The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by Shona MacLean

  ‘But why did you wait so long? Why did you not speak out before now? If you have indeed spoken out yet?’ I looked at Thomas Stewart, who by his eyes directed me back to the baillie.

  ‘I had not the proof; I had only the certainty of my own heart, my own mind. I could not accuse a man of such a thing on those grounds – the Devil lays many snares for those who are not watchful of their own weaknesses, and I knew mine. I had to wait and watch these eight years, and he never put a foot wrong. Until two weeks ago, when he plunged himself once more into the acts of darkness and I knew his day was approaching. But still there was no proof, and strive though I might, and did, I could find none. But I prayed also; I prayed that the Lord might aid me in my striving. And He did, with the discovery of Patrick Davidson’s maps; I knew then that I was to send for you. And when you came, and showed yourself not to have been corrupted by your failings, as men had thought, I knew that you were the man who could do what I could not. I had of times asked myself why God had given you such gifts, if they were only to be thrown away on the whim of your human failings. I had forgotten that our true calling is not always that which seems most likely to the eyes of men.’

  ‘I am not called to be a searcher out of murderers,’ I said coldly.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but a searcher for the truth. Even from your youngest days, I had marked you out as a searcher for the truth.’

  From my youngest days. His words took me back three days to that bare chamber of his, to the kist that lay on the floor, to the notes I had read as he and Charles slept, of my sermon at Boyndie kirk. What great hopes he had had for my ministry, what thanks he had given for my gifts. And what a mockery I had made of his faith in me. Now, in this moment, he was telling me that what I had done, he had not: where I had given myself up as lost to God’s plan in this world and His salvation in the next, he never had. I would never have believed that I could have felt warmth for William Buchan, or been desirous of being worthy of his praise, but I felt it now, humbled and honoured by the words of one I had so scorned.

  He continued. ‘From the moment the provost chose to entrust you with the maps, I knew you would go where I could not, ask what I could not, find what I could not. So I watched you, and I had you watched, and followed.’

  Now I understood, all those times when I had felt myself to be watched, fancied I had heard footsteps but seen no man behind me when I turned. ‘By Lang Geordie?’

  For the first time in my life, I heard William Buchan laugh, a full, mirthful, delighted laugh. ‘Lang Geordie?’ he repeated, in disbelief. ‘No, Mr Seaton, I at least do not consort with thieves and idle beggars.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘It was me, Alexander,’ Thomas Stewart said softly, ‘it was me.’

  My mind struggled to open doors on the last few days, on things I had not understood. I had known I was watched, but had never had an inkling of by whom. In Aberdeen, on the road from Straloch, even … ‘You, Thomas, it was you who followed me to Darkwater?’ I marvelled that the man had not stumbled to his death.

  ‘No, it was not.’ It was the baillie’s voice. ‘The notary could not be spared, and I feared you were getting too close, that the danger was too great. It was I who tracked your path to Darkwater. To the crone. She saw me, of course. But I knew she would not tell you. She has long been of my mind.’

  The baillie and the witch? This was beyond my comprehension. But indeed she had seen him: the tonic she had given me that I had forgotten to give him, of Rosa Solis, Sun Dew, for his ravished lungs: how else could she have known? I looked at him. ‘You could not have survived the night,’ I said.

  ‘The Lord watched over me,’ he countered. ‘I have often had cause to be at Findlater on business. Once I had seen you safely taken in by the woman, I sought out shelter with the keeper of the castle. At first light, when the worst of the haar had lifted, I was granted the trustiest of horses from their stable, and it brought me safe back to Banff well before you. I could not have left the burgh while Charles Thom was still in the tolbooth, for fear that he might have been killed before I returned, and so I sent the notary here to shadow and watch you. But with the music master free and in the safe protection of the doctor, I was able to watch over you for myself.’ He was again taken by a convulsion of coughing, and this time he consented to take the seat pressed on him. He accepted a drink of water and, waving away a second, turned to the notary. ‘The doctor?’

  ‘He has been alerted. He should be here within the hour.’

  ‘Where are we?’ I still had no notion of where I was, but was certain I was not in Banff.

