The Devil's Recruit (Alexander Seaton 4)

by S. G. MacLean

  I assured him that I would and he went quickly up the slope towards the Blackfriars’ gate, as the bell of St Nicholas finished striking the hour.

  It was evident that there was little point in me continuing my search of the garden, and so I decided to call on George to see whether he had recovered from our midnight encounter.

  *

  As George’s wife, Isobel, pointed the way up the turnpike towards his studio, her words were harsh but her eyes danced in amusement. ‘You should have your hides tanned, the pair of you, rolling in the mud like two schoolboys at that time of night. And you to be a minister of the kirk? We are in the Last Days, surely.’ She went down the corridor, laughing quietly to herself.

  I blessed God that had sent me last night to that foolish scuffle with George, just for being able to hear her laugh again. It had been almost a year – ten months – since my friend and his wife had been plunged into almost unsupportable grief by the death of their third child, a beautiful boy carried off by the smallpox that had pillaged the cradles and schoolrooms of this town. Somehow, as if by some Passover blessing, my own home had escaped, the plague had swept past without extending its tentacles beneath our door to where our children slept. But George and Isobel’s baby son now lay with his two older brothers in the cold earth of St Nicholas’ kirkyard. For weeks, I could hardly face her, and the pain I had often seen in those eyes that today danced still tore my heart.

  George, bent over a large table in the middle of his studio, was delighted to see me. ‘I thought Isobel would have banned you from the house. She tells me she doesn’t know how Sarah puts up with you. I was constrained to agree with her, for the sake of a night’s sleep.’

  ‘I am glad you managed it,’ I said, ‘for I am black and blue and did not get a wink.’ I glanced at the work he had laid out before him. ‘A landscape?’ I said, surprised, for George was a painter of portraits, and had garnered great wealth and fame, far beyond our town, for his skill.

  ‘No, come, see here,’ he said, waving his Dutch clay pipe as he spoke.

  He had four large folio sheets, side by side on to which he had sketched what I now saw was a detailed plan of a garden. Only by one or two names and landmarks did I recognize it as the place of last night’s combat and of my recent visit.

  ‘What do you think, then?’ he asked, gesturing again with the unlit pipe.

  I bent closer to look. It was magnificent, a magnificent folly, and regardless of any objection of gardener, kirk or council, I knew George would bring it into being. From the north window of his studio, which looked out over his own present back garden to that burgh wilderness and finally the loch, George would in future years see a knot garden, intricate box-framing beds of roses, the central path between them leading the eye to a summerhouse, and an avenue of fruit trees at the northern end of which, in its hollow, was the theatre.

  ‘And we shall have some plays there again, Alexander, I am determined upon it.’ George had often reminisced on the time in his childhood when a troupe of players favoured by King James had come to Aberdeen, and for their royal favour been royally entertained. Five nights of plays there had been – comedies and tragedies and histories of gore. The kirk session had been in near apoplexy, but could do little in the face of the council’s letter from the king. George’s eyes still glowed when he talked of it. My heart sank within me, for I knew that by the time his playfield was ready, I would be a minister before my session, and could not sanction any return to such public profanities.

  To one side of the auditorium, there was to be a maze of privet and holly. I could not make out what was on the other side, where the garden wall met the spa well of the Woolmanhill.

  ‘That is an old pond. A rancid bog in the summer months and a danger to public health. In the winter it fills with water from the loch source and freezes; it is treacherous to any who come upon it unawares. I have a fancy to put a fountain in it, in the Italian manner. The Italians have many ideas that we might happily adopt. Look here.’ He heaved open a large book – Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili – at a marked page and indicated one of the woodcuts there. He looked at me expectantly, but I was at a loss.

  ‘It’s a temple,’ I said.

  I could see my answer disappointed him.

  ‘It is not. It’s a pavilion.’

  ‘My apologies. But what is the difference?’

  He had been waiting for this question, and triumphantly opened the other tome at his left hand. De Re Aedificatoria. ‘Alberti says here, you see, “Let there be porticoes where the old men may chat together in the kindly warmth of the sun in winter, and where the family may divert themselves in the shade in summer.”’

