2.4 Mrs Sinclair and the Feather Haa

In which Mrs Sinclair meets a very powerful lady.

Jul 26, 2024

On Friday Mrs Sinclair paid a rather late morning visit to Lady Brae, because the ferry to Toft was delayed by the passage of a quantity of cattle. Lady Brae lived in a fine house alongside Busta Voe, in a sheltered corner at the end of the Lerwick road near an inland harbour. Her servants were briskly efficient and conducted Mrs Sinclair into the warmth of a long drawing room looking out onto the water.

Lady Brae was a middle-aged lady wearing a yellow embroidered shawl over an elegant cream-coloured gown. She was holding a pale blue cambric bonnet in her hands, considering its trimming of yellow bows. Her blonde hair reminded Mrs Sinclair of a field of barley. Red poppies glowed in the yellow silk of her shawl spilling over her dress, its fringes trailing on the floor. She greeted Mrs Sinclair affectionately and waved away her apologies. They sat together on a bronze damask sofa. Lady Brae put the bonnet back on.

‘Absurd, is it not? Mais, c’est jolie,’ Lady Brae remarked, holding a fine silver-backed mirror in the French design at arms-length, the better to see the effect of the bonnet. ‘I must be the only lady in these islands to wear yellow bows. It is a caprice. But at my age it is essential. To maintain a personality one must demonstrate strength of character, especially in the fashions in this out of the way place.’

‘They are a charming colour, Madam,’ Mrs Sinclair said with earnestness.

‘You are pleased to laugh at me, child,’ Lady Brae said with an acuity that surprised Mrs Sinclair, so striking had been her first impression of Lady Brae’s frivolousness. The lady set down her mirror and folded her hands. She glanced at Mrs Sinclair’s out-moded dress with its limp trimmings. ‘I commend you for not wasting any money on new blacks for Gilbert. That gown looks as if you have been in mourning for your whole marriage. Now. What will you do?’

Mrs Sinclair was confused. ‘I beg your pardon, madam. I do not know what you mean.’

‘Ma chère Margaret – I may call you Margaret? – you are now, finally, a woman of means and independence. You have leisure. You can recover your training and perhaps practice a little of our art?’

Mrs Sinclair glanced quickly around the room but no servants were present.

‘If it is possible, well, yes -’ She was discomposed.

‘Yet you are in mourning. Les convenances require you to maintain a decent seclusion, and to retire from society. The two goals are not incompatible.’ Lady Brae looked sideways at Mrs Sinclair. ‘I suggest that you travel.’

‘Travel?’

‘Do not gape, child.’

Mrs Sinclair had thought that she might, perhaps in a few weeks, visit Lerwick, very privately. But she had the strangest feeling now, as if she were feeling new life in wings whose bonds had been loosened. Her habits of thought were being shaken out of a box in which they had been trammelled for too long.

‘You must leave Shetland and see more of the world.’ Lady Brae looked at Mrs Sinclair. ‘But again you gape. Poor child. Did Gilbert crush you so thoroughly?’

When Mrs Sinclair had finished wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, Lady Brae continued.

‘I have just the commission that you may carry out for me. Thus you will be doing an agèd relation a service –’

While appreciative of the interest expressed in her welfare, Mrs Sinclair could not help but think that Lady Brae was barely her relation, and she was hardly old. But she did not say so; the lady was in full flow.

‘– which will bring you credit in the eyes of society, which would otherwise condemn you for jaunting abroad when it would rather you were weeping into your late husband’s waistcoats, or praying in the kirk.’ Lady Brae picked up her lorgnette and peered through it at her shoe. ‘Society is a fool. You will travel to Pompeii.’

‘What?’ Mrs Sinclair was astounded.

Lady Brae raised her eyebrows. ‘France is secure now that l’Empereur has been quelled. Italy is charming. The sea-voyage to Naples is delightful. Especially at this time of year.’

‘It is winter!’

‘Not in the south,’ Lady Brae said firmly. ‘I have no doubt that you will enjoy the experience tremendously. Now,’ and she leaned forward to tap Mrs Sinclair lightly on the arm with her lorgnette, ‘how old are your daughters?’

Mrs Sinclair felt flustered. There was some object, she knew, in this rapid switching of subjects, but she was no longer practiced in withstanding such skilled distraction. She grasped at the question, feeling as if she had been tipped off balance.

She looked at Lady Brae’s lorgnette. The double lenses through which Lady Brae had looked at her so piercingly were set in a charming frame of diamonds, but the handle – ah, she should have seen this before. It was a wand.

Mrs Sinclair realised that she was now bound to the lady, and there was nothing she could do to escape, not until she could leave the house without Lady Brae’s consent. But her thoughts were drifting beyond her control, like a leaf on a turning current in the water. Lady Brae had asked her a question.

‘Twelve, ten and three. They have a governess, Miss Warner, who is,’ Mrs Sinclair hesitated, ‘one of us.’

‘So much the better! She will attend you while the dear children stay with me, on a holiday, and I will attend to their education. I have maids with nothing to do; your dear children will be doted on and played with and instructed quite thoroughly. They will receive a grounding in the basics of our arts, and I can advance the elder girls in the subjects that your Miss Warner may not have been able to teach with Gilbert glowering at her. You can drive to London and Paris, then straight to the Alps, and Italy. Though I myself prefer taking ship at Marseille or Nice.’ Lady Brae sat straight-backed on the sofa, her eyes sparkling with enjoyment.

The Shetland Witch

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