The Devil's Recruit (Alexander Seaton 4)

by S. G. MacLean

  I sighed heavily. ‘There is little I can tell you, your Ladyship. You know the events of the last two days?’

  She nodded briskly. ‘That he was sent from Downies’ Inn in the company of his foster brother, and has not been seen since.’

  I could not see the direction of her interest. ‘I had not realised that Seoras was … known to your Ladyship.’

  She sniffed. ‘Hmf. You are scarcely a man of the world Mr Seaton, if you do not know that I am related to half the country round. There is a degree of cousinage between the MacKays and my own family, and Seoras’s father and I are friends of old: the Forbeses have long been allies of the MacKays in the north. I hear you yourself saw Seoras in Downies’ Inn the night the recruiting officers were there.’

  I acknowledged that I had done.

  ‘Then I fear there will be no happy outcome to this tale.’

  I did not know how to tell this woman who had suffered so much unjust loss that not every misadventure must end in tragedy. I chose my words carefully. ‘The boy will be coming to in the back room of some drinking place, or lying low until he thinks the furore over his absence has passed. It has happened often enough like this before, and they always come back.’

  ‘Not this time. His companion has already been found, has he not? In what condition was the boy?’

  So I told her of Hugh’s cuts and bruises, his sodden clothes and the weeds in his hair.

  She stared away from me, into the fire. ‘Tell me exactly what happened, what was said in Downie’s Inn the night before last.’

  And so I did, although I could not see what purpose it would serve. When I had finished, she was silent a few moments before saying,

  ‘Then Seoras MacKay is dead, Mr Seaton. He is dead.’

  Her words startled me, and before I could respond, we were interrupted by the arrival of Matthew Lumsden’s wife, and all chance of asking Lady Rothiemay how she could pronounce with such certainty upon the thing was lost, but I reflected on it that night, and on several after.

  5

  Rumours at the Session

  Sarah had had little to say when I told her that evening of Lady Rothiemay’s good regard of her. In fact, she had looked almost displeased by it.

  ‘She meant well by it, you know.’

  ‘I have no doubt she did, but it would please me better to know that no one in Banffshire remembered my name.’

  ‘Sarah,’ I sighed, ‘it was a long time ago, and of those who remember it at all, none will blame you.’

  I knew the minute I said it that I had done wrong. I wanted to bite back the words, but it was too late. When her response came, it was slow, and deliberate.

  ‘Will they not? That is very good of them.’

  She had never forgotten, could never forget, the jeers and the stones hurled at her as she had been driven, pregnant by her brutish master, from the burgh of Banff nine years ago, and while we had made, over time, this life for ourselves here in Aberdeen, I had never once been able to persuade her to return to that town with me. It was a matter we rarely spoke of, and I was glad to leave it now.

  ‘Do you think I am a fit person to judge who will make a good schoolmistress?’

  Her face softened, and a mischievous look came in to her eyes. ‘You are a terrible person to judge such a thing. I do not know what her Ladyship was thinking of. You think a stocking well-turned if your heel does not go through it at the first wearing, and letters well learned if the Catechism can be recited back to you.’ She glanced at Deirdre, who was busied in plaiting a strand of my hair with one of her own ribbons. ‘Look at you. You appear beyond comprehending that little girls might ever need the slightest discipline. If left to you, the schoolmistress’s post will be awarded to the one who can best look up at you with the eyes of a lost doe.’

  I pulled her towards me. ‘And when did you ever look up at me in such a manner? A she-wolf more like, indignant that I should even speak to you.’

  She laughed and teased herself away from me. ‘You had not yet learned to pay a proper compliment.’

  I had glanced at her casually when I’d mentioned Isabella Irvine, but seen little reaction, voluntary or otherwise, in her eyes. I had told her, years ago, of everything that had passed between myself and Katharine Hay. She had known most of it anyway, through rumour and gossip, and we had rarely spoken of it since, but I had never mentioned to her Isabella’s friendship with Katharine or consequent dislike of me. To talk of it now would be to threaten something in her that I knew was still fragile, and perhaps always would be.

