Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

‘I know you are not,’ I said. ‘Where did she go?’

‘She went first of all towards the kirkyard, but I think she must have caught sight of Janet and Mary Dawson, for she turned sharply away all of a sudden and made in the direction of the Rose Craig. She climbed the steep path up to the back of the castle grounds, and here I lost her for a few minutes. It was so dark, and yet I feared discovery, for she would have easily seen me if she had looked back. When I thought it safe to ascend the path myself, I did so. I could not see her, and I had left it too long to even hazard a reasonable guess as to which direction she might have gone. A gate in the castle wall was banging. At first I thought nothing of it, thinking it was only the wind. But then I noticed a little rag of plaiding snagged on a splinter in the wood. I went through the gate and still I could not see her, and I resolved to spend some time searching the grounds.

‘I must have been there half an hour or more, searching behind every wall, under every tree. Eventually I knew it was fruitless to search any further – if she had been in the castle grounds, she was not there now. There was no way I was going to venture down the path from the Rose Craig again – how either of us had made it up there in that wind and rain I do not know. I was heading for the gate in the wall that leads to the Water Path when it swung open and there stepping through it towards me was Marion. She was soaked to the very skin, and her hair blown all about her, and I could get no sense from her at all. She called out his name when she first realised there was someone on the path, and when I could make her understand that it was not Patrick Davidson but I myself who stood there, she all but collapsed. All she could say was, ‘I cannot find him, he will not be found.’ I think I must have half-carried her down the Water Path to High Shore. Thank God we were not seen – well, by any other than the Dawson sisters, that is. I managed eventually to get Marion back to her father’s house. Her mother takes a sleeping draught at night, and as we made little commotion I do not think her father was disturbed by us.’

‘At what hour did you reach the apothecary’s?’

He considered a moment. ‘It was something after ten, I think. Not long after.’

My heart sank within me. They had missed him by a few minutes, if that. Five minutes or less earlier down the Water Path and they would have met Patrick Davidson himself, and they would not have abandoned him to the gutter and his fate as I did. I thought I could guess the rest. ‘And you went back out searching for him early this morning, when you found he had not returned?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I went back out last night. Marion was in such a state it was the only thing that would stop her going out herself.’

He related to me then how he had walked the burgh boundaries, avoiding the entry ports on a plea by Marion. She had been almost as concerned that no one should know Charles Thom was searching for Patrick Davidson as she had been that Davidson should be found. He had been down every street, every vennel, every wynd in his search for the apothecary’s apprentice. He had searched relentlessly through the night until, feverish and exhausted, stumbling homewards in the early hours of the next morning, he had heard that Patrick Davidson was lying dead in my schoolroom. And all the while I had slumbered.

A question had been forming in my mind. ‘Charles, why do you think Marion was so fearful that anyone should know you were looking for Patrick Davidson?’

He reflected a moment. ‘I think she believed that whatever danger attended Patrick Davidson would also threaten whoever might know he was in danger. She had a foreknowledge that he was in danger last night, and very likely from whom and why, though she would not tell me. I truly believe that her foreknowledge of what happened last night puts her in danger of her life, Alexander. If anyone should learn of it, I am determined that they shall not make the connection to her through me.’

I could see the sense in what he said, and that there was little point in trying to dissuade him from his resolve. ‘What have you told the baillie, then?’

He gave a low laugh. ‘Nothing that he believes. I have told him that I returned to my bed at the apothecary’s, but having consumed so much ale in the inn was forced to get up again and go out into the air two hours or so later, as I was in fear of vomiting. I said I walked down to the Greenbanks and towards the sandbar at the river mouth to let the storm blast away my nausea and in the hope that it might render me sober. Once there, I began to realise my folly in setting out in such a tempest and sought shelter in the ferrymen’s hut, the ferrymen being stranded at the other side of the river with their boats. There, I fell asleep, and did not wake until the first essays of daylight.’ He smiled. ‘I always feel it is a good thing to give Baillie Buchan and James Cardno and their like a little of what they want. So firm is their belief in the debauchery of others that they are scarce likely to question it when presented with an admission. Certainly, Cardno nodded delightedly when I proffered that explanation.’

‘But not the baillie.’

He let out a sigh. ‘No, not the baillie. William Buchan, I think, has more knowledge of his fellow man than many might think, and he is no fool. His questions come back time and again to Marion. He suspects she was in some way involved last night. He intends to question her as soon as he has the results of the examination from Jaffray. I fear it will not go well for her if she is left alone with him.’

I thought of the lost girl I had seen this morning, staring into the depths from the Elf Kirk, and I promised him I would do what I could, but in truth I had no idea where to begin. I was not indifferent to Marion Arbuthnott’s fate, but I did not feel certain that she was as innocent in this whole sad story as Charles Thom believed her to be. She was a person of secrets, and now he found himself entrapped by one of them. It was for him that my anxiety increased. I made one last assault on his resolve. ‘But what of yourself? You must do something to help yourself.’

‘There is nothing I can do, Alexander.’ He took my hand. ‘I must rely on my friends, and on the mercy of God.’

How the wheel had turned with us – I who had been abandoned by faith at the first real testing, and he who had had no faith until the troubles of others’ lives had crashed in on him. At length I stood up, exasperated at his obstinacy and my own inadequacy. ‘But you cannot stay in this place,’ I said. ‘It is scarcely fit for beasts. Jaffray and I will do everything in our power to have you out of this place. And more,’ I paused and breathed deep, aware that the promise I was about to give would involve me in things I had no knowledge of: ‘I will do all I can to discover who did kill Patrick Davidson, for I know you did not.’

He closed his eyes tight and opened them again, pushing his head back against the wall. ‘No, I did not kill him. I thought Marion was all the world to me, but she made her choice. In life or death I know that he was her choice. To kill him would have availed me nothing. And anyway,’ he looked up with a rare twinkle in his eye, ‘if I were the murdering kind, there are a good few in Banff whose names would be on my list before that of Patrick Davidson.’

As I descended the steps of the tolbooth I could hear the clear and plaintive strains of some highland air. I had never tried to master the Gaelic tongue as Charles had done, but the words that penetrated to my very core spoke of loss, some irredeemable loss, whose pain it was beyond the power of our Scots tongue to render.

Once out again into the damp light of the afternoon I had no inclination to return to the schoolhouse. I decided instead to seek out the truth behind Jaffray’s call out to Findlater. The large as well as the smaller ferry boat had been tied up last night, for fear of loss in the tempestuous sea, but a stranger might have entered Banff at some landward port. I set out on a tour of all the gateways to the burgh, starting at Sandyhill and making my way via the Gallowhill and Boyndie Street to Caldhame and the Seatoun, but my enquiries availed me nothing. There had been no report of any stranger – or burgess indeed – attempting to enter the burgh from the outside last night, and only Jaffray and his manservant were known to have left it. I had not been the first to ask these questions, for the baillie had been there before me. And now he would be assured, as I was myself, that Patrick Davidson’s killer had not been a stranger to Banff, but an inhabitant of the town itself.