Seaton 03 - Crucible of Secrets

by S. G. MacLean

  I was not sure that I could form the words. ‘It is about … Sarah. And Andrew Carmichael.’

  ‘Ach!’ He turned away in impatience. ‘Not this again. How many ways do you need to be told? There is nothing …’

  ‘I saw them, William.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw them together. Yesterday. At the Snow Kirk.’

  ‘The Snow Kirk? But why …’

  ‘I had just come up the Spital Hill and was about to go down to the Old Town when I saw them come round from the back of the kirkyard. You will say I was mistaken, but I know I was not. Oh, God, William, his hands were on my wife.’

  And then I couldn’t get the words from my throat, I couldn’t see him any more; everything was blurred and hazy before my eyes, and William was across the room and had me by the shoulders.

  ‘Alexander, this cannot be what you think it is. There must be some good reason for it.’

  ‘What? I watched them there, I saw how he looked at her as she walked away, and I swear to you, William, I wanted to kill him. If I could have moved, made one foot go in front of the other I believe I would have killed him.’

  ‘But you did not. Did he see you? Did either of them see you?’

  ‘No. I went down behind a wall until they went their ways. Then I stayed there, for hours, just sat. Eventually, I came back down here. I didn’t know where else to go.’

  I ran a hand through my hair, only too conscious now of the sight I was presenting to my friend. ‘And the children, they have not been alarmed?’

  ‘You are in the college so much, I don’t think they would have noticed anything amiss, had it not been for Sarah’s distraction. Zander knows there is something wrong, and Deirdre has been asking for you.’

  ‘I should have thought of the children.’

  ‘Come back, come back with me, and see them now. The rest can be dealt with later.’

  So I left the library and the college with him, but I did not go down to William’s house. Instead I went to my own, to wash myself and change my shirt and shave my face. I had not quite finished that last when I heard the sound of Zander’s feet in the close and soon he was bursting through the door, filled with questions. I told him I had been engaged on secret work of great importance for Dr Dun, and that I was sworn to reveal the details to no one. He was delighted and impressed. And after him came Sarah, with Deirdre in her arms. I took my daughter and held her to me, but I could look only at my wife. And I truly looked at her. The sun had bronzed her arms and neck and scattered tiny freckles across her skin. I wanted to undo Carmichael’s touch, to erase from my mind the memory of his fingers on her face. But I found I could not speak, still less make a move towards her.

  ‘Alexander,’ she said. ‘Where have you been?’

  I put Deirdre down and told her to go and look for her brother.

  ‘Have you not spoken to William?’

  ‘He told me he found you in the library, that you had been in the college all night. What were you doing? Why did you not come home? Or send me a message?’

  ‘A message?’ A voice in my head, a warning voice, was telling me to go no further. ‘How could I send you a message when I did not know where I should find you?’

  On her face was a look of utter incomprehension, and the beginnings of some anger.

  ‘Where you should find me? Where you, who can slip from our bed yesterday morning without a word, and not return, until forced to, by William Cargill, tonight, again without a word, without a thought for us, should find me? Where else would you find me but here, looking after your children, or with Elizabeth? Where else?’

  ‘At the Snow Kirk, Sarah; I would find you at the Snow Kirk.’

  Everything stopped. I could see, all movement in her seemed to cease, aside from a panic that darted through her eyes.

  She put out a hand to me. ‘Alexander …’

  I shook it off.

  ‘Alexander, please, listen to me.’

  I stopped at the door, taking down my light hide jacket from the nail where it hung there. ‘Listen to you? Dear God, Sarah, I cannot look at you.’ I let the door swing shut behind me as I left.

  My footsteps took me to Maisie Johnston’s house, to the parlour where I had so often sat and drank with my friend Archie Hay in our long-gone student days. I had rarely gone there since then, and since my marriage, not at all. It was not a place a respectable man should be seen, and for a college regent to be found there would bode very ill indeed. I ordered English beer, and then asked for uisge bheatha, the whisky distilled in Speyside and the mountain glens to the west. Maisie denied that she had it.

  ‘Come, Maisie, you had it ten years ago, why not now? If Archie Hay was sitting here before you, would you tell him you did not have it?’

