The Winter Sea

by Susanna Kearsley

  Sophia half-listened, and smiled when she was meant to at the scandalous behavior of the comte, but her own imagination had been captured so completely by the story he’d just told them of Queen Mary’s flight from England into France, that hours later she was thinking of it still.

  She stood a long time at the great bow window of the drawing room that afternoon and gazed upon the sea, and wondered how it would have felt to have been cast upon those rough and wintry waves, with no sure knowledge of what future lay ahead for the wee infant son you carried in your arms, and only fears about the safety of your husband in the land that you were leaving, and might never see again. How deep, she wondered, must have been the queen’s despair?

  She was not aware of anybody entering the room till Colonel Graeme spoke, behind her, in a calming tone that seemed to know her mood and sought to lighten it. ‘I would not be surprised to see it snow before this day is out. Those clouds do have the look of it.’

  Coming forward, he stood close beside her and let his gaze follow her own, saying nothing at all, only keeping her company.

  Sophia looked a moment longer at the ice-grey swells that rose and fell beyond the window, then into the comfortable silence she said, without turning, ‘My father always loved the sea.’

  He glanced at her with eyes that were astute. ‘And ye do not.’

  ‘I do not trust it. It does seem a pleasant sight in summer, but it wears a different face, and one I do not like to look at, in December.’

  He nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘there is no sight so melancholy as the winter sea, for it does tell us we are truly at the ending of the year, and all its days are passed, its days of joy and sorrow that will never come again.’ He turned to look at her, and smiled. ‘But so the seasons turn, and so they must, by nature’s own design. The fields must fall to fallow and the birds must stop their song awhile; the growing things must die and lie in silence under snow, just as the winter sea must wear its face of storms and death and sunken hopes, the face ye so dislike. ’Tis but the way of things, and when ye have grown older, lass, as I have, ye may even come to welcome it.’

  ‘To welcome winter?’

  ‘Aye.’ He had not moved, and yet she felt his voice like an embrace, an arm of comfort round her shoulders. ‘For if there was no winter, we could never hope for spring.’ His eyes were warm on hers, and wise. ‘The spring will come.’ He paused, then in that same sure tone he said, ‘And so will he.’

  He meant the king, of course, Sophia told herself. He meant the king would come. And yet she thought she saw a fleeting something in his eyes before they slid away from hers again to make a new assessment of the snow clouds that were drifting ever closer to the shore, and in that instant she could not be sure he had not spoken to her, purposely, of someone else.

  They never mentioned Moray. Having learned his nephew had been well when he had been at Slains, the colonel seemed to be content to rest with that. He had not asked for any details of what Moray did, as though he deemed it not his business. They were very much alike, Sophia thought, these two men—bound by rules of honor that prevented them intruding into someone else’s privacy, and made them guard their own.

  It was as well, she thought, he did not know her private thoughts this moment. She was thinking of the desperate flight of Mary of Modena, of the fear and faith and hope that must have driven such a queen to brave a winter crossing with her baby son. And now that infant, grown to be a king, stood poised to cast his own spare fortunes on those same cold, unforgiving waves that seemed determined to divide the Stewarts from their hopes, and from their royal destiny.

  She tried, as Colonel Graeme had advised, to see the promise in the winter sea, but she could not. The water, greenly grey and barren, stretched away to meet the shoreward rolling clouds whose darkness only spoke of coming storms.

  In all the time since she had come to Slains and first learned of the planned invasion to return the king, Sophia never once had paused to think the plan might fail. Until this moment.

  From my window, I could see the breaking waves against the harbor wall. The wind was strong this morning, and the waves were coming high and fast and casting up an angry spray that made a hanging mist to all but hide the curve of snowbound beach. I couldn’t see it clearly. Further out, the sea had turned a deeper color in the shadow of the dark grey-bottomed clouds that were now gathering and blotting out the sun.

  It wasn’t difficult, while standing here, to feel the way Sophia must have felt. This winter sea was not so different from the one that I had pictured through her memory. Through her eyes.

