Edge Of Reason E-Book

Malcolm Archibald

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Canada, 1759. After the capture of Quebec in the Seven Years War, Corporal Hugh MacKim of the 78th Highlanders attempts to desert the British army. But when Hugh is caught in an ambush, his loved one, Tayanita, is mortally wounded by a tall, tattooed Canadian.

MacKim swears vengeance. Suffering from nightmares, he returns to the army, transfers to the Rangers and decides to fight in a series of skirmishes through the winter. When the French attacks on the British outposts become more frequent, General Murray organizes the Flying Picket: a group of men dedicated to preventing the French attacks.

Certain that his sworn enemy, Lucas de Langdon, is among the attackers, MacKim joins General Murray's group. But can he exact his revenge, and has the strain of war tipped him over the edge of reason?

Leseprobe

EDGE OF REASON

Warrior's Path Book 2

MALCOLM ARCHIBALD

CONTENTS

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Appendix

Historical Notes

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2021 Malcolm Archibald

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Edited by Lorna Read

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

For Cathy

PRELUDE

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM, CANADA, SEPTEMBER 1759

“Come on, Hugh,” Tayanita urged over her shoulder. “Before the redcoats come.”

MacKim followed, padding between the tall trees with his musket at the trail and his bonnet cocked forward over his forehead. Behind him was the structured security and discipline of the British Army; ahead stretched the unknown hazards of the Canadian wilderness. MacKim knew he was exchanging the constant companionship of Fraser’s Highlanders for the smile of a local woman, and he was happy with his choice. He smiled as he watched Tayanita’s lithe body weaving in front of him, with her braided black hair bouncing between her shoulder blades. Tayanita was unlike anybody he had met before, a stubborn, loving, adaptable woman with whom he fully intended to spend the remainder of his life.

At that moment, Corporal Hugh MacKim of Fraser’s 78th Highlanders was as happy as he had been for the past fifteen years. His troubles lay behind him, and life beckoned with a golden finger.

“I’m coming, Tayanita!”

MacKim did not see who fired the musket. He only heard the report and saw the result as the lead musket ball smashed into Tayanita’s forehead. He could do nothing as Tayanita’s skull disintegrated, with shreds of bone spraying outwards, together with a film of blood and grey brains.

“Tayanita!” MacKim reached out, just as a second musket fired, and then a third, with the sound echoing hollowly through the trees of Sillery Wood.

Tayanita crumpled as the musketry continued. The balls whirred around MacKim, one burrowing into the ground, and another thudding into the tree beside him. MacKim swore in Gaelic, English and French. Years of experience in this war in North America had made him knowledgeable about wounds. He knew that Tayanita was dead. Nobody could survive the degree of injury the musket-ball had wrought, yet MacKim still attempted to reach her, to pull her away from the so-far invisible enemy.

The voices sounded then; Canadian-accented French mingled with Abenaki. They were all around MacKim, closing in, shouting to encourage each other as they searched for more British or Colonial soldiers. The Canadians would not be successful, for MacKim was alone, struggling to desert from the recently-captured city of Quebec in this contested country of Canada.

Rolling to the shelter of a fallen tree, MacKim readied his musket, searching for a target. He would mourn Tayanita later; his first inclination was for revenge, and his instinct was to retaliate. MacKim knew he was a dead man fighting; he would not escape from the war-party of mixed Canadians and Abenaki in this forest country. At that minute, he did not care; he only wanted to kill at least one of the enemy who had murdered his woman.

Silence descended. MacKim lay still, scanning the trees for any sign of the enemy. He needed only a glimpse of a Canadian or an Indian, and he would fire; the Rangers and Light Infantry had trained him well.

“Please, God, allow me one shot,” he pleaded. “One shot before they kill me. One shot to avenge Tayanita.”

The foliage remained undisturbed. Not a leaf shifted, not a branch moved. MacKim waited, with his finger on the trigger and his eyes never still, scanning the forest for anything untoward. A whiff of powder-smoke drifted to him, acrid and familiar.

The attack came from his left. Two Abenaki warriors burst out of the trees, painted faces screaming, upraised hands holding gleaming tomahawks. MacKim aimed at the leading warrior, waited until he had a clean shot and pressed the trigger.

There was a spurt of smoke and flame; the Brown Bess musket kicked back into MacKim’s shoulder and he grunted. He knew he had hit his mark and, with no time to fix his bayonet, he held the musket like a club, awaiting the onset of the second Abenaki.

“Caintal Davri!” MacKim roared the regimental warcry. The 78th Highlanders were new to the British Army list but had already proved their worth in the savage fighting to gain Quebec. MacKim added, “Tayanita!” as he challenged the charging Abenaki. He had a glimpse of a third man approaching him, a tall, lean Canadian with tattoos disfiguring his face, and then the Abenaki warrior was on him.

Not caring if he lived or died, MacKim swung his musket at the painted warrior, who sidestepped and tried an upward swipe with his tomahawk. MacKim jerked backwards, rammed his musket-butt into the Abenaki’s face, felt the satisfying crunch of contact, and gasped as the warrior’s tomahawk scored across his ribs. Instinct forced MacKim to lunge forward, pressing his musket into the Abenaki’s face, breaking the gristle of the man’s nose so blood spurted, and then the Abenaki threw him to the ground and leapt on top. They grappled, each man wounded and bleeding, gasping with effort. Each sought an advantage, with the Abenaki the taller and heavier, but MacKim desperate to avenge Tayanita, uncaring of any injuries the warrior inflicted.

