The Devil's Recruit (Alexander Seaton 4)

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘I understand.’ He stood up, readying his hat to go outside into the mist again. ‘Will you embrace me as a brother, Alexander, and will you tell me that come what may to our land, you will remember me always as a brother?’

  ‘I will.’

  With a curt nod to Archie, Matthew left, to go once more into the spider’s web of the councils of his masters. Archie looked after him, long after he had closed the door behind him, and there was something in his face that told of an alteration between my two old friends. We were alone now, in the near silence of my kitchen, where the gentle hiss of the fire, the even breaths of my sleeping son, and the ticking of the clock on the mantelshelf could not even begin to span the chasm of silence between us.

  At last Archie spoke. ‘Will you condemn me for a Mass, Alexander? Is all we have ever been, one to the other, to be lost for the sake of a Mass?’

  I could hardly believe he was speaking those words to me. ‘Do you think it means nothing to me?’ I said at length.

  He spread out his hands, beginning to relax. ‘Not nothing, of course not nothing. But not so much surely, that you’re lost to me?’

  I saw in his face that he truly believed what he had said. ‘Archie, you have known me my whole life, almost. I have loved you my whole life, but you and I, we are nothing, we are dust. Dust and ashes in the hands of God. A man cannot place the love of friends, of family even, before his obedience to God.’

  ‘And yet you embraced Matthew …’ His certainty was beginning to falter.

  I leant towards him. ‘Archie, with Matthew we always knew; there was never any attempt to dissemble. His whole life, we knew what Matthew was, and I have prayed daily to know that he might be amongst the saved. But you … you and I, we’ve been different from what Matthew and I ever were, different even from what William and I have become.’ I could see the slightest pain, even now, after all, at the mention of William who, over long, constant years, had begun to fill Archie’s place in my life, as if that one thing, in all that had changed and happened over time, mattered more than the rest to be left unchanged. ‘For all we were ever different, for all your recklessness, you were never reckless in that. Your faith was as sure as mine.’

  He rubbed at a cord at his neck that I had never noticed there before. I remembered, long ago, in Ireland, a time when I had come in to that habit myself, and I imagined the crucifix that must lie against his chest as it had done then, against my will, on mine. He was only aware of the gesture when he saw that my eyes noted it.

  ‘When I was young, all I knew of Rome was the catalogue of vanities, blasphemies, idolatries our ministers and teachers warned us against, and I knew that my father had faced exile and the near loss of his patrimony in its name.’ Archie’s father had known disgrace, in the days of King James and the old queen, Elizabeth, in England, for too close an acquaintance with the Spanish plotting of Scottish Romanist noblemen. He had nearly lost Delgatie over it, and had resolved never to glance at a rosary again. ‘But in the war,’ he continued, ‘I learned a different tale.’

  I stared into the fire and said nothing.

  ‘Will I tell it to you?’

  ‘Will there be any truth in it?’

  ‘All of it.’

  I was as loath to hear Archie’s truth as I was any more of his lies, but I had not the energy to argue. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I told you how after I recovered from my injuries at Stadtlohn I travelled until I found the Protestant forces under Count Mansfeld, and what a wretched collection of humanity I found there.’

  ‘I thought,’ I said, my voice strangely dry, ‘that you all went to the wars for honour.’

  ‘Did you? I do not think so, Alexander. You see enough in this small town, in the country around, when harvests fail or debts are called in, when the only other choice is jail or the House of Correction, why men and boys throw in their last chance with the recruiters. And the men recruited by Mansfeld in ’24 were the absolute worst, the most desperate dregs of humanity you could ever hope to see. Almost a hundred shiploads he brought from England with the thought to relieve Breda from the Spanish, but our French allies withdrew their permission to land on their shores, and so away to the north he sailed. But the Dutch liked the look of his recruits no better than the French had, and they were left a fortnight at anchor at Flushing, to starve, to die from the cold, from thirst. The bodies of the dead and the nearly dead were thrown overboard. By the time the rump that was finally let ashore reached Breda, the town was beyond help, and when it fell, the Dutch no longer wanted Mansfeld’s ragged mercenaries. And so we marched north and north, and those who should have succoured us would give us none, flooded their own lands that we might find no sustenance, and so we were forced to plunder those we had thought to help. We never did meet up with MacKay’s regiment as had been hoped. They came too late. Wallenstein decimated our forces at Dessau in April of ’26. Over half of our men were taken prisoner, and most of the Scots and Irish amongst them went over to the Catholic side.’

