The Exile of Sara Stevenson

by Darci Hannah

  “Aye, aye, I will,” and with a visible gulp to steel his nerves he picked up the thread of his narrative precisely where he had left off. “As I was saying, sensitive information was given to this lady’s father and that man, having great pull with the mariners on account o’ the work he did, made a deal with Captain Babbington of the HMS Majestic. And so it was that the lad found himself lashed into a hammock, swingin’ in the half light on the lower decks of a man-o’-war. What I dinna bargain for was how much his sorry plight would affect me.” And the look in the man’s eyes as he spoke reflected all the pain in my own.

  Thomas, according to Mr. Stewart, was no ordinary case. Of course pressed men rebel, but Thomas did so with such relentless fervor that even Captain Babbington began to take notice. “He was a right good sailor, ye had tae give thae lad that, an’ knew his trade well as any. But he made a rare habit of defecting, and every attempt he made tae go over the side was met with due consequences. At first the captain merely had his grog and tobacco stopped indefinitely. This would have sorely chaffed any ordinary sailor, but young Mr. Crichton hardly took notice at all. Next time the lad tried tae go over the side he was given the lash. And yet he still persisted in this foolishness. In fact, young Tam made such a point o’ defectin,’ ’twas almost a game between him and the marines what keep order on the ship. Every night marine guards were posted to keep watch—every fishing vessel that pulled alongside was checked, and every trick in the book was tried and duly thwarted. The lad was denied all liberties except his work, and even at that he had to be monitored by a watchful eye. ’Twas I that was given this unholy job.

  “Young Mr. Crichton received more excruciating discipline than ever a man was meant to receive, and still he persisted. When I had brought him down to the ship’s doctor tae have his back anointed and wrapped for the seventeenth time in nearly as many days, I finally asked the lad, why? Why did he persist so? It was then young Tam turned to me, and as he’s lying there facedown on the doctor’s table, he says with that steely blue gaze o’ his mocking me, ‘As I’ve told ye before, I have commitments, Mr. Stewart, commitments to a lady. I doubt very much if ye ken what either word—commitment or lady—might mean.’ Well,” Mr. Stewart remarked, smiling at the memory, “young Tam always had humor about him, ye had tae give him that. An’ a right way with words too. And I will tell ye this, he took his punishment with as much goodwill as any man could. Even auld Captain Babbington began to take pity on him and offered to send the particular woman he was trying to reach sae desperately a letter.

  “Tam, seein’ that he was being given an inch, began a string o’ letters that day, quite inundating the poor captain. And when he was no’ writing letters, or doing his duty, he was plotting his next attempt to divest himself of thae auld Majestic! Might I tell ye, ma’am, how his heart broke every time one o’ his letters was returned unopened? It drove even the most hardened auld salt tae tears.”

  “But … but I never received any letters, Mr. Stewart!” I averred, feeling a frantic, helpless despair. “I swear, had I received but one, I would have likely commandeered my own ship and attempted to find him!”

  “Aye,” he said with a soft smile. “I believe that ye would too. And so must have your parents. For poor Tam dinna even ken where ye were but for your home in Edinburgh.”

  “And my mother had returned all Thomas’ letters unopened!” I added dejectedly, quite overcome myself with the heartache he must have felt.

  “Now, my dear, it just so happened that when all this came about, old Bony was startin’ up his tricks again. And we found ourselves pitched for battle with a Frenchie. Every man jack o’ us was itching for a fight that day, but none so more than your Thomas. In fact, I believe it fair drove him, and for once he gave no thought tae jumpin’ ship. For he was in so much pain already, both physical and mental, that only the heat of battle could soothe him.

  “The captain knew that young Tam would fight with every drop o’ blood that flowed through his fiery veins, and so he put him on the boarding party under me. That was when Tam asked of me his favor.

  “He told me all about ye, Miss Sara. So good was his description that I would ha’ known ye had I met ye on the crowded streets o’ London. And once he had described a bit of what lay between ye, he asked, should he be knocked on the head, would I find ye and give to ye all his belongings. I promised him I would, but I also swore on my life that I would make certain he would be the one to find ye once the war was over.

