Read Online White Rose Rebel by Janet Paisley - Free Book Online Page B

that General Cope liked his bed. From the hallway came the sound of clattering. The door burst open and Cope appeared, a rotund, red-faced man with his buttons half done and his wig askew, scarlet uniform spattered with rain. He flapped his hands, apologetically.
    ‘Ah, I’m sorry, I was –’
    ‘Late,’ Cumberland snapped. His jowls quivered. He swept up a sheaf of papers and waved it at the two generals. ‘Last week HMS Lion engaged two French frigates. The Elisabeth limped back to Brest. The du Teillay escaped. Now our intelligence reports my cousin has gone from France.’
    ‘He wouldn’t be such a damn fool as to land,’ Cope said. ‘Not with only one ship.’
    ‘That we know of.’ Cumberland sat down heavily and began towrite. ‘You’ll mobilize for Scotland. General Hawley, you’ll join General Wade in Northumberland.’
    ‘England’s Jacobites won’t start an insurrection,’ Hawley objected. ‘They only talk. A few gibbets swinging in the Highlands would ensure the peace.’
    ‘Or one for a would-be king,’ Cumberland corrected. He handed the paper he’d been writing to Cope. ‘A letter of credit, Johnny. That should cover your payroll. Find him.’
    Rain had battered down throughout the first two weeks of July, a hard, unceasing rain that cut like knives, drumming on roofs, puddling fields and flooding the burns into spate. When it stopped, it was suddenly summer, dry and hot as if no such rain could be imagined, far less fall. Only flooded fords, swollen lochs and fast-flowing rivers gave the lie to that, and the crops. Grim-faced, Anne and Aeneas sat on their horses side by side, staring at the devastation. The field of barley was flattened.
    ‘The wheat will be the same,’ Aeneas said, dismounting to check the standing height of broken stems.
    ‘Can we harvest it now?’
    ‘Aye,’ he squinted up at her against the harsh sun. ‘But for hay.’ That would mean overwintering more cattle so the crop could return its worth fed through the beasts. It would be spring before any value derived from it.
    ‘At least the oats are in.’
    ‘Plenty of porridge,’ he agreed, swinging back up into the saddle, ‘and less to wash it down with.’
    ‘So it’s ale and uisge beatha you mourn,’ she teased. ‘Or that we’ll miss our contribution to German Geordie’s keep?’
    He leant an arm on his horse’s neck and studied her for a moment.
    ‘There’s another shame this is a barley field,’ he said slowly, seriously, despite the light in his eyes. ‘You’ll not be wanting ears of that inside your skirts.’
    The sudden twist of pleasure inside Anne, though familiar now, was always unexpected. Throughout June, they had tried walkingthrough the estate so she could learn it but could barely pass a grassy patch among the heather or a copse of trees. Hand-holding was fatal to forward progress so, if she was to know the extent of Moy, they had to traverse it on horseback. Unlike Aeneas, she could not control her smile.
    ‘I doubt they’d be a joy under the kilt either,’ she said.
    ‘ Ach , I’m a man.’ He grinned now. ‘I can stand the itch.’ Then he chuckled. ‘At least till later.’
    It took longer than it ought to reap and stook the half-ripe grain. Aeneas sent fifty cotter families over to help cut and stack at Dunmaglas, where MacGillivray, with more barley in exposed fields, would have suffered greater loss.
    When the work was done, the boys who’d volunteered into the Black Watch assembled at Moy Hall. They’d been kept back for a harvest that would no longer come, their income from military service needed even more now. Lined up, fresh-faced and eager enough for adventure, they were mostly oldest sons of the poorest families. Cotters on the periphery of the estate were often exiles from other clans, banished for some transgression or voluntary exiles over some dispute, given the thinnest soil and most meagre grazing allowance until they proved themselves to their new