The Winter Sea

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘I’ve been away a few days,’ he said, ‘visiting my brother, but I’ve done a bit of reading on the subject of genetic memory and I’ve found a few things that might interest you. I could come round right now, if that’s all right?’

  It was more than all right. I’d been waiting to talk to him, wanting to hear his opinion on what I’d discovered in Edinburgh. There wasn’t anybody else I could talk to about it, really—no one else who’d listen in the patient, non- judgmental manner of a trained physician and be able to discuss things from the medical perspective.

  I had the tea brewed by the time he arrived with a folder of what looked like photocopied pages from assorted books. And before he could tell me what he’d found, I told him my news about Mr Hall’s letter describing how he’d brought Sophia to Slains.

  Dr Weir was delighted. ‘That’s wonderful. Wonderful, lass. I’d have never believed you could find such a thing. And it actually said that she came from the west, and that both of her parents had died in connection with Darien?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How incredible.’ Shaking his head, he said, ‘Well, there you are. There’s your proof that you’re not going mad.’ He smiled. ‘You simply have the memory of your ancestor.’

  I knew, deep down, that he was right. I even shared his obvious excitement at my find, but it was tempered by a sense of hesitation. I wasn’t sure I wanted such a gift, or knew the way to deal with all its implications. And my mind was still resisting the idea. ‘How could something like that happen?’

  ‘Well, it has to be genetic. Do you know much about DNA?’

  ‘Just what I see on crime shows.’

  ‘Ah.’ He settled in, balancing his folder for the moment on the broad arm of his chair. ‘Let’s start with the gene, which is the basic unit of inheritance. A gene is nothing but a length of DNA, and we’ve thousands of genes in our bodies. Half of our genes we inherit,’ he said, ‘from our mother, and half from our father. The mix is unique. It determines a whole range of characteristics: your eye color, hair color, whether you’re left- or right-handed.’ He paused. ‘Countless things, even your chance of developing certain diseases, are passed down to you in your genes from your parents, who got their own genes from their parents and so on. Your nose may be the same shape as your great-great-great-great grandmother’s. And if a nose can be inherited,’ he said, ‘who knows what else might be?’

  ‘But surely noses aren’t the same as memories.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s been discovered, so I’ve learned, that there’s a gene that plays a part in making people thrill-seekers, or not. My eldest daughter, now, she always loved a bit of danger, from the time that she was born. Always climbing, she was—we had to harness her to keep her in the pram. She climbed out of her cot, up the bookcases, everywhere. Now that she’s grown, she climbs mountains, and jumps out of airplanes. Where did she get that from? I don’t know. Not her environment,’ he told me, with a certain smile. ‘My wife and I are hardly what you’d call the mountaineering type.’

  I shared the smile, imagining the gnome-like doctor or his wife suspended from a cliff by ropes.

  ‘My point,’ he said, ‘is that some aspects of our nature, of our temperament, are clearly carried in our genes. And memory, surely, is no more intangible than temperament.’

  ‘I guess you’re right.’

  He reached to open up his folder and began to sort the photocopied pages. ‘I did find some very interesting articles on the subject. For instance, here’s a piece by an American professor who believes that the abilities of some savants— autistic savants, who are mentally and socially shut off from all the rest of us, and yet have these strange, unexplainable gifts in one area, music, or maths, for example—this professor thinks their abilities may be the product of some form of genetic memory. He actually uses the term.

  ‘And here’s another piece that caught my fancy. I tried to keep strictly to science, but even though this is a bit more new-age, it did raise what I thought were some valid possibilities. It suggests that the entire past-life phenomenon, where people are “regressed” under hypnosis and recall what they believe are former lives in other bodies, may in fact be nothing more than their remembering the lives of their own ancestors.’ He handed me the folder, sitting back again to watch me while I sifted through the articles myself. Then he said, ‘Maybe I should start my own wee study, hmm?’

