The lights dimmed. The sound of bagpipes filled the room, and Fiona found herself looking across the moor at the Government lines. Union Jacks flew in the wind. The video was in black and white, which lent a stark feeling of timelessness to the scene before her.
The perspective shifted, and now she was standing at the British lines staring at the Highland clans across the moor. Where the British Army had been organized, the Jacobite lines were chaotic. Men shouted, waved the saltire, beat on their targes with swords as they prepared to face the government army.
Shots rang out. Smoke began to fill the landscape, but still the lines held. More shots, more smoke, and suddenly the Highland lines began to charge. The men, shouting and screaming, ran straight at the tourists who stood frozen in place in the modern Visitor Centre.
An entire front row of men went down, and howls of agony rose over the bagpipes as the Highland clans continued their mad rush toward the enemy. The screams and the clanging of metal were deafening.
Now Fiona could see the individual men racing toward her, resolution etched on set faces. She stood transfixed as the kilted men met the British officers and began hand-to-hand fighting. Bodies littered the boggy ground.
A soldier turned suddenly. He was British Army; even in black and white the the iconic uniform was obvious. He had lost his tricorn. Wild black hair flew in the wind as he stopped and stared straight at her, and Fiona felt her blood run cold. In the monochrome vista of grey, somehow she knew that his eyes were blue—the color of a summer sky.
She stared into those eyes, rigid with shock. They might have been alone on the battlefield; everything else had receded into the smoke and clamor.
Then he was gone, melted into the chaos as if he’d never existed. The sounds of battle diminished and finally stopped altogether, as the ramifications of the day’s slaughter began to dawn on both sides. The scene was oddly quiet, the clanging gone, bagpipes silenced. The moans of dying men were all that could be heard in the harsh landscape.
The lights came up and the room returned to the present. Nearby, a woman was crying softly, the only sound as people began to wander out of the room. Fiona stood alone, transfixed by what she had seen.
The man in the video—the British soldier—was the man in her dream. His eyes were the eyes she had seen countless times. But that wasn’t what was keeping her rooted to the floor, unable to move.
The eyes had blazed with recognition. He knew her.
She found herself out on the sidewalk, uncertain how she had gotten there, and began to step into the parking lot.
Suddenly she was swept off her feet onto the ground, a pair of strong arms holding her as she rolled across the sidewalk into a bush.
The pain of the branches penetrated her daze, and she found herself looking up into angry blue eyes. She mumbled an apology, and scrambled to her feet to face the man.
He was sputtering. “Maybe you should pay attention so you make it home to the States in one piece, aye?”
She felt an answering anger building.
“Are all Scottish people as rude as you?” she asked “And for your information, I’m Canadian, you buffoon!”
Excerpt is from Drumossie (Book 1 of Echoes in Time series) by M. MacKinnon, who notes “My protagonist, Fiona Maclean, is from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. She is visiting Scotland in search of her roots, and in this scene she is about to watch the video in the Cullodon Battlefield Visitor Centre.” MacKinnon’s books are available on Amazon. Find out more at mmackinnonwriter.com
