The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by Shona MacLean

  ‘When I was in my delirium,’ I finished for her. Nobody spoke to me, openly, of that time, when Jaffray had had a message from the old woman of Darkwater that she had found me, wandering, delirious, near the crag of Findlater, and had taken me safe into her home to nurse me. I had very little recollection of it myself; the days between my disgrace at Fordyce and the arrival of Jaffray to take me home to Banff were lost to my memory, and I made little effort to seek them out there.

  Mistress Youngson continued. ‘She lives in a sort of shack, does she not? Or a cave at the far end of the beach – I have never been myself so I could not say for sure,’ she added somewhat too hurriedly. ‘She is held by many to be a witch. She sets great store by the healing and holy wells, by secret pools known only to herself. It is said she consorts with the spirits, the wee folk—’

  Again Gilbert Grant stopped his wife. The serving girl had returned from Jaffray’s and her eyes were growing wide. ‘To return to the point,’ said the woman, ‘in the last great scare of the witches, before you were born or the old king had gone down to England, the woman of Darkwater was lucky to escape the stake. It was said that only the fear of her great powers and great fellowship with Beelzebub stopped the others from naming her.’

  I had heard something of this time, of course, but people did not care to speak much of it. To speak of it too freely might be to give life to the memory, to the fears in people’s breasts, and to start it all again. There was something I had not known of before, though. I looked at the old woman. ‘And what has this to do with my mother? You said it was as well for her that it was past before she ever came here.’

  The old couple remained silent, uneasy, not knowing what to say. It was Edward Arbuthnott, almost forgotten in the corner, who spoke up. ‘Because she was different. Like my Marion, your mother was different.’

  Mistress Youngson went and sat by him on the bench. ‘Aye, she was.’ She looked at me and smiled. ‘Your mother was tall and beautiful, with her long dark hair, hanging loose, and those grey-green eyes, like your own. She spoke differently; she had different ways. And though she was not a papist, that she was Irish was enough for many. Your father knew it, that she was different, and that it was not well-liked, but he was proud of her for it, until it broke the both of them. There were those who resented her for her marriage, who thought your father would have done better, by himself and by the town, to have taken a local girl to wife.’ She looked away a moment, and I wondered if she had been one of them. ‘This is not an easy place to be different. The longer she was here, the more of an outsider she became. And—’

  ‘And she would not have fared well at the hands of the witchmongers, I fear.’ I looked at Gilbert Grant, who was looking directly, honestly at me, and I felt cold to my heart.

  There was little sound in the room now, save the bubbling of the water starting to boil, and the slow and heavy breathing of Edward Arbuthnott as he looked again into the flames. ‘I do not know why Marion was there,’ he said. ‘At Darkwater. There is no good reason for a young, unmarried girl to visit such a woman. No reason for my girl to have been there. They would have burnt her alive if they could have got her, but they could not; she ended her life before they could take it from her.’

  Again the image came to my mind. I spoke in a low voice to Gilbert Grant. ‘Was it at the Elf Kirk? Did she jump in the end from the Elf Kirk?’

  Both Grant and his wife turned puzzled frowns on me. ‘At the Elf Kirk? No, boy, surely you have heard. She poisoned herself on the Rose Craig. She was found there, dead, by Geleis Guild and her four children on the evening of the Sabbath; they had gone that way to pick flowers to take to Marion before the service in the kirk. But Marion already had flowers; when they found her, she was wearing a garland of henbane in her hair.’

