A Strange Scottish Shore Read online

  “That face,” he said. “Those eyes of yours, frowning at me. I never imagined I should see them again.”

  “I’m not frowning. Only thinking.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  I allowed my hand to fall away and turned to the sea. “So you traveled here from Edinburgh, did you?”

  “Yes. Well, Edinburgh as it exists, which is rather different than we knew it, Truelove. I only recognized it by the Castle Rock. I suppose that’s how I deduced what had happened, because there was the Castle Rock, except without the castle, without anything else familiar. I spent some time there, until the local folk became suspicious of me, and then I left.” He began to tug at my hair, which lay loose and tangled around my shoulders, and I realized he was combing it with his hand. “I met a fellow at a tavern, an earnest Christian chap who had traveled to Edinburgh on trading business, and helped him out of a tight spot. In return, he offered to take me home with him, to his village in the north.”

  “And you’ve lived here ever since?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  A note of melancholy had entered his voice, so new and so entirely unlike the Silverton I had known that I turned back toward him. His hand, which had been combing my hair, slid to the center of my back. I put my arms about his waist and laid my head against his chest, and I spoke fiercely into the rough wool of his tunic.

  “You’re going home now. I’m taking you home.”

  He said nothing, but his arms wound around me and held my body snug against his. I listened to the slow beat of his heart, the tide of his blood. The clouds were thinning, and over the ridge of his shoulder I saw the battlements of the castle, and the pennant that snapped in the freshening wind. The damp, tangy air of this strange world filled my lungs. I knew I should move. I should step away from his arms and lead him to the jagged point of rock that the duke and I had designated as our rendezvous. But I didn’t move, and neither did Silverton. We stood locked together, as perfectly fit as a pair of spoons, unable to part.

  “Are you ready?” I whispered.

  “The question is not whether I’m ready, Truelove, but whether you are.”

  I pulled back. “Of course I am. The sooner we leave this place, the better.”

  “But you’ve only just recovered from the journey here. Are you sure you wish to attempt the return passage so soon? Rest awhile longer?” He assumed a solemn, innocent expression, reminding me of the old Silverton. “Naturally, I’d take the most splendid care of you. Bring you back up to fighting strength.”

  “I’m strong enough already, I believe. And I don’t wish to spend another minute here in this uncivilized world, among your barbarian friends.”

  “They’re not such bad chaps, once you get to know them.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I’d rather not take that chance.”

  “Now, Truelove.” One of his hands still remained at my waist, and he raised it now, grasping my fingers. “You know I’d never let anyone harm you. Not while I’ve breath in my body.”

  I pulled my hand away. “That’s precisely what worries me. Come along. Let’s make ourselves ready.”

  He sighed and followed me back into the hut, where we smothered the fire and washed and put away the cook pot and utensils. The atmosphere took on a strange quality, as if we were preparing for an afternoon’s picnic instead of a journey some several hundred years into the future. I asked Silverton where he had put my modern clothes, and he pointed to the chest beneath the window.

  “But why do you want them?” he asked.

  “Because I ought to be suitably dressed, upon our return.”

  “My God. Suitably dressed? How does one dress for this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t wish to excite comment on our return, that’s all.”

  “Truelove, I don’t mean to alarm you, but I expect that’s inevitable. Our clothing’s the least of it.”

  I could hardly answer his logic, so I made a stubborn noise and turned to the chest. Before I could lift the lid, however, his lordship darted in front of me and took hold of it himself.

  “Here,” he said. “I’ll find them for you.”

  “It’s no trouble.”

  “Nothing’s ever any trouble for you, Truelove, but I shall continue to hammer away at your confounded self-sufficiency until my dying day. Ah, here we are.” He turned abruptly and handed me a small stack of folded clothes. “I would have had them laundered, except there’s no laundry, as such. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  I couldn’t see around his shoulders, and in any case he had already lowered the lid of the chest with his other hand. I took the clothes instead. “If you’ll excuse me,” I said.

  “Excuse you? Excuse you where?”

  “I require a moment of privacy.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “My dear girl. Who do you think removed those clothes from you in the first place?”

  “I’ve endeavored not to think about it at all.”

  “Well, not to belabor the obvious, but I was your lady’s maid, Truelove. Good old Frederick, at your service. Every last button and hook and lace, so that nobody would call you a foreigner or a witch or worse, as they did me. I took the most conscientious care not to uncover any more than was necessary, of course, but I’m afraid your modesty is forever compromised. Do you mind awfully?”

  I moved to the wall and turned my back. “At least have the goodness to look away, if you can’t bring yourself to leave the room.”

  I heard his footsteps, and then his voice, more distant, somewhat muffled, as if he were speaking into the opposite wall. “I see I’ve offended you.”

  “Of course not. I know you meant me no ill.”

  For a moment, he didn’t answer. The rustle of my garments made the only sounds in the room. I knew he was turned away, so that we stood back to back, separated by twelve feet of empty, charged space.

  He cleared his throat. “You see, Truelove—don’t laugh—I imagined myself a sort of bridegroom. I imagined you had arrived here to stay. With me. If that makes any difference.”

