‘Why, of the English captain—for I’ll no more call him Scottish—of the English rogue who did this day betray his friends by turning his own guns upon that same French ship that had so long been under siege, and forcing its surrender. I do speak,’ he said, and spat the name, ‘of Captain Thomas Gordon.’
She stepped back as though he’d struck her. ‘I do not believe it.’
‘Nor would I, had I not seen it with my own eyes.’ His face grew bitter. ‘I’ve seen many things this day that I would rather not have seen. But as ye say, the king does live.’
Sophia hugged her arms more tightly round herself and wished that she believed in God enough to pray that Moray, too, was still alive. But even if he was, she knew that he had passed beyond her prayers, to waters much more dangerous.
‘Why did it fail?’ I asked from curiosity, and Graham, who’d been lounging on the other sofa, marking papers, glanced across.
‘What’s that?’
‘The invasion. Why didn’t it work, do you think?’
‘Ah.’ He set down the paper and rested his head back in thought.
I had never been able to write, before now, with somebody else there in the room. It distracted me. Even my parents had learned to stay clear. But this morning Graham had come downstairs while I was still deep in my trance and had settled in without my even knowing he was there. It wasn’t until I’d gone three pages on and discovered that I was now drinking a fresh cup of coffee that I hadn’t made, that I had looked over and seen him stretched out on the opposite sofa, his own cup of coffee forgotten beside him, head bent to his papers.
And then, having noted his presence, I’d simply gone back to my writing, back into the flow of it, lovely, unbroken. I’d never have thought it was possible. But here I was at the end of the scene, and here Graham was, still in the room with me, quietly comfortable, thinking of reasons why young King James hadn’t succeeded in his first rebellion attempt in that spring of ’08.
‘The easy answer,’ he began, ‘is that it failed because the Stewarts never had much luck. I mean, from Mary, Queen of Scots on down, their history’s not a happy one. They didn’t lack for looks, or charm, but somehow they just never had it easy.’
‘Most historians would say they brought that on themselves.’
His sidelong look was inwardly amused. ‘Never trust a historian. Especially Protestant historians writing about Catholic kings. Most of history is only the tale of the winning side, anyway, and they’ve a motive for painting the other side black. No, the Stewarts weren’t that bad. Take James, for example—old James, who was father to your King James. Most of the books that say he was a bad king and cruel and the rest of it, all that came down from one single account that was written by someone just passing on rumors years after the fact. If you read what was actually written by those who were with James, who saw what he did, they have nothing but good things to say of the man. But historians went with the rumors, and once it’s been written in print, well, it’s taken as gospel, and then it’s a source for the research of future historians, so we keep copying lies and mistakes,’ Graham said, with a shrug. ‘That’s why I tell my students to always get back to original documents. Don’t trust the books.’
‘So the Stewarts,’ I steered him back round to the question, ‘just had some bad luck.’
‘That’s one answer. And bloody bad timing.’
I frowned. ‘But their timing was not all that bad in the ’08. I mean, with the English off fighting in Flanders, and the Union making everyone up here feel mad enough to fight, and—’
‘Oh, aye, you’re right in that sense. Aye, of all the Jacobite rebellions, the ’08 was the one that should have worked. They would have had to face the English fleet at any rate—you couldn’t send some twenty-odd ships sailing out of Dunkirk without tipping off the English you were coming—but you’re right, they did manage to get a bit of a jump on them, and on land they’d have met hardly any resistance at all. They nearly broke the Bank of England as it was, there was such panic when the word got out King James was coming. One more day and things would have been such a mess Queen Anne might have been forced to make a peace and name her brother as successor just to save her own position. But I didn’t mean that sort of timing. I meant their specific timing. First,’ he said, ‘the young king catches measles just as they get set to leave Dunkirk. That sets them back a bit. And next they have a storm at sea. And then they miss their mark and end up miles off course, just off the coast up here, so that they have to turn around and lose a day in getting back to where they should be. Then, when they do make it to the Firth, they don’t go in, but drop their anchors, wait the night and let the English catch them. History,’ Graham said, ‘is really just a series of “what if ’s”。 What if the French commander hadn’t gone off course? He would have made the Firth a whole day earlier, far ahead of the English ships. What if that first ship that went up the Firth, the…I forget the name…’