Finding Fraser(31)

For an Irish visitor, Susan’s knowledge of this ancient Scottish site was almost encyclopedic. Within minutes, she had me choking back tears as we walked into the visitor’s center at Culloden Moor. The course of history had been changed at this very location and the skirl of the pipes that greeted us as we entered was a reminder of all the Scottish lives lost on those fields so long ago.

I had to stop and take a deep breath. I was here in the very place where Jamie and his clan brothers had fought and so desperately lost against the English. Or—his real-life counterparts had, at least. I could hardly believe it.

We wandered through the displays describing the banishment and return of the pretender, Charles Stuart, known to all as Bonny Prince Charlie, and the lead-up to the battle as he rode through Scotland gathering support. I had to dig around in my pocket for a tissue as I read the displays, and by the time we sat down for a short film re-enacting the battle itself I was nearly losing it.

Susan must have sensed my emotion, as she moved away to give me some privacy. A few minutes later, as the lights went up between film loops, I could see I was not the only person wiping their eyes.

I walked into the main section of the visitor’s center and Susan was there to greet me.

“Yeah—difficult to see, ain’t it?” she said, her voice low. “Let’s go outside and yeh can get a feel for the actual battlefield in person.”

She hurried through the rest of the displays and I followed her outside. The sunny morning had clouded over somewhat, but the day was still bright. We followed the path that led out into the field.

“It’s pretty mucky out there right now, but yeh get the idea of what it musta been like, yeah?” said Susan. She shaded her eyes and pointed off to one side of the field. “The fight had begun at Nairn, but hadn’t gone well and the feckin’ English chose this site to finish the Scots off. That flag over there shows where the Scots made their stand, and the English troops stood over on t’other side.”

We followed the path as far as we could as it wound across the bleak moor. A collection of black sheep gathered to one side of the field, nosing at the frozen grass and nibbling the first tender shoots under the snow.

“I can’t believe they could hold a battle on this land—it’s not even remotely flat. You’d think they’d all be tripping and falling into the rough patches.”

Susan shrugged. “Well, they had no heavy equipment, or even horses really,” she said. “And it was likely not quite as lumpy as it seems today. Here, check these out.”

She hurried over to one of the mounds under the snow and reached down to brush it off. Under her gloved fingers, words appeared on a surface of rough-hewn stone. Clan Stewart of Appin, it read.

“A gravestone?” I breathed. I could hardly believe it.

Susan nodded. “Indeed. These were put in place by the landholders after the battle and have been here since. And see over there?”

I followed as she hurried past a much larger stone to one side of the moor. “Is this another grave marker?” I asked, pausing beside it.

“Tch,” Susan waved her hand, not even turning her head to look. “That marks the graves of the few English soldiers who fell here. Doesn’t even bear a second glance. No—what I wanted to show you is away this side.”

She stood well over to one side of the field, beside a couple of low rocks almost completely buried in snow. But instead of brushing them clean, she bent over almost on one foot, leaning and listening.

“Can ye hear it?” she asked. I paused and solved the problem of my winded panting by holding my breath. It had been a bit of an energetic day to that point.

After a moment, I looked at her. “Is that water?” I asked, and she beamed at me as though I had just passed an important test.

“Tis the Well of the Dead,” she explained. “On’y source of water fer the poor souls on the battlefield.”

I stood beside the spot in the snow and thought about the real-life version of Jamie and his lads, their lifeblood quenching this frozen ground. Heroes for their nation but doomed all the same.

“Emma. The mos’ important bit is here.”

Thinking of Jamie and the wrenching choices he and his family had to make, with so many lives lost, I wiped my eyes surreptitiously and turned to where Susan was standing. It was yet another snow-covered rock, and I marveled at how well she knew the geography of the place.

I bent to brush the rock face off, but she put her hand on my arm.

“There’s no call for that. No words mark this stone,” she said, somberly. “This is a place of our shared heritage, you and I. For this is the stone where the Irish fell—the Irish who came to the aid of their Scots brothers against the foul shared enemy.”