A Strange Scottish Shore

by Juliana Gray

  THE BOOK OF TIME, A. M. HAYWOOD (1921)

  Eleven

  Seven months later

  The nights had been growing shorter for many weeks, but the air was still dark when I awoke. The force of habit, I suppose. I lay quietly, listening to the soft whistle of the wind against the wooden shutters. Last October, when the weather turned bitter, Silverton started hanging a length of sheepskin over the shutters before we retired to bed, but no amount of insulation could banish the noise of an Orkney gale.

  “You can’t go out today,” I whispered. “It’s too fierce.”

  “Nonsense. A mere zephyr.”

  “Stay home,” I said. “Please.”

  He didn’t answer. His heartbeat struck gently at my back; his breath warmed my hair. Of course he was awake. He always woke before I did, long before the sun found the horizon. The earlier we woke, the longer we could lie like this, not moving, snug in our chrysalis of bedclothes, while the wind blew and the morning gathered, cold and damp, around our noses. I had long since stopped thinking in hours and minutes; time had lost its boundaries, its neat compartments, and we lived by the sun. During the darkest days of winter, we must have spent half our lives in slumber.

  In bed, at least. Not always slumber.

  When we did sleep, it was the deepest sleep I had ever known, dreamless, so rich and velvet that waking felt like emerging from the bottom of the ocean. I became aware of myself in slow stages, detail by familiar detail, my face and arms and legs, my heavy stomach, the weight of Silverton’s arm along my ribs, empty of any desire to be anywhere else except right here, in this particular hollow of this particular bed, enclosed by these particular arms.

  By the slight stirring of his body, I knew Silverton would rise soon. I turned in his embrace and tucked my nose into the hollow at the base of his throat.

  “Now, Truelove,” he said softly. “You know I’ve got to make a living.”

  I loved the taste of his skin, the smell of him, the texture. He washed every afternoon when he came home from the harbor, but still the scent of fish clung faintly to his pores, and I loved it, I loved it. How strange that a smell I had once considered disagreeable was now my favorite smell in the world. I touched his collarbone with the tip of my tongue and he let out a long, slow breath. His hand moved down my back to cup my buttocks. I couldn’t keep him out of his boat today, I knew, but I could at least keep him in bed with me a little longer before he left.

  We took our time, because we had so much of it to spare, handfuls of time that had no meaning and no measurement. Dawn crept around the cracks of the window when at last he finished, gasping, and fell to the sheets beside me. We both wore nightshirts because of the cold, and mine was rucked up almost to my shoulders. He pulled it back down and drew up the blankets to cover me. “Stay here,” he said, kissing my lips. “I’ll start the fire.”

  I rolled on my side and watched him drowsily as he threw on his tunic and bent before the hearth. He seemed too lean to me, his muscles too tough and too flat, battered by winter and the hard labor of harvesting the sea. We had plenty to eat, but the food was simple and plain, lacking any richness, and since my courses had ceased in the third month of our union, he made me eat his share of cheese as well as my own. The baby worried him, I knew. When I first told him my suspicions, his face had filled not with joy and pride, as I expected, but with remorse. And though I went on to experience hardly a moment of sickness, though I remained strong and healthy and disgracefully sound, that misgiving had never quite left his eyes. He worried about my confinement, he worried about the crisis of birth. He worried about providing for us both.

  “Really,” I said once, exasperated, “did the possibility not once occur to you, when you were committing yourself to me three times daily?”

  “Of course it did. But there’s a great deal of difference between the theoretical and the actual. A theoretical infant, sometime in the distant future, is a marvelous thought. An actual infant increasing within my wife’s womb is positively terrifying.”

  “This from a man who has cheated death a hundred times.”

  “But that was only my death, Truelove. I can face that possibility with perfect tranquility. You, on the other hand—”

  I never let him complete that sentence, and to his credit, he was easily distracted from morbid thoughts. He was too naturally ebullient, too naturally amorous to regret the act of love. Instead, he fussed, as he did now. While the fire caught, he poured me a cup of ale and made me sit up and drink every drop—it’s good for your lactation, he informed me, having had a long and unembarrassed conversation the other day with the village midwife, who had been scandalized by his interest.

  “Lactation? But the babe won’t be born until summer,” I said.

  “It can’t hurt, can it? Now, drink up, there’s a good girl, while I make your breakfast.”

  “I can make my own breakfast.”

  “That doesn’t mean you should. Look here—”

  But I was already swinging my legs out of bed, already reaching for my woolen dress. “Your health is just as important as mine. Think what it would do to me, if something were to happen to you.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m as strong as an ox, and besides, I’ve got luck on my side. Tremendously important, luck.”

  I sliced the bread and laid it on the plates. “Luck? You’ve been transported without consent from a world of wealth and privilege and railways to a world of primitive barbarism and unsatisfactory wine.”

  He turned, caught me around the waist, and pulled me against him for a long, deep kiss. “As it happens, Truelove, I consider that the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Then you’re mad.”

  “Consider, my dear. Would you ever have agreed to marry me, if you weren’t so utterly devoid of alternatives as you are here?”

