The Prisoner's Dilemma

by Sean Stuart O'Connor

‘Now, what have you to report? I do not believe you were here earlier when I sent for you.’

  ‘No, sir. Well, you will recall that I was making investigations into the ship that we heard had exploded.’

  ‘Indeed. No, I had not forgotten. Well, what did you find?’

  ‘We established that the ship was driven onto rocks near a fishing village to the north of here called Dunbeaton during last night’s great storm. I interviewed some of the villagers and they were all certain that the ship was not making for their bay. It has no deep water, no landing quay and the rocks there are well known to be dangerous. It’s more likely that the ship was blown in there by the gale. It was wrecked before it exploded. There were no survivors.’

  L’Arquen gazed in silence at Sharrocks with one eyebrow lazily lifted.

  ‘I see. No more?’

  ‘We found the name of the vessel, sir. On the stern of one of its boats.’

  ‘Send a man down to Dundee and tell them to have it traced. It would be useful to find out where the ship came from.’

  L’Arquen rose from his desk and went over to where a large map of the area hung on a wall.

  ‘And where was it going?’ he said quietly, tracing the coastline with his finger and then moving inland. He tapped a spot a few inches from Craigleven.

  ‘There was a report yesterday that some of the rebel highlanders have been seen not twenty miles from here. The ship was obviously bringing gunpowder for the rebellion – but where was it going to be met?’

  L’Arquen’s finger wandered up the coast again before returning to tap a large illustration of a castle.

  ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘who owns this great thing here?’

  ‘The Earl of Dunbeath, sir. He is the largest landowner in the area.’

  ‘Dunbeath?’ murmured L’Arquen. ‘One of that name was in the Lords with my father some years ago. They are the clan chiefs of the Urquhain – an ancient Scottish line.’

  This was enough for Sharrocks.

  ‘Another Scottish bastard allowed to be in London, sir? In the House of Lords! If you’ll permit me, sir, but why do we allow it? They are nothing but disloyal bastards, the enemy within. Most of them are nothing more than traitors that want to see us kicked out of here. So they can have their Bonnie Prince damned Charlie on the throne.’

  ‘Yes’, said L’Arquen, half to himself, ‘an Italian instead of the German that we have now.’

  But Sharrocks had reddened with anger, inwardly raging at L’Arquen’s high handed treatment of him and his questioning reaction to the report – but submerging his fury under an exaggerated show of duty. He stepped forward in emphasis.

  ‘You are quite right, sir. Where was that damned ship going? Find that and I believe we find the Jacobites. I’d like to take some men and put that village under surveillance. I’m quite sure they know more than they’re saying.’

  L’Arquen looked coolly away. There was a pause as he considered the request.

  ‘Very well, Sharrocks. But you are to be covert. That means I don’t want you or your men to be seen. We’re unpopular enough here as it is. You are not to stir up trouble unnecessarily – it just makes these people side with the rebels. We’re not at war you know, Sharrocks. Not yet anyway. You may investigate and report back. I’ll give you a few weeks to find something. But do not be seen, d’you hear me? And certainly not by that Dunbeath fellow.’

  * * *

  Much as Annie had prayed, her instinctive love for Sophie was being returned with interest and it was not many days after her rescue that they were sitting on a windowseat, with the old housekeeper laughing away at Sophie’s strangled English. She now tossed her head back in a gentle mockery of Sophie’s youthful manner and mimicked her strong German accent. But Annie could see that in spite of her playful teasing, Sophie was fast polishing the English that she’d learnt as a child. It was now her greatest hope that the girl would stay at the castle and provide the companionship that she so much longed for.

  As they rattled on, they sewed, making clothes for Sophie. Annie looked up and her laugh rang out again as she repeated something that Sophie had just said. In her delight she mentioned this to Dunbeath as he happened to walk past, deep in thought. But the earl didn’t even break stride and Annie’s face fell, plainly dismayed at his silence.

  ‘His lordship is not one for games,’ Sophie said quietly, looking down at her work.

  ‘No, he is not,’ replied Annie. ‘You will learn, he is not one for others at all. He prefers his own company.’

