‘And I fell with it.’ With a rueful smile, I turned my ankle, testing it.
‘Aye, well, you’ll want to take care up at Slains, then, won’t you? You’ll do more than hurt your ankle if you lose your footing there.’
I looked beyond his shoulder to the window with its view of those red walls that clung so fiercely to the rocky cliffs, in shadow now that dark clouds had begun to mass above the sea to block the sun. ‘I don’t imagine I’ll be up there in the next few days.’
He paused, then asked me, ‘When you’re up there, walking through the rooms, what does it feel like?’
It was tricky to explain. ‘Like everyone just left the room as I walked in. I almost hear their steps, the swishing of their gowns, but I can never quite catch up with them.’
‘I thought perhaps,’ he said, ‘you might see flashes of the past, there in the ruins.’
‘No.’ I looked a moment longer and then pulled my gaze away. ‘The memories aren’t at Slains, itself. They’re locked in my subconscious, and they come out while I’m writing, though I’m not sure they are memories till I’ve had a chance to test them.’ And I told him how his Old Scots Navy book had proved my Captain Gordon scenes were factual. ‘I’ve decided not to read the book at all, I’m only using it to verify the details once I’ve written down a scene. But not everything is that easy to prove. I’ve just found out my heroine is pregnant, for example, so to prove she really was I’d have to find a record of the child’s birth or baptism that lists Sophia as the mother. Records from so long ago don’t always tell you what you need to know, if you can track them down at all. There are a lot of people in our family tree my dad can’t find, and he’s been working on the thing for years.’
‘But you’d be at a slight advantage with Sophia Paterson,’ he pointed out. ‘You have a window on her life.’
‘That’s true. I know the dates of some events now, and the places where they happened, and my dad did find the proof of those.’
The mention of my father caught his interest. ‘Did you tell him?’
‘How I got the information? Yes. I didn’t have much choice.’
‘And what does he think about all of this?’
I didn’t know for certain what my father thought. ‘He said he’d keep an open mind.’ My tone turned dry. ‘I think he would have liked it better if I’d inherited the memory of Sophia’s husband, David McClelland. Daddy still has lots of blanks he’d like to fill in on that side.’
The doctor watched me closely for a minute. ‘I’d imagine that he’s envious.’
‘My father?’
‘Aye. And so am I. Who wouldn’t be? Most people dream of traveling through time.’
I knew that he was right. There’d been so many novels written round that premise, and so many movies made where people journeyed to the future, or the past, that it was clear to see the theme was an enduring one, a common human fantasy.
And one the doctor evidently shared. ‘And when I think what it would mean to have the memory of an ancestor, to see what they had seen…I told you, did I not, that one of my own ancestors was captain of a ship? He sailed to China, once, and to Japan. I might have his love of the sea, but I don’t have his actual memories.’ His eyes grew wistful. ‘And what memories they must have been—of storms at sea, and sailing round the Cape, and seeing China in the glory of its empire…who wouldn’t wish for that?’
I had no answer to his question, but it lingered in my mind when he had gone, as did his mention of the sea and of the men who’d sought their fortune on its waves. The wind was rising at my window, and a winging band of low white cloud was closing on the castle. And in my imagination—or my memory—it began to take the shape of something else.
XII
CAPTAIN GORDON’S SHIP HAD not been seen along the coast for so long that Sophia had begun to wonder what might have become of him. From time to time a dinner guest brought news of all the changes that were happening in Scotland and in England, from the Union of the nations, so she knew the Scottish navy had been feeling the effects of it as well, and she could only guess that Captain Gordon’s orders had been altered so that he no longer sailed according to his former course.
She was surprised, then, when she woke one bright blue morning in the last days of October and looked out to see the now-familiar masts and rigging of his ship at anchor close below the cliffs.