Seaton 01 - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by S. G. MacLean

  When he could, Archie wrote to me, a small handful of letters I kept with me still. He wrote of the fighting, of the filth, the privations, the brutality of the Habsburgs and the suffering of the peasants. And he wrote of maps. Archie, who had been hard put to attend one lecture in three in our college days, fell upon the art of cartography with a passion. He learnt the art and its uses from students of the new French and German military schools. He used spies and eventually went himself, under cover of disguise, into enemy territory to chart and learn the lie of the land. At the time I had marvelled at the letters, at Archie’s enthusiasm for this new type of knowledge, and I had marvelled at the knowledge itself. And I knew what the documents Baillie Buchan was holding out towards me very probably meant. The baillie knew it too, but would have it from my mouth.

  ‘Why do you think Patrick Davidson drew these maps, Mr Seaton?’

  The room fell silent. There could be but one answer that made any sense. What Davidson had drawn was a plan for an invasionary force, landing on the Moray coast and marching – marching where else but southwards – to Aberdeen, to Edinburgh, to London itself, but first by way of Strathbogie. Strathbogie, the centre of Gordon power, the heartland of the Marquises of Huntly, commanding the North East, and ever ready to rise, in concert with their sovereign or against, in the name of Rome. Forfeiture, banishment, death on the battlefield or by the executioner’s axe had failed to slake the thirst of the Gordons for a return of Scotland to the thrall of the papacy. And Strathbogie lay not twenty miles from where we stood. But I would not lay that charge at one I had never met, whom I had already so wronged, and who could no longer answer in his own defence.

  It mattered little: the words that stuck in my throat came soon enough from the baillie’s mouth. ‘I think it is evident, is it not, Mr Seaton, that Patrick Davidson was a papist spy?’

  He had dropped the words into a silent room and opened the door to a tempest. As I tried to frame some response, Gilbert Grant stood up, rage and dismay contending in him for the ascendancy. ‘That is an outrage, Buchan, that the boy should stand accused of such a deed. He had a thirst for knowledge, for that you would condemn him as a papist and a spy?’ He turned imploring eyes on me. ‘Alexander, tell them, tell them what nonsense they speak …’ But my old colleague’s voice fell away, drowned out by the silence of the certainty that now filled the room.

  The notary was the first to speak. ‘I think it well that these papers be kept in a place of security. I propose, Provost, that after we have made more particular examination of these documents, the chest be placed under lock and key in the charter room here in the tolbooth.’

  The provost assented, having come to himself somewhat. Thomas Stewart and I lifted the chest to the table, away from the fire, which Walter Watt called to have lit. The baillie told the apothecary he might leave us, with a strict admonition that he should spread no word of this conference. He also spoke a word, an unaccustomed kindly word, to Gilbert Grant, that he need not tarry with us longer if he did not wish to. My elderly colleague rose stiffly. ‘I will go gladly, for I have not the stomach for this. He was a fine boy, a fine boy.’

  The provost clasped his hand firmly. ‘Thank you, Gilbert. You do him justice.’ As Grant and Arbuthnott were leaving, the serjeant was told to have the minister fetched. This again was the suggestion of Thomas Stewart, and although the baillie and the provost, I was sure, would have objected if they could, we all assented that it was right that the minister should be informed of what had been found. The provost then took his accustomed seat at the head of the table and invited the rest of us to be seated also.

  It was not long before the minister appeared. As Mr Guild somewhat breathlessly removed his hat and cloak, the notary commenced on an abbreviated account of what had transpired at the search of Patrick Davidson’s room.

  The minister looked truly astonished. ‘A spy? A papist, I will not believe it!’ No mention of papist had been made by Thomas Stewart, for none was needed. What other enemy could our country have? The minister looked to his brother-in-law. ‘Provost, this cannot be true, man: he was your nephew.’

