“It will be swifter to walk through the wood,” Jamie told me, taking the reins from my numbed hand. He nodded toward the small grove of pine and oak, where the sweet, cool smell of wet leaves rose from the soaked ground. “D’ye go that way, Sassenach; we’ll meet wi’ ye on the other side.”
I was too tired to argue. Putting one foot in front of the other was a distinct effort, and the effort would undoubtedly be less on the smooth layer of leaves and fallen pine needles in the wood than through the boggy, treacherous heather.
It was quiet in the wood, the whine of the wind softened by the pine boughs overhead. What rain came through the branches pattered lightly on the layers of leathery fallen oak leaves, rustling and crackled, even when wet.
He lay only a few feet from the far edge of the wood, next to a big gray boulder. The pale green lichens of the rock were the same color as his tartan, and its browns blended with the fallen leaves that had drifted half across him. He seemed so much a part of the wood that I might have stumbled over him, had I not been stopped by the patch of brilliant blue.
Soft as velvet, the strange fungus spread its cloak over the naked, cold white limbs. It followed the curve of bone and sinew, sending up small trembling fronds, like the grasses and trees of a forest, invading barren land.
It was an electric, vivid blue, stark and alien. I had never seen it, but had heard of it, from an old soldier I had nursed, who had fought in the trenches of the first world war.
“We called it corpse-candle,” he had told me. “Blue, bright blue. You never see it anywhere but on a battlefield—on dead men.” He had looked up at me, old eyes puzzled beneath the white bandage.
“I always wondered where it lives, between wars.”
In the air, perhaps, its invisible spores waiting to seize an opportunity, I thought. The color was brilliant, incongruous, bright as the woad with which this man’s ancestors had painted themselves before going forth to war.
A breeze passed through the wood, ruffling the man’s hair. It stirred and rose, silky and lifelike. There was a crunch of leaves behind me, and I started convulsively from the trance in which I had stood, staring at the corpse.
Jamie stood beside me, looking down. He said nothing; only took me by the elbow and led me from the wood, leaving the dead man behind, clothed in the saprophytic hues of war and sacrifice.
* * *
It was mid-morning of April 15 by the time we came to Culloden House, having pushed ourselves and our ponies unmercifully to reach it. We approached it from the south, coming first through a cluster of outbuildings. There was a stir— almost a frenzy—of men on the road, but the stableyard was curiously deserted.
Jamie dismounted and handed his reins to Murtagh.
“D’ye wait here a moment,” he said. “Something doesna seem quite right here.”
Murtagh glanced at the door of the stables, standing slightly ajar, and nodded. Fergus, mounted behind the clansman, would have followed Jamie, but Murtagh prevented him with a curt word.
Stiff from the ride, I slid off my own horse and followed Jamie, slipping in the mud of the stableyard. There was something odd about the stableyard. Only as I followed him through the door of the stable building did I realize what it was—it was too quiet.
Everything inside was still; the building was cold and dim, without the usual warmth and stir of a stable. Still, the place was not entirely devoid of life; a dark figure stirred in the gloom, too big to be a rat or a fox.
“Who is that?” Jamie said, stepping forward to put me behind him automatically. “Alec? Is it you?”
The figure in the hay raised its head slowly, and the plaid fell back. The Master of Horse of Castle Leoch had but one eye; the other, lost in an accident many years before, was patched with black cloth. Normally, one eye sufficed him; brisk and snapping blue, it was enough to command the obedience of stable-lads and horses, grooms and riders alike.
Now Alec McMahon MacKenzie’s eye was dull as dusty slate. The broad, once vigorous body was curled in upon itself, and the cheeks of his face were sunk with the apathy of starvation.
Knowing the old man suffered from arthritis in damp weather, Jamie squatted beside him to prevent him rising.
“What has been happening?” he asked. “We are newly come; what is happening here?”
It seemed to take Old Alec a long time to absorb the question, assimilate it, and form his reply into words; perhaps it was only the stillness of the empty, shadowed stable that made his words ring hollow when they finally came.
“It has all gone to pot,” he said. “They marched to Nairn two nights ago, and came fleeing back yesterday. His Highness has said they will take a stand on Culloden; Lord George is there now, with what troops he has gathered.”