  ‘Inchdrewer. We are at Inchdrewer.’ The majestic keep of the Ogilvies, perhaps four miles from Banff, surveying the countryside all around. The mere knowledge of it had terrified me as a boy, and in my childhood imaginings it had been home to the ogres of my mother’s tales. The notary continued, ‘The baillie and I agreed that it was safer to have you here, out of the town altogether, until at least the sheriff gets here. The doctor was hard put to permit it, but the burgh was not safe. Jaffray would have been here with you, but there are still fears for the music master, and so he agreed to stay in the town.’

  ‘And Ishbel?’

  ‘The girl is safe, and unsullied,’ answered the baillie. ‘And George Burnett will never lay his hand on a maiden of this burgh again. The new council and the new provost will not tolerate such a man in the bounds of Banff.’

  ‘New council?’ The council elections were not to be held until Martinmas, as they were every year.

  The baillie was strengthened by the challenge. ‘Half the present council are in the tolbooth or the laird of Banff’s dungeon. The provost is fled. As soon as the sheriff is returned, a new council and provost will be elected. A godly magistrate will have the governance of our town, and the days of Babylon will be over.’ But this was no crowing triumph of one man over an old enemy, of William Buchan over Walter Watt, for the baillie was looking over at Thomas Stewart. And the notary – soon, I realised, to be provost of Banff – simply looked at his feet and said, ‘God’s will be done.’

  Into the silence came a rumble, then a thunder of hooves. Thomas Stewart ran to block the door and there was a shouting of guards through the castle. The baillie did not flinch at the commotion, but my mind, racing in a head that was pounding with every heartbeat, went straight to Walter Watt. Who was to say he had not gone for reinforcements? Who would take the word of a disgraced schoolmaster and an embittered baillie, known to have been set against him for years, against the upright, forthright, wealthy provost of Banff? The horses came closer, the shouting grew more urgent, and my mind coursed down avenues it had never before seen. Was Walter Watt Huntly’s man? The maps of Patrick Davidson – might not his uncle have been the agency that called him to Banff? What had truly been in the letters to Gordon of Straloch? To Jamesone? But no; George Jamesone called me back to what I knew to be true: that this was not a matter of spies and maps and papist plots. This was a matter of a husband, his wife, a young man and some flowers, and by the mouths of the whores of Banff who thought they had heard ‘James and the flowers’, Patrick Davidson had told me it was at the very beginning. My apprehension faded as I heard the voice of James Jaffray corralling off the castle walls. Thomas Stewart had gone down to meet him.

  ‘And he lives yet? He lives?’

  The notary sought to calm the doctor. ‘He is well, doctor; he speaks and understands and has taken a little water. He lives.’

  ‘God be praised! I should never have permitted the journey.’

  The baillie rose from his chair, dredging his chest for breath. ‘There was little choice, Jaffray. In the confusion of the night, we had to get him to a place of surety.’

  The doctor passed the baillie with never a look and arrived at my bedside. The strain on the kind face subsided. ‘And so, Alexander Seaton. You have taken a bump on the head. Stealing apples from the manse garden at your age!’

  Laughter hurt my head. ‘Ther
e are no apples to be got in April, doctor. Did they teach you nothing of use in your medical studies?’

  ‘Very little,’ he smiled, ‘very little.’ He gently lifted some of the hair back from my forehead. Some strands had stuck in the drying blood of the wound and I winced as he tugged them free. He uttered a soft curse at himself. ‘That should have been cut before I cleaned and stitched it. It is time this town had a new doctor; an old man in his cups working with a needle by candlelight! You could have lost your eye. What were you about, William Buchan? You should have had me thrown in the tolbooth long ago, and a decent sober young physician set in my place.’

  The baillie laughed again through his wheezing. ‘There is none can fill your place, James Jaffray, none. May the God that sent you back to us preserve you long for us.’

  ‘Amen,’ I said.

  The doctor’s eyes were filling and he looked away briskly from me. ‘Aye, well, you will live. And I dare say a clout on the head may knock some sense into you, for nothing else will.’