  “I never did agree to marry you, if you’ll recall. I only resigned myself to the necessity, after the fact of our soi-disant wedding. In any case,” I said, pulling away, “I expect you’d have plied me with wine and seduced me eventually, with the same result.”

  “Ah, you’re happy, Truelove. Admit it.”

  “I admit nothing.”

  “I make you happy. You’re splendidly happy, the happiest, most adored, most well-loved woman in the British Isles—”

  “These aren’t yet the British Isles. And even if they were—”

  He dropped the apple he was slicing, gathered me up, and carried me to the bed. “Admit it,” he said, stabbing my neck with kisses, “admit it.”

  “Stop! Oh, God, your beard—it tickles—”

  “Admit it!”

  “Yes!”

  “Yes, dear husband, I’m deliriously happy here in this crude hovel with you. Say it, Truelove.”

  “Yes—dear husband—oh, stop! I’m happy, yes!”

  “In this crude hovel—”

  “This awful, dirty, cramped, fish-smelling hovel—”

  “Because I love you.”

  “Because I love you,” I said softly, and he stopped kissing me, stopped tickling me, and we sat together, limbs tangled, watching the fire gain strength in the hearth, while the March drizzle began to crackle against the roof.

  • • •

  The bed had been given to us by Magnus, as a wedding present. If it was not exactly magnificent—that would have been ridiculous, in a cottage like ours—it was sturdy and comfortable, furnished with a feather mattress, and I made it up neatly after Silverton left, whistling, into the rain. The dishes were already washed, our few possessions put away. I drank another cup of ale—Silverton’s orders—and went outside to gather up net for mending.

  Among the skills I had learned since falling into Silverton’s bed that August night: how to mend a fishing net, how to scale and bone a fish, how to skin rabbits and pluck fowl, how to bake bread in
a peat fire, how to make cheese from sheep’s milk, how to seal a boat with resin, how to gather and dry peat for the fire, how to draw water from the well, how to keep a house clean with only water and sand, how to darn stockings, how to mend clothing, how to speak Norse, or at least the rudiments. Once spring was under way, I had plans to start a vegetable garden, for I understood the soil here was exceedingly fertile. I learned and did all these things not because I expected to end my days as a fisherman’s wife on this dreary, dark, chill, windblown island off the northern coast of Scotland, but because I should otherwise have gone out of my mind with boredom when Silverton left each morning in his boat to make a living.

  And because it was needful. Because my husband—for so I came to think of him, whether or not we were truly married—returned home exhausted with a fish and a few coins each afternoon, and I loved him too much to do nothing for him in return.

  But there were only two of us, and by noon my work was finished. I fastened the silver chain about my waist, took my cloak from the hook and my notebook from the chest, and I headed out into the chilly March day.

  • • •

  It may surprise you to learn that I had my own boat, a sort of crude dinghy I used to row across the harbor, or else to the little inlet on the other side of the shore, away from the village. Silverton taught me to use the oars, and I discovered that I experienced no sickness at all when operating the boat myself. I liked the independence of rowing, the exercise and the exposure to the rough, wild elements of the Orkney climate. I liked to test myself, even in my new condition, and most of all I liked to explore.

  By the time I emerged into the early afternoon, the rain had cleared, although the wind blew cold against my cheek and the clouds lay low and thick. I turned to look at the castle on its hill, gray-walled and toothy, and for an instant I remembered it as I first saw it, half-ruined, crawling with builders and scaffolding and bathed in a mild picnic sun. My heart ached. Poor Max, he was likely frantic with worry for us, searching desperately for a way to bring us back.

  Max. How I missed him, and the calm, easy, almost intuitive nature of our friendship. I missed his steadfast manner, and the long hours we had spent together, engaged not in battles of wit but in deep conversation, untangling long threads of logic, charting out plans. When I thought of him, I remembered all we had left undone, the mysteries left unsolved, and the memories shattered my hard-won peace.

  Helen, I thought. Maybe Helen was trying to help him. Helen, who had some strange connection to the castle, who came from some other time of her own. Who carried some babe of her own.

  I put one hand to the new, gentle curve of my belly and closed my eyes. Show me, Max. Show me what I’m supposed to do.

  The wind howled around the corner of the cottage. A gull called nearby, and another. My eyes opened, and the castle stood imperviously above me, whole and solid, pennants snapping angrily. I slid my woolen mittens onto my hands, picked up the oars from against the side of the hut, and started down the path to the harbor, where my little craft bobbed at its mooring.

  I saw nobody in the harbor. Perhaps half the fishing fleet was out; the other fishermen stayed sensibly indoors. That was why Silverton went out when the weather was bad—or rather, worse than usual—because he could get a better price for his catch. I swallowed back my anxiety and stepped into the boat. Shipped the oars and untied the knot. A faint queasiness overtook me as the boat rocked beneath my weight, but only until I dipped the oars into the water and began to row. Then the rhythm took hold, the exhilaration of physical exercise. I maneuvered around the other boats and slipped around the little headland protecting the harbor, staying close to shore to avoid the current that ran along the channel between this island and the next.

