Page 22 of The Secret Christmas Library
She headed on up the track, worrying that her trainers wouldn’t stand up to the mud. The mud, it turned out, however, was crusty. She nudged a puddle with her toe; it was solid.
‘It’s getting very cold,’ Jamie said worriedly, looking at the sky and sniffing.
‘What are you sniffing for?’ she asked.
‘Snow. It’s a little early; it’s normally February we’re digging ourselves out.’
‘What does snow smell like?’ she said, trying an experimental sniff.
‘Hmm. Hard to say. Clean linen?’
‘Huh.’
She crested the little mound leading out of the field. Over on the other side – she’d known it was there, of course – was the sea, now at high tide, pounding against the rocks at the foot of the castle.
‘Whoa!’ she said, stepping closer to the edge, her eyes trying to take everything in. The sun was weaving in and out of the clouds and the rays struck the grey ominous crags, illuminating the great height suddenly.
From the front entrance, the house looked posh, certainly – large but formal, a stately home designed to impress, to show offhow much money the owners had, to be filled with expensive and fashionable things over the centuries: precious paintings, now sold, precious books, lost . . .
From here, though, from the back, it was a different story altogether.
Here was simply a great wet cragside rising from the churning water below them. The very oldest part of the castle, great big mossy stones, started here and emanated from the rock itself. The castle looked more grown than built. You could see this was not a place for people to attend balls in carriages; this was a defensive structure.
Mirren walked to the edge – there was a theoretical fence, but it was old and bendy.
‘Careful,’ said Jamie suddenly.
She peered over. She didn’t think of herself as scared of heights, but watching the sea crash into the rocks far, far below was genuinely frightening. She stepped backwards smartly, to Jamie’s evident relief.
‘I don’t know what state those rocks are in,’ he said. ‘Another reason we can’t really open the grounds to the public. Because, you know. They’d all die.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Mirren. ‘Bloody hell, it’s amazing.’
Jamie smiled weakly. ‘Apparently bits of it were started to ward off Vikings coming from the east. It’sthatold.’
‘I bet it worked.’
‘I believe it did,’ said Jamie. Then he thought for a moment. ‘Well, I’d believe it a bit more if forty per cent of people in the village weren’t all called Anderson and six foot nine.’
They carried on strolling the cliff head, keeping a safe distance from the edge. Despite the occasional glimpse of sun through the clouds, it had indeed got notably colder, even since that morning. Mirren pulled her jacket closer round her. Hershort pea coat was fine for mild wet London winters; she wasn’t sure it would cut the mustard here at all.
Where the gorse bushes grew over the path, their prickles snagging Mirren’s tights, they stopped and looked back.
From here, the entire castle was in sight: the glorious frontage, once again from a good distance looking fuzzily clean and white instead of dirty and old; the turrets gleaming in the sun, the pennants fluttering – and then the back, in plain stone, larger and heavier as they went on, outbuildings clear on the other side, as well as the small chapel.
‘It’s amazing,’ said Mirren dreamily. Jamie looked at her.
‘I know,’ he said, kicking at an iced-over puddle with his heavy boot, watching as it fractured into thick slabs of diamond. ‘I can’t . . . I can’t bear, after hundreds of years . . . I can’t bear to be the one who lets it go, who mucks it up.’
‘Couldn’tyoumarry a rich American heiress?’
He looked at her. ‘I see you and your colleague have a playbook.’
‘He’s not my colleague,’ said Mirren quickly, and he raised his eyebrows.
‘Anyway, why do you think I went to St Andrews?’ he said, smiling and changing the subject. ‘This place was too crappy even for them, I’m afraid.’
Another stray ray of low sun in the steely sky hit the windows on the south side and lit it a vibrant winter gold. Mirren could hear, now, the crash of the waves.
