Seaton 01 - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by S. G. MacLean

  The provost was not yet there when I arrived at the tolbooth, and I was directed instead to his house on the Castlegate. I had hoped to see Charles before I left, but the town serjeant was under strict instruction that no one – and something in his manner implied that it was myself in particular who was meant – was to be permitted access to the jail. It was becoming clear that Charles was to be kept from any communication with his friends.

  As I drew near to the provost’s house I saw him waiting for me in the open doorway. He hailed me from a distance of ten yards. ‘Mr Seaton. I am glad you are about your business early. You will reach Aberdeen in daylight?’ There was no apology for his lateness and I had expected none.

  ‘Easily. I have Gilbert Grant’s horse, and I will change mounts at Turriff.’

  He cast a practised eye over the animal. It was no thoroughbred, but it was a sturdy and dependable beast. ‘Keep a watchful eye around you as you go. There are vagabonds aplenty on the roads who would not scruple to attack a schoolmaster. The map must not fall into the wrong hands.’

  ‘I can take care of myself well enough.’ There was nothing Walter Watt could tell me about vagabonds on the highways. Three times in four years Archie and I had been set upon as we returned from the college to his father’s stronghold of Delgatie. But Archie had been taught to manage a sword before he could manage a pen and, from the very beginning of our friendship when, small boys though we were, he had realised what a hopeless knight I was, what he knew he had taught to me. From each assault we had come away with our purses and our pride intact.

  The provost seemed satisfied. He handed me a leather pouch with the chosen map inside. ‘You know what you are to ask Straloch. And remember that – you are to ask him. Our business here in this burgh is none of his.’

  ‘I know little of this burgh’s business, provost; only that on which I am sent.’

  ‘I’d wager you know more than that. I did not entirely speak the truth yesterday, when I told the minister I knew little of your ill repute. I know it all, Mr Seaton: the drinking, the whoring, the attempts at self-harm. You have had a wild time of it, six months or more.’

  ‘All that is past.’

  ‘Perhaps. The baillie for one is of a mind that it may be so, and that is something in your favour. I care little for the censure of the Kirk, but I have seen you in sack-cloth on the stool of repentance. I know nothing of the state of your soul or the extent of your repentance, but I know of your humiliation before the whole town. Better men have been banished from this town for little worse than you have done.’

  ‘I know as well as any man what I have been and what I am, provost. For the state of my soul I cannot answer, but my repentance is complete. If I had the choice, I would not still be here. But I have no other place in this world.’

  He looked at me, but said nothing. As well as the map, and a private letter of his for delivery in Aberdeen, he held a written authority to Straloch to treat me as the representative of the burgh of Banff. He handed me them all with a final instruction. ‘You must tell no one of the purpose of your visit to Straloch. There will be bloodshed and dissent in this town should the fear of a popish plot become generally known. You have been entrusted with a matter of great importance. Do not disgrace this burgh. Or yourself.’

  He turned away into the darkness of his doorway and I bade my farewell to his back. As I left the house, early in the day though it was, I heard the sound of a child crying from over the garden wall. I took a step towards the gate and stopped: a little girl, the provost’s daughter, perhaps three or four years of age, was lying on the stony path where she had just fallen, her chubby arm grazed and bleeding. I would have gone to lift her up, but Marion Arbuthnott, unnoticed by me until now, was there before me. She lifted the child tenderly then gently examined the injury. Murmuring some words of comfort she softly kissed the curly head and carried the girl in to her mother. As she was about to step through the door she turned to me and nodded, briefly, in acknowledgement. She had not taken the sleeping draught then; she had not hidden herself away. All would be well with the girl I had had such fears for but two days ago at the Elf Kirk.

