Sophia's Secret

SUSANNA KEARSLEY

It wasn’t chance. There wasn’t any part of it that happened just by chance.

I learnt this later; though the realisation, when it came, was hard for me to grasp because I’d always had a firm belief in
self-determination
. My life so far had seemed to bear this out – I’d chosen certain paths and they had led to certain ends, all good, and any minor bumps that I had met along the way I could accept as not bad luck, but simply products of my own imperfect judgement. If I’d had to choose a creed, it would have been the poet William Henley’s bravely ringing lines:
I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

So on that winter morning when it all began, when I first took my rental car and headed north from Aberdeen, it never once occurred to me that someone else’s hand was at the helm.

I honestly believed it was my own decision, turning off the main road for the smaller one that ran along the coastline. Not the wisest of decisions, maybe, seeing as the roads were edged with what I’d been assured was Scotland’s deepest snow in forty years, and I’d been warned I might run into drifting and delays. Caution and the knowledge I was running on a schedule should have kept me to the more well-travelled highway, but the small sign that said ‘Coastal Route’ diverted me.

My father always told me that the sea was in my blood. I had been born and raised beside it on the shores of Nova Scotia, and I never could resist its siren pull. So when the main road out of Aberdeen turned inland I turned right instead, and took the way along the coast.

I couldn’t say how far away I was when I first saw the ruined castle on the cliffs, a line of jagged darkness set against a cloud-filled sky, but from the moment I first saw it I was captivated, driving slightly faster in the hope I’d reach it sooner, paying no attention to the clustered houses I was driving past, and feeling disappointment when the road curved sharply off again, away from it. But then, beyond the tangle of a wood, the road curved back again, and there it was: a long dark ruin, sharp against the snowbound fields that stretched forbiddingly between the cliff’s edge and the road.

I saw a car park up ahead, a little level place with logs to mark the spaces for the cars, and on an impulse I pulled in and stopped.

It was empty. Not surprising, since it wasn’t even noon yet, and the day was cold and windy, and there wasn’t any reason anyone would stop out here unless they wanted to walk out to see the ruin. And from looking at the only path that I could see that led to it – a frozen farm lane drifted deep with snow that would have risen past my knees – I guessed there wouldn’t be too many people stopping here today.

I knew I shouldn’t stop, myself. There wasn’t time. I had to be in Peterhead by one o’clock. But something in me felt a sudden need to know exactly where I was, and so I reached to check my map.

I’d spent the past five months in France; I’d bought my map there, and it had its limitations, being more concerned with roads and highways than with towns and ruins. I was looking so hard at the squiggle of coastline and trying to make out the names in fine print that I didn’t see the man till he’d gone past me, walking slowly, hands in pockets, with a muddy-footed spaniel at his heels.

It seemed a strange place for a man on foot to be, out here. The road was busy and the snow along the banks left little room to walk beside it, but I didn’t question his appearance. Any time I had a choice between a living, breathing person and a map, I chose the person. So I scrambled, map in hand, and got my car door open, but the salt wind blowing off the sea across the fields was stronger than I’d thought it would be. It stole my voice. I had to try again. ‘Excuse me…’

I believe the spaniel heard me first. It turned, and then the man turned too, and seeing me, retraced his steps. He was a younger man than I’d expected, not much older than myself – mid-thirties, maybe, with dark hair whipped roughly by the wind and a
close-trimmed
dark beard that made him look a little like a pirate. His walk, too, had a swagger to it, confident. He asked me, ‘Can I help you?’

‘Can you show me where I am?’ I held the map towards him.

Coming round to block the wind, he stood beside me, head bent to the printed coastline. ‘Here,’ he said, and pointed to a nameless headland. ‘Cruden Bay. Where are ye meant to be?’ His head turned very slightly as he asked that, and I saw his eyes were not a pirate’s eyes. They were clear grey, and friendly, and his voice was friendly too, with all the pleasant, rolling cadence of the northern Scot.

I said, ‘I’m going north, to Peterhead.’

‘Well, that’s not a problem.’ He pointed it out on the map. ‘It’s not far. You just keep on this road, it’ll take you right up into Peterhead.’ Close by his knee the dog yawned a complaint, and he sighed and looked down. ‘Half a minute. You see that I’m talking?’

I smiled. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Angus.’

Bending, I scratched the dog’s hanging ears, spattered with mud. ‘Hello, Angus. You’ve been for a run.’

‘Aye, he’d run all the day if I’d let him. He’s not one for standing still.’