  Nor was it difficult to feel the shade of Colonel Graeme close beside my shoulder. I could feel them everywhere around me, now, the people who had lived at Slains that winter. They were with me all the time, and it was harder to detach myself, to pull away. They pulled me back.

  Especially this morning. I had meant to take a break and get some badly needed sleep, but all I’d managed was to make a piece of toast, a cup of coffee. And I hadn’t even finished that, and here the voices were again, beginning to get restless.

  I could have closed them out, but at the window glass the wind rose to a wail and forced its way around the frame to swirl its cold around me and it breathed, ‘Ye have no choice.’

  And it was right.

  XV

  SHE’D THOUGHT TO SPEND an hour in the stables with the horses, but she’d given up that plan when she had happened upon Kirsty standing close against the stable wall with Rory, their heads bent close in earnest conversation. Sophia would not for the world have interrupted such a private moment, so she stopped, and turned away before they saw her. Taking care to keep her footsteps soft so she would not distract the couple, she went round again the long way past the malthouse and the laundry.

  It had snowed, as Colonel Graeme had predicted, and the branches of the sleeping trees that showed above the garden wall were frosted thick with white, and further down she saw the thin smoke twisting upwards from the chimneys of the bothy at the bottom of the garden. She had not set eyes on Billy Wick since Captain Gordon’s visit weeks ago, and she had no desire to meet him now, so it was with dismay that she caught sight of his hunched figure standing black against a snowy shrub whose crooked branches arched and reached towards the inland hills as though attempting to escape the fierce winds blowing off the bleak North Sea.

  Sophia was about to seek escape herself, and carry on along the laundry wall and round the corner to the kitchen, when another movement from the garden made her pause, and look more closely. Billy Wick was not alone. A second man, much larger and well-wrapped against the cold, a thick wool plaid drawn cloak-like round his head and shoulders, had come now to stand beside the gardener. There was no mistaking who it was—the only question, thought Sophia, was what business Captain Ogilvie could have with Billy Wick.

  Whatever it was, they took some few minutes about it; in that time her troubled frown grew still more troubled when the hands of both men moved and some unknown object passed between them.

  It was only when the two men parted, disappearing from her view so that she could but guess that Captain Ogilvie was making his way back along the path towards the house, and might at any moment come upon her without notice, that she moved. Her steps were ankle-deep in snow but quick with purpose, and the hands that drew her cloak more tightly round her sought to warm the chill she felt within, as well as from without.

  She found the colonel, as she’d hoped she’d find him, in the library. He smiled above the pages of his book as she came in. ‘Have ye returned so soon? I would have thought ye’d had enough defeat for the one day.’

  Ignoring the chess board, she asked, ‘May I speak with you?’

  He straightened as though something of her urgency had reached him. ‘Aye, of course.’

  ‘Not here,’ she told him, knowing Ogilvie would soon be back and often chose this room himself to sit in. She needed someplace private, where they would not risk an interruption. As h
er fingers met the thick folds of her cloak, she asked on sudden inspiration, ‘Will you walk with me?’

  ‘What, now? Outside?’

  She nodded.

  With his eyebrow lifting on a note of resignation, Colonel Graeme took a last look at the warming fire and closed his book. ‘Aye, lass. I’ll come and walk with ye. Where to?’

  The snow was not so deep along the cliff top, where the wind had blown inland into low drifts that lay soft and melting from a long day in the sun. It was late afternoon, and shadows tangled thickly with each other on the ground beneath the snowy branches of the trees that edged the flowing stream. The scent of burning wood fires from the chimneys of the cottages smelled homely to Sophia, and the smoke that curled to whiten in the air above the wood appeared to mirror her own misting breath.

  They walked between the cottages, and up the windy hill beyond, and down onto the wide fawn-colored beach. The sand felt firm beneath her feet, not soft and shifting as it had been in the summer, and the dunes were dusted white with snow through which the tufted golden grass still rose to bow and bend before the wind that tossed the waves ashore.

