The Winter Sea

I

SHE FOUGHT THE NEED to sleep. It caught her up in rolling waves, in rhythm with the motion of her horse, and lulled her weary body till she felt herself relaxing, giving in. The blackness flooded round her and she drifted in it, slipping in the saddle, and the loss of balance jerked her into wakefulness. She clutched the reins. The horse, who must have surely been as tired as she was, answered with an irritated movement of its head, and turned a dark reproachful eye towards her before swinging its nose round again to the north.

The eyes of the priest who was riding beside her were more understanding. ‘Do you grow too tired? We have not far to go, and I would wish to see our journey end tonight, but if you feel that you can ride no further…’

‘I can ride, Mr Hall.’ And she straightened, to prove it. She had no desire to stop so near the goal. It had been two weeks since she had set out from the Western Shires, and every bone within her ached from traveling. There had, of course, been Edinburgh—one night upon a proper bed, and water hot for bathing—but that memory seemed distant, four long days since.

She closed her eyes and tried to conjure it: the bed with its crimson and gold hangings, the fresh-ironed linens that smelled sweetly scorched against her face, the smiling maid who brought the jug of water and the basin, and the unexpected kindness of her host, the Duke of Hamilton. She’d heard of him, of course. There were few people in these times who didn’t have a firm opinion of the great James Douglas, Duke of Hamilton, who’d all but led the Parliament in Edinburgh and had been long considered one of Scotland’s fiercest patriots.

His sympathies towards the exiled Stewart king in France were widely whispered, if not openly expressed. He’d been arrested in his youth, so she’d been told, for his connection to a Jacobite conspiracy, and held prisoner in the Tower of London, a fault which could do nothing but endear him to his fellow Scots, who had no love for England or its laws— and even less since this past winter’s Act of Union, which in one swift, bloodless strike had stripped the Scottish people of what shreds of independence they had clutched as their inheritance from Wallace and the Bruce. There was to be no government in Scotland now; no parliament in Edinburgh. Its members would disperse to their estates, some made the richer by the lands they had been granted in return for their approval of the Union, others bitter and rebellious, talking openly of taking arms.

Alliances were forming where they never had before. She’d heard the rumors that her own kin from the Western Shires, all staunchly Presbyterian and reared to loathe the Jacobites, were seeking now to join them in conspiring to restore the Catholic king James Stewart to the throne of Scotland. Better a Catholic Scot to rule them, so they reasoned, than Queen Anne of England or, worse still, the German prince the queen had named as her successor.

She had wondered, when she’d met the Duke of Hamilton, just where he’d stood upon the matter. Surely there could be no restoration of the Stewarts without his knowledge of it—he was far too well-connected, too powerful in his own right. There were voices still, she knew, that called him Jacobite, and yet he had an English wife, and English lands in Lancashire, and seemed to make himself at home as well at Queen Anne’s court as here in Scotland. It was difficult to judge which side he’d choose if it should come to war.

He hadn’t talked of politics while he had been her host, but then she hadn’t thought he would. She had been thrust upon him suddenly, and, for her part, unwillingly, when the kinsman who had ridden with her from the west, as chaperone and guide, had fallen ill upon their entry into Edinburgh. Her kinsman claimed some slim acquaintanceship with the duke, having once served the dowager duchess his mother, and from that had gained for his young charge a bed for the night at the duke’s grand apartments at Holyroodhouse.

She had been accepted kindly, and been fed such food as she’d forgotten in the long days of her journey—meat, and fish, and steaming vegetables, and wine in crystal goblets that reflected back the candlelight like jewels. The room she’d been shown to had been the chamber of the duke’s wife, who was visiting relations in the north of England at the time, and it had been a gloriously rich room, with its gold and crimson bed curtains, and the Indian screen, and the paintings and tapestries, and on the one wall, a looking-glass larger than any she’d seen.

She’d looked at herself with a sigh, having hoped her reflection would show something more than the road-weary waif who sighed back at her, bright curls disheveled and darkened by dust, pale eyes reddened and circled by shadows of sleeplessness. Turning, she’d washed in the basin, though it had been no use. Her reflection, while cleaner, had looked no less pitiful.

She had sought solace in sleep.

In the morning she had breakfasted, and after that the Duke of Hamilton himself had come to see her. She had found him very charming, as his reputation promised. In his youth, so it was said, he’d cut a dashing, gallant figure at the Court. In middle age, he had grown slacker in the contours of his face, perhaps, and less firm round his middle, but he had not lost the gallantry. He’d bowed, his dark wig spilling past his shoulders in its fashionable curls, and he had kissed her hand as though she had been equal to his rank.

