and the end of my first tour of Cruden Bay. Stuart seemed happy to sit there in comfort and warmth and displayed no great interest in taking me anywhere else. He was back to being friendly when he walked me home. No flirting, just a smile on the doorstep and a promise he’d look in on me tomorrow.
I checked the kitchen fire and found it burning low, and so I stoked it in the way that Jimmy’d shown me, feeling almost expert. ‘There,’ I said and stood, raising a hand to catch the sudden yawn that was intended to remind me I had barely slept at all last night, and had just drunk a glass of wine and needed to lie down.
My little bedroom in the back had just a wardrobe and an iron bed, complete with sagging mattress on old-fashioned springs that squeaked when I sat down. There was a window here that looked towards the north, and I could see the jagged outcropping of rock with ruined Slains high on it, rising red against the sky. But I was far too tired, just now, to take much notice of the view.
The bed squeaked loudly when I lay on it, but to my weary face the pillowcase felt soft and cool, and when I slipped beneath the freshly laundered warmth of sheets and blankets I could feel my state of consciousness slip, too.
I should have slept.
But what I saw when my eyes closed was neither darkness nor a dream.
I saw a river, and green hills with trees below a sky of summer blue. Although I didn’t recognise the place, the image would not leave. It went on playing like a private film within my mind until I lost all sense of being tired.
I rose, and went to write.
II
She dreamt of the woods, and the soft western hills, and the River Dee dancing in sunlight beyond the green fields, and the soft waving touch of the high grasses bowing before her wherever she walked. She could feel the clean air of the morning, the cool gentle breeze, and the happiness carried upon it, while nearby her mother sat singing a tune that Sophia could only remember in dreams…
It was gone, words and all, when she opened her eyes. And the sun was gone, too. Here, the light was a harder flat grey, and it couldn’t reach into the bedchamber’s corners, so they stayed in darkness, although she knew well from what she’d seen last night by the candle that there would be little to hide in the shadows. The room was a plain one, with only one tapestry trying to soften the stark grey stone walls, and one painting – a portrait of some unknown woman with sad-looking eyes – hanging over the mantel. Below both of those lay a hearth that was too small to be any match for the wail of the wind at the rain-spattered glass of the window.
She clutched a blanket to her for protection from the cold, and rose, and crossed to see what view she had. She hoped for hills, or trees…though she could not remember seeing trees upon the landscape when they had approached the house last night. In fact, this part of Scotland seemed quite bare of vegetation save the gorse and rougher grasses that grew close beside the sea. The salt, perhaps, made it impossible for anything more delicate to grow.
Another angry blast of rain assailed the window as she reached it. For a moment she saw nothing, then the wind chased off the water in thin, sideways-running rivulets, and let her see beyond the glass.
The sight was unexpected, and it stole her breath. She saw the sea, and nothing else. She might have been aboard a ship, with days of journeying between herself and land, and nothing round her but the grey sky and the storm-grey waves that stretched forever to the grey horizon. She’d been warned by the Countess of Erroll at supper last night that the walls of Slains Castle had been, at some places, set close to the cliffs, but it seemed to Sophia the walls must rise straight from the rock for her chamber to have such a view, and that there could be nothing below but a sheer drop of stone wall and precipice, down to the boiling foam of the sea round the rocks of the
I checked the kitchen fire and found it burning low, and so I stoked it in the way that Jimmy’d shown me, feeling almost expert. ‘There,’ I said and stood, raising a hand to catch the sudden yawn that was intended to remind me I had barely slept at all last night, and had just drunk a glass of wine and needed to lie down.
My little bedroom in the back had just a wardrobe and an iron bed, complete with sagging mattress on old-fashioned springs that squeaked when I sat down. There was a window here that looked towards the north, and I could see the jagged outcropping of rock with ruined Slains high on it, rising red against the sky. But I was far too tired, just now, to take much notice of the view.
The bed squeaked loudly when I lay on it, but to my weary face the pillowcase felt soft and cool, and when I slipped beneath the freshly laundered warmth of sheets and blankets I could feel my state of consciousness slip, too.
I should have slept.
But what I saw when my eyes closed was neither darkness nor a dream.
I saw a river, and green hills with trees below a sky of summer blue. Although I didn’t recognise the place, the image would not leave. It went on playing like a private film within my mind until I lost all sense of being tired.
I rose, and went to write.
II
She dreamt of the woods, and the soft western hills, and the River Dee dancing in sunlight beyond the green fields, and the soft waving touch of the high grasses bowing before her wherever she walked. She could feel the clean air of the morning, the cool gentle breeze, and the happiness carried upon it, while nearby her mother sat singing a tune that Sophia could only remember in dreams…
It was gone, words and all, when she opened her eyes. And the sun was gone, too. Here, the light was a harder flat grey, and it couldn’t reach into the bedchamber’s corners, so they stayed in darkness, although she knew well from what she’d seen last night by the candle that there would be little to hide in the shadows. The room was a plain one, with only one tapestry trying to soften the stark grey stone walls, and one painting – a portrait of some unknown woman with sad-looking eyes – hanging over the mantel. Below both of those lay a hearth that was too small to be any match for the wail of the wind at the rain-spattered glass of the window.
She clutched a blanket to her for protection from the cold, and rose, and crossed to see what view she had. She hoped for hills, or trees…though she could not remember seeing trees upon the landscape when they had approached the house last night. In fact, this part of Scotland seemed quite bare of vegetation save the gorse and rougher grasses that grew close beside the sea. The salt, perhaps, made it impossible for anything more delicate to grow.
Another angry blast of rain assailed the window as she reached it. For a moment she saw nothing, then the wind chased off the water in thin, sideways-running rivulets, and let her see beyond the glass.
The sight was unexpected, and it stole her breath. She saw the sea, and nothing else. She might have been aboard a ship, with days of journeying between herself and land, and nothing round her but the grey sky and the storm-grey waves that stretched forever to the grey horizon. She’d been warned by the Countess of Erroll at supper last night that the walls of Slains Castle had been, at some places, set close to the cliffs, but it seemed to Sophia the walls must rise straight from the rock for her chamber to have such a view, and that there could be nothing below but a sheer drop of stone wall and precipice, down to the boiling foam of the sea round the rocks of the
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