Seaton 03 - Crucible of Secrets

by S. G. MacLean

  He waited.

  ‘Why did your brother flee the college on Saturday, Mr Urquhart?’

  ‘Why?’ he almost laughed, and the smile brought a light to his face. ‘Because, for all his schemes and wiles, he is nothing but a daft boy, impatient and impetuous and never stopping to think that others might not be so.’ He came over and took the seat at the table across from me, a little more at ease. ‘I am not a wealthy man, Mr Seaton.’

  ‘I was a schoolmaster myself, not so long ago.’

  ‘I remember hearing something of the sort. I was a student at the King’s College when you took up your post at Marischal.’

  I imagined the students of King’s had heard much else about me besides, but neither he nor I were going to allude to that. ‘Did you always wish to be a schoolmaster?’ I asked.

  ‘Does anyone? Did you? No, I did not always wish to be a schoolmaster – I do not mislike the task, but it is not what I once aspired to.’ He drew his finger along a line of fine dust on the table. ‘I had hopes of being a mathematician. After I left the King’s College, I travelled to Germany and thought to study there. But less than a year after leaving our shores I received a letter telling me that my father was dead and my mother dying, and calling me home to the care of my brother. Without the good graces of Sir Thomas Burnett my brother and I would be destitute.’

  ‘You gave up much for your brother’s sake.’

  ‘Sometimes we are not given the choice. And besides’ – he indicated the books on the shelves – ‘I have my books, and even in this far-flung corner of God’s creation a man might find learned converse and the society of like minds.’

  I would have known more of Patrick Urquhart, but it was the matter of his brother that had brought me here, and so I turned the conversation back to him.

  ‘Nevertheless, it does you credit that you have done so much for your brother.’

  ‘I could have done little enough for him on my own. Malcolm was not eligible for a bursary at either college. Even had I starved myself, I could not have supported him through his studies, and that is when Sir Thomas came to see me here. He offered help and I took it. He saw some worth in Malcolm’s mind that he would not see wasted. And this is how he is repaid.’

  ‘You talk of your brother’s debts?’

  ‘His debts and the scandals, the drunkenness, gambling and worse that have led to them. He can have no hope of graduating. I returned to Scotland not that I might pay for my brother’s education, but that I might watch over and guide him in his life, and in that I have utterly failed.’

  ‘Not utterly.’

  He looked up at me, a man defeated. ‘Not utterly? How can you say so, when Robert Sim, of all people, would not consent to help him any more? Malcolm knew the game at last was up for him, that he would be sent from the college in disgrace. He fled the college because he knew he had burned every bridge he had.’ His voice fell. ‘And what will happen to him now? Is he suspected of Robert’s murder?’

  I shook my head. ‘Only myself and Dr Dun have made any connection between the two, and we have not made that connection known to the burgh authorities. Dr Dun is determined that the town will meddle in only so much of the college business as it needs to.’

  He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘We had expected a delegation of some sort from the college or the town, searching for him. When I saw you, I thought you were in the van of an arresting party. I had told Malcolm he should make for the castle and Sir Thomas’s jurisdiction should anyone from the town appear.’

  I might well have done the same myself, to protect a brother. ‘I suspect the goodwill of Sir Thomas Burnett, if such your brother still retains, will do much in his favour. As to Malcolm being suspect in the murder of Robert Sim, it may be that his flight from the town on that day has done more than anything else to establish his innocence.’

  ‘How so?’

  And so I told Patrick Urquhart of the murder of Bernard Cummins. I would not have thought it possible that Urquhart’s pale face could become more bloodless, but as I recounted my tale to the point of the discovery of the weaver’s body in the Middletons’ garden, he blanched still further. I stopped talking a moment, not certain that he was still listening to me. ‘Mr Urquhart …’ I got no response. ‘Mr Urquhart … Patrick!’ At last he looked up. He was shivering, although the fire had begun to warm the darkening room. ‘Patrick, do you understand what I am saying?’

