Sophia's Secret (2 page)

He’d been born in 1664, a year before the Plague, and only four years after the restoration of King Charles II to the battered throne of England. When King Charles had died and his Catholic brother, James, came to the throne, Hooke had taken up arms in rebellion, but then had changed sides and abandoned his Protestant faith for the Catholic Church, becoming one of James’s stout defenders. But it wasn’t any use. England was a nation full of Protestants, and any king who called himself a Catholic couldn’t hope to keep the throne. James’s claim had been challenged by that of his own daughter, Mary, and William of Orange, her husband. And that had meant war.

Nathaniel Hooke had been right in the thick of it. He’d fought for James in Scotland and been captured as a spy, and held a prisoner in the fearsome Tower of London. After his release he’d promptly taken up his sword again and gone to fight for James, and when the battles all were over, and William and Mary ruled firm on their throne, and James fled into exile, Hooke had gone with him to France.

But he did not accept defeat. Instead, he’d turned his many talents to convincing those around him that a well-planned joint invasion by the French king and the Scots could set things right again, restore the exiled Stewarts to their rightful throne.

They nearly had succeeded.

History remembered the tragic romance of Culloden and Bonnie Prince Charlie, years after Hooke’s time. But it was not in that cold winter at Culloden that the Jacobites – quite literally, the ‘followers of James’, and of the Stewarts – came closest to a realisation of their purpose. No, that happened in the spring of 1708, when an invasion fleet of French and Scottish soldiers, Hooke’s idea, anchored off the coast of Scotland in the Firth of Forth. On board the flagship was the tall, twenty-year-old James Stewart – not the James who had fled England, but his son, whom many, not only in Scotland but in England, accepted as their true king. On shore, assembled armies of the highlanders and loyal Scottish nobles waited eagerly to welcome him and turn their might against the weakened armies to the south.

Long months of careful preparations and clandestine plans had come to their fruition, and the golden moment seemed at hand, when once again a Stewart king would claim the throne of England.

How this great adventure failed, and why, was one of the most fascinating stories of the period, a story of intrigue and treachery that all sides had tried hard to cover up and bury, seizing documents, destroying correspondence, spreading rumours and misinformation that had been believed as fact down to the present day.

Most of the details that survived had been recorded by Nathaniel Hooke.

I liked the man. I’d read his letters, and I’d walked the halls of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he had walked. I knew the details of his marriage and his children and his relatively long life and his death. So it was frustrating to me that, after five long months of writing, I still struggled with the pages of my novel, and Hooke’s character refused to come alive.

I knew Jane sensed that I was having trouble – as she said, she’d known me far too long and far too well to overlook my moods. But she knew, too, I didn’t like to talk about my problems, so she took care not to come at me directly. ‘Do you know, last weekend I read through those chapters that you sent me—’

‘When on earth do you have time to read?’

‘There’s always time to read. I read those chapters, and I wondered if you’d ever thought of telling things from someone else’s point of view…a narrator, you know, the way Fitzgerald does with Nick in
The Great Gatsby
. It occurred to me that someone on the outside could perhaps move round more freely, and link all the scenes together for you. Just a thought.’ She left it there, and no doubt knowing that my first response to anyone’s advice was staunch resistance, changed the subject.

Nearly twenty minutes later, I was laughing at her dry descriptions of the joys of caring for a newborn, when her husband, Alan, thrust his head around the doorway of the bedroom.

‘You do know there’s a party going on downstairs?’ he asked us, with a scowl I would have taken much more seriously if I hadn’t known it was all bluff. He was a softie, on the inside. ‘I can’t entertain this lot all on my own.’

‘Darling,’ Jane replied, ‘they
are
your relatives.’

‘All the more reason not to leave me alone with them.’ But he winked at me. ‘She’s not got you talking shop, I hope? I told her she’s to let you be. She’s too concerned with contracts.’

Jane reminded him, ‘Well, that’s my job. And for your information, I am never in the least concerned that Carrie’s going to break a contract. She has another seven months before the first draft’s due.’

She’d meant for that to cheer me, but I think that Alan must have seen my shoulders sag, because he held his hand to me and said, ‘Come on, then. Come downstairs and have a drink, and tell me how the trip was. I’m amazed you made it all that way in time.’

