A Strange Scottish Shore Read online

  I brought the boat in along the south bank, beaching it carefully among the pebbles before I stepped out and dragged the craft above the faint line of the high tide. The quiet surrounded me, empty of any hint of human habitation. I might have been standing there at any moment since the earth’s creation. Beneath my feet, a few shells crunched among the pebbles. I laid down the oars and started to walk.

  Even now, I can’t say what guided me to this particular beach. It was not the Queen’s order to make land, though she would likely insist otherwise. I walked along the rim of the shore, just along the tidal line, all the way to the tip of the opposite headland, and then back again. Not far from the boat, I found a rock and sat. The wind had calmed, and the clouds were breaking apart—a rare sight, and one I drank in gratefully, trying to calculate whether the sun might find one of those promising blue patches of sky. Then it did. A fragile warmth bathed my face. I closed my eyes and slid my hand beneath my cloak to caress the small, solid bump that was my child. My child. The word seemed so strange, so impossible and yet so natural, all at once. My child, Silverton’s child. Of course, it was no surprise we had conceived a babe. It would perhaps be stranger if we had not, so frequently and so passionately had we united as summer wound into autumn; as the connection, as the fascination between us grew and strengthened by our constant physical communion. I thought of his face, his shoulders, his laughter, so inexpressibly dear. The deep, splendid shudder of his body inside mine, time and again. No surprise at all that we had conceived life. This life, stirring now beneath my hand, like the pulse of a butterfly’s wings. This child, created from Silverton’s essence and mine, brought miraculously together on this strange, remote shore.

  And it was exactly at that moment, exactly when the stirring of life engaged in me a feeling of profound wonderment, that I opened my eyes and allowed my gaze to fall upon an object, half-hidden among the shells and the shingles of that uncanny Orkney beach.

  A small, shapely, conical metal bullet, as from the barrel of a modern gun.

  • • •

  Anachronisms. As I said before, the present Duke of Olympia made his name in the field of archeology, and particularly by his expertise in analyzing those objects unearthed in strata at a time and place in which they could not, logically, have existed. In the vast majority of those cases, Max was able to find an explanation for their paradoxical presence—accident, or mistake, or outright fraud.

  But not always. Locked inside those storerooms that temporarily housed the collections of the Haywood Institute for the Study of Time—as of the summer of 1906, that is, while the institute itself was under construction—there existed several boxes that contained certain objects, along with their accompanying notes, which the best efforts of Max’s brilliant mind could not interpret.

  Now, I am not and have never been an expert on firearms, still less on the ammunition that feeds them. I could not have told you what sort of gun that bullet belonged to; I couldn’t guess what caliber or material or particular qualities it possessed. I knew it was a bullet, that’s all, and I knew that even the earliest guns were unknown to northern Europe in this year of grace 1317.

  Moreover, this bullet was surely no round, primitive musket ball.

  I stared at it for some time before I dared to touch it. During that moment, the sun slid behind a cloud and emerged again, glinting dully on the bullet’s side. It was about an inch long—perhaps a little less—and the rounded tip of its cone was shrouded in copper. It had sunk comfortably into the space between two pebbles, as if it had rested there for some time and meant to stay, if it could. I reached down at last and pried it loose. Brushed off a bit of sand. A trace of rust discolored the groove at the bottom, or perhaps that was something else, some product of the sea. The bullet seemed to be vibrating in my hands, until I realized it wasn’t the bullet at all—it was my fingers that shook, my heart that hammered in shock, the hairs of my neck that prickled with the sensation of being watched by a pair of hidden eyes.

  I spun around and scanned the beach, the cliffs to the side, the long roll of hills gathering inland. I saw nothing, nobody. No hint of animal life amid the still, green landscape.

  I slipped off the rock and stood, looking out to sea, shading my eyes with my hand, but there was nothing there, no sail or slim, dark boat disturbing the water. Only the gentle ripple of the little bay, and the chop of the water beyond. The sun slipped behind a cloud, a large one, and I dropped my hand and opened my palm, staring at the small metal object there.

  A pair of gulls called overhead, making me jump. I ought to be getting back home, I knew, but instead I turned to the cliffs to my left, along the southern rim of the inlet, which tumbled down to shore from a height of perhaps a hundred feet.

  I looked again at the bullet. Was that really rust? How long had it lain there, nestled among the stones and shells? Certainly long enough that whoever had dropped it, or fired it, had forgotten its existence. Had left and gone . . . where?

  Perhaps more important: Who?

  In the absence of sunshine, the chill crept back under my cloak, but I hardly noticed. My mind began to spin with possibility. If this person had left one object, he must have left more. Some clue as to who he was, and how he had gotten here, and what he was doing. I shoved the bullet in my leather pouch and cast about the surrounding ground, the rocks, the shingles. The beach was narrow, perhaps twenty feet from the line of high tide to the edge of the turf. Along the southern rim, the driftwood had collected, carried there by the prevailing wind. I set off in that direction, walking slowly, inspecting the terrain as I went. My nerves sang, my mind raced. I felt as I had in Magnusson’s office all those months ago, as if something lingered nearby, something important, and if I cast out the net of my senses, if I absorbed every surrounding vibration, I might discover an extraordinary truth.

