‘I have no interest in their secrets,’ I said. ‘Go on.’
‘I comforted her and reassured her as well as I could, and sent her home to you, although all I wanted was to beg her to leave this place with me, and go far from it and start, ourselves, again. Had it not been for your children, I would have done so, and I believe she would have come with me, but for them.’
‘You are wrong, Carmichael,’ I said. ‘My wife loves me and will never leave me for any other man.’
He shrugged. ‘It is your right to believe that. But on that day, for a moment, I felt she was mine.’ He waited. ‘But then she was gone. I had promised to warn you off the masons, but she had also left me knowing all about their lodge, and from my childhood memories of what my father had told me, I knew I would find Hiram’s grave not far from the door. That night I went back down into town. I went into the streets where the weavers and dyers and their like live; keeping my hat down low and my collar up, I looked in the alehouses and taverns where I thought they might be found. Eventually I saw him – Bernard Cummins. I waited; when he left the alehouse I followed after him and watched him to his door. All that night I did not sleep, for I knew that he might at any time expose me. Had it not been for the death of Robert, I could have passed the name of Nicholas Black off as a youthful student prank, indulged in to while away an hour or so in a Leiden inn, but I knew it was too late for that. And so the next evening I went down into town again, as soon as my classes were over. I waited for Bernard Cummins to return to his lodgings and approached him in the street. I apologised for my strange behaviour of the previous day, excusing it by saying I had mistaken him for a passing acquaintance from the past who had more than once importuned me for money. I invited him to come and take his dinner with me, and talk over old times.’
‘You walked openly with him to the King’s College?’ I could scarcely believe the pair had not been seen.
Carmichael shook his head. ‘No, I could not do that. But there are enough narrow lanes and dark vennels, even at this time of year, between his lodging in Futty Wynd and the Middletons’ house, that I could manage it without attracting undue notice.’
‘You told him the Middletons’ house was yours?’
‘I told him I rented rooms in the lodging in their back-land, but that my landlady was a harridan who would allow of no company, and so we slunk silently down by the shadow of the wall to the lodge. I take some comfort in the knowledge that he never knew he was to die; I had cut his throat from behind within a moment of us rounding the corner to the lodge, and he was in Hiram’s grave not two minutes later. I was sorry for it, because I remembered our evening at the Fir-Cone in Leiden then, and it had been one of good cheer.’
And now between us there was silence; he stood before me, the murderer of two men, the usurper of the name and inheritance of another, the man who might well have taken my wife from me. A good man; a decent man, as any who could get me to listen had told me. But all that was gone. I remembered what he had done to Rachel Middleton in his search for the book he now held in his hand. I did not know if I was looking at Nicholas Black or at Andrew Carmichael, and I did not know what the man leaning against the window across the room from me would do. I glanced down at the box of medical instruments. His eyes followed mine.
‘I have no weapon. And despite all, I have not the taste for blood.’
‘What will you do?’ I said. ‘Will you come back with me, to the magistrate? Will you give yourself up?’
He shook his head. ‘I have lived two men’s lives. It is my choice how I should end them, how I should prepare myself to meet damnation.’
‘You cannot know—’ I began.
‘Oh, I know. One of the elect would not do as I have done. I am destined for the flames, and it is time that I made myself ready.’
Only then did I notice that he had pulled an unlit candle from a nearby sconce on the wall. He took flint from his pouch, struck it and brought the flame to life.
‘We have no need of light, Andrew,’ I said carefully. ‘The sun is still high in the sky.’
‘And I have no mind to see it set.’ He laid the flickering candle on the ledge beside him, picked up the book of theses and held it open towards the flame.
‘Destroying the book will not destroy the truth, you know,’ I said.
‘Perhaps not, but it will be a long time before another volume such as this finds its way to the Marischal College library, and by the time it has, I and all who knew me will be long gone.’
‘I will have to tell them, you know, Andrew.’
‘No, you will not.’
‘Andrew …’
‘Do not be frightened, Alexander: no doubt your journey through the flames will be one of earthly torment only, and not the thing of eternity that awaits me.’
I threw back my chair and lunged at the burning book in his hands, but he was too quick for me, and had the flame at the edge of a window drape before I could reach him. The heat of the summer sun had left the thing as dry as tinder, and the whole was engulfed in a moment. I watched in horror as Carmichael swept books from their shelves and set alight as many as he could. The keys to the library door were on the window ledge where he had set them after he had first come in. I tried to reach them but a second drape caught light and barred my path.
‘Andrew, for the love of God, the keys!’ I shouted, as the smoke from the flames began to obscure him from my view.
‘I am sorry,’ he shouted, coughing, ‘her life will be better without you.’ His voice failed and he stumbled into the glass cabinet to his right and sent it crashing to the ground, knocking over another as it did so. I tried to clamber over the shattered fragments, but already the books that had been flung from its doors were taken up in the conflagration and formed between me and the door a barrier of fire. I tried to shout again, above the noise of splintering glass and roaring flame, but the smoke that stung my eyes scorched my throat and filled my lungs. I could scarcely see, still less speak, and the last thing I did see before the black fumes overtook me entirely was the sight of Andrew Carmichael, or Nicholas Black as I now knew him to be, standing against the window of the Marischal College library, utterly aflame. As I passed into the nothingness he was beckoning me to, I thought the smoke had already begun to warp my mind, for I believed I heard a familiar voice call my name and an unholy cursing as William Cargill crashed through the library door.