  ‘With me as your subject, you mean?’ I was briefly amused by the thought. ‘I’m not sure how much use I’d be to science.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Well, there’d be no way to prove just how much of the story was coming from memory, and how much was my own creation,’ I said, thinking now of how I had deliberately brought Captain Gordon back into the plot to stir the waters. That had come from my frustration with Stuart and Graham, and not from Sophia. ‘The family history details, fair enough, those can be checked, but when it comes to things like dialogue…’

  “I should imagine it would be a mixture of your memory, and your writer’s art. And what of that? We tinker with our memories all the time. We add embellishments—that fish we caught gets larger, or the faults we had get fewer. But the basic event…well, that is what it is. We can’t turn sad memories to happy ones, no matter how we try. So I’d wager what you’ll write about Sophia, at its essence, will be truth.’

  I thought about that later, when he’d gone and I was sitting at my writing-table, staring at the screen of my computer while the cursor blinked expectantly.

  I wasn’t in the trance, tonight. My conscious mind was uppermost, and I could feel it pushing at my characters while they dug in their heels. They wouldn’t walk the path I tried to put them on. I’d meant to write the dinner scene, with Captain Gordon sitting at the table with John Moray and Sophia, so the two men could continue their competitive exchange.

  But neither man was keen to speak, and in the end I had to go and fetch The Old Scots Navy book that Dr Weir had loaned me, thinking I might come across some interesting naval going-on that Captain Gordon could be telling everyone about, to get the conversation going.

  I hadn’t had the nerve to read the book since that first night when I had opened it and learned that all the details I had written about Captain Gordon had in fact been real, and not of my creation. That knowledge had been too much for my troubled mind to process at the time, and after that I’d left the book untouched beside my bed.

  But desperation drove me now to scan the index, searching for a Captain Gordon reference that might give me what I needed. And I found a document appended to the text, that seemed to be of the right date. It started: ‘During Hooke’s absence in Edinburgh Captain Gordon, commander of the two Scotch frigates on guard upon the coast (the one of 40, the other of 28 cannon) had come ashore to the Earl of Erroll…’

  I could feel the now familiar creeping chill between my shoulder blades.

  It was all there, as plain as day.

  The captain promising the earl that he’d stay off the coast for fifteen days, and the exchange of signals to be used in case he met the French ship, and the fact that Captain Hamilton was bound to grow suspicious if the French ship stayed too long in Scottish waters. Even Captain Gordon’s statement that he might soon have to leave the naval service, since he would not take the oath against King James.

  I read it with the same sense of surrealism I’d felt when I’d been sitting in that reading room in Edinburgh with Mr Hall’s old letter. Because I knew for certain I had never read this document before. I hadn’t gotten this far in the book on my first reading. I had gotten spooked and closed it, as I closed it now. I pushed it far away from me across the table. ‘Damn.’

  I’d honestly believed that scene had been my own invention, that I’d made the captain come back just to complicate the plot. I’d been so proud of how I’d worked the whole thing in. And now I found I hadn’t done such an amazing thing.

  It looked as though I’d have to face the fact that Dr Weir
had hit the nail more squarely on the head than I’d have liked. It might be that I was not to have a hand at all in the creation of this story.

  Maybe all that I could do was write the truth.

  Deleting the few stilted lines I’d written so the cursor sat once more at the beginning of the chapter, I closed my eyes and felt the silence of the room press round me like a thing alive.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘What scene should I be writing?’

  VIII

  THE COUNTESS LOOKED ROUND, smiling, as Sophia passed the doorway of her private rooms. ‘My dear, would you have seen Monsieur de Ligondez?’

  She meant the captain of the French ship, the Heroine, which that morning had, unheralded, returned from Norway, sliding down the coast so very stealthily that none at Slains had noticed it until the boat that bore the captain had been rowed halfway to shore. The earl, who had not risen from his bed yet, had been forced to beg Monsieur de Ligondez’s indulgence for the short while it would take to dress and drink his morning draught and make himself prepared.

  The countess, also, had just finished dressing.

