The Winter Sea

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘Do you have all that?’ he asked me. ‘Good. I’ll try to go more slowly for you. Now, about the Hays. They came from Normandy, according to the history books. They were raised to the title of earls in the mid-fifteenth century, and fully a hundred years before that, they’d been made Lord High Constables of Scotland by Robert the Bruce himself. That’s an influential office, Lord High Constable, and a hereditary one, passed down the family through the generations, along with a fierce devotion to the Catholic cause.

  ‘They supported Mary, Queen of Scots’s son, James VI, till James decided to turn Protestant. That was too much for the 9th Earl of Erroll, and he led a mounted attack on the king’s forces. Got himself an arrow wound for his efforts, as I recall. And he made King James so angry that the king marched north personally to sack the Earl of Erroll’s castles at Delgatie and Old Slains, just south of here. Destroyed them both with gunpowder and cannon. The Earl of Erroll spent a few years biding time in exile, then came back to Scotland, and, instead of trying to rebuild Old Slains, decided to build anew, around a tower house the Hays kept here. So then he called this New Slains.

  ‘New Slains is the one you want to know about. The other was long gone when Colonel Hooke came over. In 1708… now, let me think…the Earl of Erroll who’d have been here would have been the 13th earl, Charles Hay, the last male of the line. And his mother, the Countess of Erroll, Anne Hay, was a driving force in the conspiracy. But then,’ he said, ‘she would have been. She was a Drummond, and her brother was the Duke of Perth, a powerful man at the court of the Stewarts, in France. She was committed to trying to bring back the king. A remarkable woman. The Countesses of Erroll have, through history, been more interesting,’ he told me, ‘than their men.’

  He drank his whisky, and the warm light in the little room reflected on the thousand points of intricately cut glass on his tumbler, and his round, old-fashioned glasses, behind which his eyes turned thoughtful. ‘Mind you, her son, the 13th earl, did have some fire in his belly. He hated the Union, and fought it till his dying breath, in any way he could. And then, of course, he was a Hay, and a supporter of the Stewart kings, and that was not a choice a man made lightly. Dangerous times, so they were.’ He mused on this a moment, then went on, ‘He didn’t think to marry and produce an heir before he died, and so he passed the title to his sister. Another interesting Countess of Erroll, she was, but that’s a different story altogether. Anyway, she had no heir either, so from her the title went sideways, into her nieces and nephews, and out of the old family. Slains, though, stayed with the Earls of Erroll until 1916, when the 20th earl had to sell it for death duties. The new owner eventually gave up on it, and had the roof taken off in the 1920s—for safety, they say, though more likely it was so he wouldn’t have to pay the taxes. After that, well, with no roof, the place just fell to ruin.’

  Elsie said, ‘A shame, it was, a grand old house like that, with such a history. Samuel Johnson stayed there once, you know, with Mr Boswell, his biographer. Douglas, you used to have copies of what they both wrote about Slains. It was fair interesting.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I forgot about those.’ Rising from his leather chair, he left the room a moment and returned with a file folder full of papers. ‘You can keep these, if you like. I’ve other copies. Boswell’s account is by far the more colorful. Johnson’s is drier, but still good to read. There are one or two other bits in the folder that might be of help to you, having to do with the history of Slains. And somewhere,’ he said, looking round, at a loss, ‘I did have the old plans for the castle, that showed where the rooms were. I can’t think what I’ve done with it.’

  Elsie said, ‘You may have loaned it out.’

  ‘Oh, very likely.’ He sat down again and smiled at me. ‘The curse of age. I can’t remember anything. I’ll see if I can’t find them for you though, those plans. You’d like to have a look at them, I’m sure.’

  ‘I would, yes. Very much.’

  Elsie smiled. ‘It must be fun to write about the past. What made you interested in history?’

  There was no short answer to that question either, but I did my best, and so we talked about my father’s love of genealogy, and the trips we had taken to places our ancestors came from, and all of the hours that I’d spent as a child walking with him in graveyards to search out the headstones of great-great-great grandfathers. All of those people were real to me. Their faces in the framed and yellowed photographs that hung around our house were as familiar as my own, and when I stopped to look at them their eyes looked back at me, and pulled me with them to the past.

