The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by Shona MacLean

  ‘I had expected you before now, Mr Seaton.’ There was a seriousness to the baillie’s voice; it was without its usual air of suspicion and accusation.

  ‘I have been … occupied,’ I said, looking at Charles while I spoke to the baillie. I do not know what kind of picture I presented to these two who seemed so much less surprised by my arrival than I was at what I found.

  ‘As you see, the music master is here now.’ The baillie indicated a bench by the small deal table against the side wall of the room. ‘Will you not also sit, Mr Seaton?’ I sat down and waited, still looking at Charles, who ventured a small smile and then looked down at his feet again. He was thinner; the circles beneath his hazel eyes larger and darker than when I had last seen him a week ago, and there were blemishes, the beginnings of sores, on his skin. Yet his hair was clean and brushed and hung unmatted on his shoulders. He had shaved and was in a clean white shirt and coarse but warm woollen overclothes that I did not recognise as his. They could not have been the baillie’s, for he was a more sparely built man than Charles. I guessed they belonged to the son of the house.

  Gaunt though Charles was, he looked, in truth, in better health than the baillie, who appeared truly ill. His sallow skin, usually taut, seemed to hang from his bones. His eyes were dark shadowed sockets, and his body was hunched and racked with a wrenching cough. I recalled his virtual collapse from his horse last night and what Jaffray had said of his ceaseless activity since the discovery of Patrick Davidson’s body. I remembered, too, the provost’s assertion that he had been up half the night with the baillie in setting the business of the burgh in some sort of order. The man who had been carried to the doctor’s last night should have gone home to his bed and slept. It was plain that the baillie had done neither. Unlike Charles, he had evidently not yet washed or shaved – the first time I had seen him in such a condition – and the reek of smoke hung about him yet, as it had done the provost.

  He opened his mouth to speak again, but was taken by a coughing fit. When he had recovered himself, he reached for a wooden beaker of water at his elbow and took a long draught. I did not like this. I did not like the voice that began to whisper to me that I should pity this man, this sick man, this gaoler, inquisitor, spy. ‘I am glad to see you returned to the burgh, Mr Seaton. I had wondered, afterwards, if we had been wise to send you away to Aberdeen at such a time.’

  ‘Did you fear I would abscond? Baillie, I have nowhere to go.’

  ‘The town of Aberdeen has dangers enough of its own, but with all that has passed in this burgh these last few days, there is cause to fear for all men.’ He leaned slightly towards me and was taken by another, briefer, coughing fit. ‘You met with no trouble in Aberdeen?’ I remembered Mary Dawson and her fear of being pursued by men sent from Banff, her terror that I was one of them. Perhaps I, too, had been watched in Aberdeen.

  ‘I met with no trouble there,’ I said.

  ‘And for the other business, your commission?’

  ‘To Straloch, you mean?’

  He glanced briefly at Charles, but evidently adjudged that Charles would have little interest, and perhaps less opportunity, than any man in Banff of spreading rumours about foreign invasions and papist plots. ‘Aye, to Straloch. What other commission did you have?’ I decided to tell him nothing of my visit to George Jamesone on the provost’s behalf.

  ‘None.’

  He was satisfied. ‘What said the laird to our business?’ He was watching me eagerly, as if there was a particular answer he was anxious I should give.

  ‘He said he knew of no such plot, no commission of cartography. He thought the work well executed. The provost has his letter.’ It was evident this answer did not please him, but I intended to spend no more time on the matter of the maps. My friend, under accusation of murder, sat before me, clean-shaven in the baillie’s own house in a suit of another man’s clothes. I cared little now for plots and maps. ‘How do you come to be here, Charles?’ I asked.

  He looked at the baillie, who watched him steadily. ‘I was taken last night, about the hour of ten, from the tolbooth to this house under guard by Baillie Buchan and the notary, Thomas Stewart. I am told it was for fear of my life that I was brought here, fear that I would meet the same fate as Marion.’ His voice was flat, and fell on the last word.

