The Winter Sea

Gordon said, ‘We got him off all right. With all the rum that flowed upon our decks that night my men were in no state to notice anything besides their own debauchery. He should by now be well into the crossing.’

Sophia knew that there was nothing she could say that would be adequate, and yet she felt the need to tell him something. ‘Captain Gordon…’ But she faltered as he turned, and only asked, ‘Do you still have Lord Griffin in your care?’

‘No. He was taken by the soldiers just this morning. I can only pray that he was right to think the queen will show him mercy.’

Looking at his face, she felt ashamed that she had thought that such a man could turn a traitor. ‘Captain Gordon,’ she began again, ‘I hope you can forgive me for—’

He raised a hand to cut short her apology. ‘It is forgotten.’ Glancing one more time across the harbor to the ruin of the Salisbury, he said, ‘At any rate, you were quite right on one account.’ His eyes came back to hold her own, intent. ‘The things I did that night were not all done because of duty. They were done for you.’

She was silent for a moment in the face of that admission. It was hard to know a man could care so much for her that he would risk his whole profession, risk his life, while knowing that she did not, could not, answer his affection. In a quiet voice Sophia said, ‘I am so sorry.’ And they both knew she was speaking of much more than her unfounded accusations.

Captain Gordon, still the gentleman, released her with the words, ‘You have no need to be.’ He paused, then in a lighter voice remarked, ‘In truth, I do admire your courage coming here to challenge me. I do not doubt you would have found the means to travel all the way from Slains, if you’d been called to do it.’

She smiled faintly at the charge. ‘I might have done.’

‘But I am glad that you are not now in the north.’ He crossed to pour them each a glass of claret. ‘And not only for the fact it has afforded me the pleasure of this visit, but because I fear the English will demand a heavy price for what has happened here.’

She drank, and tried to wash away the bitter taste of tea. ‘The king escaped,’ she said. ‘It may be that his ships will take him north where they may find a better landing-place.’

‘Perhaps.’ His eyes were older than her own. ‘But if he fails, there will be evil times ahead, and it will be as well for you,’ he said, ‘that you are not at Slains.’

Graham turned his head towards mine on the pillow, half-asleep. ‘Lord who?’

‘Lord Griffin. He was on the Salisbury, I think. An old man, English, who had been at Saint-Germain…’

‘Oh, him.’ He placed the name and rolled more fully over to his side so that his arm slid round my waist, a now familiar weight. I liked the way it felt, just as I liked the rumble of his voice against my neck. ‘What did you want to know?’

‘What happened to him after he was taken by the English? Was he ever tried for treason?’

‘Aye, and sentenced for it.’

‘So he was beheaded, then?’ The penalty for treason in those times was inescapable. I didn’t know why that small fact should bother me so much—I’d read reports of countless executions in the course of researching my novels, and I knew that it was just another end result of wars and royal intrigues. But I couldn’t think of this one without seeing in my mind that old man sitting with his back against the Leopard’s slanting wall, and saying he would stay, that he would not be harmed, Queen Anne would never—

‘No,’ said Graham, cutting through my thoughts. ‘They didn’t kill him. There were some of Queen Anne’s ministers who argued for it, but she wouldn’t listen. Oh, she kept him captive, but she let him keep his head, and in the end he died of plain old age.’

That made me somewhat happier. I hoped he’d had his chance to have a view of London from his window, as he’d wanted. Certainly King James, I knew, had never seen his hopes fulfilled. His ships had been pursued along the northern coast until bad weather finally made them give up altogether and set back to open sea, and France. And those on shore, who’d waited for his coming for so long, had been left hanging in the wind to face those evil times that Captain Gordon had predicted. ‘Graham?’

‘Aye?’

‘Was anybody else killed for their part in the rebellion?’

‘Not that I recall.’ His voice was very sleepy now, and had I known him less well I’d have half-suspected he was ‘not recalling’ with a purpose, in the hope that I’d stop asking questions.

‘But the English rounded up the Jacobites and put them into prison.’

‘Oh, aye. Most of the Jacobite nobles and gentry were thrown into prison, then taken in chains down to London. Paraded around for the mob.’

I was silent a moment, imagining this. Then I asked, ‘Was the Earl of Erroll with them?’

Graham nodded, and even that effort seemed great for him because his voice had begun to grow thicker, less clear. ‘Supposedly he got so out of temper as a captive that he pitched a bottle at the Earl of Marischal, and nearly took his head off.’

‘Well, the Earl of Marischal must have deserved it, then.’

I felt Graham’s mouth briefly curve on my skin. ‘You’re defending your own, are you?’

There was no way to explain that I knew the Earl of Erroll’s character better than any historian could—that he wasn’t a figure on paper to me, but a flesh-and-blood person held whole in my memory. All of them were. I remembered their faces. Their voices.