  ‘If Archie Hay was sitting here, I would commend my soul to God and leave Archie to the Devil, for he has been dead nigh on eight years, and can have no honest business with me. But Archie Hay was not a college regent.’

  ‘My silver is as good as his.’

  She smiled at last. ‘Alexander Seaton, you never had any silver.’ She opened a small cupboard and drew something from the barrel in there. She brought the glass of golden liquid over to the far corner in which I sat. ‘Have that for free and go home to your wife.’

  I set my pouch on the bench before me and said, ‘Take my money, Maisie; I will be here some hours yet.’

  It was indeed a good deal later that I at last decided to go home. I had not the stomach for the beer, and the whisky, fine though it was, only served to invigorate the pounding in my head. The cold mutton Maisie had brought me lay uneaten on its platter. I dropped more money than was needed on the table and left.

  It was a short distance from Maisie’s place to my own house. There were few, very few out on the streets at this time of the night, even on a summer’s evening, and I was glad of it. I passed by the gable end of Rachel Middleton’s house and remembered the promise I had made to her yesterday afternoon that I would return today. I considered for a moment, but her husband would no doubt be at home, and I had little inclination to meet the physician under the gaze of the woman I knew had betrayed him with my friend. And if he were not there, it was too late to call upon a woman on her own. I looked to the sky: it was turning from sulphurous yellow to a deep and threatening grey. At last the weather was going to break.

  All was quiet in the house when I arrived home. A few coals still burned on the fire but there was no other sound or movement downstairs. The children slept soundly in their bed in the wall, Deirdre’s fingers as ever rubbing a lock of Zander’s hair. I could hear nothing from upstairs, save the occasional creak of wood in the light wind that was getting up. I took the little pillow from the chair, carved by Duncan, on which Deirdre liked to sit, and set it on the floor in front of the dying embers in the hearth, lay down and closed my eyes. Tomorrow. Time enough to begin to put right the wreckage of this family. I would listen to Sarah tomorrow.

  I think the storm must have been raging a good while before I knew it, for before I was truly awake I had become gradually aware of the flashing of light in the darkness. It would have been well after midnight when I heard the first of the children’s cries, Deirdre first and then Zander. By the time I had roused myself and crossed the room to them, Sarah was at the top of the wooden steps from our room: she was down them in a moment and had Deirdre in her arms while I tried to persuade Zander that the world was not about to end. A sudden flash of light, followed very quickly by a clap of thunder, split the sky and illuminated her face as she turned it towards me. There were no lies in that face and I wanted to go to my wife and hold her, and forget that there had ever been such a man as Andrew Carmichael.

  Just then, above the sound of the storm, I heard a shout from the courtyard. I wrenched open the shutter at the window, and at first I could see little, but then another flash of lightning showed a woman’s form, drenched, her face desperate. It was Rachel Middleton and she was banging on the door,
shouting my name.

  THIRTEEN

  The House of Jewels

  I could hardly persuade her to come into the house, still less to sit down. She was talking before she was through the door, but making little sense.

  ‘Is it the session?’ asked Sarah from behind me.

  ‘I do not think it, at this time of night. Rachel, is it the session?’

  ‘No, no, you must come, please. It’s Matthew Jack; he has my husband.’

  ‘Jack? Where?’

  I managed to unfurl her fingers from their grip on my shirt front and get her over to a stool by the hearth where Sarah had begun to rekindle the fire. Only then did I realise that Rachel Middleton had only a nightshift under the dripping shawl that was falling from her shoulders and not a pair of shoes to her feet. ‘Calm yourself and tell me.’

  She took a breath and began to speak more slowly. ‘They are in the lodging. Matthew Jack came to the house, in the night. Richard had been sleeping by the fire and Jack must have got past him – I woke to find him standing by the bed. He has always looked at me, he …’ Her face twisted in disgust, and I knew what Matthew Jack had intended. ‘I shouted out for Richard and he came running from downstairs. When Jack saw him, he brought out a knife. He warned me he would kill him if I made a move, and was forcing him down the stairs before I understood what was happening. By the time I dared to get out of my bed and go to the window, I saw that Jack had the knife at Richard’s back and was pushing him down through the backland towards the lodging. I got down and outside as fast as I could but I could not see them – they were gone.’ She clutched at my shirt once more. ‘Please come; I think he will kill him.’