  I looked to the baillie, but he was talking directly to Charles. ‘Wicked and barbarous deeds were done in this town last night. Many of the guilty were brought to the tolbooth. They held her for a witch, and you had consorted with her. They held you answerable for the death of a strange visitor to our town. They wanted less, much less, to feed their frenzy. They would have torn your limbs from your body by morning.’

  I had seen the mob last night. I did not dispute the baillie’s point. ‘And why here?’

  The baillie stood up and was again taken by a fit of coughing. He steadied himself on the arm of his chair and then straightened himself to his usual dignity. ‘Because there is nowhere else, Mr Seaton. Every prison in Banff is full, full to the brim, and in each one of them there are those who would gladly have the music master for their next victim. Nowhere else was safe, and there remained no guards to be spared, so I have become the guard. My landlady’s son, who through the night watched over Charles Thom, must go about his lawful work today. I am but one man, and I must rest, and make my devotions. And so I prayed you would come and you have come. I ask of you one hour and a half, that I may cleanse myself of the stench of last night, and rest, and pray God for his guidance. One hour and a half I ask you to guard your friend well, Mr Seaton. Do I have your word that you will?’

  I was astonished, and could think of no other response than to say yes. A very brief flicker of relief passed over the baillie’s face and he moved towards the small door to the left of the room, to the chamber I supposed he must sleep in, in those few hours when he consented to sleep. Before the door he stopped and turned. ‘Counsel your friend to pay heed to all that I have said to him, Mr Seaton. He can do nothing now for the dead, but for the living he must tell the truth; he must tell me what he knows.’ He took a well-worn Bible from the shelf by the door, and without further word he went to his chamber, leaving me with my prisoner.

  So here we were, Charles and I, at William Buchan’s hearth. How often, how many nights, had we entertained ourselves with tales of the baillie, of his omnipresence and omniscience? How many times had we felt ourselves under the baillie’s disapproving eye on his nightly check of the inns and taverns of Banff that no apprentice or servant or infamous drunkard should be served with wine or ale? Yet here we were at his fireside while he washed, and prayed, and slept next door. It was Charles who broke the silence first, his eyes crinkling in the familiar smile. ‘We have surely come up in the world, Alexander, that we are guests in this house.’

  I got up and took the seat opposite him, so lately vacated by the baillie. I leaned forward a little, my voice low. ‘Are we guests, do you think, Charles, or are we both prisoners? I think the baillie would be pleased to have me, also, where he can keep an eye on me.’

  He laughed. ‘You might well be right. He was much agitated at your absence in Aberdeen. Not just myself, but Gilbert Grant also was plied for information about your plans there – what your business was, where you would lodge, who you were like to visit – I had all this from Jaffray.’

  ‘He told me he had been allowed in to see you.’

  Charles looked down at the floor. ‘Aye, the once. But I would not have had it so; I would not have had him see me in that place. It was enough to know he thought of me – would have known that without all the baskets he sent up.’ There was a great sense of failure, of having disappointed, in his voice.

  ‘Charles, Jaffray has seen and suffered much in this life. He has few illusions about what fate can do to those who do not deserve it. You surely did not expect him to rest until he had seen you? He will not rest until he has seen you free and justice done.’ I hesitated, unsure how best to say what had to be said.
‘Whatever justice there can be done, now.’

  Charles set down his empty bowl upon the hearth, and traced his finger a moment in the ashes. ‘What justice can be done? How can any justice be done in this life for Patrick Davidson or for Marion?’ He gave off his tracing and lay with his head back in the chair, his eyes tight shut. When they finally opened I could see they were filled with tears. I had nothing to comfort him and he was right: there was no justice; there could only be retribution. But Charles was not a man with a stomach for retribution, and he would only turn his back further on the ways of this barbaric world.

  ‘Do you think it is over, Charles?’

  ‘What is over?’

  ‘The killing,’ I said.

  He pushed the hair back over his forehead in a gesture I knew well. ‘Killing or dying? I do not know. Patrick was murdered, no one doubts that, I know. But,’ he took a deep breath and swallowed hard, ‘Marion … they tell me she died by her own hand.’

