‘What bothers you so much about that boat, Alexander? You cannot still fear the recruiting sergeant is a threat to our boys?’
I turned my face away from the ship. I could not make myself lie to him, but I knew I could not tell him the truth either. ‘His presence in the town has made me … uncomfortable – that is all.’
I knew William was not wholly convinced. There was little in my past or his that the other did not know and I had a great longing to tell him what Archie had told me, of the son in Spain whom I had never seen, and have his counsel. But I could not, for – for all they had been friends – Archie had sworn me not to tell even William of his return.
I was glad that we were soon landed on the southern shore of the Dee at the fishing village of Torry. It was a harsh living the men here made, and a harsh life for the families whose mean dwellings we tramped past on our way out to St Fittick’s Church by the shore of Nigg Bay. Those who looked out at their doors as we passed would have little cause to know a lawyer from the town or a regent from the college, and yet before we had quite left the village for the moor that would take us over the headland to Nigg Bay, the word was passing from hut to hut that the kirk session of Aberdeen was on its way to try John Leslie.
I had preached once or twice in St Fittick’s myself during the vacancy of their pulpit before John Leslie, then a divinity student of some promise at St Andrews, had been called to fill the charge. That had been eight years ago, and I had had little cause to come here since. The small stone church with its short bell-tower had stood by the shore from ancient times – the stones in its kirkyard already worn and mosscovered long before Bishop Elphinstone had ever thought to build his university in the old town. The superstitions of the place were older even than those of Rome, and in the days of Rome had been kept by the people here. A well, St Fittick’s Well, was said to have healing properties, and often a rag, an old pot, a coin or some other gift would be left for the saint, or for the spirits that were said to have inhabited the place before him. Seventy years since the trappings of idolatry had been swept from our churches and still the foolish and weak in faith believed such things. Some from Aberdeen would make their way to the kirk and its well, not across the ferry, but by land, over the Bridge of Dee and through the vale of Tullos, stopping at the Elf hillock and the Faerie Brig. Watches were kept on the ferry, checks were made through the town by the session and the baillies on the Sabbath, fines were imposed, but still there were those who would wallow in their ignorance.
I had not met John Leslie more than a half-dozen times, and not at all in the last three or four years. At first, he had gone to some lengths to make himself acquainted with the theologians of our two universities, but soon it became apparent that he found the moderate leanings of our bishop and the learned doctors too lacking in fervour for his tastes. He had married the daughter of one of his old professors and brought her to his lowly parish with him, and there discovered that love alone would not overcome the ravages of poverty. Child after child had been born to them. He came less often to meetings of the presbytery. The town of Aberdeen and, it was said, his worn-out wife, saw less and less of John Leslie.
The man waiting for us in the kirk of St Fittick’s in the care, or custody, of his own elders, looked to be at least ten years older than when I had last seen him. Hair which before had been tidy and thick was now thinned and unkempt; a frame once lean and upright had grown skeletal and hunched; eyes that had been clear and intelligent were bloodshot and wild. I saw, though he had not extended it in greeting, that his hand trembled as I had seen those of others broken by drink tremble. This was not the work of a shock of the last few days, of a sudden descent into madness, but of years of abuse of his own soul and body by this minister of the kirk. Whatever William and I had been brought here for, I had no stomach for it.
‘This man is ill,’ I said, marching up to the wreckage of the minister while his session clerk was still in the midst of intoning his welcome.
‘Mr Leslie has not been in his right spirits of late, and we thought well to call for assistance from our brethren of St Nicholas.’
‘He should be at home in his bed, not here in this freezing kirk,’ I said, continuing to ignore him as I removed my cloak and put it round John Leslie’s thin shoulders. It was the minister himself who stopped me.
‘No, Mr Seaton. You must listen to them. If I am sick in heart and body, it was all of my own doing, and I tell you I repent of it, I repent. But there is no sickness of mind: I have seen what I have seen, and that must I tell, that the souls of my people be not imperilled.’
