April 16, 1746
A cold north-east wind scoured the battlefield with gusts of stinging sleet; the mutter of muskets and of cannon echoed all the way to the streets of Inverness. The armies met at Drumossie Moor, near Culloden, and the battle was as swift and sharp as the rain. Within an hour the desperate Highlanders were reduced to throwing rocks at the English weapons as their prince fled into the heather.
James Cameron, nineteen years of age, lay huddled in the bracken. The pattern of his tartan was picked with red, cochineal dye and blood mingled. Although the English bayonet that had caught him in the side had been deflected by the belted plaid he wore over his shoulder, his head had struck a rock when he fell.
For a time James lay unconscious, the icy rain raking his face and dripping between his parted lips. When he struggled at last into wakefulness he heard the screams of the wounded as the English regulars and their Scots allies systematically exterminated them.
The leaden sky churned above him. He choked on the bile and the ice in his mouth. He moved, and a strong hand grasped his shoulder, the sharp blade of a sgian dubh pressed against his throat.
"James Cameron, is it?" asked a hoarse voice. "You're no more than a traitor, lad."
James started, his breath rattling. A man's face floated in double-image before his eyes. Campbell of Argyll, he thought; you're the traitor, fighting for the German king. But his lips and tongue were too numb to speak.
The dagger flicked aside, toward James's bonnet, and skewered the muddy white cockade that had that morning perched so bravely on it. "That for your Pretender," Campbell said. "Run like a hare, he has, but Cumberland will catch him. As for you..."
James shifted feebly, trying to struggle, failing. His hand was too cold to close on the dirk at his belt. The florid face of the man above him savored his helplessness. Cumberland, the butcher.... Still he couldn't speak.
Then the Campbell was gone, and his mercy was the worst insult of all. James wanted not to be spared, but to die, in the cause that had died. He summoned his strength and heaved himself to a sitting position, grasping at the pain in his head and his chest.
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