  Henbane: the wanderers awaiting their transportation across the Styx, it was said, had worn henbane in their hair. And in the wilder imaginings of the townfolk, henbane was the special flower of the diabolic, of the witches and warlocks who flew in the night in their satanic ecstasies. But Marion Arbuthnott would have been in no ecstasy. I thought of the provost’s lovely, delicate young wife and of her four pretty children. I remembered the sight that had greeted me across my schoolroom desk only a week ago. It was not fitting that children should see such a thing. I prayed God, sincerely, that he might take the vision of it from their minds. I had not long, I am thankful, to dwell on this, for there was the sound of a familiar commotion from the front parlour and soon James Jaffray was showing himself into the schoolhouse kitchen. With no needless greeting or ceremony he went directly to where the apothecary sat and knelt before him, taking his left hand in his own and putting the other to the man’s forehead. ‘You are ill, my friend. There is a fever coming on you. We must get you quickly to your bed. Your wife can prepare the simples?’

  Arbuthnott tried to rally himself. ‘I will take mallow; there is always some ready for the fevers.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘I will see to it also that she prepares you a dish of rhubarb. And a decoction of melancholy thistle in some wine. It will revive your spirits a little.’

  The apothecary nodded wearily. ‘For myself, I wish for nothing now other than death, but the woman cannot manage on her own. Without myself or Marion, she would be destitute. But for myself, for myself,’ watery eyes now stared at some distant private vision, ‘all is gone.’

  ‘Come now,’ said Jaffray kindly, ‘you are still needed in the town. I have not half your knowledge of medicines and cures, and there is no one else now.’

  Arbuthnott raised bitter eyes towards him. ‘And do you think I would lift a hand to help any one of them, after what they have done to my beautiful girl?’

  ‘Not all, now.’

  ‘No,’ the man conceded, ‘not all.’

  We left the kitchen then to the doctor and the apothecary and the mistress, who stayed to help bathe the sick man and persuade him to take a little warm broth before he should move out in the cold again. A spare suit of Gilbert Grant’s clothing was found for him; my own only spare set of clothes was on my back, my other now being pummelled by the maidservant in a tub in the backyard. I should have been more thoughtful before taking to my night-swimming. It had done me little good.

  The schoolmaster retired then to his study, inviting me to keep him company. It was a place of comfort and good reflection, a place of exercise for the mind, and my heart always warmed to the old man when he asked me to join him there.

  ‘I have something for you first,’ I said. ‘I will be down in a minute.’ I headed up the stairs as he made himself comfortable in his easy chair. The packages and luggage carried over by Jaffray’s stable boy were lying by my bed. I checked all were there; none had gone amiss on my journey. The mid-morning gloom afforded very little light to my small chamber, but I found what I was looking for without much difficulty. I was down again at Gilbert Grant’s door only a few moments after leaving him. He was sitting in contemplation by the room’s only window, an unlit candle at his elbow. Around him was an air of sadness I had seen on him only once before, when I had finally come home and told him that what he had heard about my final trial for the ministry had been true. He was a man too ready to share in the sufferings of those dear to him, and of the innocent. In his many long years as schoolmaster in Banff, he had come to love many and had had cause to weep with them too often. His face lightened a little when he noticed me in the doorway.

  ‘Come in, Alexander, come in. We will rest ourselves here. While we cannot be of any use, at least we can keep ourselves from getting in the way.’ I smiled as I recalled how often I had heard his wife scold him for being in the way. She was always so busy, in the midst of much movement, and he preferred to be quiet and move little, but I think she knew that the reason he was always in her road was that he loved her so dearly. Before settling myself in the only other seat in the room I handed him the package.

  ‘I have brought you this from Aberdeen, from Melville’s.’ />
  ‘Ah, is it really? From Melville?’ He was thinking, searching in his mind, delaying the pleasure by not unbinding and opening the package straight away. ‘I have not had a minute to ask you how you fared on your journey, or to quiz you for news from the town. I trust to God that there is no such business there as we have on hand here?’

  ‘None that I have seen,’ I assured him, ‘although what goes on up the vennels or behind the pends of other men’s houses I do not know. This time last week we would not have thought such things possible here in Banff.’

  He raised his eyebrows at me a little in surprise. ‘Ah, would we not, do you think?’ He mused quietly a moment. ‘But you are young. I forget sometimes, Alexander, how young you really are; you have the air of one who has seen more of the world than he cares to. You will not remember that we have seen this sort of thing before. And yet we have learned nothing. Like the Israelites, time and time again we have turned our face from God and He has hidden His face from us.’