As the Abenaki straddled MacKim and lifted a long knife, MacKim thrust a thumb into the man’s eye and pressed hard. He felt momentary resistance, then heard a distinct pop as the warrior’s eyeball burst. The Abenaki flinched and reared back, so MacKim threw him off and reached for the hatchet at his belt, only for the tall Canadian to push him back to the ground.

MacKim looked up and tried to swing his hatchet, but the Canadian clamped a massive hand on his wrist, then trapped him with his knees. When he glared down, MacKim saw tattoos on both sides of his face, blue-dyed spirals that extended from his cheekbones to the corners of his mouth. The Canadian smiled, showing perfect teeth.

As the Abenaki rolled in agony beside MacKim, another man appeared. Squat, bald, and broad-shouldered, he hawked and spat on the ground.

“Scotchman,” he said, in a flat English accent. He stared at MacKim with no expression in his dead eyes.

MacKim tried to throw off the Canadian and roared as he felt a terrible, tearing pain on the top of his head. He yelled again, aware that the Canadian was scalping him. Shouting in mingled agony and rage, MacKim lunged forward and sank his teeth into the tattooed man’s neck.

They remained in that position for a second, with MacKim worrying the Canadian’s flesh and the Canadian hauling at MacKim’s scalp. Pain gave MacKim extra strength, and he wrestled a hand free and grabbed hold of the Canadian’s wrist, grappling with sinewy muscle, feeling the power of the man.

The squat man spoke again, and although MacKim could not understand the accent, he knew it was a warning.

MacKim made a final effort that heaved the Canadian from him, with the man holding a portion of MacKim’s scalp in his hand. Blood flowed freely down MacKim’s face and from the gash across his chest. He spat out a mouthful of the Canadian’s skin and blood, tried to ignore the incredible pain in his head and forced himself to stand. The Abenaki was staggering away with one hand to his beleaguered face as the squat man backed off, watching MacKim and still talking as the Canadian followed, moving with long, loping strides.

The musket shots echoed through the trees, with honest Scottish accents as an accompaniment.

“Hugh!” That was Chisholm’s voice as he ran forward with a section of the 78th at his back.

“Over here!” Hugh MacKim lifted a weak hand as pain and loss of blood drained his strength.

“Oh, good Lord help us,” Chisholm said. “I’ve got you, Hugh.”

MacKim felt Chisholm’s strong arm around him as he collapsed.

1

QUEBEC, AUTUMN 1759

“They killed Tayanita,” MacKim muttered, as the dual emotional and physical pain threatened to overcome him.

“I know,” Chisholm said, his ravaged face set in sympathy. “Come on, Hugh, let’s get you to a surgeon.”

“They killed Tayanita.”

After those words, MacKim’s entire world dissolved in pain. He was unaware of Chisholm and Private Ranald MacDonald carrying him in a blanket to the ruins of Quebec. He was unaware of the fingers pointing to the raw wound across his head, or his blood that dripped onto the ground. He was only vaguely aware of the deep-eyed surgeon who examined him, and barely aware of the brandy an assistant forced down his throat. However, despite the spirit’s supposedly numbing effect, MacKim groaned as the surgeon stitched the long gash across his chest.

“Lie still, man,” the assistant grumbled, as MacKim writhed under his hands.

MacKim screamed as the surgeon tried to dress the horrendous wound on the top of his head, with the assistant attempting to hold his face still. After that nightmare of agony, there was nothing but pain, until MacKim recognised it as an old, trusted companion. It was there, waiting for him. It would not let him down. The physical pain shielded MacKim’s mind from the mental and emotional agony of Tayanita’s death, so he clung to the former as a counterbalance for the latter.

MacKim did not know how long he lay in the makeshift hospital. It might have been days or weeks. Time did not matter; only the mingled pains and his feeling of desolation. From time to time, he was aware of other men beside his bed, although he did not know that Chisholm and Private Ranald MacDonald were checking on his progress.

At length, as the Canadian autumn descended towards the long midnight of winter, MacKim’s head began to clear. He looked around the long room with its rows of suffering patients.

“Tayanita?” he called weakly.

“You’re awake, then,” an orderly said. “You were lucky. We thought you was going to die.”

“Lucky?” When MacKim tried to sit up, the recently healed wound in his chest protested. He gasped, grunted and fought the pain. His head pounded as if a hundred farriers were making a hundred horseshoes on top of his skull.

“I heard that the savages caught you,” the orderly said cheerfully. “They were scalping you when some of your regiment chased them away.”

“I remember.” MacKim looked down at his chest, where the long, puckered scar was inflamed and red, with prominent stitching where the surgeon had worked. He remembered the tall, tattooed Canadian, the Abenaki and the squat man with the flat English accent.

“Was there anybody else there when the Highlanders rescued me?” MacKim wondered if Tayanita was not dead. Perhaps he was wrong. Maybe he had imagined the bullet smashing through her skull.

The orderly screwed up his face. “Blessed if I know.”

“I have to find out,” MacKim said, swinging his legs out of bed.

“You’ll stay where you are,” the orderly said. “Your chest may be healed, but I don’t know what you’ll do about your head. It was as red-raw as fresh liver last time I saw it.”

“My head?” MacKim winced as he touched the bandages that swathed his head. His headache increased.

“The savages took half your scalp,” the orderly said, as MacKim slumped back onto his bed. “You lie there, Sawnie, and recover. It’s bedlam outside, anyway.”