  I was glad that I had not undressed for the night, and grabbed my cloak and sword from their place by the door. ‘Sarah, I am going for William. Bolt the door and keep the children upstairs.’ I told Rachel to stay with my wife and ran to get my friend.

  I could not help but wake the whole household in waking William, but once he realised I was not at the end of some drunken episode, it did not take him long to understand what was wrong. He dressed quickly and also fixed on his sword.

  ‘You’d better take Dileas too,’ I said, indicating the large shaggy hound who was docile as a lamb with the household, but who would not, I was certain, scruple to rip out the throat of any who meant his master harm.

  And so we were running in the night, through the storm, the dog bounding ahead of us, seeming to know where we were going, and in only a few minutes we had reached the physician’s house at the top of Back Wynd. The gate at the bottom of the pend was unlocked, and soon we were down the close and in the backland of the house. The builders’ yard to our left was shut up and in silence, with no sign of movement in it, but the hackles were now up on the back of Dileas’s neck, and he had started up a low growling. The kitchen door to the house was swinging open, banging against the wall in the wind, but we ignored it and went after the dog, more carefully now, down through the back-land to the lodging at the end, where a dim yellow glow showed in one of the windows.

  He had the knife to Richard Middleton’s throat.

  ‘Call off your dog.’

  ‘Matthew …’

  ‘Call off your dog, Seaton.’

  I looked at William.

  ‘Leave, Dileas.’

  The hound, still growling and never taking its eyes from Matthew Jack’s right hand, retreated a few steps towards its master. Matthew Jack and his prisoner were in the far corner of the lodge’s one room, their faces flashing white as the lightning sent out its bolts over the burgh. Jack, shorter but burlier than the physician, had his victim on all fours in front of him.

  ‘He is somewhat like a dog himself, is he not?’

  ‘Matthew, let him up. This can serve no purpose.’

  ‘No purpose? I want him to know what it is to be treated like a dog, to grovel. What are you doing here anyway, Seaton. I suppose the whore called you?’

  Middleton risked Jack’s wrath by lifting his head. ‘Rachel – is she safe?’

  ‘She is with my wife.’

  At this Jack let out an unholy laugh. ‘What a cesspit you crawl in, you so well-respected men. I suppose you have been attending to the doctor’s wife while your own takes her pleasures in the Old Town, Seaton.’ He snorted phlegm. ‘And you too, William Cargill, who have such fears of getting another child on your own wife, you have no doubt taken your turn with Seaton’s trollop.’

  This was too much for William and he let go the dog with a yell of ‘throat’. As Matthew Jack saw the animal lunge at him he lashed out frantically. In a moment the dog was on him and had him pinned to the ground, the knife had clattered to the floor, and I was rushing towards Richard Middleton. I took hold of his arm to pull him clear of Jack and the dog, but he cried out in pain and I let his arm drop again. I felt a sickly dampness on my palm. Where it had touched him, my hand was thick with blood, as was the blade of Matthew Jack’s knife.

  Dileas had a huge paw on each of Jack’s shoulders, and was snarling in his face in a manner that left me in no doubt that the beast with whom I let my son roll on the ground and who carried my daughter on his back was perfectly capable of killing a man, and ready to do so. Jack screamed and writhed under him, but Dileas would only listen to one human voice amongst all the sounds of the storm, and that voice did not call him off a second time.

  ‘Take the knife, Alexander,’ said William, kicking it across the floor to me. ‘I am going for Vedast Lawson.’

  In the ten minutes or so it took William to return with the baillie and two of the town’s officers, Jack began to understand that the dog would not be letting up his guard duty, and gave up his screeching for help. The dog relented in so far as to moderate his snarling to a low, warning growl, which bespoke his menace with equal eloquence.

  ‘Call the brute off, Seaton,’ Jack managed to croak at last.

