The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by Shona MacLean

  William had guessed, long before Archie himself had, what were my feelings for Katharine. Archie and I had spoken of it for the first and only time on the eve of his departure for the Bohemian Wars. There had been a great feasting and speech-making that night in the town house of the Hays. The great and the good of Aberdeen to burgh and to land had toasted Archie’s family, his valour, his honour and his health, and then toasted them again. Archie and I had been party to many such nights together, but on this occasion I noticed that while he smiled and laughed and joined the toasts, in reality he ate little and drank less, and the smile faded as soon as its recipient turned his or her attention elsewhere. I often wonder now whether Archie knew then that he was going to his death, and that he would not see these faces or the sun set on this town again. The noise of the drinking, the laughing and the music rose, and the light of the fire made faces dance in and out of fleeting shadows. As the company was roaring at a lewd tale of an Edinburgh minister and the wife of a rich Leith merchant, I felt Archie’s hand on my shoulder and he leant towards my ear. ‘Come, Alexander, let us away.’ I do not think anyone noticed us slip out, save Katharine, whose eyes kept count of all I did.

  We made our way down the servants’ stairs and out through the kitchen to the backland. Light from the upper windows kept our feet from misadventure in the courtyard, and we slipped through a side gate into the vennel leading to the Broadgate, away from the house. I did not need to ask Archie where we were going – we had used this route often, to escape the eyes first of his parents, then his tutor, and occasionally of any of the town’s officers who might have come to look for him. In a few moments we were out on Broadgate and headed towards Guestrow in the direction of Maisie Johnston’s house. Maisie Johnston had brewed ale in the burgh for forty years, and there was but a handful of burgesses on the council or the session who could deny in truth that they had ever been carried home, incapable, from her parlour or spirited, half dressed, out of her back door when the session on its rounds knocked at the front.

  The cur in the yard scarcely stirred as Archie knocked on the back door of the house. It knew of old who was permitted to be here and who was not. The mistress herself opened the door to us, and nodding to me, she led the way up the stairs to an apartment I had never been in before. I had not Archie’s taste for whoring, and my previous visits to Maisie’s house had always stopped at the drinking parlour at the foot of the stairs. It was with some relief, then, that I saw the room she opened to us was unoccupied, and that a table had been set with food and drink and two places. Maisie took a coin from Archie, nodded again and left the room without having uttered a word.

  Archie sank down on a settle and let out a huge sigh as the door closed behind her. ‘Thank God, some peace at last.’ This was not his usual style of talking.

  ‘And since when have you sought peace?’ I asked.

  He was silent a long moment. ‘I crave – a kind of peace, an end to the hunting and the dancing and the days of no consequence. I crave a peace that comes when a man finds his place, when he …’ He was searching for the words.

  ‘When he meets his calling?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, as if he had only just now realised it. ‘When he meets his calling.’

  ‘And that is what, in truth, you are sailing to tomorrow? To meet your calling?’

  He unbuckled his cloak and let his hat fall to the floor. ‘Well, it is not here that I will meet it. I cannot play the fool all my life. One day I will have to return here, return to Delgatie, take my father’s place, have charge of the lands, the tenants, the family debt. I will have to fight my neighbours as they will me. I will have my honour slighted and trample on that of others. I will marry me a wife I do not love and father as many bairns on her as she can bring forth into the world. I will die and I will leave my son my debt and my lands and my quarrels, and so it will go on. But, Alexander, do not tell me that is my calling. I cannot believe that God in his heaven does not ask something else of me on this earth.’

  I had known always that there was more to my friend, to the foster brother that he had declared himself to be, than the laughing, drinking, dangerous, adored noble son, but it was a part of himself that he took pains not to reveal, even to me. Tonight though, there was to be no dissembling, for either of us. There would be no mysteries, no unanswered questions, no lack of understanding to carry down the years to our deaths, should we never meet again.

  ‘And do you think, Archie, that in these foreign wars you can do something that you could not do at home? You have no need to prove your honour or your courage here.’