Tayanita. The name ran through MacKim’s head, together with an image of the woman with whom he had intended to head west. Now, he was back in the army, a corporal in Fraser’s 78th Highlanders. If he were lucky, nobody except Chisholm would realise he had intended to desert. Lucky? The Canadians and Abenakis had killed his woman and robbed him of half his scalp. What was lucky about that? MacKim closed his eyes as the tiredness of physical weakness mixed with emotional strain overcame him.

Tomorrow, MacKim promised himself. I’ll try to get up tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. He closed his eyes as the image of Tayanita returned, with the musket ball smashing through her head. He felt the tears biting at his eyes.

“Has anything happened since I’ve been in the hospital?” MacKim asked.

Chisholm mused for a moment before he replied. “No. We’ve been sitting around on our arses doing nothing, just like you.”

“I thought I heard gunfire a few days ago,” MacKim struggled to sit up, but the flashes of pain in his head prevented the attempt.

“You did hear gunfire,” Chisholm said. “A French flotilla sailed down the river, and our artillery had a go at them.”

“Did we sink them?” MacKim asked.

“Not even one,” Chisholm said. “I don’t think we scored a single hit because they were out of range of our guns. That would be on the 23rd of November, I think.” He shook his head. “But never fear, little Corporal MacKim. Not long after, Canada provided a storm that sent three of them onto a sandbank and left them there.”

MacKim smiled, then winced at the pain even that simple gesture caused him. “The Navy would love that,” he said.

“Oh, the Navy loved it all right,” Chisholm said. “One of our frigates virtually denuded herself of men to strip everything from the largest French shipwreck. They were happily plundering when the damned Frenchie blew up. I heard that the French captain threw a match into the powder room, but that might only be a story. Our seamen were all lost, and the Frenchies boarded and captured our frigate, which had only a skeleton crew.”

MacKim sighed. “A victory for the French, then,” he said.

“A hint of revenge to pay us back for capturing the capital of New France,” Chisholm said.

“And a reminder that the French won’t give up easily,” MacKim said. “Is that all that has happened?”

“No,” Chisholm said. “While you’ve been lying at your ease, we’ve unloaded tons of stores and dragged them from the Lower Town to the Upper Town.”

“I’m glad you do something to earn your eight pence a day,” MacKim said. “Anything else?”

“There has been a bit of marching and counter-marching, and a lot of work on the fortifications here.” Chisholm grinned. “No doubt you’ll be doing your bit once you’re up and about.”

MacKim sank back. “Suddenly, I feel weak. I might need another few weeks in bed.”

“We’ll see you soon then, Corporal,” MacDonald said, without understanding the joke.

MacKim did not reply. For all his attempted humour, he felt sick at the thought of losing Tayanita. When he closed his eyes, he could see her face smiling at him through her deep brown eyes. And then he saw the musket bullet smash through her head, and a wave of intense hatred replaced his sorrow.

I will kill those men. I will kill that Canadian with the tattooed face, and that renegade with the flat accent and dead eyes. I won’t allow Tayanita to go unavenged.

The decision gave MacKim strength. After weeks of waiting to recover, he now forced himself to move, leave his bed and fight. He had a purpose in life once more.

“Reporting for duty, sir!” MacKim saw Lieutenant Gregorson study his head as if he could see the scraped scalp through MacKim’s bonnet.

“It’s good to have you back, MacKim,” Gregorson said. “Have you fully recovered?”

“Nearly, sir,” MacKim lied. He did not mention the terrible headaches that plagued him, or the nightmares in which he saw Tayanita slowly falling as pieces of her head sprayed around the ground. Such things, MacKim vowed, he would keep to himself. There were some secrets that a man did not wish to reveal to the world.

“If you are certain.” Gregorson continued to study MacKim’s bonnet.

“Yes, sir.” MacKim did not admit that the hospital had depressed him, with its daily intake of sick and dying soldiers. The army that Wolfe had led to victory was slowly disintegrating with scurvy and other diseases. MacKim was confident he would fare better in the company of active soldiers, rather than in a hospital bed. In the ranks, he would have duties to perform and his comrade’s banter to sustain him. In the hospital, all he had were gloomy thoughts and the moans of the sick.

“Report to your quarters then, Corporal,” Gregorson said.

“Yes, sir!” MacKim marched away, listening to the rattle of drums and hoarse shouts of a sergeant. He was back in the army, subject to iron discipline, ready to obey orders at an instant’s notice. He was a soldier of King George, a mindless killing machine, yet MacKim knew that he did not belong.

Before he entered the house that his company of Fraser’s 78th Highlanders had converted into a barracks, MacKim studied the city. The once-proud city of Quebec, the crowning glory of French Canada, was a mess. MacKim could think of no other word to describe it. The British bombardment with shot and shell had ruined nearly all the buildings in the Low Town, leaving hundreds as little more than rubble, and damaging what it had not destroyed. Knowing that winter was bitter-cold in Canada, General Murray had ordered the men to tear down all the wooden fences in the city for firewood, and then start on some of the wooden houses.

“Corporal!” Captain Donald MacDonald caught MacKim before he entered the barracks. “I have a working party collecting firewood for the barracks. Join us.”

I’m back, MacKim thought.

“See what we’re reduced to?” Chisholm said, as MacKim arrived at his side. “We’re common labourers now, not gentlemen soldiers.”

MacKim hefted a pile of floorboards on his shoulder and wished his head would stop aching. “It’s not why we accepted King Geordie’s silver shilling,” he said.

“Why did we join up?” Chisholm asked the rhetorical question.

“I joined up to avenge my brother’s murder,” MacKim reminded him, “and because the clan chief told me to.” He carried the floorboards through the streets, with Captain MacDonald in front giving directions.

