The Pretender's Lady

by Alan Gold

  “My beliefs, young man, have frustrated all my ambitions for a calm and ordered life. If I’ve made mistakes, then if there is indeed a good Lord, he, she, or it has played no part in helping to clear them up.”

  Hume then told Flora of the many years he’d spent in France and Austria working as a civil servant and meeting great philosophical minds and of how he’d returned to Scotland where he intended to live out the rest of his life writing his books, drinking his coffee, and thinking.

  “I am a man, Mistress Macdonald, who is of mild dispositions, of command of my temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humor, capable of attachment but regretfully never married, and at my moment of life, it is unlikely that any lady but a dependent widow or a young woman blind from birth would have me for a spouse. I am but little susceptible of enmity and of great moderation in all my passions, yet I attract so many enemies to my ideas. I don’t understand why, for that which I have written is little more than sound common sense, and that which is not common sense has not been written by me.”

  Poor Jamie tried to follow the philosopher’s logic, but failed. They finished their coffees, and Mr. Hume suggested that they take a walk along several streets until they reached Holyrood Park near Edinburgh Castle. They slowly made their way to Arthur’s Seat, where the small number of people ambulating would ensure their complete privacy.

  When they had reached the foothills of the huge cliff face that was in the center of the Edinburgh park, Mr. Hume said, “Well now, Mistress Macdonald, you wish to talk to me in privacy. Few places within a capital city afford as much privacy as does this.”

  He said, pointing out the vista overlooking Edinburgh. They sat on the grass in the shade of the hill, and Hume waited for her to begin her narration.

  “Mr. Hume, my story begins when I first met His Highness Charles Edward of the House of Stuart. We met on South Uist when he was escaping from the Duke of Cumberland . . .”

  And Flora told him about the crofter’s hut, their time alone together, her conception of Jamie and his birth in the Tower of London and ended her story fifteen minutes later with the urgent note from Dr. Johnson, which is why she had come to Edinburgh.

  He remained silent when she had finished the tale, nodding to himself and looking at Jamie.

  “And a fine young man he is too,” said Mr. Hume. “But whether somebody who has just left a Carolina farm in America, been crowned surreptitiously in an empty Abbey by an obscure cleric and has just managed to escape the ire of the prime minister and King George by hiding in Edinburgh, will be accepted by the Scottish people as their right royal monarch is another matter entirely. Your son might be an admirable man, ma’am, but claiming the Crown of Scotland just because you and Jamie’s father had a night of passion is an altogether different thing,” he told her.

  They were words that Flora had always known might be spoken, but she had hoped that the overwhelming advantage of a commonwealth of English colonies might be the factor that could persuade the Scots to accept Jamie as their king. But since her escape from London, these very self-same words had been growing in her own mind with every mile that separated them from the Palace of St. James.

  Flora had come to England with a firm conviction that she could avoid many deaths and revive the passion with which Bonnie Prince Charlie had landed here to claim the Stuart heritage all those many years earlier. Yet Jamie, much as she loved him, was a farmer’s son and calling him king didn’t make him a king. She loved him dearly, but all his life, he had grown up in the certainty that his lot in life was to follow in the footsteps of his father Alan, which was to live by simple but honest toil. He had none of the skills of conversation or repartee or wit that was required when he mixed with the men whom he would expect to follow him. Lovely, honest, and able as he was, Jamie had always been taciturn with people, and preferred to immerse himself in books and fixing implements and going fishing and swimming, rather than in the art of rhetoric, debate, and politics.

  The man who had sired him had grown up in palaces. His mother’s milk had been the inalienable fact that one day he would be king of Scotland and England by reclaiming his family’s stolen realm. But this wasn’t Jamie’s dream. Jamie was a man of the soil and the forests and the hills, a lovely but simple person, not imbued with the intrigues of courtly life—one whom she saw settled in a shack in America with a plump and friendly wife who baked pies and hung out the wash on the line to catch the early morning breezes, with children dangling off his legs as he told them stories of his upbringing in Scotland and of their famous grandmother who had once met a real live prince; a man who spent his life growing crops and not growing a nation, of fathering a family, and not a people.