  He was evidently waiting for a response that I was illequipped to give. Unperturbed, he continued. ‘What I plan, you see, is a diaeta such as Raphael planned for Cardinal Medici,’ – here I thought I might choke – ‘a pleasant place in winter for civilised discussions.’

  I did not wish to dent his enthusiasms, but I felt someone should open his eyes to the reality of the thing.

  ‘But George,’ I said, ‘these gentlemen are, or were, Italians.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he agreed.

  ‘Had they been Scotsmen, they would certainly not have spoken so blithely about sitting out in winter. Look around you, man, for pity’s sake.’

  George did, and gradually the incomprehension on his face was replaced by a broad grin, then outright laughter.

  ‘Alexander, my friend, I was trying to explain the purpose of these structures, not suggesting that we should sit out there in the wind and snow. But all the same, the sun even shines occasionally on this benighted corner of God’s creation, and would it not be pleasant if you and I and other friends could sit out of a summer’s evening and discuss the wonders of philosophy and the beauty God has laid at our door? What think you?’

  I smiled at my friend. ‘I think you are the wisest fool in Christendom, and the kindest.’

  He looked a little abashed, then slapped me on the shoulder. ‘And come tell me what you think to this, and what your kirk session might say to it.’

  He led me to a workbench where there was laid out a diagram describing a machine of some complexity.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It is an idea I have adapted from the French. I had thought to put a fountain in the middle of the pond, near the spring, have a statue in the middle, perhaps Diana, the Huntress.’

  ‘Not bathing,’ I interrupted.

  ‘No, no, of course not, but perhaps pulling back her bow, and releasing jets of water as she does so.’

  ‘It would certainly be a … curiosity,’ I said.

  ‘But not objected to?’

  ‘Oh, you may be sure it would be objected to, but if you were able to show that the movement was the result of means mechanical and not diabolical, it would be allowed.’

  He nodded, and I saw that this was only half the story. Emboldened, he added casually, ‘And around the pond I thought, perhaps, a nymphaeum.’

  I looked at him. ‘George, you are in jest.’

  ‘No, I am not. It would be perfectly respectable, a series of modestly clad nymphs in …’

  I could not help but laugh. ‘Modestly clad nymphs? Carvings of young women scarcely covered by a film of gauze, you mean. No, that would not be permitted in this burgh. All your time in the homes of the great has loosened your morals, and your memory, I think. There are to be no nymphs, George. Perhaps something such as is to be found at Edzell would be permitted.’ The gardens of Lord Lindsay’s castle in the Mearns, laid out in the last century, were a horticultural and astrological wonder, marrying a vision of planting with panelled stone walls depicting the Virtues, the Muses, and the mythology of the heavens.

  ‘I am already ahead of you there. I have poached two of Lindsay’s gardeners, you know.’

  ‘I met your gardeners today,’ I said.

  He seemed surprised. ‘I cannot think they were in the college. Or do no
t tell me Dr Dun has a mind to ape my schemes?’

  I laughed. ‘Would that the college could afford it.’

  ‘Ach, it will not be as expensive as it looks. The main thing is to get the well fixed, and then the walls built up, and then I will not perhaps be beset with marauding college regents in the dead of night.’

  ‘Nor their students,’ I said, and told him of the disappearance of Seoras MacKay and Hugh Gunn.

  He was thoughtful, looking out over the dark mass where his dream of a garden lay. ‘If they are lying there injured, which I doubt from the silence that descended on the place after our own little scrap, Charpentier and St Clair will find them: they are determined on knowing every inch of the place.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, straightening myself and stretching my arms, ‘I would not like to wake up to the sight of the little wiry one brandishing an axe over me.’

  ‘No, nor I,’ agreed Jamesone. ‘He is a sullen devil. Yet Charpentier says he is the best plantsman he has ever worked with, and knows the Netherlandish bulb fields as no other. They met at the palace gardens in Brussels, and moved northwards together, until they happily chanced at Edzell, where I found them. Lady Lindsay is not best pleased that I have purloined them, as she puts it, and I doubt I shall have my commission from her now.’

