By My Sword Alone by David Black (ebook reader ink TXT) 📕

was acutely aware of the letter in his pocket, and wondered how he could explain to any yokel of an official what it said, surmising that any official here was unlikely to read Latin, in which the letter was written, or understand him, as he spoke only English, French or Latin. But no official accosted him, so he set off up the track to Den Burg.

Flat, verdant grazing. Sheep on both sides as he walked, retracing his thoughts like he was conjugating a Latin verb in order to fix it in his head.

When he ran from the drowning militia man in Nor’ Loch, he’d been repeating endlessly to himself, ‘My God! My God!’ and telling himself he had just caused a man’s death. He had not meant to, never intended it – but had he not just done murder? Then, after being consigned to the stable’s straw behind that Leith brothel, he had taken breath. Logic had formed part of his education. Facts. To be reviewed. And only then, decisions reached. So he had reviewed. And what had he learned? About the man who’d been pursuing him, intent on capturing him, ultimately to put a noose around his neck? A man who’d said he was going to plant his bayonet, ‘in his tripes’?

That man had died because he cut a corner on a path that was narrow, knowing what lay on either side.

He, James Lindsay, hadn’t killed him; the militia man’s own choices and his own stupidity had.

It was only James’ own horror at the manner of the death that awaited that wretched creature, a death that James had tried to prevent, that made him want to assume responsibility for it. Not because he’d inflicted it, but because he’d run.

‘I refuse to accept the guilt,’ he’d said out loud to the horse in the stable that night, instinctively knowing that if he did not shuck off that burden, there and then, it would dog him for the rest of his life. And the horse, in her silence, had seemed to agree with him.

He was not to know it then, but that rigour set in him a way of thinking that would last the rest of his days.

He’d fallen back on the straw after that, almost as if he was exhausted after the mental effort. Regrouping for the other changed circumstances in his life he must address. He knew it was going to be a long night, so what better way to use the time than to take stock?

The first thing he had had to face down was the dread nausea he’d felt at his own impotence in the face of all the forces out there, beyond his ken, marching. Lying in the straw, with only the horse as his confidante, he’d forced himself to review what he actually knew.

He lived in a troubled time. It didn’t matter whether he was innocent of the crime the militia was pursuing him for; the family name of Lindsay was obviously wrapped up in another conspiracy of sedition against the existing Crown, and him having the Lindsay name would put him on the scaffold regardless. But even if he didn’t hang, if he escaped, the whole sorry situation had still robbed him of his future as a scholar.

That such injustice could exist in his own country had filled him with rage. It seemed so personal, that some stupid German parvenu could indiscriminately steal his life so casually, without even knowing him – just because his German arse occupied a throne in London, a place where James had never even been, or wanted to go.

But the rage, and the ragged trains of thought running away with his head, were futile and nothing more than distractions. If he was going to survive, he was going to do it by dealing only in the logic of the now. Facts. Only facts. And the dealing with them.

One horse he could ride out of this calamity was to pledge himself wholly to the king over the water. Accept the direction of this runaway, and just go with it. He would not be the first to cast away all impediment and follow his king.

Except his king seemed never to be there; only sending courtiers and generals to do his bidding – and James had witnessed their performance in his cause at Glenshiel. He’d marched to that battle-that-never-was as a young man, full of faith, and had been rewarded by a vision of how things truly stood, saw it all with his own eyes.

However, he held one memory from that time; of the Irish officers in the service of the King of Spain. Proud, honourable men, yet exiles like he was about to become – denied their home by stupid old men, just as he had been. No cause left to follow, no country but their own path through life, just the integrity each one of them seemed to embody – of a decision made, and the determination to follow it by their sword alone.

Confronted that night by a dread future, it hadn’t seemed such a bad choice for a young man to make, to follow those young Irishmen into the service of the King of Spain. He’d certainly never have to fear the drudge of domesticity, paying tradesmen’s bills, the prospect of work, like his oldest brother. Instead, he’d be following his other sibling, David, to the life of a soldier. David, who was already in Madrid. Yes. That was where he would go, after Leiden. To Madrid, to a life in the service of the King of Spain.

*

Den Burg, when he got there, hit him with a dislocation he had not expected. From the solitude of the road, suddenly he was among a throng of people. A market spilled out across the town’s narrow streets, the likes of which he’d never seen before. He’d been to a city, yes; more than