  In all that long, broad curve of sand there was no other person to be seen. No other person who could hear them. Yet Sophia went on walking, looking not for privacy but inspiration.

  All the while that they’d been on the path, she had been trying to decide how best to tell him that she thought his friend, the captain, might be more than he appeared. There were no easy words, she knew, for such a thing, and she might not have mentioned it at all if she had not felt such a strongly warning sense that what was happening had happened once before. She set her mind, and chose to take that for her starting-place, and ventured, ‘When your nephew was at Slains, he told me once of his adventures in the company of Simon Fraser.’

  Colonel Graeme’s eyes sought out her face with sudden interest. ‘Did he, now? What did he tell ye of the matter?’

  ‘That the king did send him here with Simon Fraser to enquire how many men might rise if there were a rebellion, and to meet with all the well-affected nobles in the Highlands and in Edinburgh.’

  ‘It was the queen, King Jamie’s mother Mary, who did send him, for she does esteem him highly. Did he tell ye that?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Aye, well, he’s not a lad to give himself much credit, but ’tis true. In fact, when Fraser did return to France without John it distressed the queen so greatly she said Fraser was a murderer, and did her best to see him thrown in prison. She’s a very loyal woman is Queen Mary, and she’ll not forget her favorites.’

  She had not known that Moray was a favorite of the queen, and it gave her pride, but still she did not wish to be distracted from her purpose, and she would have moved to speak if Colonel Graeme had not said, ‘The queen was wrong about the murder, mind. ’Twas only that Fraser had scuttled away like a rat without sending John word of his leaving, so John was left stranded in hiding some months afore he could find a safe passage to France for himself. I’d gone earlier, else I’d have been there to help, for the business was all in the wind then and he was in danger.’

  Distracted again, she looked over and echoed, ‘You’d gone earlier?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, and then as if it were a well-known fact he added, ‘I was here, too, sent with Fraser as John was, by orders from Saint-Germain. Did he not tell ye his uncle came with him?’ The answer was plain on her face for he smiled and said, ‘No, he’d not say. He’s a close man with words, John. A rare one for keeping things secret.’ He looked away, toward the rolling sea, and missed the change in her expression. ‘Did he tell ye Simon Fraser was a traitor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A blow to John, that was, for he did hold the man in high regard. I had a sense of it myself when we came over. Something was not right with Fraser from the start. But John…’ He paused, and gave a shrug. ‘Well, John was younger then and counted Fraser as his friend. He found it very hard.’

  Sophia said, ‘All men, I think, would be surprised at such betrayal by a friend.’

  He caught her tone and turned again as if to question it. ‘Ye did not bring me all this way to speak of Fraser, lass. What’s on your mind?’

  She took a breath. ‘I do suspect that Captain Ogilvie might be a spy.’

  She’d feared that he might laugh, or even answer her with anger. He did neither; only asked her, ‘Why is that?’

  And so she told him what she’d seen, and what she thought she’d seen—the little packet that had passed from Captain Ogilvie to Billy Wick. ‘I think that it may have been money.’

  ‘Lass.’ He gave her an indulgent sideways look.

  ‘The gardener is an evil-minded man, and not well thought of by the other servants. He is not a man to trust. I could not think of any reason Captain Ogilvie might speak with him, except to gain some knowledge of the house and its affairs.’ She kept her eyes upon the sand and said, ‘I hope I’ll not offend you, Colonel Graeme, if I say I find you much like Mr Moray, and I would not wish to see you suffer as he suffered at the hands of someone who does not deserve your friendship.’

  There was no sound for a moment but the breaking of the waves against the frozen shore. And then the colonel asked her, ‘Do ye worry for my welfare, lass?’

  He sounded quite as moved by that as Moray had when he had made a similar discovery, all those months ago. That moment too, Sophia thought, had happened here, on this same beach, but then the blowing wind had been a warmer one and underneath a bluer sky the sea had seemed a place of hope and promise.