There were enough jokes floating round about my tendency to get distracted when I travelled, so I opted not to tell them anything about my detour up the coast. But it reminded me, ‘Alan,’ I asked, ‘are you flying tomorrow?’

‘I am. Why?’

Alan’s little fleet of helicopters helped to serve the off-shore oil rigs dotted through the North Sea off the rugged coast of Peterhead. He was a fearless pilot, as I’d learnt the one and only time I’d let him take me up. I’d barely had the legs to stand when he’d returned me to the ground. But now I said, ‘I wondered if you’d fly me up the coast a bit. Nathaniel Hooke came over twice from France, to intrigue with the Scottish nobles, and both times he landed at the Earl of Erroll’s castle, Slains, which, from the map I’ve got, the old one, looks to be somewhere just north of here. I’d like to see the castle, or what’s left of it, from out at sea, the way it would have looked to Hooke when he first saw it, coming over.’

‘Slains? Aye, I can take you over that. But it’s not up the coast, it’s down. At Cruden Bay.’

I stared. ‘Where?’

‘Cruden Bay. You would have missed it, coming up the way you did.’

Jane, sharp as ever, noticed something in my face, in my expression. ‘What?’ she asked.

I never ceased to be surprised by serendipity – the way chance happenings collided with my life. Of all the places that I could have stopped, I thought. Aloud I only said, ‘It’s nothing. Could we go tomorrow, Alan?’

‘Aye. Tell you what – I’ll take you early so that you can have your look from out at sea, and if you want when we get back I’ll watch wee Jack awhile and Jane can drive you down to have a wander round. It’ll do you both good, get a breath of sea air.’

And so that’s what we did.

What I saw from the air looked much larger than what I had seen from the ground – a roofless, sprawling ruin that seemed to sit right at the edge of the cliffs, with the sea boiling white far below. It sent one small cold thrill down my spine, and I knew that familiar sensation enough to be frankly impatient to get on the ground, so that Jane could take over and drive me back down.

There were two other cars in the car park this time, and the snow of the footpath showed deep, sliding prints. I ploughed ahead of Jane, and raised my face towards the salt blasts of the wind that left a taste upon my lips and set me shivering again within the warm folds of my jacket.

I confess I couldn’t, afterwards, remember any other people being there, although I knew there had been. Nor could I recall too many details of the ruin itself – just images, of pointed walls and hard pink granite flecked with grey that glittered in the light…the one high square-walled tower standing solid near the cliff’s edge…the silence of the inner chambers, where the wind stopped raging and began to moan and weep, and where the bare roof timbers overhead cast shadows on the drifted snow. In one large room a massive gaping window faced the sea, and when I stood and leant my hands against the sunwarmed sill I noticed, looking down, the imprints of a small dog’s paws, perhaps a spaniel’s, and beside them deeper footprints showing where a man had stood and looked, as I was looking, out towards the limitless horizon.

I could almost feel him standing at my shoulder now, but in my mind he’d changed so that he wasn’t any more the modern stranger I had talked to in the car park yesterday, but someone of an older time, a man with boots and cloak and sword. The thought of him became so real I turned…and found Jane watching me.

She smiled at the expression on my face. She knew it well, from all the times that she’d been present when my characters began to stir, and talk, and take on life. Her voice was casual. ‘You know that you can always come and stay with us, and work. We have the room.’

I shook my head. ‘You have a baby. You don’t need a house guest, too.’

She looked at me again, and what she saw made her decide. ‘Then come on. Let’s go down and find a place for you to let in Cruden Bay.’

Cruden Bay’s Main Street sloped gently downhill and bent round to the right and then left again, curving away out of sight to the harbour. It was narrow, a line of joined cottages and a few shops on the one side, and on the other a swiftly running stream that surged between its frozen banks and passed a single shop, a newsagent’s, before it ran to meet the wide and empty sweep of beach that stretched away beyond the high snow-covered dunes.

