The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by Shona MacLean

  ‘Raban is near worn out with the thing. Dr Forbes and Dr Baron and the other ministers do not let their pens lie idle on the matter. And I fear there will be much more of it to be heard yet. Anyhow, if I cannot tempt you to join in the pamphlet war, perhaps there is something more pleasant I can show you, if you do not have it already.’ From a shelf behind him he passed me a slim volume in quarto, printed here by Raban only three years ago. Poetical recreations of Mr Alexander Craig of Rosecraig. I thought of Charles Thom in the darkness and squalor of the tolbooth in Banff. What good might it do him to have the volume of Craig in his hand, summoning images of clear rivers, and freedom and love to his mind? The price of the volume was reasonable. My boots could be mended one more time. I arranged with the bookseller for the delivery of my purchases to William Cargill’s house.

  It was only midday, and I was not to meet with Principal Dun at the university until tomorrow. I had one more errand to perform and then the day would be mine to fill as I wished until William returned from his business. I had a letter from the provost in my pocket. It was addressed to George Jamesone, artist, New Aberdeen. I did not need to ask for directions to Jamesone’s house. It was on the Schoolhill, not five minutes from Cargill’s place on the Upperkirkgate. I retraced my route of the morning and in a short time was presenting myself at the street door of the artist’s imposing house.

  I knocked loudly on the door and waited. A pretty face appeared in the turret window two floors above me and then disappeared back into the darkness. I was still looking up when the door in front of me was opened inwards and a stern-faced old man asked me my business. He eyed me with some suspicion – I was not dressed in the usual manner of one who had business with his master, and he did not know me. He said he would fetch the mistress, and made to close the door.

  ‘Willie Park, will you let the gentleman in. Do you not know Mr Seaton?’

  Willie looked me in the eye, and that thoroughly. ‘Indeed I do not. No more does the master, either, I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘Oh, Willie, away and fetch some wine.’

  Willie went shuffling away, grumbling that it was changed days in this house, and what need had the master for a wife?

  ‘And do you not know me, Alexander?’

  My eyes were only slowly becoming accustomed to the dimmer light of the interior. The pretty face that had looked down on me from the turret now emerged, still smiling, from the stairway in front of me. The young woman held in her arms a bundle of swaddling from which emanated a mewling sound. She came right to me and stood, beaming, almost as tall as myself, and glowing with happiness and pride at her bundle.

  ‘I am sorry I do not … and yet …’ and yet something tugged at a memory in my head. A forgotten recess, unlocked by that smile. I looked into the woman’s face and saw the face of a twelve-year-old girl, six or seven years ago, running with her brothers around the garden of the Hays’ town house, throwing chestnuts at myself and Archie until, roaring, we got up to chase them. ‘Isabel? Little Isabel Tosh?’

  She nodded triumphantly. ‘The very same. How are you, Mr Seaton? I am pleased to have you in our home. I had heard you were not … I had not heard of you here in Aberdeen for a long time.’

  ‘No, I have been away a good while. So you are mistress here? You have married George Jamesone.’

  ‘I have, and I have borne him a son, the first of many, pray God.’

  ‘May you always be blessed. I am glad to see you.’

  ‘You remember the gay times with the Hays? Those were good days. Before this awful German war robbed them of their light. And you of your friend. I was as sorry for Archie’s loss as I would be for my own brother. He had such a heart, such a life in him.’ She paused in reflection a moment. ‘And you have business with George. Well, come away in. I will take you to him, and then I’ll get to the cellar myself. The wine will have turned before Willie ever brings it.’

  She led me up the turnpike stair, chattering away and pointing out features of the house. On the third landing she knocked on a door and went before me into the room. I waited a moment until she reappeared and told me her husband would be glad to see me.

  I had never met George Jamesone before, but I had known the painter well by sight in the latter days of my divinity studies in Aberdeen. From his time at Antwerp he dressed very much in the Dutch fashion, and affected a broad-brimmed black hat at all times – I now saw that the rumour that he wore it even while he painted was true. He greeted me with a wave of the hand as he finished some detail of the portrait he was working on, indicating that I should take a seat. I looked around me and settled for a stool by the door – I knew from my father that no craftsman likes to be disturbed in the middle of a piece of work. The room was remarkably large and airy, suffused with a northern light through the great window overlooking the long garden at the back of the house, and beyond that a stretch of woodland to the loch. Jamesone worked near the window, on a large canvas depicting a noblewoman and her two young daughters. I recognised her from gatherings at Delgatie — Anne Erskine, Countess of Rothes. He had her likeness well. Around the room were the tools and props of his trade, several I had no notion of the use of. In a small antechamber to my left I could discern pots, tubs, glass jars of myriad colours. Stacked to the right of the door were frames and parts of frames of various sizes, most black but some gilt, awaiting the fruit of the painter’s labours. There were other canvases too, some mere line drawings, others near completion.