“Clan chiefs have too much power, ordering men to war on a whim.”

“It was no whim,” MacKim said. “Fraser wanted to impress the government with his loyalty so they’d give him his lands back. We were just the small change he used to buy governmental favour.”

“Nice to know how important we are,” Chisholm said and led MacKim up a narrow street in the Upper Town, the section of Quebec on the west, furthest from the St Lawrence and closest to the Heights of Abraham. The barracks were in a collection of houses, mostly half-ruined, with roofs and walls damaged by the British bombardment when they besieged Quebec.

“Aye,” Chisholm said, as he made space for MacKim in the corner of one of the rooms. “This was somebody’s home once. War can be hard on civilians. They fight differently over here in the Americas, without the idea of quarter for the innocent.”

Thinking of Tayanita, MacKim nodded and collapsed onto his cot. It was close to the fire, as befitted his rank as a corporal.

“While you were lazing in the hospital,” Chisholm said happily, “the army had a splendid time plundering what our artillery left of Quebec.”

MacKim looked up from his cot. “Did they leave anything for me?”

“Alas, no.” Chisholm shook his head. “General Murray is coming down hard on looters, and everything else.”

MacKim placed his kit on the hard cot, checking to ensure everything was in order. He lifted a small square of colourful beadwork and closed his eyes. That beadwork was the last thing Tayanita had given him; she had made it herself and pressed it into his hand.

“So you remember me when I am not here,” Tayanita said.

“You’ll always be with me,” MacKim replied.

Tayanita held his gaze,with her deep brown eyes solemn. “We do not know what the future holds.”

MacKim held the beadwork. Tayanita had been correct; nobody knew what the future held. A few weeks ago, MacKim had all of Tayanita; now, he had only her memory and this small, colourful square. MacKim pressed the beadwork against his chest, feeling a surge of emotions from deep sorrow at her loss, to the vicious desire to avenge her.

“You’re back then?”

MacKim hurriedly hid the beadwork when Harriette Mackenzie entered the barrack room. He had known Harriette as Corporal Gunn’s wife, but when the French killed Gunn, Harriette had married Chisholm. A foul-mouthed, hot-tempered and warm-hearted woman, she greeted MacKim with a smile, flicked the bonnet from his head without a by-your-leave and examined his scarred head.

“I’m back,” MacKim confirmed.

Harriette pursed her lips. “What a bloody mess!” she said. “The Indians made a good job of you.”

“Thank you,” MacKim said. “It wasn’t the Indians. It was a Canadian and a renegade Englishman.”

Harriette tossed the bonnet back to MacKim. “You’re lucky, Hugh. Nobody can see the scar, otherwise you’d be nearly as ugly as Chisholm.”

MacKim forced a smile. James Chisholm had been badly wounded during the Fontenoy campaign in the previous war, the War of the Austrian Succession, and had remained in the army rather than returning to normal life. A deep burn covered half his face, twisting his lip into a permanent scowl and narrowing one eye. Chisholm was very aware of his looks and avoided civilians if he could.

“Aye, I married the ugliest man in the army,” Harriette said. “Well, when the French or Canadians or the Indians kill James, you’re next on my list to marry, Hugh,” she blew him a kiss, “as long as you are still alive then. I seem to be attracted to the ugly ones.”

“Thank you.” MacKim gave an elaborate bow. “I am honoured.”

Harriette slapped MacKim’s shoulder. “Until then,” she said, “I’m Chisholm’s, so keep your hands to yourself.” She swivelled her hips towards him, temptingly.

“Come on, James. You’re off duty, and I want your body. We’ll make Hughie jealous.” Grabbing hold of Chisholm’s hand, Harriette steered him to the ragged blanket that screened off a corner of the room; behind the blanket was the only privacy married other ranks knew.

Holding the square of beadwork, MacKim left the two of them together and stepped out of the barrack-room to look around Quebec.

It was the cold that MacKim noticed most. The hospital had been chilly, but outside, the temperature dropped until every breath became painful, and condensation froze on his chin. Within a few moments, the cold reached MacKim’s knees and began to spread upwards.

Stamping his feet, MacKim walked as fast as he could on the icy streets. The devastation was appalling, with fragments of stone buildings thrusting upward like broken teeth in a giant’s mouth and piles of rubble littering the lesser-used roadways. Every so often, MacKim came across one of the civilians who the British bombardment had forced from their homes. When the British took possession, they made a bad situation worse by requisitioning the least damaged houses as billets for the men and forcing the citizens out. Some Quebecers moved into friends’ houses, and many left Quebec altogether. Ragged, cold and resentful, the people of Quebec avoided MacKim as if he carried a disease.

“I don’t blame you at all,” MacKim said, as one young boy retreated into the corner of a building and threw a stone. “I’d do the same if I were you.” The missile missed MacKim, to bounce harmlessly from a wall. MacKim remembered the aftermath of the Jacobite Rising in Scotland when the British Army had spread terror across much of the Highlands. Back then, he would have happily stoned anybody in King George’s scarlet coat.

“Here.” MacKim reached inside his sporran for his last scrap of biscuit. “It’s not much, but better than starving.” He tossed it to the boy and spoke in French. “It’s a biscuit. It’s hard as stone so watch your teeth.”

The boy looked at MacKim, snatched the biscuit and stood against the wall, cramming the food into his mouth. MacKim favoured him with a wink.

“Feeding the enemy?” a grenadier asked, with a sneer on his face.

“Children are not my enemies,” MacKim said.

