A Strange Scottish Shore

by Juliana Gray

  “Oh, they aren’t just similar, Miss Truelove,” he said, “they’re identical.”

  “Identical!”

  “Almost to the stone, at least in original design. Naturally the lords of Thurso have made alterations to suit the convenience of modern inhabitants, but—oops, watch that chisel—the plan, the footprint, as they say, varies hardly an inch.” He spoke loudly, above the clang of tools around us, and while I had not directed much attention to my surroundings during our approach to the castle—my attention being focused rather more inwardly—I now cast about and saw that the room we now crossed contained the same vast dimensions as the great hall of Thurso Castle. There loomed the main staircase, there and there stretched the hallways toward the formal chambers. Though the walls were bare and the space filled with workmen and materials, the proportions aligned exactly with my memory of Thurso.

  The sickness fell away, replaced by the buzz of discovery. “How extraordinary!” I exclaimed. “Were they not built centuries apart?”

  “It’s a bit of a mystery, really. There aren’t any records.”

  “Not at either castle?”

  “No. It’s as if they both rose up by themselves. As near as we can figure, they were built sometime before Norway relinquished the islands to Scotland. Naturally this one seems older, as it’s ruined. But ruins—like people, I suppose—have a way of looking old before their time. Mind the stairs, now.”

  He kept a firm hold on my elbow as we climbed the massive staircase, which had evidently undergone recent restoration—the stone was sharp-edged, the wood raw and unpolished, the air suffused with the scent of fresh timber. “We had to replace all the banisters, all the steps,” Magnusson was saying. “The wood had rotted, of course, and the stone was crumbling. We used the staircase at Thurso as a model. Dashed fine work, don’t you think?”

  “How fortunate that the two castles are so alike.”

  “Isn’t it, though? Of course, we aren’t trying to re-create Thurso—it’s meant to be a hotel, not a medieval fortification—but it does add a fine dash of authenticity, don’t you think? And then there’s all the rubbish that turns up as we go. The dungeons, for example.”

  “Dungeons!”

  “Oh, yes. Fearsome stuff. But so convenient for stashing away unwanted items, so to speak. That’s where we discovered our mysterious chest, you know.”

  “I didn’t realize that. What was it doing in the dungeons?”

  “God knows. Perhaps it had misbehaved. There’s no way of telling when it was put there, of course. Or perhaps it lay in the dungeon all along, who knows? Here we are. My office, such as it is. There’s a sofa in the corner that should do very well. I nap in it myself, from time to time.” He winked broadly. “Do you need a blanket or some such thing? Water, perhaps?”

  I stared around the room, which was large and bare, the walls unfinished, the floor uncovered, containing a desk and chair, a pair of threadbare armchairs, and the sofa in question: a masculine, deep-seated Chesterfield of brown leather, missing a number of its buttons. A pair of casement windows looked toward the sea.

  “Nothing at all except privacy, thank you,” I said.

  • • •

  I waited some minutes after he left before I rose from the sofa, which smelled of leather and damp. Though the fickle sun now shone through the window glass, the room was chilly and suffered from a draught—from what source, I couldn’t tell. The windows were shut tight.

  According to our plans, the duke would find his excuse to leave the picnic in about an hour. I knew I ought to rest, but I was seized by restlessness, by a compulsion to discover something. Around me, the castle seemed to be lying in wait for me, seemed to beckon, desiring to be explored. I tightened the belt of my cardigan and slipped through the doorway into the hall.

  Though the building crawled with workmen, this particular corridor was empty and silent, nothing but bare stone walls and bare stone floors and thick wooden doors at irregular intervals. I tried to remember the hallway to which it corresponded at Thurso and could not—the morning room and sitting room? the state bedrooms?—and yet I had the strangest sensation that I knew my surroundings. I set off down the narrow space, away from the main staircase, and I thought I had walked here many times. The height of the ceiling above me, the exact width, the shadows; the rectangular shapes of the doorways, rounded slightly at the tops—all of it, all of it settled familiarly on my eyes. Not just my eyes. Something inside me, in the region of memory. My steps quickened. I turned right at the end of the hall, then left, stretching out my fingers to pass across the smooth, dark stone as I went, until they encountered a small door cut into the wall. I opened it. Up wound a narrow staircase, following the curve of a turret.

  For a moment, I leaned against the doorframe, gathering my breath. The perfect arc of the stairs mesmerized me. Like the rest of the castle, it was empty and unadorned, and the steps were worn in their centers, as if Magnusson’s program of refurbishment had not encompassed this column of the castle. I thought, I ought to be exploring the dungeon, where the chest was found, but instead I found myself yearning upward. I placed my right foot into the soft groove of the first one. Through the walls came the sound of hammering, of hard male voices, of the clatter and clang of tools. A faint whistling floated somewhere above me. I felt like a thief as I climbed upward, floor by floor, until I reached the top and looked briefly through the small, arched window. It was speckled with mist, affording a blurry view of the harbor.

  I turned away, opened the door to the hallway, and gasped.