  ‘And you went with them,’ I said. ‘Your faith could not sustain you through defeat.’

  He went over to the sideboard and poured himself a goblet of my wine. I wanted none. ‘My faith, or something, some deadness in me perhaps, sustained me through defeat often enough. It was victory I couldn’t stomach. I wasn’t amongst those taken prisoner at Dessau, I didn’t join the enemy’s forces then. All that I told you up to, and a little beyond that point was true.’

  I did not know whether I believed him or not, but he seemed intent on telling out his tale. ‘And beyond which point would the truth not advance?’

  He sat down opposite me once again.

  ‘It was at Weisskirchen.’

  ‘You already told me of Weisskirchen,’ I said. ‘The horrors you witnessed. They were reported even here. The slaughter of man, woman and child by the forces you had fought with. You told me you ran from it.’

  ‘And so I did. But it was Weisskirchen that changed my faith.’ He turned the goblet in his hand. ‘No, that is not true: it is what I saw at Weisskirchen that gave me faith.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘How would you? You’ve always been so certain. So assured.’

  ‘Archie, I …’ But he would not be interrupted now, and so I left him with his illusions.

  ‘I had seen many things, many acts of brutality before we ever came to that town, and whatever had been good or noble, if ever there had been, in the men with whom I had soldiered for a year by then, it had long been destroyed, and the taking of that town gave vent to everything, the most base vileness of humankind, that was left. When I could stomach it no more, when my sword arm was rendered useless by one of my own comrades whom I had tried to turn away from his evil purpose, I turned from that town and I ran. But before I was through the gates, I saw something I had never thought to see in those wars.’

  I waited while in his mind he seemed to see it again.

  ‘I saw a vision of peace. An old woman, gouged by an axe when she had been trying to protect her grandchild, was very close to death. A young priest, somehow unscathed by the venom being unleashed all around him, knelt over her and spoke to her in Latin. Quietly, in the midst of all the sound and fury, he murmured to her that her sins were forgiven, and he sent her to Paradise with the peace of Christ in her eyes. I was covered in blood and dirt and I went down on my knees before that young priest and asked him to give me absolution too.’

  ‘It was not his to …’ I began, but he stopped me.

  ‘Yes, I knew you would say it was not his to give, but I felt the weight of my sins lifted from me as I knelt before him and he told me they were forgiven.’

  ‘And from that day you have been a Papist.’

  ‘Yes, Alexander, from that day to this and until my last.’

  ‘And yet you fight for the Protestant cause?’

  He was looking right into me, unblinking, leading me to something I had not been able to see. ‘My God,’ I said a
t last. ‘Oh, my God.’

  I had been blind. Stupid. He had all but told me more than once. He and Ormiston – Ormiston, who had been waiting to take the host after him, were not recruiting for the Protestant forces at all.

  ‘I wanted to tell you, I started trying to tell you, the last time I was here, but then the child woke up, and the moment was gone. I did not want to lie to you.’

  ‘Spain?’ I said at last, my voice scarcely audible.

  He nodded, seeing that I had it now. ‘Of late, yes. But for most of the last nine years I have served in the Habsburg armies of the Emperor. When I left Mansfeld’s rabble, I joined with the other Scots and Irish in Wallenstein’s Catholic army, under Colonel Daniel Hepburn. You see, there are thousands of us on both sides, and it is not always what we have left behind that shapes the choices we make.’

