The only news we had after my husband left us were his letters—other than occasional reports from Alistair’s trips to nearby towns which brought us only a wild mélange of contradictory rumors. But, in truth, I did not receive many letters from Gavin during the time that he was gone. He was engaged in battles and campaigns and was up early and on the move almost constantly in the first weeks.

We were far from the battle sites. The royal mail was not to be relied upon. Gavin feared officials might open letters directed to Heath Hall. He trusted to messengers he knew—not strong men needed in battle but youngsters who could ride fast. They would deliver his messages and then return and try to find the army again.

Despite our misgivings, at first letters did come and it seemed that all was well…

The beginning of the first letter I received read only “September.” Gavin would not put in writing exactly where he was in case the letter was seized by an enemy to the Rebellion. He always wrote in haste in a loping scrawl that allowed only five words or so to each line, which meant he covered a page quickly.

Sometimes he wrote on the back of a pamphlet or a notice, and often down the middle, around the margins of the page on both sides and even diagonally across what he had already written. I could see that he had already used up the paper he had taken with him and was struggling to find more.

The effort to decipher what he had written would have been a joy, had I not been so eager, with the children scrambling into my lap and looking over my shoulder, to find out what he had to say.

September

My dear Wife,

Be of good cheer. All is sunshine so far. Was I wrong to mistrust of this brave venture?

At first only sixty of us were gathered at Mar’s Braemar Castle. But before long our sixty men were joined by the entire Mackintosh clan, distinguished by their red and green plaid, and other clans came with them until we had an army of 1500 foot soldiers and 1000 horses milling around in the mud. Then Mar held a great ceremony at which the blue and gold standard of the Stuarts was raised.

Such a brave sight, my dear! On one side of the flag, the arms of Scotland wrought in gold thread, and on the other, the Scottish thistle with the famous motto, Nemo me impune laccessit, which means, as you know, “No one harms me without punishment.” White ribbons unfurled from the standard with other mottos: “For our wronged King and oppressed country” and “For our lives and liberties.”

But the day was full of rain and wind and lightning, and the gold ball was blown off the top of the king’s standard. The men began muttering that this was an ill omen. You know the Highlanders, full of strange beliefs in portents and premonitions, especially before battle.

Gavin went on to tell how their little army began to march across northern Scotland, attracting more and more men as they went, entering cities and towns without a fight to be hailed like Caesar’s finest, pelted with late-summer flowers by women and girls, and toasted in every tavern by the men.

In no time they had “taken” Kirkcaldy, Kinghorn, Dysart and all the north side of the Firth of Forth, and then the kingdom of Fife, and Forfar, Kincardine, Aberdeen, Banff, Moray, Perth, Inverness, the Isles of Skye and Lewis and all the Hebrides. It was a “summer’s war” indeed with hardly a man lost.

All the while, as they marched to bagpipes and fife, they were singing the songs of the Jacobites, such as the brosnachadh (call to battle), “To the Army of the Earl of Mar.” The song was sung in Gaelic, which I did not understand, but I knew it listed all the clans that would fight for our King James III to be. What clan would endure the shame of being left off such a roll of honor?

Gavin wrote that the hardest part of the adventure so far was convincing the men not to lift pies off windowsills or chickens from barnyards. He expended many pennies and even shillings, purchasing food from farmers and tavernkeepers and then had to keep a constant watch to see that hungry men did not divest the birds of feathers and eat them nearly raw after a light toasting over a fire. He knew enough of war to know that men with grumbling insides from hasty, ill-cooked meals are poor fighters.

Gavin’s next letter described the attempt to take Edinburgh Castle, which was an ill omen of what was to come.

Yet September

Dearest Wife,

Yesterday our mighty army of Lowlanders and Highlanders almost seized Edinburgh Castle with all its stores of ammunition, arms, cannon and gold. I would have argued for distributing this money among the people again. Or using it to buy more arms to resist those rogues of Englishmen!

One of Mar’s men had suborned a group of the castle sentries who were to lower a rope ladder down to a force of ninety of our best climbers after they had clambered up the rock. But—would you believe it!—the ladder was too short! No one above or below had thought to take a measurement of the distance from the top to the bottom of the walls.

The moment of opportunity passed. The watch changed and the new sentries were not in on the plot. Our attacking force was seen fleeing, the plan was exposed and the sentries who had tried to help us were either hanged on the spot or flogged until they would have preferred death.

Still we hold the north of Scotland and no strong force of redcoats has yet come against us. But this disorganization…it is as if we are a collection of many little armies, each of its own mind.

I am about to lose the light, my dear, as my candle gutters out, but I have a wish for you yet: “Let not the dark thee cumber/What though the moon does slumber?/The stars of the night/Will lend thee their light,/Like tapers clear without number.”

I remain always,

Your loving Husband

That last I recognized as a stanza from another Robert Herrick poem, “The Night Piece, to Julia,” and, of course, it touched me that he remembered even now how fond I was of Herrick. I guessed that Gavin’s uneasiness was greater than he would tell me so he was trying to distract me with verse.

