The Winter Sea (8 page)

When it seemed she must let go the reins and the stirrups and throw herself down from the saddle to save her own life, the mare suddenly wheeled and changed course, running not at the sea but alongside it. The great walls of Slains, soaring out of the shoreline, grew nearer with each pounding volley of steps.

She
must
stop, thought Sophia, or else the mare might go the wrong way around those walls, into the precipice. Pulling the taut reins with all of her strength, she called out to the mare, and the brown ears twitched round, and the mare unexpectedly came to a sliding halt, flinging Sophia clear out of the saddle.

She had a vague awareness of the sky being in the wrong position before the ground came up with bruising force, and stole her breath.

A sea bird floated overhead, its eye turned, curious, toward her. She was gazing upwards at it, with a roaring in her ears, when a man’s voice asked her, ‘Are you hurt?’

She wasn’t sure. She tried her limbs and found them working, so she answered, ‘No.’

Strong hands came under her, and helped her sit. She turned to better view the man, and found he was no stranger. ‘Captain Gordon,’ she said, wondering if she perhaps had suffered greater damage to her senses than she’d realized.

But he seemed real enough, and his smile seemed pleased she’d remembered his name. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’ve the devil’s own habit of turning up anywhere, and it’s a good thing for you that I did.’

Running hoofbeats interrupted them as, breathlessly, the countess caught them up. ‘Sophia—’ she began. Then, ‘Thomas! How in God’s name do you come here?’

‘By His grace, my lady,’ said the captain, kneeling still beside Sophia. ‘Sent, it would appear, to keep your young charge here from being sorely injured, though I must confess I’ve done no more than set her upright.’ With a grin, he asked, ‘Do you indulge in racing now, your Ladyship? I should point out that, at your time of life, it is not wise.’

Her look of worry cleared. She said, ‘Impertinence,’ and smiled, and asked Sophia, ‘Are you truly unharmed?’

Sophia answered that she was, and stood to prove it. She was shaky on her feet, though, and glad of Captain Gordon’s firm hand holding to her elbow.

He looked to the mare, quiet now, standing several feet off. ‘She does not appear such a dangerous mount. Will you try her again, if I stand at her head?’

He did not say as much, but Sophia well knew he was urging her back on the horse for a reason. She’d only had such a great fall once before, as a child, and she yet could remember her father, in helping her back on the pony that had thrown her, saying, ‘Never waste a moment getting back into the saddle, else your confidence be lost.’

So she went bravely to the standing mare and let Captain Gordon help her up into her seat, and saw his eyes warm with approval. ‘There,’ he said, and took hold of the bridle. ‘If you will permit me, we shall set a slower pace, on our return.’

The countess rode beside them on her own well-mannered gelding. ‘Truthfully, Thomas,’ she asked him, ‘how came you to Slains? We have had no account of your coming.’

‘I sent none. I did not know if my landing would be possible. We are on our return from the Orkneys and must keep to our patrol, but as the winds have been most favorable I find myself quite able to drop anchor here some few hours without causing us delay.’

The countess said, ‘You have not then been troubled much by privateers?’

‘I have not, my lady. It has been a voyage fraught with boredom—much to the frustration, I might add, of my young colleague, Captain Hamilton, who travels in my wake. He is most keen to fight a Frenchman, and can scarcely be contained from running out to open sea,’ he said, ‘in search of one.’

The countess smiled faintly at the joke, but she looked thoughtful. ‘I confess I did forget your Captain Hamilton.’

‘I know. But I did not.’ His sideways look held reassurance. ‘Do not worry. I have everything in hand.’

It was a function of his character, Sophia thought. He did, indeed, appear to have a flair for taking charge. Within a minute of their getting back to Slains, he had dispatched the mare to Rory to be groomed and searched for injuries, and Kirsty had been summoned to attend Sophia, much to the same purpose, while the captain and the countess waited downstairs in the drawing room.

‘I am not hurt,’ Sophia promised, watching Kirsty fuss round with the washing-bowl and linens, ‘and you do not need to wait upon me.’

‘Captain Gordon’s orders,’ Kirsty said, and cheerfully absolved herself of all responsibility. ‘Och, just look at this mud!’

‘I do fear I have ruined the countess’s beautiful habit.’

‘Well, ye’ve done it nae good. Nor yourself, either. See your back—ye’ll have great bruises. Disna that hurt?’

‘Only a little.’ Sophia winced, though, at the touch.

