Seaton 03 - Crucible of Secrets

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘You misrepresent me, Seaton.’

  ‘Do not belittle yourself, Jack. No one that has returned here from the continent has escaped the poison of your innuendo.’

  ‘Oh, I do not belittle myself – you have misunderstood me, Mr Seaton. You talk of fifteen years. A minor detail, but inaccurate. After I graduated from the town’s college in Edinburgh and set sail for Danzig, I was away from Scotland thirteen years. True though, those thirteen years I took note of everything, everything, there was to be known of my fellow countrymen abroad. Not simply those that were there when I was, but those who had gone before me and left something of their story behind them. And there were so many.’ He laughed to himself and then caught me with his direct look. ‘You know what the Poles say, don’t you, Seaton? About finding Scotsmen, rats and lice the world over? Well, every louse-ridden inn I stopped at, every barn I slept in that had rodents scuttling in its rafters, had a story for me of some fellow Scot who had been there before me. For years, Seaton. Years.’ Such was the venom in his voice now that he almost spat the last words. ‘Our sainted principal, Dr Dun – I could tell you of him at Heidelberg.’

  I sought to forestall his malice. ‘Dr Dun only stayed a very little while at Heidelberg.’

  He leered through the dim light. ‘Have you ever wondered why, Seaton? And your dear, dear friend Dr Jaffray – so tragic that he could never father a child on his wife, when there is more than one bastard in France with the look of a Banff physician in his eye.’

  ‘You lie.’ My mouth was dry and the words would hardly come from my throat.

  ‘Do I? Ask him. You are so well acquainted with the sons of whores yourself, it should give you much to talk about.’

  I thought I might kill him. Had he not been bound, hand and foot to the iron gad that ran the length of the room, I might have killed him. Instead I walked to the one small aperture in the wall, blocked by two iron bars, that allowed a breath of air, a glimpse of light into the place. I gripped one of the bars, my fingers so hard and fast around it that my nails cut in to my own palms.

  ‘Tell me about Nicholas Black,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  He affected an airy disappointment. ‘Oh? You do not wish to hear of the associations of our venerable advocate, William Cargill, so respectable now? Or of the pastimes of Andrew Carmichael at Breslau, Frankfurt and elsewhere, before he took ship for Aberdeen, to practise his continental manners on your wife …’

  Before I knew I had moved, my hands were round his throat. ‘Tell me about Nicholas Black,’ I said again, ‘or I swear before God I will strangle you with my own two hands and save the hangman a job. What do you know of Nicholas Black?’

  He managed to make some sound escape his throat that suggested he would co-operate, and I loosened my grip enough to let him speak. It was a moment before he could. ‘All right, all right, I will tell you.’

  I let go his neck and went to stand in front of him. ‘Well?’

  He put a manacled hand to his throat and rubbed where my fingers had left their imprint. He swallowed and it gave me some pleasure to see that it gave him pain.

  ‘It was only once, at Rotterdam. I had gone there to hear the minister preach on—’

  ‘I am not interested in the sermon. Tell me about Nicholas Black.’

  Jack gave one more meaningful rub to his neck. ‘All right. Let me think then. It was eight, no, nine years ago. I had left Leiden and was making my way down through the Low Countries to Paris. While I was in Rotterdam I went by the Scots factor’s office, to send some letters back to Edinburgh and to see to a transfer of funds. The factor’s office was thronged with Scots booking passages home, or arriving and waving around their letters of commendation, seeking to find others who might be travelling their way. Nicholas Black was there. I caught his name as one who had given up his place on a ship bound for Leith, and was ready to sell his passage to another. A young physician returning from Montpellier paid him well for his place.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Black?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Like one who did not need the money. The young physician was clad in threadbare robes and patched breeches, while Black was finely dressed: he should have given up his place for free.’

  I almost spat in exasperation. ‘Not his clothes, man – his hair, his eyes, his stature.’

