Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

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 towards Spain.