  At last he spoke, his voice a monotone. ‘You are telling me that you believe Robert Sim to have been murdered by the same hand that took the life of Bernard Cummins, and that that should spare Malcolm suspicion of the deed, for he had left the burgh by the time of the weaver’s murder.’

  ‘And that is true, is it not? He was here with you by Saturday night?’

  ‘Yes, and has been ever since, thank God. And Bernard Cummins had his throat cut, just like Robert Sim …’

  ‘Yes.’ I judged it best not to tell Urquhart of the lodge or the fraternity: I was coming to believe, like Richard Middleton and John Innes, that the fewer who knew of it, the safer the remaining members would be. ‘And I think there is a connection between the two.’

  I went on to explain about the entry of the weaver’s name I had found in Robert Sim’s hand in the Trades’ Benefaction Book. Finally I told him what Bernard Cummins had told his sister about the man he had recognised in the street. ‘That is why I need to see the letters the weaver wrote to his sister.’

  Without a word, he went over to the chest in the corner. It was not locked, and it did not take him long to find what he was looking for under the layers of clothing and winter blankets. When he straightened himself and turned back to face me, he had in his hand a bundle of letters, tied up with a length of string.

  ‘I had almost forgotten they were there. I have only read the ones she brought to me herself – I do not know what is in the older ones, but I doubt you will find anything in there that is worth killing a man – two men – over.’

  I settled back in my chair and began to sort through the letters, searching for the name of a man Bernard Cummins had met once, in Holland, many years before. The letters covered a period of almost twelve years, and there was one written every three or four months. The oldest were written on the poorest paper, a little crumpled and torn in parts, the writing unsure. Starting from the beginning, I accompanied the young weaver on his travels from this little Scottish parish to Zeeland and the town of Middelburg, where he was met by Sir Thomas Burnett’s brother John, Scottish factor there. For a month, Bernard Cummins had stayed in Burnett’s household, learning what rudiments he could of the Dutch tongue, in spoken and written form, under the watchful eye of Mr Alexander MacDuff, minister of the Scots kirk at Campvere. Burnett had then accompanied the boy to a small town near Bruges, and the home of the master weaver with whom he would perfect his craft. Cummins was a story-teller of some talent, and I felt with him the awe and wonder of the nervous apprentice confronted for the first time with the great centres of Europe, with people who spoke in tongues that were not his own, and who lived by manners and customs that were new to him.

  An hour passed, and I was only vaguely aware of Patrick Urquhart across the table from me, working at something with pen and ink, and a small set of sticks he seemed to examine very closely. Napier’s Bones, a favoured tool amongst mathematicians. In time the schoolmaster brought a lamp, and I realised afternoon had passed in to evening. So engrossed was I in the life of Bernard Cummins, of his master’s household, the news and scandals of the small Flemish town in which he lived, that I almost missed it; I almost missed the one piece of news I had been looking for.

  It had been nearly nine years ago, in early September, just as summer was turning to autumn, and Cummins had gone with his master to Leiden, to sell cloth. On their second evening in the town, the master weaver had left his young apprentice to his own devices and gone to spend the evening in the company of some old acquaintances. Cummins had wandered the town, taking in its sight
s, and in very little time had found himself in the student quarter. Feeling hungry, he had taken himself to a nearby inn, the Fir-Cone, and with the guilders his master had given to him for the purpose had ordered himself a dinner. The name of the inn struck me, for it had been a favourite haunt of William’s in his Leiden days. The young weaver had not been halfway through his hutsepot, however, when he was joined on his bench by a trio of English students with nothing in mind but to dose themselves quite thoroughly on brandy-wine before they should be tracked down by their censorious professor. At least, he had thought at first that they were all English, but after a very few words had realised that one of them, the quietest and most sober of the three, was a Scot. This young man soon left his companions to their drinking and fell to talking with Cummins of their homeland, and any news either had of it. He told Bernard he was a student at Franeker University, in Friesland, even further to the north. He and his fellows lodged in the home of their divinity professor, Dr William Ames, a fervent adherent of the views of Calvin with strict ideas on discipline and morals. They had come to Leiden with Dr Ames on a book-buying expedition and were to make for Amsterdam the next day, from where they would take ship across the Zuiderzee and back to Friesland. It was a great boon to Cummins to converse in his own tongue after so long a time away from home. The evening had been brought to an abrupt ending by the outraged divinity professor who after much searching had tracked down his errant scholars before marching them from the inn with little ceremony and no little prophesying of the punishments to come, in the next world and in this. Bernard Cummins had ended his letter with the words, ‘I was sorry to see the end of an evening of such good conversation and great cheer, and I hope that, whether here or in some other place, I might one day again come upon my countryman, Nicholas Black.’