  Eventually Jamesone left off his work. Still with his back to me he stretched his arms wide and yawned, and then removed and hung up the smock he had been wearing. He turned and afforded me a broad smile. I liked him instantly — it was a smile of genuine fellowship in a face alive with humour and intelligence. ‘Mr Seaton, I am glad to see you. As you know, we have never met, but my wife tells me you are friends of old. Come, sit here by the window — you will be more comfortable and I can better see your face — I have an interest in faces.’ Had I not already known that he had travelled to learn his trade, his manners and way of speech would have given him away. He did not have the air of a man who had spent all his years within the confines of one society.

  I did as he asked and moved to a seat near the window. He continued to move about the room, cleaning and tidying his brushes and paints and cloths. The old manservant came in with a tray of wine and a dish of nuts and raisins, which he set down grudgingly before me at his master’s request. ‘Now, Mr Seaton, you have business with me.’

  I brought the letter from the pouch at my side. ‘Not I, but Walter Watt, provost of Banff.’ I held out the letter.

  Jamesone took the letter that I held out to him. ‘So Watt has had himself made provost now, has he? Well, I cannot own myself surprised. He sat for me several years ago – he and his wife. He was a man who would not wait long on destiny, I think.’

  I adjudged it better not to add my thoughts to those of the artist. He left that subject, and turned his attention to the letter, whose seal he had now broken.

  ‘Your provost wishes me to come to Banff once more to paint him and his family.’ He looked up. ‘I am glad they have had children. I think their lack was a great sadness to his wife.’

  ‘It is not the same wife. The first died some years ago.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it. There was a great beauty and kindness in her. She should have been better blessed.’ He sighed. ‘But the provost has little notion of the press of patrons on me in these days. Those I paint now usually come to sit for me here. But I was glad enough of his business once and should not scorn him now. Besides, it would be interesting to paint the same face once again, and see how the years have marked it.’ He gestured towards the work he had just been engaged upon. ‘I am to travel with this portrait to Rothes at the end of the month. I will return home by way of Banff and see the provost and his family then. I cannot promise him that I can do any more than a sketch of them there – I think it likely they must come sit for me here. You can pass on
this message for me?’

  I assented, although I did not anticipate with any great pleasure telling the provost of Banff that, risen in the world though he was, he was of less consequence to George Jamesone than once he had been. The painter and I talked for a while of Banff and the country around and people he knew there. He avoided mention of Delgatie, and I suspected news of my disgrace had reached to Aberdeen and to the ears of those who hardly knew me. But here was a man who did not hold it to my account. He had travelled in the world and, as he told me, ‘A painter sees many things in the lives of men that others do not see.’

  ‘I am not sure of your meaning,’ I said.

  He moved across the room to stand beside his canvas of the Countess of Rothes. ‘What do you see here?’

  I scanned the portrait for a moment but could divine no great secret in it. ‘I see Anne Erskine and her two daughters.’

  He quizzed me. ‘Is that all you see?’

  I looked again and shrugged. ‘Well, no. I see a window, some heavy, rich draperies, a table, some artefacts. There is a box on the table with a necklace hanging out of it. There are some portraits on the wall behind the countess, and there is a chess board with some pieces on the table.’ He continued to eye me expectantly. I lifted my hands in resignation. ‘I am sorry. That is it.’

  He smiled and took a clean brush in his hand and used it as a pointer. ‘You look, but you do not properly see. You see the Countess of Rothes and her two daughters. Yes. You see a window – is it simply for light? I am not a painter of windows. Look again – the arms of the family are stained in the glass – there is nobility there. And should you doubt it, regard the portraits behind her – there is lineage, too. The jewel box on the table; has she been careless, and not put things in their place before the painter should arrive? I think not. There is wealth, opulence in the world displayed for all to see. And the chess board – again untidy. A game shortly played by the countess and her children – why no doll, nor rattle nor spinning top? Because these are no childish games this woman and her children play – theirs is a game of strategy; these are girls of good wit and learning. Yet there remains one feature you have not mentioned.’ I looked again. The painter studied me as I did his picture.

  ‘The cherries?’

  He nodded. ‘Indeed, the cherries. Did you think they were just an affectation of colour, a painter’s indulgence?’

  I had to confess that I had not thought much about them at all – they were simply there, as fruit often is in such portraits.

  ‘You see a portrait of the Countess of Rothes and her daughters, no sons – for there are none. The fortunes of the family may rest with these two little girls. So see displayed their lineage, their nobility, their wit, their learning and their wealth. But more than all that, one thing is required of them – fertility. And look, look again, Mr Seaton. See how fertile, see how ripe they will be.’ He turned away and walked back to the window, where he stood looking out at his wooded garden and its delicate blossoms.

  I said nothing, being now a little discomfited by the picture. He turned round and indicated a set of shelves behind me and, as I cast my eye over them, several things that had puzzled me on first entering the room now made a little more sense. He came across to me and picked up the human skull that grinned horribly from the bottom shelf. ‘I am not, as you know, a medical man. I have no interest in this skull other than its use to me in the depiction of death, the certainty of death. These shells you see here were, indeed, gathered on a happy walk along the shore on a summer’s day with my wife, and are to me a memento of things pleasant, but in a painting they would become the symbols of wealth. If you look at these books here, you will see by their titles that they are of no great consequence. Those books of true interest to me are downstairs, in my library. These books here are again mere props, but they have been used many, many times to symbolise the learning of some of my illustrious sitters.’