  When I reached the sandbar at the mouth of the Deveron the larger of the two town ferries was waiting. The tide was high, unlike the day twelve years ago or more when Archie and I had been riding from Banff to Delgatie. He had insisted that the water was low enough and the sandbar wide enough for our horses to ford the river with ease. The horses had made it, just, but only the diligence of Paul Black, the ferryman, had saved their two young riders from drowning. The tongue-lashing he had given each of us once he had pulled us both to safety at the end of his boatman’s hook was as nothing to the leathering we both received at the hands of the laird’s stable master for risking the horses. Eight years later, that same stable master had sent his only son to the Bohemian wars to serve the young Master of Hay, and the two fathers, master and servant, had wept together when they received the news that neither would return. Yet here was I still: on a borrowed horse, little more than a messenger, of no great worth to those who thought themselves my friends and of none to myself.

  Paul Black still held the tack of the ferry. He hailed me from a distance, an identical boat hook in his hand. ‘Bring him round this way, Mr Seaton.’ He helped me settle and tie the animal. Having seen to the other travellers he did not cast off, but instead came over to talk with me. ‘I am sorry, Mr Seaton, you will be inconvenienced today. The smaller boat is not out.’

  ‘I have no need of the smaller boat,’ I said, not comprehending.

  ‘No, but it means we will have to wait for Sarah Forbes.’ He nodded back in the direction of the town and I followed the line of his vision. The name Sarah Forbes was something familiar to me, but I did not know why. Then, as I looked towards the town, I remembered, and the bleakness of it filled me. A crowd, not large but notable none the less, was making its way past the Greenbanks towards the ferry landing. At its head was the town drummer who struck out a relentless beat. The image in my mind was of George Burnett, master mason. He had sat in the kirk last Sunday on the stool of repentance, as I myself before the whole congregation had often done. His public shaming was in recompense for his having been found guilty of the sin of fornication, adulterous fornication, with one of his servants, which he had denied until Sarah Forbes’s six-month swollen belly gave him the lie. He would sit on the stool another two weeks, for the good of his soul and the edification of his neighbours, and he would pay a six-shilling fine which would be put into the hand of the presbytery divinity bursar such as I had once been. As for Sarah Forbes, who could take her punishment but not pay her fine, she and her unborn child had been condemned to banishment from the burgh, never to be found again within its bounds, on pain of death. Such was justice in our godly commonwealth.

  At the sound of the drum I had thought immediately of Mary Dawson. I had not seen her since Monday night, and had not heard of her about the town since her sister Janet’s banishment. I wondered what fate had befallen her.

  As the procession came to a halt, the town’s officer read out the terms of Sarah Forbes’s banishment one more time. A woman spat; another hurled a stone that missed the girl but caught the drummer on the cheek. Some filthy names were called and then the performance was over. Paul Black helped the girl and her meagre belongings onto the boat and the crowd turned away, the mundane business of the day calling their attention once more. Once aboard, the girl reached in a small leather pouch and brought out a coin which she held out to Paul Black. He shook his head and closed her fingers back over it. She settled herself at the end of a bench opposite me and looked directly ahead of her out to sea. She spoke to no one and no one spoke to her on the short crossing to the other side of the Deveron. As we landed on the east bank of the river, I had to wait for Paul Black to help me off with the horse, and stood back as he reached for the girl’s bundle and then her hand to steady her as she stepped warily down the gangplank.

  ‘You
are a good man, Paul,’ I said, as he untied Gilbert Grant’s horse for me.

  ‘“Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me.’” There being no travellers waiting for passage back over the river to Banff, he set to the oars with his three sons and soon the boat was pulling away towards the opposite side of the river.

  Sarah Forbes was walking away in the direction of the parish of King Edward. I myself had a call to pay there with packages from Mistress Youngson to the minister’s wife, who was her sister. She had given me to understand that the nondelivery of these packages safely into her sister’s own hands would place in jeopardy my continued residence in the schoolhouse, protest her husband however much he might. Still on foot and leading my horse by the head, I had caught up with the banished girl in less than a minute. I could not just get up on the beast’s back and ride past her. ‘It is Sarah, is it not?’