William exchanged with me a look that told me we must stop the minister from talking, for his own sake. ‘You are truly ill,’ he said, to the shambles of a man before us. ‘Let us take you home to the care of your wife. Your elders can apprise us of all that concerns the kirk.’
John Leslie threw off my cloak and went towards him with some vehemence. ‘The elders do not know. They were not here. I was here.’
I looked to the session clerk, who turned away, embarrassed. ‘Then sit and tell us,’ I said.
We drew closer to the brazier by the altar, a little sheltered from the bitter cold that licked at the walls and snaked under the doors of the kirk, as he began his tale.
‘I was here late last Monday night, alone – I told my wife I had business to attend to in the kirk, but she knew as well as I what that business was. I was down below in the vault – that is where I keep my supply.’
‘While your wife gleans for kelp on the shore, and looks to the charity of the fisher folk to put food in your bairns’ mouths.’ The old man who spoke was disgusted.
‘Aye, even then,’ said the minister. ‘But I have been given my warning. I think God has done with me and left me to the Devil.’
The elders collectively drew in their breaths. If it should become widely known that the minister of St Fittick’s had spoken like this, then not only would he burn, but others too, for a man who consorts with the Devil rarely does so alone. If the elders had hoped the sight of William and me would bring their minister to his senses, they were to be disappointed. There was nothing to do but let Leslie speak and pray he did not name anyone else as he did so.
He continued. ‘I was in the vault. Had been there some time. It was a cold and wet night, the wind blowing. I was in two minds whether to go home at all, for I have made my place down there quite comfortable, and there is no warmth to be had for me at the manse these days. I keep a lamp down there, so no light will be seen through the kirk windows. I think I must have dozed a while, for when I first heard their voices, the lamp was out.’
‘Whose voices?’ I asked.
He turned impatient eyes on me. ‘How should I know? They spoke in tongues – they cried out to the Devil in tongues. There were others who murmured in low voices, but I could hardly hear them over the rolling of sea on the stones of the shore, and the screeching of the horse.’
‘Horse?’
‘Aye, horse. Whether of this world or another, I do not know, but I never heard an animal make such a hellish racket.’
‘Was there music?’ This from an aged elder with an eager look.
‘None but a manic clanking of chains, that made a hideous cacophony with the squealing and whinnying of the beast and the endless imprecations in tongues. As it went on I thought I would go mad. Perhaps I did. I relit my lamp, and reckoning that I might as well meet the Devil in this world as the next, I came up out of the vault. The kirk door was swinging open and I could see out into the kirkyard. There must have been a dozen of them. One was very close to me, chained in the branks, a terrible wailing and crying out in their devilish words only a few feet from my ear; another danced in the air, a woman with her skirts all pulled up, making horrible, guttural sounds. The horse was in terror, trying to flee from the sight, but could not. The others stood in a circle round the graves, their besom by them, laughing as the flying wench cackled. I have never known such terror in my life. I tur
ned back into the church, ran down the aisle, and made off out by the lepers’ window at the back there.’ He pointed to the long, low window near the altar, where lepers once had been allowed to come and witness the ceremonies of the church.
‘I was out by that window and half-way across the moor before any of them saw me. I heard them shout and a great commotion began amongst them, but I never looked back once. I banged on the door of the first cottage I came to, Doddie Brown’s, and once he had let me in I bolted the door myself and bade him let no one in, come what may. And there we waited, in terror until dawn broke and Doddie sent his boy down to the village to rouse the elders.’
Here one of the elders spoke up. ‘The poor lad was scared out of his wits, said the minister had dragged them from their beds and made them watch the night through for witches and warlocks. When we got up to Doddie’s, Mr Leslie there was still in a terrible state, not his usual, you understand, but as you see him now.’ I was beginning to see that the whole parish knew what John Leslie’s usual state was, and wondered that the man had managed to keep his pulpit so long. ‘And so we went down to the kirk, though Mr Leslie would not come with us, said he would not set foot there again until he knew it had been cleansed for the worship of God. Wondrous to hear him talk so, for us.’