  Not only had Magnusson’s workmen failed to set about returning this portion of the castle to its former glory, they seemed not to have visited it at all. The space was a ruin, open and without partition, the stone crumbling. The wind sang through the gaps in the outer walls—a noise I recognized as the whistling I had heard on the stairs. A roof existed above me, at least, held in place by thick, sturdy beams, or else I might as well have been outdoors in a loggia.

  “Miss Truelove?”

  I spun around. The duke filled the doorway from the staircase, one hand on the frame and the other at his side. His head bent slightly under the lintel. I put my hand on my heart. “I wasn’t expecting you yet.”

  He stepped forward into the room. “I claimed indigestion.”

  “It’s too convenient. They’ll suspect us.”

  “I don’t particularly give a damn what anybody suspects, Miss Truelove. You looked genuinely ill outside. Are you certain you’re recovered?”

  I turned away to survey the attic before me. “I should not have climbed those stairs if I weren’t. How did you find me?”

  “A lucky guess, I suppose. One of the workmen directed me to Magnusson’s office, and when I saw you weren’t there, I wandered along until I spotted that open door to the staircase. Have you discovered anything?”

  “No. Mr. Magnusson informed me that the chest had been found in the dungeons, but he allowed that it might have been moved there at a later date.”

  “The dungeons!”

  “They seem to have incarcerated more merchandise than criminals there.”

  “Ah. Have you gone down there yet?”

  “No.” I paused to kneel beside a pile of cut stones. “The stairs only went up, and besides . . .”

  He put down a knee next to me. “Besides what?”

  “I wanted to go up. How long have these stones been here, do you think? There isn’t any dust on them.”

  He picked one up with his gloved hand and turned it about. “A great many years ago. Look at the marks.”

  I looked, but my eye was not as expert as his. “How many years?”

  “Over a century. Why did you want to go up?”

  “I don’t know. I was curious.”

  “Because I felt the same curiosity,” he said softly. “A sort of compulsion.”

 
I turned to face him. He wore his usual implacable expression, shadowed by the brim of his tweed cap. The weather had brought out a flush of red along the broad blades of his cheeks. He stared down at me, and though his eyes revealed no more opinion than usual, I had the idea that he was troubled, and that he looked to me for relief.

  I dropped my gaze to his hands, encased in black leather, still holding the ancient stone, and then back to his face.

  “A compulsion,” I repeated. “The same kind of compulsion as on the cliffs of Skyros?”

  “Yes. No. I’m not quite sure. Not as powerful, I think. Here I am, after all, talking sensibly to you, instead of being out of my mind.” He looked at the stone again. “But there’s something here. Like a field of energy.”

  “Describe it.”

  “My methodical Miss Truelove. Very well. If I must describe it, I suppose the sensation originates somewhere in the stem of my brain.”

  “The seat of instinct!”

  “I believe so. It seems to guide my actions, in place of conscious resolve. At this point, however, I can resist it. If I had wanted to, I could have remained at the bottom of those stairs, just now. On Skyros, I could no more have remained where I stood than I could have commanded my heart to stop beating.”

  I took the stone from his hand and laid it back on the pile. “Shall we walk about the room? See if the feeling grows stronger in any particular place?”

  “You might,” said a voice from the stairway, “but I’m afraid it won’t do any good.”

  • • •

  Even before I turned, I knew who stood there. She smiled and advanced toward us, and in the diminished natural light of indoors, she looked even more beautiful than she had upon the deck of the steamship. I thought there was something familiar about the shape of her eyes, about the angle of her jaw, but I could not quite understand how. As she walked, she turned her gaze to the duke and said, “Max, it’s good to see you.”

  He started. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Don’t you know me? It’s Helen.” She came to a stop before us and removed her hat. Her hair was blond and thick, parted neatly down the middle and wound in a simple Psyche knot at her nape.

  “I—I am at a loss,” he said. “Have we met?”

  “I guess not. Well, then. How to begin.” She spoke in that same accent as before, distinctly English and yet impossible to pin down. “I do have instructions, but they’re not—”

  “But who are you?” I interrupted. “Helen whom?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I can’t tell you, anyway, not in any way you’d understand. I don’t really understand it myself. I wouldn’t believe it, if I weren’t standing here. If I hadn’t spent the last seven years somewhere else, and before that—well.” She replaced her hat snugly. “I know what you’re trying to do, anyway. You’re trying to bring somebody through, aren’t you?”

  “Through what?” the duke asked warily.

  “Through time. But it won’t work, not like that. You have to be standing in the right place, and you have to be carrying something.”

  Max and I turned toward each other, eyes wide, and then back to Helen.

  “Carrying what?” he asked.

  “Something. It doesn’t matter what, apparently, so long as it’s something that belongs to the person you’re trying to summon. Some physical artifact that connects a person in one time to a person in another.” She shrugged. “So I’m told, anyway.”

  The duke and I stood there silently, shocked, teeming with questions, afraid to ask them. I wanted to take him aside and confer, but this was not a court of law. This was the attic of a half-ruined Scottish castle, and we had to decide, right now, separately and simultaneously, whether this woman might be trusted. Who she was. How she had come here, and how she knew all this.

  And why.

  Max spoke first. “Told by whom?”

  “By you, of course. You told me.”