  ‘You think this portends the judgement of God on us?’

  ‘No. This is the turning from God and not the judgement. What the judgement will be I dread to live to see.’ He opened the package now, knowing all the while that it was the Bible that was there. Without examination, without the careful caress of the finely bound volume that I had half expected, he opened the book and, with well-practised hands found the passage he wanted. He started to read, and although his finger ran along the lines, he did not look at them, for the words were already at his lips. ‘Hosea, chapter four: “Hear the word of the Lord ye children of Israel; for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out and blood touches blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish.”’

  I cleared my throat. ‘But does the prophet not also say, “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely”?’

  I had not spoken in this way, preached to another human being in many months, and the words came strangely unbidden from my mouth. Grant afforded me a saddened smile. ‘Indeed he does, Alexander. But how shall we answer to this offer of God? How did the Israelites answer when sent the Redeemer? Was he not slain? What if this young man, Patrick Davidson, was also sent to us from God?’ He looked up sharply. ‘No redeemer mind, but a prophet, a messenger only, to tell us something, to get us to mend our ways. And he is slain. How now shall God deal with us?’

  I myself had no notion of Patrick Davidson as a message from God. In his short time in our burgh he had gathered plants, drawn maps and courted a girl. There had been no public speeches, no preaching, no giving of admonition or warning by him. No passing on of messages. And yet I could not mock the old man’s fears.

  ‘But you, Gilbert, you have nothing to answer for, you who do only good to friend and stranger alike. Whatever has brought this visitation of darkness upon our town, it is not you.’

  In less than a moment I saw that the words I had intended for comfort aroused only a sudden and real anger. ‘I, nothing to answer for? Who amongst us has nothing to answer for, is without sin? It is not I. What nonsense did you hear preached in Aberdeen? We are all sinners. We are none of us capable of doing the least good thing, unless it be the Lord who ordains it. God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and could find only one good man. If there is one good man here, it is not me.’

  If not you, then who, I thought. Who in this town could argue our case in the face of the wrath of the creator? ‘And yet it does not stop you trying,’ I said.

  ‘As we are commanded to do. And you too, I know, Alexander, you try also to do good as you are commanded to do.’

  I could not answer him, and was glad when I was summoned through to the kitchen, to help the doctor bring Edward Arbuthnott back to his comfortless home.

  ‘How will he fare?’ I asked Jaffray, after we had seen Arbuthnott settled into his own bed under the care of his wife, in whom the advent of a true disaster seemed to have awoken some common sense and, what I had never remarked in her before, affection.

  Jaffray pursed his lips. ‘He will be as a man who waits for nothing more than the grave, I fear. Marion was all his hope and joy.’

  The door to Jaffray’s consulting room, the scene of last night’s desolation, was shut when we arrived in the house, but I suspected all would be clean and orderly again. The doctor went first to the kitchen, to warn Ishbel that I would be coming for my dinner that night. He wanted proper news of my trip to the town, and to interrogate me in peace, and there were things I had to ask of him. He emerged from the kitchen and ushered me quietly towards his study. ‘Ishbel is taking it very badly,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘I do not know how it was that I never saw it before, but I think, whether he realises it or not, he has taken her heart. They will let no one in to see him, and though she sends baskets of food up to the tolbooth every day, I do not know whether he gets them.’

  ‘You have not been allowed in to him?’

  ‘But once. It was Thomas Stewart who persuaded the provost. The baillie was near beside himself to be let in on the interview, but Stewart said he would come in with me himself and that would be enough.’ Jaffray paused, remembering. ‘And it was enough. He has a quiet authority to him, the notary, that even the baillie cannot question. I think he will sit in the provost’s seat one day.’