  “Your Tam fought like a lion that day, and the bloodlust was full on him. He killed many a Frenchman before he answered my sorry call. We had been fighting side by side on the enemy’s decks and got separated. Seven frogs had me in a corner when young Tam came to my aid and pulled them off me, flinging them here and there with an unworldly strength. And only when the deck had been cleared did I realize the great gash on his head. For Tam, caught up in the moment, dinna even feel it himself. But he saw the look in my eye, and I believe ’twas then he grew a wee frightened. He noticed for the first time the blood running down his face in great rivulets, and says to me, ‘Och! Jeb, ’tis nothin’! Never ye worry ’bout me,’ right before collapsing into me arms. I carried him down to the surgery, that poor fisherman’s son, and he looked me in the eye, his own moist with pain, and said, ‘Ye remember your promise, Jeb. Ye find Miss Sara Stevenson and tell her how I loved her. Never forget, man. Never forget …’”

  There were tears in the old sailor’s eyes as he uttered these words, and they fell down his sun-wrinkled face, leaving great salty streaks that glistened in the soft morning light. But his were not the only cheeks that were wet. There was not a dry eye in the entire room, nor was there a sound uttered. We were all transported by Mr. Stewart’s story.

  The old man-o’-war’s man cleared his throat and continued. “I says to the lad, thon poor beautiful boy, ‘Ach, ye daft mannie, ye tell her yourself!’ and to that Tam smiled. ’Twas a glorious smile on that boy, an’ that was how he died, smiling in my arms, all the while thinking of ye, Miss Stevenson.”

  It was while the HMS Majestic was refitting at Gibraltar, after the battle Mr. Stewart had described, that he ran into some old mates newly employed on the privateer Le Temeraire, a ship whose very name meant reckless. These men, cast-offs from the navy during the decommissioning of a great many ships when the war looked to be over, had landed themselves in a lucrative venture. They told him how they frequented a coast, a forlorn coast on the northern tip of Scotland, where they had heard tales of a beautiful young woman who had been sent to live in a lighthouse there, built by her father, one Robert Stevenson. Mr. Stewart, upon hearing the name Stevenson, knew fate had intervened.

  “And that very night I achieved what poor Tam had failed to do ever since coming aboard. I defected right there, never a look back, and joined the crew of the Le Temeraire.”

  And in this way Mr. Stewart made good on his promise to Thomas Crichton; I now felt moved to make a promise of my own.

  While the brave sailor sat teary-eyed in the chair beside my bed, I handed him the tiny child in my arms. “This, Mr. Stewart, is Thomas Crichton’s son, born this night of June first in the year eighteen hundred and fifteen. You once held his father, and for that I am eternally grateful; now you honor me by holding his son.”

  Mr. Stewart looked at the newly born infant in his arms as the tears continued streaming down his cheeks. And with the tenderness of a proud parent he bent and kissed the downy head. “I never met a braver man than your father, laddie,” he cooed in a voice as tender as a nursemaid’s. “An’ I was blessed tae have known him. When ye get old enough, auld Jeb Stewart will tell ye more of the man whose name ye now bear.”

  Mr. Stewart heartily agreed to be godfather of Thomas Crichton’s only child, and he made good on that promise too.

  • • •

  It was some time before I felt strong enough to look at all of Thomas’ worldly effects neatly packed into the little wooden sea chest bearing his name,
which Mr. Stewart had gone to such pains to deliver. I was surprised by how little there was, just some sailor’s slops, a comb, a tin pannikin and spoon, a knife, a Bible, an Edinburgh edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect by Robert Burns and a little sack of money that he had been saving, all of which took up only half the chest. The other half, to my astonishment, was entirely filled with letters addressed to me … all of which had been returned unopened. That simple truth broke my heart.

