A Strange Scottish Shore Read online

  I said hoarsely, “You had better change your tunic.”

  • • •

  While he changed and washed in the basin, I folded my plain dress and put away my things. From our chest I retrieved a comb, which I used to smooth and plait my hair. I had no mirror, no glass of any kind. My trembling fingers kept slipping on the long strands. Still, the rhythm of the work soothed me. Returned to me some sense of the ordinary to anchor me back to the world.

  Before we left for the feast downstairs, I opened my leather pouch and searched for the bullet inside. It had nestled into the corner at the bottom, like a small, oval pebble. Except it wasn’t. I ran my finger around its base to be sure. The metal had the cold, perfect touch of something machine-born, something deadly modern. A bit of sand came loose from the tiny groove.

  “Missing something?” asked Silverton, by the door. He had trimmed his beard and combed his hair, and in his new tunic of velvet, in a shade of blue almost matching mine, he took the breath from my lungs. He couldn’t be mine. In our own world, he never would. I might have him for an instant, for a week or a month, but not like this. Not seven months as we had just lived them.

  “No,” I said. “Nothing’s missing.”

  He held out his hand to me.

  I set down the pouch and fastened the tie at the top. Tucked it into the wooden chest along the wall, the one we had brought from our little cottage by the sea.

  I placed my hand in Silverton’s, and he brought it to his lips.

  “Why, you’re as cold as ice,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t disturb you with all my morbid talk, did I?”

  I shook my head.

  “Truelove.” He took my other hand. “Something’s bothering you. Is it this damned show downstairs? Are you nervous?”

  What could I say to him? Confess what I had discovered on the beach? Describe the instincts clamoring inside me, the proximity of the supernatural in this room? The premonition of something hovering outside the perimeter of our contentment, preparing to rupture us? After seven months of perfect peace, in which the twentieth century had become the dream, and the stones and sea of Orkney had fixed themselves into permanence.

  “A little,” I said. “So many strangers, and I can’t speak more than a few words. And everybody will be staring at me and my fat belly.”

  He must have believed me, because his expression softened. He released my fingers and wrapped his hands around the sides of my face, so I couldn’t help but meet the warmth of his eyes. “Here’s the honest truth, Truelove,” he said. “You’ve never looked more beautiful. Do you know what I was thinking just now? I can’t believe she’s mine. Can’t imagine what I’ve done to deserve her. Ah, don’t cry.”

  “I am not crying.”

  He wiped the corners of my eyes with his thumbs and lowered his forehead to mine. “And I was wishing—I was wishing—”

  “Oh, don’t—”

  “—that my father could see you. See I’ve done something sensible at last. My God, how he’d love you. His face—”

  I was gripping his waist now, digging my fingers into the muscles along his sides. I whispered, “Let’s not go. Let’s stay here.”

  “A very tempting thought.”

  “Then stay with me. They don’t really need us. They won’t miss us. Please.”

  He laughed. “I’m afraid they will. Magnus will, at any rate.”

  “Damn Magnus.”

  “No, no.” He drew back and took my shoulders. “Buck up, Truelove. Time to tap that extraordinary courage of yours. We shall march straight down those stairs with our heads high—I shall, at any rate, I’ll be proud as a bloody peacock with you on my arm—and we shall damned well enjoy ourselves.”

  “I won’t understand one word in five.”

  “I shall translate for you. I won’t leave your side for an instant, I promise. Then we’ll leave early and come upstairs and frolic all night, if you like.”

  His eyes were very bright. I realized he actually wanted to go downstairs and share in the revelry. Of course he did; he had always loved a good party, loved to lose himself in communion with his fellow man. Then, afterward, to lose himself in communion with a woman. He craved all this. He was emerging from his solitude and becoming himself again. A wiser and more somber Silverton, perhaps, but drawn inevitably to the old joys.

  “Will we really?” I whispered.

  He kissed my forehead. “I’m at your service.”

  My heart was so full, it hurt. I rose on my toes and kissed him back, except on the lips, and I felt by the movement of his mouth that I had surprised him. I don’t know why. I had kissed him often enough before. Maybe it was the force of the kiss, the ardor of it. When I drew away, he was smiling.

  “As game as they come,” he said, and he took me by the arm and ushered me through the door.

  • • •

  The night after his funeral, my father appeared in my room for the first time. I had dressed for bed, but I couldn’t bring myself to rest. His presence ought to have shocked me, but it didn’t; I think I was beyond shock, beyond sense, having endured both the grief of his passing and then the burden of planning his funeral within the space of five sleepless days. It was autumn, in the last year of the century, and I felt as if the entire world were passing into eternity.

  I became aware of his presence as I sat in my armchair before a meager, dying fire. I lifted my head and there he was, wearing a dressing gown of dark green paisley over a pair of blue pajamas, one leg crossed over the other. I suppose I thought he was a hallucination. My mind was so exhausted, you see, even if my body refused to settle into sleep. He spoke first. He told me how sorry he was to have left me by myself, without family, but he trusted to the goodness of the duke and duchess to stand in his place, as guardians of my interest.

