Ghosts of Culloden Moor 13 - Kennedy Page 3

  ~

  “Poor Cate,” her father said, and took his place at the table. “She didn’t need yet another mouth to feed tonight.”

  Nessa waved away his concern. “She willna mind Jacky joining them. ‘Tis as easy to feed eleven as it is to feed ten.”

  “I suppose.” He winked at Fingal. “The more for us, aye?”

  Fingal moved over into Jacky’s chair again, as he’d done for dinner that day. And if it weren’t for Nessa tying up his brother in the barn, young Fingal might have been free to sit in that spot forever more. But thankfully, in another two days, there would be no need for Jacky to run off and play soldier, man or not.

  She finished her meal quickly. The bowl of potatoes and thick meat gravy she’d set aside for her captive was easily hidden beneath her shawl when she excused herself to do the milking. Nessa was confident she would think of another excuse for his absence come morning.

  She hadn’t thought to put on mittens what with the bowl in one hand and the lantern in the other, so the cold, wet wind chilled her fingers to the bone before she reached the barn door. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on a nice warm cow.

  She set the lantern on the ground to unbar the door, then picked it up again and stepped inside. Ginger mooed at her. Or was it was Jacky’s welcome she heard?

  The stool was bare. She lifted the lantern higher, hoping to see his form on the far side of the pillar, but he was truly gone! The ropes lay in pieces in the dirt.

  Whether the cousins returned for him, or he found a way out of her knots, it made no matter. Jacky was gone. Angry and gone.

  Nessa walked numbly to the smaller stool, plucked up a clean bucket, and made her way to Ginger’s side. The milk wouldn’t drop until her hands were good and warm, but once it did, Nessa’s tears began to fall as well.

  “I cannot believe I couldn’t save him,” she told the cow, her throat clogged with centuries of tears. “I couldn’t save any of them.”

  It was a long tortured evening by the time she’d milked both cows and cried herself dry. And in spite of her mortal state, and the exertion, she grew colder and deader inside. Except for the sting in her fingers, she might as well have been a ghost again. For all she cared, the cold wind off Cromarty Firth could freeze her where she stood. There was nothing left for her to do. Soncerae had every reason to collect her and be done with it.

  However, she was now eager to reach the afterlife. For, if she found Jacky, Ian, and the others, there would be one hell of a reunion—wherein she would bellow at the top of her lungs, “I told you not to go!”

  But Soni didn’t come.

  The cold wind eventually crept beneath her shawl and brought on a parade of chills she could not ignore, so she went back into the house. She took one last, long look at her father’s sleeping form, at his warm pipe lying on the mantle, and a final glance around the house in case Soni came for her in the night.

  She watched over Fingal for a wee while, caressing his small hands and his copper curls. Finally, he rolled away from her and she found her bed.

  Lying on her back, she searched the rafters. Every night of her life, she’d stared at them, and yet it was so long ago she vaguely remembered the pattern of the shadows. She cast her mind back to that self-same day, when she’d been the other her.

  She and Jacky had argued yet again. She’d begged, then she’d harped until they were both fit to be tied. When she woke in the morning, on the April 15th, her brother had been packing a ruck sack and explaining to Da why he had to go.

  Their father hadn’t put up much of a fuss. A man had to test himself, he’d said, in a voice that suggested John Kennedy had done some testing in his own time. But neither would Da join the fight. That, alone, should have given Jacky pause, but he’d united with the cousins in the yard and gone on his merry way.

  After feeding her father and brother a mere five hours later, Nessa had worked herself into a tizzy. She’d waited until her father was in the field before she gave Fingal a message to relay to him, that she’d gone after Jacky, to bring him home. And that Cate would have to feed Fingal and him for a day or two.

  But that had been the other her.

  Question was, what would she do this time?