  William Campbell and I were finally able to finish what we had started in my bedroom on that stormy night at the end of May, yet it was a good six weeks before we did. That was when my baby was christened, legally bearing the name Thomas Crichton II. For it was proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was no man’s bastard but the legitimate son of a dead man. Because of the letters, the irrefragable mutual consent on both our parts and the peculiarities of Scottish law, Thomas and I were man and wife under God for those few weeks when our child was conceived, even if no one ever knew of it but us. Kate bore testimony, working hard to repair the friendship we once had. I was not a begrudging soul, but I was stubborn, and slowly Kate MacKinnon became a woman even I could be proud of. On that same day, after the christening of wee Thomas Crichton, another ceremony was held at the old church in Durness, and that was the marriage ceremony joining me, Sara Stevenson Crichton, to William Campbell.

  William was a fine man and a good husband. The successful and blessedly uneventful birth of wee Thomas did much to lift that veil of death that so plagued him. And though he never embraced the vocation of physician again, he did have an astounding amount of knowledge on the subject. This drove the scientist within him; his intellect and curiosity were great, and the natural world held a kind of fascination for him that at times bordered on irksome. When he wasn’t busy preserving mariners’ lives he turned his passions in the direction of amateur naturalist and studied, as no man before him had ever done, the flora and fauna indigenous to the Cape. Wee Hughie was his first apprentice in the art, the boy knowing instinctively where to find the creatures William sought out, and he, more often than not, took his knife to the poor beasts that intrigued him so, drawing his findings meticulously in one of his leather-bound sketchbooks.

  However, one creature I absolutely forbade William to dissect and examine under his microscope was the hare; for that guileless little besom abounded in our garden (much to his chagrin), validating my theory on peas. The hares of Cape Wrath loved peas as much as I did not, and they had eaten every last one of the fleshy plants down to the nub. William suffered duly for this, first because he liked peas, and second because the victory, however small, went straight to my head. But he, being the canny man he was, was thoroughly adept at trapping hares, and caught them by the score. We ate of them gladly, but William was forbidden to take them beyond the stewpot!

  We chose to stay at the lighthouse on Cape Wrath, a place that in those early days resembled more of a nursery than any proper place of business. And slowly, the ghosts of William’s terrible past left him. The only time I saw fear in those pale, haunting eyes of his was whenever another child was about to be born. It was only after the successful delivery of our fourth son (William Campbell only knew how to give me sons; Kate and Robbie had all the daughters) that I suggested, perhaps mockingly, that he just stay in his tower if he preferred and I’d handle the matter myself, calling him down at the “all clear.” I could see that he actually entertained this thought, a wistful smile flitting across his handsome face at the suggestion. But William had too much of the physician about him yet to pass up such a learning opportunity and delivered every one of our sons and Kate’s daughters with his own capable hands. He was also remarkably adept at mixing his own elixirs!

  Although Cape Wrath was to always be our home we did make the trip south to Edinburgh a few times. The first of these was the November after Thomas was born. William was required to make a visit to Baxter Place, duty drove him; nothing nearly so honorable drove me. My parents were quite pleased with the match I had made, for William Campbell came from a good family, but even they knew that from their previous actions I was lost to them as a daughter.

  Yet there was another reason we had traveled to Edinburgh that November besides seeking my parents’ blessing, and for this purpose William and I found ourselves wandering through a little fishing village on the Leith estuary. And when the man opened the door of the little hovel we had knocked on, I knew instantly I had come to the right place, for there could be no mistaking who he was. The magnetic blue gaze, the disarming white-toothed smile and the hair once golden but now white; he was the image of his son, only older, grayer … sadder. And as instantaneously as I had recognized him, he had recognized me, for Thomas, after that glorious tour around the coast, had gone home and made his peace with his father at last. He had moved back there, choosing the hut of a poor but kindly fisherman over his crowded lodgings in a questionable section of Edinburgh. And there, under the roof of the only other person who had loved him as much as I, he had lived. It was there he strove to be a good, honorable man. And it was there he had ended up telling his father all about me, including our plans to elope.

  When the man saw his grandchild in my arms, he cried. They were tears of joy and sorrow in equal amount. He then took his grandson in his arms in a meeting that touched both William and me beyond words. I knew for a certainty we had done the right thing by finding him. Just as both William and I knew that James Crichton would play an important role in his grandson’s life.