  ‘And Ormiston? When did he make his choice? Did he ever sail with MacKay’s regiment, or was that a lie too?’ It seemed to me that Ormiston was brazen enough to lie to the face of Lord Reay himself.

  Archie took another draught of his wine. ‘He is not the man you think him to be, Alexander. He has greater honour than you give him credit for.’

  ‘And yet he raises troops to die abroad under false promises. They think they go to fight in the Protestant cause, for the King’s sister, and all the while they are but fodder for the cannons of the Habsburgs. And Ormiston has the gall to receive honour from Lord Reay.’

  Archie’s face hardened. ‘He well merits it. He fought for six years in MacKay’s forces, saw his brother die …’

  ‘Is that what turned him?’

  ‘Turned him?’

  ‘Is that what sent Ormiston scuttling over to the Habsburgs? That his brother died in the Protestant cause?’

  Archie regarded me a while. ‘You see it all in such simple terms.’ He sighed. ‘No, he did not come over then. The first time I met him, I was with Colonel Butler’s Irish forces, defending Frankfurt an der Oder against the armies of Gustav Adolph. Ormiston was still with MacKay’s regiment then, and though they were victorious, his own commander praised the valour of Butler’s defence. Ormiston told me of it when next we met, and I think it created a kind of brotherhood between us, despite the slaughter we had both witnessed in that town.’

  Within me yet, for all my anger with him, for all the distrust of him that had welled up within me in the last hours, something winced at his talk of brotherhood with the lieutenant, a brotherhood I knew I would never be able to share in.

  ‘It was two years after Frankfurt, at Freistadt, that we met again. By that time, I had met in with two of our old acquaintance, Walter Leslie and John Gordon, risen high in the Imperial armies. We were in a stand-off near Nuremberg, and one afternoon, while on reconnaissance, we were captured all three of us by a party of Scots in MacKay’s regiment, serving under the Swedish king. With Leslie and Gordon I had been openly Archie Hay, but as a captive I was again humble Sergeant John Nimmo. Five weeks we stayed with our captors, until ransom was paid, and a merry five weeks they were.’ I realised it was the tale Ormiston had told us aboard his ship two nights before, but he had not told all, as Archie did now. ‘The causes for which we fought were put aside, and we revelled in our shared nationhood, and a comradeship of arms far from home. While Gordon and Leslie were royally entertained by their fellow officers, I was under the watch of a young ensign. That is how Ormiston and I came to meet again. We spoke over our memories of many shared battles; in time we came to speak of what we had lost through the war – he of his brother, I of all my family and friends at home, and finally, as men will do, of what faith we had. And so, in time, he conceived a desire that when Leslie, Gordon and I should finally be released to rejoin the Imperial forces, he should come with us, and so he did, and he and I have fought and travelled together ever since.’

  I saw now that Ormiston was far from the mere acquaintance that Archie had first presented him to be, and that the officer’s knowledge of and dislike of me probably stemmed from the same roots as did mine of him. I went over to the window and looked out at the murky darkness. ‘And so all your talk of spying, of travelling across Europe, of Brussels, Madrid, that was just a fantasy for my amusement, my entertainment.’

  ‘No, Alexander. The difference is that I walked openly, was welcomed in Vienna, in Brussels, Madrid, but that in other places I had to pass with caution, in the shadows, not make myself known. And the lieutenant …’

  I spun round. ‘I do not care about the lieutenant. What I want to know is …’ I swallowed, cast my eyes up the stairs to where Sarah was probably still awake. ‘ … Is what you told me about Madrid true?’

  ‘The child?’

  I nodded.

  ‘It’s true. What’s more, Matthew Lumsden saw him too.’

  I went back over to the fire, my voice lowered. ‘Matthew?’

  ‘It was he who first spotted the boy. I have to confess, my eye was more taken by the mother, but it nearly stopped my heart when Matthew said to me, “Is that child not the image of Alexander Seaton?” It was all I could do not to take the boy in my arms and whirl him round the room. In the years since the loss of my own darling child, it was the greatest joy I have known.’