  The doctor nodded understanding. ‘Aye, my father had no great love of history, but he’d inherited a portrait, quite a good painted portrait, of a Weir who had been a sea captain. It hung in the study, when I was a lad. A fair bit of imagining, I did around that portrait. I don’t doubt it’s why I’m so fond of the sea.’

  That reminded me. ‘Do you, by any chance, know where I could find out about Scottish naval history in the early eighteenth century?’

  He smiled, and setting down his glass, looked over to his bookcases. ‘Well, now, I might have a few odd volumes on the subject.’

  Elsie said, ‘He has a shelf full. Were you wanting information on the ships?’

  ‘The people, mostly. I need to do research on one of the captains Nathaniel Hooke writes about.’

  ‘Ah, Captain Gordon, is it?’ Dr Weir glanced at me to make sure it was, then stood to search the shelves. ‘There’s quite a lot on Gordon in The Old Scots Navy. I did have a copy here…aye, here it is. You can take that with you, if you like, and read it over, see if what you want is in there. If not, I have other books that you can—’

  Someone knocking at the front door interrupted.

  ‘Do excuse me,’ said the doctor, and he went out to the entry hall. I heard the door swing open, and the muffled voices of the doctor and another man, a burst of laughter, and the stamp of feet as someone crossed the threshold.

  Dr Weir returned, all smiles. ‘Your driver’s here.’

  ‘My driver?’

  Stuart Keith came close behind him, handsome in his leather jacket, with his near-black hair. ‘I was just on my way home, and I thought you might need a lift down to the harbor. The wind’s picking up something fierce.’

  I hadn’t noticed it earlier, while we’d been talking, but now I could hear the wind raging against the front window behind me. And I thought of walking back in that, alone, past Castle Wood, and of that dark and lonely stretch of path that led from Harbour Street up to my cottage on the hill, and having Stuart take me home seemed suddenly a very good idea.

  So I thanked the Weirs for what had been a really useful evening, and I finished off my whisky in a rather too-large swallow, and with borrowed book and files in hand, I said good night.

  Outside, the wind rocked Stuart’s low-slung car as I slid into it. ‘How did you know where I’d be?’ I asked.

  ‘Someone mentioned it tonight in the pub.’ When he saw my expression he said, ‘Well, I told you, now, didn’t I? One hour at the St Olaf Hotel and my dad can spread any news round half the village. Has he got you on a schedule, yet?’

  ‘Not quite. He just gave me a list of people he thought could help.’

  ‘Oh, aye? Who were they?’

  ‘I can’t remember their names, honestly. But I think I’m supposed to be getting a driving tour this weekend, from either a plumber or a schoolteacher.’

  He smiled. ‘That would be the plumber. You don’t have to go—I can give you a driving tour.’ He turned the wheel smartly as he said that, and the back tires swung out as we made the turn down into Main Street.

  I gripped my armrest. ‘I think that my odds of survival are better,’ I said, ‘with the plumber.’

  He laughed, and I went on, ‘Besides, you’re off again this weekend, aren’t you? Down to London.’

  ‘Aye, but not for long.’ I felt his glance, although I couldn’t see him clearly in the dimness of th
e sports car’s warm interior. ‘I will be back.’

  I knew he liked me. And I liked him, too, but not that way. Despite his looks, there wasn’t any spark, and although it had been some time since I’d felt a spark with anyone, I knew enough to know when it was missing. So I felt a little guilty when I let him park the car and walk me up the muddy footpath to my cottage. I didn’t want to lead him on, or give him false encouragement, but neither did I want to be alone. Not here. Not in the dark, when every hair along my neck was rising with the sense of something wicked on its way.

  ‘Mind how you go,’ said Stuart, reaching out to grab my arm. ‘That’s the second time you’ve done that, nearly stepped clean off the path.’ He stopped. Looked down at me. ‘What’s wrong?’