The grenadier was a head taller than MacKim, with his mitre hat making him taller still. He looked down on MacKim, as if about to say something else, saw the expression in MacKim’s eyes, changed his mind and walked away.

MacKim grunted, released his grip on the hilt of his bayonet and realised the boy was still watching him. He mustered a grimace that was nearly a smile and walked away, gasping at the cold.

When MacKim returned to barracks, Chisholm was cleaning his musket. He grunted when he noticed MacKim’s discomfort.

“Aye, the cold gets to your essentials, Hugh.” He winked at Harriette. “What do you think, Harriette?”

Harriette grinned. “The nuns in the Ursuline Convent will help you there, Hughie.”

“Who?” MacKim stood as close to the fire as he could, hoping that frostbite had not set in.

“The good ladies of the convent are not happy with the Highlanders,” Harriette said, with a grin. “Every time a Highlander bends forward, half the women of Quebec – and a disturbing number of the men – gawp at what is revealed.” Harriette laughed. “The ones that act terribly shocked are the ones who look the most assiduously.”

MacKim forced a smile. “That sounds about right.”

“Apart from the nuns, the local Canadian women tend to like Highlanders,” Harriette said. “General Murray has already banned marriages between the Canadians and us.”

MacKim felt the heat gradually return to his body. He could not imagine why any British soldier should marry a Canadian woman after the atrocities during the campaign to capture Quebec.

“The final straw came only the other week in Mountain Street,” Chisholm muttered, as he inspected the lock of his musket minutely.

“What happened?” MacKim asked.

Chisholm’s grin made his burn-scarred face even more hideous. “Do you remember that sleet storm? Oh, no, you were too busy lying in state with the nurses pampering you like a baby.”

“I remember,” MacKim said. “The frost froze the blankets to my bed.” He waited for a response to his lie.

Chisholm nodded. “As I said, you were lazing in bed when we were carrying out your duties, Corporal MacKim.”

“What about Mountain Street?” MacKim asked.

“The frost covered the streets in sheet ice. Men and horses were sliding and slipping and falling all over the place.” Chisholm’s grin became even broader. “It was quite amusing to see the streets full of men and even women falling on their faces and lying on their backs.”

“Major Ward’s wife had fun when she took a tumble,” Harriette said, laughing. “She was face-down with her skirt up over her waist and half the garrison laughing.”

“Forget her,” Chisholm said. “That day of the bad ice, General Murray ordered the 78th to mount guard at the Royal Battery in the Lower Town.”

Although MacKim had not had time to learn Quebec’s geography, the names of Upper Town and Lower Town told their own story. “That’s downhill then,” he said.

“Aye, hard by the river. We had to descend Mountain Street, which is steep. Jamie Munro lost his footing and fell, with his kilt around his chest." Chisholm could not stop himself laughing. "At least half a dozen nuns were staring in shock.” He bit off the end of a twist of tobacco. “It may not have been shock, but the sight certainly made them stare.”

MacKim tried to share Chisholm’s amusement, but Tayanita’s memory interfered.

“Well,” Chisholm continued, “I was next in line, and had no intention of ending up in disorder like Jamie Munro, or of providing free amusement to the nuns, so I sat on the ground and slithered down. My kilt slid up, so I was a bare-bum warrior, with the nuns giggling fit to frighten the French, which they are, of course. And ever since then, the nuns have been knitting long woollen hose as if their lives depended on it – or our modesty, perhaps.”

“More than your modesty, Chisholm!” Harriette added coarse details that had the two other wives in the room laughing.

Despite Chisholm’s attempt at humour, MacKim knew that the garrison of Quebec was suffering terribly with the cold, and the 78th was the worst affected. Men sick with frostbite and scurvy filled the hospital, and the list of dead increased every day. With the ground frozen too hard to dig graves, General Murray piled the corpses outside the city, a macabre wall of the dead, frozen together, a gruesome reminder of man’s mortality. Even the men supposedly fit for duty were coughing and sneezing.

“Things could be worse,” Harriette said. “Imagine how bad it would be if Wolfe had lost his battle.”

MacKim nodded without replying. If the French had won on the Heights of Abraham, he might still have had Tayanita. He pushed the thought away.

As the weather grew colder, desertions increased, and General Murray used ever more extreme measures. Floggings grew more frequent, with sentences of hundreds of lashes, and some men were hanged.

Yet none of that mattered to MacKim as every night, unless he were on sentry duty, he lay in bed clutching Tayanita’s beadwork and thinking of the two men he had to kill.

2

“Some of the Quebecers are agents of the French,” Lieutenant Gregorson addressed a gathering of the NCOs. “They are encouraging men to desert, or soliciting intelligence from us. Warn your men not to associate with the Jesuit priests or the nuns. If you see a Quebecer walking on the city walls or near our artillery batteries, arrest them.”

MacKim nodded. He had every intention of carrying out his orders, although he remembered what it was like in a country occupied by an alien army.

“Remember, men,” Gregorson said, “if you see anything that looks suspicious, report it to me. We are holding a hostile city in the midst of a conquered country. The Canadians have no reason to like us, so trust nobody.”

The NCOs muttered their agreement as Gregorson dismissed them. Each man knew the sacrifices the British Army had endured to capture the capital of New France and had no intention of throwing their conquest away.

MacKim took his part in the routine patrols around the city, searching the Quebecers’ carts as they left the city to ensure the owners were not carrying away provisions, soap, candles or other banned objects. He helped maintain the curfew that Murray imposed and questioned any man who appeared suspicious.

