The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by Shona MacLean

  I could not, and I did not try. Instead, I told him what had once been a part of the truth. ‘When Charles Thom was charged and imprisoned over this murder, Jaffray and I swore we would not rest until we had him freed. Well, he is freed now, and that is enough for the doctor – he has concerns enough in the world – but I am too far in to come out now.’

  The notary did not like what he heard. He began to speak slowly, deliberately. ‘Alexander, I must counsel you to leave off from this task. There are snares everywhere in this business. If you are not caught by cries of witchcraft, you may well be taken as a plotter and a spy.’

  ‘A spy? How so?’

  ‘The townsfolk may well hold Marion Arbuthnott to have been a witch, and Patrick Davidson to have been a victim of her craft, but I think it much more like he was a spy, and she his willing helper, for it is certain if he was not involved in the one it was the other.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ I said. ‘He did love her.’

  He looked at me sceptically, puzzled as to how I had come by such assurance. He evidently did not have the time to waste on such matters. ‘Whether he loved the girl or not is of little moment. What should concern you is that by meddling too far in his affairs you might well find yourself tainted by them.’

  ‘Is it the office or the man who tells me that?’ I asked.

  He replied firmly, quietly. ‘It is both.’

  I took flint and lit the tallow candle, for little light reached my chamber at this time of the day. I wanted to see the notary’s face. ‘Thomas, you yourself were amongst those who involved me in the matter of Patrick Davidson’s maps. How else would I have known of their existence, or of fear of plots, other than those which are constantly with us? How can you now accuse me of something that you know was none of my doing?’

  ‘I accuse you of nothing,’ he said, ‘but some of your encounters on your trip to Aberdeen were ill-advised.’

  I could not follow him. ‘In Aberdeen I lodged with an old friend, a respected lawyer, known in this town and in this house, and to you yourself.’

  He nodded. ‘William Cargill is a good man.’

  I was no longer in the mood for platitudes. ‘I achieved the purposes of my visit as far as the school here is concerned, and I fulfilled the commissions on which I was sent by this town. I cannot see where the fault is to be found in that. And if it is a question of George Jamesone, the artist, then you must refer to the provost, for I—’

  He cut me short. ‘It is not of the artist, or Principal Dun or Doctor Forbes or any of those citizens of whom I speak. You will not tell me, I hope, that you met with Matthew Lumsden on the business of this town?’

  ‘Matthew Lumsden? What is Matthew Lumsden to do with this?’

  ‘That is what I would have you tell me.’ Here I saw we had reached the point of the interview.

  Apprehension grew within me. ‘Matthew Lumsden is my friend,’ I said. ‘He has been so for many years.’

  ‘Matthew Lumsden is an adherent of the Marquis of Huntly. He has raised his head and spoken too loud and too often on matters he would have been wiser to keep to himself. His opinions are known and his religious adherence guessed at. Circumstanced as you are, he is a man whose company it would be better not to keep.’

  I got up and walked over to the door; I opened it. ‘He is a man who has not sold his honour for office. I will choose my own friends, Mr Notary.’

  If the notary made any reply as he left, I did not hear it. As the door closed behind him, I felt I had lost a friend I had never properly valued, and I was sorry for it, but my words could not be retracted. My clothes were still damp from the journey back from Darkwater, my head was aching and I was beginning to shiver. I took the stopper from the bottle the crone had given me and drank down a mouthful of the bitter liquid. As I sank onto my bed, I realised, too late now, that Thomas Stewart should not have known my movements in Aberdeen at all.