  I couldn’t answer him. The moment that he’d grabbed me, I’d been gripped by panic, sudden and unreasoning. My heart was beating so hard in my chest that I could hear it, and I didn’t have the least idea why. I took a breath, and forced a smile. ‘You just…surprised me,’ was the only explanation I could offer.

  ‘I can see that. Sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault. I hate this path at night, to tell the truth,’ I said, as we fell back in step. ‘It’s all right in the daytime, but at night it always spooks me.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Curse of my profession, I suppose. I have a wild imagination.’

  ‘Well, you can call me any time you like, I’ll come and walk you home.’

  ‘You won’t be here,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Aye. I’m away tomorrow morning, early. But I’ve told you, I’ll be back.’

  We’d reached the cottage. Stuart watched me fit my key into the lock, and asked, ‘D’ye want me to come in and see you don’t have any monsters in your cupboards?’

  From his smile I thought it far more likely that he had a mind to look for monsters underneath my bed, and I was not about to fall for that. I took his offer lightly. ‘No, you don’t have to do that, I’m OK.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  I saw how he was watching me, and knew he was considering attempting a good night kiss, but before he followed through with it, I reached instead to hug him—just a friendly hug that made no promises and wouldn’t be misunderstood. ‘Thanks again for bringing me home,’ I said. ‘Have a safe trip down to London.’

  The hug seemed to surprise him, but he took it all in stride. ‘I will,’ he said, and let me go, and took a backwards step onto the path. ‘And I’ll be seeing you,’ he promised, ‘very soon.’

  For all the complications that I knew I’d just avoided, I was sorry to see him go. The cottage felt lonely when I went inside. And cold. The coal fire in my Aga had burned so low that it took an hour of concentrated effort to revive it, and by then I was so chilled and tired I wanted just to fall into my bed, and go to sleep.

  I took the book with me—the one that Dr Weir had loaned me, on the Scottish navy, because, tired or not, I felt I should do some work, since I clearly wasn’t going to write tonight. It was an older book with blue board covers, and the title page read helpfully: ‘The Old Scots Navy, From 1689 to 1710, Edited by James Grant, L.L.B.’ The frontispiece was black and white, a portrait of a white-wigged naval officer in an authoritative stance, his finger pointing to a sailing vessel in the background. There was something in his eyes, his face, that struck me as familiar, so I peered more closely at the light italic script beneath the portrait, looking for his name. I found it.

  Thomas Gordon.

  Admiral Thomas Gordon, to be sure, but every Admiral was a captain, once.

  I sat upright. Cold rushed in beneath the blankets, crept around me, but I hardly felt it. Flipping to the index, I began a careful reading of the references to Thomas Gordon.

  ‘Thomas Gordon had,’ the book informed me, ‘a remarkable career…His voyages embraced such distant places as Shetland, Stockholm, Norway, and Holland. On 17th July, 1703, he received a regular commission in the Scots Navy as captain of the Royal Mary.’

  Well, I thought, I’d almost got it right. The Royal Mary. William and Mary had reigned as a couple—I’d just picked the wrong half, when I’d named my fictional ship.

  I kept reading. And here was the transcript of part of a letter Nathaniel Hooke wrote, of his first visit over to Scotland, two years before my story started: ‘While I stayed with my Lady Erroll, our frigate [the Audacious] was within musket shot of the castle. The day after my arrival Mr Gordon, captain of a Scotch frigate commissioned to guard the coast, appeared in the southward. My Lady Erroll bid me be under no apprehensions, and sent a gentleman in a cutter to desire the captain to take another course, with which he complied. The lady has gained him over, and as often as he passes and repasses that way he takes care to give her notice…’

  I knew I’d read that bit before, because I’d remembered his role in avoiding the French ship that carried Hooke over.

  And after that came other varied documents: Sailing orders to Captain Gordon, and more sailing orders; a warrant to Captain Gordon to sail to Scarborough; a commission to Captain Thomas Gordon in 1705 to be commander of the ship the Royal William…

  I read that last one over, to be certain I’d made no mistake. But there it was, as plain as plain. And right below it on the page, a similar commission to James Hamilton of Orbieston, to be commander of the ship the Royal Mary.

