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

return, you might enlighten him as to the full weight of shot and shell about to descend on this tiny patch of ground, which is all that is left of what he still insists on calling his kingdom.’

‘I am a colonel of dragoons, sir,’ said James, not stuffy despite the seriousness with which he wished his reply to be heard. ‘I came here to execute my orders, not to spy, or set myself up as military advisor to King Stanislas. I hope you will understand that, sir.’ The ‘king’ he added pointedly, just as Lacy had with his ‘M’sieur Leszczyński’.

Lacy and Admiral Gordon looked at each other, sharing impenetrable smiles. ‘I understand perfectly,’ said Lacy, with another of his sanguine nods. ‘It was ill of me to press you otherwise.’

The next day, Lacy was up early to see James and his small detachment escorted to the Russian lines

‘Needless to say, I am sad that the next time we shall meet will likely be on the field of battle, but that is the fate of men like us,’ he said. ‘So please do not think it presumptuous if I offer a piece of advice. We are soldiers of fortune, you and I, and in our trade there is one rule we all do well to observe … and that is never to have anything in our lives that we cannot turn round and walk away from, if fortune dictates. Now, all this we find ourselves embroiled in shall one day pass, and when it does, then remember me chevalier, as I shall remember you.’

And with that, Lacy shook James’ hand and watched him mount. He even waited to give a wave, as James and his men cantered out of the courtyard.

13

The Siege of Danzig, Part Two

The main Russian siege batteries commenced their bombardment an hour after dark that night. The mortars opened up first. For those watching from the walls between the Hegelsberg and Bischoffsberg bastions, it was as if tiny clusters of faeries had sprung briefly to life, before their lights vanished in the smoke and scores of tiny sputtering slivers of fire arced into the black sky. The noise of them followed, out of synch; a delayed series of reverberating booms, running together in a wave so that the sound quickly turned to one continuous rumble. And then the screaming of the shells before they began to land in crumps and flashes, blossoming all across the district of the city around the canal wharves.

In the hours before the bombardment commenced, James had called at the Duke of Courland’s town house, on the southern edges of the wharf district, to seek an interview with the Gräfin von Kettler. He sat in one of the large, high-backed chairs in an upstairs reception room. Dorothea sat in a similar chair opposite him, so they faced each other like an old married couple before their hearth. No fire blazed there however, the late spring evening being so balmy. In a corner of the room sat a meek and pensive parlour maid; their chaperone, there also to serve them chocolate from a bowl that sat on a small spirit stove by her side.

The poor girl gave the impression of trying to shrink further and further into her own clothing as the atmosphere in the room grew ever more brittle, and the voices of the couple by the hearth ever louder.

James had come to the house not to accuse Dorothea, but to warn her. But at his first raising of the purposes of her visits to the Russian headquarters, she coldly erupted in a measured fury, so that quickly their tryst had descended into a shouting match.

James had never felt such tumult of emotions in his breast over a woman as he did with this one. He didn’t know why he bothered, why he didn’t just walk away and leave her to her destiny. He knew her to be headstrong and calculating. But then there was all that ladylike grace on the surface, like a fast frigate in full sail, the complexity and beauty and sheer speed of her as she charged through the world. It kept tugging at him, even though knew there were tempests churning beneath; in a flash of anger, all that grace could vanish in the blink of an eye. But what was revealed was just as tantalising. The naked intellect, her drive and determination, and a fearlessness in the furtherance of her cause. All of it drew him as much her beauty.

‘Have you no idea what you have done, with your careless talk?’ he said, half placatory, half in reproach. ‘What on earth possessed you to tell General Lacy that James Stuart might seek to offer his royal person as a compromise for the throne of Poland? Because that is what you did, isn’t it? I cannot believe you magicked the idea into being yourself. Who put you up to it? Who planted the bad seed? And why on earth did you think it a good idea?’

But after he’d said it, James knew he had gone too far, with all his imagining this and questioning that.

‘Yes, I said all that, and why not?’ The deep chill in her voice was as cutting as a sabre fresh from the armourer’s stone. ‘As if you could understand. Your people and your land do not live in the shadow of a great bear, where learning to dance with it is never enough … because it can step on you without even knowing. You must learn to dance round it if you are to survive. So I dance and dance and dance, all the time. To protect, to save … and because I am loyal.’

‘Dear God almighty, woman, what are you havering about …’

But she cut him off. ‘You do not understand, because you do not think it necessary to clutter your mind with it