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

no more than a collection of instincts, before which he is powerless? Well, then, explain this … it is my instinct right now to land a blow on your stubborn jaw, thus rendering you insensible so that I might carry your person to safety. But I am managing to overcome that instinct because I realise it would be a pyrrhic victory, never to be forgiven, so I am trying reason instead.’

She threw back her head and laughed, her shoulders rocking so she had to steady herself against the mantelpiece. James began to smile too, until her laughter turned to sobs, and he rose to help her to a chair where she buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

‘I am out of ideas,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I do not know where to turn, what to do. I am defeated, chevalier. They have won. Do with me what you will.’

*

Word from Weichselmünde was that the Russian fleet had arrived and had opened its bombardment. James and his fishermen, with Dorothea now in their company, would have to follow the Mottlau the other way, to the estuary of the Vistula itself.

They took very little from the old duke’s townhouse. The old man himself would be safe there; there would be no gain for the Russians, or anybody for that matter, in treating him harshly. Indeed his physical presence might even prove a bargaining chip for whoever held him.

It was dark when James and Dorothea settled themselves, and the fishermen, eager to be away, rowed the smack out the city and turned right. For the first part of their voyage, the far bank of the Mottlau was illuminated with a myriad of campfires, lit to warm the defeated French soldiery, and in the reflections close to the water, they could see some of their grimy faces eying them with a sullen indifference.

The near bank, from early on, was occupied by Russians, who paid them not the slightest attention. A fishing boat heading to sea. Who needed the stink on them of having to check?

And then, both banks were held by Russians, and eventually came the barked orders from shore. The Russian search was not particularly onerous. The young, pimply officer spoke German to Dorothea, who assured him they were Scottish merchants, on their way to visit their other investments. James offered him a purse as a bribe, and seeing it, the officer ordered a further search where another purse was duly found. After that, they didn’t bother to search in the bait barrels where James’ real cache was; or in the skipper’s bunk, where James had stowed his pistols.

The fishermen were happy to go along. There was the money he’d paid them, and after all, the gentlemen wasn’t a damned Russian, or a Pole – he was a Scot, just like the minister at the kirk in Tallinn, who always kept an open door for any distressed sailor – so they were happy to sail James and his lady to Karlskrona.

*

James still had his original letters of passport from the Palazzo del Re in the breast pocket of his tunic, and Dorothea had documents of her own. Both sets satisfied the old Swedish harbour master’s brief inspection. He directed them to the local inn where a bath could be had, and a decent supper.

Dorothea had had little to say during their uncomfortable but otherwise uneventful voyage. But she had clung to him, especially when she slept. Only once had she asked, ‘What are we going to do when we get there?’

The ‘we’ did not escape James, and when he looked at her, he knew it wasn’t meant to.

James had had no answer. ‘We have coin, and I have a letter of credit,’ he said, referring to Mr MacDougall’s little missive naming James’ bankers in Hamburg, also tucked away. ‘So we shall not suffer.’

Now they were on land, the questions seemed more pressing. As she waited for her bath to be filled in her bedroom, Dorothea fidgeted. James sat in the room’s small gallery, smoking a pipe and looking out over the neat, flat countryside.

‘So this is it?’ she said. ‘You snatch me from my doom, you offer me a future of learning and wisdom, then you hold me, comforting, in your arms across the sea. And now you just sit there. So now what? Eh, sir? Now what?’

James stood up, his train of thought on that very question, shattered. He glowered at her but before he could open his mouth the chambermaid came bustling back lugging her last, now empty bucket, all steam and dripping water. As she went out, she sang words in her strangely lilting language that neither he nor Dorothea understood, but assumed were that the bath was full now.

When James turned back to Dorothea, her look was so wanton and surly, he felt that familiar constriction in his throat, and a distinct lack of it in another part.

He had intended to say something to her, but all the events of the past days, weeks, months even, came crowding in on him, taking away any words, leaving only action to speak for what he felt right now. So he just picked her up and carried her through the bedroom door, pausing only to kick it shut, with the heel of his cavalryman’s top boot.

Epilogue

The count had not a moment’s doubt where he would find the king. He would be on the other side of the Gamla Stan, picking his way across the site that one day would become his new home, getting in the way, and irritating the all the French craftsmen. For the simple reason that it was a beautiful morning with the sky a deep azure, dappled with high scudding clouds, brilliant white in woolly clusters, and a blustery breeze that would blow away all the masonry dust and keep the