  There was a pause while Sophie completed a line of stitching. She took a deep breath and then embarked on a subject that she knew would be painful for the old woman.

  ‘Annie, would you do something for me? Do you feel you could ask Lord Dunbeath if he would make me a loan of the money I need for a passage back to my home? My poor mother will be desperate to see me again and I fear that it is only a matter of time before rumours of our shipwreck will work their way back to her ears.’

  Annie was even more shocked than Sophie imagined she would be. The old housekeeper hadn’t given any thought to her beautiful friend having a family or even a past. And now this blow had fallen. Her spirits fell and there was a sad edge to her voce as she replied.

  ‘Oh, I could not do that, my love. I’ve never known anyone ask such a thing of him. You don’t know his lordship – he cares nothing for others’ problems. Can you not rest for a while and gather your strength here? Perhaps he will get used to seeing you in time? You might even make yourself useful – and then you can ask him yourself.’

  * * *

  Time passed and once Zweig had decided to live, there was little that would slow his huge strength and iron determination from completing an almost incredible transformation. It was not yet a month since the fatal wreck that had brought him here, but even in that short time he had progressed from being a hopeless near corpse to the helpful, outwardly cheerful and charming guest that now stood outside the cottage, joking with Mona as he helped her to hang stones to hold down the turf roof. The captain spoke good English from his long experience of trading and just as Mona had restored him, so he was restoring her. Nursing him had been the best of therapies and simply being in the company of his colossal personality was gently easing her grief.

  The weather has been kind for some days too and, as she laughed at an idle comment of his, a long-forgotten warmth began to seep through her. She now looked over at him.

  ‘You know I told you that the girl that survived the shipwreck is at the castle down there,’ she said, indicating the far end of the bay with a nod of her head. ‘Would you like me to get a message to her? I could send word through Lord Dunbeath’s housekeeper the next time she comes down here. We’ve told nobody about you being here for fear it would get back to the English but perhaps you’d like me to speak to Annie now that you’re better?’

  ‘No, please don’t,’ Zweig replied with a cool shrug, fully aware that he was in no position yet to deal with Sophie. ‘The girl was just a passenger on my ship and we’d hardly exchanged two words. We were only taking her as far as Dundee so I’m sure she’ll complete her journey by land when she’s ready. No, I’d rather she didn’t know I was alive – she’d probably blame me for her troubles! But thank you for asking me all the same.’

  He smiled at Mona with obvious fondness and then looked up at the roof.

  ‘Now, I think you’ll find that the turf is secure. Give me something else to do. I have to repay your kindness somehow and I don’t think Andrew will ever allow me near a boat!’

  Mona laughed and coloured with delight as she thought for a second.

  ‘Well there is a job that needs doing. It’ll be very dirty though. I’ve been asking James to do it for days but he keeps putting it off.’

  ‘Anything. Lead me to it.’

  ‘Well it’s over there,’ she said, pointing towards the pigsty. ‘Poor pigs. They need their bedding replaced. Do you think you could do it?’


  ‘Do it? Why I’m almost a pig myself. Just give me a shovel.’

  A few minutes later Zweig was bent double inside the sty and cleaning away the ground mess with a will. He had the old straw outside and he now moved towards the back wall to dig out the soiled earth.

  He hummed as he worked, thinking to himself that he’d do the messy job properly for once and ‘give the old hull a good scrubbing’. He dug deeper, swinging the spade as best he could in the tiny space. But with his third stroke the blade hit a long thin stone and he pushed it to one side and lifted the shovel again. But an unconscious instinct made him hesitate. He wasn’t quite sure why, but something had bothered him. Then he realised that there’d been an odd noise when the metal blade had struck. He tapped the stone again. There was definitely a muffled sound rather than a metallic ring and, curious now, he reached down and pulled the strange shape out of the earth. It was definitely not a stone – it was long and cylindrical and soft to the touch. He picked it up and carried it out into the light. He now saw that whatever it was had been covered by an oiled cloth and then tied up with twine. Intrigued, he looked more closely at it and pulled the string away. He glanced quickly around to see if he was being overlooked and then unrolled the covering. His head dropped in amazement. Lying in his hand was a sight so incredible that he muffled the urge to shout out. It was a beautiful, jewel-encrusted telescope of extraordinary quality. Once glance had been enough to tell him what it was and he looked quickly around once again to check that he hadn’t been seen.

