The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(104)
Colonel Graeme, who, Sophia thought, would also have a memory of those troubled days of treachery, agreed. ‘It is a stirring tale.’
‘Aye, well, I had it straight from the Comte de Lauzon. He was there—he was one of the two men that guided Queen Mary that night out of Whitehall and over the river and down to Gravesend, and he went the whole journey to France with her, too. He saw all that did happen, and kept it stopped up in his memory, till one night I helped him unstop it with wine.’ Captain Ogilvie smiled, in remembrance. ‘He told me other tales, as well, but few I’d want to tell a lass.’ But he did think of one that was not too offensive, and settled himself deeper still in his chair while he told it.
Sophia half-listened, and smiled when she was meant to at the scandalous behavior of the comte, but her own imagination had been captured so completely by the story he’d just told them of Queen Mary’s flight from England into France, that hours later she was thinking of it still.
She stood a long time at the great bow window of the drawing room that afternoon and gazed upon the sea, and wondered how it would have felt to have been cast upon those rough and wintry waves, with no sure knowledge of what future lay ahead for the wee infant son you carried in your arms, and only fears about the safety of your husband in the land that you were leaving, and might never see again. How deep, she wondered, must have been the queen’s despair?
She was not aware of anybody entering the room till Colonel Graeme spoke, behind her, in a calming tone that seemed to know her mood and sought to lighten it. ‘I would not be surprised to see it snow before this day is out. Those clouds do have the look of it.’
Coming forward, he stood close beside her and let his gaze follow her own, saying nothing at all, only keeping her company.
Sophia looked a moment longer at the ice-grey swells that rose and fell beyond the window, then into the comfortable silence she said, without turning, ‘My father always loved the sea.’
He glanced at her with eyes that were astute. ‘And ye do not.’
‘I do not trust it. It does seem a pleasant sight in summer, but it wears a different face, and one I do not like to look at, in December.’
He nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘there is no sight so melancholy as the winter sea, for it does tell us we are truly at the ending of the year, and all its days are passed, its days of joy and sorrow that will never come again.’ He turned to look at her, and smiled. ‘But so the seasons turn, and so they must, by nature’s own design. The fields must fall to fallow and the birds must stop their song awhile; the growing things must die and lie in silence under snow, just as the winter sea must wear its face of storms and death and sunken hopes, the face ye so dislike. ’Tis but the way of things, and when ye have grown older, lass, as I have, ye may even come to welcome it.’
‘To welcome winter?’
‘Aye.’ He had not moved, and yet she felt his voice like an embrace, an arm of comfort round her shoulders. ‘For if there was no winter, we could never hope for spring.’ His eyes were warm on hers, and wise. ‘The spring will come.’ He paused, then in that same sure tone he said, ‘And so will he.’
He meant the king, of course, Sophia told herself. He meant the king would come. And yet she thought she saw a fleeting something in his eyes before they slid away from hers again to make a new assessment of the snow clouds that were drifting ever closer to the shore, and in that instant she could not be sure he had not spoken to her, purposely, of someone else.
They never mentioned Moray. Having learned his nephew had been well when he had been at Slains, the colonel seemed to be content to rest with that. He had not asked for any details of what Moray did, as though he deemed it not his business. They were very much alike, Sophia thought, these two men—bound by rules of honor that prevented them intruding into someone else’s privacy, and made them guard their own.
It was as well, she thought, he did not know her private thoughts this moment. She was thinking of the desperate flight of Mary of Modena, of the fear and faith and hope that must have driven such a queen to brave a winter crossing with her baby son. And now that infant, grown to be a king, stood poised to cast his own spare fortunes on those same cold, unforgiving waves that seemed determined to divide the Stewarts from their hopes, and from their royal destiny.
She tried, as Colonel Graeme had advised, to see the promise in the winter sea, but she could not. The water, greenly grey and barren, stretched away to meet the shoreward rolling clouds whose darkness only spoke of coming storms.
In all the time since she had come to Slains and first learned of the planned invasion to return the king, Sophia never once had paused to think the plan might fail. Until this moment.
From my window, I could see the breaking waves against the harbor wall. The wind was strong this morning, and the waves were coming high and fast and casting up an angry spray that made a hanging mist to all but hide the curve of snowbound beach. I couldn’t see it clearly. Further out, the sea had turned a deeper color in the shadow of the dark grey-bottomed clouds that were now gathering and blotting out the sun.
It wasn’t difficult, while standing here, to feel the way Sophia must have felt. This winter sea was not so different from the one that I had pictured through her memory. Through her eyes.
Nor was it difficult to feel the shade of Colonel Graeme close beside my shoulder. I could feel them everywhere around me, now, the people who had lived at Slains that winter. They were with me all the time, and it was harder to detach myself, to pull away. They pulled me back.