M’sieur Eugene’s flight had taken him as far as Montrose, and thence through Mr McKay’s good offices, to Kirkspindie. James remembered a tall, spare, enigmatic character, a man of many parts, who never explained how he came by them. Or discussed his family, or what had happened to them, or indeed himself. So total was his reticence that no-one in the Lindsay family had ever questioned why those significant parts had not propelled him to far a greater status, on a more impressive stage, than a mere tutor to the third son of a minor aristocrat in an obscure corner of a not very significant European power.
But here he had remained; to all intents and purposes a happy man, seeing to James’ letters; and thence to his Latin and French. And when he hadn’t been busy in the schoolroom with the boy, he cultivated in him courtly manners, polished his rough, rural accent and developed in him a certain talent for dancing in the French fashion. And all of it, he made fun, instilling in the boy a love of reading, and through it the prospect of a whole, wide world beyond his own damp, dreich home.
‘Use your brain, James,’ M’sieur Eugene used to say him, tapping his head. ‘Of all God’s gifts it is the most divine. So don’t be like …’ and here M’sieur Eugene would range off on yet another disparaging allusion for the mass of mankind, each one more convoluted and hilarious than the one before, frequently reducing James, and then himself, to uncontrollable giggles in the middle of the most serious lessons.
However, as far as James was concerned, the best times with his unassuming tutor were the fencing lessons, where the young James displayed an early, and not to be sneered at dexterity with the épée.
Then, a little less than a year ago, M’sieur Eugene had departed without so much as a goodbye. As Archibald was in charge, only he would have known why, but Archibald said nothing.
Indeed, Archibald had sought to enlighten James about little in those days. Reasonable questions, such as how they’d managed to retain Kirkspindie house and immediate grounds if all else had been forfeit to the crown? Or where the monies came for its upkeep, or to put meat on the table?
James and Archibald. James, the late child – the ‘mistake’, if you like – and Archibald, the obligatory heir. They were not close. Archibald, still in his early twenties, invariably passed for a man much older, and his ubiquitous dark fustian suits didn’t help. Archibald had been careful never to come out for the king over the water. Yet their father had come out, in no uncertain terms. He had been there for the ’15 rising, or ‘rebellion’ as those damned Whigs called it, and had fought at Sheriffmuir before having to flee into exile with a price on his head, and King George’s men all over his lands and policies with the king’s bill of attainder in their hands, while Archibald had remained with his books at Edinburgh University.
But no schism had arisen between father and heir.
Archibald had been reading law at Edinburgh because he had to. First it had been the Act of Union, and all the taxes and tariffs that then encumbered a no-longer-separate Scotland. They left no wealth in the land for the gentry to live off, so that all young men of good family were forced to earn a living by means other than collecting rents.
Then there had been the reckoning for the ’15.
And that was where Archibald’s legal knowledge paid off.
He had picked for loopholes in the legal assault on their family estates and found a tract of land had been passed to him personally, through his mother. As the courts had decided in the wake of the ’15 that Archibald had committed no treason, that bequest had been safe. And the rents from it had helped sustain what was left of the House of Branter and kept Kirkspindie Mearns.
And now Archibald was back here, to disrupt his life.
‘Your father has instructed that you go to university,’ continued Archibald, in his high tone. ‘And I agree. You are too young to sit about this house, unsupervised.’
James had been ready to bridle, but the news he was to go to university, so suddenly sprung, just as suddenly gripped him in a fever of excitement. Until a thought occurred to him.
‘How do you know what father instructs?’ he asked.
Archibald looked at him as if he were stupid. ‘We write, clandestinely. Do not interrupt. I have other matters to relate. And most important, and most sensitive they are too, so I require you to pay attention.’
Their father was returning to Kirkspindie. Something else sprung upon him, but he wasn’t so sure that was quite as exciting.
The earl made his entrance a few days later. James did not step out to meet him. He’d taken to carrying whatever book he was reading to the far side of the orchards every day after breakfast, and hiding out there until dinner was called.
Also, while out on his perambles, the lad had systematically scouted all avenues of escape from the estate. He thought it only prudent given that his father, the earl, was a known fugitive, and in the event he was trailing a troop of pursuing king’s dragoons in his wake, how would young James explain away his wounds? Glenshiel had not been so long ago.
It was while James was on one of those expeditions that Archibald