  The voice came to me as from a distant place. It entered my dreams and called me from them. For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul. Clear and pure, the voice came closer. It was joined by other voices, many voices, solemn, low, in unison, following the words exactly. The voices were marching on me, chanting. I stumbled from my bed, covered still in the warm damp of my clothes. But in mine adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together: yea, the abjects gathered themselves together against me, and I knew it not: they did tear me and ceased not. Closer still came the voices. My eyes not properly opened, I felt my way from my chamber and out onto the top of the stairs. Four steps down, not yet fully out of my slumber, I pressed my face to the small window set deep in the outer turnpike wall. The crowd, for it was indeed a crowd, snaked from its tail, just clearing the kirkyard gate, by way of Low Shore and the western end of the kirk, round to its head at High Shore, where it would soon pass beneath, far beneath, my window. Behind the bier, she downcast and he defiant, walked the apothecary and his wife, and at the very head, as I had known he must be, was Charles Thom. His voice, always a gift from God, stood forth alone, reaching to the Heavens: Lord, how long wilt thou look on? Rescue my soul from their destructions, my darling from the lions. Alone, high above them and in a quiet voice, I took up the psalm, word for word, note for note, and joined with all those other voices in the commencement of the lykewake of Marion Arbuthnott.

  I had to find another stand of clothes – I could not go out in my nightshirt, yet I could scarcely remain like this. The warmth of my body from the bed had dissipated and the cold of the clothes cloyed at my every inch of skin. My other vestments, beaten in a tub just yesterday by the maid, hung yet before the kitchen fire, sending steam still to the ceilings and rolling back down the wall. I returned to my room and brought the key down from the mantelshelf where it had lain for nine months, disturbed only by the cleaning hand of Mistress Youngson or her maid. I crouched by the bed and dragged out the kist. The lock was stiff, but gave way at the third twist of the key in my hand. I opened the lid quietly, fearful, foolishly, that I should be discovered in the act. And yet in but half an hour I would stand before many who knew me in that which I now hesitated to move from its tomb. I lifted the papers first – why should I have kept my sermon? And there beneath, pristine, made from love and worn but once, were the night-black drapes of a man of God, the cloak and suit of fine English cloth, with the velvet collar, made up for me by Banff’s finest tailor at the behest of all my kind friends here: Gilbert Grant and his wife, Jaffray, Charles, who had not two ha’pennies to rub together, and the parents of some of my scholars, who often had none. I had stood in my fine new clothing before the brethren at the Presbytery of Fordyce on that June night, and heard the laird of Delgatie pronounce my doom. Had I paid for them myself, the garments would have been long since consigned to the fire, but as I had not they had remained there, locked away in the kist beneath my bed, a hidden symbol of my fall. And tonight, in this town lost to its terror of a darkness it did not understand, gathering in a pagan farewell to a murdered girl and her unborn child, I would wear them again. It was almost fitting. I removed my sickly damp rags and began to dress.

  The town bell had just tolled seven when I passed under the archway at the side of the apothecary’s shop. The rhythmic chanting of the psalms and the tentacled aroma of roasting meats guided my steps. It was a mild evening, and the sun had not yet sunk beyond the mountains of the west. The sea was peaceful. Charles’s voice seemed to guide the waves as they came surely to the shore, the people in unison taking up the line behind him, their voices rumbling away like the pebbles as the waves rolled them back to the sea. Many of the mourners had spilled out into the courtyard – although the women remained yet in the house. Unseen, as I thought, on my arrival, I scanned the faces of the people gathered there, some shifting slowly from one stance to another, some talking in low voices to their neighbours. I marvelled, but was in truth little surprised, at the hypocrisy of my townsmen – how many of them had
gathered together not three hundred yards from here, but two nights ago, and watched the body burn of the girl they now mourned? As I began to pass amongst them, I noticed how few of any note were absent from this gathering. The guilds were there, those who were not locked away awaiting justice, their deans wearing the regalia of their office in honour of their fellow guildsman, the apothecary. Baxters, candlemakers, coopers, fleshers, shoemakers, dyers, weavers, hammermen. How resplendent, how strong had I seen my own father on many a night such as this. How my mother had hated the public appropriation of such private grief. She had not understood.

