Seaton 03 - Crucible of Secrets

by S. G. MacLean

  There was little in the set of propositions that was greatly contentious, or would have given too much difficulty to a competent and diligent student. Nothing that would have been of too great concern to the civic or religious authorities of our town. I could see nothing in any of them that could be construed as a danger to our society or to anyone in it. Certainly nothing that might have caused Robert Sim’s unexpressed concerns of yesterday or have precipitated his death.

  I moved on.

  The most interesting to me amongst the books in Duncan’s gift, perhaps because of my growing curiosity about the lands across the North Sea, was a finely bound 1616 edition of The History of the Frisians, by Ubbo Emmius, late Principal of the University of Franeker. Aside from my sojourn in Ireland, I had never journeyed beyond these shores, and the histories of the places and peoples across the seas held an increasing fascination for me. I resolved to come back and read Emmius’ work when this business was done with. Of less interest to me was his Opus Chronologicum, published in Groningen in 1619. The warm personal dedication inside, written to Duncan in Emmius’ own hand, reminded me that the Scottish doctor had practised for many years in that region, and the two had evidently been friends.

  There were more histories – of the Franks, the Romans, the Germans, of Poland and of Spain; re-tellings of battles at sea between Christians and Turks, the siege of Rhodes and the capture of Famagusta. There was even an account of the activities of the Jesuits in Japan. Duncan had travelled in his mind to places and amongst people I had not even begun to imagine.

  Most of all though, Duncan seemed to have interested himself in the minerals of the earth and the possibilities they offered to the man who might fully understand and master them. These were the most numerous and evidently well-thumbed of all the books Sim had catalogued on the day of his death. Clearly, my countryman had grown increasingly interested in alchemy as he had entered upon old age. As I worked my way down the list, I began to suspect that the conventional works on minerals and fossils were a mere supplement, or even a screen to the more occult works gifted by him to our college. As well as some works of Paracelsus and the Magiae Naturalis of Gianbattista della Porta, there were numerous alchemical books and pamphlets by authors I had never heard of. I had never felt any great attraction for the Hermetic quest, the searching after a secret, unifying knowledge, known to the ancients but lost to us. My earliest teachers had been of the view that the mind of God is not for man to know, and that those who sought that knowledge through the symbols and artefacts of His creation were at best deluded and at worst blasphemous. It was not a matter I often reflected upon, natural science not being in my field of interest, and I had no time for those who peddled little more than fantasy and magic.

  What I had not told Sarah was that by the time I had replaced the final book from Duncan’s collection in its box, my eyes stinging and my head sore, I had begun to fear, a little, the unknown evil that had walked amongst these shelves only a few hours before, searching for what I myself sought. As a cloud passed over the face of the moon, and the darkness of the library’s many recesses deepened, I had become more and more aware of the silence of the place, the emptiness of all human presence. The lighting of another candle to better illuminate the tiny print of the volumes in front of me served only to cast shadows where before there had been none, to suggest movement where there was only stillness. The usual silence of the streets at night heightened my sense of isolation, and my fear, and I checked more than once that I had bolted the library door from the inside.

  After I had locked the books and catalogue safely away once more, I had to force myself to return to Robert Sim’s desk and to think, to consider whether anything in my examination of the books of the benefaction had brought me any nearer to understanding the murder of the librarian. But there was nothing, nothing there that could, as far as I had seen, have occasioned his need to speak to Principal Dun, or his hesitation to talk to me.

  I forced myself again to picture Robert Sim as I had last seen him before his death; to picture the desk at which I now sat. What had been there? The catalogue, yes. But what else? The register – what I had found in the register was of greater concern to me than anything I had seen in the catalogue, but that was the work of tomorrow. And then there had been the Trades’ Benefaction Book – found in that bag, lying, bloodstained, on the cobbles when the man’s body had been found. I knew that Dr Dun had taken it from the hand of the constable, and had some idea he might have taken it for safe-keeping before the baillie’s men came to remove the body of the librarian. There was nothing I could do about that tonight: I would speak to Dr Dun in the morning.

  *

  He felt sick to his stomach, but his stomach was empty from retching. It was too late now. The blood from Robert Sim’s neck had curdled on his shoe and he had not noticed it until he had reached home the night before, under cover at last of the blessed darkness. He had washed his hands and face and stared at his own image in the glass and asked himself whether it could really have been him who had done such a thing. He could almost have persuaded himself that it had been another. He prayed God that it had been another, and then he had bent to remove his shoe, and felt the sticky dampness on his fingers. He had lifted his fingers before his face and seen the brown smear on them, smelt it, and the sweet, molten odour of it had made him vomit.

