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

Kaiserhof, to be near the princess, while he awaited any reply. Should James seek a further audience with her royal highness, the officer had said, he was in the first instance, to approach him.

‘Good,’ said Mr Teviot.

James had already divined Mr Teviot was prone to sarcasm, but otherwise he seemed a serious, reliable sort. Certainly he looked the part of an envoy, or even a man of commerce. How wealthy he was, was hard to tell that morning as Mr Teviot was not properly dressed for the world, even though he was dinning in a public room of the inn.

His hair – cut short to allow a full wig to sit easily – was silver-grey and on display; no wig had yet been donned. Nor was he wearing a stock or coat. The impression was of a man whose business was more important to him than how he looked.

‘Well,’ he said at length, having quite regained his composure. He even smiled, a little thinly, before continuing. ‘That you delivered the sachet, with its seal intact, directly to the Princess Clementina instead of to me, actually helps our subterfuge. And that she let you bring away with you all that was in it, addressed to me, tells us she is not entirely opposed to us. As does the fact that we are still at liberty, and not denounced to Uncle Siggy.’

And at that he rolled his eyes in resignation before adding, ‘On the other hand, from what you have told me of your conversation, I think it is safe to assume the girl is never going to take you seriously. So we have to open some other channel of communication that she will. Leave that to me. You, on the other hand, my young blade, must devise the practical plan that is going to get her out of the grand Kaiserhof and onto the road to Rome. A plan, sir, that has to have some reasonable prospect of success!’

*

The sun had already passed behind the peak of the Patscherkofel mountain when the coach and four overtook Mr Teviot and James, who were returning at a leisurely pace to the city after a country ride.

The coach travelled on a little then came to a halt in the shadows of a copse very close to the side of the road.

With the sun gone, the air was suddenly cool, and the light growing dull.

James and Mr Teviot cantered up beside the coach, James greeted the man on the box beside the coach’s driver, and then turned to his own companion to make the introductions.

‘Mr Teviot, this is Major Aylward of his majesty King Louis’ Irish Brigade.’

Both men acknowledged each other with a touch to their hats, and as they did, two ladies emerged from inside the coach and walked away a short distance to stretch their legs, leaving the men to converse under the trees.

‘Allow me to present my fellow officers,’ said Aylward. ‘This is Captain Patrick Tracey and Captain Colm O’Brian, who has brought his wife, Mrs O’Brian, to render the service you have requested. The other lady is Mrs O’Brian’s maid, Teresa.’

The men were in the day attire of civilian gentlemen; subdued, comfortable and well cut. Aylward was a distinguished fellow, tall, with the weathered cheeks of a soldier. The other two were open-faced, younger men, each with a compact economy of movement about them that bespoke a certain seriousness. All three wore bobbed, un-powdered wigs beneath their hats, and were smiling broadly.

‘We meet in the one true cause,’ said Aylward. ‘That the king shall have his own again!’ It was the traditional Jacobite toast, and Aylward passed round a flask for them all to take a drink of what turned out to be excellent brandy.

Major Aylward, the officer who had waved James over the border at Metz not a month before, a complete stranger who had recognised a kindred spirit in a fellow exile, and entreated him to visit on the way back. His presence here on the road into Innsbruck was no accident.

After the near disaster of his first meeting with Princess Clementina, and Mr Teviot’s reproaches, James’ head had been fogged by self-recrimination. But once he’d got it all out of the way, James, the student of moral philosophy and logic, had found he was well armed to deal with the seemingly impossible task of getting a princess out of a prison. Once he’d applied some intellectual rigour, he knew that what starts out looking impossible, can quickly become all too feasible, if you break the problem down into its component parts.

He knew that he and Mr Teviot were never going to prise the princess out of the feldmarschall’s clutches on their own, let alone get her all the way to the Empire’s border and safety.

Step one must be to secure help. And that was when Major Aylward’s parting words had echoed in James’ head. Aylward, an Irishman in the King of France’s service, was almost certainly a Catholic. From which must follow a degree of loyalty to who else, but the king over the water?

So James knew all he had to do to involve Aylward in his plan was to lay it all before him. The man would not, could not, refuse. He set his scheme in motion by writing to the major, care of the Irish Brigade barracks, jogging the major’s memory of the young Scottish cornet of horse in the king’s Chevau-Légers de la Garde, who had once passed his way, and the promise they’d parted on; that they should meet again. He suggested a date and location for such a meeting. The major agreed.

But it had only been after the two men had sat down at that travellers’ inn just the other side of the major’s border post, that James had unveiled his proposition. They were two soldiers of fortune banished from their homes