The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance

by Abigail Clements

  He forced the biscuit into her hand, and she nibbled it warily, still lying prone, and, feeling no worse, nibbled some more. He stroked her hair and then lay down on the floor beside her, half-concerned and half simply curious, until she said angrily that she did not wish to be stared at while she was being ill.

  He jumped up apologetically and went away to a corner. ‘If you would come up onto the deck and see the sea …’ he said cautiously, and she shuddered away from him. ‘It is very beautiful.’

  Marsali thought of him as a child who’s brought home a rat for a pet. But she sat up, balancing awkwardly, with one damp palm yet on the floor and the other on her forehead. She pushed her hair back from her eyes and said crossly, ‘And was it beautiful when it wrecked the White Rose and flung you all but drowned on the shore of Trotternish?’

  He had assumed his strange dreamy posture, knees drawn up and arms around them, sitting thus on the floor, supple body bent. He leaned his head over his knees and looked at the floor and said, ‘Ah, but it gave me yourself then. And you were kind to me, the days I was ill.’

  ‘I am no gift of the sea, Antoine. I belong to myself. And if I was kind to you, it was because my parents and my church have taught me to be kind.’

  ‘I have not been kind, now,’ he said suddenly, as if it were a discovery.

  Marsali sat up straighter and turned and looked at Ishbel on her bunk. The old woman had gone to sleep, her face buried in the flat, hard pillow. Marsali turned her head cautiously, but found the dizziness fading. When the ship shifted roughly beneath her, she made a semblance of balance with it. ‘I think I am that bit better,’ she said.

  Antoine said softly, ‘I am thinking now your parents and your church were wise, Marsali, I am too old to change.’

  She looked at him curiously, not knowing what he spoke of and said baldly, ‘You are scant older than myself. Whatever changing you might have to mind is surely yet possible. Come, help me up; I will see perhaps your beautiful sea.’

  He stood solemnly and helped her to her feet and held her against the swaying shift of a heavy swell beneath the Sea-Harrower’s keel. His balance was perfect, like a cat’s. He stood thus, his arms about her, long after the swell passed, and he rested his head against the soft, damp tangle of her hair. He said, ‘Marsali, were it possible, and I could change and become a good Christian creature like yourself, then would you marry me?’

  She stepped free of him, amazed. ‘Holy Jesus, who is talking of marriage, in the middle of the Irish Sea? All I am thinking of now is surviving.’

  ‘But would you?’ He stood apart from her, the flickering water-light passing over him like a veil. His fingers twisted, nervous, in his sealskin necklace, like her own, prayerful, in her beads.

  ‘Och Antoine,’ she said sadly, ‘I am not ready for marriage. Neither am I a good Christian creature, for all you say. I have things I must yet do with my life that do not concern you. Go find some lady in your far strange land to make you a wife.’

  He shook his head and, taking her hand, led her to the cabin door. ‘But it is you I am wanting,’ he said simply.

  He spoke no more of marriage, or love, and with Marsali turning thus from him, he turned alike from that new gentleness of spirit and became again what he had always been, heartless as the wind of the Irish Sea. That fine wind stood now at their backs and carried them bravely until, by nightfall, Irish land stood as dark shadows in the dusk of the west. Tir Nan Og, Marsali thought, beyond the western sea, the land of the ever young. So it seemed in the dim light of the evening. In the morning it was land like all land, green and cold, and before them lay the Irish port of Cobh.

  Magically, she had become a seaworthy creature. Though yesterday she’d have given all but her life to lay her head on dry land, now her body had made a subtle bargain with the sea, and she found pleasure in the watery shifting that had been such misery. By evening she had grown well enough to take a small meal in her cabin and to stroll about the deck on Antoine’s arm, feeling very much the honoured lady there, accorded the considered respect that he was given by all. She would have thought him to grow quite vain before them, with all that obeisance, but he oddly did not, perhaps wise enough to see that the compliments were to his father’s gold, not his own young self.