  ‘Ah.’ Jack paused so infuriatingly that I thought I might set my hands to his throat again. He caught the look in my eye and thought better of his play-acting. ‘He was of middling height. Small, perhaps, but of stocky frame. Fair hair, cut short, and a close-trimmed beard. As to his eyes, I cannot tell you. We were not so close as I would have noticed.’

  ‘His age?’

  ‘He would be yours now, though better worn.’

  I whirled the description through my mind, but it could have been anyone or no one. ‘Have you ever seen this man in Aberdeen?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘And the physician who bought his place?’

  ‘Never. And before you ask it, I do not know his name.’

  ‘Where did Black go after he gave up his passage?’

  ‘I heard him laugh and say it was to Franeker. A suitable place, no doubt, for a rich man’s son. Known for the licentiousness of its students. There were riots among them a year later. No doubt he was amongst them.’

  I saw now that Jack was reverting to his favoured pastime of malicious speculation, and that I would get little else of use from him. But there was one more thing I wished to know.

  ‘And you, where did you go then?’

  He raised his chin, a hint of triumph glinting in his eye. ‘Surely your good friend Dr Middleton has told you that.’

  ‘To Paris,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed. Middleton and his associates had no time for the acquaintance of one such as I. But I returned their gracious friendship, in kind.’

  ‘You accused them of witchcraft.’

  He affected a hurt expression. ‘Indeed, I did not. But imagine my surprise a few months after my arrival to hear rumours of a secret brotherhood come to the city, travelling in disguise. A Rosicrucian fraternity. Now, the good citizens of Paris did not like the sound of agents of the dark arts moving around their city in disguise. They began to fear very greatly what evils the sorcery of such agents might procure. I felt it only my duty to inform them that in their midst, a practising physician, and one following the alchemical practices of the order, was one who had openly professed himself a Rosicrucian in Heidelberg several years before. That the citizens of Paris did not like this, and that your friend Dr Middleton decided to flee rather than persuade them to his case, is none of my affair.’

  It dawned on me then that Jack knew nothing. He spoke only in malice and built great edifices of vitriol and innuendo from the few scraps of information he could scramble together. And he had been doing this for years. I had been wasting my time, and I told him so. This time, a look of real hatred replaced the habitual sneer. ‘I know nothing? I know things people would not have me know. You think alchemy is the only unnatural practice Richard Middleton indulges in?’

  His laughter followed me as I went to the door and shouted for the guard. Even after the door had been bolted behind me, I could still hear him. ‘You will be sorry, Seaton. You and your college and this whole accursed town – you will be sorry you did not listen.’

  Once down the stairs and out at last of the tolbooth, I leant against the wall and took lungsfull of air. Never had the air of the Castlegate, with its mixed odours of seaweed, fish, spices and cheeses, vegetables warming in the afternoon sun, and the constant throng of people, tasted so clean and sweet. I pushed my way through to the apothecary’s shop and bought a packet of lavender which I crushed in my hands and rubbed all over my skin and clothes. And then I went home, to try to wash away the traces of the dirt, the infection that was Matthew Jack.

  TWENTY

  The Devil’s Angel

  Dr Dun was not in his us
ual place in the dining-hall for supper, and I did not see him return to the college until I was leading my scholars into the common school for evening prayers. His shoes were dusty and his face flushed, and I guessed he was not long returned from his visit with Jaffray to John Innes at the King’s College. I tried to move quietly towards him as the youngest bursar read from the first book of Kings, telling of the building of Solomon’s temple, and Hiram’s casting of its pillars. Where, where in the Word did it speak of secret knowledge in these pillars? Nowhere – a distraction, an invention of man. I had begun to wonder if that was what all this talk of the masons’ lodge was – a distraction, a stone that instead of revealing the truth, was placed to obscure it.

  ‘Well, Alexander,’ said the principal as I reached him by the door, ‘this afternoon has passed without incident, I hear. Perhaps our college life is returning to what it should be.’

  ‘It can hardly do that, while Robert’s killer might still walk amongst us.’