  But Sophia had herself been up some time, and knew exactly where the French ship’s captain was. ‘I do believe,’ she said, ‘that he is walking now with Mr Moray, in the garden.’

  ‘Then would you be good enough to go and seek him there, and tell him that my son and I are ready now to welcome him.’

  Sophia hesitated. She had not been in the garden these three days since Billy Wick had put his hands on her, and she had no desire to go there now in case he tried it once again. But she could not refuse the countess. With a brave lift of her chin, she answered, ‘Yes, of course,’ and did as she’d been asked.

  It was another fair spring morning. Songbirds greeted her with twittering more cheerful than the crying of the gulls that wheeled, high specks of white, above the cliffs beyond the garden wall. Her shoulder brushed a vine that loosed a fragrance sweetly unfamiliar from its soft, unfolding leaves, and when she walked her gown brushed lightly over bluebells growing close against the ground.

  She did not give herself to daydreams this time, though, but kept her eyes fixed open, and her ears alert. Not far off, she could hear the quiet voices of Monsieur de Ligondez and Moray, though she could not understand their words, and so presumed they must be speaking in the language of the French. She turned her steps towards the sound, and felt so near her goal that she had almost let her guard down when the heavy steps fell in behind her on the path.

  She would not show him fear again, she thought. Not looking round, she kept her shoulders square and walked more briskly, heading for the voices with such single-minded focus that she burst upon the speakers like a pheasant flushed by dogs out of the underbrush.

  The French ship’s captain stopped mid-sentence, startled. Moray turned to look first at Sophia, then beyond her to the gardener, who had changed his course unhurriedly away from them, towards the malthouse.

  Quickly, to distract his narrowed gaze, Sophia said, ‘The countess sent me here to find you.’

  Moray’s grey eyes settled once more on Sophia’s face. ‘Did she, now?’

  ‘She would inform Monsieur de Ligondez that she is ready, with the Earl of Erroll, to receive him.’

  Moray translated her message for the Frenchman, who bowed low and left them.

  Moray made no move to follow. Squinting upwards at the sky, he said, ‘The day is wondrous fair.’

  She could do nothing but agree with him. ‘It is.’

  ‘Have ye yet breakfasted?’

  ‘I have, sir, yes.’

  ‘Then come,’ he said, ‘and walk with me.’

  It was no invitation, she decided, but a challenge. He did not make a formal offer of his arm, but shifted, with his hand firm on his sword hilt, so his elbow lifted slightly from his body.

  She considered. She had well observed that there were roads in life one started down by choice, that led to ends quite different from what might have been if one had chanced to take another turning. This, she thought, was such a crossroads. If she were to tell him no, and stay behind, the comfort of her world would yet continue, and she’d surely be the safer for it. If she told him yes, she had a fair idea where that road would lead, and yet she felt the stirring of her father’s reckless blood within her and she yearned, as he had done, to set her course through waters yet uncharted.

  Reaching out, she set her hand upon the crook of Moray’s elbow, and the look he angled down at her was briefly warm.

  She asked, ‘Where would you walk?’

  ‘Away from here.’

  Indeed, the ordered garden seemed too small for him. Within it, he was as the bear she’d once seen caged for baiting, pacing ceaselessly around its strong-barred prison. But the garden walls proved easier to breach than iron bars, and in a moment they had passed beyond its boundaries to the wider sweep of greening cliff that dipped towards the village and the pink sand beach beyond.

  It was yet early, and Sophia saw no faces in the windows of the village peering out to mark their passage. Likely everyone was still abed, she thought, and just as well, at that. Her cautious glances did not go unnoticed.

  Smiling, Moray asked her, ‘D’ye fear that being seen with me will harm your reputation?’

  ‘No.’ She looked at him, surprised. ‘It is not that. It—’ But she could not bring herself to tell him of her true fear, that behind one of these curtained windows, someone even now was taking note of him and planning to expose him. She had heard the tales of other captured Jacobites, and how they had been cruelly tortured by the agents of the Crown who had put one man to the boot and shattered both his ankles when he would not talk. And she could not imagine Moray talking, either.