  He had slept, eventually, and the tensions and exhaustions of the day had left him too tired, he thanked God, for dreams, but it had been on waking that the nightmare had returned, for only for the briefest, most blissful of moments, had he forgotten what he had done. He had expressed his shock when he learned of Sim’s death, found the right words, if such there could be; fulfilled the duties of the Sabbath, somehow. In all, he had acted as would have been expected of him, but now, wakeful and alone as others slept, he could scarcely stop himself from shaking, and no matter how tight he held himself, he could not blot out the hollow of dread that filled his stomach. But he must think, think. A day had passed and no one had accused him. He had searched every shelf of the library and had not found what he sought, but no one else had done so either, or he would by now be tethered in the tolbooth, a doubly condemned man. It might be long enough, if ever, before anyone came upon that which he feared was still there, somewhere. For who would look as Robert Sim had looked? A man might have it before his eyes and not see what it was that Robert Sim had seen. And yet, perhaps Sim had passed what he had found to another. He would know soon enough, no doubt. All he could do now was to continue to play his part, and in the passage of time, perhaps, the horror of yesterday would be forgotten and the cause of it never known. He looked once more in the mirror, and he could begin to believe it had been another man, and not him who had committed that terrible act at all.

  SIX

  In Search of Robert Sim

  There was little that could be done in my researches in to Robert Sim’s life on the Sabbath, and so Zander was delighted to see me still at home when he tumbled from his bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes on Monday morning.

  ‘Is the college closed today?’ A better idea. ‘Is it a holiday?’

  ‘Not a holiday. A few more weeks yet till that. But I have some work to do in the town for Dr Dun, and so he has had someone else take my classes today.’

  His face became serious. ‘I hope it is not Mr Jack; I do not like Mr Jack.’

  ‘Mr Jack strives as he does that the boys might make the best of themselves, but he is maybe a bit harsh on them.’

  ‘He has a bad face,’ persisted Zander, ‘and I do not like him.’

  ‘Zander!’ said his mother. ‘A man cannot help his face.’

  ‘No, but the fellow might smile occasionally,’ I muttered to her, under my breath, to be rewarded with a warning look and a wet rag with which I was instructed to wipe my daughter’s face.

  ‘Are you going back to the library this morning?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘There are some matters Dr Dun wishes me to look i
n to in town.’

  ‘What matters?’

  I shook my head, indicating Zander, and she did not pursue the matter.

  ‘Have you time to walk with us then, to the Cargills’ house?’

  ‘I do, but I had not thought you went so early. Does Zander not go by himself these light mornings?’

  ‘He does, and Deirdre and I stay here and see to our work, do we not, my pet?’

  Deirdre laughed, and threw the rag I had left sitting by her to the floor.

  ‘But today we go early to Elizabeth’s. She is to order new linen. There is a weaver in town newly returned from the Netherlands with a wondrous skill, they say, and all the latest in Dutch fashions. Elizabeth wants my help in going through her linen chest, to see what she will need.’

  ‘If she does not already know what she needs, she cannot truly be in need of it at all.’

  ‘Alexander! I sometimes think you would be happier living like a monk in that college of yours. It is no sin to have nice things that you have worked to earn.’

  I stroked her face. ‘I know it is not. And if I could provide for you as William does for Elizabeth, I would. And I would never be happier anywhere without you. I fear I would make a very poor monk.’

  She flushed, and carried on with the business of clearing the table, her back to me. ‘You provide for me everything I could want. Everything.’ Then she looked at me, her expression changed, humorous. ‘And do not for a moment think to talk William out of allowing Elizabeth her new linen; she has promised me their old.’

  ‘Well then, I will tell him they are in need of some new Italian crystal also, for I have had my eye on those goblets of his for years.’

  I walked with the boys the extra two hundred yards or so from the Cargills’ house to the English school, set behind the wall of the kirkyard. There they would learn their letters and their morals until the time came for them to go up to the grammar school. And then, just as it had been for William and myself, it would be off to the college and the world beyond. I watched them run through the gate, Zander never looking back, and wished I could hold back time.

  It was good to be out in the town, in the early morning sunshine, away from the library and the confines of the college walls. I was stopped two or three times by townsfolk wanting to know about the murder of Robert Sim. I gave the same answer to all of them: it is out of the college’s hands; it is in the hands of the baillies. The answer seemed to satisfy them well enough. But I had not spoken the truth: the baillies may well have been about their business over the murder, but so was I. I turned down the Netherkirkgate and skirting St Katharine’s Hill by Putachieside, I headed for the Green. Far now from my lecture room, I was nonetheless on the college’s work, and I had hopes that I might find amongst the dyers and the weavers at the Green answers that had evaded me amongst the dusty books and faded pamphlets of the library.

  The house of Janet Simpson, brewster, widow to a long-dead dyer, was at the east side of the Green, near to the old Carmelite yards. Janet had the ground floor in a tenement of three storeys, and to supplement the meagre income of her trade, she had taken as lodger Robert Sim. I found her in the backland, already at her work at the mashing vat, while her daughter prepared the fire under the cauldron.

  The daughter looked up briefly. ‘Our ale is not ready. Anna Wilson down by the burn has ale for sale today.’

  The widow straightened herself when she saw who it was that her daughter was talking to. ‘I do not think Mr Seaton is here to buy ale.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I am not.’

  She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Come inside. Jessie, see to the masher.’

