I won’t tell either of their stories in great detail here, except to mention that, when Queen Anne died in 1714, Captain Gordon, who could stretch his Jacobite loyalties sufficiently to serve under a Stewart queen, could not stretch them far enough to swear allegiance to King George, whom Jacobites referred to as the German “Prince of Hanover.” Resigning his commission, he left Britain and went into Russia, where he rose to prominence as one of Peter the Great’s most trusted admirals, while continuing to do what he could to advance the interests of King James VIII in exile.
His time in Russia at the heart of the Jacobite community in St. Petersburg is partly told in my novel The Firebird, a story that also allowed me to trace the steps of Robin Moray’s youngest brother, Maurice, and Colonel Graeme’s soldier-turned-Capuchin-monk son, another Patrick, who appears in this book as young Pat in the children’s game of Covenanters and Montrose, but is known more commonly to history as Father Archangel.
Father Archangel claimed in his own family tree that there were four of them—four brothers—born to Colonel Graeme and his wife （although again, to keep things less confusing, I have only put two on the pages of this novel）。
William was the youngest. He became a doctor. Robert died at twenty-one, a monk, like Father Archangel, who lived past his threescore and ten years, dying in Boulogne, France, where he’d risen to be the Guardien des Capucins—the Superior of his house.
And there was James.
I call him Jamie in this book—partly because he appears first as a child, when the name Jamie seemed more fitting for friends and family to use, and because in the letters I read from the period, few of the adults named James were referred to by their full name either, but commonly nicknamed Jemmy or Jamie.
When I first read Louisa Graham’s description of Jamie in Or and Sable, I was convinced I’d found a central part of the great story of adventure that I planned to write about the Scots in Darien.
She told a stirring tale of how, while sailing near the colony, he and his fellow crew members aboard the ship the Dolphin were captured by the Spanish, taken first to Cartagena, then to Spain, where they were held in prison and condemned as pirates, only narrowly escaping execution before finally returning home to Scotland.
It was quite a story, and as I researched the details, it became more fascinating—but there was one problem: that same research proved to me, beyond all doubt, that the James Graham taken by the Spanish was not “my” Jamie.
The index book of the African Company shows there was indeed a James Graham who sailed aboard the ship the Dolphin on that expedition down to Darien in 1698. But there was also a “James Graem” on that same voyage who sailed on the Saint Andrew.
And in all the documents I have before me—from the Company’s registers, to their certification in August 1707 that James Graeme had wages owed to him that needed to be paid from the Equivalent; to the agreement Colonel Graeme, safely in the north of Scotland, signed to have a factor travel down to Edinburgh to do the dealing for him; to the last Testament Dative on October 8, naming Colonel Graeme as Jamie’s nearest kin and heir and granting him the wages owed—the name of Jamie’s ship is clearly stated.
“The deceast James Graeme my son,” writes Colonel Graeme, “who was midshipman and sailor on board the ship the Saint Andrew belonging to the Company of Scotland.”
It’s my belief that the James Graham whose story Louisa Graham wrote about in Or and Sable was, in fact, a cousin—son of Harry Graham of Braekness. That James Graham, after his ordeal in Spain, finally returned to Scotland to give his report to the Company, marry, and live a long life.
“My” Jamie was not so fortunate. Sometime during that expedition, he died.
I’ll admit that I was disappointed when I realized he was not the same James Graham who’d been on the Dolphin, but I still believed he might have made it to Jamaica with what remained of the crew of the Saint Andrew, so I turned my focus there, and the Darien half of the book altered shape in my mind again, adding a possible new section.
But I don’t properly plan out my novels—they take their shape from my subconscious, and on the day Lily and Maggie were meant to set sail from the Clyde, my subconscious was keenly aware of that paper that had been brought back from the colony, listing the names of the people who’d died on the voyage, among them one James Graham, volunteer.
And in my heart, I knew. Even before my own research persuaded me, I knew.
My mind didn’t want to believe it, at first. It raised arguments.