‘Ye’ll be stiff come the morning. I’ll ask Mrs Grant if she’ll make up a poultice to draw out the swelling. Although I would not be surprised if Captain Gordon has not ordered one for ye already.’ Kirsty paused, as though considering, which made Sophia think that, like herself, the girl felt unsure where the boundaries of their new acquaintance lay, for all she wanted to be friends. At long last Kirsty said, ‘Ye must be pleased, to have so great a man as Captain Gordon take an interest in ye.’

‘Take an interest…? Oh, no, I am certain he is only being kind,’ Sophia said. Then, to Kirsty’s glance, she added, ‘He is in his forties, and must surely have a wife.’

‘A wife does rarely keep a man like that from looking where he likes.’

Sophia felt her face begin to flush. ‘But you are wrong.’

‘If ye would so believe,’ said Kirsty, gathering the muddied clothes. But she was smiling, and her smile broadened when Sophia chose her plainest, least becoming gown to wear downstairs.

It was not that Sophia did not think the captain an attractive man, but only that she did not wish to have his admiration in that way, and it relieved her that he took but little notice of her when she joined the others in the drawing room.

He was already standing, and he said to Mr Hall, ‘Are you so sure you wish to leave? The winds are blowing fair, these days.’

‘I cannot stay. His Grace the Duke of Hamilton has sent me word that I am sorely needed back in Edinburgh.’

‘Then I shall be pleased to convey you to Leith. But we sail on the hour. Can you make yourself ready?’

‘I can, Captain.’ Turning, he said to the countess, ‘My lady Erroll, I do thank you for your kindness in allowing me to linger here. Were it not for the strong tone of His Grace’s recent message I do fear that you might never have been rid of me.’

‘Good Mr Hall, you are welcome at Slains, now and always. I wish you a safe journey home.’

He nodded his acceptance of her blessing. ‘Is there any message you would send the duke?’

‘None, except I wish him health, and recommend him to the Lord High Constable, my son, if he should wish to send me word.’

The priest gave one more nod, and to Sophia said, ‘I wish you well, my dear. I shall remember you in prayer.’ He left them then, presumably to gather to his belongings.

Captain Gordon stayed some minutes more, and sat and talked of idle things, but it was clear that he, too, wanted to be off. At length he stood, and took his leave. ‘I’m bound for Tynemouth, after Leith,’ he told the countess. ‘It will be no less than fourteen days before I once again come north, and I will be certain to send you a proper account of my coming.’

‘Thank you, Thomas. That would be most helpful.’

‘Mistress Paterson.’ He touched his smiling lips against her hand, and then he straightened, and with mild dismay Sophia realized Kirsty had been right, for there was more than friendly interest in his eyes. ‘I trust,’ he said, ‘that, in my absence, you’ll endeavor to have no more misadventures. Though I’ll warrant you may find that rather difficult, before too long.’

She murmured a polite reply, not wanting to detain him. It was not till some time afterwards, when she could no more see the
Royal William
’s sails upon the wide horizon, that she wished she’d asked him to explain the meaning of those final words. Because, to her ears now, they sounded rather like a warning.

C
HAPTER
5

J
ANE, MY AGENT, SET
the final page aside and curled her legs up underneath her in the armchair, in the front room of my cottage. ‘And you’ve written all of this in just two days? It must be thirty pages.’

‘Thirty-one,’ I told her, as I dragged a wooden chair across to the front door so I could stand on it to feed more coins into the black electric meter.

‘I don’t remember you writing this quickly, before.’

‘That’s because I haven’t. It feels great, it really does. It’s like I’m channeling. The words just come in through the top of my head and run right out my fingers, the voice is so easy. I’m glad you suggested a woman.’

‘Yes, well,’ she said drily, ‘I do have my uses.’ She ruffled the pages again, as though, like me, she hardly believed they could be there. ‘At this rate, you’ll have the book done in a month.’

‘Oh, I doubt it.’ I wobbled a little on top of the chair, and caught at the door jamb to steady myself. ‘I’m bound to slow down when I get to the middle. I usually do. And besides, this new angle is taking me straight into plot lines that I haven’t researched. I’ve spent most of my time reading up on the French side of things, and Nathaniel Hooke’s viewpoint, and what he got up to in Paris. I know some of what was going on in Edinburgh, of course, among the Jacobites, but apart from what Hooke wrote I don’t know that much about Slains, and the things that went on there. I’ll have to do some digging.’

‘I do like your Captain Gordon,’ Jane decided. ‘He’s a good complicating character. Is he real?’

‘Yes. I was lucky to remember him.’ The coins dropped one by one into the meter, and the slender needle, which had started drifting to the ‘empty’ mark, rebounded with reluctance. ‘It’s funny, the stray things that stick in your mind. Captain Gordon gets mentioned a couple of times in Nathaniel Hooke’s papers. Not in detail, and Hooke never says his first name, but I guess he made an impression, because I remembered him.’

