The Firebird

It made quite a full table for dinner: the general, his wife, Father Dominic, Vice Admiral Gordon with Sir Harry Stirling and Captain Hay, and of course Edmund beside her, his shoulder for want of space brushing her own when he reached for the bread.

Anna lost track a few times of what they were actually talking about, but she put her distraction down more to the liveliness of conversation than to her awareness of the dark man at her side.

Gordon sat at her other side, with General Lacy as usual heading the table, his wife at the foot, and Sir Harry and Captain Hay sitting to either side of the Franciscan, who seemed keen to hear all the news out of Rome.

Anna, living with Vice Admiral Gordon so long, had grown very accustomed to having the business of King James’s exiled court talked about openly, but this was the first time she’d seen it happen here, at General Lacy’s own table. She’d known his sympathies, certainly, and that he’d fought for King James in his youth and still passed his glass over the water, but it gave her pleasure to hear him now talking of current affairs with the ardour of one who was still a true Jacobite.

‘And did you see Daniel O’Brien, when you came through Paris?’ he asked Captain Hay.

‘I did, aye. He is well. He said he’d spoken to the Duke of Holstein’s agent there, who did assure him that the Duke, were he to gain the throne of Sweden, wishes nothing more than for King James to be restored.’

Vice Admiral Gordon nodded. ‘Aye, the Duke says much the same to me.’

‘I also met with our friend General Dillon while in Paris,’ Captain Hay went on, ‘and found him very desolate. The King no longer holds him in his confidence.’

‘Why not?’ asked Gordon. ‘Dillon is a good man, and a loyal one.’

‘The King is well aware of that, but General Dillon,’ said the captain, ‘keeps unfortunate companions. Like the Earl of Mar.’

The name meant something to the men around the table, for apart from Father Dominic they all seemed understanding of the reasons why the King would have withdrawn his trust from General Dillon.

‘Anyway,’ the captain said, ‘I did not stop too long in Paris, for even though I travelled with an alias there are too many eyes there for my presence to go unremarked, and knowing I had just come from the King, the rats came out to sniff about. I did not wish to find myself in irons, or worse. O’Brien told me of a former courier, some years ago, who’d come across with money for the King, and who resisted all attempts to turn his loyalties so strongly that the agents of the English had him poisoned. Far from killing him, it turned him mad, so that his friends were forced to bind him, and O’Brien said the man has never yet recovered.’

‘Who was this?’ Sir Harry Stirling asked, with interest.

‘Maurice Moray.’

Anna let go of her cup of wine and would have spilt it had not Edmund’s reflexes been quicker. As he righted it, she bent her head to hide her face. ‘I’m sorry.’

Captain Hay was speaking, still. ‘You will have heard about his family, I am sure. Of Abercairney. This Maurice was the youngest of them, I believe.’

‘Indeed, I know them well,’ Sir Harry Stirling said. ‘His elder brother Robert married my own father’s widow, for she was still young at my father’s death. Robert,’ he said, ‘only narrowly missed being hanged after Sherrifmuir, but though he won his release his wife died not long after, and left their five children all motherless.’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Lacy said, ‘how very sad.’

‘That whole family has come quite undone, in standing for the King,’ Sir Harry said. ‘But then, ’tis true of many families that have done the same, both Scots and Irish.’

Edmund put in dryly, ‘We should all do as the English, merely drinking healths to James instead of raising swords for him, for then we might avoid the broken heads and lost estates, as they do.’

Anna had blinked back the sting of tears enough to lift her head again, and yet the pain of hearing of her uncles’ fates, and knowing full well that her Uncle Maurice would not have been made to suffer anything had she been more discreet and not revealed him to his enemies, she could not keep the bitterness from sharpening her voice. ‘But it is by our actions, surely, and not by our words, that we reveal our worth.’

‘I know that, Mistress Jamieson. ’Tis why I made the joke.’

‘Forgive me, sir, it did not sound a joke to me.’

Across the table, Captain Hay watched their exchange with curiosity, as though, surprised by Anna’s tone, he sought a closer study of its cause. ‘Mr O’Connor, you did lately come from Spain, I understand?’

‘I did, sir. I left Spain nearly a year ago, and came here the beginning of November last.’

‘I only ask,’ said Captain Hay, ‘because in Paris I did hear some talk of an O’Connor who had left Madrid last year under suspicion he was Stanhope’s spy.’

‘That would have been myself, sir.’ Edmund took the accusation full on, straightening his shoulders as he settled back, so that the roughness of his coat brushed Anna’s arm. ‘In faith, I have lost count of all the things I was accused of when I left, but I remember that was one of them.’

‘And were they right, then, to suspect that you were spying for the English?’ Captain Hay asked, pressing, as he liked to do, until he had the truth.

Anna could feel the irritation of the man beside her, even though his voice stayed pleasant. ‘Surely there’s no answer to be made to that, for if I were a spy I’d scarcely own it, and if I were not, my answer would yet be the same as if I were.’