  In my mind, I played the scene that I’d just written, with the countess saying, ‘I confess I did forget your Captain Hamilton.’

  And Captain Gordon—Captain Thomas Gordon, yet— replying, confident, ‘I know. But I did not.’

  No more, it seemed, had I. But how on earth had I remembered such a tiny, minor detail as the name of Captain Hamilton? I must have read it somewhere, though I couldn’t for the life of me think where. I kept a written record of each document I used in my research, in case I missed a fact and needed to go back again to check it, and I knew I hadn’t read one single thing about the Scottish navy apart from what Nathaniel Hooke had written, and that hadn’t been much. Still, you couldn’t just remember something if you hadn’t had it in your memory to begin with.

  Could you?

  At my back, the window rattled fiercely from a gust of wind that sent me sliding underneath my covers, seeking warmth. I closed the book and set it safely on the table at my bedside, but it didn’t leave my thoughts, and by the time sleep finally claimed me I’d have paid a lot for one more glass of Dr Weir’s good whisky.

  CHAPTER 7

  IWAS MY FATHER’S daughter in more ways than one. When something made no sense, I tried attacking it with logic. When that failed—when I’d read through all my notes, and all Hooke’s papers, and could find no mention there of either Captain Gordon’s first name or his ship’s name, or of any Captain Hamilton—I moved on to my second coping tactic: putting something in order.

  What I chose to do was take my observations of the castle ruins, and the pages I had written, and attempt to draw a floor plan of the castle I’d imagined. Until I got the proper one from Dr Weir, it would at least help keep the daily movements of my characters consistent, so I wouldn’t have them turning left into the drawing room one day, and right the next.

  My father would have called what I was doing ‘coloring maps’. That was what he called it when I filled in time and wasted effort, in his view, by taking lots of trouble to do something wholly unessential, as when I had colored maps in high school for geography, feathering blue round the shorelines and shading in valleys and hills. But he always said it fondly, as though he also knew and understood that there were times when what the brain most needed was to simply color maps.

  It did, in fact, bring me a certain sense of satisfied accomplishment to draw my castle floor plan, all those neatly ruled lines on the page, and the room names spelled out in block capital letters. I didn’t have crayons, or else I’d have colored it, too, for good measure. But when it was done, I felt better.

  I set it
to the side of my computer, where I’d see it while I worked, and went to make myself a sandwich. I was standing at my window, eating lunch and looking out to sea, as I so often did, my mind on nothing in particular, when I first saw the dog.

  A small dog, running down the beach, ears flapping happily as it splashed through the foam-edged tracks of waves as though it scarcely felt the cold, pursuing something round and bright that rolled along the sand. A tennis ball, I guessed, and watched the dog catch up the ball in triumph, wheeling back to run the way that it had come. A spaniel, spotted brown and white.

  Even before I saw the man the dog was running to, the man who stood with hands deep in his pockets, shoulders braced against the wind, I’d set my plate down and was looking for my toothbrush. And my coat.

  I didn’t know exactly why. I could have, if I’d wanted to, explained it in a few ways. He’d been friendly to me that first day, and after spending all this morning cooped up in the cottage, I was keen to get outside and talk to someone, and I liked his dog. That’s what I told myself the whole way down the hill and up the road, across the narrow wooden footbridge and around the looming dunes. But when I’d reached the beach myself, and when he turned his head at my approach and smiled a welcome, I knew then that none of those was actually the reason.

  He looked more like a pirate this morning, a cheerful one, with his dark hair cut roughly in collar-length layers and blown by the wind, and the flash of his teeth white against the clipped beard. ‘Were my directions no help to you, then?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You were on your way to Peterhead, the last we met. Did ye not find the way?’

  ‘Oh. Yes, I did, thanks. I came back.’

  ‘Aye, I see that.’

  ‘I’ve rented a cottage,’ I said, ‘for the winter.’

  His grey eyes moved with interest to the place where I was pointing. ‘What, the old one on Ward Hill?’