The Devil's Recruit (Alexander Seaton 4)

by S. G. MacLean

MacKay was utterly unmoving. His men were silent. ‘My men can go days without food and drink, or a roof over their heads. They will stand here, as will I, until Seoras and Uisdean are brought before us.’

  Dr Dun did not flinch under the Highlander’s gaze. ‘I cannot. Your son has been missing since Monday night, when he left an inn in the town.’

  The soldier’s jaw moved slightly. ‘I see. And Uisdean?’

  ‘Hugh was with him. He wasn’t found until the next day. He has no memory of what happened and has been ill with a fever ever since.’

  MacKay swallowed. ‘Take me to him.’

  ‘Your men …’ began Peter Williamson.

  MacKay scarcely glanced at him. ‘My men will stand there until they are told to do otherwise. Now take me to my foster son.’

  There was nothing more to be said. Dr Dun, intimating that MacKay should follow him, turned away towards the regents’ tower. Not confident of what Lord Reay’s reaction to the sight of Hugh would be, I went after him.

  As we climbed the stairs, Dr Dun explained some of the details relating to Seoras’s disappearance to his father, and tried to prepare him for the condition in which he would find Hugh. ‘He was next to insensible when he was brought back to us. He seems to have lost all facility for the Scots tongue. One of the third-year students, a boy from Strathnairn, has been trying to talk to him, but can get very little of any use from him. He can recall nothing after he left the inn with Seoras, does not know where they went, how he came by his own injuries, or why he was found in the place or condition that he was. His clothes were sodden, and by the time we could get him out of them he already had the makings of a fever. I fear you’ll find him ill-suited for visitors.’ I could tell from his tone that Dr Dun was almost as concerned for Hugh Gunn as he was for Seoras.

  It was indeed in my own old room, next to Peter Williamson’s, that Hugh had been placed. An old woman from the town had been hired to watch over him through the night. A fire burned in the hearth and the shutters were tight shut against the icy air. The one candle that flickered as we entered the room did not cast its light far. On the cot that had been set near the fire, a man I would not have recognised as Hugh Gunn shifted and groaned slightly, his mouth moving in words incomprehensible to me. There was bruising around his jaw and on his neck, and cuts, bandaged now, on his hands. His cheeks were flushed and his lips cracked and dry. His face was distorted by some image that seemed to torment him from behind closed eyes.

  The small room was made smaller by the entry of Dr Dun, Lord Reay, and myself. The principal had murmured to me as we entered the room, ‘Stay close to his Lordship, Alexander: I want to know what is said between them.’

  And indeed, Lord Reay did address Hugh Gunn in the Gaelic language. If any of us had harboured fears that the man would blame his foster son for the disappearance of his son, we were wrong. So soft did he speak at first that I could hardly catch the words, words in a savage tongue from a man at home in the company of kings, repeated over and over.

  ‘Uisdean, my boy, my son. What have they done to you?’

  Forgetting where he was a moment, he turned and said something to the old woman who had been sitting with Hugh. Panic flickered on her face because she did not know what he was saying.

  ‘She does not understand, your Lordship,’ I said, ‘but I believe the fever only came full on him in the night.’

  ‘And why is there no doctor here?’

  The principal intervened. ‘I am a physician … the woman has been instructed …’

  Lord Reay looked at him with undisguised fury. ‘The woman be damned. You,’ he said, addressing me once more in Gaelic. ‘Go out and call for my own doctor. Lose no time.’

  I went without question and was back within three minutes with a man who looked like he could wrestle a black bull single-handedly and have the better of the encounter. He was dressed as one of the common soldiers, not like MacKay and his officers. He exchanged a few words with his chief before bending close and beginning to examine the boy.

  ‘This is your physician?’ Dr Dun did not attempt to mask his incredulity.

  ‘Ossian’s family has served the MacKays as doctors for as many generations as there have been generations. His son will serve my son. There is no man with whom I would more readily trust my life.’

  I remembered it from Ireland, the hereditary septs of doctors, lawyers, genealogists that served the leader of a clan. Lord Reay’s Lowland dress and manner, his reputation across Europe, had deceived me into forgetting for a moment what he really was – a Highland chief.