  I read the line again, and all the pleasantness of the last hours disappeared. I pushed aside the letters I had already read and started frantically to scan through those that remained. Almost nine years of letters, but Cummins had written less frequently to his sister as the years had gone by, and the number of letters sent across the sea had dwindled with time. Fortunately, his small, neat hand was familiar to me now, and I could run my eye down the pages at some speed, without fear of missing anything I might wish to see. This change in my behaviour did not go unnoticed by Patrick Urquhart who looked up from his work to observe me.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘What?’ I said, distracted.

  ‘What are you so desperate to find in those letters that you were not in the former?’

  ‘A name, a man’s name,’ I said. ‘I am looking for Nicholas Black.’ There was no particular alteration in his face save a heightened curiosity. ‘The name means nothing to you?’

  ‘I do not think I have heard it before. I do not recall even seeing it in any of the letters Marjorie brought me.’

  No. It was not in any of the letters Marjorie Cummins had brought to the schoolmaster to read to her, for her brother had mentioned the man only in that one letter, written long ago, when Patrick Urquhart himself had been but a schoolboy. I thought of the dangers of travelling alone at night, and wondered how far Nicholas Black might have gone in pursuit of Bernard Cummins. As I looked out on the rain that was now beating down on the ground with all the fervour of a foe too long thwarted, I was glad that I had Patrick Urquhart to accompany me on the unfamiliar road back to the castle.

  We dined in the High Hall. The laird and Patrick Urquhart exchanged a smile at my evident awe on first stepping into the room. Every inch of ceiling, from window soffits to central boss, had been painted, decorated in blue, green, red and gold. The red berries and glossy green leaves of the holly, the family’s recurring motif, sent tendrils out across the plasterwork, everywhere linking symbols, signs, messages. Had Bernard Cummins gazed on these, I wondered? He must have done. Had he understood them? Better than I. It was with difficulty, as we discussed what was to be done with Malcolm, that I managed to stop my eyes drifting too often to the mysteries above. Once we were agreed on how to proceed, the boy was summoned.

  Within a few minutes he stood before us in the High Hall. Malcolm Urquhart was well-made, handsome, and with something in his bearing that Patrick had not. Indulged by over-fond parents and then left to be managed by the brother who should have been able to lead a better life, he had an opinion of himself that would not be curbed by the discipline of kirk or college. And yet, when he raised his head to look at us, I saw not the sullenness, the defiance I had expected, and indeed seen in him before, but the face of a frightened child.

  I looked at Patrick, whose knuckles were white and looked as if they might crush the stem of the glass he held. It was Sir Thomas who spoke, and he did not play with his words.

  ‘Well, Malcolm, you have disgraced yourself, shamed the memory of your parents, and thrown in his face every kindness, every sacrifice your brother has made for you. And now, to crown all, you have brought the authorities of the Marischal College to my door.’

  The boy opened his mouth to speak, but the laird was in no humour to indulge him. ‘I will not ask you the cause of your debts – there will be nothing edifying in what you have to say, and I have heard bad enough already in this hall tonight. I will tell you this, and this one time only, that I will pay your debts to the college, and you will finish your education. And if you do not make yourself the man that God gave it to you to be, you will have no further sanctuary in this house. Mr Seaton, on behalf of the college, has agreed to it. You are a young man who might offer much to the world, or be a blight upon it. It is for you to choose which it is to be, and you will make that choice tonight, and keep to it.’