  A realization came to her, too late to save him from her hubris, that Jamie was a son of his upbringing rather than a pretender king in a Scottish castle ruling men of the intellect of David Hume and the proud chieftains of the clans. As she listened to David Hume, she realized that she had unwittingly made her lovely son into a pawn of her own history, the unsuspecting conspirator to her own ambition to rekindle the ember that had been her love for Charlie. It stunned her to think like this, but now that she was back in Edinburgh, she realized that her passion for Charlie had never truly died but had been buried deep in her breast while she lived the life of a dutiful and loving wife to a good man. Dear God, she thought, what have I done?

  Hume continued, “I’m afraid that the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and the War of Austrian Succession have rather put paid to any claim that the Stuarts might have had on Scotland. Time and history have marched past your son’s pretensions, ma’am. A pity, but a reality. You may try to have him accepted as monarch, but I fear that like his father and his grandfather, the Old Pretender, your son Jamie will never be accepted by us, or by the English as King James IX. He must return to America as a monarch in exile.”

  Flora sighed. It was what she’d feared. Here was perhaps the most brilliant man in all of Scotland telling her that all of the time and energy and fuss she’d created in order to see her ambitions flourish had been wasted. And worse, she and Jamie were in danger of imprisonment for treason. Silently she cursed herself for involving other people in her long-dormant pretensions.

  “Then we must return to America,” she said, her voice dry and rasping. “If you believe that my mission is doomed to failure, if you agree with Prime Minister North that King George will never trade the expense of his colonies for the amity of a commonwealth, and if you think that Jamie will never be accepted as heir to the Stuart throne, then what am I doing here?” she asked.

  He patted her on the shoulder and said softly, “My philosophy is that of the empiricists. I believe that knowledge comes to a person exclusively through experience. You can only come to an understanding of truth if you have experienced that truth through your senses and on the sole condition that this experience accords with and is consistent and coherent with your previous experience. What this means, Flora my dear, is that you have learned much from your experiment in coming to England and Scotland, and nothing is wasted. You have learned about yourself and your son. You’ve come to understand why this flame has so long burned in your heart, tiny and insignificant for a quarter of a century, but suddenly rekindled into a flaming passion. Perhaps it’s because your beautiful young son was the same age at Bonnie Prince Charlie when he tried to fulfill his destiny. Has that destiny become yours, Flora? Are you trying to relive your life through your son?

  “Or perhaps you came to rekindle the passion you once felt for Prince Charles? Perhaps you came because the son that resulted from that passion is now a man and you want your son Jamie to experience the same depth of joy you experienced when you and Bonnie Charlie had knowledge of each other. I don’t know, Flora. Only by searching deep within you will you find the answer. But one thing I do know absolutely is that you have grown in knowledge, stature, and wisdom by coming here. What more can you ask from life?”

  She mused on his words; knowledge comes to a
person exclusively through their experiences. She flushed in embarrassment. Was David Hume right? Was it confirmation that she was still in love with Bonnie Prince Charlie? After all these years? She still dreamed of him, but she assumed that it was nothing more than a woman’s fantasy. And what of Alan and her children. No, it was impossible. The man she’d met and fallen in love with was an extinct volcano, fulminating in Italy, married and drunk and if the stories were true, he had become as ugly a person as royalty had ever produced. No, it was quite impossible, and she had to concentrate her mind on the love she had for dear Alan and Jamie and her children and her new home of America. But first, she had to leave Scotland in safety.

  “Will my son and I be jailed?” she asked.

  He beamed a smile. “Not while there’s a modicum of hair left on my balding head, nor Scottish blood coursing around my veins. You and His Majesty King James IX will return with me to my lodgings near to Edinburgh University. Mrs. Lindsay will give you a comfortable room, and there you will remain while I sniff out any English troopers who might be sent to find you. Nobody knows of this problem, as far as I am aware, and while Scots people don’t know of any accusations made against you, you may feel free to wander the streets.” He looked at Jamie. “Provided of course that you don’t insist that your subjects in Edinburgh genuflect in your presence.”

