Seaton 01 - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by S. G. MacLean

  The provost began to nod his head slowly, evidently thinking the thing out for himself. ‘A fleet – armada they call it? – could set sail from Flanders and possibly avoid detection sailing north. A favourable wind would bring them to our shores in little enough time. But why here? Why so far north?’

  The minister could hold his tongue no longer. ‘In God’s name, do we tremble to say it? There is not one among us who does not suspect the hand of Huntly in all of this.’

  Walter Watt would have restrained him. ‘Have a care—’ but for once the minister would not be cowed by his brother-in-law.

  ‘No, provost, I will not. How long must we live in fear of the papist Gordon backsliders, who would sell our nation into Roman whoredom for the price of a mass?’ What he said was true. It was common knowledge that the Gordons had never accepted the Reformation of religion in our country, and were ever striving for a return to Rome. They did not blanch at treachery or civil war in their efforts. And now, with the king in England and the whole continent of Europe at war, might they not well intrigue with Spain as they had done before? The provost addressed me.

  ‘And have you anything to add, Mr Seaton? How seems the Spanish answer to you?’

  I worded my reply with caution. ‘I believe that if our country is to suffer an assault from the Spaniard, it will be because the king himself has brought them to it.’ These were dangerous words, I knew. Dangerous words to use in the company of men with no reason to wish me well. The provost, whom I did not like but was coming to believe I could trust, spoke first.

  ‘On what grounds do you hold this view?’

  ‘On the grounds that are known to us all: that after his accession, King Charles lost little time in abandoning his father’s policy and showing himself the enemy of Spain. England will always be the prize for Spain, but they might reason soundly that much might be achieved in England by striking our king first in his Scottish kingdom, and where else would the Spaniards find so firm and well-placed a friend as the Marquis of Huntly?’

  Thomas Stewart seemed somewhat ill at ease. ‘I feel we are all of one agreement: that if our nation is under threat from a foreign force, then that force will come from Spain, and that if Patrick Davidson was spying for anyone, it was at the behest of Madrid. And yet—’

  ‘And yet,’ interrupted the provost, ‘we have no proof whatsoever that my nephew was engaged on any such activity; these maps may be the fruits of a blameless pursuit.’

  I felt somewhat as a fly might do when led into a trap by a spider. The provost had allowed us to entangle ourselves more and more in a web of speculation of our own making, and now he was ready to pounce upon us in his dead nephew’s defence. I felt that I was as responsible as anyone, in my failure to speak up for him when Gilbert Grant had asked me to.

  ‘I am no expert in these maps, provost, and I have no interest in calumniating an innocent man.’

  The baillie was swift. ‘Even to save your friend?’

  ‘Even for that.’

  He nodded. ‘Good. It is as I thought.’

  I did not know what to make of the baillie’s words, but I had little time to pursue the enquiry in my mind. Thomas Stewart eyed me levelly. ‘Whatever we do will not be lain at your door, Alexander; you have done no more than we asked of you, and that well, yet I believe we should not proceed further in this matter without first taking further counsel.’

  The minister was wearied of listening to the views of others when his own were so clear to him. ‘And to what reprobate must we now turn before we may proceed as any group of godly and honest magistrates?’

  The slur on me was let pass as the notary responded in a steady voice. ‘Robert Gordon of Straloch.’

  The minister snorted derisively and the baillie rose from his seat in some alarm. ‘The risk is too great.’

  ‘Straloch is no papist,’ asserted the notary.

  The Reverend Guild snorted again. ‘No papist? He is a Gordon! They drink in incense with their mother’s milk.’

  The notary repeated himself, an edge to his voice being sharpened by his growing impatience. ‘Robert Gordon of Straloch is no papist. He is a Justice of the Peace and one of the best-respected men in the kingdom. The king himself does not scruple to seek his counsel.’

  ‘Aye,’ retorted the minister, ‘and Huntly does not blow his nose without consulting him first.’

  ‘Perhaps so. But many’s the time it has been the restraining hand, the measured counsel of Straloch, which has held the Marquis back, when his own impetuous nature would have precipitated us all into disaster.’