  The boy was flushed, and, perhaps for the first time in his life, chastened. He scarcely lifted his eyes as he spoke. ‘I will give you no cause to regret your kindness.’

  The laird nodded. ‘See that you do not. Now, there are some other matters touching the college that Mr Seaton must discuss with you, and I caution you to answer him straight and fully, or it will go the worse for you. Afterwards, you will stay here.’

  Malcolm Urquhart might have been of a mind to protest, but he evidently thought better of it, and turned to listen to me. He made no effort to deny his presence in the library, nor his argument with Robert Sim on the day of his death. I asked him whom he had seen when he was there, and apart from my student Adam, to whom I had already spoken, the only other person he had seen had been myself.

  ‘You did not go back to the library again, after you had passed me on the stairs? You did not return later to speak to Robert Sim one more time?’

  His face was whiter than his brother’s and he shook his head. ‘I give you my oath, Mr Seaton: I did not go back; I wish that I had done.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘To say that I was sorry. Mr Sim was never anything less than kind to me, and my parting words had been ungrateful and harsh. I was angry that he wouldn’t even put down the old set of theses he was reading to listen to me properly. I pushed the volume from his hand and left. All I wanted was to get away from the college, away from the town. I gathered my belongings and was over the Den Burn by three and back here at Crathes in time to have my supper with Patrick. And ruin his evening, too,’ he added almost inaudibly.

  I raised an inquisitive eyebrow at the older brother, but he continued to stare stonily ahead of him. The boy went on, ‘He spent most of the evening trying to persuade me to go back and cast myself on the mercy of Dr Dun.’

  ‘But you did not return on Monday?’

  He looked at me with a flash of the old defiance in his eyes. ‘I could not. By the evening of the Sabbath the news had reached here that Robert Sim had been found dead in the library close. I knew I would be suspected of the crime and I could not return.’

  There was little more to be said – I believed him, and he had told me everything he could on the matter, which, I had to concede, on its own would hardly have merited the trip to Crathes. The laird sent him down to
the kitchens to be fed, and Patrick Urquhart and I remained to take our dinner with Sir Thomas.

  Most of our talk was on the condition of the country and the ceaseless feuding, the internecine slaughter between the landed families all around, the roots of which had been lost to memory and buried in time, to send up endless poisonous shoots of vengeance and retribution. Reprisals were swift and brutal, and grief inflicted that was beyond satisfaction by the law. Everywhere in the High Hall of Crathes we were surrounded by the trappings of civility: from fine delft tableware to the intricately carved chairs on which we sat. And yet, in rooms like this, all over the north, men of wealth, education and good-breeding could barely restrain themselves in their schemes of slaughter and desire for revenge.

  ‘We know what it is, the world we should make, but our nature, it seems, revolts against it.’

  ‘Not our nature, sir, not our true nature. If we could but isolate its essence, we might be in accord with all that is good in God’s creation and the works He has enabled us to create.’

  Patrick Urquhart’s words pulled me right back to Richard Middleton and his lodge, dabbling in some Rosicrucian fantasy. I looked at him stupidly, but the laird’s mind was quicker than mine. ‘Spoken like a true mathematician, Patrick, although you should take care your words do not tend too much towards the excesses of the alchemists. Mr Seaton and, to a lesser extent, myself, are men of learning, but after the dislike of the king’s late father for the subject, there are those who might choose to misunderstand what you say.’

  Patick Urquhart swallowed and looked at the table. There was a slight tremor in the hand that returned his goblet to the tabletop.

  ‘In fact,’ said the laird, looking at me now as well as at Patrick, ‘the messenger who brought news from the town today bore with him a tale of accusations in that vein.’

  The schoolmaster opened his mouth to speak but the laird had not yet finished. ‘Matthew Jack was dismissed by Dr Dun from his regency in the Marischal College for brutality against the students, was he not, Mr Seaton?’