A Strange Scottish Shore Page 20

  I remember one day in particular, the first day of my employment. I arrived early in his study in Belgrave Square, dressed in mourning, eyes and fingers sharp with nervousness. I remember staring at his hands in awe, at his brow, at the size of his jaw. His coffee cup was empty. In my anxiety, I asked if I could bring him more. He stared at me in amazement and rang for the maid instead, and I sat there in my chair before his desk, crushed and inadequate, until the duchess blew into the room. (She is an American, you know, and will insist on blowing into rooms.) She looked at me and she looked at him, and she asked her husband what the devil he’d said to dear Miss Truelove.

  How bemused he looked! I can see that expression even now, bewilderment mingled with adoration for the woman before him. He said he’d no idea. Something about coffee.

  The duchess sighed and went to the tray of liquors on the elegant Chinese chest along the wall. She uncorked a crystal decanter of what I later learned was an aged Scotch whiskey and filled his coffee cup. “There,” she said. “That should tide you over.”

  Then she turned to me. “Darling, he may be twice your size, but I daresay he’s nervous as a rabbit to have a pretty young thing like you in his study, taking down his every word. Do try to be kind to the poor fellow. He’s only a man, after all.”

  She left the room, and I fully expected His Grace to bluster and storm, but instead he reached for his coffee cup, sat back in his chair, and drank the whole measure without pause. “She’s right, of course,” he said, sighing. “She always is.”

  As the days and weeks went on, a succession of terribly important men went in and out of the Duke of Olympia’s study, many of them large in physical dimensions as well as grandeur, but I never forgot the duchess’s advice. However grand, however tall, however strong, they were only men, nervous as rabbits in the presence of a woman.

  For the most part, I tried to be kind.

  • • •

  So I held my ground before the advancing Magnus—I had not much room to maneuver, in any case—and kept my right hand in my pocket, wrapped around my dagger.

  He is not so tall as old Olympia, I thought. Nor so broad as that fellow who visited once, the pugilist with the broken nose, who looked so fearsome until he broke the duchess’s favorite Ming vase and cried with remorse.

  I met Magnus’s bright, keen gaze. The truest fellow you’ll ever meet, Silverton had said. Rather like you, in some respects.

  He married me to Silverton with his own hands, I thought. His own words.

  He stopped in the middle of the room, a few feet away. Opened his mouth and frowned, as if groping for words.

  I stood expectantly, trying to remember if there was any tradition of droit du seigneur among the Norsemen. (Or, God forbid, the Vikings.)

  “Hello,” he said at last.

  “Hello,” I replied, and then added, “my lord.”

  He shook his head, whether to dismiss the honorific or to express his own frustration with the English language.

  Try to be kind, I thought.

  I cleared my throat and spoke carefully, pronouncing each sound. “What brings you here, my lord? Silverton is out fishing.”

  He frowned. “Sil-ver-ton?”

  “My new husband.”

  “Oh! I forget this. His name is Fingal here. This means fair-haired stranger.”

  Magnus’s accent was thick, unpolished, as if he didn’t have much practice speaking English. Well, of course he didn’t. And yet he was trying hard; I could almost feel his concentration on each word, his determination to get it right. To please me.

  I released the knife and drew my hand from my pocket. My palm was damp. I wriggled the fingers, which had grown stiff with tension. “Thank you for helping us yesterday,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.” He hesitated. “I want to question—I want to ask to you—”

  I gestured to the stools next to the wooden table. “Maybe we can sit down?”

  He smiled. “Yes, please.”

  We sat. Magnus overflowed his stool, each sturdy leg planted like a tree on the floor, bent at each massive knee. In my own world, I would have rung for tea. Would have poured him a cup and asked if he took cream or sugar. Offered him biscuits. Here, I had nothing to offer. I felt he wouldn’t take it, anyway. He had something to say to me. Something, as he said, to ask me: something important, something vital to him. He rested his forearms on his thighs and linked his fingers as a bridge between his two legs, twiddling the thumbs as he stared fiercely toward the window.

  “This is like my hut,” he said.

  “Your hut?”

  “I was a fisherman. Fingal, he has my boat now. My nets.”

  “I know he’s grateful for them. He wants to make his own living. I think he likes the peace. Before, he lived a life of great—”

  “I had a wife.” Magnus turned his gaze back to me, and I was startled by the ferocious longing in his expression. “She is gone now.”

  “I’m so sorry. How long ago?”

  “Three years.”

  “How terrible for you.” I moved to touch him, and held back at the last instant. He was not at peace, not wanting to be touched; he was scintillating, burning with something. His knuckles were white, his thumbs pressed together like a pair of steel plates. I ventured, “Was it—was she—”

  He struck suddenly, grabbing my hand with his own and holding it so tightly, I could scarcely breathe. I gasped and tried to rise, but he held me down and leaned toward me, so I could see the streaks of his irises, even in this dim, gloomy light.

  “She came from the sea,” he said. “She came from a different land. Like you.”

  “Oh!”

  His hand relaxed around mine. “We have two children.”