  So she bothered not enough now even to go ashore in the mean little harbour town, and stayed on the deck while the Sea-Harrower added to her cargo; linen again, Irish linen, and Irish glass. Ishbel stood at her side, aching to go ashore, but forbidding herself. Sure she was that, having once set foot on dry land, she would never again find the courage to return to the ship, and would remain forever marooned on Irish soil. Marsali found that odd too, for surely, she said to the old woman, had she not in her youth crossed the awful seas of the Minch from her own native isle of Barra, and more than once at that? But no, that was different, Ishbel insisted, for that was with her own folk, in their own sturdy Hebridean boats built open-style by island men with open hearts and the blessings of the Lord. But the Sea-Harrower was none of those things, with her dark cabins and dark cursed holds full of chains and a foreign evil in every timber.

  ‘’Tis in the devil’s very hands, this ship,’ Ishbel moaned, ‘the devil’s hands.’

  ‘Well if that be so, it is a wonder he cannot hold them steadier,’ Marsali said sourly. ‘Look now, we will have company; there are passengers coming aboard.’

  Five passengers joined them at Cobh, all men, dressed as gentlemen and all no doubt adventurers with their own purposes. They were housed below deck with the crew, and Marsali saw little of them. So it was not until dinner on their third night at sea that Marsali met the Irish Jacobite, Patrick Molloy.

  They had sailed again in the late afternoon and were once more on a southward course and beyond all sight of land, an amusement of gulls and a frail white daub on a vast grey sea. It was her first dinner at the table of the master, Captain Maurice de Veulle. Antoine had dined with him each night, as was his undoubted right, but Marsali had taken what scant food she wanted in the dark privacy of her cabin. Ishbel still refused to venture out onto the dark, wet deck, but Marsali waited for Antoine to come for her, from whatever mysterious place it was where he slept, and when he did, went out with him into the salty rain.

  Above her head the white square canvases billowed like wet ghosts, and the air was rich with the creaking of timber and rope, never-ending, and the tar-salt smell of ships. Gulls followed them, lost souls, trusting their lead, or perhaps uncaring, one bit of sea the same as another to them. Antoine held her hand and rapped lightly on the door of the master’s cabin.

  She had met Captain de Veulle on the day of sailing in Port Glasgow, a small neat man in a black coat and tri-cornered hat. He had greeted her politely in French, the only language he spoke, and she had thought, looking over his modest form and balding head and clipped black beard, that he looked more merchant than seaman, and minion than master. He scarce seemed big enough, to say nothing of bold enough, to command so grand a ship. But he did command her, and Antoine told her later that he had once seen the ‘wee French clerk’ flog a man to ribbons for the theft of a strip of salt beef.

  Captain de Veulle rose to greet her as they entered the door of his cabin; so low it was that she needs must duck her head, and Antoine had to bend himself half over. The captain made a small bow and beckoned her to a chair by his side. The table was long and narrow, set beautifully with silver and fine crystal. At the captain’s left sat a young man with sandy hair and a jutting jaw and wild blue eyes.

  He rose at once and took Marsali’s hand and bowed over it elaborately saying, ‘Patrick Molloy, at yer service.’

  ‘The Chevalier Molloy has joined us at Cobh,’ Antoine said, sitting beside her. ‘He will travel with us to France. I am thinking you will find him of interest. He follows your kind faith and your father’s kind politics.’

  ‘Does he that?’ Marsali said cautiously, though seeing that Antoine used the manner of address fashionable amon
g European Jacobites.

  ‘She is canny,’ he said, teasing, to Molloy. ‘A few years exile have taught her the wisdom of a well-held tongue. But I assure you she is every bit with you on the side of good King James.’

  ‘Ah, then,’ Molloy said solemnly, ‘it is well I understand, for it is exile now, myself, that I have come from.’

  Marsali watched his strong, honest face carefully and said, ‘And if I am on the side of good King James?’ She sat back, still watching him, while a sailor-servant began to serve a dinner of boiled beef and onions, shifting and balancing against the ship’s sway.

  Patrick Molloy cried out at once, ‘Then I must be yer slave.’ He reached his big hands across the narrow table and clasped hers; both together, and said, ‘For one so beautiful and bound to a beautiful Cause, sure ’tis certain a man would do anything.’

  He laughed, a big echoing laugh, and the master looked at this nonsense about his table with his sharp, black eyes well guarded. Marsali smiled and withdrew her hands, conscious of Antoine watching silently. ‘I do not think I am needing a slave, the now, but if I shall, ’tis surely of you I will be thinking.’ Then she remembered suddenly the ways of the ship she was upon and felt wicked to have joked of such a thing. But there was little enough she could say of that before the wee French clerk of a captain.