  She glanced at me and then looked ahead of her, blankly. ‘Yes. I think that is well known, today anyway.’ She continued on her way.

  ‘You are Ishbel’s friend, Ishbel MacGillivray?’

  Her face had lightened a little when she turned it towards me again. ‘Yes. Ishbel is my friend. I doubt I will ever see her again, though. And the doctor too, he was good to me. He tried—’ She paused, unsure how to proceed.

  ‘You must know the doctor is my friend. You are free to speak with me. My name is Alexander Seaton.’

  Now at last she smiled, a smile that lifted her face from the ordinary and took something of the wariness from her eyes. ‘I know who you are, sir. Your name is also known.’ She looked down as if she regretted being so open, then said, ‘But Ishbel says you are a good man, and that the doctor thinks well of you.’

  ‘The doctor thinks better of me than I deserve. He tried to help you, then?’

  She nodded. ‘He guessed at my condition two months ago. He spoke up for me before the session and at the council, but it did not sway them. Why should it? I am a fallen woman.’

  ‘Where will you go now?’

  ‘I have nowhere to go but my uncle’s house – on the far side of King Edward. If he will take me.’

  ‘Are you afraid he will not?’

  She gave me a dubious smile and then looked down at her belly. ‘He had little enough opinion of me before he sent me to work in Banff, and he will have less now. Anyway, I must get on. The haar is coming in. Goodbye, Mr Seaton.’

  I remained motionless by my obedient mount as she walked away and up the track. ‘Wait,’ I called. ‘Please wait.’

  She turned around and lowered her head.

  ‘Sarah …’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘I …’ I did not know the answer. ‘It is a long walk to King Edward. Six miles, maybe.’

  ‘Not so long. Two hours, or a little more, will take me there. Anyway, I am in no great hurry.’

  That I could believe well enough. The condemnation of the citizens of Banff would hardly have faded in her ears before that of her aunt and uncle started.

  ‘It will be hot when the haar lifts. Much of your journey will be uphill. I am going by King Edward myself.’ I indicated the saddle, broad and worn by many years in the old schoolmaster’s service. ‘If I moved these bags a little, and doubled this blanket, there would be room …’

  She looked at me, perplexed, and then laughed out loud, a true laugh of delighted mirth. ‘Mr Seaton, where are your eyes? Have you seen the size of me? The poor beast’s back would break with me up there as well, and you would have to sit on his ears just to make room for me.’

  I stood aside from the horse and stepped a little closer to her. ‘You do not understand, Sarah. If you can make yourself comfortable up there, I will walk.’

  She parted her lips slightly and drew in her breath as if she was about to say something. She looked up at me for a moment and then looked away as the pale green eyes that had looked blankly out to sea on the ferry threatened to give way to her feelings. She took the hand that I held out and let me lift her up onto the horse.

  We passed only one or two people on the road, and they took little notice of us. I thought of her former master George Burnett, the father of her child. I had never liked the man, and neither had my father before me. I remembered my father coming home from meetings of the craft guild and talking of the swagger and the coarseness of George Burnett. But the stonemasons were a powerful guild in Banff, and Burnett the most skilled amongst them.

  ‘Will George Burnett care for his child?’ It was not unknown for a father to raise a natural son with those of his marriage.

  Again she laughed, a different laugh this time. ‘Care for his child? George Burnett is too busy to concern himself with anything so profitless. These last storms have cost him many days’ work, and the fine the session forced from him is more than he thinks me or my baby worth. He should have been much further on with the building of the minister’s new house by now, but the weather has held him up so badly he still has much of the garden ground to clear before he can even complete the foundations. The longer it takes him, the longer he will wait on his payment. My fate is of little interest to him, other than that I should be out of his wife’s sight and cease to cause him inconvenience. He will not acknowledge the child. But I would have it no other way.’ I waited for her to continue, and she did. ‘I arrived in Banff a maiden and no whore. I have left it a maiden no longer, but I am no whore either. While there is breath in my body he will never set a hand on my baby.’ She placed her hand over her belly, and in that moment I knew she would kill to protect her child if she had to. I began to fear a little less for Sarah Forbes.