At first, the Quebecers were surprised that this slim Highlander with the haunted eyes spoke French so fluently, but they soon learned to avoid him as one of the more officious of the occupying soldiers.

At night, MacKim clutched Tayanita’s beadwork and said nothing. He did not care what anybody thought of him. He did not care that most of the Highlanders walked wide of his presence. Nothing mattered except his increasing hatred of the tall, tattooed Canadian and the squat renegade with dead eyes.

They moved in a long, silent column, sliding on the frozen ground and hunch-shouldered against the cold. With their muskets held close to their shivering bodies and layers of whatever clothing they could borrow covering them, the Highlanders looked more like a straggle of poaching gypsies than British soldiers.

“If the Frenchies come tonight,” Ranald MacDonald muttered, “we’ll be too cold to fight back.”

“Maybe the enemy feels the cold as well,” Chisholm said.

“Not them.” MacDonald shook his head. “These Indians don’t feel anything. They’re impervious to cold or heat.”

As they took up their positions at the Sailor’s Battery, overlooking the River St Charles and the dark lands beyond, MacKim stamped his feet to restore his circulation. “I hope the bastards come.”

“You’re the only one, then,” Chisholm said. “The rest of us have had enough fighting and want a quiet life.”

Beyond the river, pinpricks of light gleamed through the dark.

“That’ll be the French, watching us,” MacDonald said. “Like Chisholm, I hope they stay where they are.”

“If I were the French commander,” MacKim said, remembering the weak state of the garrison, “I would take the opportunity to attack now. They still outnumber us, and they’re used to the climate. I hope our Rangers are out there, watching them.”

Chisholm grunted. “Most of the Rangers and the Louisbourg Grenadiers have returned to their posts, scattered all over North America. We’ve got less than a hundred in Quebec.”

MacKim forced a smile. “See what happens when I go into hospital? The place falls to pieces.”

Chisholm thrust a long pipe into his mouth. “It’s worse than you imagine, Hugh. Williams and most of the siege-guns, the heavy artillery, are overwintering in Boston.”

“What’s Murray thinking of?” MacKim asked. “We’re virtually asking the French to come in.” He looked over the battlements at the iced St Charles River and the vastness of Canada. “I hope we have some outposts out there.”

“Not many,” Chisholm said. “We’ve got a few small detachments, but nothing else, except General Murray is beginning to build some blockhouses on the Plains of Abraham.”

“We should have outposts to watch the French,” MacKim continued with his theme. “That’s where the Rangers should be. They’re the best soldiers we have. Without them, the French and Canadians outmatch us in forest warfare,”

Chisholm grunted. “Not now that you’re back, corporal.” His eyes were never still as he searched through the night. “It’s been quiet so far.”

“The French general, de Levis, must know how weak the garrison is. How about the Navy?”

Chisholm puffed at his pipe. “They’ve mostly gone. Admiral Saunders could not remain in the St Lawrence.” He walked along the ramparts, huddled against the cold, yet holding his Brown Bess musket like an old friend. “The ice would destroy his ships in days. He’s left HMS Racehorse and HMS Porcupine and a handful of small vessels, but they’re out of the river until the spring thaw comes.”

MacKim remembered the part the Navy had played in operations during the previous summer’s campaign. The Navy had carried the Army across the Atlantic and onto every combined operation from the capture of Louisbourg to Quebec. In MacKim’s eyes, Admiral Saunders had been just as much the victor of Quebec as General Wolfe.

“We’re cut off, then,” MacKim said.

“We are,” Chisholm agreed, “until the ice breaks in the spring.” He paced the length of their beat and stared over the parapet again. “But with Commodore Lord Colville at Halifax with the 74-gun HMS Northumberland and a pretty powerful naval squadron, the French can’t come across the Atlantic to reinforce de Levis’s army, either.”

MacKim stamped his feet again, with the sound echoing in the dark. “We’re both under siege, then, with the climate holding us prisoner.”

“It’s a straight fight between General Murray in Quebec and the Chevalier de Levis in the rest of Canada,” Chisholm grunted. “They still outnumber us. They know the terrain better than us and, as you said, without our Rangers, they are our superiors in Forest warfare.” He straightened to attention as Captain Donald MacDonald passed, huddled against the cold.

“Triumph!” Captain MacDonald gave the parole – the password – for the night.

“Victory.” MacKim gave the countersign as Chisholm hurriedly hid his pipe.

“Anything to report, Corporal?” Captain MacDonald asked.

“No, sir,” MacKim said. “We were watching the lights a cross the river and wondering if the French were there.”

“They will be.” Captain MacDonald passed a quid of tobacco onto Chisholm.

“Your pipe will go out, Chisholm,” he said, with a smile. “Keep alert, men, and notify me if anything changes. Keep your muskets handy, boys. Look after Bess, and she’ll look after you.”

“We will, sir,” agreed MacKim.

Captain MacDonald lifted a hand in salute and continued on his rounds.

“He’s a good man, Captain MacDonald,” Chisholm said. “At the forefront in battle and never lets his men down.”

As soon as Captain MacDonald strolled away, the Highlanders resumed their conversation, pretending to be casual while each man scanned the blackness. MacKim counted the pinpricks of firelight, marking their position so he would know if any moved. He listened to the wind blowing across the St Charles River, aware the ice could bear the weight of a man, allowing a French raiding party to cross. With the walls of Quebec high here, the French would have to use scaling ladders, but they might arrive, kill a sentry or two and withdraw, purely to unsettle the defenders.

