She simply nodded, wary of where this was going.
“Did you know bears are actually related to the dog family? Family Ursidae.”
“Um, no, actually, I didn’t know that.” They stood silently, studying it. “Really?” she asked suddenly, incredulous.
“Aye, really.” Leaning in closer, he tilted his chin as if to look down along his nose, and Magda wondered if he was nearsighted.
“It’s always struck me as a rather simple piece,” he said. “Do you see that dog’s tail? It’s longer than the piteous bear’s arm.”
A clipped laugh escaped her. She nodded, warming to this peculiar young man and his awkward candor. “Or that thing.” She pointed to a dark brown form snaking along the ground behind the bear. “Is that supposed to be a bear tail?”
“Or something else entirely?” he asked, awe in his voice.
Magda had to clap her hand over her mouth to silence a very unladylike bark of laughter.
“I imagine your father has done quite a lot of missionary work in the British colonies, in the Americas?”
Magda was thrown off by the abrupt, and dangerous, return to the original topic.
“Yes, some.” Panic flushed her anew, and she wondered frantically at a possible escape strategy.
Just as she was about to stride purposefully over to pull a book from the shelves, he asked, “The southern colonies or northeastern? ” Robert spoke slowly, as if her answer would hold great import.
She hesitated, then said, “Northeastern mostly.”
“Aye.” A strange smile bloomed on his face, and he appraised her with eyes that seemed to hold a secret. “I’d guessed the north-eastern colonies.”
Chapter 29
“They’ve got him,” Donald said. The old man stood, hand on the hilt of his sword as if poised at that very moment for vengeance. Streaks of muddied ice soiled his trews, and a thick layer of frost weighed down his bonnet, making the wool hang heavily on his head. “They’ve got the Lochiel.”
James had sent the Cameron laird and his uncle ahead to scout Campbell’s exact position, while he’d continued to march his Royalists through the snow-choked Grampian range toward their point of attack. Last they’d heard, Campbell had been on the move, bringing additional forces from the west, thinking to trap James between Campbell’s Covenanters and the five thousand more that awaited him in Inverness.
But Campbell hadn’t wagered on Highland ferocity. Rather than be cowed by the icy conditions around them, James and his men had been invigorated. Jagged mountains stretched vast and desolate around them. White snow dusted the high passes and seemed to melt directly into the white clouds that dotted the clear blue sky overhead.
James led his men into the foothills, and it was as if they were a single magnificent, wild force sweeping up effortlessly to elude some cruder and more banal predator below. Then they climbed higher still, along the snowy passes, cutting and kicking steps into the mountain for their ascent.
“The Campbell has come to rest, and the bastard cools his heels close to Cameron lands. The Lochiel, och”—Donald pulled the bonnet from his head and scrubbed his face with his hand— “Campbell’s reinforcements camp at Inverlochy, and I’d wager there are no less than three thousand of them.”
Colonel Sibbald had approached and heard the last of Donald’s report. “Close to Tor Castle?” he asked, rubbing his hip where he’d been wounded near two decades past. The lead shot was never removed, and James knew it troubled the old colonel when the weather was cold. The man seemed to be having a particularly tough time of it now, and James had smelled whisky on his breath more often than usual. He didn’t want to say anything to him— Sibbald had been leading military campaigns when James was still in knee breeches— but his misgivings grew as battle neared, and he thought the man’s life to be more valuable than his dignity.
“Aye,” Donald replied, “they edge onto Clan Cameron’s very lap, and it didn’t please young Ewen overmuch.”
“I imagine not,” James said. He forced thoughts of Magda from his mind. She stayed at Tor with the Camerons, but he couldn’t think of that now. Anxiety over her safety would do him no good. Retaining his focus would be the best and only way to protect her.
Shaking his head, Ewen’s uncle slapped his bonnet against his thigh, releasing a small cascade of snow and ice. “The lad got it into his head to cut a few Campbell throats on our way out, and I think he got himself a few too.” Pride flickered in Donald’s eyes. “And then I spied it, a wee tussle ending with Lochiel pulled from one of the larger tents, the lad struggling like a roped bull, a pistol at his head and two Covenanter swine at his side.” Donald smiled. “If I know my nephew, I’d say he went for the throat of the Campbell himself. Though that cur would’ve had guards posted.”
James held Donald’s gaze. “I’ll not abandon Ewen.” He looked away to the ragged peaks of frozen rock stretching far into the distance. “Inverlochy, eh?” And a shiver ran through him, followed quickly by a buzz of excitement, the lust for battle deep, and startling.
“We’ll turn at once, of course. Double back on our position. Head over the Devil’s Staircase, across the high passes to the north side of Ben Nevis, then we’re on down to Inverlochy.”
Donald barked a startled laugh, then stared in silence as he realized that James was serious. “But lad, we’ve just passed Glencoe. Inverlochy is ten leagues from here. It will take days for so many men to travel so far.”
“So, we’ll just have to make haste, aye?” James announced. He would hurtle his fifteen hundred men like an avalanche down the mountain to crush Campbell from the rear.
He quickly rallied the men as word carried down the line of their new destination. The Highlanders took the change of plans in stride. They merely regrouped and took a final meal before the last push, using the opportunity to share in the few brace of black grouse and snow hare that some MacDonald clansmen had hunted, as if they hadn’t been truly hungry before the suggestion of it. They’d looked on in amazement, though, watching their marquis pounding dried oats into the snow to scoop them up on hissgian dubhfor one last meal of frozen porridge.
The Royalists jogged through the day and night. All rational thought had long been expunged from James’s mind, leaving in its wake only the instinctive bobbing and leaping over the uneven terrain, and the rhythmic pumping of his legs, keeping time with the steady in and out of air in his lungs. Elusive wisps of white smoke danced in the bitter air, the breath of over a thousand men racing across the mountains.
