Seaton 03 - Crucible of Secrets

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘Sarah.’ I put my hand up to her face and felt the moisture on her cheek. ‘Sarah, look at me.’ She turned towards me but still she would not look in my face. ‘Sarah, I have wronged you; I have listened to the poison of rumour in the town and I have wronged you. I have wronged Andrew Carmichael also, I know that.’ She was watching me now, as the last pink light of the day spread over our bed and onto the bare floorboards of our room. I swallowed. ‘I spoke with him this afternoon. I had to go up to the King’s College, to see John, and I met with Andrew afterwards. What William and others have often sought to tell me is true: he is a good and decent man. I cannot condemn him because he has loved where I love, because he wanted what I have, before that thing was mine.’

  ‘I was always yours, Alexander.’

  I pulled her closer to me and kissed her, and held her there a long time, and then, ‘Sarah,’ I said, holding her back a little from me, ‘what do you know of Rachel Middleton?’

  She frowned. ‘Rachel? The doctor’s wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She sat up, hugging her knees to her. ‘Not a great deal. She is a little older than me, I would say. Perhaps twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. She arrived a few years ago with her brother who had come up from Glasgow, I think, to do the finishing work on Craigston Castle. Her husband had been completing his medical studies abroad and soon joined them. When the work at Craigston was complete, they moved into the town. Her brother was killed in a fall two years ago and left her wealthy – she and her husband live in his house. She does not mix greatly, does not encourage company, I don’t think, and they have no children. Why?’

  ‘And what do they say about her, the gossips in the streets and in the market place?’

  She turned on me. ‘You know I do not listen to these women, that I have good cause, that–’

  ‘I know that. But you must have heard something?’

  ‘Truly, I have not. Although … she is a woman who attracts notice, and that is rarely a good thing for one who came a stranger to the burgh. There are those who do not like her for that she holds herself aloof – but why should she not? Why should she wish to be forever mixing with those of no interest to her? But I haven’t heard any tales against her – yet. Do you tell me that you have?’

  ‘Not I, but William: the session will soon hear accusations of adultery against her. It has been brought to their ears that Robert Sim, and other men too, were night-time visitors to her house, at times her husband was not always present.’

  ‘To consult her husband perhaps?’

  ‘Sarah, how often did you hear of Robert being ill? Never once.’

  She went to pour herself a beaker of water from the pitcher on the sideboard. As she was padding back to the bed, she stooped to pick up something that had fallen from a pocket of my breeches to the floor. A small, folded piece of paper. She opened it and froze.

  ‘Sarah? What’s wrong?’

  She said nothing for a moment, continuing to stare at the paper.

  ‘What is it?’

  She looked up at me, her face pale in the first shafts of moonlight. ‘Alexander, where did you get this?’

  I recognised now the thing in her hand. It was the note I had found in the small walnut casket hidden away in Robert Sim’s boot under his bed. ‘In Robert Sim’s room. I could not think what it meant at first, but it has come back to me now, although why Robert took such pains to hide it, I do not know. Jachin and Boaz – the names of the great pillars at the entrance to Solomon’s temple.’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Gilbert Burnett.’ Her mouth was scarcely able to form the name that had never before been acknowledged in our home. The name of the master stonemason in Banff, in whose house she had been an abused servant, until his rape of her had been discovered in her pregnancy with Zander, the boy who was now my son. ‘Gilbert Burnett, in his drunkenness and swagger told me once: it is the Mason Word.’

  TEN

  The Lodging House

  I had returned to my duties in the college because I had thought I was needed, but I had been as well, I think, to leave my scholars to the ministrations of John Strachan, the divinity scholar and mathematics regent who had had charge of my classes in my stead. My mind was whirling with words spoken the previous night, and a fleeting image at the edge of my vision early this morning. I hardly knew what lectures I gave, or how my scholars answered my questions. It was a relief to all, I think, when the bell sounded for the mid-day meal.

  The dining-hall, usually a cramped and lively place in spite of frequent exhortations to silence and decorum amongst students and masters, was still and sombre as I took my seat at the top table beside the principal and the remaining teachers, the silence issuing from the two empty seats at the end of our table overwhelming everything save the all-pervading odour of mutton fat.

  The principal seemed to have less stomach for his food than I did myself. Plucking at a piece of oat bread and hardly touching his ale, he exchanged only the occasional remark with the professors on either side of him. I suspected what had to be said between them over the expulsion of Matthew Jack had been said already, in their private rooms and away from ears that did not need to hear.

  ‘Have the boys heard?’ I asked my fellow regent, Peter Williamson, in as low a voice as he could hear.

  ‘I would think the whole town heard, the racket Jack was making when he was put out at the gates.’

  ‘I saw him myself. Where has he gone?’

  ‘No one knows. Some say he has left the town to try his luck elsewhere, others that he has left Scotland altogether.’

  ‘Would that we were that fortunate,’ muttered the regent to my left. ‘I was with the porter to oversee the packing of his bags. Jack ranted that we would hear more of him, and that it would be changed days for this college when we did.’