  Many times before, I had made this journey. I knew the outline of the shore, the way the pebbled beach gave way to the rise of the cliffs, and then the abrupt bite of the first inlet. Silverton rowed with me the first time, and we brought the boat to shore there and ate a little picnic. That was at the end of August, when the sun still offered a little heat; in fact, the day had been unusually warm, and we had basked on the rocks and contemplated swimming.

  “We can’t,” Silverton had said sadly. “For one thing, it’s jolly cold. For another thing, the castle overlooks this little inlet, and we can’t have anyone see us.”

  “Why not? Surely they can’t see us properly from so far away.”

  “Maybe not, but they’d know it was us. None of the locals swim. The fishermen consider it bad luck, and the rest of them just think it’s a sign of witchcraft.”

  “And they already think I’m some sort of witch, don’t they?”

  “Well, they can plainly see the spell you’ve cast over me,” he said, touching my hair, and we didn’t speak any more about swimming, or anything else, for some time.

  Now, as I rowed past the mouth of the inlet, the tranquility of that summer afternoon seemed terribly distant. The wind blew in stiff, cold gusts, and the sky hung drearily above my head. The waves slapped against the hull of the boat, sending a salt spray across my cloak and my face, and still I rowed, bending my strength into the oars, thrilling to the pulse of my own effort. The terrain began to rise again, the inlet slipped from view. Now the cliffs, jagged and without mercy. The waves sloshed around the base, carving delicate features into the bare rock, and I kept well clear, though the wind blew from the northeast and I was not in any particular danger. Silverton had lectured me about the perils of a lee shore, to be watched carefully under oar and avoided at all costs while under sail.

  As I drew in another great gust of air, I thought I smelled a faint hint of roses.

  Is this sort of expedition really wise, in your condition?

  The right oar skipped painfully on the surface of the water. I swore—in Norse, I hasten to add, which lends such exclamations a certain panache. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  Sitting in the stern. I suppose you can’t see me in this light.

  I resumed my rhythm, pulling hard to right myself. “I’m perfectly capable of rowing a boat, madam.”

  I don’t mean the exercise itself, although I should prefer you to undertake it with a degree less vigor. I mean rowing out so far, by yourself, in such weather. Should you meet with an accident, you would have little recourse.

  “I don’t intend to meet with any accidents.”

  Nobody ever does. But think of your poor husband. Think of the child.

  “I assure you, I think of them constantly. You, on the other hand. You haven’t intruded yourself on my company in months. Have you something particular to tell me? Some choice piece of advice that can’t wait for a more opportune moment?”

  (A sniff.) I was only trying to give you a little privacy, during your honeymoon.

  “Honeymoon, indeed—”

  You seem to have enjoyed it well enough.

  “I did, thank you.”

  With the expected result, of course. That rascal Silverton. Naturally he took no care for your own convenience.

  “I need hardly point out that your own husband is guilty of the same offense.”

  Procreation was our duty, my dear. Still, a most inconvenient condition. If the cause were not so supremely enjoyable, I should never have endured it once, even for the sake of Great Britain, let alone nine times. And then, at the end of a miserable nine months, the further misery of bringing forth. Thank God for chloroform.

  I pressed my lips together and studied the wooden slats at the stern of the boat. If I narrowed my eyes, I could just detect a blurring at the point where the boards came together, and a faint impression of the color blue.

  The Queen went on blithely, as if the lack of blessed chloroform in medieval Orkney had not occurred to her.

  However, the deed is done, and I urge you most firmly to turn this—this little craft of yours about and return to shore, for the s
ake of the life within you, if for no other consideration. Your husband—

  “Silverton is hardly overjoyed at the prospect of fatherhood.”

  Nonsense. Of course he is. He’s only daunted by the responsibility, as he should be. Whatever is he thinking, to support a wife and child as a fisherman? I had hoped better for you. Still, he’s a fine, strapping fellow, and will get healthy enough infants on you, I dare guess. If one must endure the indignity of childbearing—

  “Really, madam. This is not a matter I wish to discuss with you.”

  If not with me, then with whom? A girl ought to have somebody with whom to discuss these matters, at such an interesting time of life.

  “Certainly. But why you?”

  There was a small, defiant harrumph from the stern, and then silence. I thought perhaps she had gone, and yet instead of feeling relief, I experienced a pang of longing. Or perhaps it was only indigestion. In any case, I went on rowing, while the cliffs fell back into another inlet, and I realized I had never roamed this far. I had always turned back, made uneasy by the sheer, cruel height of those cliffs.

  Put to shore here, the Queen said sharply.

  “What? Why? I thought you wanted me to turn back.”

  Put to shore, I say.

  “I am not in the habit—”

  There was a flash of light, and I knew she was gone, reabsorbed by whatever force had concentrated her spirit before me. I paused mid-stroke, while the waves buffeted the boat, and began to turn.

  But I did not turn all the way around. As the inlet slid past my gaze, I saw the shallow, pebbled shore, and the grass-topped landscape that led toward it, and something attracted me, I don’t know what. Some tug of memory, or magnetism, or perhaps only the breathtaking fairness of the scene, the tender slope of grass softening the horizon, the elegant crumble of cliffs into shore. The calm surface of the sheltered little cove.