  When the baillie spoke his words were slow and deliberate. ‘And what say you, provost? Should we consult Robert Gordon of Straloch on the matter of these maps?’ He was watching the provost closely, as if hoping something in the man’s reaction would reveal complicity or innocence in his nephew’s doings.

  It was a moment before Walter Watt began his reply, and as he spoke, I understood what it was that had set him apart from his peers. Walter Watt, when he chose, could speak and reason with a degree of authority that silenced other men. ‘I too am uneasy about approaching so close to the centre of Gordon power on a matter so potentially dangerous for us all. Nevertheless, we cannot proceed on an investigation relating to these maps without expert opinion of their nature. It is known that there is not a man in the whole of Scotland who has a greater understanding than Straloch of the art of cartography. That he is a Gordon and a confidant of the marquis cannot be denied, but what the notary says is true. He is respected as much as any man, and may of times have been the one voice that counselled against catastrophe. We should consult Straloch. We should ask him for his opinion on the basis of one map – only one. For if my nephew had fallen into such a blasphemous treachery as he may have done, I am resolved that these papers should burn to ashes and never another eye look on them.’

  Minister, baillie and notary were all, at length and to varying degrees brought into agreement with the provost as to the way to proceed. There remained the question of how the chosen document should be transferred safely to Straloch. Under the present circumstances, with a murderer either walking abroad in the burgh or lying untried in the tolbooth, neither the notary nor the baillie could be spared. The minister declared that it was not his intention to break bread with the idolatrous Gordons, and the provost was no message boy. The gaze of the baillie fell upon me. He must have known what I myself in the maelstrom of the past two days had almost forgotten – that I was committed to travel to Aberdeen the very next day. He himself would have signed the authority to release me from my duties for a few days. His gaze began to weigh heavy on me and I cleared my throat. ‘I am bound to journey to the town tomorrow. Two of Dr Liddel’s scholarships at Marischal College have fallen vacant and one of my most promising scholars could make something of a claim to compete for one of them. I am travelling to Aberdeen to ascertain what I can of what will be required of the boy in his trial for the bursary, and to purchase some books required by the grammar school here. My journey will take me within two miles of Straloch.’ And so, after much protest from the minister, silenced by the provost, and no further comment from myself, it was resolved that it should be I who carried the map to Robert Gordon. I was to tell him as much of its tale as we knew and were prepared to apprise him of, and ask him for his opinion on its nature and import. I had never met the laird of Straloch, but I knew him by repute to be a man of great learning and wide experience. I did not fear, as did the Reverend Guild, that I would be infected with popery simply from dining at the table of a Gordon. I was distant, very distant from my God, but I knew without question that mine was still the God of Calvin and Knox, whatever the Reverend Guild might fear I had learned at my mother’s knee. The light was dull now, and the sea pulled the clouds in from the west as the town bellman marked the hour as five. It was agreed that I should return here at seven the next morning. The provost would meet me and release into my care one – only one – of the maps drawn by h
is nephew.

  I made not to my lodgings and the promise of Mistress Youngson’s meagre but wholesome supper, but to Jaffray’s. With all the broken links of my life these past few months, the doctor had become the only tonic that I knew.

  FIVE

  Post-mortem

  The girl’s eyes were alive with questions.

  ‘Let me in, Ishbel, and I’ll tell you.’

  Jaffray’s servant looked a little abashed as she held the door open wider for me and helped me off with my cloak. ‘The doctor’s in his study, Mr Seaton. I’ll get you your supper.’

  ‘But I haven’t come for my supper.’

  She was unmoved. ‘The doctor said you would come when you finished your work at the tolbooth. He said you’d be wanting your supper.’ She turned and headed for the kitchen. Further protestation on my part was useless and I made my way down the long hallway towards Jaffray’s study at the back of the house. Here James Jaffray used to watch his wife in her garden, through the little study window, and here I believed he watched her still. More than once I had walked into the room to find him gazing out into the darkness, his hand on the page of an open book he could not have told me the title of. I knocked gently on the door. A slight shuffle and then the familiar hearty voice.