  Peter Williamson poured himself another beaker of ale. ‘Empty threats,’ he said. But I remembered what Jack had shouted as he’d been left outside on the street, that he was being forced from the place because of what he knew. And I also realised that if no one had seen him about the town since then, no one had seen him leave it either.

  I rose with everyone else when the principal got up to leave soon afterwards. As he passed behind me he touched me lightly on the shoulder. ‘You may go now, Alexander.’

  That morning I had told Dr Dun of my fears for my friend John Innes in the King’s College, and of what William had heard concerning Rachel Middleton. He had agreed that I should talk privately with the doctor’s wife, and had also urged me to try again with John. So, for a third day, I left my scholars in the hands of John Strachan, and went out into the town.

  The young physician and his wife lived in her brother’s old house at the top of Back Wynd, on the corner where Upperkirkgate meets the Schoolhill. Behind it lay the churchyard. There was no reply to my rap on the front door, so I went down the pend at the side and in through the builders’ yard there to the backland of the Middletons’ house. The gate was bolted from the inside and as I knocked I caught sight of a small movement behind the half-opened shutter of a window above me. I knocked again, never taking my eye from the window, and after what seemed to me a long time, I heard footsteps and the opening of the back door of the house. The bolt was drawn back and the gate opened to me.

  I had never before spoken to her, nor indeed seen her at close quarters, but I saw she was as different from her husband as flame to water. Where he was slim, pale, angular, she was curved where a woman should be curved, her movement was flowing warmth, her eyes hazel and her hair a chestnut that sparkled almost auburn in the sun. Hints of lemon and thyme drifted to me on the air.

  I had thought what I would say to her, the questions I would ask – I had discussed them with the principal even – but as I sat down opposite her at the bench by her back door, those scents took me back to a fleeting moment earlier in the day, when I thought a figure pulled back into the shadows of the college gateway as I’d p
assed, and instead I heard myself asking, ‘You have been looking for me, Mistress, have you not?’

  She poured something from a pitcher into glass beakers and offered one to me.

  ‘A mint cordial,’ she said. ‘It is cooling.’ She took a sip and put her glass down slowly. ‘I have been looking for you, yes.’ She looked directly at me. ‘I need your help because I do not know where else to turn, or even what I should ask for, but I know that I need help.’

  ‘Take your time.’

  ‘You were Robert’s friend.’

  ‘Yes.’ I waited while she searched for the right words.

  ‘He told me that, that you were his friend. That you were a good man.’

  ‘I am no better than any other, but I was his friend, and would be so to those he cared for.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I know he visited you here, at night.’

  She seemed a little startled that I had come so quickly to that point, but she recovered herself.

  ‘Who told you that he came here?’

  ‘I know that a report has been made to the session that Robert came here, and others too.’

  ‘I knew there would be, eventually. And the nature of this report?’ Her face was defiant but I could see a tear in her eye.

  ‘Do you really need me to …?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘It questions your virtue.’ There was no gentle way of saying it. ‘I think you should prepare yourself for an accusation of harlotry in connection with Robert’s visits.’

  She took a deep breath, almost relieved, it seemed, to have heard the worst. ‘They will not prove it.’

  ‘That is not my concern. You must understand I do not come here to judge, still less to speak for the session. My only end in this is to find justice for Robert, but I think it is true that he came here, is it not?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘it is true.’

  ‘When did it begin? When did he start to visit here?’

  ‘Six months ago perhaps, but as to the beginning, it was longer ago than that.’ She looked up brightly. ‘You did not know my brother?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Hugh was a stonemason, a master of his craft. He was a good deal older than me – he had been my mother’s first child, I her last. When Richard, my husband, was in Germany pursuing his medical studies, Hugh took me in. I managed his house and he took care of me. He found work aplenty here, and brought other masons to work with him. When Richard at last returned from the continent, Hugh allowed us to live here together. When he died, he left me this house. The men he worked with went their own way, and I lease the yard out to one of his old apprentices, a master now himself, for a reasonable rent.’

  I could not see how any of this touched on the fate of Robert Sim, and my impatience must have shown on my face.

  ‘I am coming to the matter now,’ she said. ‘We lease out the yard, but the lodging house the workers stayed in when they were not engaged on projects out in the country is there.’ She pointed to a squat stone building at the far end of her own garden, near the kirkyard wall. ‘My husband is often called out at night, or away for a few days, to see to patients. I did not wish to have a group of men living so close. A little over six months ago, I decided we should clear out the lodging house and lease it to some family, or a young married couple. Richard saw to the clearing, with the help of a friend …’ Here she hesitated.

  ‘A friend? Who? Robert?’