  ‘You are a rogue, George, and will lose half your patrons if you steal from them their most prized workmen.’

  ‘Ach. So be it,’ he said dismissively. ‘Edzell is a wonder indeed, but it was designed long ago and its labour is one of maintenance, not creation as here. Guillaume found my proposal a challenge he could not refuse.’

  ‘And St Clair?’

  Jamesone made a gesture of indifference. ‘Who can tell? His face is as sour here as it was at Edzell. But I am not constrained to spend my time with him, and if Louis and Christiane Rolland can thole him, then so will I.’

  I peered at George’s sketch of a herb garden, and wondered how Louis Rolland would manage to explain to him, on Charpentier’s behalf, that the designing of a garden cannot be carried out on the same principles as the planning of a painting. Even I knew that no gardener would set delicate herbs against a north-east facing wall, not half a mile from the North Sea.

  Just then, voices that were Aberdonian to their core burst in on Jamesone’s Elysian fantasy. He strode over to pull close the shutters which he had opened for better light and air. ‘God in Heaven! Have I to buy the street too, to find some peace in my own home?’

  I went with him to the window and what I saw drove all thoughts of gardens from my mind. I ran down the turnpike stairs more quickly than was safe to do, and was out on the street in less than half a minute. Being hauled down Schoolhill from the direction of Back Wynd, was Hugh Gunn, on either side of him one of the burgh’s burliest constables. The boy looked to be utterly drenched, though it had not rained since he had left the inn, and almost unable to walk by himself. He was shivering in the sharp October air, his face and hands were bruised and cut, and his long fair hair darkened and matted by water and weeds.

  I ran after the trio, who were attracting loud and uncomplimentary attention from those townsfolk out on the streets. At the foot of the Upperkirkgate I caught one of the constables by the shoulder. The fellow was about to swing a fist around at me, but saw at the last minute who I was.

  ‘We’ve found one of the devils at least, Mr Seaton. We’ll have to march the wretch to the magistrate before we can turn him over to you.’ He snapped round to the scholar on his arm, whose knees were buckling beneath him as if they could hold him no longer. ‘Stand straight, you devil, or by God, you’ll never see the Broadgate, never mind the college gates.’

  I could scarcely believe the boy I was looking at was the same young man who had been determined to sign up for a soldier only the previous night.

  ‘Hugh, what happened to you?

  No answer but a half-swallowed mumble and another buckling of the knees. I turned again to the constable. ‘Where was he found?’

  ‘Passed out in a cooper’s yard near the Green.’

  ‘Like this? Soaked?’

  ‘That is the way I came upon him. They had maybe thrown water over him, to rouse him.’

  ‘It must have been a bucket straight from the Putachie Burn by the look of him. Was there anyone with him?’

  ‘Not a soul. Whoever he was with is no doubt dead to this world in someone else’s yard or midden. Now, I’ll have to get this fellow up to the Castlegate; as if the town hadn’t delinquents enough to deal with.’

  I held up my hand. ‘Wait a moment. Hugh? Where is Seoras?’

  The boy looked at me stupidly, as if he could not understand me. I tried again, in his own tongue. ‘Uisdean? Cait a bheil Seoras?’

  This time, he understood. He seemed to have great difficulty in moving his tongue, and the words that he eventually produced were difficult to make out: ‘Chan eil fios agam. Chan eil fios agam.’ Tears were in his eyes as he looked desperately at me over the shoulder of the man dragging him away. I do not know.

  3

  The Drummer Boy

  It was nearly eight o’clock that evening before I finally arrived home, by which time Hugh Gunn had been safely returned to the college and placed under the care of Peter Williamson, whose remorse at what he saw as his dereliction of duty towards Hugh and Seoras was very great. He insisted on caring for the rambling boy himself.

