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 and 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.”