  The provost, who had sat silently throughout Thomas Stewart’s narrative, maintained his composure. ‘I would rather lose my own life than believe it. Never has there been such a taint on my family name. Never. No hint of Romanism, of disloyalty to Church or Crown has ever attached itself to me or mine. I pray to God that it be not true, for the boy’s sake and for the memory of his aunt that is dead, for she loved the child to distraction, and he her.’

  To my surprise, the baillie, who was not much given to sentiment, added his voice in agreement. ‘It is known and well remembered that she did. And never did a child have a more Christian example before his eyes. If it be found that the boy did stray into the path of Rome, no blame will attach itself to her memory.’

  The minister, ever ready to set himself at odds with Buchan, did not altogether like this. ‘Nor yet to that of the provost, Baillie Buchan. Or to his family.’ In all this, as in all else, the Reverend Mr Guild’s concern was for himself. He was never slow to recall to all who listened that his own sister was now the provost’s wife, but any hint of dabbling with Rome by that family might leave its mark on himself. For Walter Watt, perhaps, the risk was greater. He had worked his whole life to garner position, influence, wealth and power, and aimed higher still than the provostship of Banff. What of all he had gained in this great life’s work would be left to him if his family name should be tainted with the odour of treachery? He could not even approximate to the position of the Marquises of Huntly, forgiven again and again by their indulgent monarchs. The king did not know Walter Watt, Provost of Banff, from any other middling creature in his kingdoms. Both for Watt and for his brother-in-law the minister, the revelation of Patrick Davidson as a papist spy would be a personal disaster.

  The baillie seemed unconvinced, uninterested even, in the minister’s assertion in defence of the provost. ‘Whether any blame attaches itself to the provost, his present family or indeed to any other indweller of this burgh remains to be seen, Mr Guild. When our community is threatened by the blackest of evils, as it is now, vigilance, vigilance in the Lord, is all.’

  The provost leaned forward, his eyes cold and hard. ‘There is none more vigilant for the good name of this burgh than am I, baillie, as well you must know.’

  Buchan was unperturbed. ‘And the good of its soul, provost? For make no mistake, what we deal with today is the good of its soul.’

  The notary, used to the endless shifting for position between baillie and provost, waited silently while they spoke out their piece. When the natural pause came, as he had known it would, he took charge once more of our discussion. ‘I hope it will be understood and agreed amongst us that we must take great care how this business is handled. Any suspicion of inhabitants of the town having truck with foreign enemies will cause poisonous division in the burgh. Accusation will be hurled against accusation, suspicion grow like a fungus in the hearts of the indwellers. Trade, and the security of the burgh, will be disrupted.’ How quickly Stewart had cut to the heart of the matter. While some, like the minister and provost, might fear first of all for their own position and others, like the baillie, might have genuine fears for the immortal souls of the inhabitants of Banff, in the end, the real concern was not for Kirk or king, but for the security and trade of our town. ‘This business must be addressed with the utmost secrecy.’

  ‘But how can that be?’ spluttered the minister. ‘If some higher authority should come to know of it from other mouths than ours, then we might all be held guilty of apostasy and treason.’

  Thomas Stewart sought to assuage the Reverend Mr Guild’s concerns. ‘Great care will be taken over the security of these papers, minister, and as soon as we have some better knowledge of their true import, they will be delivered to the sheriff. On this you have my word.’

  The minister was still not satisfied. ‘I am not assured that this secret can be kep
t. I would call into question, for instance, the presence in this room of Mr Alexander Seaton. Neither by position nor repute is it fitting that he should be one of our number and privy to this knowledge.’

  To my surprise, Baillie Buchan spoke in my defence.