Epilogue
The air was the cleanest I had ever breathed. I could feel it course slowly through my body, purifying as it went, reaching to where the very furthest tentacles of smoke had reached and making all clean again.
‘There are those who believe fire to be the most potent of all the elements, the greatest agent of change, but I have long held it inferior to air.’
‘You are better versed in these matters than I, James, and I will not argue with you.’
‘That indeed will be a pleasant alteration between us.’
I allowed him his small note of triumph, for although he had made little enough of it, I knew, had I paid greater attention to him, confided more in him, I would not have been in need of the cleansing mountain air we now breathed.
‘The map over your mantel-shelf will serve as a reminder to me, should I need it, of your greater wisdom, Doctor; I will take care not to dismiss your concerns again.’
‘What you call my greater wisdom is nothing more than an inclination to pay attention to people, Alexander, to listen. You paid enough attention to Andrew Carmichael – or Nicholas Black, as we must now call him – but it was all of the wrong sort. You looked at him, and try as you might, all you could see was the man whose aim was to take your wife from you. You listened to him, but you had no interest in the half of what he said. Whatever man you thought you looked upon was the creature of your own fears, and those had little to do with Nicholas Black. Had you listened to what he said that night at William Cargill’s dinner-table, instead of worrying that he sat too close to Sarah, that burn
on your leg might never have been.’
‘It was not so much that, by then,’ I said. ‘The truth is I think I had begun to like him myself. To see him come into his own in company, revel in telling a tale, was something new to me and I believed I was seeing the man he had hidden from me because I had never given him the chance to reveal him to me until then.’
‘And you were probably right. His tale of his eventful night on the island of Texel was indeed amusing, and would have given me no pause for thought other than as something I could later relate myself for the entertainment of others, had he not claimed earlier in the evening for the whole company to hear, that he had never been as far north as Gouda. Now, if there be any short-comings in that map I bought from Melville – and I am minded to invite Straloch to Banff to take a look at it – on one thing it is clear: the island of Texel is well to the north of Gouda.’
‘If you had not bought that map …’ I said.
The doctor swatted away a fly and shook his head. ‘It was not just the map. It was something else he said that I thought little further on until you started rambling about Nicholas Black and Franeker before you took off for the library from Paul Ogston’s graduation dinner.’
‘I had not realised that I had not mentioned him to you,’ I said.
‘You had mentioned the name, but told me nothing else about him.’ The doctor raised a wry eyebrow in my direction. ‘We have of late had other topics of conversation, if you recall. But after you rushed off from the table that day, I did ask William about Nicholas Black, as you had told me to, and he explained to me about the weaver’s letter to his sister and the Scots student of the name studying at Franeker. Well, a month or so ago, it was my misfortune while dining with Lindsay at Edzell to be seated at dinner next to the most boastful fellow, a physician from Angus. No doubt her ladyship thought she was doing me a good turn, in seating me next to one of my own profession with whom I might converse on acquaintances and places in common.’
‘And this was not the case?’
The doctor snorted. ‘It might have been, had I been able to get a word in edgeways, but the fellow commandeered the whole conversation to himself. There was hardly an open eye around the table by the time the first three courses had been dealt with, I’ll tell you.’ I had to suppress a smile at the image of my old friend thwarted of his own expected audience. ‘Anyhow, while I was myself still awake and listening to him, he was discoursing on what he imagined to be his linguistic expertise, and shared with the company a shibboleth by which he claimed it was possible to tell a true Frisian from an impostor.’ Jaffray looked at me meaningfully. ‘It concerned the drinking of tea.’
‘Of tea?’ And then I remembered, the curious phrase Carmichael had uttered when the subject of that drink had come up at William Cargill’s table. ‘Butter, bread, tea, spice …’ I began, failing badly.
But Jaffray had it exact. ‘“Buyter en Brae en t’zijs goe Huwsmanne spijs.” You see? You do not listen. Franeker is at the heart of the West Frisian lands. When I heard that the Nicholas Black whom you sought had been a student there, Andrew Carmichael came immediately to mind, and when William and I cast around the table in Bella Watson’s yard and saw that he, too, had slipped away we knew we had to find you. Your mumbling to me about the Franeker theses directed us, thank God, to the library.’
And there they had found smoke billowing from the shattered windows and the door locked. William’s lawyerly occupation had deprived him of little of his strength, and the doctor’s determination had taken twenty years from him. Between them, they had managed to batter down the door. In the brief moments they had before the smoke threatened to overcome them, too, they had found my body, all consciousness and almost all life gone from it, and dragged me to the air. The vehemence of the inferno had forced them back, although William had tried, once, to advance into the flames towards the blazing figure he saw stumble further into the fire.
