The Winter Sea

‘Aye. He starts tomorrow for Lord Stormont’s house at Scone, to see the Duke of Athol. My son was asked to go, as well, but he thinks it unwise that he should undertake that journey, as he has but just come home after a session of more than six months. If he did return towards Edinburgh so soon, and to such an assembly of known Jacobites, it would give the government room for a suspicion that some plot was carrying on. It is enough of a risk that, with the parliament now finished, and the chief men of the nation dispersed over the different counties, Colonel Hooke must hazard himself in traveling through a great part of the kingdom to meet with our nobles. He has a design, I believe, to divide the country into two circuits—to visit one himself, and to desire Mr Moray to go through the other, but my son does view that plan with apprehension, also.’

‘Why?’ Sophia asked.

The countess was threading her needle with deep, blood-red silk. ‘Mr Moray is a wanted man.’ She said it as though none could deem it shameful; as though, greatly to the contrary, it were a thing of pride. ‘The English for these three years past have put a price upon his head. They have offered, by proclamation, the sum of five hundred pounds sterling to any person who should seize him.’

Sophia’s needle slipped again and speared her finger as she let her hands drop to her lap. ‘Five hundred pounds!’ She’d never heard of such a sum. A tenth of that would be a fortune to most men.

The names of those who’d wronged the Crown were often published, so she knew, with five pounds offered for their capture, and that commoner amount did often stir an honest person to betray a friend. What friends could Mr Moray hope to have, she wondered, with five hundred pounds upon his head?

‘He is well-known,’ the countess said, ‘south of the Tay, in his own country, but the colonel feels that Mr Moray could with safety make a progress through the northern provinces, and settle an agreement with the Highlanders.’

Sophia frowned. ‘But why…?’ She caught herself mid-sentence.

‘Yes?’ the countess asked.

‘I do apologize. ’Tis none of my affair. But I was wondering…there surely would be other men who might have come with Colonel Hooke. Why would King James send Mr Moray here to Scotland, and so set him in the path of danger?’

‘Some men choose the path of danger on their own.’

Sophia knew this to be truth. She knew that her own father had been such a man. ‘But if he should be captured…’ she began, and then broke off again, because she did not want to think of what might happen to him if he should be recognized, and taken.

The countess, with no personal attachment, said, ‘If he should be captured, then our plans may be discovered.’ She had finished with the flower she was working, and she bit the blood-red thread through with precision. Her eyes upon Sophia’s face held something of a tutor’s satisfaction in a favored pupil who showed ease in following a course of study.

‘That,’ she said, ‘is why my son does feel uneasy.’

Sophia was uneasy in her own mind, still, when she awoke next morning. She’d been dreaming there were horses stamping restless on the ground outside the castle, with their warm breaths making mist each time they snorted, and men’s voices calling out to one another with impatience. She woke to semi-darkness. From her window she could see a slash of palest pink across the water-grey horizon, and she knew that it would be another hour or more before the family and their guests began to stir and start the day’s routine of morning draughts and breakfast. But her restlessness was strong, and within minutes she had up and dressed and left her chamber, seeking human company.

The kitchen was deserted. Mrs Grant had set a pot to boil, but she herself was nowhere to be found, nor were the other servants of the kitchen. Nor was Kirsty. Thinking Kirsty might have gone to visit Rory in his stables, Sophia crossed the yard to look, but all she found was Hugo lying listless in his bed of wool and straw. There were no horses left for him to guard, except the one mare that had brought Sophia up to Slains from Edinburgh, and from whose back she’d tumbled when she’d ridden with the countess. That mare now dozed upon her feet, as though depressed to find the stalls to either side of her were empty. When Sophia touched the velvet nose, the mare’s eyes scarcely flickered to acknowledge the caress.

‘They’ve gone, then,’ said Sophia. So it had not been a dream. Not altogether. In some half-awakened state, she truly had heard horses stamping, and the voices of the men, as Colonel Hooke and Mr Moray had struck out before the dawn on their respective missions—Hooke towards the south, and Mr Moray to the north.

She felt a sudden twist of loss, inside, although there was no cause for it. Unless it was because she’d had no chance to say goodbye. No chance to wish him well, and bid him keep his back well-guarded in that land of wild men, to whom five hundred pounds would seem the riches of a king.

She leaned her head against the mare’s soft muzzle, stroking still, and said, ‘God keep him safe.’

The male voice seemed to speak out of the air behind her. ‘Tell me, lass, what man does so deserve your prayers?’

She wheeled. It was no ghost. Within the stable doorway, Mr Moray leaned one shoulder on the heavy post, arms folded and at rest across the leather of his buffcoat. Hugo hadn’t stirred or barked, as he was wont to do when there were strangers in the stable, and the mare’s soft head stayed steady in Sophia’s startled hands.

‘I thought that you had gone,’ she blurted out, and then because as speeches went, she knew that sounded foolish, and because it might to certain ears reveal more than she cared to show, she gathered her composure and responded to his question with another of her own. ‘Did Colonel Hooke take both the geldings, then?’