  Neither had I told her of Lady Rothiemay’s pronouncements upon Seoras MacKay. On hearing of the young man’s disappearance, Sarah’s first response had been that the recruiters had taken him, and no reasoning on my part could shake this conviction from her. I had called on the master of the grammar school on my way home from Lumsden’s house. David Wedderburn had told me that the boys in the school still had nothing in their minds but the recruiting ship, to the extent that he had abandoned normal lessons and taken them instead through the Spaniard Cervantes’ account of the Battle of Lepanto. No sighting of the recruiting sergeant had been made anywhere near the school yard that day, and Wedderburn was vigilant on the matter, on account of the fears of the mothers of the burgh. I did not tell Sarah of my visit to the schoolhouse. It would do her little good to know that the matter that so exercised her fears did mine also.

  It was a little before seven when William arrived to accompany me to the weekly diet of the kirk session. He had been called to the eldership of the kirk several years before I had, and had never known, as I had, the shame of being forced to sit in sackcloth on the stool of repentance before the whole congregation. Whether that made me a better judge of my fellow man, I could not tell.

  It was a short walk down the Netherkirkgate to Correction Wynd and the Kirkyard of St Nicholas, and given the cold and the hour, few were out on the streets. I took the chance to castigate William for not having forewarned me of Lady Rothiemay’s presence in town, and he laughed heartily. The dullness of his own day had only been enlivened by a fight between two cottars from Woolmanhill over accusations of a stolen horse. ‘I nearly took a dunt on the head myself, helping Baillie Lawson to separate them.’

  ‘And it would have been well deserved, I am sure.’

  We arranged our faces and lowered our voices as we went in by the door of the East Kirk. William smiled as he saw me glance up at the pulpit that would soon be mine. ‘Have you your sermon written yet?’

  ‘Nine years since,’ I said, under my breath.

  Steps took us down to the small chapel of St Mary’s below the kirk, where the session was to meet. The others were already gathered there, under the groined stone vaulting of the roof. A fire had been lit in a brazier, but could do little to dissipate the cold echoing from the very stones of the place. My breath was in front of my face when I spoke. There was a great deal of stamping of feet and rubbing of hands, and I heard the hope expressed more than once that we would not have over much business to attend to tonight.

  Dr Barron, the Moderator, opened with a prayer that the Lord might grace our assembly and grant us wisdom in our judgments. Mr Andrew Melville, reader in the kirk, read from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter twenty-four, and the clerk followed by reading to us the order of business. An apprentice tailor and his master’s housemaid were brought before us for the third time to answer to an accusation of fornication made against them; they had denied the charge three times and it had not yet been found proven. The tailor’s wife having accompanied them gave assurance that the girl, to her absolute knowledge, was not with child, and the pair were admonished to see in future that their carriage did not draw suspicion of loose living down upon themselves. Several more townsfolk came before us and were similarly dealt with. Last to be summoned was a cooper, Gilbert Wilson, made to appear at the instance of Archibald Wallace. The cooper had promised to marry Wallace’s daughter, but had delayed time and again in setting the ban
ns before the kirk. When questioned, the young man, whom I recognised from the night in Downie’s Inn, produced a testimonial from Lieutenant Ormiston showing that he had signed for the Scots Brigade. The session accordingly loosed him of his obligations to Wallace’s daughter, much to that man’s displeasure, and prayed God’s blessing on the holy enterprise against the forces of the anti-Christ. The reluctant bridegroom made his escape with profuse thanks and evident relief.

  The subject of the recruiting ships seemed to exercise one of my fellow members, Deacon Gammie, particularly, for he twitched and worked at his gums continuously through the examination of Gilbert Wilson, as if there were matters of mighty import to be discussed instead. The sound of Wilson’s feet on the flagstone stair had not yet faded when Gammie came half-way out of his seat to pull at the sleeve of the Moderator.

  ‘Yes, Deacon,’ said Dr Barron, in a manner which suggested that he had no great faith that what the Deacon was about to say would be of any relevance to our proceedings at all.

  Gammie got to his feet like an excited child kept waiting too long for his turn to speak.