  She looked away from me. ‘Not Robert. I cannot tell you his name. But he came, and he helped. Some of what they cleared from the place – a few tools, some materials – was sold to other craftsmen in the town. But they found something in there – I don’t know what – that made them stop in their work. I wanted to go in and sweep the place out, for it had not been swept or cleaned since my brother died, but my husband would not let me – he said he would do it. And indeed, for the next few evenings, he and his friend worked at the place with brooms and buckets, and had candles burning and a fire in the hearth at night. It was shortly after that that Robert first came. I was out, fetching coals, when he came through the gate. Richard was not here and had not warned me to expect anyone, and I was so frightened to see a man just come through the gate like that, I dropped the coals. Robert insisted on gathering them all up and taking them into the house for me.’

  ‘And that was the beginning.’

  ‘If you like,’ she said.

  How far could I probe into those moments, those small incidents that can take two people from acquaintance, to the first awareness of desire, to love? Robert had not chosen to confide in me about Rachel Middleton, and those remembered moments were all that she had left. I would leave them to her. But then, a possibility entered my mind.

  ‘You were going to come to me for help. Is it that … are you with child, Robert’s child?’

  ‘What? No, no.’ She shook her head, emphatic. ‘It is not that at all. It is just that – we have few friends in the burgh; our own doing, our own choice.’

  It was a strange admission, but I had not the inclination to pursue her on it. ‘But your husband’s practice does well, does it not? He attends to several patrons of wealth and growing influence in the town.’

  ‘Oh, yes. But none of them would endanger their own position to help us, should danger come.’

  ‘What danger are you talking about? Do you believe your husband found out about your adultery with Robert? That he murdered Robert Sim?’

  ‘No,’ she said, angry, determined. ‘No!’ Her eyes had filled with tears. ‘Before now, I feared only malice, and that I have faced before and faced down before. But now, after Robert, I do not know. I fear for my husband; we have no one to turn to and no one who will speak for us. Robert always said you were a good man. And that you had courage.’

  I could not understand her, and she did not seem to understand why it was that I could not. ‘I fear Robert spoke too well of me, but I will be a friend to you. I can only do that if you are honest with me. You must tell me the truth about your husband and his friends.’

  She looked to the ground, biting her lip, the tears spilling over now.

  ‘The meetings. I know – or I greatly suspect – Robert was involved in some secret society. From what you have told me, I believe it met here, at your house.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Rachel, you must tell me what you know, or I cannot help you.’

  ‘I know that, but they did not meet here in the house, it was down there.’ She pointed to the lodge. ‘They would spend three hours there, sometimes longer.’

  ‘How many of them were there?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Four; never more than four, I think.’

  ‘Your brother, Robert Sim, John Innes and who else?’

  ‘John?’ she faltered. ‘How? No, I …’

  ‘I am near to certain that John was one of their number. And he is in a state of terror. For his sake, you must tell me the truth. I will tell no one that I had it from you.’

  At last she nodded.

  ‘Was it John who came here to help your husband in the first place, when he was clearing the lodge?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘That I cannot tell you.’

  ‘Cannot, or will not? Mistress Middleton, this man’s life may depend on it.’

  ‘I know that, but my husband has sworn me to secrecy on the matter, and I cannot go against him. He too is fearful, but I do not know what he is fearful of. And I fear for him, that whatever evil was behind Robert’s death might seek him out too.’

  I stretched my hand across the table briefly to touch her fingers. ‘You must trust me. If I am to help your husband, and John Innes, I must know as much as you can tell me. Who is the fourth man? It is not Matthew Jack?’

  ‘Matthew Jack?’ Her face paled. ‘Not him, no not him. He did come here once, one evening, but he had not been invited and was not wanted. It was the evening of one of Richard’s meeting
s, and Matthew Jack came not long after Robert had arrived. He knocked only once on the door and then walked right in – and found the three of us seated around the table, having our supper before the others arrived. Matthew Jack demanded to know what Robert was doing here, and what he had in his bag.’

  ‘His bag? The satchel that he always carried with him?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Richard lost little time in putting him from the house, and telling him that should he ever come back he would have the baillies on him. He has never been back here, but I have seen him around the town, and the way he looks at me sickens me to my stomach.’

  ‘The way he looks at you?’ She flushed and I realised what she meant. ‘I think you need to be careful,’ I said. ‘If your husband must go to his patients in the night, tell him he is to take you first to my house.’

  ‘Your house?’

  ‘My wife Sarah will be there; there will be no scandal. I think you should not be alone at night.’

  ‘Since the night of Robert’s death, Richard has not gone out to patients.’

  ‘Have you been in the lodging since your husband and his friends began to hold their meetings there?’

  ‘Never. He asked me not to go in there, and he took all the keys.’

  ‘And you have no notion of what it was they found, or of the nature of their meetings?’

  She shook her head. ‘They met for study and conversation, fellowship, that is all.’

  ‘But why then the need for secrecy?’

  She looked out over her garden, where bees were busy amongst the marigolds and daisies. ‘I am sorry, Mr Seaton, I was not privy to their secrets and did not seek to be so.’

  I could believe her, but there must have been something. ‘His bag, that Matthew Jack demanded to see. Do you know what was in it?’

  She smiled. ‘Now that I can tell you. Books. With Robert, what else but books?’

  Books. The books his landlady had seen.

  ‘Did he ever show you these books?’