'There is nothing quite like a James Buchan novel'Financial Times
Paris, 1784. Following a tragic battle in Quebec, we join William Neilson's grandson - also William - as he strives to find purpose in a changing world, amidst a backdrop of terror and conspiracy, and battles so bitter, they break even the strongest of wills.
Full of colour, and with rich and detailed research, the tales of William Nielson and his family are hugely entertaining and a must for readers of swashbuckling fiction.
Praise for A CHALICE ARGENT, the second William Neilson novel:
'Delightful ... William Neilson continues to exhibit basically all of the virtues. He's brave, stoical, generous, truthful, constant, protective towards the weak and honourable to a fault. Yet entirely likeable. The nearest series to this I can think of is Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin cycle' Francis Spufford, winner of the Costa First novel award
What readers say about A STREET SHAKEN BY LIGHT, the first William Neilson novel:
'A tight and bright romp of a read' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'His rollicking romp ranges widely across the world, taking in the French Revolution, the Jacobite rebellion, love affairs, duels, general skullduggery and much else besides, in prose as elegant as it is witty' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Release date:
November 6, 2025
Publisher:
Headline
Print pages:
224
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During the later years of the eighteenth century, a respectable address in the city of Paris was the street known as rue Varenne or de la Varenne. Running in a westwards direction, on the south or left bank of the River Seine beyond the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, it had been in old times a lane amid wastes and hunting-ground. In the passage of years, the lands each side had been allotted and built upon with private houses, each with its coachmen’s gate, courtyard, corps-de-logis or principal range, pair side-wings, and garden laid out in the geometrical taste.
Among those houses on the south side, and not the least superb, was the hôtel Joyeuse-Neilson. Erected by the last duc de Joyeuse in the reign of King Louis XIV, the house had passed out of fashion, its golden urns and blazons as apt as an old man’s leer in a gathering of chaste young persons. A passer-by of those days remarked less its Gothick architecture than the mob of Canadians and other wild folk encamped in front of the porte-cochère.
Subjects of the Huron nation, who had come to France at the fall of Canada to the English in 1760, those emigrants had been swelled in number by maroons of Saint-Domingue, weary galley-convicts, gallant ladies in retirement, sea-sick pirates, timid night-thieves, penitent assassins and divers other such strayed sheep, who, so long as they submitted to Huron law and custom, and to the Apostolic, Catholic and Roman cult, were received into the fellowship.
Their numbers, which might be no more than a dozen in the fair season, augmented in the foul to three or four score. They were entertained in the kitchens of the western wing of the hôtel. When not restoring themselves, those persons liked to lounge in the street, smoking their pipes and accosting foot-passengers for a sol, with which contribution they were satisfied. The Lieutenant-Generalcy of Police of the City of Paris had, over the years, thought it prudent to leave the nest untroubled.
One morning of autumn in the year 1784, two young lads, who from their dress and deportment appeared to be gentlemen-cadets of the Royal Military College a hundred steps to the west, having paid their octroi to the Hurons, were pacing up and down before the gate of the hôtel as if debating some strategic affair. They appeared to be aged some fifteen or sixteen years. Finally, the less dishevelled of the two boys, rocking on his heels, burst out:
“Did I not know it to be impossible, I’d say you was nervous, friend.”
“I am not nervous, Neilson. I wished merely to gather my thoughts before broaching the threshold.”
In part because they were créoles, one Scotch, one Italian, they were the best of friends. One was admired by his brother-cadets, the other shunned, and that made their friendship the more distinct.
The young men were led across the court by a North American, relayed to another, and then to a third, which last brought them into a long room overlooking a shining garden. Seated in the southern window-light, at her work, was a lady in widow’s black.
“Good day, Mme Dalouhe!”
“I am not deaf, rascal. Who’s blackie?”
“May I present my friend and brother cadet, M. di Buonaparte?”
William Neilson gave the family name four syllables and the Italian particle.
“Turk?”
“Corsican, my lady.”