  I shook my head. ‘He would not listen to me even if I had a mind to, and I do not have a mind to.’

  ‘I should have known …’

  ‘Hold your peace, Matthew, or he’ll have your throat.’

  Holding the knife rigidly in Jack’s direction, I risked a glance at Richard Middleton, who had been dragging himself along the ground to find support against the wall. He winced with every movement.

  ‘Where are you cut?’ I asked him.

  ‘Just the arm,’ he managed to say.

  ‘It should have been your heart.’

  I rounded on Jack. ‘Hold your peace, I said, for may God forgive me, it would give me little grief to see you carried from here a corpse.’

  ‘I think it likely that God will have other work with you than forgiveness, Seaton, and with our friend the physician and all his unnatural practices.’

  A swift snarl from the dog silenced Jack again and I was able to bend once more towards the young doctor, who had propped himself now against a long-cold chimney breast. His skin had taken on a greenish hue, whether through loss of blood or the effects of the lightning that intermittently illuminated us all for one another, I could not tell, and beads of cold sweat had begun to form on his forehead. ‘Help will be here soon.’

  And it was. The dog heard the voices first, his master’s voice and others, running down through the backland to the lodge, shouting. William was first through the door, followed by Vedast Lawson, the baillie, and two of the town’s stoutest men. William called off the dog and the men had Jack’s hands shackled behind his back in minutes. ‘I’ll have that knife off you as well, Mr Seaton,’ said Lawson, indicating the gory weapon I had almost forgotten I was still holding, which was more akin to a butcher’s knife than a doctor’s scalpel.

  ‘Gladly,’ I said, handing it over to him.

  After the baillie and town’s officers had gone, hauling Matthew Jack, still spewing out his venom, to the tolbooth, I assured William that I would be fine on my own with Richard Middleton. He was reluctant to leave me, and would only do so on condition I kept Dileas with me. The h
ound’s agitation had scarcely abated, despite the removal of Jack, and I was not quite sure he was what was called for to put the physician at his ease, but William was insistent. When I agreed to the dog’s staying, he left, content, first to go to my house to let Rachel Middleton know that all was well with her husband, and then to go home to reassure his own family.

  I bent down and looked at the blood seeping through the sleeve of Richard Middleton’s shirt, from the knifewound on his arm.

  ‘That looks to be deep. I should have asked William to go first to the college and fetch Dr Dun. I will take you to the house and then get him myself.’

  ‘No.’ He was trying to get to his feet but could not and sat down again. ‘No,’ he said again, more forcefully this time. ‘I will see to it myself; I am a physician, remember.’ He looked at me with a degree of hostility in his eye, but it did not last, and was replaced by something resembling defeat which pervaded his long, angular frame. ‘I am a physician.’

  A physician, yes. ‘Tell me what you need.’

  ‘My instruments are in a case in the kitchen. I will also need a basin of water and some clean linen, torn into strips.’

  Leaving the agitated dog guarding the door, I quickly fetched what he had asked for and was soon, under his instruction, helping him to clean and dress the wound. I helped him on with a clean shirt, and persuaded him to drink some water I had brought fresh from the well outside. William had left an extra lantern with us, and as Middleton drank I was able to look properly around the lodge for the first time. It was then that Jack’s words, scarcely registered at the time he had uttered them, came to the forefront of my mind and I saw what it was that had made him speak of Middleton’s ‘unnatural practices’. What I had taken for the chimney breast of a fireplace such as would be found in any habitation was, I now saw, something quite other – it was the breast of a furnace, and not a furnace such as my father had used at the smiddy. Two sets of bellows lay on the floor, and ranged against a wall was a collection of large vessels only some of which I recognised: vessels for descension, sublimation, calcination. By the other wall, a water-cooling still. Set along a wooden bench were glass and copper vessels of almost every description: alembics, phials, flasks and basins. Below it mortars and pestles, tongs, a steel chisel, a basket of coals. Shelves above held jars and bottles of substances I could not begin to guess at, and near the door was a cabinet of drawers such as would be found in a spice-merchant’s booth or an apothecary’s shop. I did not need to ask him, for I knew: I was in an alchemist’s laboratory.