The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance

by Abigail Clements

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Aye. Or something. I am thinking, lass, I was once more at home, with James MacKinnon at Trotternish. I am liking that lion, more than the world of men.’

  Marsali looked from Antoine to the castle far below them and back to Antoine. He wore yet the black hat with the white cockade he’d pinned there so boldly in Glasgow.

  She said, ‘Still and all, you’ll no doubt be that wee bit more at ease away down there.’

  Antoine shrugged and slipped his feet back in the stirrups and flicked the reins over the pony’s shaggy neck. ‘It keeps one no dryer than yon thatched cottage of MacKinnon’s. The roof leaks something fearful, and the sea is ever rapping down below. Come away, lass. The winds of time have circled again. Now you’re the stranger at my door.’

  Marsali held back yet, looking down. Le Château Sainte Marie cast sharp shadows on the sea. Its crenellated walls and elaborate rounded towers were ruddy gold, and the windows flashed in the late sun. It perched on a thin white peninsula of limestone sweeping out into the Mediterranean. Before it, at the foot of the barren grassy hill where they had stopped to overlook it, were its gardens, formal and French, with hedges of boxwood making squares and circles and an immense fleur-de-lis, dark green on greener lawn. Beyond the house, on three sides, was the sea.

  They had ridden for a week, from the night they left Avignon, through the vineyards and gardens and orchards of the gentle provincial countryside, with the far white shadows of the Alps hanging in an ever receding distance. Their road had taken them across the interior, between Avignon and Antibes, and only now, coming across the back of this barren hill, with its wild grass and white rock and wind-twisted pines, did they meet again the sea.

  Antoine gave a wild shout then, and scared up the pony, and rode down the hill to his home at a dangerous stumbling canter, a wild and callous boy, driving his weary mount unkindly. At the foot he would have to wait, for Marsali followed but slowly, unwilling as her pony. But when she reached the foot of the hill, Antoine was gone.

  The iron gates in the buff stone walls, taller than her head, were standing open and unattended. Marsali’s pony raised its head, sensing the company of its own kind and stables nearby, and snorted and danced about until she let it pass through the gates. She rode lonely and uncertain up the long drive, white with a paving of crushed shells. On either side, the tree-shaded lawns and flower gardens stretched away immaculate, as if the gardener’s hand was never from them. But there was no living thing in sight.

  She had never felt more alone, and longed even for the sight of Antoine somewhere ahead in all that magnificent alien beauty. But she saw nothing of him, neither the bay coat of his pony, nor the blade of his clothing. Surely now, he had ridden on, unable to hold back, in his eagerness for his home.

  Marsali halted her pony and carefully arranged the folds of her capuchin cloak and smoothed down her wind-tangled hair. Then she rode on, not knowing who of his family she might be about to meet. He had been uncanny casual about that all, and she feared a sudden entanglement with his awesome father, or strange unexplained mother, that Barra lass who’d come to be lady of this house. Or maybe his four sea-going brothers, all no doubt as haughty as himself, God preserve her. Last night she had said, in frustration, ‘Will you at least be telling me, who will greet me there, for you’ve been as sly as a fox about them all?’

  He had shrugged. ‘How would I be knowing? ’Tis a year now since I’ve set eyes on the place. And I’m only going now for the comfort of my bed while I wait on my ship for Rome.’

  ‘You’re not exactly sentimental,’ she had said.

  ‘Nor are they,’ he answered calmly, ‘though I fancy they’ll be pleased I’m not yet dead.’

  ‘Oh indeed,’ she said with an admiring smile. ‘Aye now, that is most heart-warming. The tie of blood is indeed a wondrous thing. I am feeling now I am riding into a nest of adders, all bound to take me with true Christian charity to their hearts.’

  ‘I would not count on it,’ said Antoine.

  The pony shied away from the arch in the boxwood hedge, but she kicked it angrily and it sidled through, turning its head away. Its iron shoes struck hard on stone, and they emerged from the garden onto a high windswept terrace, edged on either side by a faded white stone balustrade, pale against the blue of the hazy sea. Above the tall, old house rose three storeys to its steep, slate roof, with a narrow round tower at either corner. The door was worn, weather-beaten oak, massive and topped by a heavy stone crest. Flowering vines and dark red ivy tangled thickly about all the still, dark windows. Antoine’s pony stood, saddled yet sweat-shining and weary, by the door. Antoine was nowhere in sight.

