The Winter Sea

CHAPTER 13

MY FATHER, ON THE phone, had no idea. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I thought he read it, somewhere. Wasn’t there a piece in one of Greg Clark’s books about a little stone that had a hole in it?’

‘“The Talisman,”’ I named the story by one of my favorite Canadian writers. ‘Yes, but Grandpa didn’t get it from there. Don’t you remember, he always used to say he liked that story because his own father had told him the same thing— that if you found a little stone that had a hole in it, it would protect you, keep you safe from harm.’

‘Well, there you go. My father never talked to me the way he talked to you girls, but if he said that his father told him, that’s your answer, isn’t it?’

‘But how far back,’ I asked him, ‘does the thing about the stone go, in our family? Who first started it?’

‘I couldn’t tell you, honey. Does it matter?’

Looking down, I smoothed my thumb across the little worn pebble in my hand. I’d found it just last year in Spain, though I’d been looking for one ever since my grandfather had told me of it when I was a child. He’d never found one of his own. I’d often seen him strolling, head bent, at the water’s edge, and I had known what he was searching for. He’d told me if I found one, I should wear it round my neck. I hadn’t done that, yet. I’d been afraid the cord I’d threaded through the hole would break, and so I’d kept the stone safe in the little case I used to carry jewelry when I traveled, and had trusted it to do its job from there.

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.

I hadn’t been outside in days. My eyes were unaccustomed to the light, and I felt cold despite my heavy sweater. But my mind, fixed firmly on the past, ignored these things. There were still dunes that ran above the beach, but not in the same places they had been three hundred years ago. The sands had blown, and shifted, and the tides had come to claim them, and left little I could use to judge position by. But inland, there were hills I found familiar.

I was studying the nearest of them when a blur of brown and white streaked past me, snatched a rolling bit of yellow from the sand, and sharply wheeled to change its running course and come and pounce on me, with muddy feet and wagging tail.

I had stiffened at the sight of him. He’d caught me unprepared. I’d known that Graham would be back to visit Jimmy, but I’d hoped I could avoid him. And the way that we had left things, I’d been sure that he would be avoiding me.

The spaniel nudged my knee with an insistent nose.

‘Hi, Angus.’ Reaching down, I gave his ears a scratch and took the tennis ball he offered me and threw it out again for him as far as I could throw. As he dashed happily away in close pursuit, the voice that I’d been bracing for spoke, coming up behind me.

‘Good, you’re up. We were just coming to collect you.’

His tone, I thought, was so damned normal, as though he’d forgotten what he’d told me at his father’s. I turned my head and looked at him as though he were insane.

He’d been starting to say something else, but when he saw my face he stopped, as someone does who’s put a foot down on uncertain ground. ‘Are you all right?’

The dog was back. I turned again to take the ball and throw it out along the beach for Angus, grateful to have some excuse to look away from Graham’s steady gaze. I shook my head and bit my tongue to keep from saying something I’d regret. And then I calmed my temper and said, ‘Look, just let it go, OK? If you don’t want to see me anymore, that’s fine. I understand.’

There was a pause, and then he came around to stand so that he filled my field of vision.

‘Who said,’ he asked, evenly, ‘I didn’t want to see you?’

‘You did.’

‘I did?’ Forehead creased, he shifted slightly as though needing space to concentrate, as though he’d just been handed something written down in code. ‘And when did I say that?’

I was beginning to feel less than certain of the facts myself. ‘At your father’s, after lunch, remember?’

‘Not exactly, no.’

‘You said that Stuart was your brother.’

‘Aye?’ The word came slowly, prompting me to carry on.

‘Well…’

‘Stuart was behaving like himself on Sunday, meaning he was something of an arse. But he was doing it,’ said Graham, ‘to impress you, and I didn’t have the heart to knock him down for it. That’s what I thought I’d told you.’ With a step he closed the space between us, and he lifted one gloved hand to tip my face up so I wouldn’t look away. ‘What did ye think I meant?’

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell him, but his nearness had the power of a magnet on my brainwaves, and I couldn’t even phrase a decent sentence.

Graham took a guess. ‘You thought that I was giving you the push, because of Stuie?’ There was disbelief in that, until I answered with a tiny nod.

He grinned, then. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I’m not so noble.’

And he brought his mouth to mine, and kissed me hard to prove the point.

It was a while before he let me go.