  Molloy regarded her changed expression, and with sudden intuitive subtlety he switched from English to his own Irish tongue. ‘We laugh, colleen, at a world beyond our changing. I know fine the company we are keeping.’

  And she nodded, listening hard and understanding, for it was not unlike her native speech. He said, ‘So you are hearing me now in my own voice. ’Tis true, then, you are a highland lass.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Blessings upon you. Sure an’ I thought there were none but heathens here.’ He laughed gleefully, but she shook her head narrowly and looked pointedly to Antoine, so foreign and French in his manner.

  ‘Himself there is hearing your every word,’ she said.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Patrick Molloy said in English, swallowing hard. Then he grinned engagingly and extended his hand to Antoine and said, ‘You will be pardoning the ill manners of a poor country man. I am not used to the ways of the civilized world, having been long from them. ’Tis sure I am ye are no heathen, sir, an’ I was meaning no offence. But will ye be telling me now, how came ye by the Irish tongue?’

  ‘By the tongue of her who rocked my cradle, and no offence was taken. And you are surer of some things than I.’ But he did not take the Irishman’s hand, and it was withdrawn, awkwardly, in return.

  ‘Aye, but a highland lass, ’tis grand,’ said Patrick Molloy, finding safer ground. ‘For was it not with highland men I fought in forty-five, and would I had died as brave as they, and had been spared the shame of Carlisle.’

  ‘Carlisle,’ Marsali gasped. ‘And were you with the garrison there?’ When he nodded she cried, ‘Och will you have known my good brother, Norman MacKinnon? For he was, too, at Carlisle.’

  Patrick Molloy sat straighter and solemn. ‘’Tis sure that I did an’ all. Ah, a brave lad he was, and bonnie, with his singing to while the time. Lassie, will ye be telling me now how he fared? You see, I was sent away to London to be transported, I with a half-French father, they dare do no other. And from the colonies I made me escape, and me own way home to Ireland.’

  ‘He was hanged,’ Marsali said flatly. ‘He had no French father to save him, only a highland brigand. He was hanged at Carlisle and is six years now in his grave.’

  ‘Ah, colleen, I am sorry,’ and he leant and took her hand. ‘’Tis a terrible shame that, so fine and bonnie a lad.’ Then he tightened his grip on her hand, and his eyes were bright and burning. ‘But no fear,’ he whispered, in a low sure voice. ‘We will see him well avenged. Our star is rising once more, Marsali. We will see them all avenged.’

  He stopped suddenly, with the slightly shamefaced look of a man who frequently speaks too freely. While he tugged at his cravat and glanced nervously at the captain, Antoine said in Gaelic, between two mouthfuls, ‘She is my ship, and for myself, you may speak what politics you please. I have few, and he there,’ he shrugged towards the captain, ‘has none at all. Nor has he any Gaelic.’ He continued eating, calmly, and looking at no one.

  Patrick Molloy leaned back in his chair and sighed slowly and said in English, ‘Me father was forever saying me tongue would be the death o’ me.’ Then he switched to Gaelic and thanked Antoine for his hospitality. He said to Marsali, ‘It is good to be knowin’ myself in loyal company, for there is a story I could tell ye.’

  She laughed and said, ‘If you trust the likes of himself, your tongue will be the death of you, but go on. I do not think he could be bothered to betray you, albeit the cause is laziness, not loyalty.’

  Antoine took that with a calm smile as was his nature. Molloy blinked, uncertainly, but said, ‘Ah, no matter. For no doubt ye will be rejoicin’ to hear it; for is not the day of vengeance at last at hand? Within the year I swear t’ ye, our prince will be in the very heart of England, and the clans of the North risen to his brave defence.’

  ‘And all that is left of them put again to the sword?’ Marsali cried out. ‘And my young brother gone to join the elder on the gallows of King George? If that is your story, Patrick Molloy, keep it to you. I am not wanting to hear.’

  He drew back, a little hurt, and not at all comprehending. ‘But would he not be proud, the lad, to die thus avenging his brother? As proud as I would be meself?’

