The Winter Sea

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘You’ve seen him drive?’

  ‘I said I’d take my chances with the plumber.’

  Graham did smile, then. ‘I’ll take you for a driving tour some weekend, if you like.’

  ‘And you’re a safer driver, are you?’

  ‘Aye,’ he told me. ‘Naturally. I’m all the time driving old ladies to Kirk on a Sunday. You’ve nothing to fear.’

  I’d have gone with him anywhere, actually. My mother, had she known that I was walking on the coast path with a man I barely knew, would have been close to apoplectic. But instinctively, I knew that Graham told the truth—I didn’t have to fear when I was with him. He would keep me safe.

  It was a newfound feeling, and it settled on me strangely, but I liked the way it felt. I liked the way he walked beside me, close but not too crowding, and the way he let me go ahead of him along the path, so I could set the pace.

  We went the back way down Ward Hill and found ourselves in the same gully with its quiet tangled trees and running stream that I’d gone through with Jane, two days ago, when she and I had headed from the village up to Slains. It was a drier day today. My boots were not so slippery as we crossed the little bridge and made our way up and around until we’d climbed again up to the level of the clifftop.

  Ahead, I could see the long ruins of Slains with the one tall square tower that stood at the end overlooking the sea, and I looked at the windows and tried to decide which ones should be Sophia’s. I would have liked to spend a few minutes in the castle, but there was another couple walking round the walls this morning, loud and laughing, tourists, and the atmosphere was not the same. And Graham must have felt it, too, because he didn’t slow his steps, but followed as I set my back to Slains and started off again along the coast.

  I found this new part of the path disturbing. Not the walk itself—it wasn’t really all that difficult, for someone used to walking rough—but just the sense that everything around me, all the scenery, was familiar. I’d had flashes, in my life, of déjà vu. Most people had. I’d felt, from time to time, a moment’s fleeting sense that I’d performed some action once before, or had some conversation twice. But only for a moment. I had never felt this long, sustained sensation, more a certainty, that I’d already come this way. That just up here, if I looked to my right, I’d see—

  ‘Dunbuy,’ said Graham, who’d come up to stand behind me on the path, where I had stopped. ‘It means the—’

  ‘Yellow rock,’ I finished for him, slowly.

  ‘Aye. What turns it yellow is the dung of all the seabirds nesting there. Come springtime, Dunbuy is fair covered with them, and the noise is deafening.’

  The rock was near abandoned now, in winter, but for several gulls that stood upon it sullenly, ignoring us. But I could hear, within my mind, the seabirds that he spoke of. I could see them. I remembered them…

  I frowned and turned away and carried on, still with that sense of knowing just where I was going. I might have been walking the streets of the town where I’d grown up, it was that sure a feeling.

  I knew, without Graham’s announcement, when we were approaching the Bullers of Buchan. There wasn’t anything remarkable to see at first, only a tight-clustered grouping of cottages built at the edge of a perilous drop down another deep gully, and in front of them a steep path winding upwards to what looked to be an ordinary rise of land. Except I knew, before we’d even started up that path, what waited at the top. I knew what it looked like before I had seen it—a circular shaft, like a giant’s well, cut at the edge of the cliff, where the sea had eroded the walls of a mammoth cave till the cave’s roof had collapsed, leaving only a strip of stone bridging the cleft at its entrance, through which the waves sprayed with such force that the water appeared to be boiling below when I stood at the edge to look down.

  Graham stood at my side with his hands in his pockets, and standing there he, too, seemed part of a memory, and I wondered if this was what people felt like when they started going insane.

  He was talking. I could hear him, vaguely, telling me the history of the Bullers, and how its name had likely come from the French word for ‘kettle’, bouilloire, or perhaps more simply from the English, ‘boiler’, and how in the past small ships had hidden there from privateers, or if they were smugglers themselves, from the Scottish coast patrols.

