The Winter Sea

‘Mind how you go,’ said Stuart, reaching out to grab my arm. ‘That’s the second time you’ve done that, nearly stepped clean off the path.’ He stopped. Looked down at me. ‘What’s wrong?’

I couldn’t answer him. The moment that he’d grabbed me, I’d been gripped by panic, sudden and unreasoning. My heart was beating so hard in my chest that I could hear it, and I didn’t have the least idea why. I took a breath, and forced a smile. ‘You just…surprised me,’ was the only explanation I could offer.

‘I can see that. Sorry.’

‘Not your fault. I hate this path at night, to tell the truth,’ I said, as we fell back in step. ‘It’s all right in the daytime, but at night it always spooks me.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘I don’t know. Curse of my profession, I suppose. I have a wild imagination.’

‘Well, you can call me any time you like, I’ll come and walk you home.’

‘You won’t be here,’ I pointed out.

‘Aye. I’m away tomorrow morning, early. But I’ve told you, I’ll be back.’

We’d reached the cottage. Stuart watched me fit my key into the lock, and asked, ‘D’ye want me to come in and see you don’t have any monsters in your cupboards?’

From his smile I thought it far more likely that he had a mind to look for monsters underneath my bed, and I was not about to fall for that. I took his offer lightly. ‘No, you don’t have to do that, I’m OK.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

I saw how he was watching me, and knew he was considering attempting a good night kiss, but before he followed through with it, I reached instead to hug him—just a friendly hug that made no promises and wouldn’t be misunderstood. ‘Thanks again for bringing me home,’ I said. ‘Have a safe trip down to London.’

The hug seemed to surprise him, but he took it all in stride. ‘I will,’ he said, and let me go, and took a backwards step onto the path. ‘And I’ll be seeing you,’ he promised, ‘very soon.’

For all the complications that I knew I’d just avoided, I was sorry to see him go. The cottage felt lonely when I went inside. And cold. The coal fire in my Aga had burned so low that it took an hour of concentrated effort to revive it, and by then I was so chilled and tired I wanted just to fall into my bed, and go to sleep.

I took the book with me—the one that Dr Weir had loaned me, on the Scottish navy, because, tired or not, I felt I should do some work, since I clearly wasn’t going to write tonight. It was an older book with blue board covers, and the title page read helpfully: ‘The Old Scots Navy, From 1689 to 1710, Edited by James Grant, L.L.B.’ The frontispiece was black and white, a portrait of a white-wigged naval officer in an authoritative stance, his finger pointing to a sailing vessel in the background. There was something in his eyes, his face, that struck me as familiar, so I peered more closely at the light italic script beneath the portrait, looking for his name. I found it.

Thomas Gordon.

Admiral Thomas Gordon, to be sure, but every Admiral was a captain, once.

I sat upright. Cold rushed in beneath the blankets, crept around me, but I hardly felt it. Flipping to the index, I began a careful reading of the references to Thomas Gordon.

‘Thomas Gordon had,’ the book informed me, ‘a remarkable career…His voyages embraced such distant places as Shetland, Stockholm, Norway, and Holland. On 17th July, 1703, he received a regular commission in the Scots Navy as captain of the Royal Mary.’

Well, I thought, I’d almost got it right. The Royal Mary. William and Mary had reigned as a couple—I’d just picked the wrong half, when I’d named my fictional ship.

I kept reading. And here was the transcript of part of a letter Nathaniel Hooke wrote, of his first visit over to Scotland, two years before my story started: ‘While I stayed with my Lady Erroll, our frigate [the Audacious] was within musket shot of the castle. The day after my arrival Mr Gordon, captain of a Scotch frigate commissioned to guard the coast, appeared in the southward. My Lady Erroll bid me be under no apprehensions, and sent a gentleman in a cutter to desire the captain to take another course, with which he complied. The lady has gained him over, and as often as he passes and repasses that way he takes care to give her notice…’

I knew I’d read that bit before, because I’d remembered his role in avoiding the French ship that carried Hooke over.

And after that came other varied documents: Sailing orders to Captain Gordon, and more sailing orders; a warrant to Captain Gordon to sail to Scarborough; a commission to Captain Thomas Gordon in 1705 to be commander of the ship the Royal William…

I read that last one over, to be certain I’d made no mistake. But there it was, as plain as plain. And right below it on the page, a similar commission to James Hamilton of Orbieston, to be commander of the ship the Royal Mary.

In my mind, I played the scene that I’d just written, with the countess saying, ‘I confess I did forget your Captain Hamilton.’

And Captain Gordon—Captain Thomas Gordon, yet— replying, confident, ‘I know. But I did not.’

No more, it seemed, had I. But how on earth had I remembered such a tiny, minor detail as the name of Captain Hamilton? I must have read it somewhere, though I couldn’t for the life of me think where. I kept a written record of each document I used in my research, in case I missed a fact and needed to go back again to check it, and I knew I hadn’t read one single thing about the Scottish navy apart from what Nathaniel Hooke had written, and that hadn’t been much. Still, you couldn’t just remember something if you hadn’t had it in your memory to begin with.