Yet he was still safe, and every night the children and Lucy and I thanked the Blessed Virgin for protecting him, as if we were fashioning with our prayers a starry veil to be spread over him by the very hands of the Madonna, that would repel all bullets, cannonballs, bayonets and the myriad other dangers of war.

Sometimes I almost believed that our prayers would succeed. Every morning of that exceptionally beautiful autumn, which passed in a glory of russet and orange, I woke with the absolute knowledge that Gavin yet lived and was well. I could see him in my mind, being shaved by the first light of day by one aide, or hastily downing half-cooked eggs and crisped toast prepared by another over a campfire. Or debating with Mar and Winton and the other lords around a table upon which maps were spread helter skelter, trying to determine where the English forces were and what moves they were planning. And, above all, everyone asking, where is our king? Where is the Chevalier?

For our young hero James Stuart apparently had not appeared and they still had no sure word of his coming. No victories in battle, no territory gained, would suffice if the Chevalier did not appear, backed by soldiers and arms. No one knew then that wind and weather, illness, betrayal, and the ill will of European monarchs following the death of Louis XIV on the first of September—all of these calamities had beaten James back again and again as he tried to cross the Channel. But men could not fight forever on behalf of a phantom.

Other letters followed from Gavin, generally cheerful, but with a discernible undertone of apprehension. While Mar led his force north, deeper into Scotland, Gavin and Winton and Derwentwater went with the party that crossed in and out of the north of England.

The latest news here is that Thomas Forster of Northumberland, a Protestant with no military background, is to take charge of our army, according to an order from Mar. Forster has been a Member of Parliament, but I doubt that his battles on the floor of the House of Commons, fierce though they may have been, have prepared him to take on the Duke of Argyll, who heads the troops of “Wee Geordie.”

Some Highlanders thereupon mutinied. Hundreds of them, seeing that no King James has come to lead us, and worrying about their harvest, simply began to drift away, night by night. Others marched away openly by day. (I am thinking the British redcoats don’t have the option of leaving their army whenever they wish.)

Winton was disgusted by the undeserved promotion of Forster and the meandering, listless progress of our forces so far. He took a good portion of his men and headed for home. The war council sent a messenger after him to beg him to return.

Under those circumstances, he said, he could not desert our righteous cause, but added, grabbing his own ears, “You, or any man, shall have liberty to cut these out of my head if we do not all repent it.”

But do not torment yourself with concern for me. We have yet to be in any real danger. The camp life—riding all day, eating stale bread, sleeping on a hard camp bed—seems to agree with me, and it has not yet rained enough to make us long for a better roof than a tent over our heads.

Our men are doing well, too. Little Callum has grown two inches and is now quite stout. He is enjoying himself so much, I’m afraid he will run off to the continent to join the French or Prussian army when we are done. Do not look to see him back at Heath Hall.

I could read between the lines, of course, and see what he was not saying aloud. The troops were disorganized and without experienced military guidance. The little army, so brave at Braemar Castle, was already beginning to dissolve. But I knew Gavin would not turn homewards. He had pledged his honor to the cause and he would stick.

Lucy could see I was downcast. She came to me and put her arm around my shoulder.

“Every day he is alive and well is a good day,” she said.

After that we heard nothing more from Gavin for weeks.

The silence continued as October slowly passed and eased into November. Already there were signs that the coming winter would be unusually cold. The barnacle geese with their black hoods flew over us earlier than was usual, headed for their winter campgrounds on the Solway Firth. Snowy owls arrived early and settled in and had already startled me once or twice, swooping by overhead to begin their hunt at twilight. Red squirrels had started gathering nuts in September, seeming to rejoice in the vast quantities of acorns that also presaged a hard winter. I used to enjoy the chittering of squirrels but now found it faintly sinister. What did they know about coming cold and doom that I did not?

I even thought the spider webs I saw in the gardens and among the trees were larger than usual. And there were halos around the moon, night after night. I would stand and gaze up at the ringed moon until Lucy came and draped a shawl around my shoulders or Moira and Elspeth came to drag me back inside.

“You won’t find news of Gavin in the behavior of wild creatures or in signs in the sky by night,” Lucy admonished me.

“I am remembering the tales we told each other as children in Wales,” I said. “How you could predict coming storms and cold winters by watching the creatures prepare for the seasons. Last winter was rather mild. I fear the one that comes will not be so.”

“And why would that concern you?” said Lucy. “We will be cozy by the big fire. And the horses will be warm in the stable. Gavin is away south where surely the winter will be softer. And men tend not to fight great battles in snow and ice.”

I shuddered. “I can’t answer as to why. I’ve never feared the winter before. There’s something in it…it’s not just the cold or the snow and ice.” I pressed my lips together and said no more because I sounded like some addlepated crone, looking for signs in sky and earth, wind and water, that would foretell the future.