“Why is the musket called a Brown Bess?” Private MacNicholl asked during a lull in the conversation. “Captain MacDonald told us to look after Bess.” He held his musket up. “Helloa, Bess.”

“Ah,” Chisholm turned against the wind to re-light his long-stemmed pipe, “I know the answer to that.”

“Tell us,” MacKim said, “but keep your voice down in case the captain returns, and keep alert, all of you.”

“It was during the War of the Spanish Succession, so sometime between 1705 and 1712. The army was marching hither and yon, and in every camp, and on every march, a group of very friendly Spanish women turned up.”

“Very friendly?” MacNicholl repeated, hoping for salacious details.

“Very friendly!” Chisholm lowered his voice. “But you’re too young, MacNicholl. A child like you should be learning his ABC, not thinking of women. The friendliest of them all was a brown-haired, buxom girl that the soldiers called Bess. When the army left Spain, they called their muskets Brown Bess in her honour.”

“Is that true?” MacNicholl asked, as MacKim scrutinised the lights across the river.

“Probably not,” Chisholm said. “The name more likely comes from us pickling the musket barrels to protect them from rust.”

“Oh,” MacNicholl said. “I prefer your story.”

“So do I,” Chisholm said.

MacKim raised his head. “Listen! Something’s stirring out there.”

“I can’t hear anything,” Chisholm said.

MacKim put a hand on Chisholm’s arm. “Keep quiet and listen. Something’s moving to the north.”

The musketry began a moment later, sporadic at first, then rising to a crescendo, and dying. The muzzle-flares were visible, like a score of bright sparks in the night, momentary, deadly and then gone, leaving deeper darkness in their wake. The scent of powder-smoke drifted in the wind, acrid and sour. A single shot sounded, followed by a hoarse challenge, hollow in the dark.

“Triumph?”

“The Frenchies are attacking one of our outposts,” MacKim said.

“Triumph?” The voice sounded again, faint with distance. MacKim thought how lonely the picket would be, out there in the hostile night.

“It sounds like our lads beat them off.” Chisholm knocked out the ashes from the bowl of his pipe and stared into the black. “They might try here next.” He checked the lock of his musket, ensured the flint was sharp and crouched lower behind the parapet.

MacKim took a deep breath. “Aye, they might.” He imagined the tattooed Canadian and the squat renegade mounting the ramparts here and fingered the long bayonet at his hip. Please, God, grant me the opportunity to avenge Tayanita. I don’t care if I die afterwards, I only want to kill her murderers.

The screaming started a few minutes later, long-drawn-out, rising and falling to an agonised, hopeless bubble.

“That will be the Indians and Canadians torturing a captive.” Chisholm gripped his musket more firmly. “I detest those bastards.”

MacKim loosened his bonnet as his scalp began to tingle and burn. He thought of the terror of a man waiting to be tortured by the Indians and spoke in a low, intense tone that held Chisholm’s attention. “Since they murdered Tayanita, I want to destroy everything French, and wipe them from the map,” he said. “I’d take an adze and draw it from the Gulf of St Lawrence to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi to New Orleans. I’d remove anything remotely French from the entire continent.”

MacKim was aware that Chisholm was watching him as he wiped the spittle from his chin. “I’ll destroy every single man,” he whispered. “And send the women and children back to France.”

Chisholm opened his mouth to speak, and closed it quickly as the screaming began again, even higher-pitched than before, raising the small hairs on the back of MacKim’s neck.

“Jesus.” Chisholm breathed out hard. “There was nothing like this during the Fontenoy campaign. We fought each other like soldiers, not savages. There is something evil in this continent that makes men act in such a manner.”

MacKim checked the flint of his musket, aware the screaming had unsettled him. “I want to kill the French,” he said. “I want to kill the French, the Canadians and the Indians.”

“Tayanita was an Indian,” Chisholm reminded him.

MacKim’s glower should have killed Chisholm where he stood. “I know.” MacKim turned away, feeling the tears turn to ice on his cheeks. “I know.”

3

The head arrived the next morning. An Abenaki warrior ran up to the battlements beside the Ursule Redoubt in the west, threw it over the wall, and ran away.

“Shoot that bugger!” the duty sergeant ordered. With the reports of their muskets flat in the sullen cold, three men fired, but none of the shots came close.

The head rolled on the ground and lay still, staring upward through the hollow pits that had once been eyes, with the nose, ears, scalp and lips cut off.

“Welcome home, Private Dawson,” a grenadier sergeant of Bragg’s 28th Foot said laconically. “He was as useless in life as he is in death.” He pushed the head with his foot, so it rolled away.

Others of his regiment did not treat Dawson’s torture and death as lightly, and MacKim felt the anger surge through the garrison. He allowed it to ease over him, augmenting his hatred as he stood outside Fort Louis at the edge of the Upper Town, listening as a section of Bragg’s marched past, cursing.

If the French had merely skirmished with the outposts, caused a few casualties and withdrawn, they would have succeeded in their objective in unsettling the garrison. By torturing and murdering prisoners, they created anger and a desire for revenge.

“Murdering bastards,” MacKim said as he cleaned his kit that evening. “Dirty, torturing French bastards!”

“Enough, now Hugh,” Ranald MacDonald said. “Think of something else.” He stepped back as MacKim approached him, bayonet in hand.

“Easy, Hugh!” Chisholm warned, but it was Harriette who stepped in front of MacKim.

“You don’t need the blade, Hughie.” Harriette spread her arms to protect Ranald MacDonald. “Fight if you must, but murder is a hanging offence.”

