The Redemption of Alexander Seaton (27 page)

I conceded that there was some sense in what the laird reasoned, but it seemed to me that he deliberately did not mention the maps; that he was drawing me to his point instead. I held the document up. ‘You think he came to do this?’ I asked.

His voice was low and he spoke slowly, not looking at me. ‘I think he may have done,’ he said, ‘and that if he did, he was killed for it.’ His words hung in the air a moment, and then he changed his tack. ‘But tell me also, Mr Seaton; where was the body found?’

I swallowed and looked at him directly. ‘The body was found in my schoolroom, sprawled across my desk.’

He nodded, and seemed satisfied. It was as I had thought: I had been asked the question as a test of my honesty and trustworthiness. Robert Gordon had known exactly where the body of Patrick Davidson had been found. I wondered what else he knew. The singing and laughter from the dining hall was becoming louder. A voice called out ‘Gray Steel’ and the sounds of clapping and the stamping of feet was followed by the dragging noise of furniture being cleared from the floor for dancing. Straloch crossed the room and shut tight the door, which until then had been left a little ajar. ‘How did he come to be there?’

I swallowed. ‘He was brought there.’

He was watching me closely now. ‘By whom?’

I had no reason that I knew to distrust the laird of Straloch, but neither was I content to tell him all I knew. ‘For their own protection, I cannot tell you.’

‘The killer?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I am certain of that. Those who found him saw the state he was in and sought to help him. They had seen me entering the schoolhouse shortly before, and thought I would not yet have been abed, or at least asleep. They left him there. I knew nothing of it till morning. He was dead then.’

‘Why did they not call for you?’

‘They did not wish to be discovered themselves.’ I had given away too much already. Mary Dawson was out of the country, and safe now, but her sister Janet might not yet have gained a sanctuary. The laird, sensing my reluctance, did not press me further. He changed his line of questioning a little.

‘They tell me he was murdered on the night of the great storm. We were battered here for many hours, and lost some trees in the park there. On such a night there cannot have been many abroad. These Samaritans of yours, they saw no one else?’

Since he would not leave it I would lie. ‘No.’

‘And there is nothing, in your past or his, nothing in these maps, that links you in some way to Patrick Davidson or his fate?’

The sensation of fear began to creep through me, and I could feel a coldness under my skin. ‘I know of nothing.’

Straloch was grave. ‘But he was laid in your schoolroom to die. And yet it is your friend, the music schoolmaster, who lies in the tolbooth of Banff, while you walk free.’ He looked
at me in silence for a moment before proceeding. ‘I fear there is some great game of evil afoot in Banff, a game that will not end at the one death. You must take great care, Mr Seaton, great care.’ We had neither of us finished our wine. I sat and sipped the warm red liquid while the laird’s words resonated in my head.

I drained my cup and stood up. ‘I must go to my bed now, I think.’

Straloch came towards me and offered me his hand. ‘I myself have an early start. I ride out tomorrow at seven. I am bound for Edinburgh. I doubt if we will meet again before I leave. As you can see, I am much surrounded by young men and in their company often, but it is not so often that I find one whose conversation is of interest to me. I hope we may meet again some day.’ We shook hands and I gave him the letter from Jamesone that I had almost forgotten, and made for the door. I had my hand on the handle when he suddenly called me. ‘The map!’ How quickly it had been forgotten in the talk of its maker’s murder. ‘I will write a line for you to take back to the provost tomorrow. I can be of little help to allay his fears. It is the finest piece of cartography I have seen, and would serve any army well, if the others you spoke of are of anything like the quality. But I tell you again, I know of no intended invasion, and if there be any, the hand of the Marquis of Huntly is not in it.’

I believed him; whether or not Baillie Buchan, the Reverend Guild and the rest would was another question. Assuring the laird I could find my way myself to my bedchamber, I took the candle he offered me and made my way back along through the west wing to the great central stairway. The sound of a raucous ballad and much laughter
filled the whole ground floor of the house. How many times I had been party to such evenings, such gatherings of friends and kin, the storytelling, the music, the catches and rounds, that went on into the small hours of the night. I longed to go in, just to listen, to be one of them again, for a moment. The ballad came to an end as I stood at the foot of the stairs. And then, when the laughter and cheering had died down, a woman’s voice, clear and alone, rose in a lament. All around was silence. Isabella Irvine. I ascended the stairs.