  William and I often talked of the night that had changed both our lives forever, but never around the children. The rescue of the men from the privateer Le Temeraire, though thoroughly successful in every way, was never formally noted by the lighthouse, nor was it ever mentioned by the people of the Cape, except for during those long winter nights spent huddled around the hearth, where fantastical tales were spun and retold year after year, purely for the entertainment of young and old alike. The elusive craft Le Temeraire was never to be seen (officially) again, yet oddly enough, claret was still the preferred drink of the locals!

  From the moment wee Thomas arrived on Cape Wrath, the letters from Mr. Seawell had stopped. His identity was always a great mystery to us, and why he had chosen to contact me through Thomas was an even more puzzling incident for us to comprehend. We knew we never would understand. We had even traveled to Oxford once to find his lodgings, but were told, on several occasions, that no one by that name had ever lived there. The trail was dead. There was no information anyone could give us on the man’s identity. And William and I were both in agreement when we surmised that we had both been touched by something special and unearthly that year—something that only the two of us had been able to share. I never heard from Mr. Seawell again. Yet I knew, deep within the core of my being, that one day Alexander Seawell would come to Cape Wrath. And I prayed that what he would find once he arrived would be enough to restore his faith in humanity once again, just as his letters had helped to restore my faith and had brought William Campbell to me.

  And that unearthly little skiff, owned by an angel and sailed by the man who forever had a hold of my heart? The ghost of Thomas Crichton never again appeared. It was only that once. And it was that fleeting, unearthly encounter at the jetty that forever changed my life and the way I would look at life from then on. No, Thomas Crichton never came to Cape Wrath again. But I never could bring myself to stop searching for him. Never …

  TWELVE

  Alexander Seawell

  MAY 31, 1915

  It had been a hellish journey, and one he was glad was nearly over. Yet getting to Cape Wrath posed problems of its own. After taking that crowded, smoke-filled, meandering train route north from Oxford, changing once in Edinburgh and then again at Aberdeen, he finally made it to Inverness, that glittering capital of the Highlands. Yet there he found his journey was just beginning. Another rail was in order, heading north yet again, across the River Ness and into the Highlands proper.
Yet the old steam engine could only take him as far as a little village called Forsinard. Thankfully, he was in Sutherland.

  It was there he attempted to hire a taxi to take him to the northern village of Durness. Arriving at the little station he questioned a local man. The man, like many he had encountered north of the border, speaking a form of English he barely understood, comprehending only five to the dozen words and even then he was only guessing, smiled at his naïveté. He inquired of the man again, asking after a lorry for hire, and this time he was directed to another soul dwelling on the outskirts of the little village.

  Alexander found the croft without incident, being the only one for miles. And it was there he met an old peat harvester named Hamish MacPhee, a weather-beaten yet apparently cheerful gent who seemed overjoyed at the prospect of company. After taking a glass of the local whisky he inquired of the man about hiring transportation to carry him as far as Durness. The old crofter smiled and disappeared into a lime-washed building, returning a moment later with a short, portly, ill-looking donkey.

  Alexander waved his hands in alarm at the sight of the mange-ridden creature, and told the man he was in search of an automobile, or bicycle, or horse-driven hayrick. The old crofter shook his head and beheld him with a near toothless smile, insisting the donkey was the preferred transportation of these parts. But Alexander didn’t want a donkey, he told the man, not even at the cut rate of seven pounds. But he might consider the old plow horse for the same fee.

  Here the old man balked. For the plow horse was his bread and butter; the plow horse he could not spare. It was the donkey or nothing.

  Alexander, feeling despair and a keen desperation to press onward, knew his choices were few, and so, begrudgingly, he paid the farmer the seven pounds and found himself either the new owner or new leaser of a stocky, unmotivated beast of burden named Donkey-Odie. The farmer had said the creature’s name with relish; but Alexander did not smile. He was too preoccupied with marveling at his own stupidity. The farmer, thinking the Englishman had not heard him correctly, for he knew the English to be queer folk without an ear for the local jargon, handed him the lead rope, saying the name faster. This time Alexander heard it correctly. The name sounded suspiciously like Don Quixote.