  If she lit out now, could she find the lads sooner? With a little more time, could she sway them? If she simply bashed Jacky on the head and kept him unconscious until after the battle, the Butcher of Cumberland and his men would finish him off, believing him one of the injured, to whom no quarter would be given. So, if she were to try such a tactic, she would have to do so far from the battlefield.

  But in the past, she hadn’t found him until the morning of the battle, standing on the field itself, just an hour before the first shot.

  Heartsick, she covered her eyes with her arm and tried to calm her wayward thoughts. It was no use. The look in their eyes that afternoon had been the same as when she’d gone to them, on the battlefield, to urge them one last time to flee.

  I will not be a coward. I will not be a coward. Even when they’d stared at the enemy across the disastrous bog. Even when they’d known their chances.

  She wished she would have warned them about the butchery that would come after, but they wouldn’t have believed it any easier than they’d believed the rest.

  What good would it do to follow them now? She would rather not relive that bloody day. But was she meant to?

  “Soncerae,” she whispered to the rafters. “Have I failed? Is there truly nothing noble I can do now?”

  No longer sure of how to spend her final gift of mortal time, she closed her eyes and drifted through fuzzy and faded memories of long ago. In the wee hours before dawn, she startled and woke.

  The other her would have left that day for Culloden. Should she do the same? Or could she change something by remaining at home?

  She wished she’d been given some instruction before Wickham had whisked her away from the moor, but she supposed it was not possible for him or Soni to know what would happen to her.

  Or was it?

  Did the pair already know that history could not be change in the end? Did they know she’d be doing everything possible to sway her family to stay away from Culloden? And that she would do so in vain?

  Her stubborn nature balked at the idea. She’d never been one to sit still when told she should stay put.

  Of course history could be changed, she reasoned. She’d already done things differently than she had before. Her brother was on the road to Culloden far earlier this time. When their father rose that morning, Jacky wouldn’t be on hand to explain why he felt compelled to join the fight, or ask for the man’s blessing. Her father would be hurt to find his eldest son gone without a word.

  That history had changed.

  Fingal would not have the chance to bid his brother farewell.

  That history had changed.

  Nessa swung her feet to the floor and slipped them into her favorite brown boots—a different pair than those she’d worn to Culloden long ago. She also donned a different dress, a heavier coat.

  Her own history was about to change. And if she could change hers, maybe she could change someone else’s.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  That morning, after milking the cows, Nessa took great care cooking the meal. Firstly, it was only the second meal she’d prepared in centuries and she’d forgotten enough to worry. But her body seemed to remember well enough to get her by. She watched, entranced, as her hands reached for salt or lard, shuffled the coals to adjust the heat, or knew when to stop fiddling with the dough and call it good.

  Secondly, she wanted the meal to be special if only because it would be the last she would ever share with Fingal and her da.

  And lastly, she hoped a good meal would help soften the blow of the news of Jacky.

  Not wanting to spoil the taste of the food, she waited until her da had only his tea left to drink before she confessed that Jacky must have left in the night, and she was certain he’d gone with Ian
and the others, to join the Jacobite army. She also confessed to trying to hold him captive in the barn.

  Her father was stoic, as usual. A nod and a frown. Never a harsh word about someone who was not present to defend themselves. Only a touch of disappointment, a sad smile, and a new line of worry across his brow.

  “God go with them all,” he said. Then he sent Fingal over to Cate’s house to ask for an extra lad to come help with the animals while he tended to the fields.

  Before Fingal reached the door, however, Nessa scooped him into her arms and lifted him up to face her.

  “Fingal?”

  “Aye?”

  “I… I willna be here when ye return. So I thought perhaps ye’d like to kiss me before ye go.”

  He wrinkled his small, freckled nose in distaste, then laughed and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Ye’ll come back though, aye?”

  She forced a smile. “I certainly hope so.”

  “Then put me doon.”

