The Winter Sea

I closed my hand around it, briefly. Put it back among the necklaces. ‘Not really, no,’ I told my father. ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’ Wondered if that superstition had come down to me from a bright-haired young woman who’d heard it told once while she’d walked on the beach with a soldier, a long time ago…

‘Hey,’ my father said, and changed the subject, keen to share the satisfaction of discovery. ‘I’ve got another generation back on our Kirkcudbright bunch. Remember Ross McClelland?’

‘Yes, of course.’ We shared an ancestor in common, and my father, having first run into Ross back in the sixties on an early trip to Scotland, had been writing to him ever since. I’d never met the man myself, but I recalled the Christmas cards. ‘How is he?’

‘Fine. It sounds like his wife’s not too well, but you know Ross, he doesn’t complain. Anyhow, I called him up last week to tell him I’m back working on that branch of the family tree again, and I told him what we’d managed to find out about the Patersons—not that they’re really connected to him, but he still found it all interesting. And when I said I’d ordered Sophia Paterson’s baptism record through the LDS library here, and was just waiting for it to come in, he said he had some time free and, since he was right there anyway, he might just poke around himself and see what he could find.’

I shifted the phone on my shoulder, smiling at the faint tone of envy that had crept into my father’s voice. I knew how much he would have loved to be poking around, too, in churchyards and reading rooms. Toss in a sandwich for lunch, and the odd cup of coffee, and he’d be in heaven. ‘That was nice of him,’ was all I said.

‘You’re telling me. I just got off the phone with him. Sophia Paterson,’ he told me, reading off the details, ‘Baptized eighth December, 1689, daughter of James Paterson and Mary Moore, and it lists both the grandfathers, too—Andrew Paterson and William Moore. I’ve never seen that in a register before.’ He was beaming, I could tell. ‘Ross hasn’t found James and Mary’s marriage yet, but he’s still looking, and at least with all those names it will be easier to verify.’

‘That’s great,’ I said, and meant it. ‘Really great.’ But I was thinking, too. ‘I wonder…’

‘Yes?’

‘Could you ask him to keep one eye open for the death,’ I asked, ‘of Anna Paterson?’

‘Of who?’

‘Sophia’s sister. She was mentioned in their father’s will, remember?’

‘Oh, right. Anna. But we don’t know when she died.’

I bit my lip. ‘Try the summer of 1706.’

There was a long pause. ‘Carrie.’

‘Yes?’

‘Why won’t you tell me where you’re getting all this from?’

‘I’ve told you, Daddy,’ I said, wishing I could lie more convincingly, ‘it’s just a hunch.’

‘Yes, well, so far all your hunches have hit the bulls-eye. You’re not turning psychic on me, are you?’

I tried for a tone that implied the idea was nonsense. ‘Daddy.’

‘All right.’ He gave up. ‘I’ll see if Ross will take a look. You don’t know where, exactly, she’d be buried?’

That last bit was faintly sarcastic, but I answered anyway. ‘No. I don’t think in the town itself, though. Maybe just outside Kirkcudbright. Somewhere in the country.’

‘Right. And Carrie? If you nail this one, we’ll have to have a little talk,’ he said, ‘about your hunches.’

The week flew by more quickly than I’d thought it would. The story was in full run, now—I wrote until the need for sleep took hold of me, and slept till noon, then woke and got back at it, rarely bothering with proper meals, preferring bowls of cereal instead, and pasta eaten with a spoon straight from the tin, things I could eat while I was working and that didn’t leave a lot to clean up, afterwards. The coffee cups and spoons began to gather in the sink, and by week’s end I didn’t bother looking for a clean shirt but just took the one I’d worn the day before, the one that I’d left slung across the bedroom chair, and shrugged it on again.

I didn’t care. I wasn’t in the real world, any longer. I was lost within my book.

Like someone living in a waking dream, I walked among my characters at Slains, and gained increasing admiration for the countess and her fearless son as they involved themselves more deeply than before in secret preparations for the coming of King James. That angle of the plot, as always, held me fascinated. But this week, my storyline kept turning more and more upon the growing love between John Moray and Sophia.

How much of that was memory, and how much was my imagining the romance that I might have had myself, I didn’t know, but their relationship developed with an ease that drove my writing as a fair wind blows a ship upon its course.

They were not lovers, yet. At least, they hadn’t shared a bed. And in the castle, in the presence of the others, they did nothing that would give away their feelings. But outside, beyond the walls of Slains, they walked, and talked, and stole what moments they could make their own.

I didn’t like repeating scenes, and so I hadn’t put them on the beach again, although I sensed they’d been there. I could see them in my mind’s eye with such certainty, and always in the same spot, that when I woke up one morning, restless, earlier than usual at nine o’clock instead of noon, I took my jacket from its peg and went to see if I could find the place.