‘And what did you find at the kirk?’ asked William.
‘Not a witch nor yet a warlock, that I’ll tell you,’ said the fellow who seemed least disposed to further humour the scandalous life of his minister, ‘but a pile of blankets and empty wine jars, and a vault that stank to high heaven of debauches.’
‘And what of the kirkyard? You found nothing there to give weight to your minister’s tale?’
Again, there was unease, a reluctance to speak, amongst them. Finally, the session clerk spoke up. ‘It would be best, Mr Seaton, Mr Cargill, if you would come and see for yourselves.’
He led us to the door, the rest following, and showed us the branks where gossips and scolds would be chained, their mouth held in an iron halter that prevented the movement of their tongue, at the time of divine service, so that all who passed by on the Sabbath might see their penance and humiliation. The bridle was mangled and the chain that linked the iron manacles to the wall hacked in two, by an axe if not some brutal show of demonic strength. I thought of the incessant clanking of chains, the moaning from the branks of which the minister had spoken. ‘What else?’ I said.
The clerk threaded his way through the gravestones to a more open space under the old hawthorn that somehow withstood the blasts that came over the sea direct from Norway. ‘It was a wet night, last Monday night, and has been a hard frost ever since.’
‘Aye,’ agreed William. ‘The ground has relented nothing in a week.’
‘That is right,’ said the clerk. ‘You see how the turf is trampled and churned here. As if many feet had danced.’
‘Booted feet,’ I said, stiffening after having bent down for a closer look at the frozen mud. ‘I had not imagined witches so careful of their feet.’
I looked up at the tree through which Leslie had sworn he had seen a woman fly. It had nothing to tell. The ground had also been churned by hooves. I pointed the marks out to William. He inspected them cautiously. The members of the session seemed reluctant to come near them. A nervy-looking man spoke for them. ‘Do you see any there that are – cloven?’
William struggled to suppress a smile. ‘If the Devil danced here, he was remarkably well shod.’ He looked beyond the kirkyard towards the path that led up to the cliffs where, year on year, the sea scoured more and more of the rock away and paths crumbled over the edge. He had seen enough. ‘Come, Alexander, there is nothing more to be learned here – no witches’ sabbath but some young ones, out dancing, and John Leslie too drunk to know the difference.’
I looked around at the old, worn graves, the newer ones with their engravings still fresh, the tranquillity of the place disturbed only by the occasional cry of a sea-bird or the building rumble of the pebbles as the waves rolled gently from the shore. ‘It is hardly a place of disturbed spirits,’ I said.
‘Then you are a fool, Mr Seaton, and you do not know what you look for.’ John Leslie, still shivering but no longer hunched, regarded me gravely. ‘For at night, in the darkness, with the wind howling and the sea crashing on the shore like a demented beast in search of its prey, familiars of the Devil walk here. I know it, for I have seen them, and I have seen the unquiet dead they leave behind.’ The man was stone cold sober, and now I was certain he had lost his mind, for the words he spoke would be his own death warrant.
‘Get him away from here, get him home!’ I shouted, and frightened by my vehemence, the clerk ordered two of the strongest-looking of their number to take John Leslie to his miserable manse and bid his wife keep him there.
I looked after him, then turned to address what was left of the session. ‘This is an offence to the kirk and all that is right. After the way you found him on Tuesday morning, ranting and raving and in a terror, how could you have thought of letting him back in the pulpit again yesterday?’
‘We thought at first, as you do, that he had been driven mad by the drink, that the visions he claimed were the product of a mind destroyed. He swore to us then he would never touch another drop. It was not the first time he had done so, I grant you, but he had been so frightened out of his wits we believed him. And then, he did not touch a drop all week, is that not right?’