  The principal was evidently not persuaded by what he saw before him. ‘Yes, but does this man – the folk ways have their uses, but …’

  The man named Ossian turned around and fixed Dr Dun with a long gaze before saying, in Latin that would not have been out of place on the steps of the Senate of Rome, ‘My father and grandfather and their fathers and grand-fathers before them were as learned as any doctors in Europe. I learned from them on the Braes of Ben More and in the valley of Strathnaver, but if it will put your mind at ease on the matter, I also studied in the schools of Montpellier and Padua. I have attended to cattlemen and fishermen, princes and kings. I have known Hugh Gunn since the day he was born.’ And then he called to the old nurse and began to give her instructions, in Scots, as to what she was to bring to him.

  As the doctor attended to Hugh my ear became accustomed once more to the words of their Gaelic tongue. Ossian would murmur phrases in Latin, the names of medicines and authorities, committing things to his mind, but these phrases would be interspersed with more deliberate utterances to Hugh himself, reminding him of incidents from his and Seoras’s common boyhood, ploys they had been involved in, scrapes they had got in to, and I realised he was trying to find some connection, some common ground, that might spark off in Hugh’s mind a recollection of what had happened on the night of Seoras’s disappearance. But there was nothing, save a repeated jumble of words which I could not understand.

  ‘Loose the horse?’ said Ossian. ‘What horse, Uisdean? Whose horse?’

  But Hugh just kept repeating the same words again and again.

  Lord Reay shook his head impatiently. ‘Horse theft. Seoras has too much of his grandmother’s Gordon blood in him. Be it horses, cattle or land, they cannot keep their hands from what is not theirs. If I find this is the tail end of a thieving escapade, I’ll tan that boy’s hide for a saddle when I lay hands on him.’

  ‘You think Seoras is – responsible – for all of this?’

  MacKay turned impatient eyes on me. ‘Of course he is responsible. It would not be the first time he has laid himself low for a few days until trouble has passed. What else would it be?’

  I looked to Principal Dun and he asked the old woman to leave us. When she had gone he said, ‘Your Lordship, forgive me for what I must tell you, but there can be no point in dissembling. It has come to be believed that your son must be dead, murdered, and that Hugh Gunn, by some means or another had a hand in it.’

  The colour that drained from Lord Reay’s face seemed to take with it every particle of warmth that was in the room. There was no movement save the occasional shifting of the sick boy in the bed. In the foster father’s eyes I saw the cold wrath of a northern storm.

  ‘Who has spoken of murder?’

  Dr Dun replied. ‘It is all the talk of the streets, but the magistrates too have begun to consider the possibility – likelihood, in fact. Hugh has clearly been in a fight, and he was the last person to be seen with your son – he was sober whilst Seoras was not. Mr Seaton here was witness to their last exchanges in the inn. I think it likely that you must prepare yourself for grief. Even if he is not dead, should Seoras have been lying somewhere since Monday night, in the cold we have had …’

  Lord Reay spoke slowly. ‘If my son is dead, it will be none of Hugh’s doing.’

  Dr Dun was hesitant. ‘They were known to have fought.’ Then he looked directly at Lord Reay. ‘They did
little else.’

  Here I thought the soldier would explode. ‘Fight? They were foster brothers. What else should they do? Write sonnets? Play the lute? We have women in Strathnaver to do our embroidery!’

  The physician got up without speaking and left. Lord Reay seemed barely to notice. He turned his attention once more to me. ‘Tell me what happened in the inn.’

  And so I told him almost all that had passed in Downie’s Inn. But it was not all that I had told Dr Dun, and Dr Dun said nothing to correct me, for I suspect he understood the thought behind my deceit. I did not tell him that I had come upon Hugh in the act of signing up for Ormiston’s regiment. I feared he would take it as a betrayal. The next few moments proved me right.

  Dr Dun, who had remained by the doorway for much of the time, said, ‘It may be, you know, that no harm whatsoever has come to Seoras, and I pray God it is so.’

  Lord Reay looked away from the boy on the bed to the principal. ‘You think he has gone of his own accord?’ Some of the anger was out of him now, and he seemed almost ready to consider the possibility of something better.