  ‘There’s no need,’ said Colonel Graeme, kindly. ‘And ye needn’t worry about Ogilvie—he’s not like Simon Fraser, and he’s served the Stewart kings too long to turn a traitor now.’

  She raised her head and saw from looking at his face that he’d dismissed her warning, but the small unquiet voice within her would not rest. ‘But even so, you will be careful?’

  ‘Aye, lass. For your sake, since it troubles ye so much, I will be careful.’ But he said it in the same way that a naughty child might promise to be good, and there were crinkles at the corners of his eyes that let her know he did not think the matter serious. ‘Now, was that the only thing ye had to tell me?’

  From his tone she half-believed he had expected something more, but when she gave a nod he seemed to find that satisfactory.

  ‘Well then, let’s start back, for I’ve seen all I want of snow the day, and I can hear a dram of whisky calling from the fireside back at Slains.’

  Though she was disappointed she had not convinced him about Ogilvie, she could not help but smile. ‘You go,’ she told him. ‘I would stay a while, and walk along the beach.’

  He looked along the sand without enthusiasm. ‘If ye have a mind to stay, I’d best stay, too.’

  ‘There is no need.’ She tossed his own phrase back at him. ‘I will be safe. There was a time when I did walk here nearly every day.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ He seemed to smile, though she could not be sure. ‘But ye did tell me that ye did not like the sea in winter.’

  ‘And you told me, if I tried, that I might come to see its virtues.’

  ‘So I did.’ This time the smile was unmistakable. ‘I’ll leave ye to it, then, but see ye do not stay too long out in the cold.’

  She gave her promise she would not, and watched him walk away along the sand, his shoulders set so much like Moray’s that the likeness caught a little at her heart and made her pull her gaze away, then look again with misting eyes. She was half-glad when she was left alone.

  She climbed the dunes and found the place where she and Moray had so often sat and talked, and though the ground was snowy now she sat with legs drawn up beneath her cloak and turned her gaze toward the sea.

  It had been weeks since she had been here. In the summer she’d come often, for it was upon these sands that she most strongly felt the bond that yet connected her to Moray. She’d found comfort in the thought that every wave that rolled t
o shore had lately traveled from the coast of France to spread its foam upon the beach before her, and would then return with the inevitable rhythm of the tides to touch the land where Moray walked. That image, small but vivid, had sustained her through the length of days while she had looked toward the wide horizon for the first glimpse of a swift approaching sail.

  But none had come, and when she’d sickened from the bairn within her belly she had not felt well enough to walk so far. Besides, the bairn itself had given her a new kind of connection to the husband who was absent from her arms, if not her heart, and she had not felt such a pressing need to walk among the memories on the shore.

  But now she found them here, and waiting for her, and her eyes from habit turned to search the distant line where sea met sky, with apprehension this time more than hope, because she feared what might befall the herald ship from France if it arrived at Slains while Ogilvie was there.

  For all that Colonel Graeme had not been convinced, and Ogilvie himself was such a harmless-seeming man, she could not cast aside her feelings of suspicion any more than she could keep from hearing in her mind again the words that Moray had once spoken to her here, among the dunes: The devil kens the way to charm, when it does suit his purpose…

  It was more than what she’d seen that morning between Ogilvie and Billy Wick. Now that she’d turned her mind toward the possibility, it also struck her that although he’d been at Slains some days the countess had not warmed to him, but kept politely distant. And the instincts of the countess, thought Sophia, rated far above all others in the house.

  She looked with doubt towards the cold horizon, and again she heard a voice—not Moray’s but the colonel’s, telling them: The time is measured now in days. And as the sun dropped lower into cloud she knew what she must do.

  She did not wish to disappoint the colonel, or bring trouble on his shoulders, but if he would not believe her and take action, someone must. She would approach the countess, tell her what she’d seen, and let the older woman handle things as she saw fit.