The Winter Sea

I was touched, so I took extra care to sign all her books well, with my friendliest wishes and thanks for her help.

The papers she had found for me were of more interest, I discovered, than the letters the duke wrote himself. It was interesting, always, to learn about someone by how other people described him. By late morning, I had learned so much I didn’t think it possible that anything was left that could surprise me.

Till I turned to the next letter.

It was one of several written by an Edinburgh physician to his younger brother, and was dated 19th April 1707. After going on for half a page about a dying patient, he said, ‘Coming home, I did meet Mr Hall, whom I am sure you will remember from our dinner with His Grace the Duke of Hamilton, and who is by the duke now greatly valued and esteemed. Mr Hall appeared quite pale, but when I questioned him he did assure me he was well, but only quite worn out from having traveled on His Grace’s business. He has ridden these five days from Slains, the castle of the Earl of Erroll in the north, where he last month conveyed a young kinswoman of the earl who had come lately from the Western Shires. This lady, who is named not Hay but Paterson, had very much impressed the Duke of Hamilton as being of good character, and learning that her parents had both perished in the Darien adventure, which His Grace does hold to be our nation’s greatest tragedy, His Grace did then endeavor to do all he could to aid the lady in her journey northward, and to that end did commission Mr Hall to be her guide.

‘With such an act of kindness does His Grace reveal again his true benevolence to those who do apply to him in need…’

The letter carried on to praise the Duke of Hamilton for fully one more page, but I just skimmed it to the finish, and went back.

I had to read that passage several times before I could believe that the words, the facts set down in front of me, were really there—that everything I’d written in my own book had been true in every detail, and not fiction.

But the line dividing fiction from the truth had blurred so badly now I didn’t have a clue where it began, or where it ended. And I didn’t know exactly how to deal with that.

My first thought was to share the news with Dr Weir, to tell him that I’d found what looked like proof Sophia Paterson had been to Slains. Not only that, but that she’d been there at the time and in the circumstances I had written down in my own story. But the doctor, when I called him, wasn’t home. And likely wouldn’t be, said Elsie, until sometime Sunday afternoon. He’d gone to see his brother, near Glasgow.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘If it’s important, I could—’

‘No, it’s all right. I can wait till Sunday.’ But it seemed a long way off. I could have used the doctor’s counsel and encouragement when I came home to Cruden Bay late Friday night, too tired to take much notice of the apprehensive feeling that, as always, met me halfway up the path above the harbor.

The night was calm. There was a winter moon to see by, and as I drew closer to the cottage I could see that Jimmy had left lights on for me, spilling warmly out the front room windows. And inside, I found things looking just as I had left them. But the voices of my characters, beginning now to whisper in my mind, advised me differently. I heard the countess saying clearly: ‘Much has changed since you were last at Slains.’

I didn’t doubt that she was right.

And so I crossed to my computer, sitting patient on the long scrubbed table, waiting for me. And I switched it on.

V

ALL WEEK THERE HAD been visitors.

They came on horseback, singly, from the shadowed lands that lay toward the north and the northwest. Sophia knew from their appearance and their bearing they were men of some importance, and although they were presented to her when they first arrived, as though they’d come for no more reason that to bid her welcome to the region, she knew well that this was simply a convenience, for each visitor was then conveyed to Colonel Hooke, in private, and remained with him some time.

The first to come had been announced as Lord John Drummond, which had stopped Sophia’s heart an awful moment, till she’d calmed herself with the assurance that her Uncle John could not have left his grave and come to Slains in cruel pursuit of her. And then, the countess, too, had understood, and had been quick to say, ‘Sophia, here is John, my nephew,’ and the man who entered was a younger man, and pleasant in his manner. He was, Sophia learned, the second son to that same Duke of Perth—the brother of the countess—who was spoken of so famously as living in such closeness with the exiled king, and young Lord Drummond did not hide the fact that he, too, was a Jacobite.

Sophia had suspected, these past days, beginning with the warning of the countess that she might hear things and see things that would play upon her conscience, that the coming of the colonel and of Mr Moray might, as its design, involve some plot among those nobles who would bring King James to Scotland and restore him to his throne.

Such things were never spoken of before her, but she’d noticed that, although the countess and the two men did not drink the king’s health at the dinner table, they did pass their goblets casually above the water jug, and from her uncle’s house Sophia knew this meant they drank the health of him ‘over the water’, meaning of the king in exile just across the English Channel.

She knew this, yet she held her tongue, because she did not wish to vex the countess by revealing what she understood of everything now happening at Slains. The countess was so occupied and busy with her guests and with the messengers who came and went at all hours from the castle that Sophia felt her own place was to keep herself well out of things and keep the countess happy by pretending to be ignorant.