The dog, by then, had given up on both of us, and trotted off some distance to explore along the ridge of dunes that edged the beach. Graham turned and, slinging one arm warm around my shoulder, set us strolling in the same direction.

‘So,’ he asked, ‘we’re good?’

‘You need to ask?’

‘I’m thinking, now, I’d best not be assuming anything.’

‘We’re good,’ I said. ‘But Stuart won’t—’

‘Just let me handle Stuie.’

I decided I should mention, ‘He’s been giving everybody the impression that he tucks me in at night.’

‘Aye, so I’ve heard.’

I glanced up quickly, but I wasn’t quick enough to catch the smile. He said, ‘I ken my brother, Carrie. He’ll not be a problem. Give it time.’ He drew me closer to his side, and changed the subject. ‘So, if you weren’t out here waiting for me, what brought you down to the beach?’

‘I was getting a feel for the setting,’ I said. ‘For a scene I’ve been writing.’

I looked at the dunes, and the rough waving grass, and the clifftops beyond, and I had the strange feeling that something was missing, some part of the landscape I’d seen in my mind when I’d written the scenes between John and Sophia.

I narrowed my eyes to the wind, as I tried to remember. ‘There used to be a rock, up there, didn’t there? A big grey rock?’

Turning his head, he looked down at me, curious. ‘How did ye know that?’

I didn’t want to tell him I’d inherited the memory of its being there. ‘Dr Weir loaned me some of his old photos…’

‘Aye, they’d have had to be old,’ he said, drily. ‘That stone’s not been there since the 1700s.’

‘It must have been a drawing, then. I just remember seeing some view of this shoreline with a big rock, just up there.’

‘Aye, the grey stone of Ardendraught. It used to lie in that field, up at Aulton farm,’ he said, pointing out a spot above the far curve of the beach. ‘A great granite boulder, so large that the sailors at sea steered their course by it.’

‘Where did it go?’ I asked, gazing upwards at the empty hillside.

Graham smiled at me, and whistled for the dog. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

The ancient church sat in its own little hollow of trees, with bare farmland rising all round and no neighbors except for a plain-looking house and grander home built of red granite that stood on the opposite side of the narrow curved road, which was edged by the high granite wall of the kirkyard so closely that Graham had to park the car a short way down, beside a little bridge.

He wound the windows down a bit for Angus, who looked weary from his run along the beach and seemed content to lie back, uncomplaining, while we left him there to walk back up the winding road.

It was a peaceful place. There was no sound of traffic, only birds, as Graham swung the painted green gate open and stood back so I could go ahead of him into the quiet kirkyard.

The church was graceful, built with rounded towers at each side, with pointed tops that made it look a lot like the old pictures I had seen of the Victorian façade of Slains. Around the church and out behind, the standing headstones stretched in ordered ranks though some were old and weathered, spotted white with lichen, and some leaned, and some had fallen altogether with their age and had been taken up and propped against the inside of the kirkyard wall.

The setting was familiar, and yet somehow wrong.

Behind my shoulder, Graham said, ‘This entire church was built out of that one great stone of Ardendraught, which gives you some idea of the size of it.’

It also explained why I hadn’t recognized it, I thought. The stone had still been on the hill overlooking the shore, when Sophia and Moray had walked there. It hadn’t been broken away yet by stonemasons’ hammers.

‘What year was the church built?’ I asked.

‘In 1776. There was a church here before that, but no one knows exactly where.’

I could have told him where. I could have traced the outline of its walls beneath the present ones. Instead, I stood in silent thought while Graham showed me some of the more interesting features of the parish church.

I didn’t catch it all—I drifted in and out of daydreams, but a few things stuck. Like when he pointed out a marble slab that had been sent across the sea to mark the grave site of a Danish prince, killed in the battle that had given Cruden Bay its name in the eleventh century.

‘It means “the slaughter of the Danes”, does Cruden,’ Graham told me. ‘Cruden Water runs close by the battlefield.’

I looked where he was looking, at the quiet stream that ran beneath the bridge where we had parked the car—a little unassuming one-arched bridge that struck a stronger chord within my memory when I viewed it from this angle.

Curious, I asked, ‘Is that an old bridge?’

‘Aye. The Bishop’s Bridge. It would have been here at the time your book is set. You want to take a closer look?’

