The Winter Sea

‘No.’

‘Last night, upon the stroke of midnight.’

‘You were dreaming,’ Kirsty told her.

‘No.’ Sophia stopped her restless pacing by the window, gazing out across the grey mist that was melting with the sunrise, touched with bands of gold and red that shimmered like the blood of kings. ‘It was no dream, I think.’

And she was right. For on the evening of the next day Mr Malcolm, who had been away from home for some few nights, returned in agitation.

‘Fetch me bread and clothes!’ he called. ‘I must away.’

His wife, surprised, asked, ‘Why? What is it? What has—?’

‘Christ, woman, cease your talk and make ye haste, else ye may see me hang with all the rest of them.’ And with that outburst Mr Malcolm sank despondent to the nearest chair and gripped his head with both his hands. He had not bothered taking off his heavy cloak, to which the salty dampness of the sea winds clung and channeled down in rivulets to drip upon the floorboards.

In worried silence Mrs Malcolm brought him wine, and haltingly his story came, in pieces, while Sophia stood and listened, though each word was like a stone cast up to shatter her own hopes.

It had begun so well, he said. Two days ago the first French ship, the Proteus, had sailed into the Firth, and he had met it two leagues in and gone on board with several pilots. There had been a storm at sea, the captain told him, and the Proteus had separated from the others, so they had expected they would find the other ships of the king’s squadron there before them in the Firth. Their appearance had excited those on shore, and those who had put out in fishing boats to welcome them, but though they waited all that afternoon and evening no more ships arrived.

So at the break of day the Proteus had turned again and ridden on the ebbing tide towards the great mouth of the Firth, to see if she could find the other French ships and convey the pilots to them.

What the Proteus had found still bothered Mr Malcolm so much that it took him some moments to collect himself before he could continue.

The French, he said, had gathered at the entrance to the Firth the night before and dropped their anchors, and so lost their chance to enter in the river on a flowing tide. By dawn the tide had turned, and they could do no more than wait. ‘And then the English came,’ he said. ‘Near thirty sail of them, and half of those had fifty guns or more.’ He shook his head.

The Proteus had not been well-equipped for fighting. She’d been fitted for a transport ship, the best part of her guns removed to make room for supplies and troops. She could do little more than watch the battle.

Mr Malcolm showed a grudging admiration for the tactics of the French commander, who though trapped had turned his ships against the English as if he intended to attack. From his position on the Proteus, Mr Malcolm had seen the French throwing whatever they could over the sides in an effort to lighten the ships, and as the English had responded to the challenge by shouldering into their battle array, the French had swiftly turned and steered a course towards the north.

A few French ships were left behind, and one had been engaged so heavily by English men of war that it had battled all that day and passed the night pressed by its enemies. But King James’s ship, at least, had escaped.

As had the Proteus which, having lowered Mr Malcolm to a waiting fishing boat, had steered its own course boldly out to sea, in hopes of drawing off a few more of the English in pursuit to give the king more time to find some safer harbor to the north.

Sophia said, ‘So then the king is yet alive.’ She could at least draw hope from that. For if, as Colonel Graeme had once said, no battle could be called a victory if the king were lost, then surely there could be no true defeat if the king lived.

‘He lives,’ said Mr Malcolm, ‘and God grant he comes ashore, for my own life will be worth little till he does. Even now the English soldiers search for those of us who went on board the Proteus, and in the road of Leith they now do hold the crew and captain of a captured ship, and he that claimed it for his prize is blackest of them all, for he was once the king’s own follower, and hearing of his deed today is like to break my Lady Erroll’s heart, for she did hold him dear.’

Sophia frowned. ‘Of whom, sir, do you speak?’

‘Why, of the English captain—for I’ll no more call him Scottish—of the English rogue who did this day betray his friends by turning his own guns upon that same French ship that had so long been under siege, and forcing its surrender. I do speak,’ he said, and spat the name, ‘of Captain Thomas Gordon.’

She stepped back as though he’d struck her. ‘I do not believe it.’

‘Nor would I, had I not seen it with my own eyes.’ His face grew bitter. ‘I’ve seen many things this day that I would rather not have seen. But as ye say, the king does live.’

Sophia hugged her arms more tightly round herself and wished that she believed in God enough to pray that Moray, too, was still alive. But even if he was, she knew that he had passed beyond her prayers, to waters much more dangerous.

‘Why did it fail?’ I asked from curiosity, and Graham, who’d been lounging on the other sofa, marking papers, glanced across.

‘What’s that?’

‘The invasion. Why didn’t it work, do you think?’

‘Ah.’ He set down the paper and rested his head back in thought.

I had never been able to write, before now, with somebody else there in the room. It distracted me. Even my parents had learned to stay clear. But this morning Graham had come downstairs while I was still deep in my trance and had settled in without my even knowing he was there. It wasn’t until I’d gone three pages on and discovered that I was now drinking a fresh cup of coffee that I hadn’t made, that I had looked over and seen him stretched out on the opposite sofa, his own cup of coffee forgotten beside him, head bent to his papers.