  We had reached Jaffray’s parlour by now, and mention of the provost had recalled me to my earlier appointment. ‘I cannot wait long,’ I said. ‘I should have seen Walter Watt by now, to report on my business.’

  ‘Then I will not keep you.’

  ‘But tell me first,’ I said. ‘How was Charles when you saw him?’

  Jaffray sighed deeply. ‘He was … less sanguine than I had hoped to find him. He sees little prospect of success in our endeavours to free him. And I fear he is getting ill.’

  ‘Any man would get ill in that festering hole.’

  ‘Indeed. Ishbel’s clean blankets can only do so much against the cold and the damp in that place, and he has been a week now without proper exercise. Being parted from his music and, strange to say, his pupils, affects him too, I think. I fear he might take a fever and not have the will to defeat it.’ Then a thought came to him that cheered him somewhat. ‘You must see him today though, Alexander. They will surely let you see him?’

  ‘Have no fear over that,’ I said. ‘They will let me see him or they will know nothing of my business in Aberdeen or at Straloch. But I doubt if there will be much room in the tolbooth after last night.’

  ‘No. No more in Hell, either,’ Jaffray added bitterly. He opened the door and shouted through the house for some kindling to be brought for his fire.

  ‘Do you think there is anything in what Mistress Youngson hinted at? That if Charles had not been secure in the tolbooth they would have turned on him last night too?’

  Jaffray looked up from his efforts with the fire. ‘I am certain of it. You did not see them at their height, Alexander. They were like a pack of wolves. We had very little warning of it. I was carrying out the examination. Her mother insisted on it – against Arbuthnott’s wishes – but his wife was certain her daughter would never have taken her own life.’

  ‘And had she? Did you have time to discover that much?’

  Jaffray looked at me. ‘I did, and she had not. I am as certain as I can now ever be that she died by the same method as Patrick Davidson, and by the same hand.’

  ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘The vomit, the contortions in the face, the signs that paralysis had begun to take hold – they were all the same. And yet I could not get very far, to find better proof, before the baillie burst through the door. I did not understand him at first; I thought he had lost his senses.’ The scene was being replayed in his mind. ‘ “Jaffray, they are coming. Cover her up. For the love of God, man, they are coming for her!�
� And before I knew what he was rambling about, the minister and Cardno and a whole mob of them were through the door. They had pushed the lad aside and Ishbel was knocked to the ground. They near trampled the baillie underfoot till they got to me and stopped. They commanded me – the minister did – to leave off my examination and give them her body. I refused. I told them my work was none of their concern and to get out of my house. And then they pushed me aside too. The mob would have had their hands in her very entrails had the minister not started shrieking at them to leave off, lest they be tainted with the witch’s blood. And then at last, I understood. It was the witch-hunt, and the baillie had come to warn me of it. It was over in moments. They had smashed the place up and taken her naked body from the slab and were gone, and the baillie had gone too, to take horse for Boyndie, where the presbytery was meeting, and the moderator, to try to stop them in their madness. And then you came and we were in the state that you found us in.’ He was breathing hard now, and his hands were shaking. The stable boy came in with the kindling for the fire and I saw the bruise on his face from where he had been knocked aside the night before.

  ‘Will you bring the doctor some of his port wine?’ I asked him. ‘And Adam?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Seaton?’

  ‘Are you all right yourself now?’

  The boy blinked and bit his lip. ‘Yes, sir. I am fine.’

  ‘Who was it that hit you?’

  ‘It was Lang Geordie.’

  The same Lang Geordie who had warned Janet and Mary Dawson away from Banff. ‘The beggar man? What had he to do with it all?’

  The boy looked at me in surprise. ‘It was him who was first through the door, sir. After the baillie and before the minister. They say in the town that it was Lang Geordie who first set up the cry of witch.’

  After he had come with the wine and gone again, I asked Jaffray something that it shamed me to ask, but which I had to know.

  ‘Do you think she was, James?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you think Marion Arbuthnott was a witch?’