  ‘Aye, Ishbel, that’s all right, come in.’

  I entered. ‘It’s not Ishbel, I’m sorry to say. Are you waiting on your supper?’

  He started, then laughed heartily. ‘Well, you could make a minister yet, with yon creeping step and that knock of a girl.’ Then his face registered regret, but there had been no malice in his joke. ‘You have been much busied with this business today, Alexander. I spent the morning going through the shelves at the apothecary’s, checking he kept only the licensed poisons. When I had finished I learnt from Arbuthnott that you were at the tollbooth. For a moment I feared that Charles Thom’s fate had befallen you also. It was some time before the serjeant was able to persuade me that you were detained in the council chamber and not above in the jail.’

  ‘If I ever suffer that misfortune I doubt that I would show myself the stoic that Charles does.’

  A light came into the doctor’s eyes. ‘They have not broken him, then. Thanks be to God. He is better than all they can do to him. But his body is not strong.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘and that is a hellish place that they have him.’

  ‘I know it, for I have been called there often enough to salve the sores of poor souls rotting in there.’

  ‘And did they permit you access to the tolbooth today?’

  He snorted contemptuously. ‘The baillie has left instructions that I am not to be in commune with Charles. The confines of his narrow mind have expanded themselves to imagine that I have no other object in visiting the boy than to pass on details of what my examination has found, that Charles might be all the better placed to deny complicity.’ Then he asked in a lowered voice, ‘You have been to him, Alexander. What is he hiding? He surely has no part in this business, but he is keeping some secret, is he not?’

  I hesitated. Charles had made me promise to tell no one of his night searching with Marion for Patrick Davidson, yet the bond of honour and friendship that bound us had been all but forged by James Jaffray. The secrets Charles would keep from Jaffray were those that a son would keep from his father, but Charles’s silence before Baillie Buchan was of a quite other nature – it was for fear of imperilling the life of Marion Arbuthnott. I told him what I knew. He listened carefully, and when I came to the end of my short monologue, he nodded slowly. ‘It is as I suspected. Charles will say nothing in his own defence for fear of endangering Marion.’ He stoked the fire absent-mindedly. ‘Then you and I must prove his innocence, Alexander. Have you had the opportunity of speech with Marion yet?’

  I shook my head. ‘None has, as far as I can gather. The baillie has tried, I believe, but has had even less from her lips than he has from Charles’s. I do not know if she would speak any more freely to me than she does to Buchan. And it is a pity, for there are other matters that I would ask her of.’

  ‘What matters are these?’

  I filled my glass with some of the wine Ishbel had left out for us and began to tell him of the maps. He listened with great interest and, to my surprise, no little knowledge, interrupting every now and again to seek clarification of some point or to ask about the reactions of the others engaged in the examination of the drawings and their notes. Before I had got halfway through my narrative he advised a visit to Straloch. Then he raised the question of espionage, and, like me, he suspected the hand of Spain, and of course, of Huntly.

  ‘And how does the provost take the news? Does he defend the boy?’

  I reflected. ‘When Gilbert Grant and I first arrived at the tolbooth, the provost was shaken, very shaken. He was as a man who can scarce follow events, still less control them. I have never seen him in such a way before.’

  Jaffray was remembering. ‘I have. Once,’ he said.

  I waited for further explanation, but he waved his hand dismissively. ‘It is unimportant. Go on.’

  ‘In time, he mastered himself. His defence of his nephew became more – reasoned. Had his authority not been added to Thomas Stewart’s caution and good sense, we would be there yet.’

  Jaffray smiled. ‘Listening while the minister piled up a pyre for heretics then managed to set himself atop it.’

  ‘I wish I had your facility with words, doctor, for that is just exactly what would have happened.’ And who then in Banff would be safe? I could have written there and then the names of twenty papists who did not flaunt their faith but did not hide it sufficiently. If Patrick Davidson was indeed shown to have been a papist spy, God alone knew what would happen in our town. Jaffray’s mind was clearly working along the same lines.