  I had just removed the woolen tunic, and stood there in the corner of the hut in nothing but my chemise, holding one petticoat in my hand, shivering a little. I remember the smell of peat smoke, and the faint, briny whiff of the sea.

  “A foolish presumption, I soon learned. But what I saw—what I did—I did in reverence,” he continued, in the same quiet tone.

  I turned my head and saw his broad, homespun back, his bowed head, the glint of his long hair. He stood in the farthest corner of the hut from me, like a boy being punished, except a boy so overgrown you couldn’t see the corner for the body that occupied it.

  If he turns, I thought. If he turns.

  I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t dare.

  The air was quite cool on my skin, but I had stopped shivering. I was flushed and warm. I said lightly, “At least now you have better prospects. Instead of sharing your exile, I’ve come to lead you back to freedom.”

  “Freedom. How jolly.”

  “Aren’t you happy? Don’t you want to return? Your family, your friends. Think of your poor father. Your sisters and brother, your dear stepmother. Surely you miss them.”

  “Of course I miss them. Every day, it’s a hole in my chest. I’ve already told you how lonely it’s been.”

  “You’re a lord, Silverton, you’re the heir to a dukedom. You have everything.”

  He raised his head and turned, but his eyes didn’t widen or wander at the sight of me in my chemise, in a state of near undress. His gaze rested on my face alone, as if that was the only thing that mattered.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have everything. Now for God’s sake, let me help you with those damned petticoats, or we’ll never get there before nightfall.”

  • • •

  Silver
ton held my hand as we climbed the mile or so of hilly terrain toward the plain on which the castle stood, and the promontory beyond it. I was grateful for his support. My limbs lacked strength; my head was light with fatigue. Though the clouds were breaking apart, and the sun sometimes warmed our shoulders, I still felt chilled, as if the exercise and the sunshine weren’t enough to chase away the strange, cold sense of dread that overcame me as we approached the fortress. A soldier of some kind came into view, atop one of the towers, and I tightened my grip on Silverton’s hand.

  “Why, what’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” I nodded toward the castle. “There’s nothing to fear, is there?”

  “From the chaps on the battlements, do you mean? No. They wouldn’t waste their time on us. In any case . . .”

  “Yes?”

  A shout drifted downward from the tower. I squinted up to see the guard’s arm raised, his attention fixed in our direction. Silverton raised his own hand—the one not holding mine—and answered with a hail of his own.

  “In any case,” he said, “I happen to know a few of them.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Walk on. And keep that cloak close about you.”

  The cloak was far too long—it belonged to Silverton, who had at least ten inches on my height—but that was the point, wasn’t it? To disguise my extraordinary clothes. The wool swished around my heels and toes, scarcely clearing the earth, and I began to think that Silverton had been right. I should have kept my strange tunic. I felt the eyes of that guard on my figure as I walked along the narrow path, hand in hand with Silverton, bundled in an oversized cloak despite the August sunshine. Not warm, perhaps, by the standards of a twentieth-century London, but no doubt positively tropical in medieval Orkney.

  I turned to Silverton. “What year is it?”

  “What year? Don’t you know that?”

  “I never asked.”

  He looked amused. “It’s the year of grace 1316, at least so near as I can determine.”

  “Aren’t you certain?”

  “Record keeping is less precise than you’d imagine, dear one. Care to rest a moment?”

  He spoke casually, but I knew he was concerned for me. My stride was dragging, my breath coming far too fast. We had nearly finished the hill—the castle was now a hundred yards away, to the right—and I said, “No, thank you. I’d rather not stop.”

  “You’re quite safe, I assure you. Nobody will trouble you, as long as I’m here.”

  “Just as nobody troubled us in the privacy of your own home?”

  “That was different,” he said, and I waited for him to explain this distinction in circumstance, but his attention had turned to the sea that washed the cliffs to our left. I followed his gaze and saw a cluster of small ships—boats, really—plying the water of the channel between this island and the next.

  “Not warships, are they?” I said.

  “Warships? Wherever do you get your ideas, Truelove? That’s the fishing fleet. Humble fisherfolk, drawing a living from the water. Just because they speak a different language doesn’t make them fearsome, you know. They’re just like us. As strange as that sounds. Underneath it all, we are mere human beings, the lot of us, fourteenth century or twentieth, plying the same water. Men and women, seeking only to exist and to procreate, to leave some little mark on the world before we vanish from it. Careful!” He caught me as my foot found a rock. “You’re awfully winded, Truelove. We must stop.”

  “No. We’re nearly there.”

  “As game as they come,” he said, sighing, but he didn’t try to stop me. We reached the plain, and the path became easier. The castle passed to our right, without any disturbance, and my breath returned to me, though not my strength. Ahead, I saw not one promontory but two: two long, jagged teeth biting into the sea. I paused, and Silverton asked me what was the matter.

  “Nothing,” I said. “It looks different, that’s all.”

  “I daresay it does. Time and tide. Do you see anything familiar?”

  “I’m sure I will, when we draw closer.”