  Marsali kicked her foot free from the single stirrup and swung her leg over the upper pommel and lowered herself awkwardly from the side-saddle to the ground. Oh, he was nothing if not a gentleman.

  She went forward and stood before the door, thinking, what now, did she knock upon the thing or just walk boldly on in and match his ill manners with her own. But before the door she stopped, looking up uneasily at the surmounting coat of arms. In the centre, bowing its beautiful unnatural head, was the unicorn, its solemn carved eyes bringing a glint even to raw weathered stone.

  ‘Aye, now, lassie, have you found yourself a friend?’ She whirled around; it was Antoine’s voice, and Antoine, gaily laughing and soaking wet, was sitting on the high balustraded wall on the side of the terrace nearest the sea.

  ‘Where were you,’ she cried angrily, ‘leaving me to ride alone to your own unkind door?’

  ‘You’ll be forgiving me, now,’ he said calmly, ‘but you lagged so far behind, and my pony would not be waiting. Running wild he was, so eager to be down the hill. I could not hold him.’ He grinned, swinging his legs and shaking his wet hair, his broad hat in his hands. ‘I’ve been away down to the sea,’ he said, lightly. She stepped to the balustrade and drew back with a shudder. The wall on which he sat so lightly edged a cliff face that fell seventy feet to the water. A narrow stone staircase, chipped into the rock, crept dizzily downwards from the terrace and vanished into the plunging green and white surf.

  ‘’Tis bonnie, is it not?’ he said.

  ‘It is terrifying,’ Marsali answered. ‘Were you not thinking it might be seemly if you went first to greet your mother and father, and second to play in the sea?’

  Antoine shrugged, ‘She is not here, my mother.’

  ‘She is not? Have you been in the house, as well?’

  ‘No. Not yet. But she will not be here, I am knowing, for she has not been for many long years.’

  ‘You could have told me. I thought I was to meet her.’

  ‘Did I not say?’ Antoine said mildly. ‘Surely I had.’

  ‘Surely you had not. And your father?’

  Antoine shrugged and said, ‘Perhaps,’ so casually that Marsali said instantly, ‘But not likely? And your brothers?’

  ‘They are all seafaring men, my father and my brothers, lass, they’ve ships of their own.’

  ‘Where is your mother, Antoine?’ Marsali said quietly. ‘Surely she is no seafaring man, as you say.’

  ‘Away to her own people, long since, lass. She was not happy here.’

  ‘Away to Barra?’

  ‘Och, that direction.’

  ‘Antoine, why did you bring me here if the house is surely without a living soul?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he cried. ‘There are cooks and maids and gardeners and grooms. Look now, surely you’d not call it derelict.’

  ‘You are knowing my meaning,’ Marsali said evenly. ‘Well enough we could have gone back to Marseilles, and found passage to Rome. We have ridden five days across the country to bring us here. And why, that you might ride havoc through the gardens, and play in the sea, and make a mockery of myself? You’ve tricked me, Antoine; I am wanting to know why.’

  ‘I have been thinking I’d like you to myself.’

  ‘By all that’s holy, Antoine, I’ve no time for this. I’ve
my father’s fate in my hands, and you are playing love-games across the breadth of Provence.’

  ‘Och you needn’t look so fearful calf-eyed hopeful, lass. I’m not going to rape you. Only I thought,’ he swung one leg over the stone balustrade so he rode it like a horse, and leaned fearless over, looking down into the distant sea, ‘I thought we might talk that wee bit.’ He sounded sad and distant.

  Marsali gave a hopeless shrug and said, ‘Tell me honestly, will there indeed be a ship at Antibes to take us to Rome? For that I must surely have.’

  ‘You shall, I promise. I swear it. Another week, there will be a ship. Only a week, Marsali, ’tis all I ask. One quiet week by the sea.’

  She nodded and wrapped her cloak about her. ‘Will you be asking me in, Antoine, or will we camp here like beggars at the castle gates?’