  The rest of our journey passed quietly and we arrived in King Edward without incident. Sarah’s uncle lived on the far side of the parish, where the road dipped then rose again towards Turriff. Mistress Youngson’s sister lived, of course, in the manse beside her husband’s kirk. As we approached the kirkyard gate I sensed the young woman shifting uneasily on the horse’s back.

  ‘Is there something the matter?’

  She smiled, too bright a smile. ‘I am fine, thank you, just fine. But I think maybe it would be better if I walked from here. It would do your name no good to be seen here with me, and you do not deserve to be calumniated for your kindness.’

  ‘Nor you for your condition. I think, perhaps …’ I hesitated, but she was looking at me intently. ‘I think perhaps, it was not your will that George Burnett should have—’ This was none of my business, but I was too far on now to go back.

  She looked away. ‘No, it was not my will.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said.

  I reached up to help her down from the beast’s back, but as I set her gently on the ground I – without knowing what I did – let my hands rest a moment at her waist. From the warmth under my fingers I felt the full force of a small kick, a touch from another world. I pulled my hand away as if burnt, then placed it back in wonder. She smiled, a little confused, as I was. I had not known such an intensity of human touch, different, and yet greater than that I had known in my passion for Katharine Hay. I think I would have stood like that a lifetime. The sound of the byre door opening startled me from my reverie, and I managed to step back a pace or two from Sarah Forbes before Mistress Youngson’s sister emerged carrying a pail of freshly taken milk.

  Esther Youngson, wife of the minister of King Edward, knew me immediately. Carrying the pail carefully, she walked towards us, smiling, as her sister seldom allowed herself to do. ‘It is Mr Seaton, is it not? And,’ she looked beyond me and put down her pail, ‘Sarah Forbes. Oh, Sarah, my child, so it is true, then.’ Sarah, who had held her head high as she had walked away from the jeers and stones of the mob at Banff could not withstand the tenderness of an old woman who had known her from childhood. She hung her head and wept. Mistress Youngson made her way past me and held the girl for a moment until the crisis subsided. There would be no going to her uncle’s just yet. Carrying the milk and the packages that had brought me here, I follow
ed the two women into the manse.

  Hamish MacLennan, a formidable preacher and fervent for the discipline of the kirk, was not at home. His wife insisted that Sarah lie down on the serving girl’s bed set into the kitchen wall. Despite her protests that she was not tired, it was scarcely ten minutes before the level rise and fall of her breathing told us she was asleep. In sleep she looked younger than her eighteen or nineteen years, almost childlike. Mistress Youngson laid another blanket over her and came across to where I sat on the window seat.

  There was bread baking in the oven and its aroma filled the room. The warmth of the kitchen enveloped me so that I too felt I might sleep. In childhood I had often sought out the kitchen and the window seat. From there I would watch my mother at her work and listen to her stories of her Ulster homeland. There were many legends, of kings and princes and giants, and of the fairy folk, tales that would have had my mother up before the session, just for the telling of them, had it been known. To me the saddest story was not of princesses, or sea-folk or fairies, but of a young woman, a wealthy burgess’s daughter of Carrickfergus. The girl had fallen in love with a Scottish soldier returning to his homeland by way of Ireland from exile in France with his master. The young woman’s father had been opposed to any match between them; his daughter had not been brought up to be the wife of a mere soldier, a hammerman to trade. She had been educated in the ways of a lady to be the wife of a lawyer or civil servant or wealthy merchant. He forbade his daughter to see any more of the soldier. Three weeks later, the laird of Delgatie set sail in the night with his men up Belfast Lough and away towards Scotland, far away from his lovely daughter. But when the maidservant went to wake the girl in the morning she found the girl was gone, gone sailing to Scotland with the laird of Delgatie and his armourer, Andrew Seaton, my father.