The Unnatural Death of a Jacobite

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It was the first time they had all played together since Mackenzie and Scougall had returned from the Highlands two weeks before. Mackenzie stood on the first tee, deep in thought, staring north across the grey sheet of water to Fife beyond. The journey north to Mackenzie clan lands in Ross- shire searching for his daughter had been a complete failure. The trail for Elizabeth had run cold. They had searched back and forward across the Black Isle and round most of eastern Ross- shire from castle to castle and township to township for almost a month. They found nothing, only rumours of sightings a few weeks before, and rumours of rumours of sightings. Everyone was distracted by the war. The whole place was in a state of mayhem; the peace shattered when Dundee raised the standard for King James at Dundee Law. Another armed rising in the Highlands. They saw armed men everywhere and fear on every mother’s face. The taste and smell of war. And God knew how long it would last. Once begun, civil war could last for years, even decades. It spread through the country until it dragged everything into its vortex. The last one had changed everything. It had changed the Highlands for good. It had changed the world, or so it had seemed. The world had been taken up in the hands of strife and thrown back down in another shape.

During the search, he had managed to keep his melancholy feelings at bay. He was focused entirely on finding her and Ruairidh Mackenzie, Seaforth’s brother, whom she had eloped with. The thought that they were hiding out somewhere in Mackenzie lands was reasonable. A letter from his brother told him she had been seen at the house of Mackenzie of Kilcoy, but his brother had heard nothing more by the time they reached him. Elizabeth could have been anywhere by then – off to the west Highlands or as far away as the islands – Lewis was held by the Mackenzies – a much longer journey by boat across the Minch. Without definite intelligence of their whereabouts, it would be a wild goose chase. For all he knew, they could be with Dundee’s army on its progress back and forth across the hills, in the game of cat and mouse with Mackay’s forces. Ruairidh was, after all, a Papist and Jacobite. Dundee was seeking new recruits, making outlandish promises to the clans. It was even possible they had fled to King Louis’s court in France or to Ireland where King James had gathered his forces and where Seaforth had escaped to. The thought of his duplicitous chief angered him and a wave of despair washed through him. The sinking of his spirits. A hatred of life. A desire for it all to end. The terrible thought kept returning, invading his mind. He might never see Elizabeth again. She was taken from him just as her mother had been over twenty years before. And he would be left alone. n