Reaching across, Chisholm took the bayonet from MacKim’s grip. “We know you miss Tayanita, Hugh, but putting a bayonet in Ranald won’t bring her back.”

MacKim glared at Chisholm and took a deep breath. He thought of his brother, murdered as he lay wounded on Culloden Moor, and of Priscilla, married to another man, and now Tayanita. It seemed that fate stole away everybody that mattered to him.

“Maybe you’d best keep clear of me, Chisholm,” he said, retrieving his bayonet and sliding it into the scabbard. “And you too, MacDonald.”

“Aye,” Chisholm said. “Maybe we’d best, at that.”

“I’m not myself at present.”

“No,” Ranald MacDonald said. “You’re not.”

MacKim took a deep breath, held the beadwork close to his chest and turned away. He could feel his hatred seething within his head.

The drums woke him as they beat out reveille, the staccato sound hammering around the city, chasing away sleep and informing the world that another day had dawned.

MacKim groaned, looked around, gave the beadwork a final hug and thrust it inside his knapsack. “I hate these bloody drums.”

The army lived by the drums, which regulated every action the soldiers made and marked the passage of every day. At the break of dawn, the drums beat Reveille to drag the men from their beds and advise the night sentries that their lonely vigils were nearing an end. The next call was Troop, which summoned the men to the parade ground for the roll call and officer’s inspection. At ten in the evening, or an hour earlier in summer, Tattoo ordered the men to retire to their quarters for the long night ahead.

“I hate these drums,” MacKim repeated.

“We all do,” Harriette said, dragging the covers from him. “Up you get!” She was smiling, although the shadows in her eyes revealed her concern. “The harder you work, the sooner you’ll be back to normal.”

Ignoring the near-constant ache in his head, MacKim joined the work parties in the city. Apart from the routine guards on the walls, the men helped repair some of the hundreds of houses the British bombardment had destroyed, making barracks and quarters for the officers and men. They also opened embrasures in the curtain walls and hauled cannon to watch over the Plains of Abraham, the plateau that dominated the western side of the city.

“If de Levis ever tries to recapture Quebec,” Chisholm said, “this is the wall he will assault.”

MacKim looked over the wall, imagined the French coming and nodded. It was only a few months since the late General Wolfe had won his battle on the Plains of Abraham, and now the British held Quebec, it seemed inevitable that the French would try and recapture the city.

When not toiling on the walls, working parties built stockades to block the avenues in the suburbs and made fascines – bundles of brushwood used to strengthen any earthen redoubt or trench – until the city had a reserve of over four thousand in case of need.

To give the men variety, the officers ordered the men to make creepers – grips that attached to the bottoms of their boots – sleighs, sledges and toboggans.

“We’ll be as well prepared for winter as possible,” Captain Donald MacDonald said cheerfully. “It takes more than a strong arm and a broadsword to defend a city.”

Occasionally, MacKim led a section working outside the city, with Major Patrick MacKellar, the chief engineer and his assistants directing them in chopping trees to make redoubts a few hundred yards from the walls, to keep any raiding French away.

They worked until the drums beat the retreat, and men filed thankfully back to have the roll called, and then Tattoo ordered them back to bed.

The days passed in toil, with the hours of darkness lengthening and men dropping with disease. Despite the garrison’s efforts, in the absence of most of the Rangers, French raiding parties controlled the night. As well as skirmishing with the British pickets, they captured the cattle, the garrison’s food-on-the-hoof, and brought an air of nervousness to the men.

“These damned Canadians were out last night,” Chisholm said. “They stole a score of beef cattle and killed two men.”

“It’s time we were striking back,” MacKim said.

“You tell General Murray that,” Chisholm said. “I’m sure he’ll listen to your advice.”

Harriette looked up from the fire. “If you don’t tell the general, Hugh, I will. Somebody has to teach those French to keep their distance.”

Perhaps the thought of being confronted by the formidable Harriette spurred General Murray to action, for the next day, he organised two columns of men to extend the borders of British-controlled territory.

He sent the first column, of two hundred men, to St Foy, a small village a few miles to the south-west on the edge of the Heights of Abraham. MacKim and a section of the light infantry marched with them and immediately began to fortify the village, much to the disgust of the priest in the chapel.

“It’s all right,” Captain Donald MacDonald told him in fluent French. “If your French friends don’t attack us, we won’t damage anything.”

From St Foy, the British detachment could watch the road the French would have to travel if they marched north from Montreal and warn the Quebec garrison of impending danger.

The Highlanders only remained for a few hours, sufficient to consolidate the position, and then they returned to Quebec, leaving a strong force behind.

“Aye,” Chisholm said. “Murray must have listened to you, Harriette. Not only can we watch the French, but we also have a few Canadian parishes under our control now, so we can take the fresh produce to help combat the scurvy.” He looked up. “That’s our main enemy here, lads and lassies – the climate, salt provisions and disease. We can beat the Frenchies in a fair fight, but if we’re starving and diseased, we won’t be able to stand, let alone fight.”

The main French advanced post was at Jacques-Cartier, upstream from St Foy towards Montreal on the north shore of the river, with a forward position at St Augustin. Levis had most of his regulars in winter quarters between Trois Rivières and Montreal, with his outposts as sentinels to deter any British raids.

Murray’s second and larger column of four hundred men marched inland to Lorette and established a strong outpost there, with patrols into the lands beyond. With both armies settling in for the winter and their territories secured, most of the British hoped for a quiet winter.

“We need more Rangers,” MacKim said. “De Levis will be pushing his advantage in men and experience, sure as anything.”