  ‘No,’ he conceded, ‘but as you yourself have said, over-much dwelling on the events of the last week is not good.’

  ‘You have seen John Innes?’

  He pursed his lips. ‘I have, and it is not a sight such as I hope to see again within the walls of either the King’s College or this one.’

  ‘He is no better?’

  ‘I do not know how bad his condition was when last you left him, but it can hardly have been worse than what Jaffray and I found today. It should have been dealt with before now, long before now.’

  His tone left no doubt that he held me complicit in the state John Innes had been allowed to fall into, and I could argue nothing in my defence: all my interest in John had been in what he could tell me regarding Robert Sim. Had I gone to him in any other circumstances and found him as I had done, I would not have left off until I had seen him get the help he evidently needed. I struggled for a response that would not come. The porter brought some message and it was too late, the principal was gone.

  It was after eight by the time I left the college, but I was not ready to go directly home. Instead, I let my steps take me down to William’s house, where I found him by the empty hearth in his study, deep in conversation with Jaffray. The doctor looked weary, and something in William’s face told me he was glad to see me.

  ‘Alexander, we had not looked for you tonight.’

  ‘I wanted to speak with the doctor here before I went home, to ask after John Innes; the principal told me little, other than that he was in a very bad state.’

  ‘Take my seat here then,’ said William, ‘and I’ll get you a glass.’ My friend nodded in the direction of a thick brieve lying on the table. ‘I have to look that over before tomorrow. I will be in the parlour. Call upon me before you leave.’

  ‘Tell me what you found,’ I said, as he left and I took his seat opposite Jaffray and filled both our glasses.

  Jaffray took a long drink before he spoke. ‘I have seen many men, too many, near to the end of their wits and beyond it, but few in as bad a state as John Innes. He would not let us in at first, though Dr Dun pleaded and then ordered him too. Andrew Carmichael came, and tried to persuade him, but to no avail. Eventually Carmichael went for another regent and between them they broke the door down. And then the stench, Alexander, the stench – as bad as I have known in the meanest hovel. There had not been a breath of air in the place for days. I do not know when he last ate – Carmichael says the trays he has left at the door the last two days had gone untouched. There was rotting and mouldering food on the floor of the place, flies, maggots. The only water was in a jug of brown stuff, warm and brimming with insects. I think he had taken some ale. The skin was hanging from his bones, and the clothes we took from him were only fit for burning.’

  ‘He let you undress him?’

  ‘He would hardly let us look at him to start with, never mind come anywhere near him. He was shrieking about black magic and agents of the Devil, calling on his angels not to abandon him.’

  ‘The Devil’s angels?’

  Jaffray shook his head and swallowed down more of the wine. ‘No, his own. He had become convinced, we gathered at last, that his every movement was guided by angels, but that they would only talk with him while he was alone. When we got some light in the place we saw scattered everywhere books and tracts on the Cabbala. Symbols, words he thought his angel words were scrawled in ink on the walls, in the dirt on the floor. He thought they would protect him.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From whatever – and he was very clear it was a “what” and not a “who”– had killed Robert Sim. Robert had not followed the Cabbala, had not trusted in the angels you see. They had spoken of it, it would seem, on the morning before Robert’s death …’

  ‘In the library,’ I said. ‘John had been in consulting a work on Vitruvius. I had thought his interest was in architecture.’

  ‘His interest was in everything, and that was the trouble.’ He looked up at me. ‘Your friend John has not had an … eventful life, has he, Alexander?’

  ‘Eventful? No,’ I said, ‘I would not call it eventful.’

  ‘He arrived in the King’s College, Dr Dun tells me, at the same time as you yourself did.’

  ‘Yes, and William too. But I do not follow you.’