  On one level, I took this in quite calmly, and yet on the other my thoughts swirled as fiercely as the waves below me. I didn’t think Graham had noticed, but in the middle of telling me how he and his brother had ridden their bikes the whole way round the rim of the Bullers once, when they were younger and more daring, and how he’d almost lost control going over the thin bridge of sunken earth not far from where we were standing, he stopped talking and gave me a penetrating look.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  I lied. I said, ‘I’m not so good with heights.’

  He didn’t move an inch, or take his hands out of his pockets, but he looked at me and gave his pirate’s smile and said, ‘Well, not to worry. I won’t let you fall.’

  I knew it was too late. I had already fallen. But I couldn’t tell him, any more than I could tell him what I’d felt today on our walk here, and what I was still feeling. It was craziness. He would have run a mile.

  The sense of déjà vu stayed with me on the long walk back, and worsened when I saw the jagged walls of Slains, and I was glad when we’d gone past and down into the wooded gully. On the little bridge that crossed the stream I thought that Graham hesitated, and I hoped he might suggest we take the pathway to the right and stop in at a pub for lunch, but in the end he only walked me back up onto Ward Hill and across the tufted grass until we stood before the cottage.

  He said nothing to begin with, so I filled the pause by lamely saying that I’d had a lovely time.

  ‘I’m glad,’ he said. ‘I did, as well.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Would you like to come in for a coffee, or something?’

  Stuart, I knew, would have picked up on the ‘or something’, but Graham only took it at face value, and replied, ‘I can’t, the day. I have to get back down to Aberdeen. I have a stack of papers sitting waiting to be marked.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But I’ll take you for that driving tour next weekend, if you’d like.’

  My answer came a bit too fast. ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Which would be better for you, Saturday or Sunday?’

  ‘Either.’

  ‘Then let’s make it Saturday. We’ll call for you at ten, again, if that won’t be too early.’

  ‘We?’ I asked him.

  ‘Angus and myself. He loves a drive, does Angus, and I’d never hear the end of it if I left him behind.’

  I smiled, and told him ten o’clock would be just fine, and having thanked him once again and said goodbye, I went inside the cottage.

  But my nonchalant attitude vanished the minute I stepped through the door, and I grinned like a schoolgirl just back from a date. Standing in my kitchen, well back from the window so he wouldn’t catch me watching him, I saw him take a pebble from the path and skip it deftly out to sea, and then he kicked one booted foot into a tuft of grass and, looking pleased himself, strolled down the hill towards the road.

  I wasn’t holding out much hope, when I sat down to write.

  It would be gone, I knew. The dream I’d had last night would be long gone. It was no use.

  But when I turned on the computer and my fingers touched the keyboard, I surprised myself. I hadn’t lost it after all. It was all there, the whole of it, and as I wrote each detail I remembered having dreamed it. I could not recall this happening in all the years that I’d been writing. It felt…well, like I’d said to Jane, it felt the way a medium must feel, when they were channeling the dead.

  The story flowed from my subconscious in an easy, rapid stream. I saw the leering face of Billy Wick, the gardener, and the smile of Kirsty’s sister in her cottage, with the children playing round the gentle mas
tiff, and I felt Sophia’s sadness as she spoke about her parents, and her thrill of expectation as she saw the ship at anchor near the castle, and the mad confusion of her run with Kirsty to the house, and Rory’s warning they should get inside, before the countess missed them.

  And tonight, my writing went beyond the dream. And there was more.

  IV

  SHE HAD NO TIME to change her gown before the countess called for her. She had just reached her chamber and had seen with her own eyes, within the looking-glass, the rare disorder of her hair, the wild color that her run along the clifftop had raised in her cheeks.

  And there was Kirsty, breathless too, and knocking at her door to say the countess had requested that Sophia join her downstairs in the drawing room.

  ‘I cannot go like this,’ Sophia said.

  ‘Och, ye look fine. ’Tis but your hair that needs attention.’ And with reassuring hands, the housemaid helped Sophia smooth her windblown curls and pin them back into their proper style. ‘Now, go. Ye canna keep her waiting.’

