would my husband ever lift his head again? I knew I should go at once to Traquair and seek advice from Charles but I felt reluctant. Once given advice I would be expected to act and unlike before, when fear and fury would have driven me to William’s side, a strange, leaden despondence settled on my limbs and I wanted nothing more than to curl up on my bed with my child, smell her odour of freshly mown hay and sleep for ever.