  ‘Mr Seaton is here as one who has particular knowledge of the matter before us. You will be aware, I am sure, of the great friendship that existed from boyhood between him and the Master of Hay?’ The minister was bursting to interrupt, but Buchan would not permit it. ‘Sir Archibald Hay died in the cause of our faith and the defence of our Church against the idolatrous forces of the Empire. In the course of that service, as you will recall from the funeral oration given by the Earl Marischal, he became expert in the drawing and using of maps. Also in the course of that service, he wrote many letters from the lands of Germany and the Low Countries to his childhood friend, Mr Seaton.’ He looked towards me as if awaiting some protestation. ‘It is known, Mr Seaton. Few letters enter this town without my knowledge. What I know of their contents depends upon the gravity of the times. I believe it likely that Sir Archibald would have revealed to you at least some of his new knowledge and his practice of it.’ I knew, as did everyone, what were the centres of power in our community, and yet I had not understood until that moment the true extent of Buchan’s control of knowledge in the town, and would never have foreseen his frankness on the matter. There was little point in protesting a desire for privacy or outrage that it had been infringed; such protestation would be taken as little less than an admission of complicity in some act of treachery or private vice. I simply agreed that he was correct in his belief, and that Archie had written to me a good deal on his new passion for the cartographer’s art. Buchan nodded, satisfied. ‘I thought as much. And it is fortunate indeed that he did, for I could think of no other in the town who would have been able to advise us with any sure knowledge of the matter.’

  This was not enough for Mr Guild. ‘To cite Mr Seaton’s old friendship with the Master of Hay in his support – it is known throughout the country that the laird will no longer have him in the house, that he it was who barred Mr Seaton’s way to the ministry – is beyond endurance.’ The minister could scarcely contain his impotent outrage. ‘You should have consulted a higher authority before taking such a step.’

  ‘He did,’ interrupted the provost. ‘Mr Seaton’s position in the burgh may well be lowly, but he is acknowledged a man of great learning and I know of no other in this town with any understanding of maps. As for his repute – I know little and care less for your tittle-tattle, but I know there has never yet been any suggestion of heresy or collusion with the forces of idolatry in his carriage, public or private.’

  ‘But his mother, the Irishwoman—’

  ‘Is dead,’ I said. ‘My mother is long dead.’

  The minister thus chastened said no more of my unfitness for this trust, but simmered silently at the double-edged affront to his dignity and his person.

  It had been many months since any save my closest friends in the burgh had treated me with anything other than either wary suspicion or open contempt. There were those of course like the Dawson sisters, the shore porters, the journeymen labourers – those on the margins of our community – who had been little impressed by my college learning and my progression towards the ministry and so were little shaken by my fall. Most of the rest found it expedient to avoid me now. All save my closest friends. I had never cared to claim friendship of casual acquaintances, and in the first few months after my rejection by the Presbytery at Fordyce, I had eschewed the company of even my few good friends – the doctor, Charles Thom and Gilbert Grant in Banff, and the two or three companions of my student days who still lived in Aberdeen. They, a wonder to me now, had persevered with me throughout my darkest days of self-loathing.

  My astonishment at understanding, at last, that I really was not fit to be a minister had, for a while, almost robbed me of my senses. Days of wandering wildly along the cliffs and shoreline, eastwards then westwards with little consciousness of where I was had ended, not with my death on the rocks as might well have been expected, but with an exhausted collapse on the shore below Findlater. I had been found there by a local wise woman who many accounted a witch, but I did not believe she was. She dragged me – God alone knows how – the length of the beach to the cave in which she dwelt, summer and winter, and nursed me there. When my delirium was finally broken, she sent word to Jaffray of where I was to be found. The fact that I still lived was a matter of joy to him as well as to Gilbert Grant and, even then, to Mistress Youngson. It was not a matter of joy to myself. I drank, I wallowed in self-pity, I drank more, I railed in bitterness at my fate, in anger at all who came near me; I went with women and hardly knew their names. Three times I had been brought before the session, three times forced to sit in front of the whole kirk and proclaim a repentance I did not feel.