Neither, I thought, was his master. The man had an aura of energy, restlessness, and I’d delayed him enough. ‘Then I’ll let you get going,’ I said as I straightened. ‘Thank you for your help.’

‘Nae bother,’ he assured me, and he turned and started off again, the spaniel trotting happily ahead.

The hardened footpath stretched ahead of them, towards the sea, and at its end I saw the castle ruin standing stark and square and roofless to the swiftly running clouds, and as I looked at it I felt a sudden pulling urge to stay – to leave the car parked where it was and follow man and dog where they had gone, and hear the roaring of the sea around those crumbled walls.

But I had promises to keep.

So with reluctance, I got back into my rental car, turned the key and started off again towards the north.

‘You’re somewhere else.’ Jane’s voice, accusing me but gently, broke my thoughts.

We were sitting in the upstairs bedroom of her house in Peterhead, the bedroom with the little chains of rosebuds on the wallpaper, away from the commotion of the gathering downstairs. I gave myself a mental shake, and smiled. ‘I’m not, I—’

‘Carolyn McClelland,’ she said, using my full first name in the way she always did when catching me about to tell a lie, ‘I’ve been your agent for nearly seven years, I can’t be fooled. Is it the book?’ Her eyes were keen. ‘I shouldn’t have dragged you over here like this, should I? Not when you were writing.’

‘Don’t be silly. There are more important things,’ I said, ‘than writing.’ And to show how much I meant that, I leant forward for another close look at the sleeping baby wrapped in blankets on her lap. ‘He’s really beautiful.’

‘He is, rather, isn’t he?’ Proudly, she followed my gaze. ‘Alan’s mum says he looks just like Alan did.’

I couldn’t see it. ‘He’s got more of you in him, I think. Just look at that hair.’

‘Oh, the hair, God, yes, poor little chap,’ she said, touching the bright copper-gold softness of the small head. ‘I did hope he’d be spared that. He’ll freckle, you know.’

‘But freckles look so cute on little boys.’

‘Yes, well, be sure you come and tell him that, when he’s sixteen and cursing me.’

‘At least,’ I said, ‘he won’t begrudge the name you gave him. Jack’s a nice, good, manly name.’

‘The choice of desperation. I was hoping for something that sounded more Scottish, but Alan was so bloody-minded. Every time I came up with a name he’d say, “No, we had a dog called that”, and that would be the end of it. Honestly, Carrie, I thought for a while we’d be having him christened as “Baby boy Ramsay”.’

But of course they hadn’t. Jane and Alan always found a way around their differences, and little Jack Ramsay had made it to church today, with me arriving in time to stand up as his godmother. That I’d managed to do it only by breaking every speed limit between my stop in Cruden Bay and here had left the baby so supremely unimpressed that, when he’d first laid eyes on me, he’d yawned and fallen fast asleep, not even waking when the minister had doused his head with water.

‘Is he always so calm?’ I asked now, as I looked at him.

‘What, didn’t you think I could have a calm baby?’ Jane’s eyes teased me, because she knew her own nature. She wasn’t what I would have called a calm person. She had a strong will; she was driven, and vibrant, so very alive that she made me feel colourless, somehow, beside her. And tired. I couldn’t keep up.

It didn’t help that I’d been struck by some virus last month that had kept me in bed over Christmas and taken the fun out of New Year’s and now, a week later, I still wasn’t back to full speed. But even when I was in good health, Jane’s energy level was miles above mine.

That was why we worked so well together; why I’d chosen her. I wasn’t any good myself with publishers – I gave in far too easily. I couldn’t stomach conflict, so I’d learnt to leave it all to Jane, and she had fought my battles for me, which was why I found myself, at thirty-one, with four bestselling novels to my credit and the freedom to live anywhere, and anyhow, I chose.

‘How is the house in France?’ she asked me, coming back, as she inevitably would do, to my work. ‘You’re still at Saint-
Germain-en
-Laye?’

‘It’s fine, thanks. And I’m still there, yes. It helps me get my details right. The palace there is central to the plot, it’s where the action mostly happens.’ Saint-Germain had been the French king’s gift of refuge to the Stewart kings of Scotland for the first years of their exile, where old King James and young King James by turns had held court with their loyal supporters, who’d plotted and schemed with the nobles of Scotland through three luckless Jacobite uprisings. My story was intended to revolve around Nathaniel Hooke, an Irishman at Saint-Germain, who seemed to me to be the perfect hero for a novel.