  ‘Unlike the rest of you, he has never left it. Now, I know as well as you do yourself, that your fortunes have not always been what they are now, that you have known disgrace and failure. You have lived; you have loved. John has never experienced loss because he has never had love; he has never known failure because he never aimed at success. He has known nothing of the world not bounded by the sea and the two rivers that encompass these two towns of Aberdeen. This fraternity, this study – call it Rosicrucian, call it Hermetic, call it dabbling in the secrets of the masons – call it what you will, it opened doors of wonder and possibility to him. And so he lighted like a sparrow on one topic before flying to the next, trying to encompass it all and in the process understanding very little. The others took seriously their study for that study’s sake, but John believed every word of promise, of the fantasy of the Fama. And then he kept rambling about a book.’

  ‘A book?’

  ‘He was very anxious about it. We could get very little sense out of him. All he would say at first was, “She hasn’t brought the book; she said she would bring the book and she hasn’t brought the book.”’

  ‘Rachel Middleton?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘Eventually we got out of him that Rachel Middleton had been to see him on the day after Robert’s body had been discovered and he had asked her for it. There had been some book Robert had promised to show him, and Rachel had promised she would find it and bring it to him. It was only after we had got Strachan and Carmichael to carry him – for he was not fit to walk – to the Mediciner’s manse …’

  ‘Dr Dun has taken him into his own house?’

  ‘Yes, he did not think it wise to leave him in the college where he might upset the scholars and be a danger to himself.’

  ‘I see. Go on.’

  ‘It was only after we had settled him in the Mediciner’s manse and sent the two others to clear out his lodgings that we could get more sense about this book out of him.’

  ‘What was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Something that Richard Middleton knew of, that Robert had promised to obtain, that would show John Innes the errors of the Fama and its followers, and point him in a better way.’

  ‘I remember now – Patrick Urquhart mentioned it to me when we were at Crathes. He didn’t know the name. Did John tell you what it was called?’

  ‘That I cannot tell you. I doubt the poor soul knows himself. But he is settled now, and will be looked after by Dr Dun and his daughter. She was preparing a decoction of camomile when I left, to calm him. I think in the greater scheme of things, the title of the book is of little importance.’

  ‘I think you are wrong, Doctor.’

  He put down his glass and summoned
up a warning look I knew well. ‘Alexander, if you are even thinking, even thinking of questioning John Innes further on this book, still less trying to find it, I utterly forbid it. Utterly. The boy must be helped to forget this whole episode. If you seek to pursue this matter of foolish books about secret societies, I will personally see to it that Dr Dun allows you no access to John Innes at all.’

  ‘Peace, Doctor, peace,’ I said, laughing. ‘I am not as callous as you evidently think me. John Innes will hear not one more word of this book from my lips. But I fear I must find it out, for I believe it is the book Rachel Middleton went to Melville’s bookshop looking for, on the day she saw Bernard Cummins there. If this book is in some way the connection between the two murders, it may help me track down the killer.’

  The doctor frowned. ‘It is a very slight connection, Alexander.’

  ‘But you will admit it is one?’

  ‘I admit nothing.’ He had roused himself from his earlier weariness. ‘Go to Melville if you must. The man never forgets a book or who bought it. And I will come with you – that way you are less likely to land yourself in trouble.’

  *

  All was in darkness. Four hours of the night before daylight would start to send its specks of grey and blue so that a movement sensed a moment before in the dark would become an object, a man seen.

  He turned the key, locking the door of the lodge behind him. He had wondered, all these days, why they had never thought to ask about that key. So taken up with other matters, they had simply forgotten it. Thank God. His search of the lodge had revealed nothing – he had looked in to every hiding place, every nook they knew about and those they did not, but what he sought was not there. She must have it in the house. Sim must have brought it there. She could not have looked at it yet, of that he was certain, but how long could he trust, believe, that she would not open the volume, turn the pages and find the name that would lose him all he had, and lead him to the hangman’s rope?

  At the other end of the path, the kitchen door was locked, of course. He slipped the chisel from his pocket and wedged its edge between door and jamb. A few moments’ careful work, and he had the thing open, the final splinter startling a rat from the midden and out under the pend gate.