The Winter Sea

Sophia knew he’d meant to say he did not know. He did not know how Mary of Modena had withstood such slander, and Sophia did not know herself how any woman could. To carry a child and bring him to life, and then have him denied and rejected by those who knew otherwise…well, it was not to be thought of. Sophia resisted the now almost unthinking impulse to rest a hand on her own belly while Ogilvie, having recovered, went on, ‘But the old king had made up his mind that the queen and the Prince of Wales were to be sent out of London and carried to France. There were but a handful let in on the secret.’ The firelight cast shadows along his expressive face as he leaned forward and brought them both into the secret as well. He went on with the story as surely as one who had been there: ‘At supper, the night that the flight was to happen, the queen sat at table. Calm, she was. She played her part so well that none suspected. After she withdrew, she changed her fine gown for a plain common habit and took up the Prince in a bundle, as if she were only a servant he were the clothes to be washed. She’d been given two trustworthy men for her guards, and she had her own women. By secret ways, all of them passed from the palace of Whitehall, and taking care not to be seen scurried into the carriage that waited to carry them down to the river.’

Sophia fought the urge to hold her own breath as she crept in her imagination through the watchful shadows with the queen. She bit her lip.

‘The night was so dark,’ Captain Ogilvie said, ‘that they could barely see each other. And the crossing of the Thames in violent wind and rain was treacherous. But when they finally reached the other side, the coach and six that had been meant to meet them was not there. The queen was forced to shelter from the weather by a church wall, in a dangerous exposure, and so wait until her guardsman went to fetch the coach. They nearly were discovered. ’Twas but Providence protected them, as it did later on that wild night when they were almost stopped along the road to Gravesend. They escaped that too, but narrowly, and made it safely to the coast, where others joined them for the journey over sea to France. An awful voyage that was, too, but through it all the queen made no complaint. A rare, brave woman,’ he proclaimed her, ‘and ’tis by her courage we do have a king today, for if they had remained in England nothing would have saved them.’

Colonel Graeme, who, Sophia thought, would also have a memory of those troubled days of treachery, agreed. ‘It is a stirring tale.’

‘Aye, well, I had it straight from the Comte de Lauzon. He was there—he was one of the two men that guided Queen Mary that night out of Whitehall and over the river and down to Gravesend, and he went the whole journey to France with her, too. He saw all that did happen, and kept it stopped up in his memory, till one night I helped him unstop it with wine.’ Captain Ogilvie smiled, in remembrance. ‘He told me other tales, as well, but few I’d want to tell a lass.’ But he did think of one that was not too offensive, and settled himself deeper still in his chair while he told it.

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.’