She was looking at me, curious. ‘Why did you name him Thomas, then? I thought you had opinions on the naming of historical characters, and how they shouldn’t be guessed at.’

I did. Ordinarily, I would have left the first name blank until I’d had a chance to look it up. This time, ‘He wanted to be Thomas,’ was the only way I could explain it, ‘so I let him. I can always change it later, when I find out what his first name really was.’

His ship’s name, too, the
Royal William—
I had made that up as well, but I knew that would be a simple thing to fix. The British navy kept good records, it would all be written down somewhere.

Jane said, ‘You’ll have to change the name of his “young colleague” while you’re at it. Captain Hamilton. You’ve got a Duke of Hamilton already, you can’t have another Hamilton. Your readers will be too confused.’

‘Oh. I didn’t even notice that.’ It was a bad habit of mine, playing favorites with names. In one of my first books I’d nearly had two men named Jack running round, mixing everyone up. Jane had caught that one, too, at the very last moment. ‘Thanks,’ I told her now, and started looking for my workbook, to remind myself.

My workbook was the only way that I could keep things organized. Before, I’d carried pocketfuls of notes and scribbled scraps of paper. Now, I wrote down all my thoughts on characters and plotting in the pages of a weathered three-ring binder, where I also kept the photocopied pages from the books I’d used for research, and the maps and timelines that I would refer to as my story took its shape. I’d got the inspiration for my workbook from my father’s family history binders, neatly kept and sectioned in a way that satisfied his sense of order. He had worked his whole life as an engineer, in charge of building things, and second only to his love of making every surface level, was his need to battle chaos with pure logic.

I did try. I flipped my workbook to the section labeled ‘To Be Checked’ and jotted down the names of Captain Gordon and his ship and Captain Hamilton.

‘So you think it’s all right?’ I asked.

‘I love it. It’s fantastic. But you don’t need me to tell you that,’ Jane said, and smiled at me, a parent indulging a child. ‘You writers and your insecurities. Honestly. You said yourself you felt you were creating something wonderful.’

‘I said the feeling of
writing
it was wonderful. That doesn’t mean the story’s any good.’

‘Come on. You know it is.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I think that it’s fantastic, too. But it’s still nice to hear it from somebody else.’

‘Insecurities,’ she said again.

‘I can’t help it.’ It came with the job—all the time that I spent on my own, with that blank stack of paper I had to turn into a book. Sometimes I felt like the girl in the fairy tale, Rumplestiltskin, locked up and told to spin straw into gold. ‘I’m never sure,’ I said, ‘if I can pull it off.’

‘But you always do,’ Jane pointed out. ‘And brilliantly.’

‘Well, thank you.’

‘All you need is a break. I could take you to lunch.’

‘That’s all right, we don’t have to go out. I can make you a sandwich.’

She looked round. ‘With what?’

I hadn’t realized, till I looked around myself, that I had nearly used up the supplies that Jimmy Keith had stocked my kitchen with. I was down to three slices of bread and an egg. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I guess I need to do some shopping.’

‘We can do that,’ said Jane, ‘on our way back from lunch.’

After lunch, though, I managed to talk her into walking up to Slains with me, again. We went from the village this time, by the footpath that led from the Main Street. It took us through a wood of tangled trees behind Ward Hill, where a small and quiet stream ran through a gully to the sea. The footpath crossed the stream by way of a flat bridge, then climbed the further hill that changed from coarse, shrub-covered ground into a proper cliff as we came up above the level of the trees. Another steep turn and we stood at the top, with the sea far below us and Slains in our sights. The walk here wasn’t difficult, as coast paths went, but it was slippery in spots, and twice Jane nearly lost her footing near the edge.

‘You are
not
,’ she said, emphatically, ‘to come up here alone.’

‘You sound exactly like my mother.’

‘She’s a sensible woman, your mother. I mean, look at this, will you? What kind of a madman builds his home right at the edge of a cliff ?’

‘The kind of a madman who likes good defenses.’

‘But they’re not such good defenses, really, are they? If your enemies came overland, they’d have you trapped. There’d be nowhere to go.’ She glanced down again at the foaming sea striking the rocks far below, and I could see that it affected her. I hadn’t expected that she would be bothered by heights. After all, she’d flown with Alan, and the two of them were known to do some crazy things on holidays, like climbing into caves and parasailing in the Amazon.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

‘I’m fine.’ But she did not look down again.

I felt completely in my element, myself. I liked the sea sounds and the crisp wind in my face, and my feet placed themselves with confidence upon the path, as though they felt quite certain of the way.

