By My Sword Alone by David Black (best e books to read .TXT) 📗

wee Jaimie Lindsay? Twa fingertips clean gone, man! It must’ve been some fierce battle!” If it is a man being telt, he’ll already be contemplating the pie he’s havin’ for dinner, and if he is of a witty disposition, hoping the fingers won’t be in it. And if a wummin, she’ll already be lookin’ at that dress in the shop opposite. So will you wheesht now Jaimie and let me finish! Going to university at Glasgow will get you out the way, not because of some trifling scratches, but because I have to create a myth, and your presence might leave it open to doubt. You are likely to hear things, even as far as Glasgow. Feign total ignorance if you do. You have always looked a dizzy cheel, it will not be over difficult.’

James ignored the jibe; he was used to them. ‘What things?’ he asked.

‘Two Branters at Glenshiel. I must let the rumour spread that the other one was me. And then dash it. It is risky but by far the easiest way to deflect attention from you. People’s minds do not dwell on confusion if there is a plausible alternative. They will know that David was there, and they will be led to assume that the other was me. Then, once the notion has traction, I will be at pains to deny it. Aided by my alibis ... my appearances before the bench, in the university library, at kirk. Two versions of the same tale … only one can be true. But as everyone knows, all tittle-tattler tales are prone to inflation in the re-telling. Was it two brothers? Or just one? Maybe the first witness had had a dunt from a redcoat grenadier and was seeing double ...’

‘All that trouble to go to, for me?’

Archibald lifted a finger for hush. ‘You are my brother. Also, you are young. If they come to you, you might not know what you might give away to a professional questioner. But mostly, the cause needs you clean. For who knows when a grown James Lindsay’s services might be needed?’

That was why monies had been found to pay for a place at Glasgow. And why Mr McKay had been in communication with the university senate.

James listened, all too aware that nobody in the family had ever discussed with him the cause, or inquired if he wished pledge his loyalty to it – and all too aware of the presumption of his brother in this matter, that he would.

So, he had rallied to the standard at Glenshiel – but it would have been nice to be asked if he could continue to be counted on. He wasn’t saying it to himself at the time, but it would prove to be another seed of resentment.

Archibald did not deign to notice the expression on James’ face as he continued. ‘You are young yet to matriculate, but Mr McKay assured the senate despite your tender years you are competent enough in Latin to comprehend the lectures – all the teaching is in that language. Anyway, that and the heavy clink of a full purse was enough to secure the university’s complaisance. I have arranged rooms not far from the High Street. You leave at the end of the week.’

His remaining days at Kirkspindie saw him wander its full extent, drinking in the only place he’d ever known as home. Apart from his recent cross-country march to war, which he now looked upon more as some holiday adventure, this trip to Glasgow would be the first time he’d ever really left.

And over everything hung the presence of his father. James was still too young to have the necessary vocabulary for his own description of the man, but he could easily recall apposite passages from M’sieur Eugene’s teaching. ‘Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing …’ was one that fitted the bill, he remembered, penned by that English playwright in his Scottish play.

For the earl was indeed a bellicose ranter, with a predilection for procrastination. And if he had been constant in his character, even unto that, his might have been a life lived free of turmoil. But he was not constant. There was a cycle to his behaviour that every now and then saw the procrastination torn asunder by sudden bursts of intense activity, nearly always ill-judged and invariably misguided.

Even at his tender age, James did not like to think what that cycle might portend for the cause of the king over the water.

2

Pushed to Flight

‘I know not what intrigue they are up to now,’ James said, running his fingers through a tousle of hair, ‘but I’m damned but they’ve implicated me in it. I’m sure of it. And I’m a dither what to do, dear Davy. And that’s why I’m here in the town, pinning your ear.’

James Lindsay and his friend David Hume sat huddled in the snug of a tavern in one of the many stinking wynds off the Royal Mile. Outside was a labyrinth of twelve-storey high tenement canyons, smeared in rain-runnelled soot; the night sky a merely a darker tier, high above in the permanent shadow into which the drizzle seemed to cling more than fall, like over-saturated air. And below, all manner of human waste puddled the ground in the tiny courtyards and narrow closes between.

The tavern, however, was a lit haven of warmth. The homely heat from a fire in an open grate, and the cosy fug in the air from a surfeit of candles that complemented the smoke from over a dozen pipes of quietly puffing customers in its tap room. Round a corner, in the snug, it was more intimate, with just our two sat together over a pint of claret – not their first.

‘It sounds ominous the way ye tell it, James,’ Hume was saying, as he stuffed his own pipe. ‘But it could just as weel