Seaton 03 - Crucible of Secrets

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘How far was she involved in this … “fraternity”?’ asked Jamesone.

  It was a question I had been beginning to wonder about myself. ‘All she knew was that her husband and his friends met in her brother’s old lodge to talk and study together. The rest she has learned since.’

  ‘You believe her?’

  ‘I see no reason for her to have lied about it.’

  Jamesone raised his eyebrows but said nothing more.

  ‘Mathematics and theology leading to alchemy and Cabbala.’ Jaffray sighed heavily. ‘I have never understood why men have endlessly sought God and the right way of living in His world in secret books, arcane symbols, when it is made so freely available to us all, in the one Book.’

  ‘Not all men see so clearly, Doctor. They must always convince themselves that there is something hidden.’

  ‘And they believed the keys to this hidden knowledge were somehow to be found in a stonemasons’ lodge?’

  ‘They are not alone in that,’ said Jamesone, ‘and that is my concern for the three who are left, and for Rachel Middleton.’

  A thought struck me. ‘You too are an adept?’

  The painter smiled and shook his head. ‘Not in the manner of these young men of your fraternity. But I am a painter, a simple craftsman. My first training, like that of any painter, was not in how to paint a duchess’s face, a bowl of fruit or flowers, or, with respect to our host’s impeccable taste, a dead fish, but a wall. Plain and simple. And what gives a craftsman his strength – the protection of his craft from interlopers, untrained charlatans, those who would undermine his living? What gives the craftsman his voice, his public face in burgh and kirk?’

  ‘The guild, of course,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘That’s right, the guild. And yet, there is no painters’ guild.’

  William was beginning to smile. ‘I had forgotten, but I remember now. George is a mason, Alexander. Like the plumbers and the carpenters, the painters are part of the masons’ guild.’

  I stared at him. ‘So you know the secrets of which we speak? You know what it is they are looking for?’

  ‘I know the symbols and the words, I can walk through the house of memory as any mason must do and unlock for myself the meanings of what I find in the rooms of that lodge of the mind. Ultimately, it is the lodge of the mind that holds the secrets of the architects of the pyramid, of the builders of Solomon’s temple. Richard Middleton and his friends may root around in their lodge for many a long year, but they will not find the knowledge they seek there.’

  ‘I think they had begun to,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  There were only four of us in the room now, all good friends, all of whom I would trust with my life. And so I said, out loud, Jachin and Boaz, the Mason Word.

  Jamesone’s face blanched. ‘Alexander, where did you hear that?’

  ‘I found it, written down, hidden away in Robert Sim’s room when I searched it after his death.’

  ‘Do you think he had told the others?’

  ‘No. Certainly neither Richard Middleton nor Patrick Urquhart had had it from him, and as for John Innes – well, I have not been able to ask him.’

  I could see Jamesone’s mind was working away at something. ‘I wonder if he mentioned it to Rachel?’

  ‘She did speak tonight of having heard more of the fraternity’s business from her husband and from Robert than she wished to.’

  Jamesone was pensive. ‘It makes me fear for her. She should be careful to tell no one else that Robert had begun to make her privy to his discoveries, and I think she may need greater protection than her wounded husband can afford her.’

  ‘Is it really so dangerous?’

  ‘I hope to God that it is not. The men of my lodge are good and honest, and hard-working. They tolerate me for my craft’s sake, although I move in circles now that most of my fellow painters in the town do not. But they know that I am a craftsman, and not some gentleman dilettante such as those that have begun to infiltrate the lodges around Edinburgh. They will not like this meddling in their business by this so-called fraternity.’

  My throat was becoming dry. ‘What might they do?’

  ‘A quiet warning, if anything at all, would be in the nature of the men I know. They would have no truck to do with the other things.’

  ‘What other things?’ asked William gravely.

  Jamesone looked in to his wine cup and then set it aside. ‘The punishment promised at the initiation ceremony to those who give away the Mason Word is that they will have their throat cut from ear to ear.’