  He burst out laughing. So did Flora. But Jamie couldn’t find reason to laugh and remained straight-faced.

  “As soon as is practicable, I shall secure passage by carriage for you from Edinburgh to Glasgow, where you can take a packet boat back to America; there you will breathe the sweet air of freedom. America is where you and your son should be, Flora. Unless I’m very much mistaken, America will soon shrug off the mantle of monarchy and flex its young and powerful muscles. I believe that with its youth and vitality and now with thousands of Scots pouring in there to make a new life, America is destined to become a great nation, a very great nation indeed. And you and your son and your other children will contribute to that nation in ways far more beneficial than could Jamie sitting atop a teetering throne, wearing a second-hand crown, and calling himself king.”

  She sat for many minutes, letting his words settle upon her mind. Jamie looked at his mother and silently thanked the Lord that they would be returning to America imminently—for though he loved his mother dearly, he had never wanted to be a part of this adventure.

  She breathed out a sigh of acceptance, smiled at the elderly David Hume, and stood. “I shall return with you to your lodgings, Mr. Hume, and consider our future in light of your wisdom. I thank you for being a friend to me and my son.”

  While she was resident at Mr. Hume’s Edinburgh lodgings, Flora thought very long and very hard about returning to America and to Alan, having accomplished so much, yet achieved so little. While she knew in her heart that Mr. Hume was right and that the Scottish people would find it difficult to accept Jamie as their king, she felt that in fairness to him, to herself, and to her memory of Bonnie Prince Charlie, that she had to make one determined effort. So she decided that before she left Scotland she would find out whether the guttering flame she still carried for Bonnie Prince Charlie would ever endanger her marriage by flaring up again into a searing inferno. She determined that she would test whether or not the Scottish people’s love for Bonnie Prince Charlie was truly dead and a thing of the past.

  She sent notes again to those members of Edinburgh society whom she knew that she could trust to keep her secret. She wrote to Lady Macdonald, separately to Sir Alexander Macdonald, and to the leaders in Edinburgh of the Church of Scotland and of Edinburgh University. Yes, it was a risk, but it was a risk she was prepared to take. After all, if she was exposed to the authorities, she could always flee and follow Bonnie Prince Charlie’s path across the Highlands. She asked those to whom she wrote to meet with her for afternoon tea at four o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday, February 21.

  As Flora’s notes were being received, another letter, this one more ominous, arrived in Edinburgh from London. It had taken an entire week for the letter to arrive informing the commander of the garrison in Edinburgh Castle that he was to be on the lookout for an elderly matron with white hair called Flora Macdonald and her son James, who had committed an unnamed but egregious act of treason against the person of His Majesty King George III. No reward was offered to the citizenry for their capture, but once they were arrested, they were to be transported to London immediately to be dealt with.

  On Saturday, the twenty-first, at half past three in the afternoon, a detachment of guards was sent to be stationed on the London to Edinburgh road and to stop any persons matching the description of the two miscreants and bring them in chains to the Castle.

  Flora had no idea that such a body of troops had been dispatched. Instead, as the troopers sorted themselves out on the road in anticipation of their arrival in Edinburgh, Flora sat in her lodgings with her son Jamie and waited. Mrs. Lindsay had laid out a special tea for her and her important guests, with griddlecakes, honey biscuits, a pot of coffee, and a pot of tea ready to be poured. The fire was lit in the downstairs parlor.

  The clock ticked ever onward past four o’clock. Her heart raced in anticipation of what might happen. Did she still love Charlie, a brief figment of her life all those years ago? And did Scotland still remember a handsome and daring young man who had tried to reclaim what was rightfully his?

  Flora looked at Jamie and smiled. She had advised him of what to say should people call and shake his hand. And she waited. And waited.