  “Then at least—I’m so sorry—when she died—”

  Magnus’s hand tightened again, more fiercely than before. “Fingal. He loves you. He says—said—many times of you. Now you are here.”

  “Yes. Now I’m here.”

  He turned toward me and took my other hand, holding them both within his. His expression lost a little of its ferocity, but remained earnest. Still containing some tension I could not comprehend. Grief, I supposed. The grief of a good, faithful man who had loved his wife.

  “You will love my friend Fingal,” he said. “You will be his good wife. You will stay in his house and have joy.”

  “I don’t—I can’t—”

  “He will protect you.”

  “Yes. He will protect me.”

  “And you will stay with him.”

  “Of course.”

  Magnus nodded and released my hands. “I will protect you, too. I hope—Fingal and you, sometimes you come to visit me. I like to speak the English. To keep—to speak—”

  “To practice speaking?”

  “Yes! To practice. Maybe you practice the English with my children.”

  “If you like,” I said warily.

  He gazed at me without speaking. The bones of his face were so thick and heavy, so plain as to be almost beautiful. His skin covered them like a thin, finely worked leather, and I thought of Silverton’s skin, taking on the same texture, and knew it was the North Sea, the Orkney weather, a fisherman’s skin. That was it. Silverton was not Silverton anymore. He was not a marquess or a spy or a dashing chap about town. He was a fisherman named Fingal, living quietly in his hut in a remote, windblown village by the sea, six hundred years ago.

  And maybe Magnus was thinking about my skin, the bones of my own face, because he lifted one of his huge hands and cupped my cheek gently, testing the texture with his thumb.

  “Stay,” he said. “Stay with Fingal. He loves you so.”

  • • •

  By afternoon, the drizzle had eased. I ate some bread and cheese and went outside for a walk; in the village, I found the bakery and the blac
ksmith and the alemonger. In the harbor, the fishing boats began to return, selling the day’s catch to the fish merchant, but Silverton was not among them. Though the men and women cast me curious gazes, nobody approached me. It was as if I carried some kind of disease. No matter. I walked because I needed to think, that was all. Certainly not because I desired intercourse with my fellow human beings.

  The hour grew late, and still there was no sign of Silverton. I returned to the hut and studied the notes and drawings I had made—these notebooks of research on the nature of travel through time, which had then traveled through time itself. None of it was much use. Max and I had learned so much more in the few days of our stay in Scotland. But I didn’t really consult those papers for the information they contained.

  One page only interested me: the drawing on the cliffs of Naxos.

  Still inside its notebook, one page among many. The lines of ink so familiar to me, I could see each one when I closed my eyes.

  And the figure of the woman—the one I had noticed on the drawing inside the secret compartment of the chest Magnusson had shown us—was not there.

  I wiped my finger delicately across the empty space where she ought to be, as if I might rub her into existence, but the paper remained exactly as I had first created it. The woman did not exist. She had not yet been drawn.

  • • •

  I had no way of knowing what time it was when the door opened at last and Silverton arrived home, looking as if he had been run through a steam engine, and smelling rather strongly of fish.

  “Why, what’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Oh, a spot of bother with the winds, that’s all. Then some net to be repaired.” He tossed a package on the table and followed it with a pair of coins. “There’s our supper. I was late getting in, after everybody else had sold his catch, so I wasn’t able to get much for my trouble. If you don’t mind, I’m just going to wash. Can you cook a fish, do you think?”

  “I’m—I suppose I can.”

  “Just chuck it in that iron dish and bake it in the fire. I’ll be back in a quarter hour.”

  He turned and left before I could reply. I stared at the lump on the table, wrapped in cloth, and went to the hearth to find the iron dish, which turned out to be a shallow pot. I unwrapped the fish and, having never cooked such a thing in my life—having never really cooked much at all—followed Silverton’s brief instructions exactly. It was a large fish, silver-scaled, still whole, eyes round and shocked at this unexpected turn of events. I stuck it in the pot and stuck the pot in the fire, directly on the glowing peat, and rinsed my hands in the bucket by the hearth.

  Silverton returned a few minutes later. His hair was wet, his skin was pink. He set a bottle on the table and went to warm his hands at the fire.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Wine. I keep it in the storehouse for special occasions.”

  “You look exhausted.”

  “I’m afraid I am.” He stared at his hands. “It’s not an easy life, I suppose. What did you do all day?”

  “I walked. I thought. Magnus came to visit.”

  Silverton turned. “Did he?”

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “Maybe I’m not. What did he have to say?”

  I considered Silverton’s weary face for a moment and went to inspect the fish in its primitive oven. “Just to wish us well, really.”

  We ate and drank in a strange silence. The fish was delicious, white and flaky and mild. The wine was mere sack, too sweet, but not unpalatable. Outside the window, the sky was deepening in color, and the air grew dim and thick and smoky. Silverton’s charm had deserted him. He looked at his food, at the walls. When a gust of wind came through the window, he rose and closed the wooden shutters, and then went to light the crude oil lamp in the middle of the table.

  “So, my dear,” he said, sitting down again, “what have you been thinking about, all this time?”

  “I’ve been thinking about how we are to return home.”