  I thought of the confusion of last night. Surely Jaffray had told someone, some authority other than just myself. I lowered my voice further still, conscious as I was of the baillie’s even breathing on the other side of the door. ‘Charles, has no one told you? Marion did not die by her own hand, Jaffray is adamant on that. He swears before God that she died by the same hand, and in the same manner, that killed Patrick Davidson.’

  What colour there was drained from Charles’s face. ‘Then the killing has not stopped,’ he said.

  I watched him intently, watched for any flicker, any sign that would tell me something. ‘Charles, is the baillie right? Do you know something?’

  He bit his lower lip and shook his head slowly. ‘I know nothing, Alexander, nothing. I would to God that I did. Since Marion’s death, the baillie has been at me night and day, as he was at Marion before it. But I know not even what manner of knowledge he seeks. He is like a dog worrying at a burrow from which the hare has only one escape. He will not let up, and I can tell him nothing.’ He looked away at the slowly dying embers in the meagre fire. ‘It is as if he knows very well what it is that he seeks, but he must have another say it for him.’

  A thought was now becoming more formed in my mind, a thought that had been taking shape for some days now. ‘Do you think it possible that what the baillie seeks to establish is not what you know, but whether you know? You remember what you told me of Marion’s behaviour on the night of your search together for Patrick Davidson: she was almost as determined that no one should guess she had confided in you as she was to find Davidson. She feared as much for you as for him. She knew that the very suspicion that you had knowledge of what Davidson was about would put your life in danger. Who can say now that she was wrong? She paid that price herself.’ I could see, from Charles’s face, that my point was not lost on him. ‘You say, and I have had it from Jaffray also, that the baillie rarely left off his questioning of her, and now, since her death, he has taken you into his own charge.’ The coldness I felt was little to do with the bare and cheerless room in which we sat. ‘Charles, you must continue to play the ignorant; you must continue to hold fast that you know nothing.’

  He looked at me with exhaustion in his eyes, exhaustion of the soul. ‘That will be no great triumph, no great achievement, for truly, Alexander, I know nothing. If you will not believe me, how should I convince the baillie? But Marion confided nothing to me but her certainty of danger itself. Had it been otherwise I would have told him by now. I have not your resolve.’

  ‘And I have not your humanity.’ I thought of Marion Arbuthnott, of the girl who had always been distant, detached, content in herself, until Charles had been able to draw from her some of the warmth of friendship. I wondered again where that might have led, had not Patrick Davidson come soon after, and with him the first experience of love.

  Charles broke the silence. ‘Whatever burden Marion carried after Patrick Davidson’s death, she carried it alone. I could not help her, for I was never allowed to see her after they found him, and I do not think she even tried to go to the tolbooth to see me.’

  ‘She was lost in herself by then, Charles. No one could reach her save the children, Geleis Guild’s children, but she wanted no further human contact, nor comfort either, I think.’

  ‘But that is it, of course! There is one in whom she might have confided. Not the baillie, certainly, for she feared him. No, but in Geleis Guild. I think it possible she did, for she – the provost’s wife – came to see me once, in the tolbooth. The guards dared not prevent her. It was three days ago. She also was watchful, anxious to evade the baillie’s surveillance, I remember that.’

  ‘Why did she come to see you?’

  ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘I was so glad at the time to see a kind face that I did not question it. She told me she gave no credence to the notion that I could have murdered Patrick or anybody. She spoke of her anxiety to see Marion again, alone, for they were companions, and she knew how hard all these things would be on her. I think in truth that Marion was her only friend. She was anxious to see her, but she could never escape the baillie’s watchful eye, still less get past him at the apothecary’s door. I hope to God she did not get to see her, or she will be in danger now herself.’

  ‘I would have little fear on that score. I think the provost’s mind is bent upon protecting his wife from whatever there is yet to come.’

  ‘I think, then, that he is a wise man,’ said Charles, quietly. ‘You will ask Jaffray about it, though?’

