The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(103)
Sophia doubted whether there was anything that would improve her game this morning, trapped as she still was, her king held helplessly in check. While Captain Ogilvie settled himself in a chair by the fire, she took the opportunity to study once again the way the pieces were positioned on the board, in hopes she’d chance upon the move that would release her king from peril.
Colonel Graeme watched her closely from across the table, making no attempt to hide his amusement. ‘There is a way,’ he told her, ‘to get out of that.’
‘You would not wish to tell me what it is?’ She knew he wouldn’t. He had never told her how to move or given her advice, but in the teaching of this game he had from time to time seen fit to help her train her sight along the proper line.
He did it now. ‘It does involve your queen.’
‘My queen…’ She looked, but still she could not see it. And then, of a sudden, ‘Oh,’ she said, and made the move.
‘See?’ Colonel Graeme’s smile seemed proud of her. ‘I told ye. Now your king is safe. At least,’ he told her, teasing, ‘for the moment.’
Ogilvie looked on with partial interest, but Sophia knew he would not sit for long before the urge to tell a story overcame him. He had kept them fully entertained at last night’s supper with his tales, for having lived so long he had amassed a wealth of stories, and the telling of them seemed to bring him pleasure. Neither did Sophia have any objection to hearing them. She found them fascinating, full of bold adventure—though she would have listened, truth be told, if they had all been dull, because her heart was not so hard she could deny a man like Ogilvie, whose days of grandeur and of glory were all now behind him, the chance to live those days again in memory, while he spoke.
‘Aye,’ said Ogilvie, relaxing back into his chair, ‘’Tis often in the power of the queen to save the king. Our young King Jamie owes much to his mother. He would not be living at all were it not for her bravery in taking him over the sea.’
Colonel Graeme seemed to also sense a story coming on, and did his part to encourage it. ‘Aye, ye should tell this young lassie about all of that. She’d have been but a wee bairn herself, at the time.’
Ogilvie looked at Sophia, and seeing that she was receptive, said, ‘Well, the young king—Prince of Wales he was then—was but half a year old. It was this time of year, the first days of December, and everything wild and windy and cold. Things were going poorly for the old king then. He was losing his hold on the kingdom. Most of his generals, and Marlborough with them, had left him, gone over to William of Orange, and his own daughter Anne had just secretly flown, too. That did him in badly. A raw wound, it was, that the daughter he loved would betray him. He lost a good part of his fight after that, and cared little what happened to him, but he cared a great deal for the queen and the wee Prince of Wales. He kent the lad would not be safe, for all the Whigs had whispered round the falsehood that wee James was not the queen’s own son. The devil’s lie, that was,’ he said with feeling, ‘and how the queen could bear it, having birthed him in a room stacked full with witnesses as all queens must endure, I—’ He broke off, the strong emotion that had gripped him making further speech on that same subject difficult.
Sophia knew he’d meant to say he did not know. He did not know how Mary of Modena had withstood such slander, and Sophia did not know herself how any woman could. To carry a child and bring him to life, and then have him denied and rejected by those who knew otherwise…well, it was not to be thought of. Sophia resisted the now almost unthinking impulse to rest a hand on her own belly while Ogilvie, having recovered, went on, ‘But the old king had made up his mind that the queen and the Prince of Wales were to be sent out of London and carried to France. There were but a handful let in on the secret.’ The firelight cast shadows along his expressive face as he leaned forward and brought them both into the secret as well. He went on with the story as surely as one who had been there: ‘At supper, the night that the flight was to happen, the queen sat at table. Calm, she was. She played her part so well that none suspected. After she withdrew, she changed her fine gown for a plain common habit and took up the Prince in a bundle, as if she were only a servant he were the clothes to be washed. She’d been given two trustworthy men for her guards, and she had her own women. By secret ways, all of them passed from the palace of Whitehall, and taking care not to be seen scurried into the carriage that waited to carry them down to the river.’
Sophia fought the urge to hold her own breath as she crept in her imagination through the watchful shadows with the queen. She bit her lip.
‘The night was so dark,’ Captain Ogilvie said, ‘that they could barely see each other. And the crossing of the Thames in violent wind and rain was treacherous. But when they finally reached the other side, the coach and six that had been meant to meet them was not there. The queen was forced to shelter from the weather by a church wall, in a dangerous exposure, and so wait until her guardsman went to fetch the coach. They nearly were discovered. ’Twas but Providence protected them, as it did later on that wild night when they were almost stopped along the road to Gravesend. They escaped that too, but narrowly, and made it safely to the coast, where others joined them for the journey over sea to France. An awful voyage that was, too, but through it all the queen made no complaint. A rare, brave woman,’ he proclaimed her, ‘and ’tis by her courage we do have a king today, for if they had remained in England nothing would have saved them.’