  I had been unable to learn anything further of Hugh’s experience, or Seoras’s fate, occupied as I was with my class all afternoon. Before supper, I had accompanied Dr Barron, Professor of Divinity in the college, to a meeting of the ministers of all the kirks in Aberdeen, and had dined with them afterwards. It seemed hardly possible even now when I thought about it, but ten years on from the greatest disappointment of my life, from my public disgrace at a meeting of the presbytery of Fordyce, I was on the point of being called to the charge of the East Kirk of St Nicholas in Aberdeen. At the age of thirty-five, I was finally to attain to that thing I had wished for my whole life – by Christmas, I would be preaching the Word to the people of Aberdeen as a minster of the Kirk of Scotland. Dr Dun had preparations well in hand for my replacement as regent of the highest class at Marischal College, and was gradually releasing me to other duties in the town, more commensurate with my new status.

  Also more in keeping with the standing of a minister of the kirk, my family was to move to a new home, on the Gallowgate, a larger and grander house than the little cottage on Flourmill Lane that my friend William had leased to me at a derisory rent for the last seven years, since my marriage to Sarah. There were six weeks yet until we were to shift, but Sarah was already busy making preparations for the move. I expected to find her engaged in some spinning or needlework when I arrived home. Instead, what I found was a house with an atmosphere more chill than that I had just stepped in from, the two younger children lying awake but silent in their bed, my wife staring defiantly at a neglected fire, and our older son, Zander, nowhere to be seen. On the floor at Sarah’s feet were two wooden drumsticks, snapped in half.

  Nobody spoke as I walked over to pick up the broken toys. I looked from them to my wife, but she studiously avoided my eye. ‘What has happened here?’ I asked. ‘Where is Zander?’

  ‘He is upstairs, where I sent him. Had you asked that question two hours ago, you would have had a different answer.’ She was determined I would drag it out of her. There was nothing to do but oblige.

  ‘Why?’

  At last she looked at me. ‘Because he was not here. He did not come home until well after seven, when William Cargill brought him and James from the harbour.’

  I put a hand on her shoulder to reassure her. ‘I’m sorry he missed his supper, and I’m sure he will be sorrier, but you know, it is a natural thing for boys of nine to forget to go straight home after school. I did it often enough myself, and even a boxed ear and an empty stomach failed to remind me the next time there was something more interesting to do. I suspect they had go
ne down to look at the troop ship.’

  She shook my hand from her shoulder and I saw fire in her eyes as her head swung round towards me. ‘That is exactly where they went. Down to look at the troop ship. That boy has nothing in his head but the war and going to be a soldier. He has no talk but of marching and sieges and guns and colours. And all your talk of Matthew Lumsden and Archie Hay has not helped – Matthew is forever at the long end of the law, and look what became of Archie’s dreams of glory!’

  I sat down, hurt and perplexed. ‘Granted, Matthew is no good example, but I talk to Zander of Archie because it pains me more than anything else in life that he will never know him. And I doubt if there is a boy in Aberdeen who does not dream of being a soldier, who has not been down to look at the troop ship, seen Ormiston and his officers in their fine coats with their swords at their belts and their scars of honour, and wanted one day to be like them. What else should they want? A life of drudgery and toil such as they see about them here every day? Let him have his childhood dreams; when he comes to manhood he will better see the truth of it, and if he does not, it will be because God has called him to be a soldier and it will not be ours to question it.’

  Her face crumpled, all the defiance, all the rage, gone, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘But what if they take him, Alexander? What if they take him on to their ship, and we never see him again?’

  ‘Sarah …’ I leant towards her and took her two hands in mine. ‘They will not take him. What Ormiston wants is good officers, men who can be relied upon and who can lead, and soldiers strong enough to carry a musket, wield a pike. He has no interest in boys of nine.’

  She sniffed and nodded, but I was not sure yet that she was convinced. She released her hands and picked up the drumsticks that I had set back down on the floor. ‘I broke them,’ she said. ‘After William had left with James. Zander knew he would get no supper. He did not seem to care. He said a soldier had to learn to march on an empty belly, and he went and got his old drum out of the chest there. He beat it up and down the room, up and down the stair, until I could take it no more. I took the sticks from him and I snapped them in two.’