  “But what am I to do?” I asked him. “Where do I belong?”

  “My dear Emmeline. I’m afraid you must choose that for yourself. You have the wit and the strength to make your way along any path, wide or narrow.”

  “A lonely path,” I said.

  He had uncrossed his legs and leaned a little forward, and his dear face was soft with kindness. “You’re wrong,” he said. “You have friends you know nothing of, and I have no doubt they will one day make themselves known.”

  “I don’t need friends. I need my father.”

  “My dear,” he said, “remember you are fortunate to have two fathers. One of them still remains to you.”

  “That man is nothing to me. No more than I am to him.”

  My father sat back again and smiled faintly. “Perhaps,” he said, and his edges blurred, and in the next instant he was gone, and I blinked, staring at the void he had just occupied, feeling as if I had just woken from a dream.

  In the ensuing years, he appeared to me regularly, if not often, but he never again referred to the unknown man who had fathered me on my mother. I suppose I forgot the substance of that first conversation entirely. But I never quite got over the habit, which I had formed as a child, of looking, half consciously, for my mother’s lover. On the streets of London, the drawing rooms of my employer, the opera house, the department store, the railway carriage—he might be any man, any fellow of a certain age, and sometimes, as one of them perhaps felt the weight of my speculation, he turned to look at me. Turned to look, and my heart lost itself, my breath died, until he turned away again.

  He always did.

  Except here, in this strange, primitive century. Without thinking about it, I had stopped looking for my sire. I hadn’t thought about him at all. My real father—Mr. Truelove, I mean—no longer appeared to me in this place, and in his absence, in the absence of all familiar things, I almost forgot I had any parents at all. I had only my life with Silverton, and his proximity was enough. So great
was his devotion, it banished that loneliness I had felt since childhood.

  It was only when Silverton mentioned his own father that the idea of fathers rushed back to me. That, and Silverton’s tender embrace, his cheek absorbing the movement of his child inside me. As we walked down the staircase to the noisy hall below, I caught the scent of smoke and charred meat and perspiration, caught sight of all the men milling happily, of Magnus’s large frame towering above them, and I stopped and turned to Silverton.

  “My father!” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “My father! I wish you could have known him. I wish you could see him.”

  He gave me a strange look. “But I have met him, on several occasions. In Belgrave Square, when I had business with Olympia. Capital fellow, your father.”

  “I mean that you could have known him as my father. That he could see how good you are. How happy you’ve made me.”

  We still stood on the stairs, about a third of the way down the final, wide stretch. There was no rug, and the soles of our shoes rested on bare stone. Below us, the noise of revelry blurred into a single boisterous roar, like a sea in which you might drown.

  “Have I made you so happy?” Silverton asked.

  “Yes.” I gripped his arm. “I want you to know how happy I’ve been. My father would be so grateful.”

  “Grateful? I’m your husband. It’s my duty to make you happy.”

  “You have. You have. You’ve been wonderful.”

  “Truelove, what’s wrong? You’re shaking.”

  “Nothing’s wrong. It’s only nerves.”

  “My dear—”

  “Fingal!”

  We turned so quickly, I lost my balance, falling against Magnus’s sturdy shoulder before Silverton could catch me. He took the blow without flinching, simply wrapped an arm around me to steady me, and then restored me to the step.

  “My God,” Silverton said, “don’t do that to a fellow.”

  Magnus shrugged. “The baby. Makes it hard to—” He jiggled back and forth.

  “Balance,” I said. “I know.”

  Silverton drew my arm back through his elbow and secured it with his other hand. “You’ve got a big feast down there,” he said in Norse. (I translate roughly, you understand, for my Norse was not fluent.)

  “The Earl of Thurso visits us. We must make a good feast.”

  I looked at Silverton. “I’m sorry. Did he say the Earl of Thurso?”

  “Yes,” Magnus said, this time in English. “My father.”

  • • •

  “He’s a bastard, of course,” Silverton said, when Magnus had escorted us to the bottom of the stairs and then vanished with a peculiar agility. “His mother was a girl in the village. But the earl did right by him. Took him in when he was breeched—or whatever it is they call it these days—and had him properly educated.”

  “You said he was a fisherman.”

  “Well, that came after. I believe he had some sort of falling-out with the old man, and moved himself to the Orkneys, to this island, as a fisherman.”

  “Then how did he come to be lord of Hoy?”

  “Damn it all, Truelove. Can’t the questions wait until after the party?”

  “No, they can’t. And why didn’t you tell me about all this before?”

  “It never came up. But I’d be happy to—oh, look here.”

  I followed his gaze and saw Magnus advancing back toward us, except this time he was accompanied by two children—a boy of about ten who held his hand, and a girl of about five who sat like a doll in the crook of his massive elbow.

  “Well, well,” Silverton said, in undertone. “This is unexpected.”

  I had no time to ask him why. The three of them stopped before us, and Magnus allowed the little girl to slip carefully to the floor to stand shyly by his side. “My little ones,” he said, in English, “this is the lady Fingal, who is wife to our friend Fingal.”