  ‘But my gown is muddied.’

  ‘She will never see it,’ Kirsty promised. ‘Go.’

  Sophia went. Downstairs, she found the countess in an outward state of calm, but standing close beside the windows of the drawing room as though she were anticipating something and did not wish to be sitting when it came. She held her hands toward Sophia with a smile. ‘Come stand with me, my child. We will this day have visitors, who may be in this household for a month or more. I wish you to be at my side, when I do bid them welcome.’

  Sophia was amazed, and touched. ‘You do me an honor.’

  ‘You are,’ the countess told her, plain, ‘a member of this family. It is fitting you should stand where my own daughters would be standing, were they not already married and departed from me.’ She paused, as though what she meant next to say took thought, and needed to be weighed. ‘Sophia, in the coming months, there will be much that you will see and hear within these walls. I pray that you will understand, and find the means to let it rest with ease upon your conscience.’

  There were heavy steps within the hall, and voices, and then Kirsty came ahead and at the open door announced the guests: ‘My lady, here are Colonel Hooke and Mr Moray.’

  For Sophia, that small moment which came afterwards would evermore be burned within her memory. She never would forget.

  Two men stepped through the doorway of the drawing room, but she saw only one. The man who entered first, with hat in hand, and crossed to greet the countess, might have been a shade, for all Sophia paid him notice. She was looking at the man who’d come behind, and who now stood two paces back and waited, at a soldier’s ease.

  He was a handsome man, not over tall, but with the broadened shoulders and well-muscled legs of one who did not live a soft and privileged life, but earned his pay with work. He wore a wig, as fashion did demand of any gentleman, but while the wigs of most men were yet long about the shoulders, his was short at top and sides, drawn back and tied with ribbon in a queue that neatly hung behind. He wore a leather buffcoat, with no collar and no sleeves, split at the sides for riding, with a long row of ball buttons up the front, and at the back a black cloak fastened to the coat below the shoulders, hanging full so that it covered half the sword hung from the broad belt passing over his right shoulder. His sleeves were plain, as was the neckcloth knotted at his throat, and his close-fitting breeches ended at the knees in stiff dragoon boots, not in buckled shoes and stockings.

  To Sophia’s mind, he cut a proud, uncompromising figure, yet his grey eyes, in that handsome and impassive face, were not unkind. They swung to hers in silence, and she could not look away.

  Could scarcely breathe, in fact. And so she was relieved to hear the countess speak her name in introduction to the first man, who now stood quite close beside her. ‘Colonel Hooke, may I present Sophia Paterson, the niece of my late cousin, come to live with me at Slains and bring some brightness to my days.’

  Colonel Hooke was taller than his soldierly companion, and his clothes were of a finer cut, with holland sleeves and edgings of expensive lace. He wore the high-arched periwig she was more used to seeing, and his manners were the manners of a gentleman. ‘Your servant,’ he said, bending to her hand. He had an Irish voice, she noted, pleasant in its tone. He told the countess, ‘And in turn, I would present to you my traveling companion, Mr Moray, who is brother to the Laird of Abercairney.’

  ‘We are already acquainted.’ The countess smiled, and to the silent Mr Moray said, ‘It was not quite four years ago, I do believe, in Edinburgh. You traveled with your uncle, and were kind enough to bring me certain letters for my husband, I recall.’

  He gave a nod, and crossed the room to greet the countess with respect. Sophia waited, eyes cast down, and then his deep Scots voice said, ‘Mistress Paterson, your servant,’ and her hand was taken firmly in his own, and in that swift, brief contact something warm, electric, jolted up her arm. She mumbled something incoherent in reply.

  Colonel Hooke said to the countess, ‘Do I understand your son is not, at present, with you here at Slains?’

  ‘He is not. But he is soon expected, and I do have several letters of his which he does desire that I should put into your hands.’ Her tone turned serious. ‘You do know that the Union has been ratified by parliament?’

  Hooke seemed to find the news not unexpected. ‘I did fear it.’

