From the set of Davy Hume’s face, all angles and planes in the dancing candlelight, James knew a discourse was coming on. But then, that was what he had come for.
‘We stand at the dawn of a new age,’ said Davy, puffing ruminatively on his pipe for effect. James wasn’t going to be disappointed. ‘An age of reason and enlightenment. The discoveries of science and the study of the natural world are showing us that creation and our place in it, is far wider, more profound and more magnificent than mere canonical dogma can ever contain. But we’re still at the beginning … we might have thrown off that yoke … but where has it got us so far, James? Into the jungle of Hobbes’ Leviathan …’
Thomas Hobbes was the bête noir of their revered tutor, Francis Hutcheson. Hobbes, whose philosophical treatise written at the time of the last century’s English war cast a dark shadow. Both James and Davy Hume knew all about Hobbes and his Leviathan; how he’d argued that man, in his state of nature, was a selfish, brutish creature, a degenerate concerned only in satisfying his base appetites. That he had survived so far only through the constraints of religion – so if you threw that off, then only the tyranny of a totalitarian state could save you from the jungle; from a perpetual, ‘war of all, against all’. They also both knew that Hutcheson believed man deserved a significantly better destiny, and was working to define it and encouraging his students to follow suit.
‘So when it comes to what path you choose, I suppose you have to ask yourself, James,’ continued Davy, ‘which is the nobler pursuit? That of learning, and the ascent of man? Or, who gets to plant his arse on a throne in London?’
‘I agree, of course I agree,’ said James. ‘When you put it like that … great issues are in play.’
As older men, they would scoff at this debate, but now they were both young, still in their teens, so everything was a ‘great issue’, and they saw themselves centre stage in it.
‘But I cannot deny my daily anger at all this oppressive Whiggery,’ continued James, ‘and the preposterous figure this King George cuts upon the world. Sometimes I just want to feel the heft of a sabre in my hand again …’
Davy smiled to himself. It amused him to notice how his friend James was not above romanticising his deeds on that day at Glenshiel.
‘And you are oppressed, how?’ Davy interrupted again. ‘Dragged from your bed each night and beaten? Your purse confiscated by any passing redcoat who takes the notion? Where is the tyranny here? I’ll tell you. It is in the general poverty of folk, and the chaos that blights all our lives. Not because of whose arse is on the throne, but brought about by something more fundamental. By man’s failure to see things as they really are. Man survives. We know that. The very fact that we have history tells us. But if we are to prosper, if we are to find our way to our God-given potential, it is the duty of men like us to enquire ever more deeply into the soul of man … to name and label and so bring to heel all the forces that drive us. It is nothing less than a new moral firmament that we seek ... to define a new polity and guide the hands that will write its laws. A process, I think you’ll find, James, that you and I are already embarked upon.’
James was nodding, sagaciously – weighing these great profundities, as young men do – when there was a commotion, and raised voices from the tap room. A grubby, unshaven face appeared round the corner of the snug.
‘Is on’y o’ ye a scholarly weesitor fae the Glasgow?’ it asked.
‘Aye, and who is it askin’? said Davy, suddenly alert.
The face ignored the question. ‘Cuz there’s a pairty o’ militia stompin’ aboot the wynds, askin’ fer sic, sayin’ he’s a spy and recruiter fer the king o’er the watter … and they’re fair set oan carryin’ him aff tae the tollbooth … where nae doubt there’ll be a noose waitin’ fer ’im lang syne.’
‘On yer feet, James!’ cried Davy, grasping his friend’s arm. From his pocket, he produced a handful of coins, and pressing them into the unshaven man’s hand, he said softly, ‘Tell the militia, aye ye did, and say you saw him heading up the Royal Mile for Borthwick’s Close.’
Davy bundled James out into the wynd, and pushed him the other way, heading through back courts for Fleshmarket Close, and the steps down to the Nor’ Loch.
‘How could they ha’ known?’ hissed James as he stepped out smartly. They neither of them ran, not wishing to draw attention.
‘Man, ye came on the bluidy coach!’ Davy hissed back. ‘Its arrival is practically an event for every cut-purse in the town, and an extra penny for the first one to tell the militia who was on it. Anyway, you have your answer. Your family is demonstrably involved in another intrigue, and like to get you hung whether you want to come out with them or not.’
They reached the bottom of the steps, where the reek of the loch was strong.
‘I leave you here, James,’ said Davy, turning his friend to him; their faces just pale smudges to each other against the dark loom of