  He poured wine into the glasses, finer work they were than I would have thought to find in this house, and handed one to me. ‘What passes for courage here is but a case of me doing what it is known I shall do, what those who went before me did. It will change nothing. But the wars on the continent have greater stakes than our petty doings on these shores. I have a choice. I do not have to go there, but I choose to go; I wish to play in that great game, and to make a difference.’

  I was silent for a moment, searching for the right words that he would carry with him. ‘I think you are wrong,’ I said.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I think there is a difference to be made here. Changes in the world need not always proceed from kings and their causes. A change in one man, howsoever lowly he be in the beginning, can affect many in the end.’

  His eyes twinkled and a smile played about his mouth, just as it did when he knew he had a better hand of cards than I, or when I had made a careless move on the chessboard. ‘And there you have it, Zander. I could not have put it better myself. As ever, you give yourself away without knowing that you do.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘It is in your words, Alexander, in your words. You speak of a change in one man. That is your calling, not mine. Your mission is to change what men are. Mine is to change what men must face, to put right by force the damage done when those of your vocation have failed. Mine is to seek to alter the destinies of kingdoms from the top, yours from the very smallest component in them. Neither of us will succeed alone, but we may one day come close to one another in our paths.’ He drained his glass and refilled it. ‘Until then, though, there is food, there is drink, and there are women, by God, there are women.’ His face, his mood had reverted to their old selves. His well-accustomed mask was in place; he had told me what he had to and we would not need to touch on the subject again.

  ‘Archie …’

  He looked up briefly from the chicken leg he was gnawing at with some gusto.

  ‘Archie, there is something I have wanted to tell you, to talk to you about before you leave. I …’

  Again the twinkling eyes, the playful smile. ‘You are in love with my little sister.’

  I felt the breath go out of me, and could say nothing for a moment.

  He shook his head and laughed. ‘Oh, Zander, you think me a dullard after all. How many years now? One, two? Half the pretty girls in Aberdeen and Banff have thrown themselves at your feet, while I have had to make do with the wanton ones, and you have shunned them. Twelve months or more ago, my friend, I realised that you were in love. It did not take a great casting about to find the object of your affections. At first I was bemused, I will confess. The idea that my sister could be seen by any man as other women are seen by me had not occurred to me. And then for a while I reasoned that it was simply that she talked more sense than I that led you to seek out her company, but in the end I could not deny what to others had been long obvious.’

  ‘To others?’

  ‘Why, aye. To my mother and to yours.’

  This was horrible; I felt I would vomit.

  ‘Och, Alexander. You have the colour of a dead fish, and much the same expression. Bear up, man. It is not so bad. My mother is a little pleased, your own delighted, and of course your father does not know.’

  ‘God be thanked. And yours?’

  Archie shrugged and reached for
a mutton chop. ‘My father knows, but he trusts my mother in these matters, and Katharine can put her heart where it pleases her.’

  ‘That is your father’s view?’

  He nodded. ‘In as far as he takes a view. He knows you are a good man, and the son of the best of men. He loves his daughter and would see her happy. Trust in me, Zander. I will return from these wars covered in glory. I will marry me that fertile, rich bride of my parents’ choosing. Katharine will be of less consequence than a brood hen. They’ll let her marry whom she wants.’

  ‘I hope to God you’re right.’

  He tossed a mutton bone to his dog, lying between us on the floor. ‘Of course I’m right, Zander. Am I not always right? Besides,’ he sighed as he got up and went to the window, looking out over the blackness that was the burgh at night, ‘my parents love me well, too well. I shall ask them, and she will be yours.’

  As ever, he had run on to a thing decided, leaving little space or time for reason. ‘But what of Katharine? Will she have me?’

  He looked at me, astonished. ‘You do not know? You have never tried her on it?’

  ‘I have never … I did not think … No.’

