Midnight Honor

madam?”
    Anne gave him her answer, having collected just enough spittle under her tongue for it to reach the duke's highly polished boot.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
    Inverness, May 1746
    T he fear was like a blanket, smothering her. The slimy stone walls of her cell seemed to be shrinking around her, closer each day; the air was so thin and sour she had to pant to ease the pressure in her lungs. The sounds from the other cells were as bone-chilling and piercing as the screams that haunted her dreams day and night.
    Cumberland had come to the prison three times over the past six weeks, offering to free her in exchange for giving evidence against the Jacobite leaders. All three times she had sent him away spluttering German oaths under his breath.
    Her hair was dull, matted with filth. Her skin was gray. Deep purple smudges ringed her eyes. Her hands were stained black, her nails cracked and torn from repeatedly pulling herself up to the narrow window cut high on the cell wall.
    She did not know what she hoped to see, other than a glimpse of the fading light to indicate another day had drifted into night. Both were endless, the one filled with the nightmares of the living, the other with nightmares of the dead. There were times she almost thought it would be a blessing if she simply did not waken one morning. Cumberland said Angus was still alive, but she had no reason to believe it. If hehad lived through the fever and putrefaction of a belly wound, if he were still alive, surely he would have found some way to get word to her. Not all of the guards had been chosen for their cruelty. There were some who didn't leer and rub themselves when they walked by her cell, some who smuggled in an extra cup of water or, once, a half-gnawed chicken leg in exchange for a rosette button off her bodice.
    The buttons were gone, the silk of her bodice was more gray than pink, and the only thing of value she had left—the one thing she would never part with unless it was removed from her dead body—was the silver-and-cairngorm brooch Angus had given her the night before Culloden. She kept it against her breast, tucked beneath her corset, and when she felt herself growing weak, when the despair threatened to overwhelm her and the sounds of the dying men nearly deafened her, she pressed against the metal until it cut into her skin.
    She would not give Cumberland the easy way out. If he wanted her dead, he would have to give the order to hang her, and because she was the wife of a prominent chief, that could not be done without taking her first to London to stand trial.
    Common soldiers and deserters were not so lucky. Thirty men who had been found amongst the ranks of the Jacobite prisoners but who were recognized as having once signed on to serve the king were summarily tried and hanged, the courts-martial taking place on the stroke of one hour while their bodies hung naked and dead the next. One such man was led past Anne's cell, called out to the courtyard by the drums, and when he paused a moment outside her door, she nearly did not recognize young Douglas Forbes through the blood and filth. He managed a parting smile, however, and she was told later that he walked to the gallows with his head high and refused the blindfold, preferring to stare at the vastness of the sky overhead before the trap was sprung beneath him.
    More prisoners were brought in every day, and when the Tolbooth filled beyond its capacity, they were taken to the churches, then onto ships that were subsequently converted to prison hulks.
    In the latter days of April, Cumberland posted orders that all known and suspected Jacobites were to be reported to theCrown officers. Ministers were told to make lists of those in their kirks who had been absent during the months of the rebellion; warrants were issued for all chiefs and noblemen, with rewards offered for their capture and arrest. A price of thirty thousand pounds was put on the head of Charles Stuart, with lesser, but still substantial, sums allocated for those names that had sounded most often on the battlefield: Murray, Cameron, Glengarry, Clanranald, Ardshiel. Regiments of infantry and dragoons were sent out to hunt down the fleeing Jacobite contingents. Lochiel's stronghold at Achnacarry was demolished, the castle reduced to rubble, while the chief and his kinsmen were forced to hide in caves in the hills. Gray clouds of smoke hung over the glens as clachans were burned, the sheep and cattle driven back to