  NINETEEN

  Scotsmen, Rats and Lice

  It was with a pounding head and a mouth as dry as a haystack in August that I entered the lecture room the next morning. The college well was rank and scaly in the summer months and best avoided. I asked a bursar to bring me a jug of ale from the college brewery, but could not look at it when it came. My enthusiasm for discussing my thoughts on Aristotle’s Ethics or Aquinas’ exposition of them was only marginally less than that of my students, who were buzzing with talk of the hanging that was to take place that day, and the prospects of its being followed by that of their erstwhile tormentor and former regent at the college, Matthew Jack. After struggling through the first page of my lecture notes, I gave up, and set them a proposition to argue amongst themselves instead. I took myself to the back of the room and a place out of the sunlight, where I lay down on a bench behind my scholars and hoped for rest.

  I heard some sniggering from those closest to me. ‘It is the heat,’ I heard one say to another. ‘It is sending them all to the Devil. Not just Mr Jack – may Beelzebub welcome him with open arms – but the rest of them, too. John Innes at the King’s College has gone mad.’

  ‘Mr Innes? The one like a monk? No – he has not the capacity.’

  ‘I tell you he has. I had it from my cousin who is in the first class there: he has barred himself up in his room and shrieks about devils and angels.’

  ‘Do you think it is him?’ hissed another in a loud whisper, clearly thinking I was asleep.

  ‘Who? Mr Seaton?’

  ‘No. Mr Innes.’

  ‘Him what?’

  ‘Killing people. The librarian and that weaver.’

  ‘No,’ came another. ‘It was a doctor. I heard one of the college servants talking about it. Both of them. With a scalpel.’

  ‘Maybe it was Dr Dun!’ More sniggering.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  I hauled myself up and roared at them. ‘One more word of this and you will all be in the tolbooth yourselves. Nicomachean Ethics. Book Five: Justice.’ And I marched up to the front of the class, reinvigorated, and lectured them without pause for the next hour and a half.

  By the time we reached the dinner hall, I think my scholars were as convinced that I was fully as mad as they believed John Innes to be. In the course of ten days they had seen me gradually – or perhaps not so gradually – transformed from a careful and diligent teacher to one who could disappear from the lecture room for hours or indeed days at a time, and on each return to them have become something else: a dejected creature, a misanthrope, a raving drunkard, a disciplinarian of so little cheer that it would have put Matthew Jack to shame.

  ‘You are preoccupied, Alexander,’ said Dr Dun as I took my seat beside him at the top table.

  ‘What? Yes. I think I have not been the best of teachers to my students of late; they deserve better of me, but I am not certain how I can give it.’

  ‘They have not been neglected in your absences – John Strachan has done well by them, and besides, it is well known you had taken your scholars through their courses by the end of May and spent the last month rehearsing with them what they have already been taught.’

  ‘It is not that that concerns me. You have told us often that we regents and professors are in loco parentis to these boys. What has happened here these last days has affected them more closely than I had troubled mysel
f to consider. They know so little about what lies behind Robert’s death …’

  ‘As little as we do ourselves.’

  ‘Yes. And they fill their ignorance with wild imaginings – and who can blame them?’

  ‘Not I,’ sighed Dr Dun, ‘and not some of their parents either. Look around the tables.’

  I did so, properly, for the first time in days. The tables occupied by the lower classes were much more sparsely occupied than was usual.

  ‘Their parents have been calling them home. It is perhaps a blessing – although not a blessing we would have looked for – that Robert’s murder and the derangement of Matthew Jack have occurred now, so close to the vacation. Had so many of our students begun to desert us in the middle of the year, we might have had to close our doors, and as we know from what has happened in the German lands, colleges and universities so forced to close their doors might never open them again.’

  I knew it well. ‘I have become too concerned with things that have happened outside these walls to the detriment of those still within them.’