‘He did not want it,’ they had told me when finally I had come round and been able to make some sound issue from my scorched throat. ‘Andrew Carmichael, Nicholas Black, whatever you will call him, he did not want to be saved. He chose his death, the flames rather than the hangman’s rope.’
Jaffray let me indulge my thoughts a few minutes then brought a small flask from the bundle he carried with him. ‘Here, swallow some of this. It will do you more good than all that sage water Sarah has been pouring down your throat.’
‘She said it would heal the scorching, and indeed, I scarcely feel it now.’
‘No doubt, but it is a foul enough thing for a man to stomach.’ He unstoppered the flask. ‘Drink down some of that instead and then I will take you to the men who make it, the true alchemists who turn water into gold.’
I did as I was bid, and followed my old friend as he led me onwards on the mountain path, through the clean air that he promised would restore my body and strengthen my soul. I promised myself with every step that I would return a different man from him who had left Aberdeen in the doctor’s care; that I would prove Andrew Carmichael wrong, that there would never come a day in my wife’s life when anyone could say she would have been better off without me.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Aberdeen University Special Libraries and Archives and Aberdeen City Archives for allowing me to consult materials in their care. I would like to thank Craig Russell and Dr Jamie Reid Baxter for their advice on matters Frisian, and most particularly to thank Professor Goffe Jensma of the Department of Frisian Language and Culture, University of Groningen, for his help with my queries on the Frisian language in the seventeenth century.
Anyone wishing to read further into the early history of Freemasonry in Scotland should consult Professor David Stevenson’s The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590-1710 (CUP, 1988). The classic account of the Rosicrucian phenomenon is Frances Yates’ The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Routledge, 1986). The painted ceilings of Crathes Castle can still be admired in that property, now run by the National Trust for Scotland, their symbolism explained in Michael Bath’s Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland (NMS, 2003).
Keep reading for a taster from S.G. MacLean's next novel,
The Devil's Recruit
Prologue
Aberdeen, early November, 1635
The ship lay behind him, a silent hulk of black against the greying sky. Darkness would fall and he would go out amongst the streets, down the alleyways, in to the inns and the alehouses and find those who had something to run from. They would listen, eyes brightening, as others offered them a dream of something else, tales of something better, the adventure of being a man. They would marvel at the possibility of wealth, titles, land in places they had never seen. Keeping to his shadows, quietly, he could promise them a nightmare beyond their imagining: brutality, starvation, disease, the corrosion of anything good they might once have been, the certainty of death. But they would not listen to him – they did not look at him. Often, they did not even see him.
The recruiting sergeant rarely left the ship unless it be under cover of darkness, and it wanted a little time yet for that, and yet he was drawn, in spite of all he knew to be wise, away from the hidden places of the quayside and up the well-remembered lanes and vennels behind Ship Row and in to the heart of the town.
The college roofs rose up ahead of him, behind the houses that fronted the Broadgate. The scholars that had their lodgings in the town were hastening to them, little sign of being tempted astray to an inn or alehouse and away from their hearth and their landlady’s table – however mean those might be. Gowns were pulled tight, caps held to heads and oaths against the elements uttered. Few remarked upon him. One or two children, late already for their supper, darted across the street and down narrow pends and closes, laughing in strange relief as they disappeared from sight. Women on their own quickened their step. Those in twos or threes cast him swift glances and murmured in low voices to their companions as they hurried on. He stopped in the shad
ow of a forestair jutting out in to the street. ‘Changed days,’ he thought, ‘that I should stand here unnoticed.’ But the observation was a reassurance to one who sought obscurity. Gradually, the bustle at the college gates grew to nothing, and the doleful ringing of the bell above St Nicholas Kirk told the porter that it was time they were closed against the darkness that had now fallen. Three nights he had waited thus; three nights he had been disappointed. He was on the point of giving the thing up as lost, a lesson from fate, a message from the God with whom he had so long ago parted company, when the billowing form of a solitary man in the gown of a regent of the Marischal College emerged on to the street. The figure called something to someone behind him, and the gates were hastily drawn to against the growing turbulence of the night.
The recruiting sergeant held his breath, scared almost to move. The voice, it was the voice, he knew it, and by a trick of the years it called to something in him that he had thought long dead. At this distance he could discern no grey in the hair, no line on the brow, and as the other crossed the Broadgate and disappeared down the side of the Guest Row, he knew it was the very walk. Even after all these years, there could be no doubt: it was Alexander Seaton.
The stranger pulled his cloak tighter round him and turned back in the direction of the quayside and the ship. It was growing colder, and it had been enough. There was time yet, and he had other business to attend to tonight.
ONE
Downies' Inn
The place was as full as I had seen it in a long while, and worse lit than was its wont, the poor light from cheap tallow candles doing more to mask the dirt ingrained in every bench, every corner, than the landlady’s cleaning rag had ever done. A sudden, noxious warmth hit me, of steam rising from damp clothing mingled with the usual odours of long-spilt ale and burnt mutton. I shouldered my way through a knot of packmen and chandlers to the hatch from which Jessie Downie dispensed only bad ale or sour wine. Just before I reached it, there was a small commotion to my left as four of Peter Williamson’s scholars bolted from a bench in the corner and out of the back door of the inn.
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