  ‘It has happened to the discontent and hearty dislike of our people, and the peers and other lords, together with the members of the parliament, are all returned now to their residences in the country. Only my son, and the Earl Marischal, and His Grace the Duke of Hamilton do yet remain at Edinburgh. The last two of these men, so I have been informed, are dangerously ill, and are not fit to travel.’

  ‘I am sad to hear it,’ Hooke said, frowning. ‘I did write the Duke of Hamilton before our ship set sail. I asked that he might send some person, well-instructed, who could wait upon me here.’

  The countess nodded. ‘He did send a Mr Hall, a priest, who kindly served as guide for Mistress Paterson when they came north from Edinburgh. Mr Hall consented to stay with us, and did wait for you a month, but he could wait no longer.’

  Hooke looked disappointed. ‘We have been delayed at Dunkirk these past weeks. The winds were contrary.’

  Dunkirk, Sophia thought. So they had come from France. And from the pallor of Hooke’s face, their journey had not been a gentle one.

  The countess, who missed little, must have drawn the same conclusion, for she said to Colonel Hooke that their delay was of no consequence. ‘But surely you must both be very weary from your voyage. Colonel, please do read your letters, and refresh yourself. There will be time for talk when you have rested.’

  ‘You are kind. ’Tis sure that traveling by ship does never much improve my health. I should prefer the most ill-tempered horse beneath me to the calmest sea.’

  Sophia bravely glanced toward the place where Mr Moray stood in patient silence, noting that the sea did not appear to have in any way affected his health. He looked to be fit enough to stand all day, as he was standing, letting others make the conversation. She recalled her father saying, ‘Men who watch, and say but little, very often are much wiser than the men they serve.’ She had a feeling that, in this man’s case, it might be true.

  Aware of her appraisal, Moray’s grey eyes shifted quietly to hers, and once again she found she had no will to break the contact.

  ‘Come, Sophia,’ said the countess, ‘we shall give our visitors some peace.’ And with a smile the countess took her gracious leave of both the gentlemen, and in her wake, Sophia did the same, not daring this time to look back.

  She found a refuge in the little corner sewing room, where for a mindless hour or so she struggled with her needlework and tried to think of nothing else. Her fingertips were painful from the needle-pricks when she at last gave up and went to look for Kirsty, hoping that companionship might have success where solitude ha
d failed.

  At this hour of day, and with guests in the house, Kirsty should have been setting the dining room table for supper, but she was not there. Sophia was still standing in that room, in faint confusion, when the rustling of a woman’s gown, in concert with more manly, measured steps, approaching down the corridor, intruded on her thinking.

  The voice of the Countess of Erroll was serious. ‘So, Colonel, I should advise you to not be in haste. You will find his affairs greatly altered, within these past months. All the world has abandoned him, and all the well-affected have come to an open rupture with him. He is suspected of holding a correspondence with the court of London, therefore it would serve you well to be upon your guard before you trusted much to him.’

  They were near the open doorway of the dining room. Sophia smoothed her gown and linked her fingers and prepared an explanation of her presence there, for it seemed sure to her they would come in. But they did not. The footsteps and the rustling passed her by, and when Hooke spoke next he had moved too far away for her to know his words.

  She felt relieved. She had not meant to listen to a private conversation, and it would have pained her had the countess known she’d done it, even if it were by accident. Eyes briefly closed, she waited one more minute before stepping out herself into the corridor to carry on her search for Kirsty.

  She could not have said from which direction Mr Moray had been coming, nor how boots like his upon the floorboards could have made no sound. She only knew that when she stepped out through the doorway he was there, and had it not been for his swift reflexive grabbing of her shoulders, their collision would have surely damaged more than her composure.

  He had clearly not expected her to be there either, for his first reaction was to swear, then to retract the oath and ask for her forgiveness. ‘Did I hurt ye?’

  ‘Not at all.’ She drew back quickly—just a little bit too quickly—from his grasp. ‘The fault is mine. I did not look where I was going.’