  ‘Did they question the provost as to his nephew’s time abroad, whether he fell in with papists there – was he in the region of Douai, or Paris even?’

  ‘You think he might have been to one of the Scots seminaries there?’

  ‘Well, when did ever you hear of a new-trained priest, returned from France to declare himself as such? They all come by clandestine roads, disguised as students, teachers, doctors, even.’

  ‘I do not think he was a priest. The subject was not raised in that way. No mention was made of Douai, or indeed of Paris. And yet …’

  ‘And yet?’ prompted the doctor.

  ‘When I spoke to Charles, he told me of Davidson’s love of the music, the masses, the great cathedrals he saw on his travels. I think he may well have had papist leanings.’ If this had been the case, he could have made common cause with many – prominent Gordons among them – within easy reach of Banff.

  ‘If Davidson was in clandestine meetings with papists, they must have taken place, as must his map-drawing, on his gathering expeditions.’

  ‘With Marion,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, we are back once more to Marion, and I would be more than astonished if the baillie had not come to the same reasoning. He will question her closely on it if he suspects she has any knowledge at all that might be useful to him. She may have held out against him so far, but I doubt she has the strength of will to do so indefinitely.’

  I thought about the girl as I had seen her the day before, peering into the depths and then looking through me when I hailed her at the Elf Kirk. I was not as sure as Jaffray that even Baillie Buchan could reach to what she knew. The doctor, however, was not to be reassured.

  ‘It is necessary that we should know what she hides if we are to help Charles.’ He closed his eyes, the better to concentrate on the problem. ‘I will see her, tomorrow.’ He called for Ishbel and handed her a hastily scribbled note, addressed to Arbuthnott. ‘Have the boy take that to the apothecary’s. Tell him he must give it only into the hand of Arbuthnott and that he must see to it that he reads it immediately. He is to lose no time.’ Ishbel, who had been given many stranger commissions before, went immediately without question. I looked to my
friend for an explanation. ‘I have told him that Buchan will come looking for his daughter tonight and that he is to give the girl a sleeping draught and see to it that she takes it. I have told him that I will come and see to her in the morning, and that no one else is to be admitted to see her until I have done so.’

  ‘Will he do it?’

  ‘He will do it. The man is in a state of near terror – a murder and now perhaps treason – all emanating from his house. If Baillie Buchan comes looking for his daughter, Arbuthnott will know it is for no good purpose to Marion or her family. He must know as well as you and I do that the girl is implicated up to her neck.’

  It was, in the circumstances, a chilling assessment of Marion Arbuthnott’s situation. Her graceful neck might yet be circled round with the executioner’s rope, she not being high born enough to lay it beneath his axe. The knowledge that Charles’s fate rested in hers added to my already mounting sense of apprehension. In the alleyways and vennels, the backlands and the courtyards of Banff, evil was waiting. Watching. And it would not watch for ever. It was only ten days now till the sheriff returned to hold the assize. Ten days perhaps, to save our friend.

  ‘Will she talk to you, doctor?’

  ‘Aye, she will. I have known her since she drew her first breath. She will know her friends from those she cannot trust, or those who cannot help her.’

  ‘With Davidson dead, and Charles in the tolbooth, what friends are left to her?’

  ‘You and I, Alexander. You and I, and she must know that soon. I am certain that whatever the nature of her burden, she cannot carry it alone much longer.’

  And then a thought struck me, and I wondered that it had not done him also. ‘The minister’s sister, though. Geleis Guild.’ The provost’s wife. ‘They are friends, are they not, she and Marion? And Marion helps with the children. Might she not unburden herself to her?’

  Jaffray reflected. ‘I had not thought of that. Aye, she might, when she comes to herself a bit. But those would be women’s things. We can do nothing for a murdered heart, but perhaps we can help dispel her more immediate fears. I will talk to her, tomorrow,’ Jaffray repeated, and I did not see the need for further questions on the matter.