  Recognizing his logic, she lowered him to his feet and he scampered out the door, eager to run his errand. Cate’s house had ever been the favorite place for all the lads. Their aunt kept biscuits at the ready to fill every corner of a growing lad’s stomach—and those of the older lads who only grew their bellies. She had no doubt Fingal would return with a few heavy-laden pockets.

  Her da rose and moved to the window where he stood still as a tree peering out at something unseen. It was his quiet way of mourning.

  She hated to disturb his thoughts, but had no choice. “Da?”

  “Ye’re going after him then?” he said without turning.

  It was a relief not to need to utter the words herself. “I cannot sit idle and wait. I’ve… I’ve a bad feeling about the coming battle.”

  He turned to frown at her. “Coming battle?”

  “Aye. On Drumossie Moor…” What else might she say without sounding mad? “The Jacobites are due a loss, aye? And Jacky should not be the one to pay for that loss.”

  Her da nodded, but she wondered if he understood more than her mere words. Could a parent tell when their daughter had been replaced by a different version of herself? Or was he only worried to see a woman sticking her nose into the politics of the land.

  His large fur-covered arms wrapped around her and pulled her close. “I am frightened for ye, Assa. Dinna travel alone—”

  “I will find others—”

  “Keep a knife tucked—”

  “I have three—”

  “And if ye canna turn yer brother’s nose to home…”

  “Unless God Himself inspires me to do otherwise, I’ll return, Fither mine.”

  He took hold of her shoulders and held her away from him. Only when he was satisfied with something in her eyes did he nod and drop his hands away. “God go with ye.”

  She fought back an army of tears, took up the sack she’d already prepared, and left her house for the final time—

  Again.

  ~

  Nessa was tempted to hurry up the rise to Cate’s house if only for a brief look at the woman who had been a mother to her. A clearer memory of Cate’s face, however, was not worth the risk of time. So Nessa refrained.

  Her heavy hooded coat covered her to the knees and would weigh her down at the end of the day. But she also knew the cold that would come, and a woman huddling and hiding from the weather would be of little use to anyone else. And she was bloody determined to save someone from the horrors of Culloden.

  Anyone.

  After three hours of walking, and then some, she perched on a low stone wall and rested. The spring water she’d stored in a wineskin wet her dry mouth and soothed her throat. A bun quieted her stomach.

  If she walked at a steady, quick pace, she expected to reach Beauly Firth by mid-afternoon. If she found a boat quickly, she could be in Inverness by sundown. She could easily afford to let a room for the night. After all, the coins in her pocket wouldn’t need to last her beyond the next day. Either she would fall at Culloden once again, or Soni would come for her.

  But if I’ve changed my history?

  She shook her head. Saving herself would be a vain and worthless triumph. She’d been given a pair of days. Surviving the massacre would not buy her more time.

  But if I never fell at Culloden, I wouldn’t have become one of the 79. So—

  “Easy there, lassie.” A young man dressed in rags separated himself from the trees across the road and down a bit. She’d been so lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed him. “Easy now. Dinna stand on my account, aye?” He held his empty hands out to his sides and took small, slow steps toward her. “I pray ye willna mind sharing yer luck with me. Yer sack seems full. And heavy. And I’m ever so willing to lighten yer load.”

  She lifted one boot and slid a wicked, narrow blade from a sheath she’d sewn inside. And while she held it up between them, she lowered her sack behind the wall and shook the handle of another dagger out of her sleeve. One quick move later and both hands were full and ready for a fight.

  The man stopped five feet away and grinned. His eyes widened playfully and he waved his hands as if he were trying to amuse her.

  “I’ve got it,” came a voice from behind her. She swung her left arm wide and spun, hoping to wound the one who’d spoken. But the figure jumped backward. He hadn’t completely escaped her reach, however, because the tip of her blade skittered across cloth and something more.

  “Cor! She cut me!” The second man, dressed better than the first, gaped at the blood on his fingers and the slice across his shirt. Her sack hung from his other hand.

  With a blade pointed at each man, she wielded the only other weapon she had—self-assurance. With her chin in the air and a cocky grin on her face, she teased them.