  Just in case, she opened the front door to the parlor, but the cold hallway was empty except for Mrs. Lindsay, dressed in her Sunday gown, who gave her an encouraging smile. Flora went to the front door and opened it, despite the harsh wind that was blowing. She returned to the parlor, and she and Jamie stared at the open door. And they continued to wait for Jamie’s subjects to come and attend on him. And they waited.

  The First Epilogue

  THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES

  SEPTEMBER 3, 1783

  All of the newly-liberated American men in the room sat as still as lumps of marble while King George’s court artist, Mr. Benjamin West, quickly sketched in charcoal their positions, their clothes, their wigs, the table and its contents. Facing him were Mr. Benjamin Franklin, Mr. John Adams, Mr. John Jay, and Mr. Henry Laurens who, although not a signatory to the Peace Treaty, nervously held the document at the back of the scene. All sat or stood facing the painter enabling him to sketch a good representation of each man before they disappeared for a celebratory lunch and further discussions.

  In Benjamin West’s opinion, however, the entire scene was unbalanced, because of a tragically absent figure who should have been sitting on the other side of the table. Yet Sir David Hartley, the British Minister Plenipotentiary and Member of Parliament for Kingston-upon-Hull, sent by King George to negotiate Britain’s surrender of its colonies to the Americans, had refused to sit at the same table and have his portrait painted. Posterity would never know his part in the historical proceedings nor the shame he felt at Britain’s capitulation to such a raggle-taggle mob of flash-harry Republicans masquerading as soldiers. His pointed absence meant that students of this momentous event would never see the face nor disposition of the man who signed away Britain’s most precious colonies.

  When West finished the sketching, he sought appointments with the gentlemen over the next few days so that he might paint their faces and bodies in oils on the canvas, but in the meantime, he thanked them for their patience and bid them all good morning.

  Benjamin Franklin, wearing his customary dark morning suit, waistcoat, and cravat, rose from his chair and stretched. It had been an exhausting few weeks of the final negotiations with the government of Great Britain. Much acrimony, much bombast, and much rending of the flesh; but in the end the British knew that they had to concede, and Franklin, despite his diplomacy and genteel ways—a counterbalance to John Adams’ assertiveness—enjoyed turning
the knife in the body of Britain one or two more times than was absolutely necessary. He had once been a solid supporter of Great Britain and the maintenance of a cordial relationship, but when he suffered an appalling attack against his character in the privy council, he had begun to refocus his ideals and realized, just as the other compatriots of the Continental Congress had realized much earlier, that Britain’s patronizing relationship with its colony simply couldn’t last. Taxation without representation was only one issue; the other was the hubris with which England had treated its American colony, as though it was a perpetually filled pantry that the English landlords could pillage whenever they were hungry.

  He left the others to continue talking, and walked alone out of the Salon of War into the miraculous Hall of Mirrors where a luncheon banquet had been laid. King Louis XVI had ensured that on this one occasion, none of his courtiers would be present, only his Ministers, the Americans and their advisors, the British negotiators and advisors, and himself.

  Franklin walked to the table and saw with delight that the chefs had included his favorite meal of thinly sliced lamb flavored with a sauce of mint and Spanish pimentos. Whenever he came to Europe, be it Britain, France, Italy, or elsewhere, the very first meal he ordered was a well-cooked lamb. For some reason, possibly the grass on which they were fed, possibly the air or the heritage of the beasts, European lamb always tasted infinitely better than American lamb.

  Mind you, his disgust with the French monarch and his wife’s eating habits had encouraged him to avoid any meal at which Louis was the center of attention. Just a week earlier, he’d been unable to avoid watching the spectacle of Louis and Marie Antoinette being fed a forty-course lunch and their sycophantic courtiers applauding every mouthful. Nauseating was the word that sprang to his mind, and as a description, it didn’t just define the gluttony.

  He was about to pick up a plate and fill it, as he had rushed his breakfast in order to attend the final negotiations on the wording of the Peace Treaty, when he felt a tap on the shoulder. Franklin turned his bulky form in surprise and saw Charles Gravier, the comte de Vergennes, chief of the council of finance, and one of the most able and important advisors to Louis XVI. He beamed a smile and clasped his hand.