I did, and so we left the quiet of the kirkyard and walked the winding road that made a narrow S-curve at the bridge itself. It wasn’t more than ten feet wide, with worn and crusted sides of stone that rose to Graham’s elbow height. The Cruden Water underneath was muddy brown and gently running, swirling into eddies that moved lazily along the reedy shore beneath the overhanging bare-branched trees.

Graham stopped halfway across, leaning over the edge like a schoolboy to watch the water slipping into shadow underneath us. ‘It’s called the Bishop’s bridge for Bishop Drummond, since he was the one who had it built, although it wasn’t finished until 1697, two years after he was dead. He retired up to Slains,’ he offered.

But that would have been before the time I needed. Bishop Drummond would have died more than ten years before Sophia had arrived. Besides, there wasn’t anything about his name that rang a bell for me. Another name was rising in my mind, and with it came a hazy image of a kind-faced man with weary eyes.

I asked, ‘Was there a Bishop Dunbar?’ When I spoke the name I knew that it was right, somehow. I knew it before Graham answered, ‘William Dunbar, aye. He was the minister of Cruden at the time of the ’08.’ The look he angled down at me appeared to be acknowledging the thoroughness of my research. ‘By all accounts, he was well-liked. It caused a bit of a stir when the Church forced him out of the parish.’

‘Why did they do that?’

‘He was Episcopalian, as was Drummond before him, and as were your Errolls at Slains. If you lean over here, in fact, you can still see what’s left of the Earl of Erroll’s coat of arms, carved in the side of the bridge. See that square?’

I leaned over as far as I dared, and Graham kept a safe hold on my shoulder, and I saw the square he meant, although the carving was so worn inside I couldn’t see the detail. I was about to say so when the movement of the water underneath me stirred a sudden memory of a different stream, a different bridge, and something that had happened…

Damn the Bishop, Moray’s voice said calmly, and I tried to catch the rest of it, but Graham pulled me back. When I was standing upright once again he asked me, ‘D’ye deal with that, then, in your book? The religious divisions?’

It took me a moment to bring my thoughts back, but my voice sounded normal when I said, ‘They’re there, yes. They have to be.’

‘Most of my students, when they’re coming new to my lectures, don’t realize how much of an issue it was,’ Graham said. ‘How much fighting went on because somebody read from the wrong prayerbook. If you and I had lived back then, and you’d been Presbyterian and I Episcopalian, we’d not have stood together on this bridge.’

I wasn’t sure of that myself. The fear of hellfire and damnation notwithstanding, I’d have lain odds that the eighteenth-century version of myself would have had the same weakness for Graham’s grey eyes.

The hard stone of the bridge had passed its chill into my fingers, so I hugged them to my chest. ‘I am, actually.’

‘What?’

‘Presbyterian.’

He smiled at that. ‘We call it Church of Scotland here. And so am I.’

‘So we’re all right to stand on the same bridge, then.’

‘Aye.’ His glance was warming. ‘I suppose we are.’ He looked me over. ‘Are you cold?’

‘Not really. Just my hands.’

‘You should have said so. Here, take these.’ And tugging off his gloves, he passed them over.

I looked at them, remembering how Moray, in my book, had made a gesture much the same when he’d gone riding with Sophia that first time. And putting on the gloves, I found, as she had found, that they were warm, and overlarge, and rough upon my fingers, and the feeling had a certain sinful pleasure to it, as though Graham’s hands had closed around my own.

‘Better?’ he asked.

Wordlessly I nodded, struck again by all the little intersecting points between the world that I’d created and the world that really was.

He said, ‘You look half frozen. Want to get a cup of coffee?’

My thoughts were with Sophia still, and Moray, and the moment when he’d asked her to go riding, and she’d known that she was standing at a crossroads of a kind, and that her answer made a difference to the way that she would go. I could have simply told him yes, and we’d have found a place somewhere to stop and buy a cup of coffee on our way back down to Cruden Bay. But like Sophia, I decided that the time had come to choose the unknown path.

And so I told him, ‘I have coffee at the cottage. I could make you some.’

He stood there for a moment looking down at me, considering.

‘All right,’ he said, and straightened from the bridge, and held his hand to me, and smiled when I took it. And we left behind the little church that had once been the great grey stone of Ardendraught above the windblown shore, and in whose shadow other lovers, not so different from ourselves, had moved in step three centuries before.