  He shook his head in amused exasperation. ‘Well, Alexander, on that score I cannot help you. On that you must shift for yourself. But I think you will find a willing listener to your pleas. And then we would be truly brothers, and there would be nothing dearer to my own heart.’ He smiled at the thought and presently his smile took on a look of mischief. ‘And you shall have the kirk at Turriff, or King Edward or Banff, and thunder from the pulpit at my wicked and wanton ways.’ And thus he tried to make light of our parting, thanking God that he would soon be relieved of my ‘lang dreep’ of a face. ‘If ever there was a minister born it’s you, Zander. You will sermonise the life out of them.’

  We laughed, and as the rumble of our laughter receded, we remained in companionable silence a few minutes, he kicking at a log with the toe of his boot, I watching the candle flicker and splutter in the draught. I wondered when next I would see that loved, arrogant, noble face, hear that roaring laugh. I wondered how war would change him, how living out in the world, away from our charmed college life, would change me, how my practice of the word of God would measure against my knowledge of it.

  He broke into my reverie by throwing his unbuckled sword at my feet. ‘Enough of this lovesick nonsense, Mr Seaton. Tonight you will accompany me on my farewells to the “ladies” of Aberdeen. You must not be completely out of practice when you get my poor deluded sister to your bed and I … I must not disappoint the ladies, for tomorrow I sail from our safe harbour, and how they will weep for the Master of Hay!’

  And that night with Archie had been the last of my wild nights. For two years after that, I had immersed myself in my divinity studies. My mother had died in the second winter after my graduation to Master of Arts. She had been ill a long time by then, too ill to travel. My father had not come to hear me present my theses – he had no Latin anyway. For those two years my head was buried so deep in my books, and she and her mother came so rarely into town, that I hardly saw Katharine above a dozen times. I do not recollect what nonsense I spoke to her the first few times. The harder I struggled to say something that would imprint my image on her soul, the worse the nonsense became. But one day, nearly two years after Archie had left, I walked from Old Aberdeen to the house in the New Town. The Hays were preparing to journey back to their fastness for the winter, and I would not see them again for several months. I went to bid them safe journey and farewell, as Lady Hay had asked me to do. We ate a cold dinner and drank the good wine that his lordship did not wish to leave in the house. Lady Hay busied herself with many questions about my studies and my progress and the comfort of my college room. His lordship, wary now of too close a familiarity with matters of religion, plied me for the college gossip. And through it all, as I held my conversations with her parents, my thought, my mind, was all on Katharine. She was a child no longer – had not been these last three years – and the knowledge of her proximity engulfed me.

  The meal ended all too soon. The parting was over quickly. But as Katharine passed me at the entrance, just as she was about to step out onto the Castlegate, a huge careless hound bounded past her to join his master’s train, and toppled her into my arms. I felt the softness of her through her winter furs, and the warmth of her breath against my neck. The heat of it ran through my whole body, and I held her a moment longer than was needed. She steadied herself, and I could see the flush of confusion on her cheeks. She left, with no spoken farewell.

  I did not see her again until the Yuletide festivities at Delgatie. The kirk session might fulminate as it liked, but the laird of Delgatie would have his Christmas feasting, and all his adherents would know his hospitality as if there had never been a reformation of religion in our country. The dancing and the music and the storytelling, more raucous with every new teller, went on for three days, and by the end of the first I had danced, spoken, laughed, sung with Katharine more than I had in the previous two years. At first, in the dancing, the thrill of being able to touch her in full view of all the company without attracting notice or censure almost paralysed me. Her red silk gown, embroidered with golden flowers and tendrils, and the sparkling jewels set in her pale blonde hair, made her seem like a visitor from some winter world of fable. By the end of the evening I did not want to relinquish my hold on her. I could not sleep that night; I could not eat the next morning. I could not pray; I could scarcely read the lesson in the castle chapel. My lord would hunt after breakfast, but I, a student of divinity, was spared the obligation to attend him on his hunt. Katharine’s mother was overseeing the work of the kitchens, in preparation for the night’s feasting to come.

