‘So that is why they held their convocations so late at night. It is little wonder then that Rachel Middleton became the object of the burgh gossips, or that Matthew Jack began to suspect something sinister of these gatherings. Rumours of dark practices at the lodge have begun to circulate the town, and I’ll tell you this, Alexander, the masons do not like it.’
‘The stonemasons?’
‘Aye, the stonemasons. Theirs in an honourable craft, with its secrets, as all crafts have, but they do not like this calling down of attention on themselves by what happened at the Middletons’ lodge, or the interference in their practices of those who have never raised a hammer. There is a feeling building in the burgh against the Middletons, and soon it will not need Matthew Jack to feed it.’
I knew it. Accusations, insinuations, that the physician had dabbled in the darker side of the alchemical arts would not be long in losing him what patients he had, and the rumours that had begun to abound about his wife were not those that a woman such as she could long survive.
‘It does not help that they are strangers here, with no kin and few friends.’
‘I would be their friend,’ I said at last.
‘And I also. And in pursuit of that cause, Elizabeth has invited Richard Middleton and his wife to join with us on Monday night, to meet the doctor. George Jamesone and Isobel are to be there too.’
My painter friend and his wife always made for entertaining company. ‘It will be a night of good cheer, then,’ I said.
‘Yes, that is what I intend. And …’ He seemed unsure as to how to proceed.
‘And?’
‘I have also invited Andrew Carmichael, in the hope that he can bring with him John Innes. John has not been seen outside the King’s College since he heard the news of Robert Sim’s murder.’ He was watching me carefully. I was not sure that I was ready to face Andrew Carmichael after the thoughts that had rampaged through my head and emptied my stomach only a few hours before, but I knew that if I was truly to excise the canker of suspicion and distrust within me, I must.
‘It will be a good thing if he manages to get John down out of the Old Town.’ I was glad to have managed this, and it seemed to satisfy William, too. That achieved, I was keen to change the course of our conversation. ‘Has any fresh evidence come to light in the burgh in the case of the two murders, any witnesses?’
‘Nothing, nothing at all. The baillie and his men are circling Richard Middleton like vultures round a dying beast. They cannot see beyond the rumours about Robert and Rachel and the killer’s use of a doctor’s scalpel. As to the death of the weaver, much though many would wish to see Matthew Jack found guilty on that charge, no connection can be found between him and Bernard Cummins other than the Middletons’ garden. The weaver was so recently returned to the burgh that his connections here were very few indeed.’
‘I do not think it is here that the connection is to be found. Tell me, William, in your days at Leiden, you never came upon a Scot, a student at Franeker, by the name of Nicholas Black?’
William thought for a moment and then shook his head. ‘It is not a name I recall, although I never went to Franeker, you know. There was little to recommend it for a lawyer, and the climate was more miserable than I had a mind for. Why do you ask?’
‘Because Bernard Cummins did come upon him. One evening, about nine years ago, when in Leiden with his master, he met Nicholas Black at the Fir-Cone inn. And he met him again here, in the street of this burgh, not a week ago, but Nicholas Black denied the fact, denied the name, and claimed never to have met Bernard Cummins before.’
William’s eyes grew wide. ‘But how do you know this?’
‘Bernard Cummins, like Malcolm Urquhart, came from Crathes. His sister told me of it, and I read the weaver’s account of his meeting with Black in a letter almost nine years old in the schoolmaster’s possession. I do not think we will find the killer of these two men until we find Nicholas Black.’
William thought a moment before he spoke. ‘But you know as well as I do, Alexander – there is no scholar in Aberdeen by the name of Nicholas Black, not in either burgh. Surely, after nine years the weaver was mistaken?’
‘His sister said he was not, that he was sure of it. For want of an option, I am determined to find him.’
‘And where do you propose to do that?’
‘I had thought to begin with Matthew Jack.’
He was incredulous. ‘You are not serious? You and I were the last people to have seen Robert Sim alive, and you it was who found him dead. And then you discovered Bernard Cummins’s body also. How long do you think it will be until it occurs to Matthew Jack to turn his bile on you?’
I could not argue with what he said, for I knew Matthew Jack had no love for me. ‘I have no other option,’ I said.
William was silent a moment. ‘You have another option, you know.’
‘I would be glad to hear it.’
‘The masons.’
I shook my head. ‘That lodge has been out of use for years. Richard Middleton took me over every inch of it on the night we found the weaver’s body. There are no secrets there worth killing a man – two men – for.’
‘I tell you, Alexander, the lodge the masons seek to protect is not a lodge of stone, but of the mind, and it is in that lodge that Robert Sim and his companions had begun to dabble.’
‘And Bernard Cummins?’
‘The laird of Crathes’s father was much in the company of his kinsman, the late Chancellor, who was known to have taken some interest in the practices of the masons. His house at Pinkie was more adorned with emblems and symbols even than Crathes. He made no secret of it, and I never heard a word of the present laird involved in anything sinister, but if Cummins was studying and executing designs for his project in the castle, then …’
‘Then?’
‘Then you should tread warily, Alexander, that is all I am saying.’