I had reached my small chamber at the very top of the house before I remembered the boots that a servant had taken in the afternoon to dry for me. Wearily I turned and began to make my way down again. I used my knowledge of such houses to guess where the kitchens might be. I turned to the right at the foot of the stairs and knew that something had gone wrong. I looked around the great entrance hall of the house and saw nothing or no one to give cause for alarm, and yet something was not as it should be. I stood still and listened. I heard nothing. And that was it: where before there had been music, and voices singing, and laughter, now no sound came from the dining hall. Yet, I had heard no one come up the stairs after me. I followed the corridor past the dining hall towards the kitchens, and was met by the steward coming the other way. He was carrying my clothing and riding boots. I thanked him and took them from him. As I did so, a bell was rung in the dining hall and he hastened to answer it. As he stood in the open doorway I could see beyond him into the room. Straloch stood with his back to the fireplace, talking in a low but authoritative voice to his older sons and two or three of the young men who had been at table earlier. Of the women I saw nothing. The steward closed the door
behind him, and in the darkening silence of the house I climbed the stairway once again and made for my bed.

Sleep was not long in coming, but it was not sound. At the top of the house though I was, I was conscious of much movement and low voices on the floors beneath me. Once, someone with a candle paused outside my door. The flicker of light seeped beneath the doorway for a moment and then withdrew. The footsteps were light and soon I could not hear them at all. And then somewhere, deep into the long night, I was brought to full wakefulness by the sounds of horses gathering in the yard below. Conscious of the patrol that had earlier passed my door, I crept from my bed and peered through a gap in the window shutters. Gradually, I prised them further open. In the light of a full moon I could see, far below me, five men on horseback: the young men to whom Straloch had been talking in the dining hall. He was not there now, but I could see Isabella Irvine, her nightclothes a startling, ghost-like white in the moonlight, bidding her cousins and their kinsmen farewell. Quietly, they set off away from the house, only picking up speed once they were far enough away not to disturb those sleeping within. Isabella watched after them until they disappeared from sight, before turning back to the house. As she did so she looked up, directly, at my window. I could not tell whether she saw me or not. I returned to my bed, the window shutters still open, and watched the night sky until the first shafts of sunlight appeared from the east.

The laird had also departed by the time I appeared in the dining hall for my breakfast. The room was a noisy babble of the younger children of the house and their nurses. Bowls of porridge with warmed milk and scones spread with sweet
confits were played with, spilt, dropped for the hounds or left, all to the indignation of the nurses. I took a good meal, as I had no plan to tarry long at any of my staging posts on the road home. Just after the chapel clock struck eight, I rose from the table and returned to my room to gather my few belongings. As I descended the stairs, relief that I would soon be leaving the strange house of night-time partings turned to apprehension: Isabella Irvine stood at the bottom, watching and clearly waiting for me. I held her gaze until, at the last step, she looked away.

‘Good morning,’ I said.

She did not respond to the civility and for a moment seemed at a loss for how to proceed at all. In the end she held out a small package and a sealed letter. ‘My uncle asked that I should give you these. The letter is to be delivered to your provost; the packet is for yourself.’ I took them from her and thanked her. She merely nodded briskly and turned to walk away.

‘Wait,’ I said, touching her arm with my hand. She looked down upon it as if it were an object infected. I let it drop. ‘Please spare me a moment.’

She faced me impassively, waiting.

‘Katharine Hay,’ I began.

She sighed impatiently and made to turn again.

‘No, please,’ I persisted. ‘I only wish to know how she really fares, how life is for her … so far from home.’

Her eyes blazed at me. ‘How do you think it is for her?’ she asked. ‘He is a man of near sixty. You had as well drawn your sword and ended her misery.’