There were no other footprints ahead of our own, and no tracks of a dog in the soft, muddy places. Which wasn’t too surprising, since it stood to reason that the man I’d run into that first day in the parking lot, the man I’d asked directions of, could hardly spend his whole day, every day, up here. He might not even be a local man. I hadn’t seen him round the town—and, for no reason other than the fact I’d liked his smile, I had been looking.

I was looking for him now, but when he wasn’t at the top, I took care not to show my disappointment. Jane didn’t miss much, and she always had been quick to take an interest any time
I
took an interest in a man. I didn’t want her asking questions. After all, there wasn’t anything for me to say, I’d only met him once. I didn’t even know his name.

Jane asked me, ‘What’s the sigh for?’

‘Did I sigh?’

‘With feeling.’

‘Well, just look at this,’ I said, and spread my hands wide to the view. ‘It’s all so beautiful.’

The ruins felt much lonelier this afternoon, with us the only visitors. The wind wept round the high pink granite walls and followed when we walked along the grassy floors of what had once been corridors. I had wanted to see if, from what still remained, I could make out the floor plan, and Jane, her equilibrium restored now that we’d stepped a little further from the edge, was keen to join me in the game.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘this might have been the kitchen. Here’s a bit of chimney stack, and look at the size of that hearth.’

‘I don’t know.’ I walked further along. ‘I think maybe the kitchen was somewhere down here, near the stables.’

‘And what makes you think those are stables?’

She wasn’t convinced, and I knew I was letting the house I’d imagined last night, when I’d written the scenes of Sophia at Slains, shape my judgment of where things should be. There was nothing at all at this end of the house to suggest what the rooms might have been—only roofless rectangular spaces with crumbling walls, nothing more. But I still spent a happy few minutes meandering round, playing at fitting my made-up rooms onto the real ones.

Sophia’s bedchamber, I thought, could be within that tall square tower standing proudly at the corner of the castle’s front, against the cliffs. I couldn’t see a way to get inside it, but my mind could fill the details in, and guess at what the views might be. And down there, at the end of this long corridor with all the doors, could be the castle’s dining room, and this, I thought as I stepped through a narrow arching door into the soaring room I’d liked so much my first time here, the one where I had seen the tracks of man and dog and where the gaping window gave a wide view of the sea, this surely must have been the drawing room. Well,
under
the drawing room, actually, since I was standing in what would have been the lower level of the house, the floorless main rooms being all above me, but the view would be the same from the great window I saw higher up the wall. A person could have stood there and looked out towards the east along the glinting path of sunlight on the waves to the horizon.

I was gazing out that way myself, when Jane came up to join me.

‘What?’ she asked.

I turned, uncomprehending. ‘Pardon?’

‘What’s so interesting?’

‘Oh. Nothing. I’m just looking.’ But I brought my head back round again and stared a moment longer at the line where sea met sky, as though I needed to be sure, now that she mentioned it, that there was nothing there.

Jane left just after two o’clock, and I went into Cruden Bay to get some food for supper. I’d never much liked shopping in the larger modern grocery stores, it took too much time to find anything, so I was delighted when I found a little corner shop on Main Street. I didn’t need much—just some apples and a pork chop and another loaf of bread. The man who kept the shop was friendly, and because my face was new to him, he asked me where I came from. We were deep in a discussion about Canada and hockey when the shop’s door jangled open and the wind blew Jimmy Keith in.

‘Aye-aye.’ He looked happy. ‘I’ve been lookin fer ye.’

I said, ‘You have?’

‘Oh, aye. I was up tae the St Olaf Hotel yestereen, and I found some folk tae help ye wi’ yer book. I’ve made a wee list.’

His ‘wee list’ appeared to have at least a half a dozen names. He read them off and told me who they were, although I couldn’t keep them straight. I wasn’t sure whether the schoolteacher or the plumber had offered to give me a driving tour of the district. But I did take note of one name.

‘Dr Weir,’ said Jimmy, last of all, ‘taks a rare interest in the local history. He’s a gran man. He’s aye fightin tae save Slains. He’ll be at hame the nicht, if ye’ve a mind tae wander ower there and spik wi’ him.’

‘I’d like that very much. Thanks.’

‘He’s got hissel a bungalow up by the Castle Wood. I’ll tell ye the wye, it’s nae bother tae find.’

I walked out after supper. The dark had settled in, and on the path down from my cottage to the road the strange, uneasy feeling gripped me once again, although there was no one and nothing there that could have threatened me. I shook it off and made my legs move faster, but it followed, like an unseen force that chased me to the road, and then retreated into darkness, waiting…knowing it would have another chance at me, tonight, when I came home.