‘I will, but I cannot leave the matter as it stands. The faces of those dead men haunt me, and I fear they may not be the last.’ I got out of my chair. ‘I am going to the tolbooth.’
William shook his head. ‘You cannot. There is to be a hanging on Tuesday morning – they will allow no visitors over the door until that is safely done, for fear of an escape. Go home, Alexander, take your rest in the tranquillity of the Sabbath, and leave this for a while.’
I told him I would go home, and had intended to do so, but my footsteps took me instead down past the Guestrow and eventually to the house at the top of Back Wynd that just two nights ago had been a scene of horrors. Not wishing to be seen knocking on the street door, I went down the vennel to the backland of the house. The door to the kitchen was open but there was no sign of Rachel Middleton, and no response from inside when I called out her name. It was only as I was turning to leave that I heard her voice.
‘Mr Seaton!’
She was coming around the corner from the lodge, a bunch of marigolds and daisies in her hand. ‘Is it Richard you are looking for? He is sleeping.’
‘I hoped you might have a minute to talk to me.’
‘I have many minutes. Very few seek out my company.’
She sat down on a stone bench by the side of the lodge, below the north window, and invited me to join her. The garden was very different place from the dark and rainlashed scene of two nights ago. Rather than the stench of blood, the smell that reached me now was of sweet aniseed from the rowan in flower above the bench. Along the south-facing wall of the house were pots of chive, mint, parsley, rosemary and sage, and the pathway from the flagstones at the back door down to the lodge was fringed with lavender. Behind the lodge was a tangle of raspberry bushes. Kale, carrots, peas and onions grew in orderly rows, and in a bed, carefully strewn with straw and covered with netting, strawberries were coming forth from their flowers. The heavy hum of insects was cut through occasionally by the song of blackbird or thrush. Only the sound of the sea in the background, and the occasional caw of a gull spoke of
a world outside this garden.
A bee, busy at a yellow rose, held my attention.
‘It is untroubled by the cares of man, is it not?’ she said, also watching it.
‘There is perhaps a lesson there we might profit from. God’s crucible is around us, in the quiet industry of His creatures, working in harmony in the earth He created. What your husband and his friends sought in their studies and experiments in the lodge was to be found not there, but outside, here.’
‘It is not as it seems,’ she said quietly.
I turned to her. ‘How so?’
‘Can you have forgotten? Two feet from where you sit a murdered man was laid in his grave. Wickedness, evil, has reached into the heart of this garden and made it rotten.’
‘The evil was in the man who came here; it is not here now.’
‘Is it not? Richard, Robert and the others called it here, and I don’t know if it will ever leave. But we will.’
‘You are leaving?’
‘We have no choice. You must have heard what people have begun to say, about me, and about Richard too. There is no safety here for us. Richard has his medical degree. It will take him anywhere. I will go with him, where we are not known, and we will start again.’
‘You will remain together? After everything?’
She regarded me for a moment, weighing something up, it appeared. ‘You know some of what has passed in our life, but that is only a small portion of what you would call “everything” means. We will remain together. Always.’
I was uncomfortable and I think she may have intended to make me so. I turned the conversation back to the question of her husband’s career. ‘Richard’s degree – his medical degree – where was it conferred?’
‘Heidelberg. But he travelled and studied widely after he fled the city in the face of the Imperial forces – up into northern Germany and Poland, then down through the Netherlands to Paris.’
‘Where in the Netherlands?’
‘Groningen, I think. Why?’
‘You do not recall if he ever mentioned meeting a young Scottish weaver?’
She shook her head. ‘He spoke of his friends, his studies, and something of the towns and peoples he came across, but he never mentioned a Scottish weaver. He told you himself: he never met Bernard Cummins, either in the Netherlands or here. He is in no doubt upon that point.’
‘And you?’
‘I?’
‘Did you know Bernard Cummins?’
‘I did not know him, but I knew who he was. I had heard him being spoken about, seen him pointed out – he was the kind of man women noticed. And then I saw him one day – the day before his murder – in David Melville’s shop.’
‘The bookseller’s? What was he doing there?’
‘He was talking about pattern books – there was a Dutch name, I think.’
‘Did he speak to you?’
She shook her head. ‘I do not seek the conversation of men I do not know.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said, and after an awkward moment, ‘Who else was in the shop at the time?’
‘No one. There was no one but me, Bernard Cummins and the bookseller.’ Then she understood what I was asking. ‘Do you think the weaver was followed around town before his death?’
‘All I know is that nine years ago, in Leiden, he met a Scottish student by the name of Nicholas Black, and that he met him again in the streets of this burgh only days before he was killed.’
‘I know no one of that name.’
‘Nor I. The man denied to Bernard Cummins that he was Nicholas Black or that he had ever seen the weaver before.’
‘And who did he claim to be?’
‘That, I am afraid, I do not know.’
EIGHTEEN
Jaffray’s Dinner
The Sabbath passed without incident and a thorough testing of my classes on the Monday showed them not to have suffered during my latest absence, but left me with no leisure to visit Matthew Jack in the tolbooth.