It was on one of these bright autumn days of mid-November that the news came at last. As it happened, I had climbed up into the tower and was balancing on my toes, peering through the crenels, as I often did. Then I would stoop and look through the arrow slits. I must bring a stool up here to stand on, I thought.

I told myself I was merely surveying the beauty of the fall day with the harvest nearly all in and the tree branches, having shaken off their load of leaves, traced against a blue sky—and just an undercurrent of frost in the air. The night would be colder.

But I was really on the heights to watch the skein of paths that came to Heath Hall for signs of a rider or a cart driver or anyone coming to tell us something. And so it was that I saw a black form rounding our cove of birches—a horse with a bright ginger-headed rider. It was Callum on Gavin’s horse, riding him too hard, I thought. And I wished all at once that he would gallop faster and that he would slow to a trot and then to a walk.

If it was the worst news, I wanted Callum to turn and go back the way he had come, no matter how hard he had ridden to bring it to me. I did not want to hear those words. I felt as if a curse had fallen over me and I could not move. Yet I could feel my heart banging against my breastbone.

Callum was riding faster and coming up to the house quickly, his red hair, much longer than when he had left, streaming behind him in parallel to the horse’s tail. And as they came closer, I could see plainly that horse and rider were layered with a heavy paste of dirt and sweat.

The curse broke. I spun around and almost fell down the spiral staircase, calling for Lucy and the children. All of us ran in a mass to burst through the great front door and confront Callum before he even had time to dismount.

I did not mean to say these words, but they just came up from my heart and out of my mouth before I could muzzle myself: “Is he hurt?” I cried. “Is he…?” I could no more than mouth the word “dead.”

“No, no, my lady,” Callum managed to croak out as he seized on the cup of ale Lucy had thought to bring him. “He’s taken.”

He thrust me a torn paper he had plucked from his pouch. I could barely read the broken scrawl.

Preston

Wife, we were defeated here and I was taken prisoner, along with the five other peers and hundreds of men.

My money is gone, spent on provisions for the men. Please send more with Callum as I have nothing for necessities. He will meet me at Barnet.

Come to London as soon as you can. We will be held in the Tower, and I will have no way to petition for my release if you do not come.

Yours in haste, G

When I had had a moment to recover from my shock and saw there was yet hope…although the reference to “the Tower” stirred all the nightmares stowed in the back of my memory…I hardly allowed poor, exhausted Callum to get off the horse before I began haranguing him, trying to get him to tell us what had happened. He had no powers of narration, but Lucy finally elicited some sort of picture by asking questions that he could answer with single words or simple sentences. And he told us what he could with gesture and mime.

The southern Jacobite force under Forster had marched into England down through Cumberland and Westmoreland, past Penrith, Appleby and Kendal, and at last into Lancaster to the town of Preston. Callum counted the towns off on his fingers. By that time there were about 2000 men in the force altogether, and, as they approached Preston, two troops of English dragoons, seeing they were vastly outnumbered, made haste to leave the town.

The rebels were greeted with great enthusiasm in Preston, largely by local Catholics, and perhaps, young Callum said, “There’s was a mite ól an iomarca.”

Lucy looked at me. “Too much drinking, I’ll wager.”

“And dancing,” Callum said. “A fiddler played. All danced.”

“And pretty young women?” I asked. Callum grinned and nodded.

It did not occur to me then to squirm at the thought of Gavin dancing with some rosy-cheeked English maiden in Preston. Only much later, during my endless journey to London, that thought did bob through my mind, one spinning image among many.

Amid all the celebrating, Forster did not think to barricade the bridge over the Ribble River, though the river was not fordable on either side for some miles. Blocking the bridge would have stopped the English cold.

Nor did Forster block the narrow pass that led from the bridge to the town, or even close up all the entrances to Preston. When a large force of dragoons arrived and attacked the next day, the besieged still had the advantage of cannon and the cover of the town’s buildings, but the redcoats managed to get in through an unguarded entrance on the south side.

While the Jacobites were fighting gallantly from street to street, Thomas Forster nursed a headache in his bed with a posset of curdled milk, sugar and ale. By the next morning, with both sides still engaged in hand-to-hand combat throughout Preston, Forster decided it was time to surrender on the promise from the English that King George would be merciful.

Forster rode out of Preston under guard in a large, commodious carriage. He offered to take the other nobles into the carriage with him, but Gavin and young Derwentwater refused, saying they would prefer to walk to London than to ride with Forster, who had been so quick to insist on surrender.

Once we had extracted what we could of the dismal story from Callum, we fed him and gave him a fresh horse and a fat wallet and satchel packed with food. Lucy admonished him sternly to conceal the money on his person and never take it out where anyone could see him until he reached my lord. I also scratched out a note of encouragement for Gavin with a promise that I would soon see him in London.

From then on, I had no time to indulge myself in grief or to allow my great, pounding fears to overpower me. I had too much to do. I knew I must go to London and somehow save my husband’s life.

That night the first snow fell.