‘So you are stranded in my care, it seems,’ he’d said. ‘I am afraid your kinsman is quite seriously ill, with fits of fever. I have seen him lodged as comfortably as possible, and found a nurse to tend him, but he will not be able to ride for some time.’

‘Oh, I see.’ She had lowered her head, disappointed.

‘You find these apartments so lacking in comfort that you wish to be gone?’ He’d been teasing, of course, but his voice had held true curiosity at her reaction.

‘Oh, no, it is not that, Your Grace. ’Tis only…’ But she could not name the cause herself, except that she wanted to be at the end of her journey, and not in its middle. She did not know the woman she was going to, the woman who was not her own relation, but that of her uncle’s by marriage. A woman of power and property, who had been somehow moved by providence, upon that uncle’s recent death, to write and say that she would take Sophia in and offer her a home.

A home. The word had beckoned to her then, as it did now.

‘’Tis only,’ she said, faltering, ‘that I will be expected in the north.’

The duke examined her a moment, then he said, ‘Pray, sit.’

She sat, uncomfortably, on the narrow settee by the window, while he took the velvet chair opposite, watching her still with a curious look. ‘You go to the Countess of Erroll, I’m told. To Slains castle.’

‘I do, sir.’

‘And what is your connection to that remarkable lady?’

‘She was kin to my uncle, John Drummond.’

A nod. ‘But you are not a Drummond.’

‘No, sir. My own name is Paterson. It was my aunt who married to the Drummonds. I have lived with them these eight years, since my parents died.’

‘Died how?’

‘They were both taken by the flux, Your Grace, while voyaging to Darien.’

‘To Darien!’ He spoke it like a hammer’s blow. He had, she knew, been one of the most ardent of supporters of the Scottish dream to found a New World colony poised on the spit of land between the North and South Americas. So many had put faith in it, and poured their wealth into the venture, trusting it would give the Scots control of both the seas—a route to India that none could rival, cargoes being carried overland across the isthmus from the one sea to the other, bringing riches that would see the country rise to untold power.

Her father had believed the dream, had sold all he possessed to buy a passage on the first brave voyage. But the golden dream had turned a nightmare. Both the English and the Spanish had opposed the Scottish settlement at Darien, and nothing there remained except the natives and the empty huts of those who would have built themselves an empire.

The Duke of Hamilton had been outspoken in condemning those who’d played a hand in Darien’s undoing, and he looked at her with newfound kindness as he said, ‘It was by God’s grace that you did not travel with them, else you, too, had lost your life.’ He thought a moment. ‘Would you then be kin to William Paterson?’

The merchant and adventurer who first had dreamed of Darien, and who had set its fateful wheel in motion.

She said, ‘I believe he is a distant cousin, but we have not met.’

‘That is, perhaps, as well for you.’ He smiled, and settled back to think. ‘So you would travel north to Slains?’

She had glanced at him, not daring yet to hope…

‘You will have need of one to guide you, and protect you from the perils of the road,’ he had continued, still in thought. ‘I have a man in mind who might be like to suit your purpose, if you are content to trust my judgment.’

She had asked, ‘Who is the man, Your Grace?’

‘A priest, named Mr Hall. He knows the way to Slains, he has been there on my behalf before. And you would have no cause for fear,’ he’d told her, ‘in his company.’

No cause for fear. No cause for fear.

She slipped again upon the horse, and Mr Hall stretched out a hand to right her in the saddle. ‘We are here,’ he said, encouraging. ‘I see the lights of Slains ahead.’

She shook herself awake and looked, eyes strained against the evening mists that swirled upon the barren lands around them. She could see the lights as well—small dots of yellow burning in the blackened spears of turrets, and unyielding walls. Below, unseen, she heard the North Sea raging on the rocks, and closer by, a dog began to bark a sharp alarm, unwelcoming.

But when she would have held her horse back, hesitant, a door swung wide and light spilled warm across the roughened turf. A woman came towards them, in a widow’s gown of mourning. She was not young, but she was handsome, and she walked towards them hatless, without shawl or cloak, and heedless of the damp.

‘Your arrival is most fortunate,’ she told them. ‘We shall presently be sitting down to supper. Bed your horses in the stable, you will find my groom to help you,’ she instructed Mr Hall. ‘The lass can come with me. She will be wishing to refresh herself, no doubt, and dress.’ She held a hand to help the girl dismount, introducing herself. ‘I am Anne,’ she said, ‘Countess of Erroll, and, till my son’s marriage, the mistress of Slains. I do fear I’ve forgotten your name.’

The girl’s voice was hoarse from disuse, and she had to clear her throat before she spoke. ‘Sophia Paterson.’

‘Well, then,’ said the countess, with a smile that seemed at odds with the bleak landscape at her back, ‘I bid you welcome home, Sophia.’