The Highlandmen are chasing Katy Forrester’s [i] fat lambs across the stubble, their filibegs tucked up and arms set wide on either side like soaring buzzards, roaring at the hilarity of it.

Her man, Samuel, and the older boys are still out on the moss.  They fled before the Highlanders crossed the ford at Frew.  It made no sense to stay: they would either have been pressed into service as rebels or cleaved in some dispute over a chicken…or a lamb. 

The hairst is in, so there is grain in the kists and kye and sheep on the stubble.  Easy pickings for the thieving Jacobites. 

Sam says this had happened in his grandfather’s time, back in Kilsyth, thieving Highlanders and Irishmen – and Englishmen – descended on their parish, stripping the land like the locust in the Book of Exodus. 

Katy stayed on in Bield with her daughter, Becky, and the younger bairns.  Jamie is with them. He is almost 16.  Touch and go.  She sees he is anxious and afraid:  man of the house, as their parks fill up and the rough men, armed to the teeth and avaricious. They have camped out on the stubble on the Carse.

Two nights ago, a company of dragoons clattered down the new Military Road from Stirling.  They roused George Moir of Leckie from his bed and carried him off into the night[ii]. The man is a notorious  Jacobite, wears the White Cockade and is forever toasting the ‘king across the water’. They say he offered the Young Pretender a bed for the night: it seems the Stuart Prince intends to take him up on the offer whilst his caterans plunder the parish.

The laird’s sister, Betty, sent her servants around the tenants asking each to contribute, willingly, to their hospitality.  Better hospitality than rape and thievery.  The same old Teuchter racket.

Katy and Becky spent the morning grinding meal and making bannocks and sowen, neeps and blood pudding (though they did mix a puckle sawdust in the mix).    In the afternoon they took their pot and cauldron to the encampments and helped cook the meat of three good oxen, one of which Betty Moir insisted that her brother’s tenants provide for the feast.

As the Jacobites feasted on the fat of their land, Katy kept her daughter close, feart that she too might be added to the menu but the Highland men were more interested in their bellies than there todgers: for now.

The Camerons and McGregors muttered contentedly in their foreign tongue, sang, drank and filled their bellies.  A Cameron gave her boys scraps of the beef which they snaffled quick then became obstinate about moving on. Their officers and chieftains, so stylish in their dress, with wigs powdered and shiny weapons, lingered  then were gone: off to keep the Pretender company at the big house.

Yet now, in the early morning light, the barbarous rogues, drunk and fattened on her hospitality, are lifting Katy’s sheep! 

She steps out  from the house to watch the thieves scramble drunk across the slope above the farm and her mother’s temper flares in her.   She goes back into the house. Her children are huddled by the cold grate in the but.

“Through ben the hoose, “she says. “You, Becky, bide here with the bairns.”

But the girl is feart too and the wee ones, Davy, Helen and Walter so distressed and, anyway, there is safety in numbers so she herds her ducklings out the door and along the trail towards the House of Leckie.

It isn’t far, a walk through thin woodlands, birches and oaks new planted in the modern way.  Highlandmen flit here and there among the trees, piss in twos and threes or squat to shit.  From the hill the laughter and shouts of the sheep-stealers.  From the Carse the queer hubbub of thousands of voices murmuring in Gaelic, Irish, Scots and English: a veritable Babel.

Katy keeps the bairns bunched in from of her where she can see them and young Jamie brings up their rear, watchful but unarmed.

Outside the big house, horses are being groomed and fed and saddled. Jacobites in fine uniforms lounge back against the walls to smoke, take snuff.  They drink from fine pewter flagons. 

The gentlemen doff their cocked hats and bow as Katy’s flock draggles across the courtyard and up the steps to the door.  They watch as she composes her family.  Davy, Helen and Walter to the front, Jamie and Becky either side of her.  She bids Jamie step forward and rap on the door, hard as he could.  The courtyard gentlemen stirred themselves to watch.  The reek of their tobacco drifts on the breeze, mingling with the smell of horseshit.

Betty Moir’s maid, Phemie, opens the door.

“I’d like a word with the mistress, please.” Katy says.  “If she’s available.”

Phemie looks worried, shakes her head then turns back inside, leaving the door ajar. 

“I’ll ask if I see her, Mrs. Paterson.  But she has company, ken.”

“Ay, Phemie.  Do what you can, eh?”

The bairns huddle in front of her, gazing into the entrance hall. Men in fine clothes, with elegant postures, pass to and fro, indifferent to their gaze. From inside she can smell cooked meat and woodsmoke.  They wait.  It is a good while before Betty Moir appears, gie gussied up for so early in the morning.

“Mrs. Paterson.  Children.”