  ‘While we are on the matter of the soldiers, it has come to my ear that Matthew Lumsden has been sighted in the burgh.’ He pursed his lips and nodded curtly in the direction of where William and I were sitting. Matthew was an old friend from our student days and the nephew of his namesake, Baillie Lumsden, whose house I had been in that day. Unlike his uncle, Matthew had never settled to a respectable trade or business, and was known to be a willing sword in any cause of his master, the Marquis of Huntly, the most powerful nobleman in the North of Scotland and one whose family had ever about them the whiff of Rome. Gammie clearly felt that the mention of Matthew’s name should be enough to put the session on the alert.

  This point had escaped the Moderator. ‘And what would you propose we do with this information, Deacon?’ he asked.

  Gammie was taken aback. ‘Be vigilant! The man is a Papist, out and out, and may draw others in his snare.’ Again he looked pointedly at William and me.

  William smiled. ‘I can assure you, Deacon, that I am ever alert, in my lawyer’s mode, to such snares, and in twenty years of friendship with Matthew have side-stepped them with ease. And as for Alexander, given his calling, I think you may rest easy.’

  ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘I was at Baillie Lumsden’s house today – there was no sign of Matthew there, nor indeed the Marquis of Huntly either.’

  There was a great deal of suppressed laughter at this, but Gammie was none abashed. ‘You may mock, Mr Seaton, but these are dangerous times, and the poison of the war on the continent may seep into our own body soon enough if we do not look to our own imperfections.’ I regretted mocking the man now, for he was right – much though I loved him, Matthew was a blemish, a wound on the body of our kirk and commonwealth which, if not kept in check, might thoroughly infect the whole body.

  ‘Quite so,’ said the Moderator, ‘and we should study to avoid such a calamity.’ There was much shuffling of feet and murmured agreement from the embarrassed elders.

  Matters of discipline and rumour thus dealt with, and all who were not members of the session being gone, the clerk became grave and warned us that what we were about to discuss was not to be noised abroad in the burgh, for fear of encouragement of superstition and unrest. A report had come from the kirk session of St Fittick’s Church in the parish of Nigg, across the mouth of the Dee, of a demonic Sabbath thought to have been held at the kirk only two nights since. Lights had been seen, for which there could be no lawful cause, and a great howling heard. Dancing amongst the gravestones and flight through the trees above the kirkyard had been witnessed by the minister himself, who was now in a state of terror and constant calling for succour upon the Lord. The session of St Fittick’s begged our prayers for the restoration of their minister’s senses, and urged vigilance upon us lest the coven take mind so to pollute the kirk of St Nicholas. Fervent prayers were duly said on behalf of Mr John Leslie, minister there, and resolve was taken to keep a nightly watch on our own kirkyard.

  ‘Have you seen anything of Matthew in the town?’ I asked William, after we had bid goodnight to Dr Barron and the others at the kirkyard gates.

  He shook his head dismissively. ‘No. Old Gammie sees Papists under every bush, and besides, when do you think Matthew ever learned discretion? If he was come home from whatever the Marquis has him at abroad, you and I would both be nursing sorry heads and empty purses. I was so drunk the last time he was here it was only by the quick thinking of one of my clerk’s boys that I escaped the notice of our good deacon myself.’

  ‘What, after you had refused to come home with me?’

  ‘Aye. Young Willie Dodds noticed Gammie creep in to Madge Ronald’s inn on his rounds, and threw a sack over the top of me before I could be spied. He and Matthew then sat on me until Gammie was safely gone.’

  ‘No chance of such times now,’ I murmured, after our laughter had drawn the attention of passers-by. ‘Between my tours of the inns in search of students who might be tempted to sign up with Ormiston, and taking my turn at the kirkyard watch, I will be lucky if I can get home to my own house one night in three.’

  ‘Ach, it will not be for long,’ said William. ‘Ormiston will be gone in little over a week, I’ll wager, once he has toured the lairds in the country round and conscripted a few of their sons. Besides, he cannot tarry here much longer if he is to reach safe to the Elbe and have his recruits securely quartered with their regiment before winter sets in.’

  ‘That will be a relief to the whole town.’