  “I suggest, if yer bellies are empty, ye join an army and earn a meal, aye?”

  Something pressed against her back. Solid, unbending. It could have been a pistol or a knife. Through her coat she couldn’t tell.

  The first man laughed. “Thank ye for the suggestion, lassie. But we’ve just left all that behind us.”

  Deserters. Dangerous men, then.

  A startling thought followed—if she’d succeeded in luring her brother and cousins away from the battle, would others see them as she viewed these men?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Nessa stood her ground and continued to point her blades at the two men she could see. Her coat was thick. Cutting through it with a dull blade would be hard work. But with a sharp one? Or a pistol?

  One chance in three then.

  “Drop yer weapons,” growled the man at her back.

  She shook her head and laughed. “I’ll be dead tomorrow. I might as well go out fighting. After all, if I kill one of ye, perhaps that will save someone ye might have killed later on, aye?” The reasoning cheered her.

  “Dead tomorrow?” The man sounded duly perplexed, so she took advantage of his confusion and spun around to face him. Her right blade stopped at his throat and the one in her left hand pointed at the man in the road. The man still standing on the far side of the rock wall she would worry about only after he climbed over it.

  “Aye. Dead tomorrow,” she said gleefully. “And who wants to race me to Hell, hm?”

  “What’s all this talk about death, now?” The man in the road shook his hands again. He was trying to distract her, but she wouldn’t fall for that a second time.

  Holding tight to her weapons, she changed positions again and pointed one blade at the man before her and the other toward the wall. Only that villain had jumped over and reached for her just as she swung her knife. Again, the tip drew across his chest. And though he yelped, he kept coming, knocking her arm behind her and shoving her toward the road where the first man caught her and forced her arms to her sides.

  The man in front of her watched without paying attention to the end of his pistol. She assumed he wasn’t worried about the dangerous end because it wasn’t loaded.

  The cut man pressed himself against
her right side. “Ye’ll apologize, princess.” Spittal flew from his mouth. To the man with the pistol he gestured with his head. “Shoot her, Ben, if’n she doesna apologize.”

  Ben shuffled closer. Nessa struggled to get her arms loose. With her blade still in hand, she was sure she could extricate herself if she could get but one arm free. But with a man to either side of her, holding tight, she wasn’t able to budge.

  The man raised his pistol to point at her temple. “Ye’d best apologize quickly, I reckon.”

  She stopped struggling and smiled sweetly. “Kiss my arse.”

  “Shoot her!”

  Ben shrugged like he had no choice. With the gun pressed to her head, she clearly heard the hammer fall.

  A shot rang out.

  She’d bet the gun wasn’t loaded, but she’d apparently lost that wager! Or had she? She felt no pain.

  Suddenly, the men at her sides stepped away from her. Ben, staring wide-eyed, tipped to his right and fell. Had his gun misfired?

  She lifted her weapons to ward off the other two, but they disappeared into the trees where the grubby man had first appeared.

  From the hill behind the wall, a man rushed toward her and vaulted over the barrier as if it were just another step to take. By the time she recognized him, he was almost upon her. Relief flooded through her and threatened to spill out of her eyes in the form of tears.

  “Are ye all right, lass?” he said, worrying over her head, turning her face to and fro. “I was afraid I’d never get my Bess loaded in time. And I was too far away to come runnin’, aye?”

  Such a welcomed sight! She’d never imagined seeing him again.

  His Rich dark hair was cut above his collar. Icy blue eyes narrowed slightly. Ever observant, he was. The corners of his eyes were creased from both squinting and laughing overmuch. That much she knew. And his brows matched his beard—a bit on the scraggly side with a thick dark patch in the center.

  He might have appeared almost whimsical but for the sobering, heart-stopping face beneath all that hair. And Heaven have pity, his body moved like a great sleek cat. Smooth on the surface with much going on underneath.