  I winced. ‘I have had many a clout on the head before,’ I said, ‘but none has had such an aftermath as this. It is worse than the worst morning after a night’s drinking. And I know it is not that, for I drank very little last night.’

  Jaffray surveyed me gravely. ‘You drank enough. A few mouthfuls more and you would have been dead.’

  I laughed out loud, despite the pain it gave me. ‘Doctor, I had but two cups of wine, the one of them spilt on the ground for the most part. I have drunk more with you at the inn while waiting on our dinner.’

  ‘You should thank God for whoever knocked that second cup from your hand, Alexander, for the dregs of the poison were still in it when the notary picked it up from the ground.’

  I looked at Thomas Stewart. ‘I was behind you; I saw nothing but the hand that passed you the cup and then I saw you drop it. I would have been straight after you, had it not been for the fight that broke out on the dance floor. Whoever thought Charles Thom incapable of murder did not see him last night: it took four of us to pull him from George Burnett’s throat. By the time the commotion was over you were gone from sight. The baillie bade me stay at the lykewake while he went to look for you. When I found the cup lying on the ground I gave it to the doctor. We had had fears that your life might have been in danger.’

  ‘And they were right,’ said the doctor. ‘The dregs of the belladonna were there in plenty.’

  ‘Belladonna?’ I asked stupidly.

  ‘Aye, belladonna. It is still to be seen in your eyes. Your pupils are like plates. He wanted to make sure you were robbed of the power of speech before it killed you. Have you a thirst, Alexander?’

  ‘It rages.’

  ‘And what do you recall of events after you left the lykewake?’

  I closed my eyes and searched my memory for something. Fleeting glimpses of things came to me, a sensation of apprehension, but little else. I tried again. This time there was something more, and apprehension was replaced by real fear. I looked to the doctor and swallowed hard. ‘I think, it is hazy, you know, but I think at the kirkyard,’ I hesitated, not knowing how the baillie would react to what I had to say.

  ‘Go on,’ said Jaffray.

  I glanced at the baillie for a moment. ‘I think I saw the dead walk.’ I had expected thunderous rebuke, accusations of blasphemy, witchcraft, consorting with spirits, but none came. William Buchan merely looked at the doctor and the doctor nodded.

  ‘The visions. You saw the visions. The belladonna brings on hallucinations. It is what the witches use to send them on their orgies of commune with the dead, to send them in their flights for Satan. It is fortunate for your mind and soul that the baillie came upon you when he did.’

  ‘And for my body too,’ I added. ‘I do not think the provost had it in mind that I should live to tell his tale.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Jaffray. ‘No more do I.’ He went and murmured something to the notary who, nodding, sent one of the doorkeepers back down the stairs. The baillie had joined the doctor and the notary in conference, and for a moment none heeded me. I strained to hear their words, but could make out little. William Buchan asked Jaffray for news of the provost, but all I could hear by way of reply was ‘Carnousie’. Carnousie. Nearer Turriff than Banff, yet away from the sea. If he wanted to get away, he should have gone by the sea. Some more instructions were relayed further down the castle and attention returned to me.

  ‘Mr Seaton,’ said the baillie, ‘I doubt the doctor will permit you to be moved again for some days—’

  ‘Indeed I will not,’ interrupted Jaffray with some emphasis.

  ‘And the notary and myself cannot tarry much longer from Banff. There is much to be attended to. Nevertheless, there is much I would know of you.’

  ‘And perhaps tell me?’

  He eyed me steadily for a moment. His mouth scarcely moved. ‘Perhaps. But first, I would be grateful if you would tell me what you were telling the notary when I entered the room.’

  My head was thumping more than ever, and again I tried to remember. I looked to Thomas Stewart for help and he lifted paper from a shelf by the door and began to read. In my first moments of bleary consciousness, I had not noticed him writing it. ‘When I asked you how you had known, you said that Patrick Davidson had told you.’