  For nearly six months it had lasted, until all who were left were James Jaffray, Gilbert Grant, and Charles Thom. No one else of any decency or standing would look me in the eye, and from my scholars I had little respect and deserved less. Mistress Youngson, the childless Mistress Youngson, who had taken me to her home and loved me as if I were her husband’s son, could scarce bear to look at me. Six months, until at last I stood on the precipice between existence and death. I was not dead, and though I did not live, I might exist. At first I relied almost entirely on Jaffray: he had persevered belligerently and relentlessly with me regardless of my assertions that I did not need him; Charles Thom in his own passive and morose way had done the same. Gilbert Grant had simply waited, waited patiently for me to rediscover at least some civility, as he had known I would. My shame at my carriage towards him, when I eventually dragged myself out of the trough of aggressive despondence, was profound. His forgiveness was quiet and complete. But his wife could never forgive me; she could never forgive the hurt I had caused her husband – and even herself – and as she once told me, she had now seen the dark side of my soul. And here now, in this chamber, in the provost’s defence of me, a door had opened slightly offering a passage back towards the world of men. And there might be respect in that world, and it mattered all the more because the hand that had pushed open the door was not that of a friend.

  I nodded my head a little towards the provost in a gesture of thanks. ‘I will be of what assistance I can in this business. I can make no claim for great knowledge of the art of mapping, but what I was given to understand from Sir Archie you will know entirely. As to my discretion, Mr Guild need not fear: what is spoken of here will not be noised abroad by me.’ In enforced retreat, the minister favoured me with a look of practised contempt.

  The baillie, paying him no heed, strode towards the chest. ‘Then let us bend our necks to the task, for enough time has been wasted already.’ For the next three hours, until the light began to fade and other duties called the attention of the notary, baillie, provost and minister, we pored over the maps. As our examination progressed, the question arose as to what military uses they might be put to. One or two suggestions were somewhat fantastical – the minister claimed to fear the burning and desecration of the marked churches by the idolatrous horde. I believed it more likely that the churches were indicated as landmarks, and that an invading force landing many miles from the centres of power would be unlikely to tarry in the presbyteries of Fordyce or Turriff to burn churches. Of greater concern were the great lengths to which Davidson had gone in describing the bounteous contents of the laird of Banff’s gardens and orchards, as well as the nature and times of the fleshmarket in the burgh and the location of the great barnyards of Delgatie and Rothiemay – brimful of corn and barley. An invasionary force coming by sea and with a long march ahead could provision itself well with such information. There was little doubt in any of our minds that the enemy would be papist – the question was simply from where. The minister and the baillie, united for once, suspected France. I, along with Thomas Stewart the notary, inclined towar
ds Spain.

  The baillie was in little doubt. ‘The French – long a godless people and ever the enemy of Scotland. France would have had us in her snare sixty years ago, when we had scarce yet freed ourselves from thraldom to Rome. The late king’s mother was but a pawn in their schemes. It grieves me greatly that her grandson should have fallen in with yet another French marriage, for no good will come of it.’ King Charles had only succeeded a year ago, yet within two months he had married himself a French bride. This ‘dabbling with Rome’ had made many uneasy, myself included.

  The provost turned to Thomas Stewart. ‘You think Spain the more likely foe. What is your reasoning?’

  The notary pushed one of the maps across the table to the provost. ‘We are agreed that a substantial landing force could be disembarked here or here?’ The provost nodded, and the notary traced a line with his finger slightly north and eastwards of the sea at Banff. ‘Any invasionary fleet would be most likely to come in here. A journey up the west of Scotland and around Cape Wrath or even the Orkneys would be fraught with navigational perils and could not hope to escape detection for long enough to surprise us. But that is the way the French would have to come, for they could scarce sail up the English Channel and hope to progress up the eastern coastline of England without attracting notice. But think of the Spaniards. Think of the Netherlands.’ What he said was true; since the revolt of the Dutch twenty years ago, Spain no longer held the northern Netherlands, gathered now into a republic under the auspices of their States-General. But they still held the south, and soldiers and ducats flowed from Madrid to Antwerp and Brussels, sustaining a network of Spanish spies and intrigue on a seemingly limitless supply of gold from the Americas. Perhaps Patrick Davidson had simply been one more cog in the great Spanish wheel that drove the Habsburgs’ will through Europe and beyond.