  He laughed then, delightedly, having won, and leaping off the balustrade, ran to the door and bowed to her there. She looked above him, at the stone creature over his head and said uneasily, ‘One thing, Antoine. Surely now, if you did not build this house, is it not strange to find your own beast there, awaiting us?’

  He looked up and grinned. ‘Och himself again. He has a way of following me about. Like James MacKinnon’s eerie dog, he will not leave me be. But I am not complaining. A faithful companion is hard to come by, and of no little worth.’

  So he led her inside, beneath the creatures watchful, sad stone eyes. It was a castle, for all he said, built once as a fortress out on the rock, tamed now to be grudgingly gracious, but never forgetting its rootings in more troubled. times. Its walls were stone, and so were the long hallways with their high church-arches, unplastered and adorned only with tapestries. There was much artistry of marble, statues and immense polished tables, everywhere a gleaming stoniness, chosen for coolness in a warm land. Great mirrors hung between the tapestries so they were shadowed back and forth in a confusion of dim colour. But the empty halls echoed with every footstep, and as Marsali walked within, she was conscious at once of another sound, a distant eerie sound, like a singing far below.

  ‘What is that?’ she cried, taking his arm as he led her through the door.

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘Wait. I’ll be showing you.’

  There was a bellpull of ornate embroidered velvet with great gold tassels at the door, and Antoine rang it casually, his hand finding it with long familiarity. At once a maid in a black cotton skirt and a white blouse came through a door at the far end of the hall, looking tiny and childlike against the great height of stone walls. She was pretty and had a ribbon in her hair and wooden shoes on her feet.

  She curtsied at once, and her face was alight with surprise. He spoke quickly to her in French, again with the subtle local accent, but Marsali understood him to be asking for her superior. She vanished, with a clatter of the shoes on stone. Within minutes a manservant arrived, a small, dark Frenchman in blue, gold-crested livery, who bowed and showed obvious delight, and then a great gathering of servants appeared, all whispering and chattering and trying to restrain the amazement they clearly were feeling.

  Antoine said nothing of explanation, of where he had come from, or where he had been, or why he had come. Marsali supposed it was assumed that such matters were not the affairs of servants, though in her own fine home, in Glentarvie, servants were clansmen and shared the rights of kin.

  Antoine turned to the manservant and said quietly, ‘My father, he is not here?’

  ‘He is in Paris, sir, as always at this season.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Antoine. ‘And then we are quite alone?’

  ‘Most certainly, sir. There is none here, but yourself.’

  ‘Aye, that is splendid,’ Antoine said with a long slow smile. ‘For this is the most private of times. I will be having the master bedroom prepared, if you will, for myself, and my bride.’

  Marsali sat on a tiny Chinese-lacquered stool by the white marble fireplace in the master bedroom of the Château Sainte Marie. The floor length windows stood open to the balcony, and the sea wind and moonlight came in together. Three candle sconces lit the room, and the low fire and the light was so dim that the shifting rippling patterns of moonlight reflected from the sea veiled the walls. Marsali thought them covered with some fine cloth or paper, all painted with gilt, and she had never seen any like them. It was too dark to know the colour.

  She and Antoine had dined alone in the great banqueting hall, panelled in oak and hung all about with tapestries. Between them was twenty feet of mahogany table laden with silver, and behind each of them stood two serving men in blue livery who leapt to attention at their slightest request. The food was like nothing she had ever eaten, and the wines clearer and finer and more delicate than any she had tasted. She felt like a dreamer, among all that, but for Antoine, familiar and yet strangely alien in his father’s high-backed chair.

  Upon their arrival, he had changed from his water-sodden travel-greyed clothing, vanishing off to a bath and leaving her to be led off by the wooden-shoed maid to a bonnie room where she found the small gathering of clothes she had packed on the pony’s back carefully pressed and laid out for her choosing. There she had washed and dressed for dinner. Antoine had emerged from his dressing room in green velvet britches and jacket and a pale silk skirt and cravat, looking uncommonly handsome and no doubt knowing it.

  In the banqueting hall, he took formality upon himself, as if he drew it from the room, and assumed all his native haughty grace. Oh far rather he had laughed and teased and been the uncanny half-child creature she knew, than become like this, a prince, elegant as red-haired Tearlach ever had been.