My stomach lurched. In the early days and weeks after she had gone south, my imagination had filled with images of Katharine and her husband, images that I had fought,
through drink, into some sort of oblivion, and now, here they were, being thrown in my face. And how could I tell this girl that there was nothing she could say to me, no words of condemnation, that I had not already said to myself? What could I say to make her understand that whatever the depths of her revulsion, I knew they were not deep enough? I swallowed hard. The words I wished for would not come: there was little point in continuing this interview. I turned away from Isabella Irvine and walked towards the door. Perhaps, though, I could somehow reach to Katharine all the same; perhaps this was one last chance I had not expected. At the entrance portal I turned to face her again. ‘One thing more.’

Her head tilted upwards a little and her nostrils widened.

‘Yes?’

‘The next time you should see Katharine, will you tell her that I was wrong, and I am sorry; Alexander Seaton is sorry.’

She regarded me coldly. ‘I will not. You made your choice, Mr Seaton, and you must live by it, as does she.’ She bade me no farewell and was gone, vanished into the darkness of the east wing.

A light drizzle fell as I rode from Straloch. It was a house of much life, much happiness, but over which my very presence seemed to have cast a dank and dismal shadow. I might have been happy there, once, in former days, but I could not be now. I was not long in reaching the inn at New Machar, and was grateful to see there the familiar and welcoming face of William Cargill’s old manservant, Duncan, who was to travel with me as far as King Edward, to fetch Sarah Forbes. He must have left Aberdeen before dawn. He assured me he had breakfasted at the inn, and was as eager
as myself to get on. In no time he had fetched from the stableyard the sturdy pony and cart William had sent him with and we were on our way.

Duncan made little conversation and that suited me well. His only comment was that he had not been out on this road since he had gone to Banff with the master to fetch back his bride, and that that had turned out well enough. The pony’s pace was steady but slow, and it was into the afternoon before we stopped at Fyvie to rest the beasts and take some refreshment. Elizabeth had packed two baskets – for us, the other for Sarah. There were chicken legs and eggs and cheese, and wheaten scones spread with marmalade, and flasks of good ale. Duncan, a fine Presbyterian, muttered at the excess, and at the numbers of the hungry such a feast would feed. I helped myself to two chicken legs and eyed the third enviously, wondering what poor soul met on the road would have that to his supper on the old fellow’s return journey. He watched accusingly as I put a second slice of apple pie to my mouth. I pretended not to notice.

We finally reached King Edward as the late afternoon light began to lose its warmth and turn a colder grey, portending dusk. Duncan had instructions from his master to take lodgings in Turriff before dark if it could be done, and not to think of attempting to finish the journey back to Aberdeen by night. Rarely can a warning have been less needful: the old man would never have been so foolish. We went first to the manse, where to my relief I found that the minister was at home. His wife offered us food, of course, but Duncan, thanking the mistress profusely, said we had dined to our fill, and that a drink of water for ourselves and the pony was all that was needed. I had changed my horse at Turriff, and was
now once again on Gilbert Grant’s mount. Duncan warmed himself in a seat by the fire while I was shown through to the minister’s spartan study.

Hamish MacLennan was tall and spare and learned-looking. As we entered at his call, he was standing at the window with a small book in his hands. I recognised it, for it was an identical edition to that I and all teachers used with our children: Craig’s
Shorter Catechism
. His wife announced me and, nodding in my direction, he invited me to sit down.

‘I am sorry to have interrupted you in your work,’ I said.

‘I am always at my work. Here in my study, out in the parish, in the kirk, in my every solitude. My life is in my calling.’

I did not know how to respond and he saw my discomfort.

‘I meant no criticism of yourself, Mr Seaton. It is the Lord who judges all.’ He paused for a moment in contemplation of this thought, and I wondered how it was that the town of Banff had to endure the self-serving mediocrity that was the Reverend Guild while this poor country parish was so blessed in its minister. MacLennan might almost have forgotten I was there, but his wife, who had not yet left, called me back to his attention.

‘Hamish, Mr Seaton has a favour he would ask of you. For myself, I hope that you might feel able to grant it him.’ Thus having said, she left us to our business.