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

… because it is not a matter of life and death for you. But it is for me, and for Courland. So I will explain and then we shall talk about you, and then we shall see if you wish to continue being so wilfully obtuse.’

James’ brow furrowed; what was all this, ‘then we shall talk about you’ that she was saying? What was there to ‘talk about’ when it came to him? He was not the problem here, it was her wayward, headstrong charging about … to call her a bull in a china shop was not even close!

But Dorothea was not finished.

‘I would love to see Stanislas reign as King of Poland. Courland would love it. To have a neighbour free of the pernicious intrigues and ambitions of the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs. But I came to Danzig to drip into Stanislas’ ear that it would be better if he accepted their consolation prizes and slipped away. This Augustus they intend to put in his place is a puppet – even he knows it. The Poles might not want a puppet, but Austrian Charles does. Especially one who will give him stability on his eastern frontier. Tsarina Anna would rather just swallow Poland whole, but with Austria in the game, she cannot. However, if a compromise can secure her western frontier, and allow her influence to extend a little further along the southern shores of the Baltic, and even further into Europe, then she will acquiesce. After all, such an accommodation means that she and Austrian Charles can concentrate on scratching at their mutual itch to the south – the Turk. For Poland, it is an arrangement that means she is no longer in any danger of being merely gobbled up by the bear, and Courland with her. Both get to live a little longer, and not to end up just booty in a bag. That is why I came here, to do what I had to, to prevent that, with what I had to hand.’

James, dizzy with it all, had wondered if maybe the ordinary Courlander, or Pole, might have settled for just being allowed to get on with their lives.

‘And then you turned up, chevalier,’ she sneered at him. ‘Or rather, not so much you, but who you represented. You were bound to attract attention with a sejm in full call ... but you proceeded to do nothing. The man you would call king had sent you, must have sent you. No other meaning was credible. Yet you did nothing in his cause, not even listen! Not even after the letters from Rome arrived – which everybody read, obviously. How could you imagine they wouldn’t? And so everybody then knew that you had been sent with a mission, a mission you betrayed! You stand in judgement over me, for what I have done. But all I have done has been out of loyalty. Something you obviously do not comprehend. I asked you why you were here, so you might help me save my people, but you wouldn’t tell me. So I asked where answers might be had …’

And in a flash, James knew who had put the whole Stuart notion in her head. De Valençay. She had been communicating with her old partner in intrigue. Of course she had! She would not have been able to resist, regardless of the wisdom of it. If James shut his eyes, he could practically see the letters passing to and fro between Dorothea and de Valençay, and he wondered how many other fingers must have handled them those confidential communiqués. But he wasn’t allowed to wonder long, for Dorothea hadn’t finished.

‘James Francis Edward Stuart,’ she said the name with a malicious precision. ‘Of royal blood. Married into Polish nobility. And a friend to Louis of France, also married into Polish nobility. A Stuart on the Polish throne puts a Polish consort there beside him. Not quite what the sejm voted for, but almost there. It also brings France into Poland. The most powerful nation in Europe … what a buttress against the east. And for France herself, a strategic gift that allows her to close the pen on the troublesome Hapsburgs. And for Courland, we get a powerful friend on our doorstop, and overnight we cease to be a mere bauble for a Romanov to dispense as reward to their latest favourite. I want James Stuart on this throne. And I have a way to sell the idea to the Russians that will suit them very well, if I can prevail upon your General Lacy to place it before the tsarina.’

James added hubris to the mental list of her qualities that he had been composing just a moment before. He had no wish to hear what notion she wished to sell to the Tsarina Anna. Just as he had no idea whether all her other constructions had any truth to them. He’d come here for one reason only – to tell Dorothea one thing only; that as fine and grandiose, and oh so subtle her notions might sound to her own ear right now, as far as her future was concerned, they were but flotsam. Because Lacy would never listen to her, because the Russian tsarina didn’t want to listen, and when her soldiers got here, they were going to do away with Dorothea von Kettler, and that she had to leave immediately. There could be no more secret safe conduct passes beyond the walls for trysts with Lacy’s staff. If she tried again, she would not return. Nor could she wait idly while the siege around the city closed, because it would seal her inside with nothing left to do but await her executioner.

He tried again to explain, but she’d have none of it and was in full retort – on how events had moved beyond his shabby betrayals, how he knew nothing, and in his shabbiness, had changed