  ‘He may have signed up with the lieutenant …’

  Those words were enough. Lord Reay dropped Hugh’s hand and stood up, all trace of benignity gone. ‘My son,’ he said, a rolling anger in his voice, ‘the son of Donald MacKay of Strathnaver, will serve in the Garde Eccosaise and then go to the German lands and fight in his father’s old regiment, as will Uisdean here, God willing. I was Colonel of the Scots Brigade in the service of Gustav Adolph of Sweden. Wherever else Seoras might be, he is not on the recruiting ship of a minor officer of my regiment.’

  At that moment, the physician re-entered the room with four of MacKay’s soldiers behind him. Without reference to Patrick Dun or myself, two took up their position outside of the door, the other two inside. The principal cleared his throat.

  ‘You cannot post armed men here in the college. We are under the jurisdiction of the burgh council, and I cannot authorise the presence here of these men.’

  Lord Reay looked him full in the eye. ‘Authorise what you will, but there are almost forty of my men in your courtyard, who will only be leaving on condition that these men stay. I can assure you, and any other power in this land, that neither your council nor anyone else will put manacles on this boy’s hands.’

  With some final words of reassurance to an unhearing Hugh, and instructions to his physician, MacKay left, a living reminder that the law of Scotland, even now, was only as strong as a nobleman’s arm.

  I should have been angry, insulted for the privileges of my college, the claims of my town, but instead I felt a strange surge of admiration for this man who valued loyalty and faith above the dry ink scrawled by long-dead clerks on rolls of parchment. More than that though, I too could not believe that the death of Seoras MacKay – for dead I was certain he was – was the doing of the boy who lay, hurt and fevered, on the bed in front of me.

  7

  The Recruiting Sergeant

  The departure of Lord Reay left the college in a heightened state of tension, worse than the days of waiting for his arrival. An emergency session of the burgh council was held, and by midday it was made known to us that the provost and magistrates had agreed to allow Lord Reay’s men to search every property in the burgh in the hope of finding Seoras. The principal, anxious that all our boys should be safely accounted for, decreed that those who lodged out in the town were to be brought within the safety of the college walls until the Highlanders and the recruiters had left.

  The principal and all the other teachers would remain in the college, but it was understood that I was reluctant to leave my wife and family alone for even a night. Four years ago, one of my fellow regents, driven mad by spite and malice, had assaulted her in our home and left her near for dead. If ever I had to be away now, she and the children moved into the home of William Cargill. She, who had been so independent before, never argued now that there was no need. But the day had been so busy I had not forewarned them, and so they were at home alone. It was well after ten at night that the porter unlocked the gates for me, and that I stepped out into the silent town.

  Again, just as I had been on the previous night, I was taken by a desire to be alone a while. Between my day at the college and my nights at home, there seemed to be no time at which I could give proper thought to the changes that were being wrought in my life. I knew that once I had my manse there would be more space for our family, and even a room to myself where I might study and pray in peace. I looked back to the roofs of the Marischal College as they rose above the houses on the Broadgate. For nine years now, that place, that rabble of buildings surviving from the days of the Grayfriars who had first inhabited them, patched and added to over the years as the college expanded, had been a foster parent to my adult self. And yet, for all that my longest-held dream was about to be realised, I felt a knot of apprehension in my stomach as to how I should manage, cut adrift from it, when in a few weeks’ time I walked out of those gates a regent of Marischal College no more.

  The town I walked through had its own concerns. It was a place waiting, but for what I did not know – for soldiers in the night, for what tomorrow might bring. Candles burned in windows where usually there would be none at this hour – a single light in each home, godly citizens of a godly burgh, warding off the darkness. On the Guest Row – the Ghaist Row, or Way of the Spirits, as our fore-bears had called it – lights at upper windows sent flickering shadows on half-hidden courtyards and narrow closes. I did not look up at Baillie Lumsden’s house, afraid of the ghosts of my own life residing there, the memories that had been stirred in me by the face of Isabella Irvine. Perhaps it was a good thing that I had so little time to give thought to my own life, for things I had thought buried were coming back to haunt me, and I knew they could bring little that was good to the life I lived now.