Sarah was waiting for me when I returned from the college. She had left the children upstairs and come down to change out of her everyday gown in to a finer one of crisp grey cambric that in summer she wore on the Sabbath. With it she wore a simple white tucker and cuffs with the merest run of lace where her sleeves met her bare arms. She was standing before the old looking glass on the wall, her hair pushed to one side as she tied at her neck a black velvet ribbon I had brought her a year ago from Edinburgh, from which hung a small stone of agate, the best that I had been able to afford. I promised myself that one day, somehow, I would see her dressed as other women were.
She did not turn when she heard me come in, but continued to stand with her back to me and began slowly to pull the brush down through her hair.
As I watched her, and I took in her whole form, I saw what I should have noticed days, perhaps weeks ago. I saw what Jaffray had noticed in minutes: a slight broadening of her hips, a swelling below her waist. I went across the room and saw the brush go loose in her hand. She scarcely moved as she waited. I put my arm around her waist and my face into the back of her neck. Her hair was soft against my cheek and I felt the warmth of her, and of that other life, my child, under my hand.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Can you even ask?’
‘Forgive me,’ I said.
‘It is forgiven.’
I turned her around and lifted her face in my two hands. ‘You do not know what there is to forgive. Sarah, I have to tell you …’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘In Ireland.’
She threw down the brush in frustration, tears trimming her lashes. ‘Do you think I do not know what happened in Ireland? Do you think I do not know you? When I see you sometimes, caught in one of your dark moments, as if the world you see is not the one I look upon, I know you have gone there in your mind.’
‘You are wrong, Sarah, I seldom think of it, still more seldom of …’ I stopped.
‘Of her?’ she finished for me.
‘Sarah …’
‘Don’t, Alexander! I know, I have always known, that there was a woman. But that was before, before you ever asked me to be your wife, before I became your wife or bore your child. I can live with that, as I must, but I will not hear you speak her name.’
I took hold of her wrists in my hands. ‘It was not love. I knew it then and I know it now, here. I know love, and it is you. It is you, Sarah. And the fear of losing you to another man has almost driven me to despair, to seek refuge in the worst of myself.’
‘You will never lose me to another man, can you not see that? Please, Alexander, let us leave the names of others unspoken, in their own places, and let us be what we are, here.’
I held her to me, held my child to me, and if I could have done, I would have built a wall around our house, stone upon stone, so high that none could breach it.
We arrived early at William’s house. I left Sarah with Elizabeth and went up to the parlour. The fire there had been lit for cheer as much as warmth, and William and the doctor were seated at either side of it, bent over a gaming board where William’s walrus ivory chessmen were locked in combat with one another. Neither man looked up as I came into the room. ‘Your bishop is in peril, Doctor,’ I said.
‘The bishops will be in more than peril if the king doesn’t stop his meddling,’ retorted the doctor, swiftly capturing William’s rook with an unremarked pawn.
William shook his head, smiling. ‘I am too trusting, but tomorrow night, I will be ready for you, Doctor.’
‘We shall see, we shall see,’ said the older man. Still he did not look directly at me, merely raising an eyebrow in my direction as he ranged his captives. ‘Sarah is here I hope?’
‘She is,’ I said.
‘And I will have no further cause for regret that I did not drown you at birth?’
‘None, James. I give you my word.’ I saw by William’s face that I had been the subject of some earlier conference between the
two, and that my appearance at the evening’s gathering had been no certainty in their minds.
‘Take a seat, Alexander, and I’ll help you to a glass.’ William went to the French carved oak cabinet in which the best glassware was kept, and produced a bottle of the finest Venetian glass into which he had already decanted what looked to be a substantial claret. He poured out three glasses, and I noticed that until that point, he and the doctor had been drinking ale from his favourite Bartmann jugs. I squinted at the jug in Jaffray’s hand. ‘You know, Doctor, were it not for the beard, I would say that fellow had been modelled on yourself.’
Jaffray held up the jug to his own face the closer to examine it. ‘You may well be right, Alexander, and a good stout drink he holds too. I will sample your claret all the same, William.’
‘That is very good of you, Doctor.’
William stood against the great sandstone over-mantel into which his and Elizabeth’s initials, with the year of their marriage, had been intricately chiselled. Jaffray, of course, sat in the master’s chair, high-backed oak with two stout arms. He took a sip of the wine, and savoured it a moment before speaking again.
‘William has been telling me about the terrible things that have been happening here in the town. The news of Robert Sim’s death reached Banff the very next day, and I and others were sorry to hear it: he was a fine man, and knew his books. I know also that you counted him a friend, both of you, and a friend is a loss not easily made up. But William is concerned, and so am I, that Dr Dun asks too much of you in setting you to look for this killer – that is a job for the town, not the college, especially now with this second murder.’
I sought to reassure him. ‘Dr Dun merely asked me to look into Robert’s life, and matters in the library, in so far as they might affect the college.’
‘And that has taken you already to the grave of another man with his throat cut, and away from home, to Crathes, has it not? To look into the life of a murdered man may well bring you into the path of his killer, and this is not what Sarah needs, not now. You have enough on hand at home, boy; can you not content yourself with that and leave the justice of the realm to those who are called to enforce it?’
Seaton 03 - Crucible of Secrets Page 17