  But now they were just themselves again, and alone, and Antoine was trimming the wick of a candle with a small silver knife, as if that were the most important thing on earth, intrigued by it, and ignoring her.

  Marsali carefully unlaced each of her leathery boots and slipped them off carefully, stretching her toes with calm luxury. Then she stood slowly up, in her stocking feet, her eyes on the insolent head bent over the candle.

  ‘Bastard,’ she said. He went on with his candle trimming. ‘Bastard, you’ve no right,’ she cried, and suddenly she caught up her pistol from where she had laid it on a marble and gilded dresser. She held it up steadily, with a sure young hand, and aimed the heavy thing squarely at his head.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said calmly, sitting on the edge of the beautiful canopied bed. ‘’Tis not loaded. I made sure enough of that five nights ago. I was fancying yourself, what with the dreamy summer nights, and you’ll mind I was telling you, I was not like to be shot for my trouble.’

  ‘And what now, damn you? Are you fancying me now? And what are you intending?’ she cried, furious, knowing he could well do whatever he pleased. It was not so much the thing itself she was minding, but his arrogance.

  ‘Myself, lassie,’ he said, stretching his long arms and toying with the fringe of the canopy over his head, ‘myself, I am intending to sleep.’ He kicked off his silver-buckled shoes and loosened his cravat with a careless tug and flung it across the bed foot and said, ‘You need not look so priggish, lass. ’Tis not the first room we’ve shared.’

  ‘At Trotternish there was no choice, and in Glasgow the same. There are twenty bedchambers in this house, Antoine, to be sure, and indeed yon bonnie place I went to dress would well have done me fine.’

  ‘Och, were you wanting a room of your own? I did not think.’ He shrugged out of his jacket and flung it on the floor.

  Marsali picked it up by habit and said, ‘Child,’ with scorn. She hung it over a gilt-backed chair. ‘I am not your bride, Antoine. You’d no right to say it.’

  ‘Och ’twas but a game, little cat,’ he said quietly. ‘But if you are not amused, I will mend it. Come now, I will call the servants and say my new bride has taken a fright of me, as brides do, and wishes a bedchamber of her own.’ He jumped up, and stepped quickly for the bellpull, so she had to grab him about the waist and hold him back, enraged.

  ‘
Enough, Antoine. You’re shaming me. I never hurt your pride when you were at my mercy, in Skye.’

  ‘It seems, lass, I cannot win. I am not knowing how to please you. And to tell truth,’ he flopped down on the bed, and fell back on it, lying across it, ‘I am that tired, I do not care. ’Twas only your company I was wanting. ’Tis lonely this empty, old house.’ He got to his feet then, slowly and a little solemnly, and drew back the blue silk embroidered counterpane. He undid two of the pearl buttons of his shirt, and then looked at the bed, and said softly, ‘Och, I cannot bother,’ and lay down again, drawing his stocking feet up and laying his head back on the pillows. He closed his eyes and lay there quietly.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  ‘I am going to sleep.’

  ‘And what of me?’

  ‘Are ye not tired?’ he said, opening his eyes briefly: ‘You can go for a walk down by the sea, if you like. Mind you don’t fall, now, the steps are fearful steep.’

  ‘Antoine, where am I to sleep? On the floor?’

  He sat up slightly, resting on one elbow. ‘If you fancy, lass. But will you not be more comfortable on the bed? Surely ’tis large enough for two.’

  ‘Antoine, this is a foolish game.’

  ‘Why, little cat?’ Then he sat up again and smiled. ‘Och, is it that thing, on your mind? Well I assure you I have no intention. Surely I would not be doing that thing if the bonniest of all creation lay beside me, I am that weary.’

  Marsali stiffened at that and looked coldly on him, but then she came and sat uncomfortably on the very edge of the bed. Antoine lay back again and said, ‘Och but my back aches, and my legs, with all that riding.’

  ‘I have been riding as well,’ Marsali said sharply. ‘And am I so ugly?’

  He looked up at her. ‘I do not think so, lass. You’re not ugly at all, now that you ask. Will you pull the coverlet over me; I think I’ve taken a chill.’