  He went along willingly, as if we were choosing a spot for our picnic. He’d insisted we bring a bit of bread and cheese, some ale in a flask, in case our mission took longer than we supposed. He’d said this in a careless voice—In case things take a trifle longer than planned, my love—as if it didn’t matter, as if the success of our mission had little consequence. But he was always like that, wasn’t he? Even in the Mediterranean, he had treated everything like a lark. Only the strength of his grip around my fingers betrayed any conviction.

  On we walked, and the shape of the cliffs became clearer now. I raised my hand to shade myself from the sun, which had reappeared with sudden, blinding intensity, and tried to remember exactly how the promontory had appeared from the window of Mr. Magnusson’s office, overlooking the sea. I knew there was just one, covered in tufted grass that had thinned into bare rock as it approached the brink, but only because I hadn’t noticed a second outcropping. Had the other crumbled away in the centuries since? Which one, then?

  “Come,” Silverton said. “Let’s walk to the edge. Something might trigger your memory.”

  We angled away from the path, toward the cliffs. A breeze whistled in from the sea, laded with all the smells of the ocean: salt and fish and that sort of indefinable green-tinged marine tanginess. The sun vanished again, as suddenly as it had appeared, and now I felt the wind’s chill on my bare cheek.

  “You’re shivering,” observed Silverton.

  “Only nerves.”

  “Well, I’m damned glad to hear it. I thought I was the only one dreading the ordeal to come.”

  “Don’t you want to go home?”

  There was the slightest pause. “Of course. It’s the getting there that’s the trouble. Are you quite sure Max knows what he’s doing? Not going to lose us in the void somewhere?”

  “There are no guarantees, of course.”

  “As I thought. At least we’re together this time. That should be a comfort. You must hold me tightly, Truelove, so I’m not afraid.”

  “Don’t joke.”

  “I’m not joking, believe me.” We had reached the ledge, and he stopped a few feet away. “Here we are. I don’t know about you, but this rather reminds me of a certain extraordinary cliff on Skyros.”

  “Much smaller,” I said.

  “Same notion, however.” He still held my hand. His palm was warm and dry, a great comfort. He looked upward to the mottled sky, and then down. “Anything nudging your memory, Truelove? We can walk about a bit.”

  I followed his gaze tentatively downward—I am not afraid of heights, but the edge was rather close—and saw to my surprise that the cliff was not a sheer one. The rock tumbled downward at a comfortable angle to a shingled beach, quite deep, and on this beach rested a hut of some kind, larger than Silverton’s, although fallen into disrepair.

  “Why, what’s that?” I pointed to the beach.

  “That? Oh, some old fisherman’s dwelling, I suppose. Decent, sheltered position, though rather inconveniently far from town. See anything you recognize?”

  For some reason, the hut held me transfixed, and only with the greatest effort did I turn my gaze to the side, and the shape of the outcroppings nearby, none of which matched the picture in my head from Magnusson’s window. I made a noise of frustration. “Perhaps we should simply walk along the edge,” I said.

  “And what? Wait for Max to find us?”

  “It’s about being in the exact right spot, you see. Some particular location that connects us.”

  “Ah. And what if that location doesn’t exist, from one century to the next?”

  “Then I’m sure . . . I’m sure . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sure we’ll find a way. Max will find a way.”

 
“No doubt. Magnificent, all-powerful Max. He is, after all, the Duke of Olympia. I say, can we stop for a bite of bread? I’m awfully famished.”

  I tugged his hand. “We’re almost there. I’m sure of it.”

  “You’re sure? How? Feeling some sort of tingling?”

  I wasn’t. I felt nothing at all, in fact, none of that familiar electricity that had charged me in Max’s presence. Only the chill of wind on my cheek, and the heat of Silverton’s hand in mine. And a slight swirl of unease in my belly, one that was not supernatural but merely human doubt. I thought about the chest in the library, about the sketch in my own hand on the paper that lay inside it. The paper that had once lain inside the leather portfolio I had brought from London—where was it now?

  “Not tingling, exactly,” I said. “Look! That rock ahead. I think—yes, I’m quite sure. That’s certainly it.”

  “Excellent. Good show. Off we go, then.”

  I kept my gaze fixed on the rock, about a hundred yards ahead, which did indeed strike a chord of memory. That shape—not quite the same, but similar. My skin began to prickle underneath my clothing, like a buzz of static. Excitement, or Max’s power, gathering me toward him? The formation was quite large and dark, so deeply charcoal it might have been wet. Not a blade of grass or moss grew upon it. The distance closed. My heart was beating hard, my breath short. About twenty yards away, I stopped and turned to Silverton.

  “Yes? Something wrong?” he asked. “Is this it, or not?”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Of course I believe you. You’re here, aren’t you? We’re both here. Something sent us here.”

  “Max. It was Max.”

  He lifted his hand and rubbed his beard. His gaze shifted out to sea. “I was there on Skyros. I saw what happened. If Max can yank a damned mythological Theseus off a cliff three thousand years in the past, without even stopping to think, I imagine this ought to be child’s play.”