  Although we had gone our separate ways from the minister and other elders, he leaned towards me and lowered his voice further. ‘And as for the minister of St Fittick’s, you’re as like to find him in an alehouse as you are one of your students, and that is the cause of his demonic visions.’

  ‘John Leslie? No.’

  ‘But aye, John Leslie. Surely you know the man is seldom sober?’

  ‘I did not know,’ I said.

  ‘Well, my friend,’ he said, raising an eyebrow at me, more than half serious, ‘if we are to make a minister of you, you will have to learn to listen to gossip, for some of it will be true. For instance, Elizabeth told me six weeks ago that Gilbert Wilson only agreed to marry Jeannie Wallace because he’d lost a drunken wager and was desperate to extricate himself from his promise from the moment he woke up sober. The arrival of Ormiston’s troop ship has been as a blessing from God to him.’

  ‘I know it; I saw him sign up myself.’ My mind went back to the image of the young cooper eagerly putting his name to the paper the lieutenant’s men had set in front of him. And then a thought struck me. ‘William, the night in Downie’s Inn, when Gilbert Wilson signed for the regiment, Hugh Gunn was planning to also. I had the strong sense that it was to take himself out of the shadow of Seoras MacKay. Did you ever hear of bad blood between them?’

  ‘I never heard their names until yesterday, but I have heard tell of more than bad blood between them today.’

  I stopped, conscious of a vague stirring of hope. I hadn’t been back to the college since the morning. ‘Has Seoras returned?’

  ‘Not by the time I met Baillie Lawson when I was leaving my chambers tonight. It seems Hugh Gunn is accused of having had a hand in his foster brother’s disappearance. Hugh claims to remember nothing of what happened after he and Seoras left the inn, until he was found in the cooper’s yard yesterday morning. But that he was in a fight is clear, and the state he was found in has led to rumours that he drowned his foster brother. The baillies have agreed that the boy might remain under the custody of Dr Dun in the college, although how he is to shield him from the wrath of Strathnaver, I do not know.’

  Nothing cheered by what William had told me, I bade him goodnight him on Correction Wynd, where he had business to attend to. Lady Rothiemay’s words, asserting that Seoras was dead, returned to me. But what had I told her to convince her of it? That I had stopped Hugh
Gunn from signing up with the lieutenant? Surely she could not believe the boy would murder his foster brother over that? And yet I could not think, on a night like this, that Seoras would be hiding away of his own accord, although of course out in the town, there were places where a man might secrete himself, briefly, if he so wished it.

  A half-hour’s walk to clear my head before I went home would do me no harm, and I found myself going deeper in to the town, in the hope that I might come upon some hint of him. My feet took me along lanes and wynds, where gates and doorways set into high walls might lead to secret places, narrow pends giving off on to dark courtyards, forgotten gardens, places where the hopeless poor slept amongst the derelict dwellings of men long dead, but I doubted that Seoras MacKay would have been able to evade discovery in any of them for two days and nights. Even in the darkness, a man could not hide from his thoughts, and those that dogged me could not be shaken off, evaded, by a sudden turn into an unexpected close. Images came, unbidden, unwanted, to my mind’s eye. Lady Rothiemay’s words echoed again in my head; the look on Hugh Gunn’s face as he had pushed past me in Downie’s Inn, the bitterness in his voice as he’d addressed his companion would only leave my mind to be replaced by the memory of the state he had been in the previous morning, and the weeds which had hung from his sodden clothes. A terrible thought came to me and I tried to push it away, but it kept coming back like the body of a drowned man, brought inevitably to the surface.

  At some point in my wanderings, a strange notion that I was not alone attached itself to me, but no matter how often I turned, I saw no one. Nevertheless, I was glad to finally emerge back on to the Schoolhill, where the moon in the clear sky reflected blue light off the frost that covered the ground. I could see my way before me now as clearly as if I had a lamp in my hand. Again though, after a moment, I almost believed I heard footsteps shadow mine, stop less than a heartbeat after mine had stopped, but I realised my foolishness when I saw a well-known figure hurry past a doorway only a few yards ahead of me. Louis Rolland.