  Within a few yards, the driftwood began to collect in tangles, some of it quite old and smooth, bleached by sun, and some of it so new it was still wet. There was one enormous log, hollow in the middle, and as I clambered over it, I lost my balance and spilled to the ground on the other side. For a moment, I lay there, stunned out of my fervor. My elbow hurt. When I raised it, I saw a small patch of blood darkening the wool of my tunic. I half expected to hear a queenly voice admonishing me for my impetuousness—my clumsiness, at least—but there was only the gentle wash of the waves on the beach, and the screech of the seagulls passing overhead. I rolled on my side and sat up, facing the cliff, and in doing so caught sight of something I had missed earlier: a shadow that was not a shadow, but a recess in the rock.

  I braced myself on the log and stood. My right ankle wobbled and held. I limped carefully in the direction of the recess, holding my right elbow with my left hand. The space deepened as I approached it, almost a cave, surrounded by curious piles of driftwood that were all roughly the same size—too similar for mere chance, as if someone had gathered them there for a particular purpose, and the wind and weather had since undone it. A few long, flat branches stood propped against the entrance to the recess, and when I reached it I peered inside, behind the wood. The air was dim and chill, for the cave faced north, cast in shadow by the cliffs above. I couldn’t see much. I ducked past the branches and stepped fully into the shelter.

  At once the sensation of power enveloped me, so electric, it was as if Max himself had laid his hands upon my skin. I flung out one hand to find the wall, to anchor myself while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The rock was cold and damp, the daylight faint by the time it found its way between the gaps in the driftwood at the entrance, but I could see that the space stretched farther into the rock than I had imagined. So far, in fact, that I wondered if nature could have created it on her own. I felt the buzz of human habitation, the flavor of it on my tongue. I stepped forward, tracing my fingers along the wall for guidance, and went about eight or ten feet before I found the opposite wall. My nerves burned, my hair lifted. I
cast about—the ground, the ceiling of rock above me, the walls—and saw nothing, nothing, but I felt everything. The bullet was like an anvil in my leather pouch, so heavy I imagined its gravitational field tugging my awareness downward, until I actually set one knee on the ground and found not rock or rough shingle, but something soft, like cloth.

  I leaned down and groped about with my fingers. Slid my knee away and lifted this thing, this cloth that was not actually cloth.

  It was a suit of some rubberlike substance, made to fit the human body.

  I made a noise of wonder, an exclamation, and a voice answered me. Silverton’s voice, calling my name.

  • • •

  Since the night last August when we had first lain together as lovers, as husband and wife, Silverton and I had not discussed the possibility of returning to the twentieth century. I remember waking up the next morning, immersed in warmth, immersed in the sensation of Silverton’s body curled around mine, and thinking I never wanted to leave. To leave this pallet was to return to our old habits, our old constraints, and to stay was the purest joy. So I lay there without moving, breathing in the scent of his skin, and eventually I realized he was awake, too. Equally still, and for the same reason. We were thinking the same thought, praying the same prayer.

  Eventually I spoke. One of us had to. I asked him if he was happy.

  “My dear Truelove,” he said, pronouncing my name slowly, as two separate words, true love. “I am the happiest man alive, just now.”

  Then he turned the question around. Was I happy?

  No, that’s not quite right. Here is what he actually asked me:

  And you? Have I made you happy at last?

  I wanted to say that this was the happiest moment of my life, that I had never felt such joy as I felt during the night just past, that my every sorrow had dissolved in the draught of his love.

  But I couldn’t say those words. I wasn’t the sort of woman who spoke like that. I only whispered, Yes, and I believe he must have understood the rest of it. He turned me in his arms and kissed my forehead and my nose and lips. “That’s all that matters to me, then,” he said. “You’re all there is.”

  “You’re everything,” I whispered back, and I meant it. I had given myself up to him, I had given myself up to the possibility that I might never return home, and sometime in the night Silverton had built me a home here, in this hut, on this humble pallet, and I didn’t need another. I didn’t want another. I didn’t want to leave.

  And I knew that he didn’t want to leave, either.

  • • •

  So when I heard his dear, familiar voice calling my name, echoing from the walls of the strange cave hidden along the cliff wall, I dropped the suit back into the shadows and called back, “I’m here!”

  He appeared an instant later, blocking what little light made its way into the cold, dark space. I saw only his hair, like a nimbus.

  “Thank God,” he said.

  I started forward and met him halfway in a crushing embrace. “Why, what’s wrong?” I asked.

  “What’s wrong? I came home to find you gone, your boat gone from its mooring.”

  “I only went for a row!”

  “In this blustery weather. Haven’t you any sense?”

  His left hand stroked my hair; his right arm lay tight across my back. He was breathing hard, almost panting, and underneath the damp heat of his body I could feel the agitated smack of his heart.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “I only went for a row. You didn’t need to come after me.”

  “Well, I couldn’t sit around and wait, either. The baker said he’d seen you head up the western side, so I went out after you, had to put down the sail and row because the wind was coming from the wrong quarter. And then your boat here, empty, no sign of you.”