  Zweig hid the beautiful instrument in the folds of his clothes and walked up behind the cottage and onto the dunes. He climbed for some time until he came to a vantage point from where he could see the castle. He checked once more that he couldn’t be seen and then took the telescope out and examined it more closely, running his finger in amazement over the embedded jewels, each one the size of a large ring. He then lifted the gorgeous thing to his eye and focused it on the stones of the castle’s roofline. Even to someone as experienced of nautical telescopes as he was, its power amazed him and he slowly moved the enlarged image, first looking through the glass walls into the observatory, then swinging it away to examine minutely the great fortress’s layout.

  A movement at the castle’s land side made him sweep it down and he now saw the greatly magnified image of a carriage coming up to the entrance. A portly man in a deep red coat stepped down by the front door and dug around in his pocket for coins to pay off the driver.

  Zweig put the telescope into the inside pocket of his coat and walked back to the cottage, deep in thought, puzzling over where such an unbelievable object could have come from. He wrapped it again in its oilcloth and retied it up with the string. He then hid it under a stone, well away from the cottage and went back to his work, smiling broadly and quietly singing a snatch of folk song:

  ‘Wie bist du doch so schon, O du weite, weite Welt.’

  ‘How jolly is life. And how wide is the world’

  Chapter 8

  David Hume gave an exhausted last look at the departing carriage and put the remaining coins back in the pocket of his coat. Glancing down to the ground he checked yet again that the driver had set down all his many pieces of baggage.

  He took a step backwards and gazed with fascinated distaste at the huge blocks of joyless granite that made up the castle’s intimidating entrance and then at the forbidding front door, set uninvitingly deep within the sharply cut masonry. But in spite of the grimness of the vast frontage that towered over him, he breathed deeply – at last, his hideous trial by coach was over. He had returned from his duty to the mad Marquis after a painful few weeks of effort and had then left Edinburgh twelve days ago for a journey that should have taken no more than four or five. He had found the country so alive with rumours of an imminent rebellion and so fearful of imagined conspiracies that every garrison of English redcoats he’d met had set up roadblocks.

  At every twist and turn he had been stopped and questioned, sometimes so absurdly frequently that more than once he had begun to doubt his decision to leave the comfort of his Edinburgh home and take the long trip north.

  One particularly difficult officer near Inverness had held him for four days while a copy of the Treatise that Hume had with him was pored over for signs of sedition. Eventually a local nobleman had been found with whom Hume had a passing acquaintance and who had rather reluctantly vouched for him. Without this, God forbid, he felt he would have been held there still.

  Now he looked up at the carved heraldry over the great entrance and saw with a drooping heart the Urquhain motto, incised deeply into a vast stone crest.

  Nos Unus, eh? he thought grimly. He sincerely hoped not – if he’d come all this way just to have Dunbeath serve his own ends then he’d feel it was time doubly wasted.

  To his surprise the door swung suddenly open and to his even greater astonishment it was Dunbeath himself who stood there, wigless and dressed in the oddest of working clothes.

  ‘Hume! I thought it might be you. I heard a carriage on the drive. Well, you’re most welcome – although I was expecting you many days ago. A terrible journey I’ve no doubt, with the English army seeing spies everywhere. Well, come in out of this terrible cold. Annie, help Mr Hume with his cases.’

  Dunbeath looked about him and saw Sophie standing in the hall.

  ‘And you, girl,’ he shouted sharply, ‘take these bags of Mr Hume’s and escort our guest up to his room.’

  Hume stared at Dunbeath with amazement. To find an earl answering his own door was extraordinary enough. But, far more than that, he was struck forcibly by his old friend’s appearance. He was shocked to see the signs of such an obvious lack of attention to himself and the tension and strain in him that must be the reason for his drawn skin. More than this, he saw his feverishly high colour.

