By My Sword Alone David Black (best story books to read txt) 📖

‘You must behave as a rich man! I insist upon it,’ the comtesse often admonished him, throwing him another purse. ‘D’you wish people to mutter behind their fans that I am consorting with a pauper, and a foreign one at that?’

So he played whist, and was moderately successful, finding it natural to count cards and hold the tallies in his head. However, his fellow officers were under no illusion as to where his stakes came from. Everybody knew of the comtesse, and her penchant for young stallions. Nearly all were jealous because of her beauty, but no acerbic asides, not even veiled asides, ever came James’ way regarding his ‘kept’ status, or indeed on any other aspect of his background. Not after they had seen him at sabre practise. Watching him pass and thrust had made had it plain; provoke a slap of the glove from this young interloper and you could well end up skewered.

James might have had brothers, but in reality he had grown up alone, and like all only children, he had yet to develop any understanding of the effect he had on other people. But even he could not miss the general froideur with which he was treated in the Chevau-Légers. Which was why, after such exercises he seldom joined his fellow officers for their afternoon revelries, but usually saw to his horse’s brushing down and feeding, before he rode her back into the city and to the comtesse’s own enclave in Saint Germain.

On this day, as usual, he was lost in a reverie as he rode. His filly, another Sophie, practically knew the route herself.

Ségolène Raffarin was the true name of the Comtesse de Boufflers, his employer. She had first ‘hired’ him as the keeper of her stud after that fateful meeting in the salon. How appropriate, her society of friends had all thought, but never said, because she was too significant a force in her society to offend. Her husband, the Comte de Boufflers, dead some years ago of a calenture, had been fabulously wealthy. And now, so was she.

Ségolène, oh Ségolène, how had it all started? For her it began as a transaction, pure and simple. For James, the naïf? He hadn’t known any better than to follow where she led.

And then, as it always did, his reverie drifted back over all the events that had brought him here.

Mr Crawford and Mr Dillon, his first, and so far still his only true friends in Paris, had certainly been pleased with how things had panned out.

Crawford especially, would never forget the evening his maid had announced there was a countryman of his at the door, seeking an audience, and handing him a note from the almoner at the Paris Faculty of Theology. ‘One for you, I think, mon ami,’ it had read.

‘Show him in.’ Crawford would always remember saying those fateful words. And then, there before him had stood a tall, rather unkempt looking lad, his long red hair in need of a wash, yet still managing to comport himself with dignity. Not rushing to blurt out his predicaments – for predicaments there must be, otherwise why would he be here, clutching such a note from a dispenser of church charity.

‘I am James Lindsay, the third son of the Earl of Branter,’ he’d said, once seated with a restorative brandy before him, ‘and I am in Paris seeking a passport or other safe conduct that will carry me to my brother in the service of the King of Spain at Madrid.’

So, he wasn’t there to deliberately sponge. Yet every word of his declaration spelled trouble.

‘Mr Lindsay,’ Crawford replied, ‘it is with some regret I have to tell you that in coming here, you have stepped into a briar patch … a perfect tangled web of interests and prejudices, where what, on the face of matters, might seem simple, is not.’

For a start, the fact that James was asking for a passport from the French authorities meant he must be travelling without one, and coming from Scotland that could mean only one thing as far as they were concerned. Here was another Jacobite fugitive.

‘My Lord Stair, the English ambassador, and an exceedingly irritating and ingratiating rogue catalogues every one of your kind who arrives here, or even merely passes through, and reports them to London,’ Mr Crawford had assured him. ‘France’s current policy is for good relations with the English. Need I say more? Also, dear Lord preserve us! A safe conduct to Spain? You obviously do not know that very little time has elapsed since the King of Spain conspired, unsuccessfully, to murder Orleans, before Louis’ majority and while he was still regent, in order to replace said Duke with himself … and that since then there has been a war. For you to be found in possession of any document with the word “Spain” in it, would see you immediately consigned to the Bastille!’

And even then, the depth of James’ predicament had yet to be fully plumbed.

Because of the pretender’s ostensible commitment to the Catholic cause, there were many in France still well-disposed towards his followers, which was why the almoner had sent James Lindsay to Crawford and not the Paris gendarmerie.

But Crawford had then gone on to assure young James that he should not take any great comfort from that, because he had little to offer him by way of assistance.

‘My master is John Law of Edinburgh, a banking gentleman of some international repute,’ Crawford told James. ‘And I am his man of affairs in this city, where he retains considerable interests, yet can no longer safely reside.’

James had recalled the name, and some rumour of scandal.

Crawford had been good enough to elaborate. ‘I know not whether it was common knowledge in the cloisters of the University of Glasgow, but the previous