  There was the baillie, watching. I was not greatly surprised to see him: despite his oft-rehearsed condemnation of such ‘popery’ as the lykewake, he was a man who liked to know his enemy. And there, not amongst the general throng, but alone in the shadows of the doorway to the apothecary’s house, was the provost. My eye met his and he gave me the briefest of nods before retreating further back into the shadows, where a white wraith flitted behind him; Geleis Guild also had come to mourn her friend and helper. As I turned my gaze from the doorway I caught a glimpse, from the corner of my eye, of Jaffray. He was deep in conference with Thomas Stewart, and had evidently not seen me. I took a step towards them and the doctor looked up in my direction. I had not seen him since he had pleaded with me not to go to Darkwater. He raised a hand to acknowledge me, but the notary avoided my eye. Stung, I turned back towards the place the music was coming from.

  My minister’s garb cutting a path for me through my astonished neighbours, I made my way eventually towards the circle at the front of the throng, nearest to where the song schoolmaster and his scholars stood. Charles directed the boys in the old way, standing before them behind a makeshift lectern, turning the pages of the choirbook with one hand as he directed the boys behind him with the other. Away from the inn, away from Jaffray’s, away from the kirk, he was a man transformed. The cares of his world and the confines of his duties lifted from him, he was at liberty, so seldom granted him, to enjoy fully and to offer to us his God-given gifts. The psalm he now took up was not, as the others had been, a monotone, stripped of all decoration and ornamentation, but something worthy of the gifts and training of a true musician. Voices of master and boys rose in magnificent polyphony, urging the Lord, for Marion Arbuthnott, to ‘judge and avenge my cause’.

  Baillie Buchan, whom I discovered a few feet away from me, did not move throughout the rendition of the whole piece, yet his face hardened in disapproval with every new proof of the virtuosity of my friend. He never once took his eyes from Charles though, and it was only as master and boys then set themselves in reports on the eighteenth psalm that he seemed to notice me. He said nothing, but moved slowly closer to me, evidently set on the guarding of either Charles or myself from escape.

  In a moment he was at my shoulder. I was emboldened by the gradual dying of the light. ‘The psalm is not to your taste, baillie?’ I asked.

  ‘The psalm is to my taste,’ he said. ‘The words of King David, cried out to our Lord, assured in the righteousness of his cause in a sinful world. But this playing upon it, this decoration and ostentation, born of the vanity of men, turns my stomach. What need has the psalmist of such perversions?’

  ‘Surely, baillie, our music master’s voice is a gift from God?’

  He turned on me a look of frozen contempt for my words. ‘Do you not recall the words of John Knox? Or is he out of favour with the great Episcopalians of the King’s College?’ There was the disdain in his voice of a man who made no compromise.

  ‘I am no stranger to the works of John Knox,’ I replied, ‘and neither were my masters.’ And indeed I recalled the words of the great Reformer, and their exposition as my classmates and I had debated the place of music in the worship of God. For the baillie, there was no debate.

  He spoke quietly. ‘He knew of the snares of the world waiting on all men, and warned against such as these. The schoolmaster’s gifts should be applied to the edification of the people, not to the parading of his own vanity.’ The vehemence of his words was almost beyond his strength to muster, and the baillie was overcome by the now familiar retching cough.

  A spit with a hog roasting on it turned in one corner, near to the apothecary’s well. Some ragged urchins were already gathering near it, ready to risk the wrath of the cook for the chance of a hot meal. I was hungry, and would gladly have sat down and eaten something myself, for I felt weak from hunger and fatigue. It was not time for eating though; the long trestle tables laid out in the courtyard were as yet empty of the delights that the women of Arbuthnott’s kin had been preparing all day. The time of solemnity had not yet passed – that of gluttony and excess was still to come. My fine suit of English wool with its long cloak and collar were not sufficient to take the damp and cold from my bones. I began to feel shivery, and searched out a place beside the fire. Gladly would I have returned to my bed, for I had little time for lykewakes and the superstitions they recalled, but I felt impelled to stay and see the night through.