  And so it was that I came upon her on the stairs. No great work of chance, really. In truth, I know I had been looking for her, as I think she had for me. The great turnpike stairway of Delgatie was broad enough for us to pass with ease, but not so broad that we could not somehow contrive between us a slight stumble, a touch. A brush of her shoulder against my chest. ‘Alexander.’ She said my name and called to every part of me. I pulled her close into me and held her as if my very breath depended upon it. We were there a long time. How it was that no one in the castle came upon us I do not know. I feared that if once I should let her go she would be gone for ever, that I would never recapture that moment, that feeling of pure existence, a complete engrafting of my whole self upon the world. But loosen her I did, eventually. She did not run, or evanesce, but took my hand and led me further up the stairs then down the three steps to her own chamber. I had not set foot in the room for years, not since as boys Archie and I had crept in there to steal a doll, which we then set on a stack in the castle yard and burned as a witch. From that day her mother had forbidden us to cross the threshold.

  The room I stepped into had lost many of its childish trappings – it was a lady’s chamber. The wall hangings and bedding were of rich damask. A tapestry showed a knot of berries and flowers. A Venetian looking glass of the finest quality hung on the wall. Katharine took my hand and led me to a settle by the fire. She took rugs from the chest beneath the window seat and cushions from the high, heavily canopied bed. On a table was a box of the deepest ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I had been with Archie when he had bought it for her, the last gift he gave her. I knew it to be filled with her grandmother’s gold and jewels, kept for great occasions; at other times she preferred to wear but a single cream pearl at her neck. Outside, although it was not yet midday, the sky was darkening to a heavy and deep grey, and snow began to fall. A candle flickered under a copper burner, filling the room with a warm incense of winter. She bade me build up the fire and went down to the great hall to fetch wine, cold meat, cheese, nuts and pastries from the side table laid out for those who would take a midday meal. Two or three times she went back and forth between her chamber and the hall, and was remarked by no one. We spent the remainder of the day together, wi
th the rugs wrapped around us by the fire, holding each other and talking of how long we had loved until now, and how we should manage our secret until Archie came home. We could not marry until I had completed my divinity studies, until I had a man’s station in the world. Until Archie came home to plead the case of the friend who was not worthy of Katharine’s hand. We would not speak our love to any other until Archie came home.

  The months passed, the yuletide festivities were long over, I passed my course in divinity to the approbation of all my teachers, and still Archie did not come home. I took up my teaching post in the grammar school of Banff while waiting for a kirk to fall vacant. The kirk of Boyndie in my own presbytery, not four miles from the town of Banff, fell vacant, and I was invited to preach there, to commence on my trials for the ministry. Still Archie did not come home.

  And then the news arrived that he was dead. ‘They will weep for the Master of Hay!’ he had said. And they did weep. The whole of the North wept, a torrent of unceasing grief for the heir to Delgatie. The best and bravest of our youth, the hope and pride of his family, slaughtered in the German mud. I had been with him seventeen years, different as black and white and closer than brothers. I should have been with him then. I should have walked beside his horse through the mud; I should have put my body between his heart and the bayonet that killed him; I should have cradled his head in my lap as he died, leaving me worthless and alone.

  Archie’s family was not to be consoled. His mother cried as if her very heart had been ripped out. His father looked into the long tunnel of death with no light behind him. They wanted me with them every hour of their blackest days. For I was of Archie, no substitute, no second or third best, but of their boy. They looked at me and they saw us climbing trees at seven. They saw us diving into waterfalls at twelve, fishing, hawking, laughing. They saw us ride through the castle gates at fifteen, to King’s College and all the delights of Aberdeen, riding to manhood and to our future. In my eyes they still saw their son’s brilliant smile. In my hearing, my Lord Delgatie begged forgiveness of God for grieving so deeply for his son. The God of Scotland gave children and He took them and His will was not to be questioned. I watched the old man’s heart break.