  Marsali said, ‘I have lived seven years among the company of the dead and the wreckage of the land they left behind. Not for you, nor for King James, am I wanting any more of it. Och mindless louts, the lot of you, can you not leave us to get on with living afore our youth is gone and we’ve none of us the strength? It is bairns and grain my land is needing now, not the swords of kings.’

  She turned her head sharply, eyes narrow and mouth set hard, bewildered by men and their passion for destruction. Antoine said softly to Patrick Molloy, ‘Never you mind, she has her own story, which she takes now to Avignon. I would not be taking her protestations o’er seriously. Come, tell your tale. I am interested, if not the lady.’

  Patrick Molloy forgot his hurt then and cried out, ‘Is it true that? Is it to Avignon that ye go, now?’ When Antoine nodded, he was delighted, for he was off as well to Avignon to see the prince and said surely he would accompany them and would that not be grand, not waiting to hear if he was welcome. But Marsali said only, hushed, ‘Is he truly there then?’

  ‘Och surely,’ Molloy said lightly and then leaned boldly forward and whispered, ‘Will ye be knowin’ Alexander Murray?’

  Though Marsali shook her head, Antoine said, ‘I know him to be Elibank’s brother, and Elibank, for all his neat caution, to be one of us.’

  ‘Aye, a grand soul, Lord Elibank, to be sure,’ Molloy said lightly. Leaning again forward, sharp chin on hand and all caution lost to the fire of the moment, he whispered, ‘But Alex Murray is the bolder. Is it not for himself I travel now, and in his name the messages I carry to the court at Avignon?’

  ‘And what are those?’ Antoine said quietly, delicately dipping fingers in the rose water beside his plate. He dried them carefully and seemed scarcely to listen.

  Molloy was filled then with a dramatic desire to impress this disdainful foreigner and said, aloud, ‘Only the capture of London, and King George to boot, and all his kith and kin. A mere trifle no doubt, to one so cool as yourself.’

  ‘London, is it?’ Antoine smiled to himself with quiet mockery. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘An’ are ye callin’ me a liar?’ Molloy shouted, half rising.

  Antoine only laughed, delightedly, and Marsali said quickly, ‘Wheesht, you’re to pay him no mind; he is forever full of teasing and cannot resist it. But tell me, how will you hope to capture London and all?’

  Molloy, ruffled pride smoothed, sat back and said, ‘Well now, there
is more to it all than I am knowing. My masters do not share their every confidence with me, to be sure. But I am knowing that Prince Charles himself was in London and seeing just how he would blow up the Tower. And the Earl Marischal is with us, with a great Swedish force, and Cameron, the brother of Lochiel, will be at Crief for a rising of the North.’ Marsali nodded slowly, playing with her embossed linen table napkin, and, knowing that the plans he cherished were no doubt the same as her father’s, his purpose entangled thus with James MacKinnon’s.

  ‘I am thinking your masters share more confidence with you than ever I would,’ Antoine said, ‘but that is their misfortune. Still I am grateful to you for your story, for I await eagerly the day when I see poor Geordie snatched bodily from off his throne.’ He laughed again, with a private delight, and Molloy grew angry, though not knowing quite why. Antoine called for more wine, and then brandy, and, with the dour captain looking on, they drank on into the narrow hours of the morning, Molloy talking gaily and freely of all the grand plans being forged for his exiled king.

  Antoine said little, but listened the while, and Marsali knew suddenly that had he been a spy for King George, he could hardly have behaved more wisely, and felt sad at the mockery he made of the poor, honest fool Patrick.

  Still, late in the night, Molloy grew morose and Irish and gloomy, and began to talk of fate and death, in a loving way. He minded her then of her father and his fierce gloomy kinsmen, and having enough of them suddenly, she bade them all goodnight.

  ‘An’ are ye leavin’ me, colleen?’ Patrick cried out, like one mortally hurt. He swayed slightly in his seat, as much with the drink as with the motion of the sea.

  ‘I am that,’ she said sharply. ‘Och you needn’t look so mournful, you’ll be having my company all the long road to Avignon, will you not?’

  Patrick Molloy went suddenly very still, staring out beyond her, through the open cabin door, as if he looked upon a ghost out in the rain. The wild blue eyes were sad and clouded as he said softly, ‘I’ll not be travelling that road, colleen.’