  ‘I will,’ I promised him. Charles was greatly wearied and looked ready to sleep. I would not tax or question him further. As his eyelids flickered and then closed, I moved quietly from my chair. I had never wondered about the baillie’s home, never considered him as a private person, for the life of the individual was always to him a thing of wickedness and impiety, an offence to God and a threat to the commonwealth. There was little comfort in this room, and little more, I suspected, in the small chamber leading off from it where he had gone to wash and where he now slept. William Buchan was a merchant who carried out a steady trade; he must have been a man of some wealth, yet there were few – if any – signs of it here. There were no wall hangings, such as even in Banff could now be found in the homes of some of the wealthier merchants, but one simply embroidered canvas above the door to the baillie’s chamber. Each corner was adorned with a small symbol of the seasons of the year – a lamb, a cornflower, a russet apple, a sprig of holly – but it was the wording in the centre that caught the eye. I knew, without the neat legend beneath it, that it was taken from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians; it was a verse I had pondered often myself: But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the lord. At the very bottom corner, in tiny lettering, were the initials HB and the date 1610. I had, in my lifetime, seen many verses from the Bible rendered in thread and canvas, but I had never seen one such as this. Was this then what drove the baillie, what lay at the heart of his inhumanity? Was it that his own mother had set him on this course of coldness towards his fellow man in some supposed pursuit of godliness? I could think of no other who could have done so.

  The room itself was scarcely less bare than the walls. The only furnishings were the two hard wooden chairs on which Charles Thom and I sat and the table and bench to the side of the room. A kist with a strong lock – keeping the papers of business, I assumed – was below the one small window. There was no rug or matting on the swept wooden floor, and no ornament of any sort – what bowls and plate there were were either wooden or of coarse, local work, not burnished or painted. A low bookshelf was set against one wall, and it was to this that I gave my attention. It was from here that Buchan had picked the Bible as he had gone to his rest, yet another Bible remained. I took it from the shelf and opened it. Inscribed inside, in a thin and uncertain hand were the words: To William, walk always in the fear of the Lord and in the certainty of your mother’s love, Isabella Farquhar. 1596. Th
e baillie could scarce have been ten years old when his mother had given him that Bible. But more, I realised that whoever had stitched those words that had condemned him to a lifetime of arid loneliness, it had not been his mother.

  This was not the place to set my mind to that mystery and I resumed instead my examination of the baillie’s small library. The Psalms. Some tracts and pamphlets against the Catholics, the Jesuits, the government of bishops and the perils of assuming one’s own will, all in the vernacular. All as I would have expected, all save one. For William Buchan too had an edition of Craig’s poetical works, identical to that I had bought for Charles so recently in Aberdeen, yet this copy was well thumbed, well used, evidently oft read. This was not a man whom I thought poetry could have touched. As I wondered at this, my foot struck against another kist, long and low, beneath the shelf. On this one there was no lock. I bent down and opened the lid as quietly as I could. Inside, bound together, were little exercise books such as I would allow the better pupils to keep, like diaries or commonplace books. I carefully unbound the pile nearest the top and took the first book in my hand. On the front was written, in the baillie’s small and steady hand, ‘Sermons, March 1624–June 1625’, and inside there were notes and meditations on every sermon he had heard in those fifteen months. The whole pile of notebooks beneath it went back year upon year, month upon month, week upon week as far as my own childhood and beyond. A lifetime of the man was in those books, and I would have given much for the freedom to peruse them, but I was too conscious of the low, rasping breathing coming from just the other side of the door.

  I could not help but open the most recent exercise book, though. The baillie had attended the kirk in Banff, mostly, but he had travelled too, all around the presbytery. He had found much to praise, many words of wisdom on which to meditate and to thank the Lord for, but he had found more to censure. Laxity in discipline, ignorance of the true meaning of the scriptures, error in the interpretation of God’s plan. Most of all, though, there was near a fury, fury at the ignorance, incompetence, and hypocrisy of the Reverend Guild. I could disagree with nothing he said of Guild’s preaching. Then a thought struck me. I rifled backwards through the pages and indeed it was there: 22 June, year of God one thousand six hundred and twenty-five. Mr Alexander Seaton, undermaster at Banff Grammar School, expectant for the ministry. At Boyndie Kirk.