  I remembered. A dead man had spoken to me, and I had listened, and heard, and understood at last, as I had not done while he lived. And so I told them, and as I spoke, the notary wrote. I told them, with shame, but honestly, of my staggering vision on the night of the murder, of the whores and of the man in the gutter. I told them of seeing Janet Dawson beaten from the burgh to the rhythm of the drum, and of her desperate words to me before she was torn away, Patrick Davidson’s last words. Not ‘James and the flowers’ as she and her sister believed they had heard on that stormy, drink-fuelled night, from the lips of a vomiting, dying man, but ‘Jamesone – the flowers’. George Jamesone and the flowers – the colchicum mortis – falling from the open hand of Patrick Davidson’s aunt, dead eight years. As I had finally realised last night at the lykewake, the painter’s words had come back to me, ‘You look, but you do not see.’ Standing in the great hall of the provost’s house, with the body of Patrick Davidson lying on a table beside me, I had seen a portrait hanging on the wall. It was a portrait of a man and a woman, a wellmade man and his pale, grieving wife, flowers falling from her hand and lying crushed and lifeless at her feet. Their lost children, each a perfect promise of beauty in this life, of hope, that had slipped from her grasp. And around them, amongst the paraphernalia of their wealth, their attainments and their aspirations, hidden away in a dark corner, almost out of sight, was a lute, a lute with a broken string. Disharmony, a love that has been strained and snapped, the painter’s vision of what he truly saw before him. Completed only a few weeks before Helen Black, the aunt of Patrick Davidson and first wife of Walter Watt, Provost of Banff, had died. The loved, beloved aunt; the aunt who had been almost a mother to him.

  The grieving boy had left and studied and prospered in the world. And in that world he had pursued the love of botany, planted in him by the conversations at his uncle’s fireside between Walter Watt and James Cargill, physician and great botanist. Had the provost not told us so himself? The boy had travelled, and the career in law, so dry, so lacking in the life and sun and water and air and colour and texture and fragrance that he truly loved, had gradually been pushed aside as he became more and more entranced by the world of science, of medicine and, above all, of plants. Patrick Davidson had known his calling: he would study the apothecary’s art. And where else would he go to apprentice than the place of his happy boyhood, where the first stirring of that love for the minute perfections of God’s creation had taken him? And so he had returned to Banff, and had been welcomed by the provost as a lost son, and taken to the heart of a new family. He had sat down to dine in his uncle’s great hall, and let his eyes drift up to rest for a moment on the face of his dearly loved, lo
ng-dead aunt. But just for a moment, for then his eyes travelled further, to her hand and past her skirts to the floor, and he saw what he should not have been able to see. He saw what had no godly cause to be in that painting, or in this town, or this land even. He saw the flowers whose only use, beautiful though they were, was the procuring of a death, her death. But he did not let himself make the connection, did not want to see it, until he went with Marion Arbuthnott to Darkwater.

  ‘And what did he learn there? What did you learn there?’ asked the baillie in a strange voice. He knew the answer but did not wish to know it.

  There was no need for me to tell them of the child that Marion had been carrying – if they did not know it already, it was none of their concern. A vision of my own mother came to me, but I pushed it away. ‘He learned,’ I began, ‘that his aunt, Helen, had gone to her in desperation, after all that Jaffray,’ I looked at the doctor and with an incline of his head he urged me to go on, ‘after all that Jaffray or any other could do to help her carry a living child to its delivery failed her.’

  ‘There were many others who did the same,’ said the doctor, softly. ‘Would to God that he had given me the skill to effect that if nothing else.’

  The expected reproof from the baillie did not come. He simply said, ‘Continue, Mr Seaton.’ We had yet to come to the point.

  ‘They learned that eight years ago, Helen Black, from grief and fear, had almost reached the limits of her senses.’

  The notary laid off his writing. ‘Do you say she took her own life?’

  I opened my mouth to answer, but the baillie was there before me, speaking quietly, as to himself. ‘No, never that. It was taken from her.’

  Thomas Stewart looked from one to the other of us. ‘The crone told you this?’

  I started to shake my head but the pain stilled me. ‘No, she did not. But I think, I am almost certain, that the knowledge of his aunt’s fear and desperation, so close to the time of her death – the same time at which the picture, with those flowers in it, was painted – convinced Patrick Davidson that his aunt had been poisoned.’