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

But the reality of the king’s true position could not be denied, at least not by anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear.

On the face of it, King James’ court had still been a vibrant one when James Lindsay arrived; and indeed it remained so. The palazzo, no more than a baroque, four-storey town house in the shadow of the minor Roman basilica of the Santi Dodici Apostoli, held musical soirées twice a week, and balls every weekend. Every gentleman from Great Britain passing through on his grand tour was encouraged to call.

But behind the settled façade was a writhing, seething struggle for personal gain and favour. Some came from vanity, most from greed. Factions constructed grand strategies, abased themselves at courts from Madrid to Paris to St Petersburg, seeking diplomatic backing, the promise of troops, guns, the promise of future treaties with a restored Stuart monarchy – and always, their hands out for money.

Sometimes the corruption and self-interest was so blatant, James had felt sick. How could the king not see? Not act? Sometimes he wondered if it were not just a throne the king was lacking, but the dynamism necessary to seize it.

‘He just seems to always want to see the best in people,’ the Comte de Valençay had once observed to James at one of the palazzo soirées, long after the all the initial shine of James’ heroic rescue had rubbed off. De Valençay was King Louis’ man at the Vatican.

James would never forget how the French aristo had first introduced himself that evening.

‘Chevalier Lindsay, I carry a message for you from Colonel Flahaut …’ a man had said, suddenly at James’ elbow, out of the blue. Colonel Flahaut? James was stunned; his former commanding officer of the Chevau-Légers de la Garde? How could this man know that? Who was he?

‘The colonel still remembers you, despite the passage of time, chevalier. When we last conversed, and I told him you and I now shared the same city, he asked to be remembered to you. He also asked me to thank you for your parting billet … most courteous, he said, although obviously hastily written,’ continued the man, ‘and he said to tell you that knowing la de Boufflers he quite understood your reasons … and applauded your discretion in sparing the regiment any subsequent discomfiture. Oh, and he added that your commission still sits upon his table against the day you choose to return.’

For want of anything else to say, all James had managed was, ‘I do not believe I have had the pleasure …?’

‘Oh! Pardon! The Comte de Valençay, King Louis’ ambassador to the Holy See, at your service. I do so enjoy attending the Stuart court here in Rome, so far from its natural home. They do put on such wonderful entertainments; one almost forgets they are merely doing it to distract themselves from their pain … they certainly distract me! And the people you meet are invariably fascinating.’

After that, de Valençay often button-holed James to renew their ‘diverting conversation’. James had always found him a most discomfiting man; very tall and languid yet precise in all his movements. His limbs were most eccentrically elongated, so that he seemed to move like a praying mantis, but he was compelling in his charm and wit. James always looked forward to their meetings, despite himself, always feeling uncomfortable, as if he was in the presence of a superior intellect. Grateful for the attention, yet recognising that he was in the presence of something dangerous, too.

It had been what else de Valençay had gone on to say at that first meeting that had first snagged James’ interest in the man.

‘Resigning your commission, chevalier … do you ever wonder whether you swapped a sound horse for a lame one?’

‘I don’t understand the question, comte. I had no …’

‘Choice? Of course you didn’t, but I ask it in terms of your king, and seeing the best in people.’

James frowned.

‘We live in a world today of great power relationships, that produce causes for war and strife ad infinitum. France, Spain, Austria, Russia. And Britain, behind its moat. Alliances, interests … who is with us today, and not, tomorrow. In this world the periods of peace are merely truces, and human bloodshed only suspended. But a truly powerful Britain, in an unknown future, what role might she play? A Britain, despite her moat … bound to the continent, but not of it … using her diplomatic skill and her commercial might to direct and control in an intelligent fashion? Her current king is a fat German farmer. But on the other hand, do you think a king who only sees the best, is a king who is equal to the task of controlling and directing … in an intelligent fashion?’

James had stared at him, dumbfounded. He had only recently begun a new correspondence with his old friend Davy Hume, and it was on this very subject – of how man might break the endless cycle of bloodshed and war through a new philosophy of moral conduct – that they were exchanging letters. Their old lecturer and mentor Francis Hutcheson had returned to Glasgow University to take up the chair of moral philosophy, and his work was stimulating much thought. Both James and Davy had agreed they were living in an important time. How had this Frenchman known? Indeed, how had he known anything, and why had he lit upon James to share his thoughts?

‘I merely throw these thoughts out,’ de Valençay had continued, with a smile as sweet and innocent as a child’s. ‘They are but the musings of a diplomat with too little to do, who likes to peer into the future ... but by employing more earth-bound, empirical tools than your gypsy astrologer. I’d be intrigued to hear