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

*

It was not total silence that James encountered from his fellow senior officers in the days that followed, but in their company, conversations quickly descended into the monosyllabic. Poinatowski, right again; professional jealousy. James found he was not concerned, and frequently spent his evenings writing. The days, he spent walking or riding the walls and defences of the city, familiarising himself with the ground over which he would likely have to fight. He seldom found his fellow officers similarly engaged.

Then there were the evening concerts given by a lively and talented chamber orchestra, sponsored by King Stanislas for ‘the diversion of the population in these troubled times’. It was at one of those that he chanced upon di Monti again, the French minister to Stanislas’ court.

‘I have inquiries after your health, chevalier colonel,’ di Monti had observed to him. ‘From one Comte de Valençay.’

‘Really? And how is the comte?’

‘La! At his obscure best, chevalier. His letter referred to the wounds you have suffered to your left hand, and inquired whether similar or worse injuries had been suffered by your right. He is a most arch character, the comte. I am assuming that he must have extracted a promise from you to write to him, and that you have not lived up to it. N’est-ce pas? I merely pass on the message, of course, knowing better than to inquire any further into the comte’s affairs. Good day to you, chevalier.’

James understood perfectly; his reins were being jerked. It did not signify. He had nothing to write, never having paid any heed to the politicking all around him. But the comte’s name being uttered gave him a twinge; that he had even mentioned the name of Stuart in connection with the Polish succession, if only to Poinatowski. It mattered not a jot that the chatterers might speculate on all manner of reasons for his presence here. But in that one unconsidered moment he had let slip a genuine morsel to be chewed upon by all who might come upon it.

He liked Poinatowski, instinctively. But what did that signify? The young Polish noble might know of all the currents in play in his world, but there had never been anything about him to give the impression he was an intriguer. One might assume the titbit would be safe with him, that he would never trade it for gain. But then it would only take James’ indiscretion to form part of some anecdote Poinatowski might unthinkingly tell over cards, or round a mess table, and then the idea would be free, with a life of its own in an unsympathetic world.

There was nothing to be done. He would never mention it again. Or write it down. Certainly not in his letters to his elder brother, still in Madrid, or the oldest, still in Edinburgh. Nor to David Hume, to whom he wrote the most. Not that any spy here in Danzig would ever get to read a letter written by him if he did, because he always now handed them personally to trading ship masters about to sail.

It took over a week for the Dzików dragoons to start arriving in the city. Beart, his second in command, had done little to plan the movement in advance, so the men and horses had come dribbling in, in great disorder, on whatever barges had been randomly commandeered. However, once they did arrive, their billeting was seen to with great efficiency by Poinatowski. Even so, it took another two weeks before the regiment was ready to execute his orders.

*

‘Bugler!’ James gave his battlefield bellow. ‘Sound the charge!’

The brassy, urgent blasts were in his ear as he prodded Estelle’s flanks with his stirrups, and behind him, two troops of dragoons in a single rank moved as one from canter to full gallop, sabres drawn, towards a very agricultural line of wagons. Their peasant drivers, dressed in all manner of skins and woollen bundles, began leaping from them, before they realised they’d nowhere to run.

James drank in the scene, leaning forward so his head was practically between Estelle’s eyes; the road ahead of him winding across a packed, old-snowy waste. Everything grey-white apart from the wagons, most of them no more than rolling hay-ricks – fodder for the Russian cavalry, and the few artillery horses around Danzig. Then there were the high-sided wagons, canvas tied tight across their open tops; those could be anything from powder barrels or shot to delicacies for the senior officers’ tables.

There was a score or so of Russian dragoons, scattered along the length of the convoy, about thirty wagons in all. No gay coloured uniforms here; it was too cold. Like James’ own men, the Russians were all in long grey coats, their bicorne hats scrunched down over mufflers, and in as much alarm as their civilian charges. Bolt upright, reining their horses, not knowing where to turn. No chance to draw a sabre or a musket, they nearly all just wheeled round and fled up the rise where their fellow troopers had already ridden, in tight troop formation, to see off a half a dozen Dzików that James had placed there in advance to draw their attention.

The Russians and all the local waggoneers had been looking at the enemy on the crest of the rise, and their own charging fellows, so nobody was watching to see the three-deep column of Polish horsemen ride from behind a bare, leafless copse of birch on the other side of the road; or to see its troopers, once clear of the trees, immediately swing from column into line with the precision of a sweeping watch hand.

Estelle carried James, careening through the gap between two wagons, with Casimir galloping fast in his wake. Out the corner of his eye, James could see one of his troopers battering down, with