  Looking down, she said, ‘I do not fear your company.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, lass.’ He brought his arm against his side and kept her hand close to him as he steered their steps between the sleeping cottages and down again onto the beach.

  The sea was wide. Sophia could no longer see the bare masts of the French ship brought to shelter on the far side of the castle rocks. She only saw the bright sky and the water, with its endless waves that rolled to shore in white-curled ranks that fell in foam against the sand and then retreated to the broad horizon.

  As she watched, she felt again the pulsing of her father’s blood within her veins, and asked impulsively, ‘What is it like to sail upon a ship?’

  He shrugged. ‘That does depend on whether ye do have the constitution for it. Colonel Hooke would no doubt say it is a wretched way to travel, and I would not call him wrong. To be so close confined with many men and little air does not improve my temper. But to be on deck,’ he said, ‘is something altogether different. When the ship is running fast, sails filled with wind…’ He searched for words. ‘It feels, then, like to flying.’

  She did not suppose that she would ever know that feeling, and she told him so.

  He said, ‘Ye cannot ever say which way this world will take ye. Had ye told me when I was a lad that I would leave the fields of home to fight the battles of a foreign king, I would have called ye mad.’ He slanted a kind look at her. ‘Mayhap ye’ll walk a ship’s deck, after all.’ And then he looked ahead, and added in an offhand tone, ‘I’ve no doubt Captain Gordon could arrange it, if you asked.’

  Sophia shot a quick look upwards, searching for some clue in his expression as to why he felt so cold towards the captain. There was more between the men, she knew, than could be laid to her account. She said, ‘You do not like him.’

  ‘On the contrary, I do admire him greatly.’

  ‘But you do not like him.’

  He took several strides in silence. Then he said, ‘Three years ago I came here by the order of King Jamie, in the company of Simon Fraser. D’ye ken the name?’

  She knew it well, as did the whole of Scotland. Even in a nation such as theirs, where the rough violence of the past ran like a stream submerged beneath the everyday affairs of m
en, a rogue like Simon Fraser set his deeds apart by their depravity. To gain himself the title of Lord Lovat, he had sought to kidnap and marry his own cousin, the heiress to the last lord, but his plot had gone awry and he had taken, in her stead, her widowed mother. All undaunted, he’d decided that the mother was as useful as the daughter to his purposes, and calling on his pipers to play forcefully to drown the lady’s screams, he had subjected her to brutal rape before a band of witnesses, and claimed the weeping woman for his wife.

  Fraser had not kept his title long and had been outlawed for his deeds. He had fled to exile before finally being pardoned, but the black stain of such villainy would not soon be erased.

  Sophia’s pale, set face showed plainly that she knew whom Moray spoke of.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘’twas all the time like walking with the devil, but the devil kens the way to charm when it does suit his purpose, and to most at Saint-Germain that year it seemed that Simon Fraser was the key to raising Scotland for the king. He had a plan, he claimed, and he convinced the king’s own mother of its virtues, so she sent him here to test the ground. They chose me to come with him, I was later told, because it was believed that by my honor and my family’s reputation I’d more easily commend myself to those we wished to meet with than would such a man as Fraser. They were right.’ The reminiscence set a shadow on his face. ‘We were received by many honorable men. And Simon Fraser did betray them all. And me.’ His smile was thin. ‘He was, throughout our visit, telling all he knew to agents of Queen Anne.’

  That, thought Sophia, must have been how Moray had been branded as a traitor to the queen, and earned the price upon his head.

  ‘I was full ignorant of this. ’Twas Captain Gordon who enlightened me,’ he said. ‘At table with my father, he did call me fool, and worse, that I would let myself be so used by a man who, by his treachery, would surely bring to pain and ruin men of better character. And so it came to pass. I saw good men of my acquaintance taken prisoner, and battered in the pillory, and sentenced to be hanged. And though I managed to escape, my father took my shame upon himself and bore it with him to his grave.’