Iain MacGillivray survived Culloden only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats walked through the corpses of his comrades. Six years later, the Highlands have been ‘pacified’, and Iain is living a quiet life as a bookseller.

His tranquillity is broken one morning when he opens his shop and discovers a man’s body. Next to it lies the murder weapon: a sword with a white cockade, emblem of the Jacobites, on its hilt. The ashes of war are far from cold, and Iain is about to be thrust into them.