  I wanted to be where he had been, in that room, in that Jesuit house, in that city of heat and wonders, and see what he had seen. Not Roisin, for I had never cared enough for Roisin and could only with difficulty picture her face, but my son.

  ‘Are you certain?’ I said, my voice almost a whisper.

  ‘As certain as I am looking at you. I asked the woman outright. She dissembled at first, but she was no good at it. And so she told me that yes, he was your son, but she begged that I should tell no one else, for she and her child were dependent on those who believed he might one day follow in the footsteps of his father, and that that father should not be a university teacher from a cold Scottish town.’

  I sat down, my head in my hands, my heart thumping so loud I could hardly think. Archie crouched down in front of me. ‘They are cared for there, Alexander, safe and honoured in your cousin’s name. And these Jesuits whom you so despise, and Lady Rothiemay and all the other recusants, here and in Ireland, see to it that they and many others like them will not go hungry, nor dishonoured, nor without shelter. Nothing you could do would make life any the better for them, or for you. You are a great one for the will of God. Accept it in this.’

  And so we talked on, and I came to understand, I think, what drove my friend. He had not lied to me before when he had said his one aim was that the war should end, and that he believed only a victory for the Habsburgs could end it. And so he recruited in that cause. By the end, I was no longer angry with him, no longer disappointed, and I wondered even that in the life he had led since our youth, it should still matter to him that I thought of him at all. I felt, as we sat across from one another in the warmth of my small kitchen, that the night had strengthened our friendship, not destroyed it.

  ‘But there is one thing, Archie. You know I cannot let you take those boys you have on the ship away to fight for the Empire. You know they must be released. And I must name you, and Ormiston.’

  He was resigned. ‘I don’t know whether to be sorry or proud that you are still so incorrupt, so constant. Proud, I think, but I also would beg of you one day’s grace.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. Not a day. You must be gone tonight, and in the morning I will go to the sheriff and have them name you, and Ormiston, and Charpentier, and what your purposes have been. The sheriff’s officers will board your ship and those boys will be taken ashore and sent back to their own parishes and towns, or put under Lord Reay’s charge to go south with his men if they still wish to fight. This will be their last night aboard that ship, and you – I care not for Ormiston – but you must leave this town tonight, and you know you can never come back.’

  It was as if I had not spoken. ‘One day’s grace, Alexander, that’s all I ask.’

  ‘What? So you and the lieutenant can spi
rit that ship away, with its unsuspecting cargo?’

  ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘So that I might go and see my father. Come with me, Alexander. To Delgatie. Let us go the old road together one more time.’

  19

  St Ninian’s Chapel

  The town was still a mire of darkness and fog when I set out early the next morning for the college. Already, Lord Reay’s men were abroad, continuing their futile search for the son of their chief. Nodding to them as I passed, I did not go directly to the Broadgate, but rather took the path down St Katharine’s Hill until I came to Shore Brae from where I could reassure myself that the recruiting ship still sat steadily at anchor off Torry. It did, and I offered a silent prayer of thanks to God. Others around the harbour had less to be thankful for, anxious as they were for the arrival of some cargoes or the departure of others. It was a fog of the sort that could lie over the sea for days, or be burned off in two hours. I must have been the only man in Aberdeen who wished to see it last.

  Sarah had still been awake when I went to bed late the night before. It might have been tiredness, nothing more, but there was a look on her face that was almost haunted. I did not think she could have heard the conversation that passed between Archie and me, and yet I had found myself unable to talk of small things, things of no consequence that might put her mind at rest. She asked me, almost blankly, if we had made up our differences, and I told her that we had. I told her too, of Archie’s wish that I should go with him to Delgatie.

  ‘Do as you will,’ she had replied. ‘My blessing will alter nothing.’

  She was cold through, and though I held her through the night, I do not think she ever got warm.

  ‘I love you, Sarah,’ I had said as I left.

  ‘Maybe that will be enough.’ She turned and smiled at me at last. ‘Be safe, Alexander.’