  It was a moment before my eyes accustomed themselves to the dim light of the room in which the women cooked, ate and slept. Little enough light found its way into the back-land of the tenement, bounded as it was by others of two and three storeys, and almost none came through the one small window to this room. A smell of bannocks from the oven filled the place, and I noticed a tray of them already cooling on the table. I suspected Janet supplemented her income with some extra trade which the bakers and the town’s authorities would not like. It was no concern of mine.

  She placed a bannock and a beaker of ale in front of me. ‘I had been expecting you – you or some other from the college.’

  ‘Have you had the baillies here yet?’

  A twinkle came into her eyes and she nodded towards the cooling bannocks. ‘You do not think I would have those sitting out for all to see if the baillies had not already been and gone?’

  I smiled. ‘No. Were you … of any help to them?’

  ‘What is it that you do not want them to know?’

  The shrewdness of her question took me by surprise. ‘I don’t know. But most men have something. I will not cast any blame on his memory if there is nothing good to be gained by it.’

  ‘Then I will tell you what I told them: Robert Sim was a good tenant; he gave me no trouble. He paid his rent on time, never came drunk to this house or took trouble to our door. He brought no visitors here and no one ever came here looking for him. He went early in the morning to the college, where he took most of his meals. He returned late. He kept his chamber tidy and never had a day’s sickness that I know of.’

  ‘And that is what you told them?’

  She got up and went to the oven. ‘That is what I told them because that is what they asked me.’

  ‘But there is something more.’ Some indecision in her eyes told me that she had not told me everything. ‘Had Robert said anything to you … had he been acting in any way differently of late?’

  I saw her hesitate.

  ‘Please, Mistress, you must believe me. I am here on the college business, on behalf of Principal Dun, but Robert was also my friend. I do not seek to blacken his name or look for scandal for the sake of scandal. If there is anything you know that might be of help in finding out his killer, I urge you to tell it to me.’

  Carefully, she lifted another tray from the oven and then turned to face me. ‘It is little enough. In another man, it would scarcely have taken my notice.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘In the last few months, since the turn of the year, Mr Sim had taken to going somewhere on a Friday or sometimes a Saturday night, every two or three weeks, perhaps, and not returning until late.’

  ‘It was not simply that he was working longer in the library?’

  She shook her head. ‘I do not think it. On those nights, he would return earlier than usual from his work and take his supper here, rather than in the college, and then go out again. Sometimes he would have his satchel with him, with a book or books in it.’ She paused a moment. ‘And that is another thing. Until this change in his habits came about, he never took books from the library home with him, never. Only some accounts he worked on for the guilds.’

  I did not doubt this. Robert had always been vigilant in upholding the regulations that forbade the borrowing of books from our library. Unlike the scholars and masters of the King’s College, we at the Marischal were restricted to consulting them in the library itself. Not even the principal was permitted to take a volume beyond its walls.

  ‘Did you ever see what these books were?’

  She shrugged. ‘I saw them on his desk when I went in to clean his chamber, but I cannot tell you what they were. I cannot read. My daughter knows a few letters, but she was never in that room – it was for her own sake as well as his.’ She fixed me with a warning look. ‘I will not have burgh gossip about my daughter.’

  ‘Do not fear for that; there will be none from me.’

  Satisfied, she continued. ‘They were not always the same books. They changed from time to time – I could tell by the size, and colour and age of them – but they were of no interest to me, and I doubt if I would know them again.’

  I doubted it also, and it would serve little purpose to have the old brewster woman look over the hundreds of books on the shelves and in the presses of the library in the hope that
she would recognise those she had once seen in Robert Sim’s chamber.

  ‘When was the last time Mr Sim went out in this way?’

  She needed no pause to think. ‘It was the Friday before last.’

  ‘Eight days before he died?’

  She nodded curtly, and I thought my questions were finished, and was about to ask to see Sim’s chamber when she spoke again.

  ‘He didn’t come back.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That last Friday. He didn’t come back. Not until the Saturday night. I am a light sleeper: I would have heard him come in. And besides, his bed was never slept in.’

  ‘Did you question him about it? Did he tell you where he had been?’

  She gave a humourless laugh. ‘I am a widow woman, Mr Seaton; I earn a crust brewing ale and by having a lodger sleep in the only decent room in my house. It is not for me to question where the librarian of the town’s college has spent the night.’

  She was right, although many a landlady would not have been so reticent. I recalled some of the misdeeds of my own past and darker days, and the righteous fury and many last warnings issued to me by my landlady in the schoolhouse of Banff. I recalled also the nature of some of those nights when I had stumbled late to my own bed, or not at all. ‘Had he been drunk, do you think? Or with a woman?’

  She raised an amused eyebrow at me. ‘That I cannot tell. But I think you are more of an age than I to tell how a young man spends his nights away from his own chamber.’

  I had no answer for her and she gave me the key to Sim’s room. ‘The baillies have already searched it, but they found nothing. I took the trouble to go round it with them. Lock the door when you are finished, and put the key back up on the shelf there. I must get on with my work.’