“As I said. And I am not your lady.”
The conversation seemed to have reached its term, when a door opened at the end of the saloon. A lady, not young but not far gone in years, dressed alike in mourning black, entered. As she stepped into the room, the lady gave the impression of having woken from a dream of open air. The boys stood at attention. The lady smiled.
“William, you have made my day.” She turned to M. Buonaparte. “Will you not present your fellow-scholar?”
“Corsican cut-throat.”
“Cut-throat or not, Mme Dalouhe, any friend of my nephew is welcome here.”
“Napoleone di Buonaparte, my lady. It is an honour to be presented to so famous a warrior.”
“If you please, M. di Buonaparte. My fighting career was short and disgraceful.”
“Pardon me, Mme Duclos, but I have heard otherwise.”
“Arse-kisser!”
“Please sit, gentlemen.”
M. Buonaparte obeyed, but an eye-brow from his friend set him upright. The adjustment of manoeuvre from one of sitting down to one of remaining standing was not well executed.
“But you are suffering, M. Buonaparte.”
Mme Dalouhe cackled.
“It is nothing. I slipped in the fencing-school while being soundly beaten by M. Neilson.”
“My tits!”
“Mme Dalouhe, would you kindly order breakfast for M. Neilson and M. di Buonaparte?”
With that request, Mme Duclos appeared to intend a double result, both supplying her beloved nephew and his friend with refreshment, and ushering Mme Dalouhe off the stage. It should be said that the speech of Mme Dalouhe had not always been so coarse. Years, widowhood and, perhaps, her companion’s reticence had taken their toll. (Mme Dalouhe had quarrelled with her children, first singly, and then in troops.) The lady set off, cursing, to fulfil her charge.
“Do you drink Champagne, M. Buonaparte? My god-father, General Neilson, was devoted to Champagne.”
“I have never tasted Champagne, madame.”
“Then the pleasure and honour are ours.”
The lady’s manner was so plain, it appeared to M. di Buonaparte an affectation. Had M. di Buonaparte, of a precarious family of the city of Ajaccio, known that his hostess had been beforetimes a barefoot servant, as had Mme Dalouhe, he would not have been surprised.
“What branch of the military profession have you chosen, M. Buonaparte?”
“The artillery, madame.”
“That is my brother’s specialism. He has been an artillerist since the cradle. My god-father, the late General Neilson, had no particular genius: sometimes artillery, sometimes engineering, sometimes the marine. In Persia once, he captured a Russian fort before waking the defenders. He turned the tide at Carillon in Canada without firing a shot. He had, M. di Buonaparte, a touch of Scotch wizardry.”
“Alas, my lady, those not so gifted must fall back on ballistics and equations.”
In this house of soldiers’ widows, M. Buonaparte told his friend as they sauntered back to the Champ-de-Mars, he had never felt so well at his ease.
II
Growing up on his father’s lands at La Ferté-Joyeuse in the Sologne, doing the things that fortunate boys do everywhere, with younger brothers to favour or shun, sisters to love and vex, birds to shoot, horses to school, catechisms and deponent verbs to commit to memory, young William Neilson had small curiosity about his parents’ world. He knew that there was a house at Paris, rue Varenne, which never failed to haul a cloud into the room. The lad wondered why, having one house, or rather castle, they should require another.
One day, by an inadvertence of his mother, he had a subject to inhabit it: Mme Duclos. A little later, he heard Mme Neilson say: “Why in heaven does the Duclos need a great hôtel in the faubourg? She never goes out, keeps no carriage, receives no calls, sees nobody but her savages.” Young William began to be curious of Mme Duclos.
Riding out alone with his father, young William learned more. His grandmother, old Mme Neilson, before his father’s birth, had taken as her legal child a foundling of the Hôtel-Dieu of Orléans named Marie-Ange de la Contrition. His father and the orphan had grown up as brother and sister. The sister was now widowed. Her husband, Colonel Jean Duclos, having survived with honour the war in Canada, had fallen at Yorktown in the government of Virginia in the year 1781 while detached to the staff of General Washington of the Continental Army.
