The first shots came from a Jacobite gun. The duke’s gunner opened fire with devastating results to the Highland ranks. The tartan-clad line, with wind and gunpowder blowing in their faces, stoically suffered the assault. Cumberland was too good a general to allow his men to engage in hand-to-hand combat before his artillery had done their job. With the Jacobite ranks standing six men deep, cannonballs wiped out entire regiments in seconds. Still the Highlanders stood, waiting for the signal to charge.
“Please,” Katrine prayed, “give the order, give it now.”
The fury of a Highland charge was legendary. There were few English troops that could withstand a hoard of screaming men bearing down upon them with broadswords drawn and claymores swinging. But the order never came. The prince was too far behind to see what was happening to his front line.
Something was definitely happening. Katrine clenched her fists. Richard’s troops were moving forward to a position in front of the wall. When the Highland charge came, her husband’s men would sweep the clansmen with bullets from end to end.
There was confusion in the Jacobite ranks. The MacIntoshes of Clan Chattan rushed forward, and the men of Atholl followed. Richard’s men poured forth their fire. The carnage was appalling. Katrine closed her eyes and willed the nausea rising in her throat to depart. When she opened them, it was to see her father, his wig and hat blown off, fighting his way from the rear of the duke’s army to the head of the second line. But it was already too late. Defeated, the clansmen were moving back. The moor was covered with the blood of the dead and wounded. Cumberland’s cavalry rode forward, pursuing the retreating Jacobites. Katrine could no longer see her father. The entire battle had lasted less than one hour. On the moor and on the road to Inverness packed with fugitives, Cumberland’s dragoons began their indiscriminate slaughter.
Katrine’s breasts ached and the bodice of her gown was wet with leaking milk when she maneuvered her mare down the gradual slope to the bloodstained moor. She could not return to Culloden House until she knew the worst. On the battlefield, surgeons cared for the government injured while Cumberland’s dragoons bayoneted and clubbed to death the wounded of the prince’s army.
She must find Richard. He would stop this senseless massacre. Praying that he was still alive, Katrine slipped from her horse and walked amidst the bodies strewn haphazardly across the field. Her eyes burned with the effort of holding back tears.
It was April, and all around her the heather bloomed in glorious profusion. Wrapped in a clan tartan, the Cameron standard-bearer, MacLachlan of Coruanan, lay stiff in the dirt. Robert Mor MacGillivray, his arms and legs severed from his lifeless body, lay nearby. With a sob, Katrine rested her aching body against the flank of her mare. These were her people, the men she had grown up with, danced with, teased and laughed and joked with since before her earliest memory. Hot tears flowed down her cheeks. Shoulders shaking, she slid to the ground and buried her face in her hands.
A sharp pain pricked her shoulder. She turned quickly, surprising a youth dressed in the despised garb of a government soldier. Fury drowned out her reason. Rising to her feet, she pushed aside the point of his sword. “How dare you,” she hissed. “Do you know who I am?”
“You are a Scot, madam,” the soldier replied. “The duke’s orders are to give no quarter to the enemy.”
“Does the English army stoop to making war on women?”
The man nodded. “We do now. Ever since George Murray’s orders to give the enemy no quarter.”
Katrine’s eyes flashed. “That’s a lie. Lord Murray is an honorable man. He would never issue such an order.”
“He did indeed,” the man argued.
Katrine straightened. “I am Katrine Wolfe. Perhaps you know my husband, Lord Ashton?”
The man whitened under his tan, and she saw that he was little more than a boy. “I know Lord Richard Wolfe, m’lady,” he said. “If you’ll allow me, I shall take you to him.”
Under different circumstances, the expression on her husband’s face when he looked up and saw her would have been worth everything she’d been through. He was in his tent, signing some last-minute dispatches before returning to the battlefield.
“My God,” he said hoarsely, rising to his feet. “Katrine, is it really you?”
She burst into tears and threw herself into his arms. The soldier, showing exceptional tact,