But Katy cannot contain herself or wait on pleasantries.  “Their lifting our sheep, Betty.  Coorse ungrateful cheils.  Can you no do something?”

The Laird’s sister looks irritated.   Here’s she, a hostess to what they deem royalty and mistress of the estate (for now) and her tenant is complaining about a few stolen yows?  “Where?” she asks.

“The Bield. One the Whitehill.  And beyond.  They canna help themselves.”

From beyond the scraggy screen of trees, she hears gunshots.

Three men emerge from a side room, one still gnawing on a chicken leg.  One wears a bright red tartan kilt.  The others wear green plaids.  Fine stockings.  Broadswords buckled.

“Who is shooting?” the red one asks in a strange stilted English.

“This widow here…”

A wave of sickness breaks over Katy as she hears the word. Is she already a widow? 

Suppressing her dread, Katy bobs a curtsey nonetheless to acknowledge herself.  Becky only dips her head.  Davy looks up into Katy’s face, questioning.

“These are your children?” the red one asks.

“Aye.  Sir. My lord. Yes.  They’re…”

“Mrs. Forrester is one of my tenants.  She says some of your Highland men are stealing her sheep.”

“Bidh sin aig na Camshronaich,” says the taller of the two Highland Chiefs[iii].

The slighter of the two is clearly irritated by whatever his companion said.  He steps back, affronted.

“ Nar leigeadh Dia! ‘S e na Griogaraich a th’ ann.”

Another shot rings out beyond the trees.

“Cuiridh mi geall ceud guineas nach e na Griogaraich a th’ ann.”  The bigger man smiles. He has a fine, fierce handsome smile but Katy’s sheep are being pilfered.

“What is going on, Locheil?”

“Glencarnoch wagers one hundred guinees that the thieves are not McGregors.  Done. We’ll mete out justice to our own as we find them. Agreed?”

“Aontaichte.” Glencarnoch steps towards the door, his gaze fixed on young Jamie.  “Boy, you…show us to your mother’s sheep.” It is not a request. Jamie glances towards his mother but is already turning to lead the way.  Glencarnoch and Locheil stride past Katy and the bairns.

Katy wonders will she see her boy again or will these Lords press the boy into the rebel army.

The third man stands in the lobby, seemingly at a loss at what to do or say.

“Will you come inside, Mrs. Forrester?” Betty says.

Katy hesitates then nudges the little ones in front of her and across the threshold.  Inside, the house smells even more strongly of cooked meat, perfume and alcohol.

“Come,” the young man says. “Eat.”

Davy and Walter need no second telling. They follow the gentleman through the door where the board is set with wheaten loaves and meat and porridge and crowdie and wine and cheese. 

The boys hesitate before this unimaginable surfeit.  The gentleman offers Helen a bannock.  Betty Moir is lurking nervously in the hall, one eye on the open door.

She hears another shot and, when Katy’s attention returns to her three bairns, each is chewing on an oatcake or a hank of bread.

“Madame. Mademoiselle.  Si vous plait. Mange.”

Becky has stepped past her, tentatively approaching the board, by the time men’s voices behind them return their attention to the open door.

“Tha ceud gini agam, a Loch Iall.”

Jamie hurries to his mother, keen to be a boy again, free of Glencarnoch’s authority.

“What happened?”

“This man shot his man,” Jamie gestures towards Locheil.

Locheil pulls a sour face then recovers his composure.  “It was a Cameron.  Please accept my apology, madame. It was as well the point was made.”

“Shot through the lung,” Glencarnoch says. “Whilst running away.”

“That was unintentional,” said Locheil.

“Gun teagamh.”[iv]

“Gentlemen.  We must be on our way,” the foreigner says and, as though he were their Prince, lairds follow him out to the waiting horses.  By the time Katy herds up her flock of weans, each has at least one scrap of food clutched in each fist. 

Betty Moir is preoccupied bidding farewell to her ‘Prince’ and his gentlemen.  The gentlemen make a great show of gratitude and pleasantries but Katy has no place in that boorach.  She has her sheep, perhaps, but does she still have a husband?  She leads the six bairns back to the Bield at a brisk pace and bolts the door.

That morning the Jacobites moved on towards Edinburgh.[v] 

Notes:

[i] Nee Paterson

[ii] Moir remained in prison for 2 years.

[iii] Journal  of  the  Clan  of  MacGregor  and  Transactions  of  the  year  1745, from  the  Braes  of  Balquhidder,  till  they  returned,  by  Mr  Duncan MacGregor.

[iv] The wounded Cameron was transported as far as nearby Touch where he died the next day.

[v] Samuel Forrester and his two older sons survived.   Samuel died in 1762.