In the vacation of his school at La Brienne in the county of Champagne, young William’s picture of the widow gained pencil-strokes and shading. At old Mme Neilson’s death in 1769, Mme Duclos had taken as her inheritance the family’s particular hôtel, rue Varenne. Whether because his mother thought that saucy or that a found child was no kindred for a born Montmorency – Who knows what stains of sin or mental or physical infirmity she had brought into ancient houses! – William sensed that the ladies were not friends. Such adult discord is painful to youth. William was too young to know that women rarely blaze away at other women in snowy forest clearings, as is the masculine practice, but slash with smiles and compliments in temperate withdrawing-rooms.
In calling on Mme Duclos soon after his promotion to the Military College at Paris, William knew that he was pleasing his father, his mother something less. Fearing he might become a casus belli muliebris, or occasion of feminine war, the lad all but turned about at the gate. Curiosity gained the upper hand. The sensation gave way to that of disappointment when, as he stood at the alert by an English cannon in the court, the foot-man brought him a note. The letter said, amid many caresses, that before she had the delight of receiving her nephew, Mme Duclos would first ask leave of his mother. Had the foot-man been other than an armed American of six feet in height, young William might have sworn a gentleman-cadet’s oath.
Permission was granted (with what muffled violences, only a woman would know) and the visit proceeded. Mme Dalouhe had left the house to bully her youngest daughter, and the supper was head-to-head.
Mme Duclos spoke with frankness. Events that in the bosom of his family had been told in such-and-such a way, or told not at all, appeared to William in a blaze of American light. He had never imagined such a history. As conceited a young man as ever lived, William Neilson was not used to persons cleverer than he was, except, on certain days, M. Buonaparte. In that long evening, William learned more than in all his fifteen years.
He had the impression that nothing Aunt Duclos was saying to him had she said before or would she say again. He wondered if that were a flattery of his aunt’s or an amiable habit of women in general. He resolved to adopt it.
The lady’s late husband, M. Jean Duclos, while but a common soldier in Canada in the Seven Years’ War, had rebelled against the surrender of the colony to the English and, by his own exertions, in the winter of the year 1760, brought ninety soldiers of the army, and a further thirty-six Canadian militia, Acadians and native men, women and children across the sea to Rochelle.
In the shame of loss and defeat, such an instance of French obstinacy soothed the injured pride of the public and was brought to the attention of His Christian Majesty, who rewarded M. Duclos with a commission and the ribbon of the Order of Saint-Louis.
King Louis, the fifteenth ruler of that name, wishing to hear no aspersions on the conduct of the army commanders, the marquis de Montcalm, the chevalier de Lévis and General Neilson, thought better to punish the administration of the Intendant of Canada, M. Bigot. The process spun out over two years. In reality, the bankrupt Court sought every pretext not to pay the King’s war-time debts to the poor Canadians. The extortions of M. Bigot and his friends were so flagrant that every obligation must be examined or visée and, if found fraudulent, stricken from the record.
“The poor habitants, who had given their all to preserve the colony for France, were turned out as beggars.”
The departure of the French governor and military officers from Canada in 1760 had left behind a land burned to ashes, and, tottering above the ruins, a tower of playing-cards. Since there was never a paper-mill in New France, but always a long dark winter with nothing for an unlettered population to do but play at cards, those items, once retired from play and signed on the back by Governor General Vaudreuil and M. Bigot, or a creditable merchant, had for years served as the circulating currency. Super-added to the cards were innumerable receipts, ordinances and bills, issued during the seven years of war under the signs-manual of M. Montcalm and Mr Neilson, for supplies, wages and freights for the army and presents for our native allies. All were obligations of the King of France and might be sold and bought, for the debts retained a spectral value in commerce of two sols per livre; or, as we say in affairs, were priced at a discount of 90 per cent; or, as gamesters have it, offered a 10-to-1 chance against being honoured.