  “I was just exploring.”

  He pulled back at last, and I felt him examining my face, though he couldn’t have really seen my expression in the darkness. At least, I hoped he couldn’t. His arms fell away, and he took my hand. I cried out at the pain in my elbow.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “My elbow. It’s all right. I scraped it up a bit, going over that fallen log.”

  “You did what?”

  “I was only exploring,” I said again.

  He swore and lifted me in his arms, carried me outside into the daylight. The sun still hid behind its enormous bank of cloud. He set me down on the log and knelt before me to examine my elbow.

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  He looked up at me reproachfully. His hair was tousled and salty, tied back in its leather thong, and his beard needed trimming. How changed he was from the old days of valets and impeccable grooming. In the dull light, his eyes had lost their extraordinary blue, but none of their old magnetism. I stared back helplessly, praying he wouldn’t see what lay in mine.

  “Truelove,” he said, “my own Truelove. You know how I admire your pluck. Never in life would I seek to clip those marvelous wings of yours. But I ask you—I beg you—just think a little. Think what you mean to me. If I should lose you—the both of you—”

  I put my hands on his bloodless cheeks. “Never. Never.”

  “This past hour—no sign of you—”

  “Never.” I kissed him. “Never.”

  He allowed my kiss, but didn’t return it. He was too shocked, I suppose, too relieved to feel anything. I slid down the log to kneel next to him on the pebbles.

  “I feel the same way, each morning, when you set out in your boat,” I said. “I watch you make sail. I watch you until you’re out of sight, and I wonder if I shall ever see you again. Especially when the weather’s like this.”

  “I came home early. That’s why I came home early. I thought you might worry.”

  “Well, I do. Every time. I have to keep busy, to keep occupied so I won’t think of you out there.”

  “Why haven’t you told me?”

  “Because I know how much you love to go. I know you need your solitude, your peace, I know you need the sea, and since I can’t go out with you—”

  “Oh, Truelove.” He gathered me against him and buried his face in my hair. “Damn the bloody sea. I can do without fishing, for God’s sake. Particularly in the middle of winter. What I can’t do without is you.”

  He was leaning against the log. His tunic was soft against my cheek; he wasn’t wearing a cloak. He never seemed to mind the cold. I lifted my head and rose to straddle him. Slid my hands along the roughness of his beard until I cradled his jaw.

  I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t do without him, either, that I worshiped him, that I had just been sitting in the sun and reflecting on the nature of this life he had made in me, how I loved the little butterfly in my belly because it was a small piece of his own essence, a living amulet I carried within me.

  But I said none of that. Of course I didn’t. I only kissed him, and this time he kissed me back while the sun slid out at last and warmed our heads, our shoulders. His hands disappeared underneath my dress and my linens, and to this day I remember the awkward, hurried, desperate way we came together on that beach, his hands underneath my clothes, his flesh sliding into mine, the crash of pleasure at the end, so unimaginably intense I lay reeling against his chest while the world blurred around us. Cold and damp and uncomfortable and it didn’t matter, nothing else mattered, only his body and mine and the small, budding life between us.

  • • •

  “There’s another reason I came home early,” Silverton said, “other than the weather, and I couldn’t find any damned fish.”

  We sat together against the log, facing the water, cushioned from the rough texture of the beach by my cloak underneath us. My head lay comfortably in the hollow of his shoulder, and everything smelled of the sea.

  “Hmm,” I said drowsily.
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  “Are you listening to me, Truelove? I sometimes imagine I’m speaking into a void, at a moment like this. You lying there in a trance and all that, overcome by the sorcery of my lovemaking.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Excellent, because this is important. I’ve been thinking about giving up the fishing trade altogether.”

  I lifted my head. “What’s that?”

  “Giving up fishing. A chap with a wife and a baby on the way, he can’t afford to take chances like those afforded by the North Sea in January. To say nothing of the laughable compensation in exchange for such risks.”

  “But you love fishing.”

  “I did love fishing, when I had only a chill, empty hut waiting for me on my return, and no hope for the future. Now I begin to see its disadvantages. Particularly when one would rather stay tucked up luxuriously in bed with one’s wife, instead of rising before the sun.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “Of course I agree. It’s just—and I don’t mean to argue against my own interests—but what else could we possibly do? Acquire a farm? I’m afraid I don’t—”

  He shuddered. “Perish the thought. If you don’t like me smelling of fish, my dear, only imagine the sorts of perfumes I’d bring home from a barnyard. No, no. That’s too hard a life for you, anyway. A farmer’s wife, that’s real work.”

  “I don’t mind working.”

  “I mind it for you. No, I had in mind something a little more prestigious.”

  I peered into his face, which was angelic, bathed in light from the mild afternoon sun, the lines smoothed away by contentment. He had one arm back behind his head, cushioning him from the wood, and I supposed he looked like what he was: a man who had just experienced a satisfying out-of-doors tryst with his wife.

  “What, exactly?” I asked.

  “Well, the other day, as I was haggling with that old villain Christof for a price for my fish, I happened to run into our good friend Magnus.”