  ‘The fault is mine,’ said the principal. ‘I have asked too much of you, these last weeks, and our friend Dr Jaffray is of the same opinion.’

  ‘Jaffray?’

  ‘I spent a pleasant hour with the doctor this morning. Your health—’ the principal’s hesitation as he searched for the last word suggested to me that ‘state of mind’ was more likely to have been Jaffray’s phrase – ‘is of great concern to him.’

  ‘It need not be,’ I said. ‘Besides, he shouldn’t bring his fears over me to you – you have enough to occupy yourself here and at the King’s College without taking thought over me.’

  Dr Dun smiled. ‘But I do, Alexander. I value the counsel of my old friend as much now as I did twenty years ago. If James Jaffray brings his concerns over you to me, then I am duty bound to listen to him.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We can do nothing more for Robert now, and we must leave the burgh and the forces of the law to deal with what does not concern us. The matter of Malcolm Urquhart has been happily resolved by your visit to Crathes. I am grateful for what you have done in attempting to uncover Robert’s killer and to protect the college interest, but it has gone far enough, too far for you.’

  ‘Dr Dun,’ I protested, ‘I wish to finish what I have—’

  He held up a hand to silence me. ‘No. You are finished with it. See to your scholars. See to your health and to your family.’

  ‘But …’ I was almost at a loss. ‘This afternoon I am to go with Jaffray to the King’s College to see John Innes. John has not been well, he—’

  Again he stopped me. ‘Jaffray has told me all about it. I am Mediciner of the King’s College, and I have known that boy for years. I am going with Jaffray to see him this afternoon. You are to stay here and to concern yourself no further in these matters.’

  I opened my mouth but was not permitted to speak.

  ‘Look to your students, Alexander.’

  His meal scarcely begun, Dr Dun wiped his hands on his napkin, pushed back his chair and, to the mild curiosity of the rest of the teachers ranged along the table, left.

  It was two o’clock before I had gone round my whole class and checked their notes of the morning’s lecture. I took time to discuss with each of them, in small groups of two or three, any misunderstandings they might have. By the time I released them to go to their chambers and study what they had learned I felt that at least some of the damage caused by my erratic behaviour of the last week had been set right, and I promised myself that I would scrape together whatever Sarah and I could spare to provide a supper for them in the graduation week. Checking that at least one of my fellow regents would be remaining in the college for the afternoon, I passed out of the gates, telling the porter that I was going home, and should be returned before five o’clock. Once out of sight of the college gates, I turned not right, to the close that would take me to my own home, but left, and cut through a long vennel joining Netherkirk-gate to the Shiprow. From there, safely hidden from the view of any gateman who still might have an interest in me, I strolled casually up to the Castlegate and across to the tolbooth, where my college robes gained me access, without over-much questioning, to the cell in which Matthew Jack was held.

  The place was strangely silent today. On my previous, rare, visits to this stinking place, usually to stand caution for a student caught with a harlot or in a drunken brawl, the grille at every cell door had been filled by the sneering or broken faces of those behind it whose manacles gave them the freedom still to walk. Today, there were no faces at the doors, no snarling insults or desperate pleas for money or for justice, instead just the occasional cough, groan, or shuffle of feet and clink of chains against the stone floor.

  ‘What has happened?’ I asked the guard who was leading me up the turnpike to Jack’s cell.

  ‘They are always like this on these days. Gives us a bit of peace for a while.’

  ‘What days?’

  ‘What days?’ He turned to me in astonishment, his lamp swinging above me on the narrow stair as he did so. ‘The hanging days.’

  I had forgotten. The servant of a landward laird had been hanged for the murder of another. ‘Makes them all realise that God’s judgement is closer than they thought. They soon forget, mind you. Not your fellow, though. God’s judgement is never off his lips. I’ve slept through shorter sermons in the kirk, and better ones, too, than I’ve heard from that quarter. The other prisoners would rather hunker down six to a cell than share one with him.’