  I cleared my throat. “Hello.”

  “Lady Fingal. I give to you my son Henry and my daughter Olivia.”

  I bent and took each of their hands. “What lovely names,” I said slowly. When I straightened, I saw the color in Magnus’s cheeks, the extreme focus of his gaze upon me.

  “I hope you will be friends,” he said.

  “Of course. As you know, we shall have a child of our own this summer.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  His gaze continued to penetrate mine, as if he meant to look within and observe the memory of the babe’s conception. Beside me, Silverton cleared his throat and bent from his great, lanky height to address the children.

  “And I am the lady’s lucky husband. Delighted to meet you, Master Henry.” He shook the boy’s hand. “And the fair Mistress Olivia.” He held out his first two fingers to the girl, and I’ll be damned if the little minx didn’t smile and cast down her pretty blue eyes and touch Silverton’s outstretched fingers as if they were made of porcelain. I suppose I couldn’t blame her; I knew the effect of Silverton’s charm all too well. No doubt his eyes were twinkling, or some such nonsense.

  “Do you mean to say you’ve never met?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid not. Magnus keeps them under snug supervision, don’t you, old boy?”

  “Then how do they understand modern English?”

  Magnus frowned in confusion, and Silverton said something in Norse I couldn’t pick out. I returned my attention to the children: first the sturdy, dark-haired boy, who stood solemnly at his father’s side. His skin was pale and his eyes were round and startlingly blue, and he was possibly younger than I first realized; he had inherited his father’s robust proportions, which gave him the look of an older boy. The girl was a little fairer, her hair a lighter brown, her eyes a lighter blue, and she hid behind the edge of her father’s tunic and regarded us intelligently.

  Magnus and Silverton were still talking. I knelt before the girl and asked her if she had a doll, and she said yes. The doll’s name was Margaret and she was upstairs. Daddy had made her a cradle of her very own.

  “Daddy must be very clever with his hands, then,” I said, and Olivia nodded yes. I turned to Henry and asked him if he knew his letters.

  “Yes, madam,” he said, very correctly, “and my numbers and sums, too.”

  “Does your father take you outside with him?”

  “Yes!” Olivia said. “We ride our punnies.”

  “Ponies,” said Henry witheringly, sounding very much like a big brother.

  “Ponies.” I straightened. “Very good.”

  The men had stopped talking and stood facing each other, arms folded. A fine tension hummed between them. I put my hand on Silverton’s arm and felt its tautness. Along the line of Magnus’s throat, a tendon flexed.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “My dear,” said Silverton carefully, “Magnus proposes you accompany him and the children upstairs to their rooms, while he settles them with the nurse. Is that agreeable to you?”

  “But what about you?”

  “I shall remain below and make merry.” The words make merry were uttered dryly. He turned his head to look at me, and his expression was stiff. “I believe he has something to say to you.”

  “Say to me?” I looked between them. “What? Why can’t he say it here?’

  “It has to do with the children, I believe, and such conversations are better done in private.”

  I turned to Magnus. “But—”

  Silverton took my elbow and maneuvered us a step or two away. “Just go with him, Truelove. It won’t take long.” He paused to adjust the long plait of hair over my shoulder. “He’s about the only fellow in the world I’d trust with you, except perhaps Max himself. And for the same reason.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Because he’s desperately i
n love with someone else.”

  • • •

  The children occupied a suite of rooms on the highest floor of the castle, which we reached by means of a staircase curving around the walls of a turret. I led the way, Magnus at the rear, the children between us. As I climbed, I marveled at the newness of the steps, the crisp, fresh-cut stone in its familiar spiral. The height made me dizzy, or maybe it was my own anticipation. Before I left, I had kissed Silverton good-bye. I don’t think he understood why, and I couldn’t tell him.

  I did my best to ignore the tremors around me. I shoved them aside as mere imagination. Behind me, the children chattered away in Norse, and Magnus sometimes replied in the patient, measured way of fathers with small children. The air grew fresher. The noise of the feast faded and died away below us. I counted the steps to steady my nerves, and by the time we reached the landing at the very top, by the time I reached for the latch on the door, I felt a great calm settle over me. My hand, as it pushed the door free, was marvelously steady.

  The scene that opened before me was not what I expected. The vast, open space of the attic was now partitioned into rooms, and dry rushes covered the stone floor. The outer walls were sound and strong, holding the Orkney gales at bay. Somewhere within, the peculiar smoke of a peat fire made the air snug.

  As I stood, transfixed, the children ran past me down the hall, toward a door near the end that stood ajar. Magnus came up beside me and said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Come here.”

  I thought it was a command, but he didn’t move, and so maybe he meant for coming here. He was thanking me for making this little journey with him. I turned to look at his face, which followed the progress of his children down the hall and around the corner of the door. When they disappeared into the room, he ducked his head to look at me.

  “But why?” I said. “Why am I here?”

  He picked up my left hand and examined it: first the back, my knuckles, the bones of my fingers, and then the lines of my palm.

  “Come,” he said, and this time the command was clear.