The man who spoke looked around him for affirmation, and many heads nodded in assent. ‘Even his wife confirmed it. He had taken it ill a few days, but by the fifth day, Saturday, he was beginning to look more like a man in health – in mind and body too, and he praised the Lord for it, and begged our leave to do his penance before the whole kirk, in the seat of repentance on the Sabbath. That was what we allowed – it was from that seat, and not the pulpit, that we dragged him.’
I had noticed it earlier, below the altar table, facing the whole kirk, a small, wooden stool. By a kitchen hearth, in a barn, it would have drawn little attention, but in a kirk it drew every eye, for that was where notorious sinners must sit, in shame and sack-cloth, to do their penance. I remembered John Leslie on the day eight years ago when he had been inducted into this charge, and wondered that such a man could have brought himself so low as to be forced to sit before his own congregation in this manner to proclaim his ruin.
‘He deceived you then,’ said William.
‘What?’
‘When he feigned sobriety.’
The clerk shook his head. ‘He was as sober as you or I, Mr Cargill. Clean-shaven, not the merest taste of drink upon his breath. His wife had sworn that he had taken no drink in five days. She said he had gone early, and with a firmness of purpose she had not seen in him in a long time, to the kirk. He wished to prepare himself in prayer for his public repentance, there was a kind of peace and joy about him, she said. That was an hour before the service. By the time the precentor came in and found him here, his sack-cloth rent and ashes in his hair, he was not in his wits. He was howling to God for deliverance from his torment, from the visitations of the walking dead. The precentor could not shift him, and those of the congregation that arrived first were too terrified to go near him. It took us some time to get him down from the stool and away to the vestry before the people could hear much more.’
‘What more was there?’ I asked, not certain that I wished to hear the answer.
The others looked to the session clerk. ‘It was not easily that we calmed him, put an end to the ranting.’
I was becoming impatient. ‘What did he say to you then?’
The man’s face was almost defiant. ‘That he had seen the dead walk. As sober as I am standing here, and yet he looked me in the eye and told me, in words well measured, that he had seen the dead walk.’
William’s face paled. ‘When? When did he say he had seen them?’
‘Yesterday morning. In the kirkyard. From the grave behind Jessie Goudie’s. He saw a crea
ture, dreadful, rotted, rise from it and call to him.’
My mouth was dry. ‘What did it say?’
The clerk shook his head. ‘He did not know. It croaked at him in strange tongues. He fled to the church for sanctuary.’
‘And did the thing he saw not follow after him?’
‘He said it never entered the church.’
As petrified as their minister, they pointed out Jessie Goudie’s grave, but would not take a step closer to it. It was there, clearly marked, a spinster not dead two years. But behind hers was another, much older stone, tilted at an angle to the ground, beset by lichen. Whatever it told of the body whose last resting place it marked was long worn away by wind and salt rain. The stone showed no cracks, and the ground around it was undisturbed.
William surveyed the ground around, and I was about to turn back to the kirk when his voice stopped me.
‘Alexander, the well.’
I looked over to the spring where the waters of St Fittick’s Well, that place of resort for the superstitious and the desperate, trickled from the earth. I saw nothing there I had not seen before.
‘No,’ he said, animated now. ‘Not that one. But there, the Lady Well.’
Some way back and off to the right from behind the old and unmarked grave was the vaulted stone casing of a well dedicated long ago to the mother of Christ. No miraculous or magical properties being claimed for it, it had fallen into disuse and been all but forgotten by those who thronged the other. We walked towards it, pulled back the bush whose twigs and branches had recently been snapped and trampled upon, and descended the stone steps down to the spring of the well itself. A foul smell, not just of damp but of animal filth came to us.
‘There must be a beast dead in here,’ said William. ‘Mind your feet there – the steps are covered in slime.’ But when we got to the bottom of the steps, we found no dead beast, just the excrement and blood of one who, for its time in this shelter at least, had lived.
The Devil's Recruit (Alexander Seaton 4) Page 15