Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [131]
“Well, more or less,” I said. “I gather you do, though, which is what’s important. What does it say?”
The expression of lively interest with which Jamie greeted all manner of puzzles faded a bit, and he let the sheet of paper fall to his knee. He looked at me, lower lip caught between his teeth in introspection.
“Well,” he said, “that’s what’s odd. And yet I dinna see how I can be mistaken. The tone of James’s letters overall tend one way, and this ciphered one spells it out clearly.”
Blue eyes met mine under thick, ruddy brows.
“James wants Charles to find favor with Louis,” he said slowly, “but he isna looking for support for an invasion of Scotland. James has no interest in seeking restoration to the throne.”
“What?” I snatched the sheaf of letters from his hand, my eyes feverishly scanning the scribbled text.
Jamie was right; while the letters from supporters spoke hopefully of the impending restoration, James’s letters to his son mentioned no such thing, but were all concerned with Charles’s making a good impression upon Louis. Even the loan from Manzetti of Salerno had been sought to enable Charles to live with the appearance of a gentleman in Paris; not to support any military end.
“Well, I’m thinking James is a canny wee man,” Jamie had said, tapping one of the letters. “For see, Sassenach, he’s verra little money of his own; his wife had a great deal, but Uncle Alex told me that she left it all to the church when she died. The Pope has been maintaining James’s establishment—after all, he’s a Catholic monarch, and the Pope is bound to uphold his interests against those of the Elector of Hanover.”
He clasped his hands around one knee, gazing meditatively at the pile of papers now laid between us on the sofa.
“Philip of Spain and Louis—the Old King, I mean—gave him a small number of troops and a few ships, thirty years ago, with which to try to regain his throne. But it all went wrong; bad weather sank some of the ships, and the rest had no pilots and landed in the wrong place—everything went awry, and in the end, the French simply sailed off again, with James not even setting foot upon the soil of Scotland. So perhaps in the years since, he gave up any thought of getting back his throne. But still, he had two sons coming to manhood, and no way to see them properly settled in life.
“So I ask myself, Sassenach”—he rocked backward a bit—“what would I do, in such a situation? The answer being, that I might try and see if my good cousin Louis—who’s King of France, after all—might maybe see one son established in a good position; given a military appointment, maybe, and men to lead. A General of France is no bad position in life.”
“Mm.” I nodded, thinking. “Yes, but if I were a very smart man, I might not just come to Louis and beg, as a poor relation. I might send my son to Paris, and try to shame Louis into accepting him at Court. And meanwhile keep alive the illusion that I was actively seeking restoration.”
“For once James admits openly that the Stuarts will never rule Scotland again,” Jamie added softly, “then he has no more value to Louis.”
And without the possibility of an armed Jacobite invasion to occupy the English, Louis would have little reason to give his young cousin Charles anything beyond the pittance that decency and public opinion would force him to provide.
It wasn’t certain; the letters Jamie had been able to get, a few at a time, went back only as far as last January, when Charles had arrived in France. And, couched in code, cipher, and guarded language generally, the situation was far from clear. But taken all in all, the evidence did point in that direction.
And if Jamie’s guess as to the Chevalier’s motives was correct—then our task was accomplished already; had never in fact existed at all.
* * *
Thinking over the events of the night before, I was abstracted all the next day, through a visit to