  I began to understand. ‘And this lute?’

  He picked up the instrument that had been left leaning against a chair. ‘The lute — as many musical instruments — is a symbol of human love, even lust.’

  ‘So that is why you have not had the broken string mended, because it is never played?’

  ‘No, I wish that that were the case. Not all affairs between men and women are as happy as the union by which I am blessed. The broken string is for disharmony.’ He was silent a moment and then smiled and said briskly, ‘So now you are an expert, Mr Seaton. When you look, you will see.’

  ‘I wonder. I doubt if I will ever see what is truly there.’

  ‘I think you speak of more than paintings.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  He replaced the lute by the wall. ‘For all my draughtsman’s tricks I am no expert on the nature of men. I think there is perhaps more of a story to be told in their faces, if I could but unlock it. That is why I am of a mind to take this commission from your provost, to see what story the lines in his face will tell me of his life since I painted him last.’

  I laughed a little. I did not want to be drawn too far into this line of conversation. ‘I think you might have better luck were you to study the fine cut of his clothing, the size of his house, the number of his adherents.’

  The painter was not convinced. ‘Such things might tell me much about his fortunes these last few years, but it is his face that will tell me of the man.’ He regarded me for a moment, his head tilted slightly to the side. ‘I think there are things your face can tell me.’

  Vanity overtook me and I was aware of a strong need in myself to know what others saw when they looked upon me.

  ‘What things?’

  He motioned me to come closer to him and I sat before him at the window seat. ‘I know from my wife that you are a schoolteacher, an undermaster in a burgh grammar school. There is intensity, earnestness in your eyes, yet you say little. I think – though I may be wrong – that you are a man of great learning. If so, you seem too old for your current station in life. What age are you? Thirty-four, thirty-five?’

  ‘I am in my twenty-seventh year.’

  He nodded, biting his upper lip. ‘Then you are younger than you look. And you are not of Banffshire stock – too tall and spare of build, although the gauntness, I think, comes from self-neglect and not nature; and your eyes … they have a quality in their grey – almost green, in this light – that is not found hereabouts. And your hair is too dark – like an islander, or some of the Irish. Am I close to the truth or have I covered myself in folly?’

  ‘I am of Banffshire stock, for my father and his father and back for many generations hale from that part of the country, but my mother was an Irishwoman, of native Irish lineage. You are right also in that I am too old to be an undermaster in a school – I had hoped to do other things with my learning, but that was not to be my fate, and—’

  He shrugged. ‘And you do not wish to speak of it to a man who but twenty minutes ago was a stranger.’ The painter saw more than he would own. I waited another five minutes while he penned a reply to the provost, then took my leave of him. As I was about to descend the stair he said, ‘Mr Seaton. I hope to see you again in Banff. If you would permit it, I would gladly paint your likeness – as a study. Yours is not a blank canvas.’

  I had planned to spend the afternoon studying more closely the list I had got from David Melville, the bookseller, of books he was commanded by the council to supply to the grammar school. I did not want the scholars of Banff to be disadvantaged in their trial for a bursary. My mistake, once back at William’s house, was to lay myself down on my bed to work, rather than sitting at the table. I was soon asleep. I was awoken in the late afternoon by a familiar voice in my ear.

  ‘Oh, Alexander, Alexander, make haste; you are late for the lecture.’ I jumped out of bed, scattering books and papers around me as I did so, and it took me near a full minute to understand it was now 1626, and not 1618, and that I was no longer a student in the King’s College, in peril of the i
re of my professors. As I came, with little dignity, to my feet, I was greeted by the broad smile of William Cargill. ‘You have grown lazy in your old age, Alexander. You were never one for backsliding. Do you teach your scholars in the afternoon at all – or do you have them plump your pillows instead?’

  I stooped to pick up the fallen papers. ‘In the mornings I teach them their grammar and to fear God; in the afternoons I teach them to mistrust lawyers with soft linen.’

  He laughed and sat down on the crumpled bed. Then he looked at me in seriousness. ‘You are a man exhausted, Alexander. Must you really return to Banff so soon? Can you not stay here with us a while longer? We can make you well – give you food, rest and friendship.’

  I avoided his searching gaze and busied myself with tying the strings on my book covers. ‘You are kind, William, but I do not starve in Banff, and a man, even a fallen man, must work. And,’ I looked up at him now, ‘there is also friendship there, different from ours, I suppose, but it sustains me.’

  ‘I do not pretend to be a Jaffray, Alexander. I know he has kept you where you might have fallen further – he has been a rock to you. But you are a young man still, and he no longer young, and you need to look at the world again with the eyes of a young man, I think. There are other pathways ahead of you; there are still choices for you to make.’