  Max swore so softly, I almost didn’t hear him. I felt the change in him, however. There was a winding of tension, a sense of electricity so strong, I thought I heard it crackling. I wanted to lay my hand on his arm, on his shoulder, to offer him some kind of comfort, but of course that was impossible, too.

  Helen continued, watching Max’s face as she spoke. “You said you would know what I meant by that.”

  “Yes, I believe I understand,” he said. “What else did I tell you?”

  “Just that, really. There wasn’t much time.”

  She shifted her gaze to me as she said this, and I knew she was lying.

  “Tell me,” I said, speaking with as much authority as I could muster, “are we to understand that the duke has met you in another time? That you have traveled here from some other age?”

  “Yes.”

  “When? Where?”

  A small hesitation. “I can’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “I shouldn’t even have come to you, except that I need—” She looked again at the duke, and again I experienced that jar of familiarity, that sense of having seen this movement before.

  “You need my help,” he said.

  Helen drew in a deep breath, and as she did so, she placed her hand on the stout rise of her belly. I saw that her skin was so pale, it matched almost exactly—in color, if not in texture—the creamy wool of her cardigan.

  “I need you to send me back,” she said.

  • • •

  “She might be lying,” I said. “She might be trying to trick you.”

  The duke spoke solemnly from the window. “That may be true, of course, but not wholly so. How else would she know as much as she did? Why, she knows more than we do.”

  “So did Hunter.”

  I sat rigid upon the sofa in Magnusson’s office; Max stood, as I said, by the window nearest me. In order to obtain this privacy for us, I had claimed a sudden return of illness, and Max played his part as if born to intrigue: solicitous, insisting upon my immediate removal to a place of resting, brushing off Helen’s offers of assistance. Miss Truelove needs utmost quiet, he had told her imperiously. He would rejoin her upstairs when he was satisfied with Miss Truelove’s health and comfort.

  At this moment, my health and comfort seemed the furthest objects from his mind. He stood with one hand braced on his hip, the other on the window ledge, motionless. His brow was keen. The light through the glass was strangely white, turning his skin pale. I wondered what he was staring at. What he was thinking.

  “Yes,” he said absently. “Poor Hunter.”

  “Poor Hunter?”

  “After all, he’s dead. What do you think of this proposition of hers? Of Helen’s, I mean. This idea that I must possess some sort of object upon my person, some link to the person I’m trying to summon.”

  “I suppose there’s a certain logic. If an object existed in a previous time, does it not then contain some link to that moment?”

  “But when we were on Skyros, I had no object upon me that belonged to Tadeas.”

  “Yes, you did. The medallion. The one I found in Desma’s bedroom at Knossos. Didn’t it once belong to him?”

  He started. “By God.”

  In some corner of the castle, not far away, a workman began to hammer in slow, steady strokes, like the beat of a drum. I thought it sounded like chiseling, like the battering of metal upon stone. The smell of sawdust seemed to hang in the air, and beneath it something more foul, like manure. Above it, another smell entirely, one I knew intimately but could not name. I opened my mouth to ask Max whether he smelled it, too, whether he recognized the particular scent, but he spoke first.

  “You would think—wouldn’t you, Miss Truelove?—that with all this power of mine, this apparent ability and even inclination to move events like the gods on Olympus, I might have troubled to send myself some damned CLUE”—he brought his fist down on
the stone, suddenly and mightily—“how to proceed.”

  “But you did not,” I said. “You did not plant some clue. Which means that whatever it is you decide, whatever it is you do, it will be right.”

  He turned to me with deliberate slowness. His eyes were bright and incredulous. At first, I thought he had seen something out the window, some extraordinary object, but then I realized this extraordinary object was me. That I was the source of his amazement.

  “Why, you’re right,” he said. “I must act, that’s all.”

  I rose from the sofa. “Yes. Simply act. Do something.”

  “Act what? Do what?”

  He spoke intently, one hand still gripping the edge of the window, and as I stared at him, helpless, the strange illusion came upon me again: the duke, before an identical window, blurring and transforming into Silverton. The sunlight in his hair became the gold of Silverton’s crown. I shut my eyes and opened them again, but the illusion remained, the blurring, and within me grew an unstoppable urgency, a craving that seemed to travel within the channels of my blood.

  “We are in the library!” I gasped.

  “What’s that?”

  “The library! This room—Magnusson’s office—it’s the library! The Oriental library.”

  I could not see the duke’s face—it merged into that of Silverton, so that the expression hid itself from me—but the head moved, allowing the gaze to travel around the room.

  “By God,” he said, in Silverton’s voice, “you’re right.”

  Now the craving strengthened, electrifying my nerves. I stepped forward, and as I did, I recognized the faint scent, carrying above the almost barnyard odor that had filled the room.

  The smell belonged to Silverton. His soap, or his skin, or whatever its source. I had smelled it last in the hotel room in Edinburgh, as he bent over my body in the bed.

  I staggered forward and seized the duke’s hands, driven by a compulsion I could not name. “Send me back!” I gasped.

  “Send you back?”

  “Yes. Now. That’s what you must do. That’s how you must act. Send me back to him.”