  My way became darker as I left the Guest Row and turned on to Flourmill Lane. The blades of the mill, caught white in the moonlight, creaked, not quite still at the other end of the lane, like a ship waiting in an unnatural harbour. I could see no one out in the lane, but again I felt that I was being watched. I slowed my pace and walked more carefully, taking the time to glance in each doorway, each pend, that I passed. No one. By the time I reached the entrance to our court, I was chiding myself for my foolishness and more concerned with getting out of the cold than with whoever else might be out on the streets tonight. Just as I turned under the archway, a sound stopped me, some movement at the mouth of the close across the lane. I turned around but saw nothing – an animal, a trick of the mind.

  The door was locked, as it always was now after dark, and I found the fire almost dead and the two younger children fast asleep in their bed. A candle had been left for me in the middle of the table, and I lifted it to guide me up the wooden stairs. Zander murmured something to himself and turned over as I held the light above his cot on the upper landing, but he did not wake. The door to our bedchamber was open, and the blue light of the moon streamed across the rush matting of the floor, but the bed was empty. I pushed the door open wider and found Sarah standing silently with her back to me, by the gable window that looked on to Flourmill Lane. Her voice was dull. ‘He is there.’

  ‘Who? Who is there?’ I went to the window beside her.

  ‘In the close mouth across the street. He’s been there, watching, for the last two hours.’

  I was looking at her face, a study in terror, and not out at the window. ‘Who, Sarah?’

  ‘There,’ she said, pointing, ‘there. The recruiting sergeant.’

  I went closer to the window to look, and as I did so, a figure stepped from the close mouth in to the open lane. He wore no cloak but a thick leather buff-coat. His hat was low on his head, but for a short moment he lifted his face, half-covered by the patch over his left eye, to the full light of the moon and slowly raised his arm in salute. He held my eye for a moment after he lowered his arm and then he moved away into the
night.

  I had not yet removed my boots and was at the top of the stairs before Sarah caught me.

  ‘Alexander. Stop. Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘I’m going after him,’ I said quietly.

  ‘After him? You cannot! Have you gone mad?’

  I lifted her restraining hand from my chest and went past her.

  ‘Alexander!’ she cried.

  ‘He has come for me, Sarah. He has come for me.’

  A cat from the forestairs next to our house squalled angrily as I disturbed her in pursuit of some prey and I heard my Davy stir in his bed, calling out for his mother as I closed the door behind me, but I did not wait or turn back. I turned right at the top of the pend, in the direction I had seen the sergeant head. At first, coming to the fork of the Netherkirkgate, I could not tell where to go, whether up towards Grayfriars or down to St Nicholas Kirkyard. And then I saw him: he had paused a moment by the wall of Lumsden’s house on the Guest Row, and after making sure that I saw him, he moved off again. A curious, fast, limping gate. The gait of a wounded man who had learned to overcome his wounds, and in that gait I could almost recognise the walk. I quickened my pace and he did his, so that thirty yards of distance remained resolutely between us. He paused again, momentarily, looking over his shoulder at me before crossing the Broadgate and making off in the direction of the Castlegate. I followed as fast as I could, but still I did not gain on him. By the time he had passed in front of the vast edifices fronting the Castlegate – the Earl Marischal’s town house, the tolbooth, the courthouse – and crossed towards Futty Wynd and the gate to St Ninian’s Chapel I no longer wondered where he was going: I knew. And he knew that I knew it. He was making for the Heading Hill.

  I lengthened my stride, and each step took me backwards in time. I thought not, as I had done when a young man, of the gruesome deaths, deserved and undeserved that had been meted out to the burgh forefathers in that place, but of the possibilities, the dream of a future that I no longer had. As the frosted moss gave way beneath my boots, I felt the spring of it in the warm sunshine under my bare heel and sole. The fresh salt smell of a winter sea gave way to the summer scents of clover and thyme. I turned only once to look at the burgh below me, the spire of St Nicholas standing clear in the night sky as it had done then, the new roof of the Marischal College library, restored at last after the fire that had ravaged it.