The Post Office was marked by its red sign against the grey stone walls, and by the varied notices displayed in its front window announcing items for sale and upcoming events, including an enticingly named ‘Buttery Morning’ to be held at the local hall. Inside the shop were postcards, books, some souvenirs for tourists, and a very helpful woman. Yes, she knew of one place in the village that might suit me. A little cottage, basic, nothing fancy on the inside. ‘It was old Miss Keith’s before she passed away,’ she said. ‘Her brother has it now, but since he has a house himself down by the harbour, he’s no use for it. He lets it out to tourists in the summer. Winters, there’ll be no one there except his sons from time to time, and they’re not often home. The younger lad, he likes to travel, and his brother’s at the university in Aberdeen, so Jimmy Keith would probably be glad to let you have the place these next few months. I can give him a phone, if you like.’

And so it came to pass that, with a newly purchased pack of postcards stuffed into the pocket of my coat, I walked with Jane along the sidewalk by the rushing stream and down to where the road bent round and changed its name to Harbour Street. The houses here were like the ones along Main Street higher up – still low and joined to one another, and across from them a series of small gardens, some with sheds, sprang up between us and the wide pink beach.

From down here I could see the beach itself was huge, a curve at least two miles long with dunes that rose like hills behind it, casting shadows on the shore. A narrow white wood footbridge spanned the shallow gully of the stream to where those dunes began, but even as I paused and looked at it and wondered if I might have time to go across, Jane said with satisfaction, ‘There’s the path,’ and shepherded me past the bridge and round to where a wide and slushy pathway veered up from the street to climb a good-sized hill. Ward Hill, the woman at the Post Office had called it.

It was a headland, high and rounded, thrusting out above the sea, and as I came up to the top I looked behind and saw I’d climbed above the level of the dunes and had a view not only of the beach, but of the distant houses and the hills beyond. And turning back again I saw, towards the north, the blood-red ruin of Slains castle clear against cliffs of the next headland.

I felt a small thrill. ‘Oh, how perfect.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jane said, slowly. ‘It looks rather dismal.’ She was looking at the cottage, standing all alone here on the hill. It had been rubble-built, with plain square whitewashed walls beneath a roof of old grey slates that dripped with dampness from the melting snow. The windows were small, with their frames peeling paint and the worn blinds inside were pulled down like closed eyelids, as if the small cottage had wearied of watching the endless approach and retreat of the sea.

I reached out to knock at the door. ‘It’s just lonely.’

‘So will you be, if you live up here. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.’

‘It was your idea.’

‘Yes, but what I had in mind was more a cosy little place right in the village, near the shops…’

‘This suits me fine.’ I knocked again. ‘I guess he isn’t here yet.’

‘Try the bell.’

I hadn’t seen the doorbell, buried deep within the tangle of a stubborn climbing vine with tiny leaves that shivered every time the wind blew from the sea. I stretched my hand to press it, but a man’s voice from the path behind me warned, ‘It winna dee ye ony good, it disna ring. The salt fae the sea ruins the wiring, fast as I fix it. Besides,’ said the man, as he came up to join us, ‘I’m nae in the hoose tae be hearin ye, am I?’ His smile made his rough, almost ugly face instantly likeable. He’d have been well into his sixties, with whitening hair and the fit build and ruddy complexion of someone who’d worked hard outdoors all his life. The woman at the Post Office had seemed sure I’d like him, although she had warned me I might have some trouble understanding him.

‘He speaks the Doric,’ she had said. ‘The language of this area. You’ll likely find it difficult to follow what he says.’

I didn’t, actually. His speech was broad and quick, and if I’d had to translate every word I might have had a problem, but it wasn’t hard to catch the general sense of what he meant when he was talking.

Holding my hand out, I said, ‘Mr Keith? Thanks for coming. I’m Carrie McClelland.’

‘A pleasure tae meet ye.’ His handshake was sure. ‘But I’m nae Mr Keith. Ma dad was Mr Keith, and he’s been deid and beeried twenty years. Ye ca’ me Jimmy.’

‘Jimmy, then.’

Jane introduced herself, never content to be out of the action for long. She didn’t exactly nudge me to one side, but she was an agent, after all, and though she likely didn’t even notice it herself, she liked to take control whenever somebody was bargaining.