The Firebird

‘Not always. Only when I leave the office.’

‘He was quiet all the weekend.’

‘Well, he likely had a woman with him,’ I explained. ‘Besides, I don’t work weekends.’

‘And you’re not working the now,’ was Rob’s reminder. ‘Put that thing away.’

‘Rob …’

‘Put it down, or switch it off, afore I throw it out the window.’

From his tone I knew he wasn’t being serious, but nonetheless I humoured him and stuffed the mobile deep into my pocket.

‘Thank you. Now,’ he said, ‘what were you saying about Colonel Patrick Graeme?’

‘Oh. I looked him up. He was the Captain of the Edinburgh Town Guard, when he was younger, so a man of some authority, but when King James the second—’

‘Seventh.’

‘Sorry?’

‘To you English,’ Rob corrected me, ‘he was the second king named James to rule ye, but in Scotland we’d already had six James’s afore him.’

‘Well, both names would be right, then.’

Once again I got the sideways glance. ‘Whose history are ye learning, at the moment?’

‘Scotland’s, I suppose.’

‘Then learn it properly.’ His tone was lighter than his words, but I still took the dare.

‘All right, then. When King James VII left and went to France in exile, Captain Patrick Graeme followed him. He left his wife behind, I think, in Edinburgh. At least at the beginning.’

‘Children?’

‘He had four sons, from what I could find. Two became Capuchin monks, one was trained as a doctor, and one went to sea.’

‘What, no soldiers?’

‘Apparently not.’ I consulted the papers I’d scribbled on last night when I’d done my Internet searching. ‘The seagoing one and one monk died as fairly young men, but the other monk seems to have made quite a name for himself. He was called “Father Archangel”.’

Rob said, ‘Still, from those bloodlines you’d think you would get at least one soldier.’

‘Maybe that’s why Colonel Graeme was close to his nephew,’ I said. ‘Anna’s father.’

‘And what did ye learn about him?’

‘Colonel Graeme told Anna that her father’s name was John, and that his father was the Laird of Abercairney, right? Well, there was a John Moray, the third son of Sir Robert Moray of Abercairney, who became a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Regiment of Lee, one of the Irish regiments that served the King of France.’

Rob thought that sounded right.

I said, ‘John Moray died around 1710.’

‘That would fit. What we saw at the cottage,’ he said, ‘was most likely happening right at the end of the ’15.’

‘The what?’

‘The rebellion of 1715.’ His eyebrow was lifting again. ‘Do they not teach you any real history at all, here in England?’

‘Go on, then. Enlighten me.’

‘King James VII had three children,’ Rob told me, patiently. ‘Two daughters, by his first wife, and a son by his second. The birth of that son was what set off the first revolution, ye ken, against James, in the late 1680s, for James meant to raise his son Catholic, as he was, and that was a problem for those who opposed him. They wanted a Protestant heir to the throne. So they fought against James, and he went into exile, and they set his daughters, whose mother had raised them both Protestant, to rule in his place. The first daughter was Mary, along with her husband – you’ve heard about William and Mary? And after came Anne. By the time Queen Anne died, James VII was dead as well, and her half-brother, whose name was also James, was nearly my age by then. He still lived in his exile in France, and there’s some talk,’ he told me, ‘that Anne thought to make him her heir, for her own children all died afore her, but none of her English advisors would have that. When she died, in 1714, they went for her closest relation who was a good Protestant, and brought him over from Hanover – Germany,’ Rob said. ‘And that’s how you end up with King George, the first George, who barely spoke English. The Jacobites, not just in Scotland, ye ken, but in England, too, weren’t having that. So they started a war, and brought young James, King James VIII, over from France to win back his crown.’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘No. Most of the fighting was over afore he arrived. What we saw at the cottage near Slains,’ Rob remarked, ‘was the end of it – all of the Jacobites making a run for it with England’s ally, the Earl of Argyll, at their heels.’

‘Was he Scottish?’

‘He was.’

I was silent a moment, still sorting out all the alliances and the betrayals of those tangled times, and the cause that had brought a man of Colonel Graeme’s great age back from France into Scotland to fight for the man he considered his king.

‘It’s a shame,’ I said. ‘All of the fighting they did, and for nothing.’

‘Well, they’d not have seen it that way. It was James VIII’s throne, he’d been born to it, and in their view there was no act of parliament could change that fact. They were fighting for honour and justice. Not bad things to fight for.’

I smiled at his tone. ‘And would you have fought, too, with the Jacobites, if you had lived back then?’

‘Most likely.’ Briefly pressing back against his seat, Rob stretched his shoulders as though they were cramping.