The Scottish Prisoner

What would his own parents think of William? They had neither of them lived to see any of their children’s children.

He lay for some time, his throat aching, listening to the dark, hearing the voices of his dead pass by in the wind. His thoughts grew vague and his grief eased, comforted by the knowledge of love, still alive in the world. Sleep came near again.

He touched the rough crucifix that lay against his chest and whispered to the moving air, “Lord, that she might be safe, she and my children.”

Then turned his cheek to her reaching hand and touched her through the veils of time.

Author’s Notes

The Wild Hunt

The concept of the Wild Hunt—a spectral horde seen rushing through the night skies or above the ground, hunting for things unknown—doesn’t come from Celtic mythology but from that of Central/Northern/Western Europe. Celtic mythology being the very plastic and inclusive thing that it is ( videthe way it historically entwined itself easily with Catholic theology in Scotland and Ireland, where people might say a prayer to St. Bride in one breath, and a charm against piskies in the next)—and the inability of any Celt to pass up a good story—and it’s no wonder that you find variations on the Wild Hunt in the Celtic lands as well.

In some forms of these stories, the horde consists of faeries, in others, the “hunt” consists of the souls of the dead. Either way, it isn’t something you want to meet on a dark night—or a moonlit one, either. In the British forms, the best-known “wild hunt” tales are “Tam Lin” and “Thomas the Rhymer” (there are dozens of variations), in which a young man meets the Queen of Faerie and is more or less abducted by her.

The notion of abduction of humans by the hunt is common to almost all hunt tales, though—and it may be this aspect that caused our Irish Jacobite plotters to adopt this nom de guerre, as they pla

         The host is riding from Knocknarea

         And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;

         Caoilte tossing his burning hair,

         And Niamh calling Away, come away:

         Empty your heart of its mortal dream.

         The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,

         Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,

         Our breasts are heaving our eyes are agleam,

         Our arms are waving our lips are apart;

         And if any gaze on our rushing band,

         We come between him and the deed of his hand,

         We come between him and the hope of his heart.

         The host is rushing ’twixt night and day,

         And where is there hope or deed as fair?

         Caoilte tossing his burning hair,

         And Niamh calling Away, come away.

        —William Butler Yeats, “The Hosting of the Sidhe”

[Footnote: An interesting modern variation on the Wild Hunt is the BBC television series Quatermass and the Pit, by Nigel Kneale, broadcast in December/January of 1958/59. In this science fiction serial, the concept of the Wild Hunt is used as a very literal metaphor for the murderous and bestial impulses of humanity (truly creepy in spots, hilarious in others; great acting!).]

Thomas Lally

Thomas Arthur, Comte de Lally, Baron Tollendal, is one of the real historical figures who appear in this book, along with George II, George III, and Horace Walpole. Born of an Irish father and a French mother (from whom he inherited his titles), he served with the famous Irish Brigade at Fontenoy and was a French general during the Seven Years War. He did in fact serve as Charles Edward Stuart’s aide de camp during the battle of Falkirk, in the ’45, and was mixed up in various Jacobite plots, including one hatched in Ireland in the 1760’s.

I havetaken one small liberty with Thomas Lally, though. He was captured by the British following the Siege of Pondicherry, in India, and taken to England in 1761, not 1760. Given his real involvement with the Irish Jacobites—and his obvious spiritual kinship with Jamie Fraser as a prisoner of the English—I thought the minor temporal dislocation was worth it.

An interesting—if grim—footnote to Lally’s life is that he was indeed Just Furious about slurs cast on his reputation in France, following the French defeat at Pondicherry, and agitated to be sent back to France to defend himself at a court-martial. After five years of steady badgering, the British didsend him back to France—where, in 1766, he was promptly convicted of treason and beheaded.

Twenty years later, a French court reviewed the evidence and reversed his conviction, which I trust he found satisfying.

Bog Bodies

I’ve always found bog bodies—the corpses of people found preserved in peat bogs—fascinating. The garb and accoutrements of the body found on Inchcleraun (which is a real place, and has a real monastery) are a composite of such items found on or with bog bodies from Europe. My thanks to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History for hosting a special exhibition on bog bodies that provided me with a great deal of useful information, and to the British Museum, whose Lindow Man has always spoken powerfully to me.

George II, George III, and Horace Walpole

I love Horace Walpole, as does anyone with an interest in eighteenth-century English society. The fourth son of Robert Walpole, who was England’s first prime minister (though he himself never used the title), Horace was not politically active, nor was he socially important, physically attractive, or otherwise very noticeable. He was, however, intelligent, observant, witty, sarcastic, and apparently never suffered from writer’s cramp. His letters provide one of the most detailed and intimate views of English society during the mid-eighteenth century, and I’m indebted to one of these missives for Lord John’s experience of King George II’s state funeral.