“The Kings of France have ever been indifferent debtors, nephew.”
Those cards and ordinances General Neilson’s widow engaged to pay at sight, in specie and in full. She instructed M. Le Ber, banker at Mont-Réal, to call in and pay in Spanish silver the whole amount for which she would supply bills on Quito and Mexico. She said she had given her word to her late husband.
In France, such vidual fidelity was thought an affectation and, to a certain degree, an insult to the Crown or, as we say, lèse-majesté. Mme Neilson had been rich but how the devil was she going to find one hundred millions in silver? True, she had sold her jewels, carried in a coach with a false floor by our William’s father to Geneva, where the stones were detached and scattered into Poland, Hungary and Russia. True, the Venetian pictures had gone to England, where they occasioned that struggle of liberality such as erupts sometimes amid the well-to-do. His Grace of Devonshire wrote to say that he would be happy, even prefer, that the Titians remain at La Ferté for as long as Mme Neilson felt convenient. Milord Pembroke sent a copy of the Reni Venus, by Mr Gainsborough, as a memento of Mme Neilson’s sacrifice.
Men computed that jewels and pictures, together, had brought in twenty millions. The library was sold to the King for two million francs. The two large dwelling-houses might bring another five. The farms, canal and improved lands each side of the waterway a further six or seven. Was Mme Neilson so deranged with grief for her husband that she should destroy her fortune and succession for a few starving Canadian farmers and savages who were now subjects of King George of Great Britain, and good riddance to the pack of ’em? Who cared for M. Voltaire’s arpents de neige, or acres of snow?
“It was my maman’s penance.”
“Penance for what fault, aunt? From all I have been told, my grandmother was the very best of women.”
“I do not know, nephew.”
Then the Supernatural intervened. Or was it that miracle of the commercial age, which is the propensity of all but a very few men and women to seek to better their conditions with the minimum of toil?
In the merchant quarter of London, known as the City, men wondered if the Widow Neilson knew something they did not know. Had the lady some intimation, from her friend the Pompadour, that at the Peace the King of France would engage to redeem the Canada Paper? Was Mme Neilson, in preserving her spotless credit, laying the foundation of a second fortune? Knowing nobody at Mont-Réal, the stock-jobbers sent their orders to the English military governor, Mr Murray, and anybody else with whom they could scrape acquaintance.
English officers beat on hanging doors and unglazed windows, begging and threatening the habitants to bring out their receipts. Mr Murray pasted notices on burned and broken walls that the King of France had betrayed his former subjects and the play-cards were worthless, but raked in for himself some quartermaster bills as private speculation. M. Le Ber was buying for his own as well as Mme Neilson’s account. The discount fell to 70 per cent and then to 56 per cent. Those who had bought in early – and all boasted to have done so – had quadrupled their money in half a year.
Captains brought back to London bales of the debt-paper in ballast, which tripped up the waiters in the coffee-places in ’Change Alley and made crazy heaps in the counting-houses of Lombard-Street. M. Le Ber wrote to Mme Neilson from Mont-Réal that, such was the speculative fever in town, even card-money had become unfindable. The Journal de La Haye reported from Paris that the French Court was at that moment preparing a scheme of redemption for the Canadian bills.
That was not true but, as it were, made itself true. The new Secretary of the Marine, M le duc de Choiseul, disliked his forerunner and thought the Canadian bankruptcy quite as shameful as the terms of the capitulation at Mont-Réal. More to the matter, the unpaid Canadian debts were destroying the King’s credit. A statesman of ability and experience, M. de Choiseul knew the only certain truth of diplomacy, which is to give gracefully what you can no longer afford to with-hold.
“I heard that M. le duc hated my maman, and not only for forcing the King’s hand. He hated her because she was a woman who had engaged in affairs of the Treasury. I think he found that a deformity of the natural order.”
Men of the Finance were brought to the Palace of Versailles with the single instruction that Mme Neilson should be excluded, by name,. . .
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