  “Of course you have. Did you conclude anything useful?”

  “Yes. I’ve realized how I went about it all wrong. When I had Max send me here, my only object was to rescue you. To bring you back safely. I forgot there’s a greater purpose in all this, and my task wasn’t—is not—to serve my own selfish desires, but to discover that purpose.”

  Silverton drank his wine, set down the tumbler, and stared at the rim. The lamp’s small flame wavered in his eyes. “I don’t quite follow you. Am I to understand that I’m the object of your selfish desires? You came here only for my sake?”

  “I mean I thought my only task was to find you. In my eagerness—in my determination—”

  “Don’t mistake me, Truelove. I have no quarrel with your selfish desires.”

  “Perhaps not.” I finished the wine and cleared our empty plates from the table. “But they shorten our vision, don’t they? They make us impatient.”

  He rose to help me, but I motioned him back. I thought he was weary enough already. He crossed his arms and watched me as I rinsed the plates in the bucket and dried them with the cloth and put them away on the shelf.

  “Tell me something, Truelove,” he said. “How did you know I was here? How did you know where to find me, I mean. And why the devil did Max send me here in the first place, three years ago?”

  “To the first question, because you showed us where to find you. You left us clues.”

  “Did I? I don’t remember doing any such thing.”

  “Because you haven’t, yet. That’s in the future, your future. Our future, whatever it is.”

  “Our future,” he said slowly.

  “And to the second question, I don’t know. But I’m beginning to understand, I think, that this is why we failed to connect with Max yesterday. We haven’t earned it. We haven’t yet achieved what we’re meant to achieve. And it’s not possible for us to return home until we’ve done it.”

  “Done what?”

  “I don’t know! I think—I believe it has something to do with a woman.”

  “Ah, yes. It always does.”

  “A particular woman, lost in time as we are. I can only imagine it will become clear, somehow. We’ll know what it is when we discover it.”

  There was a long pause. “I see.”

  I turned from the shelf and hung the cloth on the hook in the wall. With my hands, I smoothed the folds of my woolen dress.

  “And I realized, too, that while Max and I discovered the signs of your having lived here, of having done something vital here, we can only guess whether you then returned—will return—to your own world. Our own world. So perhaps—”

  “Perhaps what?”

  “Perhaps you were right. Perhaps there is no returning at all. Perhaps this is all there is. Just to give ourselves up to fate.”

  He nodded. In the small, flickering light from the lamp, his skin had lost its weary cast, though his face was still too thin and too hard. His hair, loose from its leather tie, fell along the sides of his face in unruly pieces. I went to the chest and opened it, looking for the comb I had seen there earlier. It was made of bone, and the teeth were wide. I closed the chest again and went around the back of Silverton’s stool and began to comb his hair.

  “So yes, I have been thinking,” I said, “and what I think is this. I should set aside any plans for our immediate escape, and instead try to discover why Max sent us here in the first place. What we’re meant to do.”

  “Didn’t he remember to tell you that, when he sent you?”

  “I don’t mean Max as he is now. I mean some future Max, some wiser, more experienced Max, who knows how it all turns out. Who’s sticking us about time and place like chess pieces.”

  “My dear love,” Silverton said slowly, almost dreamily, as if his eyes were closed and he was already half-asleep. “
You’re not making the slightest amount of sense.”

  “No, I suppose I’m not. Never mind.” I laid the comb on the table and ran my fingers through his damp, smooth hair. I felt his fatigue, his longing. He reached up and wrapped his hand loosely around my wrist.

  “What are we to do, Truelove?” he asked. “Tell me.”

  I had no answer. Inside, I was trembling, I was roiling with fear and anticipation and confusion. I felt myself balancing, I felt myself back on that tenuous brink, not quite brave enough to step off and entrust my fate to another. I pulled my wrist free from his grasp and returned the comb to the chest. His gaze followed me; I felt it caress my back. I turned to face him. He rose from the chair. I thought how plain he looked, how noble. I put my hand to the back of my neck.

  “I can’t reach the fastening,” I said. “Could you help me, please?”

  He stepped forward. I turned around and lifted my hair as his hands undid the simple ties. He helped me pull the garment over my head, so that I stood in my linens. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

  “If you don’t mean to lie with me, Truelove, tell me now. For God’s sake, I can’t bear it.”

  He smelled of the sea, of salt and fish and life. I felt his warmth along the length of my back, his hands around the balls of my shoulders. I took his fingers and led them forward, across my chest, over the curve of my breasts to my stomach. The floor seemed to drop away beneath us, and I was falling irretrievably into light.

  The Lady waited bravely by the shore for the arrival of the strange ship, while the wind howled in her ears and the waves rolled at her feet, for she was certain it must bear evil news of her husband, and her grief would know no end. At last the craft made land, and a young man jumped upon the pebbles, wearing a suit such as that in which the Lady herself had arrived in this land. She cried out in fear, but he clasped her hands and said to her, ‘Lady, do not be afraid, for I am your son now grown, who has sought you these many years, and I will carry you back to your own country, and the luxury you once knew in my father’s house . . .’