“The deceast James Graeme my son,” writes Colonel Graeme, “who was midshipman and sailor on board the ship the Saint Andrew belonging to the Company of Scotland.”

It’s my belief that the James Graham whose story Louisa Graham wrote about in Or and Sable was, in fact, a cousin—son of Harry Graham of Braekness. That James Graham, after his ordeal in Spain, finally returned to Scotland to give his report to the Company, marry, and live a long life.

“My” Jamie was not so fortunate. Sometime during that expedition, he died.

I’ll admit that I was disappointed when I realized he was not the same James Graham who’d been on the Dolphin, but I still believed he might have made it to Jamaica with what remained of the crew of the Saint Andrew, so I turned my focus there, and the Darien half of the book altered shape in my mind again, adding a possible new section.

But I don’t properly plan out my novels—they take their shape from my subconscious, and on the day Lily and Maggie were meant to set sail from the Clyde, my subconscious was keenly aware of that paper that had been brought back from the colony, listing the names of the people who’d died on the voyage, among them one James Graham, volunteer.

And in my heart, I knew. Even before my own research persuaded me, I knew.

My mind didn’t want to believe it, at first. It raised arguments.

“Graham” was not the right spelling, for one thing—the Graemes of Inchbrakie used the “ae”. But coming, as I do, from a family of amateur genealogists, I knew that was no argument at all, since surnames are often misspelt in such documents. After all, the Testament Dative for Jamie’s uncle John Graeme—Colonel Graeme’s brother—who also died in the Darien expedition, misspells his name as “Graham.”

All right, my mind argued. The James Graham on the list was called a “volunteer” when Jamie had been a midshipman. But when I traced through the records of the others on that list, I found men like William Miller, who on the list was also called a volunteer but who had no corresponding Testament Dative in the otherwise scrupulous records of the Company unless he was the William Mill, a “sailor and midshipman aboard the ship Unicorn” whose Testament Dative records his surname as both Milne and Mill in the same line, and who, like Jamie, died on the Darien expedition.

The African Company might have kept poor records of the women who were part of its two expeditions, but they did keep records of the men whom they employed, and I’ve found only two James Grahams.

In the end, there’s only one Testament Dative in that name among the records of the Company for wages owed to those who died at Darien. And in the end, I had to accept that the name on the Company’s list of those who’d died before they’d reached the colony could probably belong to just one person.