  ‘Why, Dunbeath!’ he stammered, ‘it’s good to see you again after so many years. But you are changed somewhat. Are you not in the best of health?’

  ‘I do quite well, thank you,’ Dunbeath said over his shoulder as he carried a bag up the great staircase. ‘I sleep poorly of course, but which of us does not? But I see your old powers of observation have not left you, Hume. You are quite right. I have a chill from this damned cold winter, nothing more. It is attempting to floor me but I believe I shall have the better of it soon. Now, here is your room. Perhaps you wish to rest for an hour or so? But then please join me in the drawing room and we shall take a glass of whisky by the fire to simmer our blood.’

  * * *

  Two hours later Hume sat with a large glass of fine whisky in his hand and warmed himself in front of the salon’s colossal fireplace. But the atmosphere in the great chamber was somewhat cooler and he glanced anxiously across to where Dunbeath sprawled in silence on a low, gilded sofa, gazing with a blank, distracted air into the fire’s flames. Hume looked about himself at the sensational piece of theatre that made up the room, and studied more closely the ornate play of Italian plasterwork on the ceiling and the way that it cascaded down to the swags, columns and caryatids of the enormous chimneypiece. Vast tapestries lined each wall, no doubt made for the room, he thought, beautifully proportioned for the space and set between fluted pilasters of peerless oak. The salon was an enormous rectangle with large windows at each end, one looking down to the beach that stretched in a great crescent northwards towards Dunbeaton and beyond, and the other to the south and the headland there. In the centre, opposite the fireplace, the outside wall of the room’s double cube was interrupted, and instead bowed out into a fabulous curved window of stone mullions and polished plate glass that gave out onto the breathtaking canvas of the open sea.

  On a hard chair in this alcove Sophie sat quietly by a small table, her eyes respectfully downcast but her attention evidently focused on the two men by the fire. Hume’s eye now rested on her and a doubtful crease flashed across his brow.

  The Earl of Dunbeath came out of his reverie.

  ‘And Mr Black? Does he sti
ll progress at the University?’

  ‘Indeed he does,’ replied Hume with his usual good humour. ‘He is the power in the land now. I dare say we shall be calling him Rector soon.’

  They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence again and Dunbeath resumed his staring. Hume groaned inwardly: if the earl had brought him all this way just to keep up such gloomy small talk then he might as well start the tiresome journey back to Edinburgh. At least then he could sleep in his own bed rather than the colossal, curtained affair that he had been shown to by that odd girl over there. He decided to take the lead in the conversation.

  ‘So you live here alone, I see. Just a housekeeper for company. I salute you for it is much the better to be undistracted by domestic matters if one is engaged in fierce study. But, tell me, you seem to have another with you as well.’ And he looked away from Dunbeath and turned his eyes towards Sophie.

  Dunbeath followed his gaze towards the window.

  ‘You refer to the girl I suppose, Mr Hume. Take no notice of her – she’s just the castle cat. A plaything for my housekeeper that the wind blew in a few weeks ago. I hardly notice her anymore. I’m told her name is Kant and she likes to sit with me when I take my readings, but thank God she never says a word. Still, I’d swear that she understands everything I’m at; she even seems to know when I require things. Why, the other day she handed me an instrument before I realised I had need of it.’

  He paused as if considering something for a second.

  ‘As it happens you may find the circumstances of her coming somewhat interesting.’

  Dunbeath sat up and put his legs on the floor, suddenly energised by the meaning of what he was about to relate. Briefly he told David Hume of how the German ship had arrived some weeks before, driven into Dunbeaton Bay, and of the dangerous reef of rocks that had wrecked it. He finished by describing how the fire on board had led it to explode.

  ‘There is only one explanation, Hume. It must have been carrying arms and powder for the clans that have committed for Prince Charles Edward. I understand that more clans are joining by the day. There’s war coming for sure if so much ammunition was being bought. I haven’t been approached myself yet but I should not be surprised if my own people do not come to me soon. But, tell me, what are you are hearing in Edinburgh about this uprising?’