  We had come to a small door at the end of a short corridor on the topmost floor of the tolbooth. As he pulled back the bolt the guard said, ‘We have him bound to the gad, hand and foot, but I’ll stay in with you if you like. I wouldn’t be alone two minutes with that fellow for all the harlots in Aberdeen.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I have no fear of Matthew Jack.’

  The man looked at me a moment as if I had said I had no fear of the Devil, then shrugged his shoulders and told me to shout for help if I needed it, before turning back down the stairs and taking with him his lamp.

  I pushed open the door carefully, and took a moment before stepping into the place to let my eyes adjust to what light there was. I had never been this far up the tolbooth before. The smell as I had come up the stairs had been bad enough – it had worsened with every step that took me from the doors at the bottom and the occasional draught of less putrid air it allowed in from outside – but what assailed my senses now was rank beyond belief. The straw piled on the floor was thicker than any I had seen in other cells, caverns, dungeons in this place or elsewhere – so deep my foot sank to ankle level when I first stepped upon it and when I lifted it again, such filth clung to my boot that I would not have expected had I stood in a drain in the tanners’ yard. I realised that the extra depth of the straw here was not for the comfort of the prisoner, but because the guards never cared to spend long enough in this cell to lift it. The worst of the smell came from a pot in the corner that had been overturned to send its noxious contents seeping into the sludge on the floor. I could barely hear the screeching of the gulls in the marketplace below for the buzzing of flies. And in the middle of it all, looking more as if he belonged there than any other human creature could have done, was Matthew Jack.

  I swallowed, trying not to gag on the air as I readied myself to speak. But Jack was accustomed to his own surrounds and needed no such preparation. He greeted me with a guttural laugh.

  ‘Alexander Seaton. Patrick Dun’s lackey. What pleasure it must give you to see me here.’

  ‘To see a man reduce himself to a level worse than the beasts? You have brought yourself here, and it gives me no pleasure to see that, for I know what has been suffered by good men and women, boys too, that brought you to this pass. I would see you walk free on the streets and spare them the harm you have done them.’

  ‘Harm? You speak of harm? I have been cleansing them, cleansing them of their loosene
ss, their backsliding and depravity. You look on me and see me in filth, but I am clean, Seaton, clean. It is this town, your college, that crawl with dirt, that suppurate with the sores of sloth and immorality. You stand there in your regent’s gown, as if that will protect you from the infection, the noxious spores that pass through the air from one to another of the citizens of this cesspit. Look at your fine collar the whore your wife thinks so white – the smudges and smears of the Devil’s fingers have wrung it out for her. Feel the cut of the good black stuff of your jacket. It crawls with the beasts of the midden you walk through every day. The worms are in your skin, they penetrate your skull and feed on the rot of your mind. Do you feel them writhing there, Seaton? Do you long to gouge them out?’

  It was only with the greatest effort that I could keep my fingers from going to my head to relieve the intense itch that had started to creep under my hair.

  ‘You are sick, Jack,’ I said.

  ‘Then take care you do not become infected.’ He turned his head from me and began to pick at a sore on his arm. After a moment, he looked up. ‘Still here, Seaton? What do you want?’ Then a slow smile spread across his face. ‘I know what you want. You want to know what I know.’

  I pushed the door to behind me, and took a step further into the cell, provoking creatures in the matted straw to scuttle to an even darker corner. ‘Yes, Matthew, you are right. I want to know what you know about Nicholas Black.’

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise – genuine or otherwise, I could not tell. ‘Nicholas Black? Now why should I know anything about Nicholas Black?’

  ‘Because you know about everyone, every Scot who went to Europe from the time you left Edinburgh to the time you appeared here. Fifteen years later. No one has been safe from your insinuations, your sly hints as to knowledge of their past. Everyone knows that there is not a university town in reformed Europe that has not seen you in its lecture halls, had you in its kirk.’