  The psalm the scholars were singing was finally brought to its dolorous end, and, with scarcely enough pause for breath, a new sound filled the air, a sweet and melancholic melody I knew well. One of the older boys had taken up his flute, while another played on the rebec, his bow calling a plaintive tune across the strings, and Charles began to sing out, no psalm now, but a mourning lover’s air – ‘I wish I was where Helen lies’. The women had come out of the house now. Some still stood on the backstairs, while others moved softly amongst the guests in the courtyard. And then, as from another place, the timeless notes of a clarsach joined with the flute and the rebec, matched to Charles’s own voice. I turned my eyes to the source of the sound, for I knew Charles was no harpist. There, on a stool a little behind the musicians’ dais, sat Ishbel, the doctor’s girl, her fingers gently caressing the strings of the clarsach, as those of her people had done for centuries before. The instrument spoke the agony of lost love, of a life and of dreams departed, and for a few moments all other noise ceased. Charles himself fell silent. As the notes followed one another on the air, and the song came at last to its end, I saw that many in the crowd were now weeping. Marion Arbuthnott’s moment had come. The doctor moved towards the girl, pride and love glowing in him. At the top of the forestairs, engulfed in her desolation, stood Marion’s mother, her head buried in the shoulder of Mistress Youngson, whose eyes looked out on her own memories. Most of all though, it was the baillie that I noticed. He too was looking out, far from the place and time he now stood in, to an image of something long lost, long gone. I had never before seen such humanity in his face. Charles did not move, but watched Ishbel for many moments. His lips parted slightly and gradually came together again. A veil had been lifted from his eyes.

  Once having composed himself, the doctor, with Ishbel firmly clamped in a father’s embrace, called out, ‘Come now, Charles, let us have something to lift our hearts.’ Charles took a moment to come out of his spell, but smiling, took up his bow, called out a name to his players, who took up pipe, drum and tabor, and led them in a hearty harvest tune. The new sound was as a signal to mourners – guests and hosts both. Women bustled and boys ran up and down from the kitchen to the courtyard, and soon the trestles were filled with salvers, bowls and baskets of every sort of food imaginable: pies filled with pigeon, fish, rabbit; all manner of breads, pastries, puddings; custards, cakes, sweetmeats of every description. The council and the session had proclaimed time and again against such feasting, and this indeed was more of a wedding banquet than a funeral feast; but for Marion Arbuthnott there would be no wedding and all that her anguished parents could now do for her, they would do.

  The sun had gone at last, and its amber glow faded. Torches were lit in sconces about the courtyard walls, casting grotesque shadows of men, women and children in perverse celebration of the passage of a soul, two souls, into death. I tried not to look at them. I wanted to talk again with Thomas Stewart – it was not right th
at things should have been left between us as they had this afternoon, and it was for me to set things right with him. I stood up, my head setting inside my skull like molten lead as I did so, and began to cast around for some sight of the notary. There were too many people now, moving about alone or in groups, from fire, to table, to spit; I had no clear line of vision or access anywhere. I gradually pushed and jostled my way through them until I reached the place where I had seen the notary talking with Jaffray, but both were long gone now. The shivering of earlier now alternated with waves of intense heat throughout my body, culminating in the thumping of my head. I came to a bench and sat down again, fearful that my legs would buckle beneath me. Before I could breathe out my relief to be resting again, an arm shoved into my shoulder, almost knocking me from my seat. I looked round quickly but saw nothing save the ragged hem of a deftly retreating cloak. Lang Geordie’s men had somehow got themselves here tonight, I was sure of it. It was not a night to sit in the dark corners, on the margins: safety lay in the heart of the crowd, and I forced myself to my feet again, and towards the busy tables. I could not tell if it was my own body that swayed, or those I pressed through, yet I knew my feet were not steady. I cursed the wise woman of Darkwater and her sleeping tonic, and my own stupidity in taking it not seven hours ago.

  At last I found my way through the throng. I slipped onto a bench and had a platter of food – crackling pork, baked apple with cloves, a dark and peppery gravy and warm bread – pressed into my hand. It was Gilbert Grant who stood above me.